I’ve written some pro-theist / anti-atheism arguments lately, but after quite a bit of self and mystical inquiry, going through everything I know about where Christianity fits in in the evolution of things, I’ve realized the folly of this goal.
But before I get into all that I should just answer the question. There is no argument convincing enough to turn an atheist into a theist. This boils down to how a mind develops. You’re either going to develop a preference for mystical experience or you won’t. If you are predisposed for mysticism, then you’ll find your way to God naturally. If you’re not, then you’re looking at a long, hard road even if it’s something you want to do. For me, it took roughly 15 years.
It’s a fantasy, you want to say those magic 10 or so words that kicks off the process of making an atheist accept God. But you’re dealing with some deep-seated cognitive differences that just can’t be overcome overnight. The theist’s brain simply works different than the atheist’s.
The weird thing is, atheists do do what I would call mysticism. It’s required to deeply analyse stories. Naturally they won’t do this with scripture, but other types of stories with ‘buried’ religious themes like Star Wars or science fiction, they’ll happily dive deep and examine.
The insight I gleaned last night was, while theists want to be the hero in their story, the atheist wants to not be in the story at all but rather analyze things as a scientist might. Mysticism is when you consider yourself the protagonist of your story and start looking for any kind of meaning you can make from the story events. Why did my girlfriend leave me? Well there’s some moral lesson to learn, God decided I didn’t deserve her.
An atheist doesn’t want to make up reasons where there aren’t any. As such, the atheist will never actually participate in the so-called ‘hero’s journey’.
In the past, if you were on the fence, then the default position you’d land on is a kind of forced belief. You went to catechism because society demanded it, and you had to respect religion because that was what was needed for society to function. Whatever disbelief you had needed to remain private.
Nowadays few people care, individualism won, and religion has to evolve to meet the needs of the new, rationalist-oriented population. I welcome this new development. Theists simply need to get better at communicating with atheists. And to think ever more deeply about how to incorporate rationalism into their faith.