The Gift of "I Don't Know" | Belief It Or Not
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- čas přidán 9. 08. 2022
- Just because someone doesn't know the answer doesn't mean your answer is right.
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One time I was talking to a Christian and I said "you know God isn't real". They started crying and gave their life to science right there and everyone clapped
Based if tru
@@rainbowkrampus as true as all the "my atheist friend" stories told by pastors
@@beanbrewer That's sweet.
Baptism with ph strips is kind of a weird experience. But it goes by pretty quick.
It's the bunsen burner bris that usually raises eyebrows.
I'm gonna tell Baby Jesus
69 noice
"Can your science and reason explain why it rains?"
"Yes! Yes, it can!"
I feel good for recognizing the show that's from
@@MelbeezoThat’s right my name’s Sokka, it ends with an “-Okka”, Christians…I rocked ya!
it is because pudge the fish is unhappy
“You see when water gets hot it turns into a gas… let me know when i lose you”
I seen a documentary people in the desert praying for rain on a mission from god… They had to move back closer to water, which they still said was gods doing.
To an apologetic: "I don't know" is defeat.
To anyone else: "I don't know" is opportunity.
Almost like they WANT you to fear the unknown, and not question things
I love this! So true, and so well said. It’s amazing what we can learn when we admit that we don’t know and choose to have an open mind.
"there is no language without Jesus" We have VERY strong evidence of language predating Jesus's birth.
Nope, probably just satan trying to make you gay with fake archeology.
I agree, humans did not just talk in grounts and noises. Just because there is no writing record the further back in time that you go, I believe we humans developed language far in the past. While it is most likely a long lost language that we would probably not understand, we had vocal cords in the distant past, so it makes since that humans had language.
@@mitziewheeler8517 I mean certainly, considering the written word alone predates Jesus by several thousand years, spoken word undoubtedly predates Abrahamic religions by many thousands more
That can’t be a serious argument since the Jews had to have a language before Jesus came in order to write the Torah!😂
The claim is not entirely irrational it is just not thought through to its natural conclusions. But many have thought the idea to its natural conclusion 250 years ago.
Christian theology says the Logos (the word) existed at the beginning before the Creation according to the Gospel of John. And the Gospel of John says Jesus is the Logos. So the idea of no language with out Jesus is in Christian theology. The first person to equate the Logos with the right hand angel of God was Philo of Alexandria. The first person who proposed the Logos was the divine order of the universe was Heraclitus and elaborated by Plato.
But the original idea of the Logos in Greek Philosophy was that there was an order to the Universe that if we sought it we could comprehend it.
Although many early Christians completely agreed with the Greek Logos of Socratic reason like Justin Martyr, the argument was not all of the Logos was deductive reason.
The Justin Martyr idea is completely in alignment with Immanuel Kant’s critique of PURE reason. There are aspect of being human that have a priori epistemology than a posteriori epistemology. Among others who believe the same include Adolph Bastian, Carl Jung, Noam Chomsky and all cognitive scientists.
Sadly the only way Christianity can recover from the corner it has painted itself in is to understand why Justin Martyr claimed Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, and Pythagoras were also Christians before Jesus. Hint Jesus did not have a monopoly on the Logos.
The " You can't art good without god" argument drives me up a wall ngl. I don't spend hours upon hours studying anatomy and perspective and shit for people to tell me " God gave you a gift" just completely undermining all the work I do lol.
This was actually my breaking point when I started seriously questioning my Christianity. It was in grade 8 and we had a new chaplain from the States (I’m from South Africa) who did a sermon one morning at my Methodist school, where she told us that any poem, painting or creation of any sort isn’t YOURS, but GODS. He is the real author of every book ever written, he gets all the credit for all of humanity’s greatest achievements. I was (and still kinda am) an aspiring writer so this got me super pissed. Insinuating that my writing, or anyone’s art, comes from anywhere but the deepest well of their heart and imagination and experience, is so undermining and infantilising! You deserve to get praise for your hard earned achievements!!
@@megwings11 So, according to this logic, is God also the author of every atheist or satanic piece of art? I'm confused.
@@megwings11 My breaking point was realizing that as a Nonbinary Bisexual person I’d never be able to have a leadership position ( unless I basically made my own church) and once I stopped using my faith as a excuse to hate myself I kinda lost all belief. But yeah that whole way of thinking makes me mad too as I write and draw a ton and am currently working on a book/ comic. Like shut up J man has nothing to do with my gay occult mystery lol
I just want to congratulate you on picking an excellent online handle.
@@doloreslehmann8628
They meant to type act good, not art good.
This reminds me of the line, "If God exists outside reality, then there is no God in reality."
I read this like 5 times and still don't get it. Can you simplify it?
@@1hinita Umm I can clarify it. Where God is has moved a lot. At first, up in the clouds, then in space. Well, now God exists in a space beyond physical space and time, which is reality. Discoveries have pushed God further away from places that can be measured, or weighed. So, the quip is saying God doesn't exist because where God is doesn't exist. That it's impossible for this God to exist.
@@Charles-js3ri Ooooo ok I understand it now. Thx for taking the time to explain it to me. I'm in the process of moving away from Christianity and more so think along the lines of "man created God" and not the other way around; anyway, I'm exploring and wanted to get a visual of others understanding on how they view the world through their religion or the absence of one.
Thx again!
@@1hinita Only God can explain everything.
Have you ever tried to reason out how reality could exist without God? Ask some of the commenters here. Do any of them have any answer of why their is existence?
Only God almighty could make this place. Out of nothing, comes nothing. Only God can explain everything including Himself.
@thevulture5750 It's simple to me : the universe came into being because that's what universes do. I mean I can't personally prove it, of course not, but neither can you prove that anything else created it. And I'd like to ask you one question : if nothing can be created from nothing, then what created God? If everything has to have a cause, then the existence of God too. And then the existence of whatever created God. And then the existence of whatever created the thing that created God. And so on and so forth. Because you said it : "Out of nothing, comes nothing." And if God is the only exception, it seems like you just set up an arbitrary rule to advantage your world view.
"I don't know, lets figure it out." Is the single most powerful phrase I use with my children to help them learn. Helps me learn too!
Love that! If I ever have kids, I'd love to pass that curiosity and honesty on to them.
When I worked in healthcare that was my favorite phrase. There were so many questions as a nurse tech I got that I was in no way qualified to answer. You get really good at finding out where to get the right information after a while.
I say that all the time with the kiddos at my work (I'm an elementary school librarian). If I don't have time to look it up just then I say "That's a really good question, now I'm wondering that too! Help me remember to look it up later, ok?". Not knowing something isn't bad, it's exciting! There's something new to learn!
That's how we learn and grow. No one human can know everything, but it's likely some human somewhere found the answer. So we just gotta find it!
Or you could take the approach of Calvin's dad.
Calvin: "dad, why do my eyes shut when I sneeze?"
"If your lids weren't closed, the force of the explosion would blow your optic nerve, so your eyes would flop around and you'd have to point them with your hands to see anything"
Calvin: "how come you know so much?"
"it's all in the book you get when you become a father"
Often times I wonder if some of the information I've learned as a kid was just the result of my parents messing with me
"A single molecule of DNA"
As a biologist, that made my eyes roll to the back of my head. The main problem with these guys it´s that they make a mockery out of science without having the bare minimum knowledge of it, they think that just because they had a course of chemistry at middle school (which they obviously refuse to even pay attention to) that makes them the next Pierre or Marie Curie
If it's a single molecule it's not DNA right? Because DNA is a complex multimolecular structure?
@@adamplentl5588 correct, when it's a single molecule it's called a nucleotide, and it doesn't code for anything on its own, that's why you need a chain of them in order to codify for proteins.
@@ivankiller57 so basically someone who says something like that is just indicating that they aren't familiar with the subject of DNA? Lol hilarious
@@adamplentl5588 It's not just ANY information. It's instructions on self-replication using a few chemical compounds. Instructions that several things (including that star we can't stare at without going blind) can corrupt and change to instructions on how to replicate corrupted cells that kill the host organism with enough time.
They even called DNA a cell at one point, I'm dying
It's frustrating because these apologetic speakers know what science, and athiest think or say. But these arguments are not for us. They're for their congregation. They lie to their congregation about what we actually believe or say.
Do they actually understand atheists? Based on what evidence?
(I mean, sure, there /are/ theists who actually understand atheism-but do they make the claims like in this video? Or do they accurately describe/represent atheists, or just not try to speak for atheists at all?)
I don’t even think they understand what atheists think. I think they know what common arguments sound like and they just find the easiest way to circumvent actually considering said argument
Yah well, lying to the congregation is kind of what they do. It's in the job description as it were.
A lot of them seem to claim atheists secretly beleive God exists, so they really do not seem to get it at all...
Well-said
It's important to remember that the purpose of the scientific method is not to prove something is true, it's to reduce uncertainty.
Scientists are constantly trying to prove their assertions false. Eventually they'll find the least false claim and that is the closest thing to truth that humans can determine.
How does a lack of evidence that proves there is a God make it less then 50% uncertainty that there is no God?
After all, the reason for a lack of evidence could be due to their being a God who withholds evidence of divinity on purpose, since how could one rely on faith in a God if that irrefutable proof of that God’s divinity was presented to the world?
And any factors that could be taken into account that appear to lessen the odds could also be the result of divine willful intent to withhold evidence of divinity intentionally.
@@kevinx7015 Because we can only go with the evidence provided. If God is withholding evidence, then we would still be justified in not being convinced of the god claim because we are not given said evidence.
Like if you're in a criminal case, if the prosecution is unable to produce sufficient evidence to convince of the defendant's guilt, then they will be declared not guilty, even if, in truth, the person did commit the crime. The evidence wasn't there to give the verdict.
@@kevinx7015 Dude we are talking about the scientific method, not about evidence for god or lack thereof.
@@kevinx7015 indeed any number of such things "could" be true but what likelihood do we give a proposition with zero evidence? It's a lot less than 50%. Maybe we're in a simulation. Maybe you're a brain in a jar. Maybe the universe began last Thursday. It's just worthless speculation with nothing to support it.
"How do you know there isn't a God out in all of that?"
"How do YOU know there's only one?"
because he said so 😌😌 /s
(interestingly enough, there is actually acknowledgements of other gods aside from the abrahamic god in the bible. but that's just another fun thing xtians like to ignore!)
@@rileyspooks The Bible at some points prescribe that you must offer a scapegoat to Yahweh and another one to Azazel. Nobody knows who this Azazel guy is and he is never mentioned again, but we know he deserves a goat like Yahweh does.
I find more telling the instance when God/Gods talk to himself/themselves in plural, after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, while having a panic attack and acknowledging that if Adam and Eve, after having gained the knowledge of good and evil, keep eating the fruit of life then they will became exactly as powerful as him/them.
@@juanausensi499interesting! the line that goes something like "don't worship other gods before me" is one I've seen people speculate on possibly meaning that other gods literally came before the biblical god, otherwise if he's just saying "don't worship other gods more than me" he's admitting that the other gods exist, or at least that's how I read it.
@@rileyspooks There are lots of hints that point to half-erased ancient polytheism. Another one is the tale of Moses and the Pharaoh, where Moses and the Pharaoh priest's engage in a sort of competition to prove who has the most powerful God on his side.
"20 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. 21 The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt.
22 But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said."
The interesting part is that the Egyptian priests were able to replicate some of the miracles that Yahweh did, and only with the last plagues Yahweh outmatched them. So Yahweh proved his superiority, but hardly his unicity.
Those references to other Gods are most frequent in older stories and become less and less frequent in newer ones, so we can see the progression from 'our God' to 'the only God'.
@@juanausensi499 that is so interesting, thank you for your thorough response!!
One of the hardest things for baby grad students is learning that 'I don't know' is a perfectly valid answer. I don't know is way better than making up something, because the odds of someone in your audience of doctors knows, and will call you out on it. I don't know and 'I don't think that is known, but I can double check' are answers I give frequently, and I'm considered an expert in my field. I love I don't know, because I don't know can be immediately followed by, let's find out. And that's the fun part
Woah… religion SAW that, and cut the line right at the “I don’t know” by trying to provide (obviously) bullsh*t answers for questions we still had at the time. Weird how humans work
The two most liberating sentences in the English language:
"I don't know"
"Not my problem"
"Not my problem" tend to evolve into "I dont give a f***k" the older one gets.
@@belgarath6388 Probably because one realizes exactly what they should actually give a fuck about!
What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?
I don't know and I don't care
@@danielcrafter9349 nice one lol
Learning to say "I don't know" was the first step in my deconstruction
It's an important, useful key in understanding all sorts of things.
It's even more interesting when you add, "Nobody knows."
I remember seeing a quote that said something like "Only a fool claims they know everything, but the wise will admit when they know nothing".
There's a difference between believing something and knowing something and in order to learn, we need to be able to distinguish between the two.
I think it was Socrates who said that: 'A wise man knows he knows nothing; a fool thinks he knows all.'
I’ve always been really uncomfortable with that “roadside” humor from the beginning, because, like Trevor said, it just seemed really exploitative of random people not being able to recall something. It always seemed mean-spirited and cruel to me.
It entirely relies on the fact that people act weird when under stress. I'd be willing to bet the majority of people who look dumb on those things would give the right answer if they didn't have a guy shoving a camera in their face
If they got someone who paused, closed their eyes, took a few deep breaths and concentrated on calming down and giving the right answer, they'd just turn the camera towards someone else.
@@evitanigaminU Exactly. It is only testing “instant recall ability” when something is sprung on you. I’d agree that many people would be able to answer these questions just fine under more favorable circumstances.
In hindsight someone with a camera going "Name a book" is incredibly random and off-putting.
It is, but only for the people who get flustered and blurt out anything. You don't see the people who answer questions correctly, or get sarcastic, or are considered "too boring" for the bit. Street interviews are built on the edit.
I talk to a lot of people struggling with their faith, or who have deconverted but are worried about being wrong. They are often drawn in by apologetics because of how convincing and smart it sounds and believe they must be stupid for not agreeing with it. I think this will be very encouraging for those people - it's hard to accept that "I don't know" is a possible answer, but it's something we all need to do.
The one thing I took with me from all of my church going was that a lot of people will lie to you to get you to do something. And in America 50% or so call themselves Christians Q.E.D.
You should check out a book called "We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe" It's a fascinating and often humorous examination of all the things we have yet to discover in the universe and the reality is we're just getting started. However it's meant to be exciting rather than discouraging and it's helped to give me a very hopeful and accepting position around "I don't know."
When you’re raised christian you’re basically conditioned to need an answer for everything. And there’s punishment if you don’t believe so then you’re now afraid of an afterlife, when if you’re raised atheist like my bf and his sibling, they don’t really care about what happens. Death is just death.
I got really lucky when I met my atheist boyfriend right before covid, who always respected my views- he even went to church with me twice. He was just a cushion to make me feel comfortable with I was turning away from the church. then covid hit and I saw the behaviors of other christians- I was already turned off by a series of my own self doubt but it was how evangelical christian nationalists treated something as small as mask that could even increase other people’s survival ever so slightly, that was the final nail in the coffin for me. Everything associated with christianity was spoiled and tainted for me. A religion of love? What a joke. No apologist could ever make me go back.
yet whenever i listen to any apologist. its clear all they do is misrepresent information or just straight up lie.
@@homosexualitymydearwatson4109 yeah and your expected to believe and questioning it is prohibited. thats when you know you are in a bad community or cult. because if their claims where true. they would not be afraid of people questioning it. because it would lead to what they believe. this is also why its called having faith. because its believing in what goes against reality
"A rivalry only one side knows about" is the perfect description. Lol
Agreed.
Contrary to what some Christians claim, I don’t really spend any time at all thinking about gods, let alone the Christian God, except in response to a theist bringing up the topic.
…which is only _all the time_ . Like, seriously, Christians in particular are completely oblivious to how they _constantly_ bring up their religious beliefs in nonreligious contexts.
If I sneeze in public, a perfect stranger is likely to say “God bless you”. It’s not them “blessing” me that bugs me-if they think about it at all, they think they’re helping, and I know that they’re doing nothing (good or bad) beyond _maybe_ expressing a super-low-grade basic compassion for your fellow human. It’s that they _don’t even realize_ they’re imposing their religious beliefs on those around them. Sure, in a super-lowkey way that in and of itself is harmless. But that lack of self-awareness of the degree that Christianity permeates their worldview *does* lead to harms in other contexts.
@@natbarmore Once in the comments section of a CZcams video, one that had literally nothing to do with Christianity or religion at all, someone said "Remember God loves you" as Christians do... and it had hundreds of likes and people were calling it wholesome??? And then whenever someone rejected the "love" people got mad at them for ruining something good. Because yeah, people trying to force their religion onto others is something totally wholesome and okay and we should all be happy about it...
@Lureeality 🎶🎵 this sentiment is inaccurate and it is sad that it is so prevalent. An advocate bring awareness to issues is not fixation on your religion. Those two things couldn't be more different.
@Lureeality 🎶🎵 none of my vegan friends bring up veganism unless we’re trying to find a place to go out to eat. I’ve known lots of vegans for years before I found out they were vegan. I don’t think I’ve known a Christian or Muslim who didn’t give away their faith in one way or another within hours of meeting them-most Christians literally wear their faith.
As a non religious person who grew up in a Jewish family, it’s been an interesting experience getting paid to do music for a Christian church. The way they talk about secular music and Christian music like those are the two categories, when the only people who use the word secular are Christians or people talking about Christianity. So many of them don’t understand what it’s like to not think about religion, which is why they act like atheists worship science(which some do but most don’t). They feel like worshipping a power is something everyone does when it’s really just their weird club
“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” ― Richard P. Feynman
I don’t know about you guys, but I have a lot of really awesome friends who have assured me they will track me down and torture me with fire if I EVER doubt their love for me. It’s a truly strong and healthy relationship because they’ve given me the free will to choose whether or not I love them
It's good of those friends to a: definitely exist, and b: tell you directly and unambiguously what they intend to do to you.
Oh no way that’s my friend. He’s soo cool that he teaches a classroom and lets all the kids do what they want, they know he sets rules for them. So cool that one kid didnt care about the tules started beating up the other ones. And he just stood and watched because they know right from wrong and that kid will be tortured after he’s lived a fulfilling life, even though he left those other kids disabled who will also be tortured in the same way as the bad kid, if they don’t give the teacher his undying love.
Omg my friends do that too! It's so loving of them. There was one time when I said I wasn't sure if they loved me, because it seemed like their threats were kind of mean. But then they told me that since they're college graduates and I'm a high school dropout that they know so much more than me. Of course I can't fully understand how loving they are because I'm ignorant to the things they know. Which totally explains everything! There must be a secret way I don't get where torturing someone forever with fire is loving and just. I'm just ignorant and small minded, and I can't trust my own mind. I can trust my friends, though, and I'll never doubt their love again. Not because I don't want to be tortured! They made it very clear that if I only loved them out of fear then it doesn't count. But because they're so kind to me by saving me from that torture, and all I need to do is believe in them and completely disregard any reasoning or doubts and have faith in them blindly!
Gee I wonder why Christians have a hard time conceptualizing consent? Their gold standard for love is literally coercion by threat of torture
Yup, that is all I need to know that were I to be wrong and the god of Abraham actually existed, I would take my chances with Satan.
Eternity in heaven with a being like that would just be a hell with a different setting on the thermostat.
A conclusion I came to (after a few years of being scared and waffling in faith) Is that if god does exist and wants me to be a good person, and he is truly loving, then he won't care whether or not I subscribed to the right version of Christianity (or Christianity generally) and I shouldn't have to worry about hell, as long as I live life as a decent person. If he exists but IS super caught up on which subscription I held, rather than how I lived my life, then yeah, I might be going to hell, and it would suck but there's nothing to be done. I can hold onto the fact that I think I lived my life well, all things considered, and if he's going to be petty then he's petty, but then I can know he's probably not as big, all knowing, or loving as he was made out to be and it wasn't worth putting my life in a box to please such a petty small minded being. If he doesn't exist, 🤷♀️
That's pretty much the same conclusion I ultimately came to, with an added dose of "If it really was *that* important to him that we worship him, there are millions of things he could do to make his real presence, and his real expectations, incredibly obvious to everyone."
An all knowing, all loving God wouldn't have created a hell for you to be cast into in the first place. I can promise if there is a god and he created hell, that is not a diety worthy of your time and worship. As you said, be kind and live well and if an all loving God exists they will reward you for it.
I've seen a number of people quote this quote from Marcus Aurelius--I'm calling it Aurelius' wager from now on, and it reminded me of what you said.
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
Right? Who wants to worship a jealous, petty God? I totally get why the Gnostics concluded that Yahweh was an impostor demiurge. In my mind I call the God my evangelical family worships Yaldabaoth, although I'd never say it to their faces.
I think that's a good rule to follow. Just be a good person. Any just God would reward you for that. If they didn't then they don't deserve our attention
Another thing about the "science can't prove itself" guy: science isn't about "proofs"; that's math. Science is about giving the best explanation we can currently come up with, knowing full well that any future discovery may fundamentally change that explanation.
No kidding. I felt like I was being talked at by a guy who never finished sixth grade.
I like the framing of "science is about making sure you're not wrong".
There are a million ways us flawed, finite, irrational apes can be wrong, about so many, many things. The scientific process is about making sure we haven't made any of those million mistakes, in our long search for the truth. Which is why it's so rigorous and painstaking - a million potential errors is a lot to account for. But it also gets us much closer to useful truths about reality, much quicker, than any amount of Bible study ever would.
I dedicate this video to my catholic father. It’s impossible to get him to admit that he doesn’t know something. He LOVES to say ‘well that’s just a *theory’* about all of science. He has a certain gift for projecting his insecurities onto everyone that doesn’t believe exactly how he does
Just tell him god is just a theory, and so are the rest of his beliefs
It's never "just a theory"
Theory needs some actual research.
God isn't even a theory, as whatever religious book contradicts itself a lot.
Using the theory argument shows how ignorant someone is! That's a big self burn and not a witty gotcha, i can only laugh when someone says that
A hypothesis is the word he's looking for, and i make sure to use it and theory properly, but most people don't use them properly in casual speech; a theory is a whole system that explains why something is, it was tested before and will be tested whenever there's new information or methods of testing, and if it's still around that means it worked so far, that's why evolution is one of the most credible ones, it's been around for more than a century and it was changed as we came to understand more; calling something a "theory" is like calling something someone said "evidence", a theory is an hypothesis that was tested and works, like an argument or testimony that was checked and is true can be called evidence
@@d_camara yes! I think then after theory gets more evidence did it become fact? Law?
It was a long time I am a bit rusty on the diffirience and probably there is translation issues for me too
Damn, I don’t remember making an alt account and posting this but that describes my father all right 😛
You know, in a fair few quizzes and tests, confidently stating the wrong answer actually loses you points compared to just saying "I don't know" and getting 0
Not sure about the confidently part, as I don't see how you can "confidently" state something in a written quiz/test, but for instance the SAT penalizes for wrong answers only as a means of equalizing against the effects of randomly guessing. That is, if you guessed for every single question on the test, you'd score 0 on average: the penalty is meant to disincentivize you from completely randomly guessing.
I suppose if you gave the wrong answer in like a technical interview though, that'd be a different story
Anything can exist outside my personal experience and knowledge. I love that thought. So many possibilities.
Like that guy right now in China.
What guy you ask?
Any of them.who knows what's going on elsewhere and what triumphs or tragedy of weird luck is happening 🤔 😃
That's fine. What we're complaining about is the assertion of God without any evidence. Everything about it breaks the laws of physics.
When he said "knowledge" I thought of proven things with evidence or just general knowledge, so of course I don't know everything. I don't know the name of every star in the galaxy, I don't know what specific metals are in the Earth's crust, I don't know what exact species of tree lives outside in my lawn, but God isn't particularly proven or disproven, there's a lot of inconsistencies in their story, there's a lot of benefits there's downsides, but I don't know, and I'll likely never know, while I could learn what specific type of Japanese Maple that's outside right now (it's leaves are a really light color of orangey green and yellow) but I'll probably never know if a God exists, and I kinda wish I'll never have to find out.
INCLUDING the supernatural I would imagine.
That circle "analogy" got one MAJOR flaw the theists seems to ignore. THEY are in that little circle or dot or whatever as well, so how do they *know* what's outside of their little (microscopic to some) bubble of knowledge?
Yeah, they just fill that part with 'god' - like that gives us any additional information.
Imo the major flaw with that analogy is that within my bubble is the knowledge that contradictory things don't exist, so while I may not know what does exist in the unknown, I can rule out the god of the bible.
They are also ignoring that it's an "Argument From Ignorance" fallacy. A lack of evidence that something does NOT exist, is not proof that it's true.
Maybe that circle is in a cube where God is only a puppet
you never know
They also forget that many atheist once believed the same things as them. I used to see god in the beauty of nature. I used to feel gods love. And then I woke up and realized that it’s my own brain and biases doing that. It’s sad learning the truth but also knowing that some people will never break out of their bubble
What you said about "keeping people in the in-group" is spot on. I usually refer to it as a bunch of people playing pretend together.
"I don't know" is the most important phrase in the English language. Admitting you don't know something is the beginning of knowledge.
I feel like I say it far too often. And I feel like I’m unhelpful and just plain dumb because “I don’t know” or “I have no idea.” Two things I say all the time. But on the other hand I know it’s okay not to know something. Very much a double-edged sword. I have one of those friends that are “well-informed” and seemingly know everything about what’s going on everywhere. And I get asked very often if I know something… I relent and I of course say no because I do not know what’s going on by the hour or by the second anywhere everywhere. Seems silly to me, but whatever. I don’t see much worth for me being connected and being injected with every single current event as it happens and constant information. I might be crazy, so this could all be some bullshit I’m feeling.
@@gongorelocksmagiincommand If every time you say 'i don't know' you are being sincere, then you are saying it the right number of times.
The guy who accepted that pterodactyls existed into the 19th century was fascinating. Dollars to donuts he now claims he was being ironic, or some version of that, instead of admitting he was comically wrong.
ETA: I guess I hadn’t considered he simply hasn’t changed his position, a distinct possibility for anyone who believed that in the first place. Yikes.
Protip: Matt Powell does not change his positions. Matt Powell states he is right and reality is wrong.
We laugh at him regularly.
It comes down to him being convinced the idea of his god and dinosaurs living with man are absolutely correct. Thus, he jumps on what he firmly believes is a credible picture. However...
He knows his arguments when he's trying to 'debunk' 'evolutionists' are complete BS. as he is one of the worst offenders of quote mining, taking quotes out of context, editing the video clips he shows of his 'opponents' to remove the strongest point, or even entire point of their argument. He then announces that they are stupid and proceeds to strawman in a way that is truly impressive. He linked to a creationist video that had a logo, meant to look like National Geographic's, which had been covered over a little with a link to a conspiracy site. He acts as though it's a legitimate scientific documentary explaining how the 'big bang' is nonsense.
He's a disgusting bigot who has openly said he thinks gay people should be executed, just Incase you were in anyway feeling sorry for his inability to critically assess 'evidence'. He knows what he's doing.
When you said “the guy who accepted that pterodactyls…” I knew EXACTLY who you meant. And yeah, all Matt Powell does is read from a script and use 30 year old sources, never updating them. Oh, and keep a giant inflatable banana in his backyard who he named Dr. Peel.
Stuff like that is just rudimentary clout chasing. He probably knew it's as phony as shit but he's doing it for the grams
Damn...
And to think thoes Confederate soldiers shot that dinosaur with muskets. They might be evil, but you gotta hand it to em 🤷🏾♂️
Thank you for calling out these "man on the street" interviews as schadenfreude BS
27:01 - "You know why you call it a scientific theory? Because you know no matter how many times you may have developed the hypothesis and experimented and tested it, you can be wrong later on."
Well, yes! That is actually quite accurate!
Exactly. A hypothesis must be able to be disproven, otherwise you're not asking a question; you're trying to reach a conclusion.
It's amazing how close one could be to the fucking point and still miss it.
@@AD-dg3zz Makes me think these evangelicals know what they’re doing
Putting forth the argument god exists and made everything isn’t a theory. It cannot be proven or disproven. You want to know why? It’s a stupid argument.
One of my favorite examples is Newton and Einstein. Newton created the Laws of Motion, and as far as any experiments could prove, they were perfectly right. ... with what we had access to in his time.
Then Einstein developed the theory of Relativity, and Newton's equations weren't right anymore. But we didn't throw them out - Newton was 99% right, but didn't have the means to test the weird edge cases. We can still use his equations for things that don't involve massive gravity or ultrafast speeds - basically, anything here on earth.
Newton wasn't wrong. He was just missing a piece. Einstein found that piece and plugged it in, making the equations more accurate (when we need to be that accurate). But it's entirely possible Einstein is only 99.9% right, and eventually another physicist will find a piece Einstein missed and add it to the puzzle, getting us to 99.99% correct. We may never get to 100%, but the process of learning and improving only makes us better. And being willing to be wrong is what gets us there.
I'm willing to accept that there are explanations for things I do not know, what I'm not willing to accept is that the explanation will ever be magic.
💯
Given an infinite universe (multiverse),there is a possibility, however miniscule, that it might be magic. Discounting the possibility that magic exists is limiting the universe just like the religious crazies do. Anything is possible, eventually.
@@irlikingpie you could also say things like, "given an infinite universe (multiverse), there is a possibility, however miniscule, that Hitler is God"
Yeah, I guess dude 🙄 you believe magic is real/possible as much as you want. It has way more to do with what you WANT to be true than with what is actually true.
@@elisabethscott20 I don't *want* anything to be true. It either is or it isn't. "Unexplained" cannot, by definition, be explained. I know enough to know that there is an explanation, it just hasn't been discovered yet.
@@irlikingpie then I'd argue that magic ceases to be "magic" when you discover how it works. I think there is a natural explanation for everything, therefore, I don't believe in the "super" natural.
I think linking atheism to science was a mistake, because it puts the burden of proof on atheist to scientifically prove that god dosen't exist, wish is hard.
You should be able to just be an atheist because you don't belive in god and that's it.
"Can you prove god dosen't exist?"
"Not really, but neither can you prove it does, you are free to belive the same way I'm free not to"
if a god exists it should be demonstrable, verifiable, falsifiable, replicable in research. in a million years not one god has met that criteria.
I think it is more for historical reasons in that the truth of its explanatory power was assumed and when people started poking at reality they discovered it did not fit after all. At that point what else can you do other than follow where things go.
You can't prove a negative.
There's a difference between not believing in gods and finding no reason to believe in gods.
The burden of proof actually goes to the theists. They made the claim, so they have to prove it.
The "It's true because the Bible/God says it's true" argument really gets under my skin. It's an argument for people who already believe and that's it. When I started losing my faith, I had questions for my elders and they used this one a few times and I was so insulted with that nothing answer.
That drove me nuts in my young youth --- claiming proof the Bible is true is because the Bible says it's true.
That's one of the first fundamental flaws in logic you're supposed to avoid.
It has the same convincing power that 'because i said so', but with extra steps.
@@juanausensi499 Exxxactly.
@@bluntrapture The Bible doesn't say that the Bible is true. The Bible doesn't refer to itself in even one instance. The idea that the Bible is an infallible source of truth is an extra-Biblical idea.
@@donnievance1942 The Bible says the Bible is true many times. And infallible thing is Catholic. I went to an Evangelical/born-again Christian high school, and the infallibility was constantly taught to us. And they called the Catholics 'evil.'
You embody everything I imagined a good Christian would be; it almost makes me glad I was raised in churches with fundamental pastors. If I had a history of seeing Christians actually showing love or compassion, it would have been much harder to lose my faith.
Knowing too much doeth inevitably take you to our lord, the problem is hipocrisy: we now deny all that is made and we have ignorants for pastors. This is because of the church of Mammon, the Economy which controls all other churches today: pastors have a specific role in the economy and study teology apart from "physicists", "engineers", "doctors" and "philosophers" each mediocre if they do not bring down the walls of disciplinarity.
@@jose.montojah capitalism is ultimately the problem, and communism is our only hope for a better tomorrow.
Same. One of the biggest steps for me to well, accept athiesm was how much more compassion I have been met with online, in predominantly athiest spaces vs. in my christian community.
Christianity and Islam are obligate-belligerents to non-believers: otherwise they could not haul tithes and authority from the communities theybhave infiltrated.
"Pay me or we will gabg-murder you with rocks." Is far more compelling than "Sky-Voice wants your dick skin, and says girls older than 11 have cooties! And Shellfish is yucky!"
@@mellokhai as a gay person, I have been shown more compassion and respect from Muslims than Christians. I do agree that atheist spaces are usually the kindest, but "kinder than the average Christian" isn't a very high bar to clear.
When I deconverted, my biggest beef was 1. Religious leaders say God wants you to give money-to me. 2. Religious leaders never say, “I don’t know.” The opposite of faith is not disbelief, but certainty.
"We are alive right now because our ancestors had love."
Has got to be the most beautiful way to describe the evolutionary view of love I've ever heard.
For me, the idea that love is just a survival mechanism has always been a little bit pessimistic feeling, more something to just accept as the less romantic reality. But damn, you turned that around good!
Thankyou, on so many levels for all the cool stuff you've shared with me, and others. ^.^
You know what’s really funny? I never actually stopped believing in God per se, as an ex-Catholic. I left the church when I stopped believing the god id been taught about was worthy of worship, and just…moved on. I don’t really know if I still believe in god or not as much as I simply don’t care if he’s real because it doesn’t affect how I live my life anymore. He is or he isn’t, but I don’t believe the being described in the Bible deserves obedience either way. Arguing on that framework with religious people consistently rattles them more than “I don’t believe”
this is basically where i’m at. i don’t care about god. there are much more important things for me to occupy my mind with. it is so bizarre to me that people walk around preoccupied with the idea of god constantly.
"Moved on..." (sigh) After years of church and being sent to a Christian school, I finally managed to break through to the other side, completely unzipped my Christianism, and stepped out free at last --- but STILL I am indelibly tainted with leftovers from the indoctrination, triggering failed attempts at getting my brain to make me feel guilty.
There is a name for that: apatheism. Welcome to the club.
@@juanausensi499 But I'm very passionate and adamant about my apathy.
My explanation also rattles their framework sometimes. Whether there is a god or not, my morality comes from myself. I’ve never been in a situation where I didn’t know what the “moral” thing to do is, even if I don’t do that action (I try to tho). I trust my moral compass fully so I don’t need guidance. I agree not everyone should do that, so I don’t ask them to(which is the way all morality systems should be treated). I know I’m a good person and I have people in my life who respect and trust me, so I don’t see a need for religion in my life to tell me what’s good or bad. I’m motivated to do good because I like the people around me, not because I’m being threatened by eternal torture
I had a challenging coworker who asked me where the “Whoopee” in “Whoopee Cushion” comes from. I replied that I didn’t know. She said, “Whoopi Goldberg. It’s from Whoopi Goldberg.”
Obviously I said she was wrong. She replied, “You said you don’t know. I have an answer. I’m right.”
She’s also Roman Catholic.
this is one of the few episodes so far that thoroughly fried my brain. statements like "is it just me or does the evolutionary story keep changing" had me flatline. yes, it keeps changing cause we gain more insights as we spend more time discovering. i am unable to understand how this concept is so hard to grasp, it truly baffles me.
if i went into a never before documented cave with an infallable walkie talkie and every hour updated my findings to someone outside over the length, structure, number of passages, crawlies or minerals i find as i go, they wouldn't at some point tell me it's bullshit because the information isn't consistent.
I believed in a scientific god. Like you said, I thought that if God created everything, that meant that all of created revealed God and pointed to him. That's ultimately why I stopped being afraid of studying things like evolution that I'd been taught were just ludicrous. I figured what was true would shine through no matter what my preconceived bias, provided I was willing to accept whatever truth came out of it. Long story short, now I'm an atheist.
Followed mostly the same path you did, except for the last part. God is real.
@@Ryukuro Cool, which god, and how did you come to that conclusion, scientifically?
@@Ryukuro You'll get there eventually.
I'll even make a prediction.
It'll happen when you're at a point in your life when you're comfortable in your surroundings. When you're not vying for status and your social position doesn't depend on your beliefs and your prospects for socializing are not dependent on them either.
Funny how those who make a point of rationally studying reality have such a strong trend towards becoming atheists, huh?
Exactly what happened to me
I love the people who explain the god of the gaps (and well!) and honestly, unironically think it's a great argument. It's never not funny to me.
They like the gaps because they want to push you in.
Someone earnestly introducing the Kalam as though it's a brand new idea nobody has ever heard of before is my personal favorite.
Like, I get it, we all have knowledge gaps. There are likely many things I don't know about that most of the people around me know about.
But you'd think that if your immortal soul were on the line, you'd at least do a little research into this new argument you just found out about.
Most of the time these people don't even realize that the argument is so well documented that it has its own name.
@@monsignorerasmus.6441 The Catholic church has admitted to having put over 50 million people to death over the course of history for “heresy.”
I wouldn’t put it past them to shove someone down a hole to win an argument.
@@rainbowkrampus
In the beginning God...
@@thevulture5750Ah yes. A book said the word god, which means it is undeniable truth. Just as literally every other religious text that revolves around gods. Saying, “my book says god exists” is like saying “this book has fairies and dragons and unicorns so they all exist” ignoring the fact that every other religion can use the same argument to disprove your religion.
I love saying "I dont know". Its the gateway to knowledge.
Hell yeah.
I wish more theists realized that they've systematically had the curiosity beaten out of them.
@@rainbowkrampus
I remember my sunday school teachers getting a little annoyed by how inquisitive I was as a child. (and still am as an adult!)
I was just talking to my seventeen year old about this the other day. 'I don't know' is a completely valid answer.
Considering "I don't know" as an answer is the only way to even attempt to know something. If you take it from the beginning that you must have an answer, you simply risk getting a wrong answer. The fact that the scientific method (when applied appropriately) acknowledges that nothing is known for certain is the single most important thing it provides us with. Importantly, we should also acknowledge that not everyone who does research fully embraces this way of thinking (as it's quite difficult, especially if getting certain result may be more profitable), so we should be critical of scientific research and the bias it may hold from those who conducted it seeking a particular answer.
After I began to deconstruct, I realized that "I don't know" isn't a failure, it's a celebration. It means that there is something more to learn, and that you're still alive to learn it. I've seen this so many times both as a caregiver and as a general human, when you stop learning you start dying, and an active mind is healthier than an inactive mind. I've got so very much to learn about this universe, and I can't wait to learn what people have discovered before me.
I like hearing people who say I don't know. I find them more honest than someone who says that they know something but can give no evidence to prove it.😁
I really get annoyed when theists try to put "science" in a diametrically opposed position to theism as if atheists use it as their singular reason for denying an existence of god. No, that's not it at all. Science, is a process by which we learn about the universe around us and how it works. We follow the science and make conclusions and if the science were to lead us to the conclusion that all of this was created by a supreme being, then that's what it would it be. But that just ain't what happened.
It's extremely telling when religious leaders position logic and the pursuit of knowledge as an enemy to their faith. If your faith is so good, it should stand up to scrutiny and critical thinking. If you have to push people away from such positions in order to propagate your faith, then your faith is nonsense and superstition and should be given no credence whatsoever.
Science isn't and wasn't ever an enemy of religion. But it is an enemy of the religious organizations that want power.
Certainty is a deeply comforting thing. They want an authority to tell them what 'is' so they don't have to contend with circumstances that aren't easily quantified.
The “if something happened, some *one* must’ve caused it to happen” thing is so bizarre to me. I don’t understand why so many Christians have so much trouble with the idea that not every event needs to have volition behind it.
(I mean, we know now that even, say, picking up something off the table doesn’t exactly involve volition-the action happens first and then our brain, having observed the action, comes up with an explanation after the fact for why we “chose” to pick up the object. If “obviously volitional” acts done by sentient, conscious, self-aware humans don’t actually depend on volition, why should the Big Bang?)
Yeah, but they won't believe or even consider that at all. It's all human exceptonalist hubris.
An avalanche can be caused by a pebble, a mountain can be created by a volcano, a lake can be made by a beaver, a solar system can form with just dust and gravity. We are literally surrounded by things that nature creates by virtue of physical forces alone without any intelligent input.
Takes an incredible amount of willful blindness to reality to claim that the universe needs a creator god.
and no beginning is necessary for the universe to exist. it can be eternal and changing shape all the time.
I feel like part of what makes it so hard for Christians to accept that not everything has to be done by someone is the fact that
when you do believe God created and started the universe, you, by extension, accept that everything is volitional - plantlife grows because god made them grow etc., but the circular logic isn't obvious enough, and becomes the default if you grew up in the faith.
That makes it so questioning it requires more than three second of thought - something no one in their right (according to them) Christian mind will ever waste their time on.
@@margaretjohnson6259 so one eternal "thing" caused you to exist? but apprently it isn't "God"
I say “I don’t know” to my parents all the time, but, for some reason, “‘I don’t know’ isn’t an answer” 😐
We need to normalize “I don’t know”
I can't think of anything more selfish, proud, and hubris, than thinking that you perfectly understand the most powerful being imaginable, and that it agrees with you 100%.
Humble yourselves.
I have pretty much deconstructed my faith. Now, I'm never going to say there is no possibility of a higher being, but being absolutely convinced that there is one because it benefits some fast talking hucksters is what I have a problem with.
That's the thing: believe what you want. But don't force your beliefs on me or try to con or manipulate people --- that's being a total hypocridiot.
I never understood the whole “My religion answers all questions, so it’s better than what you believe in” mentality. In another discussion, I mentioned how one noted apologist’s entire argument essentially boils down to “Because it feels good.” This is an outgrowth of this same need. Uncertainty is scary, and religion provides certainty - even if that certainty is just an illusion.
I remember asking my dad what was god doing before he made the universe? Just floating around alone for pre-eternity?
Of course I didn't get an answer.
Same. I even asked my pastor and he gave some bullshit answer lol
@@terrybrooks4174 right? Something like, "well that's where faith comes in" or "not all knowledge is for us"
To be fair, even if God were undeniably real that's still not necessarily information that your dad/pastor/whatever would have access to. It's not like God would be obligated to share that bit of information
You wanna know who needed to hear this?
It was me. It reminded me that it's okay to not have answers. Sometimes I feel like I HAVE TO prove people wrong because they're always trying to prove me wrong..... but this made me so much more comfortable with the fact that: I'm an agnostic and "I don't know" 🙂
I still want to learn and grow 😁🌱
It boggles my mind how much work you must put in producing these; absolutely wonderful... Thank you
this reminds me of my first year in college when i had to take a christian worldview class and the professor said something along the lines of "everyone believes they're right, but that doesn't mean they are" and i had to bite my tongue to not point out that that also applies to him.
The thing I absolutely love about classic literature (myths and all that jazz) is the artistic way they attempt to explain how the world works. Of course they didn't have the advances we have now but it's so interesting to read how people from years ago tried to describe the origin of the moon
We still don't know the origin of the moon.
they talk about science not knowing all the answers, accepting that science's answer *now* might not be the same answer *later*, and so on as if it's a bad thing. tbh being able to sit with discomfort and admit that you don't know the answer, or that the answer might be complicated, is actually really comforting for me. there is honesty in "I don't know." "magical sky daddy said so", on the other hand? not as much.
Not understanding that about science is what bred anti-vaxxers yelling "liar" at everybody.
I feel like many in Christian apologetics fail to understand that objective truth doesn't care about their subjective beliefs. While science can fall into bias as well, its fundamental goal is to align our subjective understanding with what the objective truth is. Apologists start with the subjective conclusion and think they can work backwards to the objective
I grew up in a small Christian town, and I always thought, "I guess I'm Christian, I go to church with my parents. And Jesus says to be a good, honorable person, and I already want to be that, so I guess I'm a Christian.
Or I'm a Christian and I just throw out all the bits that tediously tell me how to live my life, and I just try to be a good kind person that does good things and doesn't judge people, like Jesus. Cool.
But then as I got older I started getting all these questions, so I had asked one of my church leaders them, and then I realized I didn't believe in any of this and that I wasn't a Christian, when I was about 14 or 15 was:
Me: If there's an all knowing, all powerful God that can do anything, and is everywhere all the time always, that has the ultimate judgement of right and wrong, why is there evil in the world? Why are there bad people? Why do bad things like tornadoes and earthquakes happen?
Their answer: because God gave us the gift of free will, because you're only truly good if you know the difference between good and bad. You couldn't know what bad is if it didn't exist. And all natural disasters and bad things out of our control are just God testing us and giving us opportunities to be good to each other.
Me: so our purpose as Christians is to learn the difference between good and bad, and choose to be good?
Their answer: our purpose is to be good Christians, and all we do should be in the service of God, to do his works here on earth, and to give all our glory and dedicate all we do, to him. nothing we accomplish should be for ourselves, because it's just God working through us. So our purpose is to do his work and worship him and give him all our praise and all the glory.
Me: but he could do all that himself? If he's this great all powerful perfect being, why does he care about whether or not he is praised by us? Or going about it in a convoluted way by working through us when he could do it in a blink. He just asks us to worship him and give him the credit? I don't think God would be that vain.
Their answer: it's not that he's vain, its that he loves all of us and cares about us so much, he just wants us to live the right way, the Christian way, because that's what's best for us. That's why he gave us the Bible, it's a guide to teach us how to live the right way.
Me: but then why do different churches believe different things?? Why do some parts of the Bible not make sense? I think I believe some parts of the Bible, but not others.
Their response: well if you want to be truly christian you have to follow all of the Bible, not pick and choose which parts suit you best.
Me: but I don't want to serve my husband if I get one, it should be equal, and our church doesn't believe it's wrong to be gay but the Bible says its a sin!
Their answer: well it is a sin to be gay, but we're supposed to love them anyway,
-and that's where I just couldn't reconcile what I experienced in life and what they told me I should believe. I'm not gay myself, but being gay is such a normal and inconsequential thing to me, it's just two people loving each other just like any other couple, they are just the same gender. But they said you have to believe its a sin. But there's nothing wrong with it! And an all knowing all loving God would know that!! And the cognitive dissonance was just too much for me and for the first time in my life I realized, "I don't think I believe any of this. None of it adds up and some parts contradict other parts and it doesn't make sense and I don't think it's ever going to."
And that's how I realized I'm not a Christian.
Man, I don't know if Matt Powell and Gene Kim have ever met, but could you imagine if they combined their intellectual might towards the same purpose? They might just be able to amass enough brain power to get water out of a boot!
With instructions on the heel
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣👍
Gene Kim failed at being the doctor his parents wanted him to be, so he channeled his rage and resentment towards the people that did become doctors by becoming a science-denying pastor.
Just speculating.
I get flashbacks from pastors and baptist “science” teachers saying that the Ark could fit the dinosaurs and evolution has so many gaps that it must be false.
Keep up these great videos, Trevor!
at 22:50 or so, the question of science explaining love came up, and it brought up a memory for me. A couple years back when I was researching romantic attraction and love, I found a hypothesis that romantic love could have evolved to keep two parents together for the first few years of a child's life to maximize the child's survival in those extremely vulnerable years. From then on the rest of the tribe or just the mother could take care of the child without needing a steady second parental figure. I think it was based on the fact that romantic love or at least the honeymoon phase often lasts for a few years, and in early human groups, pregnancy would happen early on in a relationship, not after years of waiting (for marriage or anything) or planning like in relatively recent history. I'm not sure if this is a fully tested hypothesis, I just thought it was interesting.
It IS interesting, and i will say you are probably right.
To test the hypothesis, we can observe other animals that also form prolonged pairs. The fact that those animals that form that bonds are the same ones that would have serious problems caring for the young if they were alone, gives credibility to the hypothesis. Also the fact that, in animals were the mother can handle the nurturing alone, or animals that just don't have parental care at all, those pairings are not found.
Ever hear the term "the seven year itch"? It's based on the idea that romantic infatuation has a natural life span of about 7 years. Curiously, my own life story bears it out, as the two longest romantic relationships in my life both lasted about 7 years. Complex societies have tended to want to extend this cycle to mandate lifelong marriages, but this is because of the needs of the authority structures and the conditions imposed by capitalist economies, not the needs of the individual.
I am still a believer, but embracing uncertainty has been a key part of being a better Christian and relying more on God's wisdom and not my own rationale. Evangelicals try to have their cake and eat it to by believing both a) that God's plan and love is beyond our mortal comprehension and b) that they totally understand everything about God's will and their bigoted Biblical interpretations are THE ONLY truth.
There's a great documentary called "Protagonist" (2007) that explores the nature of "certainty" and follows four men who acted with absolute certainty for a period of their lives. One of them is an evangelical Christian who tried to "overcome" his homosexuality. His eventual acceptance of himself didn't require him to give up his religion, but rather overcome his man-made limitations he had imagined for God.
"I don't know" are the wisest words in the English language. It means the recognition of ignorance and the pursuit of knowledge. It means embracing our smallness and trying to grow from there. To turn your back on that, to embrace an answer, any answer, just to feel big is to lose that quality that made humanity the most successful species in Earth's history.
My question, why does "God" the creator or Jesus require to be believed in? Let alone require other people to convince me that he does exist? I didn't need convincing Rain is real but every living thing lives like rain is real even without first being convinced it does.
God created us sick and declared himself the only cure.
@@dingdongism LoL. Sounds like something a human would do. . . . Ahhhh.
It’s a simple belief that was created and followers of the faith live by it.
It’s a requirement because, if not, you’re “too different”; and it’s definitely not a coincidence that the source of suffering for many people is being treated badly for being different.
Those who live by it wouldn’t care if a girl who’s considered by them a heretic, but is good and kind, gets murdered by a “lost and sinful” believer who will then repent for his sins.
They’d believe she will go straight to Hell for her heresy no matter how much goodness she has given during her life that was unjustly taken from her, whilst for them it’s very possible for him to go to Heaven or spend some time in Purgatory before going there because he has sought for forgiveness.
It’s all that: a belief. Even if it’s f*cked up, they’re free to believe what they want and all we can do is to not give a damn.
Because if God doesn't need to be believed in, he'd be real. And something that's real cannot be God because omnipotence is contradictory.
I find it very telling that so many apologists have taken to arguing from a purely deist point and then they try to walk it to the Bible. I would enjoy the debate between a devout Catholic, Genesis-is-true creationist, Islamic fundamentalist and an Orthodox Jewish apologist. All convinced that their points prove their version of the same god is the obviously correct one.
Telling of what?
Scientists didn't start with relativity. They needed Aristarchus, then Copernicus, then Galileo, then Newton, then Einstein.
Imagine if lawyers were only allowed to call one witness in court.
Nobody *ever* makes a case for anything of significance in one step.
@@fluffysheap The point is many apologists will seek to prove a creator of the universe (a deistic god) and then make a leap to saying its the Christian God, ascribing all sorts of attributes and deeds without any further proof or argumentation.
Your analogy falls short because while science has been a slow process with multiple steps, nobody is saying Aristotle is right, so everything science says is right. Its a ludicrous statement. We have evidence of our current understanding of the world and provide it; Christians do not have the same for their particular flavor of god. No one walks around saying that science found out about the periodic table, so all scientific consensus must be invariably true.
@@fluffysheap So, diferent religions are 'steps'? Who is on top?
Tbh, as a fellow Canadian, I couldn't care less about what the US thinks of us. They're a trainwreck quickly headed to the handmaid's tale. If anything, I look at them and take notes on what not to do lol
(I know and love several amazing Americans, it's the systemic issues that need fixing)
As an American, you're not wrong.
Thank you for saying that about systemic issues. I’m tired of people saying we’re all dumb or “why can’t you just stop this”, when these issues are systemic and complicated. Many of us recognize that we’re failing, but changing the system is hard.
I kept saying to my partner, "wow these dudes sound like mac" and then the Mac clip kicked in and we both started hollering
28:08 "While their theory keeps changing, god's word never will."
You keep saying that, you keep being wrong.
"God's word" has been translated a few times so through translation alone stuff gets changed or lost. Nevermind the little updates and patches the catholic church did or the fact that for a long time they alone had the word of god and didn't pass it to outsiders because that helped them stay in power and exploit people. Oh and don't forget the quabbles between the denominations you have to this day about what word means what. Especially Jehovas Witnesses who issue their own version of the bible called the scripture because otherwise the Watchtower society would lose its power over its followers (where did i hear that one before?).
At this point i want the christian god themselves to come down here and hear only their word before i do or change *anything* about me and my life!
I would also like to add that the same goes for every other religion too. They are not as united as they would like the rest of the world to think.
Yes, God's word keeps changing. We can easily conclude that as outside observers. But these people keep operating from the assumption that it *doesn't* change; that these many different versions of God's word exist, yet the particular version they personally believe is the purest, most inerrant version. It's a lot of cognitive dissonance, basically.
Let's also not forget that Jesus and God seem to argue about salvation.
Or that there are several Christian concepts, such as Satan being the snake, the 9 Circles of Hell, Purgatory, and even the Trinity, that appear nowhere in the Bible.
Or that Genesis implies God has sons, and that the Moses story calls back to Zoroastrianism, where God has a wife. And now we insist that there are no other gods but that ONE D.I.D. afflicted God.
And they are also wrong because god's word change over time in the Bible story proper, regardless of translations, additions or substractions.
There was an old covenant and a new covenant. There was a time before God sent the 10 commandments and a time after that. There was a time when every child was born with the original sin and a time when that was no longer true (after Christ's sacrifice). There was a time when God opted for physical destruction (flood, Sodom, etc.), and a time after that when God opted for not punishing anyone in this life and to keep the punishment for the afterlife.
They should use google translate for bible
Something I realized while taking a philosophy class is that the question of whether or not God exists just doesn’t matter because whether or not a God exists it doesn’t really change anything. If God doesn’t exist then flat-earthers are wrong, and if God does exist then flat-earthers are still wrong. Trying to prove that God does or doesn’t exist is ultimately missing the point.
If a Christian, when arguing with an atheist, is able to “prove” that a god exists, and the atheist can’t refute the argument, then the Christian will assume that that god is their specific God and that all of their beliefs are thusly true and right. In other words, Christians are never really arguing in favor of the existence of God, but rather in favor of their beliefs, and if they can find a way to “prove” the existence of God then their assumptions with do the rest of the work for them.
And I think it is important for other fellow atheists to recognize this. Even if you already knew, even if someone else has said this before, I think it bares repeating in specifically this way.
Everyone knows opinions don't matter. The question is whether or not facts matter. It's taken for granted that facts matter. But if the universe has no brain, it doesn't care about facts. If it doesn't care about facts, why should we?
@@theboombody As I said, the question of whether or not A god exists misses the point. Christians conflate the existence of A god with the existence of THEIR god. But what makes their god any more real than any other religion’s? Simply put, nothing. They are merely arguing in favor of the existence of a god and projecting their own beliefs onto said god.
Assuming God exists, how can we be certain that any religion (Abrahamic or otherwise) has correctly interpreted God’s beliefs?
@@trentonbuchert7342 We can't be. Not logically. I'm not sure what the properties of other followed deities are, but the Christian God does set a process in motion to free us from sin. That should be a huge part of any worthwhile religion.
at 10:44 the guy almost had me - he said that Christianity explained “the rapid expansion of… the early church” smh😂😂
YES! You used Glynn Barret clip. The dude comes across as such a mug and this isn't the only time of him lying on stage, though the only time it was caught, which is a shame. The story behind that clip is brilliant, worth a podcast on its own.
I hate when people get the terms "Atheist" and "Agnostic" mixed up:
-Gnostic: Having knowledge of God
-Agnostic: Lacking knowledge of God
-Theist: Having a belief in God
-Atheist: Lacking a belief in God
"Atheism" describes what you are not. It's like saying a ball "isn't blue"; It's a very poor descriptor of what something actually is, since every thing has an infinite number of things it is "not". That also makes it the default option. You start life with no beliefs, and for everything that exists, and infinite number of things don't exist. Ergo, if you don't have evidence for something's existence, it's infinitely more likely not to exist.
I love seeing grown men who believe in fairy tales calling scientists stupid
I grew up really believing a lot of these. In time I perceived the logical fallacies inherent, or the refusal to truly understand things like evolution or scientific claims. It’s helped me open my mind correctly and begin figuring out where I’ll land
The thing for me is that most believers think that atheists are trying to prove god's un-existence all the time... when most of us are just living our lives.
I’m an American and most of my favorite shows,growing up, were from Canada. Thanks for helping raise me,Canada! Lol 😊
As I listened about 7 minutes into this, a thought occurred to me. It seems to me that a God that wanted to have a personal relationship with me and with every other human so as not to have to punish us with an eternity in Hell would make damn sure to place Himself in the tiny slice of knowledge we do have instead of hiding Himself in the vast areas not currently known to us. And given that He is all-powerful and all-knowing, He would be able to accomplish this easily, and being all-loving He would do so. Modifying Epicurus: "whence cometh hiddenness.' The Pastor's story is bullshit.
That circle thing is so inane. There’s plenty of things that I know exist but I know little to nothing about. Football, deep sea life and the nuclear processes in the sun to give 3 very random examples.
It also implies that their god, is literally hiding itself away. Like the secrets of the universe we have yet to or ever will tease out. Their god is infinitely powerful, and yet only a small number of people's circle of knowledge includes a god or gods? Seems kind of silly to me, especially when they can't point out *how* they know, just that they know it exists. The circle thing is less a point in favor of their god potentially existing, and more a point of demonstrating they don't know very much of anything lol.
And the most insane thing is they state it with literally no awareness that the same argument could be applied to their worldview.
This was probably one of my favorite intro segways you’ve done. The transition to what the video is about works incredibly well
I just bought a shirt from Forrest Valkai that says "Question Everything" and I can't wait to wear it.
16:40 When a Christian tells a story of an Atheist who decided to I know they are utter liars. This is because there is NOTHING from which to depart.
In all fairness, I do think the word "Atheism" confuses them, because there really isn't much to this ISM. No dogma, no rules, no gods, no demons, no holy books, no holy men, no spiritual leaders, no spiritualism. Because it's an ISM, they believe it's a philosophy to follow.
Nope.
Being an Atheist means holding a falsifiable position, where one sees no reason to believe in any gods. That position can be changed if we ever acquire proof that a god exists.
He's a liar, a liar, and a liar. He's effectively , which makes him horrible. But he is oh, so conveniently forgiven at all times. I can't ever trust a person who has 100% 24/7 forgiveness for lying. This gives them license to say anything, and I can't trust a person who has this kind of license to lie.
How could you know it's a lie? There are plenty of atheists who decide to believe in god. He didn't believe a god existed, and then he did. He was an atheist, then he wasn't.
all hes saying is the person became a believer in god, youre arguing semantics here.
19:23 this coming from a guy who believes their sky daddy poofed everything into existence from nothing..which breaks the laws of thermodynamics, matter can't be created or destroyed afterall
I'm now referring to god as sky daddy
@@terrybrooks4174 for a more accurate term, how about using magic sky daddy
@@eh9618 ah yes, more refined
The thing is, Christians believe their God is omnipotent, so He can create everything out of “nothing”, laws of thermodynamics be damned.
@@hughmongoose8966 omnipotent yet can't do anything that man can do.. always needs his followers to do that for him, it's odd isn't it?
“Just because we don’t know what started it, doesn’t mean it’s your god”.
Those words make a *lot* of sense to me. I was put in church at a younger age, though I wasn’t raised christian (my mom got really involved with god and all that once we had a tragedy in our life; it was her way of coping with it) I was made to go to church for several years until she eventually fell out if it.
At first I spent most of the time being annoyed not paying attention, etc. but then I hit a point where I began to get really emotional whenever they sang live music or people shared their personal struggles. I then began to believe that this was christ opening his heart and letting me in- and that it was beautiful what they were preaching. I went from having no interest to wearing a cross around my neck, praying every morning and night, and contemplating getting baptized at the ripe age of 12. I continued to get emotional during service, and often went into the bathroom and starting bawling my eyes out. I think majority of those emotions were because I was in middle school, and middle school sucked ass.
But slowly, I began to fall out of it when we stopped going to church, and I finally realized something. That if I wasn’t told that god existed, I surely wouldn’t worship him. I concluded that yes, I have all of these emotions, empathy, and deep love for music, but it wasn’t ever for god. God/Christianity was just an already established thing that basically acted as a very convincing funnel for my feelings.
I now know that the reason why I had such a strong reaction was partially due to the fact that churches are very good at convincing everyone of christian bound beliefs. I also think that (stay with me here) as someone who is empathetic and has a very good sense about how people feel, I soaked up all that like a sponge, and often, people are easier to convince when they’re in a vulnerable and empathetic state.
After going to concerts, some of which weren’t very mellow, I ended up getting the same feeling as I did when they would sing in church- its just the way music makes me feel. It’s the experience of looking outside of yourself. I do believe that there is some sort of balance in the universe, but I no longer associate with christianity. I’ve mostly associated with the practice of witchcraft over recent years, and I believe that the energy you put out can have affect on yourself and the people around you- I personally believe it has worked for me when I manifest enough (ofc it’s mixed with the absolute possible physical effort I can do). It’s almost like sending that final wish of good luck into the universe (like a wishing well or birthday candles, which is considered witchcraft btw haha).
So instead of thinking god has his eye on me, the universe, no form, no religious texts, no prophets, or priests, or popes, or masters, just simply exists and will stay that way.
It’s been such a great feeling telling someone I’m debating with that “I don’t know”. I treated it as something that should be ashamed that I don’t know about. Now I realize that not knowing and admitting it, and wanting to find things out, isn’t a bad thing- I’m being honest in the situation. It’s also kind of ridiculous for people who you don’t know all that well, to come up to you and ask you a question on the highly complex topic that you know nothing about. Like buddy- I just discovered what you’re talking about 2 minutes ago. Theres no way I’m going to try and argue with you when I can’t even understand what you’re trying to say. And the fact that people on the opposing side view not knowing as “See! You don’t know! You lost!” drives me freaking crazy.
Good stuff as always. Just want to say that this episode's humor and clips were fantastic. Ever improving, love to see it.
The fact that they think that we think that "science" is the answer let's me know they aren't listening
It's the exact opposite, instead. Science is a way to explain certain things, but this does not mean that it can explain everything. There is always something new that still has not been explained. If anything, science is the constant asking of questions, a constant state of "I do not know, everything and i will never know everything, but i want to find out as much as possible." Religion is the one that think that it is the answer to everything. It's a case of projection on a massive level.
I am a christian, and i really enjoy your videos. One thing I've learned from them is that all these preachers are copying each other's catchy "arguments". It annoys me often how dumb many people (churchgoing people) are. If it sounds catchy or smart they'll take it as proof, that's not how arguments work! Anyway whatever works for them i guess, just like whatever works for me and whatever works for you who reads this
Every day I sink further into despair about the fact that almost NOBODY actually cares about making sure the things they believe are true. I tell myself I'm gonna stop listening to these because it's so upsetting. If only we could ALL live in our most HONEST, thorough assessment of reality. If uniting with our fellow man is the only hope left for humanity, humanity is a lost cause.
I really appreciate how much work you put into these videos. They are so much fun to watch
hey just wanted to say you make super good content, great narration, edits, cuts etc.
dont know what else to say but that i respect and appreciate the work you put into these videos.
First time i went to church as a 5 year old I just felt like i was in a cult and was immediately turned off. Yes i knew what a cult was i was watching a lot of films and even had my own childrens bible that i liked to read but eventually i just felt like it was all…odd. I asked my mom why everyone was crying simultaneously at church as a woman was speaking from the bible and she said it was because it was about god and i just couldn’t mesh with that.
admitting something is unknown is the heart of science .. it takes a real effort to admit this ofc, and its the opposite of religion, where no answer can be questioned
20:33 Does it bother me that I don't know the origin of the universe? No more than knowing that I wasn't there when it happened. Science isn't supposed to be easy or infallible, it's supposed to be accurate. His assertion seems like a challenge and an opportunity for discovery that can lead to a meaningful existence.
Ben Courson would benefit from understanding that the concept of a "Prime Mover" presented by Aquinas was actually a concept, commonly held by medieval Christians, derived from greco-roman philosophy. It is the basis of Aristotle's Metaphysics, and I wonder how many Christians would accept a belief from a "pagan" philosopher.
Similarly, the idea that everything reflects a 'perfect' reality, or form, laid out by God and has been corrupted by the world, or the Fall, is Platonic philosophy. There is a reason that Xianity can be described as Aristotelian or Platonic.
They are fundamentally platonic, but become aristotelian when they try apologetics.
Proving that there is a God is only one step, because then you have to prove that your denomination’s God is the one true God. It’s a question that no one really gets to.
Not knowing is where knowing comes from, in much the same way that sound comes from silence. If you only allow room for "I know", it's the same as filling your head with noise