exchristian

All of this led Sanger to begin thinking deeper, reading the Bible, and starting to piece together evidence. Much of the process began in 2020, just before COVID-19 shut everything down. But there wasn’t necessarily a moment in time where it all came together; instead, it was a process.

and in a time of radical upheaval and a dire, uncertain collective future - one deeply enmeshed with the certainty of individual mortality...

...people lean on the easiest crutch they can. damn me if COVID wasnt the catalyst for the next great filter.

Sanger told CBN News the skepticism he held for most of his life went back to his childhood and his unsure perspective on all religions. Despite that reticence, he did dabble in attempts to communicate with a Higher Power.

“I wasn’t necessarily praying to God, per se, but I had a sort of internal dialogue,” he said. “And sometimes, I even wrote it out …. with some supremely wise being, and, sometimes, I would even call that being ‘God,’ not that I believed that that was God, but in order to just sort of clarify my thought.”

Sounds like praying to a god to me.

“There was a period of time in which I knew things were changing, but I can’t pin it down to a particular moment when I just decided I now believe that God exists,” he said. “There is a moment when I said, ‘OK, I have to admit that what I’m doing now is praying to God,’ and there also was a moment when I prayed something like the Sinner’s Prayer after, I guess, two months or so into reading the Bible.”

Sounds like you kind of always did, and you chose Yahweh, because that's probably culturally familiar.

It's kinda interesting that "mocking atheists" were the impetus to deconstruct, but he didn't apply skepticism to both claims. There is simply no way to end up at Christianity by applying skepticism, because the Bible definitely doesn't stand up to scrutiny, and the evidence we have can only get you to deism or polytheism at best.

I don't know for certain, but it certainly doesn't sound like he was using skepticism to inform his epistemology. It sounds more like he just grew up as an atheist and never bothered to steelman his own beliefs.

“The Bible withstands scrutiny, which was a great surprise to me. I thought it couldn’t. I was wrong.”

This surprises me - it's certainly not been my experience that it does (and definitely from a historians perspective).

It would be interesting to hear him talk about this with someone who isn't a "mocking skeptic".

I wonder if his conversion will stick.

My older brother who has been a drug addict his entire life knocked up his meth head girlfriend last year. They both went to rehab and so far they are both sober as far as I know. They both "found God" at those rehabs and as much as I despise organized religion if that is what it takes to get my older brother to be a functional member of society and a proper father/partner for the first time in his life I will take that weird trade any day of my life.

It's weird because my whole life he mocked religion alongside our entire family and now he's posting Bible versus and thanking God for his beautiful kid on Facebook. It's a fucking trip.

Been a real adjustment for my mother and I to keep our mouths shut about it when it comes up, but we both know the alternative is worse for everyone so I guess it's one of those lesser of two evils situations.

This is what we call "hedging your bets".