From atheism to Christianity? How so?

[AstroNat]

I don't understand how any sane person can go from rational thinking to believing in a religion. My guess is that you weren't really all that sure in the first place and that you didn't really understand what is was that you believed. You're also still quite young and it's only natural for you to explore your "options".

[Strongbad]

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Since this topic just coincidently appeared, I suppose I will give my testimony. First off, I don't expect anyone to be convinced by what I am going to say. Most likely you'll think I had some kind of psychotic break, and that's okay, so long as you think I'm crazy in a good way. My journey is actually atheism to new age to christianity, by the way

Well, I was raised secular and the subject of God was never brought up in my home. All I really knew about Christianity is what I heard on television, so my knowledge of Christianity was pretty poor at this point. In my late 20s I started to have supernatural experiences. At that point I started to believe there was a spiritual reality and I began to pursue different religions and philosophies. A few years down the road I started to experience things which led me to believe there is an all powerful God controlling everything.

On that basis I believed in the all purpose God of love you hear about the new age. I didn't know anything about Jesus at this point. It took several years of exploring basically everything that I finally read the bible. On the basis of some revelation I had received prior to reading the bible, I began to believe the bible was Gods revelation to mankind. This is when I started to seriously consider that Jesus is the Messiah. After a few years of searching that out, I became convinced that He is the Messiah, and is still alive. That's when I became a Christian.

I can imagine what any rationalist might think when reading this, because it is utterly irrational on the worlds terms. You could call it a psychotic break, or confirmation bias, or any number of things. What I can testify to is the change in my life because I am a completely different person now. I am not problem free, but, I used to be depressed and now I am happy. I used to have a lot of fear and now I am at peace. I used to be addicted to many things and now I am sober. I used to use the internet too much..and I still use the internet too much. You get the picture..

So that's my story and I am sticking to it.

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[c172]

Say someone... pfffff, any random atheist, not calling out anyone... converted to Christianity. How did this happen? Anybody else... er, I mean anybody here been there, done that?

I confess I'm skeptical to this. First thing to pop into my head is that this is just another fundie trying to save souls by fitting in then sticking the hook down the throat.
Granted I could be wrong. Show me.

I havent read through this whole thread yet, so I may be missing something. But I am reminded of when I first settled in the North Hills of greater Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was what you call a very "vanilla", arguably sterile area. High School football on Friday night, church on Sundays. Very white.

I would say that these churches seemed to have a strong community feel, and community, to me, would be a huge draw for just about anything. I'm not one to ever go back to Christianity, but that community pull of belonging to a church is certainly there for some. Kind of like a country club.

[downbeatplumb]

why is it always the druggies that turn to Christ?
I've never done that stuff so maybe that's why I'm still an atheist.

[AstroNat]

Because drugs kill brain cells. Seemples.

[Simon Moon]

---

Since this topic just coincidently appeared, I suppose I will give my testimony. First off, I don't expect anyone to be convinced by what I am going to say. Most likely you'll think I had some kind of psychotic break, and that's okay, so long as you think I'm crazy in a good way. My journey is actually atheism to new age to christianity, by the way

Well, I was raised secular and the subject of God was never brought up in my home. All I really knew about Christianity is what I heard on television, so my knowledge of Christianity was pretty poor at this point. In my late 20s I started to have supernatural experiences. At that point I started to believe there was a spiritual reality and I began to pursue different religions and philosophies. A few years down the road I started to experience things which led me to believe there is an all powerful God controlling everything.

On that basis I believed in the all purpose God of love you hear about the new age. I didn't know anything about Jesus at this point. It took several years of exploring basically everything that I finally read the bible. On the basis of some revelation I had received prior to reading the bible, I began to believe the bible was Gods revelation to mankind. This is when I started to seriously consider that Jesus is the Messiah. After a few years of searching that out, I became convinced that He is the Messiah, and is still alive. That's when I became a Christian.

I can imagine what any rationalist might think when reading this, because it is utterly irrational on the worlds terms. You could call it a psychotic break, or confirmation bias, or any number of things. What I can testify to is the change in my life because I am a completely different person now. I am not problem free, but, I used to be depressed and now I am happy. I used to have a lot of fear and now I am at peace. I used to be addicted to many things and now I am sober. I used to use the internet too much..and I still use the internet too much. You get the picture..

So that's my story and I am sticking to it.

---

[Neo-Scholastic]

Each time in the past I have given basic summaries. I feel each leaves out little bits of insight. Having a bit more time perhaps I can be more thorough this go around. First, a general comment: conversion experiences do not happen in a cultural vacuum. When people turn to religion, they gravitate to what is most familiar. Midwesterners do not generally turn to Islam or Hinduism. Middle Easterners do not generally turn to Shinto or Rastafarian practices. My own denomination, Second Advent or New Church, does not find this problematic, which is another topic entirely.

As for myself, I was raised in a Christian home. The community church did not “feed” me. Church was a Sunday ritual. Youth group was a social club. We were taught blind faith without doctrine. As I came of age, I couldn’t just believe in something because the adults said so. From middle school through high school I learned about the major philosophers, in general, and the existentialists in particular. My exposure was pretty shallow. I still believed in Jesus, but considered it an “irrational stance” within an absurd world. In college I loaded up my electives with philosophy courses and ended up one credit hour short of a minor. In my junior year of college, being an atheist in practice I accepted that I was an atheist in belief.

For a while I became very interested in the psychologist Abraham Maslow. That really hit home. Part of my mental make-up is a propensity toward “peak experiences.” It doesn’t take much: a warm cup of coffee on a quiet rainy day, a long run by the lake in the winter, etc. While the religious describe this in spiritual terms, I considered it a curious and wonderful psychological experience that gives you a calm sense of place in the world. And I actively pursued it. I read about the many of the mystics to learn from their practices; St. John of the Cross’s “dark night of the soul”, St. Teresa’s agony that was indistinguishable from ecstasy, William Blake’s art and poetry, and, yes, the visions of Swedenborg. I learned to meditate, mostly mindfulness, and found that shedding contingent aspects of self to find the irreducible personal existent comes naturally to me. I still attribute most of this effect to the “relaxation response” used by many athletes.

All this time, I never lost interest in philosophy of mind. From college the issues started by Descartes and chewed by Ned Block, Dennett, Churchland, Nagel, and Chalmers remained fresh. Compared to my own visceral meditative and flow experiences, then and now, the conclusions of the analytic philosophers seem to be missing something essential. Because I am heavily invested in the visual arts, I have also been profoundly influenced by semiotics.

My first step back toward the Christian faith came from this mix of transcendent experiences, philosophical speculation, artistic practice, fighting for human dignity, and a commitment to existential freedom. I had the start of fairly coherent intellectual framework for expanding my understanding of reality. I slowly build on that, including my participation with AF.

The above sufficiently explains my turn toward a more spiritual worldview. It does not explain how I became a Christian. As I said in the beginning, I lacked much doctrinal education. From my philosophical perspective most of the traditional doctrines made no sense to me: God-in-Three-Persons, Jesus as both man and God, etc. Orthodox belief isn’t for me, I can accept some mystery just from being human, but the paradoxes of traditional doctrines are too blatant to overlook.

All that changed after a personal and unexpected revelatory experience. I was working on a house project in the basement when I was overcome by a profound sense that the biblical text was somehow actually alive, every “jot and tilde”. And I remembered hearing this idea before in the writings of Swedenborg. I gave him a second look. To my surprise it started to make sense. He explained the Holy Trinity, Christ’s mission, and spiritual reality in a logical way. And for the first time really the Holy Scriptures opened up for me, filled with riches and insights on so many levels.


I would be remiss in my duty if I did not mention that throughout my conversion I became increasingly aware of the sin in my life. Many Christians describe hitting bottom and turning to Christ. I cannot say that I had one defining moment but I did have several dark nights of the soul when I was forced to confront the lingering sins from my atheistic perspective. These sins included permissive attitudes toward libertines, approval of licentious and self-destructive behaviors, scoffing at people with simple faith, and no shortage of bad habits. I think that’s the regenerative process described by St. Paul as “working out my salvation with fear and trembling.”

For me God is no longer an abstract concept. He is a fundamental aspect of reality, obvious once understood, hidden in plain sight, or as the hymn says, “Tis only to splendor of light hiddeth Thee!”

[Minimalist]

He is a fundamental aspect of reality,

Reality must be a constant source of embarrassment to you.

[Ksa]

The problem is simple: Without God, life on Earth has NO MEANING. Weather you masturbate, help the children in Africa or kill someone, it's all the same cosmologically so some people cannot accept this and turn to find truth in a higher power, must I say, that shares their righteous ideology. For example, a God that would believe in the survival of the fittest and command its creation to kill itself until the better elements arise, this God they're not interested in, it's a cruel God, they need JEESUS. They need a message of comfort of peace. If God really existed, they wouldn't give a shit what he wanted, it's all about what they want.

^.^

[Drich]

Say someone... pfffff, any random atheist, not calling out anyone... converted to Christianity. How did this happen? Anybody else... er, I mean anybody here been there, done that?

I confess I'm skeptical to this. First thing to pop into my head is that this is just another fundie trying to save souls by fitting in then sticking the hook down the throat.
Granted I could be wrong. Show me.

Atheism is defined as a disbelief or doctrine that God does not exist.

Now apply occham's razor and ask what would 'one' (not the whole atheist community all at once) need to switch.

The simple answer is personal proof of God.

When we A/S/K as outlined in Luke 11 we are essentially asking for continual 'proof.' After all what better proof of God is there than God?