Here’s a post on Sean McDowell’s blog about how Paul Vitz, professor of psychology at New York University, lost his faith in college.
Excerpt:
In fact, he believes the major barriers to belief in God are not rational but psychological. Psychological factors are not determinative, but strongly shape our perception and approach to God.
To see how this relates to kids leaving the faith, let’s briefly consider Vitz’ own story. He grew up in a “wishy-washy” Christian home in the Midwest. He became an atheist in grad school and remained so until his re-conversion back to Christianity in his late thirties. While he would have denied it at the time, he now realizes that his reasons for becoming an atheist from 18-38 were “intellectually superficial and largely without a deep thought basis”. Vitz is convinced that this phenomenon is widespread today.
Rather than reasoning to his atheistic beliefs, he was simply socialized into them. He cites three reasons for his initial conversion. First, he had a degree of social unease coming from the Midwest. It seemed terribly dull, provincial, middle class, and narrow. He wanted to be part of the glamorous secular world at Michigan when he arrived on campus as an undergrad. Just think about all the young people arriving in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or other big cities or campuses who are embarrassed by their fundamental upbringing. This kind of socialization, says Vitz, has pushed many people away from God.
Second, he wanted to be accepted by the powerful and influential people in his field of psychology. His professors at Stanford had two things in common—their intense ambition and rejection of religion. Vitz concludes, “In this environment, just as I had learned how to dress like a college student by putting on the right clothes, I also learned to think like a proper psychologist by putting on the right, that is, atheistic or skeptical, ideas and attitudes”.
The third factor is personal convenience. Vitz explains, “The fact is, it is quite inconvenient to be a serious believer in today’s neo-pagan world. I would have to give up many pleasures, some money and a good deal of time. I didn’t have enough pleasures, I didn’t have enough time, and I didn’t have enough money to do any of that as far as I was concerned”. Doubts about God often follow when young people grasp how inconvenient Christianity can really be. I’ve had countless discussions with young people about God, the Bible, evolution, and other apologetic issues only to discover that what is really driving their doubts is immoral behavior (usually sex). This is not always true, but I’m surprised how many times it is.
This is what parents need to prepare for before sending their children off to college. Do you have a plan?
WINTERY KNIGHT 
While it’s certainly possible to become an atheist for irrational reasons, I think it’s worth noting that this article cuts both ways. After all, many people are socialized into religion for precisely the reasons that Vitz articulates so ably here.
LikeLike
Do you really think that it is advantageous on university campuses to come out as an evangelical Christian in your biology class or your women’s studies class or your English class? Do you think that faculty and student governments treat pro-abortion students the same as pro-life students? This blog covers everything that has happened to pro-life clubs in Canada, including the banning, de-funding and arrests.
LikeLike
I can only comment directly on SFU campus. We have quite a diverse set of religious clubs, some purely on campus and some subsidiaries of larger organizations. Our anti-abortion club did have their ratification lapse briefly but they are back in action again as of last semester and as far as I know doing just fine.
The climate at SFU is far from hostile to religion, and religious students of all types have access to extensive support systems.
As for the incidents with anti-abortion clubs at other Canadian campuses, the SFU Skeptics have mixed feelings about them. Our impression was that one Alberta group was instrumental in their own dissolution, but there have been other incidents where we agree that student societies and other campus authorities have acted inappropriately.
All of that being the case, none of this is really relevant to the point I was making. I was simply pointing out that the process described in your post can result in many types of atheist and religious views. People can be socialized into numerous beliefs and ideologies; it’s not a feature unique to atheism. That was my point.
LikeLike
Like I said, my regular readers are quite familiar with the sort of fascism perpetrated by the secular left in Canada. From Human Rights Commissions, the Human Rights Tribunals, to boards of Education, to courts, to student governments at Lakehead, Carleton, Calgary, McGill, Ottawa, St. Mary’s, and across the nation. There is no respect for freedom of religion in Canada, and the suppression comes directly from atheists like you.
If you want a list of what has happened to pro-life groups, check here:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/left-wing-fascists-at-carleton-university-ban-pro-life-club/
And of course the Human Rights racket:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/focus-on-the-family-canada-edits-radio-show-to-adapt-to-hate-crime-law/
Check the related links. We’re onto you. These things are well known down here, and we know where atheists stands on fundamental rights. Human rights, moral values, moral duties and free will don’t exist in your accidental materialist universe – no right to free speech, no freedom of association, no right to freedom of religion, and no personal responsibility. If you want me to substantiate that, I can quote Dawkins, Dennett, Ruse and Mackie till the cows come home.
Here’s Huxley:
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning–the Christian meaning, they insisted–of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.”
[Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, 1937]
LikeLike
You’re entitled to your opinion but don’t pretend you know me. Quote whomever you want– I’m not Huxley, Ruse, Mackie, Dennett, or Dawkins. Neither is anyone in my club.
Luckily for us, many of our religious peers on campus are willing to engage in meaningful dialogue without jumping to conclusions about our motives or morals. I’d tell you to “Judge not, lest ye be” or maybe say something about planks and eyes but you’re clearly to wrapped up in your own Pharisaic self aggrandizement to listen.
What a shame.
LikeLike
Could you please comment on thekeyofatheist’s actual point? I am interested in your response to that, not what happened to Pro-Life groups. I’ll reiterate: He is noting how the ‘christian-to-atheist and back again’ socialization process you describe can be just as easily observed in any adoption and rejection of any belief system.
Despite your claim that “This blog covers everything that has happened to pro-life clubs in Canada,” the post is entitled “Why do young Christians become atheists in college?” Lets not get off-topic. thekeyofatheist has made a legitmate point about how the above observations can be observed in both conversion and de-conversion of atheists to any variation on religion or atheism. This undermines the use of the Paul’s anecdote because one could easily substitute it for a story of how one converted to Christianity in a small town because of
1. A degree of social unease
2. The converted wanted to be accepted by leaders of the community
and
3. Convenience
Could you please comment on the topic of your post and the relevant comment that it generated? Thanks!
LikeLike
The point of the actual post is to explain what happens to a person when they go to university. Specifically, how the university makes it hard for them to continue to be Christians by marginalizing them as bigots and rubes. I cited a number of cases where the pro-life clubs, which are often a living out of the Christian worldview, are discriminated against. So far, I have not heard a single point on the other side explaining how Christians are not persecuted on campus. So the score is WK 1, Atheists 0. Nothing he has said in any of his comments was relevant to the post, namely, that college is hostile to faith, or not. Read the title of the post. I’ve demonstrated how college is hostile to people of faith. All we have from the other side is an assertion to the contrary but no evidence. An assertion is not an argument. It’s just an assertion.
LikeLike
While he would have denied it at the time, he now realizes that his reasons for becoming an atheist from 18-38 were “intellectually superficial and largely without a deep thought basis”.
This is likely true (most atheists* are of the anti-intellectual variety, see: Village Atheists, the largest sub-set of the movement), but it is no guarantee that even if you really think things through that a conversion is an automatic affair.
*A lot of them are actually borderline agnostics that don’t realize the difference between atheism and agnosticism. (Yes, I know: lots of apologists consider agnostics just as ‘godless’ as atheists, but I think there’s a legitimate distinction.)
LikeLike