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Look Who's a Believer now...

Phasmid

Phasmid

Mr Invisible
Seems like he was a militant atheist... the kind that spring up a lot today. A lot of them seem to have a lot of angst with regards to religion and just ***** and moan about god... even while they do this you get a hint that they still believe in him, but they're discontented with him.

*shrugs* I don't think it gives any more credibility to Christianity... to me it's just a sign that people are people, we change our minds all the time.

Personally, I'm pretty happy where I am with regards to religion (I don't really give it much thought). My kind of atheism/not really giving a fig suits me and I won't push it upon others. Other non-believers, such as those in the link, seem like they never really stopped believing... rather they just got ****** off with their beliefs and whined about them.
 
Perfect Circle

Perfect Circle

Just Browsing
Phasmid said:
Seems like he was a militant atheist... the kind that spring up a lot today.
Click to expand...

This seems to be a common misconception on RF lately... I'd like to go ahead and help clarify this. "Militant atheism", by which I assume you mean vehement denial of god(s) and vigorous debate against the concept of god(s) in public forums, is not new. It's been going on for some time now...

See: Epicurus, Ayn Rand, Carl Marx, etc.
 
N

Nepenthe

Tu Stultus Es
Didn't he convert back in April?

I love this reason for converting:
Then there was the low esteem in which Darwinism holds man. The people who insist that we are “simply anthropoid apes” can’t account for something as basic as language. The “existence of language,” love and music, to name but a few, convinced Wilson that we are “spiritual beings.” For Wilson, they prove that “the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true.” :facepalm:
Believe Again: A. N. Wilson Returns to the Faith

Or this, "It also lends weight to the fervour of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion." :biglaugh:
Religion of hatred: Why we should no longer be cowed by secular zealots | Mail Online




http://www.crosswalk.com/news/commentary/11603062/
 
Phasmid

Phasmid

Mr Invisible
Perfect Circle said:
This seems to be a common misconception on RF lately... I'd like to go ahead and help clarify this. "Militant atheism", by which I assume you mean vehement denial of god(s) and vigorous debate against the concept of god(s) in public forums, is not new. It's been going on for some time now...

See: Epicurus, Ayn Rand, Carl Marx, etc.
Click to expand...

And where exactly did I deny this? I'm merely saying that they're popping up more than ever thanks to the Internet and such.

Futher: They still sound like whiney *****es half the time. To each their own. Let people believe what they like.
 
SHANMAC

SHANMAC

Member
Heneni said:
'God's Funeral' has turned into God's resurrection. Author of the popular book has changed his mind.

Look Who's a Believer Now - WSJ.com

What do you make of it?
Click to expand...

While I am happy to see the conversion, I agree with Mister Emu that the conversion in and of itself does not add any credence to Christianity as a whole.

Perfect Circle said:
So somebody who was once an adult Christian, then left the faith, came back to it. I think he reminds me of Brett Favre...

(apologies in advance for anyone who doesn't know american football)
Click to expand...

As a member of the Packer state, I agree with you 100%. Frubes.
 
Smoke

Smoke

Done here.
Heneni said:
'God's Funeral' has turned into God's resurrection. Author of the popular book has changed his mind.

Look Who's a Believer Now - WSJ.com

What do you make of it?
Click to expand...
It's hard to know what to make of it, since Larsen doesn't tell us much about Wilson's process of becoming a believer; he just uses it as a pretext for criticizing non-believers. He says Wilson attributes his return to faith to "the confidence I have gained with age," but that's hardly an explanation.
 
Dunemeister

Dunemeister

Well-Known Member
Nepenthe said:
Didn't he convert back in April?

I love this reason for converting:
Then there was the low esteem in which Darwinism holds man. The people who insist that we are “simply anthropoid apes” can’t account for something as basic as language. The “existence of language,” love and music, to name but a few, convinced Wilson that we are “spiritual beings.” For Wilson, they prove that “the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true.” :facepalm:
Believe Again: A. N. Wilson Returns to the Faith

Or this, "It also lends weight to the fervour of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion." :biglaugh:
Religion of hatred: Why we should no longer be cowed by secular zealots | Mail Online
Click to expand...

You may slap your forehead and laugh all you like, these reasons seem perfectly fine to me. It's perfectly reasonable to see such human behaviors as spirituality, anxiety over questions of death and meaning in life, moral reasoning/awareness, and so forth as pointing to our essential nature as spiritual. That doesn't take away to our physicality, it adds to it. Now, one may well disagree; one might think (erroneously, in my view) that these things can all be reduced to something physical. But that's a controversial metaphysical view. And although the view has lots of support, the arguments for it are weak. So it's entirely understandable that someone who honestly reflects on these things might say "You know what? My previous Christian view fits better with all this than my current atheological one." This is a position one might philosophically debate, but it's not something to slap your head over.

As for the second reason, it's really about why he lost his faith originally. The "it" is the generally antireligious culture in Britain. Arguably, Britain is far more secular than the USA, and antireligious sentiment there is much stronger. If the culture at large berates and mocks Christianity, it's much more difficult to hold to the faith. That's all he's saying here. For Wilson, the generally negative attitude toward religious faith in his culture (as he experienced it) eroded the confidence he once had in Christianity. Again, this is understandable, not laughable.
 
Copernicus

Copernicus

Industrial Strength Linguist
I think that such conversions and deconversions tell us a lot about the condition of human thought regarding gods in these times, but you have to step back and look at the overall trend. Right now, the trend seems to be that a larger percentage of people are losing faith than are (re)gaining it. The demographic trend is for larger numbers of non-believers among young people. From that perspective, religious faith is diminishing.

Anecdotal individual conversions are useful for what they tell us about the specific thinking behind conversions. How do these people justify their reconversion to Christianity? Is there anything substantive behind their arguments? It seems to me that most of the reconversions seem to cluster around the argument from design, which is still a very potent underpinning for belief in gods. For example, Antony Flew admitted that his conversion (to deism, not theism) grew out of his inability to believe that DNA could have arisen from natural processes. I find such rationalizations to be completely unconvincing, but I understand why others find them compelling. It gives them a basis for raising "doubts about doubts", as Larsen (the author of the WSJ piece) put it.

But I think that the more compelling reason for conversions from non-religion to religion are emotional ones--what I find to be the overarching theme of apologists such as CS Lewis. Lack of belief tends to alienate one from the mainstream of society, if not one's own circle of intimate family and friends. Conversion to the prevailing religion carries a lot of social benefit. The battle between theists and non-theists goes on at more than one level. It is not just an intellectual argument. It is also an argument over how we are to relate to each other and our environment. Belief in God empowers people, and lack of belief comes to be seen as a means of cancelling or draining away that power. That is why the Pope's primary attack against atheism was the argument that it left us with no hope. In the end, people want to believe, because belief makes them feel stronger and better, even if it doesn't make much sense on an intellectual level.
 
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