Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of converts to Atheism


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. The nominator's rationale seems to focus mostly on whether or not atheism is a religion. As many !voters point out, this problem can be easily resolved by renaming the article (but since there is no consensus on what to rename it to, that discussion should happen on the article's talk page). There is consensus that the article needs to be cleaned up, and that the inclusion criteria need to be clarified, but I'm not seeing consensus that this article shouldn't exist at all. No one has provided an adequate rationale demonstrating that this list of people is not notable while other lists of religious converts are notable. &mdash;SW&mdash; confess 18:21, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

List of converts to Atheism

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Atheism is not a religion in the sense that Christianity or Islam are. There is no formal means for "converting" to atheism, and it has no prescribed set of beliefs and practice. It is inappropriate to describe people who have ceased believing in a deity as "converts"; which falsely implies that atheism is itself a religion. RolandR (talk) 23:45, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment I've no opinion, for the moment, on whether this article should be deleted or not, but I think some of the problems the nominator mentions above could probably be solved simply by renaming it. Polisher of Cobwebs (talk) 00:15, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Rename: Nominator took the liberty of nominating after I removed the PROD, and explained to him (or her) that the list /is/ notable and he's fighting this over semantics. Agreed, atheism isn't a religion but it's just as notable as converts to christianity. I would really appreciate it if just once someone actually brought an issue to me, rather than PRODing everything. The point is, the article does belong on Wikipedia, maybe with a different name but the nominator is trying to get it deleted over naming conventions. That's not how wikipedia should work. Ncboy2010 (talk) 00:25, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. We already have Lists of atheists listing seven list of atheist whatevers articles, a list of more lists of atheist somethings, eight lists of atheists by surnames, a List of fictional atheists and agnostics, and Category:Atheists with 75 dependent more specific atheist categories. The problem with the List of converts to Atheism is that the large majority of people now professing to be atheists were raised as having a religious affiliation and at some time identified with it before becoming an apostate. For example, Richard Dawkins was raised an Anglican and has stated that he embraced Christianity until his mid-teens. So using the inclusion criterion given, he should be on this list of "converts", and in fact the large majority of people identified as atheists should be included, making this completely unmanageable. --Lambiam 08:03, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Atheism-related deletion discussions.  --Lambiam 08:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep as part of the larger effort to list all notable converts to/from major world religions. Yes, atheism is not a religion, but it is analogous to one, and many other articles that form part of this effort (List of converts to Islam from Atheism, for example) treat it as such. Angrysockhop  ( talk to me ) 09:37, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, per WP:LC items 2, 4, 7, 10, and 11. Stifle (talk) 12:48, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: I wouldn't be averse to merging it into the lists of atheists as a subsection, perhaps "by former religion" Ncboy2010 (talk) 15:12, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 15:22, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment: If it is just renamed, how about "List of formerly religious atheists"? No opinion yet on keep/delete/merge. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 18:35, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * But are these people really "formerly religious", rather than just nominally, or by birth, linked too a religious community? What evidence is there that Philip Adams, or As'ad Abu Khalil, or Maryam Namazie, to take just three of the people on this list, ever was religious? This objection applies to Ncboy's suggestion above of listing people by "former religion" too. RolandR (talk) 20:05, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Then they shouldn't be on this list. There's a List of atheists, and then there's a list of people who have become atheists but were once not atheists. Notable people only, of course, on both lists. Two related, but not identical lists, similar to List of countries by population and List of countries by population density. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 20:52, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not following the logic of "Then they shouldn't be on this list".
 * You subscribe to whatever your parents subscribe to until you are old enough to form your own opinion.
 * When I "converted" to atheism, I thought I was the only one in the world; I didn't know there was a word. I had a crisis of conscience every time we had a questionnaire at school that required us to have a religion, and so I would have to lie to avoid persecution.
 * That's how it was in the 1960s.
 * I have since "converted" to agnosticism and as an agnostic, I resent being grouped with atheists, since the atheists are a bunch of doctrinaire assholes, as bad as any other group of religious fundamentalist kooks.
 * Varlaam (talk) 23:24, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your considered opinion of my philosophical outlook. Has it occurred to you that what is true for you may not be true for others, and that the fact that you subscribed to your parents religious beliefs offers no evidence that others subscribed to their own parents' beliefs? The Wikipedia guideline is clear and simple: we may not state that a person holds, or held, a religious view, in the absence of a reliable source stating that they (not their parents, grandparents, or neighbour's spaniel) did so. RolandR (talk) 23:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep Just as relevant as any other list of people who have done XYZ. Even if atheism is not a religion per se, it just as informative to know who changed from atheism to relgion XYZ as it is to know the converse, who changed from religion XYZ to no religion. Iglooflame (talk) 03:55, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - I don't agree with the nom's reasoning, but I don't find enough notability in this rather arbitrary list. I'm mostly objecting to the list proliferation... when there's no clear notability established outside of that (a lot of OR/synth). Shadowjams (talk) 06:18, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment,I think in which religion an atheist is raised can be covered in List of atheists article and every atheist's biography, converts to atheism does not make sense!If you are keen to quantify converts, you can create a relevant subcategory or in List of atheists article,you can have two sections-‘raised atheist’ and ‘converts’, Thank you.Skashifakram (talk) 03:33, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep Not surprisingly, even Delete voters do not agree with the nominator's rationale. Conversion to a belief, or to 'believe in one less god than everyone else', is a valid criteria. I assert that the article will be good enough in its inevitably incomplete form. Anarchangel (talk) 23:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Clean up as some sources such as do not make a claim more substantive than "leaving (a religion)" which is not equivalent to "atheism."  Labelling a person as "atheist" should require (for living people) strong sourcing directly for the label, as it is IMO a "contentious claim."  Blank unless and until such sourcing is uniformly established for those listed per WP:BLP instead of simple deletion - allowing the poor sourcing to be remedied. Oh -- and "prior religion(s)" also require strong specific sourcing for each person. Collect (talk) 15:14, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.