The reality of today’s world is that people come and go all the time, it is no big deal … they join churches, they leave churches.
What surprises me regarding some recent news is not that it happened, but rather that it is news at all. An atheist blogger, Leah Libresco, announced on her blog that she is converting to Catholicism. OK, so far so what … she is not a public figure, or for that matter famous in any way except perhaps within the context of her specific on-line community …yet …
CNN run the story
MSNBC run the story
Those that you might expect ran it, that includes the Christian Post and also Catholic Online … but CNN and MSNBC … seriously!! … was it a slow news day perhaps. When it comes to people coming and going within the context of Catholicism, to be honest most of the traffic these days is leaving, but people also join and convert so it was not in any way a unique event. Will CNN and MSNBC now be standing at the door and keeping a running tally, perhaps interviewing all those that join for an in-depth interview to be screened on the live six-o-clock news slot.
Anyway, that aside, I,
like others, have an intense curiosity, verging on bewilderment, as to what could have caused her views to change so drastically, because as I read her post, I’m simply unable to grasp or parse how she actually made the leap from non-belief to a specific belief. I suspect as time passes she will blog more and as she does so, the believers will clap and applaud and the non-believers will criticise the ideas presented. So until she does, I don’t propose to attempt to speculate on either her motives or her current thinking.
The one observation I will make is this : reality is not something we all get to vote on. A specific belief is not true because a lot of people believe it, nor is it true because people choose to embrace it. The only valid criteria for accepting anything as being not wrong is evidence, so no matter who said it or how beautiful the words might be, if there is no evidence for the claim being made then it is not true. The news that a non-believing blogger is now a believer does not in any way make the belief slightly truer, it simply gives some believers a warmer fuzzier feeling.
She converted because she secretly has an unusual fetish for those big, rumbling, old pipe organs in the churches.
As to why she “converted”, that’s easy. She’s insane.