Franics Collins

[athrock]

'Cause "true atheists" don't convert, right?

No, they don't; it doesn't make any sense at all to become an atheist (that is, without any belief in god) and then convert to a particular religion.  Why did Collins, for instance, become an evangelical Christian as opposed to a Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or, for that matter, a Catholic, an Eastern Orthodox or a Coptic Christian, with numerous variations between and within those religious sects?

Unless, of course, he had "an experience..."

Just rational thought apparently.

Here's a PBS interview:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/vo...llins.html

Teaser:

"As I began to ask a few questions of those people, I realized something very fundamental: I had made a decision to reject any faith view of the world without ever really knowing what it was that I had rejected. And that worried me. As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data. It was pretty clear I hadn't done any data collecting here about what these faiths stood for."

And this:

So this wonderful minister gave me his own copy of Mere Christianity, Lewis's slim tome that outlines the arguments leading to his conclusion that God is not only a possibility, but a plausibility. That the rational man would be more likely, upon studying the facts, to conclude that choosing to believe is the appropriate choice, as opposed to choosing not to believe.

That was a concept I was really unprepared to hear. Until then, I don't think anyone had ever suggested to me that faith was a conclusion that one could arrive at on the basis of rational thought. I, and I suspect, many other scientists who've never really looked at the evidence, had kind of assumed that faith was something that you arrived at, either because it was drummed into your head when you were a little kid or by some emotional experience, or some sort of cultural pressure. The idea that you would arrive at faith because it made sense, because it was rational, because it was the most appropriate choice when presented with the data, that was a new concept. And yet, reading through the pages of Lewis's book, I came to that conclusion over the course of several very painful weeks.

I didn't want this conclusion. I was very happy with the idea that God didn't exist, and had no interest in me. And yet at the same time, I could not turn away. I had to keep turning those pages. I had to keep trying to understand this. I had to see where it led. But I still didn't want to make that decision to believe.