{"id":1056,"date":"2009-04-16T07:48:20","date_gmt":"2009-04-16T12:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indefenseofthefaith.org\/?p=1056"},"modified":"2009-05-05T11:32:19","modified_gmt":"2009-05-05T16:32:19","slug":"a-n-wilson-on-%e2%80%9cwhy-i-believe-again%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/?p=1056","title":{"rendered":"A. N. Wilson on &#8220;Why I Believe Again&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James Grant <a href=\"http:\/\/www.inlightofthegospel.org\/?p=4790\" target=\"_blank\">says<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A. N. Wilson was once a Christian, but &#8220;converted&#8221;\u009d to atheism, rubbing shoulders with Dawkins and Hitchens and others. but now he has started to believe again. Why? He mentioned several reasons in this article, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/religion\/2009\/04\/conversion-experience-atheism\">Why I Believe Again<\/a>.&#8221;\u009d It really is worth your time to read it.<\/p>\n<p>He mentions watching people die, including his mother, and becoming convinced that purely materialists explanations for human existence do not work. He also explains that his atheist friends seem like people &#8220;who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love.&#8221;\u009d But one of the crucial steps in moving away from unbelief was a book on Nazi Germany:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I haven&#8217;t mentioned morality, but one thing that finally put the tin hat on any aspirations to be an unbeliever was writing a book about the Wagner family and Nazi Germany, and realising how utterly incoherent were Hitler&#8217;s neo-Darwinian ravings, and how potent was the opposition, much of it from Christians; paid for, not with clear intellectual victory, but in blood. Read Pastor Bonhoeffer&#8217;s book Ethics, and ask yourself what sort of mad world is created by those who think that ethics are a purely human construct. Think of Bonhoeffer&#8217;s serenity before he was hanged, even though he was in love and had everything to look forward to.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That is powerful. But don&#8217;t stop with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/religion\/2009\/04\/conversion-experience-atheism\">his article<\/a>. The New Statesman has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/religion\/2009\/04\/returning-to-religion\">Q&amp;A<\/a> with him too&#8230; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.inlightofthegospel.org\/?p=4790\" target=\"_blank\">Continue Reading&#8230;<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Grant says&#8230; A. N. Wilson was once a Christian, but &#8220;converted&#8221;\u009d to atheism, rubbing shoulders with Dawkins and Hitchens and others. but now he has started to believe again. Why? He mentioned several reasons in this article, &#8220;Why I Believe Again.&#8221;\u009d It really is worth your time to read it. He mentions watching people &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/?p=1056\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A. N. Wilson on &#8220;Why I Believe Again&#8221;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,21,71,63,59,23,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-atheism","category-false-religion","category-interviews","category-science","category-testimonies","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1080,"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions\/1080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indefenseofthefaith.org\/idotf\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}