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Bob Seidensticker of Cross Examined<\/a> (the one who sparked the discussion of the Atheist Prayer Experiment<\/a>), put up a post earlier this week titled \u201cI Used to be an Atheist, Just Like You\u201d<\/a> where he talks about three groups of atheists. Let me quote the relevant part:<\/p>\n Group 3.<\/strong> These are the well-informed atheists. They understand both sides of the ontological, teleological, cosmological, transcendental, fine-tuning, and moral arguments and more. They are at least well-educated amateurs on evolution, evolution denial, and the Big Bang. They can make positive arguments for atheism, not just rebut Christian apologetics. And so on. I put myself into this group.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s my point: I\u2019ve never heard of anyone in Group 3, the well-informed atheists, who converted to Christianity because of intellectual arguments\u2026 Well-informed Christians deconvert to atheism (and are happy to explain, using reason, why they left), but well-informed atheists don\u2019t convert to Christianity through reason. More education about the history and origins of Christianity increases the likelihood that the Christian will deconvert, but more education increases the likelihood that the atheist will stay put.<\/p>\n \u2026Well-informed atheists, now Christians, wouldn\u2019t make the arguments that apologists make. They wouldn\u2019t make arguments to which I have a quick rebuttal. Indeed, they would focus on those arguments which they knew (since they\u2019d been just like me) I had no response to. Today, he examines case studies of hypothetically Group 3 atheists<\/a> who converted for intellectual reasons, and he picked Anthony Flew<\/a>, Richard Morgan<\/a>, and this fearsome apologist:<\/p>\n His rebuttal of me is concise, so I hope he won\u2019t mind me quoting it in full:<\/p>\n Our final case study will be Leah Libresco, a fellow Patheos blogger (at\u00a0Unequally Yoked<\/a>). Immersed in a Catholic environment, she seemed to find the center of gravity of her moral philosophy\u00a0gradually move<\/a>\u00a0from atheism to Catholicism. It was as if the vocabulary available within atheism was inadequate, with Catholicism much better able to express reality.<\/p>\n In an\u00a0interview<\/a>, Hemant Mehta (the\u00a0Friendly Atheist<\/a>) pointed out that Leah\u2019s conversion hasn\u2019t led to a flood of other conversions (or perhaps any). Like Richard Morgan\u2019s conversion four years earlier, there are no new insights or arguments to which an atheist might say, \u201cOh, that\u2019s interesting; I need to think about that\u201d as the first step toward Christianity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n First, a nitpick: I think it would be more accurate to say that my moral philosophy gradually moved from\u00a0deontology<\/em> to\u00a0virtue ethics<\/em>, and then, like MacIntyre<\/a>, I found that the more I queried my new moral system, the more it seemed to rest on a metaphysical system that looked an awful lot like Catholicism.<\/p>\n But on to his main point: my conversion is\u00a0demonstrably\u00a0not intellectually compelling because it hasn\u2019t prompted conversions. \u00a0I think Bob is giving me more credit than I\u2019m due when he suggests I\u2019ve brought new arguments to the table and they\u2019ve been found wanting. \u00a0Most of my posts aren\u2019t particularly original; at their most off-beat, they\u2019re old wine in new (math-related) wineskins. \u00a0I may have translated some ideas into a system of reference that will be more attractive to a certain subset of geeky atheist, but I haven\u2019t brought in anything big they couldn\u2019t find somewhere else.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t have acolytes to trot out (and I don\u2019t expect to have very many, even if I\u2019m given more than three months to convert them). \u00a0The best that I\u2019m aware of is one reader who converted to Catholicism before I did and found some of my stuff persuasive\/helpful as he was making up his mind, another reader whose gone from atheism to a Thomistic-y Deism, and some friends who are still pretty comfortably atheist but said my argument did more to shift their posterior odds than other discussions. \u00a0No links, I\u2019m afraid; not everyone blogs this stuff.<\/p>\n But I also don\u2019t expect, as one of Bob\u2019s commenters does<\/a>, that<\/p>\n [I]f any atheist were to convert because of argument, they\u2019d know exactly what argument convinced them and they could convince another atheist with that very argument. Anyone who converts for some other reason will know that no argument they can make will convince anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It matters where people start<\/a>. \u00a0I disagree(d) with plenty of atheists on things that don\u2019t directly touch on atheism (whether there are any \u2018safe\u2019 opportunities to hate<\/a> is the first pre-conversion example that comes to mind). \u00a0I do agree with Bob, that it would probably be misleading to say \u201cBut I was an atheist,\u00a0just like you<\/em>\u201d but I think the gap between us has more the result of disagreements about metaphysics and moral law than knowledge about Dawkins, Harris, or Russell. \u00a0So, when I run into other virtue-ethicist atheists, I\u2019m ready to make a bit of a run at it, but otherwise, my atheist interlocutor and I have a long argument ahead of us that doesn\u2019t sound like an argument about religion\u00a0particularly.<\/p>\n If you want to have that<\/em> one, I think some of my most helpful tags are \u201cdirty hands\/sin eaters<\/a>\u201d \u201coffering resistance<\/a>\u201d \u201caccepting gifts<\/a>\u201d and \u201cinculcating morality<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bob Seidensticker of Cross Examined (the one who sparked the discussion of the Atheist Prayer Experiment), put up a post earlier this week titled \u201cI Used to be an Atheist, Just Like You\u201d where he talks about three groups of atheists. Let me quote the relevant part: Group 3. These are the well-informed atheists. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":5243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,176,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism","category-conversion-2","category-debatetactics"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nThese former atheists would know all the secret passwords and trap doors to get into my secret atheist lair, and, as Christians, they would walk back in and blow it up. But we never see this. Christians are still making the same old arguments, banging on the atheist stronghold with a rock hammer. I never see an \u201cex-atheist\u201d who hits me where I live, who explains why my arguments are wrong from my perspective.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2012\/10\/nerf-gun.jpg\" "\\"nerf")
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