There are those out there who claim to have converted to Christianity from atheism. Often, they are touted as figureheads by apologists, who cite people such as Anthony Flew, Alistair McGrath and Ray Comfort as examples of those who were devoted atheists but later saw the light and embraced Christianity as the truth.
I think it’s very clear, though, that anyone who is now a Christian but claims to have been an atheist in the past was never really an atheist to begin with! Yes, they may have made protestations of atheism; they may have really felt convinced by evolution; they may even have publicly defended the secularist viewpoint, but a true atheist would never have been swayed by the weak arguments of Christianity. It doesn’t matter if they felt as utterly certain of the atheist position as I do now; if they abandoned rationality, they clearly were never truly rational to begin with.
I suspect that these so-called “former atheists” secretly believed in some sort of higher power, maybe a deist conception of God, all along. Yes, they would have gone through the motions of faithlessness, to fit in with their peer groups and to present a veneer of empiricism, but I think in their heart-of-hearts, these people were always afraid that there might be something out there greater than themselves. It’s this fear which manifests itself as their “conversion”, when they come to the conclusion that in fact the things they’ve felt all along are actually true.
The myth of the “former atheist” is all too popular in Christianity, and we real atheists need to make it clear that there is no such thing! You can’t simply “stop thinking” and change your mind about something so fundamental, unless you were secretly a believer the whole time. I don’t care how vehemently you protested your disbelief in god, or how strongly you felt that creationism shouldn’t be taught in schools, if you abandon the bedrock of rationality then you were never standing on it to begin with.
(inspired by this post at Breaking Spells and this post at Real Christianity)
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February 4, 2009 at 3:40 pm
PhillyChief
Funny, I just dealt with this. I think even the theist would have to agree that to be an atheist, one has to refuse the existence of any gods (unlike this idiot). I don’t think requiring that for membership is ‘no true Scotsman’ territory. What could be is claiming there’s only one “true” way to reach that conclusion.
Now I share Yunshui’s opinion of how one should reach such a position, and hopefully that’s the majority opinion. Such a rational approach would not be so easily swayed by say a banana. I think what’s ultimately more important than the position of atheism is the rational process by which one reaches that opinion. That, I would argue, is what’s worth evangelizing. Atheism is merely a by-product of that.
February 5, 2009 at 1:35 am
the chaplain
I tend to agree with yunshui, in that I think that anyone who actually thought about his/her atheism wouldn’t be very likely to be swayed by any religious argument. It’s possible, perhaps even probable, that some people who were not religious or were apathetic about religion may have been laissez faire atheists, but they may simply have been people who never thought about the matter one way or the other. But, I hesitate to say that’s always the case, because this argument seems to mirror the “no true Christian” argument, such as the one yunshui linked to.
The “no true Christian” argument is simply an attempt to discredit people like me who once believed all the religious bullshit, but eventually rejected it. I find the argument incredibly insulting, even though clinging to my claim of former belief entails that I own up to having swallowed bucketfuls of bullshit for years. I fought long and hard to arrive at my current state of atheist enlightenment, and I resent like hell the attempts of Christians to denigrate my experience and call it something other than what it was.
Having said all that, I think there may be a significant difference between the two cases. When one is reared in an environment steeped in religion, as I was, the religious worldview easily becomes one’s default position. Even when I rebelled against the strictures of religion, I still believed in God and most of the doctrines I had been taught. Even though I knew, theoretically, that atheists existed, I had no concept of what it would be like not to believe in God. Eventually, of course – in my late teens, I committed myself fully to the dogma. I guess I could have become an apathetic believer, but that’s not happened in my case. I was a true believer, no matter what the “no true Christian” apologists want to claim.
How is life different for one who is not reared in an environment of non-belief? I’m trying to get my head around nonbelief as the default position from birth. Would it be something taken for granted, and therefore never really thought about with any care? (After all, my religious belief was much like that for me.) If so, I can see how one could have technically been a nonbeliever, yet have been susceptible to swallowing religious dogma. So, is it possible that “former atheists” really were atheists? I think so, but I think their position was arrived at by chance rather than rational deliberation.
I’m not sure it’s wise to consider only atheists who have arrived at their nonbelief through rational deliberation as the only True Atheists. I think we have to be more honest than the Christians and accept that some atheists are not rational and are, consequently, susceptible to religion.
February 5, 2009 at 8:46 am
Eshu
chappie,
Interesting viewpoint. I suspect that if you’re bucking the trend of your community, you’re forced to think about it quite hard. However, we’re all born atheists (small ‘a’) and if most of the community we grow up in ignore religious then we might never think about it. Actually, I think the majority of atheists in the UK haven’t thought about it too much, their only argument might be something like “religion causes wars” or “some priests are kiddie-fiddlers”.
In my opinion that’s all the more reason to make the arguments against religion widely known.
February 5, 2009 at 12:07 pm
yunshui
*Ahem*
Clearly the satirical nature of this post was not sufficiently pronounced…
Just to be clear – this is a parody of Alan Higgins’ post at Real Christianity. Sarcastic. Tongue-in-cheek. The sentiments above are not mine.
Have I inadvertently created a reverse Poe’s Law?
February 5, 2009 at 12:22 pm
andybeingachristian
Woah there! Did you just say we are all ‘born atheists’??? Not agnostics but atheists – those who believe there is no God? What absolute nonsense – as a teacher I can assure you that any class I’ve ever asked, regardless of family background, has always come out well in favour of God’s existence – right up to (and sometimes beyond) the adolescent point when societal cynicism and values kick in for real. That’s not to say we’re all necessarily born theist either – although the observable desire to worship a higher being as demonstrated across almost all cultures in all history does make that the more plausible statement – but ‘born atheist’ is an assumption borne of pure propaganda.
February 5, 2009 at 12:23 pm
andybeingachristian
PS I haven’t even read the article above, so sorry if I’m way off topic – I just saw the Eshu comment come up on my reader and instantly took the bait!
February 5, 2009 at 12:43 pm
yunshui
Hi andy,
I’ll grant that the “born atheists” statement is on some level contentious – given that children, once they have a sufficiently developed imagination, tend to invent imaginary friends left, right and centre, you could indeed argue that humanity the world over has a tendency towards deism. I wouldn’t actually disagree – as Eshu’s latest blog post points out, the idea of a divine Creator is, at least superficially, a more “obvious” explanation of the world. How does this help your case, though? You’re effectively claiming that there is, from childhood, a universal trait amongst humans to want to invent gods to believe in, which is admirably demonsatrated by the many faiths which throng the world. Does this not seem like pretty good evidence that gods are imaginary things, created by people for want of something to worship?
February 5, 2009 at 3:19 pm
PhillyChief
First, Andy, the comment was born atheist. By the time you get to question the kiddies in school, they’ve already been influenced and had the idea planted in their heads, so your experience isn’t relevant, is it?
Second, I think saying we’re all born atheists is incorrect because atheism is predicated upon a claim of theism. If you never heard anyone mention gods before, how would you ever get to the position of rejecting that there are any? The colloquial agnostic is incorrect as well because once again, it’s predicated upon having knowledge of what a god is.
I subscribe to the tabula rasa theory. We’re born with empty sponges in our heads, so I can’t see how you can say we’re born believing anything, one way or another.
February 5, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Eshu
Andy. Sorry, I had not intended to create such furore!
I should clarify.
It comes down to an apparently small but important difference between atheist (small ‘a’) and Atheist (large ‘A’). The former is quite minimal in it’s requirements.
You said,
I disagree. I would define atheist (small ‘a’) as “someone who does not believe in a god”. That includes myself, yunshui, PhillyChief and the chaplain. People who have good reasons for disbelieving, people who have bad reasons for disbelieving (eg: My Dad says so). Those who’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, those who haven’t. It also includes people who for whatever reason have never considered the possibility of a god or gods. One reason might be that they’ve never been told about god(s). No baby’s first words are ever “Praise Jesus!”.
Atheist (large A) is a subset of atheist which I think is best summed up as “People who describe themselves as atheists”. In which case they must have thought about at least one one form of theism for the term Atheist to make sense. I still don’t think this implies we believe it with 100% certainty, although a (much) smaller subset be “Strong Atheists” may do.
Agnosticism as originally coined by Huxley is not a halfway house of uncertainty between theism and atheism, but a way of thinking. Agnostics do not claim absolute knowledge without evidence. The result of this may be Atheism. Dan Barker describes himself as an agnostic and an Atheist and believes there are agnostics who are also Christians. It’s possible to believe something without saying you have absolute knowledge and certainty of it.
I hope that clears up why I think we’re all born as atheists (small ‘a’). I admit “born atheists” can be misread to be akin to “born musician”, which is not what I meant. Sorry. To claim we’re all born actively believing in the non-existence of a deity would be as amusingly nonsensical as saying, “I’m a Roman Catholic, and I have been since before I was born…” :-)
Predisposition to believe later on (given a nudge in a particular direction, OK, sometimes more than a nudge!) is another issue, which I think yunshui has covered.
February 5, 2009 at 6:19 pm
the chaplain
yunshui:
The parallel between your post and Higgins’s is clear. You just happened to hit on one of my pet peeves. I occasionally get commentators at the chapel who presume to know more about my history than I do, and we get lots of those types over at de-conversion.com. They’re extraordinarily annoying, infuriating, even. So, as my rambling comment probably revealed, I’m still working out the differences between “those who were never real atheists” and “those who were never real Christians/Muslims/Rastafarians/Pastafarians, etc.”