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The Bogus Reasons an Atheist Converted to Christianity
Sorting through the hogwash of Christian apologetics
On Stand to Reason, a website that trains Christians to rationally defend their religion, the apologist Jonathan Noyes says he converted from atheism to Christianity because he “bumped hard into reality,” thanks to several theistic arguments.
Yet those arguments are so feeble that there are only two likely explanations of what’s going on here. Either Noyes was never an atheist, contrary to his declaration, or he’s strawmanning atheistic worldviews, oversimplifying them for propagandistic purposes, and avoiding the real reasons why he might have decided to be a Christian.
Even before turning to his arguments, for instance, we know his presentation is deeply flawed because no one leaves “atheism for Christianity,” as the title of his article would have it. No worldview is simply atheistic since that’s a negative characterization that would make sense only in a society or a period that’s mostly theistic.
No, the issue would be why Noyes left naturalism, secular humanism, skepticism, nihilism, consumerism, or some other substantive nontheistic worldview for Christianity. A real atheist would have understood as much, or someone arguing in good faith would have explained this to his Christian…
