What does history have to do with it? Germany had nazis, Americans almost killed all indians and had stupid reasons for invading countries a few years ago. Arabs tried to conquer the world hundreds of years ago same did ROME  or France with napoleon and the crusaders of the church. Russians forcefully controlled  most of eastern europe and  England fought the war of independance egainst the free people of the USA and also conquered alot of Africa same did France. Australia had alot of murderers thiefs etc.   


Just because people were dumb in the past doesnt make them dumb now.  I mean even protestants were catholics  back in the day before protestants existed....   so just because you have another name  makes you different?  So why do people still call Germany Nazi's even tho it was not Germany but the Third German Reich  that was full of nazis? Its another name.


I totally dislike that people always have this unsmart view of things.    People change  and just because individuals do something stupid it doesnt make the whole group stupid especially when most of the stupid things happened before anyone of us was born.

BAM!!! EPIC COMMENT IS EPIIICCC!!!

No doubt it's more common the other way around, that a believer becomes atheist, but it sure ain't strange or uncommon that an atheist becomes religious.

I have more than one friend (two to be specific) who are highly intellectual and went from hardcore atheist to devote religious.

Watch the video and make sure I got the wording right.  I may of used the wrong words.  

I wouldn't count priests and confessional in moral framework.  I would count them as administrative and relgiious practices coming out of a long time of community doing this.  

My understanding is the practice of forgiveness fits into several areas:

* Having a priest forgive is a replacement from needing a community to collectively forgive.

* They serve as a way to have somone counsel someone for need for feeling they have genuinely forgiven.

The practies remain, because people feel they are needed.  Other Christian religious communities do different things.  Like in the Orthodox church, there is forgiveness Sunday where you meet everyone else in the congregation and ask them for forgiveness.  There is also a communal prayer for forgiveness before taking communion.  Confession is also in the orthodox Church, and usually serves far more the counselling session role.  The Catholic view has a far more legal framework.

In regards to divorce, the Catholic church does annulment.  The basis for an annulment is one where it say the person didn't understand what marriage was about and wanted to have the marriage annulled.  Same effect as a divorce, but the reasoning is different behind it.  Real Christian marriage is supposed to be one until death do you part.  You have a life partner you stay with, and you mutually go through life that way.  People today may not grasp this at all.

Catholic teaching on contraception is that, you allow that, where people don't control when they have sex, and manage it, the end result will be a spike in pregnancies, and an increase in abortions, and other things (like STDs).  Reasoning on society would shift with that becoming more acceptable.  Well, that is exactly what has happened.  Now birth control is a desperate firewall pitched to everyone as a way to stop other things.  But societal problems have gotten more problematic.  Ths sexual revolution resulted in a pandora's box of problems open up, and people less happy with sexuality today actually.

This is a Catholic perspective on things.  Anyone who is Catholic can correct anything I said wrong here, because I am not Catholic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Dillahunty 

My question was about individuals who were first bloggers, and Christian, and then decoverted into atheism.  There are numerous individuals who deconverted before they started to blog.  Also, Dillahunty apparenlty wanted to become a Baptist minister, and was raised Baptist.  That is a different animal than Catholic and being a priest.

I don't see how blogging is the significant element here.

And why on earth is CNN covering this?

Ah, because as we all know, atheists have poor or no morals right? That is a very strange reason to embrace a religion in my opinion.

So...? I had a philosophy professor who converted to christianity from atheism and I didn't start a thread about it, neither did he make the news :P

I don't think it is as unusual as some think, for instance a large part of the greek/roman elite seemed to be atheistic before christianity. There was also way more atheists around by the turn of the 19th century (positivism, communism etc.) than we had until the mid 90's. 

Thanks for the correction.

I don't really see why deconverting whilst blogging makes much of a difference.

For some reason, I thought you would have more to say.