Talk:Zeal of the convert

Would this also apply to Linux or BSD adopters who take every opportunity to slam Windows and Mac? Rhodoferax (talk) 17:31, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely!--^talk 01:23, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

You forgot John Stossel on this list. Though he didn't become a Randroid overnight (he claims that Atlas Shrugged has come true because of liberals and liberal Republicans), he somehow went from "efforts to regulate certain consumer goods were ineffective and in THIS particular case made things a little worse" to "There's no unemployment crisis; Americans are just too lazy to take the fast food jobs so graciously offered to them," and "Blackmail is free speech and free trade, so let's legalize it to enforce morality." ConfusedLiberal (talk) 06:43, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not meant to be an exhaustive list, only a representative one. If he is a zealous convert and notable, then include that fact on his own page.--^talk 19:49, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Martin Luther

By his students? Ain't that an attempt to whitewash him?--Arisboch (talk) 15:51, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Relevance of the undocumented prior lives as atheists of some of these individuals

Take Lee Strobel, for example. Where exactly was he supposed to be writing this down and why was he required to do so? Do you expect him to start every third article with "Btw, I'm an atheist" or something? And more importantly, If Strobel was lying about that, don't you think people he worked with who would have known, who are skeptics themselves, would have outed him? Or does Strobel have the power to turn everybody who ever knew him into total loyalists or something? Is he a hypnotist?Skadooshbag (talk) 17:52, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

I’ve already hashed out the reasons why I’m very sceptical about Strobel’s claims two years ago on Talk:"I used to be an atheist"#Duplicate? (discussing it with ZackMartin).

The core is not the lack of explicit evidence in favour of Strobel’s claims, but that his depiction of his supposed atheism is so inconsistent with anything that can fairly be called atheism and so suspiciously closely track the “cartoon atheist” caricature prevalent among his current, US fundie chums that it casts serious doubts on the whole (fairy)tale. The most absurd claim is the one about Strobel not believing in (the Christian) God because it allowed him to sin freely, which obviously makes no sense if you don’t believe in gods at all.

Strobel also sets up a clearly false dilemma between either hardcore atheism or fundamentalist evangelicalism. I personally find it far more plausible that he was some kind of “cultural” or cafeteria Christian or simply hadn’t given much thought to exactly what he did or didn’t believe (perhaps some sort of vague non-belief?).

As for the lack of evidence, that is not necessarily a clincher though it is a bit odd, given that Strobel claims to have been very outspoken (bordering on obnoxious) about his atheism — and a journalist to boot. As for these sceptics from Strobel’s heady atheist days: Who are/were they?

For an investigative journalist, Strobel provides only strangely vague anecdotes about his atheist past (which according to him lasted until he was 29), but given his complete inability to ask any serious and/or critical questions of his parade of evangelical/Christian sources in The Case for Christ, I probably shouldn’t be that surprised. The claim that these sceptics from Strobel’s past would’ve “outed him” and hence his claims must be true is simply a rewritten version of the same claims about Jesus (boiling down to: If Jesus didn’t perform miracles/was the Son of God, someone would’ve debunked him). It doesn’t work for the New Testament and it doesn’t work for Strobel. ScepticWombat (talk) 21:43, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Maajid nawaz

I know you hate Maajid, but it's funny reading your biased words quote good moderate Muslim boy next door quote emphasis on moderate emphasis on moderate emphasis on moderate in an article titled **zeal** of the convert.

Oh noes! The convert we dislike has become a moderate!! ^{— Unsigned, by: 2601:645:4201:bbd0:7cb2:ca6a:e4a6:a000 / talk / contribs 20:12, 2 February 2020‎}