One Atheist’s Journey

She describes herself as a “Bible believing, powerlifting, cancer surviving, PhD astrophysicist.” I’ve followed Sarah Salviander on social media for a few years and always find her stories interesting. Her recent post is worth consideration.

“One thing I could not get past as an atheist was the lack of internal consistency of my worldview.

When I began to question the foundation of my beliefs, that’s when it all started to fall apart.

In a purely Darwinian view, our minds did not develop to in order to perceive truth, but to survive. So, how do we know we’re thinking rationally? How do we know we’re perceiving reality accurately? We don’t; we just assume we are. Without an objective reason to believe this, it seemed like wishful thinking to me.

Then I discovered the idea of Boltzmann brains. Believe it or not, it’s much more likely that a single brain fluctuates into existence and hallucinates living a “normal” life than it is that this entire universe came into existence the way it is. How did I know I wasn’t just a hallucinating brain? I didn’t. And if it’s statistically much more likely, then on what basis did I believe that I was experiencing everything my brain says I am?

And why did I believe anyone has rights? Human rights are really important to me, but if the world is purely naturalistic, then why do we keep acting like we’re somehow separate from the rest of the natural world? Does a deer that’s being eaten alive by a grizzly bear have a right not to be eaten alive? If not, then why do we think human beings have rights in a purely naturalistic universe? None of it made sense. I was deeply unsettled when I realized all of this. Not enough to become a theist, though. That didn’t even enter my mind until two years later, when I finally realized that God as the giver of meaning, as the shaper of reality, as the maker of rules, as the bestower of rights solved all of these problems.

That was the beginning of my personal journey to Jesus Christ.”