On the topic of black christians in America

[dave_littler]

This is a topic I've struggled with for a while now, and I wanted to both share my musings on it and ask for any insights anyone (and most especially anyone who might have been a black christian in America) for their insights on.

I've always had a problem with the enthusiasm of christians of colour, if you will, in the United States. And not merely

Comments

[dave_littler]

There was a pretty lengthy discussion on one of the atheism communities a couple of weeks back revolving around the question of whether or not it would be possible to change one's belief from atheism to christianity. I'm not sure of the bent of the fellow posting the question, but it was interesting enough to spark some discussion.

My considered opinion, basically, is that you can't consciously choose to believe [X] in the place of [Y] on-demand, but that beliefs stems from what evidence you currently know of, understand, and accept. In order to change one's belief, one needs to accept new evidence. This comes down to a question of whether or not you choose to believe one source of evidence or another; whether you believe a preacher or a scientist is more credible, for example. 9and yes, I know that even that is based upon earlier information etc etc reductio ad absurdum)

My point, basically, is that there seems to be a strong bias towards believing those who espouse christianity rather than refute it. To me, it would seem that, given christianity's history with American blacks, that bias ought to be weaker than it is. They ought to be more open to hearing it debunked.

But then, perhaps it's in some part a tribalistic thing (and I don't use this term as a pejorative); the people who are doing this espousing are, after all, central figures in their community, and those doing the refuting are in large part to some measure "other".