The evidence is muddied by the fact that Christians are trained to exaggerate their witness testimony, their origin story. They might claim they were converted from atheism , but unless there's hard evidence of that fact, as in a record of committed atheistic thinking, the story could be exaggerated to help others convert. It's the same with so-called converts from Christianity to atheism. There's a propaganda war going on here, after all.
But I'm sure conversion from either side to the other is possible and that it's happened. Yet these are by far the minority cases. The vast majority of religious people--and I'm speaking not just of current Christians, but of all religious people throughout history--are born into their religions, which means they were indoctrinated as children.
Notice that there's no generalization in any of the special sciences that doesn't have exceptions. Special science laws are all ceteris paribus. So the fact that there are exceptions, when one system interacts with another and when "all things aren't equal," has no bearing on the generalization's validity. What might undermine the generalization is when the exceptions turn out to be a norm or a separate system that needs to be explained.
If you want to maintain, then, that the exceptions here are common enough to require an explanation, it's not like the only possible explanation is that atheism is false. You'd have to be a therapist with lots of inside information to know what the converts associated atheism with when they converted. Maybe they had a bad first impression based on some flawed atheistic books. Maybe they didn't understand what atheism entailed. Maybe they wanted to be more popular in their community and they envied the social benefits of being a Christian. Maybe they found atheism depressing or anxiety-inducing, and they wanted to improve their mental health. Maybe they weren't as committed atheists as they later pretended to exaggerate their Christian testimony.
What thesis is this supposed to undercut, that evidence and philosophy have nothing to do with why religion persists? I said that that's "generally" the case. It's a ceteris paribus generalization, which means I'm aware there are exceptions. That doesn't mean you don't get to generalize, just because there are exceptions. The indoctrination is so widespread, the generalization is on very safe ground.
