Stephen J. Graham@sjggrahamAtheists: if you could convert one Christian philosopher to atheism, who would it be?Christians: if you could convert a single atheist philosopher to the faith, who would it be?
1. This is a window into how atheists think. Imagine the damage to your cause if your best general defected to the enemy side. Or imagine the damage to the enemy side if their best general defected to our side.
But from a Christian standpoint, that's not how it works. It's not like gifted Christians are doing God a favor. God can raise up new sons of Abraham from stones (Mt 3:9). Christianity is not elitist (1 Cor 1-3). The fortunes of Christianity don't depend on indispensable individuals. God can replace our generals with a new batch that's just as good or better.
2. However, we could play along for the sake of argument. It's necessary to draw a distinguish between wholesale and retail thinkers. High-level thinkers and influential popularizes. In some cases, these overlap.
On the Christian side, William Lane Craig and N. T. Wright would be trophy converts for atheism. At present, those are the biggest catches. They're both popularizers and intellectually influential. Lennox is a notch below.
Then you have the also-rans. Popularizers like Zacharias, Turek, Strobel, and Licona.
On the merits, you have the high-level thinkers and scholars like Keener, Bauckham, Pruss, van Inwagen, Plantinga, Rasmussen, Dembski, Swinburne. These cater to apologetic junkies and philosophy nerds. Ed Feser is a notch below.
They'd be trophy converts for atheism, although at their age, if Swinburne or Plantinga switched sides, that might well be chalked up to losing their minds rather than changing their minds. Senility rather than seeing the light.
On the atheist side, Bart Ehrman would be a trophy convert for Christianity. He's currently the most popular and influential atheist. A scholar by temperament and training, but
nowadays he churns out potboilers. At present he's the leading popularizer.
Dawkins used to occupy that distinction, but his star has faded. Carrier is a social climber who used rival atheists as a ladder in his ruthless effort to reach the top rung, but he never achieved the following of a Dawkins, Hitchens, or Ehrman, and he suffered a precipitous downfall. A washed-up wannabe.
There's also a rising generation of YouTube celebutantes who trade in starpower rather than brainpower.
On the merits, Oppy would would be a trophy convert to Christianity, followed by guys like Shellenberg, Tooley, Wielenberg, and Sober. But they only cater to cerebral atheists, a fraction of the total fanbase.
Again, though, this is judging the stage of play from a worldly, secular standpoint. The success of the Christian movement doesn't rise or fall on winning or losing trophy converts. Some have a larger role to play, some a smaller role to play, but everyone is expendable in the sense that God is never at a loss for the necessary resources.
A big-name scientist Francis Collins might be a big catch for atheists too.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm not sure even someone like Collins would be as big a catch as atheists might think. For one thing, I imagine atheists would say something like "See! The guy who mapped the human genome no longer believes in God! Science wins!". However, that'd be illogical, based on the false assumption that there's a fundamental conflict or inconsistency between Christianity and science.
Also, if Collins were to become an atheist, then presumably it'd be because he sees a fundamental conflict or inconsistency between Christian faith and evolutionary theory (e.g. evolutionary genetics). That'd be his field of expertise. It wouldn't have as much bite if he became an atheist for reasons outside his field of expertise.
However, Collins is already a theistic evolutionist. As the founder of BioLogos, he doesn't think there's any significant incompatibility between the two. So it'd be like an evangelical apologist who has spent his ministry primarily arguing against Catholicism crossing the Tiber. One would have to wonder what he saw that he didn't see before.