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Go to bed an atheist, wake up a Christian
Someone over on Askville posted a question about going to bed as an atheist, and waking up a Christian. Actually, the exact wording was "I went to bed an atheist and woke up a Christian what happened?".
If you're like me, you immediately came up with a joke answer involving loud sex and waking up a Christian neighbor. But it turned out out that the questioner was serious. I've seen this a lot when dealing with Christians; inevitably some of them claim to have once been atheists, but later found Jesus.
I've heard this so often that I ended up writing a rather lengthy response on the subject. I thought it came out rather well, so maybe you'll find it of interest:
I think most Christians who claim to have once been atheists fall into a certain pattern.
First, they usually were not really atheists. Far more often, they simply grew up in a religious vacuum; raised with a typical apathetic American unawareness of religion. They never (or hardly ever) went to church, except perhaps at Christmas time.
But that's not the same as actually thinking about religion and making a conscious, aware choice to be an atheist.
Invariably such apathetic, non-religious people are nonetheless exposed to religious cultural conditioning through the media, their peers, and even their parents (who are themselves most likely to fall in the "apathetic, ignorant non-religious" category). Though not church-goers, they believe - on a level so deep in their minds that many never even think to question it - that religion is the source of all morality, and in the vaguely comforting promise of an afterlife.
Then they experience some crisis, most likely in their teens or twenties. In the face of that crisis, their cultural religious indoctrination is triggered, and they "find God". With a convert's typical zeal, they decide to spread the good word. It strikes them as a brilliant idea to convert atheists by proclaiming that they were once atheists themselves, and were saved. Surely that will bring atheists to Jesus, the convert thinks!
The problem is that having never been philosophically committed, informed atheists, the arguments that the convert brings to the discussion are rarely well-thought-out or convincing to atheists. Instead, the converts presuppose that all atheists are in the same spiritual state that they themselves were in before they were "saved": ignorant and apathetic. The idea that an atheist could have actually thought deeply about religion, or (even worse) have once been a Christian and then de-converted, is both incomprehensible and quite threatening.
So in self-defense they assume that any atheist who demonstrates a real understanding of religion and shows that they do not fall into the apathetic/uninformed category, is in fact lying or self-deluded. And they respond with arguments based on the assumption that the atheist shares the same cultural assumptions about religion as themselves.
The convert tries to trigger the same deeply-indoctrinated religious response that they themselves experienced. But this almost never works with an atheist who has seriously considered the issue of religion, or who was once religious themselves. This frustrates the convert. It frustrates the atheist, too - because the convert almost always ends up returning to the same arguments over and over, in the expectation that this time the triggers will work and the atheist will see the light.
The result is an ongoing, fruitless interchange in which little real information is exchanged because the two parties are effectively speaking different languages. The convert has a completely inaccurate mental image of the atheist and persists in addressing that fantasy-image of the atheist, rather than the actual person. And the atheist has virtually no way to break through the convert's false image of what s/he, the atheist, actually thinks and believes.
If anyone has any suggestions for improvements, I'd love to hear them.
If you're like me, you immediately came up with a joke answer involving loud sex and waking up a Christian neighbor. But it turned out out that the questioner was serious. I've seen this a lot when dealing with Christians; inevitably some of them claim to have once been atheists, but later found Jesus.
I've heard this so often that I ended up writing a rather lengthy response on the subject. I thought it came out rather well, so maybe you'll find it of interest:
I think most Christians who claim to have once been atheists fall into a certain pattern.
First, they usually were not really atheists. Far more often, they simply grew up in a religious vacuum; raised with a typical apathetic American unawareness of religion. They never (or hardly ever) went to church, except perhaps at Christmas time.
But that's not the same as actually thinking about religion and making a conscious, aware choice to be an atheist.
Invariably such apathetic, non-religious people are nonetheless exposed to religious cultural conditioning through the media, their peers, and even their parents (who are themselves most likely to fall in the "apathetic, ignorant non-religious" category). Though not church-goers, they believe - on a level so deep in their minds that many never even think to question it - that religion is the source of all morality, and in the vaguely comforting promise of an afterlife.
Then they experience some crisis, most likely in their teens or twenties. In the face of that crisis, their cultural religious indoctrination is triggered, and they "find God". With a convert's typical zeal, they decide to spread the good word. It strikes them as a brilliant idea to convert atheists by proclaiming that they were once atheists themselves, and were saved. Surely that will bring atheists to Jesus, the convert thinks!
The problem is that having never been philosophically committed, informed atheists, the arguments that the convert brings to the discussion are rarely well-thought-out or convincing to atheists. Instead, the converts presuppose that all atheists are in the same spiritual state that they themselves were in before they were "saved": ignorant and apathetic. The idea that an atheist could have actually thought deeply about religion, or (even worse) have once been a Christian and then de-converted, is both incomprehensible and quite threatening.
So in self-defense they assume that any atheist who demonstrates a real understanding of religion and shows that they do not fall into the apathetic/uninformed category, is in fact lying or self-deluded. And they respond with arguments based on the assumption that the atheist shares the same cultural assumptions about religion as themselves.
The convert tries to trigger the same deeply-indoctrinated religious response that they themselves experienced. But this almost never works with an atheist who has seriously considered the issue of religion, or who was once religious themselves. This frustrates the convert. It frustrates the atheist, too - because the convert almost always ends up returning to the same arguments over and over, in the expectation that this time the triggers will work and the atheist will see the light.
The result is an ongoing, fruitless interchange in which little real information is exchanged because the two parties are effectively speaking different languages. The convert has a completely inaccurate mental image of the atheist and persists in addressing that fantasy-image of the atheist, rather than the actual person. And the atheist has virtually no way to break through the convert's false image of what s/he, the atheist, actually thinks and believes.
If anyone has any suggestions for improvements, I'd love to hear them.