Obviously god does not CLEARLY show himself. If He would, he would just be showing up at our door instead of a 17 year old Mormon named Braxton. If there is anything. obvious about God is that he shows Himself subtlety.
On whether God should come down and settle it: If the consequences for not believing or not understanding him is eternal Hellfire, then he absolutely should come down and should be expected to do so. Otherwise he's immoral.
Immoral by what standard? There has to be some objective way of measuring if neglecting to come down is objectively and absolutely immoral. Who cares if it’s only relative. It’s immoral in our society, sure, but with subjective morality that may not be the case in other cultures.
@@Migler1Objective morality is only really possible from a religious perspective, so we would have to argue that it would be immoral from the perspective of God if we wanted to say that God not showing himself is objectively immoral. This would mean that we would have to argue that God would condemn his own actions, which he wouldn't, so God not showing himself cannot be objectively immoral because no action God does or does not do can possibly be anything other than perfectly moral, as he is the sole arbiter of morality in the religious worldview.
Perhaps if we don't choose God for ourselves without him directly revealing himself it " doesn't count" as it were. Perhaps revealing himself directly to all of us would make it impossible for any of us to get into heaven. I don't believe this, but it is possible
@mememaster695 Correct. And, of course, this is a totally unsatisfying answer for a non-believer who is questioning the morality of a supposed god. The theist says, "Just throw out your idea of morality, assume everything God does is good, then go from there." The non-believer might ask, "Why would a morally supreme God give someone a moral intuition that goes against his objective moral standard, and then punish them for immoral actions, or even immoral thoughts?" Well, obviously, for a good reason. Duh. Convinced yet?
Even IF there was one religion that got it right, what usually happens? Schisms! All religions divide up and divide up again. Very strange behavior for a true religion to do.
@@Grimtheorist Like putting a fish on land and claiming "free will". Not my fault, it ate from the forbidden algae. Which I knew it would do, but not my fault.
In the example about the argument in the courtroom: what if the judge asked each to describe the parent and the descriptions do not match? Would they assume the parent exists, or would they consider then that one or both parties’ perception of the parent, or the parent’s very existence, could be inaccurate?
I would consider if they were actually talking about their parents or if they were repeating what other people had said about their parents without having seen them themselves. Or maybe they were talking about separate people, but those people were not in fact their parents? Maybe they were mistaken. Maybe they were lying. But there wouldn't really be any conclusions to make other than what the claims being made are.
Many people in the past were terrible and evil. God punished them. Read what people were doing, things that never came into God's heart at Jeremiah 7: 31.
But what if one of the children describes the single parent as a 6'5 blonde haired blue-eyed man who likes to listen to rock and roll music and is a vegetarian, while the other says that the supposed parent is 5 ft 2, and a Hispanic female who likes pop music and is not a vegetarian. At what point do the differences in the two stories imply that there is in fact no parent at all, and that one or both children are simply making up the parent figure?
We know children have parents, and parents are a subgroup of 'people', so they share all the properties of 'people'. We don't know if God exists, and we don't know what properties it could have.
According to the general consensus of scholarship *(even critical Christian scholars),* YHWH was originally incorporated into the Canaanite pantheon as a son of the Canaanite high god El before inheriting the top spot in the pantheon and El's wife Athirat (Asherah) before religious reforms "divorced" them. El's pantheon in Ugarit (modern day Ras Shamra in Syria) is called the *Elohim,* literally the plural of El. Interestingly, the Biblical god is also referred to numerous times as Elohim. If you want to see if El is fictional, just read his mythology in the Ugaritic/Canaanite texts. "The mysterious Ugaritic text Shachar and Shalim tells how (perhaps near the beginning of all things) *El* came to shores of the sea and saw two women who bobbed up and down. *El* was sexually aroused and took the two with him, killed a bird by throwing a staff at it, and roasted it over a fire. He asked the women to tell him when the bird was fully cooked, and to then address him either as husband or as father, for he would thenceforward behave to them as they called him. They saluted him as husband. He then lay with them, and they gave birth to Shachar ("Dawn") and Shalim ("Dusk"). Again *El* lay with his wives and the wives gave birth to "the gracious gods", "cleavers of the sea", "children of the sea". The names of these wives are not explicitly provided, but some confusing rubrics at the beginning of the account mention the goddess *Athirat (Asherah),* who is otherwise *El's* chief wife, and the goddess Raḥmayyu ("the one of the womb"), otherwise unknown." *"First, a god named El predates the arrival of the Israelites into Syria-Palestine.* Biblical usage shows El was not just a generic noun, but often a proper name for Israel’s God (e.g., Gen 33:20: “El, the God of Israel”)." "I should add here that it is very clear from the grammar that the noun nachalah in v. 9 should be translated “inheritance.” *Yahweh receives Israel as his “inheritance” (nachalah), just as the other sons of El received their nations as their inheritance (nachal, v. 8).* With this verb, especially in the Hiphil, the object is always what is being given as an inheritance. Thus, Israel is given to Yahweh as his inheritance. ((Here I’m indebted to Dan McClellan.)) It would make no sense for Elyon to give himself an inheritance. Moreover, as I’ve argued elsewhere, it is not just the Gentile nations that are divided up according to the number of the *sons of El.* It is all of humankind, i.e., “the sons of Adam.” This clearly includes Israel. And the sons of Adam are not divided up according to the number of the *sons of El,* plus one (i.e., plus Elyon). They are divided up, according to the text, *solely* according to the number of the *sons of El.* *Thus, that Yahweh receives Israel as his inheritance makes Yahweh one of the sons of El mentioned in v. 8. Any other construal of the text would constitute its rewriting.* A Sumerian hymn speaks to the goddess: “Nanshe, your divine powers are not matched by any other divine powers.” *Does this mean that Nanshe was the high goddess, that there were no gods above her? No, it does not.* Nanshe was the daughter of Enki, the high god. *In Sumerian mythology, as with Ugaritic, Israelite, Babylonian, and others, in the ancient past, the high god (Enki, in this case) divided up the world and assigned his children certain domains.* Nanshe was given a limited domain (the modern Persian Gulf) and was tasked with maintaining social justice there. *This is exactly what we see in Deuteronomy 32 with Yahweh. Yahweh is given a limited domain (Israel) and is given authority over his people, to punish them, as well as to protect and defend them against foreign enemies.* That Yahweh, like Nanshe, is said to have incomparable divine power *does not* mean that he is not subordinate to the high god who gave him his domain. *It is also of note that Nanshe, like Baal, Yahweh, and so many other deities, evolved over time. Her domain increased, and she was promoted in the pantheon (although she never became the high goddess)."* *"The Most Heiser: Yahweh and Elyon in Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32 - Religion at the Margins"* based on the *majority scholarly consensus.* (Written by Thom Stark who is a Christian) *"Michael Heiser: A Unique Species? - Religion at the Margins"* (A second response to Michael Heiser) *"Excerpt from “Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan” by John Day - Lehi's Library."* *"The Table of Nations: The Geography of the World in Genesis 10"* - TheTorah.com (Excluding the short narrative on Nimrod (vv. 8-12), *which appears to be a later addition,* Genesis 10 contains *70* names of nations or cities, a number that was symbolic of totality. Similarly, the descendants of Jacob were *70* in number (Gen 46:37; Exod 1:5), *as were the sons of the supreme Canaanite god El, with whom YHWH became equated.)* *"Polytheism and Ancient Israel’s Canaanite Heritage. Part V | theyellowdart"* (Of course, much of this [i.e., that Israel worshiped El and Asherah alongside YHWH] is really to be expected given that recent syntheses of the *archaeological, cultural, and literary data* pertaining to the emergence of the nation of Israel in the Levant *show that most of the people who would eventually compose this group were originally Canaanite. As the Hebrew Bible notes, the Hebrew language itself is a Canaanite language, literally the “lip of Canaan” (שְׂפַת כְּנַעַן; Is. **19:18**), and so it cannot often be distinguished by modern scholars from other Canaanite inscriptions on purely linguistic grounds.)* *"Ugarit - New World Encyclopedia"* (Ugaritic religion centered on the chief god, Ilu or El, whose titles included "Father of mankind" and "Creator of the creation." The Court of El was referred to as the (plural) 'lhm or ***Elohim,*** a word ***later used by the biblical writers to describe the Hebrew deity*** and translated into English as "God," in the singular. El, which was ***also the name of the God of Abraham,*** was described as an aged deity with white hair, seated on a throne.) *"Mark Smith: Yahweh as El’s Son & Yahweh’s Ascendency - Lehi's Library"* (Mark Smith is a Catholic) *"God, Gods, and Sons (and Daughters) of God in the Hebrew Bible. Part III | theyellowdart"* *"02 | December | 2009 | Daniel O. McClellan - Psalm 82"* (Daniel McClellan is a Mormon) *"Elohim | Daniel O. McClellan"* (Refer to the article "Angels and Demons (and Michael Heiser)") *"God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible - Almost."* (Pay attention to whose wife Asherah (Athirat) is in the Ugaritic/Canaanite texts and how she became the wife of YHWH/Yahweh) *"Yahweh's Divorce from the Goddess Asherah in the Garden of Eden - Mythology Matters."* *"Asherah, God's Wife in Ancient Israel. Part IV - theyellowdart"* *"The Gates of Ishtar - El, was the original god of the bible."* *"The Gates of Ishtar - Anath in the Elephantine Papyri"* (In addition to Asherah (Athirat) being the consort of Yahweh, it appears some Israelites also viewed the Canaanite goddess Anat(h) as Yahweh's consort) *"Canaanite Religion - New World Encyclopedia"* (Refer to the section "Relationship to Biblical Religion") *"The Syncretization of Yahweh and El : reddit/AcademicBiblical"* (For a good summary of all of the above articles) Watch Professor Christine Hayes who lectures on the Hebrew Bible at Yale University. Watch lecture 2 from 40:40 to 41:50 minutes, lecture 7 from 30:00 minutes onwards, lecture 8 from 12:00 to 17:30 minutes and lecture 12 from 34:30 minutes onwards. Watch *"Pagan Origins of Judaism"* by Sigalius Myricantur and read the description in the video to see the scholarship the video is based on. Watch *"How Monotheism Evolved"* by Sigalius Myricantur and watch up to at least 21:40. Watch *"Atheism - A History of God (The Polytheistic Origins of Christianity and Judaism)"* (By a former theist) Watch *"The Origins of Yahweh"* by Derreck Bennett at Atheologica.
Nevertheless, the historical reconstruction that El was the chief god of the Israelites is not indebted only to the testimony of the (rather late) biblical witness of P. *Numerous biblical texts attest to the fact that the titles, functions, and the imagery associated with the Canaanite god El, as revealed by the Ugaritic texts and the Canaanite myth of Elkunirša, were assimilated into the profile of the deity YHWH.* According to the Ugaritic texts, El was known for his *wisdom* (e.g., KTU2 1.4.V.65[6]) and *great age* (’ab šnm, *“Father of Years,”* and drd, *“Ageless One,”* in KTU2 1.4.IV.24 and 1.10.III.6, respectively),[7] his *compassionate nature* (lţpn il dp’id, *“Kind El, the Compassionate One,”* e.g., KTU2 1.16.IV.9), his role as *father of the gods and humanity* (’ab ’adm, *“father of humanity,”* KTU2 1.14..III.47, and bny bnwt, *“creator of creatures,”* KTU2 1.17.I.24) and *creator of the cosmos.* [8] El was the *divine King* (e.g., KTU2 1.2.III.5-6) and the *head of the pantheon or divine council* (referred to variously as the dr ’il, *“circle of El/Family of El,”* KTU2 1.15.III.19; mpħrt bn ’il, *“the assembly of the sons of El,”* KTU2 1.65.3; bn ’il, *“the sons of El,”* KTU2 1.40.33, 41; pħr kbbm, *“assembly of the stars,”* KTU2 1.10.I.3-4; ‘dt ’ilm, *“assembly of the gods,”* KTU2 1.15.II.7; cf. KTU2 1.2.I; 1.3V; 1.4 IV-V) which met at the sacred mountain. *His consort was the goddess Athirat who bore him seventy sons* (šb‘m bn ’atrt, *“the seventy sons of Athirat,”* KTU2 1.4.VI.46). El was also known for his *divine patronage and blessing of progeny to humans* (as in the Epic of Kirta; see, for example, KTU2 1.14.III.46-51), for his *appearances to humans in dreams* (e.g., KTU2 1.14.I.35-37), as *being a healer* (KTU2 1.16.V-VI), and for his *dwelling at the sacred mountain* (e.g., KTU2 1.2.III.5-6) at the *sources of the mythical rivers* (KTU2 1.2.III.4; 1.3.V.6; 1.4.IV.20-22; 1.17.V.47-48) in a *tent* (KTU2 1.2.III.5; 1.3.V.8; 1.4.IV.24; 1.17.V.49; c.f. the Canaanite myth Elkunirša which *describes El’s abode as a tent[9]).[10]* *To underscore the fact that terminology and imagery originally used for the god El was adopted by the Israelites in their descriptions of YHWH,* the following brief summary might be placed in comparison to the discussion of El above: YHWH is an *aged, patriarchal deity* (Ps. 102:28; Job 36:26; Is. 40:28; Dan. 7.9-14, 22), *a father* (Deut. 32:6; Is. 63:16; 64:7; Jer. 3:4, 19; 31:9, etc.), *merciful and gracious* (Ex. 34:6; Jon. 4:2; Joel 2:13; Ps. 8615; 103:8; 145:8, etc.), *a divine patron who bestows the blessing of progeny upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,* often manifesting himself in *dreams or visions, a healer* (Gen. 20:17; Num. 12:13; 2 Kgs. 20:5, 8; Ps. 107:20, etc.), who *dwells in a tent* (Ps. 15:1; 27:6; 91:10; 132:3) *amidst the heavenly waters* (Ps. 47:5; 87; Is. 33: 20-22; Ez. 47:1-12, etc.), the *creator of the cosmos,* who is enthroned as *heavenly King* in the *divine council* (1 Kgs. 22:19; Is. 6:1-8; cf. Ps. 29:1-2; 82; 89: 5-8, etc.) on the *sacred mount of assembly* (e.g., Is. 14:13). Additionally, in much Israelite religious practice throughout the monarchic period, *YHWH had a divine consort, the goddess Asherah, the Hebrew equivalent of Ugaritic Athirat.[11]* (Originally the wife of El) *"When Jehovah Was Not the God of the Old Testament. Part II - theyellowdart"* Watch Professor Christine Hayes who lectures on the Hebrew Bible at Yale University. Watch lecture 2 from 40:40 to 41:50 minutes, lecture 7 from 30:00 minutes onwards, lecture 8 from 12:00 to 17:30 minutes and lecture 12 from 34:30 minutes onwards. Watch *"Pagan Origins of Judaism"* by Sigalius Myricantur and read the description in the video to see the scholarship the video is based on. Watch *"How Monotheism Evolved"* by Sigalius Myricantur and watch up to at least 21:40. ------------------------------------------------------------------ In addition, look up the below articles. *"Jews and Arabs Descended from Canaanites - Biblical Archaeology Society."* ("The study in Cell not only establishes that the ancient Israelites were ***descended from the Canaanites,*** but also establishes that the Canaanite people across the separate city-states of the southern Levant, and over a period of 1,500 years, were a genetically cohesive people.") *"The Canaanites weren't annihilated, they just 'moved' to Lebanon - The Times of Israel."* *"Ancient Canaanite religion explained* - everything.explained.today" *"Archeology of the Hebrew Bible - NOVA - PBS"* ("Many scholars now think that *most of the early Israelites were originally Canaanites, displaced Canaanites,* displaced from the lowlands, from the river valleys, displaced geographically and then displaced ideologically.") *"Origins of Judaism explained* - everything.explained.today" ("According to the current academic historical view, the origins of Judaism lie in the Bronze Age amidst polytheistic ancient Semitic religions, ***specifically evolving out of Ancient Canaanite polytheism,*** then co-existing with Babylonian religion, and syncretizing elements of Babylonian belief into the worship of Yahweh as reflected in the early prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. (The Torah)". *Refer to the bibliography at the bottom of the page)* *"Canaanite languages - Britannica"* ("Group of Northern Central or Northwestern Semitic languages including ***Hebrew,*** Moabite, Phoenician, and Punic.") *"El - New World Encyclopedia"* (Refer to the section "El Outside the Bible" and the fact that *most of the early Israelites were originally indigenous or displaced Canaanites)* *"El (deity) explained* - everything.explained.today" (Refer to section "Ugarit and the Levant" and the fact that *most of the ancient Israelites were originally indigenous or displaced Canaanites* and see how Yahweh, later conflated with El (Yahweh-El(ohim)) is fictional) *"The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan - Essay - The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History"* *"Canaanite Phoenician Origin of the God of the Israelites."* *"The Phoenician (Canaanite) God Resheph in the Bible - Is That in the Bible?"* *"How the Jews Invented God and Made Him Great- Archaeology - Haaretz."* *"When the Jews believed in other gods - Archaeology - Haaretz"* *"The Invention of God - Maclean's"* *"How Did the Bible’s Editors Conceal Evidence of Israelite Polytheism - Evolution of God by Robert Wright."* *"A Theologically Revised Text: Deuteronomy 32:8-9 - Ancient Hebrew Poetry."* *"Biblical Contradiction #3: Which God is the Creator of the Heavens and Earth: Yahweh or El?"* - Dr Steven DiMattei *"Biblical Contradiction #27. Are Yahweh and El the Same God or Not?"* - Dr Steven DiMattei *"Biblical Contradiction **#294**, **#295**, **#296**. Which god liberated Israel from Egypt: Yahweh or El?"* - Dr Steven DiMattei *"Quartz Hill School of Theology - B425 Ugarit and the Bible."* *"The Origins of Yahweh and the Revived Kenite Hypothesis - Is That in the Bible?"* *"Yahweh, god of metallurgy - Fewer Lacunae."* *"Polytheistic Roots of Israelite Religion - Fewer Lacunae."* *"Yahweh was just an ancient Canaanite god. We have been deceived! - Escaping Christian Fundamentalism"* *"Religious Studies: El, Yahweh and the Development of Monotheism in Ancient Israel."* *"Yhwh, God of Edom - Daniel O. McClellan."*
I never understand how Christian God could witness Buddhist monks and Islamic imams engage in complete self denying behavior in their search for “transcendence” and they aren’t ever given a correction that they should be following Jesus
But that's _easy_ to understand! In nature, there is an extremely common pattern of *competing opposites.* Predator and prey are in conflict. Men and women are in conflict. Traditionalists and idealists are in conflict. Life and environment are in conflict. That eternal tug of war, that constant competition, drives both sides to evolve over time. The prey gets faster as the predator gets stronger. The right dominates culture for a while, then the left dominates culture for a while; and we see what each side gets wrong and gets right. *Ever seen that Star Trek episode where five different species are all given different parts of the same puzzle, and the point is for them to let go of their hatred/distrust of each other enough to all collaborate on the solution? It is also a test, to see if they have all developed to the point where they are **_capable_** of forgiveness and coperation.* We humans obviously aren't yet.
In science, we start with competing beliefs but there is a way to evaluate them and we eventually see convergence. While religious people claim to have a way to know the truth, what we see is a divergence of beliefs. Personal revelation is not a reliable way to determine truth.
Yeah, I like pointing to modern consensus on things like the age of the Earth and the timeline for that convergence of opinion. Like, we have articles published by _Lord_ Kelvin in the 1890s in Nature where he, along with physicist coleagues, argued the sun was ~20,000,000 years old and that the geologists and biologists must be wrong to claim at least a billion years and should bow to the superior, proper science of physics (I'm barely exaggerating the tone of the exchanges, the text reads so catty). Yet, only about 30 years later, everyone agreed the now-late Kelvin was wrong by a factor of 100 thanks to evidence from the physics of radioactivity (which wasn't known at the time and so screwed up his calculations for the age of the sun, but wasn't a factor in geology and evolutionary biology). Another thing worth pointing out is that scientific disagreements include testable predictions which, once evaluated, would necessarily support one hypothesis over another. You don't and can't have that in religion outside of prophecy which is never specific enough to actually settle anything other than "the end times must be later than we thought".
The fact that religion is present in almost every human society isn't proof that it is anthropologically a natural fact about our species and not some supernatural reality?
The religious confusion argument is great. Theists often want to advance an argument like "God is the best explanation for the universe", sidestepping the "we don't know" type of atheist response. They try to do the watchmaker thing and appeal to fine-tuning. The religious confusion argument turns this on its head though: what is the best explanation for all the different religous points of view? Why are people so confused about this? I don't really buy the "minor details" side of the argument though, because it's the theist who argues that the seemingly-inconsequential is actually of great import to God (what you wear, what you eat, what you do in the bedroom etc) so they can't have their cake and eat it on this point. If it's so important to God that we don't eat shellfish, why is there so little agreement on this (and so much nickel-and-diming over thr technical definition of "fish" and such!) These things would be insiginificant and not worth discussion, if they gave up the position that God says they matter a great deal.
"What is the best explanation for all the different religous points of view? Why are people so confused about this?" There's a parable of three blind men touching an elephant. They all touch different parts of it, and their conclusions about the part they are touching are correct. But also incorrect. One touches the trunk, and thinks that's all there is to the animal. One touches a leg. One touches a tusk. Their failure is that none of them are willing (or able) to have that leap of insight and realize that they are all touching different parts of the same huge, bizarrely-shaped complex organism.
@@AlexReynard See, but that still doesn't solve the problem. If God were, in some sense, an amalgamation of different religious viewpoints, God would be very very contradictory. Fundamental claims on which different religions are based on are mutually exclusive, and without them, the religion falls apart, so how could one piece them together into a coherent whole? But suppose I grant it to you that there is a coherent way to piece together different religions into a coherent God. Then that God would be immoral. Because God is leaving us to our own devices to kill ourselves because we're trying to figure what they are like, when they could just come down and intervene, is immoral. And any argument that God is not immoral over this is just false. The only way to argue that is you believe that morality is whatever God says and does, in which case the worst brutalities would become moral if it's God's wish. With that being said, would you let people kill themselves over trying to settle a dispute/disagreement over something you could easily clear up? I doubt it. And God is supposed to be better than humans, so God should do those things. If God is not better than humans are, then there is no point in worshipping that God.
@@charlie_0823 Great response! Those are some damn good, challenging, fair questions! "See, but that still doesn't solve the problem. If God were, in some sense, an amalgamation of different religious viewpoints, God would be very very contradictory. " You mean like nature is? How it's full of opposing, conflicting forces like predator and prey species competing to the death for resources? I think you're right. "Fundamental claims on which different religions are based on are mutually exclusive, and without them, the religion falls apart, so how could one piece them together into a coherent whole?" Imagine several groups of people who all have a pile of puzzle pieces. They all hate each other, and are convinced, "Only WE have the full picture!" Except, _most of everyone's pieces are fake._ Every group has a small handful of true pieces. To seem wiser and more important than they are, all the groups invent pieces, which they say are holy received wisdom. *Those* are the pieces that conflict with each other. Because they're fake. They're methods of controlling the public. Or ways for the priests to get more gold for themselves. Or sometimes, they're bits of advice that only work for a certain population in a certain region. Even if you were able to sort out all the true pieces from the false ones (and then brushed away all the duplicates), you'd be left with only a small handful of true pieces. *Nowhere near enough to gain an accurate impression of the whole picture.* It's only now, when we have unprecedented communication among so many different cultures, that we are finally beginning to compare and contrast everyone's puzzle pieces. I think one of the reasons Jordan Peterson is an effective speaker is that, while a Christian, he cross-references lots of other religions and mythologies, showing respect to all of them. To put it another way: if a bunch of uncontacted Amazonian tribesmen see a Boeing 747 fly overhead, they can pool their most brilliant minds to try and figure out what the hell that thing in the sky was, and they still *cannot ever get a correct answer*. Not because they're in any way stupid. But because they are simply unaware of too much information that would be critical to identifying what an airplane is. "Because God is leaving us to our own devices to kill ourselves because we're trying to figure what they are like, when they could just come down and intervene, is immoral." Billions of cells in your body die every day. Why don't you come down and intervene to save them? Is it because you're immoral? Or because you can't? "The only way to argue that is you believe that morality is whatever God says and does, in which case the worst brutalities would become moral if it's God's wish." Heck no; I think God is associated with nature and reality and truth. Meaning, he is amoral. Nature contains both beautiful sunsets *and* pediatric cancer. There's nothing moral about nature, it simply IS. An extremely complicated system of conflicting systems and organisms. Similarly, the truth is amoral. It's true that petting animals makes us feel better. It's *also* true that splitting an atom can generate enough energy to destroy a city. Both these things are true, and it's up to us humans to decide what we do with those truths. "If God is not better than humans are, then there is no point in worshipping that God." Sure. So then, what if we're cells in God's body? What if *way* more stuff on the macro level is sentient (planets, suns, maybe comets or energy fields) and they're all just flawed people like the rest of us? Remember that movie Meet Dave? Where there's a big Eddie Murphy spaceship, with lots of tiny little Eddie Murphies inside of him? Maybe that's God and humanity. God's our *_guy._* Maybe, in his world, he's just a random schmuck. Not the greatest hero ever, not the greatest monster, but just someone with good points and bad points like anyone else. But also, think of it this way: If the cells of your body don't do their jobs, you get sick. Maybe even sick enough to die. So maybe there's no need to _worship_ God. Maybe it's just a matter of, if we make ourselves healthier and smarter and more playful, then that has a bigger effect than on just ourselves.
The reality is that God didn't create multiple religions, we did. This happens back in the old testament multiple times essentially didn't want to know god and chased after foreign gods. We even see it today. For instance Muslims primarily reject Christianity over the trinity and the idea of God dying on a cross which is eerily similar to why the Romans initially rejected Christianity because to them their gods were all mighty heroic warriors who were very promiscuous so a God that dies on a cross bearing the sins of his people looks like a failed God not a victorious one. Here is the thing if we reject God for who God actually is and want our own version of God is it any wonder we have so many different religions
@@AlexReynardlol so many false analogies😅. The most egregious is the cell one, which I’ll comment about. Of course I can’t do anything with the cells in my body, cos I didn’t claim to have created them. However, God is claimed to be creator of all things, so the whole “maybe we are cells in his body and he can’t do anything” argument only goes to buttress his incompetence😁 - that’s if he existed anyway.
I would say it's more like different people claiming to be speaking on the parents' behalf telling the children contradictory things. And the things they're claiming were said don't match the written documentation of what the supposed messengers claim they'd been told.
God has never communicated with me; that must mean I’m doing all the important things right. Makes you wonder about all those Christians who think god HAS guided them. They must have been about to do something really evil for god to intervene. No wonder they all feel guilty.
*I've* never communicated with you before either. Does that say _anything_ about you? Maybe it's just that I never noticed you until now. You were just one in a sea of millions of other commenters. To put it another way: How many individual cells in your body are you personally acquainted with?
@@williamwatson4354 do you think I believe Exodus to be a historical account or something? I like my burning bushes and snakes as much as anybody else but jeez
God isn't the issue, and being someone who consideres himself a growing christian, i can tell myself something is okay (self deluding), knowing FULL WELL God doesn't view it as such(the actual truth), which means i am ignoring God to sin. Too much of that leads to him leaving you to your reprobate mind, a mind that even God cannot change (in the sense of not removing your choice/free will; meaning you will never choose him even IF you know he's right, and you're wrong).😮
Holy Spirit is our connection with God, our flesh is our sinful nature, we have the ability to choose to deceive our own selves even when knowing the truth, aka think of the devil and angel on your shoulder and you get to decide which you want to follow
"Why Did God Make Different Religions?" There's a parable of three blind men touching an elephant. They all touch different parts of it, and their conclusions about the part they are touching are correct. But also incorrect. One touches the trunk, and thinks that's all there is to the animal. One touches a leg. One touches a tusk. *Their failure is that none of them are willing (or able) to have that leap of insight and realize that they are all touching different parts of the same huge, bizarrely-shaped complex organism.*
John's gospel was the last book and is witness to everything being fulfilled by the three witness and authorities of baptism for justification in one religion.
10:48 "Religious wars, religious persecution, religious intolerance, dehumanization" Haven't you just turned the argument back into the "problem of evil"?
It’s an argument I find fairly compelling. Why if there is a god and god is not an evolutionary social construct is religious belief, practice and creed so diverse across the world.
In all these discussions, I am surprised that there isn't more focus placed on the fact that even to suggest that human beings could have a "relationship" with an all powerful creator of the universe demonstrates immediately that this is simply a projection of the human mind. No one suggests you could have a relationship with a bunch of mathematical equations, which is what typically describes the universe, or indeed a cluster of galaxies (for the pantheists out there). You can't have a relationship with an ant or a rock. So even to talk about this implies that you think God is some sort of supersized human being. And of course all the stuff about creating man "in his own image" is just an inversion of exactly this. The religious have to believe this because otherwise why would "He" be so similar to man and have emotions, desires and indeed purposes? Referring to God as "He" demonstrates the ludicrous nature of this right at the start.
5:50 This is false. All you have to do is transpose the situation to a more realistic one: Both A and B claim that God gave *them* this land. It is *not* obvious from this that God exists. 7:04 Yes! Anything that actually matters to God for us to know is worth a divine decree. If the answer can't be unequivocally determined from the set of prior decrees (and I mean as unequivocally as adding numbers together) then God *should* make his wishes entirely clear. If he doesn't, then it's his fault people get it wrong. The book clearly is not sufficient, given that people have derived entirely opposite answers from it on many subjects. Note: there can be no "not worth it" for an omnipotent being, for whom nothing is any noticeable effort anyway.
just in general, any God. it doesnt matter in this discussion. its either no God, a God that doesnt care wether we believe in it, otherwise it would make things perfectly clear, no confusion possible. or there is a God thats playing games with its creation.
Believing in bad ideas, bad. Believing in Good Ideas, Good. Figuring out the good and bad requires empathy and logic. Reason matters when thinking is in the room.
We do not know if there is any sort of creator/mover at play in the universe as a whole. I don't believe we will ever know. The sharper question is - why do people believe that they know (absolutely) the nature of the universe and who God is, and what he thinks, and how we should behave etc etc? Because one of the innumerable holy books says that a man sacrificed himself for us 2k years ago, and then rose from the dead? Is it *at all* reasonable to use as a basis for believing you know the ultimate truth about existence??
Believing in atheism recompenses nothing but social rot and broken families. The Biblical descriptions of fallen humanity therefore rings true to me, the instructions the formula it works, and the account of those that wrote the Bible was that they received that wisdom from God, thus I believe it. The atheists on this video have a lot of questions regarding the problems of this world, but the Bible clearly explained Gods wrath is for our sin. For example, Bible says thats why he scattered people abroad to worship other gods. His wrath is to humble us because we can get awfully arrogant very quickly (like the kids on this video) when everything is going right for us. Ultimately God destroys us, and yet he made salvation so simple for us, a free gift to accept, Jesus Christ as the substitution for our sins that we shall not die the second death.
I feel that in most such discussions, some aspects of God go unnoticed or overlooked. One can consider the possibility that God is trying to achieve something different. However, most theistic beliefs, speak of an all knowing and all powerful God. Such a god simply would not be limited by capacity or have limited potential. It would be able to achieve exactly what it wants through an infinite range of possible methods. It can create a world where the true religion is easily discernable from a false one, in 1 million different clever and subtle but unfailing ways. However, there is another potential issue. Many arguments against God doing this or that assume that no alternative exists. This is not a reasonable assumption! For instance, the argument was made in this video that God might desire for there to be multiple religions in order to help clarify his nature. if that was truly the plan, surely it could be done in a much better way! You could actually communicate about that in your holy texts, after all. You could make it clear to the people of earth what the purpose of multiple religions is so that they could better achieve it. there is no reason why an infinitely wise God couldn’t be a better communicator, even if there was some weird twisted and backwards purpose to what he was doing.
The problem is the word 'method'. A true all-powerful good doesn't need methods like he doesn't multi-step plans. What he wants, he already has. In fact, the mere concept that a perfect God could want anything is contradictory.
Ooooh, you're so close! Follow that logic to its ultimate conclusion! If all of those boxes of cereal exist, then that itself is proof that "Which is the TRUE box of cereal?" is a malformed, useless, divisive, awful question. There is no one true box of cereal. There is a vast cereal aisle, with many boxes. There's a whole fucking supermarket, with all sorts of different things inside of it; all of which are as real as each other. Same as, your own body has many different organs in it. No one is "most" important; they are all interdependent on each other. If a religion gathers millions of people, *that itself* is proof they have stumbled on to _some_ real truth. Some tiny percentage of the whole truth. If they were completely full of shit, no one would follow them. But the popularity of an idea proves that it is _somehow_ useful. Even if its followers are _completely wrong_ about WHAT that usefulness is. (Like Dawkins' documentary about homeopathy; it fails as medicine, but succeeds at making patients feel listened to and comforted.) I think every religion has uncovered a piece of a key. All of them have then built up loads and loads of bullshit around their piece. but if they could ever think unselfishly enough to really compare what pieces everyone has, maybe we could find more. _And then maybe they could unlock something._
An omniscient, omnipotent being will *always* succeed perfectly at doing anything they wish to do. A reasonable way to resolve the clear religious & theological confusion is that clearly communicating truth about itself wasn't the real goal of God. It must have been secondary to other goal(s) that it be definition must have accomplished by sheer virtue of willing it to be so. I'm just playing God's advocate; I'm agnostic to whether some version of a God exists, & as close to disbelief as I allow myself (for anything) regarding the Biblical God. & apatheistic in attitude. It's just interesting to think about, not something I particularly care about one way or the other, even if true.
In the end, the existence of imperfection, no matter how little, completely disproves a perfect being. A perfect being makes perfect things. Everything else are excuses.
@@juanausensi499 Not necessarily. If its goal is something that *involves* creating imperfect things, & not the act of creation at all, it could do so. Perfection always requires context related to goal(s). A weapon that instantly wins a war by wiping out the other side is "perfect" at its task if the sole goal of the generals is just to win the war. Even though most people would hardly say that this is "perfect," because their values / goals will usually include that people aren't wiped out. A hammer is "perfect" when you need a nail in a wall, & seriously lacking if you're working with screws. Perfection is contextual to the goal(s) of the person / being pursuing those goals. That only saves God if it is "only" omniscient & omnipotent, but not defined as omnibenevolent or even morally good. Moral goodness implies a whole host of values & goals that involve morality. Making imperfect creatures, & imperfectly communicating with them, both of these things are consistent with an omniscient & omnipotent being (only constrained by what is logically possible), if those *aren't* the ends, but the means to the ends. Because it must accomplish its ends perfectly. When you add that this being must be morally good, whatever that would mean, it becomes a lot more problematic for it to be practicing an "ends justify the means" approach to achieving its ends. Esp if the means involve deception, harsh cruelty, suffering, & loads of death. I would add that I, personally, think perfection is itself a terrible thing. It means no more room for improvement or growth. It may as well mean dead. We have the phrase "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good," but it's always bad. Perfection (in 1 or more ways / contexts), like an ideal, is fine to define as something to strive to approximate. But you don't get there, & if you try for real perfection instead of approximating it, the result is almost always undesirable & harmful. A perfect being would be a tragic, totally alien thing that we should have nothing to do with. Reality is potential / possibility, & reality seems to abhor the absolute & the perfect.
yes. a perfect being would be incapable of being imperfect and incapable of creating an imperfect creation. as perfectness requires the lack of the potential to be imperfect @@juanausensi499
@@MarcVL1234 Name me any objective that can be accomplished with imperfect things that can't be accomplished with perfect things. "Perfection always requires context related to goal(s)" Correct. Perfection is when all possible goals are accomplished. You aren't perfect if there are goals still not accomplished. Are you arguing that the notion of 'perfection' is subjective? Because I 100% agree with that: it's subjective and extremely context-dependent. I'm just arguing from the assumption of objective perfection to address what that would hypothetically entail.
@@MarcVL1234 The issue here is that a omnipotent & omniscient being (no matter if he is also omnibenevolent) doesn't need to create means. He can obtain the end result without any intermediate step. And, if he is omnipotent, he already have done that. So, a world in a state of change progressing to some end can't be the creation of such god: either he doesn't exist or this world is not part of his creation, unless that world in a state of change is the desired end in itself, so there is no point in that change other than existing. I agree, perfection is the end of all roads, a black hole where no improvement or action is possible. But that's just my opinion, Buddhists would say that that state of just being without doing is the best possible one.
I think this really is a problem for theists, especially when you consider polytheism vs monotheism. If God cares about particulars, his Divine Hiddenness sure is a problem in clearing up the confusion.
Why should it be a problem for theists pray? For a theist the more of gods the better! It is a problem for a fanatic fandom of the respective god/s only.
Let’s not forget god failed to provide sufficient evidence he exists and he is going to punish ME forever for his failing. This is by definition “all loving”.
This reminds me of political arguments that go like, "I don't believe that [current event] is happening, because I've never seen any evidence of it happening to ME!" "Okay, well, it's happening to other people. so will you look at their evidence?" "No. Get that shit out of my face. It's fake. It's disinformation. I know it can't be true, because I've already decided it can't be true, therefore it can't be true."
As a skeptic I never understood this argument. Why doesn't God reveal Himself and end all this confusion. Well, supposedly for billions of people, he has, so... I think the argument is more like, Why doesn't God reveal Himself to Me the way I want. Of course, maybe God thinks that, If the way I am doing it is good enough for A), it should be good enough for B) ? It makes sense that we would have different interpretations of what God is and God wants, heck, we have that of "everyday things" that we can see and touch, how would we not have that of the immaterial ?
The question is what version of God do you really want. Do you want a version according to a God you prefererences and likes or do you want God for who God actually is?
How do you explain multiple religions? Well to that I ask, how do you explain the Ad Populum fallacy you just used. This entire video is based on a commonly used fallacy, and the two philosophy nerds should know better.
@Laplace246 Yeah, it's nothing new. Every atheist and their dog uses it, and it's literally stupid. "You disagree which religion is true. Therefore, no religion is true." Is a non sequitur
@Laplace246 Yeah, it's actually a non sequitur. People having a disagreement about X does not mean X=False. They also just assert that "if their was a true religion, It would be obvious to me." Yeah, that's just an assertion. You must demonstrate that. People believe things that are obviously false all the time, for example "did you know Jesus is depicted as blonde with blue eyes" no he isn't and everybody with eyes can see this to be false, but people believe it.
@@garrettlink9090 Remember that this is really a version of the Divine Hiddeness arguments. If God is hidden, people are going to disagree. But God could reveal Himself and settle the disagreements. The fact that He does not do so seems to indicate He doesn't care what people believe.
@Walter-j3c that's just an assertion, though. Not revealing himself=he doesn't care Based on what? "If God cared, he would reveal the truth to us." What are you appealing to foe the truth of this statement? You are putting a qualifier on what it means for God to "care" but have no justification for the qualifier
I can understand not believing in God. But when atheists are *_certain_* there is no God, their arguments are such arrogant nonsense, it hurts my head. It's like, 'I do not currently know the answer to this complicated math problem, which is _irrefutable proof_ that the problem *was always unsolvable, and will remain unsolvable forever.'*
@@AlexReynard atheism is non-belief not belief in the contrary. It's simply looking at the equation, seeing the answer ignores certain mathematical laws and pointing it out and not accepting the answer, and even bringing to question the utility of such an equation. There has never been epistemologically sound evidence for the existence of a God, so it ill becomes a man of sense to persist on proving the existence or non-existence of a God when there are much more useful matters to attend to. Unless of course you have certain presumptions about the human condition regarding religion and God and their relation to a good experience. I personally don't see them as necessary, so I don't really see utility in believing in them, or looking to prove that they are true.
If the Christian God exists, he should issue Bible 2.0, it’s been 2000 years for god’s sake. Or come outta hiding. Either way would be helpful. Otherwise why would I believe?
If he exists he should come down and reveal himself, and then we record his presence through cameras for video evidence, and then we should have, let's say 2,000 witnesses all write down their account of the proceedings. and at the end of all that it should be indisputable that he exists. that shouldn't be so hard for an all-powerful god, right?
The whole analogy about kids and a parent is like many theists arguments. I our experience every child we know of had a parent. God's create predominantly non life so better ask what we would need to prove a mountains parent in court. As far as the Christian argument God sent down a son and the son was killed by one group of humans. Then the son rose and we never killed him again. But he is still gone. Not to mention that God used to, according to the bible, interact with us in concrete ways. No more. Seemingly, possibly coincidentally, no interactions have happened since we have the ability to record and analyze things much better.
It's a purposelly bad analogy. We all know that children have parents, and we don't know that because descriptions of parents match: we know because we can see those parents. The very existence of God is what the debate is about, while the existence of fathers is not into question. By comparing God to parents, the analogy subtly introduces the idea of God existing. A better analogy would be a UFO sighting. If independent witnesses described the UFO in the same terms, that would increase the comfidence of the UFO being real, while contradictory accounts would reduce our level of comfidence.
Sirs,your real question is why would a monotheistic God cause to create 3 monotheistic Gods ? The root cause here is monotheism. This was postulated by Abraham ,a tribal leader long time ago.He never imagined that his one monotheistic God will result in 3 monotheistic Gods over a period of perhaps a millennium. So these are all constructs of human mind. Animals do not have any such conflicts or confusions.
Human-centric Supernatural Sky-Gods are "all constructs of human mind", but don't mistake that for proof that there is no objective, as-yet-unknown, Unified Thing-in-itself at the heart of the Universe. Also: the same instinct that "teaches" a bird how to build a nest, "teaches" humans philosophy - with the end to all conflicts or confusions as an End.
Its an easy one. God likes to identify Himself as many different aspects of Himself. Why should he for godssake just stick with the one and only image of Himself prefered by some little jewish tribe?
I dont think he did mankind made different religions. Not that i believe in a god since no one has provided any verifiable evidence. I dont think are hearing much from alex 0 connor on this video it just seems to be one person talking. I had thought this was going to be a two way conversation between alex o connor and someone else.
@@gabrielmaximianobielkael3115 Oh that one. But he isn't the only one. When are we going to talk about the rest of them I mean the Christian God only covers 1.8 billion people The other 5.9 have different ones
Buddhism and zoroastrianism is more of a code of ethics. Judaism and Christianity is more or less the same thing. Islam is a copycat version of judaism and Christianity with heavy cultural overtones heaped on top.
Whatever god you believe in to me have equally no evidence and you could probably apply some of the opinions to any of the gods. I think am correct in saying buddhism does not have a god but am not sure if they still believe in a supernatural being. I thought buddhism was more a philosophy.
Why would you make such an assumption? Obviously, if God exists, God is NOT talking. We, the children, have been given the ability to figure it out and grow. It seems that as a religious person, I've accepted that. But atheists seem to think we should have a list of do's and dont's. A bunch of answers. They seem to think god would want our brains shut off? No, we have to use our brains and wrestle with life's questions. There is no supernatural.
It seems to me that the nonbelievers are expecting direct evidence of god, which eliminates the need for faith. God is like the wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain.
I dont know why we need faith in a god at all rather than just knowing there is a god. I dont know why asking for verifiable evidence of god is an unreasonable request.You could believe in any deity if you just rely on faith rather than having evidence verifiable.
@@silverfire01 If GOD provided direct evidence, then it would be a no- brainer, everyone would believe, which would eliminate your freedom and ability of choice. Which is why belief has two parts, 1) indirect evidence , 2) faith
@@jrsotr271 reply maybe. but if you believe already based on faith then you could srgue then that you are eliminating freedom and ability of choice already. You could believe then in any deity if you did not require evidence and just used faith.
How lucky each and every one of us is to be born into the “right” religion. Except the ones who weren’t. They’re just there to serve as an example. 🤷♂️ Also, that single parent analogy Is nonsense. Siblings arguing over who mom said could play Wii is SOOOO FAR REMOVED from the concept of geocoding entire groups of people because of their interpretation of a note that invisible mom left on the fridge that says they had to. How anyone can rational religion is CRAZY to me. Also WII!?!? I’m at least twice your age and find that reference dated.
Mankind made different religions, as neither Christianity, Judaism or Islam are legitimate as none follow the Torah of Abraham, not God's fault as Jesus came in one faith.
God didn’t create other religions, man did. God gave man the innate desire to worship. If man rejects God, his desire to worship remains. Man will then fill that desire by worshiping self or something else. In this day and age, man worships self. Before we created other religions to follow. Most everyone will have the opportunity to know God. If you aren’t given the opportunity, He will judge you by other means.
" God gave man the innate desire to worship." i don't believe there is a god. Can you provide credible evidence that there actually is a god? Thank you.
What you're doing is called a presupposition. "God gave us this desire to worship" you're assuming God exists when you can't prove that God exists. People are born into religion, they're indoctrinated. If a society has no concept of gods then no one becomes religious
@@TboneWTF If God doesn’t exist, why the question “Did God make different religions”? Why do non-believers always accuse God of being terrible if they don’t believe? You say you don’t believe but what do you believe. If you believe in anything, it requires some form of faith. I believe in faith based evidence. All ideas from man or science, begin with nothing. This is because God is the beginning. I don’t think we will get far in this discussion over comments though. I leave you with this though. I imagine you’re well versed in man’s idea of science. Have you ever read the Bible though? If you haven’t read the whole Bible, how can you say it’s wrong or incorrect?
@@TboneWTF Watch Joe Rogans podcast with Stephen Meyer. He goes through explaining intelligent design and you will see some of the gaps in modern science thinking.
@@jhinojosa123 "I believe in faith based evidence" I believe that credible and verifiable evidence is the most reliable path to the truth. Having faith means you have no credible evidence. You can have faith that Santa Claus is real but that doesn't mean it is true, right? So what evidence can you provide that your god is actually real and true? Good luck my friend.
Well, since people like to believe they are on the right side of the velvet rope, having scores of denominations lets them hold that belief and still be theists.
Alex misses the point again! His ambition to be lauded as the Most Reasonable Atheist has led him into unreason. An all powerful god who wants us to know him could PROVIDE all the the clarifying evidence necessary. As for divine decrees, obviously it would be up to GOD to decide whether the dispute concerns a matter so critical that it needs to be clarified or not. And the invocation of Jesus and the bible is absurd. The proliferation of Christian sects is all you need to see that Jesus's brief ministry and the bible didn't suffice to clarify matters and any rational being who actually cares what people believe would move to plans b, c, d ... until the matters are settled. So the reasonable options are: 1. There is no god. 2. There is a god who doesn't care what we believe. 3. There is a god who cares what we believe who is too stupid or incompetent to communicate effectively. 4. There is a god who cares what we believe who is a jerk and allows people to go astray in ways that will affect them negatively but who cares. Alex's mission has gone off the skids.
No, its not. It depends on what you want to use that word for. If its used as a name, then its “God”. If its used as description of a specific type of being, then it is “god”. As in; “the name of the christian god, is God.”
@CgGoil What sort of deluded bubble do you live in? God's name isn't God. It's YHWH, or Jehovah in its pronunciation. God is His title as He's God. Even secular Google confirms it in a search within seconds. You are without excuses.
@ people use “God” as a name. Your specific brand of god may not be called “God”, but other people are using that word as a name. Its not that hard to get. You are without excuse.
@@CgGoil Many people are dishonest though. God is a title not a name. You can argue til you are blue in the face over this. Nothing changes on the matter.
God didn't create anything (especially religions). Humans invented religions. You can't even prove your god is real my friend. (or can you?). Good luck
@@TboneWTF your mockery of God is clearly being seen. All man made religions have a works based,do something ,in order to enter Heaven. Christianity states God has already done it. Jesus Christ died for our sins, we have to repent of our sins,put our faith(alone) in Christ and we will be saved. It is a gift from God to all who accept the gift. We are justified by Faith Alone.
The different religions argument really only works for the Abrahamic God. More explicit revelation becomes an issue only after correct belief in a specific deity becomes the norm. Otherwise the diversity of religious expression while maintaining core tenets common to most conceptions of religion isn’t purely a negative. The conception of henadology neatly explains the proliferation of various deities while maintaining the power of certain theistic arguments as an example.
So either god is so weak they refuse to explain themselves. Or it's all made up. And as we expect when people make shit up they Don't all agree upon important details.
@@NicholasMarshall there are common features through most religions across cultures and history. Ideas centered around sacrality, the role of ritual, myth as a guide for instilling values, a degree of agency for beings that exist outside and/or above humans, and so on. Those overlaps can point to something that while real isn’t neatly constrained to a particular narrow view of Christianity. Religious diversity is a major issue for certain conceptions of theism while for others it is expected and explained neatly (see Brahman or the Neoplatonic One).
So then we should speak out against anyone who is imposing rules or commiting violence on other people based on these inherently subjective and illogical ideas, no?
Well that's awfully convenient for you. "It's just inherently illogical!" Reminds me of a horror reviewer on here who reviewed a horror film for ninety minutes and eventually concluded, "None of this makes sense to me, so maybe the director was intentionally not making sense!" There was actually a perfectly simple allegorical explanation for everything in the film. The reviewer just didn't think of it. So he concluded that, because *HE* couldn't find the solution, _no solution existed._ The height of arrogance.
I think a feature missing from this argument which makes it even more powerful, is that dominant conception of God, which comes from the Abrahamic tradition, doesn't exist anywhere in historical or archeological records prior to the 12th century BCE, with Yahweh's name not even being attested to until the 9th. To put this into perspective, humankind came into itself around 300.000 years ago, with behavioral modernity beginning some 50-65.000 years ago. IE, for roughly 299.999 years, or let's say 49.000 if we're going by "modern humans" and to be charitable, they had no clue who this god was, that there was such a god, nor did they even have a concept of such a god. This, more than anything should get the noggin' a joggin', because surely, if this god existed it wouldn't have only first reared it's head in the levant some 3000 years ago.
(blinks) How in the world does this logic make sense to you? This is like saying that, since a toddler is not yet developed enough to understand calculus, _calculus itself must have never existed._ Because surely, calculus would have taught itself to that toddler if it existed. That's crazy! People were barely civilized for most of our history. If you're a vastly-complicated cosmic being, can you possibly expect humans, in that level of their development, to be *capable* of understanding your nature? Like, your body is made of cells, right? Tiny little individual cells? *Do you think any of them know your name?* And if they don't, does that prove you don't exist!? Or does it just prove that they're very simple organisms, and they don't know your name because they're not even capable of comprehending your _form!?_
@AlexReynard It makes sense to me because, unlike you, I'm not bending backwards with false equivalences to obfuscate the point of the argument. 1.) There's no comparison here to be made to calculus. For one, calculus is not an existent, it's conceptual; a language of symbols made to describe and make accurate statements about reality. Of course human development of that language, and their appreciation of its more granular depths of application, would be gradual. Moreover, calculus is a complicated synthesis of a series of simpler mathematical inductions that *have* been with mankind ever since we gained the ability to count separated objects. Yawheh is not, unless your argument is that Yahweh is a logical extrapulation of older polytheistic traditions the same way calculus is an evolution of simple arithmetics. You can make that claim if you want, but that leads us to the second way your analogy is flawed: 2.) It is not inherently baked into the claims of math that "calculus" has always been there in the same way Yahweh is argued to have always been there. You might want to try to sneak out of this bind by basically arguing that the modern theistic ideas of god evolved gradually because older humans didn't understand him the same way they didn't understand advanced math, but that route excludes the foundational narratives for the Abrahamic faiths. It also fundamentally undermines any certainty believers would have today, since we could just as well argue that modern believers' ideas about god are as wrong as they were 6000 or 20.000 years ago. Point here is: Yahweh is argued to have created humanity and been with them ever since he did. He's argued to be intimately interested in their fates, in wanting to have a personal relationship with them, and caring about whether they believe he exists or not. Yet, humanity has no record or conception of this diety for most of our history. Not even in basic terms. For your appeal to be in any way analogous it would be more akin to making a very specific claim along the lines of, for example, human civilization being a product of calculus - that humans were intimately acquainted with it, and needed it to survive, all the while there's no evidence of calculus in 99% of our species' history.
An omniscient God should be better at communicating. Co-authoring one book, one time, in a soon to be dead language, doesn’t strike me as the best effort at communication. Indeed, it’s so badly written that it results in even individuals w/ in the same church holding different versions of god, heaven, justice, morality, etc.
I would venture still further. He should have made all the human brains and feelings the same. Because there lies the problem in fact - we all understand the same words in a different way. It is essential to destroy subjectivity. What a wonderful world it would be if there was just one human in billions of clones! Perhaps coming soon to you....
Imagine if we never acted on any impulse or emotion before first proving it had a logical reason to exist. So many of us would be hit by cars, or miss out on love, or ignore our deepest principles.
Alex, you sound like a lawyer. For the most part, you only add to the confusion. Enough! Best that whole thing is just ignored. All this contrivance is a total waste of time, as it all has been for centuries.
No you can't turn the argument on its head. The situation is clearly. asymmetrical. I'm a bit surprised to hear Alex use such bad reasoning. He's usually very sharp and rational.
What if you just thought that the world was more beautiful with multiple religions, and that God is trying to maximize aesthetic value rather than utility?
Pretty weak argument. Atheists really need to broaden their understanding of theism and realise their narrow grasp of Abrahamic religions doesn't account for the entirety of religious belief on the planet. It's also pretty odd to expect God to conform to our expectations as humans.
1. God didn’t 2. God came down and settled which is the one true religion 3. Everyone has enough evidence to accept and enough obfuscation to reject so they don’t feel compelled to do something they don’t want to do “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” 1 John 4:15
Im a non-Abrahamic TRUE MONOTHEIST... Yahweh is a desert war God of hypocrisy, not the ONE TRUE CREATOR. THERE ARE MANY RELIGIONS BECAUSE EVERY SENTIENT SINGULARITY HAS THEIR PERSONAL CONNECTION TO THE ONE TRUE CREATOR. DIVINITY COMES IN ALL FORMS.
@@juanausensi499 show me on the doll where the Bad theology touched you.... 😂.... my perception not not require the validation of the approval of your perception.... I'm not tryna convert no one. I'm just letting you know ppl like me exist.
@@juanausensi499 Symbols are only empowered by the SENTIENT SINGULARITY which gives life to it, by the Phoenix fire of CONSCIOUSNESS. ALL CONSCIOUSNESS IS AN EXTENSION OF THE OMNI-CONSCIOUSNESS... TO WHICH EVERY QUANTA OF OUR LIVES CONTRIBUTES.... a SENTIENT SINGULARITY is a LIGHT-SEED OF THE ALL-SPARK... LIGHT IS ALLOWED EXPRESSION BY THE INFINITE SCAFFOLD OF DARKNESS. LIGHT NEEDS THE MEDIUM OF DARK ON WHICH TO PROPOGATE. , & EXTEND UNTO EVERY QUANTA OF CREATION. ALL UNIVERSES WITHIN THE INFINITE OMNI-VERSE EXIST AT THE SAME TIME & PLACE SIMULTANEOUSLY. EXISTENCE SIMULTANEOUSLY IS & IS NOT.... JUST AS CREATION IS BUILT ON NOTHING, SO TOO IS EVERY CO-CREATOR AN EXTENSION OF TGE ONE TRUE CREATOR. (who is not Yahweh). ❤
@@juanausensi499 I see "Satanists" as just as weak as the rest of the followers of Abraham, as they all believe God is DIVIDED INTO GOOD & EVIL... and they all worship sin. My divergence in Theism & theology is I do not believe in the concept of "EVIL & SIN". I believe in the True unity of the ONE TRUE CREATOR. The ONE true CREATOR has nothing to be jealous of, For all existence is an extension of his being. All words are HIS WORDS. ALL NAMES ARE HIS NAME. ALL THINGS ARE HIS THINGS. GOD IS NOT DIVIDED. GOD IS INSIDE US. I am the BRIGHTEST NIGHT. I am the DARKEST LIGHT. ... & I AM ASCENDING.
Every single atheistic argument, boils down to one misunderstanding about what theism is answering Why do we have imperfections? we can conceive of perfection. Why do we have imperfections? Ultimately, the atheist is rejecting the presupposition that we are imperfect . They’ll either have to say we are perfect or that imperfection is an illusion. The feast also claims that we are already actually perfect or that perfection is an illusion
Now, I'm big on rejecting presuppositions, but I certainly don't need to conclude that we are perfect, nor that imperfection is an illusion. If I ultimately accept the __observation__ that we're imperfect, why is it so bad that I rejected the presupposition? I'm not sure I believe you've ever encountered a single atheist who has said we are perfect or that imperfection is an illusion.
@@hemoglobin3751 “if I ultimately accept the observation that things fall why is it so bad that I rejected the presupposition of gravity.” The observation that things are imperfect is the presupposition that perfection could conceivably exist.
Perfection and imperfection are not illusions, nor are they necessarily reflections of any kind of larger truth. Perfection and imperfection are just measurements we make in comparison to a standard. I might claim that humans are imperfect, but the perfect standard I am comparing them to would be a different standard than others might use. Are we truly asking the same questions if you can ask those questions in more specific manners? For example, someone might believe homosexuality is an imperfection, whereas I would not. That same person would likely not have a problem with people rejecting homosexuals, but I would. At that point, we are no longer asking the same simple question, at that point we are asking two separate questions of "why do homosexuals exist," and "why do homophobes exist?" At that point, the question is not actually about "perfection" and "imperfection" because we have vastly different ideas of what those words actually mean and what they apply to. We would be distinctly asking different questions that would then be swept under the same umbrella simply because we both view one another as having imperfections, but in completely opposite ways. At that point, the question of "why are things imperfect" would more accurately be worded as "why are things not as I believe they should be?"
"Why won't the God/parent just provide clarity?" Have you read the Old Testament or had children? The entire history is God giving his chosen people very clear instructions and they repeatedly disobey. It's almost a running joke. Then you have kids and you realize, "oh now I get it."
@TheTrueRandomGamer the only religions that claim to have a deity are Judaism, Christianity, Islam and I think Hinduism. I find one interesting aspect of Christianity is that Jesus is mentioned or alluded to by major religions, and only in once is he proclaimed as God
All philosophically and theologically inquiry meshed down to this conclusion.... People have a tendency to go to the most "obvious" and most "logical" explaination in terms of their own biases :) The simplest ones is the most conveniant ones that requires tiny effort of examination and thinking. Even less conveniant is the thoughts that require you to think coherently within a bigger picture - where as human beings can never reach the full picture. If only it were that simple as saying "now ignore all those other religions and holy texts claiming to be the correct one". Most if not many of the major religions have alot of similarities in ways of thinking about God. Most of the differences is caused by social conditioning and cultural differences - which also have had a great effect on atheistic thinking. Which in alot of ways takes alot of religous thought process into their thinking about human conditioning without a God. Sartre for example replaces "God" with "Nothingness" - but as Parmenides already reflected upon during pre-socratic times - there is no possible way of thinking of 'nothing' without thinking about something. How do human beings know that they have the "correct" concept of Nothing? Some talk about Day and Night, certainty and uncertainty etc... But at the end of the day - we're human beings with one leg shorter than the other - a limping pilgrim - on a journey on the search for Truth. Truth will be more clear when you get closer and closer to the inviteable Death. Where everything you ever thought of - will be called into question - and you realize that Truth is more and bigger than what human beings can ever get a hold on to. There's something bigger than you - something more important than looking out on what everyone else is claming - than have a genuin and deeper self-examination of yourself and your own beliefs. Most genuin truthseekers in all religions (including atheism) is trying to look above and beyond their own religion - and across different frames and religions - to try and find a deeper truth for themselfes. Most people doesn't take this path in their life today - they don't have much time to think about it - so they land on the most popular and conveniant conclusions - until Death catches up with them....
Ehh no, The bible Jesus didn't come to form a religion. Its you guys who decided to create a religion of Christianity out of him. All your Bible Jesus did was to say "follow me"
I feel that in most such discussions, some aspects of God go unnoticed or overlooked. One can consider the possibility that God is trying to achieve something different. However, most theistic beliefs, speak of an all knowing and all powerful God. Such a god simply would not be limited by capacity or have limited potential. It would be able to achieve exactly what it wants through an infinite range of possible methods. It can create a world where the true religion is easily discernable from a false one, in 1 million different clever and subtle but unfailing ways. However, there is another potential issue. Many arguments against God doing this or that assume that no alternative exists. This is not a reasonable assumption! For instance, the argument was made in this video that God might desire for there to be multiple religions in order to help clarify his nature. if that was truly the plan, surely it could be done in a much better way! You could actually communicate about that in your holy texts, after all. You could make it clear to the people of earth what the purpose of multiple religions is so that they could better achieve it. there is no reason why an infinitely wise God couldn’t be a better communicator, even if there was some weird twisted and backwards purpose to what he was doing.
But god does clearly show himself. The practitioners of a bunch of mutually exclusive religions told me it’s undeniable
Prove to me that you’re a real person
@@adamzandarski8933prove to me that youre not a real person.
@@adamzandarski8933 I have seen and felt @Emperorhirohito19272, you should believe me, only way of knowing him is through me
Obviously god does not CLEARLY show himself. If He would, he would just be showing up at our door instead of a 17 year old Mormon named Braxton. If there is anything. obvious about God is that he shows Himself subtlety.
it always baffles me how they never seem to do any level of self reflection
The better question is why has god allowed so many Fast and Furious movies?
Family.
Easy answer, human free will.
Hay don't knock the Fast and Furious movie franchise. Those films are great art.
Bro!!!!!!!
Watch your mouth
On whether God should come down and settle it:
If the consequences for not believing or not understanding him is eternal Hellfire, then he absolutely should come down and should be expected to do so. Otherwise he's immoral.
Immoral by what standard? There has to be some objective way of measuring if neglecting to come down is objectively and absolutely immoral. Who cares if it’s only relative. It’s immoral in our society, sure, but with subjective morality that may not be the case in other cultures.
@@Migler1Objective morality is only really possible from a religious perspective, so we would have to argue that it would be immoral from the perspective of God if we wanted to say that God not showing himself is objectively immoral. This would mean that we would have to argue that God would condemn his own actions, which he wouldn't, so God not showing himself cannot be objectively immoral because no action God does or does not do can possibly be anything other than perfectly moral, as he is the sole arbiter of morality in the religious worldview.
Perhaps if we don't choose God for ourselves without him directly revealing himself it " doesn't count" as it were. Perhaps revealing himself directly to all of us would make it impossible for any of us to get into heaven. I don't believe this, but it is possible
@@nickydaviesnsdpharms3084 I hate to break it to you but he's not the only one.
The continent of India has many many more.
Before example.
@mememaster695 Correct. And, of course, this is a totally unsatisfying answer for a non-believer who is questioning the morality of a supposed god. The theist says, "Just throw out your idea of morality, assume everything God does is good, then go from there."
The non-believer might ask, "Why would a morally supreme God give someone a moral intuition that goes against his objective moral standard, and then punish them for immoral actions, or even immoral thoughts?"
Well, obviously, for a good reason. Duh. Convinced yet?
Even IF there was one religion that got it right, what usually happens? Schisms! All religions divide up and divide up again. Very strange behavior for a true religion to do.
Is it? Seems pretty standard practice considering how carnal humans tend to be
@@japexican007 but if you're a god, would you allow your message to be distorted by these other breakaway religions?
@@Vhlathanosh Yes, because "free will"...
@@Grimtheorist Like putting a fish on land and claiming "free will". Not my fault, it ate from the forbidden algae. Which I knew it would do, but not my fault.
@@zimpoooooo A lot like that, yeah.
In the example about the argument in the courtroom: what if the judge asked each to describe the parent and the descriptions do not match? Would they assume the parent exists, or would they consider then that one or both parties’ perception of the parent, or the parent’s very existence, could be inaccurate?
The characteristics of the parents would then indeed be in question.
I would consider if they were actually talking about their parents or if they were repeating what other people had said about their parents without having seen them themselves. Or maybe they were talking about separate people, but those people were not in fact their parents? Maybe they were mistaken. Maybe they were lying.
But there wouldn't really be any conclusions to make other than what the claims being made are.
The Christian God has long ago proven to be very sadistic.
He hasn't. The Bible describes him that way, though 😉
That is putting is very mildly. A monster beyond comprehension. Makes Hitler and Mao look like Alterboys.
@@zimpoooooo
Makes Hitler look like SpongeBob
Many people in the past were terrible and evil. God punished them. Read what people were doing, things that never came into God's heart at Jeremiah 7: 31.
@SamFey
Why should anyone care what the bible says?
But what if one of the children describes the single parent as a 6'5 blonde haired blue-eyed man who likes to listen to rock and roll music and is a vegetarian, while the other says that the supposed parent is 5 ft 2, and a Hispanic female who likes pop music and is not a vegetarian. At what point do the differences in the two stories imply that there is in fact no parent at all, and that one or both children are simply making up the parent figure?
I mean that's the obvious point that Alex seems to be deliberately missing for whatever reason.
What if they only agree on what the parent is not? And have no description of what he is?
We know children have parents, and parents are a subgroup of 'people', so they share all the properties of 'people'.
We don't know if God exists, and we don't know what properties it could have.
@@juanausensi499 We should be able to agree that "If god exists, God is a bad parent."
@@goldenalt3166 At least, the Abrahamic version of it. I agree.
According to the general consensus of scholarship *(even critical Christian scholars),* YHWH was originally incorporated into the Canaanite pantheon as a son of the Canaanite high god El before inheriting the top spot in the pantheon and El's wife Athirat (Asherah) before religious reforms "divorced" them. El's pantheon in Ugarit (modern day Ras Shamra in Syria) is called the *Elohim,* literally the plural of El. Interestingly, the Biblical god is also referred to numerous times as Elohim. If you want to see if El is fictional, just read his mythology in the Ugaritic/Canaanite texts.
"The mysterious Ugaritic text Shachar and Shalim tells how (perhaps near the beginning of all things) *El* came to shores of the sea and saw two women who bobbed up and down. *El* was sexually aroused and took the two with him, killed a bird by throwing a staff at it, and roasted it over a fire. He asked the women to tell him when the bird was fully cooked, and to then address him either as husband or as father, for he would thenceforward behave to them as they called him. They saluted him as husband. He then lay with them, and they gave birth to Shachar ("Dawn") and Shalim ("Dusk"). Again *El* lay with his wives and the wives gave birth to "the gracious gods", "cleavers of the sea", "children of the sea". The names of these wives are not explicitly provided, but some confusing rubrics at the beginning of the account mention the goddess *Athirat (Asherah),* who is otherwise *El's* chief wife, and the goddess Raḥmayyu ("the one of the womb"), otherwise unknown."
*"First, a god named El predates the arrival of the Israelites into Syria-Palestine.* Biblical usage shows El was not just a generic noun, but often a proper name for Israel’s God (e.g., Gen 33:20: “El, the God of Israel”)."
"I should add here that it is very clear from the grammar that the noun nachalah in v. 9 should be translated “inheritance.” *Yahweh receives Israel as his “inheritance” (nachalah), just as the other sons of El received their nations as their inheritance (nachal, v. 8).* With this verb, especially in the Hiphil, the object is always what is being given as an inheritance. Thus, Israel is given to Yahweh as his inheritance. ((Here I’m indebted to Dan McClellan.)) It would make no sense for Elyon to give himself an inheritance. Moreover, as I’ve argued elsewhere, it is not just the Gentile nations that are divided up according to the number of the *sons of El.* It is all of humankind, i.e., “the sons of Adam.” This clearly includes Israel. And the sons of Adam are not divided up according to the number of the *sons of El,* plus one (i.e., plus Elyon). They are divided up, according to the text, *solely* according to the number of the *sons of El.* *Thus, that Yahweh receives Israel as his inheritance makes Yahweh one of the sons of El mentioned in v. 8. Any other construal of the text would constitute its rewriting.*
A Sumerian hymn speaks to the goddess: “Nanshe, your divine powers are not matched by any other divine powers.” *Does this mean that Nanshe was the high goddess, that there were no gods above her? No, it does not.* Nanshe was the daughter of Enki, the high god. *In Sumerian mythology, as with Ugaritic, Israelite, Babylonian, and others, in the ancient past, the high god (Enki, in this case) divided up the world and assigned his children certain domains.* Nanshe was given a limited domain (the modern Persian Gulf) and was tasked with maintaining social justice there. *This is exactly what we see in Deuteronomy 32 with Yahweh. Yahweh is given a limited domain (Israel) and is given authority over his people, to punish them, as well as to protect and defend them against foreign enemies.* That Yahweh, like Nanshe, is said to have incomparable divine power *does not* mean that he is not subordinate to the high god who gave him his domain. *It is also of note that Nanshe, like Baal, Yahweh, and so many other deities, evolved over time. Her domain increased, and she was promoted in the pantheon (although she never became the high goddess)."*
*"The Most Heiser: Yahweh and Elyon in Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32 - Religion at the Margins"* based on the *majority scholarly consensus.*
(Written by Thom Stark who is a Christian)
*"Michael Heiser: A Unique Species? - Religion at the Margins"*
(A second response to Michael Heiser)
*"Excerpt from “Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan” by John Day - Lehi's Library."*
*"The Table of Nations: The Geography of the World in Genesis 10"* - TheTorah.com
(Excluding the short narrative on Nimrod (vv. 8-12), *which appears to be a later addition,* Genesis 10 contains *70* names of nations or cities, a number that was symbolic of totality. Similarly, the descendants of Jacob were *70* in number (Gen 46:37; Exod 1:5), *as were the sons of the supreme Canaanite god El, with whom YHWH became equated.)*
*"Polytheism and Ancient Israel’s Canaanite Heritage. Part V | theyellowdart"*
(Of course, much of this [i.e., that Israel worshiped El and Asherah alongside YHWH] is really to be expected given that recent syntheses of the *archaeological, cultural, and literary data* pertaining to the emergence of the nation of Israel in the Levant *show that most of the people who would eventually compose this group were originally Canaanite. As the Hebrew Bible notes, the Hebrew language itself is a Canaanite language, literally the “lip of Canaan” (שְׂפַת כְּנַעַן; Is. **19:18**), and so it cannot often be distinguished by modern scholars from other Canaanite inscriptions on purely linguistic grounds.)*
*"Ugarit - New World Encyclopedia"*
(Ugaritic religion centered on the chief god, Ilu or El, whose titles included "Father of mankind" and "Creator of the creation." The Court of El was referred to as the (plural) 'lhm or ***Elohim,*** a word ***later used by the biblical writers to describe the Hebrew deity*** and translated into English as "God," in the singular.
El, which was ***also the name of the God of Abraham,*** was described as an aged deity with white hair, seated on a throne.)
*"Mark Smith: Yahweh as El’s Son & Yahweh’s Ascendency - Lehi's Library"*
(Mark Smith is a Catholic)
*"God, Gods, and Sons (and Daughters) of God in the Hebrew Bible. Part III | theyellowdart"*
*"02 | December | 2009 | Daniel O. McClellan - Psalm 82"*
(Daniel McClellan is a Mormon)
*"Elohim | Daniel O. McClellan"*
(Refer to the article "Angels and Demons (and Michael Heiser)")
*"God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible - Almost."*
(Pay attention to whose wife Asherah (Athirat) is in the Ugaritic/Canaanite texts and how she became the wife of YHWH/Yahweh)
*"Yahweh's Divorce from the Goddess Asherah in the Garden of Eden - Mythology Matters."*
*"Asherah, God's Wife in Ancient Israel. Part IV - theyellowdart"*
*"The Gates of Ishtar - El, was the original god of the bible."*
*"The Gates of Ishtar - Anath in the Elephantine Papyri"*
(In addition to Asherah (Athirat) being the consort of Yahweh, it appears some Israelites also viewed the Canaanite goddess Anat(h) as Yahweh's consort)
*"Canaanite Religion - New World Encyclopedia"*
(Refer to the section "Relationship to Biblical Religion")
*"The Syncretization of Yahweh and El : reddit/AcademicBiblical"*
(For a good summary of all of the above articles)
Watch Professor Christine Hayes who lectures on the Hebrew Bible at Yale University. Watch lecture 2 from 40:40 to 41:50 minutes, lecture 7 from 30:00 minutes onwards, lecture 8 from 12:00 to 17:30 minutes and lecture 12 from 34:30 minutes onwards.
Watch *"Pagan Origins of Judaism"* by Sigalius Myricantur and read the description in the video to see the scholarship the video is based on.
Watch *"How Monotheism Evolved"* by Sigalius Myricantur and watch up to at least 21:40.
Watch *"Atheism - A History of God (The Polytheistic Origins of Christianity and Judaism)"*
(By a former theist)
Watch *"The Origins of Yahweh"* by Derreck Bennett at Atheologica.
Nevertheless, the historical reconstruction that El was the chief god of the Israelites is not indebted only to the testimony of the (rather late) biblical witness of P. *Numerous biblical texts attest to the fact that the titles, functions, and the imagery associated with the Canaanite god El, as revealed by the Ugaritic texts and the Canaanite myth of Elkunirša, were assimilated into the profile of the deity YHWH.* According to the Ugaritic texts, El was known for his *wisdom* (e.g., KTU2 1.4.V.65[6]) and *great age* (’ab šnm, *“Father of Years,”* and drd, *“Ageless One,”* in KTU2 1.4.IV.24 and 1.10.III.6, respectively),[7] his *compassionate nature* (lţpn il dp’id, *“Kind El, the Compassionate One,”* e.g., KTU2 1.16.IV.9), his role as *father of the gods and humanity* (’ab ’adm, *“father of humanity,”* KTU2 1.14..III.47, and bny bnwt, *“creator of creatures,”* KTU2 1.17.I.24) and *creator of the cosmos.* [8] El was the *divine King* (e.g., KTU2 1.2.III.5-6) and the *head of the pantheon or divine council* (referred to variously as the dr ’il, *“circle of El/Family of El,”* KTU2 1.15.III.19; mpħrt bn ’il, *“the assembly of the sons of El,”* KTU2 1.65.3; bn ’il, *“the sons of El,”* KTU2 1.40.33, 41; pħr kbbm, *“assembly of the stars,”* KTU2 1.10.I.3-4; ‘dt ’ilm, *“assembly of the gods,”* KTU2 1.15.II.7; cf. KTU2 1.2.I; 1.3V; 1.4 IV-V) which met at the sacred mountain. *His consort was the goddess Athirat who bore him seventy sons* (šb‘m bn ’atrt, *“the seventy sons of Athirat,”* KTU2 1.4.VI.46). El was also known for his *divine patronage and blessing of progeny to humans* (as in the Epic of Kirta; see, for example, KTU2 1.14.III.46-51), for his *appearances to humans in dreams* (e.g., KTU2 1.14.I.35-37), as *being a healer* (KTU2 1.16.V-VI), and for his *dwelling at the sacred mountain* (e.g., KTU2 1.2.III.5-6) at the *sources of the mythical rivers* (KTU2 1.2.III.4; 1.3.V.6; 1.4.IV.20-22; 1.17.V.47-48) in a *tent* (KTU2 1.2.III.5; 1.3.V.8; 1.4.IV.24; 1.17.V.49; c.f. the Canaanite myth Elkunirša which *describes El’s abode as a tent[9]).[10]*
*To underscore the fact that terminology and imagery originally used for the god El was adopted by the Israelites in their descriptions of YHWH,* the following brief summary might be placed in comparison to the discussion of El above: YHWH is an *aged, patriarchal deity* (Ps. 102:28; Job 36:26; Is. 40:28; Dan. 7.9-14, 22), *a father* (Deut. 32:6; Is. 63:16; 64:7; Jer. 3:4, 19; 31:9, etc.), *merciful and gracious* (Ex. 34:6; Jon. 4:2; Joel 2:13; Ps. 8615; 103:8; 145:8, etc.), *a divine patron who bestows the blessing of progeny upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,* often manifesting himself in *dreams or visions, a healer* (Gen. 20:17; Num. 12:13; 2 Kgs. 20:5, 8; Ps. 107:20, etc.), who *dwells in a tent* (Ps. 15:1; 27:6; 91:10; 132:3) *amidst the heavenly waters* (Ps. 47:5; 87; Is. 33: 20-22; Ez. 47:1-12, etc.), the *creator of the cosmos,* who is enthroned as *heavenly King* in the *divine council* (1 Kgs. 22:19; Is. 6:1-8; cf. Ps. 29:1-2; 82; 89: 5-8, etc.) on the *sacred mount of assembly* (e.g., Is. 14:13). Additionally, in much Israelite religious practice throughout the monarchic period, *YHWH had a divine consort, the goddess Asherah, the Hebrew equivalent of Ugaritic Athirat.[11]* (Originally the wife of El)
*"When Jehovah Was Not the God of the Old Testament. Part II - theyellowdart"*
Watch Professor Christine Hayes who lectures on the Hebrew Bible at Yale University. Watch lecture 2 from 40:40 to 41:50 minutes, lecture 7 from 30:00 minutes onwards, lecture 8 from 12:00 to 17:30 minutes and lecture 12 from 34:30 minutes onwards.
Watch *"Pagan Origins of Judaism"* by Sigalius Myricantur and read the description in the video to see the scholarship the video is based on.
Watch *"How Monotheism Evolved"* by Sigalius Myricantur and watch up to at least 21:40.
------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition, look up the below articles.
*"Jews and Arabs Descended from Canaanites - Biblical Archaeology Society."*
("The study in Cell not only establishes that the ancient Israelites were ***descended from the Canaanites,*** but also establishes that the Canaanite people across the separate city-states of the southern Levant, and over a period of 1,500 years, were a genetically cohesive people.")
*"The Canaanites weren't annihilated, they just 'moved' to Lebanon - The Times of Israel."*
*"Ancient Canaanite religion explained* - everything.explained.today"
*"Archeology of the Hebrew Bible - NOVA - PBS"*
("Many scholars now think that *most of the early Israelites were originally Canaanites, displaced Canaanites,* displaced from the lowlands, from the river valleys, displaced geographically and then displaced ideologically.")
*"Origins of Judaism explained* - everything.explained.today"
("According to the current academic historical view, the origins of Judaism lie in the Bronze Age amidst polytheistic ancient Semitic religions, ***specifically evolving out of Ancient Canaanite polytheism,*** then co-existing with Babylonian religion, and syncretizing elements of Babylonian belief into the worship of Yahweh as reflected in the early prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. (The Torah)".
*Refer to the bibliography at the bottom of the page)*
*"Canaanite languages - Britannica"*
("Group of Northern Central or Northwestern Semitic languages including ***Hebrew,*** Moabite, Phoenician, and Punic.")
*"El - New World Encyclopedia"*
(Refer to the section "El Outside the Bible" and the fact that *most of the early Israelites were originally indigenous or displaced Canaanites)*
*"El (deity) explained* - everything.explained.today"
(Refer to section "Ugarit and the Levant" and the fact that *most of the ancient Israelites were originally indigenous or displaced Canaanites* and see how Yahweh, later conflated with El (Yahweh-El(ohim)) is fictional)
*"The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan - Essay - The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History"*
*"Canaanite Phoenician Origin of the God of the Israelites."*
*"The Phoenician (Canaanite) God Resheph in the Bible - Is That in the Bible?"*
*"How the Jews Invented God and Made Him Great- Archaeology - Haaretz."*
*"When the Jews believed in other gods - Archaeology - Haaretz"*
*"The Invention of God - Maclean's"*
*"How Did the Bible’s Editors Conceal Evidence of Israelite Polytheism - Evolution of God by Robert Wright."*
*"A Theologically Revised Text: Deuteronomy 32:8-9 - Ancient Hebrew Poetry."*
*"Biblical Contradiction #3: Which God is the Creator of the Heavens and Earth: Yahweh or El?"* - Dr Steven DiMattei
*"Biblical Contradiction #27. Are Yahweh and El the Same God or Not?"* - Dr Steven DiMattei
*"Biblical Contradiction **#294**, **#295**, **#296**. Which god liberated Israel from Egypt: Yahweh or El?"* - Dr Steven DiMattei
*"Quartz Hill School of Theology - B425 Ugarit and the Bible."*
*"The Origins of Yahweh and the Revived Kenite Hypothesis - Is That in the Bible?"*
*"Yahweh, god of metallurgy - Fewer Lacunae."*
*"Polytheistic Roots of Israelite Religion - Fewer Lacunae."*
*"Yahweh was just an ancient Canaanite god. We have been deceived! - Escaping Christian Fundamentalism"*
*"Religious Studies: El, Yahweh and the Development of Monotheism in Ancient Israel."*
*"Yhwh, God of Edom - Daniel O. McClellan."*
I never understand how Christian God could witness Buddhist monks and Islamic imams engage in complete self denying behavior in their search for “transcendence” and they aren’t ever given a correction that they should be following Jesus
free will
But that's _easy_ to understand! In nature, there is an extremely common pattern of *competing opposites.* Predator and prey are in conflict. Men and women are in conflict. Traditionalists and idealists are in conflict. Life and environment are in conflict. That eternal tug of war, that constant competition, drives both sides to evolve over time. The prey gets faster as the predator gets stronger. The right dominates culture for a while, then the left dominates culture for a while; and we see what each side gets wrong and gets right. *Ever seen that Star Trek episode where five different species are all given different parts of the same puzzle, and the point is for them to let go of their hatred/distrust of each other enough to all collaborate on the solution? It is also a test, to see if they have all developed to the point where they are **_capable_** of forgiveness and coperation.* We humans obviously aren't yet.
Divine inspiration went out to get milk thousands of years ago.
Only for the religions with an established power base. The smaller groups still report new direct messages from God.
In science, we start with competing beliefs but there is a way to evaluate them and we eventually see convergence. While religious people claim to have a way to know the truth, what we see is a divergence of beliefs. Personal revelation is not a reliable way to determine truth.
Yeah, I like pointing to modern consensus on things like the age of the Earth and the timeline for that convergence of opinion. Like, we have articles published by _Lord_ Kelvin in the 1890s in Nature where he, along with physicist coleagues, argued the sun was ~20,000,000 years old and that the geologists and biologists must be wrong to claim at least a billion years and should bow to the superior, proper science of physics (I'm barely exaggerating the tone of the exchanges, the text reads so catty). Yet, only about 30 years later, everyone agreed the now-late Kelvin was wrong by a factor of 100 thanks to evidence from the physics of radioactivity (which wasn't known at the time and so screwed up his calculations for the age of the sun, but wasn't a factor in geology and evolutionary biology).
Another thing worth pointing out is that scientific disagreements include testable predictions which, once evaluated, would necessarily support one hypothesis over another. You don't and can't have that in religion outside of prophecy which is never specific enough to actually settle anything other than "the end times must be later than we thought".
The fact that religion is present in almost every human society isn't proof that it is anthropologically a natural fact about our species and not some supernatural reality?
The religious confusion argument is great. Theists often want to advance an argument like "God is the best explanation for the universe", sidestepping the "we don't know" type of atheist response. They try to do the watchmaker thing and appeal to fine-tuning.
The religious confusion argument turns this on its head though: what is the best explanation for all the different religous points of view? Why are people so confused about this?
I don't really buy the "minor details" side of the argument though, because it's the theist who argues that the seemingly-inconsequential is actually of great import to God (what you wear, what you eat, what you do in the bedroom etc) so they can't have their cake and eat it on this point. If it's so important to God that we don't eat shellfish, why is there so little agreement on this (and so much nickel-and-diming over thr technical definition of "fish" and such!) These things would be insiginificant and not worth discussion, if they gave up the position that God says they matter a great deal.
"What is the best explanation for all the different religous points of view? Why are people so confused about this?"
There's a parable of three blind men touching an elephant. They all touch different parts of it, and their conclusions about the part they are touching are correct. But also incorrect. One touches the trunk, and thinks that's all there is to the animal. One touches a leg. One touches a tusk. Their failure is that none of them are willing (or able) to have that leap of insight and realize that they are all touching different parts of the same huge, bizarrely-shaped complex organism.
@@AlexReynard See, but that still doesn't solve the problem. If God were, in some sense, an amalgamation of different religious viewpoints, God would be very very contradictory. Fundamental claims on which different religions are based on are mutually exclusive, and without them, the religion falls apart, so how could one piece them together into a coherent whole? But suppose I grant it to you that there is a coherent way to piece together different religions into a coherent God. Then that God would be immoral. Because God is leaving us to our own devices to kill ourselves because we're trying to figure what they are like, when they could just come down and intervene, is immoral. And any argument that God is not immoral over this is just false. The only way to argue that is you believe that morality is whatever God says and does, in which case the worst brutalities would become moral if it's God's wish. With that being said, would you let people kill themselves over trying to settle a dispute/disagreement over something you could easily clear up? I doubt it. And God is supposed to be better than humans, so God should do those things. If God is not better than humans are, then there is no point in worshipping that God.
@@charlie_0823 Great response! Those are some damn good, challenging, fair questions!
"See, but that still doesn't solve the problem. If God were, in some sense, an amalgamation of different religious viewpoints, God would be very very contradictory. "
You mean like nature is? How it's full of opposing, conflicting forces like predator and prey species competing to the death for resources? I think you're right.
"Fundamental claims on which different religions are based on are mutually exclusive, and without them, the religion falls apart, so how could one piece them together into a coherent whole?"
Imagine several groups of people who all have a pile of puzzle pieces. They all hate each other, and are convinced, "Only WE have the full picture!" Except, _most of everyone's pieces are fake._ Every group has a small handful of true pieces. To seem wiser and more important than they are, all the groups invent pieces, which they say are holy received wisdom. *Those* are the pieces that conflict with each other. Because they're fake. They're methods of controlling the public. Or ways for the priests to get more gold for themselves. Or sometimes, they're bits of advice that only work for a certain population in a certain region.
Even if you were able to sort out all the true pieces from the false ones (and then brushed away all the duplicates), you'd be left with only a small handful of true pieces. *Nowhere near enough to gain an accurate impression of the whole picture.*
It's only now, when we have unprecedented communication among so many different cultures, that we are finally beginning to compare and contrast everyone's puzzle pieces. I think one of the reasons Jordan Peterson is an effective speaker is that, while a Christian, he cross-references lots of other religions and mythologies, showing respect to all of them.
To put it another way: if a bunch of uncontacted Amazonian tribesmen see a Boeing 747 fly overhead, they can pool their most brilliant minds to try and figure out what the hell that thing in the sky was, and they still *cannot ever get a correct answer*. Not because they're in any way stupid. But because they are simply unaware of too much information that would be critical to identifying what an airplane is.
"Because God is leaving us to our own devices to kill ourselves because we're trying to figure what they are like, when they could just come down and intervene, is immoral."
Billions of cells in your body die every day. Why don't you come down and intervene to save them? Is it because you're immoral? Or because you can't?
"The only way to argue that is you believe that morality is whatever God says and does, in which case the worst brutalities would become moral if it's God's wish."
Heck no; I think God is associated with nature and reality and truth. Meaning, he is amoral. Nature contains both beautiful sunsets *and* pediatric cancer. There's nothing moral about nature, it simply IS. An extremely complicated system of conflicting systems and organisms. Similarly, the truth is amoral. It's true that petting animals makes us feel better. It's *also* true that splitting an atom can generate enough energy to destroy a city. Both these things are true, and it's up to us humans to decide what we do with those truths.
"If God is not better than humans are, then there is no point in worshipping that God."
Sure. So then, what if we're cells in God's body? What if *way* more stuff on the macro level is sentient (planets, suns, maybe comets or energy fields) and they're all just flawed people like the rest of us? Remember that movie Meet Dave? Where there's a big Eddie Murphy spaceship, with lots of tiny little Eddie Murphies inside of him? Maybe that's God and humanity. God's our *_guy._* Maybe, in his world, he's just a random schmuck. Not the greatest hero ever, not the greatest monster, but just someone with good points and bad points like anyone else.
But also, think of it this way: If the cells of your body don't do their jobs, you get sick. Maybe even sick enough to die. So maybe there's no need to _worship_ God. Maybe it's just a matter of, if we make ourselves healthier and smarter and more playful, then that has a bigger effect than on just ourselves.
The reality is that God didn't create multiple religions, we did. This happens back in the old testament multiple times essentially didn't want to know god and chased after foreign gods. We even see it today.
For instance Muslims primarily reject Christianity over the trinity and the idea of God dying on a cross which is eerily similar to why the Romans initially rejected Christianity because to them their gods were all mighty heroic warriors who were very promiscuous so a God that dies on a cross bearing the sins of his people looks like a failed God not a victorious one.
Here is the thing if we reject God for who God actually is and want our own version of God is it any wonder we have so many different religions
@@AlexReynardlol so many false analogies😅. The most egregious is the cell one, which I’ll comment about.
Of course I can’t do anything with the cells in my body, cos I didn’t claim to have created them.
However, God is claimed to be creator of all things, so the whole “maybe we are cells in his body and he can’t do anything” argument only goes to buttress his incompetence😁 - that’s if he existed anyway.
Yeah in children analogy, it's like the parent interevened by telling each of the children something different.
I would say it's more like different people claiming to be speaking on the parents' behalf telling the children contradictory things. And the things they're claiming were said don't match the written documentation of what the supposed messengers claim they'd been told.
1 Corinthians 14:33: God is not a God of confusion.
And yet there are 45,000 different Christian denominations.
God has never communicated with me; that must mean I’m doing all the important things right.
Makes you wonder about all those Christians who think god HAS guided them. They must have been about to do something really evil for god to intervene. No wonder they all feel guilty.
That's awesome thinking
*I've* never communicated with you before either.
Does that say _anything_ about you?
Maybe it's just that I never noticed you until now. You were just one in a sea of millions of other commenters.
To put it another way: How many individual cells in your body are you personally acquainted with?
@@AlexReynard God knows everybody and can talk to anybody.
If the Holy Spirit were as real as Christians claim, there shouldn't be confusion.
Have you considered that a self evidential God might limit our free will?
@@Igelme r
Read Exodus. Where do you find free will? Free will is just an excuse not an answer.
@@williamwatson4354 do you think I believe Exodus to be a historical account or something? I like my burning bushes and snakes as much as anybody else but jeez
God isn't the issue, and being someone who consideres himself a growing christian, i can tell myself something is okay (self deluding), knowing FULL WELL God doesn't view it as such(the actual truth), which means i am ignoring God to sin. Too much of that leads to him leaving you to your reprobate mind, a mind that even God cannot change (in the sense of not removing your choice/free will; meaning you will never choose him even IF you know he's right, and you're wrong).😮
Holy Spirit is our connection with God, our flesh is our sinful nature, we have the ability to choose to deceive our own selves even when knowing the truth, aka think of the devil and angel on your shoulder and you get to decide which you want to follow
If the god is infinite wouldn't all religious disputes be equally major or minor?
"Why Did God Make Different Religions?"
There's a parable of three blind men touching an elephant. They all touch different parts of it, and their conclusions about the part they are touching are correct. But also incorrect. One touches the trunk, and thinks that's all there is to the animal. One touches a leg. One touches a tusk. *Their failure is that none of them are willing (or able) to have that leap of insight and realize that they are all touching different parts of the same huge, bizarrely-shaped complex organism.*
John's gospel was the last book and is witness to everything being fulfilled by the three witness and authorities of baptism for justification in one religion.
10:48 "Religious wars, religious persecution, religious intolerance, dehumanization"
Haven't you just turned the argument back into the "problem of evil"?
It’s an argument I find fairly compelling. Why if there is a god and god is not an evolutionary social construct is religious belief, practice and creed so diverse across the world.
Alex shaved.... awesome....
Im straight again.... thank god. 😂😂😂😂
This was from a little while back, I'm afraid.
I'm pretty sure this is older footage from before the age of the mustache. 😅
@@gurigura4457 dammit Alex!!! You got me again, you fahker!!!! 😂
Jesus stepped out for some smokes but he’s coming right back anytime y’all.
In all these discussions, I am surprised that there isn't more focus placed on the fact that even to suggest that human beings could have a "relationship" with an all powerful creator of the universe demonstrates immediately that this is simply a projection of the human mind. No one suggests you could have a relationship with a bunch of mathematical equations, which is what typically describes the universe, or indeed a cluster of galaxies (for the pantheists out there). You can't have a relationship with an ant or a rock. So even to talk about this implies that you think God is some sort of supersized human being. And of course all the stuff about creating man "in his own image" is just an inversion of exactly this. The religious have to believe this because otherwise why would "He" be so similar to man and have emotions, desires and indeed purposes? Referring to God as "He" demonstrates the ludicrous nature of this right at the start.
I unironically thought they were talking about children playing with weed until this moment 5:44
this guy SLAUGHTERS his points!
5:50 This is false. All you have to do is transpose the situation to a more realistic one: Both A and B claim that God gave *them* this land. It is *not* obvious from this that God exists.
7:04 Yes! Anything that actually matters to God for us to know is worth a divine decree. If the answer can't be unequivocally determined from the set of prior decrees (and I mean as unequivocally as adding numbers together) then God *should* make his wishes entirely clear. If he doesn't, then it's his fault people get it wrong. The book clearly is not sufficient, given that people have derived entirely opposite answers from it on many subjects. Note: there can be no "not worth it" for an omnipotent being, for whom nothing is any noticeable effort anyway.
I know there's no God simply because of the amount of injuries piling up for the Gunners in what was supposed to the their year.
What's one fact we know about god for absolute true? Just one thing.
Can I confirm which God are you referring to?
In the podcast, Alex isn't the one asking the question in the title.
just in general, any God. it doesnt matter in this discussion. its either no God, a God that doesnt care wether we believe in it, otherwise it would make things perfectly clear, no confusion possible. or there is a God thats playing games with its creation.
Believing in bad ideas, bad. Believing in Good Ideas, Good. Figuring out the good and bad requires empathy and logic. Reason matters when thinking is in the room.
Is bad\good in this context relative or based on universal precept?
We do not know if there is any sort of creator/mover at play in the universe as a whole. I don't believe we will ever know.
The sharper question is - why do people believe that they know (absolutely) the nature of the universe and who God is, and what he thinks, and how we should behave etc etc? Because one of the innumerable holy books says that a man sacrificed himself for us 2k years ago, and then rose from the dead?
Is it *at all* reasonable to use as a basis for believing you know the ultimate truth about existence??
Well, they are overwhelmed by fear of death and becoming a believer acts as comfort and succour - so reason has nothing to do with it.
Believing in atheism recompenses nothing but social rot and broken families. The Biblical descriptions of fallen humanity therefore rings true to me, the instructions the formula it works, and the account of those that wrote the Bible was that they received that wisdom from God, thus I believe it.
The atheists on this video have a lot of questions regarding the problems of this world, but the Bible clearly explained Gods wrath is for our sin. For example, Bible says thats why he scattered people abroad to worship other gods. His wrath is to humble us because we can get awfully arrogant very quickly (like the kids on this video) when everything is going right for us. Ultimately God destroys us, and yet he made salvation so simple for us, a free gift to accept, Jesus Christ as the substitution for our sins that we shall not die the second death.
@@billwalton4571 Hoist, by your own petard.
I feel that in most such discussions, some aspects of God go unnoticed or overlooked. One can consider the possibility that God is trying to achieve something different. However, most theistic beliefs, speak of an all knowing and all powerful God. Such a god simply would not be limited by capacity or have limited potential. It would be able to achieve exactly what it wants through an infinite range of possible methods. It can create a world where the true religion is easily discernable from a false one, in 1 million different clever and subtle but unfailing ways.
However, there is another potential issue. Many arguments against God doing this or that assume that no alternative exists. This is not a reasonable assumption! For instance, the argument was made in this video that God might desire for there to be multiple religions in order to help clarify his nature. if that was truly the plan, surely it could be done in a much better way! You could actually communicate about that in your holy texts, after all. You could make it clear to the people of earth what the purpose of multiple religions is so that they could better achieve it. there is no reason why an infinitely wise God couldn’t be a better communicator, even if there was some weird twisted and backwards purpose to what he was doing.
The problem is the word 'method'. A true all-powerful good doesn't need methods like he doesn't multi-step plans. What he wants, he already has. In fact, the mere concept that a perfect God could want anything is contradictory.
The only thing about this video that makes me really upset is the mention to Nintendo Wii
Is there a way to determine which is the One True box of cereal in the cereal aisle?
Ooooh, you're so close! Follow that logic to its ultimate conclusion!
If all of those boxes of cereal exist, then that itself is proof that "Which is the TRUE box of cereal?" is a malformed, useless, divisive, awful question.
There is no one true box of cereal. There is a vast cereal aisle, with many boxes. There's a whole fucking supermarket, with all sorts of different things inside of it; all of which are as real as each other.
Same as, your own body has many different organs in it. No one is "most" important; they are all interdependent on each other.
If a religion gathers millions of people, *that itself* is proof they have stumbled on to _some_ real truth. Some tiny percentage of the whole truth. If they were completely full of shit, no one would follow them. But the popularity of an idea proves that it is _somehow_ useful. Even if its followers are _completely wrong_ about WHAT that usefulness is. (Like Dawkins' documentary about homeopathy; it fails as medicine, but succeeds at making patients feel listened to and comforted.)
I think every religion has uncovered a piece of a key. All of them have then built up loads and loads of bullshit around their piece. but if they could ever think unselfishly enough to really compare what pieces everyone has, maybe we could find more. _And then maybe they could unlock something._
An omniscient, omnipotent being will *always* succeed perfectly at doing anything they wish to do. A reasonable way to resolve the clear religious & theological confusion is that clearly communicating truth about itself wasn't the real goal of God. It must have been secondary to other goal(s) that it be definition must have accomplished by sheer virtue of willing it to be so.
I'm just playing God's advocate; I'm agnostic to whether some version of a God exists, & as close to disbelief as I allow myself (for anything) regarding the Biblical God. & apatheistic in attitude. It's just interesting to think about, not something I particularly care about one way or the other, even if true.
In the end, the existence of imperfection, no matter how little, completely disproves a perfect being. A perfect being makes perfect things. Everything else are excuses.
@@juanausensi499 Not necessarily. If its goal is something that *involves* creating imperfect things, & not the act of creation at all, it could do so. Perfection always requires context related to goal(s). A weapon that instantly wins a war by wiping out the other side is "perfect" at its task if the sole goal of the generals is just to win the war. Even though most people would hardly say that this is "perfect," because their values / goals will usually include that people aren't wiped out. A hammer is "perfect" when you need a nail in a wall, & seriously lacking if you're working with screws. Perfection is contextual to the goal(s) of the person / being pursuing those goals.
That only saves God if it is "only" omniscient & omnipotent, but not defined as omnibenevolent or even morally good. Moral goodness implies a whole host of values & goals that involve morality. Making imperfect creatures, & imperfectly communicating with them, both of these things are consistent with an omniscient & omnipotent being (only constrained by what is logically possible), if those *aren't* the ends, but the means to the ends. Because it must accomplish its ends perfectly. When you add that this being must be morally good, whatever that would mean, it becomes a lot more problematic for it to be practicing an "ends justify the means" approach to achieving its ends. Esp if the means involve deception, harsh cruelty, suffering, & loads of death.
I would add that I, personally, think perfection is itself a terrible thing. It means no more room for improvement or growth. It may as well mean dead. We have the phrase "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good," but it's always bad. Perfection (in 1 or more ways / contexts), like an ideal, is fine to define as something to strive to approximate. But you don't get there, & if you try for real perfection instead of approximating it, the result is almost always undesirable & harmful. A perfect being would be a tragic, totally alien thing that we should have nothing to do with. Reality is potential / possibility, & reality seems to abhor the absolute & the perfect.
yes. a perfect being would be incapable of being imperfect and incapable of creating an imperfect creation. as perfectness requires the lack of the potential to be imperfect @@juanausensi499
@@MarcVL1234 Name me any objective that can be accomplished with imperfect things that can't be accomplished with perfect things.
"Perfection always requires context related to goal(s)"
Correct. Perfection is when all possible goals are accomplished. You aren't perfect if there are goals still not accomplished.
Are you arguing that the notion of 'perfection' is subjective? Because I 100% agree with that: it's subjective and extremely context-dependent. I'm just arguing from the assumption of objective perfection to address what that would hypothetically entail.
@@MarcVL1234 The issue here is that a omnipotent & omniscient being (no matter if he is also omnibenevolent) doesn't need to create means. He can obtain the end result without any intermediate step. And, if he is omnipotent, he already have done that. So, a world in a state of change progressing to some end can't be the creation of such god: either he doesn't exist or this world is not part of his creation, unless that world in a state of change is the desired end in itself, so there is no point in that change other than existing.
I agree, perfection is the end of all roads, a black hole where no improvement or action is possible. But that's just my opinion, Buddhists would say that that state of just being without doing is the best possible one.
I think this really is a problem for theists, especially when you consider polytheism vs monotheism. If God cares about particulars, his Divine Hiddenness sure is a problem in clearing up the confusion.
Why should it be a problem for theists pray? For a theist the more of gods the better! It is a problem for a fanatic fandom of the respective god/s only.
Let’s not forget god failed to provide sufficient evidence he exists and he is going to punish ME forever for his failing. This is by definition “all loving”.
This reminds me of political arguments that go like, "I don't believe that [current event] is happening, because I've never seen any evidence of it happening to ME!" "Okay, well, it's happening to other people. so will you look at their evidence?" "No. Get that shit out of my face. It's fake. It's disinformation. I know it can't be true, because I've already decided it can't be true, therefore it can't be true."
As a skeptic I never understood this argument. Why doesn't God reveal Himself and end all this confusion. Well, supposedly for billions of people, he has, so...
I think the argument is more like, Why doesn't God reveal Himself to Me the way I want. Of course, maybe God thinks that, If the way I am doing it is good enough for A), it should be good enough for B) ?
It makes sense that we would have different interpretations of what God is and God wants, heck, we have that of "everyday things" that we can see and touch, how would we not have that of the immaterial ?
The question is what version of God do you really want. Do you want a version according to a God you prefererences and likes or do you want God for who God actually is?
@@pgpython Some people want a version of God they can disprove, that they can justify not believing in and that is the version that "exists" for them.
How do you explain multiple religions?
Well to that I ask, how do you explain the Ad Populum fallacy you just used.
This entire video is based on a commonly used fallacy, and the two philosophy nerds should know better.
Bro is onto nothing
@Laplace246 Yeah, it's nothing new. Every atheist and their dog uses it, and it's literally stupid. "You disagree which religion is true. Therefore, no religion is true." Is a non sequitur
@Laplace246 Yeah, it's actually a non sequitur. People having a disagreement about X does not mean X=False. They also just assert that "if their was a true religion, It would be obvious to me." Yeah, that's just an assertion. You must demonstrate that. People believe things that are obviously false all the time, for example "did you know Jesus is depicted as blonde with blue eyes" no he isn't and everybody with eyes can see this to be false, but people believe it.
@@garrettlink9090 Remember that this is really a version of the Divine Hiddeness arguments. If God is hidden, people are going to disagree. But God could reveal Himself and settle the disagreements. The fact that He does not do so seems to indicate He doesn't care what people believe.
@Walter-j3c that's just an assertion, though. Not revealing himself=he doesn't care
Based on what?
"If God cared, he would reveal the truth to us." What are you appealing to foe the truth of this statement? You are putting a qualifier on what it means for God to "care" but have no justification for the qualifier
I can understand not believing in God.
But when atheists are *_certain_* there is no God, their arguments are such arrogant nonsense, it hurts my head.
It's like, 'I do not currently know the answer to this complicated math problem, which is _irrefutable proof_ that the problem *was always unsolvable, and will remain unsolvable forever.'*
@@AlexReynard atheism is non-belief not belief in the contrary.
It's simply looking at the equation, seeing the answer ignores certain mathematical laws and pointing it out and not accepting the answer, and even bringing to question the utility of such an equation.
There has never been epistemologically sound evidence for the existence of a God, so it ill becomes a man of sense to persist on proving the existence or non-existence of a God when there are much more useful matters to attend to.
Unless of course you have certain presumptions about the human condition regarding religion and God and their relation to a good experience.
I personally don't see them as necessary, so I don't really see utility in believing in them, or looking to prove that they are true.
Q. Why did God make different religions?
A. He didn't.
Video reported for misleading misinformation etc.
If the Christian God exists, he should issue Bible 2.0, it’s been 2000 years for god’s sake. Or come outta hiding. Either way would be helpful. Otherwise why would I believe?
If he exists he should come down and reveal himself, and then we record his presence through cameras for video evidence, and then we should have, let's say 2,000 witnesses all write down their account of the proceedings. and at the end of all that it should be indisputable that he exists.
that shouldn't be so hard for an all-powerful god, right?
Surely each of the gods created their own religions?
playing both sides so he always comes out on top
- Macweh
The whole analogy about kids and a parent is like many theists arguments. I our experience every child we know of had a parent. God's create predominantly non life so better ask what we would need to prove a mountains parent in court. As far as the Christian argument God sent down a son and the son was killed by one group of humans. Then the son rose and we never killed him again. But he is still gone. Not to mention that God used to, according to the bible, interact with us in concrete ways. No more. Seemingly, possibly coincidentally, no interactions have happened since we have the ability to record and analyze things much better.
It's a purposelly bad analogy. We all know that children have parents, and we don't know that because descriptions of parents match: we know because we can see those parents.
The very existence of God is what the debate is about, while the existence of fathers is not into question.
By comparing God to parents, the analogy subtly introduces the idea of God existing.
A better analogy would be a UFO sighting. If independent witnesses described the UFO in the same terms, that would increase the comfidence of the UFO being real, while contradictory accounts would reduce our level of comfidence.
Sirs,your real question is why would a monotheistic God cause to create 3 monotheistic Gods ?
The root cause here is monotheism. This was postulated by Abraham ,a tribal leader long time ago.He never imagined that his one monotheistic God will result in 3 monotheistic Gods over a period of perhaps a millennium.
So these are all constructs of human mind. Animals do not have any such conflicts or confusions.
Human-centric Supernatural Sky-Gods are "all constructs of human mind", but don't mistake that for proof that there is no objective, as-yet-unknown, Unified Thing-in-itself at the heart of the Universe.
Also: the same instinct that "teaches" a bird how to build a nest, "teaches" humans philosophy - with the end to all conflicts or confusions as an End.
Its an easy one. God likes to identify Himself as many different aspects of Himself. Why should he for godssake just stick with the one and only image of Himself prefered by some little jewish tribe?
I dont think he did mankind made different religions. Not that i believe in a god since no one has provided any verifiable evidence. I dont think are hearing much from alex 0 connor on this video it just seems to be one person talking. I had thought this was going to be a two way conversation between alex o connor and someone else.
As the Reds fan, there’s only one thing that bugs me here😉
This is a really one religion argument going on here.
A definite Christian bias.
I have some issue with that.
When do we have a Buddhism for example.
But he is indeed talking about Christian God. The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent God
@@gabrielmaximianobielkael3115 Oh that one. But he isn't the only one.
When are we going to talk about the rest of them
I mean the Christian God only covers 1.8 billion people
The other 5.9 have different ones
Buddhism and zoroastrianism is more of a code of ethics. Judaism and Christianity is more or less the same thing.
Islam is a copycat version of judaism and Christianity with heavy cultural overtones heaped on top.
Whatever god you believe in to me have equally no evidence and you could probably apply some of the opinions to any of the gods. I think am correct in saying buddhism does not have a god but am not sure if they still believe in a supernatural being. I thought buddhism was more a philosophy.
Why would you make such an assumption?
Obviously, if God exists, God is NOT talking. We, the children, have been given the ability to figure it out and grow.
It seems that as a religious person, I've accepted that.
But atheists seem to think we should have a list of do's and dont's. A bunch of answers. They seem to think god would want our brains shut off?
No, we have to use our brains and wrestle with life's questions.
There is no supernatural.
No God needed.
@vladtheemailer3223 did i say one was? Are you replying to someone else's comment? My comment started with an acknowledgement that no one knows.
It seems to me that the nonbelievers are expecting direct evidence of god, which eliminates the need for faith. God is like the wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain.
I dont know why we need faith in a god at all rather than just knowing there is a god. I dont know why asking for verifiable evidence of god is an unreasonable request.You could believe in any deity if you just rely on faith rather than having evidence verifiable.
@@silverfire01 If GOD provided direct evidence, then it would be a no- brainer, everyone would believe, which would eliminate your freedom and ability of choice. Which is why belief has two parts, 1) indirect evidence , 2) faith
@@jrsotr271 reply maybe. but if you believe already based on faith then you could srgue then that you are eliminating freedom and ability of choice already. You could believe then in any deity if you did not require evidence and just used faith.
Alex looks dead inside
Cool projection
I am delighted you got rid of the moustache
He didn’t. It’s an older video
@@DefenestrateYourselfthat’s a real pity
How lucky each and every one of us is to be born into the “right” religion.
Except the ones who weren’t. They’re just there to serve as an example. 🤷♂️
Also, that single parent analogy Is nonsense.
Siblings arguing over who mom said could play Wii is SOOOO FAR REMOVED from the concept of geocoding entire groups of people because of their interpretation of a note that invisible mom left on the fridge that says they had to.
How anyone can rational religion is CRAZY to me.
Also WII!?!? I’m at least twice your age and find that reference dated.
Mankind made different religions, as neither Christianity, Judaism or Islam are legitimate as none follow the Torah of Abraham, not God's fault as Jesus came in one faith.
God didn’t create other religions, man did. God gave man the innate desire to worship. If man rejects God, his desire to worship remains. Man will then fill that desire by worshiping self or something else. In this day and age, man worships self. Before we created other religions to follow. Most everyone will have the opportunity to know God. If you aren’t given the opportunity, He will judge you by other means.
" God gave man the innate desire to worship." i don't believe there is a god. Can you provide credible evidence that there actually is a god? Thank you.
What you're doing is called a presupposition. "God gave us this desire to worship" you're assuming God exists when you can't prove that God exists. People are born into religion, they're indoctrinated. If a society has no concept of gods then no one becomes religious
@@TboneWTF If God doesn’t exist, why the question “Did God make different religions”? Why do non-believers always accuse God of being terrible if they don’t believe?
You say you don’t believe but what do you believe. If you believe in anything, it requires some form of faith.
I believe in faith based evidence. All ideas from man or science, begin with nothing. This is because God is the beginning. I don’t think we will get far in this discussion over comments though.
I leave you with this though. I imagine you’re well versed in man’s idea of science. Have you ever read the Bible though? If you haven’t read the whole Bible, how can you say it’s wrong or incorrect?
@@TboneWTF Watch Joe Rogans podcast with Stephen Meyer. He goes through explaining intelligent design and you will see some of the gaps in modern science thinking.
@@jhinojosa123 "I believe in faith based evidence" I believe that credible and verifiable evidence is the most reliable path to the truth. Having faith means you have no credible evidence. You can have faith that Santa Claus is real but that doesn't mean it is true, right? So what evidence can you provide that your god is actually real and true? Good luck my friend.
Jesus Christ made 1 religion ,man knowing far more than him made the rest.
Jesus was Jewish
of course god could exist give the fact that we have a lot of religions. But not a God that wants us to follow a certain faith
Well, since people like to believe they are on the right side of the velvet rope, having scores of denominations lets them hold that belief and still be theists.
Alex misses the point again! His ambition to be lauded as the Most Reasonable Atheist has led him into unreason. An all powerful god who wants us to know him could PROVIDE all the the clarifying evidence necessary.
As for divine decrees, obviously it would be up to GOD to decide whether the dispute concerns a matter so critical that it needs to be clarified or not.
And the invocation of Jesus and the bible is absurd. The proliferation of Christian sects is all you need to see that Jesus's brief ministry and the bible didn't suffice to clarify matters and any rational being who actually cares what people believe would move to plans b, c, d ... until the matters are settled.
So the reasonable options are:
1. There is no god.
2. There is a god who doesn't care what we believe.
3. There is a god who cares what we believe who is too stupid or incompetent to communicate effectively.
4. There is a god who cares what we believe who is a jerk and allows people to go astray in ways that will affect them negatively but who cares.
Alex's mission has gone off the skids.
Can anyone demonstrate that God is real?
@vladtheemailer3223 Not to my satisfaction but a whole bunch of people think they can.
Or another reasonable option is you have no idea whatsoever
@knightofwangernumb2998 Oh, look! An argument without an aegument! If you have an actual criticism of what I wrote, please share.
@@johnrichardson7629 The argument/criticism would be that there is another option
There is no such thing as the supernatural. This video also completely ignores polytheism.
You're spelling God with a Capital G. That's a big no no in atheist consulate circles. Are you dissenting? Under the bus you'll go by your peers.
No, its not. It depends on what you want to use that word for. If its used as a name, then its “God”. If its used as description of a specific type of being, then it is “god”. As in; “the name of the christian god, is God.”
@CgGoil What sort of deluded bubble do you live in? God's name isn't God. It's YHWH, or Jehovah in its pronunciation. God is His title as He's God. Even secular Google confirms it in a search within seconds. You are without excuses.
@ people use “God” as a name. Your specific brand of god may not be called “God”, but other people are using that word as a name. Its not that hard to get. You are without excuse.
@@CgGoil Many people are dishonest though. God is a title not a name. You can argue til you are blue in the face over this. Nothing changes on the matter.
God didn't create anything (especially religions). Humans invented religions. You can't even prove your god is real my friend. (or can you?). Good luck
@@TboneWTF your mockery of God is clearly being seen. All man made religions have a works based,do something ,in order to enter Heaven. Christianity states God has already done it. Jesus Christ died for our sins, we have to repent of our sins,put our faith(alone) in Christ and we will be saved. It is a gift from God to all who accept the gift. We are justified by Faith Alone.
@@chrismachin2166 bless your heart
The different religions argument really only works for the Abrahamic God. More explicit revelation becomes an issue only after correct belief in a specific deity becomes the norm. Otherwise the diversity of religious expression while maintaining core tenets common to most conceptions of religion isn’t purely a negative. The conception of henadology neatly explains the proliferation of various deities while maintaining the power of certain theistic arguments as an example.
So either god is so weak they refuse to explain themselves.
Or it's all made up. And as we expect when people make shit up they Don't all agree upon important details.
@@NicholasMarshall there are common features through most religions across cultures and history. Ideas centered around sacrality, the role of ritual, myth as a guide for instilling values, a degree of agency for beings that exist outside and/or above humans, and so on. Those overlaps can point to something that while real isn’t neatly constrained to a particular narrow view of Christianity. Religious diversity is a major issue for certain conceptions of theism while for others it is expected and explained neatly (see Brahman or the Neoplatonic One).
Your problem is that you're trying to be logical about an objectively illogical and subjective subject. Not possible.
So then we should speak out against anyone who is imposing rules or commiting violence on other people based on these inherently subjective and illogical ideas, no?
@@asagoldsmith3328 Violence is not subjective. And if the rules are not based on a foundation of reality and objective truth, then yes.
Well that's awfully convenient for you. "It's just inherently illogical!"
Reminds me of a horror reviewer on here who reviewed a horror film for ninety minutes and eventually concluded, "None of this makes sense to me, so maybe the director was intentionally not making sense!" There was actually a perfectly simple allegorical explanation for everything in the film. The reviewer just didn't think of it. So he concluded that, because *HE* couldn't find the solution, _no solution existed._ The height of arrogance.
@@AlexReynard you know the whole thing is made up, right?
@@OBGynKenobi You're going to have to rephrase that. I have no idea what that sentence means. "The why thing"?
I think a feature missing from this argument which makes it even more powerful, is that dominant conception of God, which comes from the Abrahamic tradition, doesn't exist anywhere in historical or archeological records prior to the 12th century BCE, with Yahweh's name not even being attested to until the 9th.
To put this into perspective, humankind came into itself around 300.000 years ago, with behavioral modernity beginning some 50-65.000 years ago. IE, for roughly 299.999 years, or let's say 49.000 if we're going by "modern humans" and to be charitable, they had no clue who this god was, that there was such a god, nor did they even have a concept of such a god.
This, more than anything should get the noggin' a joggin', because surely, if this god existed it wouldn't have only first reared it's head in the levant some 3000 years ago.
(blinks) How in the world does this logic make sense to you?
This is like saying that, since a toddler is not yet developed enough to understand calculus, _calculus itself must have never existed._ Because surely, calculus would have taught itself to that toddler if it existed. That's crazy!
People were barely civilized for most of our history. If you're a vastly-complicated cosmic being, can you possibly expect humans, in that level of their development, to be *capable* of understanding your nature?
Like, your body is made of cells, right? Tiny little individual cells? *Do you think any of them know your name?* And if they don't, does that prove you don't exist!? Or does it just prove that they're very simple organisms, and they don't know your name because they're not even capable of comprehending your _form!?_
@AlexReynard
It makes sense to me because, unlike you, I'm not bending backwards with false equivalences to obfuscate the point of the argument.
1.) There's no comparison here to be made to calculus. For one, calculus is not an existent, it's conceptual; a language of symbols made to describe and make accurate statements about reality. Of course human development of that language, and their appreciation of its more granular depths of application, would be gradual.
Moreover, calculus is a complicated synthesis of a series of simpler mathematical inductions that *have* been with mankind ever since we gained the ability to count separated objects. Yawheh is not, unless your argument is that Yahweh is a logical extrapulation of older polytheistic traditions the same way calculus is an evolution of simple arithmetics.
You can make that claim if you want, but that leads us to the second way your analogy is flawed:
2.) It is not inherently baked into the claims of math that "calculus" has always been there in the same way Yahweh is argued to have always been there. You might want to try to sneak out of this bind by basically arguing that the modern theistic ideas of god evolved gradually because older humans didn't understand him the same way they didn't understand advanced math, but that route excludes the foundational narratives for the Abrahamic faiths. It also fundamentally undermines any certainty believers would have today, since we could just as well argue that modern believers' ideas about god are as wrong as they were 6000 or 20.000 years ago.
Point here is:
Yahweh is argued to have created humanity and been with them ever since he did. He's argued to be intimately interested in their fates, in wanting to have a personal relationship with them, and caring about whether they believe he exists or not. Yet, humanity has no record or conception of this diety for most of our history. Not even in basic terms.
For your appeal to be in any way analogous it would be more akin to making a very specific claim along the lines of, for example, human civilization being a product of calculus - that humans were intimately acquainted with it, and needed it to survive, all the while there's no evidence of calculus in 99% of our species' history.
An omniscient God should be better at communicating. Co-authoring one book, one time, in a soon to be dead language, doesn’t strike me as the best effort at communication. Indeed, it’s so badly written that it results in even individuals w/ in the same church holding different versions of god, heaven, justice, morality, etc.
I would venture still further. He should have made all the human brains and feelings the same. Because there lies the problem in fact - we all understand the same words in a different way. It is essential to destroy subjectivity. What a wonderful world it would be if there was just one human in billions of clones! Perhaps coming soon to you....
I hope one day humanity will collectively come to the conclusion that before we worship god(s) we must first prove that god(s) exist
Imagine if we never acted on any impulse or emotion before first proving it had a logical reason to exist.
So many of us would be hit by cars, or miss out on love, or ignore our deepest principles.
@AlexReynard why would we then be hit by cars? Or miss out on love? Or ignore our deepest principles?
Alex, you sound like a lawyer. For the most part, you only add to the confusion. Enough! Best that whole thing is just ignored. All this contrivance is a total waste of time, as it all has been for centuries.
God should be this, God should be that, well too bad you are not him so deal with it! accept his free gift Jesus Christ
He didn't
No you can't turn the argument on its head. The situation is clearly. asymmetrical.
I'm a bit surprised to hear Alex use such bad reasoning. He's usually very sharp and rational.
I am not sure about this video as alex o connor on left is not saying much .
What if you just thought that the world was more beautiful with multiple religions, and that God is trying to maximize aesthetic value rather than utility?
Then you’d have to argue that this reality somehow had the maximum amount of aesthetics physically possible
I need evidence for god before I can believe he is real.
This question shows that you want to understand and seek knowledge, I suggest you ask a Muslim imaam. It would be interesting if you did.
Trough Jesus christ. Thats how simple it is.
That's how simple you view it.
Pretty weak argument. Atheists really need to broaden their understanding of theism and realise their narrow grasp of Abrahamic religions doesn't account for the entirety of religious belief on the planet. It's also pretty odd to expect God to conform to our expectations as humans.
Humans with free will did. There is one god. That is Christ.
1. God didn’t
2. God came down and settled which is the one true religion
3. Everyone has enough evidence to accept and enough obfuscation to reject so they don’t feel compelled to do something they don’t want to do
“Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.”
1 John 4:15
Im a non-Abrahamic TRUE MONOTHEIST... Yahweh is a desert war God of hypocrisy, not the ONE TRUE CREATOR.
THERE ARE MANY RELIGIONS BECAUSE EVERY SENTIENT SINGULARITY HAS THEIR PERSONAL CONNECTION TO THE ONE TRUE CREATOR. DIVINITY COMES IN ALL FORMS.
Good for you. What attributes has your God? Because it's mere existence changes nothing.
@@juanausensi499 show me on the doll where the Bad theology touched you.... 😂.... my perception not not require the validation of the approval of your perception.... I'm not tryna convert no one. I'm just letting you know ppl like me exist.
@@Dark-Light_Ascendin Yes, you exist. I'm not offering my approval, just a question arising from personal curiosity. You are free to answer, or not.
@@juanausensi499 Symbols are only empowered by the SENTIENT SINGULARITY which gives life to it, by the Phoenix fire of CONSCIOUSNESS.
ALL CONSCIOUSNESS IS AN EXTENSION OF THE OMNI-CONSCIOUSNESS... TO WHICH EVERY QUANTA OF OUR LIVES CONTRIBUTES....
a SENTIENT SINGULARITY is a LIGHT-SEED OF THE ALL-SPARK...
LIGHT IS ALLOWED EXPRESSION BY THE INFINITE SCAFFOLD OF DARKNESS.
LIGHT NEEDS THE MEDIUM OF DARK ON WHICH TO PROPOGATE. , & EXTEND UNTO EVERY QUANTA OF CREATION.
ALL UNIVERSES WITHIN THE INFINITE OMNI-VERSE EXIST AT THE SAME TIME & PLACE SIMULTANEOUSLY.
EXISTENCE SIMULTANEOUSLY IS & IS NOT.... JUST AS CREATION IS BUILT ON NOTHING, SO TOO IS EVERY CO-CREATOR AN EXTENSION OF TGE ONE TRUE CREATOR. (who is not Yahweh). ❤
@@juanausensi499 I see "Satanists" as just as weak as the rest of the followers of Abraham, as they all believe God is DIVIDED INTO GOOD & EVIL... and they all worship sin.
My divergence in Theism & theology is I do not believe in the concept of "EVIL & SIN". I believe in the True unity of the ONE TRUE CREATOR.
The ONE true CREATOR
has nothing to be jealous of,
For all existence is an extension of his being.
All words are HIS WORDS.
ALL NAMES ARE HIS NAME.
ALL THINGS ARE HIS THINGS.
GOD IS NOT DIVIDED.
GOD IS INSIDE US.
I am the BRIGHTEST NIGHT.
I am the DARKEST LIGHT.
... & I AM ASCENDING.
Every single atheistic argument, boils down to one misunderstanding about what theism is answering
Why do we have imperfections? we can conceive of perfection. Why do we have imperfections?
Ultimately, the atheist is rejecting the presupposition that we are imperfect . They’ll either have to say we are perfect or that imperfection is an illusion.
The feast also claims that we are already actually perfect or that perfection is an illusion
Now, I'm big on rejecting presuppositions, but I certainly don't need to conclude that we are perfect, nor that imperfection is an illusion. If I ultimately accept the __observation__ that we're imperfect, why is it so bad that I rejected the presupposition?
I'm not sure I believe you've ever encountered a single atheist who has said we are perfect or that imperfection is an illusion.
@@hemoglobin3751 “if I ultimately accept the observation that things fall why is it so bad that I rejected the presupposition of gravity.”
The observation that things are imperfect is the presupposition that perfection could conceivably exist.
Perfection and imperfection are not illusions, nor are they necessarily reflections of any kind of larger truth. Perfection and imperfection are just measurements we make in comparison to a standard.
I might claim that humans are imperfect, but the perfect standard I am comparing them to would be a different standard than others might use. Are we truly asking the same questions if you can ask those questions in more specific manners? For example, someone might believe homosexuality is an imperfection, whereas I would not. That same person would likely not have a problem with people rejecting homosexuals, but I would. At that point, we are no longer asking the same simple question, at that point we are asking two separate questions of "why do homosexuals exist," and "why do homophobes exist?"
At that point, the question is not actually about "perfection" and "imperfection" because we have vastly different ideas of what those words actually mean and what they apply to. We would be distinctly asking different questions that would then be swept under the same umbrella simply because we both view one another as having imperfections, but in completely opposite ways.
At that point, the question of "why are things imperfect" would more accurately be worded as "why are things not as I believe they should be?"
@@xaviersandoval1765couldn’t have said it better myself
@@xaviersandoval1765 trying to TH-cam comment on my phone is a nightmare. I need to be at home to give this the read it deserves
"Why won't the God/parent just provide clarity?" Have you read the Old Testament or had children? The entire history is God giving his chosen people very clear instructions and they repeatedly disobey. It's almost a running joke. Then you have kids and you realize, "oh now I get it."
"Now ignore all those other religions and holy texts claiming to be the correct one."
@TheTrueRandomGamer the only religions that claim to have a deity are Judaism, Christianity, Islam and I think Hinduism.
I find one interesting aspect of Christianity is that Jesus is mentioned or alluded to by major religions, and only in once is he proclaimed as God
All philosophically and theologically inquiry meshed down to this conclusion.... People have a tendency to go to the most "obvious" and most "logical" explaination in terms of their own biases :) The simplest ones is the most conveniant ones that requires tiny effort of examination and thinking. Even less conveniant is the thoughts that require you to think coherently within a bigger picture - where as human beings can never reach the full picture. If only it were that simple as saying "now ignore all those other religions and holy texts claiming to be the correct one". Most if not many of the major religions have alot of similarities in ways of thinking about God. Most of the differences is caused by social conditioning and cultural differences - which also have had a great effect on atheistic thinking. Which in alot of ways takes alot of religous thought process into their thinking about human conditioning without a God. Sartre for example replaces "God" with "Nothingness" - but as Parmenides already reflected upon during pre-socratic times - there is no possible way of thinking of 'nothing' without thinking about something. How do human beings know that they have the "correct" concept of Nothing? Some talk about Day and Night, certainty and uncertainty etc... But at the end of the day - we're human beings with one leg shorter than the other - a limping pilgrim - on a journey on the search for Truth. Truth will be more clear when you get closer and closer to the inviteable Death. Where everything you ever thought of - will be called into question - and you realize that Truth is more and bigger than what human beings can ever get a hold on to. There's something bigger than you - something more important than looking out on what everyone else is claming - than have a genuin and deeper self-examination of yourself and your own beliefs. Most genuin truthseekers in all religions (including atheism) is trying to look above and beyond their own religion - and across different frames and religions - to try and find a deeper truth for themselfes. Most people doesn't take this path in their life today - they don't have much time to think about it - so they land on the most popular and conveniant conclusions - until Death catches up with them....
If you read the Bible, you will see what religion God wanted...
But that's only good for the Christian God.
There are at least 72 other gods.
God also asked in the Bible if I remember correctly for human sacrifice.
@@JamesBarry-j7m Correct. The religion God wanted involves human (and other animal) sacrifice, genocide, and slavery (sexual and otherwise).
Ehh no, The bible Jesus didn't come to form a religion. Its you guys who decided to create a religion of Christianity out of him. All your Bible Jesus did was to say "follow me"
If you read another religious book from another religion they would claim theirs is the true god or gods.
God didn't make anything
I feel that in most such discussions, some aspects of God go unnoticed or overlooked. One can consider the possibility that God is trying to achieve something different. However, most theistic beliefs, speak of an all knowing and all powerful God. Such a god simply would not be limited by capacity or have limited potential. It would be able to achieve exactly what it wants through an infinite range of possible methods. It can create a world where the true religion is easily discernable from a false one, in 1 million different clever and subtle but unfailing ways.
However, there is another potential issue. Many arguments against God doing this or that assume that no alternative exists. This is not a reasonable assumption! For instance, the argument was made in this video that God might desire for there to be multiple religions in order to help clarify his nature. if that was truly the plan, surely it could be done in a much better way! You could actually communicate about that in your holy texts, after all. You could make it clear to the people of earth what the purpose of multiple religions is so that they could better achieve it. there is no reason why an infinitely wise God couldn’t be a better communicator, even if there was some weird twisted and backwards purpose to what he was doing.