Atheism is cool. At least, that's the popular perception of a world view that's enjoyed a rebrand and a renaissance in the last couple of decades. Authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have issued forceful public challenges to the claims of the major faiths and the rights they've traditionally been granted, while well-respected and high-profile public figures have lent vocal support to their ideas. When Stephen Fry outlined an atheist (or even anti- theist) position on an Irish talk show, the interview went viral in hours, while comedian Ricky Gervais frequently uses his substantial platform to attack and undermine religion in film and stand-up.

Christians can naturally feel a little threatened by this kind of activity. Witness the scores of 'response articles' which appeared within days of Fry's "capricious, mean-minded God" outburst.
If we do feel worried or undermined in our faith, it should probably prompt some serious self-examination; a belief that is truly practiced in everyday life should be strong enough and have enough evidence to withstand a few specious celebrity soundbites. Infact, there are reasons to feel strangely positive about the atheist pronouncements of public figures. Not only are there countless people who have found themselves in church, or on an Alpha course, precisely because the arguments of Dawkins and others left them dissatisfied, but there are also many stories of formerly high-profile atheists who ended up losing their surety, and in many cases converting to the Christian faith.

Below are just five of those stories, of former atheists who found that their belief in nothing ultimately led them nowhere.


1. C. S. Lewis
Before he wrote the Narnia saga, some divisive sci-fi and the popular theology books that led to thousands of rational conversions (mine included), Clive Staples Lewis was a professed atheist. He spoke of a "blandly Christian childhood", but wrote in his biographical work Surprised byJoy of his "seemingly firm belief in the inexistence of God", which was later shattered by a combination of reading GK Chesterton and developing a friendship with JRR Tolkien.
In perhaps the most famous passage from that book, he writes:
"You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."


2. Peter Hitchens
The younger brother of noted atheist writer Christopher Hitchens once shared his late sibling's worldview. A journalist, author and conservative political commentator, he infamously set fire to his copy of the King James Bible as a15-year-old at boarding school.
He and Christopher shared a tempestuous relationship over 50 years, exchanging their youthful arguments over toys for debates about the existence of God in later life.
He describes coming to an awareness of his own sin, writing that "my large catalogue of misdeeds replayed themselves rapidly in my head...I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned". Getting married in church, and swearing oaths before a God whom he'd previously rejected, further unsettled him, and he slowly found himself professing a Christian faith.
After his brother famously published God is not Great in 2007, Peter wrote his own book, The Rage Against God in response, critiquing the new atheist movement among which Christopher was so prominent.


3. A. N. Wilson
The British author and journalist writes that in his 30s he"lost any religious belief whatsoever, "and went on to write a book–entitled simply Jesus –which poured scorn on the idea that the gospels contained historically accurate information on a man who he simply regarded as a prominent Jewish leader. However, after spending "five or six years" quietly attending church, he says he discovered that he had come to adopt the faith preached there.
Wilson is now one of modern atheism's most outspoken critics, riled particularly by the assertion that faith is the pursuit of the weak-minded. In a famous article for the Daily Mail, Wilson broke cover as a Christian convert and took aim at celebrity atheists, or what he called "all the liberal clever-clogs on the block", while in another Christmas Dayarticle for The Telegraph, he wrote of his now utter conviction that
"the Gospel would still be true even if no-one believed it."


4. Anthony Flew
His name may not be familiar, but Flew was one of the most significant atheist thinkers of the pre-Dawkins era. He was a prominent critic of religion, suggesting that atheism should be the default position until evidence for God could be produced; that the burden of proof should be on the faiths, not on the faithless.
He carried these beliefs late into life, even signing 2003's Third Humanist Manifesto. However, just a year later, he announced that he had dramatically changed his philosophical allegiance.
Flew hadn't converted to the Christian faith, but he had embraced deism–the belief in God. So convinced was he, that in 2007 he published his final book, There is a God: How the world's most notorious atheist changed his mind.
It has been discredited by atheists ever since who claim that Flew's change of position was due to his declining mental health, and that the book was mainly the work of his co-writer. However, before his death in 2010, Flew lucidly and specifically addressed this in one of his final articles, itself a rebuttal of Dawkin's references to him in The God Delusion.


5. Alister McGrath
Today he's one of Christianity's fiercest and most respected defenders, but Alister McGrath had to undergo a Pauline conversion before he got there.
Growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1960s, McGrath writes that he "came to the view that God was an infantile illusion, suitable for the elderly, the intellectually feeble, and the fraudulently religious...It was the received wisdom of the day that religion was on its way out, and that a glorious, godless dawn was just around the corner. "As a young intellectual with an aptitude for science and specialisms in quantum theory and then biology, McGrath' srationalist worldview had little patience for theories of blind faith.
However, his deep engagement with science was–perhaps counter- intuitively–the very thing that unsettled his unbelief. He writes:
"Atheism, I began to realize, rested on a less-than-satisfactory evidential basis.The arguments that had once seemed bold, decisive, and conclusive increasingly turned out to be circular, tentative, and uncertain". He became a Christian, and continued his enthusiastic pursuit of science, realising that his growing interest in theology was not in conflict with it; rather the two disciplines illuminated each other.
Having at first been a fan of Richard Dawkins' scientific writing (if not his arguments for atheism), he has since become one of his most enduring opponents, both in print (he's the author of The Dawkins Delusion) and in public debate.


What's perhaps most interesting about all of these stories is the diversity among them. One might imagine that famous intellectuals tend to arrive at a conclusion of Christian belief by means of rational argument, yet that's by no means the only reason given. Conviction of sin, the observation of transformation, and the sense that God was simply pursuing them all contributed to these widely-varying testimonies. McGrath realised the rational argument for God was stronger than that against Him, but Wilson based his decision mainly on what he saw in the behaviour of Christians.

Surely this contains one of the strongest rationales for faith. Belief in God isn't blindly based on acceptance of the Bible as truth, or simply because the argument makes sense, but because when we begin to truly look for him, we begin to find him everywhere. In nature, in science, in supernatural experience, and perhaps most compellingly of all in the transformed lives of the people who have already believed in him.

The journeys of these five men are not unusual. They are simply five high-profile examples of what can happen when closed minds open to the possibility that they might just be wrong.

For more high profile converts, visit; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Christianity_from_nontheism







Article by Martin Saunders - A Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape.
Twitter: @martinsaunders

weird

"Atheists express their rage against God although in their view he doesn't exist "


This is serious

tell me more.

this copy and paste scraps..

Gibberish

"I was at this time of living, like so many Atheists or Anti-theists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world." C.S. Lewis

My best quote "The Gospel will still be true, even if nobody believes in it".

Yes it will, and I believe in it, even if I were the only person who believes in it.

What about the tens of millions of theist that have left theism for atheism?

dalaman:
What about the tens of millions of theist that have left theism for atheism?

This lovely lady has shared her trauma:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWsN6JhYEKk

Share yours and get the help you need.

dalaman:
What about the tens of millions of theist that have left theism for atheism?

lmao ... you keep making false claims without any proof

What about those that lost faith in theism? Are they not relevant too?

Don't you consider the possibility that atheism could have some validity?

@kingebukasblog I'm surprised you seem to respect empirical proofs

Kay17:
Don't you consider the possibility that atheism could have some validity?
@kingebukasblog I'm surprised you seem to respect empirical proofs

If they "had faith" in atheism then they were not typical atheists.

Yes people's psychology do change, but one common observation on all who have left atheism is that, apart from their new found sentiments for religion, they have absolutely no proof for their new found faith, neither can any one of them provide proof against atheism. None of them proved God, all of them got sunk into faith.
They all seem to suffer from some sort of religious Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

ooman:
Yes people's psychology do change, but one common observation on all who have left atheism is that, apart from their new found sentiments for religion, they have absolutely no proof for their new found faith, neither can any one of them provide proof against atheism. None of them proved God, all of them got sunk into faith.
They all seem to suffer from some sort of religious Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

The atheists just dont know what faith is

KingEbukasBlog:


The atheists just dont know what faith is

Faith means believing things in the absence of evidence because you want them to be true.

What does this actually prove? So because they decided they want to believe in God means God automatically exists? I'm sorry but how unreasonable does one have to be to keep coming up with all these nonsense?

dalaman:


Faith means believing things in the absence of evidence because you want them to be true.

Faith is actually the evidence

freecocoa:
What does this actually prove? So because they decided they want to believe in God means God automatically exists? I'm sorry but how unreasonable does one have to be to keep coming up with all these nonsense?

No . God exists and they saw that they have been living a lie

KingEbukasBlog:


No . God exists and they saw that they have been living a lie

I still ask, if you and they believe they have been living a lie, how about other atheists who don't believe the same or the theists who decide to be atheists based on their own realisation?

What does this prove?

freecocoa:
I still ask, if you and they believe they have been living a lie, how about other atheists who don't believe the same or the theists who decide to be atheists based on their own realisation?

What does this prove?

You mean the thread ? Or this :

I still ask, if you and they believe they have been living a lie, how about other atheists who don't believe the same or the theists who decide to be atheists based on their own realisation?

KingEbukasBlog:

The atheists just dont know what faith is

faith?

[b]“The current intellectual assault on God in Europe and North America is in fact a specific attack on Christianity – the faith that stubbornly persists in the morality, laws, and government of the major Western countries. . . .The God they fight is the Christian God, because He is their own God. . . .God is the leftists’ chief rival. Christian belief, by subjecting all men to divine authority and by asserting in the words ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ that the ideal society does not exist in this life, is the most coherent and potent obstacle to secular utopianism. . . . the Bible angers and frustrates those who believe that the pursuit of a perfect society justifies the quest for absolute power.”- Peter Hitchens







“I thought this gesture [burning his Bible] was a way of showing that I had finally rejected all the things that I had been brought up to believe, and I went on to behave for the next 20 years of my life exactly as if I didn’t believe in him [God], and that’s how I discovered in the end that what I had rejected was right.” — Peter Hitchens.
[/b]

dalaman:


Faith means believing things in the absence of evidence because you want them to be true.

Atheism has faithfuls, cos they hang on to a belief

[b]I have been an Atheist for almost 30 years in my head but not in my heart or I still would be one. I was deceived as a Teenager that I came from an Ape and Jesus was just made up, at the time He was my Best Friend so I was heartbroken.

Years later after messing up my life Jesus became a part of my life again but it was years again before I really understood His Truth even though I had been going to Church.

At the point of death once again Jesus rescued me and I came to heart repentance and having now asked for His wisdom and empowering and believing I have received them, He is leading me into all understanding and yes I have absolutely no doubts of His reality or how I came to be in His Family which is all about Love for Him as Part of The Godhead or Trinity as we call Them today and sacrificial Love for others .

My only regret apart from hurting God and misleading others which I now know I have been forgiven of, is that I wasted so much of my life when I could have been serving Him but I also know He will work all things for good, even my mistakes. - Anne.

[/b]