Conversion

What persuades people to change their minds about Climate Change?

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climate change

People can and do cross the divide. People who once promoted a specific stance will be persuaded that they were wrong and cross over to take a quite different stance. A rather obvious example is religious belief. There are many people who today are atheists but were once deeply religious, so quite clearly they have … Read more

The non-conversion of Christopher Hitchens

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It is perhaps inevitable that claims of deathbed religious conversions pop up for most well-known people, because religion is basically an emotional experience and not an intellectual one, so an appeal to your emotions that runs along the lines of “Look, here is somebody famous who converted, you should do so as well”. The problem … Read more

Conversion Stories … that don’t actually convince anybody of anything at all

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One common strategy that is commonly deployed to convince people to convert is to wheel out a conversion story of somebody impressive. Here is a specific example, it consists of a posting to a Facebook group yesterday … ■■ Quran wins the heart of US Professor Dr. Jeffrey Lang ■■ Dr. Jeffrey Lang is an Associate … Read more

Claim: “atheism is a nonintellectual exercise in self-deception”

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I have perhaps been guilty in times past of living inside a religious bubble, and so having now stepped outside, it is always worth pondering the thought that I have just exchanged one bubble for another, hence I often expose myself (intellectually) to things that are clearly not ideas I agree with. Today’s example comes from … Read more

The religious conversion of Bill Maher

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OK, so this is not so serious today and concerns the musings of a Christian playing “What if” in response to a satire clip by Bill Maher. I’ll post Bill’s religious conversion clip at the end (it’s a bit of hilarious satire), but first lets take a look at what this lady has been dreaming … Read more