I didn’t really distinguish between someone who converted to atheism vs one who never was religious to begin with.
Atheists very much do. Many of them, like myself, come by atheism after a period of believing much of the same things you do.
Isn’t the above possible without paying much, if any attention to science?
Maybe, but why turn our backs on another source of it? Is your life literally so full of awe and wonder that there's no room at all for more? We should all be so lucky, I guess.
Or are you saying that the above described bliss in atheism
I don't see where you've quoted any of those individuals describing bliss in
atheism.
That’s something that’s changing fast in our society, I’ve seen it with my own eyes in my 55 years of life.
That's true. It's getting better, and I think prominent atheist figures like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris - as well as individual atheists who do come out to their friends and family - have much to do with that.
But it's by no means easy. In many ways atheists are America's "last minority."
A couple of them show relief and contentment.
I never said it was a harrowing process for everyone. But even the people who feel relief, it's the relief that comes at the
end of a worrying period of losing one's faith.
The earth was more generally thought of to be fairly young at that time
Not at all. By Darwin's time the Christian "young Earth" had long been rejected by the geological community as well as by mainstream Christians.
I know of no evidence that suggests that Darwin was keenly interested in geology or astronomy, so it makes sense that he would have been uncertain about evidence for an old earth.
I guess, but I still don't see any of your evidence that Darwin hopped off the Beagle and immediately put together a cabal of atheist geologists. I'm not sure there were any, or that Darwin would have needed any. The geological consensus against the 6000-year-old Earth was developed primarily by Christians.
Speculation about events of millions of years ago, ruling out anything but naturalism for all of reality
I wonder if you could point to even a single high school science textbook that so much as
defines "epistemological naturalism", much less "rules anything out" but it. Science textbooks communicate the scientific consensus. What on Earth else should they do? Creation stories are the subject of a comparative religions class, not a science class.
Sorry, too old for that.
If you're so old, that only makes it more important for you to start getting caught up on the science if you'd like to have an informed opinion about the origin of life. I'm not saying "enroll in classes" but there's a significant weight of scientific expertise available at this board - students and professors who would like nothing better than to ease the burden of your incredible scientific ignorance.
Maybe instead of spinning insulting yarns about how they're all involved in a conspiracy to murder dissenting voices, you might ask them some questions? Questions are the beginning of knowledge.
Not peer reviewed you say? Why do you insist on peer review
Peer-review is how we distinguish between writing that
is science - that is the "scientific literature" - and writing that is
about science, meant to give laypeople an approximate explanation of it. When you
say "the scientific literature", but what you
meant was the science-subject popular press, you're engaged in a fundamental misrepresentation about the nature of science and the scientific consensus.
"Origin Of Species" wasn't peer reviewed.
You're right, which is why "On the Origin of Species" has only historical interest, not scientific authority. (The arguments that "On the Origin of Species" presented to laypeople, on the other hand, were peer-reviewed by the Linnean Society.)
Peer review seems to be for science what the courts are to Democrats — the judge/jury said this, so that trumps everything that a much larger group of people thinks.
Peer-review is how the scientific consensus on an issue emerges. You've correctly identified that it is important to scientists; surely it can't be taken as a
bad thing that we just don't take a scientist's word for stuff? That we subject all scientific experiments and conclusions to review by those best equipped to assess them?
As Thomas Sowell put into words very concisely; People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all the average persons put together.
Why not just come out and say that you fundamentally reject the very idea of expertise?
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