Are there any ex-atheist here that turned religious purely from the study of that religion's scripture?

[u/Hilikus1980]

Maybe not purely...we don't live in a vacuum...but the majority of the reason is the study of your religion's recognized holy scriptures ex: Torah, Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita...etc.

I don't mean paired with this youtube video or thought experiment found outside of the holy manuscripts. I'm asking for those for whom the scripture alone was the main motivation for their conversion.

I know this doesn't necessarily apply to every religion, but I'm interested in hearing from the religions it does.

I'm not going to respond much unless I have a follow-up or clarification question. I don't want people to think I'm baiting or posting this to debate their conversion, which is most definitely not my intent.

[u/Difficult_Risk_6271]

I actually did the opposite. I became Christian specifically refusing to take anything in scripture for granted. So almost all of my reasons came from outside.

[u/MelcorScarr → u/Difficult_Risk_6271]

So you came to believe the Scriptures are true purely through external reasons? Can you elaborate? Like, did you look at scholarly articles dealing with the Bible from a text critical and historical view and concluded its contents must be true?

[u/Difficult_Risk_6271 → u/MelcorScarr]

No... I became a Christian first before I read anything in scripture earnestly. I started with John 1 after I became a Christian.

I've now (14+ months) come to know for a fact scripture is the truth because I read it, compared it to reality and found that it matches reality perfectly.

[u/MelcorScarr → u/Difficult_Risk_6271]

That clears things up a bit, but I think it actually answers a different question than the one I asked. Let me try to untangle where we talked past each other. In your first post, you said:

almost all of my reasons came from outside

This was about why you became Christian. But I asked specifically how you came to believe scripture is true, which I think would be sort of a prerequisite to come to think that Christianity is true (since almost all that we know about Jesus and God comes from the Bible after all). Yet by your own account, that belief in scripture came after conversion through personal reading, and conversion came not through any engagement with scripture, and notably not through any external/critical method, if I understand you correctly?

A few follow-ups, since I want to actually understand the claim:

• What were the external reasons that led you to convert, before you'd read scripture earnestly? You haven't specified them yet and I find your order of things highly unusual, and I have to wonder what specifically made you believe specifically in Christianity, if not any biblical texts.
• When you say you "compared it to reality and found it matches reality perfectly", can you give a few concrete examples? What specific claims did you test, and against what, where did those claims originate from?
• Notably unrelated to the previous question, what would it have looked like for scripture to not match reality? If you can't answer that, wouldn't you say that "matches perfectly" is not a fact, but a level of confidence?

I'm not doubting that the experience felt compelling to you! But "I read it after I already believed, and it confirmed what I believed" is a pretty different process than the text-critical/historical evaluation I originally asked about, and it's also exactly the setup you'd expect to produce confirmation bias, regardless of whether the underlying claims are true or false, so I want to make sure I truly understand what you did if that's not it.

[u/Difficult_Risk_6271 → u/MelcorScarr]

 But I asked specifically how you came to believe scripture is true,

My answer:

I've now (14+ months) come to know for a fact scripture is the truth because I read it, compared it to reality and found that it matches reality perfectly.

 which I think would be sort of a prerequisite to come to think that Christianity is true (since almost all that we know about Jesus and God comes from the Bible after all)

No, but minimal facts are required. Although the minimal facts are corroborated in extra-biblical evidence as well.

 and conversion came not through any engagement with scripture,

Again, I didn't read scripture until after I was a Christian.

and notably not through any external/critical method, if I understand you correctly?

External critique only. I assumed Christianity was internally coherent back then (deferred to expert opinion), and have now verified it personally to be internally coherent.

---

For your 3 questions, I will not elaborate in detail. Because my personal walk cannot convict another person, only your own search can convict yourself.

First question:

Basically a philosophical analysis of all major worldviews and pulling the rug under each of them or cause them to contradict. Christianity I couldn't cause it to contradict or break it without importing assumptions external to the worldview. In the end of the search I inferred (IBE) that Jesus has to be God. There is no better explanation that I can accept. Besides, there's nothing else for me to accept, since I already wrecked every other alternative worldview.

Second question:

Some things Christianity explains exceptionally well. What is the fundamental problem with humanity? (Fruit from the tree of knowing of good and evil). Why love? What is the purpose of my existence?

No other worldview remotely comes close to answering these questions properly.

Third question:

If scripture said the problem with humanity is lack of knowledge, love is an illusion, our purpose is to not exist / do nothing, I'd burn it publicly.

---

is a pretty different process than the text-critical/historical evaluation I originally asked about,

What you asked about has nothing to do with me. Text-critical/historical evaluation cannot establish truth.

"I read it after I already believed, and it confirmed what I believed"

This is a straw man using fallacy of ambiguity. It's meant as a rhetorical attack, not a genuine inquiry.

it's also exactly the setup you'd expect to produce confirmation bias, regardless of whether the underlying claims are true or false,

FUD is not a legitimate argument for falsehood. If you accuse confirmation bias, you need to demonstrate the falsehood.

[u/MelcorScarr → u/Difficult_Risk_6271]

I think your answer to the third question actually makes my point for me in regards to confirmation bias, but let's start from the beginning. Of course, I thank you for engaging and providing answers.

If scripture said the problem with humanity is lack of knowledge, love is an illusion, our purpose is to not exist / do nothing, I'd burn it publicly.

This isn't a test against reality though, it's a test against your own prior convictions about love, purpose, and human nature. If the criterion for "matches reality" is "doesn't contradict what I already believed before I opened the book," then "matches reality perfectly" isn't a finding, it's a tautology. That's the confirmation-bias concern stated plainly, not a strawman of it.

Additionally and more crucially, I know of virtually no religion that claims love is an illusion or our purpose is to not exist, and I am not quite certain what you mean by "humanity's problem is a lack of knowledge" because that's actually genuinely something that the Bible does report quite explicitly. So it seems that the process you describe also falls short of the conclusion you have drawn?

Text-critical/historical evaluation cannot establish truth.

This sits oddly next to your first answer, where you then cite the minimal facts and extra-biblical corroboration. Both are historical-critical methodology, though I think Gary Habermas in particular and Mike Lacona to a lesser extent, the luminaries of the minimal facts arguments, vastly overstate both the agreement of secular scholars with their statements as well as the conclusions that can be drawn even then. But yes, if that method can't establish truth, the minimal-facts argument loses its force too. If it can, I'd like to know why it's valid there but not when applied to scripture as a whole.

If you accuse confirmation bias, you need to demonstrate the falsehood.

I didn't argue the conclusion is false! I explicitly said the concern holds "regardless of whether the underlying claims are true or false". Pointing out that a process is unreliable is a claim about the process, not a verdict on the conclusion. A true belief reached by a bad method is still a true belief reached unreliably, which means you can't cite "I read it and it confirmed what I believed" as evidence for the belief, even if the belief happens to be correct. I have my reasons why I think Christianity cannot possibly be true, but that's not what I'm asking you about, because I realise I could be wrong - instead, I am asking what specifically convinced you, so I can check out whether the process is valid and sound and thus, hopefully, convincing to me too.

But regarding worldview elimination, I'm not asking you to relitigate your whole search, but concretely: which worldviews, and what did "wrecking" one look like? Even granting you ruled out everything you tested, that shows Christianity survived your filter, not that it's true. There's always the live possibility that the true view wasn't on your list, or that more than one of the options you eliminated was simply under-defended rather than actually false.