By strong atheist I mean someone who is very smart, lacks the belief in any gods, possesses a scientific and intellectual mindset and naturally reacts with a high degree of scientific skepticism toward any religious beliefs and claims in general. Some illustrative examples that quickly come to mind are
Richard Dawkins,
Sam Harris,
Matt Dillahunty,
Aron Ra and the whole staff that integrates
The Atheist Experience show.
Are there notable cases of strong atheists converting to Christianity because they had a supernatural experience?
The most famous biologist of all time (Charles Darwin) was a firm believer in the Abrahamic God— though later in life he became somewhat conflicted in his views on his particular strain of Christianity, particularly struggling with the “problem of evil”, but despite this he is quoted as saying in 1879 “I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.”
The most famous
physicists of all time are Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
Newton’s religious views were, at the time, very unconventional — had they been public he would probably have been deemed a heretic, but there is no doubt that he believed firmly in the idea of God, his heresy arose from questioning
how he should be worshiped — he particularly disagreed with the divinity of the Trinity. He was, however, definitely a theist, albeit an unconventional and radical one.
Albert Einstein is probably the closest to an Atheist we have so far — he was raised as a Jew, but in later life he rejected the idea of a “personal god”, a benevolent, human-like entity who took an interest in human affairs. He did not describe himself as an atheist, though he did not believe in an afterlife — he believed that God existed, but that he was nebulous, universal, and not comprehensible to the human mind.
Did History's Most Famous Scientists Believe In God?
