Former Atheists - What convinced you?

[rikuoamero]

What I'm writing here is for those people who consider themselves to be former atheist i.e. at one point in life, they either lacked a belief in a god of any kind, or actively disbelieved there is a God (there's a difference between the two).
I'm hoping that at least some people who are of this group (and hopefully joined the usergroup called 'Former Atheist' on this site) are/were also skeptical, in that they demanded evidence for religious claims.

My question is - What is it that convinced you? If you were to somehow go back in time and meet your previous, atheist (hopefully skeptic) self, would you or could you use whatever it is that convinced you to convince that version of you? Or would your past self be skeptical and dismissive of what it is you present?

Just to be clear - This isn't restricted to Christians only. You can be a Muslim who considers him/herself former atheist or whatever religion or belief you subscribe to. I want to hear from you.
I also promise NOT to debate in this thread. All I want are responses and your thoughts on this question. I will probably debate elsewhere, but not on this thread. This thread is solely for me to gather information.

[bluegreenearth]

I have spent over a dozen years on the trail looking for proof on abiogenesis. Because with abiogenesis there would be at least more to the investigation leading toward no intelligent creator. Yet the evidence of that is not compelling enough to keep barking up that tree. I don't know how long you've been following the abiogenesis investigation but in my experience, whatever headway you think they have, there is an extremely high chance that abiogenesis is impossible. The term 'partial success' made me laugh, it's like saying a person is partially pregnant. Get ready for more 'partial success' from the abiogenesis scientist.

With no condescension being deliberately intended here, your comments above demonstrate that you've either misunderstood my entire explanation or are deliberately ignoring it. If I am to presume that you understand where "looking for proof" supporting a claim about reality apart from knowledge of your own existence is a recipe for confirmation bias and doomed to fail on the outset, then I'm puzzled why you would continue to demand proof for a scientific claim when you should know the best any credible scientist can do is abductively infer a falsifiable hypothesis as the most reasonable explanation when it has been demonstrated to routinely succeed in making novel testable predictions. Otherwise, to expect the acquisition of the absolute "Truth" about reality apart from knowledge of your own existence is to expect a philosophical impossibility. This is not debatable. Once again, with no condescension deliberately intended, I'm more than happy to work through this logic with you if it is a matter of resolving any confusion or misunderstanding you might have. However, if you are going to just stubbornly insist that you have a proper understanding of the perspective I've described, then I fail to understand why you would ignore it and continue to take issue with abiogenesis when you claim to understand that it is only being defended as an abductive inference at this point.

Cell creation is only one problem for the first life coming from abiogenesis. The conditions for abiogenesis to happen are the first problem. Water needs to be present yes but here's the catch, without living cells like phytoplankton in the earth's water to absorb most of the Sun's light we wouldn't have liquid water on Earth. We have heard the term, "all life needs water". Yet, "all liquid water exposed to the Sun needs life" is true as well. This means that life and liquid water had to appear very close to the same time. Then, that one better get to work multiplying ASAP. That's if the first cell to appear used sunlight to produce food. Because if the first abiogenesis cell didn't use sunlight to make food, well then it better evolve fast into one that does, otherwise bye bye life. Abiogenesis would need to happen really fast before the planet ends up more like Mars. The odds that abiogenesis happened are hard enough to comprehend, but add that it must happen in a relative tiny time window and be the right kind of cell boggles the mind.

I'm not sure where you acquired the idea that liquid water exposed to the sun requires the presence of phytoplankton for itself to remain as liquid water or that life would not have continued to survive if the first cell didn't use sunlight to make food and subsequently failed to evolve this capability, but it is important to investigate any credible objections to such claims before asserting them as factual information. I'm more than happy to have you work through the reasoning supporting those claims for me where I will either identify if a misunderstanding occurred or revise my understanding if necessary.

In any case, unless I'm mistaken, your overall argument might contain a logical fallacy. It is my interpretation that your argument could be rewritten as follows: "I can't imagine how life could have emerged from non-life given my understanding of the necessary conditions for life to exist. Therefore, I am choosing to reject the possibility of abiogenesis and believe the intelligent design hypothesis." If I've unintentionally straw-manned your argument, please provide a clarification in your response. Meanwhile, if my interpretation of your argument is more or less accurate, then your reasoning is describing an argument from incredulity.

[2timothy316]

I have spent over a dozen years on the trail looking for proof on abiogenesis. Because with abiogenesis there would be at least more to the investigation leading toward no intelligent creator. Yet the evidence of that is not compelling enough to keep barking up that tree. I don't know how long you've been following the abiogenesis investigation but in my experience, whatever headway you think they have, there is an extremely high chance that abiogenesis is impossible. The term 'partial success' made me laugh, it's like saying a person is partially pregnant. Get ready for more 'partial success' from the abiogenesis scientist.

With no condescension being deliberately intended here, your comments above demonstrate that you've either misunderstood my entire explanation or are deliberately ignoring it.

Not ignoring, just not commenting on it or considering it in my reply as there is much of your post I feel no need to comment on. As you focus on such small things where there is so much more to consider.

I'm not sure where you acquired the idea that liquid water exposed to the sun requires the presence of phytoplankton for itself to remain as liquid water

LOL not remain liquid but liquid water remain on Earth.
Ok, so what do you know about how Earth got it's atmosphere and why we don't have an atmosphere like Venus? You are aware how the first life forms gave Earth it's atmosphere? You do know that the early Earth had abundant water. right? And it didn't likely come from comets or asteroids. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/ ... _35AR.html

For a long time scientist thought the Earth was mostly rock and water came later. They were incorrect. Certainly you understand the changes to everything we know about Earth's early years.

[2timothy316]

Therefore, I am choosing to reject the possibility of abiogenesis and believe the intelligent design hypothesis.

The term 'Possibility' means something different to each of us I'm sure. I'm not going to debate that term with anyone anymore. I have done it before it ends up no where. All I will say is I have enough information satisfactorily for myself to deem abiogenesis impossible and I will not debate this with you.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to 2timothy316 in post #74]

I won't try to debate the meaning of "possibility" with you but would appreciate receiving a resolution to your argument from incredulity.

[bluegreenearth]

Not ignoring, just not commenting on it or considering it in my reply as there is much of your post I feel no need to comment on. As you focus on such small things where there is so much more to consider.

I'm confused by your response as it does not seem to provide any clarification as to whether you understood my explanation or not. Would you be able to "steel-man" the explanation I provided to demonstrate that you properly understood it?

LOL not remain liquid but liquid water remain on Earth.
Ok, so what do you know about how Earth got it's atmosphere and why we don't have an atmosphere like Venus? You are aware how the first life forms gave Earth it's atmosphere? You do know that the early Earth had abundant water. right? And it didn't likely come from comets or asteroids. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/ ... _35AR.html

For a long time scientist thought the Earth was mostly rock and water came later. They were incorrect. Certainly you understand the changes to everything we know about Earth's early years.

I'm aware that one reasonable hypothesis accepted by the experts in the composition of Earth's early atmosphere is that oxygen-rich compounds such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and water vapor may have been dominant. The evidence suggests that these oxygen-rich compounds were released by magma as it was erupted onto the Earths surface just after the planet initially formed. Scientist have been able to determine what the oxidation levels were in the magma by analyzing samples of the Earth's oldest zircon crystals that were once liquid magma but solidified before having the opportunity to release their gasses into the atmosphere of the primordial Earth. Scientists have also discovered that a significant portion of the carbon dioxide that existed in the Earth's early atmosphere was subsequently captured by the geologic process of subduction as a function of plate tectonics. This reduction of carbon dioxide prohibited the runaway greenhouse effect from occurring on Earth. Furthermore, having an early atmosphere dominated by oxygen-rich compounds does not contradict existing theories about aerobic organisms evolving from anaerobic organisms because the evidence suggests that the subsequent development and increase in the concentration of "free oxygen" occurred slowly over time.

I'm aware that one reasonable hypothesis for the origin of liquid water on our planet accepted by the experts in this particular field at the moment is that it arrived at different times in different quantities from different icy objects which formed elsewhere in the solar system before subsequently colliding with the primordial Earth. After colliding with Earth, the ice on those icy objects melted and evaporated into the atmosphere where it eventually condensed into liquid water before raining onto the planet surface. Analyses of various isotope ratios seems to indicate that the largest quantities of water probably condensed on Earth almost immediately after the moon was formed by an interplanetary collision about 4.5 billions years ago. Therefore, an ocean of liquid water could have existed on Earth soon after that event. The information from the NASA article you referenced does not contradict this possibility because it suggests liquid water may have been present in large quantities on Earth by 4.3 billion years ago. The NASA article also doesn't suggest or imply that the majority of our water couldn't have come from comets or asteroids. That would be a misunderstanding of where the article claimed that the formation of 4.2 billion year old zircon crystals had to have occurred in the presence of liquid water in large quantities rather than from a collision between a dry meteorite and a dry rock at the time. This wouldn't preclude icy objects from colliding with Earth prior to 4.2 million years ago to have supplied enough liquid water to permit the formation of those zircon crystals.

[2timothy316]

The evidence suggests that these oxygen-rich compounds were released by magma as it was erupted onto the Earths surface just after the planet initially formed.

No volcanoes. That too has changed. Cyanobacteria is the likely reason.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... tmosphere/
https://news.mit.edu/2016/oxygen-first- ... phere-0513

So abiogenesis had to happen early in the earth's history and had to happen quickly and it had to be abundant very quickly. This first cell must have used photosynthesis. There was no time for it to take millions of years to become what it needed to be so that the Earth's water would not have been lost to the vacuum of space. The atmosphere those little cells made saved the Earth from fate like that of Mars.

See, this what I was talking about being keeping one's focus too narrow. Focusing only on abiogenesis creates blindspots.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to 2timothy316 in post #77]

I don't understand where the information from those articles you provided supports the claim that photosynthesizing organisms must have existed in abundance on Earth more than 4 billion years ago. In fact, both articles agree that "free oxygen" didn't exist in the atmosphere until around 2.5 billion years ago and took around 10 million years to build-up in concentrations necessary to begin rusting iron-rich sediment. Oxygen that is not freely available but trapped within the molecular structure of oxygen-rich compounds is not able to rust iron-rich sediment. If the oxygen produced by photosynthesizing organisms is emitted as "free oxygen" and not as oxygen-rich compounds, then what is the most reasonable explanation for the slow build-up of free oxygen in the atmosphere that is known to have occurred over millions of years? Would it be reasonable to expect the early atmosphere to have been saturated with free oxygen rather than having it slowly build-up over millions of years if photosynthesizing organisms were already existing in large numbers back then? Given the high concentrations of oxygen-rich compounds in the magma that is known to have existed at the time, would it be reasonable to expect the early atmosphere to be saturated with oxygen-rich compounds rather than free oxygen?

[2timothy316]

[Replying to bluegreenearth in post #78]

You might want to look into it. I don't really have the time to research for you what we know is changing now that we have evidence that Earth had water 4 billion years ago.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to bluegreenearth in post #78]

You might want to look into it. I don't really have the time to research for you what we know is changing now that we have evidence that Earth had water 4 billion years ago.

I never disagreed that water probably existed on Earth 4 billion years ago. Would it help if I described the proposed order of events and the evidence supporting it?

[2timothy316]

[Replying to bluegreenearth in post #80]

Here are some things to get you started on your own research.
Photolysis and how life through photosynthesis stopped Earth's water from being broken down by the Sun and water's hydrogen atoms lost to space.