What was it like being an atheist?

[Angrboda]

The question remains, German. What would lead you to suspect that they are dishonest in this?

I also think that Christians (and Muslims) generally lie about having been Atheists. A couple of things make me doubt. Number one, the similarity of the narrative that you hear from people about having been an Atheist. I've been involved in the Atheism debate for a while and I've come to the conclusion that people are regurgitating the same story. Look at JDStrodel's story of being an Atheist. Does it sound similar to anything that real Atheists on this board write about their life experience? No. This isn't a realistic story. A common idea amongst Christians is that they were 'angry with God' when they were Atheists. Also this shows when they believe Atheists are currently angry or rebelling against God. However no Atheist that I know actually expresses these ideas. I think this story is being fed to people one way or another.

I don't think this is necessarily an indication of lying. It is a not uncommon theme that people tend to "re-remember" their past along the lines they want to believe things happened. Thus a jilted lover will misremember the breakup as being his initiative and so on. It's an aspect of cognitive dissonance I suppose, but I suspect in some if not most cases, the memories are actively "rewritten" and reinterpreted along lines consistent with anti-atheist myths and stereotypes. It may be that they were never the atheists they portray themselves to have been, that that particular atheist narrative has been created after the fact, but there may be a core of truth that they once were an atheist of some sort. It also occurs to me that unhappy and stressed people, atheist or no, are likely more susceptible to religious conversion; perhaps you're seeing a selection effect wherein most atheist to theist conversions occur in people who are in some sense unwell to begin with, and thus these "atheist conversions" are skewed toward a specific atheist experience because the probability of conversion is skewed towards those types. (I notice Mister Agenda has a point along the lines that perhaps they were never True Atheists[tm]. I'm going to skip that and the second half of your post this am. Maybe later.)

(ETA: It also occurs to me that there is an additional assumption here that the former atheist is sincerely attempting to recount their experience. Not to get off on the question of why theists frequently seem to be consciously lying when in fact they may not be intentionally doing so, but it's entirely possible that for some converts, the lie is not so much in them claiming to have been an atheist — that part may very well be true — but rather in their claim that their retelling and narrative are an honest and authentic account of their experience; they may be intentionally or unintentionally distorting things for reasons of (theistic) self interest [if not outright lying about the content of their experience].)