Has anyone EVER changed his mind...

[El Greco]

...regarding the existence or non-existence of God while debating in this forum ?

Paul's thread got me thinking and since I'm new here I have probably missed such a conversion. Can you point me to a thread (or series of threads) where it is evident that a deist became an atheist or vice versa ?

If such a case doesn't exist, do we have any other example of conversion in this place ? Like a believer in clairvoyance who reformed or anything at all ? I'm looking for links to specific threads.

[Darat]

Originally posted by El Greco
...regarding the existence or non-existence of God while debating in this forum ?

Paul's thread got me thinking and since I'm new here I have probably missed such a conversion. Can you point me to a thread (or series of threads) where it is evident that a deist became an atheist or vice versa ?

If such a case doesn't exist, do we have any other example of conversion in this place ? Like a believer in clairvoyance who reformed or anything at all ? I'm looking for links to specific threads.

I have a personal "conversion" that took place here a couple of years ago.

I used to believe that I knew that "guns" were necessarily bad in any society. I now know this cannot be proven, and is just an unsubstantiated opinion, like the opinion that guns are not necessarily bad for any society.

Looked for the threads but they have been lost in the purges of the past.

[BillyJoe]

Well you are talking specifically about "god" and "on this forum", Darat notwithstanding. So no I have not had such a conversion. But I have converted god to dog by reversing the letters. And back again because Ralph did not appreciate it.

[Marc]

I believe Ruby and Roadtoad are two people who have changed as a result of hanging around here.

[El Greco]

Originally posted by Darat


I have a personal "conversion" that took place here a couple of years ago.

I used to believe that I knew that "guns" were necessarily bad in any society. I now know this cannot be proven, and is just an unsubstantiated opinion, like the opinion that guns are not necessarily bad for any society.

A change of opinion is always something noteworthy, but this example is not exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking more about things that could be considered "paranormal" by some people. Your conversion seems to me like a case where social science had a lot to do with, and certainly noone would characterize your original or current beliefs as "paranormal".

Although I have no doubt that even such a conversion is extremely rare.

[UndercoverElephant]

Originally posted by El Greco
...regarding the existence or non-existence of God while debating in this forum ?


Yes.


Paul's thread got me thinking and since I'm new here I have probably missed such a conversion.


Probably.


Can you point me to a thread (or series of threads) where it is evident that a deist became an atheist or vice versa ?


No, they have been deleted.


If such a case doesn't exist, do we have any other example of conversion in this place ? Like a believer in clairvoyance who reformed or anything at all ? I'm looking for links to specific threads.

The conversion was in the other direction. I was once an atheist activist, but I would probably now describe myself as being as neutral as possible on all subjects and sympathetic to both moderate skepticism and mysticism. My "conversion' was out of hardline scientific materialistic atheism and eventually towards a philosophical position best represented by Richard Rorty :

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/


2.2 Antirepresentationalism

Rorty's enduring attitude to relativism and subjectivism is that both are products of the representationalist paradigm. Though the theme is explicit in PM and CP ("Pragmatism, Relativism, Irrationalism"), it is with Rorty's later and further appropriation of Davidson that his criticism of the idea of knowledge as representation becomes fully elaborated (ORT "Introduction" and Part II). Drawing on Davidson's criticism of the scheme-content distinction ("On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme") and of the correspondence theory of truth ("The Structure and Content of Truth"), Rorty is able to back up his rejection of any philosophical position or project which attempts to draw a general line between what is made and what is found, what is subjective and what is objective, what is mere appearance and what is real. Rorty's position is not that these conceptual contrasts never have application, but that such application is always context and interest bound and that there is, as in the case of the related notion of truth, nothing to be said about them in general. Rorty's commitment to the conversationalist view of knowledge must therefore be distinguished from subjectivism or relativism, which, Rorty argues, presuppose the very distinctions he seeks to reject. Equally, Rorty's epistemological behaviorism must not be confused with an idealism that asserts a primacy of thought or language with respect to the unmediated world, since this, too, is a position that is undercut by Rorty's Davidsonian position. In light of the view of truth and of meaning that Rorty appropriates from Davidson, his conversationalism is not a matter of giving priority to the subjective over the objective, or to mind's power over world's constraint. Rather it is the other side of his anti-representationalism, which denies that we are related to the world in something other than causal terms. Differently put, Rorty argues that we can give no useful content to the notion that the world, by its very nature, rationally constrains choices of vocabulary with which to cope with it.


Rorty rejects both science and philosophy as ultimate arbiters of truth.

[Gregor]

Ahhhh post-modernism. [I'd start a diatribe, but it'd be off topic].

[JeansW]

In response to El Greco, yes I have changed my mind when it comes to "God." I was raised as a Christian and have since thrown away my old beliefs and now consider myself an atheist because of the knowledge and critical thinking skills that I obtained from the JREF message boards.

This is the thread that I originally posted about this change is located here: http://host.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24121

[Yahweh]

I actually have 2 friends of mine who are on a path towards Atheism.

I've been reading books on hypnosis and brainwashing, and I believe its finally paying off...

[El Greco]

Originally posted by JeansW
In response to El Greco, yes I have changed my mind when it comes to "God." I was raised as a Christian and have since thrown away my old beliefs and now consider myself an atheist because of the knowledge and critical thinking skills that I obtained from the JREF message boards.

This is the thread that I originally posted about this change is located here: http://host.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24121

It is remarkable that the JREF boards have played a role in your conversion. But you didn't participate in a heated debate on these boards as a deist, did you ?

I never questioned the fact that people can and often do reform, I just want to see whether the endless debates on R&P have any reforming effects on the participants, or, like Paul noted, are simply futile.

[JeansW]

I never debated on the boards, but I did read many debates which helped contribute to my conversion. A lot of things that I might have debated were being debated on a daily basis, so I mostly sat back and read what each side had to say and made up my own mind based on all the arguments going on.

A lot of people get discouraged when dealing with fundamentalists who most likely will never change their minds, but they should keep in mind there might be a lot of people like myself who are reading all the threads and taking a more skeptical look on things that they previously viewed as universal thruths because of the way they were raised (or whatever other reason that they feel their religion is all-knowing.) You can't make someone who is dead-set on their beliefs change their mind, but you can help someone who has already began taking a skeptical look at their beliefs.

[Keneke]

I went from Agnostic to Weak Atheism while on here. It's such a small leap, actually.

[scribble]

Originally posted by JustGeoff
The conversion was in the other direction. I was once an atheist activist, but I would probably now describe myself as being as neutral as possible on all subjects and sympathetic to both moderate skepticism and mysticism.

You mean, sympathetic to any skeptic that believes that God can post documents on his computer that are copyrighted.

Neutral to skeptics that think the world is due for a "massive change in global consciousness" in the year 2012.

Moderate myticism that thinks mathematics is a blueprint for the universe, when in fact it's the exact opposite.

Neutral with mystics that think zero, the number, is somehow philosophically interesting.

You're a nutter, Geoff, same as you ever were.

--

On the other hand, some people who came to this board HAVE changed.

When I came here, I was still holding on to the remains of my Christian Fundamentalist upbringing.

A few of you know that. I've never made a big deal about it, because I'm ashamed of how stupid I've been in the past.

The endless debates do have an effect on some people. In my case, I couldn't help but see how rational certain arguments were and how completely irrational certain other arguments were. A long enough pattern of observation combined with my own searching led me to believe such is ALWAYS the case in religion.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I have had a signficant change since coming to this forum. I used to say that the only question I had was:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Now I say that the only question I have is:

Is there a reason why there is something rather than nothing?

~~ Paul

[whitefork]

I'll bite. What's the difference between "why" and "what is the reason why"?

[hammegk]

When I first started posting here I was a dualist/panentheist. Now, for a good overview of my thinking:


The Upanishads are a collection of Indian speculations on the nature of reality and the soul and the relations between these two.
The texts date from around 600 BC. They often give the impression of a building under construction - an ongoing exploration of themes not yet fully resolved. No strictly coherent scheme can be extracted from the upanishads - not even from each single upanishad. Like the Bhagavad Gita they are the work of several hands.
If one theme unites these writings, it is the search for an underlying unity linking everything we see and think. That unity is called Brahman. In most texts, Brahman is said to be identical with Atman, the world soul, which is also identical with the atman of each individual. In this sense every individual is united with the cosmos, and only needs to realize this fact to reach fulfillment.
The upanishads are, thus, essentially pantheistic. However, their quest for unity went at times too far. Since the world we see is clearly highly diverse, some texts deduce that if the cosmos is unitary, then appearances must be delusory. They are maya - like a magical trick. The self, the presence of the cosmic Self within each person, is the `Real' world - a world of pure thought, which cannot be apprehended by the senses. Meanwhile the real sensible world of life and love, birth and death, is dismissed as no more than a dream projected by the self. Once a person realizes this, the illusion falls away and they become one with the All.
This view - similar in essence to most schools of Buddhism - contrasts strongly with realistic pantheisms which accept the material world as real. Idealistic pantheism fails to explain why we all dream the same dream - why the detail of the sensible world is shared by everyone present. It cannot explain why we should start to `dream' the world at all, nor why there should be a `we' to dream.
The belief that reality is illusion is perhaps the greatest illusion of all. It leads to indifference, inaction, insensitivity, world-blindness, death in life. Indeed in the upanishads all these are praised as the highest wisdom.
No life can be led in an illusory world - even hermits and monks have to eat, excrete, and sleep. Thus they are forced to acknowledge in action the reality of the world they deny in theory, and their own lives disprove their beliefs. The only life that is consistent with full acceptance of idealist pantheism is a hunger strike until death. The sage who wishes to survive another day must forget his wisdom.

The extracts are from Robert Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, Oxford University Press, 1931.



from http://members.aol.com/heraklit1/upanish.htm

[gentlehorse]

Originally posted by Kullervo
I'll bite. What's the difference between "why" and "what is the reason why"?

Asking "why" assumes that there's a reason. I assume that Paul now questions whether that's the case.

[whitefork]

Originally posted by gentlehorse


Asking "why" assumes that there's a reason. I assume that Paul now questions whether that's the case. I get it. How I managed to read "what is" instead of "is there" is beyond me.

(edited to remove pointless stuff)

[Ruby]

Originally posted by El Greco
...regarding the existence or non-existence of God while debating in this forum ?

Paul's thread got me thinking and since I'm new here I have probably missed such a conversion. Can you point me to a thread (or series of threads) where it is evident that a deist became an atheist or vice versa ?

If such a case doesn't exist, do we have any other example of conversion in this place ? Like a believer in clairvoyance who reformed or anything at all ? I'm looking for links to specific threads.

Well, I was a die-hard fundamentalist Christian when I first came on here................then I became more of a liberal Christian after a few months of posting. Now I'm a deist/agnostic/humanist.:p

[Checkmite]

I was a Jeffersonian deist when I first arrived, and remain so now. Of course, Upchurch did manage to "convert" me to Unitarian/Universalism (which means that now I'm a Jeffersonian deist who goes to a "church" and there meets with a few other deists, a liberal Christian, a Ba'hai, a pantheist, a couple of nondescripts, and a whole slew of others, and we all favor humanism), but as far as any actual opinions...no change.

[Igopogo]

I figure this isn’t what you’re looking for, but I went from "pure atheist" to "atheist who thinks there’s a definite use for the God concept" (of a non-deity, non-supernatural kind). Here’s the thread:
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30736

I have to say I felt like an odd man out until someone pointed out that Einstein once said coherently what I was trying to get across (poorly) here:
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30859

[Ruby]

I have been trying to dig up some old threads I posted in where I might have engaged in debates when I was still a believer.

For the most part, I tried to avoid debates since my views were gradually becoming more and more liberal.......Plus, I felt a bit overwhelmed by everyone's intellectual ability on subjects that I felt a bit clueless on.

I did find this thread on Creationism http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17338&perpage=20&pagenumber=1 I posted on it to respond to a survey but got sucked into a debate. I'm glad I did, even though a couple of posters were very harsh with me, because other posters were great and really helped to get me thinking and probing.

The following paragraphs below were something I typed in the thread. It shows you where I was in my beliefs at that time. I think that was back in April.


"I disagree with a big bang theory as I stated above. I cannot make sense of a world...universe.... just coming into existence without a Creator. Now, I might come to the belief that the Creator was the one who caused a *big bang*................but not sure how I feel about that for now.

I don't believe men evolved from apes. I don't believe any creature went through phases of evolution. I believe that whatever ape-man bones that were dug up were either planted or are actual bones of apes or gorillas. There are no genuine fossils found of any creature in some sort of transitional stage."

The difference between my beliefs now and then is that now I accept the big bang theory. I don't think it happened by chance.......but don't throw out the possibilty. I think some force, god, higher power set the universe in motion. I believe that we share a common ancestor in apes. I see evidence of evolution too. I think transitional stage fossils may very well have been found too.

There's so much that has changed in my thinking!!!!!!!!!!:D

[El Greco]

Thanks for all the links, I've spent sometime reading these threads.

Admittedly, Ruby's transformation is the most spectacular. Ruby, I'm really amazed at how open you've been to opposing opinions! And how well you handled sarcasm! Of course, one could tell from your very first posts that you didn't have a pathological attachment to your beliefs :)

You say you are a deist AND an agnostic at the same time ? :eek:

[gentlehorse]

Originally posted by El Greco
You say you are a deist AND an agnostic at the same time ? :eek:

A deist agnostic may not know that there's a God, but may believe based on intuition. There are some who understand that intuition isn't a reliable source of information, yet rely on it where belief in God is concerned. The fact that intuition isn't reliable is the source of their agnosticism.

Edited to say that the above is my unsubstantiated opinion--

[sorgoth]

Me. I was very religious. Hell, I was a frigging ALTAR BOY before.

And boy, did I argue. I tried saying that the bible was a book of peace and love (I was shown wrong). I argued that the universe could not exist without God (I was shown how that is illogical), I argued that, if the Old testament wasn't right (I had always had my suspicions about old Noah), well then the New Testament HAD to be right, with all the records...I was shown that the romans HAVE no records of a miracle guy around that time....

I went from christian, to agnostic (I used the argument that you couldn't prove God DOESN'T exist, which I now realise is a piece of s**t argument), and now I'm a hardcore atheist.

Of course, something could happen, and if it would be illogical to be an atheist, I would return to theism...but it hasn't happened, and I doubt it will.

[Dorian Gray]

When I came to this forum, I was immodest. But now I am one of the most humble, gentle, meek, soft-spoken and modest people on Earth.

[BillyJoe]

I used to live in a card-board box on the side of the road, but now look at me, I.....er....hey, who stole that box?

[darling]

Originally posted by El Greco
...regarding the existence or non-existence of God while debating in this forum? I haven't really debated that on this forum, and I don't spend much time in R&P, but since I've been a JREF member, I've gone from very liberal Christian to agnostic atheist. I don't think I've changed much at all, really - my outlook on life is exactly the same, except that I just don't believe in God anymore.

If such a case doesn't exist, do we have any other example of conversion in this place? There was a thread on the British monarchy which turned me from a weak-agnosto-royalist into a republican.

There was a huge JFK thread that encouraged me to research and made me much more conviced of Oswald's guilt than I was before.

So people can and do change their positions on things, but they have to be willing to allow that possibility.

[Christian]

The path from Christian to whatever is very simple.

Once a Christian begins the doubt the Bible, then that is the beginning. Atheists know this full well.

[The idea]

Originally posted by Christian
Once a Christian begins the doubt the Bible, then that is the beginning. Atheists know this full well.
Aha! That proves that there's an atheist conspiracy! Who else would know about the relationship between Christianity and the Bible?

[Christian]

The idea wrote:
Aha! That proves that there's an atheist conspiracy! Who else would know about the relationship between Christianity and the Bible?

I've been here for a while. The method is basically the same. Without a doubt, most atheist in this board have studied the Bible much more than the average Christian.

There is a reason for this.

[c4ts]

Christians who ask to many questions LOSE THEIR FAITH! NOOOOOOOOO! I am a Christian footsoldier I believe everything I'm told NO HUMAN GO APE BLAOWDAWDEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And a fundie cabbage is born. Or maybe just Pillory.

[wayrad]

Originally posted by Christian
Without a doubt, most atheist in this board have studied the Bible much more than the average Christian.

There is a reason for this. All is revealed! Atheism is caused by....Bible study!!!

Boy, the Gideon Foundation has a lot to answer for.

[Christian]

c4ts wrote:
Christians who ask to many questions LOSE THEIR FAITH! NOOOOOOOOO! I am a Christian footsoldier I believe everything I'm told NO HUMAN GO APE BLAOWDAWDEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And a fundie cabbage is born. Or maybe just Pillory.

Most atheists are under the delusion that they have the answers to the most important questions in life. I believe they do not.

That presents a nice question, is the quality of your life better than a Christian's? (average vrs. average in same locality, etc. etc.)

wayrad wrote:
All is revealed! Atheism is caused by....Bible study!!!

Boy, the Gideon Foundation has a lot to answer for.

Atheism is caused by rebellion.