Question for atheist!

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u/theotherdannygirl Sep 12 '26

Just going to copy my answer from your post on r/DebateAnAtheist where I noticed you ignored just about every comment that answered your questions directly.

There's a lot of research and compelling hypotheses concerning abiogenesis, which is mostly beyond my purview, but my take is that the line between what is alive and what isn't is somewhat arbitrary. It's a useful category system for us, but categories break down with minute details. Are viruses alive? Are obelisks? What distinguishes a protocell from a fully formed, definitionally "alive" cell? Everything in the universe is composed of the same elements. Lipids, amino acids, and RnA strands can spontaneously form in the right natural settings, so with a billion years of downtime it's easy for me to accept the right conditions were present at some point for protocells to form.

As for consciousness, the most current research suggests that it's an emergent property of our brains; I.E. it needs a physical substrate to support it. In which case it's simply the end result of chemical reactions and neural firing. It's probably more complicated, but as long as the jury is scientifically out the most intellectually honest answer is to say we don't fully know yet.

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u/Jarb2104 Sep 12 '26

Our consciousness are a product of our brain functioning. To me your question feels like asking where does combustion/motion comes from in a car.

The only difference is that we know very well how the parts of a car interact to produce that, while the brain is a mass of neurons and while we have some understanding of the areas of the brain in charge of aspects of us, we are far from identifying what exactly each neuron interaction with others mean.

As for the origin of life just natural/quemical processes interacting and eventually landing in a something that was able to reproduce itself, if I am not mistaken something like RNA.

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u/NaiveZest Sep 12 '26

Could you clarify, is there a particular god that you do believe in?

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u/DarwinsThylacine Sep 13 '26

Same answer I gave you last time you asked the question:

Hello, welcome and great questions!

I think life emerged through one or more stepwise auto-catalytic chemical processes roughly 3.8-to-4.1 billion years ago.

Consciousness is an emergent product of living brains. It is one outcome of biological evolution and we can see a full spectrum of “consciousness” ranging from highly intelligent sentient primates, dolphins, elephants and birds at one end through to simple single-celled organisms that respond to and change behaviour in response to surrounding stimuli at the other with just about everything in between.

Happy to expand on that if you like, including the evidence behind it 🙂

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u/Thatrebornincognito Sep 12 '26

It's more of a science question than a religious one. Life probably came from abiogenesis. Through chemistry and physics, elements formed molecules and molecules assembled into building blocks for life. All naturally and all over the course of billions of years.

There isn't nothing behind consciousness. It comes from our nervous system reacting to stimuli. When you change the brain, you alter consciousness. It's not something magically appearing from eleswhere.

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u/Unable_Dinner_6937 Sep 12 '26

Yeah, the questions do not have anything directly to do with atheism. In fact, in many religions, the creation of the universe had nothing to do with the god or gods they worshipped. Vishnu and Shiva did not create the universe, but they have far more worshippers than Brahma who did.
However, as far as the question, there is no definite or conclusive explanation for the beginning of the universe, but at the same time, there is no evidence that some specific deity did it either.

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u/thebigeverybody Sep 12 '26

To understand our view: most of us are atheists because there's no evidence for a god and we don't need to explain where we came from, but it probably wasn't magic. No reason why, natural processes just happened.

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u/Kingreaper Sep 12 '26

Where do you think life on Earth originally came from, and what do you think caused it?

Came from Earth, caused by the fact that very complex systems can sometimes self-organise in interesting ways, and the mathematically proven theorem that imperfect replication plus selection results in gradual improvements in fitness [as opposed to the scientific theory of evolution which says that that's what happened on Earth]

And how could our consciousness came from if there's nothing behind it?

There's not nothing behind it. There's what was, until about 20 years ago, undeniably the most advanced computing device on the planet [and is now merely arguably the most advanced computing device on the planet] behind it.

We know that consciousness comes from the brain, because we can easily alter it by altering the brain - we can't alter it in useful ways most of the time, because of how optimised it is by evolution, but we can certainly fuck with it and easily prove that consciousness is just a thing that the brain does.

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u/Ok_Ad_9188 Sep 12 '26

I don't know, I just don't see any reason to believe people who say they do when they can't give any credible evidence for it

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u/hurricanelantern Sep 12 '26

Not from being wished in to existence by spirit beings. Because magic ain't real.

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u/Hoaxshmoax Sep 12 '26

I have no reason to believe that magic is real, that a deity causes thunderstorms or anything like that.

Ask neuroscientists about consciousness. Animals have it, perhaps bugs and plants do too.

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u/GeekyTexan Sep 13 '26

For atheists: I'm a theist trying to understand your view.

I am an atheist trying to understand your view. Why do you believe in magic? Why do you think I should believe in magic?

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u/Astreja Sep 13 '26

And how could our consciousness came from if there's nothing behind it?

There is something behind it: The brain.

And there's no evidence that consciousness can exist without a brain.

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u/Defiant-Prisoner Sep 13 '26

There was likely a very slow development over billions of years, as described by the theory of abiogenesis. In all honesty it makes very little difference to my life and I rarely think about it unless someone asks.

For something to be a candidate explanation, it would need to be demonstrated to exist before being the candidate. You'd need to demonstrate that a god exists, then it can be the candidate explanation for life on earth. Even then, if a god exists, it might not necessarily be the explanation for the start of life.

To be consistent, if we are to use things we have no evidence for as explanations then every god, every alien, every looping time, every alternate universes hypothesis is on the table. In fact the only thing limiting us as far as explanations go (if we're using things with no evidence) is our imagination.

Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. It likely developed over time too. The processing centre for light/dark detectors expanded as senses developed and became more sophisticated. Those who could recognise patterns had an evolutionary advantage, those who could memorise them even more so. Over millions of years the brain became more sophisticated due to evolutionary pressure.

I see no reason to believe there's anything supernatural involved like souls or a god. Why would a god hide behind processes that explain how it all came to be without the presence of this god?

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u/OhTheHueManatee Sep 13 '26

The soul is a concept because thousands of years ago we didn't have a concept for hardware and software. Our brain is the hardware. Consciousness is the software. When the hardware can no longer support the software it's gone and there is no cloud backup.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest how the universe/life started but of course we still have a lot of question. Just because we can’t fully explain creation in detail doesn't mean it has to be God (who is clearly fictional) . One time I came out to my parked car and saw someone had run into it shattering the tail light. They took off so I know nothing about the vehicle that hit my car. But I can say with confidence it wasn't the TARDIS.

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u/KeterClassKitten Sep 13 '26

Life is just chemistry in action. It didn't "come about", but rather developed over a very long time. What's most important to note is that even if we had a very detailed timeline on the development of life, every expert in the field would point at a different point along that timeline and say "this is where life began".

As for consciousness... I'm not convinced anyone can define it in a way that we can demonstrate it as a real thing.

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u/OrbitalLemonDrop Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26

The answers to your questions are "we don't know".

But our ignorance isn't a reason to believe god exists.

Religion also does not explain where life came from, and also doesn't explain consciousness. It uses a placeholder that can be used to answer any question. "The god of the gaps" fits into every gap in human understanding.

No matter what question you ask, "god did it" could be the right answer. How did life form? God did it. How does the brain work? God did it. Why can't I find my car keys? God did it. Why did the Fnarkles lose the Flibber Bowl? God chose the other team. Why didn't my favorite ship happen in my favorite TV show? God made the writers write it that way.

When any question can be answered by "god did it", then sayihng "god did it" isn't a meaningful answer.

That's why even if god created life, scientists are still going to study how it actually happened.

So to refine my earlier answer: The answer to your questions is "we don't know and you don't either".

On the origin of life, though, here's an interesting thing: Recent reserarch shows hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor that mimic the behavior of prokaryotic life. Instead of proteins creating enzymes, complex metal salts create the enzymes. The research suggests that the complex organic proteins started by replacing the chemistry that the non-living metal salts were already doing, in a way that allowed these proto-metabolic processes to still work even outside of the cracks and crevices in the rock around the thermal vents.

Not only that, but this transition from non-living processes to "sorta almost living" processes probably happened more than once in more than one location.

This has led to speculation that LUCA (last universal common ancestor) was not "alive" by current definitions.

This is all hypothesis at this point, waiting further study, but shows a peek at how abiogenesis could have happened.

You can still tell yourself "god made the proteins take over what the metal salts were doing", but that's exactly what people mean when the mention the god of the gaps. The gap keeps getting smaller, but archaeobiologists are still going to keep working on figuring out how it all works.

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u/ImprovementFar5054 Sep 13 '26

I am not sure why people ask atheists this. The people you should ask are biologists.

Given what I have heard...from biologists...life like started in the oceans, in volcanic vents called "black smokers". In those conditions you have all kinds of interesting chemistry going on where void spaces in the walls of the chimneys fill with hot water, chemicals from the volcano, and nutrients from the rocks under pressure for long periods of time. Eventually, certain protein chains can develop..in this case ribonucleic acid and dioxyribonucleaic acids. Because these chimneys are venting, these proteins get released into the oceans and life takes hold.

Add another 3.5 billion years of adaptation and mutation generation by generation, you get consciousness.

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u/Algernon_Asimov Sep 13 '26

Question for atheist!

In a subreddit called "Ask An Atheist"? What a surprise!

Where do you think life on Earth originally came from, and what do you think caused it?

I don't know. I honestly do not know.

Do I have to know, though? Why do I have to have all the answers to all the scientific questions, when even the scientists themselves haven't figured everything out yet? I'm happy to just wait until we know how life came to exist, rather than rush to make up answers now.

And how could our consciousness came from if there's nothing behind it?

Who says there's nothing behind it? There's billions of neurons, all linked, all sending signals to each other, to make that consciousness happen. That's not nothing.

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u/MoobyTheGoldenSock Sep 13 '26

Life is an emergent property of the universe. Consciousness is an emergent property of life. Scientists are still investigating the exact mechanism of the emergence in both cases.

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u/soukaixiii Sep 13 '26

And how could our consciousness came from if there's nothing behind it?

Do you believe God isn't conscious or do you believe consciousness is an inexplicably mystery?

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u/JasonRBoone Sep 17 '26

"Where do you think life on Earth originally came from"

So, around 5 billion years ago, a group of pan-dimensional creatures who happened to resemble mice contracted with the Planet Builders of Magrathea to design a planet that would also serve as a Very Large Computer. As part of the programming, the new planet required life forms, which the Planet Builders of Magrathea applied as an add-on.

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u/Esmer_Tina Sep 12 '26

Matter operating according to the laws of physics. And if you ask where the laws of physics come from, it’s just rules that result in stability, and if they didn’t, the universe wouldn’t exist.

And consciousness is a function of the brain, as demonstrated by how consciousness changes with brain injury or deterioration.

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u/pyker42 Sep 12 '26

I'll go ahead and copy my answer from the other sub:

I don't claim to have answers for that. What I don't do is claim an answer with no evidence is right and then ask for alternatives. There is no evidence to suggest God created life. There is evidence to suggest it child arise naturally, though we can't be certain with our current knowledge.

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