So I’ve been reading various proposals on what people think they would find compelling enough to convince them, if they are atheists, to become theists, or, if they are theists, to become atheists.
I had been asked to think about this when I was getting my bachelor’s degree, and I couldn’t come up with a good answer. If I knew what would convince me to change my mind, I would have examined it to find out if it did change my mind. So, I just said, “I don’t know” and categorized the necessary information as that which I didn’t even know I didn’t know.
Pretend that made sense and go on.
Now, it seems, I’ve learned. What it took was compelling reason to doubt my experience of a relationship with God and God’s self-revelation in scripture and creation.
I’ve already told the story of why I began to doubt my own experience of my relationship with God. About six years after that story ended, I committed myself to preaching at least one sermon each week. I read scripture and looked at the world around us to provide my parishioners with a message about who God is, what God wants and what that meant to us in a coherent, consistent fashion that would be relevant to their lives and help them choose to accept God’s will for them and live out their salvation, participating in the creation of God’s Kingdom.
It may be that my goals were too high.
After a few months, I began to question whether scripture provided a coherent, consistent view of who God is and what God wants. I began to find serious problems with the bible, and with the God portrayed in the bible. There were claims that God loves us, wants what is best for us, keeps His promises, etc, etc. But the actions described did not support the claims listed. And when I turned to the world around us, it was even worse.
As I found myself plagued with doubts, I turned to friends, family and other clergy. I was shocked to realize that what bothered me did not bother them. They had a God in their minds and looked for evidence in scripture and creation that backed up the God they had chosen to make up. Contrary evidence was tossed away without qualms, because “No one could believe in a God like that.”
And they were right. I couldn’t.
So, what did it take for me to de-convert? It took God’s purportedly self-revelation through scripture, creation and personal experience to tell me that either God doesn’t exist, doesn’t care, or can’t actually do anything about it if God does care.
