On Atheism, suffering is just an accidentally existing organism's emotively subjective interpretation of the the accidental byproducts of accidental bio-chemical reactions occurring within a haphazardly evolved brain.
Which is also why theism cannot be blamed for suffering either. We're in animal bodies, and animals live and die by killing other life forms, usually causing suffering in the process. We defend our communities from enemies, who want to take something from us. Autocrats have often used religion to further their own secular, greedy ends, but that's not the fault of the religion, it's the fault of our animal inheritance toward dominance. The religion *of* Jesus merely encourages the listener to accept sonship with God and to desire to become more and more mature, psychologically whole and grown up, and loving of each other. Unfortunately Christianity is a religion *about* Jesus, it's not Jesus' religion. Try and tell a Christian to listen to God instead of Jesus and they think you're talking nonsense. Too many Christians don't understand the religion they profess to follow. John is the exception.
@@gary00333 - Well, I'm not Bible based the way John is, (although I generally agree with his points made here). My source material is the Urantia Book, which confirms that life began as a single cell, but was designed by Life Carriers, and it was designed to evolve, on an evolving planet, in an evolving solar system, in an evolving universe. That conditions appear to be harsh and not designed for humans to have a cushy life like some (most) would prefer, speaks more to the level of the maturity of the person doing the wishing. Yes, we're still fundamentally apelike, with lots of animal inheritances, forced to live by the same laws of existence that all other life forms contend with. But we also have self-consciousness, which no other animal has. A dog just is, it doesn't ponder the mysteries of the universe. Only human have the concept of good and evil. We are soul cocoons. That we suffer and experience pain, is by design. Those are feedback systems which we too often ignore, to our own detriment. I differ with John with regard to calling natural disasters "evil" as that term implies someone is making a moral choice for them to happen. That's god of the gaps thinking. Evil only exists when a moral being makes bad freewill choices. Lots of evil exists because of those choices, and we have it within our power to work collectively to bring them to an end. The trouble is, we're still animals, distrustful of others. So we inflict needless pain. [We see that currently with the rampant disinformation campaign currently being wages by the ruling class, fooling some of the population into echoing their lies.] We could stop global warming, (and will eventually do so), but we're lazy and don't like change. So we bring much evil on ourselves.
As God is not a material being, there will never be any physical evidence for his/her existence. The only evidence possible for the existence of God is experiential. I've had plenty of it, but as we don't yet have the Vulcan mind-meld, my experiences (and anyone elses) can only be expressed in words, which pale in comparison to the visceral level of the experiences of God's love I've had (and perhaps John has had as well). John tends to focus on the existence of consciousness as his proof for God. That mind exists, which is a non-material phenomenon, is proof that there's more to reality than just the material. It is suggestive of deity but not proof of it. The closest we came to having proof of God's existence, was Jesus' mission on Earth. But the authors of the Bible only understood a rather small amount of what he taught them, and the extent to which they were able to convey to the rest of us, suffered even more. There is another book that compensates for the shortcomings of the Bible, called the Urantia Book, written by celestial personalities. The main focus of that book is the concept of a spirit fragment of God that indwells our minds, called a Thought Adjuster. Via this Adjuster, we can communicate back and forth with our Divine Father-friend, and receive assistance in our decision making process, particularly with regard to moral decisions. This requires going into the stillness, which you have to want to do. You also have to be willing to grow and change as a result of this association. Few people are.
@@Sirrus-Adam _'As God is not a material being, there will never be any physical evidence'_ This is true of all mythical things. _'The only evidence possible for the existence of God is experiential'_ You seem to be referring to what is called anecdotal evidence, and anecdotal evidence obviously is not evidence. For example we have anecdotal evidence for big foot, fairies, little green men from Mars and so on. _'John tends to focus on the existence of consciousness as his proof for God'_ We don't yet understand what consciousness is but its demonstrably an emergent property of the brain. Alter the brain with drugs or trauma and consciousness is altered for example. _'The closest we came to having proof of God's existence, was Jesus' mission on Earth'_ Most experts agree that a man called Jesus probably existed. But other than that there is no contemporary evidence of any miraculous Jesus outside of the Bible. Many mythical people were written about in ancient manuscripts. There is no reason to think that a miraculous Jesus was any diferant. Sorry but I don't take the Urantia seriously. There is simply no good testible verifiable evidence for God and John Lennox knows it. That is why he uses lots of bloviation to mask his bad arguments for his God. Nobody outside of his fellow ultra religious followers take him seriously. With respect, John.
This is just a lengthy diatribe filled with emotional appeals and logical fallacies, so let’s break it down. First, suffering is real, and pretending that faith provides some sort of special insight into it is a delusion. Pain doesn’t magically disappear because you pray or have faith. In fact, many religious explanations for suffering, like the idea of a benevolent god allowing it for some greater purpose, are downright absurd in light of the sheer magnitude of suffering in the world. Next, the attempt to redefine faith as “trust” is just a fancy way of saying, “I believe in something without evidence.” Faith is not a virtue; it’s an excuse to ignore the facts. If you think that atheism is a belief system as dogmatic as theism, you're missing the point: atheism is based on a lack of belief in the supernatural, not on an alternate set of dogmas. The so-called "problem of evil" isn’t just a philosophical conundrum; it's a direct challenge to the idea of a loving, all-powerful god. If that god exists, then suffering is a failure on its part, not an aspect of some divine plan. You can’t have it both ways-either your god is not all-powerful or not all-good, and that ruins the whole theistic framework. Then you throw in a bunch of historical examples of violence and suffering associated with atheism, but those are often misrepresented. Atheism doesn’t necessitate violence; that’s a human trait. People commit atrocities under many banners, including religious ones. It’s a lazy argument to say that because some people identify as atheists and commit terrible acts, atheism as a worldview is to blame. Finally, the emotional appeal of your own suffering and experience doesn’t give you the moral high ground. It just shows you’re human. We all experience suffering, and it’s our shared humanity-not some faith-based morality-that compels us to alleviate it. It’s time to stop using suffering as a prop for faith. We can face the reality of pain and work toward solutions without needing a deity to justify our empathy and moral responsibility.
That is a prefabricated and contrived choice. The actual choice is between spiritually and religion. They are often conflated concepts, sometimes they overlap, but generally they are distinct ways of thinking and acting. This is why an atheist can be a spiritual person and act on higher moral and spiritual grounds whilst a religious person can be an immoral monster and sadistic tyrant. Religious organisations are often highly politicised and morally corrupt. So asking whether someone is an atheist or religious is nonsensical and irrelevant is it not?
That is a powerful closing statement, and I agree.
Well put, John!
Yes, thank you Professor Lennox!
On Atheism, suffering is just an accidentally existing organism's emotively subjective interpretation of the the accidental byproducts of accidental bio-chemical reactions occurring within a haphazardly evolved brain.
Atheism doesn't have to explain suffering it's just a part of existance like sweating
Which is also why theism cannot be blamed for suffering either. We're in animal bodies, and animals live and die by killing other life forms, usually causing suffering in the process. We defend our communities from enemies, who want to take something from us. Autocrats have often used religion to further their own secular, greedy ends, but that's not the fault of the religion, it's the fault of our animal inheritance toward dominance.
The religion *of* Jesus merely encourages the listener to accept sonship with God and to desire to become more and more mature, psychologically whole and grown up, and loving of each other.
Unfortunately Christianity is a religion *about* Jesus, it's not Jesus' religion. Try and tell a Christian to listen to God instead of Jesus and they think you're talking nonsense. Too many Christians don't understand the religion they profess to follow. John is the exception.
Might want to listen to the video
@@gary00333 - Well, I'm not Bible based the way John is, (although I generally agree with his points made here). My source material is the Urantia Book, which confirms that life began as a single cell, but was designed by Life Carriers, and it was designed to evolve, on an evolving planet, in an evolving solar system, in an evolving universe. That conditions appear to be harsh and not designed for humans to have a cushy life like some (most) would prefer, speaks more to the level of the maturity of the person doing the wishing.
Yes, we're still fundamentally apelike, with lots of animal inheritances, forced to live by the same laws of existence that all other life forms contend with. But we also have self-consciousness, which no other animal has. A dog just is, it doesn't ponder the mysteries of the universe. Only human have the concept of good and evil. We are soul cocoons.
That we suffer and experience pain, is by design. Those are feedback systems which we too often ignore, to our own detriment. I differ with John with regard to calling natural disasters "evil" as that term implies someone is making a moral choice for them to happen. That's god of the gaps thinking. Evil only exists when a moral being makes bad freewill choices.
Lots of evil exists because of those choices, and we have it within our power to work collectively to bring them to an end. The trouble is, we're still animals, distrustful of others. So we inflict needless pain. [We see that currently with the rampant disinformation campaign currently being wages by the ruling class, fooling some of the population into echoing their lies.]
We could stop global warming, (and will eventually do so), but we're lazy and don't like change. So we bring much evil on ourselves.
John Lennox has never given us any real evidence for Gods existance.
But when it comes to bloviation he very very good.
As God is not a material being, there will never be any physical evidence for his/her existence. The only evidence possible for the existence of God is experiential. I've had plenty of it, but as we don't yet have the Vulcan mind-meld, my experiences (and anyone elses) can only be expressed in words, which pale in comparison to the visceral level of the experiences of God's love I've had (and perhaps John has had as well).
John tends to focus on the existence of consciousness as his proof for God. That mind exists, which is a non-material phenomenon, is proof that there's more to reality than just the material. It is suggestive of deity but not proof of it.
The closest we came to having proof of God's existence, was Jesus' mission on Earth. But the authors of the Bible only understood a rather small amount of what he taught them, and the extent to which they were able to convey to the rest of us, suffered even more.
There is another book that compensates for the shortcomings of the Bible, called the Urantia Book, written by celestial personalities. The main focus of that book is the concept of a spirit fragment of God that indwells our minds, called a Thought Adjuster. Via this Adjuster, we can communicate back and forth with our Divine Father-friend, and receive assistance in our decision making process, particularly with regard to moral decisions. This requires going into the stillness, which you have to want to do. You also have to be willing to grow and change as a result of this association. Few people are.
@@Sirrus-Adam
_'As God is not a material being, there will never be any physical evidence'_
This is true of all mythical things.
_'The only evidence possible for the existence of God is experiential'_
You seem to be referring to what is called anecdotal evidence, and anecdotal evidence obviously is not evidence.
For example we have anecdotal evidence for big foot, fairies, little green men from Mars and so on.
_'John tends to focus on the existence of consciousness as his proof for God'_
We don't yet understand what consciousness is but its demonstrably an emergent property of the brain. Alter the brain with drugs or trauma and consciousness is altered for example.
_'The closest we came to having proof of God's existence, was Jesus' mission on Earth'_
Most experts agree that a man called Jesus probably existed. But other than that there is no contemporary evidence of any miraculous Jesus outside of the Bible.
Many mythical people were written about in ancient manuscripts. There is no reason to think that a miraculous Jesus was any diferant.
Sorry but I don't take the Urantia seriously.
There is simply no good testible verifiable evidence for God and John Lennox knows it. That is why he uses lots of bloviation to mask his bad arguments for his God. Nobody outside of his fellow ultra religious followers take him seriously.
With respect,
John.
If you read from bible the story of Job, you can see that Satan is more clever than God.
This is just a lengthy diatribe filled with emotional appeals and logical fallacies, so let’s break it down.
First, suffering is real, and pretending that faith provides some sort of special insight into it is a delusion. Pain doesn’t magically disappear because you pray or have faith. In fact, many religious explanations for suffering, like the idea of a benevolent god allowing it for some greater purpose, are downright absurd in light of the sheer magnitude of suffering in the world.
Next, the attempt to redefine faith as “trust” is just a fancy way of saying, “I believe in something without evidence.” Faith is not a virtue; it’s an excuse to ignore the facts. If you think that atheism is a belief system as dogmatic as theism, you're missing the point: atheism is based on a lack of belief in the supernatural, not on an alternate set of dogmas.
The so-called "problem of evil" isn’t just a philosophical conundrum; it's a direct challenge to the idea of a loving, all-powerful god. If that god exists, then suffering is a failure on its part, not an aspect of some divine plan. You can’t have it both ways-either your god is not all-powerful or not all-good, and that ruins the whole theistic framework.
Then you throw in a bunch of historical examples of violence and suffering associated with atheism, but those are often misrepresented. Atheism doesn’t necessitate violence; that’s a human trait. People commit atrocities under many banners, including religious ones. It’s a lazy argument to say that because some people identify as atheists and commit terrible acts, atheism as a worldview is to blame.
Finally, the emotional appeal of your own suffering and experience doesn’t give you the moral high ground. It just shows you’re human. We all experience suffering, and it’s our shared humanity-not some faith-based morality-that compels us to alleviate it.
It’s time to stop using suffering as a prop for faith. We can face the reality of pain and work toward solutions without needing a deity to justify our empathy and moral responsibility.
That is a prefabricated and contrived choice.
The actual choice is between spiritually and religion.
They are often conflated concepts, sometimes they overlap, but generally they are distinct ways of thinking and acting.
This is why an atheist can be a spiritual person and act on higher moral and spiritual grounds whilst a religious person can be an immoral monster and sadistic tyrant.
Religious organisations are often highly politicised and morally corrupt.
So asking whether someone is an atheist or religious is nonsensical and irrelevant is it not?