I sometimes post the nasty emails I get from Christians, and I’ve gotten a fair few in the last two weeks (saying that morality doesn’t come from God drove many Christers wild), but an email like the following makes up for everything. Forgive me for putting this up, but who doesn’t like to feel that their efforts have paid off? I did not, of course, write my book to turn people into atheists, but if it has that effect—and rational discussion of evidence often does—then that’s all well and good.
This is posted with permission.
Dear Jerry,
Ever since I read your book (WEIT) I have been lurking about on your website and don’t really tend to comment on any posts. I thought it would be appropriate however to send you an email to say thanks – I’ll clarify why in a moment.
I am a thirty-two-year-old male from [a country in northern Europe]. I work as a software engineer and during coffee breaks I read your website. I also have a cat named [name redacted] – I might send in some more about him later 🙂
I was raised a Christian by my parents. Both of them are scientists, however both of them are also religious (my mother much more so than my father). As a young boy I accepted everything for granted and had no doubt in my mind that everything I heard at Sunday School was plain and simply true. As I grew up however, doubts formed in my mind.
From about fifteen I started thinking about the subject more rationally and started asking myself questions. I found out that I could not combine my (otherwise rational and secular) worldview with my Christian upbringing. For a long time however, I sat on the fence and did not worry about it too much.
By the time I was thirty I think I was a de facto atheist although I might not have had the courage to own up to it if I had been put on the spot. Somehow I was basically too scared to admit it, even to myself. For a long time I had struggled with my own mortality. After reading your book and making up my mind about the subject, I suddenly felt liberated and free. I went on to read more material and more rationalist sources. And the further I went, the more free, liberated and happy I felt! The uncertainty was slowly wearing off to be replaced by rationality and clarity.
I’d like to say thanks for writing your book. For me it formed a turning point, the figurative straw that broke religion’s back in my mind. Being from a European country I never had any doubts about evolution as it was taught in schools and formed a solid basis for my understanding of nature. However, it took me a long time to be able to throw off the fetters of religion and your book formed a turning point for me in that regard.
Feel free to publish this email if you like, I would however appreciate you not publishing my name or email.
Thanks,
[name redacted]
Feel free to say a few words to this brave soul. By the way, I have never gotten a single email telling me that my atheist writings have turned someone away from evolution who had initially accepted it or was interested in it. And, given the emails I’ve gotten lately, don’t think those people would be hesitant to write!
Conga rats, [name redacted]! Welcome to the real world!
Cheers,
b&
Very nice. I could have written some of that about myself. Except the part about being European. And the part about having scientist parents. And… Well, never mind. Very nice, indeed.
Well done [name redacted]! Interesting how much angst and work it takes to accept there is no god. I remember going through the same exercise myself. It was evolution that cinched it for me but it was at the time a wrenching exercise.
I envy my son who has being brought up in the absence of religion and find all religions spooky and weird. He’ll never have to go through that.
Also I wonder how many of these nice letter the toners get. I bet not many.
That’s great! I love that you now feel ‘liberated and happy’
Bringing reality and one’s beliefs about it into alignment requires honesty, which is sometimes very difficult to exercise. But the willingness to try is a testament to intellectual character. That’s why it’s a brave thing to undertake and no small feat of accomplishment to achieve when the two are finally aligned. Be proud. You deserve it.
Do not be put off from commenting if you feel the urge. I hope that one day you will feel confident enough to be more open with friends & family. Good luck to you mate!
Welcome to our world! Your honesty and courage are inspiring. Thank you for sharing your story.
Good for you – it is difficult to think your way through all you were taught as a child. The old cliche about getting at children with religion is true.Some people never recover from it and never learn to appreciate the reality of the world as it is.
While reading the email, and being from Northwest Europe myself, something struck me as odd, and then he even brought it up himself: If you’re a Christian from Northern Europe, chances are that you have no problem whatsoever with evolution! (-when I moved to the States in 1992, and one day ran into someone who stated that Earth is about 6,000 years old, I had a good laugh: I thought he was pulling my leg. I had NO idea people actually believed that, and I was in for a HUGE shock when I finally found out how MANY Americans are YECs. I had NO clue-).
And the email writer then confirms that evolution has, indeed, never been a problem for him.
Then WHAT in WEIT “broke religion’s back”? As I recall, WEIT is purely a biology book, addressing the evidence for evolution.
I don’t recall that it dwelled much on other fallacies in religion. Did it? Do I need to re-read it? (Not that I need to be convinced of these fallacies).
That Dawkins’s oeuvre helps you change your mind on religion, okay, that WEIT helps you change your mind on whether evolution actually happened, okay, but reading WEIT making you an atheist? Nope, not buying it.
Oh, I can see it.
If [name redacted] had the usual amount of “belief in belief” combined with the usual shallow layman-level understanding of evolution, WEIT could easily have driven home the point that all these YECs are raving batshit insane loonies.
Once you understand just how powerful a theory the Theory of Evolution by Random Mutation and Natural Selection is, there’s no way to look at alternatives with any sort of charity. It’s like trying to pretend that astrological levitation is a reasonable way of explaining helium balloons. “Does not compute.”
As I read it, WEIT was, for [name redacted], that which convinced him(?) that there really isn’t any “there” there in religion for him to be charitable towards. However sincere the religious may be, they’re also as worng as can be. So why beat yourself up pretending otherwise?
In this light, it’s not hard at all to understand why reading WEIT would give [name redacted] a clean conscience to stop trying to pretend.
Cheers,
b&
I think you approach this from an American point of view where Christianity is often associated with the YEC viewpoint.
When you write “WEIT could easily have driven home the point that all these YECs are raving batshit insane loonies” .. you have to realize that in NW Europe most people don’t even know what a YEC is! When I grew up there, all Christians I knew were PERFECTLY at ease with evolution: didn’t even THINK of it as something that would contradict their faith or as something that even has something to do with faith. Think Ken Miller and Francis Collins!
I too come from a religious family with very religious parents, like [name-withheld], and was thoroughly done with religion around age 15/16. Contemplation about evolution never even once entered that process. It wasn’t part of the issue.
Hmm… I’m not sure if your explanation is one I agree with or not. Or at least, I’m not sure if you’re getting the same meaning out of Redacted’s letter that I am. Let me explain…
My conversion story is a similar to Redacted’s. I’ve always been a thinker, a questioner. Even though I was raised religious and considered myself a Christian (and had the usual hangups about sex and homosexuality and other things), I was always asking questions. At some point, I realized that I didn’t have any solid reasons to believe what I believed, and so I stopped calling myself a Christian and started calling myself Undecided. I wasn’t yet convinced that all these metaphysical claims were bullshit. I still retained many vestiges of my Christian upbringing. And I thought there was a high probability that I would end up being some kind of Christian in the end (though I considered other religions too).
As I learned more about the natural world, however, all that changed. WEIT was actually the tipping point for me, and I think it’s because learning about a theory as encompassing and broadly-supported as evolution helps a mind understand what it means to have support for an idea. It means that your theory should logically entail other facts, it should predict ones you haven’t yet found, it should be falsifiable if you find things that you shouldn’t find. It’s like a highly connected web of facts, each one supported by its neighbors.
Religion doesn’t have that. But I needed to understand what an explanation was supposed to have before I could understand that religion didn’t have it. Learning about ToE (through Jerry’s excellent presentation) was like training in scientific thought. As I read WEIT, I found my mind “letting go” of its need to posit a god working behind the scenes. I had no more need of that hypothesis – it was an empty one to begin with!
That’s basically how I became an atheist. When I read Redacted’s letter, it seemed to me that his conversion had been something of the same.
Perhaps, Ben, you’re actually saying the same thing?
I think we’re probably expressing much the same sentiment. I’ve not had the experience the two of you have had, so I was only offering a plausible interpretation. You filled in details and sanded down the edges.
I think the money quote from you post is: “But I needed to understand what an explanation was supposed to have before I could understand that religion didn’t have it. Learning about ToE (through Jerry’s excellent presentation) was like training in scientific thought. As I read WEIT, I found my mind “letting go” of its need to posit a god working behind the scenes.”
It’s quite common for religious people to uncritically accept scientific facts while maintaining belief in a cosmic puppetmaster who tweaks the dials from time to time. Once you understand that there’s no need for, room for, or evidence of dial-tweaking in any form whatsoever, what’s left for gods?
Cheers,
b&
So, if I read you guys correctly, you’re saying that exposure to the scientific method did the trick, and not necessarily the presentation of evidence for evolution.
Okay, exposure to (and understanding of) the scientific method as an antidote to religion I DO buy. Too bad it doesn’t work for everyone (both name-withheld’s parents (scientists) and the aforementioned Ken Miller and Francis Collins come to mind).
Anyway, I don’t want to beat this to dead, but my only point was that if you’re religious but DO accept evolution, then Jerry’s otherwise fabulous book doesn’t seem like the first choice to turn one into an atheist (it wasn’t even written with that intention). It just struck me as odd. That’s all.
That it DID help name-withheld, well, good for him (AND Jerry!).
I should add to this that I grew up accepting what I was taught in school about evolution (which wasn’t much). I believed it, but didn’t know the evidence for it. My Jehovah’s Witness uncle had been trying to convince me it was all bullshit, and, not knowing the evidence for evolution, I was questioning it and trying to learn more about it.
WEIT was the first real presentation of the evidence that I’d read. So let the record state that while I always believed in evolution, I did not have a strong backing for that belief until reading WEIT.
I must say I’m surprised by your comment. You’re saying that you don’t buy Redacted’s conversion story, as if he… what, made it up?
No, I didn’t say he made it up. Nor did I say that I didn’t buy his conversion story! I said I didn’t buy the notion that reading WEIT makes one an atheist, especially given the fact that you have never had a problem with accepting evolution as a fact to begin with.
If you never had a problem with evolution, then WHAT in WEIT is going to change your mind (and about what)? You will know a lot more about evolution and its evidence, but how would it change your opinion about religion?
Of course, he mentioned WEIT as only being the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s (religion’s) back, but still.
What I would have found way more plausible, is when he would have claimed that reading Jerry’s ‘website’ (directed here by WEIT) ‘broke “religion’s” back.
Read my comment above to Ben about my own conversion. It’s true for me as well that reading WEIT was the tipping point. Obviously an “entire conversion” was not effected by one book, but it finished the job.
We’re always saying that religion is the antithesis of scientific thought, yes? So what happens when you teach someone to think scientifically? Exit religion.
Apparently Teh Religious require higher standards for conversion experiences to Atheism than to Christianity. Reading a book is insufficient for the former whereas what manifests as sunstroke on the road to Damascus works for the later.
My deconversion-story is very similar to yours and “name-redacteds”. Learning more and more about the ToE – not only from WEIT but from similar books as well – lead me to finally admit to myself that I was an atheist.
But I do not think “learning to think scientifically” was the crucial factor. Learning – finally daring! – to apply the standards I applied to all other “truth claims” to those of religion was much harder and a much more important step.
I personally think the actual reason for finally “losing my religion” was that, after reading all these books by atheist biologists, I came to accept their conclusion that the ToE and the existence of a benevolent creator with a personal interest in us human beings are mutually incompatible.
And as evolution was a fact I never had doubted that meant the intellectually honest thing to do was to give up the last remnants of semi-Christian believe in “a kind of higher power”.
It might well be that it is easier to reach this point when you are surrounded by people for whom accepting evolution as a fact and being a believer are incompatible.
Like name-redacted, I grew up in a society in which the theory of evolution is widely accepted by most people of faith. Only after reading WEIT and similar books I came to the conclusion that those who think they are compatible either do not know much about evolution or do not know much about their faith.
Live long and prosper.
Moar like this, plz.
And a bonus: s/he has a kitteh!
Yes, indeed — and may I take a moment? [name redacted], if you’ve yet to send your cat’s pictures and story to Jerry, please do so!
Cheers,
b&
“s/he has a kitteh!”
It’s a ‘he’. 😉
Duh. If only I could read…
Seems clear enough to me. 😉
/@
I felt like I was reading my own story. Liberating and freeing, indeed!
My path to atheism wound through being a cradle Catholic, reading the Bible and being horrified by it, accepting evolution (I was ignorant of the idea of “natural selection” until my college years) and then gradually realizing that there was no room for anything supernatural.
There was one incident that stands out: when I was with a date, I told her that I had gotten my “throat blessed” (the priest puts two blown out candles in a cross and touches one inner corner to your throat). She just about peed herself with laughter…she asked “do you BELIEVE that nonsense”. I started to laugh too and responded…”well, I got my flu shot so…”.
Little by little I, ahem, “evolved”. 🙂
(I know, that is a misuse of the term as biologists use it, but it is ok as physicists use it).
I still CRINGE when I think of all the ‘rituals’ I participated in as a young catholic boy … (not in the least ‘confession’!)
Yeah, I too was jolted out of a lot of intellecual laziness by being laughed at by people who I thought of as pretty damn smart.
I clearly remember a couple of incidents that led to me thinking, “Hmm, I’ve got some reading — and thinking — to do.”
The superstructure of faith crumbled pretty quickly, although not painlessly.
Good on you [name redacted]. It is so heartening to hear stories like yours; it puts a big smile on my face anyway.
I never had to face the first step on your road to freedom – my father, a scientist, never gainsaid anything; he just never talked about religion and happily signed notes to school to excuse his children from RE.
I feel for all of you who have had to put your foot on first pavement of the road that liberates. But, by golly, I applaud all of you. Well done [name redacted] and please give your name redacted cat a big hug from a fellow non-believer.
Welcome to the rest of us.
Glad to have you aboard, [name redacted]. Your story is an inspiring one and the phrase “I could not” when it comes to believing improbable things seems to be at the heart of a lot of defections to atheism.
I could not either. Lots of us could not.
The difficulty for me was that once I knew I could not, I didn’t realise that I *need* not. For a while.
Then everything got better.
Dear Letter Writer:
If you’re looking for some good atheist writing online, here’s some of the best:
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/index.html
Adam@ebonmusings gets a lot of credit but still not as much as he should.
Congrats on shaking out the cobwebs.
Good on ya!
We all have our personal journey. I had to work through “aieee, I’m gonna die” at around 7, as my youth had an on-again, off-again struggle with religion. (Due to having one atheist and one religious parent in a free upbringing. And I was always curious in all things.)
Flirting with religion to ‘save’ one’s life didn’t seem very moral and brave at the time. Ah, the idealism of youth!
I am also no friend of ideologies, after a brief flirt with communism at 11. Until after a few months I realized that “revolution” meant bloody revolution in practice. (Not due to my parents, but it was the vogue, “everyone” had to be “free thinking intellectual” at the time.)
It wasn’t until I later learned about the specific belief system that underlies that ideology. (Marxism.)
A pox on both houses, they lie their teeth off at little children.
My stance against the illusion of knowledge from philosophy is all fresh though. Unfortunately or fortunately those falsehoods don’t, or didn’t, propagate much among children and youths. Sigh, I wish I had learned the lesson of not provisionally accept alluring claims for good back then.
Welcome, [ name redacted ]!
My path to atheism started with Erich von Dâniken.
As a kind of anti-addictive.
/@
Ditto, but my catlick church helped
Ah! I’m also an ex-Catholic.
/@
PS. & of course, it’s “Däniken”, not “Dâniken”: pesky iPad!
Yippee! I love those who relate their stories of inspired knowledge. Congratulations, and thank you [R D] for sharing your “soul” with us.
Jerry, I must tell you, I have given your book to so many people of faith. They give me books to “read” and I give them WEIT in return.
One event where I gave your book was when I was invited to attend a New Earth Creation lecture given by two men who were in the oil patch here in Calgary. One was a Geologist and the more prominent speaker was a Chemical Engineer (I need to review that but I believe I’m correct).
Pre and post this “lecture”, which lasted all of 40 minutes, the 3 hours was filled with cutsey “god created the earth” songs by (I’m flustered to say) wee students of mine.
I passed along WEIT to a woman that I respect, even though she is of faith, but have yet to hear back from her. We will chat one day.
On a personal note, the transition from “yeeegads I’m gonna burn in hell” feeling to “ya, I’m ok with all of this and it makes so much sense, why don’t we all get it” is a huge ease to the brain. My mother was told she was excommunicated from the Catlick church for marrying my father, the son of a United Church minister. Plus, all her children would be bastards.
Pathoooeee! Gone. Freedom to think about sentient things, especially here on your site Jerry. Thank you!
And, [R D], thank you for sharing! Come share your thoughts. Welcome!
Could it be it was nice because it’s from and ex Christian? Well, Ill bet [name redected] was always polite. But so many Christians and other theists are not. The arrogant certainty can be just too much.
When I get fed up with them, this is one of the things I find cheering, for some odd reason. Maybe the humor grows from that mood.
youtube.com/watch?v=PQxYeaD873o&feature=related
I knocked off the www. in hopes this won’t blow up into a big embedded object.