Conversions

I just got finished listening to a delightful little book by an ex-Syracuse English professor, who converted to Christianity somewhere following tenure (“The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert”). As someone influenced by the anti-Christian spirit that can be found in some academic institutions (I’ve never encountered this anywhere I have been, including Harvard which was probably the most spiritual academic place I have been, and I got my doctorate AT a Christian college). It got me to think, what are some of the most distinct and dramatic conversions I am aware. Here are eight that pop into my mind, and, like life, are diverse.

1)    CS Lewis. Lewis is probably the most influential Christian writer of the last 500 years. His conversion from a devout Atheist at Oxford was centered on one of the most essential reads of all Christian writings, GK Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.

2) Anthony Flew. Antony Flew was the 2^nd if not most prominent Atheist philosopher of the 20^th century. Several years before his death, the Brit lost his Atheist faith based on the realization that life is here by accident is ludicrious. (see “There is a God” by Anthony Flew).

3) John C. Wright, acclaimed science fiction writer

“I prayed. ‘Dear God, I know… that you do not exist. Nonetheless, as a scholar, I am forced to entertain the hypothetical possibility that I am mistaken’

Soon after, Wright over a series of days had a number of visions and physical encounters with Biblical figures.

4) Edward Feser   One of my favorite contemporary philosophers, Edward Feser converted to Catholism in his 30’s.  Feser is a prolific and highly-skilled writer. “The Last Superstition” is a contemporary philosophical masterpiece refuting the new (recycled) atheism from the likes of Harris and Dawkins. It was classical theistic viewpoints from Augustine and Aquinas that convinced Feser of the truth of theism.

5) Alister McGrath. Another leading philosopher, Alister McGrath was a product of the 60’s British attitudes towards God, particularly in academia. When he had to consider theism as part of his educational process, he dreadfully at first, realized that it had explanatory power that atheism was completely void of. He has since become a leading philosopher in Theism, and is also a prolific writer and critic of Dawkins and Harris.

6) My favorite conversion is of the great 20^th century evolutionary biologist, George Price. In a remarkable recount of his life, “The Price of Altruism” explains how Price realized that good in this world was outside of any explanatory power, and dedicated the last years of his life fully entrenched in helping the poor. He died of despair, killing himself because of the pain he felt of the people suffering in this world. One of the most remarkable people to live, his story is unforgettable.

7) The best looking person on this list, by far (sorry Alistair), Olivia Wilde. Olivia Wilde was an ardent materialist, and preparing for a film a few years ago, she was led to read NY police records of alleged exorcisms that took place. She came to think the reports as utterly true, and is now a theist.

8) M, via E.  I met M through E at Harvard. E was a very bright, extremely well-behaved and sincere young Christian who is now in her medical residency. She was married to M, who was an atheist, until meeting E. He is now training as a Ph.D. student in philosophy. However, M becaome a Christian because E is an incredibly generous and caring person, not because an intellectual awakening. These are the best conversion stories, I think, in the eyes of the Almighty.

Bayesian probability and God

Thomas Bayes was an 18th century mathematician, philosopher and Presbyterian preacher.  In what has become a pretty popular concept even in biology (I remember when I was interviewing for faculty positions four years ago a chair of an oncology department at a university in Boston asked me what I thought about using Bayesian probability to develop cancer treatments, and I deflected for a couple obvious reasons) I came across an interesting use of Bayesian probability by Don Page, who is considered by people in the field to be one of the top theoretical physicists in the world (and got his Ph.D. under Stephen Hawking).

Page, although its clear not the reason he is a Christian, uses Bayesian probability to justify his belief in God, and specifically the Christian God. Bayesian probability is a system of probability that incorporates traditional measurements of probability (frequency and chance) with components of propositional logic, to form a system where proposition and hypothesis can be combined with frequency and chance. This can in turn be used for things like what are the statistically best cancer treatments for a cancer when much of the figuring out which treatment is best is based on uncertain hypothesis, or, as Page uses it, for a worldview.

Page reasons it out something like this: Given even just a low probability that an intelligent Creator is responsible for our universe and us, the historical evidence of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection event moves it from the overall chance for God from a low probably to a high and very likely probability.

It is obviously completely devoid of any philosophical arguments for God, and as such, is catered towards those inclined to think about God in purely mathematical terms. I personally believe that it is warranted (as I have written about) to consider belief if God a, as Alvin Plantinga would categorize it, proper belief (a belief that needs to be assumed to make sense of anything, in particular sense itself), but that will not satisfy many, not even the most open-minded. I also believe, as you would imagine, that de novo the chance of God (meaning an intelligent Creator) is very high, as I think at this point of our understanding a matrix-like reality is the only plausible alternative to a reality created by an intelligent Creator. But to the credit of Page, he has assigned a very conservative value to the existence of God, and put the onus on the evidence of Jesus and His Resurrection as the major probability mover. And I like that. It also forces anyone taking Page seriously on this to take an equally serious look at the evidence for the Resurrection and genuine start of Christianity (as I’ve noted in the past, a thoroughly convincing case is laid out in N.T. Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God”). I believe this is where the real strength of this approach is, from an evangelical standpoint. This will hardly matter for hard and ardent atheists who have fully closed their heart to the possibility of God (which, as I’ve said in the past, has nothing to with the reasons, per se, for God, but like all of us, are highly influenced by other factors). But for those with open minds and hearts to the possibility, it very well could turn the tide. And that is what good evangelizing is: gentle, respectful, genuine urging to share in the greatest story every told; which just happens to be true.  

Tolstoy's tired but true message

"My life is a stupid and spiteful joke someone has played on me"    English translation "A confession", Leo Tolstoy


If you as literary critics or just people that read a lot, Leo Tolstoy will be listed somewhere towards the top of their list as the greatest writers that have lived.  Even myself, who only in the last ten years or so has become a reader,  unlike, for instance. my sister, who has been a fervent reader all her life,  has read at least bits and pieces of some of his works. But I was recently turned on to his most personal writing, part auto-biographical and part philosophical, Tolstoy wrote "A confession" ten years after War and Peace and two years after Anna Karenina. 

Although over 100 years old, his evaluation of people who by all accounts have reached high levels of success remains poignant. My years in academia observing those that are my older and more "successful" peers have already suggested to me what he in many ways corroborated.

He writes of these revelations "all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what was considered completely good fortune. I was not yet fifty; I had a good wife who loved me and whom I loved, good children, and a large estate... I was respected by my relations and acquaintances... I was praised by others...."   Yet, one of the most respected people and "fortunate" people among his peers, Tolstoy, like many of his peers, was miserable. He was smart enough to understand what the majority intelligentsia worldview actually meant to things like purpose, ethics, love, integrity and meaning.

It is anecdotal, because getting the degree of honesty (and this by itself is complicated by the degree of shielding we naturally do to protect ourselves) needed would be probably impossible, but my experiences would agree: I don't know anybody (and in the world of academia-- while I love it and my peers00 we are probably the most clear-cut population of intellectual snobs so I feel particularly qualified to speak) that are actually happy. Think about that for a second.

 Of course, I can't crawl into their heads and see if they are happy or miserable. Of course, there are clear moments of elation (a discovery!), a newborn baby in the family, a prestigious award, the joy of laughter after I tell them a mostly inappropriate joke, that bring moments of fleeting pleasure.

But in the colleagues I know the best, it always and totally, seems to come crashing down. And like in Tolstoy's world of the elite artists and poets and writers, and in the world of the successful engineers and lawyers and elite businesswomen and men, I strongly predict it is all the same as it is in academia: consciously or subconsciously, there is a baseline of unhappiness and misery that can be traced to the most obvious of all causes, one that we alone among all species suffer: a lack of (perceived) purpose in the prevailing worldview of intelligentsia.

And Tolstoy is just as sharp on what exactly the knee-jerk solutions are. The first stage is to submerge yourself in things that you think could bring satisfaction and purpose: For him it was writing, and teaching, and rubbing shoulders with the most powerful and intelligent. For most of us, it is working disproportionately and trying to find greater satisfaction with career success.  When all this miserably fails, like it inevitably does with everyone, he moved on to his family, again, like many of us also do. Maybe he could find purpose in his marriage, and then his kids, and then giving his kids the best opportunities he could and setting them up for the best life he could think of. But his mind kept moving back to the questions: Even if so, then what? How is this at all purpose if it just drags the same problems to them? And so this is always a dead-end for him -- and us -- as well.

There were no answers in any of these things. We also try other things. As I've written before, given the immense ease to do so with today's amazing technology, distraction is the lazier answer. Fantasy sports, traveling, hobbies, binge watching the Ozarks (great show by the way, my wife and I successfully binge-watched this weekend in between taking care of 4 kids), buying more and more stuff (this has become such an issue know you can binge-watch shows on minimalism!), getting heavily involved in national and state policy, living on facebook, etc. The list goes on and changes from generation to generation. But the point is Tolstoy was fortunate enough to be bright and diligent and persistent enough to get to the answers of the questions he was asking and realize the dead-end of it all, many of which people never live long enough to realize themselves.

The next step, and because Tolstoy was among the intellectual elite it was easier for him, was to access the leading thinkers, philosophical and scientific and such, and, well, lay down on the proverbial couch and see if they had any answers. After his inquiries, it should not be surprising that nobody had any satisfactory answers for Leo Tolstoy.

Living out the rationalists' worldview, with Jesus Christ at the centerpiece, was the only solution for Leo Tolstoy. By all accounts Leo Tolstoy was a much happier man after his conversion, a man that was able to live with purpose and integrity, when he adapted worldviews, and, subsequently, was adopted as a son of God.

Happiness and Christianity are over and over mistakenly married together: as a Christian, in my experience, life is even more miserable. It's not that you have to play with a different set of rules as most others, although that does not help, but your eyes are open to the misery that everyone holds (which would be non-consequential in itself), but, like a demasking agent, your heart is open as well, leading to feeling the misery of others. Frustration, in my experience, increases dramatically-- you see others' misery is often self-inflicted, and there is nothing you can do to help them. Trying only exacerbates the frustration: if it is family, it is even worse, because there is that sense of obligation. It is hard to learn to just let go and let them be.

But these examples are not the same Misery (capital M) that Tolstoy is concerned with, and it is not the ultimate misery that many of the most intelligent and honest people see the most vividly. To paraphrase the remarkably simple and true words of Tim Keller, If we came from no purpose and meaning, and we are, as all accounts point, headed to a collective total demolition when the sun burns out, there can logically be absolutely no meaning and purpose in between. Even if we found a way to live forever on this planet, whatever forever means, there still would be no purpose: There is nothing truer than that.

Tolstoy went in every direction (I suppose today we would do most research online, travel to different regions of the world, etc., but the same questions and ideas behind the voyage remain the same) many of us go to find meaning and purpose. As luck would have it, for him, he greatly outlived the average lifespan of a Russian in the late 19th century which enabled him the time to find that purpose and meaning; not subjective meaning, that existentialism falsely offers,  but objective and logical purpose and meaning.

One other point: if Tolstoy had found it earlier in his life, would he have been as great of an artist? Would Anna Karenina exist? I dont know. This is akin to people that may ask the question if Ryan Adams was never addicted to heroin, would Love is Hell be as great as an album as it was? We don't know enough scientifically about how the truly creatives' brains work. But this is not the point at all. In fact, it is just another distraction at getting to the truly meaningful answers, so im sorry i wasted your time reading this paragraph.

I hope your journey ends as well as Tolstoy's did, where I suspect he is enjoying eternal meaning and joy, and writing up a storm.