You still cannot see or feel god, but you can everything else in your life. And when you came to your decision about GOD what made you immediately leap to the christian faith? Methinks you just got brainwashed by your wife.

Here's where you lose me: Christians believe in a God, Atheists do not. Given. But belief has never struck me as something a person could choose. In the case of conversion, it doesn't seem to me that people convert from not believing to believing; rather they convert from one mode of belief to another. In my opinion this would seem make conversion from Atheism to any variety of theism uncommonly difficult. (Maybe I'm wrong about this?) I'm sure the distinction will strike some Christians here as strange or inappropriate, as they often seem to interpret Atheism as actively believing in the non-existence of a God (which it sometimes) rather than a lack of believe (which, I'm inclined to think it more often is) but I think it stands nonetheless.

Hopefully this is making sense, but I'll throw in a personal anecdote to try to clarify a little: I have actually tried to believe in God. Multiple times. I was raised in a very religious (Christian) home and as a result grew up continually assaulted with the ideas of Hell and eternal torment for non-believers. Unfortunately, like all children, my psychology predisposed me to believe much of what adults told me. However, I have never (to my knowledge) been able to effortlessly believe in a deity. (Effortlessness seeming to be necessary for it to be true belief, and not self-persuasion.) This put me in the apparently uncommon position of attempting to force myself to believe something I could not believe, out of fear of a contingent assertion. As a result, I am quite familiar with the nature of belief being such that it is uninfluenced by artificial manipulation.

Maybe you were experiencing a different "kind" of Atheism than I am familiar with, or perhaps my assumptions are wrong. Feel free to correct me. But in any case, I'd like to know your take on that. Were you simply non-religious out of apathy prior to your conversion, or did you really not believe in theistic religion? Do you believe in God now? Do you believe in Jesus? (Forgive me if you feel the answers to those questions should go without saying. For me they don't, as I have myself attempted to be religious, while knowing all the while I didn't really believe any of what I was doing.) What does "belief" in those contexts mean to you? If you really did not believe in such premises before your conversion how do you think you began believing in them?

Sorry this comment is so long, (and contains so many questions) but I hope you respond. Please believe me that my questions are genuine and honest, and not intended to make a point or elicit a reaction. I know these days the interweebz seem to be full-to-the-eyeballs of trolling Atheist assholes (and trolling Christian assholes) and I'm not trying to be one of those.

Edit: This is the second time I've tried to post a comment, so if this one goes through twice, my apologies; it didn't work the first time. :O)

My congratulations and gratitude again! It's also oddly consoling to see that you also experienced the "you weren't really an atheist" or "you've chosen to be ignorant" comments. I'll never figure out why some of my former, atheist, friends ('former' by their choice, not mine) decided that the conversion FROM Christianity to atheism is "maturing" and discovering the work of God in my life was "ignorant." It honestly smacks of ego in the highest degree.

Once upon a time that would have made me angry. Now it just makes me a little sad.

Thanks again for sharing your story and for allowing a fellow convert to share it!

Thank you for sharing your story with us. I've got a somewhat similar story (replace atheist with agnostic and 27 year old with 37 year old) but have never really walked through it or written it down. I'm going to try to do that now.

And thanks for creating a cool community on your blog.

Peace.

They did an amazing job with that video too!

Thank you for being willing to let us all see into it.

As a former non-Christ-Follower, I am realizing that I did the same thing most of my adult life. Everyone that I knew that was 'religious' was 'old, and scared of death.' On top of that, most of them were judgmental and rude.

That was the picture I had of religious people. Unfortunately there are still plenty of those type of Christians, but Dewde and a whole generation of 'new followers' are going to unleash social changes, and care for people like older generations could only hope to. I'm glad I found your blog!

You may be correct that it doesn't hurt anyone that you believe what you believe, but your actions may or may not refute that. As an arbitrary example, someone may be against the distribution of the Plan B contraceptive based on his beliefs. Or against the distribution of the HPV vaccine to school-aged children. Or stem cell research. Or abortion rights. Or evolution education. Or sex education. Although you might think that his actions are not hurting anyone, if you advocate public policies that encourage restriction of those programs, they might be. You have not "been presented with all of the information" on both sides. My guess is you may have been presented with your pastor's distillation of the information from "both sides." The fact that you even present this false dichotomy is further evidence that your information is incomplete.

And it's not strictly true that Dewde's beliefs disgust me. That's a misreading of my comment. It's the theme of heart-over-head that's reprehensible. It's an advertising slogan. In 99% of Dewde's life, I'm sure he agrees that thinking is the proper thing to do when faced with a problem. But when god is added into the mix, you suddenly have to use your heart instead? It's nothing short of a boatload of special pleading. If Dewde just waited for divine revelation as the sole guiding hand to point him through life, he surely wouldn't be where he is today, so it's disingenuous, and disgusting IMO, that this theme is used to sell the church, theism, and the Christian faith. "Oh, don't think about it. Just use your heart, and Jesus will come into your life." Replace "Jesus" with any other word and you would scoff at such a suggestion, but instead you simply nod in agreement. I have no disagreement that the Jesus character as portrayed in the Christian New Testament is a noble person generally worthy of admiration. You can point to specific deeds and sayings of Jesus and use them as examples to live by and lead a superb life. There's just no need to weasel into the heart-over-head supernatural — and ultimately implausible — stuff.

Your suggestion that a better word choice would be more effective is weird. I assure you that I take a fair amount of time choosing my words, and in general every word is intentional. If I dumb-down my comments to mitigate the magnitude of my concerns, then my comments would effectively say nothing. The fact that they somehow agitate you, at least a little, is somewhat encouraging. If you're going to disregard what I say, I hope you at least get a little irked at what you read, since it'll be more memorable.

I cannot imagine why anyone would want to make me change my mind – what difference would it make? It doesn't hurt anyone that I believe what I believe. In fact, my beliefs make me want to help all people, even the ones I don't particularly like.

I likewise think that all other human beings are entitled to their own beliefs. I can tell you what I feel and why I feel it, but I don't believe it is my crusade to make you believe the same. You have been presented with all of the information on both sides and you made a choice just like I did.

That being said – telling someone that their beliefs disgust you is something I don't understand at all. Feeling anger and disgust at another person's choices and beliefs as related to God and his existence is what causes most of the anger and strife in this world. I can understand that you want to debate the existence of God, but I'm disappointed that you would deride your "friend" to accomplish an end. If you truly want to change his mind, mocking him is not the way to do it. Dewde seems to take it in stride, but other friends may not. I am not saying stop debating them, I'm just saying that choosing your words more wisely will make them listen and respect your opinion.

I referenced Godwin's Law because it seemed you were heading down a path of character assassination, of which the next logical step is ad hominem. What I read was that I pretend to make a serious effort. I pray as a charade. That sort of thing.

Hey, Dewde, I got Chris F. to defend you. That's what happens when someone like me is a little to black and white.

But still, that required extraordinary evidence *might* happen. I have zero expectation that it will, but it might. And I also think "personal" evidence is total crap, so I didn't intend to imply that his personal reasons were valid. I'm just saying that such evidence *may* exist, and if it does, it's reasonable to acknowledge it. And even if some god-implying evidence existed, there's still a gargantuan gap to cross to get to Christianity, so that's another problem. I agree with you in a practical sense: any actual atheist isn't going to change his/her mind, in part because it would never even occur to them to consider that there are gods. Dewde may refute this, but it seems like when he says he was an atheist, he in fact wasn't. I simply can't fathom that anyone who even nominally called themselves an atheist would find themselves even "test praying" such as Dewde did in his story. But I find it equally unlikely that he's trying to deceive people about his history for dramatic effect, though it does apparently make for quality church video. To be sure, I think Dewde is confused on these points.

So, while I completely agree with you that it ain't never gonna happen that someone truly godless is going to turn to the other side for rational reasons, I still don't see how that remains impossible. I almost hate myself for appearing to defend the honor of atheists-turned-christians here. I think such a conversion is a terribly misguided act based on misinterpretation of life's events and a fundamental ignorance of advancements in epistemological methods and virtually every life science. These are the tools that have enabled society and knowledge to advance in spite of religion, and the religious consciously choose to disregard this and even revel in their ignorance. I just mean to leave open the scant possibility that it could in theory be a rational choice.