Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – the conversion of Larry Sanger

Larry Sanger, for those who didn’t know, was supposedly one of the founders of wikipedia. Per his wiki page, that doesn’t seem to be quite accurate. And his page on rationalwiki reveals just what a twit he is (no memes at the end)

In any case, he has supposedly converted to christanity, though which version isn’t very clear. Chritains are touting this as a “smart person joined our cult so this means our cult is true” thing. Unsurprisngly, Sanger, despie having a phd in philosophy, is a very poor apologist. You can see him explain why he converted here.

he also has a youtube video of it, which is where I found this story originally and where I replied to it. My response is below:

so, you simply went back to christanity, and do tell which versin is the “Right” one, out of the thousands of versions that christians have invented.

“Similarly, I observed Christians on social media often (though not always) behaving with maturity and grace, while their critics often acted like obnoxious trolls. ”

Quite the false claims and lovely confirmation bias. You claim “new atheism” was “obnoxious”. In what way? Showing people how their claimsm are false? Pointing out how their claims cause real harm?

” Some of my favorite people were Christian, too. And some of them were extremely intelligent. Strange.”

Just because intelligent people join a cult doesn’t mean the cult’s claims are true. This is an appeal to authority fallacy.

“I scanned books produced by New Atheists such as Dawkins and Harris and could never bring myself to actually buy one: they were just so transparently mediocre. Criticism of theism and Christianity presented such a rich field of strong argument, and I found virtually none in these books. In fairness, this is not so much the case with the philosopher atheists, whose work is more serious.”

a version the “sophisticated theology” argument.

Unsurprisngly, it seems you can’t actually show where Dawkins, Harris, etc were wrong.

“While all this was happening, my thinking about morality evolved. In 2014-15, I wrote a couple of essays, “How to end Western Civilization” and “Our Moral Abyss,” in which I bemoaned the worsening moral culture of the West, which I associated in part with the decline of religion. ”

curious how religion has no more morality than any thing else, and its morality is just as subjective as anyones. Christian morality is demosntrably subjective, with each inventing a list of morals they claim their god wants, and yet the poor dears can’t show that their god merely exists, much less agrees with them.

They also have the problem that they must insist that their god doesn’t have to follow these supposedly “objective” morals since they have to invent excuses why it is okay for this god to commit genocide, to kill people for the actions of others, etc. This makes their morality subjective to who someone is. it also shows their morality is little more than might equals right.

so this,

“Many don’t go to church; many of those who do go to church don’t believe; even those who do believe don’t take religious moral strictures very seriously; even if they do, they probably don’t understand them well; and finally, those who understand them aren’t supported by most others, who are both ignorant and deculturated, and all too willing to “tolerate” all manner of sins. So, as I say, as a serious cultural force, inspiring us to live well, religion is a pale shadow of its former self. Even as a nonbeliever, this strikes me as a truly profound loss.”

is complete nonsense.

and this is even more so:

“What makes humanity loveable, and what inspires the most devotion toward heroes and leaders, is the capacity for creation, the ability to invent, build, preserve, and restore whatever is good, i.e., that which supports and delights flourishing, well-ordered life. What makes evil individuals worthy of our righteous anger is their capacity for destruction of the good, due to their contempt for human life as such. If so, then the love for God may be understood as a perfectly natural love of the supremely creative force in the universe. For what could be greater than the creator of the universe, and what could be more loveable? And then it certainly makes sense that they would regard Satan as a force most worthy of our hatred and condemnation, since Satan is held to be an essentially destructive entity, the one most contemptuous of human life as such.”

then we have this

“after all, one of the things that one learns about the occult and its various secret societies is that they believe the knowledge itself is potent, that it opens doorways to the spiritual realm. If there was one thing that was clear to me, it was that I wanted such doors, if any there be, to remain firmly shut.”

curious how all religions do exactly this. It’s also notable that you didn’t jsut read the bible, you tried to find sources that told you it made sense. I do wonder what would have happened if you had just read it alone. I did and I’m an atheist.

“Science says the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe. But whatever had a beginning has to have had an explanation. As this is the beginning of matter itself, it cannot have a material cause; thus it must have an immaterial cause (whatever that might be like).”

The first cause argument never needs a god. No need for an “immaterial cause” either. You simply assert that with no evidence at all.

“Physicists tell us that if the values of those constants were different, then various things could not have happened; for example, atoms could not have formed, or stars could not have ignited and given off light and heat. But scientists have never offered an explanation for these constants.”

Yep, and you went straight to “Goddidit”, depending on your personal ignorance and the strange expectatin that scientists will never do any more research.

BTW, if you want to claim “design” you need to explain why your god wsa such an idiot or malicious to create the sun to give us cancer, DNA to fail often and horribly, and the human body to guarantee that humans will choke to death by the thousands every year.

You may claim the “fall” but that would mean you aren’t seeing any ‘design’ since everythign supposedly changed when your god took a temper tantrum and cursed everything. the claim that it is a culmulative case is nonsenes since not one of those arguments shows your human blood sacrifice by torture needing god is the right one.

There is no one Christainity but thousands. it seems that, like all christians, you’ve made up your own version.

Unfortunately, this conversion reads as a conservative fellow (no surprise he’s an anti-vaxxer) who didn’t get the attention he thought he deserved, failed at business, and now is trying to find a niche amongst christians who will laud him for being a convert. Jordan Peterson has been doing the same thing.