How Christians Roleplay Being Free Thinkers 

I used to be an evolutionist atheist. I would pray to my Richard Dawkins posters in my room before every meal and paint satanic symbols on churches for a hobby. But then someone told me "If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys" and I instantly realized that Jesus is the truth and I instantly became a christian and was saved!

I do hate it when they say " I was an atheist " , the fact they think being an atheist is partying and doing drugs.

I was an atheist, eating babies and summoning demons to do my laundry... but then I found God. Now I eat Jesus and summon angels to do my laundry. *Much* better.

What I'm hearing Mary say is that she surrounded herself with Christian apologetics exclusively until it sunk in, and not once did she look elsewhere for the truth. Not once did she honestly consider the plethora of counter arguments. She didn't go looking for the truth, rather she looked for confirmation of what she already believed. People like this are being dishonest with themselves.

I used to be an atheist too...and, I still am.

It was downhill from the moment of "I think, therefore I am, therefore a god exists".

I was a theist for years. My friends just kept asking me questions. I didn’t fall off a horse and change my mind all at once, I just kept thinking.

I remember when an eager, bright eyed campus evangelist wanted to talk to me about God. I was actually happy to do so. I was examining beliefs after a Christian school upbringing and I thought cool. Hey maybe this is God. Then I convinced myself it WAS God presenting himself to me. So we sat down at a table in the library and ... he gave me a super basic apologetics 101 presentation about the watchmaker's argument, followed up with Pascal's wager. I'll never forget the proud look on his face as he finished. He just hit it out of the park. Then we said a prayer. But I was just thinking, wow, that's it. That's really all there is. I was so ... disappointed.

I have a Creationist acquaintance with whom I’ve spoken about the Christian, Bible literalist, Young Earth Creationinny worldview he subscribes to. He claimed to be an atheist once but when I got him to elucidate on what he meant by atheist it boiled down to being rebellious against god. Hanging out with friends instead of going to church, pretending to do Bible study, that sort of thing, but actually still believing there was a god. He couldn’t quite grasp the idea of how my actual NOT believing in ANY gods was different from that.

"I really got into apologetics" = I was really resistant to challenging my own presuppositions formed during childhood and adolescence.

She had some little twinge of doubt and went racing to apologetics for reassurance that she should keep believing what she believed. That’s not honest inquiry.

When I was a kid, I attended a conservative evangelical K-12 school. Each year we'd rehearse and put on apologetical plays in December and at the end of the school year in May. I distinctly remember many of our plays being scripted dramas where someone would role-play an antagonistic atheist professor or some such, and one of the students would role-play the heroic evangelist protagonist student. In one particular Christmas charade (yes, a Christmas one), the antagonizing atheist professor renounced his prideful folly after the heroic student trotted out the 2nd law of thermodynamics shtick. Zod's video got me reminiscing about this experience. It was something we students did every year for our teachers and parents, and it seemed so normal. But looking back at all this decades later, it was anything but normal.

What I got from this was a girl who went to college and was unexpectedly confronted with the fact that a lot of people don't believe Christianity is true, which conflicted with what she was taught as a child. She found apologetics and was really into it because of the comforting way it reinforced her existing belief. Now, when asked why she's Christian, she brings up all the half-remembered arguments and themes from apologetics because they are her comfort blanket. She's never really deconstructed the arguments being made.

I have never understood how anything could be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial, and yet still exist and have the power to do anything including making a universe. It sounds like something from a sci-fi story.

I was a believer for over 60 years. Went to church, prayed, read my Bible multiple times but never encountered apologetics. The only thing I knew was Pascal’s Wager but didn’t know that’s what it was called. Only after leaving religion and using RU-vid did I learn all the failing apologetics arguments. But they are young - they must have known the arguments for years. They would be better off studying comparative religions and true Bible origins. Hope it doesn’t take them as long as it did me to realize it’s all made up!

I used to be a Christian like you, but then I took a nail to the foot.

The allergic reaction to “I don’t know” is unsettling but not surprising.

I physically groaned in pain at “the Latin phrase, ‘ergo, something, if you remember it.’” It still stings.

Once just once i would like a christian to demonstrate god

I used to be one of those "I used to be an atheist" christians. Really I was raised secular but never really learned to think critically about any of it. But they think anything that isn't religious is atheist

She comes off as a superficially deep thinker. Making loose connections to vague ideas to support her beliefs.

That was hilarious! I don't mean to laugh at them, but they were clearly lying, even if unintentionally. I loved how you brought up Josh MacDowell, who "didn't want to believe" but somehow found his way back to the same fairytale.

Wait! Wait! Let me get out the Creationist BINGO card. Can't do shots, I'd be unconscious in the first 3 minutes. ❤️ Zod.

As St. Billy of Preston once said, "Nothing from nothing leaves nothing."

I've gotten so used to the obviously fake personal stories, I stopped recognizing how strange the behavior is. There have been plenty of "I used to be an atheist" stories that involve a bizarre and unrecognizable depiction of atheist life. Typically, it's a fiction by Christians for Christians. And yet it's occasionally trotted out to actual atheists. And I haven't come across it much these days, but back during the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s there were plenty of "I used to be a Satanist" stories. They involve bizarre and unrecognizable depiction of Satanist life. Again, a fiction by Christians for Christians.

Whenever I hear the "I used to be an Atheist" claim by a Christian I immediately know they do not know what that position actually means. It usually means they never thought about "God" because they were partying with their friends and thought Church was lame.

I'm imagining Frank Turek's grinning face slowly fading into view while they argue that the origin of the universe must have been spaceles, timeless, powerful, personal...

It occurred to me this is also why apologists like to quote so many "famous" atheists. Because they're so busy regurgitating the same arguments, they assume we do the same, and that those arguments are the real foundations and justifications for our lack of loss of belief. But you can become an atheist without knowing any ancient philosophy or modern big-name atheists like Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. A theist friend kept quoting Dawkins in a conversation over lunch and was shocked when I finally said I'm not familiar with his arguments and I didn't really care to.

*God as an explanation = **_"An Appeal To A Bigger Mystery"_** .* Who needs science, when you can just assume how the universe came to be, _with your "feelings"._ lol

They sound like they got an apologetics 101 handbook for their birthdays, skimmed it without even understanding the bad arguments and repeat what they've remembered.

The Marvel Universe came into being as explained in the Shazam! Cosmological Argument.

How come the universe "coming from nothing" is utterly unconvincing but God speaking it all into existing from nothing seems OK?

Not ever being religious, all I can say is that if these were my kids I'd be weeping with sorrow at how brainwashed they are.

_"many incredible constants... gravity, second law of thermodynamics"_ is where I stopped giving her the benefit of the doubt. That is not how you talk about something you've put some real thoughts into first.

This pair of lovely people did offer-up one thing I haven't heard before: All the naff arguments used by Apologists were thought of independently by the stunning, brave and strong Mary. If her story is true (Which I am sure it must be, because Christians can not lie) then we have no need for Apologists. Ooh, this means this delightful, honest, beautiful couple shared two need things with me.

You analyzed their video with grace, intelligence and compassion. Bravo, Zod.

I actually find Mary's story very relatable. I went through several instances - mostly in high school and college - where I would try to determine if my beliefs were justified or not. The problem with my questioning was that it would back up to an assumption I was unwilling to examine or question and then the rest of my reasoning and belief system followed from there. Why am I a Christian? - I believe the Bible. Why do I believe the Bible? - I think it was inspired and preserved by a god. Why should I think this god exists as opposed to gods of other religions? - Because their gods are clearly not real, but mine clearly is. There were definitely more steps in there, but that's a shorthand example of where my reasoning would stop at an unquestionable assumption. Over time that assumption got pushed back further, but there were still a lot of mental shortcuts involved. Eventually I allowed myself to question deeper layers of my fundamental beliefs and my Christianity dwindled down to Theism, then to Deism until one day I had a moment where I looked at it all and went "Oh." realizing I was now an atheist and had fully jettisoned my belief in any sort of god. My belief died not with a bang, but with a sigh. Anyway, my point in telling that story is to show that at that time I though I was doing the work, I felt like I was critically examining my beliefs, and that I think it's entirely possible that Mary believes that she did too. I think it may be a fairly common experience for believers where they begin to question but their indoctrination (both external and self-imposed) stops them from getting past certain core beliefs while allowing them to feel fully justified and rational in those beliefs.

That opening is very revealing. Whenever you ask an apologist a simple question, you'll get a long winded sermon back.

The human brain is unfortunately easily manipulated. That’s what I learned from this video. Cheers!!

You nailed it right off the bat. They need arguments and angles to flesh out their God instead of ya know, having actual facts. When you have facts, you don't need any of this nonsense.

OMG!! "It's not like I'm gonna mail you a pizza roll" I just lost my mind🤣🤣🤣😂🙌🙏🎩

I feel like when people do this type of stuff they are being as original as the plot of God's Not Dead (spoiler for those of you blessed to not know of the film, that means very unoriginal). Great video Zod! I always look forward to your next video!

You continue to come up with the best, more original video topics. It's no easy task and i appreciate the effort!

Wait.... You have an actual human face?

The more I watch apologetics, the more I am convinced that I couldn't dumb down enough to become a believer. All I am hearing is that she is running down a checklist, that she probably got from some apologetics home schooling textbook. While feeding him lines, so he can show how much more intelligent men are.

‘I can prove god’ ……….A Few Moments Later…….’You gotta have faith’.

Apologetics - the art of trying to convince someone that the magician really did cut the lady in half.

I think you are overthinking it. Mary doesn't sound like a young atheist convert with a deep personal story because she's not a convert. She merely confirmed what she already believed in. And yes, she's just repeating things she just heard before but not memorizing taking points trying to sell them as original.

The existence of apologetics proves Christianity has problems.

What I find interesting is that I came across the ‘did something come from nothing’ question when I was young, all on my own, at the age of about 15. But, because I didn’t have any religion in my life, I focussed more on the impossibility of ‘nothing’, rather than trying to create a ‘something’ into existence.

In high school and college, I was very right wing and Christian. I went into the delusion, that Christians were MORE "free and independent" than atheists (because WE weren't going to Hell, and had our lives "figured out") Looking back, it was an act to fit in, a clever talking point. I'm ashamed that I also was " "conservative " to cover for awful, negative, lies I believed about Jews, Gay people, and other minorities. As, I grew up, met MORE people, I slowly realized, right wing media, and "friends", had lied to me.

Mary is full on lying by not saying she's heard these ideas elsewhere. To the confessional!

Roleplaying as being a freethinkers is one of the best descriptions of what apologists do that I've ever heard. What's really sad is whether they're sincere or self conscious grifters, its true either way.

"It had to come from someone outside of space and time." My dear child, let me tell you about Gallifrey...

Incredible work, as always. I admire your incredible skill at precisely articulating nuanced but powerful points. I also admire your courage. You make some very bold claims, all of which I agree with entirely, that some people could take great offense at. You always do a more than adequate job of preventing any reasonable person from taking offense but that is no guarantee that offense won’t still be taken. Not everyone is willing to accept the consequences that come with that level of honesty. As someone who is, and has paid their own very dear price for it, it is genuinely cathartic to hear your work. We need more like you out there. Looking forward to see your work with Dan!

In listening to them I think you hit the nail on the head at 12:50 when you say that going through a few apologetics books felt like doing her research. I don't think she was claiming these are original thoughts, instead these are her conclusions based on her "research". She found the confirmation bias she was looking for and ran with it.

I agree that the story lacks specifics for her own experience. I also also agree that there is common lingo and memes that are used in idealogical communities in general. That being said, if someone does get interested in a subject and wants to know more, they’re probably going to read or listen to information about it, and they’re going to choose the sources that seem the most trustworthy to them given their priors on the subject. It’s hard to come into almost any subject with no preconceptions whatsoever. Given that, you’d expect this kind of behavior to be the default. She came to it from a Christian background and wanted to confirm her own beliefs so she listened to apologists. Humans are predisposed to adopt the language of those we are in the most contact with. It is a very rare person, indeed, who comes up with truly novel ideas. We call those people geniuses and generally tend to know their names. (e.g. Einstein, Socrates, etc.) So, for the rest of us, ranging from a bit slow to very smart, we listen to what other people say and assess it based on how it fits into our own world models. Another fairly rare trait is the ability to admit that you were wrong and critically examine your beliefs. The more strongly held the belief is, the more jealously we are programmed to protect it. This is a useful adaptation in nearly all circumstances. We would die from analysis paralysis if we reexamined everything we believed every time we got new information. Unfortunately, that useful heuristic of fitting new information into your world model in ways that minimize the change in that model causes us to usually be blinded to our own erroneous thinking. We naturally view contradictory information with suspicion and it tends to just bounce off of the armor that we surround our cores with. So, it is very reasonable to expect people in their positions to speak the way that they do and use common jargon for their communities. It does show a lack of critical thought, but critical thinking is a very rare ability. It took years and years and a lot of pain for me to transition from belief to non-belief. I had to let go of a part of myself in order to do it. It just so happened that I valued truth more than I valued religious belief. And it was a slow road out; I didn’t just go from young earth creationist to atheist in a single step. Every time I revised my beliefs, I took the minimal step to fit the new information into my world model and self image. And once I realized, somewhere deep down, that I was a step away from losing my belief, I shut down for years. I refused to think about it because I knew exactly where I’d end up. I tried desperately to find a way to hold on. I participated in religious rituals that weren’t really within anything I had ever believed, such as catholic communion even though I’ve never been a catholic. I was truly desperate. I got angry when my wife asked me about it because I knew I would end up a non-believer. But, eventually, I had to admit to myself that I had lost belief years earlier. I ended up as a deist at that point, because I couldn’t explain the origin of the Big Bang. It was the last tiny shard of my belief that I could cling to. Then I heard Dr. Krauss talk about it and the final shard sublimated into nothing. Now, even if his explanation is incorrect, I find placing a deity in that location to be an assumption without any basis. At this point, while I don’t believe in it, the only way I can imagine an entity creating our universe is if our universe were a simulation. That would be my assumption if I saw incontrovertible evidence that unexplainable magic existed. By that, I don’t mean something we don’t understand or some new discovery or way of looking at the world. I mean something that is completely incongruous with the well verified laws of nature. I’m talking about someone saying a magic word and then a truly supernatural event occurring. Not like nanotechnology or something explainable if we just understood more and did more research. I mean, if I say “wingardium leviosa” and a dense object floated up with energy from absolutely no physical source whatsoever. That tells me that the universe operates on rules that are not based on fundamental physical forces but arbitrary rules of the kind that a mind might invent. The same thing goes if we suddenly meet a “god” of some kind. Again, not an alien with ridiculously advanced technology (think Thor and Loki from the Marvel movies). A real, scientifically verifiable entity with the kinds of supernatural powers traditionally associated with deities. That does not tell me that there is a creator god or anything of the sort. That tells me that the universe doesn’t make sense and that can only be true in a universe not built on fundamental rules and forces. That kind of thing comes from a mind. In those cases, the hypothesis with the minimal amount of assumptions is a simulation since you are only hypothesizing something that would fit into a universe with such fundamental rules as we observe, instead of an entirely new entity for which we have absolutely no previous evidence or examples of. And no, for any believer who actually read this whole post, the gods of any of our religions are not prior evidence. If you do any kind of honest examination of the evidence instead of just following your instincts, it becomes blindingly obvious how and why religions were invented, why they spread and continued. The fictional nature of the documents becomes so clear that you just can’t see them any other way. Everything that was “mysterious” just starts to make sense and fit together cleanly. You lose that intensely uncomfortable cognitive dissonance you were suffering from. It eventually becomes quite comfortable and reassuring. “The world just makes sense.” It’s much better than “god works in mysterious ways” which is code for, “that thing that we’re talking about makes absolutely no sense and I recognize that fact, but instead of admitting that I might be wrong, I’m going to make excuses and point to some infinity and claim that you have to search the whole thing and disprove all of it to endanger my beliefs. Additionally, I’m going to put my fingers in my ears and sing La-La-La so that I don’t have to actually think that whole thing for fear that it might cause me to doubt myself.” The holes in the religious stories are so enormous that you could drive an aircraft carrier through them without scratching the paint. They’re the kind of thing that a rational adult would never even start to believe. The only way to end up believing them is to be indoctrinated from an extremely young age and exist in a culture that reinforces it. That or to be the kind of credulous person that will fall for nearly any scam you come across.

Excellent analysis, focusing on the need for honesty in expression without begging the question.

When I was a Christian, it seemed like every other testimony was that they "used to be an atheist" and/or grew up in an atheistic home. Even then I was very skeptical of the stories because not only did they all sound the same, but I only knew a couple of atheists irl in the Bible belt of the South so where were all these atheists coming from? When I'd look into it or ask questions, I always found that they were never actual atheists. At best, they had been non-practicing Christians. Some thought that because they questioned the existence of god at some point (but never stopped believing) that made them an atheist. A lot of Christians don't understand what an atheist is and most leaders don't want to honestly explain it to them.

Tbh if you want to see religious people really role-playing being free thinkers, you just put them aganist other religious indivuals. Say muslims versus christians. In the end one of them will take the role of the free thinker to the other

I love your channel, Zod.

It's a version of Pascal's wager. She can only be certain of her own existence, but not the nature of external reality, including the existence of God. However, the risk/reward proposition of God justifies whatever rationalizations she needs to enable her belief.

POZ! As usual, great responses. Unfortunately, these two will probably go farther and get better support than atheist RU-vidrs! But, maybe they'll start getting cracks if their stuff is debunked early and they see it. These are why you all must continue! 👍💙💖🥰✌

Somebody once told me the world would....they're not the sharpest tool in the shed.

I love the second law of thermodynamics. But I don't listen to apologists about it unless they can tell me about the other laws of thermodynamics. Most don't even know how many of them there are.

Zod, thank you for creating the wonderfully awful phrase "Total Chad of an apologist". Please keep using it.

But she never thinks to ask where did God come from? Who created God? 😂😂

"I'm a free thinker. I think the same things as the other free thinkers who think the same things as me!"

Cult influencers frame legitimate doubt as "a trial," even "Satanically-caused," and then resolve the discomfort with stories of regaining faith, only stronger. Emotionally, this works because the doubting believer comes back to a comfortable belief. It's nothing more than this.

Apologetics really neutralizes their rationality.

I would be very interested to see if there is even one person who made atheist content, wrote an article, blogged etc. regarding arguments for the existence of the Christian god and why they did not find them convincing, who then later became a Christian and talked about what they changed their mind about. There seem to be so many "I used to be an atheist" apologists who never seemed to have written, recorded or made a public statement of disbelief when they were atheists. All of the apologists of this type seem to want to swear about what an avowed hardcore atheist they were, and yet I can't seem to find the writings of Atheist Lee Strobel saying why he does not think the argument from first cause is very good.

This is my first time watching one of your videos, and I'm impressed by your calm, respectful tone. Looking forward to exploring more of your content! Thanks for this.

It all starts in early childhood.

I used to be an athiest. I would draw pentagrams, drink blood and paint demonic seals so that goetic demons would be summoned and help me with all my boring tasks until the magic god-human hippie saved me. Now i eat his flesh and drink his blood.

Watching this video enabled me to completely fill out my apologetics BINGO card!

I just discovered your channel and have been happily binging, you have a beautifully succinct of breaking down all this stuff. As a wise man named William Shakesman once said, "Brevity is the soul of wit."

I think people genuinely believe that if you preface a thought with “logically” that makes it logical.

I can't look at Descartes - he's a bit decomposed. "You can still hear Beethoven, but Beethoven cannot hear you." - Monty Python

"Mail a pizza roll"?? That's it. You're Mr. Plinkett

I nearly laughed myself out of my recliner with that can of “Primordial Soup”!

I just hate the sentence "oh we could not come from nothing" then they say God created universe literally out of nothing... its just irks me to the highest point

I am so angry about my “Christian” upbringing. The older I get the more awful I realize it was.

In other words - Theyrr both liars ,actors, and shallow thinking sheep . The opposite of free thinkers or sincere truth seekers.

What their intro reminds me of is the way people talk in a sory of radio commercial. There's this skit they still sometimes do, like "Why don't you just use ?" " you say? I haven't heard of it!" "Oh, is great! In fact its so great that ! You should try it today by "

To be charitable, perhaps she didn't have all this vocabulary when she first began exploring the causal chain of the universe (which isn't beyond a college freshman) and this is just her brain backfilling rough concepts with the better vocabulary she now knows when looking back at college.

Even if you didn't notice the Mr. Plinkett reference, your brain did

This is for a youth ministry. They’re patronizing teenagers.

It just amazes me that she independently she arrived at the exact same "truth", nearly word for word, she had been immersed in all her life.

For anyone else concerned that PoZ may be taking an ungenerous interpretation, watch 17:56. She really is claiming to have come up with all of this on her own.

When I first started college, I was sat under an apple tree one day when a piece of fruit fell to the ground. I wondered to myself why it fell straight down, rather than sideways or straight up. I deduced that there must be some sort of force pulling it toward the Earth

I was a theist…until I was maybe 6yo. My deconversion story: My dad handed me a picture Bible for kids. I read it and thought “Yeah, well this obviously isn’t true”. A few years later, after reading the complete Bible as a Catholic School kid, that position evolved to “Holy shit! This book is absolutely insane”

Our feelings emerge out of the subconscious mind and our conscious minds try to describe it and make sense of it after. But they are two different things. That is why it is difficult to define things like love, beauty, and belonging. They arise out of the shadows, then we describe them into awareness. Belief in god feels as tangible to us as love, but love is an internal experience. The only physical expression of it is what we chose to do in response, and religion is the same. The Bible was written (by people) in response to a belief in god. Churches are built (by people) in response to a belief in god, and wars are fought and lands taken and the losers made slaves.

There is no such thing as punching down. Bad ideas are bad ideas, no matter how many followers you have. I absolutely believe they are lying. They are telling a story that is absolutely not true, in order to lead people they hope are in the audience to a conclusion they desperately want them to reach. You know what we call that? Being a con man! That's what religion is!

An excellent article, o Prophet! You are far gentler than I could possibly be.

Seeing as though something can't come from nothing, then where did god come from? God is a something so did it come from nothing or did it come from something?

Hey man, I happen to be *extremely* Protestant, and I want to tell you…that this was a very gracious and fair and kindly stated argument. Nice job.

Most of the "I used to be an atheist" stories that I've heard aren't lies, it's usually that they came from a background that didn't talk about religion. They were apathetic atheists, which is in stark contrast to ex-Christians who fully understand both sides of the arguments and came to a reasoned conclusion that it was false.

Good content and very graciously presented.

Or she heard it from craig and thought it was her thought. You could play bingo with tanners thought.

I love how theist like to pull the “No true Scotsman” whenever anybody leaves their faith. But then completely accept someone when they say they use to be a atheist…