They lost me for several reasons, but the biggest one is this: I asked some questions that were uncomfortable, (or impossible), to answer. And I was told, "we're not supposed to understand it". Of course there are some things we don't understand. So we strive TO understand. But to be told we're NOT SUPPOSED TO UNDERSTAND, is the biggest admission there's a con taking place there's ever been.
Yeah, I've heard that said when debating believers. They get this goofy exalted look when they say that we're not meant to understand, like it's blasphemous and will anger God. B.S. Seems like the original Apple Salesman in the story was more God-like.
who are they? Were they random people in a church or priests/clerks? if they were priests and clerks they were being lazy and couldn't be bothered. If you were asking random people inside the church it might have bordered on harassment.
@@Mal1234567 Okay. Choose any example of the suffering and/or death of innocent people you’d like and explain away the fact that it’s being observed by an entity who allegedly could intervene, but chooses not to.
My parents encouraged my brothers and myself to go to every church in our home town and pick our own religion They ended up with 3 atheists Most religious people are religious because it was the religion of their parents and they were raised with the mentality of, 'This is what we believe and so do you'
@@ImmuneToTrollHate you’ve really hit the nail on the head here. I remember one commentator illustrating the many accidents or circumstances of birth that have a bearing on our individual lives. None of us choose our parents or the country we were born in, tribe or community, our sex, level of affluence in childhood and the one you mention on the parental influence on what religious doctrine we are “encouraged “ to follow and even which sports team you support. Many quietly accept their fate on all or most of these life effects and get on with it without much questioning or resistance. It may only be when some of these virtues come with a elements of extremism that humanity turns ugly, then people or institutions who are different to our own situation can become targets of dislike or even hatred which can, with relative ease, turn violent. I believe it is only the clear thinkers that push back on their parental and teachers’ influences and brainwashing, nationalistic, tribal, religious doctrines and society norms to challenge, question and form their own decisions on how they shape their lives. Many of the rest simply follow the herd with whatever beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours they have absorbed. One of the most important gifts our parents can give us is the freedom to make our own choices free from pressures or prejudices.
@@matthewclay6535The fact that there are still so many believers in spite of a TOTAL LACK OF EVIDENCE for a god. Yes, thankfully, religion is declining, but the fact that there are still so many CLINGING to these ridiculous beliefs...
Ironically, it's the Christian children who have been indoctrinated at a young age before there minds can comprehend properly that are suffering. The constant religious put downs and brainwashing making then feel they are not worthy. Even as adults they end up with mental trauma and lack of drive to go out in the world and succeed in a happy fruitful life! .
Only the blind cannot discuss color. Why can't Penn perceive the damage reducing Judeo-Christianity and all the art, music, architecture like the great Cathedrals of Europe, to stupid endeavirs by silly, superstitious people who could have used their talents to benefit humanity. He unknowingly encourages children and adults to look down on people of faith as ridiculous ignorant morons. Can he not see that each follower of his world-view separates humanity into superior and inferior? That this would close every church, church-based child care and charity? That the basic moral guidance encoded in the 10 C are now optional for each parent to select? That evrry child is now a "thing," not, "An infinitely precious, holy, sacred being?" He knows not what he seeks to destroy. He cannot forsee the empoverishment to all future humanity which the destruction of 2000 years based on the teachings of Paul he takes for granted.
I agree, and I am a Christian believer! I had a terrible childhood but I became a Christian. I didn't become a Christian because of my childhood but despite it. Other people have had the converse, that's true of life as a whole. It's simply an illogical conclusion but remember, it was Penn saying that, and I am saying the opposite so I guess we cancel each other out LOL.
Indeed. I had a horrible childhood because my parents were christians. I started asking questions about their god when I was 7 years old and they consistently failed to give anything other than evasive answers. They did not like that, to say the least. Even at 7, after all their preaching about honesty, the whole thing seemed dishonest to me. There is no god. It is obvious, even to a child.
@robbarron8635 But Rob, have you ever asked yourself why you're unable to provide a remotely plausible explanation for believing an ancient myth? I find it fascinating how such beliefs are so good at getting their hooks in people, until there is such an emotional investment made that it overrides common sense. It's so obviously a 2000 year old scam.
Sorry but no, the ones condemning people to hell are those who are very poor Christians. To say something like that requires a dismissal of people and an acceptance of hell. I do NOT want a single human being on this earth to go to hell, not one. Not even the most terrible human being on the planet do I want to go to hell. If I did, that would show the state of my soul to be truly black. I can condemn NOBODY, no-one at all. God Himself does not want to condemn anyone, He even says so in 2 Peter 3:9 where we read 'The Lord is .... patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to a knowledge of salvation.' If I as a Christian meet a non-believer, an atheist, a follower of some being other than God, I pray they will come to know the truth that sets them free (John 8:32) so that they do NOT miss out on eternal life with God.
Thats why the Americas were a Paradise before 1492, also how the 5 cradles of civilizations created everything we love and use everyday without monotheism.
I was a devout Catholic for the first 16 years of my life, but that changed because of Greek Mythology. My sophomore English class was reading Greek Mythology, and one night, while doing my homework, I had a thought. Ancient Greeks believed these stories were true the way I believed in God. Why did they believe? I asked myself. I came up with 3 reasons. First, it was what they had been taught to believe and what everyone around them believed. Second, it provided an explanation for things that they otherwise couldn't understand. How would the Sun move across the sky if Apollo didn't tow it across the sky with his chariot? Third, it provided comfort. They may suffer in this life, but if they were good people, they would be in paradise after they died. More importantly, they would get to be reunited with their deceased loved ones. Obviously, the next question was why did I believe in God? I decided that I believed for the same three reasons. I couldn't think of a 4th. Most importantly, I decided those reasons were not sufficient. I have identified as agnostic rather than atheist for two reasons. First, because while I didn't have enough evidence to believe, I couldn't prove there was no God. Second, there were some public atheists that seemed to delight in mocking people who believed and calling them superstitious morons. I have never had any desire to destroy other people's faith. Religious faith can be powerful. Over the millennia, faith has been responsible for a tremendous amount of pain, suffering, and death. But that faith can also be a powerful force for good. It can also provide tremendous comfort to those who believe. There are times I sincerely wish I could believe. Like Penn, I was close with my mother. She passed away a little over 5 years ago. I know she's gone. I know she isn't suffering. But hardly a day goes by that I don't think of something I wanted to tell my mother, some movie, book, TV show, or news story I wished I could share with her. I miss her terribly. But I refuse to believe something just because I want it to be true. Logically, the more I want something to be true, the better evidence I should demand before I believe it. The existence of God is unfalsifiable. If God exists and really wants me to believe he does, it wouldn't be hard for him to convince me. Obviously, God is under no obligation to provide me with proof of his existence. But so long as he doesn't, I will just have to live my life trying to be the best person I can be. Not because of the promise of paradise or the threat of damnation but because I believe that is the right thing to do.
Very well reasoned and stated. I depart from your charitable perspective on ‘believers’ when their unfounded beliefs bleed into public policy that affects all people e.g. abortion bans. If ‘believers’ insist on forcing their superstions on the rest of us, the least the rest of us can do is push back forcefully by calling out their ridiculous unfounded beliefs.
"I just don't wanna not exist". OK...sounds like the child that doesn't want to get off the merry-go-round. Enjoy the ride and be happy for others getting a turn too. My dad told me when he was dieing "your turn to ride". Thank you Pop for the world you gave me. I'll try not to waste a minute. My late brother said (1) "don't sweat the small stuff" (2) " it's all small stuff". Thank you Jupitar Star!
"OK...sounds like the child that doesn't want to get off the merry-go-round." Do you think that someone born addicted to crack, because their mother smoked it while pregnant, and who is then sold into sex slavery to pay for that addiction, might get some solace in the idea that, if they can just make it through this rotten life they've been handed, there might be some solace and relief at the end of it?
@@kenpyle1716 Some people are just so desperate for community and social acceptance that they'll put up with pretty much literally anything. That's how cults get people and stop them from leaving. It's true for lesser scale situations too... people staying in bad relationships and so forth.
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Why watch the same bad, boring, movie over and over again?
I did when I was young and single. Great place to meet girls and find the ones that go to church on Sunday to be forgiven for what they did on Friday and Saturday night.
I'm so glad I found this channel. I'm reading comments trying to get a better understanding. I like many, have been raised believing Christianity. Now that I'm 53 and have experienced tragedy after tragedy. I do have severe PTSD. I didn't want to stop believing in god but it happened. All these cracks in the foundation until it crumbled into dust. Now I'm devastated bcuz everything I truly believed to the core disentegrated. I don't know what or how to do now. .... this is a level of depression like no other!!!
Healing takes time, and the best part for almost all people about religion was the community with others. I focus my former "religious" energy into doing everything I can to make the world a kinder, more open and caring place.
If organized religion makes you a good person, that's all that matters. But, organized religion is nothing more than a social club of like minded people. And history shows groups like that turn on others that don't think like them.
Some people need religion. It fills a certain void that's missing in people's lives. Some people use religion as their social life. Some people use religion as their support system. Some people even use religion as a form of cheap entertainment.
I myself have my own spiritual beliefs that I have carved out over 71 years, and I'm happy with them and happier to live in a country where I neither need spiritual advice from the Pope, the Preacher, and certainly not Penn Jillette. Good for Penn, and his thoughts are very cogent, well thought out and articulated. The best thing about freedom of religion is that it includes freedom from religion as well if that's what you believe. Selah
"I just don't wanna not exist." I think this a core truth that drives most or all of us. I intellectually know that I won't know that I don't exist anymore when it happens, but part of me can't stop wishing for the fairy tale to be true. Still, we'd be better off as a race if we all understood that this is the only life we'll know and the only world we'll know, and that if we want anyone to remember us when we're gone, or if we just want our human family to continue, we'd better get our act together and change how we look at each other and how we use the miracle that is Earth
I started writing almost the same train thought as yours but decided to see if anyone already had expressed it. @9:22 I relate so much to what he's saying and it's what keeps me from falling asleep some nights, the thought of no existing. What I don't agree with you on is that you'd prefer that the fairytale was true. I don't, I'd rather find a way to exist forever but there not being a deity. As for the rest, I also believe that empathy is what this world needs.
@@keithmarshall7715 You sound very sure of that - and I don't hope that you're wrong - but can you provide any irrefutable evidence to support your statement?
You "know" that you wont know you exist anymore..? How do you know that? Who do you know that died and came back and told ya? Not believing in an afterlife is fine but you know?..cmon
@Vincent67337, why did you use the word claimed? I'm one of those ex-catholics and I don't claim to be raised Catholic I was raised Catholic I was an altar boy I went to Catholic High School you know! Later realized what a damn f***** up institution it was and became an atheist
I have a great life without a ''God'' and religion and i dont interfere with those who believe, but rather let them live their life as i want them to let me live my life.
But most of "them" don't reciprocate, (allowing us to live our lives the way we allow them to live theirs). They're constantly trying to get us to join their "club," as if doing so affords them extra brownie points when their final day comes.
@@astridmiller7938 Not just them... it is most people who "believe." I can't count the number of times I've had people tell me that "Jesus still loves you," and he's waiting for me to "return to him."
I would totally agree with you, if it wasn't for the fact that the VAST majority that just quietly pray at home or once a week in church etc, inadvertently then support the noisy ones, mostly by sheer numbers, to then enable them to pass laws that EVERYONE then has to uphold, based on a 2000 year old book of half educated bronze age goat herder's scribblings of BULLSHIT!! That's why I convert as many as I can. With some great success so far, as most are really only "hedging their bets" about going to "hell" and it's SO easy to destroy that bullshit too.
I always find it tiresome that virtually every religion is taking pleasure from life on the “promise “ that after you are dead you will have a great time! Ridiculous
Maybe that mindset was the only way to get primitive people to understand the concept that, 'Immediate gratification is bad for you. Work now, save for tomorrow, and you will be better off than if you just live like a hedonist today'.
@@AlexReynard It was a way for the narcissists at the top to keep the people they were exploiting from rebelling. Unfortunately they never give a single thought to how long eternity is; even the best things grow sour in the end, but even then you have to keep enduring them. A Hotel California in the sky. And torture in hell is such a silly concept. What are souls supposed to feel the torture with when brain and nerves have decayed?
@@kellydalstok8900 1) Just because a demonstrably-beneficial idea can be exploited by greedy priests doesn't invalidate the idea itself. No idea is so good it doesn't have fools and assholes clinging to it. 2) So maybe the afterlife isn't eternal. Maybe the stories told to primitive people are vast oversimplifications. 3) I doubt our consciousness is in our heads. There's a lot of stuff I've been seeing (Rupert Sheldrake's work, and the CIA's Gateway project) that suggests that, consciousness does not come from our brain. Our brain is more like a VR helmet that allows our immaterial consciousness to interact with material reality. Think of consciousness as an 'energy field', like gravity or electromagnetism. My best guess is that, all our individual consciousnesses are split from a central source. Like sparks from a central flame. The afterlife would be the place your consciousness returns to after the physical body it inhabits dies. I think our bodies are like an avatar sprite in an MMORPG. Or vehicles that we're driving. So then, Hell might simply be the area around the central flame. It wouldn't be torment, but _chaos._ As in, think of how chaotic your dreams are. Nothing is stable; events and settings can flow into different states as you imagine them. Now imagine a space where everyone's dreams manifest as their reality. It would be utter pandemonium, as everyone's imaginations collided. And I doubt this would be eternal. Of what use to the universe would that be? What if the 'exit door' to Hell is either to get reincarnated back to the material plane, or give up your individuality and merge your spark with the fire, so it can learn and grow?
@@clubcyberia8572 Really? Why? We're all going to die someday, so why not make peace with that? Why not plan your end to be a glorious, beautiful, or hilarious one? Why not delve into the knowledge of death, and how it led us to be able to perceive time in relation to our awareness that we had a finite lifespan? Stuff like that? Oh! You meant, like, religions where they just want non-members to die. Yeah, okay. Full agreement that those guys are boring mean assholes.
I believe the more we learn, the more we realize the incredible rarity, balance, and complexities of our existence. If you actually look at the big picture, everything is created for a purpose. What came first? The chicken, or the egg? They had to have come into existence at the same time. They are both dependent on each other. Same with everything, all part of an incredible design. The complexities of the human body are fascinating. Our blood clots, we fight infections, and our wounds have the ability to heal. Absolutely fascinating, if you think about it. You started as a single cell, and now your body consists of over 100 trillion cells with a road map, DNA, which makes you entirely unique. If DNA isn't proof of an incredible, unfathomable design, I don't know what is.
@@scottdykema5385That’s because you’re ignorant. Uninformed. Read a book. Intelligent design? Explain why most humans need their wisdom teeth removed? What idiot designed that? How about the fact that the human eye is a terrible “design” Just a quick google search produces tons of information about how inefficient it is. You’re an intellectual child
Extend that to how the universe works. It’s a very violent place with exploding stars that result in the creation of planets. The existence of trillions and trillions of stars and hence planets, so far away from us that we will never, ever see them with our naked eye. Most, if not all of them devoid of life, so begs the question, what purpose did any “creator” have in mind for their existence?
There are two things I have heard over and over from religious people the 1st is that when something bad happens it's all part of God's plan, God has a plan and the second is that when God created us he gave us the freedom to choose for our selves whether or not to believe in him however if God has a plan then we don't have the freedom to choose to believe in him because if he has a plan then everything is predetermined and if God doesn't have a plan and did give us freedom of choice to believe then he abandoned us because any actual act of God any interference on his part would take away that freedom or to put it simply God either doesn't exist or he is an absent parent who abandoned his children.
As a long time Christian, (now atheist), I never understood how so many other Christians truly believed in earthly punishment and reward. This completely nullifies the idea of Jesus dying for our sins. Even as a Christian, I believed in earthly action/ consequence and randomness. God isn’t making that good person suffer, the world is. But my brain evolved the ability for critical thinking and I have left the Matrix.
@dwaynehendricks7842 Hitchens was directly responsible for my final turn away from religious beliefs. That being said, there were a few things that he said about politics that I didn't agree with.
We are not intended to go to hell. Hell was not prepared for us. The devil rebelled against God. The devil does not want a relationship with God and does not want to be with God and so a place had to be created for him and his followers. Humans are not supposed to go to hell. But when we choose to ignore God and through our disobedience declare that we do not want to be with him eternally, then what is God to do? He grants us our free will and send us to a spiritual realm without God. The knowledge of what we have missed out and the reality of being in a place without God brings excruciating pain. God does not send us to hell. We choose to go to hell in our actions.
@@rudysega The Sunk Costs Fallacy, also known as the Gambler's Fallacy, is the argument that you're already in so deep that you might as well keep on digging yourself deeper. Like all fallacies, this is not a rational argument but a distortion or rationalization. Abuse victims often stay in abusive relationships by arguing some version of this fallacy to themselves. Maybe the abuser will change this time (ignoring the data from all the previous times) and anyway I'm in so deep that I've got no way out. Yes, you do have a way out of this particular fallacy. Accept your loss and walk away from it.
Where do I begin; maybe the fact that my stepmother believed I was a devil-worshipper 'cause I listened to rock-n-roll music!! She burned all my albums!!!!! Every Sunday she had to blare the preacher who was arrested for prostitution. Then I had an ex who claimed she could 'feel' the demonic spirits coming from my music, so I slipped a Marylin Manson cd under her seat, and you know what, I didn't hear a peep outvof her for three weeks till she was cleaning and 'discovered' said cd. Lets just say we didn't last long after that!! And it just blossomed from there. Now that I a member of FFRF, I truly do feel 'welcomed'. Thank you.
The very foundation of the church and every good thing that it does is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. From those we derive our distinguishing marks - the love that we hold in common (John 13:35) and the doctrine that sets the guidelines for how we live, act, and worship (John 14:15). Atheist churches have no hope because they are missing these key elements. These principles don’t just affect atheist churches, though. Splits, division, and sharp disagreement occur in the church as well. Ephesians 4:1-3 reminds us that we must be diligent to preserve our peace and unity that come from the Spirit. As the church can become fractured into small cliques and sects when we look out for ourselves first or don’t show the love of Christ in all things, we have to be all the more diligent in this day and age to prove ourselves united in Him. The only way for humans to ever become truly unified in one mind and purpose is through the love of Jesus Christ. Is that love alive, working, and evident in your congregation? Your life? My life? I hope we’ll all take some time to think on these things.
I do not want eternal life. In any human context, one which replicates the meaningful and fullfing reality we thrive on, it would be the ultimate Hell. The human brain cannot cope with eternal awareness or existence. You'd go insane. I take comfort in going back to nothingness after I die. And, frankly, to have more of the same experiences or worse, forever, is not a concept I can fathom nor desire.
I honestly believe that most of it is fear. Fear of death, fear of losing their friends, family and community. Give them a reason to know thats not the case and they'll probably come around, most of em anyway. Being poor doesnt help either. But thats another rabbit hole.
What’s always been a burning question for me is….if there’s a god, why doesn’t he/she/it just show themself and put the greatest question in the universe to rest? Does god get more worshipers if you can’t see him? I’d think if he showed himself the exact opposite would happen.
Especially sense this god was doing miracles and all kinds of shit K's of years ago. Then when cameras, writing, education came about; at the same time these real "miracles" people "saw or heard about" vanished. (except of course in 3rd world countries without these verifying tools don't exist) Got is alive and well and doing "gods work" on the daily.
@@fishtailfuture very true. It’s hilarious that god supposedly used to talk directly to humans thousand of years ago, then decided to suddenly stop and publish a best seller instead and said to mankind, “here, you read it and figure it out”.
@@bigboithe8th It's so crazy to me. I was never indoctrinated as a youth. And it literally makes me think these people are crazy. I don't understand it. I don't get how anybody can be convinced by it. I'm not trying to be a dick. It literally baffles me that people could be so easily manipulated and dumb on this. But I can admit plenty of very smart people are believers. In fact, given how many people are religious. Most smart people are believers. The thing is, I don't think most people really actually believe it. I think they don't think about it much. I think they pay lip service. I think they know it's kind of ridiculous but they just go along, but they don't go to church and don't really care. Except when it comes to voting and some obscure political issues. All the sudden they wanna come out of the woodwork like daddy has something to say about it. It's really weird. It's really creepy and it's really sad honestly. To somebody that wasn't indoctrinated. I'm 100% honest when I say it's like believing in Santa Claus or a leprechaun. It holds no more value to me. These people try to hit you on an emotional level or something about going to hell. All it does is just show me how scared and pathetic they are and how unconfident they are in their own beliefs. It's such a weird juxtaposition.
In my life I haven't been so much an atheist, as an anti-theist. When I found this attribution of Epicurus, I had found the meaning of god. At the least, meaningless. At the most, deepest evil. “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is God able to prevent evil, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is God both willing and able to prevent evil? Then whence cometh evil? Is God neither willing nor able to prevent evil? Then why call him God?
That is incorrect. Knowledge is a justified true belief. In order to KNOW it, you must believe in it. Knowledge is just the addition that it's justified as true, as well as being true. But if you accept that you do not know WHAT x is, in any manner that is personally and meaningfully coherent, then you cannot believe it. If I ask you "do you believe in flizzwedles" then you'd say NO - because you have no idea what that might be. If I said "they are non-rabbit, non-blue things that did something" then clearly that doesn't make them more comprehensible so you'd hopefully be unlikely to accept their existence (ie., believe in them).
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that's wrong "belief" does not imply lack of knowledge. I believe the things I know. don't you?
@DonoVideoProductions Knowledge is acknowledged fact. There is no element of faith when it comes to things that are factual. They are whether or not you believe them to be. It's hubris to think that existence requires someone to perceive it. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, it still generates sound. This thinking is why people 'believe' God made us in his image. Its human arrogance combined with creativity cranked up to 11.
@@DonoVideoProductions No. If I know something, it's knowledge as distinguishable from mere acceptance, which is belief. I can verify what I know. What I can't verify, I believe, or take on faith.
It always pisses me off, when theists pull that bullshit "what happened to you as a kid to make you become an atheist?" like the default position is believing in invisible sky daddies, and only some horrible, traumatic experience, would make someone "turn from baby geezus". It's the most fucking annoying thing, i swear
YES the default position is seeking religion. For fuck's sake, how can you believe otherwise? Look at all the vastly-different cultures all around the world, and damn near every single one of them that has ever existed has had some form of religion. It is absolutely the default in human nature for us to believe there's something more than just this life and just us. The only question is, "If we are meaning-seeking beings, does the thing we seek exist, or is it just that seeking it is beneficial to us?"
@@AlexReynardis it ? Because all those cultures you're talking about...force children to believe in these religions. It's more about fitting in, than seeking out. There's no seeking, you're recorded as having whatever religion your parents are before you can even speak...
I had a well adjusted happy childhood, even with a stay at home mom, believe it or not, and I never felt the need to believe in mythological entities. Still don't.
@@vectorwolf Well, obviously, that explains it. Who's going to choose to devote themselves to seeking a world beyond this one, if this one is already great? What kind of person would devote themselves to creating a tulpa? Someone who already has a fulfilling relationship? It's why you see tons of outcast dorky teens getting interested in magic and the occult. If you know you do not fit well in this world, you're going to seek a feeling of "home" elsewhere. There's almost no difference in the desire to explore magic and the desire to create art, at its fundamental root. It's a yearning to either find, or create, _something more than _*_this._*
@@AlexReynard And yet I'm an artist by trade and have been all my life. XD You don't need a shitty life to be an artist, just a creative mind. And plenty of people are creative without needing trauma to get them there. The "tortured artist" trope isn't founded in reality at all, if anything it's often used to grossly misinterpret an artist's work and intent. Are there artists with a woeful history rhat shaped their artistic growth? Sure. But there's probably more tiresome middle managers where that holds true than artists. Lots of people have crappy childhoods. Correlation is not causation.
3:38 My god, Penn, I don’t even like people to tell me what do - there’s a way to do that by having a conversation and letting them have input, too! I hate proselytizing - “l’ll do my thing and you do your thing. I “get” what people see in their religions, I really do. But unless, it’s a philosophical, discussion which we can argue amiably, DO NOT try to turn me. I don’t care what religion you are, as long as you’re a good person and help others and be nice to them, you’re cool. I’ve met people who Jehovah’s witnesses, they were so nice for the most part :)🌷 (n.b. Of course, there are people who will be “nasty” and mean.)
Is that not equally true of your imagining that there is no God? If we Christians can be accused of not being able to provide empirical evidence of the existence of God, surely an atheist can equally be challenged that they cannot provide empirical proof that there is no God!
@@robbarron8635 Why would anyone in any circumstance feel compelled to prove that something DOESN'T exist? I could make up an infinite number of things that might exist, but why should I expend any energy at all proving a single one of them doesn't exist? If you want me to believe something that you believe, by all means make your case, but asking someone else to disprove it is folly.
@@robbarron8635 NO ONE should be a Christian because no one should believe absurdities which are claimed without any evidence. When you come to understand how absurd your beliefs are you'll hopefully let them go. You were *indoctrinated.*
@@robbarron8635 There is a a far higher probability that a god doesn't exist than exist. It is not up to an atheist to provide proof of an existence of a God. It is a believer. Anyway how do you provide proof?. There isn't any. So it is the believer that must do this almost impossible task.
Many of my earliest memories are Junior Sunday School lessons. The God that decided to destroy humanity with a Flood to me was not all powerful, and very capricious. In jealousy of my younger sister's night-time attention, I wanted my mother to pray with me too at bed time. She'd never done that before, and she never did. She sent me to my room telling me how to pray. But none of it made sense to my 4-yo mind. If God was all knowing, all powerful, and the epitome of Love, then He already knew what I wanted. So why didn't He give it to me? Was I disobedient? Then I thought, how can I communicate with someone who has no name, must be spoken to through the name of His son, and had not once ever revealed himself to a mortal? Where did He get off hiding behind a curtain claiming almighty benevolence? Was He that incompetent he needed a Jesus and innumerable mortals to get His work done? All impotent and unintelligent if you ask me. But 4 yo boys were never asked their opinion of this contradictory and nonsensical God. From an early age, I was a curious boy and wanted to understand everything. It led me to science, and a life-long career in it. What I discovered along the way was astonishingly well organized biology and physical relations/processes. Some person(s) really smart were behind the existence of living creatures and how matter operated. But I don't think one man could know all that, and is required to accomplish that. I've tried. Organized religion is a fraud, one that becomes plainly and painfully evident when sitting down to examine its roots. None of the founders ever instituted a knew doctrine. And certainly none of them ever reported having a heavenly Manifestation, while the priests thereof have repeatedly demonstrated how impotent they are in implementing the simplest of their tenets. When I read The True Believer, I was convinced Religion had gotten life all messed up, and I did not need an incompetent, impotent intercessor to guide me to "Perfection."
"But 4 yo boys were never asked their opinion of this contradictory and nonsensical God." I know people who had evolution explained to them so poorly when they were young, that they grew up disbelieving in evolution. But if you walk them through the steps of natural selection, they'll say that all makes sense. Yet, they're certain they disbelieve in "evolution". Because what "evolution" means to them, is that poor explanation they were taught, which they are certain is not true.
@naheedkhanmd3 - Aside from being incompetent, he's a sadistic tyrant and a despot as well. He's very jealous. Worship any other deity other than him and you'll burn in hell forever.
When visiting another country, breaking the cultural rules is easy if you have not been exposed to them. In Australia, it is common for commuters to thank the bus driver. It is understandable down under because the entire population has excess blood in their heads.
I'm grateful for the tolerant Christian upbringing I had as a child. It didn't exclude the ancient pagan myths either. It at least gave me a concept of eternity and immortality. In later life, this was a great help in accepting the mindblowing impications of time being relative. I believe that all of spacetime is eternal. At one point there is my living being, at another point is my remains, but both exist eternally on the same level. But they're different things. One can't become the other, and the one doesn't supercede the other. Of course ancient books are full of errors that we can't accept anymore.
Perosnally, I think it was more helpful for me to face the reality of ending when I was around 8-9 years old. Made me realize how important to live this life fully since this is my only one that is for sure, I don't know if there will be a second chance.
@@dorkception2012 That must have been an awful realisation at that age. On one level I kept my childish, animal-like belief in my immortality as long as I had my Christian faith, until my late teens. Then, I believed after I died my atoms would still be part of life on Earth. But, Einstein's theories restored my belief in immortality. I won't be alive centuries from now. I agree this is the only life we have, so we should make it a good one. I think we have this life for all eternity. But, this idea that the past isn't really passed, but exists forever, has a heavy price. It means the horrors of the past exist forever as well.
@@keithbessant You see, you think it was terrible for me, because you think everyone wants to be immortal? To be honest you are not the only one, but maybe that's why we see this thing from such a different perspective. The sooner a kid realize that we are mortal, the more comfortable it becomes for him/her. I was scared for like half a day for sure, but thankfully, my parents were mature enough to make me realize that it's the way why life is so precious, there is no sensation of warm, without the sensation of cold, sweet and bitter, makes the world full of flavour, and not bland. I'm really grateful how they took up the weight of the subject and I will do the same with my kids as well.
@@dorkception2012 I agree. I think the reason people have this morbid fear of death is that they think it's they who are going to be buried or cremated, when really it's their remains. It's probably how most children would see it. A living being and their remains are two different things, existing at different points in time. It doesn't bother me that I'm not living in the year 3000, any more than I'm not living in Australia or Africa. I'm alive now and that's what matters. I prefer to believe in the philosophy of Parmenides and Zeno of Elea. To, me it's easier ot believe that nothing changes and things are what they are forever. The alternative is a world of constant change, where nothing is there long enough to truly exist. It takes the light from the Sun several minutes to reach the Earth, but we don't say that we don't know if it's still there. If it was there however many minutes ago, it's there now. I think the same of older generations who are no longer with us.
@@keithbessant Yepp, that's why religions still around, it gave the feeling of comfort, even if many knows it's not proven, but it's way easier to them to deal with the trauma. Some people afraid of being insignificant, so having a larger than life "friend" gives them an ego boost. So many white lies we tell ourselves, we are truly just overgrown apes...
I agree you need blind faith to believe that 'nothing' created everything, that this nothing could balance and fine tune the universe and create order from the Big Bang, nothing then set up the right conditions for life on this ''oasis of life'' in an otherwise hostile to life universe that we have named Earth (all this from a super heated and completely sterile of life early universe), then atheist miracle of miracles- after nothing created complex single cell life from out of a magicians hat I presume- nothing then commanded these single cell organisms to go forth and multiply into millions of plant and animal species while not leaving any fossil evidence that stands up to scrutiny. Or as famed evolutionist Stephen J. Gould admitted in an unguarded 'confession' , described the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record as, ''the TRADE SECRET of paleontology.'' Darwin himself lamented to his dying days this extreme lack of fossil evidence for his delusional theory. Dozens of some of the most respected evolutionists in more recent decades have also admitted that there is an extreme dearth of transitional fossils. If there was fossil evidence to support Darwin's folly there wouldn't have been a reason for pimping out fraudulent 'missing links' such as Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Peking Man, or to imagine and then promote easily refuted 'odd variant' fossils that have the characteristics of 2 or more species such as the infamous Archaeopteryx. Darwinian Evolution was Dead On Arrival. It's rotting corpse only propped up by friends in high places and indoctrination through media and our centres of miseducation that neglected to even hint to us that there is a fatal problem with the fossil record. Now evolutionists have been forced by the 'mysterious' disappearance of the fossils of trillions of animals that allegedly lived at one time and were supposedly at one of thousands of the required stages of transforming into a new species, to propose new theories of evolution such as Gould and Eldridge's 'Punctuated Equilibrium'. Then we have otherwise brilliant scientists such as the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA Francis Crick whose 'anything but God theory' of 'directed pan-spermia' proposed that aliens on a dying planet sent a rocket ship loaded with bacteria to seed our earth with life. The only problem with these new theories is that there is zero evidence supporting them just as there is no legitimate evidence for Darwinian evolution. But do keep up your 'blind faith' of a baseless theory that devalues human life as evidenced by many of the cults past devotees, including some of the biggest mass murderers in human history. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, and many atheist dictators and serial killers.
Beliefs have a clever way of preventing us from knowing the truth. Beliefs can be wonderful but they are simply beliefs. That's all, just beliefs, not truths.
. The natural world existed billions of years before man created the superstition(s). The mystery itself is the doorway to all understanding. When superstition closes the door, then understanding will never be found.
Care to justify your belief that the natural world existed for billions of years? Or perhaps you're just referring to that deeply unscientific hypothesis they call the Big Bang? You know, the one described as: The whole universe was in a hot dense state when nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started. Wait, the earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool, neanderthals developed tools they built a wall (they build the pyramids!) Maths, science, history, unravelling the mysteries that all started with the Big Bang!' I mean, let's face it, music and mythology, Einstein and astrology, it all started with the big bang! :D
People vastly overrate their importance. These are the believers who, after surviving a tornado, give credit to their god without mentioning all of their neighbors who perished the same natural disaster. Silliness🪿
I was raised in a fundamentalist Xian household and read the Bible from cover-to-cover as a kid and studied it weekly… and when people ask why I became an atheist (at age 12), my standard reply is… “I read the Bible.”
I googled it and I believe it was Emma Goldman. I don't know her. Wikipedia says she was an anarchist, not socialist, but that's not the best source LOL
It doesn't matter what you believe. This is just my opinion. Just don't hate other people because they think differently. Also, I think it would help society if we looked for things we share in common.
Doesn't that mean that your opinion doesn't matter? And what follows is that no opinion matters. Doesn't that then mean that there are no rules whatsoever? After all those are all opinions. That's not what we see tho. Nearly everything is the majority opinion. So given that observation, I would say what you believe matters a lot in every aspect of life.
Maybe we're just really shitty at describing that which we are barely capable of perceiving. Like, imagine you catch a glimpse someday of a gigantic Lovecraftian being, so big that the sky can barely contain it. How good a job are you going to do at *accurately* describing that being? How much are your human biases going to influence your description? It's like the saying, "If ants had a God, it would be a giant ant."
@@AlexReynardActually, we're very good at describing many things we can barely perceive. For example, bacteria, viruses, atoms and molecules, electromagnetic radiation, the approximate shape of our galaxy even though no one's ever been outside far enough to see the damn thing! Even much of the observable universe! Science is the remarkable tool that allows us to do these things. Indeed, the ancient Greeks were able to deduce the shape and approximate size of the Earth long before they had the ability to actually see it. And a big difference is that your hypothetical lovecraftian being would be a part of objective reality, the observation of which could be confirmed by others, which is not at all true, nor even possible, of God or any of many other supernatural, mythological beings.
I think the biggest problem here is the definition of God. If we're talking Man-God who micromanages every single thing in the known universe? No. Clearly not real. But something more Eastern, where "God" is more like "The Force" or a metaphor for change (Shiva), IDK. I don't really have an issue with that. Further, those philosophies (unlike Christianity and Islam) are perfectly compatible with science, modernity, etc.
@janegerow5974 do a YT search. There's tons of stuff on it. They knew thousands of years ago that the Earth was round, part of a solar system, which was part of a galaxy, which was part of a universe . . . Even calculated age of the universe and were in the neighborhood. Their origin story even sounds like a metaphor for the big bang.
Most people, believes and non-believes alike, should study the history of their chosen religion and the Bible. It is interesting, as most endeavors into the unknown are. The Bible was written by men 1500 years ago in the middle east, for people of that time. It was never intended to be passed down through the generations or applied to other cultures. Men of that time had dominion over and traded women, children and livestock and was considered property. And, as property, the owner took whatever pleasure out of the property he chose. Still in that region today, these culture norms are present.
@@gowdsake7103 Most read the first version that is presented to them. Instead, find out the history of all different versions. It’s one of the biggest secrets hidden in plain site.
Translation: "I'm going to get upset at the religion that introduced the belief that all human life is sacred; beginning the foundation for the abolition of slavery. I'm going to be angry at people 1500 years ago who *began* the fight against norms that were common to every culture in humanity at the time, because they didn't get everything perfect immediately." If you saw 500 people wallowing in shit, and one of them started to climb out and clean off , you'd point at him and mock him for being covered in shit.
All of the difficult verses in the Bible have been explained by the top Christian scholars and put in the right context for those meant only for ancient Israel and in the context of the beliefs and traditions of those days. I will admit there are a handful of these verses that I don't think were dealt with completely and to my satisfaction. But translating verses from ancient languages especially words and sentences that were rarely used can be extremely difficult to get the exact intended meaning. So my hope is that with modern technology they will find several more writings in the ancient languages which will greatly help in more accurately translating these near impossible to translate verses. Penn, I agree with you 100% that if you are a devout Christian and follower of Yeshua/Jesus Christ then you owe it to others to share the Gospel, and evidence for why you believe. Too many who call themselves Christian sit on their lazy asses and never try to win one soul to Christ, so that they can join us in Heaven, rather than spend eternity on Hell with all those Freemasons and their puppets in media and stooge politicians. lol And these lukewarm Christians would be wise to read what Jesus taught would be their eternal fate. Your view that heaven will be like North Korea is deeply flawed. God is not a dictator like that pipsqueak who runs that repressive shit show. God has given us freedom of choice in this brief mortal life. The great test of our character was Jesus Christ coming to earth to teach us a perfect way to live a moral loving life, he fulfilled ALL of the many Messianic Prophecies regarding the 1st Coming to perfection, demonstrate his godly street cred by performing many miracles and healing's, then become the unblemished by sin perfect sacrifice for our sins, and then conquer death itself by rising back to life on the 3rd day! The Resurrection evidence both from the Bible and from ancient historians who actually had contempt for the early Christians but were honest historians so they wrote about how the first generations of Christians were for the most part willing to be tortured, jailed and brutally executed rather than cease preaching that many of them or their loved ones had seen Jesus alive after his Crucifixion. So the great test is, do we love our worldly sin more than we love God/Jesus so that we either remain wilfully ignorant of the many lines of evidence that God exists or we study the evidence like you have and discard it as not being valid? Our evidence stands up to debate. You atheists have zero evidence for your worldview. The only half credible alternative to Jesus being the Creator is Darwinian Evolution or plain old macro-evolution. I like to call it the opiate of the atheist, because the fossil evidence sucks so bad that dozens of the most respected evolutionists admit in their unguarded moments that there is a dearth of transitional fossils. Or as Stephen J. Gould put it the embarrassing shortage of missing links is the ''Trade Secret'' of Paleontologists. Again it's because non-believers love this corrupt world and want to be their own highest moral authority and act like they are godlike in their faulty human judgements on how one should live their lives. Look at the world of chaos, violence and corruption including the many hypocrites in our churches, that rebelliousness against God's authority ain't working! Humans are morally weak sinners who seek to justify their choices to hurt others and themselves with their harmful sins by deluding themselves that sin either doesn't exist or that they are generally good people and don't need their many sins forgiven. So if we follow the evidence and believe that Jesus came to earth to show us a better way, and it makes us hate our own sin so that we fully repent and do our best to follow Christ's moral guidance we will get rid of most of our sins in this life. But we are still human and won't become perfect until God REWARDS us for fully accepting the Gospel that Jesus shed his blood for our sins. We are promised a new eternal and perfect body and a spirit of sinlessness that believers strove for in this life but never fully reached perfection. So don't you worry about God punishing you for every sin if you make it to Heaven. Satan will be impotent to influence true followers of Christ once we reach Heaven because he will be separated and in Hell and quite busy suffering his deserved punishment along with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, serial killers and all unrepentant sinners. You're right Penn God didn't give us a detailed itinerary for how Heaven will be (nor Hell) but I'm good with the promise to be Resurrected as Christ was and the general outline of how Heaven will be fits my comfort zone perfectly. (Revelation 21:1-4) Because I've learned to trust God and that his plan will be perfect in every detail! What do you have to look forward to if ''your evidence light'' worldview is true? Ending up that your biggest contribution was to end up as worm food and going back to the nothingness that was before you or any life existed? That means all your atheist preaching and all of your accomplishments, your emotions, memories, relationships, thoughts in this brief life will be as if they never existed. Oh your videos and books may inspire more family, friends and some of the gullible public to reject the chance to have a perfect eternity but after all life eventually becomes extinct as scientists and philosophers predict then it would be as if humanity had never even existed. There goes your purpose and meaning for your life. Atheism leads to existential nihilism and along with belief in Evolution which devalues human life as being accidents of nature and simply evolved bacteria, this is what surely drove atheist dictators such as Stalin and Mao mad and resulted in them becoming the biggest torturers and mass murderers of their own citizens in world history. That Hitler guy also belonged to the Darwinian death cult but he wasn't an atheist but had many delusional and distorted views of religion. I'm a bit tired so I will give you a link. U-tube won't allow links so i will not print it correctly. gotquestions dot org/heaven-sin-html I find they give short, concise to the point one page answers to many questions regarding religions, science, evolution, cults, Catholicism, etc, that are pretty informative and accurate. This one has a short video to go with the article. Hover over verses to read them, click on to get a bit more information and check out the ''Related Articles'' if you wish.
If a medical emergency happened in the home of devout believers in god, why do they call for an ambulance, did they forget how to pray? It would demonstrate where their real faith lies
A few weeks ago, I got up from sleep to go to the bathroom, felt all the energy leave my body, and I collapsed on the floor. I didn't know if I'd had a heart attack, or a cataclysmic drop in blood pressure, a stroke, or what. But I've been in contact with a supermaterial being for a while now (it's vastly oversimplified, but if I call it an "angel" that at least conveys something higher than a human but not as big as a god). I trusted that my angel wouldn't let me die just then. I did go to the ER to get checked out, but the whole time I was calm and relaxed. At the hospital, they did a bunch of tests and determined that I'd gotten overheated in bed and dehydrated myself. Certainly plausible. And I felt better immediately after getting an IV drip and some apple juice. I was home in two hours. So, why was I relaxed? While it'd take too long to write it all out, I'd asked my angel a serious, deep question that evening, and my collapse that night maneuvered me into position to have an unambiguous answer to that question positioned directly in my sightline. That let me know that my collapse wasn't serious; it was just the only way my angel could arrange things to answer me (since they have as much ability to communicate with me as you do with an ant). Conclusive proof? Not to anyone else. But for me it was enough. When bad things happen, I ride them out, and say, 'Allright. I trust you're leading me someplace I need to be.' If I pray, it's while I'm also taking secular precautions. It's like the old joke about the man in the flood waiting for God to rescue him. If you're not open to supernatural forces wiggling their way into our world within the plausibility of natural events, you'll miss them.
Most theists that I have interacted with have a fundamental misunderstanding of the atheist position. I am not an atheist because something bad happened in my childhood, I'm not an atheist because I am rebelling against God either. I have no desire to sin. The reason I am an atheist is because I see no reason to believe that any god exists, that is it, nothing more complicated than that. I have never claimed that there is definitely no god or gods, I just see no evidence to suggest that such entities exist. I believe that mine is the normal atheist position, certainly for the atheists I have spoken with. Trying to claim that I am rebelling against God is ludicrous once you understand I don't believe God to be real.
Read what Dawkins says about DNA containing megabytes of digitally encoded information. Then ask yourself, how does any random process encode for vast systems of interacting nanomachines?
Love reading out bible quotes to deluded victims of religion and just watching them squirm, often they’ve never heard it because it’s been withheld from them from their fellow deluded victims
Most of them knows those. THey simply live in constant cognitive dissonance, sacrificing reason and logic, so they can soothe their minds that they will live after they die. Pure pathetic and sad.
If god could create matter out of nothing, then why did not god create man out of nothing? Rather god used soil/earth to create man; and man's rib to create woman.
Well, yes. If your conception of God is as simplistic and small as those characters, of course that sounds ridiculous. But how about this: Your body is made of cells, right? And all those cells are individual life forms? Do you think they have any idea that billions of them form a singular consciousness? You are a hivemind. As are we all. If cells could talk, they'd likely say, "I don't believe in people. I've never seen one. What would a human even look like? A gigantic cell? That's stupid." Maybe you can't conceive of the being that all Earthlife makes.
@@AlexReynard Where was God when those planes crashed into the twin-towers on 911? Thousands of people suffered horrible deaths on that day. Give me an intelligent answer to the above question.
@@AlexReynardNobody knows. We really can't even define what God is or where did God come from? Anything is possible. It's also possible that God created us but that there's no afterlife. It's conceivable that early man developed these concepts as a means to bring civilization to a barbaric society. The Bible could be BS and God could still exist. Humans are free to believe what brings them comfort so long as they don't try to control others.
@bmoshareholderappleshareho855 Well, God was with the terrorist who flew the planes into the buildings, of course; they were doing Allah's will after all, right!
I was a Christian for over thirty five years. Bible College, Ministry and an Elder in my church…I fervently searched for evidence of a god and simply could not justify my faith. Today I am Atheist.
Seriously? You saw the complex beauty of creation and found no evidence of God? You saw people fall in love and found no evidence of God? You learnt about the eternal life that God offers and chose to reject that as insufficient proof that God exists and He loves you? Sadly my friend, I have to say you wasted 35 years of your life looking in the wrong direction!
@@robbarron8635I wasted over 30 years in the Christian cult as well. My parents forced us into it as a young teen. The Christian cult did Nothing good in my life and no make believe gods have done anything either……
@@robbarron8635 Complex beauty of creation? Tell that to the people whose lives are now crushed by the massive damage of that hurricane last week. People fall in love? Then fell out of love? Common. He loves you? But not the little child starving, only asking for a cup of soup & a cracker? Aren't you lucky.
Did you bother searching for any other god than the one that was described to you? Maybe your church was just shitty at describing what's out there. Just because they're wrong doesn't mean no one is, or that it wouldn't be worth taking a personal journey to poke around for answers.
I like all of it except the proselytizing thing. At some point, no matter how dire the situation. I would not waste my time any more. Plus deep down, they know it's BS.
The atheist is certain that believers are secretly atheists. The believer is certain that atheists are secretly believers. Neither can empathize with the other to accept that, yes, someone else really does think differently than you.
@@fishtailfuture You're oversimplifying things, and disrespecting science itself. There's no evidence for the Christian God as described in the Bible? Allright, for one, have you actually done any experiments yourself to be sure? Or are you taking your certainty on faith, based on words others have said? Because *science is not consensus. Science is hypothesis/test/result.* Here's the even bigger problem: If evidence does not lead to one conclusion (God), and so you dismiss all that evidence and don't bother to test if it leads to any other conclusion, *that's not science, that's laziness.* Recently I've been thinking that, if almost every human culture that's ever existed has all had some form of religion, that's pretty significant. The fact that none of us has gotten it right is hardly surprising; we're still weighed down by our human biases and proclivity to anthropomorphize everything. We insist on seeing a big human in the sky, and when there's no evidence of that, we give up searching. And yet, Every Group Of Humans Ever has sensed there's something more than us out there and gone searching for it. Just because we're bad at searching doesn't mean there's nothing there! Here's an idea: There are fungal colonies that can grow to be the largest living things on Earth. IIRC, there's one three states wide, underground. And we have no idea if such beings are intelligent, because they're so different from us, we don't bother trying to comunicate. If they can't speak English, we just give up trying. If there's supermaterial life in the cosmos, or life that's energy-based rather than carbon-based, maybe it's a colony organism. Or some other type we've never encountered before. You're really going to be CERTAIN there's NOTHING out there, just because you debunked ONE theory!?
@@AlexReynard It would be one thing if any of them could actually articulate anything about there religion or what happens when they die. My guess is that if you could put your average "100% believer" on a lie detector, that 100% wouldn't be so high. religious people have been around for as long as humans, most thinking they are correct and clearly non have been. Don't try to equate atheists rationality with believers irrationality. They are not 2 sides of the same coin. They are not quid pro quo, or yin and yang. Not even close. One is reasonable, the other is believing in the Santa Clause of you era...
As a Christian man (Catholic even) I love Penn. I always appreciate his honesty and directness. No nonsense. I can still like him, love him, and think he's wrong. These things are not mutually exclusive.
My theory is that we have religion because as a species, we're uncomfortable with two things: (1) As a naturally curious species, we're uncomfortable with everything about the universe and world that we cannot explain so religion is the X Factor that we can insert. (2) Our own mortality. I made an intentional decision 7 years ago to leave my faith...at the time, I still believed in God but refused to worship him...I'd rather burn (had good reasons), but have since come to see that there is no god. I think believing that there is A Grand Plan and everything happens for a reason can bring about a feeling of peace, and I do miss that A LOT. Have to remind myself that the only thing that has changed is my perception.
My Mom died with dementia. Over a decade of losing her little by little. She was one of my best friends. Her Mom went through the same thing and she always told me as I grew up that that would be the worse thing that could happen to her. Our 'gracious god' gave that to her. No. I lost faith way before that. If we have an eternal soul, how does dementia work? Alcohol? Drugs? It's all physical and chemical.
It is not the allure of being a praise slave to a loving God in heaven, that motivates people to religion. It is the fear of eternal sadistic torture from a hate filled, perfectionist God, that motivates them to religion.
People judging people for being belivers is just as bad as people condemning people for not believing, we truly need more defined separation of church and state and live and let live. As an agnostic who believes in the possibility of a higher being or beings, if proven, I don't care what my neighbor believes so so as they leave me alone.
Here is something not explained. If god made everything and everything is good and he knows everything before it happens why in hell did he have to come back in human form knocking up a married woman to correct the mistake he made but everything is perfect?
He gave us the gift of free will. Likewise we do the best we can for our own children, we WANT them to find the right path for themselves, but we will intervene where necessary.
@@richardcolemanjr3749Very true, that's why we have to recognize our beliefs as such. I believed in atheism for most of my upbringing because it avoids this recognition.
Belief is based upon nothing more substantial than whimsy. If that works for you then fine. But I had doubts even as a kid attending Episcopalian services. I was suspicious that the age of miracles seemed to be confined to the Bible and that the clergy and various adults around me in the church didn’t seem to believe in miracles anymore. But I was aware that the Catholics still held that there were current miracles but that that was somehow considered to be in bad taste at least by Anglo-Saxons in the various British derived protestant denominations.
“Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.” -Christopher Hitchens
Ah but therein Mr Hitchens is being illogical! For a religion to be right, it needs to be the only one that is. Therefore all the others must be wrong. That's not arrogance, that is logical truth. To dismiss them all is to say that not one of them can possibly be true. The claims that Jesus made were exclusive. He said that He was the only way, the one Truth and the only true Life. He angered people by saying 'Nobody can come to God the Father except through me.' So now it's simply a matter of two choices: Either He was telling the truth or He wasn't. No 'ask the audience, 50-50 or phone a friend', just you and your own choice by which you stand or fall, sink or swim, live or die. What I or anyone else chooses doesn't matter a hill of beans, you need to be aware of just one thing: you MUST make a choice, you cannot opt out. If I am wrong, you're home free without choosing the God of the Bible. If I'm right, there are consequences. Over to you.
@@robbarron8635 I respect your opinion and belief. I am an atheist/humanist animal lover with one doggie and 3 kitties, I won’t hesitate to give my fellow man a hand in anything that is needed and do my best to conform with the rules and regulations of the laws of the land, (though must confess that I break the law at times when I speed on the freeway) Other than that, I’m beyond redemption for anything spiritual, I don’t believe, nor do I have faith, I wish to know via scientific facts and data only. Best regards to you.
I have never believed. I have tried and tried and tried just so I could finally fit in, but it always seemed a little too hokey and the magic stuff never happened in our real time. And even as a kid, I knew that saying something was invisible meant that you were lying. I was a kid and used it before on my little brother and I knew I was lying when I said it, therefore anybody else that said it must be lying as well haha. Now if only I knew you could lie for money back then...man oh man, I would probably be a lot less moral now haha.
They lost me for several reasons, but the biggest one is this: I asked some questions that were uncomfortable, (or impossible), to answer. And I was told, "we're not supposed to understand it".
Of course there are some things we don't understand. So we strive TO understand.
But to be told we're NOT SUPPOSED TO UNDERSTAND, is the biggest admission there's a con taking place there's ever been.
perfect
Yeah, I've heard that said when debating believers. They get this goofy exalted look when they say that we're not meant to understand, like it's blasphemous and will anger God. B.S. Seems like the original Apple Salesman in the story was more God-like.
@@brokenot what was it? Humans say silly things like that. But I don’t. And I will answer whatever questions you had. Try one on me.
who are they? Were they random people in a church or priests/clerks? if they were priests and clerks they were being lazy and couldn't be bothered. If you were asking random people inside the church it might have bordered on harassment.
@@Mal1234567 Okay. Choose any example of the suffering and/or death of innocent people you’d like and explain away the fact that it’s being observed by an entity who allegedly could intervene, but chooses not to.
My parents encouraged my brothers and myself to go to every church in our home town and pick our own religion
They ended up with 3 atheists
Most religious people are religious because it was the religion of their parents and they were raised with the mentality of, 'This is what we believe and so do you'
Well its the same for atheists
Many are atheist because their parents are
The one thing we can be absolutely certain of concerning religion is that almost everyone is wrong
@@ImmuneToTrollHate you’ve really hit the nail on the head here. I remember one commentator illustrating the many accidents or circumstances of birth that have a bearing on our individual lives. None of us choose our parents or the country we were born in, tribe or community, our sex, level of affluence in childhood and the one you mention on the parental influence on what religious doctrine we are “encouraged “ to follow and even which sports team you support. Many quietly accept their fate on all or most of these life effects and get on with it without much questioning or resistance. It may only be when some of these virtues come with a elements of extremism that humanity turns ugly, then people or institutions who are different to our own situation can become targets of dislike or even hatred which can, with relative ease, turn violent. I believe it is only the clear thinkers that push back on their parental and teachers’ influences and brainwashing, nationalistic, tribal, religious doctrines and society norms to challenge, question and form their own decisions on how they shape their lives. Many of the rest simply follow the herd with whatever beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours they have absorbed. One of the most important gifts our parents can give us is the freedom to make our own choices free from pressures or prejudices.
It's all about indoctrination
Indoctrination is generational, it seems.
Penn is such an underrated atheist representative. Thank you for this!
NO, I'd say he's VASTLY overrated!
Lol he's a joke. Completely overrated
"underrated atheist representative"
So who does the ratings? Contact that person!
Many people seem to prefer a comfortable, predictable delusion over an uncomfortable, unpredictable reality.
*NO THEY DON"T! Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion!*
@@matthewclay6535The fact that there are still so many believers in spite of a TOTAL LACK OF EVIDENCE for a god. Yes, thankfully, religion is declining, but the fact that there are still so many CLINGING to these ridiculous beliefs...
I call them cowards that cannot be truthful with theme selves. I have zero respect for that
Some. Not many
I admit I was one of those, it's how I was brought up, but I eventually looked around me, and became skeptical of atheism.
Isn't it nice how "The Preachers" are directly asuming that Penn had to had a bad childhood to be an atheist?
Ironically, it's the Christian children who have been indoctrinated at a young age before there minds can comprehend properly that are suffering. The constant religious put downs and brainwashing making then feel they are not worthy. Even as adults they end up with mental trauma and lack of drive to go out in the world and succeed in a happy fruitful life! .
Only the blind cannot discuss color.
Why can't Penn perceive the damage reducing Judeo-Christianity and all the art, music, architecture like the great Cathedrals of Europe, to stupid endeavirs by silly, superstitious people who could have used their talents to benefit humanity.
He unknowingly encourages children and adults to look down on people of faith as ridiculous ignorant morons.
Can he not see that each follower of his world-view separates humanity into superior and inferior?
That this would close every church, church-based child care and charity?
That the basic moral guidance encoded in the 10 C are now optional for each parent to select?
That evrry child is now a "thing," not, "An infinitely precious, holy, sacred being?"
He knows not what he seeks to destroy.
He cannot forsee the empoverishment to all future humanity which the destruction of 2000 years based on the teachings of Paul he takes for granted.
I agree, and I am a Christian believer! I had a terrible childhood but I became a Christian. I didn't become a Christian because of my childhood but despite it. Other people have had the converse, that's true of life as a whole. It's simply an illogical conclusion but remember, it was Penn saying that, and I am saying the opposite so I guess we cancel each other out LOL.
Indeed. I had a horrible childhood because my parents were christians. I started asking questions about their god when I was 7 years old and they consistently failed to give anything other than evasive answers. They did not like that, to say the least. Even at 7, after all their preaching about honesty, the whole thing seemed dishonest to me. There is no god. It is obvious, even to a child.
@robbarron8635 But Rob, have you ever asked yourself why you're unable to provide a remotely plausible explanation for believing an ancient myth? I find it fascinating how such beliefs are so good at getting their hooks in people, until there is such an emotional investment made that it overrides common sense. It's so obviously a 2000 year old scam.
The only ones condemning people to hell are those who claim to be "good" Christians.
making a claim is easy.
Exactly
Sorry but no, the ones condemning people to hell are those who are very poor Christians. To say something like that requires a dismissal of people and an acceptance of hell. I do NOT want a single human being on this earth to go to hell, not one. Not even the most terrible human being on the planet do I want to go to hell. If I did, that would show the state of my soul to be truly black. I can condemn NOBODY, no-one at all. God Himself does not want to condemn anyone, He even says so in 2 Peter 3:9 where we read 'The Lord is .... patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to a knowledge of salvation.' If I as a Christian meet a non-believer, an atheist, a follower of some being other than God, I pray they will come to know the truth that sets them free (John 8:32) so that they do NOT miss out on eternal life with God.
@@robbarron8635 Well said, my brother.
@@robbarron8635 in my comment the word good is in quotations because that's what they call themselves.
Life without religion is true freedom.
Thats why the Americas were a Paradise before 1492, also how the 5 cradles of civilizations created everything we love and use everyday without monotheism.
@@MrButtonpresser False.
@@krono5el ..and false.
@@mentilly_all yeah, sure i'm sure hayzues or amenhotep knew what a potato was.
@@krono5el . . . nice 'logic' ? 🤷🏼♂️
No game of ''hide n seek'' has ever lasted this long.
Even my dad didn't take this long to go out for cigarettes.
I was a devout Catholic for the first 16 years of my life, but that changed because of Greek Mythology. My sophomore English class was reading Greek Mythology, and one night, while doing my homework, I had a thought. Ancient Greeks believed these stories were true the way I believed in God. Why did they believe? I asked myself. I came up with 3 reasons. First, it was what they had been taught to believe and what everyone around them believed. Second, it provided an explanation for things that they otherwise couldn't understand. How would the Sun move across the sky if Apollo didn't tow it across the sky with his chariot? Third, it provided comfort. They may suffer in this life, but if they were good people, they would be in paradise after they died. More importantly, they would get to be reunited with their deceased loved ones.
Obviously, the next question was why did I believe in God? I decided that I believed for the same three reasons. I couldn't think of a 4th. Most importantly, I decided those reasons were not sufficient. I have identified as agnostic rather than atheist for two reasons. First, because while I didn't have enough evidence to believe, I couldn't prove there was no God. Second, there were some public atheists that seemed to delight in mocking people who believed and calling them superstitious morons. I have never had any desire to destroy other people's faith.
Religious faith can be powerful. Over the millennia, faith has been responsible for a tremendous amount of pain, suffering, and death. But that faith can also be a powerful force for good. It can also provide tremendous comfort to those who believe. There are times I sincerely wish I could believe. Like Penn, I was close with my mother. She passed away a little over 5 years ago. I know she's gone. I know she isn't suffering. But hardly a day goes by that I don't think of something I wanted to tell my mother, some movie, book, TV show, or news story I wished I could share with her. I miss her terribly. But I refuse to believe something just because I want it to be true. Logically, the more I want something to be true, the better evidence I should demand before I believe it.
The existence of God is unfalsifiable. If God exists and really wants me to believe he does, it wouldn't be hard for him to convince me. Obviously, God is under no obligation to provide me with proof of his existence. But so long as he doesn't, I will just have to live my life trying to be the best person I can be. Not because of the promise of paradise or the threat of damnation but because I believe that is the right thing to do.
All very well stated, sir 👍.
@@catkeys6911 Thank you.
You put into words my exact thoughts, in a way that I never could. Thanks.
@@jimd6641 You are very welcome. I'm glad I could help.
Very well reasoned and stated. I depart from your charitable perspective on ‘believers’ when their unfounded beliefs bleed into public policy that affects all people e.g. abortion bans.
If ‘believers’ insist on forcing their superstions on the rest of us, the least the rest of us can do is push back forcefully by calling out their ridiculous unfounded beliefs.
"I just don't wanna not exist". OK...sounds like the child that doesn't want to get off the merry-go-round. Enjoy the ride and be happy for others getting a turn too. My dad told me when he was dieing "your turn to ride". Thank you Pop for the world you gave me. I'll try not to waste a minute. My late brother said (1) "don't sweat the small stuff" (2) " it's all small stuff". Thank you Jupitar Star!
"OK...sounds like the child that doesn't want to get off the merry-go-round."
Do you think that someone born addicted to crack, because their mother smoked it while pregnant, and who is then sold into sex slavery to pay for that addiction, might get some solace in the idea that, if they can just make it through this rotten life they've been handed, there might be some solace and relief at the end of it?
I've had several people tell me they still go to church for the community or family, not because they still believe.
Almost as if holding a community together is an objective benefit of religion, even if the things they believe are not literally true.
I'd feel a hypocrite going to church & listen to crap I no longer believe in
@@kenpyle1716 Some people are just so desperate for community and social acceptance that they'll put up with pretty much literally anything. That's how cults get people and stop them from leaving. It's true for lesser scale situations too... people staying in bad relationships and so forth.
Why watch the same bad, boring, movie over and over again?
I did when I was young and single. Great place to meet girls and find the ones that go to church on Sunday to be forgiven for what they did on Friday and Saturday night.
George Carlin has a great bit on religion.
So does Dave Allen.
so does patten oswalt. oh skycake WHY ARE YOU SO DELICIOUS!!!
how condescending that if you dont believe in their invisible sky daddy, you had a messed up childhood
When did he say that?
@@kijekuyo9494 Interviewers ask or imply it when talking to him. See the part where he says he had a great childhood,
Yep, the ultimate irony, given the religious are essentially just perennial children.
@@kijekuyo9494 go back to the beginning of the show and listen goog,bozo.
It's not condescension, it's statistically and historically accurate data.
I'm so glad I found this channel. I'm reading comments trying to get a better understanding. I like many, have been raised believing Christianity. Now that I'm 53 and have experienced tragedy after tragedy. I do have severe PTSD. I didn't want to stop believing in god but it happened. All these cracks in the foundation until it crumbled into dust. Now I'm devastated bcuz everything I truly believed to the core disentegrated. I don't know what or how to do now. .... this is a level of depression like no other!!!
Healing takes time, and the best part for almost all people about religion was the community with others. I focus my former "religious" energy into doing everything I can to make the world a kinder, more open and caring place.
@BuddyWudzyn thank u for sharing this
If organized religion makes you a good person, that's all that matters.
But, organized religion is nothing more than a social club of like minded people.
And history shows groups like that turn on others that don't think like them.
Some people need religion. It fills a certain void that's missing in people's lives. Some people use religion as their social life. Some people use religion as their support system. Some people even use religion as a form of cheap entertainment.
It's almost as if traditionalism and nonconformity both have value to humanity, but in extremes, they both lead to people getting hurt.
Penn, you raise so many excellent points. It is wonderful to have you on our side!
"It is wonderful to have you on our side!"
Our? How many of you are in there?
I myself have my own spiritual beliefs that I have carved out over 71 years, and I'm happy with them and happier to live in a country where I neither need spiritual advice from the Pope, the Preacher, and certainly not Penn Jillette. Good for Penn, and his thoughts are very cogent, well thought out and articulated. The best thing about freedom of religion is that it includes freedom from religion as well if that's what you believe. Selah
"I just don't wanna not exist." I think this a core truth that drives most or all of us. I intellectually know that I won't know that I don't exist anymore when it happens, but part of me can't stop wishing for the fairy tale to be true. Still, we'd be better off as a race if we all understood that this is the only life we'll know and the only world we'll know, and that if we want anyone to remember us when we're gone, or if we just want our human family to continue, we'd better get our act together and change how we look at each other and how we use the miracle that is Earth
I started writing almost the same train thought as yours but decided to see if anyone already had expressed it. @9:22 I relate so much to what he's saying and it's what keeps me from falling asleep some nights, the thought of no existing. What I don't agree with you on is that you'd prefer that the fairytale was true. I don't, I'd rather find a way to exist forever but there not being a deity.
As for the rest, I also believe that empathy is what this world needs.
Sorry to tell you this, but you are an eternal being
@@keithmarshall7715 You sound very sure of that - and I don't hope that you're wrong - but can you provide any irrefutable evidence to support your statement?
@@keithmarshall7715 And you are not.
You "know" that you wont know you exist anymore..? How do you know that? Who do you know that died and came back and told ya? Not believing in an afterlife is fine but you know?..cmon
I gave up the Catholic BS in 1979 & couldnt be happier ✌💖☮
I had so many bad experiences with people who claimed to be Catholic too. Mainly in health care.
@Vincent67337, why did you use the word claimed? I'm one of those ex-catholics and I don't claim to be raised Catholic I was raised Catholic I was an altar boy I went to Catholic High School you know! Later realized what a damn f***** up institution it was and became an atheist
Is that why you have the need to tell strangers on the internet that you're happy?
The catholic BS is the biggest BS of all, they were the ones that invented the BS.
@@VindensSaga is that why you have the need to criticize someone on the internet who is happy?
I have a great life without a ''God'' and religion and i dont interfere with those who believe, but rather let them live their life as i want them to let me live my life.
But most of "them" don't reciprocate, (allowing us to live our lives the way we allow them to live theirs). They're constantly trying to get us to join their "club," as if doing so affords them extra brownie points when their final day comes.
@@castleanthrax1833 sounds like jehovah witness
@@astridmiller7938 Not just them... it is most people who "believe." I can't count the number of times I've had people tell me that "Jesus still loves you," and he's waiting for me to "return to him."
I would totally agree with you, if it wasn't for the fact that the VAST majority that just quietly pray at home or once a week in church etc, inadvertently then support the noisy ones, mostly by sheer numbers, to then enable them to pass laws that EVERYONE then has to uphold, based on a 2000 year old book of half educated bronze age goat herder's scribblings of BULLSHIT!!
That's why I convert as many as I can.
With some great success so far, as most are really only "hedging their bets" about going to "hell" and it's SO easy to destroy that bullshit too.
Who is trying to tell you about God?
Mark 16:16 KJV
[16] He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
'I love the uneducated'.
Where have I heard that before?
From Donald Trump, speaking of his supporters.
I always find it tiresome that virtually every religion is taking pleasure from life on the “promise “ that after you are dead you will have a great time! Ridiculous
Maybe that mindset was the only way to get primitive people to understand the concept that, 'Immediate gratification is bad for you. Work now, save for tomorrow, and you will be better off than if you just live like a hedonist today'.
@@AlexReynard It was a way for the narcissists at the top to keep the people they were exploiting from rebelling.
Unfortunately they never give a single thought to how long eternity is; even the best things grow sour in the end, but even then you have to keep enduring them. A Hotel California in the sky.
And torture in hell is such a silly concept. What are souls supposed to feel the torture with when brain and nerves have decayed?
@@kellydalstok8900 1) Just because a demonstrably-beneficial idea can be exploited by greedy priests doesn't invalidate the idea itself. No idea is so good it doesn't have fools and assholes clinging to it.
2) So maybe the afterlife isn't eternal. Maybe the stories told to primitive people are vast oversimplifications.
3) I doubt our consciousness is in our heads. There's a lot of stuff I've been seeing (Rupert Sheldrake's work, and the CIA's Gateway project) that suggests that, consciousness does not come from our brain. Our brain is more like a VR helmet that allows our immaterial consciousness to interact with material reality. Think of consciousness as an 'energy field', like gravity or electromagnetism. My best guess is that, all our individual consciousnesses are split from a central source. Like sparks from a central flame. The afterlife would be the place your consciousness returns to after the physical body it inhabits dies. I think our bodies are like an avatar sprite in an MMORPG. Or vehicles that we're driving.
So then, Hell might simply be the area around the central flame. It wouldn't be torment, but _chaos._ As in, think of how chaotic your dreams are. Nothing is stable; events and settings can flow into different states as you imagine them. Now imagine a space where everyone's dreams manifest as their reality. It would be utter pandemonium, as everyone's imaginations collided. And I doubt this would be eternal. Of what use to the universe would that be? What if the 'exit door' to Hell is either to get reincarnated back to the material plane, or give up your individuality and merge your spark with the fire, so it can learn and grow?
it sickens me to the core that people will willingly join a cult that worships death. (i chose those specific words for a reason)
@@clubcyberia8572 Really? Why? We're all going to die someday, so why not make peace with that? Why not plan your end to be a glorious, beautiful, or hilarious one? Why not delve into the knowledge of death, and how it led us to be able to perceive time in relation to our awareness that we had a finite lifespan? Stuff like that?
Oh! You meant, like, religions where they just want non-members to die. Yeah, okay. Full agreement that those guys are boring mean assholes.
The more you learn about how the world works, gods disappear.
The more we discover the more it all seems cesigned it seems to me
I believe the more we learn, the more we realize the incredible rarity, balance, and complexities of our existence. If you actually look at the big picture, everything is created for a purpose. What came first? The chicken, or the egg? They had to have come into existence at the same time. They are both dependent on each other. Same with everything, all part of an incredible design. The complexities of the human body are fascinating. Our blood clots, we fight infections, and our wounds have the ability to heal. Absolutely fascinating, if you think about it. You started as a single cell, and now your body consists of over 100 trillion cells with a road map, DNA, which makes you entirely unique. If DNA isn't proof of an incredible, unfathomable design, I don't know what is.
@@scottdykema5385That’s because you’re ignorant. Uninformed.
Read a book.
Intelligent design?
Explain why most humans need their wisdom teeth removed? What idiot designed that?
How about the fact that the human eye is a terrible “design”
Just a quick google search produces tons of information about how inefficient it is.
You’re an intellectual child
Extend that to how the universe works. It’s a very violent place with exploding stars that result in the creation of planets. The existence of trillions and trillions of stars and hence planets, so far away from us that we will never, ever see them with our naked eye. Most, if not all of them devoid of life, so begs the question, what purpose did any “creator” have in mind for their existence?
@@scottdykema5385 I think what came first was two chickens a male and a female. Male and female created He them in order to produce viable eggs
There are two things I have heard over and over from religious people the 1st is that when something bad happens it's all part of God's plan, God has a plan and the second is that when God created us he gave us the freedom to choose for our selves whether or not to believe in him however if God has a plan then we don't have the freedom to choose to believe in him because if he has a plan then everything is predetermined and if God doesn't have a plan and did give us freedom of choice to believe then he abandoned us because any actual act of God any interference on his part would take away that freedom or to put it simply God either doesn't exist or he is an absent parent who abandoned his children.
I just love Penn
Love Jesus first
@@guilty-of-being-right What has a two thousand year old con-man got over a smart twenty first century dude?
@@guilty-of-being-right ummm NO
"I just love Penn"
Everyone has a god. For some, it is Penn.
@@thomasmaughan4798 if I do have a choice I guess I would chose Penn... but of course my idea of worship might be a tad different
As a long time Christian, (now atheist), I never understood how so many other Christians truly believed in earthly punishment and reward. This completely nullifies the idea of Jesus dying for our sins. Even as a Christian, I believed in earthly action/ consequence and randomness.
God isn’t making that good person suffer, the world is. But my brain evolved the ability for critical thinking and I have left the Matrix.
Penn Jillette is one of only a handful of atheists who I have never heard say anything that I disagreed with.
And how 'bout Christopher Hitchens?
@dwaynehendricks7842
Hitchens was directly responsible for my final turn away from religious beliefs. That being said, there were a few things that he said about politics that I didn't agree with.
We are not intended to go to hell. Hell was not prepared for us. The devil rebelled against God. The devil does not want a relationship with God and does not want to be with God and so a place had to be created for him and his followers. Humans are not supposed to go to hell. But when we choose to ignore God and through our disobedience declare that we do not want to be with him eternally, then what is God to do? He grants us our free will and send us to a spiritual realm without God. The knowledge of what we have missed out and the reality of being in a place without God brings excruciating pain. God does not send us to hell. We choose to go to hell in our actions.
Why hold onto a belief despite mounting evidence against it?
a) Wishful thinking
b) Fear or overwhelm from the alternative
c) Sunk Costs Fallacy
That is interesting. What do you mean by sunk cost fallacy?
That's why I gave up on atheism.
@@rudysega
The Sunk Costs Fallacy, also known as the Gambler's Fallacy, is the argument that you're already in so deep that you might as well keep on digging yourself deeper.
Like all fallacies, this is not a rational argument but a distortion or rationalization. Abuse victims often stay in abusive relationships by arguing some version of this fallacy to themselves. Maybe the abuser will change this time (ignoring the data from all the previous times) and anyway I'm in so deep that I've got no way out.
Yes, you do have a way out of this particular fallacy. Accept your loss and walk away from it.
@@SteveLomas-k6k
It's why you're confused, evidently.
@@starfishsystems
good thing fallacies are a one-way street and can only happen on a side of a topic that isn't the side your on, right? 🤗...
Where do I begin; maybe the fact that my stepmother believed I was a devil-worshipper 'cause I listened to rock-n-roll music!! She burned all my albums!!!!! Every Sunday she had to blare the preacher who was arrested for prostitution. Then I had an ex who claimed she could 'feel' the demonic spirits coming from my music, so I slipped a Marylin Manson cd under her seat, and you know what, I didn't hear a peep outvof her for three weeks till she was cleaning and 'discovered' said cd. Lets just say we didn't last long after that!! And it just blossomed from there. Now that I a member of FFRF, I truly do feel 'welcomed'. Thank you.
Jillette, the best amen can get 😇
10 points to Gryffindor!
really? the best amen?
@@nicolesdad Yes.
@@DonoVideoProductions ahhh....got it...Gillette! clever
And more
The very foundation of the church and every good thing that it does is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. From those we derive our distinguishing marks - the love that we hold in common (John 13:35) and the doctrine that sets the guidelines for how we live, act, and worship (John 14:15). Atheist churches have no hope because they are missing these key elements. These principles don’t just affect atheist churches, though. Splits, division, and sharp disagreement occur in the church as well. Ephesians 4:1-3 reminds us that we must be diligent to preserve our peace and unity that come from the Spirit. As the church can become fractured into small cliques and sects when we look out for ourselves first or don’t show the love of Christ in all things, we have to be all the more diligent in this day and age to prove ourselves united in Him.
The only way for humans to ever become truly unified in one mind and purpose is through the love of Jesus Christ. Is that love alive, working, and evident in your congregation? Your life? My life? I hope we’ll all take some time to think on these things.
Exactly,God's not dead because he never existed.
I do not want eternal life. In any human context, one which replicates the meaningful and fullfing reality we thrive on, it would be the ultimate Hell. The human brain cannot cope with eternal awareness or existence. You'd go insane. I take comfort in going back to nothingness after I die. And, frankly, to have more of the same experiences or worse, forever, is not a concept I can fathom nor desire.
I honestly believe that most of it is fear. Fear of death, fear of losing their friends, family and community.
Give them a reason to know thats not the case and they'll probably come around, most of em anyway. Being poor doesnt help either. But thats another rabbit hole.
Thank god I’m atheist
holding onto belief is because sometimes you dont have a human friend who holds onto you always.
What’s always been a burning question for me is….if there’s a god, why doesn’t he/she/it just show themself and put the greatest question in the universe to rest? Does god get more worshipers if you can’t see him? I’d think if he showed himself the exact opposite would happen.
Especially sense this god was doing miracles and all kinds of shit K's of years ago. Then when cameras, writing, education came about; at the same time these real "miracles" people "saw or heard about" vanished. (except of course in 3rd world countries without these verifying tools don't exist) Got is alive and well and doing "gods work" on the daily.
@@fishtailfuture very true. It’s hilarious that god supposedly used to talk directly to humans thousand of years ago, then decided to suddenly stop and publish a best seller instead and said to mankind, “here, you read it and figure it out”.
@@bigboithe8th
It's so crazy to me. I was never indoctrinated as a youth. And it literally makes me think these people are crazy. I don't understand it. I don't get how anybody can be convinced by it. I'm not trying to be a dick. It literally baffles me that people could be so easily manipulated and dumb on this. But I can admit plenty of very smart people are believers. In fact, given how many people are religious. Most smart people are believers.
The thing is, I don't think most people really actually believe it. I think they don't think about it much. I think they pay lip service. I think they know it's kind of ridiculous but they just go along, but they don't go to church and don't really care. Except when it comes to voting and some obscure political issues. All the sudden they wanna come out of the woodwork like daddy has something to say about it. It's really weird. It's really creepy and it's really sad honestly.
To somebody that wasn't indoctrinated. I'm 100% honest when I say it's like believing in Santa Claus or a leprechaun. It holds no more value to me. These people try to hit you on an emotional level or something about going to hell. All it does is just show me how scared and pathetic they are and how unconfident they are in their own beliefs. It's such a weird juxtaposition.
Because it would put the apologists out of a job, and he cares deeply about them?
@@bigboithe8th Because then there would be no room for faith. Even free will would have to go away, and all humanity would become slaves to the god.
In my life I haven't been so much an atheist, as an anti-theist. When I found this attribution of Epicurus, I had found the meaning of god. At the least, meaningless. At the most, deepest evil.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is God able to prevent evil, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is God both willing and able to prevent evil?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is God neither willing nor able to prevent evil?
Then why call him God?
It's possible to believe something even if you don't know. Actually, belief requires a lack of knowledge. To know would eliminate the need for belief.
That is incorrect. Knowledge is a justified true belief.
In order to KNOW it, you must believe in it. Knowledge is just the addition that it's justified as true, as well as being true.
But if you accept that you do not know WHAT x is, in any manner that is personally and meaningfully coherent, then you cannot believe it. If I ask you "do you believe in flizzwedles" then you'd say NO - because you have no idea what that might be. If I said "they are non-rabbit, non-blue things that did something" then clearly that doesn't make them more comprehensible so you'd hopefully be unlikely to accept their existence (ie., believe in them).
that's wrong "belief" does not imply lack of knowledge. I believe the things I know. don't you?
Not at all. Knowledge requires belief. Is there something you know, that you do not believe you know? That describes mental illness.
@DonoVideoProductions Knowledge is acknowledged fact. There is no element of faith when it comes to things that are factual. They are whether or not you believe them to be. It's hubris to think that existence requires someone to perceive it. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, it still generates sound. This thinking is why people 'believe' God made us in his image. Its human arrogance combined with creativity cranked up to 11.
@@DonoVideoProductions No. If I know something, it's knowledge as distinguishable from mere acceptance, which is belief. I can verify what I know. What I can't verify, I believe, or take on faith.
When bronze-age Middle East tribesmen were hearing the voice of god and writing it down, we have medications for that these days!
It always pisses me off, when theists pull that bullshit "what happened to you as a kid to make you become an atheist?" like the default position is believing in invisible sky daddies, and only some horrible, traumatic experience, would make someone "turn from baby geezus". It's the most fucking annoying thing, i swear
YES the default position is seeking religion. For fuck's sake, how can you believe otherwise? Look at all the vastly-different cultures all around the world, and damn near every single one of them that has ever existed has had some form of religion. It is absolutely the default in human nature for us to believe there's something more than just this life and just us. The only question is, "If we are meaning-seeking beings, does the thing we seek exist, or is it just that seeking it is beneficial to us?"
@@AlexReynardis it ?
Because all those cultures you're talking about...force children to believe in these religions.
It's more about fitting in, than seeking out.
There's no seeking, you're recorded as having whatever religion your parents are before you can even speak...
I had a well adjusted happy childhood, even with a stay at home mom, believe it or not, and I never felt the need to believe in mythological entities. Still don't.
@@vectorwolf Well, obviously, that explains it. Who's going to choose to devote themselves to seeking a world beyond this one, if this one is already great? What kind of person would devote themselves to creating a tulpa? Someone who already has a fulfilling relationship? It's why you see tons of outcast dorky teens getting interested in magic and the occult. If you know you do not fit well in this world, you're going to seek a feeling of "home" elsewhere.
There's almost no difference in the desire to explore magic and the desire to create art, at its fundamental root. It's a yearning to either find, or create, _something more than _*_this._*
@@AlexReynard And yet I'm an artist by trade and have been all my life. XD You don't need a shitty life to be an artist, just a creative mind. And plenty of people are creative without needing trauma to get them there.
The "tortured artist" trope isn't founded in reality at all, if anything it's often used to grossly misinterpret an artist's work and intent. Are there artists with a woeful history rhat shaped their artistic growth? Sure. But there's probably more tiresome middle managers where that holds true than artists. Lots of people have crappy childhoods. Correlation is not causation.
3:38 My god, Penn, I don’t even like people to tell me what do - there’s a way to do that by having a conversation and letting them have input, too!
I hate proselytizing - “l’ll do my thing and you do your thing. I “get” what people see in their religions, I really do. But unless, it’s a philosophical, discussion which we can argue amiably, DO NOT try to turn me.
I don’t care what religion you are, as long as you’re a good person and help others and be nice to them, you’re cool. I’ve met people who Jehovah’s witnesses, they were so nice for the most part :)🌷
(n.b. Of course, there are people who will be “nasty” and mean.)
The only Gods are in peoples' imagination.
Is that not equally true of your imagining that there is no God? If we Christians can be accused of not being able to provide empirical evidence of the existence of God, surely an atheist can equally be challenged that they cannot provide empirical proof that there is no God!
@@robbarron8635 Why would anyone in any circumstance feel compelled to prove that something DOESN'T exist? I could make up an infinite number of things that might exist, but why should I expend any energy at all proving a single one of them doesn't exist? If you want me to believe something that you believe, by all means make your case, but asking someone else to disprove it is folly.
@@kevindavis5966 Well put.
@@robbarron8635 NO ONE should be a Christian because no one should believe absurdities which are claimed without any evidence. When you come to understand how absurd your beliefs are you'll hopefully let them go. You were *indoctrinated.*
@@robbarron8635 There is a a far higher probability that a god doesn't exist than exist. It is not up to an atheist to provide proof of an existence of a God. It is a believer. Anyway how do you provide proof?. There isn't any. So it is the believer that must do this almost impossible task.
Many of my earliest memories are Junior Sunday School lessons. The God that decided to destroy humanity with a Flood to me was not all powerful, and very capricious. In jealousy of my younger sister's night-time attention, I wanted my mother to pray with me too at bed time. She'd never done that before, and she never did. She sent me to my room telling me how to pray. But none of it made sense to my 4-yo mind. If God was all knowing, all powerful, and the epitome of Love, then He already knew what I wanted. So why didn't He give it to me? Was I disobedient? Then I thought, how can I communicate with someone who has no name, must be spoken to through the name of His son, and had not once ever revealed himself to a mortal? Where did He get off hiding behind a curtain claiming almighty benevolence? Was He that incompetent he needed a Jesus and innumerable mortals to get His work done? All impotent and unintelligent if you ask me. But 4 yo boys were never asked their opinion of this contradictory and nonsensical God.
From an early age, I was a curious boy and wanted to understand everything. It led me to science, and a life-long career in it. What I discovered along the way was astonishingly well organized biology and physical relations/processes. Some person(s) really smart were behind the existence of living creatures and how matter operated. But I don't think one man could know all that, and is required to accomplish that. I've tried. Organized religion is a fraud, one that becomes plainly and painfully evident when sitting down to examine its roots. None of the founders ever instituted a knew doctrine. And certainly none of them ever reported having a heavenly Manifestation, while the priests thereof have repeatedly demonstrated how impotent they are in implementing the simplest of their tenets. When I read The True Believer, I was convinced Religion had gotten life all messed up, and I did not need an incompetent, impotent intercessor to guide me to "Perfection."
"But 4 yo boys were never asked their opinion of this contradictory and nonsensical God." I know people who had evolution explained to them so poorly when they were young, that they grew up disbelieving in evolution. But if you walk them through the steps of natural selection, they'll say that all makes sense. Yet, they're certain they disbelieve in "evolution". Because what "evolution" means to them, is that poor explanation they were taught, which they are certain is not true.
If there is a god, he must be grossly incompetent.
Be afraid of blasphemy against your Creator.
@@naheedkhanmd3
Spooky language.
@naheedkhanmd3 - Aside from being incompetent, he's a sadistic tyrant and a despot as well. He's very jealous. Worship any other deity other than him and you'll burn in hell forever.
@@naheedkhanmd3 Very typical religious mindset: "Be afraid."
@@naheedkhanmd3Grow up . Become adult.
People know the rules,instinctivly. That voice inside of us.
Those rules are installed by your surroundings they’re not innate.
When visiting another country, breaking the cultural rules is easy if you have not been exposed to them.
In Australia, it is common for commuters to thank the bus driver.
It is understandable down under because the entire population has excess blood in their heads.
If you live in USA you probably don't instinctively think eating eels is a thing.
"That voice inside of us."
Us? How many of you are in there?
An invisible man in the sky who grants wishes. Ok, I’m out.
...what if the said man was like a hologram ? 😂
@@DutchVai Still idiotic hyperbole.
@@DutchVai I'd require some credible evidence of that. Holograms, gods, whatever. Belief requires something tangible
an invisible man? in the sky???? that's rich. Jesus may snicker at this one too!
@@nicolesdad Your imaginary friend has quite the imagination to snicker at religious idiocy.
I'm grateful for the tolerant Christian upbringing I had as a child. It didn't exclude the ancient pagan myths either. It at least gave me a concept of eternity and immortality. In later life, this was a great help in accepting the mindblowing impications of time being relative. I believe that all of spacetime is eternal. At one point there is my living being, at another point is my remains, but both exist eternally on the same level. But they're different things. One can't become the other, and the one doesn't supercede the other. Of course ancient books are full of errors that we can't accept anymore.
Perosnally, I think it was more helpful for me to face the reality of ending when I was around 8-9 years old. Made me realize how important to live this life fully since this is my only one that is for sure, I don't know if there will be a second chance.
@@dorkception2012 That must have been an awful realisation at that age. On one level I kept my childish, animal-like belief in my immortality as long as I had my Christian faith, until my late teens. Then, I believed after I died my atoms would still be part of life on Earth. But, Einstein's theories restored my belief in immortality. I won't be alive centuries from now. I agree this is the only life we have, so we should make it a good one. I think we have this life for all eternity. But, this idea that the past isn't really passed, but exists forever, has a heavy price. It means the horrors of the past exist forever as well.
@@keithbessant You see, you think it was terrible for me, because you think everyone wants to be immortal? To be honest you are not the only one, but maybe that's why we see this thing from such a different perspective. The sooner a kid realize that we are mortal, the more comfortable it becomes for him/her. I was scared for like half a day for sure, but thankfully, my parents were mature enough to make me realize that it's the way why life is so precious, there is no sensation of warm, without the sensation of cold, sweet and bitter, makes the world full of flavour, and not bland. I'm really grateful how they took up the weight of the subject and I will do the same with my kids as well.
@@dorkception2012 I agree. I think the reason people have this morbid fear of death is that they think it's they who are going to be buried or cremated, when really it's their remains. It's probably how most children would see it. A living being and their remains are two different things, existing at different points in time. It doesn't bother me that I'm not living in the year 3000, any more than I'm not living in Australia or Africa. I'm alive now and that's what matters. I prefer to believe in the philosophy of Parmenides and Zeno of Elea. To, me it's easier ot believe that nothing changes and things are what they are forever. The alternative is a world of constant change, where nothing is there long enough to truly exist. It takes the light from the Sun several minutes to reach the Earth, but we don't say that we don't know if it's still there. If it was there however many minutes ago, it's there now. I think the same of older generations who are no longer with us.
@@keithbessant Yepp, that's why religions still around, it gave the feeling of comfort, even if many knows it's not proven, but it's way easier to them to deal with the trauma. Some people afraid of being insignificant, so having a larger than life "friend" gives them an ego boost. So many white lies we tell ourselves, we are truly just overgrown apes...
It’s called blind faith for a reason
And that’s why it’s all make believe…. You need faith in make believe to think there’s a god……..
@@Ex_christian fairy tales to scare people into conformity
Yep, you surely need to be blind to believe Religion
I agree you need blind faith to believe that 'nothing' created everything, that this nothing could balance and fine tune the universe and create order from the Big Bang, nothing then set up the right conditions for life on this ''oasis of life'' in an otherwise hostile to life universe that we have named Earth (all this from a super heated and completely sterile of life early universe), then atheist miracle of miracles- after nothing created complex single cell life from out of a magicians hat I presume- nothing then commanded these single cell organisms to go forth and multiply into millions of plant and animal species while not leaving any fossil evidence that stands up to scrutiny. Or as famed evolutionist Stephen J. Gould admitted in an unguarded 'confession' , described the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record as, ''the TRADE SECRET of paleontology.'' Darwin himself lamented to his dying days this extreme lack of fossil evidence for his delusional theory. Dozens of some of the most respected evolutionists in more recent decades have also admitted that there is an extreme dearth of transitional fossils. If there was fossil evidence to support Darwin's folly there wouldn't have been a reason for pimping out fraudulent 'missing links' such as Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Peking Man, or to imagine and then promote easily refuted 'odd variant' fossils that have the characteristics of 2 or more species such as the infamous Archaeopteryx.
Darwinian Evolution was Dead On Arrival. It's rotting corpse only propped up by friends in high places and indoctrination through media and our centres of miseducation that neglected to even hint to us that there is a fatal problem with the fossil record. Now evolutionists have been forced by the 'mysterious' disappearance of the fossils of trillions of animals that allegedly lived at one time and were supposedly at one of thousands of the required stages of transforming into a new species, to propose new theories of evolution such as Gould and Eldridge's 'Punctuated Equilibrium'. Then we have otherwise brilliant scientists such as the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA Francis Crick whose 'anything but God theory' of 'directed pan-spermia' proposed that aliens on a dying planet sent a rocket ship loaded with bacteria to seed our earth with life. The only problem with these new theories is that there is zero evidence supporting them just as there is no legitimate evidence for Darwinian evolution. But do keep up your 'blind faith' of a baseless theory that devalues human life as evidenced by many of the cults past devotees, including some of the biggest mass murderers in human history. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, and many atheist dictators and serial killers.
the bible doesn't call it that
I hear you,I don't understand that either.You don't have to hold on to truth,that's part of you even on into eternity.
Beliefs have a clever way of preventing us from knowing the truth. Beliefs can be wonderful but they are simply beliefs. That's all, just beliefs, not truths.
can they never align?
Religious Wars are people fighting for who has the best Imaginary Friend.
. The natural world existed billions of years before man created the superstition(s). The mystery itself is the doorway to all understanding. When superstition closes the door, then understanding will never be found.
Care to justify your belief that the natural world existed for billions of years? Or perhaps you're just referring to that deeply unscientific hypothesis they call the Big Bang? You know, the one described as: The whole universe was in a hot dense state when nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started. Wait, the earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool, neanderthals developed tools they built a wall (they build the pyramids!) Maths, science, history, unravelling the mysteries that all started with the Big Bang!' I mean, let's face it, music and mythology, Einstein and astrology, it all started with the big bang! :D
according to your religious belief system
@@mentilly_all I am SAVED - from superstition and I do not believe in spirits. I believe that the abrahamic religions are the evil in the world.
People vastly overrate their importance. These are the believers who, after surviving a tornado, give credit to their god without mentioning all of their neighbors who perished the same natural disaster. Silliness🪿
First of the misconception by most Christian religions is that the Bible is Totally Christian . The Old Testament is Not Christian it is Judasim.
Much of it was taken from Greek myth.
Prayer is a fancy term for talking to yourself.
It's as valuable as an invisible motorcycle.
It's actually just a form of guided meditation, which is a perfectly secular thing.
False.
I was raised in a fundamentalist Xian household and read the Bible from cover-to-cover as a kid and studied it weekly… and when people ask why I became an atheist (at age 12), my standard reply is… “I read the Bible.”
Emma? Emma, who? Also, it's good to have a bit of caring socialism to balance up your heartless Victorian capitalism.
I googled it and I believe it was Emma Goldman. I don't know her. Wikipedia says she was an anarchist, not socialist, but that's not the best source LOL
what you're supposed to do is try to understand what sort of a world the old testament was a reaction to
It doesn't matter what you believe. This is just my opinion. Just don't hate other people because they think differently. Also, I think it would help society if we looked for things we share in common.
Doesn't that mean that your opinion doesn't matter? And what follows is that no opinion matters. Doesn't that then mean that there are no rules whatsoever? After all those are all opinions. That's not what we see tho. Nearly everything is the majority opinion. So given that observation, I would say what you believe matters a lot in every aspect of life.
We were given free will. There it is:- we were Given free will. GIVEN.
@@theresamills5095 When and by who?
Glad I am discovering Mr Jillete’s atheism now.
More known voices speaking out. This is fantastic.😊
He has done that for at least a decade...
fantastic is accurate
(because of your fantasy)
@@mentilly_all Another brainless assertion without any concept, or argument. Go and eat some more playdoh...
@@mentilly_all what fantasy is that now?
@@latinworldexplorer the fantasy that there's no Creator
Love you so much! It’s a shame people are that delusional to believe in god.
what do you mean by "shame" ?
The church asks for help, they ask for money. People ask the church for help tge church says pray.
God is a perfect, man made, contradiction.
yeah,you`re stupid and don`t know it!
Maybe we're just really shitty at describing that which we are barely capable of perceiving.
Like, imagine you catch a glimpse someday of a gigantic Lovecraftian being, so big that the sky can barely contain it. How good a job are you going to do at *accurately* describing that being? How much are your human biases going to influence your description? It's like the saying, "If ants had a God, it would be a giant ant."
@@AlexReynardActually, we're very good at describing many things we can barely perceive. For example, bacteria, viruses, atoms and molecules, electromagnetic radiation, the approximate shape of our galaxy even though no one's ever been outside far enough to see the damn thing! Even much of the observable universe! Science is the remarkable tool that allows us to do these things. Indeed, the ancient Greeks were able to deduce the shape and approximate size of the Earth long before they had the ability to actually see it. And a big difference is that your hypothetical lovecraftian being would be a part of objective reality, the observation of which could be confirmed by others, which is not at all true, nor even possible, of God or any of many other supernatural, mythological beings.
maybe your version is
Amen! Amen! Amen! I love this guy!
Either God can't or God won't! Take your pick religion because both equal the same level of nothing in the real world
Yes, Something happened in my childhood that made me atheist, I was brought up Christian.
Is it just me or everybody that gives up religion are happier? I know I am!
basing standards for truth or morality on sheer happiness is a slippery slope that leads to objective evil quicker than we think
Thank you. 💟☮️
Welcome!
I think the biggest problem here is the definition of God. If we're talking Man-God who micromanages every single thing in the known universe? No. Clearly not real. But something more Eastern, where "God" is more like "The Force" or a metaphor for change (Shiva), IDK. I don't really have an issue with that. Further, those philosophies (unlike Christianity and Islam) are perfectly compatible with science, modernity, etc.
I have read that scientifically Hinduism is the closest to the “truth”. I’d love someone to cover this and explain 😊
@janegerow5974 do a YT search. There's tons of stuff on it. They knew thousands of years ago that the Earth was round, part of a solar system, which was part of a galaxy, which was part of a universe . . . Even calculated age of the universe and were in the neighborhood. Their origin story even sounds like a metaphor for the big bang.
@@careyfreeman5056 I will thank you!
Ingersoll was so popular in the 1890s that a small town in Texas was named after him The residents have since changed the name of the town
I think the Mayor is known as an Are Soul.
@@VaughanMcCuecorrect. Ha
Most people, believes and non-believes alike, should study the history of their chosen religion and the Bible. It is interesting, as most endeavors into the unknown are. The Bible was written by men 1500 years ago in the middle east, for people of that time. It was never intended to be passed down through the generations or applied to other cultures. Men of that time had dominion over and traded women, children and livestock and was considered property. And, as property, the owner took whatever pleasure out of the property he chose. Still in that region today, these culture norms are present.
Why read the bible ?
@@gowdsake7103 Read the KJV, then read the Tynsdale version. Then you will know why you did it.
@@gowdsake7103 Most read the first version that is presented to them. Instead, find out the history of all different versions. It’s one of the biggest secrets hidden in plain site.
Translation: "I'm going to get upset at the religion that introduced the belief that all human life is sacred; beginning the foundation for the abolition of slavery. I'm going to be angry at people 1500 years ago who *began* the fight against norms that were common to every culture in humanity at the time, because they didn't get everything perfect immediately." If you saw 500 people wallowing in shit, and one of them started to climb out and clean off , you'd point at him and mock him for being covered in shit.
All of the difficult verses in the Bible have been explained by the top Christian scholars and put in the right context for those meant only for ancient Israel and in the context of the beliefs and traditions of those days. I will admit there are a handful of these verses that I don't think were dealt with completely and to my satisfaction. But translating verses from ancient languages especially words and sentences that were rarely used can be extremely difficult to get the exact intended meaning. So my hope is that with modern technology they will find several more writings in the ancient languages which will greatly help in more accurately translating these near impossible to translate verses.
Penn, I agree with you 100% that if you are a devout Christian and follower of Yeshua/Jesus Christ then you owe it to others to share the Gospel, and evidence for why you believe. Too many who call themselves Christian sit on their lazy asses and never try to win one soul to Christ, so that they can join us in Heaven, rather than spend eternity on Hell with all those Freemasons and their puppets in media and stooge politicians. lol And these lukewarm Christians would be wise to read what Jesus taught would be their eternal fate.
Your view that heaven will be like North Korea is deeply flawed. God is not a dictator like that pipsqueak who runs that repressive shit show. God has given us freedom of choice in this brief mortal life. The great test of our character was Jesus Christ coming to earth to teach us a perfect way to live a moral loving life, he fulfilled ALL of the many Messianic Prophecies regarding the 1st Coming to perfection, demonstrate his godly street cred by performing many miracles and healing's, then become the unblemished by sin perfect sacrifice for our sins, and then conquer death itself by rising back to life on the 3rd day! The Resurrection evidence both from the Bible and from ancient historians who actually had contempt for the early Christians but were honest historians so they wrote about how the first generations of Christians were for the most part willing to be tortured, jailed and brutally executed rather than cease preaching that many of them or their loved ones had seen Jesus alive after his Crucifixion.
So the great test is, do we love our worldly sin more than we love God/Jesus so that we either remain wilfully ignorant of the many lines of evidence that God exists or we study the evidence like you have and discard it as not being valid? Our evidence stands up to debate. You atheists have zero evidence for your worldview. The only half credible alternative to Jesus being the Creator is Darwinian Evolution or plain old macro-evolution. I like to call it the opiate of the atheist, because the fossil evidence sucks so bad that dozens of the most respected evolutionists admit in their unguarded moments that there is a dearth of transitional fossils. Or as Stephen J. Gould put it the embarrassing shortage of missing links is the ''Trade Secret'' of Paleontologists. Again it's because non-believers love this corrupt world and want to be their own highest moral authority and act like they are godlike in their faulty human judgements on how one should live their lives. Look at the world of chaos, violence and corruption including the many hypocrites in our churches, that rebelliousness against God's authority ain't working! Humans are morally weak sinners who seek to justify their choices to hurt others and themselves with their harmful sins by deluding themselves that sin either doesn't exist or that they are generally good people and don't need their many sins forgiven.
So if we follow the evidence and believe that Jesus came to earth to show us a better way, and it makes us hate our own sin so that we fully repent and do our best to follow Christ's moral guidance we will get rid of most of our sins in this life. But we are still human and won't become perfect until God REWARDS us for fully accepting the Gospel that Jesus shed his blood for our sins. We are promised a new eternal and perfect body and a spirit of sinlessness that believers strove for in this life but never fully reached perfection. So don't you worry about God punishing you for every sin if you make it to Heaven. Satan will be impotent to influence true followers of Christ once we reach Heaven because he will be separated and in Hell and quite busy suffering his deserved punishment along with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, serial killers and all unrepentant sinners. You're right Penn God didn't give us a detailed itinerary for how Heaven will be (nor Hell) but I'm good with the promise to be Resurrected as Christ was and the general outline of how Heaven will be fits my comfort zone perfectly. (Revelation 21:1-4) Because I've learned to trust God and that his plan will be perfect in every detail!
What do you have to look forward to if ''your evidence light'' worldview is true? Ending up that your biggest contribution was to end up as worm food and going back to the nothingness that was before you or any life existed? That means all your atheist preaching and all of your accomplishments, your emotions, memories, relationships, thoughts in this brief life will be as if they never existed. Oh your videos and books may inspire more family, friends and some of the gullible public to reject the chance to have a perfect eternity but after all life eventually becomes extinct as scientists and philosophers predict then it would be as if humanity had never even existed. There goes your purpose and meaning for your life. Atheism leads to existential nihilism and along with belief in Evolution which devalues human life as being accidents of nature and simply evolved bacteria, this is what surely drove atheist dictators such as Stalin and Mao mad and resulted in them becoming the biggest torturers and mass murderers of their own citizens in world history. That Hitler guy also belonged to the Darwinian death cult but he wasn't an atheist but had many delusional and distorted views of religion.
I'm a bit tired so I will give you a link. U-tube won't allow links so i will not print it correctly. gotquestions dot org/heaven-sin-html I find they give short, concise to the point one page answers to many questions regarding religions, science, evolution, cults, Catholicism, etc, that are pretty informative and accurate. This one has a short video to go with the article. Hover over verses to read them, click on to get a bit more information and check out the ''Related Articles'' if you wish.
The description of the Hebrew god Yahweh is in perfect conflict with the Bible stories written by believers.
If a medical emergency happened in the home of devout believers in god, why do they call for an ambulance, did they forget how to pray? It would demonstrate where their real faith lies
A few weeks ago, I got up from sleep to go to the bathroom, felt all the energy leave my body, and I collapsed on the floor. I didn't know if I'd had a heart attack, or a cataclysmic drop in blood pressure, a stroke, or what. But I've been in contact with a supermaterial being for a while now (it's vastly oversimplified, but if I call it an "angel" that at least conveys something higher than a human but not as big as a god). I trusted that my angel wouldn't let me die just then. I did go to the ER to get checked out, but the whole time I was calm and relaxed. At the hospital, they did a bunch of tests and determined that I'd gotten overheated in bed and dehydrated myself. Certainly plausible. And I felt better immediately after getting an IV drip and some apple juice. I was home in two hours. So, why was I relaxed? While it'd take too long to write it all out, I'd asked my angel a serious, deep question that evening, and my collapse that night maneuvered me into position to have an unambiguous answer to that question positioned directly in my sightline. That let me know that my collapse wasn't serious; it was just the only way my angel could arrange things to answer me (since they have as much ability to communicate with me as you do with an ant). Conclusive proof? Not to anyone else. But for me it was enough. When bad things happen, I ride them out, and say, 'Allright. I trust you're leading me someplace I need to be.' If I pray, it's while I'm also taking secular precautions. It's like the old joke about the man in the flood waiting for God to rescue him. If you're not open to supernatural forces wiggling their way into our world within the plausibility of natural events, you'll miss them.
@@AlexReynard a bit late now, but I think you should've kept this story to yourself
Most theists that I have interacted with have a fundamental misunderstanding of the atheist position. I am not an atheist because something bad happened in my childhood, I'm not an atheist because I am rebelling against God either. I have no desire to sin. The reason I am an atheist is because I see no reason to believe that any god exists, that is it, nothing more complicated than that. I have never claimed that there is definitely no god or gods, I just see no evidence to suggest that such entities exist. I believe that mine is the normal atheist position, certainly for the atheists I have spoken with. Trying to claim that I am rebelling against God is ludicrous once you understand I don't believe God to be real.
Read what Dawkins says about DNA containing megabytes of digitally encoded information.
Then ask yourself, how does any random process encode for vast systems of interacting nanomachines?
@@glenliesegang233 Did you mean to be replying to me or somebody else? My comment was an explanation as to why I am an atheist.
"I just see no evidence to suggest that such entities exist."
Have you tried psychedelics? Give me your answer afterwards.
something's existence is not determined by whether you believe it exists or not
Love reading out bible quotes to deluded victims of religion and just watching them squirm, often they’ve never heard it because it’s been withheld from them from their fellow deluded victims
Most of them knows those. THey simply live in constant cognitive dissonance, sacrificing reason and logic, so they can soothe their minds that they will live after they die. Pure pathetic and sad.
If god could create matter out of nothing, then why did not god create man out of nothing? Rather god used soil/earth to create man; and man's rib to create woman.
Believing in God is no different than believing in Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy, The Genie In A Bottle, and The Wizard of Oz.
Well, yes. If your conception of God is as simplistic and small as those characters, of course that sounds ridiculous.
But how about this: Your body is made of cells, right? And all those cells are individual life forms? Do you think they have any idea that billions of them form a singular consciousness? You are a hivemind. As are we all. If cells could talk, they'd likely say, "I don't believe in people. I've never seen one. What would a human even look like? A gigantic cell? That's stupid." Maybe you can't conceive of the being that all Earthlife makes.
Wait, WHAT? Are you telling me "The Wizard of Oz" isn't based on a true story???
@@AlexReynard Where was God when those planes crashed into the twin-towers on 911? Thousands of people suffered horrible deaths on that day. Give me an intelligent answer to the above question.
@@AlexReynardNobody knows. We really can't even define what God is or where did God come from? Anything is possible. It's also possible that God created us but that there's no afterlife. It's conceivable that early man developed these concepts as a means to bring civilization to a barbaric society. The Bible could be BS and God could still exist. Humans are free to believe what brings them comfort so long as they don't try to control others.
@bmoshareholderappleshareho855 Well, God was with the terrorist who flew the planes into the buildings, of course; they were doing Allah's will after all, right!
Wow. Humanity"s ignorance knows no bounds.
I was a Christian for over thirty five years. Bible College, Ministry and an Elder in my church…I fervently searched for evidence of a god and simply could not justify my faith. Today I am Atheist.
Seriously? You saw the complex beauty of creation and found no evidence of God? You saw people fall in love and found no evidence of God? You learnt about the eternal life that God offers and chose to reject that as insufficient proof that God exists and He loves you? Sadly my friend, I have to say you wasted 35 years of your life looking in the wrong direction!
@@robbarron8635I wasted over 30 years in the Christian cult as well. My parents forced us into it as a young teen. The Christian cult did Nothing good in my life and no make believe gods have done anything either……
@@robbarron8635 Complex beauty of creation? Tell that to the people whose lives are now crushed by the massive damage of that hurricane last week.
People fall in love? Then fell out of love? Common.
He loves you? But not the little child starving, only asking for a cup of soup & a cracker? Aren't you lucky.
Did you bother searching for any other god than the one that was described to you? Maybe your church was just shitty at describing what's out there. Just because they're wrong doesn't mean no one is, or that it wouldn't be worth taking a personal journey to poke around for answers.
I liked what he said about proselytizing
I like all of it except the proselytizing thing. At some point, no matter how dire the situation. I would not waste my time any more. Plus deep down, they know it's BS.
The atheist is certain that believers are secretly atheists.
The believer is certain that atheists are secretly believers.
Neither can empathize with the other to accept that, yes, someone else really does think differently than you.
@@AlexReynard
It has nothing to do with it. There's no evidence for God. Therefore, it should be rejected. Simple as that. But nice try.
@@fishtailfuture You're oversimplifying things, and disrespecting science itself.
There's no evidence for the Christian God as described in the Bible? Allright, for one, have you actually done any experiments yourself to be sure? Or are you taking your certainty on faith, based on words others have said? Because *science is not consensus. Science is hypothesis/test/result.*
Here's the even bigger problem: If evidence does not lead to one conclusion (God), and so you dismiss all that evidence and don't bother to test if it leads to any other conclusion, *that's not science, that's laziness.* Recently I've been thinking that, if almost every human culture that's ever existed has all had some form of religion, that's pretty significant. The fact that none of us has gotten it right is hardly surprising; we're still weighed down by our human biases and proclivity to anthropomorphize everything. We insist on seeing a big human in the sky, and when there's no evidence of that, we give up searching. And yet, Every Group Of Humans Ever has sensed there's something more than us out there and gone searching for it. Just because we're bad at searching doesn't mean there's nothing there!
Here's an idea: There are fungal colonies that can grow to be the largest living things on Earth. IIRC, there's one three states wide, underground. And we have no idea if such beings are intelligent, because they're so different from us, we don't bother trying to comunicate. If they can't speak English, we just give up trying. If there's supermaterial life in the cosmos, or life that's energy-based rather than carbon-based, maybe it's a colony organism. Or some other type we've never encountered before. You're really going to be CERTAIN there's NOTHING out there, just because you debunked ONE theory!?
@@fishtailfuture
objective morality, and genetic coding (among all the other interdependent inner-workings of every cell)
@@AlexReynard
It would be one thing if any of them could actually articulate anything about there religion or what happens when they die.
My guess is that if you could put your average "100% believer" on a lie detector, that 100% wouldn't be so high.
religious people have been around for as long as humans, most thinking they are correct and clearly non have been. Don't try to equate atheists rationality with believers irrationality. They are not 2 sides of the same coin. They are not quid pro quo, or yin and yang. Not even close. One is reasonable, the other is believing in the Santa Clause of you era...
As a Christian man (Catholic even) I love Penn. I always appreciate his honesty and directness. No nonsense. I can still like him, love him, and think he's wrong. These things are not mutually exclusive.
Hoping to see religious people in the comments. They need these wakeup calls the most.
morality and DNA
3:02 Isn’t this what Christian/Mormon missionaries are?
Before written language tribes had to deal with death and keep a tribe going all while belng successful. Hell = obedience.
My theory is that we have religion because as a species, we're uncomfortable with two things: (1) As a naturally curious species, we're uncomfortable with everything about the universe and world that we cannot explain so religion is the X Factor that we can insert. (2) Our own mortality. I made an intentional decision 7 years ago to leave my faith...at the time, I still believed in God but refused to worship him...I'd rather burn (had good reasons), but have since come to see that there is no god. I think believing that there is A Grand Plan and everything happens for a reason can bring about a feeling of peace, and I do miss that A LOT. Have to remind myself that the only thing that has changed is my perception.
Why are you taking others works and editing it up and uploading it was if it were yours?
My Mom died with dementia. Over a decade of losing her little by little. She was one of my best friends. Her Mom went through the same thing and she always told me as I grew up that that would be the worse thing that could happen to her. Our 'gracious god' gave that to her. No. I lost faith way before that. If we have an eternal soul, how does dementia work? Alcohol? Drugs? It's all physical and chemical.
It is not the allure of being a praise slave to a loving God in heaven, that motivates people to religion.
It is the fear of eternal sadistic torture from a hate filled, perfectionist God, that motivates them to religion.
nice wet blanket technique, too bad it's wrong
People judging people for being belivers is just as bad as people condemning people for not believing, we truly need more defined separation of church and state and live and let live. As an agnostic who believes in the possibility of a higher being or beings, if proven, I don't care what my neighbor believes so so as they leave me alone.
Here is something not explained. If god made everything and everything is good and he knows everything before it happens why in hell did he have to come back in human form knocking up a married woman to correct the mistake he made but everything is perfect?
He gave us the gift of free will. Likewise we do the best we can for our own children, we WANT them to find the right path for themselves, but we will intervene where necessary.
@@SteveLomas-k6k People should understand this: Believing doesn't change Reality.
@@richardcolemanjr3749Very true, that's why we have to recognize our beliefs as such. I believed in atheism for most of my upbringing because it avoids this recognition.
There's a biblical error. Please read Qur'an. It's for the entire creation, including humanity.
@richardcolemanjr3749, it's important to know your creators, The Almighty God. You're created by Him. Biblical archeology provides all the proof
In Hinduism, we are all gods.
In dog we trust!
Byslexics umite!
Belief is based upon nothing more substantial than whimsy. If that works for you then fine. But I had doubts even as a kid attending Episcopalian services. I was suspicious that the age of miracles seemed to be confined to the Bible and that the clergy and various adults around me in the church didn’t seem to believe in miracles anymore. But I was aware that the Catholics still held that there were current miracles but that that was somehow considered to be in bad taste at least by Anglo-Saxons in the various British derived protestant denominations.
“Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.” -Christopher Hitchens
3+2=7
3+2=9
3+2=5
3+2=4
Doesn't make them all wrong...nor has any human progress resulted from thinking so!
@@mmmail1969 But those are not true, by the laws that we erected through mathematics.
Ah but therein Mr Hitchens is being illogical! For a religion to be right, it needs to be the only one that is. Therefore all the others must be wrong. That's not arrogance, that is logical truth. To dismiss them all is to say that not one of them can possibly be true. The claims that Jesus made were exclusive. He said that He was the only way, the one Truth and the only true Life. He angered people by saying 'Nobody can come to God the Father except through me.' So now it's simply a matter of two choices: Either He was telling the truth or He wasn't. No 'ask the audience, 50-50 or phone a friend', just you and your own choice by which you stand or fall, sink or swim, live or die. What I or anyone else chooses doesn't matter a hill of beans, you need to be aware of just one thing: you MUST make a choice, you cannot opt out. If I am wrong, you're home free without choosing the God of the Bible. If I'm right, there are consequences. Over to you.
@@robbarron8635 I respect your opinion and belief. I am an atheist/humanist animal lover with one doggie and 3 kitties, I won’t hesitate to give my fellow man a hand in anything that is needed and do my best to conform with the rules and regulations of the laws of the land, (though must confess that I break the law at times when I speed on the freeway)
Other than that, I’m beyond redemption for anything spiritual, I don’t believe, nor do I have faith, I wish to know via scientific facts and data only.
Best regards to you.
@@dorkception2012 prove to me the number 4 exists??? Don't prattle...PROVE it actually exists?
I have never believed.
I have tried and tried and tried just so I could finally fit in, but it always seemed a little too hokey and the magic stuff never happened in our real time.
And even as a kid, I knew that saying something was invisible meant that you were lying. I was a kid and used it before on my little brother and I knew I was lying when I said it, therefore anybody else that said it must be lying as well haha.
Now if only I knew you could lie for money back then...man oh man, I would probably be a lot less moral now haha.