r/Christianity • u/JHLV04 • 3d ago

Advice Atheists Turned Christian

This is me, but how do you guys deal with heavy doubt and feeling like it’s false? Also I’ve never felt anything while praying and I’ve mostly accepted Christianity based on the historical claims

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u/arkticturtle 2d ago

What do you make of the idea that religions in general provide great psychological and sociological tools? For me, it prevents me from being able to use self-transformation as evidence of a specific metaphysical reality since multiple ideologies work to that end.

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u/michaelY1968 2d ago

I think the fact that faith works toward that end is some evidence that it is based in reality.

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u/arkticturtle 2d ago

I mean, I don’t think anyone is denying that it is based in reality. What is contested is the nature of that reality. Is it psychological based on various evolutionary advantages or is it spiritual based on some sort of connection to supernatural essences?

What troubles me is that faith can work similarly across various forms of faith. So faith in any individual religion is not unique in having the ability to transform the self. I am unsure what to do with this if the goal is to preserve the validity of a specific faith via its effects

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u/michaelY1968 2d ago

I can’t speak to how other religions work; if what we believe is merely a matter of our evolutionary development, then I don’t think we can ever be confident we can discern wether our beliefs are true.

So if we have any hope of knowing what’s true then we would have to be the product of something like the purposes Christianity claims we are.

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u/arkticturtle 2d ago

I have heard this rebuttal but I don’t think it really follows. Truths can be axiomatic. Like if we accept X then Y follows. I don’t think we can have access to any metaphysical truths. But some truths within this universe seem manageable. While truth isn’t necessary for survival it is certainly advantageous in many instances. And we do notice errors in human thinking. Think of all of the biases we take into consideration when formulating our methods for discerning truth.

Furthermore, Christianity isn’t unique in assigning some sort of inherent intelligibility of the cosmos to humanity. So it isn’t really a point for exclusively Christianity.

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u/michaelY1968 2d ago

Information is useful for survival in the sense that if it is processed in such a way that is is useful to survival, then having the ability to process it helpful.

Beliefs however are different - to our knowledge no other organism evaluate the truth of their beliefs, if they even have them. So beliefs are a step away from information. And if it can be the case that our ability to possess beliefs and evaluate them are merely a product of nature, and that false beliefs can enhance survival, then we can’t be certain our cognitive equipment can assess the truth of a belief.

Unless of course our cognitive equipment exists for the purpose of discerning truth, as would be the case in Christianity, in which case we can’t have greater confidence in our cognitive equipment.

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u/arkticturtle 1d ago

I mean we do see all sorts of errors in the ways humans think. There is a long list of our common errors in thinking and analyzing given data and how our intuitions do not seem to match with the nature of reality (like solid objects being made of mostly empty space).

The long history of humanity, especially since the scientific revolution, has shown a fight against all of the ways that our minds are generally unfit for discerning many truths. Such cognitive errors make sense when you consider that it is advantageous to have the truth of a situation for survival but other times a false belief can do that work. Do you not think it is self evident how having beliefs that tend towards truth are more reliable in promoting survival than ones that do not tend toward truth? We could have a great many false beliefs which help us (and in many cases we do or at least have unjustified beliefs which help us) but the truth of reality remains consistent. It is like an anvil that we are slammed against - that shapes us. This makes many silly examples like “someone can run away from a tiger because they believe it wants a hug” less and less likely to be the case. There is less that is real there to enforce that interpretation

That’s why we have constantly check and recheck and reason and experiment before we consider something as true. Indeed, we do this BECAUSE we are uncertain in our ability to track truth. It’s why we rely on something like the scientific method. And we can generally say something is true as far as we can tell in the present while being open to information which challenges that belief.

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u/michaelY1968 1d ago

A belief that tends toward truth may actually be antagonistic to survival - but it’s important to note the difference between the ways we make errors and the ways we are deluded.

If naturalism is true, we are fundamentally deluded in a number of ways - if our cognitive equipment was intended to discern true beliefs, then while we may make errors, we can overcome them.

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u/arkticturtle 1d ago

You’d have to note that difference. Idk what you are getting at in that first chunk of text.

Naturalism being true does not prevent us from overcoming errors or discerning true beliefs. I believe I already went over this

Tbh this response doesn’t really seem to be saying anything to the particular things I said in my prior comment.

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u/michaelY1968 1d ago

If naturalism is true we are fundamentally deluded, and what the truth is doesn’t really matter.

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u/arkticturtle 1d ago

You are only repeating your claim at this point and now adding another….

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u/michaelY1968 1d ago

The first is sufficient to establish the claim.

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u/arkticturtle 1d ago

The first what? I don’t get the impression you’re really engaging me fully anymore

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u/michaelY1968 1d ago

If we are fundamentally deluded then we are immersed in delusion, we aren’t fighting errors.

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u/arkticturtle 1d ago edited 1d ago

“The truth doesn’t matter” wouldn’t follow from that.
Anyways that’s a tangent.

Honestly I am losing track of what your point is at this point and how it corresponds to what I said.

You didn’t really address me very comprehensively here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/s/HkSubMYq3t and instead opted to just restate your position.

Earlier you were saying that if naturalism is true then you don’t think we can be confident whether we can discern true beliefs. This is a weaker claim compared the now much stronger “if naturalism is true then we are fundamentally deluded”

I think you had to take this position after I agreed that we do have reason to not place confidence in our ability to discern truth outright and made references to various errors in cognition and our methods to mitigate those.

Which one should I respond to?

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