Catholicism of all things

Of the branches of Christianity, and perhaps of all religions, Catholicism has the most developed theology, the most rigorous set of justifications for belief, the longest intellectual tradition and tries the hardest to be convivial with reason. Other branches and other religions would be a lot more surprising (unless you're counting Quakers and Unitarians, for which religion has very little to do with "belief" as we understand it here.) Especially for a self-described virtue ethicist.

My formerly agnostic girlfriend of over 5 years just joined a local Catholic congregation.

The best thing you can do for your friend, is to be a friend. Listen to her and support her as a fellow human being. If you have an agenda for what you want her to be, she will most likely be able to sense this.

Just be her friend and accept her for who she is. If she finds that the Catholic community doesn't accept her wholeheartedly, be there for her. If she finds acceptance there, then accept that too.

Hating people for being wrong is a seductive and tricky thing and can lead to unproductive situations. Limited but generous forgiveness and acceptance are optimal strategies in an imperfect world with imperfect communications channels and fallible actors. (Refer to: Axelrod's Prisoner's Dilemma tournament, and a Tit-For-Two-Tats.)

There's always the possibility she will change her mind again. Ask yourself, would you want to be permanently shunned because you didn't come to the correct conclusion fast enough? What would you think of a community with members that acted in that fashion?

I wonder if anybody has advice on how to handle this

I personally would refrain from publicly criticising her thinking, life choices and core identity on the internet. For example:

But then I remembered how I had been frustrated in the past by her tolerance for what seemed like rank religious bigotry and how often I thought she was taking seriously theological positions that seemed about as likely as the 9/11 attacks being genuinely inspired and ordained by Allah. I remembered how I thought she had a confused conception of meta-ethics and that she often seemed skeptical of reductionism, which in retrospect should have been a major red flag for purported atheists. So yeah, spending all your time arguing about Catholic doctrine really is a warning sign, no matter how strongly you seem to champion the "atheist" side of the debate. Seriously.

... this is insightful and valuable as a warning to others and for your own future reference. But it is more something to do once the victim has already been written off and attempts at influence abandoned.

Maybe it's just me, but the premise of this post rubs me the wrong way. "Thwarting" a conversion? It seems kinda... I don't know. And I'm probably one of the most anti-theistic people that I know or have interacted with on the Internet. It's not like you're trying to prevent her from slipping into alcoholism. As long as she stays fundamentally the same person, I don't see what the big deal is. People should be respected for how they treat others, not what they believe.

That said, I've read a few "convert back to Christianity" stories and a lot of them have similar hidden/leading indicators. There's always some sort of family/significant other factor; it was usually a huge sticking point during their deconversion from religion. I don't really know a lot of this blogger's backstory, but are her family and/or significant other Catholics? That would explain the jump straight from atheism to Catholicism without some sort of intermediary stage (e.g. deism, generic Christianity, etc.) based on my own personal prior probability about how these things happen.

So if that's the case, "thwarting" again seems sort of insensitive. At least to me it would be insensitive language in this context.

To be honest, I doubt that her true rejection matches her stated objections.

For several years, a lot of my friends have been telling me I had an inconsistent and unsustainable philosophy.

Emphasis mine. Her friends are Christian (probably Catholic). They heckle her when she writes atheist material for debates. Her good friend she talks about theology with is a Christian. That's all there is to it.

Humans are still tribal monkeys who follow the customs of their tribe. You put any person around a bunch of Christians (or Buddhists, or Muslims, or Jews), and they'll probably convert. It takes an extremely unusual person to not adopt the religion of their peers, even with all evidence against it.

Nobody says "hmm, according to my understanding of evolutionary theory, group selection wouldn't be a strong enough force to mediate selfish pressures in evolving human moral inclinations, therefore evil is caused by a talking snake." To answer the question directly, you convert any person the same way you change someone's football team, by surrounding them with members of the tribe you want them to be.

When I first read my friend's post, I had a major "I notice that I am confused" moment, because it just seemed so implausible that someone who understood actual atheist arguments (as opposed to dead little sister Hollywood Atheism) could convert to religion, and Catholicism of all things.

Catholicism is actually one of the intellectually more formidable religions. If you accept a few key axioms of Christianity (and even most atheist Westerners do) and think about their implications for a lot of time it seems remarkable how vulnerable you are to converting to it.

In Christianspace, for the intelectual who likes playing around with very abstract dry concepts Catholicism seems to be a strong attractor. While protestants have played around with reversing its stupidity traditional Western civilization is fundamentally Catholic civilization. It gets the halo effect from a whole lot of art and great thinkers and pretty Churches. Then there is also the sheer majoritarian argument in its favour since it is by far the largest denomination and has institutional continuity going back more than 1500 years. When people around the world think Christianity, they think Catholic.

Also as... (read more)

Pick a bunch of passages about ethics from several sources - the Bible, the Koran, Buddhist writings, secular writings, etc.

Have her read them, but don't tell her which ones are which. Have her write down her thoughts and feelings about each one, whether she thinks they stand up to logical scrutiny. Then after, tell her the sources of them and ask her whether she might reconsider.

Of course, you'd have to select them carefully so that there are no obvious giveaways (e.g. mentioning God), and also you should be careful not to cherrypick sources that make secularism look good and religion look bad.

I remembered how I thought she had a confused conception of meta-ethics and that she often seemed skeptical of reductionism, which in retrospect should have been a major red flag for purported atheists.

From my view, reductionism is the basic question. If someone is right on evolution but wrong on reductionism, that really doesn't buy them much- and I would wonder how deeply they grasp evolution.

As to how to navigate this: suppose that she has a psychological need to profess a belief in some sort of deity, such that she could not fully thrive without professing that belief. Would you want her to be an atheist then? How can you tell if she has that need or not?

Do people here, in general, think it is productive and worthwhile to spend time and energy on deconverting friends and family (provided the religious beliefs in question are mainstream and not threatening to their physical or financial health)?

That's a genuine question (not rhetoric) in case it wasn't clear.

When I first read my friend's post, I had a major "I notice that I am confused" moment, because it just seemed so implausible that someone who understood actual atheist arguments (as opposed to dead little sister Hollywood Atheism) could convert to religion, and Catholicism of all things.

I'll rejoin Jack and GLaDOS to say that Catholicism isn't the worst of religions. If I was to convert to a religion it would probably be Catholicism, and I've sometimes semi-seriously played with the idea of checking out the local church - and yes, I understand actual atheist arguments, and no, none of my family is pushing me towards religion.

(A significant part of the attraction of Catholicism is being a contrarian for the sake of it, which is not a very good reason. But there's also a good deal of curiosity, and a feeling that they're pretty good at community. On the minus side, they are responsible for a good deal of anti-epistemology, and of course, God doesn't exist.)

But second, and more immediately, I wonder if anybody has advice on how to handle this, or if they've had similar experiences with their friends. I do care about this person, and I was devastated to hear this news, so if there's something I can do to help her, I want to.

Why are you so convinced this is bad for her? Most people are somewhat religious, and every study I've seen suggests they are just as happy, well-adjusted, and moral as non-religious people. I certainly think it is generally better to believe what is true, but is something like this really worth being devastated about? Can't you just be open-minded about her lifestyle choice?

That is very scary. Leah is a pretty well known atheist blogger. It gives me that "there but for the grace of God go I" feeling.

Does she understand the difference between belief and belief in belief? I helped someone escape an unfortunate re-conversion to religion by ensuring they were clear on this distinction, and challenging them on whether they really believed.

I am observing, for more than a three decades now, how a friend of mine, becomes more and more religious. Catholic. When we met, he was a militant leftist atheists. What was quite a norm under communism we had back then here. If not a norm, then something you can easily expect from a young ambitious teenager. Did I say, he was quite a radical anti theist? I was not very comfortable with his rantings against "fools".

Then it started. He insisted on a work free Christmas day, which we had not under the communists. Then he was outraged by my view, t... (read more)

From the bit about feeling like morality 'loved' her, she seems to find the prospect that a deity exists to be a good thing -- whether or not it's true, she seems to find the belief more attractive than I think it should be given the evidence.

It might be worth explaining that it would be really cruel for an extremely powerful being to just stand around and watch evolution happen. Or, say, either of the World Wars. So, if somehow we did find out that a deity existed, we would have very strong evidence that it was unfriendly, not to mention unFriendly.

If the... (read more)

You asked a question with a real answer, but I think you've asked the wrong question. Setting out with the goal of changing someone is an especially good way to ruin a relationship. It's vastly more essential to learn to value the good in the midst of the bad, because that kind of mixed imperfection is all you will ever find anywhere.

As Catholics are quite specific about, conversion isn't a one-time event. She's in the process of converting, but I've known several people in RCIA who dropped out for one reason or another. And it's sadly true that parish... (read more)

From a "logical argument" point of view, Vaniver has the right point of view. Reductionism is the key.

From a Dark Arts point of view, reading Leah's post suggests the reason she fell toward Catholicism when she got confused on morality was that she had a bunch of Catholic friends around. Thus being a conspicuously moral (and high-status) atheist will give her an example to fall back to. This isn't too Dark Arts-ish, since you presumably try to be high-status and moral anyway.

It seems, at least, that she understands where the separation of views really occurs:

Based on my in-person arguments to date, it seems like most of my atheist friends disagree two or three steps back from my deciding Morality is actually God. They usually diverge back around the bit where I assert morality, like math, is objective and independent of humans.

As far as Catholicism specifically, she might benefit from reading Elaine Pagels, who discusses at length the historical evidence of the founding of the Catholic Church. Notably, the selection of go... (read more)

But then I remembered how I had been frustrated in the past by her tolerance for what seemed like rank religious bigotry

Could you expend on what you mean by "bigotry", I've seen that word thrown around to shut down debates way too much.

For example, from the above post some might conclude that you are an anti-Catholic bigot, depending on the definition of "bigotry" being used they might well be right.

Jay, I can certainly empathize with your concern for your friend. However, as a practicing Catholic I can assure you that your friend will not be surrounded by people trying to convince her that she needs to "repent" of her sexuality. There's less that I can say about dark side epistemology (since you would probably consider me to be an adherent of it!) but I can assure you that Leah is not going to have piles of nonsensical doctrine shoved down her throat. She will be introduced to many ideas, but ultimately she herself will decide what to accep... (read more)

During the discussion, he prodded me on where I thought moral law came from in my metaphysics. I talked about morality as though it were some kind of Platonic form, remote from the plane that humans existed on. He wanted to know where the connection was.

I believed that the Moral Law wasn’t just a Platonic truth, abstract and distant. It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth.

Presumably asking her to clarify her belief that Morality = Person, and discussing other options for Morality and why they do not make sense ... (read more)

"You don't use your mind to think about religion." - J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, Church of the SubGenius.

The question you asked is how to convince your friend not to become a Catholic. That's the question I'll answer, but it's the wrong question for you to ask.

The Episcopalian faith has much of the content and structure of the Catholic faith, but it is (I hear) more accommodating to women and to non-straight people. Perhaps this might be a better fit for your friend.

The blogger behind ravingatheist.com became a Christian. To his or her credit... (read more)

NOTE ON USAGE: I mean by "theist" only a believer in some sort of god, as opposed to an "atheist."

As far as jumping to Catholicism, even if you ding her on the implausible authoritarianism of infallibility and her apparent disagreement over sexual ethics, all you are arguing for is to move her from Roman Catholic to Anglican.

I personally do not attempt to convert people away from Catholicism or pretty much anything else unless they ask me to or they initiate a discussion with me. I have numerous discussions with my Catholic father, b... (read more)

"she felt like morality "loved" her."

Maybe you can explain to her that internal constructs can feel like external entities.

also from reading her blog post I got the impression rationality was a limit on her ability to choose her beliefs in this area rather than her means for doing so

"I couldn’t pick consistency over my construction project as long as I didn’t believe it was true."

Also this, "until I discovered that their study of virtue ethics has led them to take a tumble into the Tiber" makes it sound like she is a... (read more)

I don't think the conversion will last.

The world looks pretty scary when we try and look at it as it really is. As much as we try to account for it, at some level we are a function of that which we observe and take in- from that viewpoint, it is not difficult to imagine a scenario where the information you take in becomes skewed along lines that don't mach up with reality. Given enough skewed data, we all make choices that appear irrational from other eyes.

Sadly, none of us rank information told us once as highly as information we "discover" for ourselves. I don't know if the convers... (read more)

It probably won't lead to the bottom line she's already seemed to have drawn, but I can share a bunch of material from my ethics class (which is very much science-based, and has a lot of good videos and literature to read). I'm only 1/3 done with the class, but to the degree that it wipes everything away and starts from scratch, I feel that it could only help a person on their journey of understanding ethics.

Let me know if you're interested.

It seems the impetus for her conversion was increasing frustration that she had no good naturalistic account for objective morality in the form of virtue ethics; that upon reflection, she decided she felt like morality "loved" her; that this feeling implied God;

Throw desirism at her?

People in general rarely do things for rational, sensible, truth-based reasons. So generally, if I really want someone to do or think something, I manipuate them into it. Of course, this may harm your friendship (if you get caught) or damage the person (if you are not apt at such things) or it may run against your personal ethics. None of these are bad reasons to refrain, but if what you really want is her deconversion, you already want to manipulate her and might as well use effective tools (rhetoric, emotional blackmail, cognitive biases, reputation/shaming... whatever suits you) rather than less effective means such as facts, evidence, or logical reasoning.

Orthodox Church is strictly more probable than Catholic Church regarding truthness of dogma. ETA: assuming that both probabilities are greater than zero.