The Conversion of Leah Libresco

I wrote an article some time ago about ex-atheist converts to Christianity.  The main point of that article was to note that by reading their own accounts of their conversion experience, it is usually possible to discern that they had non-rational reasons for making the conversion.  There are two key factors in these stories.  First, they had never completely abandoned the religious beliefs that they grew up with, but retained some core elements of it somewhere in their psyche (such as the feeling that there must be an over-arching reason for our existence, for example).  Second, these core elements of belief re-emerged when they encountered a period of stress or emotional need, and became the real impetus for their fully embracing religious belief once again, often accompanied by a sense of relief that they no longer had to pretend that they were atheists. 

It is my opinion that this general scenario fits well with the majority of conversion stories I have read, even though those people would never admit that their reason for converting was more emotionally-based than rationally-based.  They often describe themselves as "dyed-in-the-wool" atheists, with a solid understanding of the philosophical and scientific basis for atheism, who eventually discovered rational arguments for belief.  And they will insist that it is those rational arguments that led them to religious belief.  Such is the case with CS Lewis, for example.  But a careful reading of their own accounts of conversion tells a different story.  You can see the emotional element.  You can see that this was what changed their minds, and the acceptance of theistic logical arguments follows their change of attitude toward belief.  In other words, all those religious arguments begin to make sense to them after they had already decided for other reasons that they wanted to believe.

I am aware of one prominent case of religious conversion that doesn't seem to fit this general pattern: that of the popular atheist blogger Leah Libresco, who became a Catholic a few years ago.  Her account of conversion tells a somewhat different story from what we so often hear.  She was not raised with religion.  She was from a non-religious Jewish family.  And unlike so many other conversion stories I have read, I don't detect a distinct emotional element in her reason for becoming Catholic.  This is one conversion account that really does seem to be based more on rational consideration than emotional need, at least at first glance.

Nevertheless, there's one thing I can say with certainty.  After reading her conversion account, it's clear that Libresco was no dyed-in-the-wool atheist, despite the fact that she says atheism was a major part of her identity.  It was just a default position she grew up with.

There wasn’t really a time when I wasn’t an atheist. My parents are both atheists, so that’s how I was raised. Religion didn’t really rise to the level of plausibility for me to think about denying it as a major part of my identity, any more than “UFO skeptic” is how anyone would introduce themselves.

She admits that she really didn't think about it much.  And that becomes more clear when she discuses the philosophical basis for her worldview:

It turned out that a lot of the atheist writings I’d read were pitched toward rebutting contemporary American fundamentalist Protestantism and had ill-prepared me for picking fights with the Catholic and Orthodox people I was meeting at Yale.

So she was unfamiliar with the larger body of scientific and philosophical works that would have given her more than adequate justification an atheistic worldview, and ample intellectual material with which to argue her position against those opponents at Yale.  Instead of seeking out a deeper understanding of materialist reality, she saw her own worldview as weakly justified in the face of religious arguments.

And in fact, she harbored religious (or proto-religious) beliefs all along.  Libresco describes Gnosticism as a barrier to Catholicism for her, but it does indicate belief in a non-material soul, which she apparently had all along, even while she described herself as a "committed atheist".

Gnosticism, and its attendant hatred/suspicion of the body, has made intuitive sense to me ever since I was little. I’ve been interested primarily in the abstract and the intellectual, so I’ve tended to think of my body as the thing that carries around the real me — my mind.

Given her predisposition toward at least some of the core tenets of theism, and lacking any intellectual basis to make a strong argument against theism, it is not surprising then, that Libresco would look favorably upon the idea of virtue ethics, being derived from Aristotelian philosophy, and leading to a teleological-based understanding of reality, which is tantamount to theism.  It is worth noting that this is not so much the triumph of the compelling logic of religious philosophy over the weakness of its secular counterpart, as it is a greater willingness from the outset to absorb theistic philosophy while ignoring any compelling counter-arguments.  Nowhere in her conversion account does she admit any deep understanding of either science or non-theistic philosophy.

It is not my contention that Libresco was never an atheist.  But it is my contention that she never had a solid intellectual basis for her atheism.  She may have called herself a "committed atheist", but it does appear that her commitment was rather lacking, given that her beliefs were so easily swayed in the absence of any solid foundation.  I would agree that this is a case of conversion that does not seem to be driven by emotional factors.  But at the same time, I would heartily disagree that she conducted any careful evaluation of the logical arguments, both pro and con.  There seems to be no evidence in her account that she ever even looked seriously at the intellectual case for atheism.