[extropy-chat] John C. Wright finds god

[Damien Broderick]

http://mostlyfiction.com/authorqa/wright.htm

Greg West:
What kind of a kid were you?

John C. Wright:
Introverted, bookish, rude, irreligious, un-athletic, smart and 
smart-mouthed: a typical product of popular culture in America.

Greg West:
When you say you were irreligious does this mean you were actively 
skeptical or simply indifferent and amoral?

John C. Wright:
My moral character has always been sterling. I mean that I was skeptical. 
For many years I had been an atheist, and a vehement, argumentative, 
proselytizing atheist at that. I saw no other possible option for belief 
for a logical thinker. My recent conversion to Christianity was a miracle, 
prompted by a supernatural revelation, which has satisfied my skepticism in 
this area, and saved my life. To my surprise, I find that I am still a 
perfectly logical thinker. I hold that it is insufficient to argue that 
since human reasoning discovers no evidence of a Divine Being, such a being 
necessarily does not exist. The proper conclusion is that humans, without 
the assistance and intervention of a divine being, cannot come to knowledge 
of Him: a conclusion I think even atheists will allow.

Greg West:
When did this conversion take place?

John C. Wright:
I had a heart attack and was near death. It happened this November just 
past, late in 2003 AD.

My conversion happened long after I wrote THE GOLDEN AGE, LAST GUARDIAN OF 
EVERNESS, or ORPHANS OF CHAOS. It was also after I wrote the short story 
LAST OF ALL SUNS, a story which prompted one editor to ask whether I was a 
Christian: I was a vehement anti-Christian at the time of that writing, 
but, like all good authors, I wrote the story according to its own internal 
logic, and logic demanded an ending more cheerful and supernatural than the 
world view of a Stoic or a natural philosopher would allow.

Greg West:
What was the nature of this supernatural revelation?

John C. Wright:
That is a strange and private matter. Let us pretend that I was visited by 
three ghosts, like Scrooge, and, like him, returned from the travail a 
better man.

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Take care--it could happen to *you*.

Damien Broderick