I wasn’t going to respond to this at all and I think that by the end of this, you’ll understand why. Recently, Ayaan Hirsi Ali came out and claimed that she was a Christian, not for any good reason, not that I think she believes any of it, but by playing the part, she thinks she can achieve some political goals.

That, my friends, is just idiotic.

Now I never really cared about Ali at all. I have no heroes. I do not engage in hero worship. I never have and I never will. This isn’t anything against her at all, I just don’t think that she, or any other person, is at all relevant in getting to the actual truth. I just don’t care. So now that we can do away with the idea that this is, in any way, personal, we return to the same place we started.

I just don’t care.

I wasn’t impressed with the last time she “deconverted” because it looked just like it does now. It was a political move, not a personal one. She had no reason to give up Islam, other than the fact that it abused the crap out of her, and now, she has no good reason to adopt Christianity, other than it has some semblance of political power that she interprets as useful.

Nowhere in her “I’m now a Christian” article did she ever say why she became a Christian. She mentioned Jesus exactly zero times. She gave no indication that she actually believes any of it, it’s just a useful lie. So, like I said, what the hell else is new?

There have been a lot of atheists who have made the same observations, everyone from Richard Dawkins to Emerson Green. In fact, here’s Emerson’s video because I think he did a pretty good job.

You know who I think had a much better take though? Even though there are plenty of Christians having a party, claiming victory, Randal Rauser wrote an article saying that this is a giant nothing-burger. He actually points out a lot of elements that struck me immediately, so I’m just going to quote some of what he said, full credit to him. I don’t have a ton of respect for him most of the time, but he certainly hit it on the head now.

Ali first says that atheism is “too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes.” But honestly, this is not much better than the story of Voltaire telling his educated guests not to discuss atheism around the servants lest they then set aside their moral compass and steal the silverware. In short, it’s a mere pragmatic appeal to God as a means of social cohesion and pro-social behaviour.

That’s really all that this is. Pure pragmatism and no belief. She’s pandering to a right-wing crowd in a way that, honestly, I think Donald Trump does. Now I don’t know what’s in his head, but it sure seems like he’s just pandering for the sake of pandering because it  gets him where he wants to go. It’s a point that I made back in the 2016 election, where he hardly mentioned God until after he got the nomination, then he was saying it all the time. Why? Because that’s what the hardcore religious right wanted to see and he needed their support to get elected.

I think she’s doing the same thing. It’s a useful lie that people on the side she’s trying to fit in with want to see, so now, she’s a Christian in all ways but the one that matters: she doesn’t actually believe it.

Ali then adds a second claim: “I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?” Ali continues the strawman here. Atheism, as such, is just the denial that God exists: it doesn’t aim to provide “meaning and purpose.” But it doesn’t follow that atheistic belief systems all fail to do this.

That’s another problem. Atheism isn’t about providing purpose. It’s not a worldview, it’s not a support system, it is the answer to a single question: do you believe in any gods? If you say no, then you’re an atheist. That’s all it means. Even though Rauser gets it wrong, he’s at least closer than Ali was. Therefore, I have no idea if she ever understood that, if any of the things she said are true. If that was what she was looking for, then she was in the wrong place and she should have known that. Instead, it sounds like what I suspect it is. Pandering to people who have been telling themselves that lie forever. What else is new?

Ali’s reasoning is equivalent to saying that if you remove the engine (i.e. “God”) from a gas-powered car (our worldview), you can’t go anywhere. But the proper comparison is not between the car with the engine and the car without the engine; rather, it is the car with the engine vs. the car with another power source. And if you are unaware of the possibilities for non-theistic sources of ultimate meaning and purpose, that just underscores the point: do your homework before making an unjustified conclusion. (Again, see The Doubters’ Creed for further discussion).

I think his analogy is kind of weak. If you want to go somewhere, you don’t even need a car. You have feet or other modes of transportation. This reminds me of something i’ve heard from the religious often. If you’re not my religion, what religion will you be? None! None of them! None of the above! You don’t need religion at all! Yet the religious seem to have a problem understanding that everyone isn’t just like they are. That is their mindset, not ours. Randal kind of gets that, I think, but most theists don’t. A lot of this just comes off as an excuse by Ali, as a way to pander to a particular political ideology and try to sneak inside without actually belonging.

Like I said, I can’t know what’s actually in someone else’s head. I have to go by what they say and what she’s said so far isn’t impressive. I don’t know if this is some kind of long con, I’d hope not because that kind of dishonesty, for whatever reason, isn’t becoming, but it really comes off feeling like she’s just doing it for political expediency, playing along because she knows that it will make it easier to get where she wants to go.

I don’t have a lot of respect for that and I don’t think anyone else should either. Then again, it’s her life and I don’t really care about her. Never did. This is just another momentary blip on the news cycle and tomorrow, it’ll be forgotten. Oh well. I’ve got better things to do.