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.

[Purple Knight]

[2timothy316]

[Sherlock Holmes]

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.

From a very early age I was amazed at the natural world and my mother bought me a great set of encyclopedias (20 volumes I think, Arthur Mee) when I was about 9 I guess. I spent hours going through these books, often drawn more to the science sections than the others areas.

At this same time the Apollo moonshot was underway and this project dominated UK science television, it was huge, always some show or report going on that was about this. Also at that time and later we had in the UK numerous other shows that touched on science, Tomorrow's World, Horizon, The Ascent of Man, Sagan's Cosmos and more.

I was an avid reader too of Superman and Flash comics which were to all intents and purposes science fiction. So this was my "world" it was the world, everything could be connected to everything else, everything happened because of something, the reason for this was that and so on, this way of thinking became deeply ingrained in my mind. Later I became immersed in mathematics and theoretical physics having read about "moving clocks g slow" in an old edition of the Guinness Book of Records (of all places) when I was 14.

I read a little about Einstein and relativity and later became more and more immersed in this.

My hobbies in my mid/late teens included electronics, astronomy, bird watching, collecting birds eggs, collecting old science books and so on, I told my mother I'd never have a Bible in my house once, saying it was useless (she was not really religious but sometimes read the Bible). So this was me, this was my world, I knew quite a lot for a kid - many kids into science do - my interests spanned Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Faraday and many many of the famous scientists from the past.

Then something happened.

I had a friend who - to my amazement - actually attended a church regularly, I'd known him for years and this had simply never come up before, so I laughed at him!

Anyway over time we'd talk about stuff and naturally I was amused that he'd fallen for a load of religious claptrap, but he did challenge me about evolution to see if I could really prove that what is claimed is in fact true, not to him but to myself. I dismissed this as a waste of time however. Later though I did begin to ponder, how - as someone well versed in logic, mathematics and so on - would such a proof look like if I were to try and put one together, that was the start of a learning period for me. Over time I found that the many arguments I'd read in books and seen on TV and so on, just didn't really stand up, required a lot of trust and extrapolation which in my mind opened the possibility that it could actually be wrong.

Bear in mind I was trying to support evolution but I began to be aware that I must value truth above prejudice, if evolution was the reason life around us is at is then frankly this should not bee hard to prove but it really was tough, there were so many unanswered questions, playing devil's advocate with myself was revealing things to me.

Eventually I reached a point where I was prepared to say evolution is not true, is not the mechanism that gave rise to the life we see around us, my decision was reached after several years of struggle to be truly open minded, the temptation was never far away to just say "F**k this man, we know this must have happened naturally, sure if one wants to believe the God explanation one can but forced to choose I'm with Darwin". But I did not, I needed to be truly honest with myself and just because I found my old, familiar world comfortable, that isn't how one finds truth.

[The Nice Centurion]

Have you ever heard of Antony Flew?
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/maga ... lew-t.html
He was convinced by science.
Do a Google search and look up some of his videos. I actually use his reasoning when debating atheists.

I dont think he was convinced by science.

Heard he was on his way to hell . . . er I mean to an Atheist Evilutionist Anthropologysatanic conference when some good white american christian person slipped him the chic tract "This was your life".

After (still hesistantly) reading it, Flew fell to his knees, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, as well as Benny Hinn as his new investment fond and became a Chick Chrisian at once.

[2timothy316]

Have you ever heard of Antony Flew?
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/maga ... lew-t.html
He was convinced by science.
Do a Google search and look up some of his videos. I actually use his reasoning when debating atheists.

I dont think he was convinced by science.

Heard he was on his way to hell . . . er I mean to an Atheist Evilutionist Anthropologysatanic conference when some good white american christian person slipped him the chic tract "This was your life".

After (still hesistantly) reading it, Flew fell to his knees, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, as well as Benny Hinn as his new investment fond and became a Chick Chrisian at once.

Thanks for your opinion.

[boatsnguitars]

Have you ever heard of Antony Flew?
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/maga ... lew-t.html
He was convinced by science.
Do a Google search and look up some of his videos. I actually use his reasoning when debating atheists.

I dont think he was convinced by science.

Heard he was on his way to hell . . . er I mean to an Atheist Evilutionist Anthropologysatanic conference when some good white american christian person slipped him the chic tract "This was your life".

After (still hesistantly) reading it, Flew fell to his knees, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, as well as Benny Hinn as his new investment fond and became a Chick Chrisian at once.

Thanks for your opinion.

Actually, the story was that Flew was getting a little senile, but he was convinced by ID (Behe, et al) that there were no pathways to explain the flaggelum naturally. He didn't know they were lying to him. So, he died with their lies echoing in his head. If anything, it shows how evil Christians are. They will lie, then lie about the lie...

[2timothy316]

Have you ever heard of Antony Flew?
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/maga ... lew-t.html
He was convinced by science.
Do a Google search and look up some of his videos. I actually use his reasoning when debating atheists.

I dont think he was convinced by science.

Heard he was on his way to hell . . . er I mean to an Atheist Evilutionist Anthropologysatanic conference when some good white american christian person slipped him the chic tract "This was your life".

After (still hesistantly) reading it, Flew fell to his knees, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, as well as Benny Hinn as his new investment fond and became a Chick Chrisian at once.

Thanks for your opinion.

Actually, the story was that Flew was getting a little senile, but he was convinced by ID (Behe, et al) that there were no pathways to explain the flaggelum naturally. He didn't know they were lying to him. So, he died with their lies echoing in his head. If anything, it shows how evil Christians are. They will lie, then lie about the lie...

Whatever you need to tell yourself to float your boat.
This isn't a debating forum its just for getting questions answered from a group. Do you have any more questions?