>>I find the Catholic thing pretty mind-boggling<< Well, Julie, It's probably a whole-hog display. If yer gona take a public dump, might as well make it a high colonic.

I'm not really sure what qualifies someone as a "good" philosopher, but I don't really think she's very good. I think she's probably quite intelligent, but she relies too much on her inner dialogue, so that if she comes to a reasonable conclusion in her mind, that must be it! There seems to be no testing of it and she doesn't really search for an alternate explanation. This leads to many leaps of logic that totally make sense to her, but would never actually convince a person who doesn't already agree with her conclusion.
Her main point is that, because we have morality, there must be a god. Just today in the comments she said that she didn't think morality needed to be created by someone, just that there is no way we could have known about morality without this someone. Huh? It doesn't even occur to her that we could have figured it out through trial-and-error? "I stole something, people got mad and tried to hurt me/shunned me. Bad idea. I won't steal again." It's pretty simple.

I find the Catholic thing pretty mind-boggling. It really makes me think that her critical thinking skills are not quite as good as she and the people who read her blog think they are...She says she'll address problems like "Why Catholicism?" and "But isn't Catholicism bad?" in later posts. Now that she's got tons of Catholic readers, it will turn into a really obnoxious debate where they all insist that you can't judge all Catholics by the actions of a few evil men...never mind that the church allowed these evil men to carry on their actions.

And with the conversion of a wishy-washy atheist to Catholicism, the levels of smug in the blogosphere have reached toxic levels...

I suppose this means I have to read some of her blog now to find out if your assessment is accurate. :-b

I'm not saying you're wrong in asserting that she's a bad philosopher, only that being good at philosophy doesn't seem to correlate, in my personal experience, with any particular theological position. I have known many philosophy students and professors, many quite clear-thinking, who nonetheless were firmly (if most of them shallowly) on the theistic side of the divide. In particular, I knew two professors who were theists (one rather hard core Christian, the other more of a deist [which is rather more common amongst philosophers]), both of whom are far more intelligent and experienced with philosophy than me.

Now, philosophy is vast enough to accommodate specialists who wouldn't find, in their sub-field, much if any conflict between what they study and theism of some form. One of those professors I mentioned taught primarily ancient philosophy, theology, and philosophy of religion, so no obvious conflicts there. I'll admit it is pretty damn odd to choose to become Catholic in this day and age for ethical reasons, as you pithily pointed out, though it isn't historically very strange. Many ethical concepts have origins in Catholic thought, and the Catholics in general have historically been more systematic and creative in their parsing of their religion's ethical guidelines than most denominations (past three or so popes excepted).

I freely admit to being no expert, but my lay-person's understanding of philosophy is: Studying how to think. Of course, it depends on perspective, but I find it hard to envisage any student of the art of thinking regarding anybody who makes those kinds of disconnected, illogical leaps as a good philosopher.

I say this fully aware that you are much better at such things than me, and therefore am fully prepared to have the point I have just made roundly spanked.

You may proceed.

I also find it exceedingly irritating that she's gone from "Objective Morality" to "God of the Bible" to "Yay Catholicism" in apparently very short order. That suggests to me that, despite her apparent infatuation with philosophy, she can't actually be very good at it.

Not sure that follows. As you seemed to be lamenting a short paragraph before, philosophy doesn't *necessarily* have any contact with things sensible or real (in any sense of those terms). She could be a damn good philosopher (so far as these things are judged) and still make perplexing life choices. Not that she is or isn't; I haven't actually read any of her blog yet.

Not to mention, starting out looking for an explanation for morality and ending that journey by joining a global cabal of child rapists and their enablers? Yeah, that's an irony that I don't appreciate.

This, on the other hand, is a brutally pithy point, and pretty hard to argue against.

I had a quick look around her blog, skimmed a few posts, and honestly? I don't think she was an atheist. She comes across as having been agnostic, but she also comes across as one of those extremely irritating people who think philosophy trumps all. Including actual facts and evidence. And those folks tend to be either religious, extremely annoying, or both.

That last post she wrote is a good example: She's considered philosophical reasons for morality, and that's it. Never mind that there are actual biological (and psychosocial) explanations for human behaviour, including what we think of as morality.

I also find it exceedingly irritating that she's gone from "Objective Morality" to "God of the Bible" to "Yay Catholicism" in apparently very short order. That suggests to me that, despite her apparent infatuation with philosophy, she can't actually be very good at it. Not to mention, starting out looking for an explanation for morality and ending that journey by joining a global cabal of child rapists and their enablers? Yeah, that's an irony that I don't appreciate.

I guess it's a continuum with religion on one side and atheism on the other. In between falls vague spirituality, doubt, apathy, and agnosticism. I suppose the trouble comes when people who are in-between give themselves labels on one side or the other. I suspect that's what happens with a lot of those Christians who talk about how they were atheists and just didn't want to believe in God, but then God changed their life or something. In reality, they may not have believed in a god, technically making them atheists, but their attitude about it was much more apathetic than the typical atheist you'd find here.
Then I think the mistake Christians make is that the only Christians who deconvert are the ones who were in the middle. No one who actually felt the love of God could ever walk away. I really don't want to make that same mistake when it comes to atheists converting. I do think that she seemed to be a bit more towards the middle than she may have realized, but I don't want to say that only someone in the middle would convert.
I guess in the end, you can know all the arguments for atheism, but I think emotionally, some people cannot handle atheism. "There's got to be *something* out there" becomes a very tempting argument, even though it's a purely emotional argument. It's not proof of anything, but it's enough for someone to step more towards religion, just because of wishful thinking.

@ Julie42 - it occurs to me a few things I might add. When my nephew was baptized, I was feeling really atheist. My parents did not raise me to be an atheist, the only condition I ever heard was my grandfather would not support us financially if we were brought to church. To this day, I don't really know what my parents really believe. My mother when I was young did say "atheist" things. I don't know if she ever believed it or just had to go along with it. At some point as we got older, she regretted not sticking to her guns, or some wishy-washy bullshit, she thinks we'd have been better off if we had some church background mostly for the community of it. I have since confirmed my atheism to my mother who did not try to sway me. My father seems surprised that I would eventually conclude atheism. He's not a big fan of the magic show, but he does believe in god. Perhaps he thought that even if he didn't push the issue from his perspective, god is just too obvious to ignore. It's just not something we talked about, which made it kind of weird that I felt like I had to tell them explicitly that I'm an atheist.

People who are affirmed atheists would be people completely different from my parents. I think what is difficult in a non-religious household, if you want to make sure your kids aren't "indoctrinated" atheists but exposed to many thoughts and impulses, have a foundation where they would probably expect an atheist conclusion for their kids. They say they are leaving it up to the kids to decide, but they are also stacking the deck against religion (which I'm not criticizing). Different from an atheist are the apathetic. They don't teach religion in school, they're not supposed to. Without any information or communication at home, it's difficult to have a perspective on it, to find it intriguing only because so many others believe something you never really considered. Consider the ripe attitude for a cult leader to just scoop you up. You have nothing, you think you're supposed to have something. We still don't talk in our family about this. I don't know what my brother believes. I think my sister had no problems marrying in a Catholic Church, living with a guy twice before marrying him in his Catholic Church, having a kid baptized in this Catholic Church and getting divorced from him, despite still being married according to the Catholic Church. She seems to like feel-good shit from Deepak-Chopra-like content sites. At present it's not clear to me if this is in addition to some vague idea of Jesus' reality or separate. Obviously she wants some magical shit to guide her inept life. My parents were not atheists and did not raise us to be atheists.

Kodie: That's a pretty good insight. It's probably really important for atheist parents to realize that just because their kids are brought up without religion doesn't mean they will never want religion.

vorjak: The posts I've read have all seemed so vague. I have trouble figuring out what she's even talking about. I've noticed this with a lot of religious/philosophical people; they're much more interested in vague, metaphysical topics so they tend to make leaps of logic that I just don't follow. That doesn't really work with atheism, when so many of us have very logical reasons for not believing in a god. Atheism/skepticism tends to make most sense to people who are practical and matter-of-fact. It seems like she was only an atheist because she was raised that way, but she's not the type of person that would have abandoned her religion (or at least some form of spirituality) if she had been raised that way instead.

I never really got into her blog. It always seemed too philosophical and I get bored very quickly with that. But a lot of people were mentioning that she always seemed to think very religiously

For a broad definition of "religiously," yes. I think she just finally reached the point where she needed a keystone to hold her moral philosophy together. And she seems to have been drawn to a sort of neo-platonic system that plays well with certain lines of Catholic philosophy.

I had an inkling this was coming. I really don't think she was going to remain happy in the atheist movement. She seems to be one of those people who craves the sort of big ideas and broad vistas that comes with Catholic theology.

I was raised without a religion and just never gave it much thought and thought I was an atheist also. As I am now, I try to think back on that time, was I really an atheist? I have since thought it through and done the work that I do really feel like an atheist now, but I only assumed I was an atheist then. It was ungrounded, more of an assumption. I was raised without religion but not to be skeptical. Like Leah, I could have been swayed to Catholicism at one point. It looks just... it has an atmosphere like no other church. Lots of my neighbors were Catholic, I saw movies where people my age were Catholic, at the time it felt like something I missed out on. My brother, at least one of my cousins, my sister, and my best friend all got married to a Catholic from being non-Catholic. My best friend converted to Catholicism from weak Buddhism (she was as much a Buddhist as I was an atheist growing up). My grandfather who was an atheist, which is partly why I'm an atheist, grew up Catholic. I could very well have been Catholic if he didn't think it through. And a huge chunk of him was still "Catholic" as he held the finances for my family and had conditions on it. If my parents had been financially free, I might have had a church. If I was going to meet a guy in my hometown and we got married, he'd probably have been Catholic. I've been engaged to TWO (C & E) Catholics.

I am saying without a real foundation of what you understand to be atheism, you may still be an atheist, but not having thought through the arguments, just being someone without a god to pray to, you may be able to be convinced of something else along the way out of good or bad reasons. I'd say in my earlier position, I went through a stage of paganism, horoscopes, numerology, tarot cards, rune cards, that sort of shit. Since there isn't a real... want to say basis, but social structure around that and I was freestyling, it eventually revealed itself as worthless. Then I got on the internet and little by little firmed up as an atheist.

In summary: you can still be an atheist but if you don't think the position through, you may be susceptible to come up with a different conclusion or to be drawn in a different direction.

"Atheist" indeed means "Without a god" and nothing more, there is no escape from that.
You can legitimately be an atheist and still believe a lot of unsubstantiated shit.

The problem is that the modern "Outspoken Atheists" slash freethinkers slash skeptics slash whatever are usually just called "atheists".
So the two things gets confused.
It's just semantics, but bites the "Outspoken Atheist" movement in the ass.

On the other hand, "we" don't have a clear label and I'm kinda proud of it.

So in case you haven't heard, Leah Libresco of Unequally Yoked is converting to Catholicism. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unequallyyoked/2012/06/this-is-my-last-post-for-the-patheos-atheist-portal.html

I never really got into her blog. It always seemed too philosophical and I get bored very quickly with that. But a lot of people were mentioning that she always seemed to think very religiously. Some people actually started saying that she was never a true atheist. This surprised me at first. I mean, really? I get so pissed off with the "No True Christian" argument that I was really shocked that people would actually use that on her.
But they actually seemed to have a point. There seems to be a difference between atheists and skeptical atheists. Some atheists just don't believe in God, and that's all. And some have very specific, thought through reasons why they don't believe. I'm not saying she hasn't given it much thought, but I read her "About" section and she was raised non-religious, so it was just natural for her to be an atheist. She never had to give it much thought.
I would never say she was never an atheist, but it seems like she just didn't have very strong reasons for staying an atheist. In the comments to her post, someone explains that morality comes from the human desire to live well and she says, <i>my response to that would be “What does it mean to live well and where did you receive this knowledge from?”</i> It just doesn't seem to be a well thought out argument at all. It just sounds like "Well what caused the Big Bang?" as proof of God.

And that's another thing. She starts by talking about morality and how it must be from a god...therefore Catholicism! I really have nothing against an atheist becoming a deist or even a theist and I'm sure it was not easy for her, especially coming out in public, but it just seems very strange that she would immediately become a Catholic. It's one thing to believe in a deity and another thing entirely to decide exactly what you believe about this deity and which church best worships that deity...especially when said church is homophobic, misogynist, and covers up child rape...