The myth of teenage angst

Over at Victor Reppert’s fine blog, an atheist left this comment:

At 10:57 PM, Steven Carr said…

“'Prior to his conversion to Christianity: Craig was experiencing angst or existential despair.'

At what age was Craig baptised? :-)

Craig says he converted to Christianity as a teenage boy.

Teenage boys suffering angst or existential despair? How unusual!”

http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/03/craig-parsons-debate-1998.html#comments

Carr doesn’t say where he’s going with this, but the insinuation seems to be that Craig’s conversion was more emotional or hormonal than intellectual.

And presumably Carr is implicitly extending that dismissive analysis to teen conversions generally.

If so, I’d say the following:

i) From what I can tell, the cliché of adolescent angst is a piece of popular mythology. It has a basis in fact, but there is a gender differential.

In what I’ve read, while young men commit suicide at higher rates than young women, the latter attempt suicide at two-to-three times the rate of young men. Men attempt suicide far less often, but are far more efficient at killing themselves when they do try to take their own lives.

Young women are about nine times more likely to suffer from eating disorders than are young men.

And while substance abuse is about the same for both sexes, they drink and do drugs for different reasons. Again, young women are more likely to turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with low self-esteem.

In other words, the stereotype of adolescent angst has a basis in fact, but it’s not a general condition of adolescence. Rather, young women are far more likely to suffer from depression than are their male counterparts.

Hence, this is, at best, a highly lopsided explanation for teen conversion.

ii) Moreover, the reason Craig gave is that he thought life without God would be meaningless.

Now, if you think that life without God is pointless, and if you also don’t believe in God, then that’s a reason to be depressed. You espouse a depressing worldview.

It’s not depression that makes you suffer existential panic; rather, existential panic is what makes you depressed. A despairing outlook is the trigger for emotional despair, not vice versa.

iii) Finally, the reason that people are more likely to convert in their teens and twenties is because that is the time of life when they are coming of age and forming an adult self-image.

They have a life of their own. So they begin to ask themselves what’s the point of living, anyway?

By the very same token, this is also the time of life when people are more likely to deconvert.

They no longer identify so strongly with their parents, and so they work on their self-definition.

This is always the problem with atheistic attempts to explain away faith on psychological grounds.

For if that’s a valid analysis, then it’s a double-edged sword.