Princeton philosopher Noah McKay converts to Catholicism

Noah McKay, a doctoral student in philosophy at Princeton University, has announced his conversion to Catholicism. He is the second Princeton academic to enter the Church so far this year.

McKay described his experience to EWTN News and said doubts about the faith weighed on him for years: the problem of evil, the "problem of divine hiddenness" and other questions he did not resolve right away.

He never considered himself an atheist or an agnostic, though he went through deep doubts in his school years and in graduate school, above all about the reliability of the Bible and how to interpret it. Still, his belief in God never faded entirely. McKay always held that God's existence was "at least slightly" more probable than his nonexistence.

The arguments that convinced him

What moved him toward theism were above all design arguments based on the fine-tuning of physics for the emergence of life. To that he added empirical evidence for contemporary Christian miracles. He also said arguments from consciousness, moral knowledge and natural beauty played a decisive part in his conversion.

McKay came to the Church through academic research. The evidence for miracles that support Catholic teaching was the central factor in his decision. Those miracles "presuppose teachings proper to the Catholic Church," he said, and the evidence behind them is "as good as or better than the evidence for Christian miracles of a more general kind" that he already believed in. Consistency required accepting all of them or rejecting all of them, and he concluded that the evidence was too strong for rejection to be reasonable.

Advice for others considering conversion

Beyond the miracles, McKay studied the history and theology of the Church and found arguments he considered "very strong." Speaking to EWTN News, he encouraged those weighing conversion to begin by studying those miracles. In an interview with the Catholic apologist Cameron Bertuzzi, he said that "if you already accept that Christianity is true, the conclusion in favor of Catholicism is irresistible."

His decision to enter the Church caused "distress" among relatives and close friends, given his Protestant background. McKay said he remained convinced that "Catholicism, if you are fully informed and really consider all the evidence, will be, in practice, irresistible." He asked those considering conversion to "pray," and said prayer, and the rosary in particular, had supported him strongly during his discernment. "Those who seek Christ sincerely and in prayer will find him," he said, adding that he hoped God would make himself known to everyone who reads his story.