From atheism to Christianity? How so?

[Whateverist]

I think people have a tendency to view deconversion as a rational process, and conversion as an irrational one. The fact is both kinds occur going both directions, and the amount of rationality involved in these processes is, to my mind, enormously exaggerated. We, as a species, don't use the bulk of our brains to reason; the bulk of our brains has other ideas.

I agree entirely. Reason and rationality are almost a sideshow. Yes we can sometimes do those things and sometimes to wonderful ends. But it rarely describes the way anyone lives their life. We don't build up our beliefs, values and actions from scratch. Indeed we could not. There is always so much more going on in our noggins than the splinter we know as our conscious minds.

Aside from the conscious/unconscious divide, there is also the obvious fact that the portions of our brains which enable symbolic language must be a recent development evolutionarily. Words are for interpersonal communication primarily. What we communicate to one another with language are realizations and plans we must have been acting on earlier in human history without language. So language is a simplification of what can be realized with non-discursive thought. Information is lost, not gained, by concentrating on just that which can be communicated interpersonally.

Think of all the people who take drugs, realize things and then find afterwords that they cannot put it into words. Well of course they can't. What they had been realizing wasn't by way of language. So when they come back to their normal consciousness where they rely overmuch on language they can't grasp any of it. They could but they are simply warped by an over reliance on language in their own internal thinking. It isn't necessary and it isn't optimal. If it wasn't so prevalent it would be recognized as pathological.