Monday, May 6, 2013

Deconversion Stories of Famous Atheists

Dan Barker, former evangelical preacher and now co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.  His autobiography is Losing Faith in Faith and he also wrote Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America' Leading Atheists.





Bart Ehrman, Biblical scholar who trained to be a pastor and became an atheist.  He peeked behind the curtain and found out that the Wizard was a fraud.  Most of the video summarizes the main problems in the transmission of the books of the Bible and early debates about Jesus:



Seth Andrews, former Christian broadcaster and now podcaster and speaker, wrote Deconverted: A Journey from Religion to Reason.

Jerry DeWitt, another ex-pastor (Pentecostal), wrote Hope After Faith: An Ex-Pastor's Journey from Belief to Atheism. He is the first graduate of The Clergy Project, started by Dan Barker and Richard Dawkins to give closet atheist pastors a safe place to discuss transitioning to secular life.



Teresa Macbain, also a member of The Clergy Project. She came out despite certain unemployment, and she is now a speaker and Public Relations Director for American Atheists. (Mute until she is at the podium b/c there's terrible feedback):



Matt Dilahunty of The Atheist Experience:



Michael Shermer (blog post): he read up on evolution in order to debunk it, and became a skeptic and atheist


I don't know if this guy is famous but he ought to be!  He tried to convert "natives" and they deconverted him:



And the classic, "Why I am Not A Christian" by Bertrand Russell (not read by him):



His answers to lame questions in an interview. His deconversion is part of the interview:

4 comments:

L.Long said...

Bertrand came to me late in my atheism, but his genius shows a terrible fact, nothing the religidiots say is new or any more valid then 100yrs ago when he was slamming them down. And no matter how hard we continue to try nothing major will come of it.
And as long as there are men who dislike women and like slapping them around, the abrahamic religions will have followers. So long as there are people who are frighten of death, and refuse to grow up and think for themselves we will always have religions and their con-men priest there to prop them up.

LadyAtheist said...

Sad to say, there's a sucker born every minute!

Christian said...

That was an interesting story by Daniel Everett. Its something that just shows, you don’t need science, internet, evolution etc but just common sense to get deconverted.

LadyAtheist said...

Yes, very! And it shows that a whole community can be atheistic without being murderous anarchists