November 12, 2007

logic and love convinced this ex-atheist

FORCED BY LOGIC
It took philosophy and a friend to convince this atheist
by Agnieszka Tennant | posted 6/01/2003 12:00AM
Christianity Today


An activist atheist, Christopher Pida often engaged people in debates in order to debunk Christianity. He earned a philosophy degree from California State University at Northridge in 1996, where he said he was "bombarded by relativism." After his best friend, Rob Westerwelt, became a Christian in college, the two would debate for hours.

"I think Rob could have easily driven me away and wrecked any chances of my coming to faith," Pida told CT. Instead, Rob's demeanor was, in Pida's words, "I'm going to love you anyway, but I'm going to stand up for what I believe in." It meant a lot to Pida that, despite their fundamental difference, Westerwelt asked him to be best man at his wedding.

Like Pida, Westerwelt earned his master's in philosophy. It was from Biola, where he now is director of advertising and publications.

Westerwelt invited Pida to last year's Defending the Faith series. Listening to the Biola philosophers made Pida recognize that atheism "took the leap of faith that is usually erroneously blamed on Christianity—a blind, unknowing faith," he says.

Books and taped lectures from Biola's apologists are "why I'm not a moral relativist," he says. They helped him realize the big difference between objective and preference claims. "Torturing babies is wrong; 'I like vanilla ice cream' is a preference," he says. "I became a Christian by force of logic."


Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:52 PM

    Hhhmmm lost one to the dark side we have. Strange, correct me if I'm wrong but WHERE EXACTLY IS LOGIC THAT CONVINCED THIS GUY. Well I guess that will teach him to study something as useless in the modern era as philosophy. probably got mislead my some nut job type type of argument.

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  2. hello allister. :)

    "...as useless in the modern area as philosophy"?

    1. How different is logic from philosophy anyway?

    2. Isn't philosophy used by many atheists then and now, to validate their reasoning?

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  3. To everyone: a proper "closure of sorts" may be found here:

    http://tecigurl.blogspot.com/2008/06/brief-history-of-timeof-evolution-ofwhy.html

    But new comments are always welcome :) It looks like i have more time to respond, but in any case again i say that i will always try my best to do so :)

    All the best and i do hope to hear and correspond with you :)

    ReplyDelete