[Dove]

you reach a belief of god by starting from an unfalsifiable conclusion

That doesn't pass the smell test. If that were true, no intellectuals would ever convert to Christianity. In point of fact, they regularly do.

Take Lee Strobel, for example. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Strobel). You can find his particular evidences unpersuasive, but you can hardly call his process irrational.

[floomp]

> If that were true, no intellectuals would ever convert to Christianity.

That doesn't follow. Intellectuals are also susceptible to cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization, especially when there is social pressure to change your beliefs, and doubly so if you hadn't explored the rationality behind being an atheist (speaking in general, not necessarily about Strobel).

I glanced briefly at the Wikipedia article and some of its references but couldn't find anything particularly noteworthy (perhaps you could point out some examples). My first impression is that there's no reason to think he used a rational process over a process motivated by some other reasons.

Atheists converting to religion is mostly support for religion's incredible strength as a meme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology_of_reli...).

[Dove]

Intellectuals are also susceptible to cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization

True enough! I guess what I really mean is that if rational processes don't lead to Christianity, you would never see people convert by following those processes. But they do all the time!

I think Lee Strobel is a good example, really. As somebody with a Master's in law and a background as a criminal investigative journalist, he certainly is reasonably well qualified to understand what evidence is and how it works. And the story he tells about his conversion is that he undertook to investigate Christianity by the same standards he would expect to use in a court case, and found it true!

Now, you could claim he's lying about that -- that he really wanted to convert because his wife did (though the story he tells is that he wanted to assemble evidence to challenge her). Or you could claim he did an incompetent job -- as critiques of his book often do. But I don't think you can claim the process he documented Case for Christ wasn't rational or evidential.

What I mean is, you don't have to buy his arguments. But I don't think you can fault him for buying them. And I don't think you can call his process anything but rational. Sure, he doesn't seem to set his prior probability on God's existence as low as some people would like, but he does certainly appear to be following the evidence where it leads.

Moreover, it's my perception as a Christian that, "Tried to evaluate Christianity to prove it false, was qualified to do so, found it true, converted" is a common story for Christian apologists. It applies to Josh McDowell, G.K. Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis, just off the top of my head. (Not to mention a number of personal friends of mine.) You can say these folks are all lying or deluded, but I think that's an unlikely claim. If they didn't arrive at Christianity by rational means, they sure do a convincing job of writing like they did!