Simply put the reason this is not a good argument is that this is not an argument. It's not trying to change your mind, it's trying to get you to understand someone else's mind. That you think it's an argument at all is a problem.
I was fairly clear that I don't consider it an argument, but the fact that it gets used in place of an argument is the problem. If someone challenges your reasons for believing something, and you resort to this reason (reasons are the compositions of arguments), then you have revealed yourself to be someone who does not rely on logic, but sophistry. That's the exact criticism of the video.
@@BrianHoldsworth A sophism is still an argument. This is not an argument and therefore cannot be sophism. Argument is inherent to the definition of sophism.
But this is not an argument. It is not phrased as "... I just believe in one god less therefore you should not also." or as "... I just believe in one god less therefore there is no god". Those would both be arguments. But they don’t exist and you are implying the argument from two statements (Personally I find classifying them as premises or reasons a stretch).
In your cited example Gervais is trying to frame atheism in terminology that a theist would understand with no attempt at changing anyone's mind or making an argument. Same with Dawkins as best I can tell but I could not find a sufficiently extended quote quickly to be completely sure.
@@BrianHoldsworthyet you still titled the video “the worst atheist argument.” Doesn’t sound like very honest presentation. But no, it’s not sophistry that shows the person doesn’t rely on logic. It’s meant to build a connection between interlocutors, to show that some common ground exists, to combat specific attitudes that seem surprised anyone could even be an atheist. You say that “you make it clear you don’t think it’s an argument” but then everything you say about it is analyzing it AS an argument, which doesn’t make a lick of sense. People are allowed to use rhetorical devices without being dishonest or without trying to make it be a substantive argument. You might not like how it’s said - and that’s totally fair - but that’s a separate issue.
@@BrianHoldsworthwhy are you always lying? (Yeah yeah, I actually know, you're an apologist). No atheist ever uses this as an argument. We use it to point out the absurdity of theist not being able to grasp why someone would not believe in their particular god, while simultaneously thinking it's obvious to not believe in all those other gods. What's more we don't need a reason to not believe something, not believing is the default position for everything. You need reasons to start believing something.
@@BrianHoldsworth The atheist stance/argument is that they have not been presented any convincing evidence that any god exists. Rather than engaging in very poor reasoning how about presenting atheists with some convincing evidence that your particular god exists ?? As for me I'm pleased to say no religion has paid any significant part in my 64 years I call myself an apatheist, I really don't care if one exists or not. It is not something that I find important enough to worry about .. however I do find myself having the urge to correct flawed reasoning.
It's not really an argument "for atheism". It's only meant to point out the double standard being applied in a way that believers can relate to. The point is: most people practice the religion of the culture they come from. Stephen Colbert is a Catholic because he was raised in a Catholic household, not because he studied every religion known to man and concluded Catholicism is the true nature of the universe.
@@TonyEnglandUKBecause atheism, by definition, denies the existence of any God. Acknowledging God’s existence means acknowledging that atheism is objectively false.
This is not an "argument", and isn't intended to be. It's a witty analogy that aims to demonstrate to theists by listing a convocation of dead gods (who were all once revered but are now reduced to comic book stereotype status by our culture), the absurdity of fervently believing that your flavour is radically different, without any distinguishing reason. Apparently, you think there's evidence in the Bible to support the idea that your god "is being itself" (whatever that means!). You think it's a "category error" to compare Christianity with the faith of the ancient Greeks because it's possible to setup an empirical test to determine whether Zeus once lived on Mount Olympus (I'd challenge you to do this, by the way.) I'm not sure why you're sure it's a "category error" when there are numerous accounts of God's interactions with man "inside" the universe in the Bible. For an entity that is "being itself" 'he' seems to have a gender, family relationships, human emotions, numerous physical incarnations (notably Jesus, in some mysterious triune form) and so on.
I was just about to type a reply very similar to this, but you’ve already done it better. For all his talk about the lack of logical and rhetorical education, he doesn’t seem to understand either. Not everything an atheist says about religion is intended as a syllogism to disprove the existence of any gods. This line in particular is just intended to explain what atheism is to a nation of people who seem incapable of grasping the concept.
The problem with Atheists is they don't realize their worldview is just as faith-based as everyone else. Absolute truth *only exists* in mathematics and logic. This means faith is required to form any worldview for humans. No human can form a worldview without faith. You just choose religious faith in academia as your religious text. Atheism is rooted in Dogmatic Scientism (blind faith in the current academic consensus like a religious text). Heck, you even have Scientism priests (top academics). For example, you believe you evolved from primordial soup, don't you? You believe you live on a spinning water ball that defies physics with a sky vacuum, don't you? You believe in the Heliocentric model and "outer space" don't you? You believe you're spinning at 1,000mph right now? You believe heavy objects fall down because of "gravity" ? Are any of these beliefs independently verifiable? They are not. They don't even have any scientific evidence supporting them that anyone reading this could verify if their lives depended on it. Yet, you believe them anyway on faith alone. Dogmatic Scientism / Atheism is the most dangerous form of dogmatism known to humanity because its members don't even recognize their own faith / dogmatism. They falsely believe they're just "following the science" when they're doing anything but. They end up defending the current consensus religiously, even mocking/censoring anyone daring to question their pre-existing beliefs (the current consensus)... making real science impossible. Science is about doing everything one can to prove oneself wrong, not censor/mock conflicting evidence. Science is a method of discovery requiring no faith... including no blind faith in academia. The scientific method was actually specifically designed to avoid dogmatism like that when applied correctly. So it's the ultimate Dunning-Kruger Effect. Scientism Dogmatists / Atheists often assume a higher sense of scientific literacy while behaving this way.... not realizing what they're doing is completely antithetical to science. Science is not an ideology or a body of knowledge to be blindly believed on faith alone. Its a method of discovery requiring no faith... and *requires* the ability to independently verify. The ability to independently verify is what differentiates science from pseudoscience... it's how we tell if a claim is a lie, corrupt, or wrong for any other reason. Yet, Atheists / Scientism Dogmatists blindly believe all consensuses from the academic community on faith alone without even bothering to think about whether they, or any of the public, could ever verify it. It doesn't get any more religious than that. Academia is your God. Worse yet, your blind faith in them is being taken advantage of to hide the existence of your real creator.
@@lightbeforethetunnel Your argument is based in a common misconception: that an adherence to atheism presupposes a necessary belief in some other value system, for example, what you dismiss as "Dogmatic Scientism". This is not true. Atheism simply suggests a lack of belief in a God. It says nothing about any other beliefs a person may or may not hold. You make some truly incredible claims here: that our belief in a heliocentric model for our solar system, our understanding that the Earth isn't flat, and even our insights about gravity (!) don't have "any scientific evidence supporting them". What the heck are you talking about?! The scientific evidence for these claims has been established with reams of empirical data over many decades. To casually dismiss the careful exploratory and analytical work of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton (to name but a few) in this fashion is breathtakingly wrong-headed. You then flatly contradict these outlandish claims by stating later that "the ability to independently verify is what differentiates science from pseudoscience". In fact, your entire post is riven with such contradictions. For example, you start out by saying: "faith is required to form any worldview for humans". But you state further on: "Science is... a method of discovery requiring no faith". These are fundamentally contradictory statements, and cannot be held simultaneously. For the record, I personally agree with the second of these truth claims, but this is not a necessary condition for my atheism - which is simply a lack of belief in something. By analogy, you probably don't believe in Santa Claus; I can't deduce from that fact alone whether or not you're an atheist or a "Scientism Dogmatist" or anything else. You appear to be tilting at a straw man. The "academia" you deride is simply the forum for scientific theories to be debated. Nobody regards academic research as a holy or immutable text never to be challenged. Quite the contrary: the whole advantage of the scientific method is that our theories can shift and change to account for new evidence. Eisteinian relativity is a radical shift away from the Newtonian conception of the universe. Quantum physics and string theory pose a similarly radical challenge to the scientific orthodoxy. Should compelling independent evidence for the existence of God emerge (suppose, for example, He rearranged the stars in the sky to form a message of greeting) I would change my views without trouble. So far, I haven't encountered any evidence of this type, but I'm quite open to it.
Hoo boy. That is some impressive gobbledygook. Every one of those things is independently verifiable. A “sky vacuum” doesn’t defy physics. You seem to be under the impression that vacuums are vacuum cleaners? They are not. They don’t suck things out into space like dirt from a carpet. It’s just empty space. You can absolutely verify a spinning spherical earth. The ancient Greeks figured it out over 2,000 years ago. The motion of the stars, sunrises and sunsets, the fact that everyone sees exactly the same face of the moon regardless of location, and eclipses are a few easy ways. The fact that people in the southern and northern hemispheres see entirely different skies. The fact that things disappear over the horizon bottom up. The fact that you can see farther as you rise in elevation. Time zones. The fact that GPS actually works. The 15 degree per hour drift Mr. Bob picked up with his fancy gyroscope. Live satellite feeds. The insane conspiracy of tens of millions of people that would be required for the flat earth to be true. The fact that objects accelerate downwards.
@@ajitterbug How much have you looked into the Flat Earth debate? My guess is you haven't at all, whatsoever, based on your response. Will you at least admit this? You know it's true and so do I. You dismissed it prior to actually understanding even the basics of both sides of the debate. And this is exactly what is expected from a Scientism Dogmatist. I expect fully that every Atheist I say this to will become very triggered and deny their worldview is rooted in Dogmatic Scientism... while their arguments simultaneously confirm it absolutely is. (I'll explain why below). That's the problem with Dogmatic Scientism. Members of this form of dogmatism are completely unaware of their own form of dogmatism. This is what makes it so dangerous. It's members falsely believe they're just "following the science" when they're doing anything but. Instead, theyre blindly believing the current consensus on faith alone like a religious text... instead of what the scientific method reveals in real life when applied honestly and objectively. For example, can you provide a single example of independently verifiable evidence that I can walk outside and verify in real life that proves Heliocentric Globe Earth over Geocentric Flat Earth? The answer will be no. You can't. You may think for a moment that you could... without realizing it all works on Geocentric Flat Earth just the same, if not actually proving Geocentric Flat Earth over Heliocentric Globe Earth instead if you went out and actually verified it for yourself instead of blindly believing what others claim they observed with the scientific method on faith alone. Here's 7 years of scientific experiments conducted by an independent group of the world's top topographers and scientists proving Earth's surface doesn't curve by experimenting directly on Earth's surface with top-of-the-line equipment and lasers: th-cam.com/video/v4fnnvnzQdc/w-d-xo.html I've personally verified many of them myself in real life, as have many thousands of others with the same results every time. Earth's surface does not curve. Every experiment is fully documented, shown step-by-step, and independently verifiable. So far, every time I present this scientific evidence to Scientism Dogmatists, the only response I get is ad hominem fallacies directed at the world-class professionals conducting the experiments (all of whom have easily verifiable credentials) such as suggesting they don't know how to conduct valid experiments and other ridiculous dismissive nonsense that they'd normally never say about world-class topographers and scientists if the results agree with their pre-existing beliefs. Anyhow, let's see if you can be different. Let's see if you can actually respond to the independently verifiable science presented against your stance without the use of any logical fallacies or obfuscation tactics. Beyond that, if you wish to dispute my claims that none of the beliefs I brought up have scientific evidence supporting them (such as Heliocentrism, gravity, etc) simply present some. Just provide a link to scientific evidence supporting any of the beliefs I mentioned. I already know all of them that you likely think are scientific evidence and will be able to explain to you why it, in fact, is not scientific evidence supporting the belief in question coherently. Your claims that they have "reams of data supporting them" only confirms everything I've said. Data/math is not scientific evidence. Data/math only makes predictions. It does not count as scientific evidence, which involves actual observation/experimentation of reality and must be independently verifiable. The question I'd ask is... why are you believing the data? Because you trust the scientists who claim they did science to get it. That's exactly my point... You're a Scientism Dogmatist who blindly trusts the consensus without actually applying the scientific method to your surroundings yourself to verify.... even if no one reading this could possibly verify any of it even if their lives depended on it. Exactly my point. It's no different than a religious person believing their religious text on faith alone. Your religious text is just the current consensus. And your priests are top academics. The worst part is they're taking advantage of your religious faith in their claims... and they're hiding your real creator from you. Most of them don't even know they're helping deceive you... as they're just as deceived themselves.
I want to give my perspective on this argument as an atheist. First of all I will say that this argument proves nothing, but I don't think that it supposed to prove anything either. If an someone (and I know that some do) use this argument trying to prove that a certain religion is false, then all of the things you said are valid. But I wouldn't use this argument to prove anything, I use it more when people are shocked to hear that I'm an atheist and I want them to realise that it's not that strange. I just want them to realise that I feel the same way about their religion as they feel about other religions. Ultimately it proves nothing, it's more about perspective.
Exactly… this isn’t even an argument. Brian even says in the video there was no conclusion and he was forced to draw his own conclusions that he then proceeded to argue against. He didn’t realize he was missing the point entirely
Well said! I totally agree with you. I love Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington and laughed and cried at Ricky Gervais’s Derrick series as I work in healthcare. But it always made me cringe when Ricky went down this celebrity atheist virtue signalling route rubbing shoulders with the Oxford elites such as Richard Dawkins. The same Dawkins who was publicly criticised by prominent humanists because his hubris/arrogance and condescension got the better of him and his real intentions were revealed when he tweeted to 2.8 million followers that eugenics would work on humans without explicitly condemning it. According to Richard Dawkins.... “It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds, It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.” ( Richard Dawkins). Eugenics experts pointed out how bizarre a statement this is when Dawkins eventually tried to backtrack due to public pressure because as well as being unethical it is extremely scientifically illiterate. Because empirical science demonstrates that eugenics is very harmful to animals including humans not to mention the obvious moral and ethical issues and the warnings from history in the form of the Nazis Third Reich. l think the bereaved relatives of the people who died under the Nazis eugenics policy would beg to differ that eugenics would work on humans. “As an evolutionary biologist, it’s my responsibility to denounce this clown” one doctor tweeted. “Richard Dawkins is now supporting eugenics, which is obviously indefensible.” (Dr Blommaert). The prominent humanist Greg Hepstein from Harvard who thankfully condemned this statement for obvious reasons responded..... “So unacceptable for Richard Dawkins to tweet about eugenics without clearly condemning it. Dawkins is *supposedly* one of our exemplars of humanism & science outreach. Yet today he's given every manner of passive and active bigot an opening to "consider" persecution on steroids” (Greg Hepstein). Another one of Dawkins associates Sam Harris boasts that.... “I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity.” (Sam Harris). I wonder why he’s one of the few ? Is it because he’s more enlightened than the rest of us or is it because torture is unbelievably evil and has never been justified by appeals to emotion as there is no clear distinction on where to draw the lines.Dawkins associate Harris argues that there are scientific “neurological" grounds for supposing that his moral reasoning is logically correct and that we “ought” to be torturing people for collateral reasons. We all know which group of people he has in mind and if your associates who are also considered prominent public intellectuals such as Daniel Dennette believe that moderate religious believers are as dangerous as extremists where do you draw the line ??? Where Dawkins and Harris get there we “ought” to use torture or eugenics from is beyond most normal people as you can’t get an “ought” from an “is” (David Hume) no matter how much you pretend you can. Methodological naturalism is supposed to be metaphysically neutral. Also are women and children exempt from Harris and his associates state sponsored torture program if they had information that was required by the state.? “Torture is one of the ultimate abuses of state power, and the use of extreme violence that exploits the powerlessness of individuals subject to state control is anathema to the rule of law. It easily becomes a license to target anyone who is declared to be a threat” (Lutz Oette). If you’re going to defend Dawkins don’t forget to defend eugenics and his associates Sam Harris and Daniel Dennettes beliefs in torture including the very disturbing belief that moderate religious believers are more dangerous than extremists.
I think you missed the point of the argument. The "I just don't believe in one more" is meant to exemplify that we have more in common than people tend to believe. It's meant to help religious people understand that it isn't a big deal to be an atheist. That to us not believing in the Christian God is the equivalent of not believing in Odin or Thor. Furthermore it's meant to help people reflect on their own beliefs. Not to change their mind but to inspire empathy. Its not some "gotcha" like you make it out to be.
I don't think he delivered his point as well as he could, but I think the core of what he was trying to get at was similar to what you're saying… By "the worst atheist argument" I think he's saying that when people use "I just don't believe in one more than you" as an argument on it's own against the concept of the Christian God, it really is "the worst" because, like you said, it doesn't work as a "gotcha".
@@markpugner9716 That's not really how it's used, though, so talking about it as if this way of using the comparison is some common thing is rather silly.
@@BrianHoldsworthIt is absolutely an argument, and a powerful one at that. The plethora of gods throughout history proves that religion is man-made. It isn't a description of objective reality. If it was, religion would be uniform. BTW, you are using "sophistry" incorrectly.
@@BrianHoldsworthit simply isn’t used in place of an argument. You are wrong about that. Full stop. And until you realize what people are actually trying to do when saying it, you’ll be very confused and frustrated by it. Also - there’s no pinned comment that I can see unless TH-cam is simply messing up(which is possible).
"Rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry" What?! Stating that atheists disbelieve in one more god than theists do is a factual statement. How on earth can a factual statement not be considered sound logic?!
The way you see all gods except for yours is how I see all gods including yours. It is not an argument it is a comparison. I believe in one less god is 100% accurate. Your sophistry is astounding.
I agree. Gervais points out the irony of each religion claiming to be "the one true" religion among the thousands of other religions that claim the same thing.
@@nicholaswiedman1409 I guess I didn't communicate myself clearly. I am skeptical because, after thousands of years of human history with different religions often at the cores of those histories, there is no sound pieces of empirical evidence supporting the credibility of any religion. Despite the absence of evidence, religions still insist that they are the "one true religion." Scientific theories are a little different. I understand that there are multiple theories of everything. The most credible ones have some empirical support, though not definitive proof. As our understanding of the universe grows, old theories will be improved upon and/or new theories will arise. The same cannot be said for different faiths and the mythologies they preach.
@Paul Jacobs What exactly is your problem with my comment? I did not make an argument. I did not try to refute anything. I provided my viewpoint on what was said in the video.
This argument is pure nonsense, philosophically, theism is the believe in the all powerful entity, the causeless cause, as the ultimate source for everything, the very same concept of a all powerful entity implies there's only one, if there's more than one, they logically can't be all powerful... So, religions are different interpretations or theories, trying to define that very same entity. How many religions are out there are completely irrelevant for the discussion theism vs atheism in the first place 🤷🏻♂️ calling his rebuttal sophistry clearly without even understanding his point of view is pretty pathetic actually... Shows you got triggered to see a fallacy you used to hold on to being destroyed and you just couldn't offer anything intellectually relevant to keep it alive... Atheists behave exactly like children, when they've pointed wrong, they start crying...
@@EduRB99 "This argument is pure nonsense" You sound like a sad little snowflake that has been told "No, you cannot have a cookie before dinner." "philosophically" I could not care less about philosophy. It is nothing more that mental self pleasuring. "the very same concept of a all powerful entity implies there's only one" "trying to define that very same entity." Demonstrate that. Demonstrate this causeless cause and that it is an entity. "calling his rebuttal sophistry clearly without even understanding his point of view is pretty pathetic actually" He did that for me at 1:30 "but rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry" "Shows you got triggered" Ahem ahem. Hello pot, meet kettle. "fallacy you used to hold on to being destroyed and you just couldn't offer anything intellectually relevant to keep it alive" A theist believes that at least on god exists. An atheist does not believe any gods exist. A person saying "I believe in one less god" is not fallacious. It is a fact. " Atheists behave exactly like children, when they've pointed wrong, they start crying..." And here you are throwing a temper tantrum. How have I been pointed out to be wrong. Your grammar is atrocious. Your "sentence" structure makes it quite difficult to try to understand what you are trying to say. Do not us elipses when a single period will suffice. If you do not attempt to construct better sentences in any further replies, they will be ignored.
" when inventing a god, the most important thing is to make it invisible, inaudible and imperceptible in every way. Otherwise, people will become skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent and does nothing." anonymous
Yeah people just came up with Jesus and the story for you... some people just sat down one day and planned it out all, yeah, ok. Even today we don't understand as much about the world and you want to be so convinced that there is no God. You take your life and existence for granted without appreciation otherwise you wouldn't seek self glorification of your intellectual pride and waste your time on creating division.
@@kubasniak that's not how mythology and legends work. They actually evolve over the course of decades or centuries. Granted, some people may create large swathes of the myth at once, but this is probably more the exception than the rule. Frauds like Mormonism and Scientology certainly show more rapid, intentional invention of their mythos. But, the main reason for their status as more obvious frauds is their temporal and geographic proximity. The evolution of the Urgaritic El into Yahweh into Jesus took thousands of years. Henotheism into monotheism into tri-une omni-benevolence. My post was tongue-in-cheek, but still makes a valid point. The gods of all things, should have a sense of humour, if they exist and safe enough targets for jest if they don't.
@Justin Gary That's quite a list you have there Justin. 1. Even if Jesus "Of Nazareth" existed, it doesn't follow that the Gospels are biographical accounts of his life. See, for instance, the "Sharpe" series for a fictional series about the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon and Wellington existed, the battles were fought, but that doesn't mean that Maj. Sharpe was traipsing around the countryside having adventures and lucky escapes every week. (Watch it if you haven't. It's a lot of fun). 2. Even if Jesus was observed to have "died" and been taken down from the cross and laid to rest in a tomb, we cannot get from there to ".. and then he was resurrected 3 days later." We have to consider how vastly more superstitious people were in the 1st century, how death was being misdiagnosed even as late as the 19th century (bells were fitted in some tombs in case the deceased "woke up." It's the subject of several popular horror stories). We also have to consider the psychological phenomenon associated with grief. People today sometimes *believe* they see their dead loved ones after death, or see their face in passers-by who are not remotely related. I've experienced it as a divorcee and my ex is still alive. 3. No atheist in their right mind would accept that Restoration as prophecy. It's far too vague and subjective, and you applied it having seen the outcome. If something's only prophetic *after* an event happens, it's probably you reading into the text, not a prophecy at all. This is what got the 2012 Apocalypse book-sellers all their ill-gotten gains. 4. Daniel was written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes IV and contemporary to those events. "Daniel" was a hero in an adventure story and a vehicle to comment on the times of the writer, centuries later. Applying it to the modern-day is a mis-step. 5. You're cherry-picking your historical evidence. You've ignored that the fall of Jericho shows no sign of battle and appears to have been due to an earthquake, that there *was* no conquest of Canaan because what happened was an internal revolution, not an external conquest, and that the Exodus of 3 million Jews and their livestock was impossible (especially given the former). *Some* slaves might have escaped and joined the newly established low country settlements, but they were not the *founders* of those settlements. 6. Attacking evolution just makes you look like a conspiracy crank. Stop it. 7. ID is question-begging. Physics can produce forms that look designed too, and you are ignoring that. 8. Hell is a Zoroastrian concept, co-opted into Judaism post-Reformation. It's "Pagan." You might want to rethink what you count as evidence, because that ain't it.
@Justin Gary How rude! Maybe if you didn't repeat arguments that have been debunked _ad nauseum_ you wouldn't hear the same answers? Perhaps you should consider that maybe your arguments actually *are* flawed and that is why you are hearing the same type of responses?
"Early Jericho, by Art Ramos, published on 19 September 2016, World History Encyclopedia "Bible says Canaanites were wiped out by Israelites but scientists just found their descendants living in Lebanon," by Ian Johnston, Science Correspondent, Thursday 07 September 2017, The Independent "First Israel, Core Israel, United (Northern) Israel," Near Eastern Archaeology 82 (2019), pp. 8-15, Near Eastern Archaeology, 2019, Israel Finkelstein
This isn't actually an argument it's a responce to questions about how you could possibly not belive in god. It's an explanation of perspective to Foster at least a superficial understanding. I don't really understand how you could miss that point.
Ricky was making a statement on his belief. He was saying in believes in one less god. The point was to say Christians are atheist to all other gods other than jeaus.
I'm pretty sure this statement has never been presented as "an argument" for anything. It's an example to theists of HOW atheism works. It a way of explaining disbelief to people that think there is a god.
I believe the video was not meant to debunk atheism or any proper atheist argument but one that seems smart amd witty at first but is actually quite baseless and doesn't say anything useful for the reasons mentioned in the video. Thats the reason the title is the worst atheist argument. Peace to you.
@@chigo999 I think one of the related points is that Christians would likely think belief in Thor or Vishnu was absurd, but from an atheist perspective, belief in Yahweh is essentially the same, and equally absurd.
The "quip" is an appeal to empathy, something that tends to be lacking in believers; hence the quip. It is the perfectly valid response to "you just want to sin.". As another appeal to empathy: Everyone is born a Muslim. Christians know in their hardened hearts that Allah is the true god. They just suppress this obvious truth in unrighteousness because they want to drink beer and eat pork. Even if they were shown irrefutable evidence that the moon split, they would still not believe it because they don't want to. So they come up with ludicrous theories like trichinosis and gravity so they can pretend there is no Allah to obey, and they attack Muslims because they hate Allah. Only Allah makes knowledge possible, so, if Christians claim they know things, all that does is prove the Quran is true. Do you see how it works? That shows you how you sound to us. It helps you to understand our perspective without us trying to prove it.
You should probably actually watch the entire interview by Colbert with Gervais. Gervais is not using this as an argument. He's using it to explain what atheism is and to get Stephen to sympathize or get over any skepticism on how an atheist could believe like they do by linking it back to a common experience. Ricky and Hawkins are only talking about what being an atheist is like. Gervais, at least, is not using it as an argument. What you're doing is making it about you. "This is not a reason for me to become an atheist!" You're right, but for the wrong reason. It's what - at least for some - being an atheist is like, couched in situations common to both people. Your ego is getting the better of you. As for the difference between God and Thor, etc. that's just special pleading. Atheists don't believe in Allah or Shiva, and they fulfill the same "role" in Islam and Hinduism as God does in Christianity - that of an all-powerful creator. And as for debunking, that's not what Atheism does. Atheism is a single opinion on one matter - the existence of gods. We don't believe there is evidence for them, but you, as the one insisting there is, have the onus of proving a god's or gods' existence. So looking back, it looks like you were trying to strawman atheists by upgrading an example of how some of us think into an argument we use then there was the special pleading, and finally trying to shift the burden of proof. Maybe you should take your own advice on learning logic.
@@realmless4193 if you listen to the full Gervais-Colbert conversation where Ricky used this statement, you'd see that he mentioned it as a way to explain what he means when he says he's an atheist.
@@homfes okay, so that was also part of the point of the video. This statement reveals that the way athiests view God claims is fundamentally flawed (that was about half the video). But I have heard this used as a legitimate argument.
@@homfes I think he means where Brian said the Greek Gods et al were believed to be part of reality but the Christian God was believed to be outside reality and its author, which Brian considered a category error. Personally, I just view presentations of claims about the existence of gods as a claim about a supernatural entity and whether or not it created reality itself is irrelevant in that framework.
@@paymweaver5650 That’s actually incorrect. Even if you don’t know who your mother is and you have no proof of having a mother, you know you have a mother because you exist. Something can’t come from nothing, there needs to be cause and effect for something to exist and the same goes for God and the universe.
@@relative2you438 God is eternal, He is beyond our universe, beyond time and space. He isn’t a magic man with a white beard in the sky. He isn’t an entity or being. Also it’s a silly question, because whatever was the cause of God also had to have a cause, and the cause before that also needed a cause, it’s an endless cycle. Everything stops at God, He IS the cause.
“He transends the universe, the natural universe. He is the ground of all being. He isn’t a being in reality, he is the source of all reality.” YOU CANNOT PROVE THAT STATEMENT.
Faith is by definition not a reliable pathway to truth. The implication being that if you can deny all the others because of a lack of faith and faith is all you have to hold your current religion it doesn't matter what story you make up, it can be denied in the same way. (except for maybe those who directly worshiped the sun, because we can see, feel and measure its worth. they have more of a leg to stand on.) While I disagree with you, I actually enjoy your content. There is a sincerity to you, and I love your calm approach to arguments.
“Faith is by definition not reliable” No offence intended but I thought everything was based on faith to a degree!. Equally, in order for anything to be epistemologically reliable you have to presuppose logic and “truth” but you can’t empirically “prove” logic as it is a metaphysical presupposition that can not be grounded in the materialistic paradigm as everything is arbitrary and ad hoc under this world view. Everything is just the blind mindless motion of atoms and brain chemicals creating the illusion of stable patterns and regularities under the materialistic/atheistic world view so in reality there’s no such thing as “truth”. This is why Nietzsche said... “logic is an illusion” (Nietzsche) So you have to presuppose logic and empiricism including metaphysical categories as you can’t even carry out basic scientific experiments without metaphysical presuppositions and philosophical claims to “truth”. “Truth” can not be grounded in the materialistic paradigm as materialism excludes metaphysical categories as everything is arbitrary and ad hoc under this world view. Richard Dawkins even admits that under this world view even values such as morals and ethics are arbitrary. When Richard Dawkins was asked about values and whether the rape and murder of a child was immoral his response was that he believed that the belief that the rape and murder of a child is immoral and evil is as arbitrary as the fact that we evolved five fingers instead of six. This is clearly absurd and most people recoil in disgust at such a callous response to an horrific crime committed against a child. This is also why people find objective morality so compelling and why for many atheists it was a big part of the reason they rejected their atheism and moved towards the belief in the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism. “Truth” is a philosophical that is a metaphysical claim and you can’t even carry out basic scientific experiments with out metaphysical presuppositions such as “truth”, knowledge, logic, identity, being, time and space including identity over time. Empiricism itself is a dogma and a metaphysical presupposition under the materialistic paradigm hence the famous essay by W. Quine (The Two Dogmas of Empiricism). So everything is based on (faith) in our sense data. For example you can’t prove sense data (empiricism) using sense data. No one can prove using empiricism that logic is true or that sense data (empiricism) is providing an accurate picture of the external world including reality and existence. Hence the argument from Cartesian doubt that demonstrates that we can doubt the external world but not our mind that is our inner world (our conscious reality). The reason we can’t doubt our inner world (our mind and consciousness) is because by the mere fact of attempting to doubt it this proves it exists that is (mind and consciousness exists) above and beyond physicalism. Mind and consciousness/theism has the greatest explanatory power and is the most parsimonious hypothesis. If our minds were nothing more than “matter” we should be able to doubt them but because we can’t mind must be immaterial. The fact is that “we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived.” (Bernardo Kastrup). So basically the belief in the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism is just a default position until materialists/atheists can prove that “matter” is all there is to reality and existence. It’s just a (non belief) in materialism/atheism as a complete theory of reality and existence. However, the problem for materialists is that quantum superposition has demonstrated that we don’t even know what “matter” is!! Some prominent atheist philosophers such as Thomas Nagel have spotted this specific epistemological problem contained in materialism and actually claim that materialism and Darwinism is false. Nagel wrote a book called (Mind and Cosmos). It’s a real eye opener! So the conclusion is that even logic is a metaphysical presupposition and empiricism is a dogma as it is based on faith in sense data. And all we can truly know is the qualitative subjective experience of mind and consciousness. According to the brilliant linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, the father of philosophy and science Rene Descartes conclusions regarding mind and consciousness still stand... “Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum” “I doubt therefore I think therefore I am” (Rene Descartes) No offence intended all the best to you keep safe ❤️
According to C.S. Lewis if.... “there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God. (C.S.Lewis). Equally I like what the late Professor Haldane of Oxford University said concerning the logical conclusion of a strict naturalism: “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true … and hence I have no reason to suppose that my brain to be composed of atoms.” Similarly, prominent contemporary idealists have gone as far as to say that “materialism is baloney” and that “Matter” is a theoretical abstraction of the mind. Nevertheless, the scientific method is supposed to be fundamentally a non dogmatic, objective, open-minded method of acquiring knowledge about reality and is actually founded on the conscious observer, that is the ability of the human mind and consciousness to experiment and describe phenomena. It is the conscious observer not “matter” that ultimately developed new knowledge and even a new language to describe phenomena through the use of appropriate metaphors and analogies. The scientific method is not synonymous with “materialism” or atheism and should not be committed to any particular attachment to materialistic belief systems, doctrines, dogmas, or ideologies. In the end, everyone's starting point and first line of defense is trust in one's mind and conscious experience. We have to trust that the emotions, feelings, sensations, and thoughts provided by our conscious experience are correct and an accurate description of reality. In theism, this trust is grounded in mind and consciousness/theism “that of which nothing greater can be conceived.” (Anselmo d’Aosta). In atheism, this trust is grounded in the motion of atoms. The latter form (random atoms) of grounding trust in the brain is weaker than the former (the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism). But they both flow from “faith” (in the trustworthiness of the external world and our mind) Theists believe in the qualitative subjective experience of reality and existence and atheists believe everything will be eventually quantified using only the descriptive language of science. However, according to Einstein “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” (Albert Einstein). And it does not help to say that we can confirm that our brains are indeed correct about the map of London or anything else because we can double check their conclusions with the reality around us. It does not help because that reality is, once again, filtered through the experience of our mind and conscious experience. For all we know, we cannot even be sure there is a reality around us. The belief in the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism has the greatest explanatory power and is the most parsimonious hypothesis. According to the brilliant philosopher Alvin Plantinga... “there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism.” (Alvin Plantinga) All the best to you ❤️
@@georgedoyle7971presuppositions maybe faith but making that faith holy is the problem. You can have your faiths and you can do anything with them but anyone and everyone should be able to criticise it in any way they deem fit if you decide to preach your faith to others In simplest terms. If you publish a holy book people can say whatever they want about it and there shouldn't be any consequences.
Very bad analogy. One plus one = 2 is a fact - a convention we have developed in mathematics. It requires no evidence by the very nature of its definition. The correct analogy would be: we reject 1+1 = 3 FOR THE SAME REASON that we reject 1+1 = 4,5,6 or infinite other numbers. We can not reject 1+1 = 2 if we apply the same reasoning that we applied to reject 1+1 = 3. In the case of gods, we reject the existence of one particular god by applying the SAME REASONING that we APPLY to reject million other gods. And the reason is LACK OF EVIDENCE. The argument that atheists go one god further is in response to theists arguments that the existence of god can not be disproven. Athiests make this argument that the existence of million other gods also can not be disproven. The reason that we do not believe in a particular god is the same reason that a theist does not believe in million other gods.
I think you got it wrong. The "atheist argument" isn't supposed to be an argument against God in the first place. It's an argument against BELIEF in one God over all others. Please notice this differende carefully. The problem that atheist point out is simply this: You don't believe in the 2999 Gods but you do believe in one. WHY? What is your justification for this distinction? If you don't have any evidence that your particular God exists, you're unreasonable to believe in him and dismiss all the others. It doesn't mean that your God isn't real. But it does mean that you have no grounding to prefer this God over others, and why would you believe something without grounding? Your second point is completly irrelevant. Sure, your God is different than other Gods (allthough it's not that different from Islam or Deism). But your evidence isn't special. Everyone can postulate that God is beyond time and space and what not. The question remains: How do you know that this is actually true and why would you believe it if you can't prove it?
First, God exists. The Bible never argues for God’s existence; it simply states it. The fact that God is should be self-evident through the works He has created (Psalm 19:1-6). Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is a simple yet powerful statement. The universe includes time, space, matter, and energy, so that all discernible elements in the universe came into being by God’s decree. Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity states that all time, space, and matter had a definite, simultaneous beginning. What has a beginning has a cause. That is the law of causality, and the fact of God easily explains the ultimate cause. God is the creator of all that is, and so we know something else about Him: He is almighty (Joel 1:15), He is eternally self-existent (Psalm 90:2), and He exists above and beyond all of creation (Psalm 97:9).
This dude's entire perfomance positively drips condescension and disingenuousness. You can tell he's completely used to a captive, passive and weak willed and minded audience. People who use this type of "hip youth pastor" shtick are a major reason people are walking away from christianity. People know when you're talking down to them. Especially the kids, and especially when you condescending from a completely unsupported position on a baseless assetion (god). People can spot that too. Especially the kids.
The word we are looking for is, PRINCIPALITY. Entities that manifest often in the human character. Think of Zeus, the king of the Olympians, I can’t help but notice that Zeus is the personification of human will that overcomes chaos, observe the Titans and Kronos’ defeat. That being said, It would be wrong to simply assume that because Zeus embodies willpower, YHWE merely means he is the idea of Being that just happened to be worshipped by the Israelites. Zeus and the others can and probably and should be though of phony imitations of God, the lesser ideal that claims to be the highest. In many regards, very evil. But yeah if by ‘belief’ we mean: to accept their existence, then yeah, most of these gods are, and were real, I just don’t believe them to be the Truth Absolute.
I remember reading that argument of Dawkins somewhere before, only I had absolutely no clue that it was supposed to be an argument when I read it. I seriously thought it was just him stating that atheists exist and that he's one of them. That's it.
I never thought it was used to assert that ‘those who reject all other gods but the one they believe in, to be atheists’ or that it means ‘atheism is thus true and theism false’. It assumes nothing. It’s simply saying, you believe in 1 out of many and I believe in none out of many; I’m an atheist, that is, without god. Full stop. Would he be ‘straw manning’ those who use it by assuming a conclusion? If an atheist uses it to assert that Christians or any believer are really atheists since they reject all but one god, or that it logically follow that they should reject all gods, then I’d say it’s fallacious but I’ve never heard it used that way.
Well you're kinda right we aren't arguing its more of a statement for people that can't believe we don't specifically believe in Christianity so we're pretty much just asking you to think of how you think of the rest of the religions and that's just our perspective on all of them. He was right when he said its not a valid argument for god because it was never an argument for god and the fact he based this off "logic" and he missed the first part so badly is kinda sad hahaha Edit: yeah an atheist shouldn't use this as an argument but guess who would. Yes the answer is theists th-cam.com/video/kpXshOGlYAE/w-d-xo.html
well maths has a lot of evidence that comes from common sense which lays down some axioms one which math is built upon but bible or quran or gita is not common sense like the way 1+1=2 is common sense. It is more like 1+1= R which does not have any evidence now in the real world it is like some people say 1+1=a some say 1+1=b some say 1+1=c....etc and each one of them think the others are wrong AND since there no evidence for any of them therefore i believe all of them are wrong
That’s because you’re correct. This whole video is a misdirect. He’s set up a straw man for the statement. It wasn’t meant to be an argument. It’s a throwaway joke line. He doesn’t even address the point of the line in this video. Just minutes of setting up a false argument and attacking that one instead. When Dawkins or Gervais say the line, they mean “You have dismissed all other religions as untrue, I am just not convinced that your religion isn’t just another one.”
I am sorry. But Math can be demonstrated, studied, challenge and reviewed.. From what I know at this time.. your God and any other Gods.. have not been demonstrated, reviewed.. etc...The comparison of Math to an Myth seems fallacious. When I, as an atheist, makes the statement "I believe in one less God than you.." it's an answer to a question from a believer.. not an argument on an existence of a God, believe it is the same with Gervais and Dawkins.. I respect that you have your comments open.. a rarity in theist youtube circles.
"Rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry." The video is an excellent example. Atheists do not care about the nature of the god of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. We are still unconvinced of the existence of that god in the same way we are unconvinced of Vishnu, Brahma, Zeus, or Odin. I, at least, dismiss the idea that anyone *knows* what god actually exists. My position is less about the existence of a god and more about you asserting that yours is real.
@@enshala6401 With zero evidence for one and zero evidence for the other, you can't say one is more than the other. But I know you're not an AI bot, because AI bots are smarter than you.
@@UnconventionalReasoning Except we don't believe YOU are real. TH-cam employs AI bots to keep a conversation going, and "you" are one of them. "You" aren't a real person.
@UnconventionalReasoning There is zero evidence "you" are real. You are an AI bot, obviously. Maybe if you said something original, "you" might fool someone. Maybe... 😂
From 5:00 on the video takes the way, I feared it would all along: "My god is special, so not believing in him is totally different from not believing in all the others" In what way is this different from "My car is special, so speed limits apply to all the others but not me"? The argument this video is about is a valid one, as all gods come with ridiculous claims. The fact that one has grown familiar to the claims of ones own god just reduced their spectacularity, but didnt rise their probability.
the problem with your Santa clause analogy is that you cant disprove him you say you could just look in the north pole for his workshop but what if the workshop has an invisibility shield. this is why we should base our beliefs on positive evidence and not negative evidence (which dousn't exist). another analogy is the needle in the hay stake, as much as you look you cant disprove it's in there but you can prove it is in there by finding it.
but he said himself that they never claimed to be in the clouds. To build off the invisibility shield that would be like saying god is deeper into the cosmos
First argument: you claim a non-sequitur and try to prove it with a false analogy. Faith doesn't require proof, by definition. Maths, on the other hand, like all science, is based on what is provable, demonstrable and predictable. It's not a valid comparison. Belief versus knowledge. Faith against empirical evidence. Atheism is a lack of belief, denying maths is a lack of education. The problem here, I think, is that you treat your faith as you treat maths: an absolute truth that cannot be denied. When you realise that you have no basis to treat faith that way, like you have with regards to maths, that's your first step towards atheism.
As an atheist trying to delve deeper into different beliefs and see why people think certain ways, I’m excited to start this video. Ok first edit I’ve never really seen the idea being presented in the video as an actual argument against religion, just as a tool for understanding and a simple thing to think about. 2nd edit You can make a multitude of excuses for Santa’s existence not being proven or it being seemingly disproven (what if he’s invisible, etc.) 3rd edit So you’re saying that your god is better than all the other gods because you say so, this is how you interpret it? Therefore your god doesn’t apply to this “argument” against religion. 4th edit At the end of the day, for me they are the same thing. So this rings a bit hollow. To me your god isn’t better than all the other gods, to me your god is equal to all the other gods because to me your god and no gods exist, making them all equally fictional to me.
The problem though is your math analogy can be demonstrated. But Theists can not demonstrate that God exists. That's why ricky gervais and Richard dawkins statement stands!
1. The term "local atheist" refers to not believing in specific deities. Without the qualifier "local," I think your accusation is correct. You are locally atheistic to all gods but one, which is the definition of being a monotheist. 2. Ricky didn't say "atheism is true or theism is false." He just described (given above) that we've all come to agree that most gods people in our history believed don't exist and never did. Ricky simply states he doesn't believe in the ones that are left. 3. The problem with your analogy is that 1 + 1 = 2 *by definition.* That is a fact. It is not relevant whether you deny any other answer, because every other answer to that question is wrong by definition. Saying "I just deny one more possibility" does not work, because it isn't merely a possibility - it's a fact. Another analogy might work if you don't pick one that has a single true answer that is true by definition. The bachelor analogy doesn't work because, again, that is the definition of "married man" and "bachelor." These are known as "synthetic." 4. It doesn't matter what you claim. It matters what you can tie that claim to. 'Richard Barron said, "God isn't one being among many in the universe. He is being itself."' It's an interesting idea and smacks of Spinoza's God, but can he tie it to anything concrete, or is he just redefining "God" to avoid the problems attached to a more traditional definition? 5. The thing about Zeus and Santa Claus is that you can provide contrary evidence to their existence." I can do the same with Yahweh. Typically, I point to the archaeological find from the 10th century BC that shows Yahweh with El, Baal, and Asherah on the same figurine, the JEDP documentary hypothesis, and more recently the anthropological and archaeological evidence of the evolution of our ability to believe in gods that emerged over time. I find the best explanation of these multiple strands of evidence is that Yahweh does not exist and is a human construct, but I respect your right to see that evidence in a different light, like "The Israelites are recorded as being idolaters in the Bible, and that's where that statue must have come from." 6. "If there's nothing there, then somebody has some explaining to do." Exactly. There's no sign of a God in "the heavens." 7. "Instead, what is being claimed about God is that He transcends the universe." Convenient, don't you think, that you'd redefine God at the exact moment in history when we can go into space and find that He isn't actually there. That's a *major* red flag in my book of goalpost-shifting and redefining your beliefs to match discoveries. Although, in all honesty, that is *vastly* preferable to *not* re-evaluating your beliefs with emerging evidence like Young Earth Christians and flat Earthers. They do a *major* disservice to all other Christians who do try to incorporate modern knowledge into their worldviews. 8. "He isn't some being within reality. He is the source of all reality." Thanks for taking on that burden of evidence, though I don't know why you believe in something that exists outside reality. Perhaps that needs a rephrase because it sounds self-defeating from here? 9. Actually, I just understand "gods" as supernatural entities, so there's no category error in that framework. That was fun, and you know, I'll leave you a like for the courteous presentation.
God has not been redefined.(#7) You are mistaken about what Christians have always believed about God. The idea of a "God in the heavens" is a secular interpretation taken from poetic wording in Scripture. That doesn't mean that we have ever believed that God is literally somewhere "up in the clouds". It has only been in the last century that we have been able to physically send people up into space and unmanned probes even farther out into space. The Catholic Church has always understood God to be OUTSIDE of time and space, as He is the Creator of it.
@@joan8862 Well, all I can say to that is that many Christians still to this day believe that heaven is up in the sky. An acquaintance of mine told me once his pious Baptist once said she didn't want to go to heaven. When asked why, she said that it would be rather boring just sitting on clouds and singing hymns all day. Now, I understand that many educated Christians that are involved in apologetics and theology don't in fact believe in the "God in the sky" part, but I put forward to you that many Christians did and still do.
What Christian don’t want to admit is that their deity has as much evidence for it as any other deity. So please present any evidence you have and stop making empty assertions.
It's God the father, God the son and God the holy spirit.. So that makes it 1+1+1 = 1 according to the jesus crowd, But they don't see the irony. This guy in this video started with a Maths analogy. He said 1+1 = 2. But I bet you when it comes to the TRINITY he will be trying to assure us that 1+1+1 = 1. That's religion for you.. lol
The first mistake is claiming this is an "argument against the existence of God", it's not. It's an analogy, a way to suggest that believing in only one God isn't that different from believing in none when there are thousands. But it does not prove God's non-existence whatsoever, it's not intended to
you’ve missed the point of the argument. the point of the argument is to rebut against religious claims such as “i can’t even imagine not believing in god” or “it’s impossible that you don’t believe in god, you must secretly rebel against him in your heart” or “but what if you’re wrong, aren’t you worried about god/hell?” and it’s simply to point out that you know exactly how it feels to not believe in a god. because you don’t believe in zeus, horus, john frum, santa claus and spiderman. inot because you harbour some secret rebelion resentment against them, but because you know from a factual standpoint that they are made up. you know exactly how it feels to not worry about missing out on presents at christmas, or the hell described for infidels on the quran. how you feel with regard to those figures and those faiths is how we feel towards your god and your threats of hell. it’s not an argument for atheism it’s an analogy to demonstrate how we feel when theists claim to somehow know our feelings or hidden motives.
in a way, spiderman is real weve all known loss, weve all known those moments where we have to act more responsible, we all know what its like to make a small mistake that has a worse consequence sure, there is no literal peter parker swinging around stopping goblins, but his struggles and experiences are very human and real
Don't be shameful. No need to. Not many atheists today can give a good argument for the non-existence of a god or why a divine is an absurd or illogical thing. Then again, same thing with many Christians for an argument for a god or a divine.
@@tryhardf844 Sure, but how many Christians let alone Catholics refers to Aquinas? I will assume not many. The most well-read Catholics may refer to C.S. Lewis. Maybe.
@@TickleMeElmo55 Nearly all catholics refer to Aquinas when it comes to arguments to prove God's existence,nevertheless in topics of more modern issues they might refer to the magisterium or in other cases Chesterton or C.S. Lewis in topics like pacifist societies or more digestable sexual morality. But i cringe everytime some protestants for example only resort to Craig or Occam.
@@tryhardf844 Nearly all? I think not. I believe you're being too generous. In the States, Catholics in general are poorly catechized. It's an outright embarrassment. Those who are well catechized may refer to Aquinas as a source, but those who aren't probably aren't familiar with his name.
It's not an argument against God. It's a defense of atheism. It just says "atheism is practiced by everyone, we just apply it to different Gods." Making this video makes it seem that you don't have a response to actual arguments.
@@brixan... Exactly! It's _not_ an argument against any specific concept of a god, so that makes it a rather lousy argument when someone uses it as such.
wrong it's a great argument in any context. All of these nutty fantasies claiming exclusive access to truth. It proves that religion is man-made nonsense.
Whenever someone uses Pascal's Wager I counter by informing them that they are saying to decide what to believe based on the flip of a coin ( heads I will believe a god exists, tails I won;t believe a god exists) when their wager requires a huge roulette wheel with every creator deity as choices ( Odin, Zeus, Jupiter, Brahma, Ptah, etc).
Atheist don’t need arguments, atheist just have to refute the arguments FOR god. “You cannot find evidence against god because he transcends our world” is everything but a good argument.
Sounds to me like it's a remark that gets under your skin. No one uses it as a genuine argument. A clever phrase? Sure. But it's not something they would use in a formal debate as anything other than a way to engage the spectators. They're describing what it means to be an atheist by pointing out a shared non-belief, using mild humor to punctuate the point. How can an atheist equate the Judeo-Christian god with Zeus or Poseidon? The answer to this question is something the atheist hopes the theist will take the time to reflect upon.
As an atheist, I have to agree that that is the worst argument put forward by atheists. The worst thing about it is that it is not actually an argument in the logical sense. I will even add two more points against the "argument" that Mr. Holdsworth is welcome to use: 1. A theist is someone who believes that a god exists; an atheist is someone who doesn't believe that any gods exist. There might be the odd theist that believes in more than one god, but I don't think that anyone believes in all gods. The definition of theist is such that one need not believe in a plethora of gods, just one is enough to qualify. The disbelief in many gods is something to be expected simply by definition. Of course, someone who believes that a god created everything but does not know which of the possible gods it was - or possibly one that nobody knows about. 2. a person cannot be an atheist with respect to one god and a theist with respect to another. Atheism is not holding a belief that any god or gods exist. If you believe in just one god, you are not an atheist. At all. Period. But, in defense of the "argument", is is not an argument but an apparently ironic bit of word play. It will never convince a theist that he is an atheist or should become one. Where it does make sense as a statement would be if a theist said to me "I don't understand how you cannot believe that some god must have created everything, whether that be the god of the bible, Allah, or some other". The "argument" would be my way of demonstrating that I am not some kind of freak, as we do have similar opinions about gods other than that of the theist. In this sense, it actually says more about the nature of the atheist position than the theist one. That said, my only other comment on this is that the best response to the argument is to laugh, and not treat it as if it were a serious argument.
_"a person cannot be an atheist with respect to one god and a theist with respect to another."_ You can but there's a specific term for it, "local atheist." To use "atheist" when meaning "local atheist" is to equivocate.
@@RustyWalker interesting. I found a definition of "local atheist" as someone who believes that gods of a certain "sort" do not exist. The article contrasts this local atheism with global atheism which it defines as "the proposition that there are no Gods of any sort". So, if the "argument" used the term local atheism, are you saying the "argument" would be correct? Do many (or any) religious people identify as local atheists? I suspect not because of the apparent ambiguity. Speaking of ambiguity it is rife in such discussions, in part because of differences in definitions. For example, the definition for global atheism is at odds with the common definition of atheism as lacking a belief in any god or gods.
@@AlDunbar It isn't an argument. It's a statement of a position. Arguments have premises, implicitly or explicitly, and a conclusion. The most famous argument in Philosophy takes the form: P1. All men are mortal. P2. Socrates is a man. C. Therefore Socrates is mortal. _"Do many (or any) religious people identify as local atheists? I suspect not because of the apparent ambiguity."_ Many religious people aren't even aware such a term exists, just like many atheists are unaware of it. However, if you ask a religious person, "Do you believe in Zeus,"" they *will* say "no." That is not controversial. Therefore, it follows that they are atheistic towards the proposition that Zeus exists. The scope of that atheism is limited to only the consideration of that single proposition regarding the existence of Zeus, hence the qualifier "local" is appropriate. _"Speaking of ambiguity it is rife in such discussions, in part because of differences in definitions."_ Indeed it is. You see many occasions where the focus of the discussion is on semantics rather than the thought-content of the individuals in the discussion. What do they _think,_ and *why?* _" the definition for global atheism is at odds with the common definition of atheism as lacking a belief in any god or gods."_ It's not so much at odds as that it has been more rigorously defined as to what it entails. "Atheism" has its classical meaning of "disbelief" as well as the modern usage of "belief in the proposition isn't found to be justified." Global atheism specifically refers to the disbelief of all god propositions. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy thinks this is hard for a global atheist to justify, omitting to consider that "atheism is a response to theism," and that we are discussing whether belief in a proposition is justified. If a proposition doesn't justify belief, why would one "choose" to believe it? If you haven't encountered a specific proposition as to the existence of some form of deity, then you likewise are ignorant of any evidence that would justify its existence, and therefore have no grounds to believe in it. Stanford makes a poor argument here.
@@RustyWalker if you reread my post you will see that I do understand this is not actually an argument. In my reply above, I put the word "argument" in quotes to indicate that someone other than me called it an argument.
If your god exists outside of detectable reality, and has no detectable effect on reality, how is that different from your god not existing at all? How is your god more than imaginary? Asking for a friend.
@@GOATEditz204 If I say that magic invisible turtles cause trees to grow, and the evidence I give for this claim is to point at all the trees everywhere, can you see the flaw in my “evidence”? That is the same structure of argument you just made.
You are right that this isn’t an argument against the existence of (a) God. Just like Russel’s theapot God is unfalsifiable. The burden of proof lies with theists. So atheists need no arguments to disprove God, theists need arguments to prove his existence. A thing no religion has done so far.
well maths has a lot of evidence that comes from common sense which lays down some axioms one which math is built upon but bible or quran or gita is not common sense like the way 1+1=2 is common sense. It is more like 1+1= R which does not have any evidence now in the real world it is like some people say 1+1=a some say 1+1=b some say 1+1=c....etc and each one of them think the others are wrong AND since there no evidence for any of them therefore i believe all of them are wrong
True, but we’re not looking to PROVE God, otherwise we would need no faith. We are looking at the reasonable evidence that POINTS to God. That’s what I do, at least 😃
Atheists take the leap of faith to say God isn’t real. Agnostics are the ones who literally don’t know. Atheists take the faith the opposite way. Don’t try to shift the burden of proof. Anybody making a truth claim has BOP on them
@@BabyBudders oh I totally agree! But you can’t prove the existence of an immaterial being. And you can’t disprove the existence of one either. So you’ll never have proof, unless your definition of proof is strong evidence
The first “argument” isn’t an argument against theism or for atheism and it isn’t supposed to be. It’s simply an illustration of what the atheist position is. You either misunderstood or are being disingenuous. Theists will say how do you not believe in god? A good response is to show them they also don’t believe in many god claims, the only difference is the theist accepts one that the atheist doesn’t.
>You either misunderstood or are being disingenuous. There's there's a third option. Like you said, is "isn’t an argument against theism or for atheism and it isn’t supposed to be". That is precisely why he says it's the worst _argument,_ because so many people seem to treat it like it is supposed to be one.
@@markpugner9716 then he should have used an example of someone treating it as an argument for Atheism. He built a straw man of what Gervais said so he could tear it down. That's disingenuous.
@@Maddjacklee81 I agree that he could have included some proof that it is being used that way, but I don't think he was intentionally being disingenuous.
That's not an atheist argument, at best it's an observation. You want an actual atheist argument? Here it goes: _It is irrational to believe in the existence of a thing when there is no good evidence for its existence. You have utterly failed to produce any good evidence to support your claim of the existence of a god or gods._ Now, you can counter my argument by simply producing good evidence for the existence of your god or gods. Go. Note: Arguments do not qualify as evidence. Fallacious arguments doubly so. Claims made in a book (even an old book) are not evidence until those claims can be substantiated -- and they can't be substantiated by other claims in said book.
Holy shit I'm gonna copy this down and put it on a notepad somewhere because this is literally the best way to express atheism. "Here is my position. Here is what you need to do to change it. Get to it."
@@lllemonade33, writes _"I doubt he will ever respond to this lol, great take though"_ Five months in and no response yet... Maybe he's like jesus, promises to return quickly but 2,000 years later you're still waiting...
But, it's not ment to be an argument against any god. I'm sorry if some atheists use it as such, but it's just an attempt to explain how I think about your particular god and why I don't believe in that god.
The problem is that even as just an attempt to explain how we think about their particular god, it falls flat and thus shouldn´t be used. The problem is that our reason to reject all gods is based on logic (due to a lack of evidence we withhold believe), while theirs is based on their believe that they worship the right god and if that is the case ofc all the other gods must be fake. So you see its not the same. At best you could say something like. "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why people of other religions reject yours.”
@@BrianHoldsworth Yes, but since this is just a very general attempt to explain a state of mind, the ambiguity is part of the argument. Until you provide all the specific properties of your particular god, I can only address the general idea of not being convinced by weak evidence.
@@hermaeusmora424 Personally I only use it as a direct response to questions about how I can not believe in any god. Still, as long as Pascal's wager is used by apologists, I think atheists can use this argument. Neither prove anything, but both are about ways of thinking.
@@hermaeusmora424*When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods you will understand why people of other religions reject yours* No, this doesn’t work, either. The reason I reject other gods is because the arguments I accept as proving God simultaneously disprove all others. To say, then, "The same reason you reject other gods is the reason I reject yours," is tantamount to saying, "I am an atheist because I think the Kalaām is true."
I like the Napoleon analogy. Many confused people have claimed to be Napoleon over the past 200 years. We can all agree to deny those false Napoleons. But is it sensible to go that final step and deny the existence of the actual Napoleon Bonaparte?
@Skydaddy Myth-Busters Exactly. Brian is making the claim that his god exists outside the natural universe, without ever providing evidence that it's possible for something to exist outside the natural universe.
@Skydaddy Myth-Busters My only point is that you presented scientific method as the only criteria for finding God. That we can know truth through philosophy and reason outside the bounds you have erected around knowledge. The best ways to approach God through human reason is philosophy and meta-physics. Therefore saying God can't exist when you don't find him within your restricted field of knowledge is like saying a plastic toy on the beach doesn't exist because can't find it with a metal detector. Your using the wrong tool.
Yes, the 'one god further' comment may be glib, - but can be effective in explaining that 1) you don't believe in all those other gods... so 2) take that feeling you have for all those other gods, and that's how I feel about ALL of them. - for me, it's a way to help religious folk understand how I understand the idea of gods, without being a jerk - it's not meant to be a conversation stopper, but continuer. Understanding each other is more important than believing the exact same stuff. Variety is the spice of life. Brian - this is my first video of yours, and I like your thought-provoking and approachable style - keep it up.
If I am dying from leprosy and you are perfectly healthy, there are millions of diseases we both don’t have. I only have one more disease than you. So I’m pretty much as healthy as you… right?
See, the problem is the comparison isnt fair... a more honest/accurate comparison would be married or NOT MARRIED... in which case, thats the truth.... a person is either married or not married and is one person away from being NOT MARRIED... You either believe in a god or you dont.... but to say married or a bachelor isnt an accurate comparison... you could be dating... his whole argument/comparison is nonsensical...
No the analogy was lame. As a bachelor is a man who is not and has *never* been married. You see there is more to being a bachelor then not having a spouse. You see I am a bachelor yet my father who is no longer married is not a bachelor. To make an comparison of 'bachelor vs husband' and 'theist vs atheist' is plan stupid. Because being an atheist simply means that you are not a theist where being a bachelor means that you have never been married.
1) The early Christians were considered atheist by the Romans, because they didn't worship the Roman gods - something to keep in mind 2) the context of atheist's saying this is oftentimes in response to "How can you not believe ___ god exists? (But look at the trees, etc)" While it may not be much of an argument, as a rebuttal it's perfectly reasonable. Since there's at least thousands, probably millions of Gods that have been said to exist, from a monotheistic perspective at most one God can exist - of a God exists at all. I think this argument is better understood as a point of commonality bridging the Gap between atheist/agnostic/religious people, aka there's more common ground between one another then may be realized. And is basically just a retort of "Is it really so hard for you to understand how I don't believe in ___ God, when you yourself don't believe in all these other gods?"
Going "one god further" isn't an argument. It is an explanation that theists already reject the bulk of gods anyone ever imagined, so being atheistic isn't hard, since we merely hold their god in the same regard as they hold others. Of course if you consider it an argument it will be a bad one, it isn't trying to be a good one. It is a soundbite, nothing more.
Okay but if I believe that the Christian God is real this belief necessitates that all other Gods are false or don't exist by the nature that the Christian God does. They are mutually exclusive. Atheist don't believe in any God and their isn't something that they do believe which excludes the belief in the others like theist have, they individual don't believe any of them. That's much more different.
@@jjaros964 *Okay but if I believe that the Christian God is real this belief necessitates that all other Gods are false or don't exist by the nature that the Christian God does. They are mutually exclusive.* What I hear is: If I perform special pleading for my god, then blah blah blah. *Atheist don't believe in any God and their isn't something that they do believe which excludes the belief in the others like theist have, they individual don't believe any of them. That's much more different.* I don't believe in your god precisely like I don't believe in the others. I think your god is incoherent, lacking even a cogent definition let alone any actual evidence for its existence. I don't need a dogmatic rejection of him based on the acceptance of another equally unproven deity. Beyond that, I'm confused as to the point of this paragraph. Different than what, theism? In which case, of course it is, who thinks otherwise.
@@jjaros964 and you must have specific reasons for why you believe in the christian god and not brahman or allah or vishnu. there must be something that has convinced you that you are right to believe in his existence. i havent seen such a piece of evidence so i treat your god just like i treat all the other gods for whom i havent seen suffcient evidence. i dont believe their claims until i see a god-claim that convinces me. the correct answer here is for you to present the evidence that convinces you that the christian god is real and all the others arent.
"The way you feel about other gods, in terms of the likelihood of their existence and their attributes, is exactly how we feel about your god, and your proposed afterlife, and your 'objective' moral system. Because both have equal justification for belief, namely none." There, I clarified the "argument" for you. Maybe you could actually address the point.
You're doing what all religious people do, you're talking so much in order to provide a safe distance between yourself and your obligation to directly prove your claim of god. If you had evidence of his existence, you wouldn't talk about opponents who dispute that existence, you'd present the evidence and the whole debate would end instantly.
usually we don’t but y’all bug us. Cope, why are we still running in your mind lmao, pure copium, it’s always atheists bringing up Christians, trying to disprove our beliefs, leave us alone if you don’t believe in our beliefs, but no we’re always running in your mind.
You are strawmanning the atheist argument about "I don't believe in just one more god than you". The argument is NOT that just because you reject all other gods you should also reject the last one. The argument is that the REASON most gods can be rejected i.e. lack of evidence, is the SAME reason your god can be rejected. Every god including yours is based on a bunch of unsupported assertions and made up stories. So you need to look up the principle of charity and stop strawmanning. Btw, 1+1=2 is true by definition because math is a language invented by humans, and we made it so that statement is true. Are you saying that your specific god is true by definition? That's kind of convenient. Not a good argument or analogy.
I disagree with the last section. They are the same and a good analogy. Both mathematics and gods are human constructs and therefore the argument is good.
@@stevetracey7785 You should go tell some theists that god is a human construct. I think many of them didn't get that memo. :-) The only thing math and god share, is that they were invented. That's where the similarity ends. One is a descriptive language, the other is a fairy tale. Again, 1+1=2 is true BY OUR OWN DEFINITION in that language, while the statement "the christian god exists" CAN"T be true just by defining it to be (it's the thing theists have been trying to prove for a long time). IT's a bad analogy because god is being equated to something that's true by definition. It's a bad analogy because... the addition of two numbers ALWAYS has exactly one answer that is correct. That doesn't mean that there has to be exactly one god that exists. It's a nice word trick that only dumb people would fall for.
@@zpd8003 let's not argue between ourselves. I could point out that by changing the base I can make 1+1=10; but that would just make me an arsehole. I accept your retort an offer my humble apologies.
@@stevetracey7785 OK np, glad you agree. The base is irrelevant and it wouldn't make you an arsehole, it would just be pointless because everything I said would still apply. Adding two numbers has one correct answer regardless of the base. It's pretty obvious the youtuber was talking about base 10.
That’s false, theism comes from logic, "this universe is too complex and points towards a maker"-> theism. Same with atheism (which is a belief) "this universe is too complex and doesn’t need a god behind it"
Or perhaps 10 if your in a base 5 number system. Which is why there has to be an agreement on some core rules. Or as the joke goes, there are 10 types of people who understand binary....
1. Ricky Gervais "exfoliates his atheism?" That may sound intelligent, but . . . ? In this context it makes no sense. 2. Humor is powerful, because it "punches up" (my colloquialism to describe how those without power point out the ridiculousness of those with power) so successfully to "exfoliate" (strip away layers of) the pompous self-importance of institutional apologists like Brian here. 3. Brian's "category mistake" of a God "of creation" versus a god "within creation" is merely a self-described, self-satisfied, self-important distinction that makes no sense beyond his unsupported claim. I'd charitably respond "Nice try," but I'd be lying. Ridiculous.
The head of a nomadic tribe did not believe in human built dwellings. He, and his people dwelled under the sky and slept on the earth. He was a mono-dwellingist, who believed only one domicile was fit for human beings- the earth. His roof was the sky. His floor the ground. A challenger came to battle the leader for his place, and told him, in front of the people, “You believe in one dwelling, but I can outdo you. I believe in one less dwelling than you, for I do not believe in the earth.” The leader had the man taken to the edge of a high cliff. “If you are right and I am wrong, you will not hit the earth at the bottom when we throw you off.” To take that last step of atheism is to remove the very ground of all being, and leave us with nothing upon which to stand.
I think the underlying point of the argument is that somehow the theist has managed to reject every god humanity has invented but somehow the believer thinks their religion just happens to be the right one. An atheist just looks at that last religion and rejects it too. I agree that this is more an argument against religion than theism. A deist god could still exist and every religion be false. Thus the argument doesn't undermine theism. But it is pretty strong against any specific religion.
there are literally only three main religions in the world and only islam is the one that has no contradictions unlike the other two, if you actually read the Quran and sahih Hadis you would also know that no human can ever write this.
@@GOATEditz204 Their evidence is pretty similar and ultimately boils down to a few central arguments, such as the cosmological, teleological, ontological, and moral arguments.
The Last Line brought it all together! Two things that appear to oppose each other at first glance, might actually both be right! Logically most people can not agree or believe in an opposing parallelism... It's like taking an object and telling someone that it is both straight and curved simultaneously, they just can not perceive it.
Thomas Edison tried 5999 experiments that all failed but that one more attempt at number 6000 worked and he created the lightbulb which lit up the world
Good example. It was the last experiment which proved to be the important one. It's also the last and everlasting God that proves to be the important one.
@James Patrick Actually, it's the reverse. Nikola Tesla was one of the pioneers of alternating current, alongside Westinghouse, while Thomas Edison pioneered direct current. There's a whole slew of articles out there about the various lawsuits Edison had with Tesla and Westinghouse about the dangers of alternating current. The famous Electric Chair came from these very suits.
@@Lumbervr : As far I as know, billions of people don't continue to worship Apollo, Zeus, or any of the other fake gods. Actually, the emperors of the past Greek and Roman empires used these fake gods to give themselves some sense of justification. In other words, they "claimed" those gods chose them to rule over the people. But I'm pretty sure the average Joe around Caesar's time didn't really believe in those gods and just played along because it was the social thing to do and also because if they didn't they would be killed. On the contrary, the God of Moses still exists because he actually does tangible things like, inspired men to write a book that has been a best seller for over 2,000 years, inspired men to build massive churches in every city of the world and every small town, inspired learned men to pursue advanced degrees in theology in the most prestigious universities in the world, and I could go on. People believe in the God of Moses because he does stuff that people recognize as beyond human effort and have a major impact on the world. What did Zeus ever do?
Your primary mistake is assuming that ANYTHING is transcendent to reality. If God is actually beyond existence, then what connection could he possibly have with it? If he IS connected with reality and affects it, then there is a basic commonality--He is NOT transcendent, he is part of existence. That is my view. I actually believe in God, but he is nothing like the Christian concept of deity. My view is that all of reality itself, in its full complexity, both gives rise to, and is part of a universal, eternal consciousness. I don't pretend to know any details beyond that, unlike all faiths invented by humans.
Excuse me, but the « argument » is, as you say, not an argument. It doesn’t try to assert anything. It simply helps theists understand what atheism is, as they often misunderstand it and sometimes even confuse it with misotheism (belief in god but refusal of worshipment or love towards them). It does what it tries to do perfectly, but it does not try to proove anything.
atheists keep saying it has nothing to do with a refusal to follow god, but whenever theyre asked if they would follow god if they knew he was real, theyd say no
@@InitialPC well... yes, even if only for heaven. Would I genuinely love Him? If he is perfect, yes. If he commits mass genocide, no. (Would still follow him for heaven though)
@@noidea5106 Lol you can't just say "sorry God, can I get a margarita now?" Now let me ask you this, and you don't have to answer, but can you actually name an instance where God is responsible for a "mass genocide"?
Depends on the context. Some believers are still clumsy enough to say, "Everything that exists had a cause," so "what caused God?" is valid for them. There's a similar framing for the "Who .." version, but I've forgotten how it's put now. With TH-cam, Christians are educating themselves in which arguments are malformed and moving away from them, little by little.
_”He isn’t some being within our reality, He is the source of all reality.”_ Yeah, it’s gonna be hard to find the atoms that make up God when God is not made of created matter.
@@StaggersonJagz Depends how you define "reality," I guess. The intent of the statement was that God is not created by an arrangement of atoms, but exists in a state of more fundamental reality than the "reality" we experience as created things.
@@StaggersonJagz _"however you define reality, God either exists within it or not. That's a hard dichotomy."_ Hard disagree. If you don't define reality, it has no meaning, and you cannot make any true/false statements involving the word, because all statements using an undefined word are nonsense statements. I'm defining "reality" as all matter and physical laws (maybe "physical reality" would work better?). But God is not made up of physical matter, or beholden to physical laws, preexisting both.
@Universalkritik if you say so. I often see arguments formed in rhetoric via questions. I’ve also never heard a good answer to it outside of: “Something something Adam ate an apple” or “something something fallen world.”
“Why does God let bad things happen” That’s a really good question because if God is good surely he would give us everything that we want ? Is that right though ? because what usually happens to a child who is spoilt and gets everything he/she wants from his/her parents without working for it or learning how to help, share and give to others as well. The results can be catastrophic with regards to lack of morality and ethics. Apparently Hitler was really spoiled by his mother. Nevertheless, if you think of all the heroes of social change, those heroes who stood up to racism, died fighting for human rights, the heroes of flight and space aviation of the last century, heroes such as Martin Luther King JR, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Noam Chomsky, Mary Robinson, Buzz Aldrin, Amelia Earhart, the Wright brothers. Now imagine if a supreme being had intervened and removed all the moral danger and natural danger from the world and from these heroes lives. In order to remove all moral evil from the world all you have to do is remove everyone’s free will. To remove natural danger all you have to do is remove all obstacles all challenges and make everything safe meaningless and purposeless. Some would argue pointless and lifeless. Because without the risk of moral evil and natural evil non of these amazing people would have been the heroes that they are and would have non of the virtues they had such as real courage, real bravery, real altruism, creativity, empathy, real love and imagination that our children and generations of children and adults have taken great inspiration from as there would be no such thing as bravery, courage, altruism, self sacrifice that is real love and real virtue with out real free will, real moral danger and natural danger. Similarly, the combined efforts of all these heroes creates a beautiful effect a mythological truth, a true myth in a sense in the collective consciousness and memory of humanity that is greater than the sum of each individual part/virtue and is greater than each individual hero that points to a reality a joy that we all yearn for that transcends the materialistic, selfish, self centred, narcissistic, nihilistic and fatalistic paradigm. “Romance is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of eucatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world poignant as grief.” (JRR Tolkien).
Interestingly, all of our physical theories at the fundamental level of “matter” have been replaced by quantum mechanics and string theory. Classical materialism has crumbled under the weight of evidence from quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics has demonstrated that “particles” exist, for want of a better word, that are invisible, unmeasurable, timeless, non locational/bi locational and can influence other, other “particles” at great distances and appear to travel faster than the speed of light. So empirical science has demonstrated that particles exist that have no definitive “location in space and time”. Is it “logically coherent” to believe that things that can be in two places at the same time actually exist. ? Is it “logically coherent” to deny this despite the weight of evidence from empirical science demonstrated in quantum mechanics. ? Is this pseudo science and is it synonymous with omnipresence. ? Who knows!! “Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum” (“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”) - Rene Descartes. This quote is the pillar on which science, rationality and the belief in the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism/being stands and according to the brilliant linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, Rene Descartes conclusions regarding mind and consciousness still stands today. All the best to you and your family and keep safe during this Corona virus crisis. ❤️
If Tolkien was a good person, why did he create Sauron? If Shakespeare was a good person, why did he write tragedies? Evil can exist for a higher purpose. We already know this. For example, people actually choose to go through the pains of childbirth in order to get a child when they can avoid it by not having children. We think some suffering is more than offset by the result. Evil is not absolute -- there are greater goods. People will choose to undergo evil to attain something higher. We don't just avoid all evils whatsoever, even when we can. No one would ever run a marathon if suffering were an absolute evil. The issue is not the existence of evil, but whether the world that contains evil is, nonetheless, worthwhile. Does the evil in a story, in a world, have a point? Sauron has a worthwhile role to play in Tolkien's stories despite being evil. Shakespeare is writing worthwhile plays, even when they are tragedies. Our world may be worthwhile because of its evil and its overcoming -- and there is no logical reason why that worth must be evident to us, right now. God thinks the end-result in our universe, and for each person who turns to him, will more than offset all the suffering for all the people who underwent it -- and God is in a position to know that. We aren't. But even we can see that suffering could be worthwhile in certain circumstances, and God can see that it will be in our circumstances. If there really is a God, why not trust him when bad things happen?
I don't think it is meant as a argument to disbelief. I think it's meant as an explanation: Very often atheists are faced with incredulous stares, people think that a belief in a god is self-explanatory. The argument is an answer to that.
@Anakin Skywalker Religion is often transmitted by childhood indoctrination, so it's taken for granted. It's coming from that mindset that makes it hard for believers to contemplate alternatives. Mind you, this is not to say that believers are unable to understand the arguments once they see the positions clearly.
@@russellmiles2861 Why? That's like asking a musician why they make music, a painter why they paint? Because that is who they are. Same with God. God Creates, it is in Gods nature to do this. May I recommend The Silmarillion, the 1st couple of chapters
One thing you forgot to mention is that it is also only targeted to Christians...and not like the other dozens of Monotheistic religions/traditions that exist.
@@npswm1314 How do you know that? You see it used against Christians because that's the majority religion in the culture you (presumably, at least) and I live in, so that's who you see it put against. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard it used at least once towards a Muslim apologist. It's just that the Christian ones VASTLY, VASTLY outnumber how many you see of other religions here.
Dear theists, this is not an argument. It's an explanation. Also, mathematicians can provide a proof that 1 + 1 = 2. That's how math works. So, Brian's analogy fails. That's why you don't find any Amathmetists out there, friends. But I will say something positive... something that all theists and atheists can agree on : as a bald guy, I am a jealous of Brian's fabulous mane. I'm now a follower of the ginger Jesus! He converted me. Despite our differing world views, Brian, I wish you the best.
I'm seeing a lot of replies to this pointing out that it isn't an argument, so it shouldn't be treated as such. But this doesn't escape the problem with it. In the case of both Dawkins and Gervais, they have given this response to some variation to the question, "Why don't you believe in God?" When someone asks a question like that, they're asking for a reason. Reason(s) is/are supported by arguments. If your reason isn't based on a logical sequence of ideas (ie. an argument), then you are conceding that your belief is not grounded in reason, but something else. So when atheists like Dawkins and Gervais are asked for a reason and provide this rhetorical verbal ornament instead of a reason, if that's all they've got, then they've admitted that it's based on something other than reason. If this is among one of the many responses they provide (which is usually true), then they're still guilty of employing sophistry to reinforce their position - which is manipulative.
2 things. 1) this is one of my issues with many of the atheists in the pubic stage. I get that it's alluding to an analogy (which I know you reject), but it's unhelpful in the same way a Christian arguing the need for a savior & forgiver to an atheist is. 2) this quip feels like it is a few steps shy of belittling one's interlocutor. I feel that there's a whole argument around the redefining and refinement of god(s) over time, but that quip compresses it beyond usefulness.
Brian I think you are misrepresenting this. Can you point to where this has been used as a "reason" to not believe in a god? The comment used by Gervais is in response to Theist's who don't understand how an Atheist cannot believe in a god. This response is used to demonstrate to a Christian that he/she is atheist about Allah, Thor etc and to demonstrate to a Hindu that they are Atheist about all other gods but there own. It is never used as an argument against the existence of a god. It is important to understand that whatever god you believe in you are in the minority ... again this is not evidence that a god does not exist just a point of fact. Atheists do not require a reason to not believe in a god, they just lack a reason to believe in a god.
Okay I thought you were just a honest interlocutor that was actually trying to properly debate and actually investigate your own position as well as your opponents and that you just kept getting misunderstood about the things you were talking about because there's a lot of Miss constrution in many theist circles I've seen at this point I got a resume that you understand what it is you're talking about but you're purposefully trying to twist and turn it to your own benefit
I'll start showing this by pointing out that is not an argument in the least and it is just a statement of fact that theists who hold a monotheistic belief only believe that there is one God meaning you do not accept and are not convinced by all the other God claims and you are simply convinced by just this one meaning you have just one more Godly than we do we're just to say we have none and we are just unconvinced...
Now I can agree that maybe atheist should refrain from using this one because it is prone to being misunderstood and to assist it probably feels like a overly snippy and hostile retort but dude you do this on TH-cam for fucking living at this point so you should actually try to understand the arguments, OR STATEMENTS that you're talking about so you don't spread misunderstanding and make discussion harder rather than easier
"Rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry " I'd have to agree with that . Now please point out to me the logic to be found in the Bible. Point out ANY kind of logic to be found in ANY religion ever . I'd be interested to hear it without it sounding like sophistry . This guy go's on and on about the importance of logic , then would argue that x is not always x if god is involved . If you don't deny math , explain how one entity can be three. Religion is poison .
It really doesn’t work, is not analogous. It is accurate for someone to say a Christian is an Atheist with regards to the Great Bear Spirit, it is not accurate to say an Atheist is a Theist with regard to any deity.
@@Tinesthia Except you have to redefine _atheist_ into oblivion. If it’s possible to be an "atheist with regards to" some specific deity, then we’re all atheists. And if everyone’s an atheist, then no one is. And if you’re not an atheist, then you're a theist. QED.
@@Tinesthia There’s the further problem of equivocation. The sorts of atheists who employ the "one less god" rhetoric are almost certainly those who define "atheism" as something like "withholding belief due to lack of evidence." But that is not a Christian’s position towards other gods. When have you heard a Christian say, "I withhold belief in Zeus because of a lack of evidence?" False equivalency or straw man-take your pick.
@@nathanaelculver5308 Christians don’t have to say that exact phrase for it to be true. Why else would you not believe in Zeus or the Great Bear Spirit? Because there is not enough good reasons or evidence. If I am wrong correct me. Is there a different reason you don’t believe in Zeus than no good evidence? Atheists use the “one less God” statement to point out we feel generally the same way about Yahweh as you do about Allah, Zeus, or the Great Bear Spirit. It is an attempt to get a Theist to understand our position, not an attempt to prove Theism wrong. It never hurts to try to look at the world from someone else’s point of view. An “outsider test of faith.” No Strawman, no False Equivalence, no redefinition...
You do understand positions don't require arguments, right? States of affair (conditions) are simply factual. Or are you lacking the competence to grasp that fact?
@@theoskeptomai2535 sure, if want to undermine your own ideas with badly constructed arguments you are free to do it. Just don't dare to blame it anyone else when you are unable to convince someone.
The worst comprehension skills on the internet: this guy. And I'm being generous, I'm not at all implying he's lying by intentional strawman because cheating is all that's left to him... and he has the guts to write " but rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry": yeh, go figure, who's the one using sophistry here. Saying I believe one god less of you isn't fallacious, first of all because it's true. The purpose of that isn't intended as a proof against god, it has never been, how you infered it I don't really can figure out and I can only appoint it to dishonesty or stupidity, you choose freely mate. It's purpose is helping you "feel" how WE feel about your god. And it isn't that much of a popular argument unless the theist says something on the like of "I can't believe you don't believe in a god", and in that case it's a perfect way to explain how I don't believe. An hint: try using the brain sometime. I know, in christianity it's deprecated and at first it can seem overwhelmingly difficult, but you really should try. Just enough to not come out as silly and smug about it as in this video.
0:51 Yeah this is a crisp, pithy piece of rhetoric. But this isn't an atheist _argument_ . No atheist used this argument against the existence of God, because "therefore God does not exist" doesn't follow from this. No, this is just pointing out an observation. And it's true. 2:43 "There is nothing valid in its content." I would say there is. It brings Christianity into perspective. Many theists believe that "Christianity and atheism" is a true dichotomy and that's simply false. The choice isn't between Christianity and atheism, or Islam and atheism. There are so many religions out there, and all of them the Christian disbelieves in, except for one.
@@nathanaelculver5308 Maybe not if you lay it out like that, but I do think that Christians think, on an instinctive level, that if God exists then it’s the Christian God.
"We are all Theists throughout all of human history. Some of us just don't go one God far enough." Dawkins, and other Atheists, would recognize the fallacy instantly if it was turned around on him like that. This exposes his pre-existing bias. Biased people only recognize fallacies against them, but not when they work in their favor.
I'm an atheist myself and agree the statement alone is indeed not a proper argument within itself. The argument is implied rather than stated, which is faulty logic. I would say the argument actually stated outloud, though I dont necessarily subscribe to it, would be something along the lines of "if one believes in one unfalsifiable claim( ie christianity, a claim that cannot logically be proven nor disproven rationally because its fundamentally based on pure faith), what stops that person from also believing in another? Why believe in one unfalsifiable claim instead of one or all others? It may be true that believers in such things feel emotionally justified in their beliefs, but so do all others in other unfalsifiable claims such as the doctrine of islam. Muslims feel just as justified in their beliefs as Christians do, so why should I, an atheist, take one more seriously than the other since they are both unfalsifiable?"
The number of times you have totally lost me, and I've had to go back multiple times... When you make the false equevalency of mathematics being the same as theology, or marriage being the same as theology (well that one is a lot closer, as marriage is often couched in religious practices, though that's not really the same as a legal marriage). I will continue... You have made the most logically sound and understandable argument *for* the "falsity of atheism," which you make the argument of, "if atheism is false, therefore my monotheism is true," which seems to be making very much the same argument you're arguing against.
Simply put the reason this is not a good argument is that this is not an argument. It's not trying to change your mind, it's trying to get you to understand someone else's mind. That you think it's an argument at all is a problem.
I was fairly clear that I don't consider it an argument, but the fact that it gets used in place of an argument is the problem. If someone challenges your reasons for believing something, and you resort to this reason (reasons are the compositions of arguments), then you have revealed yourself to be someone who does not rely on logic, but sophistry. That's the exact criticism of the video.
@@BrianHoldsworth A sophism is still an argument. This is not an argument and therefore cannot be sophism. Argument is inherent to the definition of sophism.
But this is not an argument. It is not phrased as "... I just believe in one god less therefore you should not also." or as "... I just believe in one god less therefore there is no god". Those would both be arguments. But they don’t exist and you are implying the argument from two statements (Personally I find classifying them as premises or reasons a stretch).
In your cited example Gervais is trying to frame atheism in terminology that a theist would understand with no attempt at changing anyone's mind or making an argument. Same with Dawkins as best I can tell but I could not find a sufficiently extended quote quickly to be completely sure.
@@BrianHoldsworthyet you still titled the video “the worst atheist argument.” Doesn’t sound like very honest presentation.
But no, it’s not sophistry that shows the person doesn’t rely on logic. It’s meant to build a connection between interlocutors, to show that some common ground exists, to combat specific attitudes that seem surprised anyone could even be an atheist.
You say that “you make it clear you don’t think it’s an argument” but then everything you say about it is analyzing it AS an argument, which doesn’t make a lick of sense. People are allowed to use rhetorical devices without being dishonest or without trying to make it be a substantive argument. You might not like how it’s said - and that’s totally fair - but that’s a separate issue.
@@BrianHoldsworthwhy are you always lying? (Yeah yeah, I actually know, you're an apologist). No atheist ever uses this as an argument. We use it to point out the absurdity of theist not being able to grasp why someone would not believe in their particular god, while simultaneously thinking it's obvious to not believe in all those other gods. What's more we don't need a reason to not believe something, not believing is the default position for everything. You need reasons to start believing something.
@@BrianHoldsworth The atheist stance/argument is that they have not been presented any convincing evidence that any god exists.
Rather than engaging in very poor reasoning how about presenting atheists with some convincing evidence that your particular god exists ??
As for me I'm pleased to say no religion has paid any significant part in my 64 years I call myself an apatheist, I really don't care if one exists or not.
It is not something that I find important enough to worry about .. however I do find myself having the urge to correct flawed reasoning.
It is a terrible argument.....because it's not an argument. How are theists so consistently dense?
It's not an argument, it's a rhetorical tool used to facilitate a shift in perspective.
Exactly. Rhetoric divorced from logic = sophistry.
It's not really an argument "for atheism". It's only meant to point out the double standard being applied in a way that believers can relate to.
The point is: most people practice the religion of the culture they come from. Stephen Colbert is a Catholic because he was raised in a Catholic household, not because he studied every religion known to man and concluded Catholicism is the true nature of the universe.
The point is you're fatherless
This was never supposed to be used as an argument. It’s just a simple way to explain ones belief to a theist in a way they can relate to.
This.
atheists are rather fervent in their dogmatic hatred of religion its easy to understand why they would twist this into an argument.
It’s always used as an argument, and it’s always wrong.
@@sly8926 You're making a claim without presenting evidence to prove your claim is true.
How is it wrong?
@@TonyEnglandUKBecause atheism, by definition, denies the existence of any God. Acknowledging God’s existence means acknowledging that atheism is objectively false.
This is not an "argument", and isn't intended to be. It's a witty analogy that aims to demonstrate to theists by listing a convocation of dead gods (who were all once revered but are now reduced to comic book stereotype status by our culture), the absurdity of fervently believing that your flavour is radically different, without any distinguishing reason.
Apparently, you think there's evidence in the Bible to support the idea that your god "is being itself" (whatever that means!). You think it's a "category error" to compare Christianity with the faith of the ancient Greeks because it's possible to setup an empirical test to determine whether Zeus once lived on Mount Olympus (I'd challenge you to do this, by the way.) I'm not sure why you're sure it's a "category error" when there are numerous accounts of God's interactions with man "inside" the universe in the Bible. For an entity that is "being itself" 'he' seems to have a gender, family relationships, human emotions, numerous physical incarnations (notably Jesus, in some mysterious triune form) and so on.
I was just about to type a reply very similar to this, but you’ve already done it better. For all his talk about the lack of logical and rhetorical education, he doesn’t seem to understand either.
Not everything an atheist says about religion is intended as a syllogism to disprove the existence of any gods. This line in particular is just intended to explain what atheism is to a nation of people who seem incapable of grasping the concept.
The problem with Atheists is they don't realize their worldview is just as faith-based as everyone else. Absolute truth *only exists* in mathematics and logic. This means faith is required to form any worldview for humans. No human can form a worldview without faith. You just choose religious faith in academia as your religious text.
Atheism is rooted in Dogmatic Scientism (blind faith in the current academic consensus like a religious text). Heck, you even have Scientism priests (top academics).
For example, you believe you evolved from primordial soup, don't you? You believe you live on a spinning water ball that defies physics with a sky vacuum, don't you? You believe in the Heliocentric model and "outer space" don't you? You believe you're spinning at 1,000mph right now? You believe heavy objects fall down because of "gravity" ?
Are any of these beliefs independently verifiable? They are not. They don't even have any scientific evidence supporting them that anyone reading this could verify if their lives depended on it. Yet, you believe them anyway on faith alone.
Dogmatic Scientism / Atheism is the most dangerous form of dogmatism known to humanity because its members don't even recognize their own faith / dogmatism. They falsely believe they're just "following the science" when they're doing anything but. They end up defending the current consensus religiously, even mocking/censoring anyone daring to question their pre-existing beliefs (the current consensus)... making real science impossible. Science is about doing everything one can to prove oneself wrong, not censor/mock conflicting evidence.
Science is a method of discovery requiring no faith... including no blind faith in academia. The scientific method was actually specifically designed to avoid dogmatism like that when applied correctly.
So it's the ultimate Dunning-Kruger Effect. Scientism Dogmatists / Atheists often assume a higher sense of scientific literacy while behaving this way.... not realizing what they're doing is completely antithetical to science.
Science is not an ideology or a body of knowledge to be blindly believed on faith alone. Its a method of discovery requiring no faith... and *requires* the ability to independently verify.
The ability to independently verify is what differentiates science from pseudoscience... it's how we tell if a claim is a lie, corrupt, or wrong for any other reason. Yet, Atheists / Scientism Dogmatists blindly believe all consensuses from the academic community on faith alone without even bothering to think about whether they, or any of the public, could ever verify it. It doesn't get any more religious than that.
Academia is your God. Worse yet, your blind faith in them is being taken advantage of to hide the existence of your real creator.
@@lightbeforethetunnel Your argument is based in a common misconception: that an adherence to atheism presupposes a necessary belief in some other value system, for example, what you dismiss as "Dogmatic Scientism".
This is not true. Atheism simply suggests a lack of belief in a God. It says nothing about any other beliefs a person may or may not hold.
You make some truly incredible claims here: that our belief in a heliocentric model for our solar system, our understanding that the Earth isn't flat, and even our insights about gravity (!) don't have "any scientific evidence supporting them". What the heck are you talking about?! The scientific evidence for these claims has been established with reams of empirical data over many decades. To casually dismiss the careful exploratory and analytical work of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton (to name but a few) in this fashion is breathtakingly wrong-headed.
You then flatly contradict these outlandish claims by stating later that "the ability to independently verify is what differentiates science from pseudoscience".
In fact, your entire post is riven with such contradictions.
For example, you start out by saying: "faith is required to form any worldview for humans". But you state further on: "Science is... a method of discovery requiring no faith".
These are fundamentally contradictory statements, and cannot be held simultaneously.
For the record, I personally agree with the second of these truth claims, but this is not a necessary condition for my atheism - which is simply a lack of belief in something. By analogy, you probably don't believe in Santa Claus; I can't deduce from that fact alone whether or not you're an atheist or a "Scientism Dogmatist" or anything else.
You appear to be tilting at a straw man. The "academia" you deride is simply the forum for scientific theories to be debated. Nobody regards academic research as a holy or immutable text never to be challenged. Quite the contrary: the whole advantage of the scientific method is that our theories can shift and change to account for new evidence. Eisteinian relativity is a radical shift away from the Newtonian conception of the universe. Quantum physics and string theory pose a similarly radical challenge to the scientific orthodoxy.
Should compelling independent evidence for the existence of God emerge (suppose, for example, He rearranged the stars in the sky to form a message of greeting) I would change my views without trouble. So far, I haven't encountered any evidence of this type, but I'm quite open to it.
Hoo boy. That is some impressive gobbledygook. Every one of those things is independently verifiable.
A “sky vacuum” doesn’t defy physics. You seem to be under the impression that vacuums are vacuum cleaners? They are not. They don’t suck things out into space like dirt from a carpet. It’s just empty space.
You can absolutely verify a spinning spherical earth. The ancient Greeks figured it out over 2,000 years ago. The motion of the stars, sunrises and sunsets, the fact that everyone sees exactly the same face of the moon regardless of location, and eclipses are a few easy ways. The fact that people in the southern and northern hemispheres see entirely different skies. The fact that things disappear over the horizon bottom up. The fact that you can see farther as you rise in elevation. Time zones. The fact that GPS actually works. The 15 degree per hour drift Mr. Bob picked up with his fancy gyroscope. Live satellite feeds. The insane conspiracy of tens of millions of people that would be required for the flat earth to be true. The fact that objects accelerate downwards.
@@ajitterbug How much have you looked into the Flat Earth debate? My guess is you haven't at all, whatsoever, based on your response. Will you at least admit this? You know it's true and so do I.
You dismissed it prior to actually understanding even the basics of both sides of the debate. And this is exactly what is expected from a Scientism Dogmatist.
I expect fully that every Atheist I say this to will become very triggered and deny their worldview is rooted in Dogmatic Scientism... while their arguments simultaneously confirm it absolutely is. (I'll explain why below).
That's the problem with Dogmatic Scientism. Members of this form of dogmatism are completely unaware of their own form of dogmatism. This is what makes it so dangerous. It's members falsely believe they're just "following the science" when they're doing anything but. Instead, theyre blindly believing the current consensus on faith alone like a religious text... instead of what the scientific method reveals in real life when applied honestly and objectively.
For example, can you provide a single example of independently verifiable evidence that I can walk outside and verify in real life that proves Heliocentric Globe Earth over Geocentric Flat Earth?
The answer will be no. You can't. You may think for a moment that you could... without realizing it all works on Geocentric Flat Earth just the same, if not actually proving Geocentric Flat Earth over Heliocentric Globe Earth instead if you went out and actually verified it for yourself instead of blindly believing what others claim they observed with the scientific method on faith alone.
Here's 7 years of scientific experiments conducted by an independent group of the world's top topographers and scientists proving Earth's surface doesn't curve by experimenting directly on Earth's surface with top-of-the-line equipment and lasers: th-cam.com/video/v4fnnvnzQdc/w-d-xo.html
I've personally verified many of them myself in real life, as have many thousands of others with the same results every time. Earth's surface does not curve.
Every experiment is fully documented, shown step-by-step, and independently verifiable.
So far, every time I present this scientific evidence to Scientism Dogmatists, the only response I get is ad hominem fallacies directed at the world-class professionals conducting the experiments (all of whom have easily verifiable credentials) such as suggesting they don't know how to conduct valid experiments and other ridiculous dismissive nonsense that they'd normally never say about world-class topographers and scientists if the results agree with their pre-existing beliefs.
Anyhow, let's see if you can be different. Let's see if you can actually respond to the independently verifiable science presented against your stance without the use of any logical fallacies or obfuscation tactics.
Beyond that, if you wish to dispute my claims that none of the beliefs I brought up have scientific evidence supporting them (such as Heliocentrism, gravity, etc) simply present some. Just provide a link to scientific evidence supporting any of the beliefs I mentioned. I already know all of them that you likely think are scientific evidence and will be able to explain to you why it, in fact, is not scientific evidence supporting the belief in question coherently.
Your claims that they have "reams of data supporting them" only confirms everything I've said. Data/math is not scientific evidence. Data/math only makes predictions. It does not count as scientific evidence, which involves actual observation/experimentation of reality and must be independently verifiable.
The question I'd ask is... why are you believing the data? Because you trust the scientists who claim they did science to get it. That's exactly my point... You're a Scientism Dogmatist who blindly trusts the consensus without actually applying the scientific method to your surroundings yourself to verify.... even if no one reading this could possibly verify any of it even if their lives depended on it.
Exactly my point. It's no different than a religious person believing their religious text on faith alone. Your religious text is just the current consensus. And your priests are top academics.
The worst part is they're taking advantage of your religious faith in their claims... and they're hiding your real creator from you. Most of them don't even know they're helping deceive you... as they're just as deceived themselves.
I want to give my perspective on this argument as an atheist. First of all I will say that this argument proves nothing, but I don't think that it supposed to prove anything either. If an someone (and I know that some do) use this argument trying to prove that a certain religion is false, then all of the things you said are valid. But I wouldn't use this argument to prove anything, I use it more when people are shocked to hear that I'm an atheist and I want them to realise that it's not that strange. I just want them to realise that I feel the same way about their religion as they feel about other religions. Ultimately it proves nothing, it's more about perspective.
I agree, I don't see it used as an argument at all. It's usually just a way of getting someone to start to understand the perspective of an atheist.
Exactly… this isn’t even an argument.
Brian even says in the video there was no conclusion and he was forced to draw his own conclusions that he then proceeded to argue against. He didn’t realize he was missing the point entirely
No arguments prove anything according to you atheists. All you do is conjecture
@@JLBorges2803 I agree - it was simply Ricky saying to Stephen _"We aren't so different in our beliefs after all"_
"Rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry." Yes, perfect statement.
I agree. Reminds me of all those silly bible quotes Christians throw around
Yes, and all this clown did was to throw sophistry around.
RevolutionDrummer47: The logic of Gervais' statement is absolutely clear.
I love it when the religious wax lyrical about logic.
Well said! I totally agree with you. I love Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington and laughed and cried at Ricky Gervais’s Derrick series as I work in healthcare. But it always made me cringe when Ricky went down this celebrity atheist virtue signalling route rubbing shoulders with the Oxford elites such as Richard Dawkins. The same Dawkins who was publicly criticised by prominent humanists because his hubris/arrogance and condescension got the better of him and his real intentions were revealed when he tweeted to 2.8 million followers that eugenics would work on humans without explicitly condemning it.
According to Richard Dawkins....
“It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds, It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.” ( Richard Dawkins).
Eugenics experts pointed out how bizarre a statement this is when Dawkins eventually tried to backtrack due to public pressure because as well as being unethical it is extremely scientifically illiterate. Because empirical science demonstrates that eugenics is very harmful to animals including humans not to mention the obvious moral and ethical issues and the warnings from history in the form of the Nazis Third Reich. l think the bereaved relatives of the people who died under the Nazis eugenics policy would beg to differ that eugenics would work on humans.
“As an evolutionary biologist, it’s my responsibility to denounce this clown” one doctor tweeted.
“Richard Dawkins is now supporting eugenics, which is obviously indefensible.” (Dr Blommaert).
The prominent humanist Greg Hepstein from Harvard who thankfully condemned this statement for obvious reasons responded.....
“So unacceptable for Richard Dawkins to tweet about eugenics without clearly condemning it. Dawkins is *supposedly* one of our exemplars of humanism & science outreach. Yet today he's given every manner of passive and active bigot an opening to "consider" persecution on steroids” (Greg Hepstein).
Another one of Dawkins associates Sam Harris boasts that....
“I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity.”
(Sam Harris).
I wonder why he’s one of the few ? Is it because he’s more enlightened than the rest of us or is it because torture is unbelievably evil and has never been justified by appeals to emotion as there is no clear distinction on where to draw the lines.Dawkins associate Harris argues that there are scientific “neurological" grounds for supposing that his moral reasoning is logically correct and that we “ought” to be torturing people for collateral reasons. We all know which group of people he has in mind and if your associates who are also considered prominent public intellectuals such as Daniel Dennette believe that moderate religious believers are as dangerous as extremists where do you draw the line ??? Where Dawkins and Harris get there we “ought” to use torture or eugenics from is beyond most normal people as you can’t get an “ought” from an “is” (David Hume) no matter how much you pretend you can. Methodological naturalism is supposed to be metaphysically neutral. Also are women and children exempt from Harris and his associates state sponsored torture program if they had information that was required by the state.?
“Torture is one of the ultimate abuses of state power, and the use of extreme violence that exploits the powerlessness of individuals subject to state control is anathema to the rule of law. It easily becomes a license to target anyone who is declared to be a threat” (Lutz Oette).
If you’re going to defend Dawkins don’t forget to defend eugenics and his associates Sam Harris and Daniel Dennettes beliefs in torture including the very disturbing belief that moderate religious believers are more dangerous than extremists.
I think you missed the point of the argument. The "I just don't believe in one more" is meant to exemplify that we have more in common than people tend to believe. It's meant to help religious people understand that it isn't a big deal to be an atheist. That to us not believing in the Christian God is the equivalent of not believing in Odin or Thor. Furthermore it's meant to help people reflect on their own beliefs. Not to change their mind but to inspire empathy. Its not some "gotcha" like you make it out to be.
I don't think he delivered his point as well as he could, but I think the core of what he was trying to get at was similar to what you're saying…
By "the worst atheist argument" I think he's saying that when people use "I just don't believe in one more than you" as an argument on it's own against the concept of the Christian God, it really is "the worst" because, like you said, it doesn't work as a "gotcha".
@@markpugner9716 That's not really how it's used, though, so talking about it as if this way of using the comparison is some common thing is rather silly.
@@JackgarPrime I've heard/seen it used that way many times
That was bonkers......But we know 1+1 = 2.....Because of mathematics,science,all scientists agree 1+1 =2.There's nothing to debate
Its not a argument.. It is a statement intended to make a point. Learn what a argument is.
The fact it isn't an argument, in place of an argument is the problem. That's the definition of sophistry. See my pinned comment for an explanation.
@@BrianHoldsworthIt is absolutely an argument, and a powerful one at that. The plethora of gods throughout history proves that religion is man-made. It isn't a description of objective reality. If it was, religion would be uniform. BTW, you are using "sophistry" incorrectly.
@@BrianHoldsworthit simply isn’t used in place of an argument. You are wrong about that. Full stop. And until you realize what people are actually trying to do when saying it, you’ll be very confused and frustrated by it.
Also - there’s no pinned comment that I can see unless TH-cam is simply messing up(which is possible).
@@BrianHoldsworthno one placed it as an argument you're the one who assumed it was so no. U're wrong bro
@@scambammer6102yap yap yap
You can demonstrate that 1 + 1 = 2, but you can't demonstrate the existence of 'your' god!
1+1+1= 1 according to trinitarian logic.
"Rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry"
What?!
Stating that atheists disbelieve in one more god than theists do is a factual statement. How on earth can a factual statement not be considered sound logic?!
The way you see all gods except for yours is how I see all gods including yours. It is not an argument it is a comparison.
I believe in one less god is 100% accurate.
Your sophistry is astounding.
I agree. Gervais points out the irony of each religion claiming to be "the one true" religion among the thousands of other religions that claim the same thing.
@@nicholaswiedman1409 I guess I didn't communicate myself clearly. I am skeptical because, after thousands of years of human history with different religions often at the cores of those histories, there is no sound pieces of empirical evidence supporting the credibility of any religion. Despite the absence of evidence, religions still insist that they are the "one true religion." Scientific theories are a little different. I understand that there are multiple theories of everything. The most credible ones have some empirical support, though not definitive proof. As our understanding of the universe grows, old theories will be improved upon and/or new theories will arise. The same cannot be said for different faiths and the mythologies they preach.
@Paul Jacobs
What exactly is your problem with my comment?
I did not make an argument.
I did not try to refute anything.
I provided my viewpoint on what was said in the video.
This argument is pure nonsense, philosophically, theism is the believe in the all powerful entity, the causeless cause, as the ultimate source for everything, the very same concept of a all powerful entity implies there's only one, if there's more than one, they logically can't be all powerful... So, religions are different interpretations or theories, trying to define that very same entity. How many religions are out there are completely irrelevant for the discussion theism vs atheism in the first place 🤷🏻♂️ calling his rebuttal sophistry clearly without even understanding his point of view is pretty pathetic actually... Shows you got triggered to see a fallacy you used to hold on to being destroyed and you just couldn't offer anything intellectually relevant to keep it alive... Atheists behave exactly like children, when they've pointed wrong, they start crying...
@@EduRB99
"This argument is pure nonsense"
You sound like a sad little snowflake that has been told "No, you cannot have a cookie before dinner."
"philosophically"
I could not care less about philosophy. It is nothing more that mental self pleasuring.
"the very same concept of a all powerful entity implies there's only one"
"trying to define that very same entity."
Demonstrate that.
Demonstrate this causeless cause and that it is an entity.
"calling his rebuttal sophistry clearly without even understanding his point of view is pretty pathetic actually"
He did that for me at 1:30 "but rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry"
"Shows you got triggered"
Ahem ahem. Hello pot, meet kettle.
"fallacy you used to hold on to being destroyed and you just couldn't offer anything intellectually relevant to keep it alive"
A theist believes that at least on god exists. An atheist does not believe any gods exist. A person saying "I believe in one less god" is not fallacious. It is a fact.
" Atheists behave exactly like children, when they've pointed wrong, they start crying..."
And here you are throwing a temper tantrum.
How have I been pointed out to be wrong.
Your grammar is atrocious. Your "sentence" structure makes it quite difficult to try to understand what you are trying to say. Do not us elipses when a single period will suffice. If you do not attempt to construct better sentences in any further replies, they will be ignored.
" when inventing a god, the most important thing is to make it invisible, inaudible and imperceptible in every way. Otherwise, people will become skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent and does nothing." anonymous
Oh give me a break, you dogmatic predictable know-nothing.
Yeah people just came up with Jesus and the story for you... some people just sat down one day and planned it out all, yeah, ok. Even today we don't understand as much about the world and you want to be so convinced that there is no God. You take your life and existence for granted without appreciation otherwise you wouldn't seek self glorification of your intellectual pride and waste your time on creating division.
@@kubasniak that's not how mythology and legends work. They actually evolve over the course of decades or centuries. Granted, some people may create large swathes of the myth at once, but this is probably more the exception than the rule. Frauds like Mormonism and Scientology certainly show more rapid, intentional invention of their mythos. But, the main reason for their status as more obvious frauds is their temporal and geographic proximity. The evolution of the Urgaritic El into Yahweh into Jesus took thousands of years. Henotheism into monotheism into tri-une omni-benevolence. My post was tongue-in-cheek, but still makes a valid point. The gods of all things, should have a sense of humour, if they exist and safe enough targets for jest if they don't.
@@kubasniakStill doesn't prove anything about God. All pervading and omnipotent.
Mr holdsworth, always wanted to know the origin of your surname. It is honestly befitting.
Is habitational surname
I don't actually know. There's a town in England with the name so it probably originated there.
@Justin Gary That's quite a list you have there Justin.
1. Even if Jesus "Of Nazareth" existed, it doesn't follow that the Gospels are biographical accounts of his life. See, for instance, the "Sharpe" series for a fictional series about the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon and Wellington existed, the battles were fought, but that doesn't mean that Maj. Sharpe was traipsing around the countryside having adventures and lucky escapes every week. (Watch it if you haven't. It's a lot of fun).
2. Even if Jesus was observed to have "died" and been taken down from the cross and laid to rest in a tomb, we cannot get from there to ".. and then he was resurrected 3 days later." We have to consider how vastly more superstitious people were in the 1st century, how death was being misdiagnosed even as late as the 19th century (bells were fitted in some tombs in case the deceased "woke up." It's the subject of several popular horror stories). We also have to consider the psychological phenomenon associated with grief. People today sometimes *believe* they see their dead loved ones after death, or see their face in passers-by who are not remotely related. I've experienced it as a divorcee and my ex is still alive.
3. No atheist in their right mind would accept that Restoration as prophecy. It's far too vague and subjective, and you applied it having seen the outcome. If something's only prophetic *after* an event happens, it's probably you reading into the text, not a prophecy at all. This is what got the 2012 Apocalypse book-sellers all their ill-gotten gains.
4. Daniel was written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes IV and contemporary to those events. "Daniel" was a hero in an adventure story and a vehicle to comment on the times of the writer, centuries later. Applying it to the modern-day is a mis-step.
5. You're cherry-picking your historical evidence. You've ignored that the fall of Jericho shows no sign of battle and appears to have been due to an earthquake, that there *was* no conquest of Canaan because what happened was an internal revolution, not an external conquest, and that the Exodus of 3 million Jews and their livestock was impossible (especially given the former). *Some* slaves might have escaped and joined the newly established low country settlements, but they were not the *founders* of those settlements.
6. Attacking evolution just makes you look like a conspiracy crank. Stop it.
7. ID is question-begging. Physics can produce forms that look designed too, and you are ignoring that.
8. Hell is a Zoroastrian concept, co-opted into Judaism post-Reformation. It's "Pagan."
You might want to rethink what you count as evidence, because that ain't it.
@Justin Gary How rude! Maybe if you didn't repeat arguments that have been debunked _ad nauseum_ you wouldn't hear the same answers? Perhaps you should consider that maybe your arguments actually *are* flawed and that is why you are hearing the same type of responses?
"Early Jericho, by Art Ramos, published on 19 September 2016, World History Encyclopedia
"Bible says Canaanites were wiped out by Israelites but scientists just found their descendants living in Lebanon," by Ian Johnston, Science Correspondent, Thursday 07 September 2017, The Independent
"First Israel, Core Israel, United (Northern) Israel," Near Eastern Archaeology 82 (2019), pp. 8-15, Near Eastern Archaeology, 2019, Israel Finkelstein
This isn't actually an argument it's a responce to questions about how you could possibly not belive in god. It's an explanation of perspective to Foster at least a superficial understanding. I don't really understand how you could miss that point.
How could you miss your dad?
Do you really think Ricky Gervais was using that statement as an argument for his position? Or just making an amusing comment on a tv talk show ?
Ricky was making a statement on his belief. He was saying in believes in one less god. The point was to say Christians are atheist to all other gods other than jeaus.
I'm pretty sure this statement has never been presented as "an argument" for anything. It's an example to theists of HOW atheism works. It a way of explaining disbelief to people that think there is a god.
@@byebry and Mr. Holdsworth presenting this as an "atheist argument" is a straw man.
I believe the video was not meant to debunk atheism or any proper atheist argument but one that seems smart amd witty at first but is actually quite baseless and doesn't say anything useful for the reasons mentioned in the video. Thats the reason the title is the worst atheist argument. Peace to you.
@@chigo999 I think one of the related points is that Christians would likely think belief in Thor or Vishnu was absurd, but from an atheist perspective, belief in Yahweh is essentially the same, and equally absurd.
The "quip" is an appeal to empathy, something that tends to be lacking in believers; hence the quip. It is the perfectly valid response to "you just want to sin.". As another appeal to empathy:
Everyone is born a Muslim. Christians know in their hardened hearts that Allah is the true god. They just suppress this obvious truth in unrighteousness because they want to drink beer and eat pork. Even if they were shown irrefutable evidence that the moon split, they would still not believe it because they don't want to. So they come up with ludicrous theories like trichinosis and gravity so they can pretend there is no Allah to obey, and they attack Muslims because they hate Allah. Only Allah makes knowledge possible, so, if Christians claim they know things, all that does is prove the Quran is true.
Do you see how it works? That shows you how you sound to us. It helps you to understand our perspective without us trying to prove it.
Your first analogy about maths was nonsensical.
You should probably actually watch the entire interview by Colbert with Gervais. Gervais is not using this as an argument. He's using it to explain what atheism is and to get Stephen to sympathize or get over any skepticism on how an atheist could believe like they do by linking it back to a common experience. Ricky and Hawkins are only talking about what being an atheist is like. Gervais, at least, is not using it as an argument.
What you're doing is making it about you. "This is not a reason for me to become an atheist!" You're right, but for the wrong reason. It's what - at least for some - being an atheist is like, couched in situations common to both people. Your ego is getting the better of you.
As for the difference between God and Thor, etc. that's just special pleading. Atheists don't believe in Allah or Shiva, and they fulfill the same "role" in Islam and Hinduism as God does in Christianity - that of an all-powerful creator.
And as for debunking, that's not what Atheism does. Atheism is a single opinion on one matter - the existence of gods. We don't believe there is evidence for them, but you, as the one insisting there is, have the onus of proving a god's or gods' existence.
So looking back, it looks like you were trying to strawman atheists by upgrading an example of how some of us think into an argument we use then there was the special pleading, and finally trying to shift the burden of proof. Maybe you should take your own advice on learning logic.
I love unintended irony! Thank you!
Gevais simply made a statememt. It was not a syllogism. And he's correct.
Dorothy called. She wants her straw man back.
We need to discard a lot more from our heritage. Belief in gods being one of those things.
That really isn't an argument for atheism. It's just more like a conversation starter to help theists understand how we perceive god claims.
Again, the people he cited used it as an argument. In this case, your average athiests may be smarter than athiest scholars.
@@realmless4193 if you listen to the full Gervais-Colbert conversation where Ricky used this statement, you'd see that he mentioned it as a way to explain what he means when he says he's an atheist.
@@homfes okay, so that was also part of the point of the video. This statement reveals that the way athiests view God claims is fundamentally flawed (that was about half the video). But I have heard this used as a legitimate argument.
@@realmless4193 Your wording does not make sense to me. When do atheists reveal god claims?
@@homfes I think he means where Brian said the Greek Gods et al were believed to be part of reality but the Christian God was believed to be outside reality and its author, which Brian considered a category error. Personally, I just view presentations of claims about the existence of gods as a claim about a supernatural entity and whether or not it created reality itself is irrelevant in that framework.
"Most women are not my mother. Therefore all women are not my mother."
This is an analogy that doesn't pan out. You have proof of who your mother is and proof that all women are not mothers.
@@paymweaver5650 you're moving the goalposts. The point is: don't confuse the parts for the whole.
@@paymweaver5650 That’s actually incorrect. Even if you don’t know who your mother is and you have no proof of having a mother, you know you have a mother because you exist. Something can’t come from nothing, there needs to be cause and effect for something to exist and the same goes for God and the universe.
@@epicman004 so the cause and effect for god is....
@@relative2you438 God is eternal, He is beyond our universe, beyond time and space. He isn’t a magic man with a white beard in the sky. He isn’t an entity or being. Also it’s a silly question, because whatever was the cause of God also had to have a cause, and the cause before that also needed a cause, it’s an endless cycle. Everything stops at God, He IS the cause.
“He transends the universe, the natural universe. He is the ground of all being. He isn’t a being in reality, he is the source of all reality.” YOU CANNOT PROVE THAT STATEMENT.
Faith is by definition not a reliable pathway to truth. The implication being that if you can deny all the others because of a lack of faith and faith is all you have to hold your current religion it doesn't matter what story you make up, it can be denied in the same way.
(except for maybe those who directly worshiped the sun, because we can see, feel and measure its worth. they have more of a leg to stand on.)
While I disagree with you, I actually enjoy your content. There is a sincerity to you, and I love your calm approach to arguments.
“Faith is by definition not reliable”
No offence intended but I thought everything was based on faith to a degree!. Equally, in order for anything to be epistemologically reliable you have to presuppose logic and “truth” but you can’t empirically “prove” logic as it is a metaphysical presupposition that can not be grounded in the materialistic paradigm as everything is arbitrary and ad hoc under this world view. Everything is just the blind mindless motion of atoms and brain chemicals creating the illusion of stable patterns and regularities under the materialistic/atheistic world view so in reality there’s no such thing as “truth”. This is why Nietzsche said...
“logic is an illusion” (Nietzsche)
So you have to presuppose logic and empiricism including metaphysical categories as you can’t even carry out basic scientific experiments without metaphysical presuppositions and philosophical claims to “truth”. “Truth” can not be grounded in the materialistic paradigm as materialism excludes metaphysical categories as everything is arbitrary and ad hoc under this world view. Richard Dawkins even admits that under this world view even values such as morals and ethics are arbitrary. When Richard Dawkins was asked about values and whether the rape and murder of a child was immoral his response was that he believed that the belief that the rape and murder of a child is immoral and evil is as arbitrary as the fact that we evolved five fingers instead of six. This is clearly absurd and most people recoil in disgust at such a callous response to an horrific crime committed against a child. This is also why people find objective morality so compelling and why for many atheists it was a big part of the reason they rejected their atheism and moved towards the belief in the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism. “Truth” is a philosophical that is a metaphysical claim and you can’t even carry out basic scientific experiments with out metaphysical presuppositions such as “truth”, knowledge, logic, identity, being, time and space including identity over time. Empiricism itself is a dogma and a metaphysical presupposition under the materialistic paradigm hence the famous essay by W. Quine (The Two Dogmas of Empiricism). So everything is based on (faith) in our sense data. For example you can’t prove sense data (empiricism) using sense data. No one can prove using empiricism that logic is true or that sense data (empiricism) is providing an accurate picture of the external world including reality and existence. Hence the argument from Cartesian doubt that demonstrates that we can doubt the external world but not our mind that is our inner world (our conscious reality). The reason we can’t doubt our inner world (our mind and consciousness) is because by the mere fact of attempting to doubt it this proves it exists that is (mind and consciousness exists) above and beyond physicalism. Mind and consciousness/theism has the greatest explanatory power and is the most parsimonious hypothesis. If our minds were nothing more than “matter” we should be able to doubt them but because we can’t mind must be immaterial. The fact is that “we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived.” (Bernardo Kastrup). So basically the belief in the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism is just a default position until materialists/atheists can prove that “matter” is all there is to reality and existence. It’s just a (non belief) in materialism/atheism as a complete theory of reality and existence. However, the problem for materialists is that quantum superposition has demonstrated that we don’t even know what “matter” is!! Some prominent atheist philosophers such as Thomas Nagel have spotted this specific epistemological problem contained in materialism and actually claim that materialism and Darwinism is false. Nagel wrote a book called (Mind and Cosmos). It’s a real eye opener! So the conclusion is that even logic is a metaphysical presupposition and empiricism is a dogma as it is based on faith in sense data. And all we can truly know is the qualitative subjective experience of mind and consciousness. According to the brilliant linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, the father of philosophy and science Rene Descartes conclusions regarding mind and consciousness still stand...
“Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum”
“I doubt therefore I think therefore I am” (Rene Descartes)
No offence intended all the best to you keep safe ❤️
According to C.S. Lewis if....
“there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God. (C.S.Lewis). Equally I like what the late Professor Haldane of Oxford University said concerning the logical conclusion of a strict naturalism: “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true … and hence I have no reason to suppose that my brain to be composed of atoms.”
Similarly, prominent contemporary idealists have gone as far as to say that “materialism is baloney” and that “Matter” is a theoretical abstraction of the mind. Nevertheless, the scientific method is supposed to be fundamentally a non dogmatic, objective, open-minded method of acquiring knowledge about reality and is actually founded on the conscious observer, that is the ability of the human mind and consciousness to experiment and describe phenomena. It is the conscious observer not “matter” that ultimately developed new knowledge and even a new language to describe phenomena through the use of appropriate metaphors and analogies. The scientific method is not synonymous with “materialism” or atheism and should not be committed to any particular attachment to materialistic belief systems, doctrines, dogmas, or ideologies. In the end, everyone's starting point and first line of defense is trust in one's mind and conscious experience. We have to trust that the emotions, feelings, sensations, and thoughts provided by our conscious experience are correct and an accurate description of reality. In theism, this trust is grounded in mind and consciousness/theism “that of which nothing greater can be conceived.” (Anselmo d’Aosta). In atheism, this trust is grounded in the motion of atoms. The latter form (random atoms) of grounding trust in the brain is weaker than the former (the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism). But they both flow from “faith” (in the trustworthiness of the external world and our mind) Theists believe in the qualitative subjective experience of reality and existence and atheists believe everything will be eventually quantified using only the descriptive language of science.
However, according to Einstein “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” (Albert Einstein).
And it does not help to say that we can confirm that our brains are indeed correct about the map of London or anything else because we can double check their conclusions with the reality around us. It does not help because that reality is, once again, filtered through the experience of our mind and conscious experience.
For all we know, we cannot even be sure there is a reality around us. The belief in the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism has the greatest explanatory power and is the most parsimonious hypothesis. According to the brilliant philosopher Alvin Plantinga...
“there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism.” (Alvin Plantinga)
All the best to you ❤️
@@georgedoyle7971presuppositions maybe faith but making that faith holy is the problem. You can have your faiths and you can do anything with them but anyone and everyone should be able to criticise it in any way they deem fit if you decide to preach your faith to others
In simplest terms. If you publish a holy book people can say whatever they want about it and there shouldn't be any consequences.
Very bad analogy. One plus one = 2 is a fact - a convention we have developed in mathematics. It requires no evidence by the very nature of its definition. The correct analogy would be: we reject 1+1 = 3 FOR THE SAME REASON that we reject 1+1 = 4,5,6 or infinite other numbers. We can not reject 1+1 = 2 if we apply the same reasoning that we applied to reject 1+1 = 3. In the case of gods, we reject the existence of one particular god by applying the SAME REASONING that we APPLY to reject million other gods. And the reason is LACK OF EVIDENCE.
The argument that atheists go one god further is in response to theists arguments that the existence of god can not be disproven. Athiests make this argument that the existence of million other gods also can not be disproven. The reason that we do not believe in a particular god is the same reason that a theist does not believe in million other gods.
Good explanation!
I think you got it wrong. The "atheist argument" isn't supposed to be an argument against God in the first place. It's an argument against BELIEF in one God over all others. Please notice this differende carefully. The problem that atheist point out is simply this: You don't believe in the 2999 Gods but you do believe in one. WHY? What is your justification for this distinction? If you don't have any evidence that your particular God exists, you're unreasonable to believe in him and dismiss all the others. It doesn't mean that your God isn't real. But it does mean that you have no grounding to prefer this God over others, and why would you believe something without grounding?
Your second point is completly irrelevant. Sure, your God is different than other Gods (allthough it's not that different from Islam or Deism). But your evidence isn't special. Everyone can postulate that God is beyond time and space and what not. The question remains: How do you know that this is actually true and why would you believe it if you can't prove it?
First, God exists. The Bible never argues for God’s existence; it simply states it. The fact that God is should be self-evident through the works He has created (Psalm 19:1-6). Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is a simple yet powerful statement. The universe includes time, space, matter, and energy, so that all discernible elements in the universe came into being by God’s decree. Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity states that all time, space, and matter had a definite, simultaneous beginning. What has a beginning has a cause. That is the law of causality, and the fact of God easily explains the ultimate cause. God is the creator of all that is, and so we know something else about Him: He is almighty (Joel 1:15), He is eternally self-existent (Psalm 90:2), and He exists above and beyond all of creation (Psalm 97:9).
This dude's entire perfomance positively drips condescension and disingenuousness. You can tell he's completely used to a captive, passive and weak willed and minded audience. People who use this type of "hip youth pastor" shtick are a major reason people are walking away from christianity. People know when you're talking down to them. Especially the kids, and especially when you condescending from a completely unsupported position on a baseless assetion (god). People can spot that too. Especially the kids.
No, I believe in all those other “gods” too, I just call them demons.
-Equally witty and succinct response
You mean Santa Claus is a demon?
I just call them comic book characters if not Greek gods.
Haha, I like that. Won't convince atheists, unfortunately, but it's still a good one! xD
The word we are looking for is, PRINCIPALITY. Entities that manifest often in the human character. Think of Zeus, the king of the Olympians, I can’t help but notice that Zeus is the personification of human will that overcomes chaos, observe the Titans and Kronos’ defeat. That being said, It would be wrong to simply assume that because Zeus embodies willpower, YHWE merely means he is the idea of Being that just happened to be worshipped by the Israelites. Zeus and the others can and probably and should be though of phony imitations of God, the lesser ideal that claims to be the highest. In many regards, very evil. But yeah if by ‘belief’ we mean: to accept their existence, then yeah, most of these gods are, and were real, I just don’t believe them to be the Truth Absolute.
@Hellenback Santa Claus is St. NICHOLAS, a real person and a Christian bishop.
I remember reading that argument of Dawkins somewhere before, only I had absolutely no clue that it was supposed to be an argument when I read it. I seriously thought it was just him stating that atheists exist and that he's one of them. That's it.
I never thought it was used to assert that ‘those who reject all other gods but the one they believe in, to be atheists’ or that it means ‘atheism is thus true and theism false’. It assumes nothing. It’s simply saying, you believe in 1 out of many and I believe in none out of many; I’m an atheist, that is, without god. Full stop. Would he be ‘straw manning’ those who use it by assuming a conclusion?
If an atheist uses it to assert that Christians or any believer are really atheists since they reject all but one god, or that it logically follow that they should reject all gods, then I’d say it’s fallacious but I’ve never heard it used that way.
@@lizamorganno9862 I always thought it was to make clear to the monotheist, how not believing in a god works and feels.
Well you're kinda right we aren't arguing its more of a statement for people that can't believe we don't specifically believe in Christianity so we're pretty much just asking you to think of how you think of the rest of the religions and that's just our perspective on all of them. He was right when he said its not a valid argument for god because it was never an argument for god and the fact he based this off "logic" and he missed the first part so badly is kinda sad hahaha
Edit: yeah an atheist shouldn't use this as an argument but guess who would. Yes the answer is theists th-cam.com/video/kpXshOGlYAE/w-d-xo.html
well
maths has a lot of evidence that comes from common sense which lays down some axioms one which math is built upon
but bible or quran or gita is not common sense like the way 1+1=2 is common sense. It is more like 1+1= R which does not have any evidence
now in the real world it is like some people say 1+1=a some say 1+1=b some say 1+1=c....etc and each one of them think the others are wrong
AND since there no evidence for any of them therefore i believe all of them are wrong
That’s because you’re correct. This whole video is a misdirect. He’s set up a straw man for the statement. It wasn’t meant to be an argument. It’s a throwaway joke line. He doesn’t even address the point of the line in this video. Just minutes of setting up a false argument and attacking that one instead.
When Dawkins or Gervais say the line, they mean “You have dismissed all other religions as untrue, I am just not convinced that your religion isn’t just another one.”
I am sorry. But Math can be demonstrated, studied, challenge and reviewed.. From what I know at this time.. your God and any other Gods.. have not been demonstrated, reviewed.. etc...The comparison of Math to an Myth seems fallacious.
When I, as an atheist, makes the statement "I believe in one less God than you.." it's an answer to a question from a believer.. not an argument on an existence of a God, believe it is the same with Gervais and Dawkins..
I respect that you have your comments open.. a rarity in theist youtube circles.
"Rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry."
The video is an excellent example.
Atheists do not care about the nature of the god of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. We are still unconvinced of the existence of that god in the same way we are unconvinced of Vishnu, Brahma, Zeus, or Odin. I, at least, dismiss the idea that anyone *knows* what god actually exists. My position is less about the existence of a god and more about you asserting that yours is real.
Are you a real person? Chances are that you are nothing more than an AI bot. We have more evidence that God is real than you are real.
@@enshala6401 With zero evidence for one and zero evidence for the other, you can't say one is more than the other. But I know you're not an AI bot, because AI bots are smarter than you.
@@UnconventionalReasoning Except we don't believe YOU are real. TH-cam employs AI bots to keep a conversation going, and "you" are one of them. "You" aren't a real person.
@UnconventionalReasoning There is zero evidence "you" are real. You are an AI bot, obviously. Maybe if you said something original, "you" might fool someone. Maybe... 😂
From 5:00 on the video takes the way, I feared it would all along:
"My god is special, so not believing in him is totally different from not believing in all the others"
In what way is this different from "My car is special, so speed limits apply to all the others but not me"?
The argument this video is about is a valid one, as all gods come with ridiculous claims. The fact that one has grown familiar to the claims of ones own god just reduced their spectacularity, but didnt rise their probability.
the problem with your Santa clause analogy is that you cant disprove him you say you could just look in the north pole for his workshop but what if the workshop has an invisibility shield. this is why we should base our beliefs on positive evidence and not negative evidence (which dousn't exist). another analogy is the needle in the hay stake, as much as you look you cant disprove it's in there but you can prove it is in there by finding it.
but he said himself that they never claimed to be in the clouds. To build off the invisibility shield that would be like saying god is deeper into the cosmos
First argument: you claim a non-sequitur and try to prove it with a false analogy. Faith doesn't require proof, by definition. Maths, on the other hand, like all science, is based on what is provable, demonstrable and predictable. It's not a valid comparison. Belief versus knowledge. Faith against empirical evidence. Atheism is a lack of belief, denying maths is a lack of education.
The problem here, I think, is that you treat your faith as you treat maths: an absolute truth that cannot be denied. When you realise that you have no basis to treat faith that way, like you have with regards to maths, that's your first step towards atheism.
Very well stated
@@tnbourne”Faith doesn’t require proof”
Yeah, that’s just not true
I have seen equal evidence for all gods... NONE!
If you think evidence is even relevant, you've completely misunderstood and belong in kindergarten.
There's far less evidence that you exist
Lol same. I've never seen evidence for God's existence; just evidence of humans using god as a justification for their own personal gain.
@@topologyrob Well as far as evidence of their existence goes, this person clearly left a comment on TH-cam. I don't see God posting anything.
@@jakethepillowsnake4098 "i've never seen it, it must be false!"
As an atheist trying to delve deeper into different beliefs and see why people think certain ways, I’m excited to start this video.
Ok first edit
I’ve never really seen the idea being presented in the video as an actual argument against religion, just as a tool for understanding and a simple thing to think about.
2nd edit
You can make a multitude of excuses for Santa’s existence not being proven or it being seemingly disproven (what if he’s invisible, etc.)
3rd edit
So you’re saying that your god is better than all the other gods because you say so, this is how you interpret it? Therefore your god doesn’t apply to this “argument” against religion.
4th edit
At the end of the day, for me they are the same thing. So this rings a bit hollow. To me your god isn’t better than all the other gods, to me your god is equal to all the other gods because to me your god and no gods exist, making them all equally fictional to me.
The problem though is your math analogy can be demonstrated. But Theists can not demonstrate that God exists. That's why ricky gervais and Richard dawkins statement stands!
1. The term "local atheist" refers to not believing in specific deities. Without the qualifier "local," I think your accusation is correct. You are locally atheistic to all gods but one, which is the definition of being a monotheist.
2. Ricky didn't say "atheism is true or theism is false." He just described (given above) that we've all come to agree that most gods people in our history believed don't exist and never did. Ricky simply states he doesn't believe in the ones that are left.
3. The problem with your analogy is that 1 + 1 = 2 *by definition.* That is a fact. It is not relevant whether you deny any other answer, because every other answer to that question is wrong by definition. Saying "I just deny one more possibility" does not work, because it isn't merely a possibility - it's a fact. Another analogy might work if you don't pick one that has a single true answer that is true by definition. The bachelor analogy doesn't work because, again, that is the definition of "married man" and "bachelor." These are known as "synthetic."
4. It doesn't matter what you claim. It matters what you can tie that claim to. 'Richard Barron said, "God isn't one being among many in the universe. He is being itself."' It's an interesting idea and smacks of Spinoza's God, but can he tie it to anything concrete, or is he just redefining "God" to avoid the problems attached to a more traditional definition?
5. The thing about Zeus and Santa Claus is that you can provide contrary evidence to their existence."
I can do the same with Yahweh. Typically, I point to the archaeological find from the 10th century BC that shows Yahweh with El, Baal, and Asherah on the same figurine, the JEDP documentary hypothesis, and more recently the anthropological and archaeological evidence of the evolution of our ability to believe in gods that emerged over time. I find the best explanation of these multiple strands of evidence is that Yahweh does not exist and is a human construct, but I respect your right to see that evidence in a different light, like "The Israelites are recorded as being idolaters in the Bible, and that's where that statue must have come from."
6. "If there's nothing there, then somebody has some explaining to do." Exactly. There's no sign of a God in "the heavens."
7. "Instead, what is being claimed about God is that He transcends the universe." Convenient, don't you think, that you'd redefine God at the exact moment in history when we can go into space and find that He isn't actually there. That's a *major* red flag in my book of goalpost-shifting and redefining your beliefs to match discoveries. Although, in all honesty, that is *vastly* preferable to *not* re-evaluating your beliefs with emerging evidence like Young Earth Christians and flat Earthers. They do a *major* disservice to all other Christians who do try to incorporate modern knowledge into their worldviews.
8. "He isn't some being within reality. He is the source of all reality." Thanks for taking on that burden of evidence, though I don't know why you believe in something that exists outside reality. Perhaps that needs a rephrase because it sounds self-defeating from here?
9. Actually, I just understand "gods" as supernatural entities, so there's no category error in that framework.
That was fun, and you know, I'll leave you a like for the courteous presentation.
This atheist has class.
@@g07denslicer Thank you. I'm trying to make myself leave the door open for common ground, which is not a natural instinct in this type of debate.
God has not been redefined.(#7) You are mistaken about what Christians have always believed about God. The idea of a "God in the heavens" is a secular interpretation taken from poetic wording in Scripture. That doesn't mean that we have ever believed that God is literally somewhere "up in the clouds". It has only been in the last century that we have been able to physically send people up into space and unmanned probes even farther out into space. The Catholic Church has always understood God to be OUTSIDE of time and space, as He is the Creator of it.
@@joan8862 I respectfully disagree. That *is* my analysis.
@@joan8862 Well, all I can say to that is that many Christians still to this day believe that heaven is up in the sky.
An acquaintance of mine told me once his pious Baptist once said she didn't want to go to heaven. When asked why, she said that it would be rather boring just sitting on clouds and singing hymns all day.
Now, I understand that many educated Christians that are involved in apologetics and theology don't in fact believe in the "God in the sky" part, but I put forward to you that many Christians did and still do.
What Christian don’t want to admit is that their deity has as much evidence for it as any other deity. So please present any evidence you have and stop making empty assertions.
Yap yap yap
That’s simply not true
It's not a triangle, it's a square with one less side
😅🏆
So epic 😂😂😂😂😂
You're not a dufass, you're an intelligent guy with one less brain cell than a dufass!
It's God the father, God the son and God the holy spirit..
So that makes it 1+1+1 = 1 according to the jesus crowd,
But they don't see the irony.
This guy in this video started with a Maths analogy. He said 1+1 = 2.
But I bet you when it comes to the TRINITY he will be trying to assure us that 1+1+1 = 1.
That's religion for you..
lol
That’s not an argument. It’s a descrpition of the relationship between atheists and theists.
The first mistake is claiming this is an "argument against the existence of God", it's not. It's an analogy, a way to suggest that believing in only one God isn't that different from believing in none when there are thousands. But it does not prove God's non-existence whatsoever, it's not intended to
And that's exactly why it's "the worst argument"
you’ve missed the point of the argument.
the point of the argument is to rebut against religious claims such as “i can’t even imagine not believing in god” or “it’s impossible that you don’t believe in god, you must secretly rebel against him in your heart” or “but what if you’re wrong, aren’t you worried about god/hell?”
and it’s simply to point out that you know exactly how it feels to not believe in a god. because you don’t believe in zeus, horus, john frum, santa claus and spiderman. inot because you harbour some secret rebelion resentment against them, but because you know from a factual standpoint that they are made up. you know exactly how it feels to not worry about missing out on presents at christmas, or the hell described for infidels on the quran.
how you feel with regard to those figures and those faiths is how we feel towards your god and your threats of hell. it’s not an argument for atheism it’s an analogy to demonstrate how we feel when theists claim to somehow know our feelings or hidden motives.
Correct. Strawman argument.
in a way, spiderman is real
weve all known loss, weve all known those moments where we have to act more responsible, we all know what its like to make a small mistake that has a worse consequence
sure, there is no literal peter parker swinging around stopping goblins, but his struggles and experiences are very human and real
@@InitialPC And you can take pictures with him on timesquare..
I used to make that argument as an atheist and I think back on it with shame.
Don't be shameful. No need to. Not many atheists today can give a good argument for the non-existence of a god or why a divine is an absurd or illogical thing. Then again, same thing with many Christians for an argument for a god or a divine.
@@TickleMeElmo55
Except mah boi Thomas Aquinas
@@tryhardf844 Sure, but how many Christians let alone Catholics refers to Aquinas? I will assume not many. The most well-read Catholics may refer to C.S. Lewis. Maybe.
@@TickleMeElmo55
Nearly all catholics refer to Aquinas when it comes to arguments to prove God's existence,nevertheless in topics of more modern issues they might refer to the magisterium or in other cases Chesterton or C.S. Lewis in topics like pacifist societies or more digestable sexual morality.
But i cringe everytime some protestants for example only resort to Craig or Occam.
@@tryhardf844 Nearly all? I think not. I believe you're being too generous. In the States, Catholics in general are poorly catechized. It's an outright embarrassment. Those who are well catechized may refer to Aquinas as a source, but those who aren't probably aren't familiar with his name.
It's not an argument against God. It's a defense of atheism. It just says "atheism is practiced by everyone, we just apply it to different Gods."
Making this video makes it seem that you don't have a response to actual arguments.
"It's not an argument against God. It's a defense of atheism."
And that's exactly why it's "the worst" argument against a specific concept of God
@@markpugner9716 but it is not an argument against any specific God. It just says that everyone is an atheist, but apply it to different Gods
@@brixan... Exactly! It's _not_ an argument against any specific concept of a god, so that makes it a rather lousy argument when someone uses it as such.
@@markpugner9716 wouldn't that be the fault of the individual, and not a shortcoming of the argument?
@@brixan... Yes. But to a person who thinks a broomstick is a sword, it's the worst tool for the job.
It's not an argument. It is meant to point out the arrogance of theists that they dismiss thousands if God claims but consider theirs valid.
1+1=2 can be shown.
Always top notch
You have low standards
@@Topazdemonia Maybe. And it sill doesn't explain why my standards would be relevant to you at all.
@@stephenson19861 good point..you have very interesting tehnik of debating..do you use that in someting else?paiting?drawing?
@@bernardokrolo2275 Sure. I use it in pottery as well.
@@stephenson19861 how do you use chiaroscuro in potery?
It works if it is used in response to Pascal's wager. You do often hear it in other contexts where it doesnt make sense though
wrong it's a great argument in any context. All of these nutty fantasies claiming exclusive access to truth. It proves that religion is man-made nonsense.
Whenever someone uses Pascal's Wager I counter by informing them that they are saying to decide what to believe based on the flip of a coin ( heads I will believe a god exists, tails I won;t believe a god exists) when their wager requires a huge roulette wheel with every creator deity as choices ( Odin, Zeus, Jupiter, Brahma, Ptah, etc).
Atheist don’t need arguments, atheist just have to refute the arguments FOR god.
“You cannot find evidence against god because he transcends our world” is everything but a good argument.
Atheists don't even need to refute the arguments for God. We just need to say "I don't believe you. You haven't convinced me".
Atheists are never the worst.
Sounds to me like it's a remark that gets under your skin. No one uses it as a genuine argument. A clever phrase? Sure. But it's not something they would use in a formal debate as anything other than a way to engage the spectators. They're describing what it means to be an atheist by pointing out a shared non-belief, using mild humor to punctuate the point.
How can an atheist equate the Judeo-Christian god with Zeus or Poseidon? The answer to this question is something the atheist hopes the theist will take the time to reflect upon.
As an atheist, I have to agree that that is the worst argument put forward by atheists. The worst thing about it is that it is not actually an argument in the logical sense. I will even add two more points against the "argument" that Mr. Holdsworth is welcome to use:
1. A theist is someone who believes that a god exists; an atheist is someone who doesn't believe that any gods exist. There might be the odd theist that believes in more than one god, but I don't think that anyone believes in all gods. The definition of theist is such that one need not believe in a plethora of gods, just one is enough to qualify. The disbelief in many gods is something to be expected simply by definition. Of course, someone who believes that a god created everything but does not know which of the possible gods it was - or possibly one that nobody knows about.
2. a person cannot be an atheist with respect to one god and a theist with respect to another. Atheism is not holding a belief that any god or gods exist. If you believe in just one god, you are not an atheist. At all. Period.
But, in defense of the "argument", is is not an argument but an apparently ironic bit of word play. It will never convince a theist that he is an atheist or should become one. Where it does make sense as a statement would be if a theist said to me "I don't understand how you cannot believe that some god must have created everything, whether that be the god of the bible, Allah, or some other". The "argument" would be my way of demonstrating that I am not some kind of freak, as we do have similar opinions about gods other than that of the theist. In this sense, it actually says more about the nature of the atheist position than the theist one.
That said, my only other comment on this is that the best response to the argument is to laugh, and not treat it as if it were a serious argument.
_"a person cannot be an atheist with respect to one god and a theist with respect to another."_
You can but there's a specific term for it, "local atheist."
To use "atheist" when meaning "local atheist" is to equivocate.
@@RustyWalker interesting. I found a definition of "local atheist" as someone who believes that gods of a certain "sort" do not exist. The article contrasts this local atheism with global atheism which it defines as "the proposition that there are no Gods of any sort".
So, if the "argument" used the term local atheism, are you saying the "argument" would be correct? Do many (or any) religious people identify as local atheists? I suspect not because of the apparent ambiguity.
Speaking of ambiguity it is rife in such discussions, in part because of differences in definitions. For example, the definition for global atheism is at odds with the common definition of atheism as lacking a belief in any god or gods.
@@AlDunbar It isn't an argument. It's a statement of a position. Arguments have premises, implicitly or explicitly, and a conclusion.
The most famous argument in Philosophy takes the form:
P1. All men are mortal.
P2. Socrates is a man.
C. Therefore Socrates is mortal.
_"Do many (or any) religious people identify as local atheists? I suspect not because of the apparent ambiguity."_
Many religious people aren't even aware such a term exists, just like many atheists are unaware of it. However, if you ask a religious person, "Do you believe in Zeus,"" they *will* say "no." That is not controversial. Therefore, it follows that they are atheistic towards the proposition that Zeus exists. The scope of that atheism is limited to only the consideration of that single proposition regarding the existence of Zeus, hence the qualifier "local" is appropriate.
_"Speaking of ambiguity it is rife in such discussions, in part because of differences in definitions."_
Indeed it is. You see many occasions where the focus of the discussion is on semantics rather than the thought-content of the individuals in the discussion. What do they _think,_ and *why?*
_" the definition for global atheism is at odds with the common definition of atheism as lacking a belief in any god or gods."_
It's not so much at odds as that it has been more rigorously defined as to what it entails.
"Atheism" has its classical meaning of "disbelief" as well as the modern usage of "belief in the proposition isn't found to be justified." Global atheism specifically refers to the disbelief of all god propositions.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy thinks this is hard for a global atheist to justify, omitting to consider that "atheism is a response to theism," and that we are discussing whether belief in a proposition is justified.
If a proposition doesn't justify belief, why would one "choose" to believe it? If you haven't encountered a specific proposition as to the existence of some form of deity, then you likewise are ignorant of any evidence that would justify its existence, and therefore have no grounds to believe in it.
Stanford makes a poor argument here.
@@RustyWalker if you reread my post you will see that I do understand this is not actually an argument. In my reply above, I put the word "argument" in quotes to indicate that someone other than me called it an argument.
If your god exists outside of detectable reality, and has no detectable effect on reality, how is that different from your god not existing at all? How is your god more than imaginary? Asking for a friend.
It has at least one detectable effect: Reality itself
@@GOATEditz204 If I say that magic invisible turtles cause trees to grow, and the evidence I give for this claim is to point at all the trees everywhere, can you see the flaw in my “evidence”? That is the same structure of argument you just made.
@@weirdwilliam8500 What I said was not an argument for God tho? It’s just that theism sustains.
@@GOATEditz204 I clearly explained why reality cannot be considered a detectable effect of a god. That’s all.
@@weirdwilliam8500 Well, the flaw in your evidence is that trees come from seeds. That’s it. You did not explain anything regarding God
You are right that this isn’t an argument against the existence of (a) God. Just like Russel’s theapot God is unfalsifiable. The burden of proof lies with theists. So atheists need no arguments to disprove God, theists need arguments to prove his existence. A thing no religion has done so far.
well
maths has a lot of evidence that comes from common sense which lays down some axioms one which math is built upon
but bible or quran or gita is not common sense like the way 1+1=2 is common sense. It is more like 1+1= R which does not have any evidence
now in the real world it is like some people say 1+1=a some say 1+1=b some say 1+1=c....etc and each one of them think the others are wrong
AND since there no evidence for any of them therefore i believe all of them are wrong
True, but we’re not looking to PROVE God, otherwise we would need no faith. We are looking at the reasonable evidence that POINTS to God. That’s what I do, at least 😃
Atheists take the leap of faith to say God isn’t real. Agnostics are the ones who literally don’t know. Atheists take the faith the opposite way. Don’t try to shift the burden of proof. Anybody making a truth claim has BOP on them
@@BabyBudders oh I totally agree! But you can’t prove the existence of an immaterial being. And you can’t disprove the existence of one either. So you’ll never have proof, unless your definition of proof is strong evidence
@@timothyvenable3336 exactly my man!
Religious people FEEN to make something that CANNOT BE PROVEN a fact.
The first “argument” isn’t an argument against theism or for atheism and it isn’t supposed to be. It’s simply an illustration of what the atheist position is. You either misunderstood or are being disingenuous. Theists will say how do you not believe in god? A good response is to show them they also don’t believe in many god claims, the only difference is the theist accepts one that the atheist doesn’t.
>You either misunderstood or are being disingenuous.
There's there's a third option. Like you said, is "isn’t an argument against theism or for atheism and it isn’t supposed to be". That is precisely why he says it's the worst _argument,_ because so many people seem to treat it like it is supposed to be one.
@@markpugner9716 then he should have used an example of someone treating it as an argument for Atheism. He built a straw man of what Gervais said so he could tear it down. That's disingenuous.
@@Maddjacklee81 I agree that he could have included some proof that it is being used that way, but I don't think he was intentionally being disingenuous.
That's not an atheist argument, at best it's an observation.
You want an actual atheist argument? Here it goes: _It is irrational to believe in the existence of a thing when there is no good evidence for its existence. You have utterly failed to produce any good evidence to support your claim of the existence of a god or gods._
Now, you can counter my argument by simply producing good evidence for the existence of your god or gods. Go.
Note: Arguments do not qualify as evidence. Fallacious arguments doubly so. Claims made in a book (even an old book) are not evidence until those claims can be substantiated -- and they can't be substantiated by other claims in said book.
Holy shit I'm gonna copy this down and put it on a notepad somewhere because this is literally the best way to express atheism. "Here is my position. Here is what you need to do to change it. Get to it."
I doubt he will ever respond to this lol, great take though
> That's not an atheist argument, at best it's an observation.
Exactly why it's "the worst argument"
@@lllemonade33, writes _"I doubt he will ever respond to this lol, great take though"_
Five months in and no response yet... Maybe he's like jesus, promises to return quickly but 2,000 years later you're still waiting...
@@fred_derf maybe he is Jesus
But, it's not ment to be an argument against any god. I'm sorry if some atheists use it as such, but it's just an attempt to explain how I think about your particular god and why I don't believe in that god.
Which is a false equivalency, as explained on the video.
The problem is that even as just an attempt to explain how we think about their particular god, it falls flat and thus shouldn´t be used. The problem is that our reason to reject all gods is based on logic (due to a lack of evidence we withhold believe), while theirs is based on their believe that they worship the right god and if that is the case ofc all the other gods must be fake. So you see its not the same. At best you could say something like. "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why people of other religions reject yours.”
@@BrianHoldsworth Yes, but since this is just a very general attempt to explain a state of mind, the ambiguity is part of the argument.
Until you provide all the specific properties of your particular god, I can only address the general idea of not being convinced by weak evidence.
@@hermaeusmora424 Personally I only use it as a direct response to questions about how I can not believe in any god.
Still, as long as Pascal's wager is used by apologists, I think atheists can use this argument. Neither prove anything, but both are about ways of thinking.
@@hermaeusmora424*When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods you will understand why people of other religions reject yours*
No, this doesn’t work, either. The reason I reject other gods is because the arguments I accept as proving God simultaneously disprove all others. To say, then, "The same reason you reject other gods is the reason I reject yours," is tantamount to saying, "I am an atheist because I think the Kalaām is true."
I like the Napoleon analogy. Many confused people have claimed to be Napoleon over the past 200 years. We can all agree to deny those false Napoleons. But is it sensible to go that final step and deny the existence of the actual Napoleon Bonaparte?
@President Joe Biden Makes Trumpanzees Cry Things exist. Things change. We can reason back from these observations of the world to a nessesary cause.
@@jeremysmith7176 Good point. Harry Potter was the necessary cause.
@Skydaddy Myth-Busters Exactly. Brian is making the claim that his god exists outside the natural universe, without ever providing evidence that it's possible for something to exist outside the natural universe.
@Skydaddy Myth-Busters I don't find a plastic toy on the beach looking with a metal detector. That toy must not exist I can't find it.
@Skydaddy Myth-Busters My only point is that you presented scientific method as the only criteria for finding God. That we can know truth through philosophy and reason outside the bounds you have erected around knowledge. The best ways to approach God through human reason is philosophy and meta-physics. Therefore saying God can't exist when you don't find him within your restricted field of knowledge is like saying a plastic toy on the beach doesn't exist because can't find it with a metal detector. Your using the wrong tool.
Yes, the 'one god further' comment may be glib, - but can be effective in explaining that 1) you don't believe in all those other gods... so 2) take that feeling you have for all those other gods, and that's how I feel about ALL of them. - for me, it's a way to help religious folk understand how I understand the idea of gods, without being a jerk - it's not meant to be a conversation stopper, but continuer. Understanding each other is more important than believing the exact same stuff. Variety is the spice of life. Brian - this is my first video of yours, and I like your thought-provoking and approachable style - keep it up.
If I am dying from leprosy and you are perfectly healthy, there are millions of diseases we both don’t have. I only have one more disease than you.
So I’m pretty much as healthy as you… right?
4:15 bachelor vs husband analogy was brilliant
The fact that logical thinking is required but such an illogical argument is given - and found “brilliant” is irony
@@StefanHendriks Besides, the terms are all synthetic.
Not really. You can show that non bachelors exist, not so for your god claim.
See, the problem is the comparison isnt fair... a more honest/accurate comparison would be married or NOT MARRIED... in which case, thats the truth.... a person is either married or not married and is one person away from being NOT MARRIED... You either believe in a god or you dont.... but to say married or a bachelor isnt an accurate comparison... you could be dating... his whole argument/comparison is nonsensical...
No the analogy was lame. As a bachelor is a man who is not and has *never* been married.
You see there is more to being a bachelor then not having a spouse. You see I am a bachelor yet my father who is no longer married is not a bachelor.
To make an comparison of 'bachelor vs husband' and 'theist vs atheist' is plan stupid. Because being an atheist simply means that you are not a theist where being a bachelor means that you have never been married.
1) The early Christians were considered atheist by the Romans, because they didn't worship the Roman gods - something to keep in mind 2) the context of atheist's saying this is oftentimes in response to "How can you not believe ___ god exists? (But look at the trees, etc)" While it may not be much of an argument, as a rebuttal it's perfectly reasonable. Since there's at least thousands, probably millions of Gods that have been said to exist, from a monotheistic perspective at most one God can exist - of a God exists at all. I think this argument is better understood as a point of commonality bridging the Gap between atheist/agnostic/religious people, aka there's more common ground between one another then may be realized. And is basically just a retort of "Is it really so hard for you to understand how I don't believe in ___ God, when you yourself don't believe in all these other gods?"
Going "one god further" isn't an argument. It is an explanation that theists already reject the bulk of gods anyone ever imagined, so being atheistic isn't hard, since we merely hold their god in the same regard as they hold others. Of course if you consider it an argument it will be a bad one, it isn't trying to be a good one. It is a soundbite, nothing more.
Okay but if I believe that the Christian God is real this belief necessitates that all other Gods are false or don't exist by the nature that the Christian God does. They are mutually exclusive.
Atheist don't believe in any God and their isn't something that they do believe which excludes the belief in the others like theist have, they individual don't believe any of them. That's much more different.
@@jjaros964
*Okay but if I believe that the Christian God is real this belief necessitates that all other Gods are false or don't exist by the nature that the Christian God does. They are mutually exclusive.*
What I hear is: If I perform special pleading for my god, then blah blah blah.
*Atheist don't believe in any God and their isn't something that they do believe which excludes the belief in the others like theist have, they individual don't believe any of them. That's much more different.*
I don't believe in your god precisely like I don't believe in the others. I think your god is incoherent, lacking even a cogent definition let alone any actual evidence for its existence. I don't need a dogmatic rejection of him based on the acceptance of another equally unproven deity.
Beyond that, I'm confused as to the point of this paragraph. Different than what, theism? In which case, of course it is, who thinks otherwise.
@@jjaros964 and you must have specific reasons for why you believe in the christian god and not brahman or allah or vishnu. there must be something that has convinced you that you are right to believe in his existence.
i havent seen such a piece of evidence so i treat your god just like i treat all the other gods for whom i havent seen suffcient evidence. i dont believe their claims until i see a god-claim that convinces me.
the correct answer here is for you to present the evidence that convinces you that the christian god is real and all the others arent.
"The way you feel about other gods, in terms of the likelihood of their existence and their attributes, is exactly how we feel about your god, and your proposed afterlife, and your 'objective' moral system. Because both have equal justification for belief, namely none." There, I clarified the "argument" for you. Maybe you could actually address the point.
You're doing what all religious people do, you're talking so much in order to provide a safe distance between yourself and your obligation to directly prove your claim of god. If you had evidence of his existence, you wouldn't talk about opponents who dispute that existence, you'd present the evidence and the whole debate would end instantly.
usually we don’t but y’all bug us.
Cope, why are we still running in your mind lmao, pure copium, it’s always atheists bringing up Christians, trying to disprove our beliefs, leave us alone if you don’t believe in our beliefs, but no we’re always running in your mind.
You are strawmanning the atheist argument about "I don't believe in just one more god than you". The argument is NOT that just because you reject all other gods you should also reject the last one. The argument is that the REASON most gods can be rejected i.e. lack of evidence, is the SAME reason your god can be rejected. Every god including yours is based on a bunch of unsupported assertions and made up stories. So you need to look up the principle of charity and stop strawmanning.
Btw, 1+1=2 is true by definition because math is a language invented by humans, and we made it so that statement is true. Are you saying that your specific god is true by definition? That's kind of convenient. Not a good argument or analogy.
I disagree with the last section. They are the same and a good analogy. Both mathematics and gods are human constructs and therefore the argument is good.
@@stevetracey7785 You should go tell some theists that god is a human construct. I think many of them didn't get that memo. :-)
The only thing math and god share, is that they were invented. That's where the similarity ends. One is a descriptive language, the other is a fairy tale. Again, 1+1=2 is true BY OUR OWN DEFINITION in that language, while the statement "the christian god exists" CAN"T be true just by defining it to be (it's the thing theists have been trying to prove for a long time). IT's a bad analogy because god is being equated to something that's true by definition. It's a bad analogy because... the addition of two numbers ALWAYS has exactly one answer that is correct. That doesn't mean that there has to be exactly one god that exists. It's a nice word trick that only dumb people would fall for.
@@zpd8003 let's not argue between ourselves. I could point out that by changing the base I can make 1+1=10; but that would just make me an arsehole. I accept your retort an offer my humble apologies.
@@stevetracey7785 OK np, glad you agree. The base is irrelevant and it wouldn't make you an arsehole, it would just be pointless because everything I said would still apply. Adding two numbers has one correct answer regardless of the base. It's pretty obvious the youtuber was talking about base 10.
That’s false, theism comes from logic, "this universe is too complex and points towards a maker"-> theism. Same with atheism (which is a belief) "this universe is too complex and doesn’t need a god behind it"
I thought 1 + 1 == 2/3 (according to the catholics)
I think you just keep updating your math.
Damn that actually was funny, thank you
Or perhaps 10 if your in a base 5 number system. Which is why there has to be an agreement on some core rules. Or as the joke goes, there are 10 types of people who understand binary....
I like the response “I do believe in all those other gods. They are just demons”
St George approves this message.
Or they are different cultural names for the same entity
Rahul Roy demon is a description, not a name
@@thomasfiacco1992 Exactly, and that's why description matters more than names. Names can be different but description should be similar
Atheist here. If you legit tell atheists that you think the other gods are demons, you'll just sound like a cultist.
1. Ricky Gervais "exfoliates his atheism?" That may sound intelligent, but . . . ? In this context it makes no sense. 2. Humor is powerful, because it "punches up" (my colloquialism to describe how those without power point out the ridiculousness of those with power) so successfully to "exfoliate" (strip away layers of) the pompous self-importance of institutional apologists like Brian here. 3. Brian's "category mistake" of a God "of creation" versus a god "within creation" is merely a self-described, self-satisfied, self-important distinction that makes no sense beyond his unsupported claim. I'd charitably respond "Nice try," but I'd be lying. Ridiculous.
The head of a nomadic tribe did not believe in human built dwellings. He, and his people dwelled under the sky and slept on the earth. He was a mono-dwellingist, who believed only one domicile was fit for human beings- the earth. His roof was the sky. His floor the ground.
A challenger came to battle the leader for his place, and told him, in front of the people, “You believe in one dwelling, but I can outdo you. I believe in one less dwelling than you, for I do not believe in the earth.” The leader had the man taken to the edge of a high cliff. “If you are right and I am wrong, you will not hit the earth at the bottom when we throw you off.”
To take that last step of atheism is to remove the very ground of all being, and leave us with nothing upon which to stand.
I think the underlying point of the argument is that somehow the theist has managed to reject every god humanity has invented but somehow the believer thinks their religion just happens to be the right one. An atheist just looks at that last religion and rejects it too. I agree that this is more an argument against religion than theism. A deist god could still exist and every religion be false. Thus the argument doesn't undermine theism. But it is pretty strong against any specific religion.
Great way to explain this!
there are literally only three main religions in the world and only islam is the one that has no contradictions unlike the other two, if you actually read the Quran and sahih Hadis you would also know that no human can ever write this.
That assumes every religion has the same evidence going for it. Thats not true
@@GOATEditz204 Their evidence is pretty similar and ultimately boils down to a few central arguments, such as the cosmological, teleological, ontological, and moral arguments.
@@Astromancerguy Eh, no? That evidence just supports a very specific type of Divinity.
"to say yes to anything is to say no to everything else."
Integral /Process theology would disagree.
Multiple perspectives may all be true.
The Last Line brought it all together! Two things that appear to oppose each other at first glance, might actually both be right! Logically most people can not agree or believe in an opposing parallelism... It's like taking an object and telling someone that it is both straight and curved simultaneously, they just can not perceive it.
Thomas Edison tried 5999 experiments that all failed but that one more attempt at number 6000 worked and he created the lightbulb which lit up the world
It was tesla who invented the light bulb , Edison was the first to patent it that's why he wad credited with the invention .
Good example. It was the last experiment which proved to be the important one. It's also the last and everlasting God that proves to be the important one.
@James Patrick Actually, it's the reverse. Nikola Tesla was one of the pioneers of alternating current, alongside Westinghouse, while Thomas Edison pioneered direct current. There's a whole slew of articles out there about the various lawsuits Edison had with Tesla and Westinghouse about the dangers of alternating current. The famous Electric Chair came from these very suits.
Billions of people didn’t go and worship his failed experiments tho did they.
@@Lumbervr : As far I as know, billions of people don't continue to worship Apollo, Zeus, or any of the other fake gods. Actually, the emperors of the past Greek and Roman empires used these fake gods to give themselves some sense of justification. In other words, they "claimed" those gods chose them to rule over the people. But I'm pretty sure the average Joe around Caesar's time didn't really believe in those gods and just played along because it was the social thing to do and also because if they didn't they would be killed.
On the contrary, the God of Moses still exists because he actually does tangible things like, inspired men to write a book that has been a best seller for over 2,000 years, inspired men to build massive churches in every city of the world and every small town, inspired learned men to pursue advanced degrees in theology in the most prestigious universities in the world, and I could go on.
People believe in the God of Moses because he does stuff that people recognize as beyond human effort and have a major impact on the world. What did Zeus ever do?
Your primary mistake is assuming that ANYTHING is transcendent to reality. If God is actually beyond existence, then what connection could he possibly have with it? If he IS connected with reality and affects it, then there is a basic commonality--He is NOT transcendent, he is part of existence. That is my view. I actually believe in God, but he is nothing like the Christian concept of deity. My view is that all of reality itself, in its full complexity, both gives rise to, and is part of a universal, eternal consciousness. I don't pretend to know any details beyond that, unlike all faiths invented by humans.
Excuse me, but the « argument » is, as you say, not an argument. It doesn’t try to assert anything. It simply helps theists understand what atheism is, as they often misunderstand it and sometimes even confuse it with misotheism (belief in god but refusal of worshipment or love towards them). It does what it tries to do perfectly, but it does not try to proove anything.
atheists keep saying it has nothing to do with a refusal to follow god, but whenever theyre asked if they would follow god if they knew he was real, theyd say no
@@InitialPC no...
@@noidea5106 ok, would you follow god if he turned out to be real?
@@InitialPC well... yes, even if only for heaven. Would I genuinely love Him? If he is perfect, yes. If he commits mass genocide, no. (Would still follow him for heaven though)
@@noidea5106 Lol you can't just say "sorry God, can I get a margarita now?"
Now let me ask you this, and you don't have to answer, but can you actually name an instance where God is responsible for a "mass genocide"?
"Who Created God". Another bad argument.
Depends on the context. Some believers are still clumsy enough to say, "Everything that exists had a cause," so "what caused God?" is valid for them.
There's a similar framing for the "Who .." version, but I've forgotten how it's put now. With TH-cam, Christians are educating themselves in which arguments are malformed and moving away from them, little by little.
Yes this also ranks up there.
@@RustyWalker Good point.
_”He isn’t some being within our reality, He is the source of all reality.”_
Yeah, it’s gonna be hard to find the atoms that make up God when God is not made of created matter.
If he doesn't exist in reality that means he isn't real.
@@StaggersonJagz Depends how you define "reality," I guess. The intent of the statement was that God is not created by an arrangement of atoms, but exists in a state of more fundamental reality than the "reality" we experience as created things.
@@billbadson7598 however you define reality, God either exists within it or not. That's a hard dichotomy.
@@StaggersonJagz _"however you define reality, God either exists within it or not. That's a hard dichotomy."_
Hard disagree. If you don't define reality, it has no meaning, and you cannot make any true/false statements involving the word, because all statements using an undefined word are nonsense statements. I'm defining "reality" as all matter and physical laws (maybe "physical reality" would work better?). But God is not made up of physical matter, or beholden to physical laws, preexisting both.
@@billbadson7598 that makes no sense, and does not address my point
My favourite atheist "argument" is: If there really is a God why does He let bad things happen?
@Universalkritik an argument in the form of a question.
@Universalkritik if you say so. I often see arguments formed in rhetoric via questions. I’ve also never heard a good answer to it outside of: “Something something Adam ate an apple” or “something something fallen world.”
“Why does God let bad things happen”
That’s a really good question because if God is good surely he would give us everything that we want ? Is that right though ? because what usually happens to a child who is spoilt and gets everything he/she wants from his/her parents without working for it or learning how to help, share and give to others as well. The results can be catastrophic with regards to lack of morality and ethics. Apparently Hitler was really spoiled by his mother. Nevertheless, if you think of all the heroes of social change, those heroes who stood up to racism, died fighting for human rights, the heroes of flight and space aviation of the last century, heroes such as Martin Luther King JR, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Noam Chomsky, Mary Robinson, Buzz Aldrin, Amelia Earhart, the Wright brothers.
Now imagine if a supreme being had intervened and removed all the moral danger and natural danger from the world and from these heroes lives. In order to remove all moral evil from the world all you have to do is remove everyone’s free will. To remove natural danger all you have to do is remove all obstacles all challenges and make everything safe meaningless and purposeless. Some would argue pointless and lifeless. Because without the risk of moral evil and natural evil non of these amazing people would have been the heroes that they are and would have non of the virtues they had such as real courage, real bravery, real altruism, creativity, empathy, real love and imagination that our children and generations of children and adults have taken great inspiration from as there would be no such thing as bravery, courage, altruism, self sacrifice that is real love and real virtue with out real free will, real moral danger and natural danger. Similarly, the combined efforts of all these heroes creates a beautiful effect a mythological truth, a true myth in a sense in the collective consciousness and memory of humanity that is greater than the sum of each individual part/virtue and is greater than each individual hero that points to a reality a joy that we all yearn for that transcends the materialistic, selfish, self centred, narcissistic, nihilistic and fatalistic paradigm.
“Romance is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of eucatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world poignant as grief.”
(JRR Tolkien).
Interestingly, all of our physical theories at the fundamental level of “matter” have been replaced by quantum mechanics and string theory. Classical materialism has crumbled under the weight of evidence from quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics has demonstrated that “particles” exist, for want of a better word, that are invisible, unmeasurable, timeless, non locational/bi locational and can influence other, other “particles” at great distances and appear to travel faster than the speed of light. So empirical science has demonstrated that particles exist that have no definitive “location in space and time”. Is it “logically coherent” to believe that things that can be in two places at the same time actually exist. ? Is it “logically coherent” to deny this despite the weight of evidence from empirical science demonstrated in quantum mechanics. ? Is this pseudo science and is it synonymous with omnipresence. ? Who knows!!
“Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum”
(“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”) - Rene Descartes.
This quote is the pillar on which science, rationality and the belief in the fundamental nature of mind and consciousness/theism/being stands and according to the brilliant linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, Rene Descartes conclusions regarding mind and consciousness still stands today.
All the best to you and your family and keep safe during this Corona virus crisis. ❤️
If Tolkien was a good person, why did he create Sauron?
If Shakespeare was a good person, why did he write tragedies?
Evil can exist for a higher purpose. We already know this.
For example, people actually choose to go through the pains of childbirth in order to get a child when they can avoid it by not having children. We think some suffering is more than offset by the result. Evil is not absolute -- there are greater goods. People will choose to undergo evil to attain something higher. We don't just avoid all evils whatsoever, even when we can. No one would ever run a marathon if suffering were an absolute evil. The issue is not the existence of evil, but whether the world that contains evil is, nonetheless, worthwhile. Does the evil in a story, in a world, have a point? Sauron has a worthwhile role to play in Tolkien's stories despite being evil. Shakespeare is writing worthwhile plays, even when they are tragedies. Our world may be worthwhile because of its evil and its overcoming -- and there is no logical reason why that worth must be evident to us, right now.
God thinks the end-result in our universe, and for each person who turns to him, will more than offset all the suffering for all the people who underwent it -- and God is in a position to know that. We aren't. But even we can see that suffering could be worthwhile in certain circumstances, and God can see that it will be in our circumstances.
If there really is a God, why not trust him when bad things happen?
I don't think it is meant as a argument to disbelief. I think it's meant as an explanation: Very often atheists are faced with incredulous stares, people think that a belief in a god is self-explanatory. The argument is an answer to that.
@Anakin Skywalker Religion is often transmitted by childhood indoctrination, so it's taken for granted. It's coming from that mindset that makes it hard for believers to contemplate alternatives. Mind you, this is not to say that believers are unable to understand the arguments once they see the positions clearly.
This is the peak of delusion.
Atheism, a mile wide and an inch deep.
Why would a God create a Universe-let’s see how deep we can go.
@@russellmiles2861
Why? That's like asking a musician why they make music, a painter why they paint? Because that is who they are.
Same with God. God Creates, it is in Gods nature to do this.
May I recommend The Silmarillion, the 1st couple of chapters
@@russellmiles2861
Thing is, It Appears Materialists seem to think God is just a super powerful (for lack of a better term) Human. God is not.
@@russellmiles2861 Because why the heck not? Seriously. Why not? You are telling me if you were all powerful you wouldnt make your own universe?
@@russellmiles2861 the primary answer is because God is good, so he makes what is good.
One thing you forgot to mention is that it is also only targeted to Christians...and not like the other dozens of Monotheistic religions/traditions that exist.
It can be applied to any God concept.
@@stevenhorr I never said it cant. I said it isnt.
@@npswm1314 How do you know that? You see it used against Christians because that's the majority religion in the culture you (presumably, at least) and I live in, so that's who you see it put against. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard it used at least once towards a Muslim apologist. It's just that the Christian ones VASTLY, VASTLY outnumber how many you see of other religions here.
@@npswm1314Well of course, the biggest group will be more targeted this is math
Careful, these post-modern thinkers have already begun to deny math as well.
And you have to cut down on your Peterson.
@@8fot why?
@@8fot how about you cut down on your hate and misery?
So it's wrong because the video maker is a polytheist? I don't think this guy knows the difference between an argument and an explanation.
Dear theists, this is not an argument. It's an explanation. Also, mathematicians can provide a proof that 1 + 1 = 2. That's how math works. So, Brian's analogy fails. That's why you don't find any Amathmetists out there, friends. But I will say something positive... something that all theists and atheists can agree on : as a bald guy, I am a jealous of Brian's fabulous mane. I'm now a follower of the ginger Jesus! He converted me. Despite our differing world views, Brian, I wish you the best.
Sorry, can’t stand his hair. Reminds me of hippies, I don’t like hippies.
I'm seeing a lot of replies to this pointing out that it isn't an argument, so it shouldn't be treated as such. But this doesn't escape the problem with it. In the case of both Dawkins and Gervais, they have given this response to some variation to the question, "Why don't you believe in God?" When someone asks a question like that, they're asking for a reason. Reason(s) is/are supported by arguments. If your reason isn't based on a logical sequence of ideas (ie. an argument), then you are conceding that your belief is not grounded in reason, but something else. So when atheists like Dawkins and Gervais are asked for a reason and provide this rhetorical verbal ornament instead of a reason, if that's all they've got, then they've admitted that it's based on something other than reason. If this is among one of the many responses they provide (which is usually true), then they're still guilty of employing sophistry to reinforce their position - which is manipulative.
2 things.
1) this is one of my issues with many of the atheists in the pubic stage. I get that it's alluding to an analogy (which I know you reject), but it's unhelpful in the same way a Christian arguing the need for a savior & forgiver to an atheist is.
2) this quip feels like it is a few steps shy of belittling one's interlocutor. I feel that there's a whole argument around the redefining and refinement of god(s) over time, but that quip compresses it beyond usefulness.
Brian I think you are misrepresenting this. Can you point to where this has been used as a "reason" to not believe in a god? The comment used by Gervais is in response to Theist's who don't understand how an Atheist cannot believe in a god. This response is used to demonstrate to a Christian that he/she is atheist about Allah, Thor etc and to demonstrate to a Hindu that they are Atheist about all other gods but there own. It is never used as an argument against the existence of a god. It is important to understand that whatever god you believe in you are in the minority ... again this is not evidence that a god does not exist just a point of fact. Atheists do not require a reason to not believe in a god, they just lack a reason to believe in a god.
Okay I thought you were just a honest interlocutor that was actually trying to properly debate and actually investigate your own position as well as your opponents and that you just kept getting misunderstood about the things you were talking about because there's a lot of Miss constrution in many theist circles I've seen at this point I got a resume that you understand what it is you're talking about but you're purposefully trying to twist and turn it to your own benefit
I'll start showing this by pointing out that is not an argument in the least and it is just a statement of fact that theists who hold a monotheistic belief only believe that there is one God meaning you do not accept and are not convinced by all the other God claims and you are simply convinced by just this one meaning you have just one more Godly than we do we're just to say we have none and we are just unconvinced...
Now I can agree that maybe atheist should refrain from using this one because it is prone to being misunderstood and to assist it probably feels like a overly snippy and hostile retort but dude you do this on TH-cam for fucking living at this point so you should actually try to understand the arguments, OR STATEMENTS that you're talking about so you don't spread misunderstanding and make discussion harder rather than easier
"Rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry " I'd have to agree with that . Now please point out to me the logic to be found in the Bible. Point out ANY kind of logic to be found in ANY religion ever . I'd be interested to hear it without it sounding like sophistry .
This guy go's on and on about the importance of logic , then would argue that x is not always x if god is involved . If you don't deny math , explain how one entity can be three. Religion is poison .
”Ah, so you’re a theist, too. You just believe in one less God than me."
It really doesn’t work, is not analogous. It is accurate for someone to say a Christian is an Atheist with regards to the Great Bear Spirit, it is not accurate to say an Atheist is a Theist with regard to any deity.
@@Tinesthia Except you have to redefine _atheist_ into oblivion. If it’s possible to be an "atheist with regards to" some specific deity, then we’re all atheists. And if everyone’s an atheist, then no one is. And if you’re not an atheist, then you're a theist. QED.
@@nathanaelculver5308
You don’t have to redefine any words to recognize a frame of reference.
@@Tinesthia There’s the further problem of equivocation. The sorts of atheists who employ the "one less god" rhetoric are almost certainly those who define "atheism" as something like "withholding belief due to lack of evidence." But that is not a Christian’s position towards other gods. When have you heard a Christian say, "I withhold belief in Zeus because of a lack of evidence?"
False equivalency or straw man-take your pick.
@@nathanaelculver5308
Christians don’t have to say that exact phrase for it to be true. Why else would you not believe in Zeus or the Great Bear Spirit? Because there is not enough good reasons or evidence. If I am wrong correct me. Is there a different reason you don’t believe in Zeus than no good evidence?
Atheists use the “one less God” statement to point out we feel generally the same way about Yahweh as you do about Allah, Zeus, or the Great Bear Spirit. It is an attempt to get a Theist to understand our position, not an attempt to prove Theism wrong.
It never hurts to try to look at the world from someone else’s point of view. An “outsider test of faith.”
No Strawman, no False Equivalence, no redefinition...
To date I thought the worst atheist argument was the omnipotence paradox.
You do understand positions don't require arguments, right? States of affair (conditions) are simply factual. Or are you lacking the competence to grasp that fact?
@@theoskeptomai2535 sure, if want to undermine your own ideas with badly constructed arguments you are free to do it.
Just don't dare to blame it anyone else when you are unable to convince someone.
@@theoskeptomai2535 if someone desn't even take the least effort on defending their own ideas, then said ideas aren't worth keeping. Just saying.
The worst comprehension skills on the internet: this guy. And I'm being generous, I'm not at all implying he's lying by intentional strawman because cheating is all that's left to him... and he has the guts to write " but rhetoric without sound logic is just sophistry": yeh, go figure, who's the one using sophistry here.
Saying I believe one god less of you isn't fallacious, first of all because it's true. The purpose of that isn't intended as a proof against god, it has never been, how you infered it I don't really can figure out and I can only appoint it to dishonesty or stupidity, you choose freely mate. It's purpose is helping you "feel" how WE feel about your god. And it isn't that much of a popular argument unless the theist says something on the like of "I can't believe you don't believe in a god", and in that case it's a perfect way to explain how I don't believe.
An hint: try using the brain sometime. I know, in christianity it's deprecated and at first it can seem overwhelmingly difficult, but you really should try. Just enough to not come out as silly and smug about it as in this video.
0:51 Yeah this is a crisp, pithy piece of rhetoric. But this isn't an atheist _argument_ . No atheist used this argument against the existence of God, because "therefore God does not exist" doesn't follow from this.
No, this is just pointing out an observation. And it's true.
2:43 "There is nothing valid in its content."
I would say there is. It brings Christianity into perspective. Many theists believe that "Christianity and atheism" is a true dichotomy and that's simply false. The choice isn't between Christianity and atheism, or Islam and atheism. There are so many religions out there, and all of them the Christian disbelieves in, except for one.
*Many theists believe that "Christianity and atheism" is a true dichotomy*
Which theists believe that?
@@nathanaelculver5308 Maybe not if you lay it out like that, but I do think that Christians think, on an instinctive level, that if God exists then it’s the Christian God.
Very nice and succinct response.
Well done.
"We are all Theists throughout all of human history. Some of us just don't go one God far enough."
Dawkins, and other Atheists, would recognize the fallacy instantly if it was turned around on him like that. This exposes his pre-existing bias. Biased people only recognize fallacies against them, but not when they work in their favor.
I'm an atheist myself and agree the statement alone is indeed not a proper argument within itself. The argument is implied rather than stated, which is faulty logic. I would say the argument actually stated outloud, though I dont necessarily subscribe to it, would be something along the lines of "if one believes in one unfalsifiable claim( ie christianity, a claim that cannot logically be proven nor disproven rationally because its fundamentally based on pure faith), what stops that person from also believing in another? Why believe in one unfalsifiable claim instead of one or all others? It may be true that believers in such things feel emotionally justified in their beliefs, but so do all others in other unfalsifiable claims such as the doctrine of islam. Muslims feel just as justified in their beliefs as Christians do, so why should I, an atheist, take one more seriously than the other since they are both unfalsifiable?"
The number of times you have totally lost me, and I've had to go back multiple times... When you make the false equevalency of mathematics being the same as theology, or marriage being the same as theology (well that one is a lot closer, as marriage is often couched in religious practices, though that's not really the same as a legal marriage). I will continue... You have made the most logically sound and understandable argument *for* the "falsity of atheism," which you make the argument of, "if atheism is false, therefore my monotheism is true," which seems to be making very much the same argument you're arguing against.