7:09 We were divisive (at least in the US) on the political narrative long before COVID. Trump was elected in 2016 and the division was getting worse exponentially through Clinton, W, and Obama. There are many divisional issues COVID caused, but the political division has been on an upward spiral for a while. To be clear, I worked on W’s campaign twice and there were people protesting on the Capital with his effigy in a noose/with a H*tler mustache. Clinton was impeached, for crying out loud. The political divide has been very, very bad and getting collectively worse since Clinton’s reelection campaign.
@ That’s my point. It didn’t start with Clinton, it’s been around since the inception of the country (1824 election was BAD), but Clinton, made worse with Hillary and Monica, started the most recent round of division. Carter, coming off the Nixon debacle was fairly calm, even though people particularly didn’t like him. Reagan was possibly the most well-loved, culminating in his 49 state route and Bush 41 was definitely not hated. He would have won reelection had it not been for the economy (seems familiar this year) and Ross Perot. Then it ratcheted up exponentially with Clinton, W, Obama, culminating in where we are today.
11:39 “MEN are naturally theistic…”? Do you mean specifically men or mankind? Because, as a female atheist, I am a very small demographic. I assure you most atheists are men and the statistics bear this out. There’s an atheist TH-camr that jokes that “women have led more men to the Holy Spirit than ever has.” Even many of the most popular apologists (William Lane Craig, Jay Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel, etc.) credit a girl/woman for bringing them into the church…
@@TheThinkInstitute Fair enough. And I totally screwed up/mistyped that quote. It should have said “women have led more men to God than the Holy Spirit ever has.” 😉
32:14 What are you talking about? I dare you to pretend to be an atheist on a Christian TH-cam comment section and see how many threats of hell you get. That’s nothing to say of the thousands of years of missionary work, both peaceful and not…
//That’s nothing to say of the thousands of years of missionary work, both peaceful and not…// Interestingly at about the 20:00 mark Joel accepts that the "Christian consensus ... spread throughout Europe by way of colonialism and colonization and imperialism. ... to the New World ... to Australia ...". Christianity itself spread on the back of two pernicious aspects of human behaviour - taking from others or imposing oneself on others. That is, the faith did not solve these problems, but rather it relied on them and even encouraged them. Also, Francis Schaefer's son, Frank, is a longtime atheist. In his young days he worked for his dad and admired a lot of his work but became very disillusioned when his dad became entrenched in US conservative politics. Frank runs a U-Tube channel under his name.
@@TheThinkInstitute I guess. I feel about the same when Muslims “warn” me of their hell (has also happened). I’m just as frightened of the Christian hell as I am the Muslim one. Threats of eternal damnation just get old when it’s the last resort. I’ll be having a fairly civil debate and it seems, when they run out of things to say it boils to 1) “I guess you’ll find out when you die” and/or 2) “You’re denying the truth in your unrighteousness.” Both of those are conversation-stoppers and I am confident neither are true (since I know my own thoughts, am 100% confident the latter is false and 99% confident the former is false, I imagine similarly to how you view the Muslim hell). I understand others do believe this, but put yourself in the place of a nonbeliever and how would you respond?
@@melbied6215 // "put yourself in the place of a nonbeliever and how would you respond?" // I don't think Joel is "allowed" to do this, Melbied, because he'd have to use "autonomous reasoning", which his particular set of dogma has decreed as "sinful" or "impermissible". Basically, they're not allowed to do philosophy or reason about things, UNLESS their God postulation ALREADY exists in the reasoning domain. It's a bit like a self-imposed cognitive impairment that doesn't allow you to consider any options other than the one you've decided (or been indoctrinated) to accept. It's hugely limiting, but that's why you'll see presuppers just asserting stuff like "God is the necessary precondition for intelligibility/knowledge/logic, etc", with no means (or hope) of backing it up, other than just repeating the same assertion (usually in the form "due to the impossibility of the contrary"). This is saying the SAME thing twice, or saying "p, because p". In logic, a tautology like "if p, then p" automatically follows, *no matter what* 'p' is. IF the antecedent is true, THEN the consequent MUST be true, because the antecedent *IS* the consequent! If p = "God exists" , then they will *accept* the tautology. If p = "God does NOT exist", then they'll become flustered, and will DENY the tautology, because they're dogmatically not permitted to entertain a conditional statement that has their God NOT existing! It's kind of weird, but that's why they're trapped in this "worldview" mumbo jumbo, because their "worldview" doesn't permit them to indulge in genuine reasoning. Reasoning gets suspended if the *content* of the reasoning strays outside a self-imposed boundary. It's a bit like the old joke about the 'Model T' Ford - "you can have any colour you like, so long as it's black!" :) There's no contradiction in the tautology "If a car is red, then a car is red", because it's necessarily the case under the "IF" conditions. But the presupper will say "NO! All cars are necessarily black (under the conditions of my "worldview"), so I will not allow myself to even entertain the notion of a car that is red." It's not "philosophy". It's just an odd, dogmatic belief that says "My 'worldview' is that I'm not allowed to reason about the things that my 'worldview' says I'm not allowed to reason about." 🤣
7:09 We were divisive (at least in the US) on the political narrative long before COVID. Trump was elected in 2016 and the division was getting worse exponentially through Clinton, W, and Obama.
There are many divisional issues COVID caused, but the political division has been on an upward spiral for a while.
To be clear, I worked on W’s campaign twice and there were people protesting on the Capital with his effigy in a noose/with a H*tler mustache. Clinton was impeached, for crying out loud.
The political divide has been very, very bad and getting collectively worse since Clinton’s reelection campaign.
@@melbied6215 yep, and it didn’t start with Clinton either. But I was describing the most recent trends.
@ That’s my point. It didn’t start with Clinton, it’s been around since the inception of the country (1824 election was BAD), but Clinton, made worse with Hillary and Monica, started the most recent round of division.
Carter, coming off the Nixon debacle was fairly calm, even though people particularly didn’t like him.
Reagan was possibly the most well-loved, culminating in his 49 state route and Bush 41 was definitely not hated. He would have won reelection had it not been for the economy (seems familiar this year) and Ross Perot.
Then it ratcheted up exponentially with Clinton, W, Obama, culminating in where we are today.
11:39 “MEN are naturally theistic…”? Do you mean specifically men or mankind?
Because, as a female atheist, I am a very small demographic. I assure you most atheists are men and the statistics bear this out.
There’s an atheist TH-camr that jokes that “women have led more men to the Holy Spirit than ever has.”
Even many of the most popular apologists (William Lane Craig, Jay Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel, etc.) credit a girl/woman for bringing them into the church…
@@melbied6215 mankind
@@TheThinkInstitute Fair enough. And I totally screwed up/mistyped that quote. It should have said “women have led more men to God than the Holy Spirit ever has.” 😉
32:14 What are you talking about? I dare you to pretend to be an atheist on a Christian TH-cam comment section and see how many threats of hell you get.
That’s nothing to say of the thousands of years of missionary work, both peaceful and not…
//That’s nothing to say of the thousands of years of missionary work, both peaceful and not…//
Interestingly at about the 20:00 mark Joel accepts that the "Christian consensus ... spread throughout Europe by way of colonialism and colonization and imperialism. ... to the New World ... to Australia ...". Christianity itself spread on the back of two pernicious aspects of human behaviour - taking from others or imposing oneself on others. That is, the faith did not solve these problems, but rather it relied on them and even encouraged them.
Also, Francis Schaefer's son, Frank, is a longtime atheist. In his young days he worked for his dad and admired a lot of his work but became very disillusioned when his dad became entrenched in US conservative politics. Frank runs a U-Tube channel under his name.
@ I’m familiar with Francis Schaefer, but not his son. Thanks, I’ll look into him.
@@melbied6215 warnings are not the same as threats
@@TheThinkInstitute I guess. I feel about the same when Muslims “warn” me of their hell (has also happened). I’m just as frightened of the Christian hell as I am the Muslim one. Threats of eternal damnation just get old when it’s the last resort.
I’ll be having a fairly civil debate and it seems, when they run out of things to say it boils to 1) “I guess you’ll find out when you die” and/or 2) “You’re denying the truth in your unrighteousness.”
Both of those are conversation-stoppers and I am confident neither are true (since I know my own thoughts, am 100% confident the latter is false and 99% confident the former is false, I imagine similarly to how you view the Muslim hell).
I understand others do believe this, but put yourself in the place of a nonbeliever and how would you respond?
@@melbied6215 // "put yourself in the place of a nonbeliever and how would you respond?" //
I don't think Joel is "allowed" to do this, Melbied, because he'd have to use "autonomous reasoning", which his particular set of dogma has decreed as "sinful" or "impermissible". Basically, they're not allowed to do philosophy or reason about things, UNLESS their God postulation ALREADY exists in the reasoning domain. It's a bit like a self-imposed cognitive impairment that doesn't allow you to consider any options other than the one you've decided (or been indoctrinated) to accept. It's hugely limiting, but that's why you'll see presuppers just asserting stuff like "God is the necessary precondition for intelligibility/knowledge/logic, etc", with no means (or hope) of backing it up, other than just repeating the same assertion (usually in the form "due to the impossibility of the contrary"). This is saying the SAME thing twice, or saying "p, because p".
In logic, a tautology like "if p, then p" automatically follows, *no matter what* 'p' is. IF the antecedent is true, THEN the consequent MUST be true, because the antecedent *IS* the consequent!
If p = "God exists" , then they will *accept* the tautology. If p = "God does NOT exist", then they'll become flustered, and will DENY the tautology, because they're dogmatically not permitted to entertain a conditional statement that has their God NOT existing!
It's kind of weird, but that's why they're trapped in this "worldview" mumbo jumbo, because their "worldview" doesn't permit them to indulge in genuine reasoning. Reasoning gets suspended if the *content* of the reasoning strays outside a self-imposed boundary. It's a bit like the old joke about the 'Model T' Ford - "you can have any colour you like, so long as it's black!" :) There's no contradiction in the tautology "If a car is red, then a car is red", because it's necessarily the case under the "IF" conditions.
But the presupper will say "NO! All cars are necessarily black (under the conditions of my "worldview"), so I will not allow myself to even entertain the notion of a car that is red."
It's not "philosophy". It's just an odd, dogmatic belief that says "My 'worldview' is that I'm not allowed to reason about the things that my 'worldview' says I'm not allowed to reason about." 🤣