Can a former atheist who became religious really have been an atheist in the first place?

[cynatnite]

The title of this article got my attention. Nowhere in the article did it say that the individual was an atheist. Just someone who didn't have a good view of religion and was feeling empty inside. He was never really an atheist so it's a misleading title.

http://media.barometer.orst.edu/media/storage/paper854/news/2010/10/19/News/Former.Atheist.Converts.To.Mormonism-3946514.shtml

So if someone claims to have been an atheist in the past and they converted to a religion, do you think they were an atheist to begin with? I'm inclined to say no. Maybe an agnostic at the most.

[yellerpup]

1. People get lonely.

Belief can only be changed when the belief was either not strong to begin with or when someone wants to change. This fellow sounds like someone who wanted to belong (be owned) and be relieved of making decisions. Maybe he couldn't forgive himself for something he did and needed forgiveness (relief from guilt) from a power 'greater than himself.' I don't understand it myself, but maybe he craved a magical intervention.

Edit for typo

[Warpy]

2. There are people for whom basic things like belief or non belief

will tend to follow fashion. The former atheist might have been a basically non religious type who followed a former girlfriend into being an outspoken atheist and then followed a subsequent girlfriend into being religious. I have a cousin like that.

Deep down, they're really shallow. In other words, they're all surface and nothing ever penetrates too deeply with them. Religion and politics are fashion statements, nothing more.

[yellerpup]

5. Sounds right.

I think you've got this one.

[vixengrl]

3. It's going to sound snobby of me--

but I tend to think a lot of choices about faith are matters of style, as much as one's home furnishings might be. There might be fashionable atheists who decide a change of what they say about belief and the rituals they opt to adopt can lend meaning, in the way a bamboo room divider and a bonsai suddenly change what a room "says".

Which seems a bit more like dress-up to me than belief. Although I will say taking up LDS is pretty edgy, fashionwise. I couldn't manage that irony with a straight face. And I am so accustomed to associating atheism with some degree of intellectual skepticism. The mode is de trop enough to make one suspect sincerity, but they say once you can fake that...

[immoderate]

14. I sometimes refer to it as an aesthetic judgment.

As in, "The person who invented clothes was smart. The person who invented lapels (or hemlines, etc.) was a genius."

Religion gives us the chance to argue about something that has no possible resolution.

--imm

[laconicsax]

4. Sounds like a common Christian response.

"You were never a real Christian in the first place."

[onager]

6. Xian radio out here allegedly has one...

"I was an atheist for 27 years!!!"

I have heard that over and over and OVER from the drive-time host on local Fundie radio, Frank Pastore.

While I don't want to sound like one of the "you never were" people that LacSax mentioned, I'm pretty sure clown this really never was an atheist. At least not an atheist like most of us, who actually think about what we (don't) believe.

It sounds more like this guy just wasn't very religious until age 27.

Evidence?

1. I've never heard him mention any great atheists/freethinkers, past or present, except as a way of making some ridiculous religious point. Even on those rare occasions, he usually misstates or twists what the person said, turning it into a Xian bumper sticker message.

2. He's a staunch anti-Darwinist and creationist. In fact, given his blatherings about stem cells and other subjects, he's anti-science except for those items that advance a Fundie agenda - the internet is OK, since GAWD "gave us the internet" as a conversion tool.

While it's certainly not unheard of for open-minded people to start believing in Gawd, they usually seem to take their background with them. If they had an appreciation for science and learning, they retain it. Pastore does not have that appreciation. Though he does have post-grad education (which he brags about as much as possible). AFAIK, all his education is in theology and related subjects, since the higher...learning was a by-product of his conversion.

3. As he often mentions, he converted after reading C.S. Lewis and Josh MacDowell. Anyone converted by reading those two, in my experience, could not possibly have been - excuse the expression - a "real atheist."

Way back in 1927, Bertrand Russell eviscerated Lewis in Why I Am Not A Christian. And as many of us non-believing grumps like to point out, MacDowell's book "Evidence That Demands A Verdict" should have been titled "Evidence That Would Be Thrown Out of Court."

(If the name Frank Pastore sounds familiar, he was a pro baseball pitcher with the Cincinatti Reds, back in the 1970's or 80's. He says he quit baseball after an arm injury. I've always suspected he was hit in the head with a fastball or a bat, but I'm a Mean Person.)

[PassingFair]

7. I am an atheist and so is my husband.

My two daughters are also atheists, but I wouldn't
be surprised if my oldest became a "believer" one
day. She has always been highly interested in religion.

When she was 10, she told me she wanted to become a Jew.
I'm not kidding.

I told her she'd have to study the religion, talk to
a Rabbi, and really know what she was committing herself
to.

She came to me one afternoon about 6 months later and
asked if I would make the appointment with the Rabbi
for her, and told me she was ready to convert.

I chickened out at that point, and told her that when she
turned 18, I would be HAPPY to give her away to the church.

"EIGHTEEN!" she cried.

"That's TOO OLD for a BAT MITZVAH!"

(She had read about the thousands of dollars that some
Jewish girls got on their Bat Mitzvahs and wanted to
cash in.)

The thing about her is, she had some really bad experiences
when she told friends that she was an atheist, and in grade
school, she started making up shit. She told some kids she
was Jewish, and she told others that she was a Muslim, this
actually created problems for her younger sister, who was
presumed to be "the only Jewish kid in her elementary school".

:rofl:

She even got to light the Hanuka lights at the Christmas festival!

I won't be surprised at all if my oldest daughter converts to
a religion someday.

The youngest one....that WOULD surprise me.

[dmallind]

8. of course

atheists are not a special subset of humans who can never change their minds, be persuaded or be fooled.

And agnosticism is not a question of belief or a "third option" between atheism and theism. It is an epistemological position.

[charlie]

9. Sure

The Raving Atheist is a splendid example. If anyone thought PZ was nasty...

Allah is a syphilitic whoremonger who fucks goats in an outhouse.

The Virgin Mary gives blowjobs to Jesus for ten cents a pop.

Ganesh rapes the corpses of stillborn babies.

Yes, I’m back.

I didn’t offend anyone just now, did I?

http://ravingatheist.com/2003/04/godidiot-of-the-week-the-raving-agnostic-and-you

He wasn't just a drive-by snarker. Theological issues regularly inspired him to write long essays refuting them. But, in the end it was all for naught:

http://ravingatheist.com/2008/12/christ-is-the-lord

Fortunately, though he no longer posts, he hasn't deleted his site. So, what you have is not only a record of an atheist's conversion, but a repository of great arguments against his faith. Which makes it a really weird place, probably unique.

[trotsky]

10. Absolutely.

We can't ever know how someone else's mind works, and in particular with the religion/faith issue, some pretty heavy emotional factors can be at work. And really, a lot of religious belief consists of one's willpower to put faith ABOVE what your reasoning and senses are telling you. Tip the scales one way or the other, and you have a (de-)conversion.

[TZ]

11. I'm also pretty sure that traumatic experiences

can change one's beliefs. In fact I'm a big proponent of the theory that balief has to do with certain areas of the brain and when thats damaged effected, it changes ones spiritual outlook (based on a neurorsurgeon's experience with becomming a spiritual person after a brain injury)

[Iggo]

12. I don't see why not.

[lazarus]

13. Happened to me, briefly

I was a committed atheist who went through a brutal emotional trauma (the death of my infant son) and was preyed upon by a Christian cult. They got me for a couple of weeks, then I woke up and got the hell out of that situation.

It's still embarrassing, but I have to remind myself that I just wasn't the same person for a good long while after Trevor died. I wasn't thinking properly, if at all. And these bastards were quite good at what they were doing.

[enki23]

15. sure they can,. we were all born atheists.

That doesn't mean this particular one may have held that position for very serious reasons, as many have mentioned. But that is a question almost entirely unrelated to the one asked. IMHO, people are deeply stupid in general, and many, many atheists are deeply stupid people too. I know more than a few, even among those who style themselves especially intelligent. And even intelligent people can have social and other events and circumstances that convince them of things that aren't true. That's just how humanity is. No one is immune to conversion, whether to or from a reality-based view of the universe. Some are just resistant. The causes of that resistance are many and varied, and many of *that* is even for the wrong reasons. You can be right for the wrong reasons, and you can be resistant (or not) to becoming wrong, but resistant for the wrong reasons. And on down the meta line.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. IMO, religion is an infectious disease, and fundamentalism its most

virulent form. A communicable form of madness. Reason is the vaccination against it - and sometimes vaccinations fail to protect.