My Atheism
I used to be an atheist. That doesn’t necessarily mean I was a Hitchens/Dawkins (insert other religion despiser) style atheist, in fact I wasn’t anti-religious at all. Yes perhaps I thought it was all a little silly but to be honest it was more out of ignorance than disdain for the religious. Coming from a single-parent, dysfunctional and working class household I wasn’t particularly well read and needless to say I did pretty bad at school, not because I was stupid but because I was lazy and was never really encouraged to see any value in education and learning. However, I considered myself an atheist because I didn’t believe a God or gods existed nor did I believe in the supernatural which seems consistent with atheism. I have always been naturally sceptical and atheism just seemed rather normal to me. Although I never thought about it at the time (because I’d never heard of hedonism), I used my atheism to justify my hedonistic lifestyle because it just seemed okay because that’s what everyone else in my friendship group was doing. Of course I’m not saying atheism necessarily leads to hedonism because clearly it is consistent with a number of different philosophical outlooks.
Arrogance
Yet in the seven years I’ve been a Christian I can’t count the number of times I have been accused of lying, since I couldn’t really have been an atheist. I’m constantly struck by the arrogance of some atheists who seem to know better than I do about what I have or haven’t believed in the past, rather than accept that people can move from atheism to theism. How dare people accuse me of not knowing what I didn’t believe in. One does not have to be a middle-class, Nietzsche read, university educated, Starbucks sipping humanist to be an atheist, one simply needs to have the absence of belief in the gods and the supernatural! There is no atheist disclaimer that states only those that know the Origin of the Species from back to front or those that saw the light after reading The God Delusion are allowed to call themselves atheists. Perhaps it’s that it’s only some of the arrogant atheists (and atheist celebrities) on Twitter that define themselves by their lack of belief in the gods that feel justified in accusing those less read than themselves as worthy of calling themselves atheists. There is no qualifier for atheism other than that one doesn’t believe in the gods or the supernatural, there are no books to read or prophets to obey, just the ones you choose. I’m quite justified in referring to myself as a former atheist whether atheists like that or not and in fact the more atheist literature I read, the more I think I’m justified in my decision.
The No True Atheist Fallacy
What this amounts to is a variation of the no true Scotsman fallacy whereby anyone who once considered themselves an atheist but has changed their minds couldn’t have been a real atheist. This is because from their perspective anyone that once called themselves an atheist should never become a theist, so you therefore must have been pretending, not properly understood atheism (there’s not really much to misunderstand) or just using the story for some ends. This is all very strange since many (not all) atheists view themselves as being the champions of reason and logic yet fail to see the problem of their own erroneous reasoning which I demonstrate below.
No true atheist would ever become a Christian
You said you were an atheist and are now a Christian
Therefore you couldn’t have been a real atheist
I suppose all I really want to say is that if you are an atheist please don’t keep accusing ex/former atheists of not really being atheists to begin with. Firstly, it makes you look silly and arrogant and secondly, I’m afraid you better get used to it because I think a number of people are starting to see that ultimately atheism does not stand up to scrutiny. As a Christian I have to constantly hear about all the Christian de-conversion stories going around which I read and try and learn from so perhaps extend the same respect to former atheists rather than pretending we don’t exist. Thanks.
This was originally posted at Apologetics UK.
I was a Christian during my early university days. I was a fervent evangelical, Baptist no less. Now I see it all as a mistake of my miss-spent youth. I no longer accept the supernatural.
I get rather annoyed when Christians today tell me that I was never a “true Christian”.
As an atheist, and a very active one, I completely disagree. While I will grant you the technicality that you were “an atheist” due to your lack of belief in any gods, it is generally considered by atheists using this argument that to be a “true atheist” is the same as what the general population would call a “true believer” – you need to actually know what the hell you are talking about. I was raised in a quasi-Christian setting in a Christian dominated society, and I attended a simple and lackadaisical religious education program as an adolescent, but to call myself a “former Christian” is disingenuous, and that is what the argument is really getting at. I attended RCIA (Right of Christian Initiation for Adults – Catholic Catechism for Adults) classes in college and was confirmed into the Catholic Church, but even then, upon retrospect, I was really nothing more than a deist adhering to a god of the gaps in order to feel closer to my future wife and her family. I was never a believer in any Christian dogma, although I was at least educated on the subject.
in your case, it seems that you were what I refer to as a de facto atheist – an atheist that simply is categorically defined, but has not ever made a real inquiry into the subject or studied relevant literature or ideas. You were no different than the kids that grow up being sent to a church that they abandon in college – you were a “none”. Calling yourself an atheist in that respect is indeed true, but the “no true atheist” argument does not come from a vacuum, and the context is generally important. The only time I have ever seen that approach taken is when an apologist is appealing to their former atheism as a way to, in essence, discredit the position as something that was discarded for it lunacy. This approach is responsive, in every case i have ever seen it, to a disingenuous attempt to gain undue credibility by those that wish to discredit the atheist position. In those cases, it is entirely justified.
That is fair enough, and I actually kind of agree with you, but if that is what you really believe then surely you can see what Christians like myself mean when they say someone may not have been a real Christian. Something that looks like “No True Scotsmen” may not always be that fallacy.
Very interesting to hear the other side of this. I always have Christians tell me that I couldn’t have ever been a true Christian. Hmmm.
Daniel
In your first paragraph you said you had no good reasons to be an Atheist. Now I have no way of knowing how much effort you invested in looking for reasons to be an Atheist. But I can understand how Atheists, who have found reasons, would call you a liar.
I am more interested in your reasons to become a Christian.
Can you take everyone on your journey to find truth?
Hi Matthew,
I think perhaps you have misread me or I haven’t communicated correctly, I did have reasons for being an atheist. I like most people who call themselves an atheist thought simply that there was no evidence for Gods existence. That said one doesn’t strictly require any reasons to be an atheist other than thinking it more likely that God doesn’t exist than he does.
I was wondering how you could understand me being called a liar? So one must have particular reasons that other atheists feel satisfied with for you to be called an atheist? If so you’ve moved from basic atheism to something far more exclusive and have created a definition that is not included in its meaning. An atheist doesn’t necessarily have to have invested any time in looking for reasons to back up their atheism (what’s enough, reading two books on atheism, ten books, knowing the God Delusion off by heart?). Many people believe the right thing without justification it doesn’t mean that the belief is wrong because they hadn’t invested as much time in forming it as certain people may have liked.
Lets say I didn’t have any reasons other than thinking atheism were the correct view and that no gods existed, how can I be lying? Was I a secret theist but just unaware? I’m struggling to understand how you can justify people calling me a liar.
But yes I will write about my move to Christianity at some point as well.
Your transition from Atheist to Christian requires reasons. Those same reasons, that are good enough for you, might just as easily be reject by an Atheist as untrue. They might even believe you are lying about something in your transition.
“Lets say I didn’t have any reasons other than thinking atheism were the correct view and that no gods existed, how can I be lying?”
I understand that you don’t need any reason to be an Atheist. Your
right you won’t be lying, just ignorant of your own (Atheist)belief.
Now I strongly don’t believe they are right for calling you a lair, but at the same time I see how they can come to that conclusion. Your reasons for you change in beliefs are what interest me, and I am looking to forward to reading them.
I agree of course, that there must always be a reason for change, whether it be an intellectual or experiential one or perhaps even both. The primary purpose of my post was not about the reasons I changed but rather the attitude towards those who have done so.
Holding a belief and having *justification* for it are two different categories, as I said its possible for someone to be both a theist or atheist with little justification. Obviously not everyone would be satisfied with that position but nevertheless that is the belief they actually have!
Of course the reasons I had for my atheism might not have been as robust as some other atheists but at the end of the day…so what? People have differing levels of what they would accept as a reasonable amount of evidence for a position, and perhaps may not be fully satisfied with my reasons for becoming a Christian. However at the end of the day one can only satisfy your own demands for evidence and persuasion and not someone else’s.
I will write an article about it at some point, but I would say I was persuaded by a cumulative case for Christian theism that I thought was intellectually and existentially satisfying. I realised that my atheism was fundamentally based on a number of assumptions about the universe that weren’t necessarily true which kind of led me to be sceptical of my scepticism. I will explain more.
Also goes for fallen believers (no-true-Christian)?
Douglas, to a certain extent yes. But in a number of ways its far more complicated when it comes to Christianity and people with differing beliefs on soteriology may disagree. Complicated because there are a number of beliefs one must have to be considered a Christian, for instance one couldn’t be a Christian if they didn’t believe God existed or that Jesus physically rose from the dead after his death on the cross, even if that’s what they called themselves. So as valid as the comparison is it is far more complicated going from Christian>Atheist than it is Atheist>Christian in terms of assessment. Here in the UK over 70% of people tick Christian in the census (my mum used to even though she was agnostic) yet other research suggests most in that 70% don’t actually hold any Christian beliefs but are rather ‘cultural’ Christians. You don’t generally get people ticking the non-religious (atheist) box who believe in God. That of course is not to say people who considered themselves genuine believers can’t become atheists that much is clear to anyone, there are enough de-conversion stories around for us all to see.