Nov 19 2007
Atheist Conversion or Religious De-conversion
“A secular country allows for religion to flourish, if it wants to. A secular country allows atheism to flourish if it wants to,” said Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, during a speech at University of Texas at Austin.
Barker is a former evangelical preacher who says he “de-converted” in 1984.
Recently I’ve noticed the term deconversion used to imply a shift away from religious belief to atheism, as well as the synonym expression, “conversion to atheism.”
Historically I’ve associated the term conversion with Christianity. Also, most dictionaries will list conversion in the religious context as, “an experience associated with the definite and decisive adoption of a religion.” (Merriam Webster, Your Dictionary, Wikipedia).
The concept of “decisive adoption” is very important when discussing religious conversion because most religions have in place a test of faith, by which they identify true conversion. Usually the test of faith encompasses both conviction as well as obedience and practicing of rites (outward expression of faith). Baptism is an essential rite in Christian conversion, for example.
So can one convert to atheism being that it is not a religion, does not require a test of faith, and does not require absolute allegiance to a set of rites? And can one deconvert from atheism?
As many atheists I attribute the supernatural a probability of existing so small that it’s insignificant. Be it a deity or a magical mist the supernatural belongs to fiction books. I don’t feel the need or pressure to prove my allegiance to atheism. I don’t have to deconvert or convert either. My atheism didn’t come about as a falling away from something else (though some may disagree with me, because they think I fell away from their “true church”). I don’t even have “strong feelings” about my experience that could be attributed to a conversion. If atheism came with mystical experiences it would indeed be a religion. To me being an atheist is about being practical, rational and skeptical.
So I’d say the term conversion to atheism or de-conversion from atheism would only apply as as a way of using familiar rhetoric of religious type to either be sarcastic or to create some commonality in terms when faced with a potentially religious audience. However as an atheist I would stay away from such rhetoric for fear of making my audience believe atheism is a religion. Had the term never been used with a religious connotation and truly mean what its Latin origins described, a move away from something, I would not oppose its accompanying the term atheism. As it is, there’s too much religious baggage behind it to allow it to taint discussion of atheism.
Fun fact, when asking google to define “religious conversion,” those at the Church of Google suggest that we look up “religious conversion and terrorism.”
