Atheist Deconversion

Brian Holtz

Created Jan 2003 Updated Aug 2006



There is strong anecdotal evidence of a conversion asymmetry between atheism and the world's largest religion, Christianity. Many Christians (including ministers and priests, and theologians) convert to atheism even though while still Christians they had been well-versed in Christian apologetics. By contrast, it is very hard to find atheists who converted to Christianity even though while still atheists they had been well-versed in the arguments against Christianity. If the best atheistic arguments against Christianity are better than the best Christian arguments against atheism, then such an asymmetry is precisely what one would expect. The best arguments of atheism would then tend to inoculate their atheist hearers against Christianity, whereas the best arguments of Christianity would be generally unable to inoculate their Christian hearers against atheism.

I am an atheist who believes that the usual arguments for atheism (and against Christianity) are significantly better than the usual arguments for Christianity, but who considers himself open-minded enough to be persuadable by the objectively best arguments on an issue such as this. Since there is as yet no way for rational people to agree which side's arguments are objectively best, it remains possible that I might someday encounter superior Christian arguments (or consider the usual ones so). One way to evaluate this possibility is to investigate whether atheists having long-term experience with both sides' arguments ever later convert to Christianity primarily because of comparing those arguments. In order to control for irrational or irrelevant factors in such conversions, I seek converts that were not excessively influenced by

example or pressure from parents, professors, or any authority figure; desire for fellowship with some religious person or social group; desire to rebel against parents, professors, or any authority figure; negative personal experience with anti-religious people or institutions; distaste for the historical or distant actions of anti-religious people or institutions; distaste for the evils that might be mitigated by belief in god(s); emotional dissatisfaction with the logical implications of atheism; personal injustice or victimhood; personal misfortune such as disability, injury, illness, or the misfortune of a loved one; personal failure or crisis related to substance abuse, gambling, guilty conscience, imprisonment, etc.; personal dissatisfaction with one's social, romantic, or vocational circumstances; desire to reform (or excuse) one's morality or behavior; desire for hope in divine reward.

Here are the candidates I analyze below:



William Murray

Francis Collins



Hugh Ross http://www.reasons.org/

R. G. Rindfuss http://www.entourages.com/barbs/RevBob.htm

Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad



J. Budziszewski http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9801/budziszewski.html

people listed at http://www.rationalchristianity.net/testimonies/index.html

admits that in his studies he had never checked for himself the scriptural citations of Bible critics;

seems unaware of standard (and obvious) skeptical arguments concerning e.g. Paul's 500 resurrection witnesses;

justified his earlier atheism in part by emphasizing the hypocrisy of present Christians [4] and the atrocities of past Christians [5];

cites concern for America's moral decline as a factor in his conversion story [6];

overcame an episode of substance abuse [10] and attendant vocational difficulties [11];

says he "came to know Christ as my personal Lord and Savior because devout Christians accepted me and did not condemn me" [2].

Josh McDowell

went to church morning, noon and night, but it didn't help. I'm very practical, and when something doesn't work, I chuck it. So, I gave up religion.

McDowell's conversion clearly was counfounded by dissatisfaction with his personal life:

[Some Christians] appeared to possess an inner, constant source of joy. They were disgustingly happy. They had something I didn't have. [..] I discovered that becoming a Christian was rather ego-shattering. [..] If you've ever been around happy people when you're miserable, you understand how they can bug you. They would be so happy and I would be so miserable that I'd literally get up and run right out of the student union. It came to the point where I'd go to bed at ten at night, and I wouldn't get to sleep until four in the morning. [..] I used to blow my stack if somebody just looked at me cross-eyed. I still have the scars from almost killing a guy my first year at college. My temper was such a part of me that I didn't try to consciously change it. [..] I had a lot of hatred in my life. It wasn't something outwardly manifested, but there was a kind of inward grinding. I was ticked off with people, with things, with issues. But I hated one man more than anyone else in the world: my father. I hated his guts. To me he was the town alcoholic. Everybody knew my dad was a drunk. [..] I'd go out in the barn and see my mother beaten so badly she couldn't get up, lying in the manure behind the cows. [..]

McDowell "was in a serious car accident" within a few months of his conversion. McDowell's father then had a bedside conversion (based on McDowell's example, not on evidence) and foreswore alchohol. McDowell concludes: "You can laugh at Christianity. You can mock and ridicule it. But it works. It changes lives." So does alchohol. The question is not whether Christianity can change lives. The question is whether it is true.

C.S. Lewis

Lee Strobel

I was an atheist for most of my life. I thought that the idea of an all powerful, all loving God was just silly. I learned in school that evolution was where life came from, so what do you need God for?

And I had a lot of self-motivation for living an atheistic lifestyle. I was living a very immoral life and a drunken life [..] without a moral framework, my personal life was out of control, the drinking, the carousing. I had no moral framework of how to do journalism so I would do whatever it took to get the story. I would steal; I would commit a federal crime by stealing federal document from the courthouse. [..] figured it was worth it because I never got caught. [..] I, behind the scenes, destroyed the career of one of my colleagues because he was in my way. By the time I was done with him, he was fired [..] I had no moral sense of right or wrong. If something was in my way I got rid of it. [..] I arranged for the destruction of [my girlfriend's] unborn child, didn't bother me at all.

my attitudes my philosophy my worldview my professional standards my marriage, my job everything began to change so much. [..] [I was] so frustrated from work one day and I kicked the wall, [and] put my foot right through the wall. [My daughter] said mommy I want God to do for me what he did for daddy, she gave her life to Christ at age five. [..] Right after I became a Christian I stopped drinking.

So I decide to take my legal training and my journalism training and investigate: is there any credibility to Christianity? [..] So I would investigate. I went out and I applied those skills to the question of who is Jesus Christ. I didn't do it what an antagonist attitude I did it with a journalist's attitude I said give me the facts. I'm going to look at both sides [..]

after spending two years of checking this out I just realized that in light of this torrent of evidence that points so powerfully towards Christianity, it would have required more faith to retain my atheism than to become a Christian. Because to maintain my atheism I would have had to defy the evidence, to become a Christian I just had to make a step of faith in the same direction that the evidence was pointing. That's logical, that's rational, and that's what I did.

On that day I repented of my sin, which took quite a while, and gave my life to Christ. I thought maybe my [Christian] wife would be interested in the fact that I just did this so I thought Id tell her. So I came out and was walking down the hallway and turned into our kitchen and my wife was standing there with our daughter [..] I said to my wife, "[..] I've been reaching out and reaching out and I just touched Jesus Christ. It's real and it's true and I just gave my life to him." She started crying [..]