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However I think as this is their place it is more polite to list people who stuck with atheism. Although I admit someone who was an advocate or proselytizer for atheist is probably not going to be appealing to me so I admit I didn't think those and I think that's what they want.
However I think as this is their place it is more polite to list people who stuck with atheism. Although I admit someone who was an advocate or proselytizer for atheist is probably not going to be appealing to me so I admit I didn't think those and I think that's what they want.
Point taken.
From what I've seen here, there is a general ignorance about the existence of Christian and religious Jewish intellectuals. It's as though their template for every "Christian" is a cross between Ned Flanders & Tammy Faye Baker.
Moreover, with all the unprovoked filth and abuse many of these people dole out toward the God of Abraham and His followers on the "Religion and Philosophy" forum, I thought a little "poke" was finally in order.
From what I've seen here, there is a general ignorance about the existence of Christian and religious Jewish intellectuals. It's as though their template for every "Christian" is a cross between Ned Flanders & Tammy Faye Baker.
Moreover, with all the unprovoked filth and abuse many of these people dole out toward the God of Abraham and His followers on the "Religion and Philosophy" forum, I thought a little "poke" was finally in order.
I gotcha. It is sad how often these boards degenerate into ridiculous stereotypes. I mean we even have a thread on the general religion board about whether Jews really are rich, clannish, and super-crafty It's like stepping into the dumber parts of the nineteenth century at times.
However I think as this is their place it is more polite to list people who stuck with atheism. Although I admit someone who was an advocate or proselytizer for atheist is probably not going to be appealing to me so I admit I didn't think those and I think that's what they want.
I gotcha. It is sad how often these boards degenerate into ridiculous stereotypes. I mean we even have a thread on the general religion board about whether Jews really are rich, clannish, and super-crafty It's like stepping into the dumber parts of the nineteenth century at times.
It is certainly ironic that many of the "atheist horde" at this forum will jump on the Catholic Church for being "antisemitic" (even going so far as to blame it for the neo-pagan, deeply anti-Christian atrocity known as "Nazism") yet then go on themselves to participate in antisemitic threads about Jews.
Your list did not have any Atheist.
Individuals from the cold war who were communist, which you seem to correlate to the Atheist movement, and people who were Agnostic while in social relationship with Atheist intellectuals, or Jewish in my view don’t make them Atheist.
I recognize you were trying to point out people who reverted back to religion after being Atheist, but going back to the early to mid 20th century is a poor choice of time line with the US pressures, the anti communism movement, and the religious push of the 1950’s many people would avoid anything that exposed them to close examination related to religion or political issues.
Will Herberg was Jewish, and not atheist. He was an interesting character during the late 60 and 70’s, but a poor choice as an atheist. Your take on him as an Atheist makes me wonder do you view all Jewish people as Atheist? .
Whittaker Chambers was a communist and a soviet spy by his own admission, but I have not fount where he claimed to be an Atheist. It seems you see Communism and Atheist as being one in the same also.
C S Lewis was claimed to be agnostic in his young adult life while working with several intellectual Atheist at Oxford University and only after or during WW II did he move into the christian realm. I personally see him as a christian, not an Atheist.
All three of these men were at one time atheists. Therefore strictly speaking, they fall within the definition of the OP's question.
In regard to your absurd question:
Your take on him as an Atheist makes me wonder do you view all Jewish people as Atheist?
Absolutely not!!! Do you?!?
Now onto the men themselves....
1.Will Herberg was Jewish, and not atheist.
FALSE.
Indeed he was ethnically Jewish and later in life became a religious Jew, but as a young man he was also an atheist:
Herberg, a former Communist and atheist, turned to God and became a devastating critic of contemporary political ideologies, which he described as latter-day forms of idolatry....
Further, I have a book by Herberg where he speaks about his former atheism but I don't know where it is at the moment. I will find the quote and post it some time in the future at this thread.
2. Whittaker Chambers....I have not fount where he claimed to be an Atheist.
I read "Cold Friday" many years ago (it is not presently in my library) where he stated this. I will have to do further research, however....
Chambers had been an atheist, an Episcopalian, a Quaker: "inability to make stable attachments."....
“Chambers did a complete 180,” author Paul Kengor said in an interview with NewsMax.com. In the '20s and early '30s, Chambers “was an atheist communist.” By the '50s he “had become what we today would call a Christian conservative,” having become a devout Catholic.
3. C S Lewis was claimed to be agnostic in his young adult life while working with several intellectual Atheist at Oxford University and only after or during WW II did he move into the christian realm.
FALSE.
Clive Staples Lewis was born in 1898....Lewis turned bitter toward religion early in life.... His pre-university tour of duty in World War I only solidified his atheism, since the suffering he had witnessed and experienced seemed irreconcilable with the existence of a good God.
"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust....in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...."
The OP meant individuals who spent the majority of their lives as atheists. I'm sure you know that. Does it really need to be explicitly stated in the Atheism & Agnosticism forum?
I think there's an equation that Communists aren't atheists because they aren't "freethinkers." However the term "atheism" doesn't really imply free-thought or even rationalism. All it means is a disbelief in God or gods. Most Marxists would fit that. Although in cases where I had no clear statement they were atheist, I created the list of former atheists (now former atheists and agnostics) on Wikipedia, I didn't include ex-Marxists. So Chambers was one where there was clear statements, but Peter Hitchens was not even though Hitchens had been a Trotskiyite for a long time.
People who abandoned atheism after the Cold War include Eugene D. Genovese, Anne Rice, and John C. Wright. Noted Christians who became atheists or agnostics include songwriter Dan Barker, athlete Jonathan Edwards, and minister Charles Templeton. Anyway this is maybe outside the point of the topic.
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It's like stepping into the dumber parts of the nineteenth century at times.
