I like talking with people who have changed religions. Here is one of them. Previously: Laurence Dumortier.
Leah Libresco is a news writer for FiveThirtyEight and the author of Arriving At Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers That Even I Can Offer, which is about her experience learning to pray as an atheist-turned-Catholic. She writes about religion at Unequally Yoked, and, in her spare time, she dragoons people into dramatic readings.
Can you tell me a little bit about your religious background growing up? Did your parents talk much about their own faith, or take you to any religious services? When do you first remember being aware of the concept of God, and what did you think of it?
Both my parents don’t believe in God, so I was raised as an atheist. We had a Christmas tree, but my parents were definitely upfront about the fact that they thought religions weren’t true. I was the kid in high school who worked to get us to stop doing a toy drive for Samaritan’s Purse (which uses the toys to evangelize to poor children). And, post-conversion, I still think that’s a wildly inappropriate charity for a public school to partner with.
I grew up on Long Island, where the vast majority of my classmates were secular Jews, so between that and my family, I thought of religion as something that was not only wrong, but wrong enough to be below the level of hypothesis that deserve attention. Most of the time, when I encountered religion, it was in the news, when some religiously-informed policy intruded on the lives of people like me (like evangelicals fighting evolution in public schools).
College was the first place I encountered a Christianity I couldn’t casually dismiss. I joined the Political Union as a freshman (a debating group where you only argue what you actually believe and there are no points and no judges – you “win” by changing other people’s minds or your own). I tended to gravitate to the most interesting “wrong” people I could find, and that was definitely the Catholic and Orthodox Christians.
A lot of the counter-apologetics I knew were of the Dawkins-God Delusion type – targeted toward biblical literalists, God-of-the-Gaps people. And they didn’t apply to my new friends.
So, I didn’t think they were right, but I knew I had to do more reading to convince them they were wrong, and that’s how I actually starting reading people like Chesterton and Lewis.
Oh, I would hope that people of any and all and no religions could get behind thinking Samaritan’s Purse is not an appropriate charity for children, and that using the bait of gifts to sell your worldview to poor kids is manipulative and wrong.
“The most interesting wrong people I could find” is maybe my new favorite category of person I can think of. And you’re right in that Orthodox/Catholic Christianity can produce some really great, robust, wonderful thinkers to argue with. I’d give my arm to fight with Hilaire Belloc for a week, although I still want to kick C.S. Lewis in the shins, at least a bit.
At this point, did you find yourself responding to what you were reading, whether emotionally, spiritually, or intellectually? Was it still primarily a mental exercise, or did you find yourself compelled by what you saw?
There were four books I’d single out as most important, as I was reading and thinking, and they all did kind of different things for me.
Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis was a book I got because one of the campus ministries had a table that was set up that said “Free Books” which obviously sucked me in. I’d heard good things about this, so I grabbed it, and the first few bits (on how we assume that there is objective morality and why we should trust that assumption) was one of those jarring moments of recognition, where someone’s written down what you’ve been thinking the whole time, but put it better than you have. I didn’t buy the “and therefore God!” but it still felt a bit like homecoming to read the beginning. And the rest of the apologetics there helped me see Christianity as an internally-reasonable thing, not self-refuting for lack of coherency/consistency.
Orthodoxy – Chesterton I read this after reading The Man Who Was Thursday, and Chresterton really does a magnificent job of making the possibility of Christianity feel like a high-stakes question. And something a lot more vivid/nuts than “Try being basically nice to others.” Reading this kind of got me thinking of Christianity as a portal world – not true where I lived, but a really interesting world to think about (and one I wanted to steal some things from).
The Moral Landscape – Sam Harris was one I preordered, looking for contemporary atheist writers who would make moral realist arguments like Lewis, without the “and then God!” coda. I was looking for a book I could offer back for my side, while people offered me apologetics, and this was a total disappointment. The focus is on subjective happiness, looking forward to the days when we can use brain-scans to check what makes us happy, which was way too much trust in ourselves for my taste. Being good might make us happy, but pleasure/pain was too crude a way to check on what was good.
After Virtue – Alasdair MacIntyre was huge for me. Again, like with Lewis, I had the sense of being somewhere I recognized. MacIntyre’s discussion of virtue ethics helped me let go of some of the selfish, fearful, competitive bits of my Kantianism/Stoicism (I was happy when people were mean to me in high school, because it meant that my being nice to them wasn’t tainted by self-interest or affection). This was the book I wound up bringing back to my Catholic boyfriend, in lieu of The Moral Landscape to say I’d found a non-Christian writer who could stand for my side.
And then my boyfriend told me that MacIntyre later converted to Catholicism, because he didn’t think his system worked without it. And I was kinda pissed at him for letting the side down.
Since religion was a foreign language to me, I did a lot of coming to understanding through weird metaphors, e.g:
- wrestling with sin in Confession — sort of like the story of Janet and Tam Lin!
- repetitiveness of the Rosary — a bit like the basic in ballroom dance!
- the Eucharist — kinda like this legend about people who turned into honey!
OH, LEWIS. He is so many things. I find most of his apologetics to be maddening, but every time I want to throw him into the sun I find a phrase or a way of looking at things that’s quite sound and lovely and practical, and then I want to not throw him into the sun, for a while.
I love the idea you bring up of a Christianity “that couldn’t be casually dismissed,” that you were looking for reasons not to like it, and instead found yourself compelled to engage with it. Did it feel like a primarily intellectual exercise at that point?
It was definitely a mostly intellectual exercise for most of the time for me. That’s one reason why, after I converted, it was hard work learning to pray (I talk about how I did find my way into it in Arriving At Amen), because I’d been thinking about God, not with God. What a lot of this felt like was the same kind of delightful puzzling I did freshman year in my linear algebra theory class, where I’d be reading over my problem sets and then just lie back on my bed and mentally float matrices above me, and move them around in a playful way, until I suddenly noticed I had a way to prove the theorem I was supposed to write up. Religious reading and arguments had the same fiddly feel, once I got in deep enough.
At what point did that change for you? I know there are some spiritual experiences that can be very stop-and-start, but was there ever a moment where you went from “I’m really thinking a lot about this” to “Hm, I think I might have become a Christian”?
To be honest, it only really moved past being an intellectual thing after I decided to convert. But your “Hm, I think I might have become a Christian” idea is pretty close to what was happening. Here’s the weird experience I had:
I was back up at my alma mater for an alumni debate, and, even thought the topic wasn’t about religion, I had such a strong feeling during the debate that I belonged with the Catholics. It felt like, if you walked into the room, and didn’t even know religion was a category, but were just trying to do cluster analysis based on the speeches (and the values/aesthetics therein), you would obviously come up with some natural groupings, and one would be all the Catholics, the Orthodox Christians, and me.
I kind of just wanted to put a pin in that thought, and come back to it when I wasn’t in the middle of a debate, but it kept niggling at me. After the debate, we have toasting, where we pass a cup around and offer serious and silly toasts, and I just had the thought kind of come into my head, “I could toast the Nicene creed and just convert now.” And it felt like an alien thought! I hadn’t been looking for an opportunity to convert – I still didn’t actually believe in God!
So I didn’t (I have no idea what I did toast, I was kind of shaken), but the whole experience made me feel like I needed to work harder on resolving whatever was going on. Then, three months later, I came up for another alum debate, and pretty much the whole thing happened again. That’s when I skipped toasting, grabbed a Lutheran friend in the debate group, and said, “Look, whenever I come up for these, I’m having the impulse to convert” and we had the conversation that ended in me actually changing sides.
HOW VERY INEFFABLE! There is, I think, a certain point in most conversion processes when your internal orientation of the heart shifts. Up until (and after!) that point, you can engage in research and question and debate, but there’s often a moment where you sort of think, okay, do I feel like I belong in this camp, regardless of whether or not I’m 100% certain all the time, and you sort of…find yourself pledging an allegiance!
It’s funny that you mention being shaken by it, because I think it’s easy to think of conversion as being something that’s very affirming or at least very intentional. But sometimes it can surprise and unsettle us! How did your conversation with your Lutheran friend go? Did you find yourself primarily excited afterwards? Anxious? Doubtful? Peaceful?
My friend and I wound up having a big conversation about all the questions that were pulling at me from both sides. Basically, I thought atheism was patchy and incomplete, but said nothing untrue (the parsimonious option), but Catholicism was internally consistent and answered questions for me that atheism couldn’t, but wasn’t clearly trustworthy.
The big question I was worried atheism wasn’t going to handle was how I had access to moral law. If eyes respond to light, ears to sound, etc, what is it that conscience responds to? I didn’t think the answer was “nothing in particular” or “cultural norms, which are themselves arbitrary” or something like that. I’d been a moral realist for a long time, thinking of it as being something like math: transcendent, true, beautiful. And no one really goes after mathematicians, demanding they explain how they come to know math! (But math is much more obviously extractable from the physical world that ethics are).
So I kept going round and round the tensions with my Lutheran friend, until he told me to stop summarizing the answers I’d discarded and to try to think about what the answer might be – to think something new, instead of continuing to pick over older ideas.
And that’s when I blurted out, “I don’t know, I guess Morality just loves me or something.”
And that was pretty much the answer I stuck with (though there was a fair amount of pausing and reexamination, because, as I told my friend “Just because I say something doesn’t mean it’s true”). I didn’t see how I managed to reach something transcendent, so the movement had to be coming from the other side. And that meant I wasn’t just talking about morality as some kind of big, floating rulebook, but as an agent, and one that offered itself to me.
What it felt like was a lot like when I was working on a proof or a computer program, and there’s a bit before I know what the solution is that I know I have the shape of the solution (and I’ll get the details as I write it). That kind on falling-into-placeness, plus a kind of joy/grace that was different from my usual enjoyment of a puzzle.
So, naturally, once I felt relatively settled on my flip, we prayed Night Office together and then danced around to Mumford and Sons.
Well, of course.
This is weird to read as someone who went the other way! Though now it’s been a good few years since I stopped believing in God and stopped going to church and everything, I’ve recently been coming back round to a Catholic way of looking at things. Not that it ever went away, probably, as it’s what I was brought up with, but for the first time I can see what might draw someone to Catholicism other than the ritual and sense of belonging and all that stuff.
Specifically, it’s the way that Catholicism to me seems more based on acts than some kind of inner ‘truth’ than various forms of Protestantism – most obviously those involving predestination. It’s the sense that everyone is a sinner – you’re not any more immune from doing that bad thing than someone else. I was listening to an episode of Love and Radio where they spoke with someone who was on the sex offenders register for molesting a 13 year old girl (briefly, once, 30 years previously – I don’t say that to excuse him, I think it’s important to understand the case). He talked about the environment of the time with stories in men’s magazines about seducing schoolgirls and how that made it seem almost normal. He knew it wasn’t – he felt guilty immediately as he was doing whatever he did and stopped – but the interviewer thought that he was making excuses by talking about it in that way. And I don’t think he was, I think he was saying ‘This is something I did and that anyone could have (and probably did) do’ whereas the interviewer seemed more invested in the idea that this act expressed something fundamental about this man’s inner self.
We all like to think that we’re not capable of committing the kind of really evil acts that we hear about other people doing, and I think if you come at the world from the ‘we’re all sinners’ POV (without the doom-laden, say ten Hail Marys aspect) then it makes you examine your own actions and their consequences harder. It does for me anyway.
I may have really misunderstood Protestant theology here, and indeed Catholic theology, so please correct me on any of this.
Re: the doing vs. inner belief thing, I think that is largely true.
I teach about African cultures and one of the things I try to lay down at the beginning of my courses is something that a friend in Religious Studies pointed out to me: a lot of religions in the world have much more emphasis on what you DO—the beauty of what you build, the generosity of your sacrifice, the effectiveness of your performance—and that Protestantism is pretty unique in its focus on what you THINK/believe in your secret heart. This was actually really eye-opening for me, and opened a path for me to feel okay about participating in some traditions that I still find meaningful despite my atheism, because doing things is an important experience that connects me to others.
I’m not religious, wasn’t raised religious, don’t know much about religion–a while ago, I happened to pick up Night of the Living Dead Christian and was utterly perplexed at the way it emphasized belief (in Jesus, God, etc) over actions. I’d assumed, for some reason, that the ultimate measure of a good Christian was that you do good deeds. I know this one author doesn’t speak for all Christians. I just wanted to say yes, I’ve encountered this dichotomy, and it surprised me!
That really gets at what I still appreciate about Catholicism. Especially in the past few years I’ve kind of gotten sick of the idea of the true inner heart– it’s the kind of thinking that makes people say “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” or “I’m just being brutally honest.” And more centrally, it’s the kind of thinking I’m trying to overcome with my therapist so that I can stop thinking thinks like “I guess I’m just a failure and nothing can change that” or “I COULDN’T get out of bed on Saturday, I was feeling anxious!” And as I think about the how you feel/how you act divide in more and more ways, it’s so fascinating to see how it plays out in religion and culture, too.
I love reading about people who flipped directions! Like, an atheist-turned-Catholic and a Catholic-turned-atheist, I hope they passed each other in their various directions and waved at each other as they took up the other’s former post!
I think I travelled the exact same path as Leah in the opposite direction. (Waves to Leah!) I read C. S. Lewis in an attempt to convince myself to stay Catholic, but for me the “and therefore God!” sent me further away from belief. Atheism gives me that nice puzzle-pieces-falling-into-place feeling, instead.
Yeah same here… like once I opened my mind to the possibility that there wasn’t a god, everything fell into place and the universe made sense. To me, atheism means being OK with saying “I don’t know”. Like when Leah talks about Sam Harris (ugh) talking about maybe science will maybe in the future maybe tell us something objective, like… I don’t care. I don’t feel any deep need for that firm an answer from Harris or The Bible or anybody as to why I feel certain moral compunctions or why there’s a universe or why we’re here or whatever.
“And I pray, that never used to happen before”
two weekends ago Leah hosted a Hamilton listenthru party and there were like 30 of us there and it was amazing and joyful and LAFAYETTE and mallory you simply must give in some day THE POWER OF HAM COMPELS YOU
But even if you don’t…I’m willing to wait for it
she’s not running behind or running late, she’s not standing still, she’s lying in wait. (wait) wait (wait)
Give in as in go to one of Leah’s Ham parties, not convert to Catholicism, I assume?
If Mallory would just listen to it, with just a fraction of her time, that would be enough
I love this series so much! I will definitely be picking up Leah’s book. Has anyone read any of Dorothy L. Sayers’ apologia? Not the plays/radio plays, those are kind of awful.
I have! I find her humour and intelligence and grace comes through at least 70%.
(And also she invented Peter and Harriet, so she can do no wrong.)
I’m always interested to hear why people who convert to Christianity choose one branch over the others (there’s a comment above about Catholicism vs Protestantism that is very interesting). Do most people research various branches to see which ones align with their views? Christianity was never a religion that struck a chord with me, but I do find Orthodox Christianity very interesting, especially how the trinity is viewed compared with Catholics. I also wonder how people who convert to Catholicism deal with the issues of birth control, women’s place in the church, the pedophilia scandal, etc. Do most people who convert try to work to change the church from inside? Are there lots of people who don’t believe in every word the Vatican says, don’t believe all the dogma, but feel the more basic philosophy is true? As someone who belong to a religion with no real dogmas, it’s all very interesting to me.
I mean, there definitely isn’t just one kind of Catholic Convert. Apparently my conversion to Catholicism appears to have come at the expense of being able to vote – the cognitive dissonance between the teachings of the Church I chose and the philosophies and goals of all available political candidates in every election afterward just don’t align for me. I also have a ton of cognitive dissonance around non-political issues (as if there were any such thing). For example, I believe all women should have legal access to birth control because anything else is just RIDICULOUS, but I believe that if you choose Catholicism you need to adhere to its rules on sexuality as best you can.
I also have no desire whatsoever to “change the Church from the inside” as you put it. When I did my pre-conversion research – and boy did I do a lot of it – I questioned every tenet, doctrine, rule that made me feel like I was tripping over a bunched-up rug when I came to it. So I wouldn’t say I believe ALL the dogma, just most 🙂
(By the way, I’m happy to take this off the Toast thread and into email if you like! Let me know.)
I find your views so interesting. As a cradle Catholic, I started getting informed about the debates within the church … so even though the ‘official’ stance in Catholicism regarding birth control is ridiculous, I chose to address the same question by joining Catholics for Choice and related movements, in an effort to change the status quo. Which I didn’t even know was an option until I read about the pre-Vatican II debates within the church and how close we came to going the opposite direction on that question!
I also think the birth control policy is insane! Or, at least, I find the popular conception of Catholic birth control policy insane. The doctrine behind the rules, that I can buy, because it’s about the body’s relationship to its Creator. And I do really like the part of Natural Family Planning that gets the husband involved in it – it’s not just “not tonight honey, I’m fertile” – both parties are (ideally) engaging in the process. I know one couple where the husband is the one who looks at her basal mucosa, which I find both egalitarian AND hilarious.
I love Catholics for Choice! I discovered them through one of my religious studies professors.
Since many Catholics use birth control (http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2012/02/15/index.html) it seems that yes, lots of folks take the Vatican’s instructions loosely. I find this to be so interesting, like the process of this. How do people decide which bits to reject without rejecting the whole system, especially if they find it “internally consistent” (definitely not a phrase I would use to describe Christianity myself!)?
I am close to women who are feminist activists within their respective patriarchal churches (not converts though), and I really admire their attitude that their church communities deserve to change for the better, and if they leave the church who will do it? (But then some of their movement leaders get kicked out of the church, so.) BUT it is really hard for me to imagine joining the Catholic church as a lady person. I attended a Catholic school (not raised Catholic) for middle school, and it was a formative experience for me as a baby feminist because I just felt a strong and intuitive NOPE on those matters.
At the church I went to growing up, there were two or three enormous families with 6+ kids each, and every other family had 1-3. Pretty sure they weren’t all relying on the rhythm method. I also wonder whether my grandmother was one of the early adopters of the pill. She had four kids in five years and then not even the hint of a pregnancy afterwards. She and my grandfather may have just stopped having sex (people do), but as a married woman with four kids in the early 60s… she would have actually been able to get it fairly easily. I think that for a lot of Catholics, it’s more about tradition and identity and family than specific dogma, so it’s quite easy to pick and choose.
Yeah, I’d probably never go back to the church but one thing I’ve always respected about Catholicism, or at least the version that I was raised with, is that there isn’t a big burden on the individual to personally embody every element of the religion. It’s more about the larger community and participating in whatever way you can. Most people don’t feel much pressure to prove how Catholic they are because you’re pretty much in or you’re out (thus the qualifiers like “lax” or “practicing”). And in my experience the people who are really serious about church sexual teachings are not at all the norm, at least not in the US.
Like, I’m definitely not interested in associating myself in any way with an organization that prohibits women in leadership roles, but if I had to pick one I’d rather go to the church where I can sit in the back pew silently fuming about certain teachings, knowing that there are literally a billion other Catholics and many of them feel the same way I do, instead of having to exhibit some sort of deep spiritual passion and/or cry and sway along with sappy pop songs to show that I’m saved?
“How do people decide which bits to reject without rejecting the whole system, especially if they find it “internally consistent” (definitely not a phrase I would use to describe Christianity myself!)? ”
Yes, that’s exactly what I wonder about!
In my experience, non-dogmatic Catholics see Jesus’ core teachings about helping others as the centre of their faith, and the church as part of a continuous tradition of celebrating and trying to follow those teachings. What I learnt in my twelve years of Catholic school and weekly mass was that every time there was a conflict between a specific rule and an individual who needed help or sympathy, Jesus sided with the individual*. So then, it’s easy to see the official rules as either misguided (in which case you can pray or lobby for them to be changed) or as best practices that can be adjusted according to the circumstances.
I think a lot of people value the traditions and the continuity of Catholicism. It seems, as an outsider, that it’s easier as a Protestant to shop around for a church that fits your beliefs, but there isn’t an alternative Catholicism-without-the-Vatican denomination**, so people just shop around for a parish that fits.
As an atheist, I didn’t expect to be the Catholicism apologist here, but I still have a lot of sympathy for (what I see as) their core teachings.
*Obviously, many Catholics and biblical scholars would have issues with that simplification, but that was the underlying belief of the Catholics I grew up with.
**Except for my mother’s parish in exile, who all got excommunicated en masse because they supported the priest who insisted on welcoming and giving sacraments to gay people and divorced people, etc
there isn’t an alternative Catholicism-without-the-Vatican denomination**
Episcopalianism?
This is exactly the alternative I know of. Especially because when I went to Catholic school, I was in the same grade as a child of a married Catholic priest. Which is absolutely unheard of, but he was a former Episcopal priest who converted after he was married, so… married Catholic priest with a family it was.
As far as I know that’s only allowed for Episcopalians. They have a legitimate claim to apostolic succession so the Catholic Church recognizes their ordainments (though I suspect they’ll draw the line at women and homosexuals if any of them try it on).
I think there’s a subdivision of Catholicism called Byzantine Catholics (essentially Greek Orthodox Christians who converted a couple of centuries ago and changed relatively little of their liturgy/tradition), and their priests also can get married.
(and actually it looks like @bighairnoheart, posting in this very thread, is one of them! So hopefully I’m not talking completely through my hat…)
I was raised Episcopalian, and as far as I can tell it’s basically “Catholic but more tolerant.” It uses a lot of the same rituals and trappings and stuff – the incense, the robes, the Nicene Creed, all that. But it’s okay with women being priests! And queer people existing! And birth control! And you don’t even have to be a Confirmed Episcopalian to receive communion.
I left the church because I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus and it felt wrong to stay, but I still think that Episcopalianism is pretty cool.
But it’s okay with women being priests!
Well, okay-ish (women were only given permission to become CofE bishops earlier this year, and a lot of people were really shitty about it). And some prominent figures in the Anglican church have fairly awful views, like the Archbishop of York and his views on homosexuality.
**There’s always the possibility of an Anti-Pope.
Re: non-Vatican Catholics – there actually are a few such bodies! The Old Catholic Church is the one I’ve heard the most about due to a twitter friend who is a priest in that tradition, but I believe there are others.
There are a couple of tiny Old Catholic denominations, and they don’t answer to the Vatican at all.
My tiny middle-school catholic rebellion (before just dropping out of CCD, haha) was that during the Lord, Hear Our Prayer portion of Mass I would listen to what the priest was actually asking for and respond accordingly- praying for help for local families affected by tragedy, sure, hear our prayer. but anything vaguely homophobic, or say, pro-war in Iraq? I shut right up, even when I was altar server and everyone could See Me. & actually, I did leave CCD and was never confirmed, but I still do this whenever I get dragged to Mass by my dad’s family. It’s important to me that whoever may or may not be Hearing those Prayers that they know we don’t all speak with one voice on every single issue.
Relatedly, I’m very sad that I only recently learned of an ex-nun great-aunt’s involvment in a group pushing for priests to be allowed to marry, and for women to be ordained. I don’t see her often enough to really know her, but I still want to ask ALL THE THINGS about it.
I did that too! Although for me it was college and grad school instead of middle school, and I was definitely never an altar server.
Ha, me too. Also I was the world’s worst altar server. No matter how many times I did it I could never remember what to do and when, and had to either consult the cheat sheet they kept back by our seats or get hissed at by the priest.
aww. I used to do the 8am mass and my biggest challenge was not falling asleep during the homily. I did not succeed very often.
I still do that in mass!
Since finding out that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Pope Francis have been having some skirmishes over the Church’s direction and practices (and indeed the Conference and Pope haven’t always gotten along), I think the idea of the church being a “big tent” over many differences is true. (I think the phrasing in the catechism is that it’s a “human institution” or something like that.) The bishops themselves pick and choose and argue at synods, so lots of parishioners feel at liberty to do the same.
I don’t know if someone has mentioned this already, but Catholics across the spectrum take refuge in the strong Catholic tradition of informing and forming one’s own conscience, and the MORAL duty one has to follow it. So. That’s what I do.
How do people decide which bits to reject without rejecting the whole system, especially if they find it “internally consistent” (definitely not a phrase I would use to describe Christianity myself!)?
This is something I struggle with myself – I am not at all religious, but I find it hard to understand how a person can choose to reject certain bits and continue to believe others. I don’t feel like I could align myself with a particular religion unless I believed all of it – if you are just picking out the bits you like and leaving the rest, how does that work?
Coming from the odd twilight world that is Byzantine Catholicism, all I can say is that you function within it. There’s such a range of opinion even within the clergy (my favorite priest is the Ukrainian one whose opinion on homosexuality is ‘as long as they’re happy and don’t try to kiss me’) and I’ve personally met very few who support everything the Vatican says 100%. Even historically that’s a rarer thing than you’d think. My personal goal is to be an activist nun, picking and choosing with gleeful abandon and pissing off the multitudes. Or at least a stuck up few.
I love activist nuns! I also follow a pro-choice Catholic group on FB that I learned about from a religious studies professor. It’s true that no religious group is ever one-dimensional ion their beliefs. Good luck in your activist nun-ing!
Yes to troublemaking nuns!
Yes, I think that’s the thing that is most interesting to me about conversion to Christianity. How do you pick the sect that is “you,” because there are so many.
I’ve also felt very drawn to Catholicism because I appreciate the sense of ritual, and that is one thing I really miss being an atheist. The religions I feel drawn to (not just Christian ones) all have a very high-ritual element and a level of mysticism. For me the ultimate fact of that matter is I just don’t believe in a higher power and no matter how much I’m attracted to the idea of confession and ritualized mass it would feel incredibly inauthentic to me to participate while rejecting that key element.
Not to preach myself, but have you looked into Buddhism? I’m a Zen Buddhist, and one reason that Zen spoke to me more so than other branches of Buddhism is the ritual and the mystical element (I look on the aspect of Buddhism that you’re not supposed to understand with the logical brain as a form of mysticism, and the order I love contains monks who read a lot of Christian mystics as well as Buddhist ones), as well as the lack of dogma–Buddhism traditionally doesn’t acknowledge a god, but if you want to believe in one you can. I’m an atheist Buddhist myself. It’s interesting to be religious but not believe in a god–I always want to get into debates on the secular humanist FB group I belong to about what religion is!
YES the ritual and mysticism and centuries of tradition and history was one of the biggest draws for me – I was raised Protestant (first Calvinist, then Southern & Independent Baptist) and the aceticism in both traditions turned me off, as did the unwillingness of the Baptists to provide solid, doctrinal reasoning behind all their rules like no drinking or dancing. I found the rules-without-reasons philosophy highly unsatisfying.
I don’t believe in god(s), but I do think that there are realms of experience beyond what our everyday senses can apprehend, and that there are many ways or technologies for accessing those kinds of experience, of which religious practice is one.
I’m not *exactly* a convert to Christianity as I was baptised as a child and attended Catholic Church a few times a year with my family; but I spent my teens as a Wiccan and then an agnostic and finally came back to Christianity in my early twenties, with a feeling of no particular loyalty to Catholicism.
At first, I didn’t really think about sects of Christianity- all I knew was that I liked Jesus and I wanted to go to Church. So I set about finding one and really really struggled to find one that was what I wanted. It seems like where I lived at the time, all the churches were either enormous, homophobic, street-healing Biblical literalist evangelicals with worship bands, or tiny, dusty, little places with a liberal attitude but like 5 regular attendees and the dreariest music ever. So I had a bit of a crisis of “why can’t I be queer and liberal AND have snazzy music?”
As it turned out, a few months later I moved house and literally across the street was a church that was everything I was looking for. The minute I walked in there, it felt like coming home- and everyone who went greeted me like a long-lost child. It was wonderful and healing and affirming and so different to every other church experience I’ve had. It was only after finding my church and attending regularly that I started to examine the beliefs of their denomination (Church of England) and comparing them to my Catholic upbringing.
Fortunately for me, it turns out I fit in pretty well with the Anglican tradition (although I will never get used to the extra bit in the Lord’s Prayer, IT’S JUST WRONG), so that’s where I’ll stay.
This was probably slightly rambly, but hopefully that explains a little bit about my process!
Also I always like doing those quizzes that are like “what religion should you be?” or “what denomination should I be?”. Like, I’m not going to convert to Reform Judaism because a quiz told me to, but it’s interesting to know how well your beliefs line up with certain schools of thought.
Found this one- http://www.selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client…
Apparently I should be a Methodist.
When I (finally, after a long time of resisting) let Jesus in, more than 10 years ago, I knew that I wanted to find a church to attend. The largest church (by far) in my town is the Catholic church. I liked the liturgy and history of that church, but it was the early 2000s in Boston and I knew I could never join an organization that cared so little for its people that it ignored or tacitly condoned decades of child sexual abuse.
Then one day I saw an ad in my local newspaper for an Alpha class, held at the nearby Episcopal church. (Alpha is basically “Christianity 101” for adults – like Sunday School, only shorter and with drinks and snacks.) Took the class, went to church there, liked the service and the people (all uptight, reserved people with good hearts, just like me), got baptized there in 2004, now a lay eucharistic minister. It’s by no means a perfect parish, or a perfect church, but it works for me.
Bitter, your first sentence sounds like the Anne Lamott conversion, in which Jesus (metaphorically) is a cat. I love it.
I grew up Catholic and was very surprised to discover that any Catholics still follow all (even most of?) the literal teachings of the Vatican. But then, my childhood parish was investigated by Vatican spies for doing reconciliation the wrong way. I’m grateful for the emphasis that my religious education placed on the broader principles of social justice, rather than any specific rules.
I’m not a convert to, but a convert within?
I was raised Southern Baptist, and have chosen in adulthood to be a part of a United Methodist church. I also wonder if I am not still shifting on a spectrum of Extremely Conservative Protestant to Definitely Progressive Something Else.
I made the change for many reasons, some of which are still churning and taking shape. Number One – I knew I could no longer align myself with a church/denomination that did not ordain women. In my current view and understanding of the Bible, there’s really no excuse for this anymore, and it was a priority for me to find a corner of Church where everyone acknowledged this. Number Two – The UMC isn’t perfect, but it was founded by abolitionists with a strong emphasis on social justice and community. We are currently working through full LGBT inclusion and equality in the church, and I want to be part of the charge that changes our Book of Discipline. Number Three – I know my sister like I know m- aaahh sorry, habit. Number Real Three – I think the UMC has got some ideas that resonate with me on the role of Grace in our lives, where it comes from and what it does. I am on board with this.
I’m still figuring out where I sit with things like infant baptism, the role of baptism in salvation generally, the nature of free will, the character of the saints … those sorts of things. So I may still be shifting, but I’m really enjoying having a group of people I can talk through these things with. (All my friends are M.Divs and D.Mins all of a sudden…)
Hey, a fellow Methodist!! I just posted my statement and scrolled up to find yours! What a nice surprise 🙂
Social Creed, Wesley, and ordaining women? Methodist jinx! Or maybe it’s bingo?
Definitely bingo!
Yay Methodists! I love the Toast and have been lurking for a long time, but something about this made me want to post today. I loved the Methodist church I grew up in, especially the pastor, who helped my now-spouse and I write a nice succinct 25 minute wedding ceremony that met the doctrinal requirements for marriage for both Methodists and for Hinduism (my husband was raised Hindu). Sadly, the congregations around me now that I live several states away from that church are all more conservative, non-reconciling, and I’ve been debating seeking out an entirely different flavor of Christianity. I have a hard time thinking about not being Methodist though, especially, as you noted, the . We shall see.
But, to the point, I especially agree with your comment about the role of Grace. It’s one of the major things about Methodism that resonates with me as well.
I grew up in the United Methodist church and it was great for me. I’m currently in a valley of actual church attendance (rather than a peak), but I’ve been attending a UCC/Congregational church that is very welcoming and progressive, so maybe look around for that? I also felt weird not going to a Methodist church, but I didn’t feel at home in the one in my current city.
“Are there lots of people who don’t believe in every word the Vatican says, don’t believe all the dogma, but feel the more basic philosophy is true?”
The US actually has a heresy named after it for the historic tendency of US catholics to say “fuck the pope”
Americanism (heresy)
And that was in the 19th century. Catholics have only become less concerned with the Pope since then.
Thanks for that link! I’ll be down the wiki wormhole for the rest of the day.
I DIDN’T KNOW WE HAD OUR OWN HERESY! Can I get one for “the Pope’s whatever, but fuck the Cardinals” I wonder?
I chose United Methodist because I read the Social Creed of the church and it hooked me. I have since come to embrace Wesleyan theology, and yes I have looked at the beliefs of other denominations and still stuck with mine. Though I have joked that I would be Orthodox if they ordained women. I am called to ordained ministry as a woman, so I am not going anywhere I am not allowed to do that.
That said, the UMC is still not reconciling for GLBT persons. I participate in Annual Conference, so I vote in the direction of changing that both through legislation that goes to General Conference and electing delegates who support my position.
I did the same thing in my Annual Conference this year too as a lay delegate (my first year! it was… fun!) – our state didn’t pass a resolution on to GC, but several states did, so I’m hoping for some reconciling leadership to really make this happen. If only we could just please start sending young adult delegates to GC…. like, anybody… hi, we’re here…
Do you keep up with Hacking Christianity (dot net)? That’s one place I tune in to see what’s going on with the politics of the church, especially as it regards inclusion/reconciliation (and RMN’s site of course). Any others you’d recommend?
I am lay rep to Annual Conference for my church, mainly because the two guys that used to always do it wanted to take a break, and as Young Excited Deacon Candidate, I was an ideal choice. I might be getting commissioned (might, because who they hell knows if DCOM will say yes and if I’ll pass the interviews) in 2017, so these days will be coming to an end for the moment until I get ordained, but I still get to drink with friends at AC in the meantime. I feel like that’s the great secret of AC, that all the clergy are getting hammered in hotel rooms with each other.
Is there a Young Adult group in your Conference? If there were, maybe they could put forth a delegate candidate or two. We had a lot of youth put forth their names to be elected as lay delegates, and a few of them actually got elected. Clergy was a lot more like a popularity contest of who has the most influence, but I’m sure that’s true everywhere. Truth is, there’s a pretty big dearth of young people in general in the church…it’s awkward, and I will be aging out of that category myself in about 5 years.
I like Hacking Christianity a lot for Methodist news, I haven’t really found anything else that is as good. In terms of religious stuff in general, I read Slacktivist, he has solid links about stuff on a fairly regular basis. Religion Dispatches is also good. I have been mulling the idea of starting a Methodist blog called Strange Heartburn, but I’d probably just get into trouble for writing the things I want to write.
If you ever did start such a blog, I would definitely read it!
Samesies. Would subscribe to your newsletter and contribute to a healthy comment section on the reg.
Y’all may also like http://everydayimpastoring.tumblr.com/ and http://www.wesleybros.com/. Wesley Bros was directly influenced by Kate Beaton and Hark! A Vagrant, soooo.
I know a woman who is the director of religious education at a Catholic church, and that includes adult conversions, and she will actually sometimes say to potential converts “you know, you might want to try the Lutherans down the road” (and apparently sometimes the other churches send people her way).
So even if you haven’t done all your research, if there is a formal process there may very well be someone who helps point you in the right direction.
That feeling of falling when you move from “this is a thing that seems like it could be right for a lot of people” to “holy shit I believe this, what do” is so, so sweet. When I look back at my life and recall the happiest moments of my life, I can remember exactly where I was when I realized that transubstantiation (the moment in Mass where bread>>body of Christ) was REAL and TRUE and I BELIEVED IT and how hard I cried with joy, kneeling there on a gymnasium floor. And the moment, a few months later, where I was at my previous religion’s annual youth leadership camp and the preacher started railing against Catholics and for the first time in my life I wanted to stand up and refute him, not because I was sort of pro-Catholic in a “these guys are alright by me” way but in a “stop offending me and my religion” way. What a year 2004 was.
I left Catholicism when I was 17, but came to an understanding of the power of religion in my first semester of college, when I took a course in comparative religion. That course removed the disdain I felt for anyone that believed. In any case, many years later in my 30s, my parents came to visit me, and I accompanied them to mass in the local Catholic church. During the Communion portion of the mass, I came to a similar experience as yours. I realized that the participants, at least some of them, ACTUALLY BELIEVED that they were PHYSICALLY merging with God, the ultimate power of the universe. I lost my composure and cried from the realization. My logical mind could not allow that mental state to exist, and I have continued my life living without that drama.
Something I’ve noticed about a few of these pieces is that the religion being converted to is the religion of the person’s partner in a relationship. I think it would be interesting to explore this influence more. Also, how did the partner become part of the religion. Were they born into it or did they also convert at some point?
I converted independently of any partner – I decided to convert before I met the boy who I would date during and after my official conversion process, but I will say that I was a hormonal 15-year-old when my best friend said “hey come to my friend’s church with me, there are soooooo many cute boys!” I dated a boy I met there, and the relationship was very brief but his mother was instrumental in my questioning period, lending me books and being a welcoming presence.
After I converted, I stuck around for a few years helping to sponsor other converts, and I’d say slightly less than half of the people I met in those classes were converting because of a partner. Maybe 40-45%. I’m sure mileage varies wildly by religion and individual churches/parishes. Not sure about whether a partner’s status as a convert matters all that much statistically, but I know converts can sometimes be very zealous, so I suppose it’s possible.
“I don’t know, I guess Morality just loves me or something.”
oh, oh, oh. guess I have a few things to think about, now.
Leah, I know we share some mutual Dominican friends, so I loved reading this! And now I also get why you get along with the Friars — so analytical and reasoned. My approach to my Catholicism is so different, but I love that we can turn to the same resources and find a home in the same place.
Some day I just want to have a C.S. Lewis thread where we can all hash out our complicated feelings about him.
On the one hand,
– he makes holiness seem irresistible
– his vision of the afterlife as “a place where you get whatever you choose” feels much more reasonable and real to me than the traditional heaven/hell dichotomy
– he said – “One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons — marriage or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning,” which, yes
– the way he tried to make mild BDSM seem inherently holy in “The Four Loves” was just so cute
– his whole approach to the concept of “sins” is so gentle and loving
On the other hand,
– SEXISM
– SEXISM
– SEXISM
– RACISM
– RACISM
– RACISM
-CONDESCENSION
-ADULT TALKING TO A CHILD VOICE
I still haven’t forgiven him for Susan, either.
he makes holiness seem irresistible
I don’t know, I still find it eminently resistable when reading Lewis.
So happy to see Leah Libresco at The Toast — it feels like my internet universe is coming full circle.
I first read C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves when I was 17. It my first real introduction to any kind of systematic philosophical writing, and the distinctions it drew between different forms of love (Affection, Friendship, Eros, Agape) was revelatory to me. It helped me internalize what I already knew at some level — why deep friendship seemed so rare, how you could have Affection for someone without having any real intellectual connection, how Eros was so much stronger when it was joined with Friendship.
I found this really interesting – I’m an atheist who went to a Jesuit university, and while I’ve never considered converting (because I still don’t *believe* in a deity), I think that the Catholic worldview (and particularly the Jesuit one)–particularly those facets of it that focus so heavily on searching for truth and acting in a way to improve social justice–has really changed the way that I think and order the world. I just haven’t found that I need God or Jesus to prop up that theoretical framework (and I recognize that I am clearly cherry-picking my theological tenets here).
And maybe that’s my lapsed-Protestant upbringing coming in: I recognize the moral necessity of doing good works, but I can’t see how they will affect an afterlife (particularly one I don’t really believe in). So, Protestantism and Catholicism, combined with good ol’ adolescent skepticism have made of me a moral atheist.
I’m an atheist who works at a Jesuit university! It’s kind of a different bag of worms but there are definitely conversations on campus that happen because of the Jesuit nature of the school that I feel really proud to be associated with, because they are asking and searching and striving for a more just world.
Also Franklin Graham is a nutjob.
Serious question, do new converts to Christianity usually end up reading Lewis?
This was so beautiful to read. “I guess Morality loves me or something!” is such a wonderful turn of phrase, actually. 🙂
I’m the Protestant-y type of Christian, but I love many of the books you list and love the Catholic way of looking at the world, for many of those same reasons. (Chesterton! Woot!)
“Reading this kind of got me thinking of Christianity as a portal world – not true where I lived, but a really interesting world to think about (and one I wanted to steal some things from).”
^this is so valuable to hear, as someone who grew up in the Christian world, so it’s hard to imagine the perspective of not viewing it as a world at all. On one hand, it makes me hesitant to ever say anything about it, because I assume smart people already disagree a priori with me about Scripture, Jesus, etc, that I’d only be offending, but on the other hand, I don’t know what things have crossover appeal, like Chesterton, that could enrich their world but they might not have come across it before, no matter what their beliefs are.
tl;dr: thanks for sharing, off to go find your books. 🙂
Leah on The Toast yay!! My experience of being Catholic is SO DIFFERENT, but I love how you describe your journey to this side of the Tiber. It’s really encouraging at times when I wanna throw the whole Magisterium in the bin.
And no one really goes after mathematicians, demanding they explain how they come to know math!
This has me thinking about Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, in which a bunch of cloistered monk-like scholars argue about how they can know math and it’s a very divisive question.
Lewis’s view on objective morality worked for me for a while, but then I had to ask myself why not take that one step further. (Hi, Euthyphro!) What basis is there to say that what God commands is good? If God tells me to sacrifice my son, and I say no, am I not the more moral person in this arrangement?
Good question! The way most Christians get out of the Euthyphro Problem (Are God’s commands good because he has commanded them to be, or does he command things because they are good?) is that God IS goodness, in a sort-of platonic sense. Because He is goodness, all that is good flows from him.
This is obviously too short/simple an explanation to cover the topic as comprehensively as is necessary, but I hope it was helpful!
Yes, but it’s to the point, and not sophistic.
That seem on the surface fine as it goes. But you either have to know what is good outside of God, or you have to accept that he could command you to torture babies, and that would be good. (If you say he couldn’t or wouldn’t because “that wouldn’t be good” you automatically admit to a standard besides God with which to judge behavior).
I was raised Catholic, then ‘converted’ to be a charismatic born again Christian shortly after Confirmation (who, in accordance with the Chick tracts I was given, despised my former religion as heretical). After about three years of that, I left the church, mostly because I couldn’t reconcile the behavior of Yahweh, nor the idea of a supposedly ‘merciful’ god creating a world where most of us will burn in hell (Matt. 7:13-14). Even if this were because he was a ‘just’ god, annihilation would seem to be more just than eternal suffering (isn’t not being in god’s love punishment enough?), but as hard as I wanted to see it, the bible does not evidence that (i.e. Universalism). I drifted through other metaphysical systems for almost two decades: Taoism, Buddhism, New Age/Shamanism, etc., until my interest in philosophy of religion and science led me to soft atheism, where I have been for 15 years now. I’ve not found any reasoning compelling enough to go back to any form of theism, though I do still feel Buddhism and Taoism have some interesting valuable non-religious ideas.
The Reasonable Doubts podcaster’s treatment of Euthyphro and the incoherence of God’s (Yahweh’s) ‘goodness’ is worth listening to in the final episode: http://doubtcast.org/podcast/rd139_whats_past_is_…
Personally, I’m of two minds about moral realism. Another non-religious book on the subject, besides Harris,’ is Richard Carrier’s Sense and Goodness Without God, where he argues that ‘moral’ evaluations are just a different category of any other type of evaluation (i.e. one that involves effects upon beings that can be affected). I think theists still have a lot of work to do to establish moral objectivity, le alone to justify one particular brand of theism over another. It seems to me to always boil down to a fallacy of desired consequence.
If you don’t believe that God is the creator of everything that surround’s you, then yes, you would believe you’re more moral than God. As a Christian, I wasn’t able to accept this until I accepted the fact that in Gods eye I have the intelect of a new born baby, that I could never comprehend God’s way, that if I look at mortality from a human perspective, then I could never understand God’s promise of Him preparing a place for me when I leave this earth. Let’s ponder this for a moment, God allowed His son to die at the cross for our sins, would you allow your child to die for a purpose? Probably not if you don’t believe. But God would not worry about his son dieing, because He knew He would bring Him back to be by His side. Death to God has a whole different meaning. To a non believer, this thought is barbaric. I think about the Christians around the world who are being persecuted each day, who are dieing in atrocious ways just because they belive in Christ, who are asked to convert or die and then, choose to die because they belive that in these cases death would take them home. Today, it’s becoming more difficult to be a Christian, there’s a lot of hate spewed towards Christians and catholics in particular, we can not express opinions and beliefs that are in contrast with PC. The stimulation of my heart came late in life, no one converted me, I went to church and listened and there was a slow change that took place that led to my conversion and even though I attend a church, I don’t tag myself with a denomination, but consider myself a Christian who loves hearing the word of God. I see goodness in all segments of relegions and evil men dwelling in all religions, you just need to discern one from the other.
Hi Carm,
I guess my problem with this kind of skepticism, is that it’s never really consistent. We can say that we don’t understand–that we can’t possibly understand–but I always find that when people make that claim, it is never more than one or two sentences away from a claim of being able to understand god in some other way. In fact, there’s no way to build a theology without it.
As for Christian persecution, that’s just not evidenced even remotely compared to other religions or non-religion. Just ponder the idea of an explicitly atheist television station, or an explicitly atheist school or university–I’m not talking about secular, which is neutral–I’m talking about a pro-atheist school or tv channel. No atheist has ever been or probably could ever be president. In fact, there are still laws on the books in several states that don’t allow a non-believer to hold public office. We are disproportionately represented politically as well. And we are getting target and killed, just like Christians and other kinds of theists. We constantly poll at or near the top of the most hated groups in America, along with Muslims and Scientologists. The notion that Christians are a victim of discrimination more than other groups is more often a conflation of people criticizing the theology, which is open to criticism because it is an idea–an old idea around much longer than any of the people who adopt it. It also has to do with how it affects public policy. This is where we all must come together and agree upon the most reliable epistemic source to inform our legislation. I think we should look for the most historically reliable method of discerning objectivity as our authority. To many of us, that’s clearly the scientific method, though many still contend special revelation trumps science. Then we use philosophy to interpret our authority source (in principle). That’s when it gets even more contentious. Anyway, I’m going down a rabbit trail now…
I appreciate reading about people thoughtfully converting to various religions. This is very new for me. I grew up the daughter of evangelical missionary parents, and there was no thoughtfulness involved in conversion, just a desperate fear of hell. I found, once I finally got to my thirties and I felt that terror burning away, that I simply had no room for religion. The idea that people choose it for reasons other than fear/terror/shame is very heartening. I don’t think it’s possible for me in this lifetime, but now it will help me understand if my children choose to be religious. I have told them to stay away from the people who tell them they’ll burn in hell, but other than that maybe I need to keep an open mind… This is tough stuff for me. Thanks for the thoughtful presentations of conversion stories.
Consider looking at Orthodoxy. The Western concept of ‘Hell’ is far different; it’s a fire-and-brimstone approach which has nothing to do with what was actually taught either Biblically or through Holy Tradition.
Here’s a link to start with: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles-2009/Metta…
I am loving reading this series, and am especially fascinated by the ones that involve atheist/agnostic people converting to a religion.
There is something about this process, though, that still kind of baffles me, and that I don’t know that anyone has delved really deeply into yet with these essays. I understand the idea of finding a moral philosophy that clicks with your own sense of the world, and the inherent value of having a community of like-minded people to share your values with, and the appeal of ritual and structure that religion offers. Those things make perfect sense to me! They are all really appealing! The piece I am still unable to wrap my head around is the idea of going from not believing in a sentient higher power to believing in one. I genuinely cannot conceive of the impetus that would justify making that radical switch in worldviews, short of witnessing an Actual Real Life Miracle (TM). Is there some moment where you feel like God (or whichever spiritual being) reaches out and connects with you personally? I am not being sarcastic, I find this fascinating but also completely confounding on a personal level.
That is what happened to me, anyway. I experienced God reaching out and connecting with me personally. I would not have started believing for anything less than that.
Thanks for answering this (and for running this series in the first place and encouraging such thoughtful discussion on a topic that can be sensitive for so many people). I am definitely going to be contemplating what that might feel like. Also, really looking forward to reading your eventual piece.
Mine is probably not what you’re after, as baptised Catholic but wasn’t raised in it (but with a belief in God often in the background) and then went to agnostic/atheism as a teen and adult. For me, believing in God is related to based on believing in a soul. I cemented my belief in that when I was at a wake of a friend – to me, seeing them laid out, made it clear to me that they weren’t just not alive, but something integral was missing. I went from soul to god, but haven’t yet got myself back to Church. There’s a progressive Church in town I have my eye on but haven’t actually been inside yet.
I’ve a much more emotional response than the philosophical and well researched answers in this series.
Thank you for asking this question about the switch from atheism to theism, which I also (sincerely and non-judgmentally!) am deeply curious about.
For me, what’s even more unusual is finding a specific doctrine — like, you have felt God, but how does that translate to believing in the Gospel and the divinity of Jesus? Why not Islam, or a mushy Deism?
Anyway, thank you guys for hosting this series! It is so informative and I think it can only get better.
I’m not sure the person to ask, given I went from casual Protestant (raised by Protestant parents) to hard atheist (in the sense of utterly rejecting the existence of God), but thinking back to my childhood and about what I’ve heard theist say when they talk about belief, I don’t think there is an impetus. God is sort of just there. The question of: “Why believe?” makes no sense.
Things don’t exist on the basis of whether someone has decided they want it for some reason. What reason could someone have for thinking something exists other than its presence? In my view, the “impetus” your are talking about seem more like the understanding/though/feeling/sense that God is present itself.
I think you are right about an Actual Real Life Miracle (TM). The sort of belief you are talking (“God exists”) is just that: God is thought felt/understood to be an existing state, a feature of Actual Real Life Miracles (TM). From what I remember and have seen though, Actual Real Life Miracles (TM) take far less than what many of us might expect.
Atheists tend to think of Actual Real Life Miracles (TM) as when God does something powerful and amazing in the world. For many theists though, it seems more existence being with God, such there isn’t a question of what God does for us but rather just the presence of God. It is the existence of world with God (and recognising that ) which is powerful and amazing.
I think it is reflected in the ways some theists talk about the world, when they will cite the mere existence of state (e.g. Life, their children, the world, etc., etc.) as a “miracle” of God.
Interestingly, I find this much easier to relate to this as an atheist than to assertions God is “mystical” or “unknowable.” A theist who expresses their belief in terms of a state existence is actually talking in the same terms as me. We are both saying something about a state which exists. We are both saying we know about a state of the world. We only differ in what we think is there.
OK, I’m going to reveal my ignorance here: I’m technically Orthodox Christian, but I have *no* idea what the central tenets of Orthodoxy are compared other Christian viewpoints. What makes Orthodoxy different from Catholicism?
I have gone to church and understand some of the aesthetic differences: the icons, the murals, the incense, etc, but that’s so….surface-level. What does Orthodoxy actually *believe*? Please help me. (And yes, I suppose I could go to Wikipedia, but that feels like a lazy answer. I really value the experiences/knowledge of other people here.)
Off the top of my head, they have different views on the structure of the Trinity (means a lot to me, may mean less to other people), views on communion and the presence of God in the world, role of priests, and different views on worship.
The original split back in the 11th century was to do with how and with what authority the filioque clause, where the Spirit proceeds from the father and the Son (catholic) or just the Father (orthodox) was inserted into the creed, issues over how communion was to be taken, the issue of the Roman papal authority (he was originally one of five patriarchates) and was probably aided by the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the continuation of the Eastern one. Add how the various cultures and places have changed throughout the years, one sacking of Constantinople by the Venetians, and the differences have been exacerbated.
For a good exploration of the history and legacy of the Orthodox church, From the Holy Mountain is good, and it’s not academic, it’s a piece of travel writing.
I’ll second that, Deborah. Quite a good read. Heavy theological works should be worked up to, but there are a few websites that can also point laity to the right direction. OrthodoxConvert.info is one of them.
Actually, as a fellow Orthodox Christian, it’s best to go to a priest or monk locally who can explain to you what your faith entails. One of the strange things I’ve witnessed going to a Greek church is how badly catechized they are. Most of the cradle Orthodox I run into know the externals, how to behave in a church, and so on, but don’t know or understand anything about the history of the church, the philosophical underpinnings, the wealth of deep theology, and especially the differences between the EOC and Roman Catholics (which were are many – some, due to culture, and some do to drifting away from either Biblical or Canonical traditions. Some just want to fit in with the general culture, and end up Evangelical or atheist.
I personally want religion to exist, i want it to be true…….just like dragons…..fairy’s and such.
The idea of heaven and breaking through to something unknown after death has always amazed me.
Good for her, i say as long as she is happy that’s all that counts. In this life sometimes that’s all we get.
The idea……….
Fascinating stuff. Very frustrating though.
“And that’s when I blurted out, “I don’t know, I guess Morality just loves me or something.””
This seems to be the core of the whole piece. It seems that Leah has a very strong intuition that there is some kind of objective morality out there, rather than our ‘moral sense’ being a product of the same combination of evolution and culture that shapes the rest of our mind. If you think that’s the case, you’re already most of the way to religion. The problem is there just isn’t much to support that hypothesis.
What I found more baffling was the statements that Catholicism is not internally inconsistent. That seems to require some real pretzel yoga for the brain.
At the risk of sounding combative (I sincerely don’t mean to be!), is there anything in particular that you find internally inconsistent in Catholicism? My experience, like Leah’s, has been that it’s remarkably consistent philosophically, once I’ve actually taken the time to discover what the underlying premises are.
The very foundation concept of a deity says on the surface that “God is “love”, but requires that this “God” be the source of all that is evil however you define evil. If you reply, give me a definition of evil to work with and I will walk you through it. My own definition of evil is unnecessary suffering, but any will work.
I’m not sure I agree with your premise that the foundation concept of a deity requires that a God be the source of all that is evil. There are some theories that suggest while God is love or goodness, evil is not a creation of God but rather the lack of God. These theories suggest that at initial creation (whenever/however that was, this isn’t necessarily a literal creationist/7 days theory), God only created what was good but gave his creation the free will to choose their actions. Our actions then can create evil, rather than evil existing as an independent creation from God. I mean, this is a very myth based introduction to the theory, and it’s hard to jump from evil being a lack of God and a result of the free choice of people to things like disease and accidental death and a reality where people suffer unnecessarily. But, on a related or unrelated note, I’m not sure unnecessary suffering can be considered what is “evil,” just as pleasure is not necessarily what is good.
I’d argue (as a hard atheist) it is not a question of hypothesis. The objectivity of morality is a logical expression of a state, of how people are affected, of whether or not an outcome ought to have a place in the world.
Everyone’s moral sense might be a combination of evolution and culture, which we can analyse and describe (e.g. someone is disgusted by an action or state because the culture they belong to associated it with shame), but people aren’t talking about that when they are speaking about the objectivity of morality.
What is at stake with the objectivity of morality is not what people think is right or wrong, nor is it how those believe and feeling came about. Instead, it is about what actions themselves mean, whether they ought to be performed or not, if a state of existence is one which we bare responsibility to avoid or enact.
I think it is right to oppose morals being “ought there” for this reason. Right and wrong aren’t some object sitting out in the world which we can observe of pick-up. Being expressions of other states, right and wrong cannot be separated from states into their own distinct object. They are always bound to other things, to emotions, to feelings, to interests, to actions.
But that’s also why the question of a hypothesis can’t apply. If someone talks about whether something is right or wrong, they are searching about a logical expression rather than an empirical state. They aren’t seeking to describe anything that exists. It is not question of supporting a hypothesis, but rather describing a logical expression (sort of like 2+2=4). Of course, this is what makes moral debates so tricky and (im)moral codes so dangerous. There is no standard by which to judge or confirm which one is right. Someone just “has to know,” like one does with 2+2=4.
Confusing describing states of the world for comment on morality results in shallow and unclear arguments. Description of morality get reduced to identifying some state, such happiness/pain, as the measure of moral success/failure or posing as a yet to be answered question. Sam Harris’s philosophy is a good example of this confusion and error.
I went through something of a similar experience, though my parents never left belief, just the corruption of a local church. After atheism, and going through logical and philosophical arguments which led to God, I joined the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1993. Continued good will to you, Leah.
The quality of posts here, both from theists and atheists, is quite astounding. I think Medium is turning into a place really worth checking out. The only issue I have is that I have yet to see a conservative voice here. Is this place purely for left-wing Christians?
I’m not super interested in hearing from conservative Christians, but I’m sure there are plenty of places on the Internet where you can find their opinions.
Ah, come on. You might be surprised at how many conservative Christians appreciate you and The Toast, and who knows but that we might have an interesting thought or two ourselves!
It’s fine that you like us! And fine that you have thoughts! I hope you find many places to express them. Here probably won’t be one of them, though.
I’m baptized Catholic but was raised largely atheist, and am starting to have confused religious feelings, so this series is reaaaally timely for me.
I’m really intrigued and fascinated by this line: “it only really moved past being an intellectual thing after I decided to convert.” Do you write about this in your book, or could you say more about this? I feel like I’m reconnecting with the ritual and symbolism of it but still don’t believe there’s a god. It’s leaving me perplexed about what to do about the whole thing and feeling like a bit of an interloper.
Myself I was raised in a mainline Protestant denomination of which had problems as a teen reconciling many of the inconsistencies of God and Christianity…to the point that I’d say I’m probably alive today for having the realization at some point in college that I no longer believed. For me it was something of a salvation. For a while too, try as I might and for the beauty of some writings(not most but some), and the love of the community(not all but some), as well perhaps the evolutionary necessity aspects, for the life of me I could no longer believe in something I found as either trying to cover up unknowns with often vast untruths. As far as the necessity I mentioned, humanity may well need religion to survive in the face of our acquired intelligence but as yet utter lack of intelligence.
That problem I had as a teen was Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which in the course of combating I realized religion is basically the same impulse, only the delusion created to answer each uncertainty through compulsion and magical belief is become societal. Looking across the world and through time, there are none that are not cults, and perhaps most disturbing is we call it “Faith” yet why is it even a question? -The sun is bright, the sky is blue, and these are facts of our existence that just are; yet an omnipotent or divine entity can’t be anything approaching definitive even regarding the simplicity of confirming existence. I’m afraid that for some logical queries, absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.
As I grow older I become more wary of proselytizing or being a missionary of my views as I’m not sure human beings can live without the delusion. Thus I often tell people they should be Buddhists as to me it seems closest to what reality might ultimately be, but more so as it also appears as the least malignant. My other fear though is that I’m not sure we can continue to live with it either, of which looking at the universe perhaps this is a certain “Great Filter” ahead since as yet we have not found life outside Earth. In particular we have not found intelligent life, of which the Fermi Paradox is most troubling; perhaps our brains rather than our salvation are an evolutionary dead end and the Great Extinction we’re currently the cause of, in the end will consume us as well.
Have faith? -I can’t.
Sad when someone decides that facts, proof, etc., can be thrown out the window to believe in a fairy tale. There is nothing admirable about that. Nothing.
i am trying to figure out how you made the decision to become a catholic and not a lutheran. As a life long catholic, I have read the works of CS Lewis and Chesterton, though i don’t pretend to understand what it means to be an atheist. The only problems i ever had with regard to being a catholic were resolved by Leo Trese in the faith explained which is still an excellent book despite being written in the 50s. Ronald Knox is another excellent writer.