The Case for God? (Part 2 of 2)

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Aired September 6, 2010 on BBC One -
To mark Rosh Hashanah, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks interviews four distinguished and engaging atheists in The Case For God?.
By having his own faith challenged by some of today's finest atheist minds, Lord Sacks attempts to get closer to what faith means. He interviews writer Howard Jacobson, who feels that religion is too bogged down by rules and regulations, while philosopher Alain de Botton does not believe any one religion can be the true faith". Scientist Colin Blakemore insists that science makes religion redundant, and professor Lisa Jardine maintains that human suffering undermines faith in God.
Will the Chief Rabbi find areas of common ground with these atheists and their issues with faith, and will it make him rethink his own beliefs?
via www.AtheistMedi...
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8 сен 2010

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Комментарии : 125

@doodelay 10 лет назад

I'm atheist but watching this i must say that this rabbi is the most respectful religious Person that I've ever heard. Bravo. Dare i say that he's taught me that there's a different breed of openmindedness than the idea of possibly being wrong.

@brahilly 5 лет назад

I like how you've reacted. Sacks is a fascinating guy. Would love to meet him.

@joshuamartinpryce1237 Год назад

The case for God is evident in everyone's lives, not just believers. God is around us and He is present in every life. Circumstances and opportunities are the same for everyone. Everything is the same for all. The rich do something to become rich, the poor do nothing with the same opportunities to become poor. Life is fun for the hard worker, but a huge problem for the mentally downcast. This is where God comes in. When someone succeeds its because they had fellowship in the Spirit and also was mentally focused. mental focus after being knocked down so many times comes from spiritual growth and the power of the human spirit and faith.

@cookiemonster3147 3 года назад

This is so interesting! I would see all 100 parts if they were made.

@jambimon 13 лет назад

Perhaps the Atheist did take it easy on him, but as an atheist/agnostic, I very much appreciate the civil tone maintained throughout. If we can speak calmly, and in measured response, I feel that some day we can at least get the religious to leave others alone about their faith, which would be victory enough for me.

@9vickiSue9 12 лет назад

I am very grateful for this video and for the messages given to us all.

@myopenmind527 8 лет назад

I find it truly unbelievable that Jonathan Sacks doesn't see his own indoctrination and irrational biases. Instead of accepting there are things that are unknown he prefers to maintain a level of scientific ignorance and believe there is a ghost in the machine when it comes to consciousness and free will. I can feel Colin Blakemore's frustration.

@bobblue_west 8 лет назад

( indoctrination ) a practice central and essential to religions. Imagine encouraging critical thinking. Religions would be fading faster than analog TV sets.

@SeedsofJoy 12 лет назад

Neither the theist or atheist positions are represented particularly well here. Only emotional pleading and edging around good arguments for and against God that many more knowledgable philosophers of religion would raise.

@bananacake9289 3 года назад

I disagree, with respect to you..... Why not watch it again, and again and again???? None of the participants have much time to present their views IMO which is a shame, even so.....I’m finding it quite illuminating! I wish I could have sat down personally with Rabbi Sacks, sadly it will now never be possible 😢 All the best to you.....from a lady who ‘DOES’ have a belief in God.... .HE got me SOBER..... and I remain that way 25 yrs on.... I wonder how any atheists would explain that one(?) 💕🙏🏻🇬🇧

@MrPerfectlogic 11 лет назад

In Christianity, man is appointed to die once, and after that face judgment. Those who believe go to heaven, while those that rejected God suffer eternity in hell. After the culmination of the events of the Book of Revelation all believers are bodily resurrected. The Jewish God is about here and now, the Christian God is about the after life.

@redscarecomixx8488 5 лет назад

"Why would we need faith in anything anymore?" That is just a sad, sad statement.

@lizgichora6472 5 лет назад

Very interesting! Thank you.

@Braglemaster123 8 лет назад

Brilliant, Rabbi Sacks

@benthejrporter 12 лет назад

Very interesting. Thanks.

@alastairmoody798 10 лет назад

Professor Blakemore aknowledged his stark reductivism, agreeing that "electrical impulses in the brain" are there but not "I" or "you". But as if to sweeten this, he takes exception to Rabbi Sacks' use of the word "just", to re-iterate that in using this word Sacks makes of the belief that we are indeed completely causal machines and without free will "trivial". But if Professor Blakemore also wants to point to - in case we should feel any despair - the beauty (he uses the word "advisedly", he tells us) we can appreciate in the stupendous complexity and wondrousness that it is in fact the case that "I" and "you" are an illusion, surely it is this very capacity to appreciate beauty that is trivialised? The freedom of claiming that this, and not that, is beautiful is denied to me, because (according to Professor Blakemore's lights) I am not free. So there can be no beauty.

@gremlinn7 14 лет назад

The rabbi LOVES appealing to consequences, doesn't he? "You can't *really* believe that, can you? WHAT? That would be HORRIBLE to my worldview if it were true, so it's not!"

@Braglemaster123 8 лет назад

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks is amazing !!!!! And HaShem leads him.

@SamuelFaict.Filmmaker 11 лет назад

The problem are the fanatics.

@Richard-hv5hh 2 года назад

As a secular Jew I really resent any religious figure telling me what God thinks. It is presumptuous as it basically boils down to I know the mind of God and you don't. Christopher Hitchens often spoke about this and would challenge the notion that "you have access to information about God's thoughts that I don't have." I think Hitchens saw this as arrogant and untrue, and I agree with him. Dr Sacks does this all the time. He is a nice man but I do not believe he has any more idea of God's thoughts than I do regardless of whether he is religious or not. I think Judaism is terrific on it's emphasis on behaviour above faith and it would be a much more attractive way of life if the God part was simply eliminated. I think in this day and age we should move on from the primitive man made god idea. No more evidence for it than fairies, and if anybody told me they believed in fairies I would not want to know them. I don't find any of Rabbi Sacks arguments convincing at all.

@hwk1969 14 лет назад

These are hardly harsh critics. More like friends than anything else. This is a soft ball exercise.

@ROFLCOPTER1909 14 лет назад

It's nice for once to see a religious debate which is civilised, while still tackling the big questions. If every encounter between religious believers and atheists was like this humanity would progress far quicker.

@shanellypooh 13 лет назад

He lost his faith in humanity when we exercised our freedom and did evil but when we choose to do good he sees God. I'm confused.

@leandrocruz 12 лет назад

Many people would be surprised to know that there is an unescapable conclusion/explanation for the existence of God which is not based on religion. Instead, it's based on logic and supported by science. I recommend the work of R. C. Sproul on this issue. You may not agree (surrender), but you will have to deny logic and that will make you mad!

@Eldritch78 14 лет назад

I wonder if this series was heavily edited for content, or if the Rabbi actually told the interviewees: "hey, i want to talk to you to challenge my faith, but you only have five minutes... and please be overly polite."

@Hirnlego999 14 лет назад

Forget evil and the fact that god doesn't care... how about the existence of diseases, earthquakes and according to some religions hell? If God was a real person he'd stand in trial for crimes against humanity.

@maximuscatus1 12 лет назад

We are too unique as a human being. If there is no God then we started from nothing and end up from nothing. So if you die then we can say, so what? too bad? If there is no God then there are no right and wrong, we build our moral as we go. Look for this documentary film by Lee Strobel "the case for creator" I think faith is a gift and if you do not have faith, you have not receive that gift.

@TheXtdesign 3 года назад

Brilliant! Great conversation!

@andreasgigmai7707 Год назад

THANK YOU!😊

@MarkRyanNZ 14 лет назад

A lot of interesting conversations, BUT all of them were pretty inconclusive actually. When you understand the psychological aspect of how faith can also lead to ignorance and preaching it is also indirectly responsible for a lot of current issues arising from religion. Things can not be simple because the religious text are constitutions of each religion and its culture and it is highly protected by principles of dogma. And, therefore faith arise due to recognition of human vulnerability.

@michaeloverstreet986 3 года назад

Always begin with “why”! How and what are incidental without a well thought out understanding of “why”.

@tristbjorn 14 лет назад

It's clear from this conversation, that the rabi just can't get around to a world where humans aren't magic beings. It's the base problem between rationalists and believers.

@3dge--runner 10 лет назад

Blakemore kicks ass. free will is an illusion and that takes nothing away from being human, as the rabbi implies.

@ganuv 9 лет назад

Who am I? blackmore is a Complete moron ! and free will is the choice you make. IDIOT

@liamstrain 14 лет назад

Really? The Rabbi is saying that the secular argument Blakemore presented precludes free will? And that the god of the Torah allows it? The mind boggles.

@briddle2 13 лет назад

@waksibra It was a saving face debate. They didn't bring out the heavy guns but they have them. It was an exercise designed to provoke us to thought. Each side presented the concepts that they thought were enough to stimulate thought and arm us for some reasonable beginning. In that sense they were the finest minds. But I feel nice, polite, debate is a waste of time. Time. It's so critical.

@MrPerfectlogic 11 лет назад

The assumption is that there is free will. Otherwise you have to release every single criminal, as they had no choice but to do what they did, law becomes irrelevant.

@melese1988 11 лет назад

That's not whole picture. Even if we are completely "robots" we still have the ILLUSION of free will. I agree that morality then seems utterly artificial, but still we want and can put someone in prison. In short, if free will is an illusion, we can 'act freely' (though in illusion).

@rstdot 13 лет назад

humans DO have free will, the difference rabbi is that you think it results from magic and scientists believe that free will (as well as everything else) results from physical law. We may not yet know how, but at least we KNOW we don't know how, as opposed to, like the religious, assume we DO know because of ancient myths.

@johnnythelowery 13 лет назад

for me---It's always a question of authority. Does it matter that some people want to pic-n-mix if, say, the matter of pic-n-mix has been declared and decided by God before hand.

@antybu86 14 лет назад

So the Rabbi thinks this was a "challenging program" yet there was nobody who really brought the heat... even the women who presented the problem of evil didn't even really present it very well.

@ganuv 9 лет назад

Not even one of them make an in-lighting impression except the rabbi. There is nothing in science that explains the conscious and creations cannot creat themselves, physical elements are bounded in time and anything that is related to time has a beginning. There is a great harmony and balance in all diversity of creation ,just like a pianist is the only one that can play music that invokes emotions playing the white and black keys, the universe needs a conductor and a cosmic designer to have it so perfectly tuned for life in such harmony.

@bokenstick 12 лет назад

Colin Blakemore is a great mind!

@mestrini 14 лет назад

@SophistAtheist Nope, that's what the rabi wanted us to register in our minds since he got the last word. What Blakemore said is that we (as a complete person with moral values, acquired knowledge, personality) are result of the interaction with the world (in all the forms possible). With all that in our possession we have the free will but logically our actions will reflect the influence of the world upon us.

@EdVidz 13 лет назад

@myjizzureye Actually most of your second sentence's is not exactly patented by organized religion; the daily news doesn't ask miscreants what in their religious system validates their behavior. These are highly intelligent people not doing dogmatic road rage on camera, so Rabbi Sacks' discussions elevate both viewpoints. He punctures no one, slaps no one around, he behaves respectfully differing views. These discussions are top drawer and very helpful for both viewpoints don't you think?

@nayashams6845 6 лет назад

As long as all atheist create one cell of their bodies without using anything God created, I mean just going to lab without any instruments, I am going to believe one God. God has reason for anything he created. Do not blame God when people make a terrible, awful atrocity stains the each other. May God guide us all.

@bayreuth79 12 лет назад

In a certain sense Mr Blakemore has faith- that is, faith in science to explain everything. The point is: he cannot KNOW that science is capable of explaining everything. For instance, can science ever answer the question: why is there something rather than nothing? That is a metaphysical question, so it is beyond the remit of science. Hawkings claims that science can answer why there is something rather than nothing; but as we all know what he meant by "nothing" was in fact the quantum vacuum

@koosmangat 13 лет назад

he has not met richard dawkins...

@LongshanMusic 14 лет назад

the denial of 'freewill' is not a denial of what it means to be human. that isn't even a coherent thought unless one presupposes the video maker's definition of being a human, which is hardly much of a revelation.

@erik-forsstrom 14 лет назад

Blakemore has got it going on.

@1RadicalOne 14 лет назад

Mr Sacks' denigration of naturalism - such as his comment about symphonies being "just a bunch of soundwaves" is both ignorant and depressing. Does he have any idea just how beautiful the naturalist world is?

@postalgbv 14 лет назад

chief rabbi lord.. those are some fancy honorifics you have there, buddy. yours truly, His Serene Highness, Dr. Viscount Monseigneur, Esq.

@trapfish 13 лет назад

The Rabbi strikes me as a man with far too much invested in his "faith" to ever admit he might be barking up the wrong tree even though he actually uses Pascall's wager at one point. Nothing new in any of the talks but then there rarely is, it was nice to see different faces involved, but they were very soft on him. You don't have to be rude to be harsh and it won't keep letting theists off the hook.

@aaraobenchimol 11 лет назад

I understand your point of view. But I think that regardless the content of the interview itself, focus on what Sacks' is doing: he is forcing himself to think critically about the validity of his own belief system. (And, by the way, I think this is a very healthy thing to do once in a while). In this sense, I think, this interview can inspire you to do the same.

@PimpMyYugioh 5 лет назад

What wonderful people!

@MrNicks86 13 лет назад

Why's Gerry Adams wearing that hat??

@rstdot 13 лет назад

So much of religion stems from human ego. We think that we are so much more fucking awesome than cows and fish that there must be some magic in us. So many of us find it hard to grasp that the same physical laws that create "lower" beings also create us and those "special" things we have like "free will" and "creativity" and "philosophy." These "human" things are not magical or special. The physical laws and components of the universe have led to their creation.

@waksibra 14 лет назад

@BraveDadley You seem to know a lot about me. Did I every say I was religious? I'm an atheist, but that does not mean I think the atheists in this video had anything good to say.

@bayreuth79 12 лет назад

@sisko7 You then went on to write: "...science has an awesome definition on what 'nothing' is". Again you have completely missed the point. "Nothing" in the metaphyiscal question "Why is there something rather than nothing" means NON-BEING. Scientists do not use the term in its philosophical sense, but to denote the quantum vacuum, which is a field of energy. Therefore, nothing (i.e, non-being) has no properties whatsoever.

@B1G_ChUnG5 6 лет назад

If God is somehow “all knowing” how do we have freewill again?

@dovgrant1833 3 года назад

Our freewill exists within the continuum of time and is as real as time itself. God is beyond any time constraint; time itself is a creation. therefore his knowledge of what will be does not affect our freewill. He does however, sometimes suspend our freewill when His ultimate plan for Creation's perfection is challenged by Man.

@3LARI 14 лет назад

@FullTimeGunner me too and I think he was thinking that himself. The poor man was completely bewildered and confused for the whole programme. I actually felt sorry for him, trying to justify nonsense against some of the most intelligent people around at the moment. Alain De Botton just looked embarrassed and took pity on the man, he could have ripped him to shreds...

@ivanmikhailov 13 лет назад

white noise as hitchens would say

@TheGrapplingMonkey 14 лет назад

God is not the crowd... lol or did he say "Kraut" ... i don´t get it.

@SophistAtheist 14 лет назад

wait, the scientists think we don't have free will ? free choice ? can some one please explain ?

@amolapaz1 14 лет назад

I believe in God and I respect religion. However, even I must admit that these were very weak challenges to faith submitted by these atheists. As a matter of fact this whole thing looks edited as if there were other issues not presented to us. I think this "interview' gives us believers a false sense of security instead of forcing us to really think critically about the validity of our belief systems.

@bayreuth79 12 лет назад

Mr Blakemore has a monolithic conception of 'explanation'- all explanations are scientific explnations (scientism)-; but explanation is by no means monolithic nor does science have a monopoly on explanation. There are different kinds of explanation, so for example you can have a mechanistic explanation of something (this is science) and you can have an explnation in terms of an agent. God is NOT a mechanistic explanation, but an agent explanation as to why there is something rather than nothing.

@williamwilliams2592 9 лет назад

Regardless of how one slices and dices it...the religious believers insist on being the puppet of a puppeteer.

@Phelan666 14 лет назад

These interviews are obviously edited to cherry pick parts when this guy seems to be winning the argument. It's sorta funny that, with even his best answers, he is failing miserably.

@rockmyballsplease 11 лет назад

Please elaborate on the christian god.

@SlideRulePirate 13 лет назад

Seems a pretty abstract god Sachs has got there.

@Hirnlego999 14 лет назад

Free will? I will die against my will.

@mattpassive 14 лет назад

Put his religion to the test? How about showing some EVIDENCE for your god.

@bayreuth79 12 лет назад

@sisko7 You have no basis for describing me as a bigot, so have the courtesy to refrain from doing so again otherwise you can be assured I won't respond to you. With regards to explanations, I'm afraid you rather missed my point. I was saying that there are different kinds of non-competitive explanations, so that you can have an explanation for, say, a car in terms of its mechanisms (science) and in terms of an agent (Ford and his motivations for designing cars). Different & non-competitive.

@waksibra 14 лет назад

"finest atheist minds"? I have never heard of any of them and none of them were particularly good.

@3LARI 14 лет назад

@waksibra Imagine they had have asked Richard Dawkins to have a crack. He would have had the Rabbi in tears!

@lawrencetendler2342 7 лет назад

G-D CREATED SCIENCE BOZO AND G-D CREATES THE RULES OF SCIENCE.

@RedGaribaldi 14 лет назад

Did he just bless science? How patronising.

@melese1988 11 лет назад

Free will have not been established yet.

@bayreuth79 12 лет назад

@sisko7 You are yet another utube logical positivist (even if you are unaware of it). Are you not aware that this philosophy died years ago? I wonder if you believe in a Multiverse? "This proposal of a prodigious multiverse is not a scientific suggestion but a metaphysical speculation" (Professor John Polkinghorne, Cambridge University). I find it very unchallenging debating with people who have imbibed the unscholarly rants of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris.

@oaesan 14 лет назад

@coil311 God does exist, but he has made it extremely difficult for very logical people to believe in him. It's nothing short of a miracle when a mathematics professor professes faith in God. Faith is not logical and in many cases does not make sense. It's nothing short of describing colour to a blind person. For someone like me that believes in God, I do not strive to make an atheist believe. Faith is foolish & senseless until seen in another dimension that goes beyond human logic & reasoning.

@cskamoskva 13 лет назад

@RedGaribaldi what a patronizing comment.

@rstdot 13 лет назад

@rstdot how fuckin' awesome is it that physics creates Beethoven symphonies and Van Gogh paintings! *That's* the story I want to learn about. Forget the weak, invented myths. I want to know how THAT awesome thing happens!

@amolapaz1 13 лет назад

@Chimpdaddy Thank you

@pickagreatname 14 лет назад

@waksibra Remember that the people editing these conversations have an agenda. The interviewees could have been considerably better than we're seeing. None of them are that notable though, I agree.

@3LARI 14 лет назад

@Abena20 because his beliefs are wrong.

@watdoItellmychildren 14 лет назад

I was expecting a lot more from this programme. very disappointing, weak, soft rabbi Rosh Hashanah. " I bless you and i bless science" That's gold

@bgnin 14 лет назад

god this is fake money does terrible things on human integrity

@lawrencetendler2342 7 лет назад

Water in Hebrew is Mayim .MEM YUD MEM 2 mems and one yud = H2O

@Phelan666 14 лет назад

@smartalex1972 Then Hitchens comes in and pours his glass of rum on his face.

@Hirnlego999 14 лет назад

@manchester0613 Who wouldn't want to be? Fact is, if a deity was a politician and did nothing to take away a lot of the bad things let alone invent it all then he would be charged with crimes against humanity. Genocide even. God is not great. See the video "Yahweh's Delicious Creation "

@bayreuth79 12 лет назад

@sisko7 I have reviewed all my comments on this page and I can find nothing that would give you the right to describe me as a "bigot". I suspect that you described me thus because you don't like having your illogical and nonsensical statements challenged by people who actually have an advanced education and who read books!

@Phelan666 14 лет назад

Jonathan Sacks: Fractal wrongness. He is not just wrong. He is wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. zooming in on any part of his worldview shows beliefs exactly as wrong as his entire worldview.

@hyrcan 14 лет назад

This guy has no interest in risking his faith. There's no risk. He's not doing this to seek out change, but to prove to himself and give a show for people to say, "look look I survived these attack, they couldn't shake my fait" ...FAIL..

@bxs0099 14 лет назад

this makes no sense

@Cha4k 13 лет назад

All he really did was pump out these little sound-bytes that sound good but are complete nonsense. For example, "Religion isnt easy, nothing worthwhile is" Bullshit. Sounds good though, but bullshit. I find it incredibly easy to love my wife, Guess she's not worthwhile! :D

@sarkerm2 14 лет назад

I'm not buying what this guy is selling. The whole thing looks like scripted and the questions are total BS!

@simcult 13 лет назад

Weak.

@SpookyFan 14 лет назад

Weak sauce, rabbi.

@zacrl1230 12 лет назад

The fact that he calls WWII Germany or Japan a secular nation is an insult to secularism. Hitler was raised a catholic and had some belief in a higher power, after all he thought he was part of the "supreme" race, enough said. And the emperor of Japan thought he was a living God, discussion over.

@zacrl1230 12 лет назад

First, let me apologizes for taking so long to reply. Second, I could not agree with you more. As humans we are the masters of our own fate and the fate of those around us. When, and if, more people (myself included) take personal responsibility for the world around us. It will be a much better place. My only hope is that we can do it with open-minded, forward looking people. And not those looking to thousand year old bedtime stories.. But like you said, we all have our own opinions.

@zacrl1230 12 лет назад

"If God exists? How does evil exist?" God is evil.. Granted I am an atheist. So for me the answer would be that the idea of a god is evil.

@dovgrant1833 3 года назад

If God doesn't exist, but evil does - does that mean man is evil? Not in Jewish thought. Man can do evil acts or not, but they don't define him. Man has the ability to shape the world for good or bad, but the outcome does not represent the essence of Man. Similarly, but obviously not symmetrically, the presence of evil does not obviate the definition of God as good. While true He created the possibility of good and evil, nevertheless, he allows Man to shape the measure and form of both. God steps in only when Man's actions get so bad that there is no alternative but to step in and stop the decay. So why did God create the possibility of doing evil? Because without it there is no arena for the existence of freewill. And freewill is necessary for the continued existence of a world with a being - Man - that could emulate the Creator in all His aspects, including freewill. The greatest possibility of realizing good is actuated when one symbioses with that which is intrinsically good. So, ultimately, the possibility of evil is good (however, not in how far it's taken by Man) in the sense that it allows for Man's creation and continued existence.

@MrNicks86 13 лет назад

Why's Gerry Adams wearing that hat??