4. Alex O'Connor: Losing faith in New Atheism
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- A bonus episode of full conversation with popular atheist TH-camr Alex O Connor (aka Cosmic Skeptic). He talks to Justin about his own changing relationship with new atheism, and why he is rethinking some of his early takes on Christianity. The documentary format resumes next week.
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I admire Alex so much for being so consistently polite and open-minded (and also very smart and a great communicator).
God bless Alex for his honesty and humility. And for challenging us on our faith. Thank you Justin.
Alex has aged very well over the years. In his early stages I couldn’t even watch him because of his attitude, but now I watch him with curiosity and respect. Mainly because he’s become such a good speaker. Good on him
Shalom. I'm ex-atheist from Malaysia. I'm Catholic now 😊❤✝️
Why? Why that specific god? Why would you have to eat it's flesh as worship?
@@PaulBolton-jl2qmread a book
God Bless you. Welcome to the faith
@@PaulBolton-jl2qm Basically, the heart of the "gist" of a Christian deity is absolute moral purity combined with the innate knowledge we somewhere are morally failing requires the Deity to perform some unthinkable sacrificial miracle to somehow make us pure again, and that is the purpose of God becoming flesh.
Hallelujah. God bless you✝️🤲🏻
Hope Justin you appear on Alex’s top 9 questions Theists can’t answer!
Justin and Alex make a great duo for a relaxed discussion
I now call myself Agnostic after being an evangelical Christian but after recently listening to CS Lewis The Problem of Pain, I've realised nearly all of the Christian and Atheist arguments have been argued to the point of pointlessness. As Alex said there is a point at which you're just rehashing old arguments on both sides.
is it really pointless? math fundamentals are here to stay, and christians and theists still remain to stay religious
Ironic to me, because it was CS Lewis’s essays that turned me away from Christianity and toward Theravada Buddhism.
The points have been argued to death about 200 years ago. Probably earlier. I need to read Origen vs Kelsos. Pretty certain they already fought it out well enough 😂.
@@MrSeedi76 the critism of Christianity has been the same for 1500 years
As someone who has been housebound for 17 years with post viral disease sever pain & suffering no effective treatments or cure lost friends no job, can't have children. I respectfully disagree with C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain, 30 years a Christian 17 years of failed prayer now 7 months an athiest. The book that makes the most sense to me is ( Gods Problem Bart Ehrman ) it all makes perfect and yet terrible sense. There is no God and we struggle to deal with suffering as a species.
Love you both!
Interesting guy. I can identify with him in many ways. As a teenager/young adult I became almost nihilistic once I faced up to the emptiness of my materialistic world view and I expressed it at the Edinburgh Fringe - no TH-cam then! I also mixed with Christians to a limited extent and was impressed when I saw faith make a serious and positive difference. The main difference was I despaired of academia providing a definite answer. Instead I decided to go to the top and talk direct to the Christian God of love. Daily I said to Him, "God I don't believe you are there, but if you are please tell me." He answered me quickly - I sensed His presence and the Bible came alive - but it took me 9 months to accept I was not deceiving myself. I've never looked back.
Is this podcast just more popular on another site? You'd think an interview with someone as high profile as Alex would garner much attention, and I do like it so far.
Justin Braierly has hosted a show with lots of high profile guests.
TH-cam recommandation is still working its miracle.
1.3k views in 1 day with 8k subs on episode 4.
I don't follow Justin at all, but I'm listening because of Alex.
Give it a few days. It will probably pop off. Though there aren't any gotcha moments so far or anything crazy to clip out of context.
very badly selected title
New Atheism is up a creek without a paddle. Its philosophers are clueless about consciousness (the so-called ‘hard problem’ for philosophers), is it fundamental and mind, does it emerge with quantum events? The danger with atheism is that it comes up with ideologies to fill the void. Communism has been defeated but trans humanism (the human brain embedded with technology) is in the pipeline. Religion will defeat it also, and Christianity will continue to contribute to human flourishing, against the Muslim threat and the dangers of atheistic ideologies.
Here comes a conversion. It was only a matter of time
Conversion to which religion?
The path towards God is one of wrestling. And intellectuals tend to wrestle more. I absolutely love watching this process in real time with Alex.
31:57
Maybe the only thing he hasn’t genuinely tried is asking God through prayer… subconsciously I’d imagine a lifelong atheist wouldn’t want to the truth of God to come to fruition because then they’d have to yield to Him for sowing bad seeds. If they were to consider ever seriously asking God, would to imply He exists to ask, and therefore change their ways. Sad, but we can pray that God enters his life and any other atheist’s and they accept Jesus’ death for them and resurrection
I’ve felt spiritual highs of unconditional love, it definitely moved the dial but didn’t make me just believe in God, since I feel like non-theistic psychological explanations can provide a semblance of an answer for the adaptive benefit of having that be a psychological state the mind can produce, even if no divine being exists.
On an intellectual level, I also feel that some of Alex’s points speak to the philosophy of pragmatism, which essentially argues that belief shouldn’t necessarily be dependent on solely evidence, but also on experience and adaption. I think ideas like that work to open some intellectual room for the argument that faith in higher powers, even with no evidence, can be rational in the sense that, within our species, faith is consistently a seemingly inevitable outcome in response to certain conditions and is seen by many as an optimal decision in many contexts. Even from an atheistic perspective, if you want to frame faith as a dream-like state or something where full rational thought is suspended, there is still utility for those faculties to be suspended in specific circumstances, and it is fair as an atheist to allow that process to unfold since, presumably, atheists would also like to adapt well as human beings. That doesn’t mean you have to believe in God, but you can let the feeling of belief wash over you without judgement, and that’s what practices like meditation (which atheists San Harris endorses) are helpful for.
To me, this could help us
transcend the binary between belief and unbelief, allowing to recognize that sometimes we may believe, and sometimes we may not believe, and the distribution is different for everyone.
Everyone believes in something. The belief in nothing is still a belief. The binary difference is what happens when that belief falters or runs into a wall that you can't overcome.
That is what turns happiness into sadness, sadness into misery, misery into depression, depression into the abyss.
The counter argument of that is HOPE. Hope for a better tomorrow, Hope for a better future, Hope for the better things in life to come. More importantly HOPE for what lies beyond this world.
You felt spiritual highs of unconditional love but it didn’t make you believe in God? When do you randomly feel “spiritual” highs of unconditional love when you weren’t looking for it?.. Gods literally given you evidence and you intellectually thrown it away.
Losing faith in something that believes in nothing is a very serious sign of trouble. This is the end result of atheism though. When you finally lose that belief (and it is a belief) of nothing then where do you have to turn? No where. That is when you are looking into the abyss and the abyss looks back.
The problem he is running into is the human experience. The human experience is well not good in general. Human history has proven this. What has made human existence better or for some more tolerable is hope. Hope will burn the brightest when all other lights have been extinguished.
Hope that there is good not only on earth but in the universe itself.
So true
And once looked into the abyss, you go on and write "Also sprach Zarathustra" 😊.
Simply accepting that there is not more to life than life itself is not "staring into the abyss". It's facing reality.
Even if it was this "abyss" that you mention, your solution is to simply believe in something that soothes you?
If that's acceptable to you, I won't stop you. But it's not acceptable to me.
When something terrible happens in your life, you cry about and you face reality. We all know grasping for drugs to soothe the mind is not a healthy way to deal with the pain.
I always feel like religion is that easy way out. No need to deal with the pain now, grab a bible, ignore reality, you'll see grandpa when you're dead.
Alex strikes me as a genuine seeker to be honest. Just want to also say, that we should distinguish between whether we believe in a supreme being/God/reality or whatever we want to call it and all the 'stuff' that goes with that, dogmas, scriptures, concepts, etc. It's finding the way through all that to the source.
I'll pray that Alex hears the voice of God, imagine having Alex talking about it, and getting to follow his journey. What an influence that would have
It doesn't have to be true to be effective, or even life-changing.
It's difficult to imagine a world where religious beliefs are not contested. Claiming to understand the reasons for that are incredibly complex but at least science is brave enough to at least pick away at the challenge. Documented and trialed evidence is available to suggest that the proclaimed spirit evident in humans is merely a natural reaction to a particular environment. For instance, physical attraction between individuals is triggered by a proximity reactor. That occurs with all creatures and is not unique to human species. My view is that religion is best described as a ritual that prescribes a superior position probably seeded by some suggestion somewhere in the human history. Certainly I understand the utility of religion as I do the benefits of the Tooth Fairy, Santa Klaus and other identities of thought stimulation. The capacity for fantasy is embedded deeply within humans but I'm almost convinced that it is not unique to our species.
I’d like to ask Alex, if he were to have such an experience as to make him believe God exists, how much would it actually change his internet content? Because an experience is personal & can’t be used in any arguments, what would actually change intellectually? Would any of the arguments with which he is now pretty familiar, become, respectively, more/less convincing? Would the POE become less impressive? Would the KCA suddenly be more sound?
If new atheism fails , we can stil have improved new atheism or perfect atheism , there are still many options left.
How can atheism improve? It’s only a position. New atheism is dying because it’s empty and does contain truth.
What exactly does 'new atheism failing' mean? What does that entail?
@@grahamblack1961 In the worldview of the religious person it fails, meaning it is not convincing to them,and it failed to become dominant.
How can atheism be improved when its just a intellectual position? It can't get better then which it is now. Its failing because its just that.. a intellectual position, not a way of life, and people were sold snake oil that it would somehow librate them which it hasn't.
We can lose faith in New Atheism.
The big question is - Why have faith in Christianity?
Can i find that reddit video that was apparently homophonic 😂??
Interesting
I think maybe quite a few people find God when they’re not actually looking for God or a religious experience. Jesus says seek and ye shall find, but maybe God finds you sometimes when you aren’t looking for religion or placing yourself above God.
33:22 I respect Alex a lot but i do think hes beginning to be to easy and „unskeptic“ about this Religion topic. It really sounds like that he wants to be a Christian and basically tries to interprets any weird or spiritual experience as a religious one. And he can obviously do so if he likes but it just feels like hes getting a wishfull thinker more and more himself and i hope hes getting back to be a bit more skeptical.
Alex need's to realise the New atheism failed
He still referred to religion in the same old new atheism way, saying that religion is a belief that ignores evidence. He hasn't actually learned anything. He's just switched from saying religion is bad to saying it can have good effects in someone's life. That's changing your opinion and not the same thing as advancing your understanding.
Religion is about metaphysical things. It is impossible for there to be physical evidence that something metaphysical is true or false. If there were, it wouldn't be metaphysical. It's a simple matter of definition. The fact that people have put so much time for so long into the issue and remain incapable of grasping that fact is astounding to me. No material evidence is ever going to prove or disprove the existence of an immaterial being. Nor will there ever be any way for adherents of one religion to prove theirs is true versus adherents of a different religion.
Richard Dawkins saying even if the stars formed a message about God in the sky he'd still think it was aliens who did it before he believed in God is a demonstration of this. The man admits that he is entirely unable to be convinced under any circumstances, yet still argues that it isn't convincing.
If you believe in God you are operating on faith. If you don't believe in God you are operating on faith.
@@patrickbarnes9874 this Idea Patrick atheism/ atheists just lack a Belief in God is Nonsense, atheists like Pz Myers would come along Aron AR would come along and say that's a escape Goat why don't you say it as it is there is No God? It doesn't matter how much evidence you Present to be it's not admissible in the Court Room of my mind because I no God God doesn't exist in other words it doesn't matter how much evidence you Present to be for the Existence of God No amount of evidence is going to Convince me God Exists.
Awesome breakdown
@@patrickbarnes9874 The concept of a metaphysical creator being above time and space is unfalsifiable, you are correct. However that is not the only claim religions are making. They tell stories about our origins, about apparently real historical events, miracles that happened on earth, and they give characteristics to that creator being, like being all loving, wanting a personal relationship with you, being all good and the source of morality. All of these, can be falsifiable. Also saying that something is unfalsifiable doesn’t make it likely. Plenty of other ideas about the origin of the universe that are also unfalsifiable, like the simulation theory, it doesn’t mean I should live my life according to that possibility.
I’ve heard your argument quite often, « god is outside of the natural world so it’s useless to try to disprove him using the natural world », and that seems like it ignores so much about religion. If the only claim religions made was that there was an all powerful creator being that started the universe that would be correct, but we have plenty of different religions, arguing about what really happened on earth and who was divine, making different historical claims, making claims about what should be moral or not according to their scriptures and their prophets, and impacting the real world since millenias with their different doctrines.
You say that both atheism and theism requires faith, well one requires a lot more of it than the other. If I tell you that there are unicorns beyond the observable universe, you can’t disprove it, it is unfalsifiable, however you not being convinced and so not believing it requires way less faith than me believing the claim, and claiming I should live my life according to this.
His veil is slowly getting removed.
He’s not turning Christian, is he???
I hope not. We need less theists, not more.
I'm assuming it's more to do with new atheisms' arguments on militant atheism and the argument that religion is completely unbelievable nonsense, and anyone that believes in it is ignorant.
No, his point is that a lot of New Atheists are finding common cause with religious people in things like anti-woke movements and anti-Islam movements and that he's not comfortable with that.
@@830toAwesome I also disagree with that.
@@Aleiza_49 it doesnt matter that you disagree. as an athiest myself alot of athiest have been cringe when it comes to topics like "woke" or the Palestinian genocide going on in gaza
Haha! You'll never have him.
Mr O’Connor has been seduced by the platitudes of Theism.
But what about Hell mateBit bloody cruel
I don't believe Christians are best for argument for theism because in order to prove Christianity, you need first to prove God second to prove trinity ( of course I don't mean from Christian scriptures ) and that are two arguments in one
You are propably coming from islamic point of view if that's where you see the biggest problem.
Why should we understand the nature of god without his clearest revelation? Your standard sounds unreasonable to me.
Have a nice day, God loves you!
@goenndalfthereal
First Bible is a collection of writings from different authors, not a revelation
Second you didn't understand my point first as Christian you need to prove God then to prove your scriptures
@@Mu3az523 Im sorry if I was unclear:
My earlier comment only addressed the standard that we need to prove gods trinitarian nature without the Bible. I would not expect to understand god without his clearest revelation.
I agree that we should prove that theism is true or possible before we answer the question were gods revelation lies. But we dont need to prove his attributes like the trinity at that point.
Is the Bible a revelation? I dont think that the Bible being from different authors denies that. If thats your point, but I think we speak different languages here. I think if you read the Bible as hisoric texts with reasonable historic value, you will find that Christ ressurected in the tomb on the third day. And assuming that we can agree that Christ is a valid source. And his view of scripture is clear. Of course he only spoke about the Old Testament, but it would be kinda weird to say that all the minor prophets get infallible books and the greatest Prophet and Messiah gets nothing of that kind.
Give it a chance: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." - revelation?
erm guys we can't prove the Trinity from reason , all we can do is prove that it's not impossible, but proving that is possible or true is not possible
funny how when talking to theists alex says people who call religion "bad" aren't nuanced enough, when he himself made videos claiming he used to have panic attacks thinking he'd go to hell. Religion isn't just the nice things without the atrocities just like how christianity isn't just the nice hippie jesus quotes without the atrocities of yhwh - and even jesus himself
You just proved Alex's contention with this comment. It's wrong of him to say that calling religion bad isn't nuanced enough, then you went on distinguishing between good and bad things in religion. You made no point.
@@patrickbarnes9874 My point is religion is bad despite the few good things it can offer. If I tell you to follow my doctrine because it offers good life advice, and it does, but then I also tell you part of it includes worshipping a baby smasher, it doesn't mean my doctrine is "nuanced", it means it's psychotic. That's like saying adding sewer water to wine makes it nuanced.
@@psyokTherefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
Matthew:7:12
Remind me what's bad about that? Maybe we need to define "religion" first before we call it bad. The problem isn't religion. The problem is humans. And human nature. If there was no religion, people would simply come up with other reasons for in-group/out-group thinking and reasons to hate the others even so Jesus told us to love even our enemies. If people would actually follow the teachings of Jesus, the world would be a better place. There is no doubt about that. What people made of those teachings is another matter. Just read Acts 5 to see what even the apostles made of it - "give us all your money, or else..."
@@MrSeedi76 what's bad about the "golden rule", which far predates christianity btw? Simple: how do you know what others want? One extreme example many give is sadists and masochists, but all you have to do is think of what you enjoy or prefer and realize the world is full of people who prefer other things. Your own religion tells you to stone so many different kinds of people for doing things you don't personally want to do or done to you.
So you "define religion" by proselytizing your own religion's texts lol ok. And you're seriously talking about humans naturally infighting when religions cause so much infighting there's not only thousands of religions, but thousands of further denominations.
And lastly the world would be better if we followed Jesus' teachings? The ones that tell you the world was ending TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO so don't bother making life better, just "sell" everything you own? Who tf do you sell it to if it's all ending? The teachings that tell you not to love your parents more than him? The ones that tell you not to fight back? The ones that never condemned slavery or stoning but only spoke in vague (likely interpolated) parables? The ones that tell you to look at your newborn and think "this creature is sinful just for existing"?
Great role model you've got
@@psyokyou are so lost. May God have mercy on you🙏
He must realize the Word of God is legit by what’s going on with Israel!
This babbling English "son of Dawkins" seems to think it is our job to persuade him of the merits of God. Just let him to the hard work himself, like the rest of us.
Building a god takes time and cope
"Building a God" like tinker toys?
Calm down. New Atheism was just the belief that religion, & Christianity in particular, is dangerous & has had a toxic effect on our culture, & that the world would be better if everyone was atheist.
Alex no longer has faith in that belief. While gaining some more respect for theistic arguments, he’s still not approaching a conversion. Just enjoy the conversations & stop trying to read into it.
Yeah, that's what I heard. God cannot possibly be as small as believers think it is in their religions.
The world would indeed be a better place if everyone was atheist. Delusion and wishful thinking is never the best solution to dealing with existence in all its complexity.
@@adamleckius2253no