Episode 158- Incredible Catholic Conversion w/Stephen Johnson

Um, but what it did, what it did for me is it kind of triggered an insatiable desire to just, I want to know as much about everything as possible.

Growing up LDS, um, I had always been inquisitive, but there was a shift that happened within me psychologically when I deconstructed the faith.

You know, so one of the things, like, growing up, I, I always liked reading, but fiction was my favorite genre.

Mm-hmm.

At this point, nonfiction became my favorite genre.

I just wanted to learn as much as I could about the natural world, about, uh, phenomenon that I was experiencing, about the origins of the universe.

And, um, and so it was, yeah, it, it offered me a lot in the way of understanding who I am, where I fit in into the cosmos, but it wasn't for some time that I began to see that there were holes in that, that worldview as well.

So that's, um, that, that, I guess that's shift one, from Mormonism-

Yeah

... into atheism.

Um, when I began working towards my undergraduate degree, I, I enrolled myself in a, in a course on logic, and this, this was a, a very valuable thing for me to just understand formally how argumentation works, very, very important.

Um, because now it was giving me the tools to look at something like atheism and really inspect it with a critical eye.

Atheism doesn't have those same shortcomings as Mormonism does in that it's, it's just based on the testimony of, you know, not only fallible men, but problematic men from 200 years ago.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

Mm-hmm.

Atheism [clears throat] is, is ancient.

It's, it's been around, even if it's been a minority view, since the beginning of time, and it's had time to develop.

It's had time to work out arguments.

It's had time to offer explanations for why there is anything at all or how we're supposed to be.

Um, but there, there are still, when I began to inspect it with this new set of tools, brought about, or maybe, um, new issues were, were brought to, to my awareness, and the most glaring one was morality.

Mm.

Morality and ethics, right? And I, I'm sure that, that you know this and your viewers are gonna know this, that atheism taken by itself doesn't really provide you with any good concrete justification for why ought you to do this-

Mm-hmm

... or ought not do that.

And that was a, that was a really big problem for me.