| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Sound of Trumpet" |
| Date: |
04 Mar 2007 04:16:26 PM |
| Object: |
Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/up-from-atheism/
Up from atheism
Mar 1st, 2007 by Lee
Warning: lengthy post ahead!
I first became a professed atheist at about age 15; I decided that I
had seen through all the illusions of those around me, those
unthinking, dogmatic, hypocritical, narrow-minded small-town types I
had grown up with. I literally announced to my parents that I would no
longer be attending church (I had been baptized in a Reformed
congregation and my family had attended both a Presbyterian and a
Methodist church at various times during my childhood) and that I
didn't believe all that stuff.
It's always difficult to really understand why we do anything, I
think, and this was no exception. In retrospect I think I was a pretty
smart kid who wanted to rebel in some way. Not that I was particularly
"rebellious" in any conventional sense: in high school I never drank
alcohol or did drugs, and I only had one girlfriend for most of that
time. My preferred forms of rebellion were musical (heavy metal, punk
rock, angry political rap), sartorial (combat boots, Ramones t-shirt,
partly shaved head), and intellectual (atheism, and an adolescent form
of general anti-authoritarianism - I remember a friend and I mocking
the pro (first) Gulf War propaganda we were fed daily by the in-class
"news" program Channel 1). Even "bad" kids - the kind that hung out at
the guard rail at the edge of the school parking lot in their Ozzy t-
shirts smoking cigarettes - were shocked by open professions of
atheism.
What religious formation I'd had was fairly lukewarm. As I mentioned,
the churches we attended were mainline Protestant, but of a fairly
staid and traditional stripe. I went to Sunday school at Hillside
Presbyterian, sat through what seemed to me like interminable sermons,
and went to Vacation Bible School in the summers. I have no tales of
fundamentalist horrors; it was the kind of innocuous, respectable
mainstream Protestantism that seems to be largely disappearing (for
better or worse) in our polarized age. Or at least that's how I
remember it. So, this was no grand gesture of rebellion against a
stultifying and oppressive upbringing.
Anyway, atheism fit with my overall self-image. I liked to think of
myself as being more reflective and critical than my peers. I used to
no doubt bore my girlfriend to tears with my pontifications on why
religion was bunk (too bad there were no blogs then; the poor girl
might've been spared). I even got into hot water with her parents for
(according to them) turning her against religion! (Ironically, the
Lutheran Church her family attended is one I now periodically worship
at when visiting home.) In high school English I read Joyce, Thoreau,
and Huxley and identified with their nonconformist ethos. By senior
year I was proudly brandishing my copy of Nietzsche's Anti-Christ
(whether I understood it is another matter). I can only assume that I
was pretty insufferable at times.
By the time I got to college at a state university in northwestern
Pennsylvania I was confirmed in my atheism. It simply hadn't ocurred
to me at this point that there was really anything to be said for
religion: religion weighed people down with guilt and irrational
prohibitions on essentially harmless activities, and it was based on
an intellectually unsupportable edifice.
My first year of college I majored in art. I had aspirations of being
an illustrator, maybe even drawing comic books (I was a comic geek
from way back). But by the end of my freshman year I was having second
thoughts. I had some really good friends who were English majors, and
I flirted with switching over, but I had also taken an intro to
philosophy course, and that hooked me. Althought the course focused
almost entirely on Marxism(!) I was intrigued by the idea of wrestling
with the great problems of meaning and existence. By sophomore year I
was enrolled as a philosophy major.
I imagine that many people's idea of philosophy is that, if anything,
it's likely to turn people against religion. But in my case, as I read
Plato, Augustine, the Bhagavad-Gita, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, William
James, Charles Hartshorne, Paul Tillich, Miguel de Unamuno, Nikolai
Berdyaev, Jacques Maritain, Josiah Royce, Pascal, C.S. Lewis, and a
host of others I became less and less convinced that only fools and
ignoramuses could believe in a world beyond this one. You may reply
that this is a lesson that any normal person would naturally learn as
they mature, but I can be a little thick.
I wish I could say I had an "Aha!" moment where I suddenly became
convinced that God exists. Or that I had discovered the one knock-down
argument that would convince all rational people of the reality of the
divine. Alas, no such luck (though, I did for a brief period of time
think that Charles Hartshorne's version of the ontological argument
was sound; I still think there's something to that...). But what now
seems just as important was that I came to see religious belief as
something far more substantial and worthy of consideration than my
condescending adolescent caricatures would've led me to believe. What
I thought were knock-down objections turned out to be problems that
believers had been considering for hundreds of years and had developed
sophisticated responses to. And, moreover, materialistic naturalism, I
now started to realize, was far from being a problem-free worldview.
Was it able to account for mind, purpose, and value? For the existence
and order of the universe itself?
I had also been impressed by the tradition that I associate with
Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, Kierkegaard and others that
emphasizes the limitations of our ability to adequately grasp the
truth due to our finitude and sin. This is necessary, I think, to
balance an overconfident rationalism or dogmatism. All our worldviews
have limitations and it's not obvious that one is demonstrably
superior to all the others. The western theistic tradition at it's
best seems to balance the need for confident assertion with the
recognition of mystery.
This is what you might call the "negative" value of philosophy for
faith. It can clear away intellectual obstacles to belief, even if it
can't create faith. For me, at least, that was an important step.
Though still not a believer, I'd become convinced that the claims of
religion were at least worth investigating further.
I should note that during this entire time I hadn't set foot in a
church for any reason except maybe for the odd wedding. The first time
I spent any considerable time in church as an adult came during a trip
to England and Ireland during the summer before my senior year in
college. As someone from a doughty Protestant background, this was
really my first exposure to the beauty of traditional Catholicism. In
Dublin I saw the Book of Kells on display at Trinity College and
visited Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Although I didn't
worship as such, I was moved in a way I didn't expect and made aware
of the experiential and aesthetic aspects of religion that I had
previously ignored. This was only a small part of the trip, but it
made an impact on me.
By the time I left college I had moved firmly into agnosticism (if you
can be firmly agnostic!). After a year of work I pursued graduate
studies in philosophy at Purdue University in Indiana. I had at least
a vague idea that I was interested in philosophy of religion, but took
several courses in historical philosophy, delving more deeply into the
medievals and the early moderns in particular, as well as 20th century
analytic philosophy.
The kind of philosophy I was being trained in combined analytical
rigor with a close attention to historical texts. In other words, I
was taught that we can't dismiss someone just because they lived a
long time ago ("the democracy of the dead" in Chesterton's words) and
that we should take their arguments seriously, not just read them as
historical curiosities. I struggled with Augustine on free will, St.
Thomas on God's existence, Aristotle and Leibniz on ontology, and
Moore and Wittgenstein on knowledge. I was fortunate to be taught by
some incredibly sharp people, and, in a few cases, people who were
also professing Christians. This challenged me both to become more
rigorous in my thinking and to take Christian theism seriously as a
live option.
Again without any major ephiphanies I gradually became convinced that
something like classical theism was the best metaphysics going. It
just seemed (and seems) to me like the most satisfying explanation for
the existence and order of the universe, the fact that we have minds
and they find the world intelligible, the existence of truth, beauty,
and goodness, our moral aspirations, the occurrence of well-attested
religious and mystical experience and the holiness of the saints of
all traditions. Not that it doesn't have its problems, but it seems to
me to have fewer problems than its main rivals. T.S. Eliot once
reputedly said that he embraced Christianity because it was the least
false of the options available to him. I wouldn't go that far, but
there's definitely an element of skepticism and, hopefully, humility
in my embrace of Christian theism.
This all sounds very intellectualisitic, and I don't mean to give the
impression that I spent every minute of my twenties pondering the
imponderables (though I guess as a philosophy student that was part of
my job description.). I can't really say what sort of other things
were going on in my life that might've affected my thought processes,
though undoubtedly personal factors played an important role.
I had experimented with going to church on a couple of occassions in
the late 90s, but it never really took. In fact, it wasn't until
shortly before my wedding (in the winter of 2000) that I began to
attend church regularly, and this largely out of obligation. At that
time I probably would've described myself as a kind of theistic
Platonist, but not a Christian. But it turned out that, at least in my
case, there was something to Pascal's advice to "Bless yourself with
holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural
process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet
your proudly critical intellect." I'd probably put it differently, but
the simple discipline of going to church week in and week out
gradually had an affect on me.
Sometime in 2001, precipitated in part by a serious medical issue in
the life of a friend, I realized that I believed that Jesus is the Son
of God and went into a church near the office where I worked and
prayed to him. It wasn't quite the classic "sinner's prayer" moment,
but I would call it a conversion experience, with the caveat that a
lot of groundwork had been laid. In some ways I guess it was an
explicit acknowledgement of something that had been going on under
surface for some time.
Since then my religious life has been pretty much bereft of dramatic
incident. I've attended various Lutheran churches over the course of
the last five years up until this past summer when, having just moved
to Boston, my wife and I began attending the Church of the Advent
(Episcopal). Lutheranism at its best seems to me to combine
catholicity of doctrine and worship with the Augustinian understanding
of finitude, sin, and grace that comports so well with my skepticism.
In doctrinal matters I'm pretty conventional: I don't have much of an
itch for revisionism in Christology or the doctrine of the Trinity
(Chalcedon and Nicea sit just fine with me), Atonement (I think some
combination of Anselm and Abelard is probably as close to the truth as
we're likely to get), or other doctrinal matters. If anything, the
challenge for me now is to rest in the faith of the church and get
down to the business of actually living a Christian life. Thinking
about religion, however necessary and important, can be a temptation
to neglect things like prayer, service, doing justice and loving
mercy, developing the virtues of faith, hope, and charity - those
sorts of things.
.
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| User: "Geoff" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
04 Mar 2007 10:18:06 PM |
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"Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of_trumpet@warpmail.net> wrote in message
news:1173046586.320946.259800@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
Sometime in 2001, precipitated in part by a serious medical issue in
the life of a friend, I realized that I believed that Jesus is the Son
of God
Translated: I was never really an atheist.
cya
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| User: "Josef Balluch" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
05 Mar 2007 09:04:07 AM |
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In article <1173046586.320946.259800
@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
says...
http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/up-from-atheism/
I first became a professed atheist at about age 15; ...
It's always difficult to really understand why we do anything, I
think, and this was no exception.
Nor is your return to theism, as your use of fallacy demonstrates.
In retrospect I think I was a pretty
smart kid who wanted to rebel in some way.
Case in point.
....
I can only assume that I
was pretty insufferable at times.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
....
Was it able to account for mind, purpose, and value? For the existence
and order of the universe itself?
Argument from Ignorance.
I had also been impressed by the tradition that I associate with
Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, Kierkegaard and others that
emphasizes the limitations of our ability to adequately grasp the
truth due to our finitude and sin.
Begging the Question.
This is necessary, I think, to
balance an overconfident rationalism or dogmatism.
Brilliant, Socrates. Use fallacy to achieve "balance".
....
This all sounds very intellectualisitic, ...
< chuckle!> Intellectuals would spell it as "intellectualistic".
... and I don't mean to give the
impression that I spent every minute of my twenties pondering the
imponderables (though I guess as a philosophy student that was part of
my job description.).
Fear not. I doubt anyone would ever accuse you of being an
intellectual.
....
Regards,
Josef
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
-- Anatole France
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| User: "quibbler" |
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| Title: Re: Laughable ***** |
05 Mar 2007 09:33:30 AM |
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In article <1173046586.320946.259800@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
sound_of_trumpet@warpmail.net says...
Even "bad" kids - the kind that hung out at
the guard rail at the edge of the school parking lot in their Ozzy t-
shirts smoking cigarettes - were shocked by open professions of
atheism.
LOL. I was in high school before they called goth, goth. But there were
still kids who wore black and smoked and did that kind of thing. Most of
them were into heavy metal and professed things like satanism. So the
idea that they would be scandalized by mere atheism is rather laughable
and hard to believe. Are you sure this wasn't a christian girls school
you went to by mistake?
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
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| User: "Mike Combs" |
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| Title: Re: Laughable ***** |
05 Mar 2007 12:11:49 PM |
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"quibbler" <quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.2055e631235180a1989e55@news.readfreenews.net...
Most of
them were into heavy metal and professed things like satanism. So the
idea that they would be scandalized by mere atheism is rather laughable
and hard to believe.
Why not? Notions of both Satan and God come to us from the same source.
Question the existence of God, and the whole associated mess comes into
question.
--
Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn
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| User: "quibbler" |
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| Title: Re: Laughable ***** |
05 Mar 2007 05:59:00 PM |
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In article <eshmh6$mm1$1@home.itg.ti.com>,
mikecombs@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti says...
"quibbler" <quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.2055e631235180a1989e55@news.readfreenews.net...
Most of
them were into heavy metal and professed things like satanism. So the
idea that they would be scandalized by mere atheism is rather laughable
and hard to believe.
Why not?
The reason kiddies usually pick satanism is as an attempt to overtly
reject the norms of theism, not so much for the supernatural nonsense.
Atheism often is more innocuous and less visible, because a humanistic
value system (common to many atheists) is basically xian brotherhood sans
the spooky god *****. Atheists often don't particularly attract much
attention and usually keep to themselves. It's only when there are fundy
idiots aggressively pushing their agendas that atheists tend to step up
and verbally *****-slap xers a bit.
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
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| User: "Mike Combs" |
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| Title: Re: Laughable ***** |
07 Mar 2007 12:31:24 PM |
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"quibbler" <quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.20565cae710396d8989e56@news.readfreenews.net...
In article <eshmh6$mm1$1@home.itg.ti.com>,
mikecombs@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti says...
"quibbler" <quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.2055e631235180a1989e55@news.readfreenews.net...
Most of
them were into heavy metal and professed things like satanism. So the
idea that they would be scandalized by mere atheism is rather laughable
and hard to believe.
Why not?
The reason kiddies usually pick satanism is as an attempt to overtly
reject the norms of theism, not so much for the supernatural nonsense.
Yeah, I see that you said they professed satanism rather than that they were
satanists. You probably have them pegged pretty well.
There was a classic episode of "King of the Hill" which portrayed satanists
as they really are rather than the scary hype.
--
Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn
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| User: "Gerhard W. Gruber" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
05 Mar 2007 11:53:02 AM |
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On 4 Mar 2007 14:16:26 -0800 wrote "Sound of Trumpet"
<sound_of_trumpet@warpmail.net> in sci.skeptic with
<1173046586.320946.259800@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>
You may reply
that this is a lesson that any normal person would naturally learn as
they mature, but I can be a little thick.
Nope. I wouldn't go so far. Actually it would be the other way around, what I
wold replay to such crap. As you mature, you should realize what is a fairy
tale and what is not. Beliving in the IPU aka GOD doesn't strike me as mature.
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| User: "george" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
08 Mar 2007 07:48:08 PM |
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On Mar 6, 6:53 am, Gerhard W. Gruber <sparh...@gmx.at> wrote:
On 4 Mar 2007 14:16:26 -0800 wrote "Sound of Trumpet"
<sound_of_trum...@warpmail.net> in sci.skeptic with
<1173046586.320946.259...@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>
You may reply
that this is a lesson that any normal person would naturally learn as
they mature, but I can be a little thick.
Nope. I wouldn't go so far. Actually it would be the other way around, what I
wold replay to such crap. As you mature, you should realize what is a fairy
tale and what is not. Beliving in the IPU aka GOD doesn't strike me as mature.
long time no see
I love watching the god bothering Net kooks trying to out thick each
other :-)
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| User: "raven1" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
04 Mar 2007 07:02:25 PM |
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On 4 Mar 2007 14:16:26 -0800, "Sound of Trumpet"
<sound_of_trumpet@warpmail.net> wrote:
By senior
year I was proudly brandishing my copy of Nietzsche's Anti-Christ
(whether I understood it is another matter).
Whether the author understood anything at all about anything at all is
similarly in question.
--
"O Sybilli, si ergo
Fortibus es in ero
O Nobili! Themis trux
Sivat sinem? Causen Dux"
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| User: "George Dance" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
07 Mar 2007 08:39:44 AM |
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On Mar 4, 8:02 pm, raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> wrote:
On 4 Mar 2007 14:16:26 -0800, "Sound of Trumpet"
<sound_of_trum...@warpmail.net> wrote:
By senior
year I was proudly brandishing my copy of Nietzsche's Anti-Christ
(whether I understood it is another matter).
Whether the author understood anything at all about anything at all is
similarly in question.
He did tell us that "It's always difficult to really understand why we
do anything,"
(I assume he's using the editorial 'we' and speaking for himself.)
After reading his description of how he found his way back to Jesus, I
believe he's correct on that point.
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| User: "Ed" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
05 Mar 2007 08:40:59 AM |
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On Mar 4, 5:16 pm, "Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of_trum...@warpmail.net>
wrote:
http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/up-from-atheism/
Up from atheism
Mar 1st, 2007 by Lee
snip
Sometime in 2001, precipitated in part by a serious medical issue in
the life of a friend, I realized that I believed that Jesus is the
Son
of God and went into a church near the office where I worked and
prayed to him. It wasn't quite the classic "sinner's prayer" moment,
but I would call it a conversion experience, with the caveat that a
lot of groundwork had been laid. In some ways I guess it was an
explicit acknowledgement of something that had been going on under
surface for some time.
There is a difference between realizing that you believe in something
and realizing something. One can learn that one believes in something
by introspection. Thus if I examine my own beliefs I may discover
that I believe in the Tooth Fairy. That is not the same as realizing
that there is a Tooth Fairy.
The more profound question is whether there is a Tooth Fairy, not
whether one old news group poster believes there is a Tooth Fairy.
Atheists do not disbelieve in the faith of believers, they disbelieve
in what the believers believe in.
Ed
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| User: "Misanthropic Curmudgeon" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
08 Mar 2007 02:58:40 PM |
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On Mar 5, 11:16 am, "Sound of Trumpet" <sound_of_trum...@warpmail.net>
wrote:
http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/up-from-atheism/
[snip]
I had been baptized in a Reformed
congregation and my family had attended both a Presbyterian and a
Methodist church at various times during my childhood
[then I was an athiest, and then an agnostic]
I've attended various Lutheran churches over the course of
the last five years up until this past summer when, having just moved
to Boston, my wife and I began attending the Church of the Advent
(Episcopal). [snip]
An example of the strenths of childhood indoctronation and
programming.
"Give me the boy, and I will give you the man"
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| User: "sceptborg" |
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| Title: Re: Up From Atheism: One Atheist's Road Back To Faith |
05 Mar 2007 12:03:10 AM |
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Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/up-from-atheism/
Up from atheism
Mar 1st, 2007 by Lee
<snip>
You may reply
that this is a lesson that any normal person would naturally learn as
they mature, but I can be a little thick.
Yes. You go on to prove that conclusively.
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