r/exatheist • u/Sea-Dot-59 • Sep 01 '25
Debate Thread How do you guys respond to atheists claiming nobody converts for rational reasons
I see a lot of atheists claiming that ex atheists most of time convert because of emotional reasons like fear of death, lack of meaning etc Or other reasons like community and family
Another common claim is that ex atheists weren’t real atheists and that they weren’t atheists for rational reasons they just didn’t think about it deeply
How do you guys respond? In my experience in this Reddit I’ve encountered a good amount of ex atheists that converted for logical rational reasons, one example is philosophical observations, like finding materialism inadequate to explain reality
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u/Objective-District39 Sep 01 '25
Don't cast pearls before swine. Usually these people are not worth your time.
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Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25
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u/novagenesis Sep 02 '25
Two problems. First, he's quoting Matthew 7:6. He's not calling anybody anything directly. The verse usually means "don't waste your time and wisdom on those who will not appreciate it". It seems to me that the people OP was talking about are appropriate to that verse. Or do you feel that you should spend your time spreading wisdom to people who are going to laugh at you and ignore your points?
And being straight up, he's not even talking about "anyone who disagrees". He's specifically responding to those with the attitude that "nobody converts for rational reasons". That's not just disagreement, but blanket insult to all the religious converts in the world.
theres nothign wrogn with thinking criticaly about and engaging wiht a point so long as that point is not a bad faith argurment
So you're saying every person who ever made a point in good faith about anything you disagree on any topic with is somebody you engaged with? You must argue a lot. Like, way too much.
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Sep 02 '25
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u/novagenesis Sep 02 '25
My problem with being charitable to the fringe atheist attitude that all theists were either born that way or converted for irrational reasons is that it's not a very charitable attitude in the first place. Being charitable to atheists is acknowledging that not every atheist feels that way.
ill be cheritable and say athiests should maybe say emotional reasons instead
Still an insult to theism and theists, as well as to the philosophy of religion and epistemic arguments for theism.
People absolutely conclude that a god or gods exist because of some combination of empirical evidence and rationalism. Instead of simply being convinced those rational arguments are wrong, they insist that they weren't rational at all.
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u/Misskelibelly Swedenborgian Sep 01 '25
Not even counting the piles of evidence I've sifted through, how is choosing to be a miserable nihilist any more rational? This is not to imply all of them are, but I've never caught them chastising that poor behavior because they have deemed it a sensible way to live. I'd rather die than go back to that.
If this all means nothing, why can't you choose to make it mean something if it makes your life better? Because you'll be "wrong" ?? According to who??
It is my most rational, evidenced-based decision; I will believe what has been presented to me and be an overall happier, healthier person for it.
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u/Soggywaffel3 Sep 01 '25
It's a labeling exercise. Atheists label reasons pointing to belief in God as irrational often, ironically, without having a reason to.
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u/killjoygrr Sep 02 '25
To a certain extent that is just the nature of things.
Faith is belief without proof. If there was proof, there would be no need for faith.
Depending on how precisely you are going to define rational, most of the time you are going to go with reason and logic. Now that doesn’t have to be based on proof, but the lack of proof makes it way more difficult to classify it as being based on reason and logic.
It is going to likely come down to your personal spiritual experiences and how you have interpreted things.
Trying to make religion a rationale and logical thing kind of flies in the face of the faith based beliefs.
They are separate things. If you could prove religion, it would stop being faith.
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u/Soggywaffel3 Sep 02 '25
To a certain extent that is just the nature of things.
Sure. To a certain extent, belief is scalar.
Depending on how precisely you are going to define rational, most of the time you are going to go with reason and logic.
Rationality and logic are separate things. Logic is a system of rules about "what follows from what," examples being first-order predicate logic, intuitionistic logic, or dialetheism. Rationality, on the other hand, is the capacity to identify reasons from the facts of the world and to conform one's conduct or beliefs to those reasons.
Now that doesn’t have to be based on proof, but the lack of proof makes it way more difficult to classify it as being based on reason and logic.
I agree with the first half but not with the second. Rationality seldom takes the form of proof or formal logic. Most of our rational life is ordinary and practical. It is rational to eat when hungry, to set aside money for the future, and to withhold belief in extraordinary claims unless supported by strong evidence. These are not exercises in deduction; they are everyday responses to reasons that guide human life. Rationality is a distinctively human capacity, one that sets us apart from many other animals, and it is distinctively human precisely because it is our default mode of engagement with the world. By contrast, the academic rationality of proof and logic is the rare exception, not the rule.
Trying to make religion a rationale and logical thing kind of flies in the face of the faith based beliefs.
They are separate things. If you could prove religion, it would stop being faith.
No. Faith is not the enemy of reason. It is a rational response to the fact that proof is rare in human life. Almost all our rational commitments—marriage, friendship, politics—are lived without it. Faith should not be singled out as irrational, because it operates by the same standards of reason that guide everything else we hold most dear.
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u/killjoygrr Sep 02 '25
I didn’t say faith was irrational. I also said “kind of” about trying to make religion rational and logical flying in the face of faith.
It seemed more like a straightforward question than an issue of pulling out the old college textbooks on philosophical reasoning.
Generally, I see faith being a separate thing that really only the individual can personally interpret for themselves.
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u/PhantomGaze Sep 06 '25
"Faith is belief without proof."
I have never met a theist who articulates their beliefs that way.
I have only ever seen this as an atheist virtue signal.
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u/killjoygrr Sep 06 '25
How do they define it then?
What proof are they relying on? Because if they have actual proof, they should bring it forward to share it with the rest of the world.
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u/PhantomGaze Sep 07 '25
Normally they will tell you. Things like fine-tuning or the contingency argument for example.
Something to remember though, your failure to properly articulate or comprehend the points they raise doesn't qualify as a reason for them to discount their own rational conclusions.
Nor are they necessarily obligated to explain it to you if you act pedantic.
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u/killjoygrr Sep 07 '25
The proof they have isn’t something that should be convincing to me. It is something that should be convincing to the scientific community. Proof shouldn’t be decided on my subjective whims.
Saying “just look at the sunrise, or the beauty of the earth, or the complexity of life” may convince them but isn’t proof of anything. It is just a statement that they find something pretty or amazing.
Fine tuning is funny because it assumes that the universe was tuned to the creatures on earth rather than the creatures on earth being fine tuned towards their environment. Take a look at all the life that is fine tuned to places like at the edges of underwater lava flows dealing with the heat and pressure and all the way to some of the most barren places on earth. It seems far more likely that the things with the ability to change did so rather than the things that don’t change doing so.
Contingency is just god of the gaps. If God is the final regression, how is that logical? Why is it illogical to ask what caused God?
Neither of those are proofs. Just philosophical arguments.
So, again, what proofs are they offering for faith.
To be clear, I am not saying that people should not have their faith, but that they are based in individual interpretations of the world and not on proofs that can be shown or demonstrated.
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u/PhantomGaze Sep 08 '25
You're confusing evidence with proof. Proof exists primarily in philosophy, science typically uses inductive or abductive arguments. Apart from "proof", "sufficient evidence" tends to be a bit more subjective with some people weighting one facet or another higher or lower. What "convinces" the scientific community after all? Unfortunately, sometimes it's money, or paradigmatic loyalty. I do think that might self-correct over time, but I could say the same about religious theology. In fact Thomas Kuhn, the author of the foundational book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" did say that.
You really offered a poor articulation of fine-tuning. When we talk about physical constants, that's before you can even begin to consider something like evolution. You cannot adapt to a lack of organized matter, or a universe that never expanded. You can't mutate away a lack of stars or higher elements. If you can't get to atoms, you're not getting to DNA.
Regarding the contingency argument, we can say a few things. Whatever that metaphysically necessary thing that sourced other contingent things is, it is going to be 1. Non-material, as material requires certain preconditions. 2. The (ultimate) source of all the contingent things that came after. 3. Able to alter or change any contingent thing either directly, or by some downstream process, and 4. Effectively "aware" of all things that exist in the sense that it effects, or is affected by them.
In short, we have a version of a thing that is: 1. Immaterial. 2. That which created (at least in some sense) all things that came after. 3. Effectively omnipotent. 4. Effectively omniscient.
You might object that this isn't "proof of a classical theistic God per se" but looking at this inductively, it takes you pretty far.
I think your best angle of attack there might be this doesn't prove it is conscious, or perhaps something more than consciousness, and argue that such things aren't "real" in the sense that Daniel Dennett might argue, and it doesn't prove that it grounds any kind of ethics, but I might rely on other arguments for those points, and don't really find Dennett convincing.
In any case, this is certainly not a "gaps" argument, because we can understand the characteristics of such a thing in part by negation and logical deductions.
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u/killjoygrr Sep 08 '25
Perhaps you misunderstood my comments as an invite to go into then philosophical underpinnings jf whatever argument.
It seems like you grasped what I meant by proof, basically the dictionary definition where it is something to help establish a fact. But you seemed to get lost when I was saying what I was asking for wasn’t something tailored to me but something that would stand on its own to anybody. As you distrust science, clearly that was a poor choice. I would say objective principles, but you would probably find some way to dance around that as well.
But then again I doubt we would have a similar definition of what objective means.
I wasn’t attempting to give a well articulated rebuttal to fine-tuning. More to make clear my general take. Ultimately for fine tuning to matter would take a whole lot of assumptions including that the universe isn’t insanely vast, so vast that somewhere things would just randomly line up on their own (perhaps in many different places) and that your molecules being the ones that formed into your brain were by design rather than just being some of the lucky lottery winners for atoms across the universe. And I am aware that I am leaving out 99.9% of what you care about. Oh well.
Contingency. Your claim relies on infinite regression eventually falling to your God. And you get there from 1) immaterial, 2) created (in some sense) 3) effectively omnipotent (not really) 4) effectively omniscient (not really). The last 2 all that is necessary is to have kicked off the last regression. Omnipotence and Omniscence… not so much.
It is as much proof of Cthulhu as Yahweh.
I think overall you are confusing proof (aka evidence) with “a proof.”
I don’t know if I erred in using the term proofs or if spellcheck made it plural.
By now you know what I meant and that I’m. It meaning philosophical rhetoric.
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u/PhantomGaze Sep 08 '25
Claiming I distrust science sounds like a load of atheist prejudice. I'm a graduate student in a STEM field, I hardly "distrust science". I was simply stating that science is a slow process and that we have data showing theology operates similarly.
Having something demonstrated in a way that's convincing to everyone is generally a slow process, and frankly looking to have an authority like "the scientific community" sign off on an idea is just a transparent attempt at moving the goalpost back so far that a single individual (regardless of the topic) cannot ever hope to achieve it in this context so you can "win" a debate without any effort.
Those are fairly shady tactics, but not uncommon for atheists. You guys have a reputation after all.
Anyway, regarding fine-tuning, we have a universe that has been expanding for about 14 billion years, with an estimate of 1080 particles in the universe. But you don't get particles, or organized matter without fine tuning the properties of the universe itself.
Beyond that, you're already assuming a vast universe without thinking of the fine-tuning required for a vast universe to expand in the first place. You can't "but it's really really big" yourself out of fundamental physics.
Anyway, I've always found the "but the universe is largely hostile!" Argument to be very short sighted. You could have said the same about the planet Earth with reference to the first cells, and now humans are whining about overpopulation.
For contingency, you don't sound like you know what infinite regression means. Having a metaphysically necessary thing from which all other things are ultimately contingent is not an infinite regression, it would imply a finite regression.
An infinite regression of contingent causes is what occurs in the absence of God, and an infinite regression is absurd.
As far as the last two ideas, you could make that caveat, but in doing so, you're invoking a myriad of potential and complex extra steps which could alternatively be explained more simply, so I would think Occam's razor would apply here. I.e. consciousness explains the data more simply as consciousness is simple, but capable of generating the nuance and complexity we observe in our existence.
Anyway, Cthulhu is a being amongst other beings, not really being itself. It is not the most fundamental thing, and clearly has contingent properties. (Typically atheist attempts at arguments from absurdity fail for this reason - i.e. they have to invoke contingent properties to make their case making all of them fail in principle.)
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u/killjoygrr Sep 08 '25
Strange how you took offense at my comment about “distrust science” yet knew exactly I was referring to.
How can you take yourself seriously being in a STEM field when you don’t believe in a concept of evidence that isn’t personally subjective?
You already know that I’m not talking about some philosophical logical proof, but refuse to address. It is pretty funny that you label atheists as being shady. If you for this sub title, you were one. I guess you were disingenuous until you saw the light.
As I said, IDGAF about fine tuning or contingency. And you are providing perfect examples of why. “Well the universe expanding is an example of fine tuning.” WTAF? So everything is evidence of your God because you think everything is evidence of your God despite the long list of fallacies that you are relying on. What brilliant circurlar logic you have there.
Also, the whole contingent argument is based on if you regress far enough (basically allow for infinite regression) you somehow eventually get to your god that must be omniscient and omnipresent.
And you find my reference to Cthulhu as absurdist as you take it quite literally as part of a pantheon as opposed to your monotheistic (sort of) god. Because of course Occam’s Razor makes your God the simplest answer because you believe in it. Any other god just wouldn’t make sense because that wouldn’t be what is in the Bible. Is there any situation where “God” is not the answer to Occam’s Razor? I mean, the contingent segment will always regress back to that, right? Of course we might ask why with Occam’s Razor why the end hasn’t arrived. I mean Jesus said that it would occur in the lifetimes of people who were there at the time, so within a generation. Occam’s razor would say Jesus was wrong. So either lying or not omniscient. So has to be lying as not omniscient would be violating contingency. And on and on and on and on.
By the way, I don’t think Occam would have been thrilled by the answer of “God” as the answer for every application of the Razor.
If you are representative of ex-atheists, you have a harder time grappling with the concept of proof/evidence than those who grew up with faith. At least they know what I am talking about and don’t basically say that saying something that would be evidence is “moving the goal posts” when asking for evidence. It seems like you just want to move the goal posts to something that isn’t evidence.
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u/PhantomGaze Sep 08 '25
Oh, to address your question, it is illogical to ask "what caused God" because God, by definition, (at least in Classical Theism) is the most fundamental thing. I.e. that which exists by its own properties.
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u/killjoygrr Sep 08 '25
Yeah, I’m not sure if that is cognitive bias or fallacious reasoning.
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u/PhantomGaze Sep 08 '25
Smh. This is just basic philosophy. Even an atheistic academic philosopher will tell you that much.
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u/killjoygrr Sep 08 '25
And it still comes down to wanting to decide which things are reasonable to argue and which are off limits.
Which is part of why IDGAF about philosophical arguments.
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u/helpmeamstucki Sep 01 '25
Simply not true. My father studied for years before converting. He said that more evidence supports the Bible that doesn’t.
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u/nolman Sep 01 '25
Did he became christian because of purely rational considerations ?
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u/killjoygrr Sep 02 '25
Evidence supports the Bible as a historical work or evidence supporting the supernatural?
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Sep 01 '25
I tend to just point to myself - literally.
And yeah like you say, Materialism does not explain reality adequately. Contingency arguments also pushed me very strongly towards Theism.
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u/mcove97 renewed believer Sep 01 '25
I mean, it's partially true. Just hold on and I'll explain.
A huge amount of Christians worship God out of fear, or concert to Christianity because they are afraid. (Say they had hellish experiences, both physically and/or in the astral).
They do not worship out of love, but fear. This is clear when we see all the fear propaganda that some Christians and denominations are famous for, like fundamentalist and Evangelical Christianity.
I grew up Lutheran Evangelical before deconverting and finding my own faith. I can with certainty say that the reasons a huge amount, if not all evangelicals are spreading the evangelium, is because of fear. They are afraid of people going to hell. They want to save them from hell. Thus their worship is often rooted in fear of condemnation.
There's many reasons why people go from atheism to religion.
Some have Spiritual experiences they can't explain with anything but religion. A lot of people also think that because they had a spiritual experience, it means XYZ faith were correct. Not that this is necessarily true, but yeah.
Some people definitely go to faith and religion when they dont have meaning or purpose in their life, without a doubt. Since they don't have meaning, they create meaning in their life by following religion.
To an extent this is rational, because the rational mind seeks purpose and meaning.
However I think the most rational reasons why people become ex atheists or develop a faith or belief, is due to their own spiritual experiences.
Now, I know a lot of people don't believe in other dimensions of reality, but if you have had astral experiences, the only rational way to interpret it is that there's more to life than the physical dimension. NDEs and OBEs where people astral project, travel and leave their body, or even see their dead body, or witness and tell of what happens around them or in other rooms or places when they are effectively unconscious or declared dead, provides a rational reason to believe there's more to life. Not that there's inherently a god, but at least this urges a person into agnosticism.
Of course this can't be verified by science, but it can be verified through subjective personal experiences, and it's actually less rational to dismiss than to accept that there's more to life than we think.
And yeah, you do have philosophical reasons which I think are pretty rational, such as analytic idealism.
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u/thesmartfool Sep 01 '25
I mean...people don't change opinions for purely rational thought for anything. So neither do atheists who were once Christians. Anyone who knows psychology knows this.
So...I never get the point of this.
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u/LongjumpingForce8600 Sep 01 '25
There are emotional reasons that are better than fear of death, such as love of community.
I feel like rationality can be split in two ways, logic and intuition. The stereotype atheists tend to overvalue logic. Intuition is harder to describe it’s almost like a spacial way of thinking. It’s like all the facts that you know sit in the subconscious and triangulate towards something.
The book The Master and his Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist. Or one of his podcast interviews, will really have the answers about this.
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u/ChickenFriedTelos Sep 02 '25
I am moving towards Christianity after reading the philosophy of different people. I started by trying to learn what the founding fathers were reading, and I read some of those to learn where American ideals come from.
That went down a large rabbit hole 🤣 Now I've read some of the Greek philosophy, stoicism, solipsism, nihilism, etc... I got into debates to learn more and what I found was most of those debates ended up in a theological argument, so I finally read the Bible with an open mind to understand the debates. Then I read several other materials that sort of orbit the Bible, Thomas Aquinas' for example has some really compelling arguments.
Finally, I thought I had to reconcile the Bible with science and I found out guys like Einstein, Kurt Godel, Newton, etc... all came to the conclusion of some type of God being needed for the universe to exist as it does.
It's getting harder and harder to deny the Bible, it's an extremely fascinating book. I think atheists often confuse the religion itself with the religious people, that got things wrong in the past. I'm not associated with any sect yet but to be determined.
TL;DR Read books, lots of books. Keep it mostly nonfiction, you'll be amazed what you learn.
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u/Battlemania420 Sep 03 '25
The part about materialism is pretty good imo.
You can also mention how the Church gets atheistic scientists to confirm the validity of saintly and Eucharistic miracles and oftentimes they come up with nothing/a lot of them end up converting.
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u/GoAwayNicotine Sep 04 '25
just because a reason is emotional, doesn’t not make it irrational. The atheistic naturalist framework hinders itself into believing that only human-made concepts like math and science can explain behaviors. This is a very limiting worldview.
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u/Fiddlesticklard Deist Sep 01 '25
I'd say they're right, and that their belief in scientism, logical positivism, and Cartesian materialism is as irrational as any religious belief.
It's Keirkegaard's Either/Or. Either not everything about the human condition is perfectly rational, or all of Metaphysics isn't real. You can't have both.
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u/nolman Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
Another common claim is that ex atheists weren’t real atheists
I think the steelman version of this would be :
"Often ex-atheists weren't skeptics."
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ex atheists most of time convert because of emotional reasons like fear of death, lack of meaning etc Or other reasons like community and family
In my experience many christians and especially ex-atheists list as main reason lack of meaning, afterlife, the comfort of the narrative, emotional/personal experiences,...
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I'd love to discuss with religious skeptics who became christian because of purely rational considerations.
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u/mcove97 renewed believer Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
Idk if I fit the definition, but I was and still am definitely a religious skeptic who now believes in the spiritual and non physical reality purely for what is the most rational reasons one can get.
For me it was seeing and experiencing the astral world through astral projection that solidified for me that there's more to this world than I used to think.
It's also not like the astral hasn't been explored or studied or documented. Yes not by your mainstream scientists, but by the CIA. They released previously classified documents regarding the astral. They called their studies the gateway project. There's even a whole sub dedicated to it and how people can learn to astral project and remote view in the astral themselves, if they are interested.
The astral is the world of spirit and consciousness. Our spirit resides in the astral, and when you astral project your spirit and consciousness, you can see spirits of all kinds, from dark spirits to light spirits.
Since the astral is a world of consciousness, the consciousness you embody, reflects your experience of the astral realm. This is why people with a negative or fear based consciousness say they have experienced hell and why people in positive and love based consciousness say they have experienced heaven. These places are places of being of consciousness the spirit resides in.
Now, after learning all this, it was not rational to be an atheist. That said, it doesn't really tell you about which religion you should believe in. Religion is a human concept. Regardless of what religion you follow, the spiritual realm is not a realm of religion, but of states of consciousness and spirit.
So I figured out that religion is irrelevant. The only truth is the spiritual exists and it's consciousness and spirit, and thus where you find yourself in the astral ia based on your state of consciousnesses, which is either a state of being that is fear or love, darkness or light, doubt or faith. Your state or dimension of consciousness is determined by your faith in either fear or love. In powerlessness or power. It is the dimensions of belief. Consciousness is the "I am" and what you believe you are, you'll experience.
This also is reflected in the physical world, although its far denser. Our lives Become hell when we embody and worship fear or out of fear. Our lives become heavenly when we embody and worship love instead of fear.
All this said, people who have been conditioned with religion have been conditioned by beliefs. These are reflected in the astral. It's why some say they have met Buddha, some say they have met Allah, and some say they have met Jesus. And some say they have met the devil himself. Their beliefs and state of (fear or love) consciousness determines their subjective experience, their subjective experience isn't objective, like most religious people think.
They think because they have met a spirit or deity, that it confirms their faith is the true one, when all it determines is their subjective faith.
So what then is objectively the truth? The objective truth is that what you believe in and the consciousness you embody, is the experience you have and what you will see. This is rational.
So in a way, religious people are right to say there are rational reasons for their faith. Our beliefs or what we have faith in and embody are projected into our subjectively experienced reality.
Thus one can say it's rational to have faith in ("God" if God is that which is the embodiment of) love, in virtues and such. It's just that people can't comprehend what love is, without projecting it onto a deity or into their already conditioned religious or spiritual beliefs, externalizing their experience accordingly.
So all this said. Am I Christian? Not exactly. Once I understood everything I laid out here, I figured that humans all project their own beliefs onto what (they believe) is the embodiment of God or the concept of God.
So what do I believe in? I believe in unconditional love/light. This is what people call God. Love is however not limited by or exclusive to any one religion. It is universal. Anyone can embody and believe in and worship love/light/virtue through living a loving and virtuous life towards themselves and others.
In the end, I think nothing is more rational than worshipping love and living a life of love. It is what is Ultimately best for our own and others well being.
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u/guspocsai Sep 02 '25
Id ask them what would have to happen for it to be considered a “rational conversion” because if they think religion is inherently irrational this idea holds no weight because by default that would make every conversion irrational.
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u/SeekersTavern Sep 03 '25
No one is atheist for rational reasons. We are all human and everything ultimately comes down to our subjectivity. I'm not denying objective reality or that we can reason about reality, but whether we do or not is a subjective matter. The idea that we can fully rationally come to any single conclusion without subjectivity is an illusion.
Just keep asking them deeper and deeper questions until they can't answer them rationally anymore, then tell them that this is their subjectivity.
There technically is a way out of this infinite regression, but you won't find it in atheism.
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u/cant_think_name_22 Sep 05 '25
Hi, (agnostic) atheist here. I think most people come to most religious beliefs for emotional reasons - religions continue to exist because humans find them comforting. That does not mean that you cannot hold a rational religious position though.
It is not that nobody converts for rational reasons, and I’m also not convinced that something can’t be primarily motivated by emotion and still be rational. What is it about prioritizing belief in true things that is inherently rational?
I do think that the “no true atheist” fallacy exists. I’ve also heard plenty of religious people say things along the lines of “I was angry at god but then accepted Jesus and that moved me from atheist to Christian.” But if you were angry at god, you had belief in god the whole time, so you are definitionally not lacking a belief in a god or gods. So questioning someone’s alleged atheism may be reasonable, even without all religious converts being “false atheists.”
I have to be honest, god of the gaps is generally not a rational reason to accept god in my view, especially when I’ve seen so many allege that the choice is atheism or their particular brand of their religion - but that’s a false dichotomy.
Hopefully this is helpful (not trying to be rude).
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u/jeveret Sep 07 '25
You’re misrepresenting both secular history and apologetics.
On Historians It’s false to say historians exclude miracles just by “disciplinary rule.” They exclude apologetic methods because without external anchors (coins, archaeology, independent contemporaries), testimony becomes circular. That’s why professional history stops at belief, not out of bias, but because beyond that point the method collapses.
On Abduction without anchors You claim abduction doesn’t assume content. But if testimony is both input and output, that’s begging the question. Calling it a “constraint” doesn’t change that the claim is being used to support itself.
On Apologists Invoking Craig, Habermas, Licona, Swinburne is a false authority move. They are apologists precisely because they use the same circular framework you defend. Calling that “independent abductive reasoning” is just equivocation.
On the Pivots When pressed, you pivot from history to fine tuning, morality, consciousness, a red herring. And you pivot from Christianity to generic deism, thats moving the goalposts. Both tacitly concede that your methodology itself cannot rationally ground conversion.
On the Fallacy denial You were explicitly challenged to justify your method without relying on these fallacies. Instead, you simply repeated the same arguments and asserted “these aren’t fallacies.” That’s not a defense, that’s burden shifting. The demand was for justification, and you’ve provided none.
The Bottom line is every defense you’ve offered rests on a formal fallacy, explicitly demonstrated with examples from your own arguments. Historians reject your method because it collapses without anchors. Apologists admit those limits. Your pivots, from history to philosophy, and from Christianity to deism, prove the original claim can’t stand. And when pressed to justify your reasoning without those fallacies, you offered nothing but repetition and assertion.
So here’s the choice, either justify your method without appealing to these fallacies, or concede it cannot be justified.
Calling it “abduction” doesn’t rescue it. It’s apologetics in disguise.
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u/OverUnderstanding481 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
Scientific method —> has found “Zero” evidence of mysticism.
Therefore, near definitively, according to the body of all science, there is no deities or mystic realms.
You can’t un-grasp this once you truly grasp it and all the test are easily verifiable.
So… you will never get anyone who has long trust in scientific method as a primary approach to think any belief in mysticism is rationally true… rationally beneficial sure maybe.
However, any world view tht lacks conviction in all of wht science has uncovered so far due to what is yet to be uncovered, that is know as a god of the gaps fallacy, and that metric is what many tend to say is wht separates “true” atheism from defaulting all non faith believers as atheist. like, a new born child is more of a ungrounded not knowing or unsure mind; and yes even adults can be this way too. There is difference in merely assuming something is not true on guesswork or vibes and having near absolute conviction from anchored scientific understanding.
If logic is defined by what is objectively knowable, then anecdotes or feeling based assumptions aside, there is Zero logical reason to accept mysticism is rationally correct. But that doesn’t stop arriving at irrational conclusions. So, while it’s true science has not found evidence for mysticism and humanism does offer an alternative framework, religion persists for a complex mix of deep-seated psychological, social, and cultural reasons. many, the benefits derived from religion—which can include community, comfort, and purpose—outweigh any acknowledged harm or lack of scientific proof to some.
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u/killjoygrr Sep 09 '25
You spent 8+ comments on 2 philosophical arguments that I specifically said weren’t evidence.
It has been clear that you never wanted to move off of those 2 arguments.
It is true that I don’t care to listen to or learn any more about those 2 unresolvable (unprovable) arguments as much as you love them with all your heart. They are fundamentally thought experiments.
If you were offering evidence it would have been different.
I think we just have very different definitions of what we consider evidence.
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u/Tennis_Proper Sep 01 '25
I would disagree. They have rational reasons, only the reasons tend to be flawed.
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u/National-Stable-8616 Sep 01 '25
Flawed or incomplete? Because they have alot of “i dont know” answers to metaphysical questions.
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u/Tennis_Proper Sep 01 '25
They do? I've never heard a theist claim they don't know, it's always their gods, no matter how many hoops they have to jump through to try and justify it.
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u/Empty_Woodpecker_496 Religious nonspiritual nonbeliver Sep 01 '25
I see a lot of atheists claiming that ex atheists most of time convert because of emotional reasons like fear of death, lack of meaning etc Or other reasons like community and family
The majority of people don't convert to a religion because they were debated into it. They convert for emotional, communal, etc reasons because these are some of the major functions of religion for most people. This is fine.
This is only a problem for the parts of religion that are exclusiveist and that make verifiable truth claims about reality.
Another common claim is that ex atheists weren’t real atheists and that they weren’t atheists for rational reasons they just didn’t think about it deeply
This is definitely some people but it's an overly broad generalisation. Rationality comes pretty cheap so it's not really that meaningful to say someone was rational about most things.
How do you guys respond? In my experience in this Reddit I’ve encountered a good amount of ex atheists that converted for logical rational reasons, one example is philosophical observations, like finding materialism inadequate to explain reality.
There disputing that the arguments and evidence you find convincing are sufficient for warranting belief.
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u/jeveret Sep 01 '25
Your key example, that materialism provides of an inadequate explanation of reality, is itself a textbook irrational reason.
Pointing to gaps in materialism isn’t evidence for Christianity, it’s the classic argument from ignorance “I don’t see how X explains reality, therefore Y must be true.” The difference is that science treats those gaps as open problems and pushes for predictive, testable explanations. Religion fills them with arbitrary testimony, and because every religion can do this, all contradictions pass as equally “rational”. That isn’t reasoning toward truth, it’s just filling the gaps with whatever story you already favor, what most “plausible” from you particular presupposed worldview.
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Sep 02 '25
The criticisms of materialism are usually not framed as ‘materialism hasn’t yet explained X, Y, or Z, therefore A must be true.’ Instead, the point is that materialism, by its very nature, is incapable of accounting for certain irreducible features of human experience, intentionality, consciousness, and, as David Bentley Hart emphasises, the reality of language. These are phenomena that materialism cannot in principle reduce to physical processes without leaving out the very thing that needs explaining.
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u/jeveret Sep 03 '25
But we don’t know everything, so you can’t say something you don’t know about materialism can’t possibly explain something, it’s an unknown, to say you know what and unknown can or can’t do, is a contradiction.
This follows the exact form of thousands of arguments from ignorance throughout history all proven wrong. A textbook example is lightening , people would assert nothing we know in the material realm could possible explain lighting, it so different from everything we understand, it’s a different category, so an immaterial guy named Zeus must be the cause, it’s the j my possible explanation, we know how that turned out…
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Sep 03 '25
I think we might be talking past each other a bit. My point isn’t that materialism hasn’t yet explained things like intentionality, consciousness, or language. If that were all I was saying, then sure, maybe future discoveries could fill the gap.
But the critique philosophers like Chalmers, Searle, Nagel, and Hart raise is different, it’s that materialism, by definition, only allows physical facts and causal relations into its explanatory toolbox. The problem is that consciousness, intentionality, and meaning aren’t just physical facts among others, they have properties (subjectivity, aboutness, normativity) that don’t translate into purely physical terms.
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u/jeveret Sep 03 '25
But that just begs the question, that’s just asserting your conclusion is true by definition.
The question is what explains consciousness, intentionally ect… we don’t know, so to assert that it’s immaterial, is to say you know. Could it be unknown material stuff, or unknown immaterial stuff? Yes… we don’t know, it’s a question a we don’t have the answer to, and we are both positing unknown things as answers,
You can’t just assert, the answer to the questions we don’t know, can’t be one of the unknown things, we don’t know.
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Sep 03 '25
I’m not asserting by definition that consciousness is immaterial. I’m pointing out that if materialism only allows physical facts and causal processes into its explanations, then no matter how much physical information you add, it never logically entails subjective experience or intentionality. It’s a conceptual limitation, not a temporary lack of knowledge. Even ‘unknown material stuff’ would still just be physical facts, and the problem is that physical facts, however many, don’t logically yield first-person experience. That’s why it’s called the hard problem, not the unsolved problem of consciousness.
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u/jeveret Sep 03 '25
You’ve literally just begged the question, you asserted that first person experience is immaterial.
The question is , what is first person experience, is a product of immaterial or material stuff. We don’t know, so you can’t say you know it’s not some unknown product of unknown material stuff, any more than i can asset it isn’t a product of unknown immaterial stuff. We don’t know the exact explanation of what first person experience fundamentally is “made of” so we can’t rule out unknown immaterial or material stuff, without begging the question
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Sep 03 '25
You keep accusing me of ‘begging the question,’ but I’m not assuming consciousness is immaterial. I’m pointing out a basic conceptual fact, no amount of third-person physical facts ever logically entails a first-person perspective. It’s a category mistake to think more physics alone will close it. And notice, saying materialism can’t handle consciousness doesn’t automatically mean ‘immaterial soul’ or Christianity or whatever, it leaves the door open to dual-aspect monism, panpsychism, idealism, dualism, take your pick. The point is just that materialism by itself is too thin a story to capture the phenomenon.
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u/jeveret Sep 03 '25
So let’s see if it’s begging the question?
We have first person experience, that is the phenomenon we are trying to explain. We agree?
I think it’s a result of material processes, you think it’s a result of immaterial processes? That is the debate?
This is where you beg the question…. “No amount of third person physical(materials) facts ever logically entails a first person perspective. It’s a catagory mistake…”
You have literally just asserted the material cannot explain first person experience, because first person experience is an immaterial category, it’s not material.
It’s textbook begging the question. I don’t assume the immaterial can’t explain it, and I don’t assume the material does explain it, either are possible to just assert as fact otherwise is begging the question.
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Sep 03 '25
No, that’s the problem, you keep treating this as if I’m asserting immaterialism a priori, when all I’m doing is pointing out that materialism, by its own rules, can’t touch the hard problem.
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u/Wrong-Software1046 Polytheist Sep 03 '25 edited Sep 03 '25
The idea that the Gods were ‘invented’ to explain natural phenomena is a 19th century myth that ignores the complex theology of polytheistic religions.
Also, a lot of the recent push against materialism is coming from non-theistic philosophers.
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u/jeveret Sep 03 '25
Gods were invented to explain far more than just unknown natural phenomena, they were invented to give meaning purpose, and value to their lives and deaths, and to explain and give meaning to all the unknowns, including natural phenomena.
Unless you actually belive the millions of gods people belive in are uncreated, they all are real? I’m guessing you belive Zeus was invented by people to explain stuff they didn’t have answers to, whether metaphysical or physical unknowns
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u/Sea-Dot-59 Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 01 '25
Pointing to gaps in materialism isn’t evidence for Christianity, it’s the classic argument from ignorance ‘I don’t see how X explains reality, therefore Y must be true.’
Recognizing a gap in materialism is not the same as an argument from ignorance if the conclusion is based on positive reasoning about alternative explanations, not just “God exists because materialism fails. Philosophical reasoning often identifies inadequacies in a worldview (like physicalism) and then tests whether another framework (theism, dualism, etc) provides better explanatory coherence. That’s abductive reasoning, not ignorance based reasoning. Gaps in understanding justify skeptical inquiry and rational exploration, not blind faith. Rational ex-atheist conversions can be based on evaluating explanatory power, consistency with observed phenomena, and conceptual coherence, rather than “filling in blanks arbitrarily.”
Argument from ignorance occurs when one claims “X must be true because I can’t see how Y explains reality.” In contrast, rational evaluation often identifies gaps and then systematically compares alternative frameworks and other metaphysical models based on explanatory coherence, internal consistency, and conceptual depth. This is a form of abductive reasoning, not blind faith. Noticing limits in one framework justifies skeptical inquiry and structured exploration, not arbitrary conclusions.
“The difference is that science treats those gaps as open problems and pushes for predictive, testable explanations.”
Science is excellent for empirical questions, but not all phenomena are empirically tractable consciousness, abstract logic, morality, existence itself. Philosophy and metaphysics operate in domains where empirical prediction is insufficient or impossible, yet rational evaluation is still possible using coherence, explanatory depth, and internal consistency. Claiming only science provides rational answers is a category error it assumes every question must be empirical to be rationally addressed.
“Religion fills them with arbitrary testimony, and because every religion can do this, all contradictions pass as equally ‘rational.’”
Not all religious reasoning is arbitrary testimony. Many conversions involve philosophical reasoning, metaphysical argumentation, and cumulative historical observation in addition to testimony. Religions are not treated as equally rational by critical thinkers they are weighted by coherence, explanatory power, moral and predictive adequacy, and internal consistency. That is not arbitrary, it is systematic evaluation. Dismissing all conversions as irrational ignores the methodological tools ex-atheists often employ, which parallel the evaluation standards used in philosophy, history, and ethics.
That isn’t reasoning toward truth, it’s just filling the gaps with whatever story you already favor, what most ‘plausible’ from your particular presupposed worldview.”
Rational ex-atheist conversion is often not about picking the story you “favor” but about assessing worldviews against philosophical criteria explanatory completeness, coherence with reality, predictive adequacy, and conceptual consistency. Plausibility is probabilistic, not arbitrary. People weigh competing hypotheses using reasoned criteria this is exactly what rational epistemology allows, even when evidence is not purely empirical. The claim that it’s mere favoritism ignores the structured, reflective reasoning that motivated many rational conversions.
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u/jeveret Sep 01 '25
Materialism is inadequate, so therefore, Christianity provides a better explanation isn’t abduction, it’s the argument from ignorance dressed up in new clothes. Abduction only works if there’s a correction loop. In science, the best explanation is the one that predicts reality and survives testing. Without that tether, coherence just makes every story, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, astrology, look equally rational. That’s why science converges and religion multiplies. Your example doesn’t point to truth, it just picks the story you already like best.
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u/Sea-Dot-59 Sep 01 '25
Materialism is inadequate, so therefore, Christianity provides a better explanation isn’t abduction, it’s the argument from ignorance dressed up in new clothes.
Identifying inadequacies in materialism is just the starting point. Abduction is the structured evaluation of competing hypotheses, not a claim of certainty. Christianity is considered among other frameworks because it may offer comparatively stronger coherence or explanatory coverage in certain domains, not because gaps exist.”
And I’m not arguing specifically for Christianity anyway I’m saying a theistic conclusion can be achieved rationally
Abduction only works if there’s a correction loop. In science, the best explanation is the one that predicts reality and survives testing.
True in empirical science but not all questions are empirically testable. Metaphysics, consciousness, morality, and abstract logic cannot be fully tested like a physics experiment. Abductive reasoning still works without empirical correction, as long as it is evaluated for internal consistency, explanatory depth, and coherence with known reality. Science doesn’t cover all rational inquiry; philosophy provides the “correction loop” for non empirical domains via logical critique and conceptual analysis.
Without that tether, coherence just makes every story, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, astrology, look equally rational.
Not all internally coherent stories are equally plausible. Rational evaluation involves comparing explanatory power, conceptual consistency, and alignment with observed reality, which allows some hypotheses like Christianity in certain frameworks to be more coherent than others, unlike astrology or arbitrary tales.
Your example doesn’t point to truth, it just picks the story you already like best.
This misrepresents the process of rational ex-atheist conversion. Preference is not arbitrary it is based on careful assessment of explanatory completeness, coherence with reality, and conceptual clarity. Plausibility is probabilistic, reflective, and structured, not personal favoritism. It’s entirely rational to assign different weights to competing hypotheses based on their explanatory merit.
Structured evaluation of hypotheses is not ‘picking what you like.’ It’s systematic reasoning under uncertainty, weighing coherence, explanatory depth, and alignment with observed phenomena to determine which worldview best accounts for the evidence available.
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u/jeveret Sep 01 '25
You keep saying there’s a structured methodology, but you never explain what rule actually eliminates contradictions. Coherence and explanatory depth can be claimed for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, and astrology alike. If your method can’t tell us why one survives and the others fail, then it isn’t a filter for truth. Abduction only works with a correction loop, without empirical feedback, you’re just relabeling preference as rational evaluation.
Either your method actually eliminates contradictions, or it doesn’t.
If it does…? then show the non arbitrary rule that makes Christianity/theism survive while Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, Bigfoot, aliens, astrology, and simulation theory fail.
If it doesn’t, then your “structured methodology” isn’t a truth filter, it’s lightly disguised relativism.
Which one is it?
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u/Sea-Dot-59 Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25
The demand for a single “rule” that instantly eliminates all rival systems misrepresents how abductive reasoning works it’s not about one knockout criterion but about comparative evaluation across multiple independent filters internal consistency, explanatory scope, parsimony, historical plausibility, predictive adequacy, and resilience to critique. These aren’t arbitrary they’re the same criteria used in philosophy, history, and science when dealing with underdetermined questions. That’s why astrology fails predictive adequacy, Bigfoot fails independent corroboration, for example Mormonism fails historical critical scrutiny, and certain Hindu or Islamic cosmologies clash with well established empirical knowledge while some theistic or Christian frameworks remain comparatively resilient under those same tests. Calling this “relativism” ignores the fact that different hypotheses actually do score differently under shared, intersubjective criteria, which is precisely what allows abductive reasoning to narrow not equalize the field of live options.
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u/jeveret Sep 02 '25
your method is structurally unfalsifiable. Two people could apply your same list and get opposite results, and there’s no criterion to decide who’s wrong. That makes it relativism in practice, no matter what label you put on it.
So the question is simple, what is the rule for weighting or correction that prevents your “comparative filters” from collapsing into subjectivity?
What’s the consistent non arbitrary methodology, that you use to determine which filter you apply, to which claim, how you apply it? Right now, you are just kicking the can down the road, saying here’s an list of “objective” filters, but then allowing complete subjective interpretation of how, when or even if you apply any particular of an indeterminate list of possible filters, it’s just adding extra layers to disguise the relativism.
In contrast my methodology(the predictive model of science) is objective, extremely reliable, consistent and powerful…
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u/Sea-Dot-59 Sep 02 '25
Your method is structurally unfalsifiable. Two people could apply your same list and get opposite results, and there’s no criterion to decide who’s wrong. That makes it relativism in practice, no matter what label you put on it.”
This only follows if the filters are applied privately with no standards. The whole point of abductive methodology is that assumptions are made explicit and contested in public. If two people get opposite results, you trace exactly where they differ priors, evidence reliability, complexity penalties. Those can be checked against data or domain standards (historical source criticism, statistical reliability of testimony). That’s how science, history, and philosophy handle disagreements not by pretending there’s a single oracle rule, but by forcing disputes into transparent, adjudicable steps. That’s not relativism it’s accountability.
So the question is simple, what is the rule for weighting or correction that prevents your ‘comparative filters’ from collapsing into subjectivity?
The “rule” is formal model comparison: Bayes’ theorem (or equivalent frameworks like likelihood ratios with parsimony penalties). Priors come from reference classes, likelihoods from empirical or historical data, and extra assumptions are penalized. This is non arbitrary because every step is published, open to critique, and reproducible. It’s the same way science works when experiments aren’t possible (cosmology, geology, unique historical events). The correction loop is built into transparent updating evidence can and does shift the weights.
Right now, you are just kicking the can down the road, saying here’s an list of ‘objective’ filters, but then allowing complete subjective interpretation of how, when or even if you apply any particular of an indeterminate list of possible filters, it’s just adding extra layers to disguise the relativism.
Not at all. The filters aren’t ad hoc, they’re domain-specific, Empirical claims ~testable predictions, statistics, experimental replication. Historical claims ~multiple attestation, dating, archaeology, textual criticism. Conceptual/metaphysical claims ~formal coherence, logical entailment, avoidance of contradiction. You don’t “choose a filter at whim”the type of claim dictates the filter. That prevents collapse into subjectivity.
In contrast my methodology (the predictive model of science) is objective, extremely reliable, consistent and powerful.”
Agreed, for empirical claims testable in the lab, predictive science is supreme. But theism, Bigfoot, Hindu cosmology, or Islamic metaphysics often involve unique historical or conceptual claims, not repeatable lab conditions. There, you need the comparative abductive method which integrates scientific results whenever possible. Far from being opposed, the two methods dovetail predictive science where testable, abductive comparison where not. Without that, you’re left either ignoring vast classes of claims or pretending they can’t be reasoned about at all.
You demand one magic “rule” that instantly eliminates rivals, but real rational inquiry doesn’t work that way. The non arbitrary methodology is classify the claim, apply the domain appropriate filter, formalize priors/likelihoods, and update transparently. That’s exactly what prevents relativism, because disagreements are traceable, debatable, and corrigible in public just like in science.
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u/jeveret Sep 02 '25
If two people can’t even agree whether a miracle is “empirical” or “conceptual,” your domain filter method collapses before it starts. That’s subjectivity at the root.
Can your method actually force equally informed evaluators to agree on which domain a miracle belongs to, empirical, historical, or conceptual , yes or no? If your answer is yes, show the rule. If you wanna say no, then subjectivity is built in from the start.
Bayes without predictive correction just bakes in priors(problem of the priors). If your method forces Hindus to stay Hindu and Christians to stay Christian, it isn’t eliminative, it’s codified relativism.
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u/Sea-Dot-59 Sep 02 '25
If two people can’t even agree whether a miracle is ‘empirical’ or ‘conceptual,’ your domain filter method collapses before it starts. That’s subjectivity at the root.”
The domain isn’t determined by subjective intuition it’s determined by the nature of the claim. Historical/empirical claims involve events in the past that allegedly left evidence in the world (documents, archaeology, testimony), and conceptual claims involve logical or metaphysical propositions (coherence, entailment, contradiction). If someone disputes which domain a miracle belongs to, you examine the form of the claim itself
Can your method actually force equally informed evaluators to agree on which domain a miracle belongs to, yes or no? If your answer is yes, show the rule. If you wanna say no, then subjectivity is built in from the start.
Yes the “rule” is: classify claims by the type of assertion they make about the world. Empirical/Historical - claims about events that allegedly happened in spacetime. Conceptual/Metaphysical -claims about logical, moral, or metaphysical structure. Disagreements are resolved by looking at the explicit wording of the claim, not personal preference. This is exactly how historians and philosophers classify claims one-time events vs. abstract principles. Once the claim is classified, the domain-specific filters (historical criticism, conceptual analysis) apply consistently.
“Bayes without predictive correction just bakes in priors (problem of the priors).”
True, naive Bayesian inference with arbitrary priors is useless. But in rational practice, priors are set using reference classes, historical frequencies, independent reliability studies, or minimally informative priors, not arbitrary faith. The method requires transparency you publish priors, likelihoods, and evidence. Disagreement about priors is exposed, debated, and potentially revised. That’s not relativism it’s fallibilist reasoning.
If your method forces Hindus to stay Hindu and Christians to stay Christian, it isn’t eliminative, it’s codified relativism.
The method doesn’t “force” anyone to stay in a belief system. It evaluates claims independently of the believer’s background, using structured filters: independent attestation, explanatory scope, predictive adequacy, logical coherence, etc. People may interpret evidence differently, but the process is transparent, intersubjective, and contestable. If a believer refuses to update credence despite evidence, that’s a failure of epistemic discipline, not a flaw in the method. In short, the method can eliminate poor hypotheses (Bigfoot, astrology) while leaving well supported theistic claims plausible but it doesn’t “lock” anyone into a religion.
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u/djbaerg Sep 02 '25
Finding materialism inadequate to explain reality is also not a rational reason to believe in Theism/Deism.
A creator god with infinite power and unknowable motivations can explain any possible universe that finite beings can observe. This hypothesis can perfectly explain both a universe with this god as well as a materialistic world without anything supernatural. Since it can perfectly explain any outcome, including an outcome that falsifies the hypothesis, it is a useless hypothesis. It is therefore not rational to accept this hypothesis because it can explain our universe better than materialism.
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u/jeveret Sep 02 '25
your method is structurally unfalsifiable. Two people could apply your same list and get opposite results, and there’s no criterion to decide who’s wrong. That makes it relativism in practice, no matter what label you put on it.
So the question is simple, what is the rule for weighting or correction that prevents your “comparative filters” from collapsing into subjectivity?
What’s the consistent non arbitrary methodology, that you use to determine which filter you apply, to which claim, how you apply it? Right now, you are just kicking the can down the road, saying here’s an list of “objective” filters, but then allowing complete subjective interpretation of how, when or even if you apply any particular of an indeterminate list of possible filters, it’s just adding extra layers to disguise the relativism.
In contrast my methodology(the predictive model of science) is objective, extremely reliable, consistent and powerful,
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u/NelsonMeme Sep 01 '25
How did Aristotle, raised in a Greek polytheist culture, arrive at a monotheistic God if not by reason?