I am curious as to what atheists think about this video and mainly how Brian 'Head' Welch claims to have come to know God one day after a lifetime of drug abuse and then the next day throws away all his drugs and quits his world famous band to raise his daughter properly.

This is the leading comment on youtube aorn so I thought I would make a thread about it.





edit: just noticed the video thread. Mods can move it to there if they want.

It sounds like he finally realized his daughter is more important than drugs. I hope I never get hooked on drugs such that I don't automatically realize that my children are more important than staying high.

He obviously has an addictive and impulsive personality and it seems to me that his new found religiosity may just be another 'addiction' or a short term band-aid as he tries to heal his life. It would be great to return in 2-3 years and find him still sober and a caring father and if religion is the spur for this then I'm all for it.


"Jesus, if you're real, come into my heart and take these drugs away from me", "you know i wanna quit"
To my unbelieving mind, this seems like a placebo where he doesn't think he has the strength of character to sober up alone but if he goes to church then he has the power of God helping him.

I wish him all the best but I am left with the feeling that he's attaching himself to religion as a last desperate resort to throw his duties on the back of God in lieu of actually facing his addictions and responsibilities himself and if it doesn't work out then he will still have someone to blame.

This was done several years back, and so far as I know, Head is still clean and sober. I get chills from watching this, and I find these stories to be incredibly life affirming. When I was a Christian, it was testimonies like this which confirmed by belief. I still love hearing 'testimonies', or any story about how people have turned their life around. I don't care if it's Jesus/Mohammad/Reason. A changed life is a changed life.

Regarding faith, it was always easy to look at the Brian Welch type stories. These are held up as examples and preached in the pulpits to the transforming power of Christ. Yet for every Brian Welch, there are 5 more addicts who have begged and pleaded with God for deliverance. These get swept under the rug in a 'God works in mysterious ways' rational.

+1

Reminds me in an abstract way of the doctor who went to North Korea and removed cataracts from 1000s of citizens, thus regaining their sight, "But what was so remarkable was that immediately after regaining their sight, rather than thanking the doctor, people started crying and bowing and giving thanks in front of pictures of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung as hundreds clapped and cheered in unison. I never saw such an extreme personality cult before."

God worked for Brian Welch and shunned others because I assume Brian Welch actually wanted to sober up and struggled, fought and pushed through the resistance of this addictions and the others.....did not.

I think this is true. It would be impossible for Christians to produce statistically significant deviations from the general population regarding remissions of any sort. Scientology claims to be able to heal addictions and anxiety. A good friend of mine testifies that the Church of Scientology cured him of debilitating anxiety, but that does not convince me of the truth claims of Scientology.

Josh Hamilton is a similar story. A tremendously gifted professional athlete who fell into drug and alcohol addiction, who testifies that God turned his life around and restored him. He just had another relapse with alcohol this week (this after an earlier relapse in 2009, i believe). I don't doubt his sincerity towards his faith, nor his desire to be clean and sober. But he does seem to be spending a lot of time in rehab working out his issues for someone who has been delivered from addiction by Jesus.

But what is the point of changing your life if there is no objective, transcendent, basis for morality?

You point at instances of relapse as evidence that there was no external cause for the initial "positive" change itself, but I think this might be shooting at the wrong target. If it were change for the sake of some vague, subjective notion of "personal improvement" I would agree with you.

But if it is change to bring yourself more into alignment with an objective moral will, then by definition there has to be a "willer." And if we are also independent moral agents, it also has to be at least possible to freely decide to step off that train. So a relapse or a backslide would not be an example of God's absence, nor would it be some unknown force working in mysterious ways. Instead, it is more of a conscious decision to "dis-align" yourself from the source of objective morality you had once tapped into, even if just temporarily.

Its nice to see someone change (though I bet there's a million more stories from non-famous people).

In before the xtians claim only through Jesus can one get free of drugs/alcohol addictions.

wtf at korn still being around...

This completely misses the point, and really has nothing to do with my post. There does not need to be a 'transcendent basis for morality' to want to change behavior that is destructive to your own health and personal relationships.

I said nothing about an external cause for initial change. I fully embrace the idea that there are multiple external causes for initial positive change, many of those being religious in nature. My claim is that no one religion can make this claim exclusively, and therefore using such testimonials as proof of the true working of your particular religion can in no way bolster claims of 'ultimate truth' beyond that of any number of religions.

Regarding relapse, relying on the freewill argument doesn't even address my point. Is there a demonstrable deviation between Christians and everyone else regarding relapse? There appears to be no deviation in other aspects of life, including divorce rates and charitable giving.

I think if it takes an imaginary friend to get his life in order, that's fine. The result is the important thing.

No, I got your point. My response is that a true religious conversion has a core basis in objective morality and has little to do with a vague, subjective notion of personal improvement. I agree with you that no one worldview or religion has an exclusive claim to moral truth or cause for positive change. But I assumed your argument was based on a belief that all such belief and cause for change really just comes about through naturalism, whether or not it is wrapped up in the pretense of religion. That is where my response came from, and I apologize if I misstated your belief.

Ok, then I think that clears it up. I have no doubt that to the religious convert, objective morality is a foundational criteria, and that is perfectly allowable. My argument is that relapse is not in form with objective morality, and the religious cycle of breaking addictions is indecipherable from the secular. Ultimately, the primary reason for change is personal (health and relationships being foundational), and 'objective' morals may or may not play a secondary role.

I was just impressed that he claims to have felt a deeper meaning to life than his drugs which he describes as feeling like "love" that "was so powerful the next day [he] threw away all [his] drugs" and used that love to love his daughter more and afaik has not relapsed in the 3-4 years since he quit without the help of any drugs or rehab centers (afaik).

I mean meth is pretty hard to kick from what I understand, not to mention whatever else he was on. He acts like it wasn't even a big deal throwing away all his drugs.

A spontaneous remission rate of 5% is accepted among alcoholics, and it's generally considered to be one of the tougher addictions to beat. Psychology Today puts alcohol at #6. Meth isn't even on the list.

I have a hard time taking seriously an article that says potato chips are harder to quit that cocaine and heroin.

You make "not even on the list" sound so dramatic. This epically long list of 7.

You ever tried to eat just one potato chip? Every see a severely obese person try to eat just one potato chip?

In any case, the answer still stands. Unless religions can demonstrate a remission rate greater than either 5% spontaneous remission or that of secular treatment, the results are insignificant, regardless of how inspiring you find an individual case to be.

Testimony is a very poor source of evidence.

with god, all things are possible...except music that doesnt suck

not me. another personal testimoy of some one who had a messed up life, believed a pleasant lie, and changed their life. i heard dozens of these while i was a believer, and dozens more while no longer a believer.

the most interesting thing about them is the way they, somehow, validate other people who share the same deception.

Thank God!!!
Jesus saves another life, and i hope that this sinner turned good is an example to u all.

I have read his book, pretty interesting read.

TD;DR - Pretty much self-explenationary book, where he talks about time with the band and all the stupid things he had done, about his ex-wife, how she aborted child, then another child came, at the time he was on heavy drug use and at the time at one point he was in totaly down into ''deep sh*t'', he was seeing that his Christian friends was living a pretty decent life, as he would have wanted it to live, he ''reached'' for God, seen hallucinations and found faith in him.

I'm an Atheist and I'm actually pretty happy for him.

There is none. None believers in those things should kill themselves with their addiction. Though that would be change so maybe not.

What's wrong with Stryper?