You’d take notice, but would it matter to you at all?That is would the conversion of one or even all 3, of these men offer up any new evidence for the existence of God or would this simply be evidence that they too succumbed to “delusion”?
Is there something intellectually more acceptable if arguments for God come from a famous ex-atheist?No, of course not, but that’s not relevant to the point the poster was making.
If you’re a god who (presumably) wants people to know that you exist, and you have a bunch of famous atheists who are making arguments that are leading lots of people away from belief in you, and you have the power to give any person on earth proof of your existence beyond any reasonable doubt, then your best move is to give these famous atheists proof of your existence so that – at the very least – they’ll shut up and stop influencing so many people.
Actually, probably the best move for this being is to give such proof to everybody – and when I say “proof,” I don’t mean warm and fuzzies in the pit of your stomach when you watch the sun set…I mean actual evidence, something like directly speaking in an unmistakable, audible voice to everyone on the earth at once.
No, doing so wouldn’t rob anyone of their “free will” – people would still be free to choose whether or not to worship such a being (Satan is an obvious example of a figure in Christian mythology who has concrete evidence that God exists and freely chooses not to worship him). People would just be able to make a more informed decision about whether or not they want to worship this being.
But that sort of thing doesn’t appear to happen, does it? You don’t find that anyone who dares to open his mouth against the existence of god marches down to a TV studio the next morning, declaring, “God spoke to me! Let me on the air! I have to tell people of my experience!”
No, what happens instead is exactly what we’d expect to see in a universe without a god – very few people have these kinds of “conversion experiences,” and they’re almost never anyone well-known or influential.
If this god actually exists and is going around giving people conversion experiences, a la Saul on the way to Damascus, you really have to wonder about his choices.
