When adult atheists adopt faith?

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I have this question burning at the back of my mind:

What gets adults to go from believing in absolutely nothing, to take everything from a religious testament as gospel?

There was one time in my adult life where I went through one of those melt down thingymajigs and I considered the idea of faith to be a better person as I felt ashamed of my behaviour (drinking, general Aspie behaviour before my diagnosis I didn't understand, rudeness etc.). Then when that shame went away I didn't like the idea of faith again.

Also, I noticed the people around me that convert from being an atheist do so out of their own fears of mortality (recent traumatic event) or because of crimes, ill deeds they committed. They felt somewhat excused by a higher power for their deeds, and the others felt more comfortable about death. Just to clarify this is just the people I have met. I have never questioned their motives or reasons for converting to something, just made these observations.

Would any ex atheists care to shed light on this for me? Or could others share their theories?

I'm not an ex atheist, but in high school I had a strange episode when I my religious friend invited me to a play she was in. It was all about how what you believe at the moment you die decides whether or not you will go to Heaven. I look back on it now and am appalled. But at the time, I was in a really bad place: I was depressed, didn't feel I belonged, didn't think many people liked me, etc. etc. At the end of the play, those who were not currently believers in God we asked to consider joining the church and finding Him. I broke down in tears and thought I might like to join, as it felt like there might be "someone" who cared for me and would look after me or something (really I don't know what was going on my head). The next day I changed my mind, and this sort of thing could NEVER happen to me again, but, I guess for someone whose mind is still developing and who is in a fragile mindset, these sorts of things can have a big impact/influence.

How it can happen to adults, I do not know.

Could it be as simple as openness to Intelligent Design?

Also, I think these days the argument is coming down to whether you can get Something from Nothing. I think some physicists are saying there is a strong case for this. However, that is very hard to get your head around. Is it possible people can't process the idea that the Bang Bang came about on it's own, possibly out of nothingness, and some force(GOD) must have nudged it forward?


Otherwise, there may be the awkwardness of marriage conversions. Finding partner you have deep feeling for but they're a believer.

Also, I'd be curious as to what is so attractive to these Atheists? Is there any particular Faith drawing them? Christianity? Catholicism? Or Islam?

Or do they go for more Eastern traditions like Buddhism or Taoism?

From my experience - Catholicism, Christianity, Spiritualist derivatives of this, 1 case of Bhuddism and some didn't convert to a religion a such but new age positive thinking lifestyles that believe in non-defined higher powers or self power.

Religion is the shackle, ball and chain of progress. Why would anyone purposefully imprison themselves? Lack of intelligence. They're people to be pitied, not vilified because they cannot help themselves.

Adult humans are not that much more rational than adolescent humans. It honestly makes me really sad to see what a poor grip on logic the average person has; people are rationalizing not rational. Once someone decides to believe something, they will come up with a way to deflect even the clearest reasoning as to why their position may be flawed. If people were not this way, organized religion could not exist, as all of them require people to accept "special cases" such as the Virgin Mary's immaculate conception. I don't care how many billion people in the world believe this story or how many copies of the Bible there are that recount it (incidentally in two completely different and contradictory ways in different places); the only thing that tells me that this story is true is other people. I've had someone even try to explain that it had been scientifically proven. The guy who tried to do that is a 34 year old professional engineer who runs his own business.

Could it partly be peer pressure?

If so maybe some really just shift to being Agnostic. They shrug and say "I dunno" I guess I can try church. Of course once in there they now are labeled Christian/Whatever even if internally they're Agnostic.

That's just one possibility.

The same reasons people take up ideas like David Icke's shapeshifting lizard hypothesis, astrology or homeopathy. They want these ideas to be true for some reason; they would really, really like the universe to be a particular way because that in some way would make them more content with things. For instance, a person might wish a supernaturalist religion to be true because they would really like to live forever, or perhaps because they want to feel special, important, knowing that the entities responsible for the existence of the universe itself care about them. They might be drawn to David Icke's theory, because they really want to have someone to blame for everything that goes wrong in the world. Astrology might be appealing because it implies that there is some order to the universe, that people have a destiny and what happens in people's lives isn't just chaotic. Homeopathy promises medicine totally free of side effects - who wouldn't want that to exist?

When the idea is appealing enough, in the unwary person, wishful thinking and confirmation bias can easily take over, cementing the belief in their mind.

So what probably happens is something along the lines of 'it would be really great if x were true. Therefore, x is true.'

Once this happens, there's an emotional investment in the idea; and abandoning it involves the acceptance that the universe is much less pleasant than you would want to believe. For instance, accepting that homeopathy is just water will often involve realising that there simply does not exist any treatment yet for a disease a person has, and that they are totally helpless to do anything about it. Rejecting gods brings with it the knowledge that the universe simply doesn't care what happens to us puny humans.

So in summary, a large part of irrational belief acquisition is probably an attempt to project one's own desires upon the universe, a deep seated need for the universe to be a particular way, and a failure to recognise that the universe doesn't exist for our convenience - it just exists.

^^^ Interesting. Aside from standard religious worship once might be led toward other ideas. It makes me think of the show Ancient Aliens.

There are certainly many bizarre ancient structures found around the world that are presented on that show. That alone is quite interesting and mysterious. This is followed by speculation that ancient gods or beings depicted in art maybe aliens. While far out, sometimes speculation can be interesting. But that show's hosts and probably some viewers shift from speculation to belief.

I'm not sure all the hosts are believers but most are. I think Graham Hancock might still keep this on the level of a theory, but I think Von Daniken and that crazy hair guy Giorgio Tsoukalos totally buy into it.


I used to do commercial driving and saw a strange object up in the hills in West Virginia. I damn near wondered if it was a UFO, but I took a note of the location. Eventually, I did another trip going down that same highway during the day and made it a point to look around and I saw some kind of communication station up on a mountain that was a likely candidate for what I saw. The first trip through there it was dark and hazy, so the mountains where not distinct and the haze carried the light in a weird way. It appeared like something bright and stationary up in the air because the mountains didn't standout at all during the foggy night.

But it makes me wonder how many people in the right mindset might think OMG I saw Aliens.