Are the characters in your dreams conscious?

A few weeks ago I wrote a post explaining why you are probably not living in a simulation. One of the reasons I gave was that a simulation of a person probably wouldn't have its own individual consciousness, but you know good and well that you are conscious. I was just thinking that when you dream, your brain is basically running a simulation. There are characters in your dreams that walk and talk as if they were real people. But they don't have their own individual consciousness, so this seems to be evidence that a simulation in a computer probably wouldn't be conscious either. Just as a person in your dream is a mere representation, so also a simulated person in a computer would be a mere representation.

Skepticism about theories that invoke illusion to dismiss anomalies

There are a lot of views out there that require you to say that certain aspects of our experience are illusions. For example, on a B theory of time, the passing of time is an illusion. Or, on the emergent property view of the mind, the sense we have of acting on volition is an illusion.

It seems to me that any theory or model that has to resort to illusion is an inadequate or incomplete model or theory. Ideally, a model or theory should account for all the information you have. It would be consistent with all of your information and either explain it or be explained by it. When you say that some aspects of our experience is an illusion, what you're essentially doing is admitting that that piece of information doesn't fit neatly into your model, and rather than give up your model or try to come up with a different one, you're just dismissing some of the evidence or information. You're sweeping it under the rug.

On the other hand there is such a thing as an illusion. I'm not saying we're never justified in dismissing something as an illusion. But in general when it comes to theories or models of reality, if illusion is a persistent or intrinsic part of that theory or model, then we should be skeptical of it because basically it means we have a piece of information that the theory or model doesn't account for.

Forged In Fire

Forged In Fire is my favorite show, but I still have some problems with it.

First, I don't think it accurately represents the talent a lot of the contestants have. If you're a bladesmith, your first priority isn't to make a knife as fast as you can. Your priority is quality. Well, quality suffers if you're in a big hurry. This competition is timed, so all these bladesmiths are in a big hurry. Consequently, the quality of their work in the competition is not at all representative of what they are capable of. If you look some of these people up, they've got amazing talent. I would love to see their true talent displayed on the show, but the format just doesn't allow for it.

Second, the contestants don't have any control over the tempering process. Heat treating is one of the most important aspects of making a knife, second only to material. The problem with not allowing them to temper their own blades is that when somebody gets disqualified because their blade broke during testing, it's not entirely their fault. They might've been able to produce a tougher blade by tempering it at a higher temperature or differentially tempering it. Of course some of it also has to do with grain size, which they do have control over. You can control the grain size by thermal cycling the blade. Also, the blades sometimes break because of there being cracks which form during the forging process.

Third, the testing is kind of subjective. How can we be sure that the judges are swinging each blade with exactly the same force? I wonder about this especially in the case of J. Neilson. He swings those blades really hard. It seems like by the time he gets to the second and third blade, he'd have a little fatigue. Another problem is that the judges don't always know how to wield these weapons. They don't always know how to swing a sword or throw a knife. I think they could come up with more objective ways to test these blades, but it probably wouldn't be as exciting and fun to watch for most people.

Fourth, they don't show enough of the forging process. This seems to be getting worse over time. They show too much of the interviews and the conversation between the judges when they could be showing the people shaping their blades. In this respect, I think there are a lot of YouTube videos that are far more interesting than this aspect of Forged In Fire. I think Forged In Fire would be more enjoyable if they did a better job of editing and show more forging, sharpening, and handle shaping than people talking.

Fifth, I don't like how they try to trip people up. There were some episodes where they had 24 hour epoxy on the shelves, which makes no sense because you only get three hours to attach and finish your handle. Why do they even have 24 hours epoxy? It served no other purpose than to trip up the contestants. This didn't test their ability to make blades. It tested their ability to read labels. I don't know if I would've looked that closely on the labels because it wouldn't have entered my mind that they would've had 24 hour epoxy for a three hours handle segment. It looks like they stopped doing that, and I'm glad.

Sixth, I don't like when they have people do weird stuff with weird junk metal, like making a knife using two different parts of a car or motorcycle. Sure, people do salvage steel to make blades sometimes, but people are usually pretty selective about the kind of steel they'll salvage. They'll use ball bearings, leaf springs, and farrier rasps because those are usually reliable. But no good knife maker is likely to use mystery steel that they know nothing about, and some of the challenges are just silly. I'd rather the contestants get a good piece of known steel from which to work so we can actually see what they're capable of. The ability to forage for scraps and cobble something together isn't that interesting to me, and it's not how most bladesmiths make their knives and swords.

In spite of all these complaints, I love the show. A casting agent contacted me on reddit one time to see if I'd be interested in going on it. I declined because I don't forge knives (I use the stock removal method), and I don't have half the talent most of the people on that show have, but I referred her to another guy I know (Jason Fry), and he actually went on the show! He almost won it, too. He came in second place.

Two pro-choice myths

Back in 2010, I wrote a response to something a friend of a friend of a friend had written on the pro-choice/pro-life debate. In the comment section, somebody gave me four different links that supposedly showed that laws against abortion have no affect on abortion rates. It turned out that all four links referred to just one study, and I didn't think the study showed what this person thought it showed.

Later on, a friend of mine on facebook (the same friend who had the friend who had the pro-choice friend) announced to all her pro-life friends that it had been proven (she put 'proven' in all caps) that abortion bans did not prevent abortions but only lead to women dying horrible deaths. I questioned her about that, mentioning how somebody else had previously told me about a study that I didn't think showed any such thing. I explained to her why I didn't think the study showed what the other guy claimed it showed, and I asked her if she had anything else for me to look at. She gave me three sources. I looked at them, and all three of them pointed to that same study that the guy on my blog pointed me to.

So it turned out that there's just one study that people keep pointing to as proof that abortion bans don't prevent abortions: "The Incidence of Abortion Worldwide" by Stanley K. Henshaw, Susheela Singh, and Taylor Haas.

I recently found a post on the Secular Pro-Life Perspective blog that addresses this study, then cites several sources showing that abortion bans do stop abortions, and I thought you might like to have a look-see: "Pro-life laws stop abortions. Here's the evidence." by Candace Stewart.

Another thing that has come up in a few of my abortion conversations as recently as a week or two ago is the "fact" that abortion only accounts for 3% of the services that Planned Parenthood provides. This is a highly misleading figure, and if you just google "Planned Parenthood 3%," there are a few articles that debunk it just on the first page. Here is a video I found on YouTube that explains what's wrong with it: "Debunking Planned Parenthood's '3%' Abortion Myth."

Advice for apologists

Here's some stuff I've been thinking about for a week or so. I've been adding to this list as things come to me, so these aren't in any logical order.

Know the gospel first, and be able to communicate it clearly. Understand Christianity. Read the whole Bible. Especially read the New Testament. Don't neglect reading the Bible just because you're reading other literature. Also, I highly recommend reading Basic Christianity by John Stott and What Is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert.

Read your opposition carefully. Your first priority should be to make sure you understand what they are saying before you start thinking about why they're wrong. If there are mistakes in what they said, you're more likely to notice by reading them carefully. You also want to avoid misrepresenting them. It doesn't do anybody any good for you to refute an argument that nobody actually made.

Don't chase rabbit trails. If you chase every red herring the other person brings up, you'll never get anywhere. Stay focused, and stick to the topic. I will sometimes remind the person I'm talking to what our original topic was if I feel like they're bringing up red herrings. People are subtle when they bring up red herrings. They're never out of nowhere. They're always related to the topic in some way, but they are still evasive.

Don't just read apologetics books. Read academic books on the subject you're looking into, even by people who aren't Christians or who aren't your brand of Christian. And don't just read books about the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection happened in the context of the life, teachings, and claims of Jesus, and the historical Jesus happened in the context of first century Judaism. So read more broadly in these areas.

Read original source material. For example, don't just read books about the gospels; read the gospels, too. Also, don't just read stuff about David Hume's argument against miracles. Read Hume's actual argument by Hume himself. Sometimes commentators get stuff wrong, so you don't want to rely completely one what they say.

Be charitable and courteous. Don't assume bad motives in other people. Give them the benefit of the doubt. And don't be rude. Being rude and uncharitable is a good way to lose your audience. If you get a person's motives wrong, you'll lose credibility with them. It's best to avoid motive-mongering altogether.

Read Tactics by Greg Koukl. No matter what other book you read to prepare you to be an apologist, you need to read this one. It will help you use what you know to have effective conversations with people who disagree with you. There's no other book like this one, so it's essential reading.

Read The Ambassador's Creed by Greg Koukl. It's a short little creed that gives some very good advice about representing Christ well in apologetic encounters. I don't know why Stand to Reason doesn't display this creed more prominently on their web page like they used to. It made a big impression on me a long time ago.

Only use arguments that you personally find persuasive. Don't just throw everything that "works" out there hoping something will stick. If you only defend what you think is true for reasons you think are valid, you'll rarely get embarrassed in a debate. Besides that, it's just the honest thing to do.

Pursue subjects you're interested in and on an as needed basis. You'll get more out of a book or article if you're interested in the subject or if you need to know the information because of a situation that came up in your life. For example, if you just became friends with a Jehovah's Witness, you'll get a lot more out of The Forgotten Trinity than if you were just reading it because it was next on your list. As you pursue topics you're interested in, your interests will inevitably branch out because one thing leads to another when you're studying anything.

As painful as it may be, do take some time to read some material on critical thinking, formal logic, and fallacies.

Don't just label other people's arguments with the names of fallacies. If you think they've made a mistake, explain the mistake. Simply labeling a fallacy only annoys people and doesn't help them. Also, there's a habit some people have of misidentifying fallacies because they fit a certain pattern. When it comes to informal fallacies, there are almost always exceptions to them. So if you want to accuse somebody of committing an informal fallacy, you need to explain the mistake they made so it's clear that whatever exceptions there may be to that fallacy don't apply in their case.

Do not let your increase in knowledge make you arrogant. Stay humble, have compassion for the people you're talking to, take the high road, be patient, be kind, and remind yourself of why you're doing apologetics (hopefully not to boost your ego, but to help people who need Jesus).

Don't be a back slapper. A back slapper is somebody who will get behind any argument or any personality as long as they agree with the conclusion. Honesty requires you to be willing to say if you think an argument for God is fallacious or if you think your favorite apologist is wrong about something.

Make it your goal to communicate as clearly as you can in hopes of being understood. Avoid the temptation to dazzle people with technical language and complicated arguments you know they aren't going to get. Be patient when people misunderstand you. Take the burden on yourself to make your arguments clear. I have slacked off on this over the years because I've become lazy and impatient. I get annoyed when I can tell that somebody responds without putting forth any effort to understand me. When that happens, I'll say something like, "That is not my argument. Go read my post more carefully." But this is also why I recommended earlier to read your opposition carefully in the first place. Not only will that better prepare you to evaluate the merits of what they said, but it's just good manners.

Do some soul searching and personal reflection. Go for a walk and ask yourself, "What do I really thing about this?" or "Why do I honestly believe that?" You'd be surprised at how much this can improve your defense of the gospel. Of course if you were anything like me in my early 20's, it could also make you realize you don't have any good reasons. If you don't have any good reasons, then you need to study more. But still, as you study, think about what is being said and whether you should believe it or not, and be honest with yourself about the confidence with which you believe various things and your reasons. This goes back to what I said earlier about only using arguments that you find persuasive.

Don't shy away from saying you don't know something if you don't know. Nobody knows everything, so there's nothing to be embarrassed about. Avoid the temptation to disguise your ignorance by making stuff up.

Take a chill pill. You don't have to argue about every little thing. Choose your battles. Also, have other interests so you don't burn out and so you can remain a normal person. And don't be a sea lion. If you can see that somebody doesn't want to argue with you, leave them alone.

Define your terms, but don't get bogged down arguing over definitions. The purpose of definitions is to facilitate communication. It doesn't matter whether people are defining their words correctly as long as you understand what they mean and they understand what you mean.

When you're reading a book, take notes. Write down important points you want to remember later. Just writing stuff down helps you remember what you read, and it helps you understand as well. It's also helpful if you want to look stuff up later on since you'll know where it is. And, if you want to write a review or critique of the book, those notes help.

Reading at night while you're in bed about to go to sleep is the worst time to read stuff if you really want to learn it.

Pray for those you encounter. Ultimately, it's up to the Holy Spirit to prepare a person's heart to make them receptive to the gospel. You are, at best, a means through which God draws people to himself. So don't be discouraged that people resist your case. You could be the best apologist in the world and still not persuade people. Be the best apologist you can, but don't think it's all up to you. Pray that God will open people's hearts and call them to obedience to the gospel, and pray for yourself that you will be a good and faithful advocate for the gospel. Pray that God will lead you only into truth and protect you from error. Pray that God will give you the humility to realize when you're in the wrong and change your mind if necessary.

Thinking about starting a podcast

I've been thinking lately about starting a podcast. I was inspired by Kyle Hendricks who has the AK47 podcast with his buddy, Aaron. But more than that, I've been thinking that doing a podcast could help me improve my ability to speak. Speaking has always been a bit of a struggle, but it seems to be getting worse with age. I've developed George Bush Syndrome where I can barely get through a sentence without stumbling over my words, or saying the wrong thing, or not being able to think of a word. Listening to my interview with Kyle was really cringeworthy because of the awful speech patterns I noticed. For example, I kept saying. . .

* anything like that
* and stuff (like that)
* you know
* or something like that
* Kind of
* Kind of a
* Kind of like

At one point, I was talking about how in face to face conversations, people aren't going to sit through a 30 minute explanation of an argument without continuously interrupting you. You have to go back and forth and weave your argument into the conversation. I wanted to say that people are unwilling to listen to you monologue, but I couldn't think of the word, "monologue," so I said, "pontificate." That happens to me all the time where I can't think of a word, so I'll find a substitute. I'm kind of like Porky Pig (even stuttering sometimes) except that many times the substitute word is just wrong and doesn't express what I meant to say.

Also, I sounded like I had a sock in my mouth or sand in my throat. I listened to the other interviews Kyle did, and everybody else seemed to speak clearly and smoothly, and they had pleasant voices. I hate my voice!

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I'd sometimes make a cassette recording of me talking, and send that to people in lieu of a letter. For the most part, those went pretty well, I think, and I enjoyed doing them. Every now and then, there'd be an awkward pause where I'd have to gather my thoughts, and I'd use those pauses to play a song on the guitar. There's no way I could do that now. I just can't speak smoothly enough.

My inability to speak has even made ordinary conversation difficult. I struggle so much trying to find words and trying to get through a sentence smoothly that it's very hard to keep my train of thought. Shooting the breeze with people shouldn't be so hard! I suspect a lot of my struggle isn't even noticeable to other people. For example, when I can't find a word I want to use, I may pause briefly, but I'll quickly plug in a substitute if it doesn't come to me right away. The substitute may not capture what I was trying to say as well, but the other person can't know that because they can't read my mind.

I fully expect my podcast to be horrible in the beginning, but I'm hoping that with practice it will become easier, and this will bleed over into my personal life.

The question now is what my podcast should be about. Ideally, it would be an interview type podcast. I did some YouTube interviews with the fine folks over at debate.org one time, and those went really well. The only problem is that I doubt I'd be able to get a steady stream of people to interview. Plus, it's hard to schedule interviews with people. That's why I stopped doing it at debate.org. As some of you might remember, I also tried vlogging a long time ago, but I quit because I didn't think it went well.

I have two other ideas. They're not terribly original. One of them is to do a course on apologetics. My audience would be other Christians. That could probably last a while.

Another idea is to have a broader audience, and give an over all defense of Christianity. This would be aimed both at Christians and at non-Christians. It would be sort of like a book one might write in defense of Christianity except it would be oral. I've been working on a book for a while, but it's hard to motivate myself to write in it. This could help. The only draw back is that I wouldn't be able to have footnotes. I'd have outlines to go by, and probably some notes, but I'd mostly be talking off the top of my head. This podcast probably wouldn't last as long as the one on apologetics since it would be more focused.

Neither of these podcasts would be perpetual. Eventually, I'd get through all the information I had, and I'd be done. That's the way I would want it to be. But who knows? If I actually got good at it, I might enjoy it, in which case I may either start a different podcast or find an excuse for the present one to continue.

It's unlikely that I'll announce new episodes here, though. I'd be too self-conscious about it. I'll probably just post them on Anchor (and wherever else Anchor posts them), and let random strangers listen to it who can't leave comments and make me too self-conscious.

If this doesn't work, I suppose I could always get a speech therapist.

Marriage proposals are stupid

I decided just this morning that marriage proposals are stupid. Think about it. The decision to get married is the biggest decision one could make apart from the decision to follow Christ. With that being the case, marriage is something a couple ought to talk about quite a lot before they decide to go through with it. If two people talk about whether or not to get married, and they eventually agree that they should get married, there's no reason for there to be a proposal. A proposal at that point is redundant. You'd just going through the motions.

Marriage proposals are especially stupid in cases where one of them is surprised. Whenever I see a video on YouTube where some guy proposed to a girl, and she said no, it makes me think there was something wrong with that relationship. How could he have not known what she was going to say? Did they just never talk about marriage up to that point?

Marriage proposals are sometimes surprises, though, and I think that's just as stupid. Even if a girl is surprised and over joyed when she gets a proposal, it seems to me that something has gone wrong. If they talked about marriage enough before then, she shouldn't have been surprised. They should've come to an agreement by talking it over, and once having come to an agreement, the proposal is just a formality.

I usually bring up marriage pretty early on in a relationship. I don't do it because I'm in a rush to get married, though. I do it because marriage is the inevitable outcome of a relationship that goes well. Unless you're one of those people who just don't have any interest in marriage, whenever you date somebody, one of two things are going to happen. Eventually, it's going to end, or you're going to end up married. So I think these things through. I take things to their logical conclusion. And why shouldn't I talk about it and speculate about it? How can you not think about things like that, especially if you hope to get married some day? I don't think people should be the least bit freaked out by talking about marriage early on in a relationship. You should get freaked out if the other person has already decided they want to marry you or they seem to be in too much of a rush, but if you're not talking about marriage, something is wrong. Either you're not thinking about it, which strikes me as being odd, or you're thinking about it plenty, but you're keeping your thoughts to yourself, which is also odd.

I think couples should talk openly about marriage, even early on. At the very least, you'd want to know whether the other person was open to marriage in the future, what their intentions are in dating you in the first place, and things like that. You don't want to invest a lot of time and emotion into somebody only to find out they're not the marrying sort or they don't even see you as having potential.

The older I get it seems like the more traditional things like marriage proposals seem absurd to me. Gift exchanging on holidays and birthdays also seem absurd to me, but I'm going to avoid going into a rant about that.

Sure, not having a proposal may seem anti-climactic, but so what? We'd never miss it if we never did it in the first place. Won't they be anti-climactic anyway if the couple has already discussed it and agreed that they ought to get married? The only surprise after that point is the exact timing of the proposal. I don't see how the proposal can be a special occasion, though, if they both saw it coming.

Don't a lot of couples go out and pick out an engagement ring together? If they're doing that, then surely they've already agreed to get married, in which case, an additional marriage proposal on top of the agreement to get married and the purchase of the engagement ring seems completely stupid and superfluous.

It seems to me there'd be plenty of joy in a situation where two people are so close as to be best friends, and so in synch with each other that they agreed through talking about it that they each wanted to be with the other for the rest of their lives. That would be far more meaningful to me than a situation where I buy a ring in secret and propose to her out of the blue, even if she was surprised and joyfully said, "Yes." A mutually agreed upon and well thought out agreement between two people strikes me as containing far more warmth, love, affection, and respect than a surprise proposal in which one of them has to decide on the spot whether to say "yes" or not.

A proposal kind of inherently makes it a one-sided thing. One person wants something and hopes the other person will oblige. That creates what George Costanza called "hand" in a relationship. The person being proposed to has the upper-hand. They know the poor guy wants to get married so bad he spent thousands of dollars on a ring and risked humiliation to ask her. She only has to decide if he's worthy or not. She doesn't risk as much. If she says yes, not only does she get the same thing he gets--marriage--but she gets a nice shiny ring, too, and the comfort of knowing he really wants to be with her and isn't simply caving to pressure. If she says no, she only has to feel bad for hurting the guy, but he's out a few thousand dollars, he's humiliated, and he's heart broken. I wonder how many relationships actually survive the rejection of a marriage proposal.

Engagement rings are stupid, too. I already thought they were kind of silly, but then Adam ruined everything else about them. Engagement rings now are just status symbols for women. For men, they're kind of like having your brand on somebody. But it's a status symbol for a guy, too, to get his girl a nice ring. I suppose it's a tradition that's not going away, though.

I don't think weddings are stupid. If weddings are stupid, then so is any party. I think extravagant weddings are stupid, even if you're wealthy. But having a big get together in which you pledge your loyalty and love before God and and your family and friends, followed by a party with food and drinks, is actually a good idea.

Things I used to believe and how I changed my mind

Here's some things I used to believe along with what made me change my mind. These are in rough chronological order.

God, Heaven, and Adam

God, Heaven, and Adam were all the same person. This is the earliest belief I remember having about anything. I remember being really confused by it all, and it became clear gradually over time. I can't put my finger on one particular thing that cleared it all up for me.

The shape of the earth

The earth was flat. I remember my brother coming home from kindergarten one day and telling me the earth was round, like the moon. I didn't believe him at first, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me. At some point, I started believing the moon was the mirror image of the earth and that if I look at it and squinted my eyes enough, I'd be able to see myself and my brother. We used to threaten to push each other off the face of the earth back then, but when we came to grips with the earth being round, we realized it wasn't an option. I think what sealed the deal for me about the earth being round was a TV show where the host had a globe and was talking about the earth.

Night, day, stars, and lightening

I used to believe the earth was surrounded by light, but there was a canopy that covered half the earth, and it rotated around the earth. I came to this belief because of seeing somebody with one of those earth/moon model thingies on TV that had something like a cup over half of the earth. Anyway, I believed this canopy explained night and day. The canopy shielded half the earth, and that's why there was night on half the earth. Since the earth was very old, the canopy had holes in it that let the light through, and that was stars. Sometimes, during storms, the canopy would shake and form cracks. The cracks let light through, explain lightening, and it made a loud sound, explaining thunder. I don't remember what exactly changed my mind about this.

Hell

Hell is a real physical place beneath the earth where people are burned alive for eternity. The first thing I gave up was the belief that hell was a place that existed in the earth somewhere. I still thought hell was a real place of fiery torment, though. I think I gave up the idea that hell involved literally burning in fire forever after reading the New Testament, but I can't say for sure what exactly caused the change. Around the age of 20, I began to read Jehovah's Witness literature as a result of a friend converting, and I remember the passage in Revelation about hades being thrown into the lake of fire made me realize that the traditional view of hell was not right. Since then, I've come to believe that Hades, Gehenna, and all the imagery surrounding them, such as fire, outer darkness, etc., are just ways of talking about the suffering that will result from the wrath of God against sin at the judgment. I have no idea what the punishment will literally entail, only that it will be unpleasant.

Knowledge

Nobody knows anything. The reason I thought nobody knew anything was because certainty was impossible. For anything you believe, there's always a degree of doubt that cannot be overcome. Two things changed my mind. The first was reading Descartes' Meditations On First Philosophy and realizing there are at least some things I could be certain about, like the fact that I'm thinking and the fact that I exist. The other thing was coming to understand knowledge, not as certain belief, but as justified true belief. Certainty isn't required for knowledge the way we ordinarily use the word in our day to day lives.

Determinism

I used to be a hard determinist. I held this view because of high school physics, learning about Newtonian mechanics, doing free body diagrams, etc. I began to see that everything operated according to laws, and you could actually calculate the position and motion of everything in the universe if you only knew the initial conditions. So everything was determined, including us. I can't say that I ever held this view consistently, though. I still believed in morality. I might have believed in free will, too. It's hard for me to make sense now of what was going on in my head at the time, but I suspect it was something like this: For all practical purpose, we at least appeared to have the illusion of choice, so we might as well have free will, but in reality, if you look at things very closely, everything is determined. I abandoned this view as a result of reading William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland. I became a libertarian partly because I was persuaded that it was intuitively obvious, but also because it was necessary for morality, and it was necessary for reason.

The Trinity

God is not a Trinity. When I was a kid, I never thought that much about the Trinity. I had a very vague idea that Jesus was God, but he wasn't the same person as the Father, but I didn't really think it through or worry about it. When I started reading Jehovah's Witness literature, I started to think about it, and I became persuaded that God was not a Trinity. I still didn't completely agree with how the Jehovah's Witnesses thought of things. For example, I didn't think Jesus was created. I thought of Jesus kind of like I thought of Joseph when Pharaoh put him in charge of Egypt. It says that to the people, Joseph was Pharaoh, and I figured Jesus was God in a similar sense. The start of my change was reading Reasoning From the Scriptures With Jehovah's Witnesses by Ron Rhodes. Rhodes made a case for the deity of Jesus I thought was surprisingly strong. I still wasn't a Trinitarian, though, and I wasn't totally convinced. Then I read The Forgotten Trinity by James White, and I was a full blown trinitarian by the end of it. (Here's a series of blog posts I did on the Trinity.)

Physicalism vs. substance dualism

I used to believe we were purely physical beings without an immaterial soul capable of disembodied existence. I thought we ceased to exist between death and resurrection. This was, again, due to reading Jehovah's Witness literature. What changed my mind was reading Scaling the Secular City by J.P. Moreland. I was initially persuaded by the philosophical arguments for substance dualism but later began to see that it could be defended Biblically as well.

The Sabbath

I used to not have a clear view on the Sabbath, but it was probably something like the Sabbath being an obligation to rest one day a week. I ran into a Seventh Day Adventist Chaplain when I was in the navy who persuaded me that the Sabbath was on Saturday, and that Christians are obligated to keep it. I change my view in my late 20's or early 30's as a result of studying certain passages in the New Testament. The view I have now is that the Sabbath is on Saturday, but Christians are not obligated to observed it the way its observance is prescribed in the Mosaic law. I see it a matter of personal conscience now.

Pre-marital sex

I used to believe there was no such thing as pre-marital sex because sex is what made you married in God's eyes. I came to this belief as a result of reading the Bible and thinking about various passages (I wrote this article explaining my view some time in the late 90's). I changed my mind as a result of reading J. Budziszewski's article, "The Revenge of Conscience." He persuaded me to give more weight to my moral intuitions, and since the idea of pre-marital sex did not sit well with my moral intuitions, I decided my view must be wrong.

Once saved, always saved

I used to believe you could lose your salvation. I came to this belief purely by reading the Bible. There were multiple places that made it look like you could lose your salvation. I changed my mind after becoming a Calvinist, but this was the hardest part of the change for me. After converting, it took a while for me to iron out all the Biblical kinks. After I became persuaded that Calvinism permeated the Bible, I stopped worrying about ironing out all the kinks. I figured even if there were verses whose meaning didn't fit neatly into Calvinism, I'd have more problems if I weren't a Calvinist than if I were.

Calvinism

I once rejected Calvinism. The beginning of my change was reading The Potter's Freedom by James White, particular the chapter on John 6. That argument was my primary reason for becoming a Calvinist, but I didn't become one right way. It was only after more reading and looking into things that I came around. It still happened in a relatively short amount of time, though. (Here's a more detailed account of my conversion to Calvinism.)

Free will

I used to believe in libertarian free will. It was mainly because of William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland that I held this view. Before that, I had a vague and poorly defined concept of free will. I changed my mind as a result of reading The Freedom of the Will by Jonathan Edwards. I was already a Calvinist at this point, so I remained a libertarian for a while after becoming a Calvinist. Edwards' book turned me into a compatibilist.

A vs. B theory of time

I used to be inconsistent in my theory of time. On the one hand, I used to say to people that the present is all that exists. The past is gone, and the future hasn't arrived. We live in an instantaneous moment that is continuously changing. That's the A theory of time. But then I'd also say that God exists outside of time and the whole spectrum of time is laid out before him as if it were all "now" from his point of view. That would indicate a B theory of time. I never saw the contradiction. Reading William Lane Craig solidified my belief in the A theory of time. Just in the last three years or so, I've started to cozy up to B theory. A big part of it has to do with special relativity and how it entails that there's no absolute simultaneity. Brian Greene's bread slice illustration had a lot to do with me warming up to the B theory. I'm not totally persuaded, though, because there are some physicists who don't think special relativity entails the B theory of time, and also because I think the philosophical case for the A theory is stronger. So I'm on the fence about it.

There's probably other stuff I'm not remembering right now, but there you go.