Cloud of Witnesses is pleased to be one of the stops for the newly launched Making of an Atheist blog tour.
I’ll be posting a two-part interview with Jim Spiegel beginning next Monday (2/15), and I welcome your questions and comments in response. I’ll collect three or four of the most interesting follow-up questions, and ask Jim to respond to them.
In addition, everyone who posts a question (and supplies their email address to be contacted) will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of The Making of an Atheist. I’ll look forward to hearing from you!
You can learn more about Jim by visiting his blog, Wisdom and Folly, or his website.
Other blog stops on the tour include:
Cloud of Witnesses 
From your interview at the EPS blog:
I take my cue from Scripture, specifically such passages as Romans 1:18-32, where the Apostle Paul asserts that no one has any excuse not to believe in God. Rather, he says, some “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18). In my book I develop a model for how this happens, tracing the suppression of truth to a willful rejection of God, prompted by immorality and self-deception. Thus, I argue, sinful behaviors cloud and distort cognition.
Two questions (the first of which is related to Ranger’s question above):
(1) Why should an atheist accept your account when it presupposes the truth of precisely what the atheist denies the existence and authority of?
(2) Your claim that cognition-distorting sinful behaviors and wickedness underline atheism is an empirical one for which, as far as I can tell, there is little evidence. Presumably, more secular or irreligious communities and nations should have higher rates of wickedness and immorality. What evidence are you relying on?
Hi
There are people who say they are atheists because they have the God of the Bible in mind, the one Christians proclaim. They do not believe that He exists and controls everything because they see a lot of mess in the world, that mess which Leibniz tried to explain. So they simply “take things as they come”, seeing no point in appealing to some Supreme Being. They are in a sense pantheists. Einstein roughly believed in something like this and considered himself a religious person.
A common critique of your book by atheists who have read the early reviews, is that they perceive that you are making an ad hominem attack against atheism. It seems to me though that you are not arguing against atheism per se, nor for Christian theism. Are you not actually offering an account from within Christianity to explain why some specifically deconvert? Could you clarify this issue? Thanks.
Hi aforcier,
That’s actually quite a good point, because if we could create the God we serve, He wouldn’t be God, with a capital “G.”
There are lots of good reasons to believe God exists. And lots of people who are convinced they know God personally. They’ll tell you God changed their lives for the better. That’s been my experience as well. I’d encourage you not to dismiss God too quickly.
Chris
you can have all the interviews in the world, you can configure all the possible responses, you can use clever analogies, you can dismiss atheists and atheism, you can claim superior morality… no matter your songs and dances… you cannot create the god… you pretend exists.
religion exists.
religious people exist.
but not god.
http://www.ANaturalPhilosophy.com