{"id":1539,"date":"2013-09-02T05:01:29","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T05:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/?p=1539"},"modified":"2013-09-02T05:01:29","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T05:01:29","slug":"do-ex-atheists-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/2013\/09\/02\/do-ex-atheists-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Do ex-atheists exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In a previous post, Do Christians exist?<\/a>, I gave my thoughts on the issue of whether there is such a thing as an ex-Christian. \u00a0Many Christians say\u00a0“No”<\/em>, based on various Bible passages. \u00a0I think that’s silly, as I explain in that post. \u00a0But here I’d like to address a pet peeve I have against some of my fellow atheists…<\/p>\n

Some atheists reel in horror when a Christian describes him\/herself as an “ex-atheist”. I’ve heard many an atheist respond by saying “you could never become a Christian if you were a real atheist”. \u00a0(For this post, I’ll ignore the fact that this reeks of the No True Scotsman fallacy<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In debates with theists, atheists are often told that “atheism is the belief that there are no gods”. \u00a0Many atheists (including myself) take exception to this definition. \u00a0While a person who believes there are no gods is certainly an atheist, most atheists I know tend to think of atheism as referring to a lack of belief in gods. \u00a0They are quick to point out that, for example, everybody is born an atheist, since babies do not have a belief in gods.<\/p>\n

Well, if that’s the case, then every single Christian (and Muslim, Mormon, Hindu) is an ex-atheist. \u00a0In fact, most of the people of the world are ex-atheists!<\/p>\n

Come on, guys. \u00a0Let’s be logical. \u00a0You can’t have it both ways…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In a previous post, Do Christians exist?, I gave my thoughts on the issue of whether there is such…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,51],"tags":[188,189,191,216],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-theism","tag-apostasy","tag-atheism","tag-christianity","tag-theism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}