Yes, Adoniram, I teeter on the edge on Atheism's dull blade, and I may plunge out of one faith and into another. I am curious about your Mr. McDowell though. Contrary to what you say, my librarian states that he was not an atheist, but in fact McDowell claims to have been an agnostic. To me there is a difference worth considering here, and I am worried that this may not in fact be a convincing book to some who has been deluded by the dogma of Atheism for so long. What are your thoughts on the matter?
I will wait for your answer, lest we make an accident in our choice of literature.
The Gentleman Atheist
Your librarian may be right. After reading your post I did some searching and found some references to him as having been an agnostic, and some an atheist. Reading of his conversion experience in the aforementioned book sheds no light as he doesn't say either way specifically. But he does give an indication of his general attitude...so, if I may, I'll relate a little of what he has to say. (paraphrased unless in quotes)
As a teenager, he wanted to find happiness and meaning...the answer to three basic questions: "Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?" He says he tried church, but "I guess I got into the wrong one, because I felt worse inside the church than I did outside," so he "chucked religion." Then he decided to give "education" a try. The university was less than satisfying as "enrolling there to find truth and meaning in life is virtually a lost cause." He says he tried to find fulfillment in prestige, running for and getting elected to various student offices, and in partying, going on weekend binges. "My goal was to find my identity and purpose in life. But everything I tried left me empty and without answers."
About this time, he says, he noticed a small group of people on campus, "and there was something different about them. They seemed to know where they were going in life. And they had a quality I deeply admire in people: conviction." He says he noticed that they "not only loved each other, they loved and cared for people outside their group. They didn't just talk about love; they got involved in loving others...something totally foreign to me, and I wanted it." A couple of weeks later he was sitting at a table in the student union talking to some of the group, and the talk got around to the topic of God. "I was pretty insecure about this subject, so I put on a big front to cover it up. I leaned back in my chair, acting as if I couldn't care less. 'Christianity, ha!' I blustered. 'That's for weaklings, not intellectuals.'" But he asked one of them "What changed your lives? Why are you so different from the other students and faculty?" Her reply was "two words I never expected to hear in an intelligent discussion on a university campus: 'Jesus Christ.'" To which he "snapped" "Jesus Christ? Don't give me that kind of garbage. I'm fed up with religion, the Bible, and the church." She shot back, "Mister, I didn't say 'religion'; I said Jesus Christ." He was taken aback by the girl's courage and conviction, and apologizing for his attitude said "But I'm sick and tired of religion and religious people. I don't want anything to do with it."
His new friends then challenged him, a pre-law student, to examine intellectually the claim that Jesus Christ is God's Son. He thought they were joking. "How could anything as flimsy as Christianity stand up to an intellectual examination." But after days of their insistence, he accepted their challenge, "just to refute them." He left the university and traveled the United States and Europe "to gather evidence to prove that Christianity is a sham." The more he researched, the more he struggled, "trying to refute the overwhelming evidence I was accumulating that Jesus Christ was God's Son."
But then, he began to realize that he was "being intellectually dishonest. My mind told me that the claims of Christ were indeed true, but my will was being pulled another direction. I had placed so much emphasis on finding the truth, but I wasn't willing to follow it once I saw it...becoming a Christian seemed so ego-shattering to me. I couldn't think of a faster way to ruin all my good times." But the inner conflict was driving him crazy and considering himself an open-minded person, he decided to put Christ's claims to the supreme test. He became a Christian and it changed his life. There is much more to his testimony, about exactly how his life changed, but this is long enough already.
So...after all that, did he start out atheist or agnostic? I don't know. And I don't know that it really matters that much. Like you, he was a person who had no place for religion, Christianity in particular, in his life. Much of his research resulted in his book "The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict." I urge you pick up a copy of it. Maybe it can help you satisfy your intellectual curiosity; I'm sure it would at least make you think.
As far as it's being convincing, I think ephraimanesti has a point. Which leads me to mention one more thing that McDowell says: "You may think it was the irrefutable intellectual evidence that brought me to Christ. No, the evidence was only God's way of getting His foot in the door of my life. What brought me to Christ was the realization that He loved me enough to die for me."
The Seminar has been largely dismissed (with some snickering) by real scholars as overtly biased, and quite unscholarly.
ABBA'S FOOL,
