z8000783 wrote:Is it any different to atheists who say they used to be Christians?

John

Aside from the obvious, the biggest difference is that you can easily find other people who will talk about the atheist's former life as a christian, and you even have statements and documentation from the atheist themselves showing that they were indeed christian.

For folks like Camoron, Lee Strobel, and whatever other godbotherers trouting this out are severely lacking in that "atheist" evidence. In other words, I'm pretty sure that most of them are just lying out their asses (nothing new for them).

I think this discussion is really a red herring. The question were you really an atheist before you were a Christian? is not nearly as important as the question What changed your mind?.

Good point. Although, it's nice to catch them in an obvious lie, and remind them that they should be "fighting fairly" (an apparently foreign concept to them).

Brain damage
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnXqAHAHhLM[/youtube]

OK, a perforation of his "stomach" he would be dead. The doctor "knew what was wrong with me" how? Did he have x-ray eyes.
And they left him for 8/10 hours with his stomach contents leaking into his abdomen?

An atheist, "lived for the gratification of the moment," he was unconscious and had an out of body experience, saw God blah blah blah!!! Of course if he'd bothered to read the literature on it, he'd know it was just the brain shutting down process. And he was on the way to hell. And then the power of positive thought, and his mind fighting to not die. And he woke up from his nightmare. Then I waited to hear that he didn't need surgery to repair his "perforated stomach." But it didn't happen.

What a load of codswallop.

Animavore wrote:Case in point. Check out this drivel.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKrTK_WUiCo[/youtube]

Just a question about this "The Atheist Bible". is it a different Bible ? No of course, the scriptures are sacred. So it's just the same old Bible, it just has a different name to trick short-minded people.

The good old technique preachers have been using for centuries...

Someone too lazy to take the trouble to learn something, so he goes to 'goddidit' instead. What a wally!

I'm sorry if this has already been raised, but is there not a chance that these theists genuinely think they "used to be an atheist" before they found Jesus.

I mean they probably didn't give it much thought beforehand, then met some quasi-attractive reverends daughter who flashed them some leg at prayer meetings. All of a sudden they're spouting bollocks on youtube videos.

To some, maybe not having god as an active part in your life, or not really thinking about it, counts as being "atheist". Who knows, in some cases it may actually be quite apt.

Of course you could be right Hugh.

HughMcB wrote:I mean they probably didn't give it much thought beforehand, then met some quasi-attractive reverends daughter who flashed them some leg at prayer meetings. All of a sudden they're spouting bollocks on youtube videos.

To some, maybe not having god as an active part in your life, or not really thinking about it, counts as being "atheist". Who knows, in some cases it may actually be quite apt.

I suppose the better word for them would be ignostic? Not quite the same thing, but since when do facts and definitions mean anything to a theist?

DoctorE wrote:Brain damage
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnXqAHAHhLM[/youtube]

I call bullshit! A surgery hospital in Paris doesn't have any emergency surgeons? Bullshit!

The first doctor knew what was wrong but sent him to the general hospital for a second opinion? Bullshit!

Coming on that suddenly without trauma a doctor would most likely diagnose the symptoms as a burst appendix and rush him straight to emergency surgery.

It was in Paris, France for fuck sake, a country know for its excellent health care, not some third world backwater.

And so, While in pain and probably feverish Storm had a bad dream, but Jesus and his merry band of angels saved him from devilish people dressed in hospital garb that wanted to drag him to hell. I wonder when Jesus showed up? Probably about the time that the painkillers and anesthesia kicked in.



He may have been an atheist before this episode, but it is very clear that he was in no way any sort of critical thinker.

And now he's a pastor, making all sorts of money from a book about it and selling paintings of Jesus that he promotes everywhere, from Oprah to Good Morning America.

Anne Rice is his big sponsor. The nut case that went from anti-Catholic vampire novelist to pro-Catholic Jesus novelist in the blink of an eye.

Oldskeptic, are you suggesting this guy is lying out his ass to make a buck? That is an unheard of scam! He must be quite clever.

Panderos wrote:Statement: I used to be an atheist, but now I believe.

What I'm implying: I used to be an atheist, and I understood all the atheist arguments, but then I thought about it and saw they were wrong, now I believe. People that are still atheists therefore have not thought about it properly or are simply thick.

Fallacy: I understood all the atheist arguments.

Corrected Statement: I used to be an atheist, but now I believe, but I never understood the arguments for atheism anyway.

Statement: I used to be an atheist, but now I believe.

What I'm implying: I used to be like you, but now I'm like me - really cool, in my opinion. If you want to be really cool like me, just adopt this belief I hold.

Fallacy: The apologist isn't actually cool at all.

In the end though, why should we care ? Atheism isn't going to be for everyone. When someone actually starts thinking about these ultimate questions then it takes a pretty thick skin and an intellectual rigour to keep up. People will fail for whatever reason. It is ultimately their loss.

I care if they are LYING to sell their shtick. I hihgly doubt that most actually were atheists (like the facepalm worthy quote from the one "atheist" where he said he just didn't have a relationship with the god he knew existed...).

Animavore wrote:The Christians who used to be atheists generally come across as people who never really thought about the God question. Not all of them but some I've heard when talking about they used to be atheists and "lost" what they really seem to mean is they just weren't Christians. I guess they were apatheists.

Animavore wrote:I think what Cameron above has done is, under the suggestion of his Christian bum chums, retro-fitted himself as an atheist when in actuality he was probably just a non-thinking person (and still is).

Now that could well be true - I'm only surmising. Perhaps they were previously quite apathetic, thoughtless, couldn't-care mental slackers; so they were apatheists. Now, it might seem to make their "awakening" all the more significant and worthwhile, by characterising it as having been a "conversion from the dark side", { sort of => , but if so, then it wasn't }

Well, let's be a bit charitable here. Atheists are human, after all, and subject to mental breakdowns just like everyone else.

Lee Strobel makes heavy use of the tactic in one of his painfully patronizing The Case For... books. He recounts, with unknown accuracy, an interview with Charles Templeton wherein Templeton talked about his loss of faith; Strobel portrays him as withdrawn and empty as a result of his conversion and claims to understand Templeton's woes because he (Strobel) went through much the same thing. Presumably to retain plausible deniability, Strobel never says outright that all atheists are depressed slugs, he just gives the reader two anecdotes then fills the rest with interviews with historians and philosophers (along with grinning idiots like Ravi Zacharias), whom we are to simply accept as authorities, and whose interviews seem to follow the format, "Sure, Christianity is reasonable for reasons X and Y, but it makes me Really Really Happy!!!eleventy!!"

LarianLeQuella wrote:I care if they are LYING to sell their shtick. I hihgly doubt that most actually were atheists (like the facepalm worthy quote from the one "atheist" where he said he just didn't have a relationship with the god he knew existed...).

My ideological opponent;

- is lying
- doesn’t really believe what they are saying
- isn’t as cool as me
- doesn’t really understand their own arguments.
- wears a tie and talks eloquently / all style no substance

Wow. Who knew the contest of ideas was so easy to win?

Actually, if you look closely, you will see that their non-sequiturs and yours cancel each other out.

"I used to be an atheist."
"Oh yeah, well I used to be a theist. So there!

Congratulations. A nil-all-draw

Of course too we have to take into account what people mean when they say they are an "atheist." What they mean is that they simply didn't think about religion very much, or weren't brought up with religion, which is just about everyone who's not been dragged through the church system by their parents. A lot of parents do the nightly prayers thing and grace at the table when they were kids but then abandoned it as the kids went their own way.

When we speak of atheists, we're thinking of people who know what religion is and have made a conscious decision that it's nonsense. We're not talking about lapsed, half-baked, only-on-high-holiday, indifferent "I only go to weddings and funerals" type of indifferent "take it or leave it" type people. Which is pretty much most of the people who don't make conscious decisions about religion.

These people can't even answer simply questions about the churches they sometimes attend. When you ask them questions about the tenets of their religion, before they found Jesus, they would have said something like "i only go because my wife/mother/husband etc drags me there, I don't really believe." Then they find Jesus and claim "I used to be an atheist."