About me: I believe I've always been an atheist but at various times when I was younger I tried various religions to see if there was any truth to them, found none, then abandoned whatever agnosticism I had for full blown atheism. I'm much happier after shedding all superstitious thinking.
Anyway, a great friend of mine is a former christian apologist who was of the Universalist Unitarian variety. Pretty rare from what I've seen. He was shrewd about it, knew the bible inside & out, knew religious history inside & out, had a radio show about it for a while, was an ecumenical preacher - the whole bit. He remained fully respectful of my atheism and I about his religious beliefs. Our mutual respect paved the way for a great friendship to this very day.
About a year or two ago he had some kind of epiphany, started putting two and two together along with healthy reasoning and rejected the christ-myth once and for all. Good for him! He adamantly denies the christ-myth and goes toe to toe with turbochristians in debates for his occasional amusement. Good for him! Unfortunately, I've heard him make this statement on more than once occasion:
"I reject atheism".
He expresses that 'he feels there's something more' and rationalizes it with human being's limited perceptions, saying things such as 'electromagnetic frequencies surround us but we have no way to sense it'. Sigh. Okay, whatever. The BAD thing is that the gulf he's created by rejecting religion but denying atheism is beginning to fill up with some strange stuff. He feels as if he's on a quest for knowledge and does so by trolling the internet, youtube and the like. He's somewhat discerning about things but seems to have now developed some far-out theories as a result of his "research": Zechariah Sitchin and David Icke-type alien interaction stuff, chemtrails, 911 was an inside job, the New World Order is slowly coming to pass, the Federal Reserve is controlling nearly everything, evil cabals of cigar-chomping reprobates are controlling the world, etc.
It seems he's replaced the metaphysical godhead that used to control everything (that he could worship) with the human element who now controls everything for their self-serving nefarious purposes (that he can perpetually denounce). The religious style control structure seems intact, and "evil people" serve as the proxy for his old, rejected god.
The question: how do you respectfully save someone from heading down an equally dangerous path of poor thinking? Or is it simply impossible? At least as a christian apologist he was somewhat contained and controllable. Now that he's discovered the enormous number of conspiracy theories out there and begun absorbing some of them into his philosophy he's becoming quite difficult to tolerate. I've been successful at changing the topic when he begins to go off but I'd really prefer to get him away from these potentially dangerous lines of thinking. Has anyone here gone through this and found any successful ways to counter this kind of thing? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much for your time in reading my post.
Sincerely,
traditionaldrummer
