Why is it that many Christians are former atheists and not the other way around?
64 comments
First.
Also, [CITATION NEEDED]
Yeah, citation needed. Most Atheists I've met in this country were either former Christians or never religious at all.
Most Christians I've met have always been Christian. Any Christian who claims to have once been an Atheist tends, I've found, to be lying.
Technically this is true. Everybody is born atheist by default, then some are indoctrinated into Christianity or Islam or Hinduism or whatnot.
Unless they ordain the midwife and have her baptise you before you fully emerge from your mother.
Or have a priest perform the baptism ceremony on a turkey baster of your father's sperm.
Due to the fact that most "former atheists" seem more than willing to expound on their former life as a Satan-worshiping, Harry Potter reading, baby-eating homosexual democratic communist, I'd be rather inclined to call them liars.
no no, he's not wrong. Not TECHNICALLY. No one's BORN religious, so technically, its drilled into the kids while they're still impressionable. Thus, they 'were' atheist. 'Course they also shat themselves and couldn't spell at the time, but that's a minor detail that has nothing to do with the "obviously" concious and "rational" "decision" to enter your parents belief system to avoid being punished more.
Here's another former Christian, now an atheist.
Hell, most of the most vehement atheists I see around here are former Christians.
OH! I get it! They were always Atheists...his God-vision goggles let him see that they never TRULY believed.
Every atheist I know or have known was formerly a believer in some religious creed or another. Most are former Christians. The closest you dim-bulbs have come in decades is 80-plus Anthony Flew, who decided in his senility that he's a deist, not a theist.
Your own experience is not data.
You only talk to christians, so you only see atheists that changed.
If you can read (which I doubt), you should read the bible.
Well, there's atheism, and then there's atheism. One kind involves ignoring religion until you have some kind of conversion event, in which case you can legitimately say you were both an atheist and a rather un-self-aware person. The other kind is when you realize it's all bullshit and make a conscious decision to drop religion.
Safe bet that nine times out of ten, when you hear a Christian referring to being a "former atheist", you're hearing the former sort of unthinking atheist, thus proving the dangers of an utter lack of introspection.
actually, I've found in my wanderings of the Internet that A) something like 3/4 of atheists, at least on the Internet were formerly Christian and B) most Christians that SAY they were atheists were actually agnostic or at most simply a vaguely atheistic apatheist that had never given much thought to the issue and was converted by one smooth talking missionary or odd psychological episode. If indeed they aren't outright lying, which many fundie apologists do to attempt to lend themselves credibility in the non-crazy crowd.
Define "being Christian." Does it mean you really believe, or you are going through the motions the way your parents taught you. If the latter, than the vast majority of self-proclaimed Christians today are not.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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