My conversion to atheism was less of a de-conversion from religion as it was a personal realisation of what being an atheist represented. In my life I was not surrounded by religion nor was I compelled to find it by family or friends. However, even this is not a guarantee that someone will become an atheist – one only needs look at the numerous conspiracy-theorists in the world today to see how easily irrationality can take root in one’s mind.
So, the beginning of my conversion began with the simple realisation that after reading about the awesome-ness of the T-Rexs, Tricerotops, Great White Sharks and Killer Whales I found the stories of Joshua and Noah to be no more interesting or entertaining than the fairy tales I had been brought up on. Thus at around the age of 8 or 9 I simply decided I had enough with the bible and its silliness and promptly told my mother I wouldn’t be going to Sunday School any more.
But this did not make me an atheist. Rather I began to refer to myself as agnostic (once I learnt what the word meant of course! I was still young) – loudly proclaiming that I believed in a greater power, a personal God, but that this was a God not trapped in any book. A God that existed beyond us – but always there to guide and assist. Indeed, I still prayed every night to this God and I felt he listened. I left school, completed university and entered into work – sinning and fornicating along the way – and still I felt that this personal God was there with me. I could not perceive of a world without a greater power above us nor could I bear to associate myself with the now ingrained view I had of an atheist, that they were arrogant, nihilistic and dismissive by virtue of their disbelief.
And so it was that I found Richard Dawkins The God Delusion one day, in an airport on my way to Johannesburg. And it was within its pages that I started to recognise a deeper appreciation for the world – a world based on rationality and logic. And within its pages I also recognised myself. For here I was clinging to the idea of a personal God despite no evidence to its existence and all the while dismissing the superstition so prevalent in my society – giggling at stories of the ‘tokoloshe’, expressing shared disgust at ‘muti’-killings as well as mocking creationists. I was a hypocrite and it was all there for me to see.
And so it was that one evening, I just refused to pray. I had seen that to be an atheist was not to be closed minded, nor cynical. Rather it was to finally recognise what had begun when I first refused to return to Sunday School – that on looking at the evidence for religion, and finding it to be insufficient, the only honest outcome was atheism.
Breton Vandenberg
South Africa
PS Unless you are South African I doubt you would be familiar with the terms ‘tokoloshe’ and ‘muti’-killings. It is for this reason Google is there for you – I’m sure there are better and clearer definitions out there then I could provide!
Vandenberg progressed as follows:
1. He rejected the bible at 8 or 9; but he kept the idea of a personal God.
2. After college, he found Dawkins’ book, God Delusion, and was convinced that Atheists are OK, “not closed minded or cynical”.
3. He rejected theism based on a) “insufficient evidence”, which likely means materialist evidence due to the influence of Dawkins, and b) the comparison of theism to folk religion / superstition in his society.
Summary: left theism as a (young?) adult due to a positive impression of Dawkins, a Materialist impression of evidentiary requirements, and a Fallacy of Association with local superstitions.
4 comments:
Association fallacy?
(∃x ∈ S : φ(x)) → (∀x ∈ S : φ(x))
"if there exists any x in the set S so that a property φ is true for x, then for all x in S the property φ must be true."
I think you'll be able to see that you've missed an important step and your claim of a "Fallacy of Association"* is essential baseless until that important step is taken.
*(Misusing capital letters makes everything seem more official, doesn't it)
Speaking from the Armchair:
"(∃x ∈ S : φ(x)) → (∀x ∈ S : φ(x))"
That's alright.
The problem is, what you are doing here is just the definition of a function, as a Vector Space.
So that, some operations among functions like sum and scalar product, are also Vector Spaces.
That's what mathematicians (I'm an undergraduate Electronic Engineering student, with a terrile English) call the Abelian group of operators, like derivatives, integrals and nabla operators, for example.
This analogy might fail at some point when it is compared with the logical enquiry needed for assimilating certain other topics, because when defining what is a property as true, and then, to define a property as "must be true", it should not depend of a single variable, because then, it will not be experimentally supportable, or at least, not be theoretically deductible from/for applicability.
To define a variable in a set, that needs to comply with a certain property is OK, but to be sure that a property must be true, you have to be certain that it is invariable, when another different boundary contidion is applied, if not, some logical enquiries might become tautologies sooner or later, and also some may be easily demonstrable to be false, because become self-refuting.
So, you've just missed another step yourself. Please consider that when talking about spirituality, the logical steps needed to take are probably done in a different perspective, perhaps not in a detrministic one every case, if its objective part is to be analyzed. When using traditional experimental methods to understand these kinds of phenomenon, you need to extend even more the conditions needed to get to a measurable result, and that's, by consequence, why many parapsychologists these days have some very rigid testing protocols.
Some parts about acquiring spiritual knowledge come trough the mind as abstract, not-objective, visions, which many of you dismiss aforehand without futher, thorough evaluation, and are not aware that when using logic alone, you don't need to be evidence based, not even define correctly the boundary conditions needed to understand any phenomena.
If you are mathematician, please remember that math should not be applied when the conclusions are just tested with the a-priori asertions.
Nevertheless, it is your task to find out, if that step you mention is needed every time or not, because of the nature of the problems you need to take care of.
Kind Regards.
""if there exists any x in the set S so that a property φ is true for x, then for all x in S the property φ must be true."
Yet for non-x in the set, property φ is not necessarily true.
When x is defined as "all religion", and φ is defined as "superstition (false)", plus φ is attributed to x, does the conclusion seem valid. However, the relationship between x and φ is not supported by evidence, it is dictated, as a tautology. So ascribing φ to x is not a valid association, it is pre-defined tautologically. The association is not valid, and the process is circular, with the conclusion pre-determined in the premise.
I should add, given this statement:
"if there exists any x in the set S so that a property φ is true for x, then for all x in S the property φ must be true."
Then:
If S = humans
If x = males
If φ = crossdresser
Then the statement, "if φ applies to any x in S, then it applies to all x" reads as follows:
If crossdresser applies to any male in the category human, then crossdresser applies to all males in the category human.
The assertion is false.
Armchair is pulling our collective leg, methinks.
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