How A Skeptical Philosopher Becomes a Christian [Larry Sanger] | Hacker News Reader

How A Skeptical Philosopher Becomes a Christian [Larry Sanger]

larrysanger.org

17 pointsBoogie_Man9 comments

I'm struck in these conversion essays how authors compare the worst people in their old belief system to the best people in their new one. For example aggressive atheists vs welcoming christians, or, in the other direction, firebreathing zealots vs rational atheists. Seems like an apples to oranges comparison, and not one to use as the basis for converting.

In the specific case of conversion to belief in the Christian God, the arguments presented seem to branch from a sense of wonder and awe, or even mystery (which even scientific endeavour can generate, eg cosmology) to selection of the specific biblical deity. Why that one, and not, say, the Hindu Atman or even a god we dont know about that the civilization on some distant star worships? It seems quite convenient. As a counterweight it would be good to read of conversion narratives from people outside of the Western tradition.

I am with CS Lewis in his observation that if Jesus was not the Son of God then it would be the biggest, ugliest fraud of all time. I dont make the leap that he does that Jesus must therefore be divine.

That large fraud would be closely followed by a few others. Moses and Mohammed would have some difficulties too.

Yes, although to be fair, the argument would hinge on whether one of them claimed his own divinity, or just claimed to be inspired by Him.[1]

Whether Jesus asserted his divinity in the NT is something that is not supported by all theological scholars, and so that would also excuse him from the bind.

I could, theoretically, get behind a Supreme Being idea, but I remain unconvinced that such an entity has a special interest in a single lifeform on the third rock from a minor star, and a penchant for talking in the kind of riddles that these lifeforms then use to kill each other.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis's_trilemma

Converts do tend to romanticize their new side over the old one. But I think Larry's view has specific alignment with history: at the time, the most outspoken on the websites he visited were strongly Atheistic or Anti-Religious. That sentiment prevailed in websites like Reddit which, for example, had /r/atheism and its "euphoria".

StarSlateCodex describes this phenomena in detail, as well as what happened to the more drama-prone Atheists who Larry probably tussled with: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godles...

Lurker here, just wanted to comment on your second point to say I agree as a Christian. Although Sanger has clearly delved intellectually into becoming a theist as described here, his conversion to Christianity as a specific religion appears less thorough as detailed in this blog. Though I find various theistic arguments mentioned by the essay to be persuasive, I personally was/am more gripped by the historical arguments put forward for the reliability of the Gospels and Jesus' resurrection, so it was a bit surprising to find no mention of such arguments in this blog.

As a side, to say Christianity is fraudulent if it's false is rather harsh, as fraud indicates intentional deception or malice. Yet skeptical positions that attribute deception or malice to Jesus' disciples are quite rare due to how difficult they are to defend. So if Christianity is false, it would most likely have been an honest mistake by the early Christians rather than an intentional deception, at least in my estimate.

I've been on this site since 2009 and never posted anything or commented on anything (I am just lurking and reading the insightful posts and comments always), but let me make this my first comment here, 16 years later after the creation of this account: Thank you to the original author (although he may never read this) for the long, insightful and well-documented article. Love all the footnotes too.

EDIT: Thank you to OP (although not the original creator of the blog post) for bringing this article to our attention.

I don't mean to misrepresent. I am not Larry Sanger. I thought it relevant to HN and interesting because it was written by the co-founder of Wikipedia and because it appears to me to be a focusing of an analytical "Hacker" mind to the question of theology, which seems to be of greater interest to HN browsers lately.

Personally, it was interesting to me because it represents a more philosophical approach to the Christian religion than the subjective, social, or (quite frankly) economic approach I commonly see

I figured as much, so I edited my original comment. The article itself is well-written and fully documented. I also love the approach the author takes to his faith. Everyone is welcome to believe whatever they like, but I love to see a strong defense to whichever belief system you happen to be associated with.

Thanks for posting! I too was going to post because he cofounded Wikipedia.

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