Choosing your Own Heaven: Atheist

Conversion
An Intro to World Religion Concept Paper by John Medina, 12 – The Tower

There is no definite definition of “atheist conversion”, and indeed the writer of this paper has
scoured the internet for said definition but in layman’s terms, it is where atheists have converted
once again to a belief or religion. Atheist conversion in itself is quite an interesting journey, it
involves many factors on how and why the supposed atheist converted. There are indeed many of
those who converted or simply went back to a form of belief or religion, such as Mark
Zuckerberg and C.S. Lewis the author of the series of books called the Chronicles of Narnia,
who is known by some as “the Most Reluctant Convert”.

According to the sociologist Phil Zuckerman, there are about 500 to 750 million people
worldwide who have an absence of belied in a god. It may look a huge number but that is only a
sizable majority to the 7.79 Billion people adhering to a form of belief and religion according to
an article by Wikipedia, an unlikely source but it’s quite good for some rough estimates.

Atheism in a Nutshell
According to Nielsen (2021), the critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or spiritual
beings is known as atheism. As a result, it is usually distinguished from theism, which affirms
the existence of the divine and frequently seeks to prove it. Atheism is distinguished from
agnosticism, which refuses to answer the question of whether or not there is a god, claiming to
find the questions unanswerable.

Main Beliefs of Atheism

In an article by the American Atheists n.d., the fundamental belief or core belief of Atheism is
that it is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is frequently
misunderstood as a belief system. To be clear, atheism is not a denial of gods or a lack of belief
in gods; it is a lack of faith in gods.

Atheism is defined as "the belief that there is no God" in older dictionaries. These definitions are
clearly tainted by theistic influence. The (mono)theistic influence can be seen in the fact that
dictionaries define Atheism as "there is no God." The definition would at least read "there are no
gods" without the (mono)theistic influence.

Although there is no code of conduct or ideology of which atheists adhere to, there are rationales
to which they form some kind of unified adherence, according to John Shook (2010) belief in the
supernatural, according to the skeptical atheist, violates common sense rationality. Theological
arguments for the existence of a god violate common sense rationality in numerous ways.
Although many types of gods are unaffected by these arguments (for example, a god who does
not create or sustain the world and has no interaction with its inhabitants), the traditional theistic
concept of god is clearly unreasonable. Naturalism, according to the skeptical atheist, is better
supported by available evidence and does not necessitate violations of common sense rationality.
Theological conflicts with basic rationality have not gone unnoticed by theologians. Indeed,
many theologians have devised ever more complex rational evasions, making their god even
more enigmatic than before (and more mysterious to ordinary religious believers, too).

Choosing Atheism
In an article published by the BBC (2009), there are a plethora of reasons on why people choose
atheism. Such as most atheists would use one or more of the following arguments to prove that
God does not exist. Many people become atheists as a result of their upbringing or education, or
as a result of simply adopting the beliefs of the culture in which they grew up. As a result,
someone raised in Communist China is unlikely to believe in God because the education system
and culture encourage atheism. Others are atheists simply because they believe atheism is
correct.

Why do Atheists Change their Mind?

Philosophy of Atheists when it comes to life
There are four philosophies or some form of rationale that atheists adhere to, there is Humanism,
Rationalism, Postmodernism and Secularism with the exception of the Unitarian Universalism
according to the article by the BBC (2009). These four fundamental philosophies make up some
of the understanding and reasoning behind atheism.

• Humanism
According to Robert Ashby, Chair of the British Humanist Association: Humanism is an
approach to life based on reason and our common humanity, recognising that moral
values are properly founded on human nature and experience alone. Humanism is a
positive attitude toward the world based on human experience, thought, and hopes, as
opposed to atheism, which is simply the absence of belief. Humanists believe that only
human experience and rational thought can provide both knowledge and a moral code.

They are opposed to knowledge being ‘revealed' to humans by gods or contained in

special books.
 • Rationalism
Rationalism is a way of thinking about life based on reason and evidence. Rationalism
promotes ethical and philosophical ideas that can be proven through experience while
rejecting authority that cannot (What is Rationalism? - Definition & Philosophy, 2018).

Most rationalist would agree that there is no proof that any arbitrary supernatural
authority, such as God or Gods, exists. The theory of evolution, first proposed by Charles
Darwin, is the best explanation so far for why the natural world looks the way it does.

• Postmodernism
Many of the things that religious people consider essential are eliminated in
postmodernism. Every society, according to postmodernists, is in constant flux; there are
no absolute values, only relative ones, and no absolute truths. This strengthens individual
religious impulses while weakening ‘religions' that claim to deal with truths presented
from the 'outside' and presented as objective realities.

There are no universal religious or ethical laws in a postmodern world; everything is

shaped by the cultural context of a particular time, place, and community.
Individuals in a postmodern world work with their religious impulses by picking and
choosing from various spiritualities that’s peak to them' and creating their own internal
spiritual world. The 'pub theology' becomes just as valid as the priest's.
The inevitable conclusion is that religion is entirely a result of human activity.

• Secularism
Secularists oppose religion or religious privileges, which, in turn, disadvantages others.
They believe that the declining church attendance indicates that people have chosen to
abandon their faith. They argue that giving faiths any special privileges or rights is unjust.
Education is a major concern for secularists. Religious schools, they believe, are divisive
and jeopardize the prospects for a harmonious and diverse society.

Individuals' right to have a religious faith is not an issue for secularists. Special treatment
for religious beliefs and organizations is what they oppose.

They believe that the legal protections already in place, such as human rights legislation,
should be sufficient to protect believers from violence or discrimination.

Cause of Atheists Converting to a religion

In an article by Matthew Nelson (2016), conversions from Atheism are often gradual and
complex. It can be slow, tedious, tiring and trying but then again it can happen. According to the
article he wrote, there are eight common factors that lead atheists to change their perspective on
God:
• Good Literature and Reasonable Writing
o Because they are reasonable, and also because they are honest, reasonable
atheists eventually become theists. They are willing to follow the evidence
wherever it leads, and the evidence often comes to the atheist in the most
coherent and well-presented form through the writings of Christians.

Dr. Holly Ordway , author of Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays
Down Her Arms, explains what happens when you read great Christian
authors:

“I found that my favorite authors were men and women of deep

Christian faith. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien above all; and then the
poets: Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert, John Donne, and
others. Their work was unsettling to my atheist convictions…”

C.S. Lewis, an eminent 20th century Oxford thinker, is mentioned by Dr.

Ordway. Lewis is a prime example of a rational but skeptical thinker who was
open to reading from all angles and perspectives. He became a believer in
Christ and one of modern Christianity's greatest apologists as a result of his
open inquiry.

• “Experimentation with Prayer and the Word of God

o God's Word is alive and well. Because it is "God-breathed," it has power
beyond human comprehension. God communicates with man in a variety of
ways, including prayer and the reading of the inspired Scriptures. As many
converts attest, when non-believers' curiosity (or even interest) leads to
experimentation with prayer or Bible reading, the results can be shocking.

• Historical study of the Gospels

o Lee Strobel, the former Chicago Tribune legal editor and author of the
influential work The Case For Christ, is a prime example of what happens
when an honest atheist sets out to determine whether the claims of the Gospels
are reliable or not.

In The Case For Christ, Strobel writes at the conclusion of his investigation:

“I’ll admit it:I was ambushed by the amount and quality of the evidence that Jesus is
the unique Son of God… I shook my head in amazement. I had seen defendants
carted off to the death chamber on much less convincing proof! The cumulative facts
and data pointed unmistakably towards a conclusion that I wasn’t entirely
comfortable in reaching.” (p. 264)
 Modern historical theologians such as Craig Blomberg and N.T. Wright have
taken historical theology and the study of the Gospel claims to new heights.
One of the greatest threats to modern-day atheism is the findings of such
groundbreaking studies.

• Honest Philosophical Reasoning

o "Love of truth" is the definition of philosophy. Philosophy is supposed to lead
to truth, and it most certainly will if the philosopher is willing to consider both
sides of the argument and follow the best arguments wherever they may lead.

o Dr. Kevin Vost, a psychologist, recalls his discovery of St. Thomas Aquinas'
arguments:

“Pope Leo XIII had written in the 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris that for scientific
types who follow only reason, after the grace of God, nothing is as likely to win them
back to the faith as the wisdom of St. Thomas, and this was the case for me. He
showed me how true Christian faith complements and perfects reason; it doesn’t
contradict or belittle it. He solved all the logical dilemmas.”

o In his article The Road From Atheism, philosopher Dr. Ed Feser describes the
startling effect of exposing himself to arguments for God's existence:

“As I taught and thought about the arguments for God’s existence, and in
particular the cosmological argument, I went from thinking “These arguments
are no good” to thinking “These arguments are a little better than they are
given credit for” and then to “These arguments are actually kind of
interesting.” Eventually it hit me: “Oh my goodness, these arguments are
right after all!”

Feser concludes:

“Speaking for myself, anyway, I can say this much. When I was an undergrad
I came across the saying that learning a little philosophy leads you away from
God, but learning a lot of philosophy leads you back. As a young man who
had learned a little philosophy, I scoffed. But in later years and at least in my
own case, I would come to see that it’s true.”

• Reasonable Believers
o Some (but not all) atheists have held the obnoxious position that believing in
God necessitates a significant lack of intelligence and/or reason. The majority
of atheists believe that modern science has ruled out the existence of God. As
 a result, they accuse believers of lacking up-to-date knowledge and critical
thinking abilities. (Of course, the existence of a God who exists outside of the
physical universe is primarily a philosophical rather than a scientific
question.)

o Atheists who hold this shallow attitude toward the existence of God face a
great challenge from intelligent and reasonable believers in God who can
engage atheistic arguments with clarity and logic.

o When theists are experts in any field of science, they make a strong statement.
To give you some examples, consider the following: Galileo and Kepler
(astronomy), Pascal (hydrostatics), Boyle (chemistry), Newton (calculus),
Linnaeus (systematic biology), Faraday (electromagnetics), Cuvier
(comparative anatomy), Kelvin (thermodynamics), Lister (antiseptic surgery),
and Mendel (genetics) are just a few of the names that come to mind
(genetics).

o When confronted with Christians who have reasonable explanations for their
supernatural beliefs, an honest atheist might assume that God's existence is at
least plausible. The non-openness believer's to God as a reality may then
begin with this encounter.

o Take, for example, Jennifer Fulwiler, a former atheist blogger who recently
converted. Her conversion from atheism to agnosticism, and then to
Catholicism, was a long and winding road with many twists and turns. A key
chink in her atheist armor was encountering intelligent believers in God.

• Modern Advances and Limitations in Science

o Antony Flew was a famous atheist who lived during the twentieth century. He
debated the existence of God with William Lane Craig and others. But, in the
end, the renowned atheist's recognition of the universe's profound order and
complexity, as well as its apparent fine-tuning, was a decisive reason for him
to change his mind about God's existence.

Flew explains in a fascinating interview with Dr. Ben Wiker:

“There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing
empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an
Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe.”
 He came to the conclusion that the organization of space, time, matter, and
energy throughout the universe is anything but random.

As Dr. Peter Kreeft has pointed out, no one would look at a beach hut and
conclude that it was built by some random natural process without the
intervention of an intelligent designer. Its structure necessitates the use of a
designer. How much more should we believe in an Intelligent Designer behind
the vastly more complex and ordered universe and the precise physical laws
that govern it if this "beach hut analogy" is true?

• Evidence for the Resurrection

o The case for Christ's resurrection has become more airtight than ever thanks to
the groundbreaking work of leading New Testament scholars such as Gary
Habermas, William Lane Craig, and N.T. Wright.

o The best explanation for the alleged postmortem appearances of the risen
Jesus, Paul and James' conversions, and the empty tomb, according to modern
historical studies, is that Jesus was truly raised from the dead. Even today's
critical New Testament scholars accept these basic facts as historically certain
(appearances, conversions, empty tomb, etc. ); however, they are left limping
with second-rate alternative explanations in a last-ditch effort to refute Christ's
true resurrection and "signature of God," as scholar Richard Swinburne has
dubbed it.

o Alister McGrath, a former atheist and now Christian apologist, was

profoundly influenced by the case for Jesus' resurrection. In one of his
articles, he mentions the following:

“My early concern was to get straight what Christians believed, and why they
believed it. How does the Resurrection fit into the web of Christian beliefs? How does
it fit into the overall scheme of the Christian faith? After several years of wrestling
with these issues, I came down firmly on the side of Christian orthodoxy. I became,
and remain, a dedicated and convinced defender of traditional Christian theology.
Having persuaded myself of its merits, I was more than happy to try to persuade
others as well.”

• Beauty
o The great theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, wrote:
 “I’ll admit it:I was ambushed by the amount and quality of the evidence that Jesus is
the unique Son of God… I shook my head in amazement. I had seen defendants
carted off to the death chamber on much less convincing proof! The cumulative facts
and data pointed unmistakably towards a conclusion that I wasn’t entirely
comfortable in reaching.” (p. 264)

Father von Balthasar was a firm believer in starting with the beautiful when
trying to persuade non-believers to believe in God.

Dr. Peter Kreeft refers to this as the Aesthetic Experience Argument.

According to the Boston College philosopher, he knows of several former
atheists who converted to Christianity after hearing this argument (for more
from Dr. Kreeft, see his Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God).

In true Kreeftian fashion, he presents his case as follows:

“There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Therefore there must be a God.
You either see this one or you don’t.”

Aftermath of the Conversion (Testimonials of the Converted)

Life then and now
Justin Brierly of Premier Christianity, in 2017 showcased three sceptics who converted to
Christianity who in his article ‘is walking the path of C.S. Lewis’. These are their testimonials:
Jennifer Fulwiler

The birth of a child, as any parent knows, is a life-changing event. Priorities, lifestyles, and
sleeping patterns are all quickly rearranged to accommodate the new most important thing in
one's life. However, for some people, the shift is even more profound.

Jennifer Fulwiler was raised in a loving family, but one that portrayed religion as clearly false.
Jennifer claims she has no recollection of ever believing in God. Her bedtime reading was Carl
Sagan's astronomy book Cosmos, which she was raised on a diet of "science, reason, and
evidence-based rational thought." She knew from a young age that the world worked according
to a set of well-established natural laws, and that science was the de facto method of
comprehending everything.

There is no need for God because we live in a material world of matter, molecules, electrons, and
protons, according to all evidence. Jennifer remained an atheist throughout her adult life and into
her marriage.

She did, however, experience a significant shift in her thinking shortly after the birth of her first
child. "I looked down and thought, 'What is this baby?'" Jennifer explained. And I thought to
myself, "Well, he's a randomly evolved collection of chemical reactions from a pure atheist,
materialist perspective." And I realized that if that's true, then all of my feelings for him are just
chemical reactions in our brain. 'That's not true,' I thought as I looked down at him. 'It isn't the
case.'

Jennifer's change of heart began when a thought occurred to her. The scientific explanations she
had grown up with were insufficient to explain everything she was going through in her
relationship with her child. On a scientific level, she would have known that when she looked at
her baby, a slew of neurons in her brain went into overdrive, producing a cascade of chemical
reactions and hormones, all of which contributed to her emotional desire to protect and care for
her newborn son with all of her might. However, that physical description could not adequately
describe the actual experience of full-fledged love.

'What is this baby?' I wondered as I looked down.

CS Lewis was aware of the phenomenon as well. "If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and
brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms,
I cannot understand how the thoughts of those minds should have any more significance than the
sound of the wind in the trees," writes one atheist.

Even those who believe the world is governed by physical laws, however, find it difficult to
believe that love is just a mirage. "God is love," according to 1 John 4:8. Only the existence of
God, according to Lewis and Fulwiler, could explain our deep-seated belief in love.
Leah Libresco

Leah Libresco, a mathematician and self-described "geeky atheist," joined me on my radio show
Unbelievable? in 2012 to talk about her conversion to Christianity. Until that year, Leah had
been a well-known atheist blogger on the Patheos network, writing about mathematics and
skepticism and interacting with many Christians in a friendly manner.

But for years, Leah had been bothered by something known as 'the moral argument.'

She couldn't get rid of the idea that some things are truly right or wrong, not just a reflection of
her emotions and cultural preferences. She had to admit the reality of a moral realm of good and
evil, just as she had to admit the reality of a mathematical realm that existed independently of us
humans. In the same way that two plus two equals four, the moral truth that abusing children is
wrong is true. Morality, if it existed, was purely subjective – something humans had evolved for
social advantage – and such beliefs about right and wrong made no sense in her atheistic
worldview. Only if there was a God could her growing belief in morality as a fixed and objective
reality make sense.

The atheist community reacted negatively to her conversion.

When she told her story to CNN, she received backlash from the atheist community and gained
public attention for her conversion to Christianity. While there were still many questions, Leah
explained in her interview that Christianity explained the things she was certain of better than her
atheism. "Morality is something we discover like archaeologists, not something we construct like
architects," she said. Christianity provided a compelling explanation for it."

Perhaps, again, CS Lewis’ story could have helped here. Like Mehta, Lewis objected to God on
the basis of the evil he saw in the world, but his conversion mirrored that of Leah’s as he realised
that his objection only made sense if a moral realm existed: “My argument against God was that
the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man
does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing the
universe with when I called it unjust?”

Mehta may be as confused by Lewis’ conversion story as Leah's, but the young mathematician’s
story is evidence that some roads to Christ involve profoundly intellectual journeys and that the
moral argument continues to be a powerful reason for sceptics to embrace God.

When Leah arrived on the show, I introduced her to Hemant Mehta, a fellow blogger from the
same atheist network she had previously belonged to. His blog is titled 'The Friendly Atheist,'
and he was one of the first to respond to the mathematician's conversion with a critical response.
Mehta was not so much 'friendly' as 'confused' during this encounter. He admitted that he
couldn't comprehend all of her philosophical jargon, let alone her line of reasoning. Above all, he
couldn't fathom what it was about the moral argument that had compelled her to become a
Christian, especially in a world where her God permitted such evil and suffering.

Holly Ordway

When they come across music, art, or literature that moves them deeply, most people, believers
or not, experience moments of transcendence. What if those fleeting moments of transcendence
are actually pointing us toward God? In his early life, CS Lewis struggled to reconcile his
atheism with his experiences of 'joy' when he came across poetry, literature, music, and beauty
that seemed to belong in another world, a process he describes in Surprised by Joy.

Holly Ordway, a university lecturer, grew up loving literature and poetry, devouring C.S. Lewis'
Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. She was raised in a secular
home in the United States and was unaware of the Christian allegories in both. Even though she
dismissed the idea of religion as irrelevant, she now believes that God was working through her
imagination.

Holly's atheism solidified as she progressed through higher education, but when she started
teaching literature and poetry, she was suddenly undone by the power of what she was reading,
particularly within the Christian tradition. "I remember reading the opening of John Donne's
sonnet, 'Batter my heart, three person'd God; for you as yet only knock, breathe, shine, and seek
to mend'," she said. I felt as if I had stepped on a live wire. That's when my imagination, which
had been a river beneath the surface, began to bubble up, and I realized, 'There's something going
on in this poetry, and I'm not sure what it is.'

These encounters led Holly to believe in a God who sparked her imagination, but they also led
her to investigate the beliefs of Christian poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins and TS Eliot, whose
work she admired deeply: "I had a two-step conversion, first to believe in God, then to believe in
Christ." I would have remained a theist if I had not come to believe that the resurrection was a
historical event. As a result, my imagination and reason led to my conversion to Christianity.
Before I became a Christian, I realized that what people like Gerard Manley Hopkins (by far my
favorite poet) gave me was a glimpse of the world that showed me that it made sense in a way I
hadn't experienced before. "I've entered that realm now."

Holly went from appreciating the work of these poets to jumping into the same stream of reality
they inhabited after experiencing those stabs of joy. This was also CS Lewis's experience. He
wrote about the difference between understanding something through observation and experience
in his little-known short essay Meditation in a Toolshed. A compelling sociological explanation
for why people believe can be provided by a religious anthropologist, just as a chemical
explanation for the love you feel for your partner can be provided by a biologist.
Lewis likened this to standing in a dark toolshed and seeing a beam of light coming through the
gap at the top of the door. This gives you an idea of what the beam of light is. But re-position
yourself to stand looking along the beam of light, and the dark toolshed itself would disappear to
be replaced by bright sun and the tops of the trees waving outside.

Lewis writes: “You get one experience of a thing when you look along it and another when you
look at it. Which is the ‘true’ or ‘valid’ experience? Which tells you most about the thing?”

Holly has borrowed Lewis’ metaphor, saying of the Christian poets she had come to love: “I’ve
stepped into that ‘beam of light’ so that I can look with them, and they can show me more than
they could before.”

Conclusion
In some ways, it is the crisis of ones belief. The atheist is a person who has the capacity to be
free from the chains of religion and to be free of thought. And yet, time and time again, converts
do happen, people who are atheist comes back to whatever religion they came from or found a
new one. Is it the fear of the afterlife? Is it the fear of being an outcast? One things for sure is
that religion does what it does best, give hope. From the causes of atheist coming back to
religion to the three testimonials of past sceptics, searching for meaning and hope in their lives
has never been so paramount to ones inner being. In some ways, it is in itself human to feel lost
and to feel afraid that you will need someone or something to guide you, and for themselves, that
is their own chosen heaven.

References:

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Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, November 16). List of religious populations. Wikipedia.

Retrieved December 4, 2021, from
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Nielsen, Kai E.. "atheism". Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 May. 2021,

https://www.britannica.com/topic/atheism. Accessed 3 December 2021.

Shook, J. R. (2010). Skepticism about the supernatural - researchgate. Retrieved December 4,

2021, from http://shook.pragmatism.org/skepticismaboutthesupernatural.pdf.
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What is Rationalism? - Definition & Philosophy. (2018, August 10). Retrieved from
https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-rationalism-definition-philosophy.html.

Nelson, M. (2018, December 9). Why atheists change their mind: 8 common factors. Word on
Fire. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/why-
atheists-change-their-mind-8-common-factors/19488/.

Brierley, J. (2017, March 23). When sceptics convert: 3 former atheists walking the path of CS
Lewis. Premier Christianity. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from
https://www.premierchristianity.com/home/when-sceptics-convert-3-former-atheists-
walking-the-path-of-cs-lewis/224.article.