Well, he had pretty much run up against a wall where he could no longer sustain his conservative beliefs without somehow attributing them to something outside himself because the internal logic so clearly did not hold up otherwise.  He was either going to go John Cole or turn Christianist, and he ain’t smart enough to be John Cole.

that is the sleaziest looking jesus i have ever seen

are you sure this isn’t a meta troll like five years in the making and he’s going to pop out and go “surprise i got you fuckers you fell for it” or something

are you sure this isn’t a meta troll like five years in the making and he’s going to pop out and go “surprise i got you fuckers you fell for it” or something

I wouldn’t be surprised, but I hope it’s true solely for the comedy value.  If it’s all just an elaborate practical joke, it’s not nearly as funny.  Which may be actually ironic and not Alanis Morrissette ironic.

I’ve had atheist friends go through the same turnabout, and yes, it really can happen that fast.

Mind you, they didn’t like it when I suggested it was similar to those hyper-macho guys who suddenly wake up one day and realise they’re gay and don’t care who knows it.

Yuck. Many of the posters over there are fawning over RA and his supposed conversion. But worse are his former fans: “You used to be cool! Now I can never speak to you again.”

First time I hear about that guy, so no big loss.

His site makes my browser crash, so skrew him.

Sirkowski: It’s interesting solely because Amanda predicted it 2 1/2 years ago.

I love converts.  Millions of Christians on the internet, some dude gets religion and feels that his blog now needs to be solely devoted to the worship of -Insert Religious Figure Here-.  You realize you can be religious and talk about things that aren’t religion all at the same time, right?

Yeah, if you want to burn in hell for all eternity.

seems his christianity is going to be of a piece with his atheism - extreme and self-centred. Whatever he does or doesn’t worship, looks like it has to be about him and how “clever” he is.

Well done Predicta-Amanda!

I remembered Amanda’s prediction when PZ Myers first covered the blog conversion.

I wouldn’t care whether the Raver believes or not (and since he’s always been rabidly anti-choice, I’m more comfortable with him this way, I think, as it’s more unnerving to find atheists think women have less rights than a single cell), but I do think the dedicating his life to it goes well into the crazy. It’s not healthy to dedicate your life to any one thing, although I guess I can see it if a person is going forwiping out a major disease, or writing the perfect symphony; some goals are big and complex and perhaps need to be obsessions. But dedicating your life to Jesus seems to me to be more along the lines of dedicating your life to the Beatles or Grateful Dead. You can admire and even emulate without it being your entire fucking purpose. In fact, if your entire purpose revolves around following someone else, there’s no way to be a leader or do anything magnificent with your life.

So, it seems like a waste, although it always sounding like RA was a bit of a waste anyway.

Well, he, unlike you DEMONcraps, was saved in the nick of time.  The rest of you are going to hell….but you probably know that, right?  Oh, I forgot, you’re all a bunch of Muslamofascists and Allah is gonna give you 72 virgins for being unpatriotic terrorists fighting against Christian America, like all commies do.

Wow, never heard of this guy until now. Is his 15 minutes of blogfame over yet?

I guess the argument is secondary to the arguer here. It doesn’t matter whether he’s top of his lungs against, or top of his lungs for, as long as its him, at the top of his lungs.

But good prediction!

Of course, he had to choose the sappiest, most as-seen-in-Parade-magazine picture to illustrate his conversion.

Maybe he can pray to Jesus to give him some taste.

It’s funny. On the way home from my parents’ house last evening, I was thinking about what motivates anyone to do anything. I long ago came to the conclusion that the two primary, fundamental motivations for nearly all human behaviour are fear and narcissism.

Now, we already knew that most of RA’s behaviour was motivated by narcissism, but it looks like the fear has maybe started to creep up on him, too. Unless, of course, this “conversion” is all a put-on, in which case it’s just more narcissism.

Oh joy.  Now there’s an actual name and face (and blog) of a REAL LIVE ATHEIST who Saw The Error Of His Ways and Gave His Life To Jeebus!!! to wave in the faces of all other atheists/freethinkers/insert-your-own-NonTraditionalMegacorporotheocratist-hereto PROVE THAT WE ARE WRONG AND THEY ARE RIGHT HAHAHANEENERNEENERNEENER!!!.

I definitely blame the patriarchy for this one.

I find it entertaining that he still hasn’t found the time to take this bit off the upper right-hand corner:

“First, there is no God. In fact, all definitions of the word “God” are either self-contradictory, incoherent, meaningless or refuted by empirical, scientific evidence”

He really does want to get into Dawn Eden’s pants.

Am I the only one hoping two wrongs will make a right here?  Someone set up the blind date right now!

I’m almost 100% sure that this is a joke/troll.  He hasn’t purged his blogroll or gotten rid of his statement that there is no god etc. from the right hand of the screen.  If he was really that serious, he’d have managed to get that done in the 5 days since he ‘converted’.  I think he’s just wanting to see the reaction, although he may not retract it now that he’s getting so much love from his xtian commenters.

There’s no way that’s in earnest.  Seems like a joke.

I stopped reading RA years ago and was surprised he didn’t “convert” sooner, assuming it is genuine, of course.

That would be awesome.  Please God, let it be a joke.

well, shit. Not really a surprise. He started out with a fixed set of conservative beliefs, and basically spent three or four years trying to find a way to support them.

Ask and ye shall receive, Seek, and ye shall find,  Knock and the gate shall be opened… Uh, I think it’s someplace in John.

He’s been seeking this for a while.

Uber-creepy picture of Jebus.  And Catholic.  The Apostle’s Creed with a capital “C” in “Catholic” is a shout-out.

Apostles Creed? What does Rocky’s boxing opponent have to do with religeous conversion?

That’s because you’re an atheist, Amanda.  I believe in a loving God, one who would make a man spend five years pretending to convert to Christianity just because it would make me laugh.

Huh.

I hadn’t heard of the guy, and I still don’t care, but if it’s legit, then…

It’s just par for the course, really.  People with tendencies toward the extreme can never do anything with a grain of either salt or class. 

I’m a spiritual person.  You could reasonably put me somewhere under the Christian umbrella, preferably somewhere far away from the folks at American Family Association.

To me, it’s just parallel to the gay guy who gets addicted to drugs, spirals out of control, meets an “ex-gay” counselor, and suddenly starts blaming all his shitty choices on his sexuality, and then, magically, adopts the worldview of the Concerned Women for America.  Some people find value in spirituality, some don’t, but these types are a whole different animal.  They’re not having religious conversions—they’re having identity crises.

I have a close friend who wears his atheism on his sleeve, can’t stop talking about it, wears it like it’s an accessory, and I swear to God, if he ever becomes a Christian (or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or whatever the fuck else), he’ll do the same thing.  It’ll be oh-my-god-extreme, what the hell happened to him this time…and then we’ll spend the next 5 years hearing about his relationship with the Lord at inopportune times.

Anyhoo.  Whatever.

Still don’t care.

Arianna: I was 99% sure it was parody when I saw that. Then I looked at the next entry on his blog. Now I have no clue what he might consider reasonable.

As noted on PZ’z blag, initially the phrase “dedicated to aubrey in the arms of jeesus” was encoded (backwards, single letters between close and opening ‘em’ tags) in the text of the post. Now it reads “FOS ha” (Same encoding, only forward this time.) It’s a prank, IMO.

For the interested, a quick and dirty linux/OSX command line for decoding saved source text:

cat christ-is-the-lord.htm | perl -ne 's/</\n</g; print'|grep -iA 1 '<em>.$'|grep -iB 1 '</em>'

PS—manually getting this site to render cut-and-pastable code is a royal PITA.

With all the speculation about it being a prank, it’s reminding me of one of the funniest and yet most disturbing “South Park” episodes ever, “Fat Butt and Pancake Head.”  It’s the one where Cartman claims that his hand really has become a singer named “Jennifer Lopez” but the others refuse to believe him because he’s fooled them too many times before.

You can watch the whole thing at the South Park website:  go to http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/ and choose Season 7. 

“I got you kind of!  I got you kind of!”

Well, if his conversion is real, he’s certainly found a place where the rest of his irrational beliefs can live happily. His anti-choice stance, to me, always seemed like the religious anti-choice stance without the religion. Perhaps now he’s found the justification he had been looking for.

I’m going to go way out on a limb and guess that this idiot never understood the whole atheism thing in the first place.

But dedicating your life to Jesus seems to me to be more along the lines of dedicating your life to the Beatles or Grateful Dead.

Oh, it’s worse than that.

It’s like dedicating your life to the Beatles when all you have is an album with only five cover versions of the same Beatles song, five tracks of Garth Twitty, and about twenty tracks of some godawful Klezmer rubbish, poorly translated from the Yiddish.

No shit, that is one creepy looking jesus. He looks like he’s either going to eat or sneeze on that little boy.

Ohhhh thinly veiled disgust at suffering the little black boy unto him? hm. Lardy lardy, white jesus save me from these chilluns!

“First, there is no God. In fact, all definitions of the word “God” are either self-contradictory, incoherent, meaningless or refuted by empirical, scientific evidence”

Despite being a member of the Secular Party of Australia, I find the common atheists’ attempt to objectify whether or not there is a deity to involve a misunderstanding of where reason has its limits and faith begins.  The issue at stake about “God” is not whether various conceptualisations of it/him/her are self-contradictory on a logical or scientific level.  They are bound to go beyond science and empiricism anyway, since that is in the very nature of transcendence (a characteristic the deity is supposed to have).  So the issue is whether the element of the human psyche that wants to transcend pure empiricism has any value—morally, experientially, and so on.

I believe that if religionists actually thought this complex way, instead of in a simple and literalistic manner about reality (as do many staunch secularists), they would not lead us all towards such cultural vulgarity as they are otherwise inclined to do.

>An elaborate joke wouldn’t go so far as to genuinely make someone fear for her safety at times.

ok this is actually convincing me, but the whole thing is so damn perfect you know

for fuck’s sake the font get’s uglier at the moment he announces the conversion

I’ll point out to the doubters that in the post I link, RA is already declaring that there’s a metaphysical plane of existence.  Once you believe that, Jeebus ain’t far behind, especially if you have ulterior motivations.

Amanda, it seems to me that you have been in this position before: patiently explaining to your commenters that the person who seems so bizzarre to them is actually completely serious. As before, many of the commenters would rather view the person’s actions as an elaborate, ironic prank. Irony can be a defense mechanism.

You people are crazy. RA/RT is perhaps one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever had the privilege of speaking to. The fact that you attack him personally for his views is beyond the pale of sensibility.

The moral argument alone is enough to support theism as a better alternative to atheism.

Simply put:

1. Objective moral values cannot exist w/o God.

2. Objective moral values exist.

3. Therefore God exists.

Furthermore, its downright shameful of y’all to associate RA/RT with misogyny. He spends his days (and his money) promoting a book (one that’s in thousands of Ob/gyn offices) bent on spreading awareness about a debilitating disease that affects pregnant women!

What book?  I was just at my OB/GYN’s office last week and saw nothing but old copies of Reader’s Digest, “women’s magazines,” and advertisements for laser treatment for spider veins, stretch marks, and unwanted facial hair.

Adam: 1. Objective moral values cannot exist w/o God.

2. Objective moral values exist.

3. Therefore God exists.

Neither 1.) nor 2.) is true, not even close, but just for cheap laughs, let’s provisionally assume that they are.  Then the obvious question is: Which “God”?

Adam, moral values vary by culture, and no God figure is needed for that.  And W Kiernan was right - even if your (ill)logic proof was correct, then what God would that be?  The various religions promote different values, some standing in stark contrast to others.

Hehehe…I’m glad Adam dropped that in here, because it’s possibly the worst proof of the existence of God ever.  It made me lol.

Adam, I will paraphrase from a conversation I’ve been having with a friend today after we both read an entry on RA/RT’s blog.

- The book sounds like a good thing

- but isn’t the description of the suffering of everybody but the pregnant woman in the entry a little creepy? Emotional pressure and the disruption of your children’s routine is sooo traumatic, but puking your guts up repeatedly for months on end isn’t?

- speaking of “pressure” why am I getting the distinct feeling that anybody supporting a decision for abortion counts as pressuring, while persuading the pregnant woman to keep her baby - regardless of the means used - doesn’t, because after all, every pregnant woman must, in her heart of hearts, desperately want to keep that baby?

- still, helping women who really do desperately want that baby keep the pregnancy going and tolerable is a good thing.

I’ve had a friend with hyperemesis gravidarum - it sucks enormously, and I’m all for whatever anyone can do to help women through it. OTOH - RA/RT has more than a whiff of “If you can get through the pregnancy, than morally you must get through the pregnancy, no matter how horrible, traumatic, or disruptive said pregnancy is.” Which is not a sentiment that reassures me about his general lack of misogyny.

Adam has just about converted me going the other way.

Multiple points of failure, Adam.

If a God exists, and if objective moral values exist, then the Euthyphro dilemma demonstrates that God is not the source of objective morality.

Socrates figured this out centuries before the first Christian put a saddle on a stegosaurus, and the Euthyphro argument is now all over the interbutts, so there’s absolutely no excuse for you to be so ignorant.

As a former atheist turned former Christian turned current atheist, yep, conversions really can happen that quickly. In fact, when I first turned Christian I secretly wondered if it was a sign of a brain tumor (they run in my family). I still think my apparent on-off switch for religion is neurological but not really under my conscious control. I remember thinking (and being frustrated) that I didn’t perceive myself as having much choice in “finding God”, or in having my former belief disappear.

I hope, however, that I was not as assholish in my beliefs or non-beliefs as RA was.

RA/RT is perhaps one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever had the privilege of speaking to.

You must have a very limited circle of acquaintances.

He spends his days (and his money) promoting a book (one that’s in thousands of Ob/gyn offices) bent on spreading awareness about a debilitating disease that affects pregnant women!

My husband’s company sends out nurses to treat that debilitating disease, so I’m guessing that they’re about 10,000 times more effective than a guy who put a book in the waiting room on the off-chance that some woman will forget to tell her doctor that she’s throwing up so much that she’s dangerously dehydrated.

Fun fact:  the nurses refer to said patients as “PP’s” or Pregnant Pukers.  It is, in fact, a very common condition that is usually brushed aside as “morning sickness.”  As my friend J. said about her own pregnancies, it’s not really “morning sickness” when you have it all 9 months.

“The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.”
-Eric Hoffer

In other words he’s more raving than he is anything else and will remain thus all his days.

Adam:

Simply put:

1. Objective moral values cannot exist w/o God.

2. Objective moral values exist.

3. Therefore God exists.

Hooray for assuming your conclusion!

Amen and Welcome my brother…..it is great to see how the Lord can change a life and turn him in the right direction.  See for all you non believers it is never too late to turn to the Lord and become a Christian.  May the Lord speak to each of you and turn you toward him and everlasting life!!

How much of a narcissist and/or coward do you have to be to consider “everlasting life” some sort of ultimate prize?

Sorry, cookie.  Given the merry antics of your deity in the Old Testament, the last thing I’d want to do is start believing in Him.  And prayer….right.  You actually WANT me to try to attract the attention of a psychopathic omnipotent mass murderer? 

You must be nuts.

That loving god? You mean the one who required the murder of a human being, a murder I must adore in order that I not be tortured for all eternity?

I’ll pass. Sounds like a real asshole.

Jeff….when you pass make sure you’re wearing something cool and loose fitting, may I suggest bermuda shorts a tank top and sandles…..it may be a little hot where you’re going!

The secret message appears to have changed to ‘no secret messages here’, which is all things considered pretty funny (especially from someone like the Raving (A)Theist(?) who I had pegged as utterly humorless), but doesn’t seem to indicate either way as to whether he’s finally decided to take the plunge (whether to improve his chances with the thoroughly estimable Ms. Eden or otherwise, I don’t know), or whether he’s just decided to try out a twist on the usual “no, really, I’m an *atheist*, I just sound Jesusy because Christ thinks I’m cool” con game.

when did the “judge not, lest ye be judged as well” become non-operational, cookie?

Cookie, repeating your silly fairy tale makes it no more relevant.

forked tongue: How much of a narcissist and/or coward do you have to be to consider “everlasting life” some sort of ultimate prize?

Don’t know about you, but I find “everlasting life” extremely scary.

1. Hot dogs cannot exist without God.

2. Hot dogs exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

Praise Jesus!