List of former proponents of atheism
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This is a list of people who accepted atheism for a time and then abandoned it in favor of a different philosophical or metaphysical position.
Note: Do not use personal websites or promotional websites as sources. In addition non-notable people should not be added and should be removed when added.
Contents |
[edit] Converts to Christianity
- Steve Beren - Former member of the Socialist Workers Party (United States) who became a Christian conservative politician.[1]
- Francis Collins - Geneticist who was an atheist until age 27, but then converted to Christianity.[2]
- Anna Haycraft - Raised in Auguste Comte's atheistic "church of humanity", but became a conservative Catholic in adulthood.[3]
- Ignace Lepp - French psychiatrist whose parents were freethinkers and who joined the Communist party at age fifteen. He broke with the party in 1937 and eventually became a Catholic priest.[4]
- C. S. Lewis - writer who was an atheist as a young man but converted to Christianity and wrote many books about his faith.[5]
- Alister McGrath - Biochemist and Christian theologian. Founder of 'Scientific theology' and critic of Richard Dawkins in his book Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life and The Dawkins' Delusion?[6][7]
- William Murray (author) - Son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair who became a Born again preacher.[8]
- Enoch Powell - Conservative Party (UK) member who converted to Anglicanism.[9]
- George R. Price - Geneticist who became an Evangelical Christian and wrote about the New Testament. Later he became a more conventional Christian and switched from religious writing to working with the homeless.[10][11]
- Edith Stein - Phenomenologist philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite nun; declared a saint by John Paul II.[12]
- Fay Weldon - British novelist and feminist.[13]
- John C. Wright - Science fiction author.[14]
[edit] Converts to Islam
- Jeffrey Lang - Mathematician who adopted atheism at 18, but is now Muslim.[15]
[edit] Converts to Judaism
- Will Herberg - A posthumous collection of his writing is From Marxism to Judaism[16]
[edit] Converts to non-Abrahamic religions
Note: This section refers to those who left atheism in favor of a non-Abrahamic religion that requires some form of theism. This primarily means Hinduism and Sikhism.
- John Dobson (astronomer) - Atheist who joined the Vedanta Society.[17]
[edit] Other Ex-atheists
- Antony Flew - Became a non-religious deist.[18]
- Moses Hess - Socialist philosopher and Left Hegelian who first influenced Karl Marx in his criticism of religion, but who later tried to combine the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza with Hegelianism.[19]
[edit] See also
- List of former Muslims
- List of former Protestants
- List of ex-Roman Catholics
- Former Latter-day Saints
- List of ex-Christians
[edit] Web sources
- ^ Seattle Times "In 1975, he threw off his atheism and became a Christian."
- ^ Sunday Times "Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients."
- ^ Telegraph "She reacted strongly against her parents' beliefs and became a Catholic at 19, because she 'no longer found it possible to disbelieve in God.'" (pg 2)
- ^ Time Magazine from July 19, 1963 "Lepp has the credentials to explain the mind of the atheist: he was one himself for 27 years."
- ^ PBS special"His pre-university tour of duty in World War I only solidified his atheism,"
- ^ Beliefnet article by McGrath Quote "When I was growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1960s, I came to the view that God was an infantile illusion, suitable for the elderly, the intellectually feeble, and the fraudulently religious"
- ^ North County Times
- ^ Austin Chronicle
- ^ The Guardian's obituary of Powell
- ^ University of Bielefeld
- ^ Chronicle of Higher Education article obituary(Copied by Gametheory.net) has the following "Because George was a fire-spitting atheist and Julia a devout Christian, their relationship was contentious from the beginning. After eight years, the marriage ended in acrimony." "On June 7th [1970] I gave in and admitted that God existed," he explained to friends.
- ^ University of Chicago "made a spiritual journey from atheism to agnosticism before eventually converting to Catholicism"
- ^ The Guardian Quote: Even though she was raised an atheist, in the past three or four years she has been going to church. In her eighth decade, she has even submitted to being baptised.
- ^ Advocates for self-government (A Libertarian site) says of him "A lifelong 'vehement, argumentative, proselytizing atheist,' Wright suffered a heart attack in 2003 and soon afterwards had a 'supernatural' religious experience that made him, he wrote, 'aware of a spiritual dimension of reality of which I had hitherto been unaware... I was altered down to the root of my being.' Wright is now a Christian.
- ^ His book "Struggling to Surrender
- ^ Journal of Law and Religion Described his Jewish family as "passionate atheists" and he was active in Marxist groups until the 1930s.
- ^ Interview at Space.com Quote: "So I became an atheist, a belligerent atheist. If anybody started a conversation about the subject, I was a belligerent atheist."
- ^ BBC Interview Quote: "What I was converted to was the existence of an Aristotelian God, and Aristotle's God had no interest in human affairs at all."
- ^ Cambridge University Press, page 15
