Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali is no longer an atheist

But what is the nature of Ali’s conversion? I was curious, so I read her article “Why I’m a Christian Now,” published last November. She began by telling me that in 2002 she had read the text of a lecture given by Bertrand Russell in 1927, entitled “Why I am not a Christian.” At the time, it had never occurred to Ali that she would write an essay with a title opposite to the title of the lecture Russell gave to the National Secular Society in London almost a century earlier.

Ali went on to explain her troubled past and how Russell’s lecture had helped her make the transition from a nominal Muslim to an atheist twenty years ago. Ali was born into a Muslim society, so she experienced a lot of bad things and was torn in different directions in the Muslim world, as she and her family lived in different parts of Africa and the Middle East. What she feared most was eternal torment from an angry God. Once Ali set out for the freedoms of the West, she encountered atheism for the first time, and she discovered the idea that there is no vengeful God very reassuring, even if atheism didn’t really offer hope either.

How Christianity is different

If we are to defeat these threats to Western society, we need an effective base from which to work.

But Ali now calls himself one Christian. What changed? Ali had come to embrace Western civilization, but she eventually realized that the West was threatened by three forces: the resurgence and expansion of authoritarianism as exemplified by China and Russia, the rise of global Islam, and the spread of the woke ideology. If we are to defeat these threats to Western society, we need an effective base from which to work. Ali discovered that atheism and the rules-based new world order were insufficient to provide that foundation. She ultimately came to the conclusion that the only sure basis for combating threats to the West was JewishChristian tradition that spawned the many freedoms we enjoy in the West. Ali wrote:

Unlike Islam, Christianity has outgrown its dogmatic phase. It became increasingly clear that Christ’s teachings did not merely imply a limited role for religion as something separate from politics. It also implied compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer.

Ali also commented on atheism’s inability to answer a basic question everyone asks:

Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life? Russell and other activist atheists believed that with the rejection of God we would enter an age of reason and intelligent humanism. But the ‘God gap’ – the void left by the withdrawal of the church – has only been filled by a tangle of irrational quasi-religious dogmas.

The true value of Christianity

Much of what Ali wrote is true, but it falls far short. Ali’s embrace of Christianity is purely pragmatic: the West is waging an existential battle, and recognizing the values ​​of Christianity offers the most effective strategy for preserving all we cherish in Western civilization. But nothing in Ali’s essay suggests that she understands the objective reality on which Christianity is based. Many people in the West accept Jesus Christ as a great moral teacher, but dismiss that as a myth Jesus is the Creator, has performed miracles, or that he rose from the dead. The decline of Christianity’s influence in the West is a direct result of the separation between Christianity and the objective reality of those who Jesus is, what he accomplished, and his Word. The lasting value of true Christianity does not lie in how it can save the West from today’s many threats. Rather, the value of true Christianity lies in the way it transforms lives and offers hope to the hopeless, even as the West collapses.

Let us pray that as Ali continues to explore Christianity, she will truly find the gospel. God created a sinless world, but man’s disobedience brought sin into the world, and with it death shame (Romans 5:12). But in his love, God provided a way of salvation by sending his only Son, Jesus Christ in the world (John 3:16). Jesus took the punishment of shame Himself, so that we may obtain eternal life by believing in Him (Romans 12:18-19). Unlike Islam, true Christianity offers more than just eternal life; it allows us to live this life to the fullest, while sharing love God with others, in anticipation of the eternal life to come.