If you want to disprove atheism all you have to do is provide evidence - any evidence - for a god - any god. Until they can do that, atheism remains the default.
@@richardlaiche8303 "Everything that isn't belief is atheism." By one definition, only; by the definition that says "disbelief", no. Saying "I don't know" or "I don't believe" is NOT a DENIAL of a claim but being unconvinced. Note that (typically) those who do believe also do not know; that is (typically) one reason why it is called belief/faith-belief, BECAUSE they do not know. Those who neither believe nor disbelieve, but are unconvinced, are today called agnostics-and by the "disbelief" definition, agnostics are not atheists. It is the lack-faith definition where agnostics get classified (by some) as atheists, potentially an unfair classification that disallows their own self-identifying as agnostics. By yet another (and ancient) definition, just about everyone is an atheist, regarding someone else's god that they don't believe in. I identify as agnostic. As such, I believe it is presumptuous to say there are no gods anywhere in the Universe; though there don't seem to be any making themselves obvious here at Earth.
Atheism doesn't make sense but a talking snake along with unicorns, coming back to life after death, all species in a floating boat for one year, and the earth being 6000 years old makes sense. Got it.
"I don't know" is usually an acceptable answer and frustrates believers. I'm not sure why. Maybe because if you don't know something you might start asking questions. And asking questions might lead to answers they don't like.
I know that when I was still attending church and doubting and asking questions, I was encouraged not to ask questions, and instead I was told I should just have more faith and pray more (my faith "wasn't strong enough"). If I did do any research, it had to be Christian content or books by other believers like the Case for Christ. When I watched the first video by a skeptic/atheist on RU-vid, what struck me the most was that it ended with "Don't believe me, do your own research. Look at both sides". After being told for so long to only listen to other believers and not to research the other side, this view of question everything and research both sides changed my whole perspective and ultimately lead to my full deconstruction. So I think that may be exactly what they are afraid of. - Kat
I always found the "purpose" argument especially trite. What Christians are really saying when they say that the purpose of life is to praise God is that, in their opinion, God created himself minions to praise him, and if you fail to do so, you fail your purpose, like a hammer is useless that can't be used to hammer nails into a wall. But how does that give my life meaning? It makes people utterly interchangeable, what matters is that God gets his praise from someone, but whether that's me or anyone else doesn't matter. If what you care about is hammering nails into a wall, then it doesn't matter which hammer you use, as long as there is one. But it gets even worse. From an individual's perspective, and under the assumption that their God is real, the choice is either to praise him or to be subjected to eternal torture in hell. That's like saying, the purpose of a prisoner is to sit in prison, when the alternative is being executed. "Your purpose is to praise God, *or else*," is not a slogan I'd be so smug about. But even that does not go to the heart of the matter. He's saying, a universe in which my God exists is superior to a universe in which no god exists, because in a universe without a god, your life does not have a purpose. If we accept that premise for the sake of the argument, that still does not make it more likely that there is a god. Just because you'd like it more does not make it so. And if there really is no god or a god who does not give a fig about being praised, your stated "purpose" is an utter waste of time. Moreover, if we are in such a universe, you've given yourself this purpose of praising a non-existing god. I don't know about you, but I prefer to give myself a purpose that actually means something to me, like loving my family, helping people, enjoying the one life I have, maybe leaving the world a better place for the people that come after me.
We 100% agree with you. It always rubbed me the wrong way how the notion of "Free Will" came off mafia-like, "it's a nice life you have here, it would be a shame if you didn't believe in me..." We plan to talk more about this topic you mentioned in a future video actually! Maybe it's the Boy Scout in me, but I also agree with leaving no trace and leaving this world a little better than we entered it. - Joe
After watching this video I was surprised to see that your channel is relatively new and that you don't have anywhere near the amount subscribers you deserve. You really put out some quality content and present your point of view in a calm and collected manner without taking offence or resorting to dishonest arguments. Keep up the great work and I'm sure a lot more people will take notice of your channel. 🙂
Where did god come from. Where did the universe come from. Where did god get everything. Or was it just holy magic tricks. And he made a riddle book to keep humans busy. A book of lies and fantasy. With words that can easily be twisted and abused. To gain power over others. And spread fear so that people need to constantly beg.
@@mcollins476 I don't have to because I don't expect you to believe it. I'm not asserting it as a scientific theory. It's a personal held reality model based on what I believe to be a preponderance of the evidence (not beyond a shadow of doubt). I think Reality must be infinite because for it have some finite character that character must be chosen randomly, in which case there must be a basis of the randomness, leading to a stack of turtles. Further that infinitude can explain synchronicity, which I'm convinced is not just apophenia. If Reality (I hesitate to say Universe or even Multiverse) is infinite in the special sense of comprehensiveness then probability distortions could occur due to its necessary constant growth, its replication of more complex time space continue at a greater rate than simpler ones. The future affects the past so as to promote more possible outcomes, which functions as the basis of a universal mind with a will. Is there a commandment that thou shalt not assert concepts that aren't conclusively proven. Duck.
@@Sue-xv8os I'd also point out that now we can supplement the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics with the 2nd Law of Infodynamics (it's a thing). There are conflicting forces increasing and decreasing entropy. And it happens that optimizes complexity.
Whether you believe in God or not, is based on your definition of the word God. If you simple define God as the sum of all things, who can argue that everything doesn't exist. If you define God as that which formed the Universe, who can deny the Universe was formed. If you define God as the Universe itself, then you just need to prove the Universe exist in order to demonstrate that the God you defined exist.
I like your approach and the candor and compassion with which you discuss this topic. It can be thorny in the best of circumstances. I wish you the best of luck and will try and let my friends know about your channel so they can check it out and hopefully help you grow. The world could benefit from trying your approach for a change instead of always going on the attack. Take care & Best Wishes. 🎉
Liked and subbed. Carry on. Oh, I spent 21 yrs in the Army. Most chaplains were nice and not like this dude, and did serve a purpose in reassuring scared young soldiers that they'll end up in heaven. Fortunately, the Army never compelled us to go to church.
Thank you for your willingness to serve the American people. But honestly I can't resist saying that the purpose of the chaplains was... What to convince more people to be willing to die and kill others, on both sides? Yay /s If you can't convince people that their actions and risks are necessary for their family and nation to be safe then maybe they have a right to be scared of death... Obviously things can get more complicated and you can be scared even while being convinced and determined about the necessity but... It just feels like a major abuse of belief to me. I graduated in 2011 and by that point there was already plenty of debate about 9\11 and weapons of mass destruction, let alone the previous wars... So I didn't see the military and government as worthy of my trust and life, even though there clearly does need to be some military to safeguard our nation and people. Again, thank you for your willingness to serve the American people, it is important and can never truly be properly appreciated by those who were not involved or rewarded.
@@Sue-xv8os yeah, no Vietnam war, no nuking Japan, no Iraq, no nato ... Not really helping the cause. I mean no world war involvement either. And as I said in the original reply, of course we do need a military. That doesn't mean it hasn't been abused just because we have it though.
What I call God is what you call the universe. What you call nature is just how God behaves. The universe supports me and gives me everything I need and I trust it to do so because it’s been proven to me that it does. So, I am grateful to the universe (God) for loving me and I know that what I put out is what I get back. The “God” that murdered people in the Old Testament may as well have just been a petty extraterrestrial entity who just wanted power and control. That’s not my God.
Why is it that atheists are always said to believe that something came from nothing? When we ask where did God come from, we get the answer that he's always been here. Why is it so hard to then believe that we can skip a step and just say that the Universe, in some form, was always here? Also, even if you could prove that there is a god through some sort of logical means, it doesn't mean that that god is your specific god that you describe. The real god (or gods) may not be anything like what your religion describes.
@@diogeneslamp8004 I do see their point on this. Science describes the natural, in other words, things that follow the laws of physics. Something supernatural would be able to violate the laws of physics (hence the term supernatural). If I don't believe in god(s) then it means that I would suggest that the universe came into its present form by natural means. Being created from nothing does not follow the laws of physics, thus making it supernatural. I'd just conclude that reality was never created, that it has always just existed, and has changed form. It is entirely plausible to me that our universe was someone's toy "firecracker" that they set off and then walked away from. Their physical scale, their time scale, their physical laws, everything about their existence may be on an entirely different scale from ours, and our universe's life and death may be occurring in the blink of their eye on their scale. All they may see is a pop of light, without being able to discern the swirling masses in an ever expanding little universe, where our entire existence passes unnoticed in its minute detail. To me, that is just as plausible as believing that some supernatural being created us for his own enjoyment, and that we are meant to worship that being for unending time.
@@lokilawson In another context I noted that a Kardyshev type >3 civilization might have created our universe and we could never know if we can’t explore before the Planck time. They might be a natural product of their universe and not gods as we think of them (particularly modern conceptions of big-G God). It might be Kardyshev 4 alien turtles all the way down, but we may never know. There’s therefore no justification for invoking the supernatural.
I’m becoming weary of people with a very poor understanding of science, “debunking” science. “I can’t understand this thing. Therefore JESUS! BIBLE!” Uh no, that definitely doesn’t logically follow.
I have yet to watch the whole video, but how is atheism more nonsensical than Christianity, where seas were divided, the sun was stopped, a snake talks, city walls were destroyed by screaming at them, etc...
It's all a miracle. You have to believe in a miracle because God told u to. But why am I being asked to do so? "Absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence" However, a long, thorough, failed search for evidence *is* evidence of absence. So Christians do not know how evidence works and why we need it to believe in something. Pretty much they've been blindly following something through indoctrination and what not. So they're obliged to call atheism nonsensical. This is how a cult manipulates you.
For that matter I love your handle because it’s such a dad joke and because there are truly only two kinds of people in this world: people who love bacon and people who are wrong.
If God is All Knowing he shoulda known better before he created people and the Devil if he hates them. Former Episcopalian Priest Alan Watts claimes that Preachers are dangerous and that everybody and EVERYTHING IS God in his lecture - On Being God.
"idk" is an intellectually lazy answer because im not asking what you "know" but what you think happened that caused us to be here. If you knew how it started or that god was real it wouldnt be a belief. Unfortuantely after improvably stacked on improbable a not so common planet around a not so common sun that happens to be in a realtively safe place in a galaxy can we ever start talking about the origins of life. The proper folding of the 1 of the building blocks of life is 10^156 there are only 10^86 atoms in the universe... You would need multiple building blovks at the same time in the hostile environment of early earth. God of the gaps = time of the gaps for atheist except time only hurts their argument because chem degradation.
We did indeed evolve from monkeys. We evolved from old-world monkeys (the kind of monkeys that have no tails). So, yes, we are monkeys. Check out Aron Ra's videos about human evolution
I think what they're asking is, why did something like a chimp evolve into humans, while chimps as we know it are still chimps. The answer is because there's still food in them trees. Some of the apes left and went looking for food in fields, and would later give rise to humans, but some apes stayed in the trees, and continued evolving in a way that made them even better at living in trees. We wouldn't expect them to evolve longer legs and trading their raw strength for great stamina, because those adaptations wouldn't have suited them. As for our intelligence, not everything evolves to be more intelligent. It just happened to be useful for us in our environment. The popular theory is that a more meat based diet gave us more energy which allowed our big energy hungry brains to evolve.
The human race developed and as it matured it used religion and make believe to explain the unexplainable then, today we have science and religion is being seen for what it is, make believe.
Technically, atheism does have a list of core beliefs. 1. There is currently insufficient evidence to conclude that a god or gods exist. What? I never said it was a particularly long list.
Invisible silent imaginary supernatural entities. Now that makes a whole lot of sense. Talking donkeys, giants, a super hero who can walk on water ( physically impossible), come back from the dead ( physically impossible), heal the blind, raise the dead ( again physically impossible) that all makes sense............................NOT. I will grant you - turning water into wine makes A LOT OF SENSE! .You should investigate dying and rising cults and remember that the Jesus myth is one of several examples of a dying and rising cult, all with very similar stories of virgin births ( now that doesn't make a lot of sense) and dying and rising after 3 days. Let's not forget the Angel Gabriel. He told a virgin she was preggers, then zooms off to effectively form Islam ( now that makes no sense at all). Athiesm is a rejection of all of this supernatural nonsense which has ZERO evidence. Faith is also something which makes no sense either. Belief without evidence is no way to conduct yourself .
I'd subscribe to turning water into wine (without needing a vineyard and to wait forever). Also, total side note, talking donkeys would be a real pain in the ass... - Joe
Nice, RU-vid gave me someone new in my feed! Though I feel like I'd be remiss if i didn't propose something lol. Any chance that when you don't already have a topic planned you could cover The Satanic Temple? 😅 It's one I've had some interest in for a while and am technically a member of. Though I'll acknowledge that it IS a slightly different topic. Or free will is a fun one too. Regardless I've subscribed so i can catch whatever new videos you find yourselves spending time on :)
Thank you so much for your support! Glad RU-vid sent you our way! 🙂 Free will is definitely on our list, and we may talk about it in an upcoming video a bit as well. We really like the idea of going over the Satanic Temple and the claims about them, because we know there are a lot of misconceptions about them, plus we are not entirely familiar with them and we would love to learn more about what they actually stand for. (Plus it will give our parents a Satanic Panic!)
Actually the current hypothesis is that the initial singularity consisted of a false vacuum in a very high energy state collapsed due to quantum fluctuations (which would be extremely pronounced in a false vacuum in a very high energy state), producing all the energy that comprises the matter & energy currently in the universe, as well as the energy required for the initial expansion of the Big Bang. I'm not a scientist myself, but this hypothesis makes a lot of sense to me - certainly a lot more sense than a supernatural being whose existence has never been verified speaking the universe into existence by magic
I have helped many Christians through my life and often in very difficult situation. Why should I be the target of Conservative Christians who give no thought to my individuality. Why should I be criticized with no consideration of my actions. I have also helped native people and others from different cultures and religions. With out the need to be insulting. And why should I listen to ignorant Christians who do not understand how the world works. Christians that lack the knowledge or imagination to understand atheism. Or people who fear or hate us. We live in a rapidly changing and amazing world. Even without giving credit to some unknown god. Are atheist frightening to Christians because of our courage, logic, knowledge, independence, freedom, curiosity, creativity, and confidence. We do not fear gods. And have the knowledge that the bible is not 100% true. C Christians need to learn to adapt for the future. Scientific knowledge is advertising rapidly. And C Christians will look dumber and dumber in future. Science is not out to destroy weak Christians that fear the future. Scientists have many motivations. Religion is usually low on the list. Finding empirical truth is higher. And the more information we gather the more questions we will have. And find more answers. Science is not perfect but the philosophy of science is self improving and self correcting. Scientists may never understand where the universe came from as their is such little evidence. That is not a failure. That is a logical fact. And god will not answer your questions. Just read your old book and create a new fallacy.
No matter who you are, you will be watched closely until people lose interest. Even when I moved to new neighborhoods, I could feel the neighbors get out their binoculars and part the curtains a bit; young, old, cool, bad... they will see you as mysterious until you prove yourself or someone else comes along for them to size up but you need to know your neighbors as well. I live between a Pentecostal on one side & and a Protestant Elder on the other and I cannot afford to lose their friendship. They'll never know the real me & as you said, my "individuality". The media has made the world a fearful place and that's the secret behind controlling a society is through fear, and it works & keeps people paranoid of strangers. But it's always been that way. It's the fear of the unknown.
Your comment has NO meaning. Babble, Babble Hey, making baseless claims of fact is easy! Why didn't I think of this before - no thought is even required :D
@@mrjesuschrist2u a theist's claim and assertion. The burden of proof is on the theist. Since no theist were ever able to provide sufficient proof, an atheist will never be convinced until there is so.
@@theofaron961 an atheist claim is still a claim "i dont believe god exists" You dont have proof of your concept on how life originated.... We both only have evidence. If we had PROOF it wouldnt be a belief system.
@@mrjesuschrist2u I never said God didn't exist or ever did I say I believed in anything. I said, I am not convinced. NO ONE knows how life originated but it is the theist who asserted that he or she does. The theist has the burden of proof. The theist is the one with a "belief system" and it is called faith because there really isn't any evidence of any gods that can lead to proof.
@@theofaron961 lol you live out your beliefs, you don't have a god atheism is the religion of arbitrary and self making up your own values and morals often just stealing judeochristian values that make them feel good. You are making the claim God doesn't exist when you call yourself an atheist but you're more of the Apatheist denomination which is the intellectually lazy version of atheism. You're not convinced, I get it, that is still a position. It's an on or off switch about God, a true dichotomy. You happen to be on the off side even if it's just 51% off but clearly enough off to declare yourself an atheist hahaha.
@@Garroh I don't need to watch the video. The claim is about atheism, I described atheism and used the claim of the title... It's quite simple actually...
@@Garroh May be the case, but considering that I'm only talking about the title, it doesn't really matter. I would in extension have just mocked the initial claim with my comment then...
Fallacy on the Play: Begging (or Beggaring) the Question, wherein a conclusion (e.g. that any god exists; that the universe has a purpose) is falsely assumed in the premises. You've not only assumed that a god exists, you've done it without any evidence whatsoever. Baseless, illogical claims are not evidence of anything.
I give you your own "holy" book as evidence that atheism is the truth. More folks come to atheism after reading your pornographic fiction than by any other path.
Simple one, God is perfect and we were made in his image so we should be pretty close to perfect right? Except we're not anywhere close to that as evidenced by the multitude of ways our bodies break down over time, how we have blind spots in our eyes due to how the optic nerve connects, knees are prone to damage just by design but could be improved in the same way that shoulder joints work, spines that do not function well to support a bipedal creature... What does make sense for all of that? Unintelligent design through evolution that blindly works through the cheapest method that just kinda works. Unless your argument is that our BODIES aren't made in the image of God but rather our souls. In which case, there's plenty of examples of jacked up souls too murderers, rapists, corrupt politicians etc. But let's say that's not enough because you think that's just the work of sin and the devil and God doesn't have that problem. You have numerous issues with various versions of the Bible, and mistakes in every one. Sure, you can say well it wasn't literally written by God and the devil wanted more confusion in the world! We can point out how there have been multiple religions throughout history and how Christianity, and the older Judaism, seems to pull from the religions that existed prior. More devil confusion and human mistakes right? Ok. How about faith healing? That is disproven practically every single time anyone actually tests it. What about massive plagues and migrations in the Bible that supposedly happened during recorded history? But with nothing ever being recorded about such momentous events? Does any of this prove beyond a shadow of doubt that there is no God that made the universe? No, but it's plenty of evidence to say that the Christian God probably isn't real when so many things about the "Holy" book are problematic. If God can't protect his own Word to his followers can ANYTHING we hear about him be trusted to be true? No. The same is true for practically every religion when you sit down and critically examine the claims made by it. The overwhelming conclusion from ALL of this evidence together is that there is no God.
2:14 this is exactly the point, that Christians mean, when they consider atheism a "religion". Agnosticism is actually more rational, because it does not imply a belief. "Hard" atheism is actually a belief, because if someone, whose main thinking paradigm is based on science and thus the mechanisms of proof, "believes with certainty" something that he can never be certain of, he has by definition a "belief". Not automatically a religion, but a belief. Religion is not the same as belief. So, atheism is not a religion, because this would imply further features, but it is for sure a belief. What is sometimes subsumed under this "something from nothing" argument are simply the classic questions: Why does something exist rather than nothing? How come there is reality at all? How come there is a universe, if there has never been any moment or impulse of intention at all? How come, reality had a moment of instability once? It must have had, because without a moment of instability, the universe would be in perfect balance, static, not dynamic. A reality with dynamism and changes, any "process" presupposes an instability. What caused this instability? This ongoing change? An eternal universe is not an answer at all, because the most striking question still remains unanswered: Why? In nature there is always a cause. The problem, theists have with atheism is the fact that atheists seem to avoid the most basic questions. For a theist, reality without "God" is a contradiction, because God IS reality. Therefore a sentence like "God does not exist" does not make any sense to a theist, because he immediately asks, well, what is the foundation of all these things that surround us then? Then we live in a dream, and even this is impossible, because it presupposes a dreamer and so on. It is not that God is somewhere in the universe, no, it's not like that in classic scholastic theism. Sure, there are many people who believe so, especially Non-Catholics. But this is actually a pagan belief. In classic theism God is not local, not a being you can describe or point at. It is the phenomenon of being, of reality itself. The point about theism is simply the idea, that at the very base of everything existing there is: "mind". In principio erat verbum. In the beginning there was the word, the logos. Mind over matter, not the other way around, because this does not make any sense to a theist. He then asks you: ok, there exists matter first. Why?.......... Therefore a theist does not buy this random universe narrative. I could go on in further detail, but I think this illustrates the point quite well. If you think about it in detail, it is not at all that easy and the argument that atheism makes no sense is by far not that far fetched. Your video does not at all debunk this argument, it debunks some light-hearted forms of religious argumentation. But believe me, you cannot debunk religion, it is not possible. Of course you cannot prove it either. But, this is not the point about religion anyway, so the fact that you cannot prove it, is pointless. It is not about proving anything at all, although many apologists behave this way........ ;-)
I can see you don’t like paragraphs so I’ll address your themes. Atheism/theism addresses belief; agnosticism addresses knowledge. One can have belief without knowledge but not knowledge without belief. So a gnostic atheist knows there is no god (a “hard” atheist), while an agnostic atheist isn’t convinced that a god exists so provisionally rejects belief absent convincing evidence. (You mention hard atheism at first, but you never then follow up with a discussion of soft atheism and tend to conflate the two in your subsequent discussion.) There is a binary sense in which one is either a theist or an atheist: a theist is sufficiently convinced of a god that they accept the premise and everyone else is an atheist, including those who aren’t certain (because they’re not willing to assert existence). Atheism is the negative answer to one question-does a given god exist-and is the only rational response when no convincing evidence exists. The only reason you say it isn’t rational is because you conflate hard and soft atheism. Next your address origins. You say that everything in nature has a cause (which isn’t true at the quantum level) so the universe must have a cause. You ignore the fact that we only know everything has a cause because we can observe that fact, directly or indirectly. We haven’t seen any universes come into existence so we can’t say with certainty that the universe has a cause because that causal conclusion can only be inferred. We know that the current presentation of our universe developed about 14 billion years ago from a singularity in an event we call the Big Bang, but we don’t know what happened before the Planck time. We can posit ways in which this singularity could come into existence without divine intervention or contravention of the laws of physics, but we currently have no way to explore these ideas in reality. You’re no more justified in saying a god created the universe than I am in saying an alien civilization at Kardyshev scale >3 created it. We just don’t know. You take it on faith that a god did it because you can’t tolerate the gap, but I’m comfortable admitting I don’t know. Finally, if your god is the phenomenon of being, we already have a word for that (“reality”), but also you have no justification for assuming a universal mind other than you can’t imagine how it could be otherwise. Compounding fallacies-god of the gaps, personal incredulity-doesn’t get you any closer to the truth.
If William Lane Craig is your only source of knowledge about evolution, you not only don’t know anything about evolution, you actually believe a lot of false information about it
I'm not even going to watch, because I know it will be BS reasons and fallacies... I can make this real easy... I'm an atheist, I don't believe any gods exists because it has never been demonstrated to be true. Can you demonstrate your god is real, here in reality, with empirical evidence, objectively verifiable evidence or a novel testable prediction?
