The kind of theist who'll sprinkle "I used to be an atheist" into their conversations with current atheists are a very specific breed, and are generally using that phrase in an attempt to give their position some cache that it doesn't deserve; the fact that they seem to uniformly forget the argument from authority fallacy the moment they become christian doesn't bode well for the rationality of their conversion. This grim feeling is, more often than not, borne out by what you hear when you ask them why they're a christian now; either they'll make some vague pretension to having considered the proposition rationally, before immediately switching tracks to attacking your position rather than justifying their own ("I just didn't have enough faith to be an atheist, once I started looking at the world rationally!") or they start pointing out personal experiences that they attribute to god without justification, that are themselves little more than passive aggressive attacks against atheism ("When I didn't believe, I was reckless, irresponsible, without purpose, I drank, etc").

The "former atheist" gambit is generally little more than an attack platform, which is why I don't actually care about it. Far be it from me to tell you what you did and did not believe, theists, but I'm not going to take fallacious bait simply in the name of giving you another perceived point of attack.

Whether they were "true" atheists or not is a pitfall we should never fall down. No true Scotsman and all that. Whether they were actual atheists or not is hardly germane to their position now, anyhow.

I also stray away from idioms like "shoving it down our throats." Makes us sound...familiar. Being fair, many among us say the opposite when we are told we have never read the Bible or given their god a chance.

The remarkable thing is that even though they were supposedly atheists, they have an incredible inability to defend their position.

(February 26, 2015 at 6:38 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: Whether they were "true" atheists or not is a pitfall we should never fall down. No true Scotsman and all that. Whether they were actual atheists or not is hardly germane to their position now, anyhow.

Yes. The more effective tack is to point out that they stopped being atheists for bad reasons; conversion isn't an argument in and of itself, it's just a statement of fact. I think it's pretty well established that conversions in any direction can happen for good reasons and bad reasons, after all.

(February 26, 2015 at 6:19 pm)Brian37 Wrote: There really is a lot you need to know as an atheist as far as the extent of elaborate apology that they come up with. Some may have been atheists, but that doesn't mean they were well armed. I've been at this 14 years almost every day and I can tell you I was an atheist before I started educating myself and back then I was an easy target by comparison.

I agree.
My path (so far) was:
- cradle Christian
- uninformed, apathetic, atheist (due to lack of evidence for God)
- Christian (due to hallucinations that seemed to be personal evidence and delusional thinking from psychosis)
- gnostic non-Chrisitan (due to absurdity of Christian theology)
- mostly gnostic atheist (due to reading and forum discussions and psychological wellness)

I guess there are some highly educated atheists that switch to theism though.

People come to their beliefs or lack of beliefs for good reasons, and bad reasons.

I would not doubt that these former atheists were actually atheists (I don't want to be guilty of 'No True Scotsman'), but that doesn't mean they were atheists for good reasons (the end results of critical thinking and skepticism when correctly applied to the god claim).

They could have been atheists because they were brought up without indoctrination in any religion, but never examined the issue critically. They might be dazzled by a William Lane Craig or Josh McDowell's BS and fall for it.

They might have had some experience that they were unable to explain, some theist comes along and offers them a supernatural 'explanation' and they are hooked.

There are many reasons they become theists, all of them fallacious.

There was a time in my life when I believed that it was unlikely that God existed. I don't know if the position "God probably does not exist" makes one an atheist.....but if it does then I was an atheist. However I have since shifted 180 degrees and now believe it is very likely that God does indeed exist. I don't believe any particular religion is likely to be "true".

(February 26, 2015 at 7:58 pm)Heywood Wrote: There was a time in my life when I believed that it was unlikely that God existed. I don't know if the position "God probably does not exist" makes one an atheist.....but if it does then I was an atheist. However I have since shifted 180 degrees and now believe it is very likely that God does indeed exist. I don't believe any particular religion is likely to be "true".

Belief is the psychological state in which one accepts a premise or proposition to be true.

Theism is accepting the premise that a god exists is true, everything else is atheism.

If you did not accept the premise that a god exists to be true, you were an atheist.

(February 26, 2015 at 7:58 pm)Heywood Wrote: There was a time in my life when I believed that it was unlikely that God existed. I don't know if the position "God probably does not exist" makes one an atheist.....but if it does then I was an atheist. However I have since shifted 180 degrees and now believe it is very likely that God does indeed exist. I don't believe any particular religion is likely to be "true".

But clearly given the arguments you've put forth elsewhere sound and cogent reasoning wasn't the primary factor in your compulsion to convert. So what was it? What practical difference does your faith make in your life?

Once a theist friend (former atheist) said to me that being a theist made her happier. Honestly, it's a reason I can accept. It's not rational, it doesn't make sense, but at least she admitted it was unprovable.

(February 26, 2015 at 8:10 pm)Nestor Wrote:

(February 26, 2015 at 7:58 pm)Heywood Wrote: There was a time in my life when I believed that it was unlikely that God existed. I don't know if the position "God probably does not exist" makes one an atheist.....but if it does then I was an atheist. However I have since shifted 180 degrees and now believe it is very likely that God does indeed exist. I don't believe any particular religion is likely to be "true".

But clearly given the arguments you've put forth elsewhere sound and cogent reasoning wasn't the primary factor in your compulsion to convert. So what was it? What practical difference does your faith make in your life?

I was just coming back to this thread to post pretty much the same thing.

Yeah, Heywood's justifications for his beliefs are pretty week. Loaded with fallacies.