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What wonderful feedback! Thanks for watching. I know exactly how hard that journey is, but it's great to hear you're in a better place now!

Hi! Thanks for watching. :-) I'm going to be releasing more videos on the topic of spirituality in the future, but at a high level, I'd say this: For ghosts to exist, there has to be a soul. The Christian religion believes in a soul, but other religions do not. Some religions believe a soul exists, but only lasts for a short time outside of the body, such as the ancient Mayan religion. I don't think we'll ever be able to say with 100% certainty that a soul does not exist, but I do want to be transparent that the evidence so far is in the "souls do not exist" camp. Paranormal shows can be entertaining, but there's just no much scientific evidence or support for the existence of a soul. Near death experiences, for example, share commonalities because of how our brain expires. Many evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists believe that the idea of a "soul" arose in ancient cultures because they couldn't fully comprehend the nature of death. "Joe's body was here, and he was alive, but now his body is still here, but he's not moving or talking. There must be something else inside of him that was driving his body - a soul." They didn't have the scientific or medical knowledge to understand the role played by our brain, heart, organs, etc. Separately, the topic of demons, which are supernatural entities of a different sort. For demons to exist, the Bible has to be true. And unfortunately, the Bible does not appear to be true. (If you haven't yet seen our video series on the topic, I'd encourage you to check out!) Hell does not appear in the OT at all, and the version of it in the NT was based on the Roman work of fiction "The Aeneid" by Virgil. Most scholars believe that ancient accounts of "demon-possession" were really just mental illness. Again, ancient peoples had a very rudimentary notion of neurobiology or psychology. If someone had schizophrenia in the ancient world, they were probably labeled "demon-possessed." Again, the modern scientific support for demons is basically zero. As another example of this phenomenon (assigning supernatural status to human biological processes), during the Middle Ages, priests would test whether an old woman was a witch by stripping off her clothes and lightly touching her back with a feather, stick, or some other implement. They believed that if she could not feel it, she was a witch, and they would execute her. But this is totally normal - as the body ages, nerve sensitivity declines, such that many elderly people can't feel a feather on their back. It's totally normal, but in the ancient, superstitious world, it was the sign of Satan at work. This is probably longer than you bargained for, but there's no credible evidence I've encountered for the existence of souls or demons. We are our bodies, and we are a part of nature. Hell does not exist, and we need not fear it. I hope that helps! czcams.com/video/kKXoGfg_u3I/video.html

@@join.arethionthank you so much. I’ve been struggling so much with the supernatural. So, many ppl believe in spirits and ghosts. So, I instantly think demons could be real too. Ppl talk about levitation or ppl putting themselves in weird body positions. It’s just hard when apologists make you think that Christianity is true. I stopped thinking Yahweh was real when I learned the origins, but liberal Christians still believe in the resurrection even though the Bible has errors and they accept evolution too. I’ve just been so nervous about being wrong about the gospels too because apologists would say early Christians ensured that the oral tradition was accurate.

@@join.arethion I’ve just heard so many different things about the supernatural and I feel like when I talk to atheists they just dismiss me. Maybe I trust anecdotes too much, but ppl report seeing ghosts and spirits and I instantly think of demons. My mom said she saw a ghost decades ago and her friend saw it as well. It’s like I believe my mom. I was talking to this lady who believes in a creator but she doesn’t accept Christianity. Studying quantum physics makes her believe the soul can exist outside of the body. So, all of this supernatural stuff makes me think Jesus could’ve resurrected smh. Plus, they said that the oral tradition before the gospels were written were accurate.

@@join.arethionplus my agnostic turned Christian friend said that Jesus comes to ppl in near death experiences the most. That makes me so nervous. The supernatural existing scares me that Christianity could still be true.

Thanks for watching! :-)

Hi. Thanks for watching! I always appreciate feedback, but I think there's a misunderstanding here. The Christian claim is that the Pentateuch was written by Moses. Based on the Bible's own chronology, the events in the Joseph story were taking place around 1700 BCE (give or take, depending on the Exodus dating you use). Moses would have lived between 1400-1200 BCE. Yet coins weren't invented until 650 BCE. Consequently, if Moses were the author of the Pentateuch, writing in say 1300 BCE, he *also* would not have known what a coin was. That's not the same situation as the "Bahamas" example you cite, which actually proves my point here. I call it the Bahamas because I'm living now. Using your analogy, the writer knows the word "Bahamas," i.e. the writer knows about coins and so lived after 650 BCE, which proves the writer was NOT Moses, who lived before coins were invented. Thus, Moses' "authorship" of the Pentateuch is false. The actual writer lived after 650 BCE. The way only to defend Moses' knowledge of coins in ~1300 BCE is via "historic anticipation," which I address in other videos. Hope that helps clarify. :-)

@@join.arethion Mmmm The Pentateuch ( Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) does not contain any explicit claims that Moses wrote the entire five-book collection. Some statements within the Deuteronomy book suggest Moses wrote some specific portions. However, it does not make a blanket claim that Moses was the sole author of all five books. The authorship of the Torah has been a matter of scholarly debate even before Jesus. The traditional Jewish and Christian view is that Moses wrote the entire Torah. But even these traditionalists knew of lines in the bible that Moses could not have written, which troubled them greatly. Today, few believe that it was written by Moses. For Christians, it's generally no big ask, as they feel that the Bible as a whole was divinely inspired but written by human authors. The Jewish view is more complex.

All religions are fundamentally the same...all nonsense.

Exactly 💯👍

Hi! Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure if you only encountered this video courtesy of the CZcams algorithm, or if you discovered the whole series. A few comments: 1. The general historical accuracy of the Gospels is seriously in question. czcams.com/video/_9trnFTMf-w/video.html 2. With only a few exceptions, the martyrdom of the Apostles lacks historical evidence. www.bartehrman.com/how-did-the-apostles-die/#:~:text=The%20implication%20is%20that%20his,evidence%20to%20back%20them%20up. 3. Since the Gospels cannot be trusted as consistently reliable historical documents, we cannot know for certain which Apostles were actually witness to a "resurrection." 4. If that's the case, then the Apostles, as 1st generation Christians, may belong in the same category as 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation Christians. 5. Even if we grant there were Apostles who experienced a resurrected Jesus, Christians bear the responsibility of proving that what they experienced was not simply a hallucination. (Note that this is a difficult claim to make given the unreliability of the Gospels.) There are many faiths that talk of resurrections. Did each of them truly occur? 6. Warner's thesis assumes there was a way for the Apostles to recant and save themselves by confessing Jesus' resurrection was a hoax, but there's no evidence to support this assumption. Said another way, the apostles, to the extent they existed and were martyred, were killed for their preaching and religious activities, and they may not have had any means for escaping that fate. 7. Finally, Warner's argument basically rests on the force and intensity of the propositional belief. In other words, the Apostles SAW Jesus, and that has special weight. This argument can be restated as "intensity of conviction." But many people, and many faiths, attain such a level of conviction. There are still Christian martyrs today who would testify they have personally experienced Jesus. Is their "conviction" less than that of the Apostles? What would we make of martyrs in other faiths? Contrary to content in the Christian ecosystem, these religious practitioners practice as fervently and believe as wholeheartedly as Christians do. Please see our video this topic here: czcams.com/video/ArX2OZLHim8/video.html Thanks for the discussion! :-)

I appreciate your thoughtful response. I've listened to plenty of Bart Erdman. That's for a whole other conversation. We don't have the time to dive into the whole thing about whether the New Testament writers had to be late 1st/2nd century Christians who were making more out of Jesus than he made of himself. The apostle Paul, for one, certainly does not fit in that category, something no serious scholar argues against: He believed in the resurrected Jesus and claims he saw him--and he is writing about this belief in the early '50's. (He also claimed to have spoken to the other apostles, and why wouldn't he given the kind of life-change he made? Did they tell him he was crazy or did they verify his experience with their own? Surely the latter so they too must have been convinced, in a non-confirmation bias sort of way given that their hopes were crushed at Jesus' death, with no serious thought that he was going to resurrect.) I do hope you have read Warner's book but, from some of your comments, I'm not sure. I'll just mention one thing and that is the "intensity of conviction" statement. Warner argues that there are some memories you just don't forget. I can detail what happened on the day of my wedding over 47 years ago now, but I'm clueless about what happened on the days leading up to it or the days that followed... although not everything about the days that followed! Anyway, if you see someone alive that you knew died and you interact with that person, this is one of those kind of memories with a capital "M" and maybe times ten. Then you say: "But many people, and many faiths, attain such a level of conviction." This is totally unverifiable. If they were 2nd to whenever generation believers (which they are), they don't KNOW what 1st generation believers knew. Again, the basis of 1st generation believers like Paul is altogether different. Regarding Jesus' followers, 1st generation believers knew whether or not this whole resurrection thing was a made-up lie. (They were not stupid about such things and the kind of revolutionary cultural changes they brought into the Roman world don't argument for the likelihood of mass stupidity or hallucination.) Do you really think they would have put themselves AND their families in such life-jeopardy for a fabrication? (Please see the attached five minute video. It makes this point, albeit in a rather sarcastic way.) In a different context, Jesus recognized the difference between 1st generation believers and everyone else in his interaction with "doubting" Thomas, who had missed his first appearance. He told him: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). 2nd--40th generation believers might be more blessed because they don't have the benefit of eye witness or 1st-hand information to go on but they are also much more easily deceived. Such potential deception, however, would not characterized 1st generation believers. In one of Bart's debates he likens the testimony of these early Christian eyewitnesses to those who testified to the veracity of Joseph Smith's visitation and plates. If that's all the level of comparison he's got, he's got nothing! Has he not causally peruse some CZcams videos about Smith's fabricated claims and the obvious lack of evidence? One more thing, a question: Do you believe the supernatural is possible? This is the critical question that Warner realized was a presupposition he carried as an atheist. His realization that he looked at New Testament evidence through the lens of this presupposition against the miraculous led him to eventually question if such a position was tenable since no evidence could ever be good enough and that is counter to the scientific method and the rules of evidence that we live by as human beings. Here's the video: czcams.com/video/23UNLLbOS3w/video.html

This comment made my day! Thanks so much for watching!

Wow, thanks so much for your comment! I'm glad you're enjoying it, and seriously, thanks for sharing! As a Christian, I was unaware of this information for so long, I just hope other people encounter it and engage with it.

Thanks so much!

Hahaha well played!

You seem well-informed on the topic! Thanks for watching. :-)

There's actually fascinating anthropological research on this. If you're interested, I'd recommend the work of Pascal Boyer and Azim Shariff.

@@join.arethion this is already known. Read the Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

the problem is the continuous creating of new ones when we should already realise; no god need apply.

@@MaK-13- AI Cyborgus is the next evolutionary step for the planet.

@@charlesdarwin5185 EDIT: i get what you mean now. apologies, my misunderstanding.

Thanks so much for watching and commenting! I really appreciate it.

Thanks for your comment! :-) You may find interest in the work of Emile Durkheim, if you haven't heard of him already. He was the "father of sociology" (and looms large in anthropology, too), and one of his central works is The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, where he argues that religion is a schema for social coordination and cohesion. If you're interested it's a valuable read and speaks directly to the themes you're mentioning!

Wow, that means a lot! Thanks so much for watching! :-)

Then why follow it?

Hahahaha