Critical thinking...or the lack thereof

[robvalue]

Good thread tone!

The world is in desperate need of better critical thinking.

I try my best to promote it all over this forum for the same reason you do, that maybe just one or two people somewhere will take the time to think about it and maybe properly evaluate their beliefs. I don't expect those people to be our regular forum theists, they are generally examples of minds so deeply entrenched in mythology that it's always easier for them to make one more broken argument than to consider they might actually be wrong. (Note I said consider, not admit or conclude. All I want is for people to think.)

But there are bound to be hundreds of other people reading the forum who don't sign up, just "lurking" as we call it (we need a more polite term!) looking for ideas. Those are the people who I think benefit the most from our discussions, even though we probably will never directly hear from them. It's the same principle as a debate which will be put onto YouTube.

I propose we call them onlookers. Hi onlookers! I hope what we have to say is of some use to you

[Randy Carson]

And when you read the stories of the atheists who became Christians, Jenny, what did you find to be the reasons for their conversions?

A couple stories that I've read all had the same background: being raised by religious parents. Then it would be either:

1) rebelling against fundamentalist parents to later return to faith by personal revelation
2) the parents weren't practicing/devout, so lack of belief naturally followed; the return to belief was sparked by a personal revelation

All the ones I've read converted due to a personal experience, a hallucination/dream/sudden realization etc.
And all of them already had religious background. My sample size is too small to draw conclusions on a larger scale, but I'd say that it's quite peculiar that I've not encountered a person raised in unbelief who's had god convert him in person. Could it be that your god doesn't care about those lifelong unbelievers? Or is that because said infidels would have a hard time deciding which god has spoken to them?

Yeah, I could see the reversion thing being unimpressive. I'm more interested in the folks who grew up atheist or agnostic but then became theists.

There are some of those out there.

[Jenny A]

I don't think a frontal assault very often deconverts anyone.  From personal experience with the deconverted and from reading those who have ceased to believe, there are three ways people rise out of faith: either they have naturally inquiring minds and get there all on their own; or they are asked why they believe and left to mull over the inadequacy of the answer in peace; or they begin reading debates between the faithful and the skeptical and reach their own conclusion.  If you attack head on they rationalize and entrench, leaving you with faithful attempting valiantly to defend genocide ever more faithful the further back into the corner they are pushed.

And when you read the stories of the atheists who became Christians, Jenny, what did you find to be the reasons for their conversions?

I had a vision, or a feeling, or I really liked the idea of god?  You tell me Randy.  You have any converts?

[Jenny A]

Oh I forgot one other reason for deconversion: moral disgust.

[Cato]

Yeah, I could see the reversion thing being unimpressive. I'm more interested in the folks who grew up atheist or agnostic but then became theists.

There are some of those out there.

There's no doubt this creature exists; however, they are as vocal as evangelical evolutionists, good cops, moderate muslims, and White Sox fans on the northside of Chicago.

[Longhorn]

Yeah, I could see the reversion thing being unimpressive. I'm more interested in the folks who grew up atheist or agnostic but then became theists.

There are some of those out there.

Could you give some examples? I'm sure they exist. But they're very rare and hard to find. Do you have any?

[tonechaser77]

I don't think a frontal assault very often deconverts anyone.  From personal experience with the deconverted and from reading those who have ceased to believe, there are three ways people rise out of faith: either they have naturally inquiring minds and get there all on their own; or they are asked why they believe and left to mull over the inadequacy of the answer in peace; or they begin reading debates between the faithful and the skeptical and reach their own conclusion. 

This is such a key point Jenny! For me it was actually a slight combination of both. I started questioning the impetus of my set of beliefs but in an extremely low key, even back burner type of way if you will. The questions were the lurking trolls in my brain. However, that coupled with someone taking a more Socratic method of questioning me in a very non-combative way, allowed me to push forward and start questioning further. I can also attribute my general sense of curiosity and analytical mind that had been smothered since childhood from my abysmal indoctrination as a variable that finally stood up and said, WTF do you believe and why? You have been on autopilot for years. This was essentially the genesis for me. But also, I will admit, I had a strong desire to know what I believed so that I could prove it in times of testing so when I started studying years ago my goal was to strengthen my knowledge in early bible history, biblical criticism, philosophy and ancient world history. Little did I know what was in store for me. Instead of finding an order of systematic lucid reasoning, I found the exact opposite.

[robvalue]

The Socratic method is just the bomb. It's totally non aggressive, reasonable and encourages introspection. It is amazing how few questions you have to ask before most theists have no idea what to say. Just demonstrating this to be the case is probably enough to give the more curious ones something to go away and think on. If someone could demonstrate massive holes in my world view so easily, I'd want to know about it and would give it lots of thought.