This is an interesting article about an atheist who came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
An Atheist’s Journey to Faith
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“Despite having walked past this spot every week for months, I had never paid enough attention to be certain that there was a trash can right there. But I was certain that it is wrong to kill an innocent person.”
What kind of nonsense is this?
I dont have time to read the whole article now. But what the hell is wrong with her? She didnt realize that it was wrong to kill an innocent person before? Is this article for real?
This sort of story scares the heck out of me. This woman had been going through a bad patch in her life, a religious experience was triggered, and she became Christian on the spot. It’s a classic conversion story straight out of William James.
It scares me that I could ever feel something so vividly that I was changed simply by having the experience. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Experiences are supposed to pass through my rational mind first, so I can make sure they’re trustworthy. The realisation that that’s not always how it works leaves me feeling defenceless against the universe.
I don’t want to ever be so low that I’m open to such an experience. I don’t want to have an experience that changes who I am without consulting me on the subject. By all accounts these experiences are wonderful – but so is a heroin high. Both have highs; both have lows. Both take over your life. Once you’ve taken your first hit, neither gives you much choice about going back for more. Imagine moving through a world where at any moment you can spontaneously become a junkie, and you’ll understand how I feel about these conversions. Calling it unnerving just doesn’t even come close.
I dont have time to read the whole article now. But what the hell is wrong with her? She didnt realize that it was wrong to kill an innocent person before? Is this article for real?
You’re misreading it. The point is supposed to be that her emotional certainty that murder is wrong is (and always has been) even stronger than her intellectual certainty that there was a trash can behind her. The standard CS Lewis follow-up is that there must therefore be some mysterious universal force that imposes morality on us, otherwise how could we be so very certain?
The fact that she’s constantly using Lewis-style arguments suggests to me that she really didn’t do as much research as she’d like to think – debunking Lewis is what atheists do for fun when shooting fish in a barrel seems like too much effort.
There’s one thing really wrong with the article.
Saying she was a “strongly atheistic agnostic” (which I think is analogous to someone being a “strongly deistic fundamentalist”) is grasping at straws, considering the title of the article. Agnostics are fence sitters, by definition. As Lifewish pointed out, her CS Lewis style conversion means that she wasn’t as strongly atheistic as she thought.
I can understand why Amanda finds the article interesting, but I find it irritating. I didn’t stop at “I don’t know”, because I actually wanted to know. I’m pretty sure that Amanda and others will disagree, but the only answers I did find didn’t involve religion.
Well, yes and no.
I looked for answers, and mine don’t involve religion either. They only involve God and Jesus.
I quite liked it although I didn’t think she was an atheist to start with but an agnostic.
I’m not sure that this is playing silly blighters with language – IMO, “strongly atheistic agnostic” is actually quite a good description of a skeptical atheist. We only believe that there’s almost certainly no God.
With all due respect, that’s a far better example of playing silly blighters with language.
If you truly understood the beliefs that I hold (along with a lot of other Christians), you would understand the statement I made and not consider it splitting hairs.
Sometimes when I read comments from atheists and chrisitans I can’t get over how much they sound the same.
It’s condescending to imply that this person’s choice was based on “not knowing enough” about atheism.
I see Christians say the same thing about people who deconvert to atheism.
“Oh, well if they really understood “X” then they wouuld have remained a Chrisitan”
or
“I guess they really weren’t a Chrisitan”
This argument feels the same to me.
oops “Christian”
Let me mention for the 100th time–I type too fast and poorly!
Lifewish and Terri:
This is why I think Amanda’s idea for a community website is important. The definition of agnostic is someone who either considers God as unknown and/or unknowable, or never actually questioned the existance. She very well could have been strongly atheistic, but that does not make her an atheist. I know this sounds like the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, but bear with me.
Since agnostic means that you either thought a deity was unknown or unknowable, or you never really thought about it, that does not mean she was an atheist, as the article headline implies. I’m sure there are some who call themselves “atheist” that this can apply to, but I’m an atheist because I genuinely questioned the existance of a higher power. That Ms. Ordway would put it that way in her article makes the headline of the article a misrepresentation.
On a lighter note, just for fun I’m going to side with Amanda. If someone can say that “not collecting stamps is a hobby“, then she can say that “collecting bottlecaps isn’t a hobby”.
Berlzebub,
I am not necessarily against the “no true Scotsman” argument. Sometimes the person really isn’t a Scotsman!
But, when someone is telling their story and they describe a position that they felt adament about and how they have completely reversed their view, you have to believe that, at least to them, they were “X” and are no longer.
Well you don’t have to….but it makes listening to people so much easier.
Terri,
I’m glad that Holly has found happiness, even though I don’t agree with it. The only thing I don’t like is them titling it as an “atheist” conversion, while she clearly said she was an agnostic in the first paragraph.
Now, back to “collecting bottlecaps isn’t a hobby”. Is Amanda trying to express the thought, similar to Dogma, that religion should be an idea not a belief? Inquiring minds want to know.
Not really, no.
To me, religion is a ritual. It has no meaning. You do x and y simply because you’re supposed to. Or because it makes you self-righteous.
That’s the kind of thing I don’t want to have any part of.
If you truly understood the beliefs that I hold (along with a lot of other Christians), you would understand the statement I made and not consider it splitting hairs.
I kinda think I do understand. You don’t like the word “religion” because it implies an orientation towards hierarchies and organisations that you don’t feel is a necessary part of your faith.
The problem is that, in any religion, no matter how hidebound or freethinking, there are people who feel exactly the same. I read their stories. I understand their faith too.
If I accepted your redefinition of religion to exclude Christianity, the new definition would exclude every other faith that I’ve read about. The word wouldn’t refer to anyone.
I’m not irritated because you don’t like thinking of Christianity as a religion. I’m irritated because you’re displaying a lack of empathy with all the other religions.
The definition of agnostic is someone who either considers God as unknown and/or unknowable, or never actually questioned the existance. She very well could have been strongly atheistic, but that does not make her an atheist.
In that case I’m not an atheist and neither is Dawkins. Both of us believe that, if there is a God, He/She/It is currently unknown, and hence (on a par with Russell’s Teapot) there’s no reasson to believe in Him/Her/It.
Again, it’s a redefinition that would lead to the word describing practically no-one.
Its funny you say this. I have some friends who are jewish. I talk to them a lot in a fashion like I talk here.
Thery explained to me that their “jewishness” is in fact mostly about the rituals with respect to a tradition and none of them actually beleive in any of the word of god, or even god stuff. its the tradition that is important.
I am sure that there are orthodox jews who are nto of this mind, but almost every jew I know thinks this way, including my dad.
Even while he was in concentration camps, it was not god he appealed to, it was the preservation of the jewish tradition.
So, while I I dislike religious infection in our culture, I do admire a strong attachment to traditions and rituals (however, not particularly fond of heirarchy or codifcation of some sort of structure).
you already know how I think on the god and jesus stuff.
(p.s. in using firefox, what do I have to do to get extra lines between my paragraphs? It doesnt seem to do it on its own, even when i put double blank lines. Should I use p and /p?
Of course I’m going to disagree with you here. There aren’t any other religions I can think of (I could be wrong here) where the relationship between human and deity is the priority. It’s always what can I do to please my god and get a blessing? Or what do I have to do to please my god and not anger my god so I don’t get punished?
Those aren’t questions that are regularly asked in Christianity (I know they are by people who teach the prosperity gospel and the like, but I mean the people who genuinely follow Christ).
Tech -
It’s not inserting lines for anybody. I’ll take a look at my css and see if there’s something amiss there.
There aren’t any other religions I can think of (I could be wrong here) where the relationship between human and deity is the priority.
I’d class that as very wrong. Most religions have some members who are only in it for the blessing, but then so does Christianity. I personally can’t think of a single religion that doesn’t reference the sort of personal relationship that you describe. It’s one of the basic kinds of religious thought – not at all rare.
A good example I came across recently is this poem by Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism:
Or consider this chunk of text, taken from a talk by the founder of the Hare Krishnas (please don’t ask why I have this…). The context is that there’s a passer-by singing in Hindi.
Such examples are not rare – in many religions they’re the norm not the exception. If you haven’t come across them before, that simply suggests that you don’t know much about other religions, beyond the stuff that Everyone Knows. Imagine if I were to judge Christianity based on the summary: “some god screwed a virgin and the resulting kid grew up to be a zombie”. What depths of feeling I’d be missing!
In summary: they get at least as emotional about their Gods as you do about yours. If you demean their worship, you only demean your own.
Perhaps you are right. So now I’ll question why use the word religion for any of it, if it’s all so emotional and relational, as opposed to ritual.
Because the word “religion” has never been restricted to ritualism only. Your use of the word as referring only to dogmatic hierarchical faiths is part of a linguistic shift that’s only about a decade old.
As far as I can tell, the shift has happened primarily because many Christians don’t like the idea that their beliefs are comparable with those of Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, etc. If Christianity is a religion then it’s just one among many. So they try to redefine religion to mean “all those other false beliefs”, and pick another word to mean “our true belief”. Probably the hippy movements didn’t help when they rebranded their own religious beliefs as “spiritual”.
I think the linguistic shift is silly, and I emphatically disagree with its premises, so I use the term “religion” in the traditional sense.
Incidentally, is there any way to get proper spacing between paragraphs with this software? It’s kinda irritating that it doesn’t respect my choices about how to lay out my prose.
For “decade” read “half a century”, and ignore the comment about line spacing – hadn’t noticed your comment above.
Every time I think I’ve previewed my comment thoroughly enough…
I haven’t figured out how to get the spacing in properly. It does show up properly in email notifications – just not on the actual page. :-/
I wish I could fix it, but I don’t have the skill to figure out what’s wrong with the code.