Gastogh comments on How can people be actually converted? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: yttrium 05 February 2012 10:13PM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 06 February 2012 10:22:46AM 22 points [-]

Amusingly, my university's Theology department has a reputation of deconverting people, many of whom are studying the subject in order to become priests. Apparently the subject is taught in a very scientific and critical manner. E.g. the exegesis lectures talk a lot about how it was common to make someone seem more impressive by claiming that he was born of a virgin, or about how many pre-Christian religions had a god who sacrificed his son and Christianity may just have borrowed the popular motif. This can apparently be disenchanting.

Comment author: Gastogh 08 February 2012 09:22:31AM 1 point [-]

I've heard similar stories (each one at least second-hand); there seems to be a binary split in the kind of people who go on to study theology in university: those who believe hard and those whose faith is already teetering.

It's also similar to my own experiences; while I never took a university-grade theology class, I did go through the Finnish school system and the associated nine years of exposure to religion.

I'll say this for religion and teaching it at school in a predominantly secular country: it's a great way to get people thinking. It was because of those religion classes that I first went out to find out about (read: "scratch the surface of") logical argumentation and fallacies of reasoning.

If only there were a way to predictably accomplish the same effect without all the collateral damage.