Will I ever become a Christian?

I was at a discussion board I frequent and in the Atheists forum one poster posed the following question:

Will any of you atheists/agnostics ever consider converting to Christianity in the future? I knew two friends who were atheists but converted to Christianity but did not join any organized religion or church.

I assume the intent of the question was to somehow trap atheists into admitting that we are dogmatic, unthinking nonbelievers, and that our views are as impervious to evidence as any theist's.

Rather than attack this poster as a troll, though, I thought I'd take a shot at answering the question. Feel free to let me know how you think I did.


Absolutely not.

Your question has two aspects. The first is whether we would ever come to believe in the existence of the Christian god. It is pretty much impossible to think that there will ever be evidence sufficient to persuade a rational person that such an entity exists. The evidence in favor of your god's existence is precisely the same as the evidence in favor of the existence of Zeus, Thor, Santa Claus, or any other imaginary entity.

The second aspect may be an even greater hurdle: if we were convinced that the Christian god existed, would we follow him? If we were to posit that most Christians are correct, that the Christian god exists, and that the Bible accurately depicts the nature of this god, we can only conclude that this god is the most evil creature imaginable, worse than Hitler, Stalin, or, yes, your imagined Satan. As you Christians contend, this god created circumstances in which every animal and human was destined for a painful existence and death; furthermore, the Bible recounts that this god has intentionally murdered countless humans by fire, drowning, or by rape and murder at the hands of his "chosen people". And if that were not enough, this god has determined that all humans are deserving of eternal and unimaginable torment, not only during our physical lives, but throughout the existence of the universe.

Why would anyone love and follow such a being?

Oh yes, and one other thing. In a lot of these debates the theists claim that we atheists "hate" god, and my comments just prove it. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can't hate something that doesn't exists; we no more "hate" god than we love Santa Claus. Speaking for myself, though, if an entity with all the stated characteristics of the Christian god existed, then I would think it would be the duty of all moral people to hate it.

Christopher Hitchens

It was pretty much literally impossible to agree with everything Christopher Hitchens said.



For example, I was 100% in agreement with his position that Henry Kissinger should be prosecuted, tried, and imprisoned for his myriad crimes against humanity. As he said in The Atlantic:


Many if not most of Kissinger's partners in politics, from Greece to Chile to Argentina to Indonesia, are now in jail or awaiting trial. His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anacharsis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs-strong enough to detain only the weak and too weak to hold the strong. In the name of innumerable victims known and unknown, it is time for justice to take a hand.

On the other hand, if you agreed with him on Kissinger and Vietnam it was almost certain that you would disagree with him on Bush's invasion of Iraq, which he not only supported, but called "a war to be proud of".

You could agree with his positions on atheism and religions but wish he would be a little more polite and tolerant of the sensitivities of religious people, or at least that he would refrain from criticizing that beloved icon, Mother Theresa:

“[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”

Or you could take pleasure in his obvious enjoyment of language and learning, but just wish that he would be a little less sure of himself.

Hitchens was one of the greatest public intellectuals of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, A man whose English breeding and education were evident with every word he spoke, but who became an American and embraced that identity.

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”

Hitch died yesterday of esophageal cancer at the age of sixty-two. It is a great loss for all of us.

Wanna be adopted?

Former Catholic? Atheist? General-purpose heathen?

If that's you, the Catholic League thinks they have what you need.

Today we are launching our “Adopt An Atheist” campaign, the predicate of which is, “We want atheists to realize that there may be Christians in their community, even if those Christians don’t even know they are Christian.”

Here’s what our campaign entails. We are asking everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area [click here], letting them know of your interest in “adopting” one of them. All it takes is an e-mail. Let them know of your sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along.

I only ask one thing: if you do hear from the Catholic League, and they do try to adopt/convert you, fair's fair. Give them every chance to become an atheist, but don't show them the secret handshake until you're sure.

Atheist takeover? Inshallah

Newt Gingrich (pbuh) explains the likely outcome of an atheist takeover of the United States:

"I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."


No understanding of what it once meant to be an American? Is that as bad as no understanding of what it means to be an atheist or a Muslim?