G.Z. Jordan's story of conversion from atheism to Christianity makes him a possible member of a rare species: an atheist having long-term experience with both side's arguments who later converted to Christianity purely because of comparing those arguments. [Jordan responds to the following analysis here and here. Because his excerpts of my subsequent responses to him are self-servingly incomplete, I post the full text of my correspondence to him here.]
He writes (initially, in the third person):
Jordan [..] is a former member of The Atlanta Freethought Society, American Atheists, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. His personal testimony, Birth and Death of an Atheist, serves as a succinct account of his religious conversion.But in his description of his conversion, Jordan concentrates less on the competing arguments and more on the behavior of Christians and atheists. By examining his story, one can conclude that his exposure to atheist polemics may not have been very deep, and his subsequent conversion to Christianity is tainted by at least six of the twelve potential confounding factors I describe in my survey.
Jordan seems to take bad Christians as evidence against the truth of Christianity:
Throughout my life, I observed people behaving differently in church than in daily living. I found such hypocrisy all too common in church-going Christians. I also observed they would accept "sin" in their lives, confess it or answer an altar call on Sundays, then continue it the next week. That taught me sin was preferable over God’s design. I deduced God might not even exist; if He were real, people would not discard Him as they exited church doors.Jordan shares an acccount of a personal problem from his past:
[..] The more history I read, the more I despised Christians. [..] enslaving African tribes [..] English Crusaders conquering, raping, and pillaging distant lands and claiming their spoils in the name of Christ. [..] I wanted no part of the evils of what following Christ represented. Christianity repulsed me.
The fact of the matter is that my drug addiction had seized control of mine. I experienced continued failures the following years. In the end, when my size 30 pants grew baggy on me, and my eyes were ringed in that which remained of my eye sockets, I had failed my travel business, my clients, my family and friends, and my creditors. One drug buddy, Eddy, put a gun to his head and ended his agony. I considered following suit. Other drug buddies had either over dosed or were in prison.Jordan claims to have been a well-learned atheist:
At age 28, I joined American Atheists, a national organization of like-minded infidels. I learned so much that soon I banned Bibles from my home. Someone could enter my home with muddy shoes, but Bibles had to be left at the door.There is no book that a true freethinker would avoid reading so resolutely as to ban it from his home. Jordan later admits (below) that while "learning so much" he managed to never look up for himself the Bible quotes cited by the atheists he read.I described myself as philosophically agnostic, for I believed there is not enough evidence to prove or disprove the existence of God, and a practicing atheist, meaning I lived on the premise no God existed. As far as an outright label, I identified myself as a "freethinker."
Jordan seems to take bad atheists as evidence against the truth of atheism:
One problem I encountered with atheistic organizations is that they seemed to require a religious reverence for their non-religion. When O’Hair visited Phoenix for a solstice celebration, members argued over which blessed atheist would buy her dinner, drive her around, lay out red carpet, etc. Her papal arrival had me wonder if I could cure my cigarette smoking addiction by touching the hem of her garment.Jordan seems to take nice Christians as evidence for the truth of Christianity:[..] I grew unfavorably impressed by how the "intellectual elite" couldn’t seem to get along even on a local level. I often described them as the "Catholics and Baptists going at it again."
[..] atheistic regimes have committed equally and worse atrocious acts in the name of "the people."
Then in 1992 I met a man named Jim. I learned of his Christianity, but I liked him anyway. I respected his honesty, intelligence, and good character. We became friends despite our disparate theistic positions. He made an example of not condemning, but trusting his light to shine onto me. That shocked me because I had grown accustomed to "religious fanatics" attempting to force other people to conform to their religiosity or spewing forth condemnation on dissenters. Jim accepted me as a friend and left the rest of the work to the "Holy Spirit." His attitude and obedience to the Lord opened the door for someone else who would show me just who Jesus Christ really was, is, and will always be.Jordan seems to think that the current state of morality in America has some bearing on the truth of the gospels' claims about events in first-century Palestine:Patrick L. Swindall’s personal relationship with his Lord and Savior ultimately changed my life, literally forever. His example of walking closely with his Lord, yet honoring the rights of non-believers, sang to my political soul.
It became clear to me that America’s revolutionary morals shift of recent decades produced infanticide, fatherless children, increased drug use, and violence in classrooms. [..]
I began thinking I had been wrong and had unfairly blamed Jesus Christ for what humans had done in His name.The unfairness of Jordan's blaming Jesus simply is not evidence that Jesus was divine.
I reject the idea the apostles allowed themselves to be persecuted over something they knew to be false. [..] The apostles had everything to lose by practicing their faith and nothing to gain.If dying for a belief can show the belief is true, then the kamikazes of Japan showed that Emperor Hirohito was divine. Note that Peter and James are the only alleged resurrection witnesses who the New Testament names (John 21:18,19, Acts 12:2) as martyrs, but there is no evidence that recanting their alleged belief in physical resurrection could have saved them. All other Christian martyrs died, like the kamikazes, for what they were told and not for what they witnessed.
I also reject that the apostles and the 500 witnesses to His ascension into Heaven experienced joint hallucinations.Jordan uncritically assumes that there really were 500 people who really did have visual experiences of a physically resurrected Jesus. Skeptics can easily explain the 500 claim without reference to mass "hallucinations":
Cultists are convinced of a future happening; W.W.II Japanese kamikaze pilots (similar to other religious and political martyrs) were youth indoctrinated from birth regarding the Empire/God unity concept. The disciples were neither cultists nor kamikaze styled religious fanaticsThey were precisely both. "Fanaticism" doesn't require "youth indoctrination", and "cultism" doesn't require prophecy. Nevertheless, early Christians were definitely "convinced of a future happening"; the details of that happening merely became more vague as it became clear that Jesus' "this-generation" Olivet prophecy had not come true.
His absent body is beyond secular explanation if kept in harmony with secular explanations for His followers’ visions.Simply false. Most of his followers probably had no knowledge of how the his body had been made absent by purely human means.
Bible prophecies have come to pass against enormous odds.No non-trivial prophecy in the Bible has both a) been documented as having been made before the predicted event and b) had its fulfillment documented independently of the Bible itself.
"Hey, let’s go through my atheist magazines and find the articles that challenge the Bible’s historicity and present its contradictions. Okay, let’s look up these passages," I challenged. We did. The claims were false.Here are about a hundred citations of biblical passages that Jordan might want to look up: http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html#ArgumentsAgainstChristianity
I read these articles without ever looking it up myself. I took it as a given that the scholars were the ones exposing the truth. Remember, I would not allow a Bible in my home.Thus Jordan was evidently not the sort of well-versed skeptic whose later deconversion would be of interest to my census of experienced atheists who later convert.
What I want atheists to know is that we have been lied to, my friends. The religion of Secular Humanism has infiltrated America’s schools, newspapers, magazines, and television networks. Its adherents use taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate an unsuspecting populace with their religious tenets.Typical Christian apologetic conspiracy-think: if seemingly rational people disagree with me, it's because they "lie" and secretely have the same sort of religious faith that I have. Faith must indeed be an embarrassing epistemological crime if its only defense is that everyone is guilty of it.
I came to know Christ as my personal Lord and Savior because devout Christians accepted me and did not condemn me. They loved me. They followed Christ’s teachings of loving their neighbor as themselves, and allowing their light of Jesus Christ to shine so brightly I could not deny it. [,,] Be wary of intellectualism; it led Eve to the apple.This sums it up perfectly: Jordan's conversion to Christianity seems not to have been based very much on a rational evaluation of the historical and scientific evidence.