Another atheist turns to Jesus

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is well-known in Muslim, women’s rights, and atheist circles has turned to Jesus.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 1969-

With her Muslim background, she is a famous and outspoken advocate for women. Her Muslim faith, however, created considerable cognitive dissonance for her. So Bertrand Russel’s 100-year-old lecture, “Why I am not a Christian” was a great comfort to her. “It was a relief to adopt an attitude of scepticism towards religious doctrine, discard my faith in God, and declare that no such entity existed,” she wrote.

However, she found atheism ultimately unsatisfying. “I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive,” she wrote. “Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?”

Ayaan also believes that Western Civilization is under threat from three but related forces: “the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism … the rise of global Islamism … and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.” Atheism is “insufficient” to fend off these attacks.

Her conversion, public as it is, is notable because often intellectual atheists become deists when confronted the need for a creator of the universe. While an unmoved prime mover is essential philosophically and scientifically, perhaps he is more of a deist god, so the thinking goes. Who is to say that he is involved with his universe, even on occasion interfering with the laws of nature?

Ayaan’s public embrace of theism, particularly faith in Jesus, is notable.