Conversion, apostasy, and CMI’s approach And why words mean the same to man and God

“Excellent article in which Dr. Sarfati addresses two key questions.” Admin

In the first section, BW asks good questions about the reasons people leave their faith, whether Christian or atheist, and what the best approach is. In the second section, DC asks about how we can know that Scripture means what it says. Dr Jonathan Sarfati responds to both. Readers should also check out the Related articles section for much more.

Having read many wonderful articles on your website, I get the sense that when a believing scientist switches camps from creationist to evolutionist, it is usually not evidence in favor of evolution that persuaded them to switch. It would seem that an overwhelming attraction to sin is the persuader in such a scenario.

In contrast, when an evolutionary atheist switches camps from evolutionist to creationist, it almost always has to be attributed to the overwhelming evidence for design that persuaded them.

There is a persuasion factor in each instance; people are either persuaded by the overwhelming power of sin and embrace godless evolution accordingly, or they are persuaded by the evidence of design, which makes them a prime candidate for being captured by the beauty and reality of Jesus Christ.

Dear B.W.

Thank you for writing to CMI. You raise some interesting points, and it’s interesting that I tried to address some of the same things in a recent newsletter.

You are on to something for sure. One astute observer of creation compromise wrote about many ‘deconversion’ accounts he knew of, “Half the time (or more), it has later come to light that the person’s original ‘doubts’ were related to a moral struggle.” (See “Some observations about apostasy”, well worth reading in its entirety¹). It also reminds me of an article, “With a Little Help from Your Friends’”, by Dr J. Budziszewski, professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and author of How to Stay Christian in College, where he relates the following:

I will never forget a young woman who told me during office hours that she felt she was losing her faith. Her radical feminist teachers could see nothing in Christianity but “patriarchy”, and she couldn’t find Christian replies. It didn’t take long to discover why she couldn’t find them. She wasn’t looking. And it seemed to me that she wasn’t so terribly attracted to radical feminism either. She pictured herself as struggling to hold on to her faith despite superior arguments against it. The truth was that she was looking for an excuse to lose her faith, exposing herself exclusively to the most anti-Christian influences she could find.

It reminded me of how I had used various ideologies to rationalize my own flight from faith at her age. I was so sure that I was intellectually convinced by the case against Christ, but the reasons that convinced me had little to do with the intellect.

The reasons students find it difficult to keep faith in college are much the same as the reasons other Christians have found it difficult to keep faith in other times and places. These temptations are endemic to a fallen world, and the university is no exception.