@@stevencurtis7157 A lot further actually, because it isn't just religions that go with that phrase. It could also be a reference to any number of protagonists.
_Religion™: The World's Most Refreshing Snake Oil. Requiring and encouraging people to rely solely on heuristics and logical fallacies to rationalize believing something since 10,000BC_ Put that on a fucking T-shirt and sell it to sane people. You'll get paid and you'll not have to sacrifice your integrity. No one said that sacrifice is a must to achieve something. It's just that people in general are pretty fucking stupid and feel more secure and accomplished if they can brag about how fucking pathetic they are with all of their setbacks that made it more of a challenge to achieve something; in general it gives stupid people a stick to beat other stupid people with.
If you ask youtube commentors on a typical Christian video, all you'll get is "god is real" usually with accompanying spelling errors and poor grammar.
That's how all their arguments go. For whatever reason they think if they can argue against something, say evolution, it suddenly makes their religion true.
It does amaze me how many of these belief systems (including religion, flat earth etc) produce apologists that believe that to prove themselves right they have to only point out how the supposed opposite is wrong without providing any evidence to support their own claims.
To the question "How do you know it's true?", Just once I'd like to hear a believer say "I don't, I have no idea, I just believe it is." At least it would be honest.
As much as I fervently tried to believe the beliefs of Christianity were true, when I was a Christian, I just couldn't. In the end I began saying that I have no idea whether or not it's true, but I felt better pretending to believe it was true. Eventually, I was honest with myself and realized that it was just making me miserable, and I left Christianity. Now, whether or not "God" exists is irrelevant for me.
I've met plenty of Christians who just point to Luke or Romans and they leave it at that. You won't hear them in many debates but they definitely exist
Really enjoyed this. When I was a Christian, I thought Ravi was a genius. Thought no one could dispute Jesus as truth after hearing him. Was surprised after leaving the faith how empty what he said really was.
@Joseph Polanco This is a quote from the introduction of the paper you cited: "These observations, combined with recent commentaries about the likely religious beliefs of HFA individuals (Delay, 2009; Graetz & Durbin, 2008), suggest that these individuals’ beliefs may be influenced by their intellectual strengths (e.g. emphasis on logic and attraction to systematizing observables) and their social-emotional deficits (e.g. reduced automatic inferences about mental states and decreased orientation to social rewards). " In this context, in what way is this a woe?
@Joseph Polanco So, let me get this straight. Using logic and observation to reach conclusions as opposed to social rewards and emotional influence is somehow NOT preferable? "God's necessary existence?" Please cite your sources.
Actually.. lol The first lesson is how to answer questions... In a way that confirms your preconceived believes. It's about as good a definition of apologetics as I can think of.
A woman I know, who is very religious had her son ask her, "how can Genesis be true? It just could not of happened the way the bible describes." To which she replied, (thinking she had closed down the discussion entirely with her brilliant response of) "How big is your God David?" What a non-answer.
Ravi was my mother's apologist of choice. After listening to him for a long time, I concluded he's a very sincere man whose stories, tone, and attitude were by far the most convincing thing about him. People LOVED his gentleness and apparent compassion. Otherwise, it was all the same old tricks I've heard from everyone else, he just avoided being as obviously arrogant as people like WLC.
Ravi was not anywhere close to sincere. I have documented his deceptions for the last five years. Here is a summary. ordinary-times.com/2020/05/20/ravi-zacharias-the-uncomplicated-facts/
@@zenbanjo2533 Very interesting. Regardless, his public-facing persona was very well crafted I would say (the soft spoken, foreign accented, humble man of God). Though it doesn't surprise me that there are details like that under the surface.
@Joseph Polanco Very interesting article. Basically summarizes that people who are more interested in logic and feel less pressure to socially conform end up agnostic atheists. Just what I suspected, religion relies on social pressure and irrationality, thanks for the reference :)
@Joseph Polanco That's a very interesting report. Thanks for sharing, it would make sense. I worked with the Special needs students, in our 6th form college and can totally understand, them seeing right through all the BS of religion.
I wonder if *_any_* of the stories apologists like to tell about their conversations with people of other beliefs are actually true. It's convenient how they all seem to end with the other guy bowing before the irrefutable Truth eloquently delivered by the apologist telling the story.
Even if you accept it really happened as he told it, we don't know how many more times the opposite happened. Perhaps the story is notable only because it was such a rare occurrence, and the other 1,000 times he had that same conversation, it went nowhere. Not so remarkable in that context.
I knew Ravi was dishonest when I heard him misrepresent Dawkins' views. But then what else do apologists have to go on ? Hell fire and brimstone is slightly out of fashion these days.
T. Estable Yes, I find that to be the case. Just three days ago I received a reply to a comment I wrote 5 years ago from a user called "god made big bang atheists denyit." The comment was very aggressive and long winded, but it boiled down to "You are going to burn in hell and suffer for eternity, because you rejected the love of Jesus." I think they really wanted a response from me, because after I responded "Good," they only wrote even longer comments.
"Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed." Translation: Reward those who do not seek or find answers. Result: Punish those that have the answers.
I was told by a very intelligent muslim woman, highly westernized, that the reason I was an atheist was because I questioned things instead of accepting. And she was a doctor - OMG
Whether it is Ravi Zacharias, Lee Strobel, Kent hovind, Ray Comfort, William Lane Craig... it's always the same logical fallacy tap dance. Ravi's personal favorite logical fallacy is clearly whataboutism and desperately trying to get out of the burden of proof with hand waving. "How do I know Christianity is true? Look over there at Islam!"
Ravi Zacharias is the reason I'm an atheist. His book End Of Reason introduced me to Sam Harris' works, which ultimately resulted in my abandoning of religion and faith in general. Thanks Ravi. RIP.
@dosdude Well, is there a SINGLE cult of it? like is there a single cult... sorry, creed, of Christianity? Also, yes, he may well have made some mistakes - but what were his most critical points? Also, why was Satan OWED any access, to this world, post exile?
@dosdude You have no valid reason to be a theist. In the world of science, here in the 21st Century, your primitive flat Earth world view has been thoroughly debunked. You have been exposed for what you are. A typical human projecting himself into some anthropomorphic creator being. Religion is a false lens on the world. There's no one out there, except for maybe some extraterrestrial life somewhere out there. No one's gonna save us from ourselves. We have to clean our own backyard.
As I said in another recent video about him, I can't help but feel that his Indian accent has done quite a lot of heavy lifting throughout his career. The only thing better than deepities to convince the "spiritual" crowd, are deepities with an Indian accent.
Exactly. All his white western audience members feel extra special, and no comment gets more likes than "I'm from X foreign country, and used to be a Hindu/Muslim/etc but after listening to Ravi now I love Jesus!"
@@oscargr_ But only racists would care enough to complain about being called racist, right? That's how that all works out, yes? If someone called someone a non racist, that person would not care: it is of no validity, it is only when there is some validity that scares you being out there that the accusation matters.
Ravi was the Deepak Chopra of Christianity. He always answered in long rambling deepities that didn't make much sense, but were stated with such conviction that the audience always burst into spontaneous applause and went home with their beliefs confirmed.
When I was a christian this guy was looked up to like he was some kind of god himself. My family and uncle who is a pastor think he was the greatest apologist ever. As I was leaving the faith, they suggested I watch some of his Q&A's and talks because they figured he would be able to speak to a more intellectually minded/skeptical person like myself and address the questions I had. It frustrated me to no end how often he doesn't actually answer the question he's being asked. During one of the sessions, a man asked almost word for word a question I also had about the problems surrounding free will and how that's supposed to fit with God being all knowing and having a plan and so on. Ravi didn't even attempt an actual answer but instead went on a tangent about how he knows some physicist and he doesn't have any problems with the concept so... that was his answer 🙄And the audience applauded it! 😂🤦♂️ Thanks Paulogia for doing what you do and to everyone who has been encouraging to me in the comments before. This channel has been helping me a lot. Growing up I was made to feel like there was something wrong with me because these apologist's answers usually left me unsatisfied and frustrated. It's been such a relief to realize I'm not even close to being alone in that.
Ryan F of course he doesn’t answer shit no apologetic does , they just use confirmation bias and pandering to an audience that largely Christian with why they praise whatever bullshit they claim. They worship morons like ravi as they worshiped billy graham even thou it’s considered a sin and most will deny how much they worship these fools,
Christianity is a control system of eternal punishment and reward that is instilled in a child's memory through repetition using the key words "God", Jesus" and "Satan" that elicit an automated response.
Listen to Frank Turik's reply on this question. He analogizes how we can have free will with an omnipotent god to being the same as having a recording of a sports match that has already taken place. The crowd he spoke to applauded this answer. Good grief. A much better analogy is comparing this omnipotent abstraction/god to a movie writer/director/creator...George Lucas, for example. An "all knowing" movie producer would already have the characters and the story from beginning to end "mapped out". Do the actors have "free will" ? Perhaps if the actors didn't have the script, but worked within their surroundings they could beLIEve they were working independently. Apologists are like like magicians who want people to want people to really have faith that their magic is real.
That story is just like every apologist's "I met a professor on a plane" tale they teach preachers to tell, and it's as believable as "I used to be a drug addict". I think he made it up.
@@proculusjulius7035 Oh yeah. They usually tell me something along the lines of "It's still against the law!" and I reply "that's why the founding fathers gave us the ability to CHANGE the law. they understood that progress is a constant in societies like ours (and human nature) and that's why WE THE PEOPLE decide what is law and what isn't." But alas, they continue to vote republican, and those fucks continue to work against the will of the people, and against democracy. When will they learn?
All their lives, sheep fear the wolf, yet in the end it is the *shepherd* who devours them. I could not find a more fitting epitaph for describing Ravi Z.
@Joseph Polanco Are you talking about my comment about your copypasta or are you referencing something else? I guess I'll just assume you're keeping it in this thread. Yeah, I'm honest, your duplicate post assumed "grokking" god was a positive thing the first time I saw it, and it isn't any less subective now.
_"How do you know that Christianity is the one true worldview?"_ - *This isn't even the real question... It should be something like* "how do you know that _your specific version_ of Christianity is the one true worldview?" They can't get to proving the general idea of Christianity, but even if they could they would only be half way to being able to claim absolute truth.
@Joseph Polanco lol, you completely missed the point by focusing on Christians verses non-Christians when I was talking about the hundreds of denomination of Christianity. If the line is so clear then why are there so many people, all claiming to be Christians, all equally sincere, all basing their beliefs off of the bible, and all with different beliefs, that all claim the be the 1 true version? There isn't a single Christian worldview, there are hundreds, so you have no way to claim that the Christian worldview is the one true worldview since you can't even point to a single worldview. If you care to reply then try to actually make one that addresses the topics you are replying to... unlike your first attempted reply.
@Joseph Polanco except that you are still dodging the point... even if 90% of them don't base their beliefs on the bible that still leaves dozens, if not more, competing ideas and factions all sincerely basing their worldviews on the same thing and coming to completely different conclusions. NOT ONE WORLDVIEW
@Joseph Polanco Baaaaaahahahahahaha! That's a good one. Thanks for the laugh. Seriously, you made me laugh and I appreciate that. There is also a secret handshake but .. uh oh .. nobody told you about the secret handshake, did they? Oops. Never mind, carry on.
@Joseph Polanco _"So wholly devoted to this code would these be that all non-Christian world-views/conduct would be effortlessly recognized"_ *cool, so describe it in detail* _"any sincere person can make a distinction between a Christian and an Anti-Christian (Satanist)."_ *And the other several thousand possibilities?*
Origin: God created you Meaning: So you can serve him Morality: By living to his standards (possibly ignoring slavery, child abuse, misogyny, human and animal sacrifices, genocides...) Destiny: And so, serve him forever in Heaven.
(Not a christian myself - an atheist actually - Thank GOD for that 🤣🤣🤣) Apologetics is taken from the older meaning of word apologia which is basically defending ones positions from slander or misrepresentations. It never meant to mean deceiving others for the sake of social status and money. I guess christianity ruins what it touches.
@@carogame If there is any hope for humanity, it lies within our children, not some special imaginary friend. They are our future, and only they and their offspring can improve the human condition.
@@kinglyzard The human condition is depravity. Children do not need to be taught to be sinful. It comes naturally. Look at what is going on in Portland, Oregon right now. The anarchy that is going on is a result of the culture (the younger generation). Where is the hope in that? There is only One hope and that is Jesus. If children were brought up learning the teachings of Christ then that would have a positive effect on culture.
I'll say this for Ravi - he had a very engaging voice. I envy his oratory skills and I can easily imagine being enraptured by his talks in my younger days.
Well, for a religion depending on a supernatural guarantee, it would be nice if the God in charge could answer the consumer's questions and doubts, instead of another senior consumer doing it for Him, right? -Of course, God will answer all of your doubts, you just need to have faith! After you die, all the question will have an answer, guaranteed! -...How convenient, this different religion is just like every other religion!
Religion™: The World's Most Refreshing Snake Oil. Requiring and encouraging people to rely solely on heuristics and logical fallacies to rationalize believing something since 10,000BC
@Joseph Polanco In the real world however, there are thousands of Christian denominations, some are even millennia old, most rejecting the others as true Christians, and still no word from any god a whatsoever settling the matter, somehow. Is like the god is not as interested as their minions in telling other humans what to do. Or maybe, just maybe, each imagined their own god in their heads.
@Joseph Polanco A human repeating the same words, will not make christian denominations disappear, nor will make a god appear, sorry. Nothing happened.
@@TheCheapPhilosophy he likes repeating that passage to many questions he can't answer. I doubt he has clued in to the fact that the thinking skeptic doesn't take biblical text as divine truth from on high.
@Joseph Polanco It's a big stretch to conflate "anti-xtian" with satanist. Your argument not only weakens your claim to truth, it brings into question whether you actually follow Jesus' example.
The borrowing goes back even further. Judaism took many influences - particularly dualism - from Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism in turn took many aspects of animism e.g. fire worship which of course also emerged into Judaism in the forms of god appearing as fire, smoke etc. So Islam is taken from Christianity (and others e.g. flying horses from Greek), Christianity from Judaism, Judaism from Zoroastrianism, then animism, then presumably whichever beliefs were held by local villages and even smaller social groupings centuries or millennia before that.
And further back than the Babylonian captivity, the earlier Hebrew writings were to some extent borrowed from the Caananite pantheon of gods who each ruled over distinct geographic areas. I believe that the leading theory (or at least one of them) among skeptical Biblical scholars (i.e. those who don't have to hold certain religious beliefs to keep their academic position, and whose work is empirical/historical in nature) is that El and another Caananite god were sort of combined into Elohim by some of the Old Testament authors/editors.
Judaism does NOT have or use " Dualism"... We only have HaShem everything good and bad light and dark is from HaShem who is Achad" One" 1. This is a common error. Shalom
mitzvah golem That's only true according to your personal religious belief and interpretation of what the Canaanites believed, not on what has been historically recorded and what has been researched by scholars.
"Origin, meaning, morality, destiny". Then, you know, he asked me again in like, 15 mins "can you repeat that". And, you know, that's hard, not easy, hard. And I repeated it "Origin..., meaning, morality....... destiny". So I'm cognitive, you know, really cognitive. Super cognitive. Probably the best cognitive ever...
When I was an evangelical Christian, I used to study Ravi's materials, so I was more familiar with him than any other apologist (other than WLC). He was one of the VERY few Christian apologists who (I thought at the time) provided some intellectual backing to the faith.
I learned that during the time that Moses supposedly did the Exodus from Egypt Ramses 2 ruled Egypt and Israel and all others in Canaan , meaning he had troops on both sides of the Red Sea .
@@druidriley3163 Secular history says it , Egyptian history affirms that he was the ruler then but doesn't mention Moses because even scholars admit he never existed . .Egypt has existed longer than your bible .
Great video! 👏🏼👍 Each time I have seen a video of Ravi Zacharias trying to ‘prove’ Christianity, I’ve ended up with an earworm by James Brown - “You’re like a dull knife / Just ain’t cutting / You’re just talkin’ loud / And saying nothing.” 🤔😁
Duh! Ravi did answer the question man. Christianity corresponds to reality. This is why he highlighted things like origin, meaning, morality and destiny.
@@signposts6189 No he talked woo woo bollocks not a single fact all what if s and arguments from ignoranc. Morality really ? name 2 society's that have the same morality. Please do expliin why human sacrifice, murder, rape, slavery and homophobia are fine in your buybull ?
@@signposts6189 Reality ? an all powerful invisible omnipotent god ? a bible with talking snakes, giants, angels, demons THATS reality ha ha ha. A bible with not a single creditable description of the universe? that is heliocentric and according to a lot of retards flat ! HMM seems like I will have to take my chance with reality, discover what is right and wrong, explore the planet and the universe and make testable conclusions based on observation and facts sowwy
@@gowdsake7103 The Good Book doesn't have talking snakes. There's a cunning and crafty serpent in it. But no talking snakes. Read closely, and you will notice the serpent is not representative of snakes but an animal made with individual agency. As for angels and demons, creation consists of not just humans on the third rock from the sun, but extraterrestrial moral agents from the heavens above us with a vested interest on the goings on here for good or bad. Now who is so limited as to think reality is just what he observes and nothing more? The Good Book is draws the mind to be more curious about God and His intentions for the universe and everything in it. Small minds preoccupy themselves with just the little they observe of it until they die never to know anything more since on your worldview you'l be gone beyond recall.
The word, truth, has become somewhat of a paradoxical word, in recent times. The more frequently it is used by someone, the less likely it is that they are speaking it.
My Christian parents have often attempted to evangelize to me by recommending Ravi Zacharias. It’s always been kind of baffling as to what I’m supposed to get from him. A lot of emotional appeals and baseless assertions.
Maybe you should heed your parents efforts to evangelize you. Nothing is more important than to believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God. Why wouldn't you want to trust in the one who laid down His life so that your sins could be forgiven if you repented of them? I suspect your parents love you enough to want to see their dearest child spend eternity in heaven's joy with God instead of in everlasting anguish, sorrow and torment. Ravi isn't even the issue man. You are.
@@signposts6189 What evidence do you have, other than the circular reasoning of "The Bible is true because the Bible says the Bible is true" of such things as the persistence of consciousness after death? Fecxor already mentioned that "emotional appeals and baseless assertions" don't really hold sway over him/her. It's funny that your post uses the exact same weak appeals, which amount to, wait for it, you guessed it, emotional appeals, threats, and baseless assertions. Is that really all you got? Again, why do you believe in an afterlife outside of the circular reason of "The Bible is true because The Bible"?
@@CeramicShot The Good Book consists of independent written accounts documenting a body of facts or information indicating the veracity of the claims about God and His Son Jesus Christ. Your argument about the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true is silly. The Good Book is not one book written by one person from some singular place. If it were, then you'd have a point. Try again. The facts or information in it are testable, reliable, understandable and effective. What "evidence" do you have that the Gospels for instance shouldn't be trusted because of proven falsehoods in them, if you even have them?
@@signposts6189 The specific issue in question was of the persistence of consciousness after death. What "testable, reliable, understandable... effective" proof do you have of it? You threatened Fecxor with "everlasting anguish, sorrow and torment" for believing as they do, and I want you to justify your claim of an afterlife with proof. Are you able to?
@@CeramicShot Jesus Christ died and on the third day He rose again from the dead. And because He lives again as both Lord and Christ, every human being will be brought back from the dead to stand before Him to be judged. If you trusted Him, you will enjoy eternal bliss in heaven. If you rejected Him you experience everlasting anguish, sorrow and torment in hell. The Gospels contain a veritable body of facts or information that indicate that Christ did in fact come back from the dead and ascended into heaven thereby guaranteeing the coming Judgment Day. That is how that claim is justified using the documentary evidence of the Gospel accounts. What's your excuse for not trusting the info? Speculations about the accounts being fictional because the supernatural is just fictional?
Man, his voice still has a nostalgic quality for me. His program used to play on the radio right at bedtime when I was a kid and I'd fall asleep to it.
Just because not everyone has engaged in an honest appraisal of their religion does not mean that they're stupid. Everyone has their blind spots and when you suggest they're stupid for theirs you all but guarantee they're going to shut out what you're saying.
@@Vivi2372 If you can defend your argument, there would be no need to shut people out. You would be able to prove your argument. You shut people out because you lose the argument resulting in being defeated, and instead of admitting defeat and continuing with the discussion - you shut people out. I am not speaking about you personally, I am speaking about people in general. It's important to have discussions, it's how the truth emerges.
It's not about "thinking". We all think, and there's some real smart people who believe in really dumb things. Christianity isn't about the lack of thinking. It's thinking in a certain way to protect an established dogma.
"I do my own homework and fact checking now." As a fellow prairie-dweller (I'm still here, too) that is so well said it should be put on a tee-shirt. 🇨🇦 p.s. black tee-shirt with long sleeves. Love & Smooches from one province over. 🦊
"I am now a professor at Oxford." Direct quote from Ravi. Massive false claims all documented, and he admitted them quietly to a Christian blogger last year. ordinary-times.com/2020/05/20/ravi-zacharias-the-uncomplicated-facts/
Kayleigh McEnany sure got choked up when she was talking about Billy and Ravi. Exactly the emotional response that christians have when speaking about their religion. Christianity PREYS on human emotions. They need to change the word "PRAY" to "PREY". Been "Preying" on human emotions for Millennia.
Christian apologist: the New Testament adds to the Old Testament, proving it is more true than the Old Testament. Me; So gawd got it wrong the first time and had to issue a revised edition. Since he's supposedly, perfect, inerrant, and omni-everything, that doesn't make me confident that the revision is any more accurate than the first edition.
I'm curious, what other historical documents claim Jesus didn't die on the cross? I assume you mean a document from the first few hundred years AD, which assumes Jesus existed but argues (or at least asserts) that he didn't die on the cross.
@@davidlovesyeshua Off hand, I don't think I know of anything pre 200's. The gospel of Barabbas is often cited, but there aren't any copies available predating 1500. The earliest mention of such a document with that title isn't older than 400AD.
Ravi is misrepresenting the Islamic Position of Jesus. Qur'an does affirm that it was made to look like Jesus died on the cross, so in one way or the another it's agreeing about a Crucifixion.
I think that is on for a T-shirt. NO RELIGION REQUIRED. in fact it would be good by the front door as well, except I love it when the JW’s knock. I invite them in and unpack why, as a world view, religion doesn’t work. 2 an a half hours is the longest I’ve kept them.
Holy shit, I'm pretty sure someone used this exact argument on a Street Epistemology channel to justify their beliefs. Needless to say it failed miserably
Question: how is Christinty true Ravi: becuz Islam is false Audience: applause Me:wut (Not to stereotype) But Christian apologist are concerned to prove that Islam is false than Christianity is true Ravi: some muslim told me that Islam false so it must be false He didn't even come close to debunking Islam All he likes to do is story telling I met this guy, I met that guy This happened, that happened
This happens a lot between both religions. People who do interfaith claim that the members of the other religion have visions of their true religion or that the other religions followers follow by faith and are ignorant of their religion, despite both religions have such characteristics
The funniest aspect of it all is that Christian apologists and theologians all fail to understand that even if they are correct and do debunk Islam, it does not mean they have also by extension debunked Judaism, Zoroastrianim, Maniqueism, Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Shintoism, Rastafarianism, the Baha'i Faith, or any other religion that I am not acquainted with, of which there are ultimately thousands. But even if he did debunk these thousands of religions, it does not prove Christianity is true either. In fact, by disproving Islam, he only helps increase the probability that other religions are true as well.
To be honest, I've been into this topic as a sideline observer for around 12 years now during my "Holy shit, TH-cam is f'in awesome!"* phase from 2006 but mainly in 2007 it became magical. Y!Answers (R&S) was amazing back thentoo. I became interested in Thunderf00t's *"Why Do We Laugh At Creationists?"* series and loved it! I'm beginning to be worn out from this topic... but not yet. *Paulogia* is amazing. He's so calm and direct. Keep it up man! 💓
His smugness rubbed me the wrong way. All those politely stated recollections of how he won debates with other greats when nobody was there to see it happen.
It's like watching a movie where they cut away for an important action action scene ending. He just implies that the Muslim cleric was won over to Christianity's side by this one conversation in order to wow the audience into thinking he made a point
Paraphrasing, "Jewish, Roman, Pagan and Christian historians affirm Jesus' death on the cross." I'll give you the Christian sources. As for the rest, you're going to need to produce the evidence.
Hell, I'm willing to give him the whole thing. There really was a man named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans for political purposes. Now prove he really rose from the dead afterwards. Part of the punishment of crucifixion is to throw the corpse into an unmarked mass grave, so no one can give respect to the dead. Joseph of Arimathea was probably made up for 2 purposes: to fit Jesus into the "buried with the rich" prophecy, and to claim the tomb was empty and prove it using the fact that nobody brought the body to refute it.
outside of holy texts, what proof is there for the existance or crucifiction of jesus? i've been told the romans had no record of it at all, is this true?
Nobody who was a contemporary of Jesus wrote about him. Jesus supposedly lived circa 5 BCE to 28 CE. The Romans have plenty of written records for this period of time, including those concerning Pontius Pilate. But not a single mention of Jesus. Incidentally, Pilate was documented to have been summoned to Rome by the Emperor, to be reprimanded for his arbitrary killing of too many Jews. The idea that Pilate killed Jesus, even though never specifically mentioned in any documents, seems totally plausible to me. Jesus would have been just one of Pilate's many victims. But ... the supposed _resurrection_ of this Jesus ... sounds like *bovine faeces* to me.
There's very little evidence either of the life, death, or resurrection of Jesus. Paul is the nearest and he was writing about 20 years after the resurrection.
I never found him particularly interesting. I've listened to a lot of Christian radio over the years (as a Christian and atheist) and always found my attention drifting when Zacharias came on.
The apologists' apocryphal stories of besting a well-qualified opponent with some bit of trite rhetoric or logical trap are like fingernails on a chalkboard to me after 20+ years of hearing them. Zacharias' stories are some of the worst. I'm glad Paul unpacked this one, and interestingly it's on the same morning that a video by Viced Rhino took up this subject of how apologists dishonestly frame many of their most important stories. I feel blessed! :-) Viced Rhino's video: th-cam.com/video/WWRhZ7Rz4qw/w-d-xo.html
8:03 ive noticed this as a pattern when Ravi answers a question during Q and A. The Question is specific. VERY SPECIFIC. His answers often involved poetry quotes, knowledge of other religions, and eloquently stated thoughts on human existance and meaning.....when all he had to say was..."Yes. Here's the salt. Would you like some pepper as well?"
I was a Ravi lover during my last attempt at being saved. I thought he was so eloquent and deep. Back when my heart would bleed for the unsaved humans. Then I started watching his debates and more debates and more.... so began my trip down the youtube activist athiest worldview rabbit hole of knowledge and delight. Make sense?
@Joseph Polanco You left Yahweh of the list, he 'was' also an oppressive, sadistic, demoniacal atheist who, collectively, murdered hundreds of millions of helpless men, women and little children? Read the Bible if you think I am wrong.
@Joseph Polanco If you are asking the question then you clearly have not read the Old Testament. In the OT god kills 2,821,364 people and that does not include the total eradication of the human race other that Noah and his family, just the direct deaths he caused himself. The estimate for total deaths by god is near 25 Million The Devil on the other hand only killed 10 and that was in a bet with god. Also an Atheist is someone that does not believe in a god and since your god does not believe in a god then he is an Atheist Now of course your god did not really kill anyone because he is totally fictitious. Unless of course you have some evidence to the contrary. Here is a list for you, is this enough evidence? dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html
@Joseph Polanco He threatens the innocent who spares the guilty, none of that makes any sense. How does killing a bunch of kids because they made fun of a bald guy fit in with that?
@Joseph Polanco You are the one making the claim that your god exists so it is your job to prove it and provide evidence, I cant believe you are still asking that question in 2020 it was laughed off the debate floor decades if not centuries ago. Can you provide proof that I, SulaS, did not create the universe? Here are three questions for you to see if you can answer; 1. How certain are you that the things that you believe to be true, about your god, are actually factually true? Answer on a scale of 1-100 where 1= "I have all doubt and no certainty" and 100 = " "I am totally convinced that the things that I believe to be true are actually objectively true" 2. How important is it to you, in your life, that what you believe to be true is actually factually true? Again 1-100 where 1 = "I don't care if what I believe to be true is actually true I just want (need) to believe it" and 100 = "It is vitally important to me that everything that I believe to be true is actually factually true" 3. What method did you personally use to verify that the things that you claim to be true are actually factually true? Don't bother answering question 3 if you are brutally honest with yourself and give a score for question two of below 10 as you would have already lost the argument but if you answered 100 for question two then you better have a damned good answer to question three.
As a Christian, I remember watching him on a video responding to someone in the audience asking him why homosexuality was wrong (at least that is what I remembered). And his response wasn't an in depth explanation like I was expecting, but my takeaway from that video was a "well you have your own morality, I got mine" and it was such a let down. And yet people were praising him in the comments. I think before learning about certain critical thinking terms or before examining Christianity, the only way I could describe the apologetics I was given for the hard questions I had was "unsatisfying". And that seems to continue till this day.
With an estimated 3,000 distinct and 45,000 sub brands of Christianity, it's technically not a single worldview. There are brands with differing worldviews.
This was my first view of Paulogia, and I found it very interesting. I was taken aback at first by the use of an animated character as the narrator, but on reflection, I realized that the information content minus the animation is not different from a book on tape. I have never heard of Ravi Zacharias, and I did enjoy seeing his argument dissected. I am wondering who gave Ravi Zacharias the wand when it came to coming up with the "right" set of criteria for discerning truth: origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. I find it fascinating that Ravi did not appeal to some overwhelming god as the source of all truth. It would have been his strongest argument. When someone pushing a religious world view depends on reasoning for the answer to a fundamental question, he gets into the deep end of the pool without adequate preparation. The parts of Ravi's talk that we saw had about as much to do with knowing some ultimate truth as it would if the question had been "Where am I going to go on my next vacation?". It would have been interesting to see how Zacharias would have dealt with the Paulogia answer to these four criteria. (as an aside, the last time I attended such an event was decades ago when I was in high school. The traveling evangelist in question posed essentially the same question to the local audience - "How do you know xtianity is true?" - but he was more intellectually honest than Ravi in concluding that it was by faith alone that the truth of xtianity could be known.) I prefer questions that do not presuppose the answer. "What can or do I know for certain (i.e., without a doubt)?" - does not presuppose a particular, preferred answer (xtianity). However, the resulting analysis is not the kind of stuff you can stand up on a stage and expound without putting to sleep such a large audience already convinced of the preferred answer. It seems clear that finding truth is a fourth order factor in the continued survival of the bulk of the human species from the seventeenth century to the present time. I suspect that it (finding reliable truth) is rapidly going to become first order within the next decade. If I were given the wand to pose some criteria for answering fundamental questions, I think those criteria would need to include "interest". Whose interests underlie and are being served by the fundamental question and answer? We can safely conclude that religions are largely a tool of those in power to maintain their power by distracting large crowds of the credulous. Edit: I forgot to add key criteria, viz. answers to fundamental questions need to be internally consistent and testable.
Ravi's imaginary friends are numerous. God is not the only one in is mind. A great number of his so called "gentlemen he had a discussion with" feels utterly bullshit to me.
@Joseph Polanco If you talk about a generic god that pouffed the Big Bang and then let things run on their own : none. If you talk about YHWH, well, there's plenty of evidence that what is described in the Bible did not happened.
Once I had a christian girlfriend who just loved to make fun of Mormons and their believes ... until we read the Bibel together... xD Btw..: It is absolutely possible and in fact highly likely for a multitude of things being wrong at the same time, even if they're in some point contradictory.
I used to have that in common with your Christian girlfriend. Felt I got validation from a preacher I used to watch online who did the same thing. What stopped me was a couple years later when someone tried to convert me to Islam and ended up succeeding....in making me an atheist.
Origin: We all come from East Africa and those progenitors from there. Meaning: We make meaning, whether for good, bad or indifference. Morality: We make morality, whether for good, bad or indifference. Destiny: Death, which is nothing to us. When you are dead, you exist no differently than before you were conceived. QED every day.
Islam relies on the Old and New Testament? I thought they contradict a lot of it! For example, Muslims say that God has no son and that Jesus is not the son of God. Also, I heard that Muslims do not believe that Abraham almost killed Isaac but his other son Ishmael.
@@chrissonofpear1384 What exactly do they claim? That the bible is true but every bible we have has been altered by humans and is therefore unreliable?
The god of Abraham had no son. He was a single god and the symbol of monotheism. Then the followers of the deceased Yeshua tried to elevate him to be the equal of Yahweh. That's when the fighting began.
0:41 That's interesting you say that. While Ravi had his moments, I was surprised that Dr. Geisler held Ravi up as the top living apologist in the world. I even took a class he taught at SES. But when i really listen to his points and argumts and tried to brak them down or summarize them, there was not alot there. Ive heard some say how great he is. They cant tell you what he said, but it was great. He dealt mostly with the existential questions of meaning. Here's the bottom line. He was mesmerizing... through and through.
"The Republican and Democratic parties are fundamentally different" Two right-wing, patriotic, heavily Christian parties? Oh yeah, got the whole spectrum covered here, boys.
Jakeeyy1009 It's funny, but true. Both parties are highly capitalistic. This is a fact. As such, they are by definition right-wing parties. Both parties' dominant adherent population is Christian with politicians that assert Christian values. So both parties are Christian. There is nothing unfactual about these claims.
Jakeeyy1009 So saying the USA is a Christian country equates to saying it's a theocracy? You're a massive idiot. So I guess that's why you find it funny. Oh well.
There is no collective view to contain a totality of truth. A worldview is necessarily individual and limited in time and extent. Even if there was one individual in the world that believed and professed nothing that was not true they would not know everything that could be known or have knowledge outside of their limited reach forward and back in time. Even so, they would be subject to belief and disbelief by every other more ordinary person on the planet. One True Worldview is inherently meaningless. An idealized abstraction.
The term "Christian" covers an enormous range of beliefs and taboos. When they have a firm grip on power (like now) they will turn on each other like wolves over some detail of their shared fantasy.
This was a good video, since I grew up listening to this dude. Hearing his deal dissected is pretty cool. Edit: After watching the video, it kinda just feels like Dr. Zacharias just tells a bunch of stories that end on emotional notes and I don't know why I used to enjoy his talks as a teen.
One other complexity, and point of failure to the Jenga model, is that between the OT and NT the jews adopted theology and philosophy from the Egyptians and Persians (and pagans) during times of captivity. It explains many of the differences between beliefs in the OT and what the Catholic church believes today. So, the rest is built on more points of failure than just the OT. But, that doesn’t add to coherence, rather it detracts from it.
Maybe it's just having lived with nearly 4 yrs of Pres.Trump's 'tells' when he's lying that made my ears perk up, but when Ravi started saying that the Shiite leader in Jerusalem began his address to him by saying 'sir', i rolled my eyes and kind of tuned out.
CRUCIFIXION, RESURRECTION, AND PAIN If God sent Jesus from at his right side in heaven, to earth to die (crucifixion) for our sins, only to be resurrected, rejoining God in heaven at his right side, then where did the sacrifice come in? And if he did die on the cross, he felt no pain as his father (God) had the power to take his pain away.
To your last point: According to Christian doctrine, Jesus gave up the divine advantages during his earth-life in order to be «fully man and fully god» so he could not have availed himself of divine protection against pain. Remember he felt abandoned by his father (according to the gospels)
Just cause God could have taken the pain away, doesn't mean he ever did. OT God is a bit of a psychopath so he probably didn't. But you're right on the sacrifice part, *all the sins of humanity* are apparently only worth 1 bad weekend.
For starters, I'm not sure describing the crucifixion as a sacrifice, even works on a literal basis. Then again I don't know that much of the official biblical sacrificial rules, and definitions. But about all I see in common with other biblical examples of sacrifice is that Jesus was said to have been killed. Any connotations of ritual giving seem entirely lacking. Second, a God that likes bloody sacrifices isn't very appealing to me. And a God making enormous changes to his policies based primarily on a sacrifice seems a bit messed up.
@Steve Webber Yeah, I get what you are saying. Good point! I think it is important, when we discuss whether Christian doctrine "make sense", that we know what the doctrines are. So, that's where I can help (I studied theology for a while and grew up in an evangelical environment) The thinking about "sacrifice" was that a HUMAN would have to be sacrificed to atone for HUMAN sins. (So Jesus had to be "fully human") Also this HUMAN would have to be sinless so the sacrifice would be "perfect". Something like: Gods perfect son's life was worth the same as all humans combined. (So Jesus had to be divine and perfect at the same time) Now, all this doesn't make any sense to me either. I'm just reporting what I learned "back then" so that when you criticize this, you are not criticizing me. If God fixed "something" for us, then GREAT! If he didn't, oh well (I don't know what God wants anyway) And if he doesn't exist, then he doesn't exist no matter what we think or don't think... :)
@@busylivingnotdying Thanks for the clarification. I think I have a basic understanding of the teachings at least. Part of my problem in discussing my problems with the sacrifice is it's hard to find a coherent core that makes sense to build around. I't pretty easy to say God sacrificed his only son to forgive us our sins, or save us as some like to put it. But when I start getting into the nuts and bolts of what that actually means, things start falling apart. What exactly is he forgiving who for, and why do they need forgiveness? And is this justice only relevant to how a persons afterlife will come out? The sacrifice was apparently required, planned, and executed by God. I don't know of any prior announcement mentioning a need for the sacrifice of a sinless man. Without much justification or reasons provided for that sacrifice, it seems a bit arbitrary from an outside perspective. I imagine there's more than one school of thought as to what exactly God was forgiving. If he is forgiving the original sin from the fall, it proposes transfers of the assignment of guilt from the guilty parties to parties that had nothing to do with it. And then the transfer of punishment to Jesus. I don't know of any rational system of justice that would allow such systems. I think it could be more rational to consider the fall as a metaphorical explanation of mankind's nature, and thus he is forgiving us for an inherent aspect of our nature. But then he created us as we are, and he's supposed to be perfect and omniscient. If he doesn't like humanity to be as it is, rather than a tepid act of forgiveness, why would God not change the nature of humanity? And yes the biblical God can do that without destroying free will. Christians keep going on about the merciful and just nature of God, but I just don't see that in the bible. I could go on, but it all comes to the point that even the basic fundamental claims of Christianity seem to need a lot of rationalizations to make them work. If Occam's razor is brought into play, things get rather shredded.
The best way to show the failure of all religions, is to watch apologists for each one debate each other. They all make-up endless excuses to justify their internal inconsistencies, proving that it can be done for virtually any fantasy. "Speakers Corner" debates on TH-cam are a good example.
Ravi's argument that Christianity is more truthful than other religions looks like a nice twofer. He can depend on his Christian audience to agree with a nice dose of confirmation bias. And he can reinforce that bias and sense of superiority, by praising their belief structure. And of course a few people I know would take exception to claiming the Christian religion as particularly truthful. To be fair, properly analyzing the validity of truth claims of Christianity would be too complex and time consuming to properly fit into a speech like that, but he chose it as an example.
A genuine question. Do ANY non-Biblical historical sources assert that Jesus was crucified, or do they just report the existence of people who believed that Jesus was crucified?
None do. Not a single one. The extent of the non-biblical sources that aren't debated as to whether they are authentic or not is basically "Some guys believed in some guy named Jesus or something".
Why would it matter what the Muslims think was the cause of Jesus' death? When they speak of Jesus, they say "peace be upon him", just like they do any other prophet of the Abrahamic religions. There is a deep respect for all of the Jewish and Christian prophets, though the interpretations of their lives may differ. This isn't the reason there is conflict between these faiths. Why is it relevant at all?
So if someone makes a claim but other people say its false then its false? Just them saying its false means its false? Who believes this crap? Imagine if a courtroom worked that way…
The perfect t-shirt.
"All religions are wrong,
all but mine."
You could sell it to every religion.
Take my money
While you're at it, get a few that just say "The Chosen One" and see how that goes.
@@stevencurtis7157 A lot further actually, because it isn't just religions that go with that phrase. It could also be a reference to any number of protagonists.
@@munster355 That was the idea. Prob already exists tho.
_Religion™: The World's Most Refreshing Snake Oil. Requiring and encouraging people to rely solely on heuristics and logical fallacies to rationalize believing something since 10,000BC_
Put that on a fucking T-shirt and sell it to sane people. You'll get paid and you'll not have to sacrifice your integrity.
No one said that sacrifice is a must to achieve something. It's just that people in general are pretty fucking stupid and feel more secure and accomplished if they can brag about how fucking pathetic they are with all of their setbacks that made it more of a challenge to achieve something; in general it gives stupid people a stick to beat other stupid people with.
Q: How do you know christianity is true?
R: Because islam is wrong
Me:...wut...
If you ask youtube commentors on a typical Christian video, all you'll get is "god is real" usually with accompanying spelling errors and poor grammar.
That's how all their arguments go. For whatever reason they think if they can argue against something, say evolution, it suddenly makes their religion true.
@Dan Ryan checkmate atheist.
It does amaze me how many of these belief systems (including religion, flat earth etc) produce apologists that believe that to prove themselves right they have to only point out how the supposed opposite is wrong without providing any evidence to support their own claims.
@Dan Ryan Is it good? Yeah, Israeli good.
To the question "How do you know it's true?", Just once I'd like to hear a believer say "I don't, I have no idea, I just believe it is." At least it would be honest.
Seoul Krav Kali
Ravi Zacharias was a presuppositionalist. There was absolutely no way he was going to say “I don’t know.”
As much as I fervently tried to believe the beliefs of Christianity were true, when I was a Christian, I just couldn't. In the end I began saying that I have no idea whether or not it's true, but I felt better pretending to believe it was true. Eventually, I was honest with myself and realized that it was just making me miserable, and I left Christianity. Now, whether or not "God" exists is irrelevant for me.
read above,..
I used to say that when I was a Christian. I never said I knew it was true.
I've met plenty of Christians who just point to Luke or Romans and they leave it at that. You won't hear them in many debates but they definitely exist
"It's OK. I already know that some people will clap anything." - C. Hitchens
Ha! Classic line by Hitch!
He would be quite upset to find out you'd circumsized his first name like that.
@@TheAsaoirc omg I really laughed out loud! Nice!
Hard to believe that tomorrow (12/15/21)makes ten yrs without him
"your boos mean nothing, i've seen what makes you cheer"
Really enjoyed this. When I was a Christian, I thought Ravi was a genius. Thought no one could dispute Jesus as truth after hearing him. Was surprised after leaving the faith how empty what he said really was.
I'm not sure that having a predisposition for rationalism is a bad thing.
I wonder, would people with such cognitive deficiencies receive God's grace and enjoy a Heavenly reward?
@Joseph Polanco This is a quote from the introduction of the paper you cited:
"These
observations, combined with recent commentaries about the
likely religious beliefs of HFA individuals (Delay, 2009;
Graetz & Durbin, 2008), suggest that these individuals’
beliefs may be influenced by their intellectual strengths (e.g.
emphasis on logic and attraction to systematizing
observables) and their social-emotional deficits (e.g.
reduced automatic inferences about mental states and
decreased orientation to social rewards). "
In this context, in what way is this a woe?
@Joseph Polanco So, let me get this straight. Using logic and observation to reach conclusions as opposed to social rewards and emotional influence is somehow NOT preferable?
"God's necessary existence?" Please cite your sources.
@Joseph Polanco Just read the What you put and it's absolute nonsense.
The first lesson of apologetics is how to not answer questions.
Actually.. lol
The first lesson is how to answer questions... In a way that confirms your preconceived believes.
It's about as good a definition of apologetics as I can think of.
dodge and deflect, like a dance...
A woman I know, who is very religious had her son ask her, "how can Genesis be true? It just could not of happened the way the bible describes." To which she replied, (thinking she had closed down the discussion entirely with her brilliant response of) "How big is your God David?" What a non-answer.
They're called apologetics for a reason, yet they think that term is honourable for some fuckin reason.
Ravi was my mother's apologist of choice. After listening to him for a long time, I concluded he's a very sincere man whose stories, tone, and attitude were by far the most convincing thing about him. People LOVED his gentleness and apparent compassion. Otherwise, it was all the same old tricks I've heard from everyone else, he just avoided being as obviously arrogant as people like WLC.
Ravi was not anywhere close to sincere. I have documented his deceptions for the last five years. Here is a summary. ordinary-times.com/2020/05/20/ravi-zacharias-the-uncomplicated-facts/
@@zenbanjo2533 Very interesting. Regardless, his public-facing persona was very well crafted I would say (the soft spoken, foreign accented, humble man of God). Though it doesn't surprise me that there are details like that under the surface.
@Joseph Polanco Very interesting article. Basically summarizes that people who are more interested in logic and feel less pressure to socially conform end up agnostic atheists. Just what I suspected, religion relies on social pressure and irrationality, thanks for the reference :)
Sarina T
That’s a happy by product, for people who are on the autistic spectrum.
@Joseph Polanco
That's a very interesting report. Thanks for sharing, it would make sense. I worked with the Special needs students, in our 6th form college and can totally understand, them seeing right through all the BS of religion.
I wonder if *_any_* of the stories apologists like to tell about their conversations with people of other beliefs are actually true. It's convenient how they all seem to end with the other guy bowing before the irrefutable Truth eloquently delivered by the apologist telling the story.
Even if you accept it really happened as he told it, we don't know how many more times the opposite happened. Perhaps the story is notable only because it was such a rare occurrence, and the other 1,000 times he had that same conversation, it went nowhere. Not so remarkable in that context.
The fact he claims he was referred to as 'professor' when he hasn't earned the title, suggests to me he might have strayed from the truth.
They seem far more idiotic in writing.
I knew Ravi was dishonest when I heard him misrepresent Dawkins' views. But then what else do apologists have to go on ? Hell fire and brimstone is slightly out of fashion these days.
Exactly! The guy is a tool!
Misrepresenting Dawkins is a rite of passage for apologists
You said a mouthful, Rick.
Is Hellfire and Brimstone out of fashion? It seems to be making a comeback in a big way recently...
T. Estable Yes, I find that to be the case. Just three days ago I received a reply to a comment I wrote 5 years ago from a user called "god made big bang atheists denyit." The comment was very aggressive and long winded, but it boiled down to "You are going to burn in hell and suffer for eternity, because you rejected the love of Jesus." I think they really wanted a response from me, because after I responded "Good," they only wrote even longer comments.
Not all religions can be right, but they all can be wrong
Or some can be true.
Thank god everyone is born into the correct religion.
Hahaha and all the other religions are wrong and they're all going to hell.
Just as a matter of probability, one should be skeptical in that they are doomed according to rival religions.
which god?
@@johnelliott5859 "Take your pick"
"Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed."
Translation: Reward those who do not seek or find answers.
Result: Punish those that have the answers.
I think it's even shorter in translation...
Reward those who don't seek answers.
Punish those who do.
I was told by a very intelligent muslim woman, highly westernized, that the reason I was an atheist was because I questioned things instead of accepting. And she was a doctor - OMG
Quenten Walker
That’s worrying.
@@cy-one or even shorter: gullibility is good, skepticism is bad.
@@soriac2357 You're using too complicated words now.
Since apologetic is a tap dance, Ravi could be seen as the Fred Astaire of apologetic.
Trump's witch doctor as Ginger Rodgers ?
Except Fred was entertaining
Bubba Tao
In this video specifically designed to showcase Ravi’s wit and intelligence, he still tap danced around the question. Incredible...
To quote Stephen A. Smith: "Tap dancing like the late, great Gregory Hines!"
Whether it is Ravi Zacharias, Lee Strobel, Kent hovind, Ray Comfort, William Lane Craig... it's always the same logical fallacy tap dance. Ravi's personal favorite logical fallacy is clearly whataboutism and desperately trying to get out of the burden of proof with hand waving.
"How do I know Christianity is true? Look over there at Islam!"
Ravi Zacharias is the reason I'm an atheist. His book End Of Reason introduced me to Sam Harris' works, which ultimately resulted in my abandoning of religion and faith in general. Thanks Ravi. RIP.
@dosdude lol
@dosdude Well, is there a SINGLE cult of it? like is there a single cult... sorry, creed, of Christianity? Also, yes, he may well have made some mistakes - but what were his most critical points?
Also, why was Satan OWED any access, to this world, post exile?
@dosdude
You have no valid reason to be a theist.
In the world of science, here in the 21st Century, your primitive flat Earth world view has been thoroughly debunked.
You have been exposed for what you are.
A typical human projecting himself into some anthropomorphic creator being.
Religion is a false lens on the world.
There's no one out there, except for maybe some extraterrestrial life somewhere out there.
No one's gonna save us from ourselves. We have to clean our own backyard.
As I said in another recent video about him, I can't help but feel that his Indian accent has done quite a lot of heavy lifting throughout his career. The only thing better than deepities to convince the "spiritual" crowd, are deepities with an Indian accent.
And if you say anything about his "accent" you get labelled a racist. Isn't it nice how that all works out.😎
Exactly. All his white western audience members feel extra special, and no comment gets more likes than "I'm from X foreign country, and used to be a Hindu/Muslim/etc but after listening to Ravi now I love Jesus!"
He has the indian guru voice lol
The Chopra Effect then?
@@oscargr_ But only racists would care enough to complain about being called racist, right? That's how that all works out, yes? If someone called someone a non racist, that person would not care: it is of no validity, it is only when there is some validity that scares you being out there that the accusation matters.
I have never seen Ravi give a straight answer to a question from the audience.
Ravi was the Deepak Chopra of Christianity. He always answered in long rambling deepities that didn't make much sense, but were stated with such conviction that the audience always burst into spontaneous applause and went home with their beliefs confirmed.
@Jim Merrilees Kids are sort of good that way. Answer the question Ravi!
When I was a christian this guy was looked up to like he was some kind of god himself. My family and uncle who is a pastor think he was the greatest apologist ever. As I was leaving the faith, they suggested I watch some of his Q&A's and talks because they figured he would be able to speak to a more intellectually minded/skeptical person like myself and address the questions I had. It frustrated me to no end how often he doesn't actually answer the question he's being asked. During one of the sessions, a man asked almost word for word a question I also had about the problems surrounding free will and how that's supposed to fit with God being all knowing and having a plan and so on. Ravi didn't even attempt an actual answer but instead went on a tangent about how he knows some physicist and he doesn't have any problems with the concept so... that was his answer 🙄And the audience applauded it! 😂🤦♂️ Thanks Paulogia for doing what you do and to everyone who has been encouraging to me in the comments before. This channel has been helping me a lot. Growing up I was made to feel like there was something wrong with me because these apologist's answers usually left me unsatisfied and frustrated. It's been such a relief to realize I'm not even close to being alone in that.
Ryan F of course he doesn’t answer shit no apologetic does , they just use confirmation bias and pandering to an audience that largely Christian with why they praise whatever bullshit they claim. They worship morons like ravi as they worshiped billy graham even thou it’s considered a sin and most will deny how much they worship these fools,
Christianity is a control system of eternal punishment and reward
that is instilled in a child's memory through repetition
using the key words "God", Jesus" and "Satan" that elicit an automated response.
P
Listen to Frank Turik's reply on this question. He analogizes how we can have free will with an omnipotent god to being the same as having a recording of a sports match that has already taken place. The crowd he spoke to applauded this answer. Good grief.
A much better analogy is comparing this omnipotent abstraction/god to a movie writer/director/creator...George Lucas, for example. An "all knowing" movie producer would already have the characters and the story from beginning to end "mapped out". Do the actors have "free will" ? Perhaps if the actors didn't have the script, but worked within their surroundings they could beLIEve they were working independently.
Apologists are like like magicians who want people to want people to really have faith that their magic is real.
That story is just like every apologist's "I met a professor on a plane" tale they teach preachers to tell, and it's as believable as "I used to be a drug addict". I think he made it up.
It wouldn’t be the first thing they made up! GOTEM
You just want to sin 😂😂😂
@@proculusjulius7035 but yeah, smoking a plant that “god” put here is a sin...
@@QBert904 hahaha, I tell them that all the time and they change the subject.
@@proculusjulius7035 Oh yeah. They usually tell me something along the lines of "It's still against the law!" and I reply "that's why the founding fathers gave us the ability to CHANGE the law. they understood that progress is a constant in societies like ours (and human nature) and that's why WE THE PEOPLE decide what is law and what isn't." But alas, they continue to vote republican, and those fucks continue to work against the will of the people, and against democracy. When will they learn?
All their lives, sheep fear the wolf, yet in the end it is the *shepherd* who devours them.
I could not find a more fitting epitaph for describing Ravi Z.
Eric Hovind wouldn't know truth if it whipped him with a belt.
Shudders at Hovind
@Jim Merrilees Welcome to the truth. Cynicism is optional.
Joseph Polanco
What a happy by product for them. I’ve always thought, that theists need to use a more logical approach to examine their beliefs.
@Joseph Polanco Your copypasta tastes like metal and acetone. -10/10
@Joseph Polanco Are you talking about my comment about your copypasta or are you referencing something else? I guess I'll just assume you're keeping it in this thread. Yeah, I'm honest, your duplicate post assumed "grokking" god was a positive thing the first time I saw it, and it isn't any less subective now.
_"How do you know that Christianity is the one true worldview?"_
- *This isn't even the real question... It should be something like* "how do you know that _your specific version_ of Christianity is the one true worldview?"
They can't get to proving the general idea of Christianity, but even if they could they would only be half way to being able to claim absolute truth.
@Joseph Polanco lol, you completely missed the point by focusing on Christians verses non-Christians when I was talking about the hundreds of denomination of Christianity.
If the line is so clear then why are there so many people, all claiming to be Christians, all equally sincere, all basing their beliefs off of the bible, and all with different beliefs, that all claim the be the 1 true version?
There isn't a single Christian worldview, there are hundreds, so you have no way to claim that the Christian worldview is the one true worldview since you can't even point to a single worldview.
If you care to reply then try to actually make one that addresses the topics you are replying to... unlike your first attempted reply.
@Joseph Polanco
except that you are still dodging the point... even if 90% of them don't base their beliefs on the bible that still leaves dozens, if not more, competing ideas and factions all sincerely basing their worldviews on the same thing and coming to completely different conclusions.
NOT ONE WORLDVIEW
@Joseph Polanco also, you are playing games with logical fallacies and empty assertions
@Joseph Polanco Baaaaaahahahahahaha! That's a good one. Thanks for the laugh. Seriously, you made me laugh and I appreciate that. There is also a secret handshake but .. uh oh .. nobody told you about the secret handshake, did they? Oops. Never mind, carry on.
@Joseph Polanco _"So wholly devoted to this code would these be that all non-Christian world-views/conduct would be effortlessly recognized"_
*cool, so describe it in detail*
_"any sincere person can make a distinction between a Christian and an Anti-Christian (Satanist)."_
*And the other several thousand possibilities?*
Origin: God created you
Meaning: So you can serve him
Morality: By living to his standards (possibly ignoring slavery, child abuse, misogyny, human and animal sacrifices, genocides...)
Destiny: And so, serve him forever in Heaven.
I think your Bible stops with Deuteronomy😂
So Ravi Zacharias is now also a former Christian!
Meet Ravi Zacharias. The former Christian who talked about the claims of Christians.
If Christianity is the One True Religion, why do people spend their lives apologising for it?
(Not a christian myself - an atheist actually - Thank GOD for that 🤣🤣🤣)
Apologetics is taken from the older meaning of word apologia which is basically defending ones positions from slander or misrepresentations. It never meant to mean deceiving others for the sake of social status and money. I guess christianity ruins what it touches.
Hey my friend. We are not apologizing for it. We are giving a defense for the reason of the hope in us.
@@carogame
If there is any hope for humanity, it lies within our children, not some special imaginary friend.
They are our future, and only they and their offspring can improve the human condition.
@@kinglyzard The human condition is depravity. Children do not need to be taught to be sinful. It comes naturally. Look at what is going on in Portland, Oregon right now. The anarchy that is going on is a result of the culture (the younger generation). Where is the hope in that? There is only One hope and that is Jesus. If children were brought up learning the teachings of Christ then that would have a positive effect on culture.
Don't worry, Tim. I got the joke.
I'll say this for Ravi - he had a very engaging voice. I envy his oratory skills and I can easily imagine being enraptured by his talks in my younger days.
I always get excited when a Paulogia video shows up
But he's holding glasses in his hand while he talks so he must be right.
Well, for a religion depending on a supernatural guarantee, it would be nice if the God in charge could answer the consumer's questions and doubts, instead of another senior consumer doing it for Him, right?
-Of course, God will answer all of your doubts, you just need to have faith! After you die, all the question will have an answer, guaranteed!
-...How convenient, this different religion is just like every other religion!
Religion™: The World's Most Refreshing Snake Oil. Requiring and encouraging people to rely solely on heuristics and logical fallacies to rationalize believing something since 10,000BC
@Joseph Polanco In the real world however, there are thousands of Christian denominations, some are even millennia old, most rejecting the others as true Christians, and still no word from any god a whatsoever settling the matter, somehow.
Is like the god is not as interested as their minions in telling other humans what to do.
Or maybe, just maybe, each imagined their own god in their heads.
@Joseph Polanco A human repeating the same words, will not make christian denominations disappear, nor will make a god appear, sorry.
Nothing happened.
@@TheCheapPhilosophy he likes repeating that passage to many questions he can't answer. I doubt he has clued in to the fact that the thinking skeptic doesn't take biblical text as divine truth from on high.
@Joseph Polanco It's a big stretch to conflate "anti-xtian" with satanist. Your argument not only weakens your claim to truth, it brings into question whether you actually follow Jesus' example.
The borrowing goes back even further. Judaism took many influences - particularly dualism - from Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism in turn took many aspects of animism e.g. fire worship which of course also emerged into Judaism in the forms of god appearing as fire, smoke etc. So Islam is taken from Christianity (and others e.g. flying horses from Greek), Christianity from Judaism, Judaism from Zoroastrianism, then animism, then presumably whichever beliefs were held by local villages and even smaller social groupings centuries or millennia before that.
And further back than the Babylonian captivity, the earlier Hebrew writings were to some extent borrowed from the Caananite pantheon of gods who each ruled over distinct geographic areas. I believe that the leading theory (or at least one of them) among skeptical Biblical scholars (i.e. those who don't have to hold certain religious beliefs to keep their academic position, and whose work is empirical/historical in nature) is that El and another Caananite god were sort of combined into Elohim by some of the Old Testament authors/editors.
Judaism does NOT have or use " Dualism"...
We only have HaShem everything good and bad light and dark is from HaShem who is Achad" One" 1.
This is a common error.
Shalom
@@davidlovesyeshua The Torah is against Canaanite pagan God's.
Not sure how you come to that .
Judaism is totally against multiple God's Idolatry etc.
mitzvah golem That's only true according to your personal religious belief and interpretation of what the Canaanites believed, not on what has been historically recorded and what has been researched by scholars.
"Origin, meaning, morality, destiny". Then, you know, he asked me again in like, 15 mins "can you repeat that". And, you know, that's hard, not easy, hard. And I repeated it "Origin..., meaning, morality....... destiny".
So I'm cognitive, you know, really cognitive. Super cognitive. Probably the best cognitive ever...
When I was an evangelical Christian, I used to study Ravi's materials, so I was more familiar with him than any other apologist (other than WLC). He was one of the VERY few Christian apologists who (I thought at the time) provided some intellectual backing to the faith.
I learned that during the time that Moses supposedly did the Exodus from Egypt
Ramses 2 ruled Egypt and Israel and all others in Canaan ,
meaning he had troops on both sides of the Red Sea .
I think it's only in the movie "The 10 commandments" that we're to assume Ramses II was the pharaoh of the Exodus.
@@druidriley3163 Secular history says it , Egyptian history affirms that he was the ruler then but doesn't mention Moses because even scholars admit he never existed . .Egypt has existed longer than your bible .
Great video! 👏🏼👍 Each time I have seen a video of Ravi Zacharias trying to ‘prove’ Christianity, I’ve ended up with an earworm by James Brown - “You’re like a dull knife / Just ain’t cutting / You’re just talkin’ loud / And saying nothing.” 🤔😁
Ravi talked a lot, but never answered a question.
Ahh there you have the skill
Duh! Ravi did answer the question man. Christianity corresponds to reality. This is why he highlighted things like origin, meaning, morality and destiny.
@@signposts6189 No he talked woo woo bollocks not a single fact all what if s and arguments from ignoranc.
Morality really ? name 2 society's that have the same morality. Please do expliin why human sacrifice, murder, rape, slavery and homophobia are fine in your buybull ?
@@signposts6189 Reality ? an all powerful invisible omnipotent god ? a bible with talking snakes, giants, angels, demons THATS reality ha ha ha. A bible with not a single creditable description of the universe? that is heliocentric and according to a lot of retards flat ! HMM seems like I will have to take my chance with reality, discover what is right and wrong, explore the planet and the universe and make testable conclusions based on observation and facts sowwy
@@gowdsake7103 The Good Book doesn't have talking snakes. There's a cunning and crafty serpent in it. But no talking snakes. Read closely, and you will notice the serpent is not representative of snakes but an animal made with individual agency. As for angels and demons, creation consists of not just humans on the third rock from the sun, but extraterrestrial moral agents from the heavens above us with a vested interest on the goings on here for good or bad. Now who is so limited as to think reality is just what he observes and nothing more? The Good Book is draws the mind to be more curious about God and His intentions for the universe and everything in it. Small minds preoccupy themselves with just the little they observe of it until they die never to know anything more since on your worldview you'l be gone beyond recall.
7:31 - *"I guarantee you"* said every *con-artist* ever ... while showing the greatest sincerity and speaking with the greatest confidence.
The word, truth, has become somewhat of a paradoxical word, in recent times. The more frequently it is used by someone, the less likely it is that they are speaking it.
It was always thus. Remember what Orwell wrote in 1984....
@@neiloflongbeck5705 can't tell if trolling or wrong. The perfect context.
@@Elkator955 in 1984 the Ministry of Truth produced lies, etc.
Chris From SouthAus
Truth is fake news!
Autonomous Collective You Republicans wanna get your ass kicked? I’ve been putting Republicans in the hospital for years
My Christian parents have often attempted to evangelize to me by recommending Ravi Zacharias.
It’s always been kind of baffling as to what I’m supposed to get from him. A lot of emotional appeals and baseless assertions.
Maybe you should heed your parents efforts to evangelize you. Nothing is more important than to believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God. Why wouldn't you want to trust in the one who laid down His life so that your sins could be forgiven if you repented of them? I suspect your parents love you enough to want to see their dearest child spend eternity in heaven's joy with God instead of in everlasting anguish, sorrow and torment. Ravi isn't even the issue man. You are.
@@signposts6189 What evidence do you have, other than the circular reasoning of "The Bible is true because the Bible says the Bible is true" of such things as the persistence of consciousness after death? Fecxor already mentioned that "emotional appeals and baseless assertions" don't really hold sway over him/her. It's funny that your post uses the exact same weak appeals, which amount to, wait for it, you guessed it, emotional appeals, threats, and baseless assertions. Is that really all you got? Again, why do you believe in an afterlife outside of the circular reason of "The Bible is true because The Bible"?
@@CeramicShot The Good Book consists of independent written accounts documenting a body of facts or information indicating the veracity of the claims about God and His Son Jesus Christ. Your argument about the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true is silly. The Good Book is not one book written by one person from some singular place. If it were, then you'd have a point. Try again. The facts or information in it are testable, reliable, understandable and effective. What "evidence" do you have that the Gospels for instance shouldn't be trusted because of proven falsehoods in them, if you even have them?
@@signposts6189 The specific issue in question was of the persistence of consciousness after death. What "testable, reliable, understandable... effective" proof do you have of it? You threatened Fecxor with "everlasting anguish, sorrow and torment" for believing as they do, and I want you to justify your claim of an afterlife with proof. Are you able to?
@@CeramicShot Jesus Christ died and on the third day He rose again from the dead. And because He lives again as both Lord and Christ, every human being will be brought back from the dead to stand before Him to be judged. If you trusted Him, you will enjoy eternal bliss in heaven. If you rejected Him you experience everlasting anguish, sorrow and torment in hell. The Gospels contain a veritable body of facts or information that indicate that Christ did in fact come back from the dead and ascended into heaven thereby guaranteeing the coming Judgment Day. That is how that claim is justified using the documentary evidence of the Gospel accounts. What's your excuse for not trusting the info? Speculations about the accounts being fictional because the supernatural is just fictional?
Man, his voice still has a nostalgic quality for me. His program used to play on the radio right at bedtime when I was a kid and I'd fall asleep to it.
Isn't christian thinker an oxymoron?
No but you suggesting it is, is an insult.
Just because not everyone has engaged in an honest appraisal of their religion does not mean that they're stupid. Everyone has their blind spots and when you suggest they're stupid for theirs you all but guarantee they're going to shut out what you're saying.
@@Vivi2372 If you can defend your argument, there would be no need to shut people out. You would be able to prove your argument. You shut people out because you lose the argument resulting in being defeated, and instead of admitting defeat and continuing with the discussion - you shut people out. I am not speaking about you personally, I am speaking about people in general. It's important to have discussions, it's how the truth emerges.
It's not about "thinking". We all think, and there's some real smart people who believe in really dumb things. Christianity isn't about the lack of thinking. It's thinking in a certain way to protect an established dogma.
Pete - By the reactions, I see you found all of the humor impaired viewers.
"I do my own homework and fact checking now." As a fellow prairie-dweller (I'm still here, too) that is so well said it should be put on a tee-shirt. 🇨🇦
p.s. black tee-shirt with long sleeves. Love & Smooches from one province over. 🦊
11:20 Mystery Men! That movie is hilarious and indeed criminally underrated!
This! So much this! "If you cannot control your anger..."
I would love to hear the version from Sheikh Hussein point of view..
right?!?
I would like to know if Sheikh Hussein is a real person.
@@timames2238 I've a high feeling he was making this whole story on his own.
@@timames2238 Is it just me, or does the name Sheikh Hussain sound like uh... Pastor... Smith?
A debate would've been interesting to say the least.
22 seconds.. never saw such a short time after a video posted. The video alert popped up while i was watching LOL
While he was alive he always puffed up his credentials, I am guessing his use of _professor_ wasn't related to any actual academic post.
"I am now a professor at Oxford." Direct quote from Ravi. Massive false claims all documented, and he admitted them quietly to a Christian blogger last year. ordinary-times.com/2020/05/20/ravi-zacharias-the-uncomplicated-facts/
@@zenbanjo2533 Aha! Thanks.
Kayleigh McEnany sure got choked up when she was talking about Billy and Ravi. Exactly the emotional response that christians have when speaking about their religion. Christianity PREYS on human emotions. They need to change the word "PRAY" to "PREY". Been "Preying" on human emotions for Millennia.
It's the logical fallacy of argument from emotion.
It dovetails right into their persecution complex. Very disturbing indeed.
Christian apologist: the New Testament adds to the Old Testament, proving it is more true than the Old Testament.
Me; So gawd got it wrong the first time and had to issue a revised edition. Since he's supposedly, perfect, inerrant, and omni-everything, that doesn't make me confident that the revision is any more accurate than the first edition.
@Joseph Polanco That bit about the *new* covenant kinda gives it away.
God fucked up with that old covenant, so here's a new one.
Religion .... 99% trying to explain itself, 1% reality
Religions exist alright, - it's the God claim that remains unproven !
@@tonydarcy1606 How can that be when the universe and everything in it is evidence of Him and Jesus Christ decisively shows God to us?
That's quite a claim man. Care to back it up?
It is truly bewildering that some people respected Ravi. Rarely have I witnessed such convoluted philosophical gymnastics.
"...Only historical document that claims Jesus didn't die on the cross"
Ummmm....
I'm curious, what other historical documents claim Jesus didn't die on the cross?
I assume you mean a document from the first few hundred years AD, which assumes Jesus existed but argues (or at least asserts) that he didn't die on the cross.
@@davidlovesyeshua Off hand, I don't think I know of anything pre 200's. The gospel of Barabbas is often cited, but there aren't any copies available predating 1500. The earliest mention of such a document with that title isn't older than 400AD.
Ravi is misrepresenting the Islamic Position of Jesus. Qur'an does affirm that it was made to look like Jesus died on the cross, so in one way or the another it's agreeing about a Crucifixion.
"No religion required." Sounds good to me.
Religion seems to only muddy the waters when simpler explanations make perfect sense.
And sometimes the truth isn't simple and easy to understand but it's better to accept that than simple and incorrect conclusions.
I think that is on for a T-shirt.
NO RELIGION REQUIRED.
in fact it would be good by the front door as well, except I love it when the JW’s knock.
I invite them in and unpack why, as a world view, religion doesn’t work. 2 an a half hours is the longest I’ve kept them.
Holy shit, I'm pretty sure someone used this exact argument on a Street Epistemology channel to justify their beliefs. Needless to say it failed miserably
"jesus christ" did not die in real life on a roman cross. in the books he did, but then again such evidence also proves that batman is real too.
Question: how is Christinty true
Ravi: becuz Islam is false
Audience: applause
Me:wut
(Not to stereotype)
But Christian apologist are concerned to prove that Islam is false than Christianity is true
Ravi: some muslim told me that Islam false so it must be false
He didn't even come close to debunking Islam
All he likes to do is story telling
I met this guy, I met that guy
This happened, that happened
This happens a lot between both religions. People who do interfaith claim that the members of the other religion have visions of their true religion or that the other religions followers follow by faith and are ignorant of their religion, despite both religions have such characteristics
one of the main fallacies is a false dichotomy that if it isn't islam, it must be christianity by default...
The funniest aspect of it all is that Christian apologists and theologians all fail to understand that even if they are correct and do debunk Islam, it does not mean they have also by extension debunked Judaism, Zoroastrianim, Maniqueism, Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Shintoism, Rastafarianism, the Baha'i Faith, or any other religion that I am not acquainted with, of which there are ultimately thousands. But even if he did debunk these thousands of religions, it does not prove Christianity is true either. In fact, by disproving Islam, he only helps increase the probability that other religions are true as well.
To be honest, I've been into this topic as a sideline observer for around 12 years now during my "Holy shit, TH-cam is f'in awesome!"* phase from 2006 but mainly in 2007 it became magical. Y!Answers (R&S) was amazing back thentoo. I became interested in Thunderf00t's *"Why Do We Laugh At Creationists?"* series and loved it!
I'm beginning to be worn out from this topic... but not yet. *Paulogia* is amazing. He's so calm and direct. Keep it up man! 💓
He thinks Christianity is the true religion but I'm sure the people that worshipped Mithras thought he was the true religion.
Even as a Christian I never thought Ravi was that interesting.
His smugness rubbed me the wrong way.
All those politely stated recollections of how he won debates with other greats when nobody was there to see it happen.
I'm surprised you never mentioned his sordid history. How he used his influence for sexual purposes.
It's like watching a movie where they cut away for an important action action scene ending. He just implies that the Muslim cleric was won over to Christianity's side by this one conversation in order to wow the audience into thinking he made a point
This video aged well.
Paraphrasing,
"Jewish, Roman, Pagan and Christian historians affirm Jesus' death on the cross."
I'll give you the Christian sources. As for the rest, you're going to need to produce the evidence.
Hell, I'm willing to give him the whole thing. There really was a man named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans for political purposes.
Now prove he really rose from the dead afterwards. Part of the punishment of crucifixion is to throw the corpse into an unmarked mass grave, so no one can give respect to the dead. Joseph of Arimathea was probably made up for 2 purposes: to fit Jesus into the "buried with the rich" prophecy, and to claim the tomb was empty and prove it using the fact that nobody brought the body to refute it.
Of course comments are turned off on that video. Because they can make claims all day, but cannot defend them from our questions and criticisms.
outside of holy texts, what proof is there for the existance or crucifiction of jesus? i've been told the romans had no record of it at all, is this true?
Nobody who was a contemporary of Jesus wrote about him.
Jesus supposedly lived circa 5 BCE to 28 CE. The Romans have plenty of written records for this period of time, including those concerning Pontius Pilate. But not a single mention of Jesus.
Incidentally, Pilate was documented to have been summoned to Rome by the Emperor, to be reprimanded for his arbitrary killing of too many Jews. The idea that Pilate killed Jesus, even though never specifically mentioned in any documents, seems totally plausible to me. Jesus would have been just one of Pilate's many victims.
But ... the supposed _resurrection_ of this Jesus ... sounds like *bovine faeces* to me.
There's very little evidence either of the life, death, or resurrection of Jesus. Paul is the nearest and he was writing about 20 years after the resurrection.
@@tonydarcy1606 ... after the _claimed_ resurrection.
Ravi Zacharias was a great speaker - even if everything he said was nonsense.
I never found him particularly interesting. I've listened to a lot of Christian radio over the years (as a Christian and atheist) and always found my attention drifting when Zacharias came on.
Great speaker? Annoying perhaps
It’s like a circular firing squad. All or at least most religions claim that other religions are false. They all disprove each other.
The apologists' apocryphal stories of besting a well-qualified opponent with some bit of trite rhetoric or logical trap are like fingernails on a chalkboard to me after 20+ years of hearing them. Zacharias' stories are some of the worst. I'm glad Paul unpacked this one, and interestingly it's on the same morning that a video by Viced Rhino took up this subject of how apologists dishonestly frame many of their most important stories. I feel blessed! :-)
Viced Rhino's video: th-cam.com/video/WWRhZ7Rz4qw/w-d-xo.html
8:03 ive noticed this as a pattern when Ravi answers a question during Q and A. The Question is specific. VERY SPECIFIC. His answers often involved poetry quotes, knowledge of other religions, and eloquently stated thoughts on human existance and meaning.....when all he had to say was..."Yes. Here's the salt. Would you like some pepper as well?"
It is the one true view because they want your money more then any of the other religions.
This blew me away back in the day. Ravi made me dismiss Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris outright. I really wish I had never crossed RZIM back then. 😞
Ravi Zacharias? Wasn't he the one who had the sex scandal and crimes?
...sorry that didn't narrow it down that much.
One man’s truth can be different from another !! facts, are what is important
I was a Ravi lover during my last attempt at being saved. I thought he was so eloquent and deep. Back when my heart would bleed for the unsaved humans. Then I started watching his debates and more debates and more.... so began my trip down the youtube activist athiest worldview rabbit hole of knowledge and delight. Make sense?
@Joseph Polanco You left Yahweh of the list, he 'was' also an oppressive, sadistic, demoniacal atheist who, collectively, murdered hundreds of millions of helpless men, women and little children? Read the Bible if you think I am wrong.
@Joseph Polanco If you are asking the question then you clearly have not read the Old Testament.
In the OT god kills 2,821,364 people and that does not include the total eradication of the human race other that Noah and his family, just the direct deaths he caused himself. The estimate for total deaths by god is near 25 Million
The Devil on the other hand only killed 10 and that was in a bet with god.
Also an Atheist is someone that does not believe in a god and since your god does not believe in a god then he is an Atheist
Now of course your god did not really kill anyone because he is totally fictitious.
Unless of course you have some evidence to the contrary.
Here is a list for you, is this enough evidence?
dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html
@Joseph Polanco He threatens the innocent who spares the guilty, none of that makes any sense. How does killing a bunch of kids because they made fun of a bald guy fit in with that?
@Joseph Polanco You are the one making the claim that your god exists so it is your job to prove it and provide evidence, I cant believe you are still asking that question in 2020 it was laughed off the debate floor decades if not centuries ago.
Can you provide proof that I, SulaS, did not create the universe?
Here are three questions for you to see if you can answer;
1. How certain are you that the things that you believe to be true, about your god, are actually factually true?
Answer on a scale of 1-100 where 1= "I have all doubt and no certainty" and 100 = " "I am totally convinced that the things that I believe to be true are actually objectively true"
2. How important is it to you, in your life, that what you believe to be true is actually factually true?
Again 1-100 where 1 = "I don't care if what I believe to be true is actually true I just want (need) to believe it" and 100 = "It is vitally important to me that everything that I believe to be true is actually factually true"
3. What method did you personally use to verify that the things that you claim to be true are actually factually true?
Don't bother answering question 3 if you are brutally honest with yourself and give a score for question two of below 10 as you would have already lost the argument but if you answered 100 for question two then you better have a damned good answer to question three.
@Joseph Polanco Maxim semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit
As a Christian, I remember watching him on a video responding to someone in the audience asking him why homosexuality was wrong (at least that is what I remembered). And his response wasn't an in depth explanation like I was expecting, but my takeaway from that video was a "well you have your own morality, I got mine" and it was such a let down. And yet people were praising him in the comments.
I think before learning about certain critical thinking terms or before examining Christianity, the only way I could describe the apologetics I was given for the hard questions I had was "unsatisfying". And that seems to continue till this day.
With an estimated 3,000 distinct and 45,000 sub brands of Christianity, it's technically not a single worldview. There are brands with differing worldviews.
I LOVE Mystery Men! Totally underrated.
Agreed.
This was my first view of Paulogia, and I found it very interesting. I was taken aback at first by the use of an animated character as the narrator, but on reflection, I realized that the information content minus the animation is not different from a book on tape. I have never heard of Ravi Zacharias, and I did enjoy seeing his argument dissected.
I am wondering who gave Ravi Zacharias the wand when it came to coming up with the "right" set of criteria for discerning truth: origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. I find it fascinating that Ravi did not appeal to some overwhelming god as the source of all truth. It would have been his strongest argument. When someone pushing a religious world view depends on reasoning for the answer to a fundamental question, he gets into the deep end of the pool without adequate preparation. The parts of Ravi's talk that we saw had about as much to do with knowing some ultimate truth as it would if the question had been "Where am I going to go on my next vacation?". It would have been interesting to see how Zacharias would have dealt with the Paulogia answer to these four criteria. (as an aside, the last time I attended such an event was decades ago when I was in high school. The traveling evangelist in question posed essentially the same question to the local audience - "How do you know xtianity is true?" - but he was more intellectually honest than Ravi in concluding that it was by faith alone that the truth of xtianity could be known.)
I prefer questions that do not presuppose the answer. "What can or do I know for certain (i.e., without a doubt)?" - does not presuppose a particular, preferred answer (xtianity). However, the resulting analysis is not the kind of stuff you can stand up on a stage and expound without putting to sleep such a large audience already convinced of the preferred answer. It seems clear that finding truth is a fourth order factor in the continued survival of the bulk of the human species from the seventeenth century to the present time. I suspect that it (finding reliable truth) is rapidly going to become first order within the next decade.
If I were given the wand to pose some criteria for answering fundamental questions, I think those criteria would need to include "interest". Whose interests underlie and are being served by the fundamental question and answer? We can safely conclude that religions are largely a tool of those in power to maintain their power by distracting large crowds of the credulous.
Edit: I forgot to add key criteria, viz. answers to fundamental questions need to be internally consistent and testable.
Another great episode of “Apologist VS APOLOGIST: CamVCam Edition”
Ravi's imaginary friends are numerous. God is not the only one in is mind. A great number of his so called "gentlemen he had a discussion with" feels utterly bullshit to me.
Damn right .
@Joseph Polanco If you talk about a generic god that pouffed the Big Bang and then let things run on their own : none.
If you talk about YHWH, well, there's plenty of evidence that what is described in the Bible did not happened.
Once I had a christian girlfriend who just loved to make fun of Mormons and their believes ... until we read the Bibel together... xD
Btw..: It is absolutely possible and in fact highly likely for a multitude of things being wrong at the same time, even if they're in some point contradictory.
I used to have that in common with your Christian girlfriend. Felt I got validation from a preacher I used to watch online who did the same thing.
What stopped me was a couple years later when someone tried to convert me to Islam and ended up succeeding....in making me an atheist.
@@noel090909 let me guess. They thought by debunking christianity, they were proving islam? Lol
Terry Fulds
I cannot stop laughing. Because yes.
Do theists realize how predictable they are? 😂
@Joseph Polanco
Just two things..: Jesus Christ was a jew not a christian. And Satanists are indeed just Christians only rooting for the other team.
@Joseph Polanco
All according to the bible.
What's yours..?
Origin: We all come from East Africa and those progenitors from there.
Meaning: We make meaning, whether for good, bad or indifference.
Morality: We make morality, whether for good, bad or indifference.
Destiny: Death, which is nothing to us. When you are dead, you exist no differently than before you were conceived.
QED every day.
Islam relies on the Old and New Testament? I thought they contradict a lot of it!
For example, Muslims say that God has no son and that Jesus is not the son of God.
Also, I heard that Muslims do not believe that Abraham almost killed Isaac but his other son Ishmael.
Apparently the texts were 'altered' by humans, they claim. Odd God would not make it a priority to correct them sooner, if so.
@@chrissonofpear1384 What do you mean? Where do you have this information from?
@@WadelDee That's just what many Muslims claim, to my recollection. Mohammed too, I think?
@@chrissonofpear1384 What exactly do they claim? That the bible is true but every bible we have has been altered by humans and is therefore unreliable?
The god of Abraham had no son.
He was a single god and the symbol of monotheism.
Then the followers of the deceased Yeshua tried to elevate him to be the equal of Yahweh.
That's when the fighting began.
0:41 That's interesting you say that. While Ravi had his moments, I was surprised that Dr. Geisler held Ravi up as the top living apologist in the world. I even took a class he taught at SES. But when i really listen to his points and argumts and tried to brak them down or summarize them, there was not alot there. Ive heard some say how great he is. They cant tell you what he said, but it was great. He dealt mostly with the existential questions of meaning.
Here's the bottom line. He was mesmerizing... through and through.
"The Republican and Democratic parties are fundamentally different"
Two right-wing, patriotic, heavily Christian parties? Oh yeah, got the whole spectrum covered here, boys.
Jakeeyy1009 It's funny, but true. Both parties are highly capitalistic. This is a fact. As such, they are by definition right-wing parties. Both parties' dominant adherent population is Christian with politicians that assert Christian values. So both parties are Christian. There is nothing unfactual about these claims.
Jakeeyy1009 So saying the USA is a Christian country equates to saying it's a theocracy? You're a massive idiot. So I guess that's why you find it funny. Oh well.
A sure sign of dishonesty is when a person is asked a simple question and takes a rambling ten minutes not to actually answer it.
Midichlorians ugh
That's how you know there is no god.
I HATE when Apologist's attempt to speak on behalf of other people that they clearly don't understand its so condescending and frustrating.
I know this is going to be a good video when you're starting with a clip of Dollar Store Paris Hilton.
Gosh, is that expensive?
More like bargain bin Barbie!
There is no collective view to contain a totality of truth. A worldview is necessarily individual and limited in time and extent. Even if there was one individual in the world that believed and professed nothing that was not true they would not know everything that could be known or have knowledge outside of their limited reach forward and back in time. Even so, they would be subject to belief and disbelief by every other more ordinary person on the planet. One True Worldview is inherently meaningless. An idealized abstraction.
The term "Christian" covers an enormous range of beliefs and taboos. When they have a firm grip on power (like now) they will turn on each other like wolves over some detail of their shared fantasy.
This was a good video, since I grew up listening to this dude. Hearing his deal dissected is pretty cool.
Edit: After watching the video, it kinda just feels like Dr. Zacharias just tells a bunch of stories that end on emotional notes and I don't know why I used to enjoy his talks as a teen.
One other complexity, and point of failure to the Jenga model, is that between the OT and NT the jews adopted theology and philosophy from the Egyptians and Persians (and pagans) during times of captivity. It explains many of the differences between beliefs in the OT and what the Catholic church believes today. So, the rest is built on more points of failure than just the OT. But, that doesn’t add to coherence, rather it detracts from it.
Maybe it's just having lived with nearly 4 yrs of Pres.Trump's 'tells' when he's lying that made my ears perk up, but when Ravi started saying that the Shiite leader in Jerusalem began his address to him by saying 'sir', i rolled my eyes and kind of tuned out.
Foreign accents seem to enthrall American evangelicals.
CRUCIFIXION, RESURRECTION, AND PAIN
If God sent Jesus from at his right side in heaven, to earth to die (crucifixion) for our sins, only to be resurrected, rejoining God in heaven at his right side, then where did the sacrifice come in? And if he did die on the cross, he felt no pain as his father (God) had the power to take his pain away.
To your last point:
According to Christian doctrine, Jesus gave up the divine advantages during his earth-life in order to be «fully man and fully god» so he could not have availed himself of divine protection against pain. Remember he felt abandoned by his father (according to the gospels)
Just cause God could have taken the pain away, doesn't mean he ever did. OT God is a bit of a psychopath so he probably didn't.
But you're right on the sacrifice part, *all the sins of humanity* are apparently only worth 1 bad weekend.
For starters, I'm not sure describing the crucifixion as a sacrifice, even works on a literal basis. Then again I don't know that much of the official biblical sacrificial rules, and definitions. But about all I see in common with other biblical examples of sacrifice is that Jesus was said to have been killed. Any connotations of ritual giving seem entirely lacking.
Second, a God that likes bloody sacrifices isn't very appealing to me. And a God making enormous changes to his policies based primarily on a sacrifice seems a bit messed up.
@Steve Webber Yeah, I get what you are saying. Good point!
I think it is important, when we discuss whether Christian doctrine "make sense", that we know what the doctrines are. So, that's where I can help (I studied theology for a while and grew up in an evangelical environment)
The thinking about "sacrifice" was that a HUMAN would have to be sacrificed to atone for HUMAN sins. (So Jesus had to be "fully human")
Also this HUMAN would have to be sinless so the sacrifice would be "perfect". Something like: Gods perfect son's life was worth the same as all humans combined. (So Jesus had to be divine and perfect at the same time)
Now, all this doesn't make any sense to me either. I'm just reporting what I learned "back then" so that when you criticize this, you are not criticizing me.
If God fixed "something" for us, then GREAT!
If he didn't, oh well (I don't know what God wants anyway)
And if he doesn't exist, then he doesn't exist no matter what we think or don't think... :)
@@busylivingnotdying Thanks for the clarification. I think I have a basic understanding of the teachings at least.
Part of my problem in discussing my problems with the sacrifice is it's hard to find a coherent core that makes sense to build around.
I't pretty easy to say God sacrificed his only son to forgive us our sins, or save us as some like to put it. But when I start getting into the nuts and bolts of what that actually means, things start falling apart. What exactly is he forgiving who for, and why do they need forgiveness? And is this justice only relevant to how a persons afterlife will come out?
The sacrifice was apparently required, planned, and executed by God. I don't know of any prior announcement mentioning a need for the sacrifice of a sinless man.
Without much justification or reasons provided for that sacrifice, it seems a bit arbitrary from an outside perspective.
I imagine there's more than one school of thought as to what exactly God was forgiving. If he is forgiving the original sin from the fall, it proposes transfers of the assignment of guilt from the guilty parties to parties that had nothing to do with it. And then the transfer of punishment to Jesus. I don't know of any rational system of justice that would allow such systems.
I think it could be more rational to consider the fall as a metaphorical explanation of mankind's nature, and thus he is forgiving us for an inherent aspect of our nature. But then he created us as we are, and he's supposed to be perfect and omniscient.
If he doesn't like humanity to be as it is, rather than a tepid act of forgiveness, why would God not change the nature of humanity? And yes the biblical God can do that without destroying free will.
Christians keep going on about the merciful and just nature of God, but I just don't see that in the bible.
I could go on, but it all comes to the point that even the basic fundamental claims of Christianity seem to need a lot of rationalizations to make them work. If Occam's razor is brought into play, things get rather shredded.
It says so in the Judeo/Christian Bible
written by Judeo/Christians.
The best way to show the failure of all religions, is to watch apologists for each one debate each other. They all make-up endless excuses to justify their internal inconsistencies, proving that it can be done for virtually any fantasy. "Speakers Corner" debates on TH-cam are a good example.
@Joseph Polanco What has this to do with my comment? Or are you just sad troll looking for attention with cut and past whataboutism?
@Joseph Polanco Heere's your sign
th-cam.com/video/9a3eCHij4Vo/w-d-xo.html
Ravi's argument that Christianity is more truthful than other religions looks like a nice twofer.
He can depend on his Christian audience to agree with a nice dose of confirmation bias.
And he can reinforce that bias and sense of superiority, by praising their belief structure.
And of course a few people I know would take exception to claiming the Christian religion as particularly truthful.
To be fair, properly analyzing the validity of truth claims of Christianity would be too complex and time consuming to properly fit into a speech like that, but he chose it as an example.
Interesting, seems like the allegations against Ravi hadn't come out yet at the time of this video.
@@robertwarner-ev7wpyou gotta love how he talks about truth, and everything about him was a lie.
A genuine question. Do ANY non-Biblical historical sources assert that Jesus was crucified, or do they just report the existence of people who believed that Jesus was crucified?
None do. Not a single one. The extent of the non-biblical sources that aren't debated as to whether they are authentic or not is basically "Some guys believed in some guy named Jesus or something".
Why would it matter what the Muslims think was the cause of Jesus' death? When they speak of Jesus, they say "peace be upon him", just like they do any other prophet of the Abrahamic religions. There is a deep respect for all of the Jewish and Christian prophets, though the interpretations of their lives may differ. This isn't the reason there is conflict between these faiths. Why is it relevant at all?
So if someone makes a claim but other people say its false then its false? Just them saying its false means its false? Who believes this crap? Imagine if a courtroom worked that way…