Have you ever convinced a religious person to become atheistic?
Yes, a few dozen, exclusively through my writing.
My impression is that the arguments have almost no effect. What has an effect is being smart, likable, and altruistic, while occasionally mocking religion and sending signals that being religious is socially uncool.
In other words, people will only convert for precisely the wrong reasons.
Absolutely true. If they were ready to accept the correct arguments, they would have become atheist on their own.
The probability for a given person to have developed a skeptical mind, have overcome the possible brainwashing effect of a religious education and all the possible correlated biases/fallacies (sunk-cost, belief-in-belief, etc.) and not having heard a compelling anti-religious argument is very low. Therefore, you can convert them either following the long, hard, but certainly more rewarding path of making them skeptical, if not rational, or you can bombard them with emotional nukes to demolish the emotional concrete walls that protect the religious belief.
I don't know of anyone who argued someone else into atheism, ever. (Of course this may happen, but not so frequently.)
But I know plenty of people who were swayed by being a third party to a good discussion, or by reading someone else's ideas as a passive observer.
This suggests to me that Task #1 is finding ways for people to engage with your ideas without involving a status competition between you and them.
At least a few, online and in person, possibly more than I'm aware of. One person mentioned that he'd become an atheist as a result of observing my online debates over the course of a few months, but he never went out of his way to tell me, I only learned from following a later discussion; there might be others I've similarly influenced who've never told me.
Unlike Luke, all the people I know I've caused to convert professed to have been swayed by my actual arguments (and a fairly common reason for conversion I've heard is "I followed online debates and the atheists always had the better arguments,") but I've never known it to happen as an "aha!" moment upon being exposed to a single knockdown argument. In my experience it's always taken prolonged exposure to atheistic arguments for a sense of familiarity to build up, after which the person can have an "aha!" moment and realize they have somewhere to go from there.
Different people tolerate different demeanor, but I've never known of anyone converting someone else without making themselves likable to their targets.
In all the cases I can think of, conversion has taken a minimum of a few months of exposure to atheist ideas.
Two conversion stories of my own.
My atheism feels inevitable now, but may not actually have been. I was raised as a catholic and believed myself to be having conversations with God (admittedly one sided ones), and that he was observing me al the time (which was awkward when I thought about it). I was exposed to reason and logic, as well as left wing politics. I was aware of the contradiction between my mother's belief and her not agreeing with most of the church's positions. I grew more detatched, and started declaring myself as a deist (although, having not been exposed to that particular term, I claimed (at age 17) to believe in God but not religion). Soon after I came to the realisation that there was no-one I was talking to on the other end.
I would owe most of that conversion to a supportive, non-forceful environment (while my primary school was catholic, my secondary school was secular. That said, one of the staunchest atheists, and indeed rationalist that I know went to a catholic secondary school as well), and exposure to scientific ideas. There was no pressure on me to believe a particular thing- in particular no social group required me to continue belief.
The other persona...
My brother's opinion of religion changed after he had to study Catholic theology because our young cousin wanted him to be her Confirmation sponsor. The guy who was his tutor was very much the "holier-than-thou" type and he found the actual positions of the Church on various social issues repulsive.
So that's one way. ;)
Amusingly, my university's Theology department has a reputation of deconverting people, many of whom are studying the subject in order to become priests. Apparently the subject is taught in a very scientific and critical manner. E.g. the exegesis lectures talk a lot about how it was common to make someone seem more impressive by claiming that he was born of a virgin, or about how many pre-Christian religions had a god who sacrificed his son and Christianity may just have borrowed the popular motif. This can apparently be disenchanting.
Same thing at the academically best divinity schools in the US; they turn out a lot of non-theists, a fact that shocked me when (as a devout undergraduate) I took a "History of the New Testament" class and found myself surrounded my aspiring preachers who were losing their religion.
One interesting facet of this: since they're exposed to all of these facts by a respected scholar who's not trying to turn them into atheists (i.e. a non-adversarial interaction with someone of higher status), they're much more susceptible to the ideas than they'd be if they were arguing with an atheist peer.
Unlikely; I think it's more a case of lost purposes.
One notable case is that of the Jesuit order, which from its inception had the most extensive scriptural/theological/philosophical training (seven years before ordination) of any order. In previous centuries, this reliably produced extremely devoted and intelligent priests, who racked up massive numbers of conversions as missionaries.
However, as the field of scriptural studies changed in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Jesuits incorporated new historical-critical material which contradicted some of the traditional claims of the Old Testament. (It's to their credit that they did this, even if their reasoning was that knowing the exaggerations of the Old Testament surely wouldn't undermine the core of the faith.)
But as this process continued, eventually the Jesuits transformed into one of the most liberal of the Catholic orders. The original policy came at a time when the most educated people knew of little to contradict the Church, but the world changed.
I have an anecdote, but my situation is probably not representative. I started out as an evolution-accepting theist who didn't belong to an organized church. I'm pretty sure I believed instead of belief in belief, but since my beliefs didn't match those of any organized religion, I didn't have a community of other believers around me.
I was converted to atheism by watching atheist youtube videos, to which I was introduced by a series mocking creationists. When I realized that the smartest, most science-savvy commentators were atheists offering good argumen...
Hopefully this is beneath us, but it seems that Flirt to Convert is a pretty common and powerful technique that religionists use to obtain converts.
Of course, it would be a terrible thing to date someone for the purpose of converting them to LWian rationality, but personally, I was introduced to HPMoR (and consequently LW) by someone I dated. Conversely, I have had at least one person I've dated read HPMoR (but did not get into LW).
In a larger example, I can say that the recent Ohio LW meetup was 31% female, and that every one of us had been either brought or "converted" by a date or SO, so I do think this is a way to lessen the gender imbalance on here.
The 2011 survey has us at only 8% female. That may be progress, but for me, it still isn't good enough. I am going to come right out and say that I WANT a more balanced gender representation on LW and in rationalism in general.
When it comes to recruiting there are two completely separate issues: 1) Getting People in The Door, and 2) Keeping Them.
Right now the discussion seems focused on Getting Females in The Door, so that is what I will focus on here.
How do people join this community?
MileyCyrus mentions that OB/LW draws its readers from crowds that tend to be male-dominated. I think this is true, but it is not something that we can change within a generation:
LW draws its from the computer science, transhumanist, etc, communities.
These communities are mainly male.
Therefore LW will end up mainly male.
So looking at this, if we want to have LW more gender-balanced, we either have to have more females in the computer/transhumanist/etc communities, or we have to draw from a more gender-balanced crowd. None of these seem like feasible strategies, so we have to ask:
What is another way to Get People In The Door?
Another way people join communities is when they are "converted"...
I don't know if it was intentional, but Eliezer's decision to write a rationality fanfic as a brilliant gambit. Fanfic.net's readers are overwhelming smart, young and female.
LW and OB have a lot to say about psychology and sociology, two fields where women are more interested then men. Perhaps we could reach out to those segments?
The meetups could also recruit women directly. Men don't have to bring their girlfriends, a platonic female friend works too. Or you can hold the meetups in places where women are more likely to be present (think bookshops, not bars).
If you want more women at the Singularity Summit, we could make a survey for people did not attend. Ask why they didn't come, and see if there's a difference between men and women.
But the most important thing is to make sure the rationalist/trans-humanist community is a safe place for women. Keep an eye out for what Alicorn wants to reduce. Address concerns of sexism sensitively, instead of pulling a Dawkins. In general, LW's treatment of women is better than other communities that pride themselves on being rational (e.g., atheist and Objectivist). Let's keep it that way.
I think from my own experience a conversion is just a switch of tribal affiliations. That means, it takes two components:
a sense of rejection from your previous community.
a sense of connection to the new one.
So the reason why indirect arguments seem to work better would be because if you argue directly you don't normally argue with someone but against them which reduces if not reverts the sense of connection. If my theory is correct then in direct conversation a more socratic method would be better. But you will probably not be successful until you somehow disconnect the theist from his circle or catch him at a time when he feels somewhat disconnected.
Putting all of the "social mechanisms of conversion" ideas together, it seems to me that the best way to help de-convert a religious person is to welcome them into a non-religious social circle, thus giving them the social freedom to explore their doubts without fear of total ostracism. (The group doesn't even have to be mostly comprised of non-theists, just not comprised of people who all belong to similar religions!) And if they bring up their doubts to you, it's a good time to talk.
And the best part is that whether or not it changes anyone's m...
I was told once that things I said in english class helped convert a friend of mine to atheism, but this was so long ago that I can't really remember what I said. In terms of my own experiences of giving up beliefs I've had, a key factor is readability and honesty in presentation. Things like Yvain's non-libertarian faq are fun to read and seriously strive to address the viewpoints that I formerly held as a libertarian. It didn't make fun of libertarianism, but allowed it to reveal its own silliness by talking about it.
A number of commenters have referenced the idea of being a spectator instead of a target, and I think this is important. One-on-one debates often have a competitive aspect to them that can make people defensive (nobody wants to feel like they've "lost" the "argument").
And really, converting people on a case-by-case basis is probably one of the least efficient approaches to cultural change. My guess is that it's more important to create a healthy "atmosphere for conversion", and I think a big part of that is just being outspoke...
»A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.« Debate culture is often not particularly well developed, so no hook to start from.
Have you ever convinced a religious person to become atheistic? How did you do this? How long did it take? Were the people in some sort of life crisis, or were they just living along?
This is probably a quite difficult task of persuasion. So stories how people were successful at it could be very interesting to improve ones' persuasion abilities.
Relatedly, it might be interesting to know what religious groups have gathered on techniques to convert people to their religion - are there some manuals/techniques floating around?