Bloggers are comment whores. The more the better. No worries.

Chris:

You'd know if any of our convos were upsetting to me, because I would tell you. I know that you know this, but just wanted to reassure.

Both:

If this convo keeps going, it will get thinner and thinner until a black hole is formed. I would appreciate it if one of you would concede defeat before that happens. But if it doesn't… it was probably God's will anyway. Christianity, FTW!

Back to the discussion at hand. My impression is that you (Chris F.) value your own experience over that of others. You say that there are things that could happen to make you reexamine your commitment to atheism. But you don't afford Dewde that same right. Is he not capable of making rational decisions? How can you be so sure that he doesn't have info that you don't have? You obviously know the guy. What if he's truly experienced the things he claims to? Now you are trying to convince him they didn't really happen. What if they really happened?

That brings me back to atheism as faith commitment. If it is not a faith commitment, you sure are treating it like one. You are so certain that there is no evidence for God's existence that you would persuade others to believe the same thing as you. Anything you can get "evangelical" about, as you put it, starts to fall into the faith category, whether it is belief that a certain candidate will save America, or that the Cubs will win the pennant. Your faith commitment is that your take on the Bible or the Koran is correct. Your faith commitment is that there is no persuasive evidence for the resurrection of Christ. But it is very much so a faith commitment, based as you said on the absolute fundamental tenant of "evidence motivates actions." And you are convinced of your take on the evidence. That's faith, albeit faith that is rooted in yourself, and your intellect and experience.

I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I do wish we could discuss the two worldviews on an apples-to-apples level. We all place ultimate faith in something. I place my ultimate faith in Jesus as revealed in the Bible. You place ultimate faith in something else. I don't know you well enough to know for sure what that is, and the comment thread on a blog is hardly the place to start pointing fingers. But I know enough to know that by virtue of being human, you are placing ultimate faith in something.

I'd love to discuss this more, but already feel pretty bad about turning this post into something I'm certain Dewde did not intend. Feel free to email me at ben.meredith@gmail.com and we can continue the dialogue.

I would hesitate to characterize my stance as "aggressive." I might be aggressive on this blog, but that's because Dewde has actively solicited opinions on how ridiculous his actions were. I don't walk down the street proclaiming my godlessness to anyone I see. I don't try to convert Christians that I know (Dewde excepted). But I don't ever pretend to be religious when in a group of religious folks doing "religious things" (wife's family get-togethers during holidays, for example), which has rubbed people oddly at times… it's amazing how irked some people get when you quietly choose not to pray with them, but they get over it.

And atheism is emphatically *not* some faith commitment. Why do Christians like to spout that? The default position you'd take with anything else in your life is that you don't assume something is there in the absence of evidence for it. Atheism is no different. It's just saying that there's no reason to posit a god's existence, because it doesn't provide any extra explanatory power over the things we observe and events that occur. Anyone who would say that they're an atheist and they know that no gods exist and that no amount of evidence will persuade them otherwise is just plain stupid. If something wildly out of the ordinary happened this afternoon and it suggested that a god existed and was actively participating in the world, of course I'd take notice. It might persuade me to dig out my Christian Bible, or it might persuade me to get a Koran, or a subscription to a nice Larry Flynt publication. Who knows? But that evidence just hasn't hit me. No evidence seems even slightly compelling at this point, hence my current position. The only "faith" involved here is that evidence is what motivates actions. I certainly have no faith that no god exists, because no faith is required to think that.

What's in it for me? I'm really interested in how people think about this stuff. I like Dewde because he's open about his thought processes and he responds to criticism and name-calling very well! I also like knowing that he used to be an atheist (albeit an apparently very bad one ), because that promises to make his "faith journey" easier for me to understand. Of course, to this point, I'm just as perpexed as I can be why he turned this corner. But it's interesting nonetheless.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081128/ap_on_re_us/h...

i actually had to look up IMO to see what it meant. why the reference to the International Mathematical Olympiad so much? jk

Regarding the comments that I got distracted reading. As Christians, we believe in a spiritual world in addition to a physical world and that there's a connection between the two. I don't believe Dewde was afraid of the crosses or the vandalism he saw, but there's a different spirit that would lead someone to vandalize something than one that would choose to clean up something. Not to say that someone was possessed by a demon or an angel (although I do believe that's possible), but in cleaning up and praying over the area, Dewde was just asking for GOD's spirit, a spirit of hope, life, love to reside over the area as opposed to a spirit of destruction and vandalism. At least, that's the way I see it. My apologies to Dewde for putting words in your mouth if that's the case.

Again, an encouraging letter and great example to follow.

That and those slides are ridiculously gross. My sister once slid on baby poo at Chuck E. Cheese. Nasty.