Alex O'Connor is not really a CosmicSkeptic, so I do not think we will ever see a actual CosmicSkeptic with Alex O'Connor, but Alex O'Connor we have all seen likely several times.😉
@@Benjamin-to2zqI’m gonna be honest your comment falls flat because the insult was pretty creative, you coulda just said it was rude or somthing Good insult
I was so confused every time I heard someone quoting Tom Holland, I was like "I didn't know the current actor for spiderman, tom holland, was so outspoken about religion and ethics" lol
Yep. But he is also super tough on letting anything get into his belief system. That's he only embraces truth one micro-drop at a time, and debates everything else.
Er, I don't know about Westerners but here in Singapore, most of us have mates who have religions (or not) different from us. I mean, I'm Christian, but seriously, I have mates who are Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and nonreligious. No big deal.
@@Chew81 The point was more intended as a specific reference to their own relationship. If you look at their first videos several years ago you will notice that they are much more aloof.
I've watched one of his video when he was still using the name cosmicskeptic and he showed a edited image of a Bible website to prove a point. It was about Adam and Eve, he made it look like God says that they will die immediately after eating the fruit. The guy is a wolf in a sheep's clothing.
There’s an old discussion on Alex’s channel where they discuss this. It would be the bones of Jesus or anything that absolutely disproves the Resurrection of Christ. As it says in 1 Corinthians 15:17. If Christ is not risen our faith is in vain.
@@JawrL95 it's pretty weird from JB to say that; to disprove something that wasn't proven in the first place. But, I guess most christians probably think this way.
@@The.Dark.Side.Official You are somewhat confused. Atheist - has no *belief* in a god Agnostic - doesn't *know* if there's a god or not One is about belief, one is about knowledge. Most atheists are agnostic; the have no belief in a god (therefore atheist) but they also don't claim to know if there is a god or not (therefore agnostic)
@@The.Dark.Side.Official Strange question. How do people become theists? How did they know? Becoming an atheist is simple: it happens when you are not persuaded by claims that a god exists. You probably don't believe in stories about Santa Claus, which technically makes you an "asantaclausist." An atheist isn't someone claiming he knows something, but a person who says he doesn't believe in certain propositions that are made.
I watch Alex for really one reason. I'm a philosophy major, years out of school. If I wish to do any philosophy its largely reading, and discussions just don't exist. Alex holds his podcast to a level I enjoy and recall. The type of discussions I miss having, at the level I enjoy and find engaging.
Alex and Justin represent so well the theme of the great writer, G.K. Chesterton's, "The Ball and the Cross." That novel is about an atheist and a Catholic coming together in a world that doesn't take either very seriously anymore because they don't take anything very seriously anymore; it's devolved to easy-going relativism. In our culture, everyone almost goes too far the other way and treats anyone with a divergent opinion as at best wrong and at worst evil; Justin and Alex are a breath of fresh air to be seen not only listening to one another, but genuinely seeming to enjoy what the other person has to say even when they disagree.
It was really interesting to hear the beginning conversation on how framing art in varying contexts can completely change our attention, attitude, and affections for the work, and then segue immediately into Alex’s brand name change from CosmicSkeptic to self-titled. In terms of the art, I know for certain that is true. Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms used to be just a relatively pretty painting for me, and then I learned the story of Aaron’s Staff which budded almond blossoms as a sign that God chose him, and I absolutely fell in love with the painting. Since then, I find the painting beautiful, and I have it up on my wall in my bedroom. It wasn’t that the art changed, just my understanding.
I have the same beauty for the Universe without a God .. simply for the reason that In the naturalistic view there is no true evil .. there is only action and consequences.. no devilish demon ( ultimately Gods creation)luring us on the wrong path only the ever dwindling number of things we have not yet learned about
@svendtang5432 I agree that there is a certain beauty that saying, “God did it” kind of ruins. Things I find so interesting are learning about how life functions on the scale of individual cells and abiogenesis, because they show how mechanical life can be. I think the incredible, yet fascinating complexity of those things are ruined by slapping a label that says, “God did it” on all of that.
Guy de Maupassant was the writer who hated the Eiffel Tower and frequently dined in it! If you read some of his short stories, I think you’ll appreciate his fabulous sense of irony even more. I’d recommend “The Necklace” for a start.
It may be smaller by comparison, but there's probably not much crossover between the audiences, meaning this is a great opportunity for Alex to draw in new listeners.
Getting my Masters in Theological studies (for fun) was the best (and hardest) thing (academically) that I have ever done. Theology is fascinating, truly.
@@corneliahanimann2173 Not much, LOL, that's is why I did it for "fun". I have an undergraduate in Mech. Eng. I guess you can do as much as with a degree in philosophy?
@@paulsacramento5995 I imagine so. In Switzerland you need to get a masters in theology to become a pastor/priest, but I can not at all imagine another job that would appreciate that degree. I do see the appeal though, but in some sense, I feel that for topics of psychology or even literature- especially movie-literature, but more in a "trivia" sense, not in a sense where I would want to spend hours studying these topics in a book. I figured maybe I was underestimating the actual usefulness of a degree in theology, but I guess you solved that mystery for me. Thank you
First fifteen minutes was such a fantastic introduction into the mind of this person Ive never heard of before. Overall this was a great talk. Searching for answers, and being aware of our ability (or inability) to create the reality as we perceive it along with the driving forces that shape our world view. It is such a clear thing that we are more passengers to forces beyond our intellectual control, even more so when those forces are actually inside us (emotions and intuitions). This was overall an engaging discussion brushing on these huge topics that hundreds of hours could be spent on.
What I'd like would be for God to reach into my brain and make me believe in him. This would benefit us both. He wants me to believe in him and I want to believe what's true. Since I'm requesting that this be done it wouldn't violate my free will. Since I still don't believe, it seems that God doesn't actually exist, he doesn't really want my belief, or he's irrational.
The logic of solipsism. You have imported an objective image of what 'God' might be and then when you fail to see that image subjectively, you blame the object for not existing. But God is not an object.
I like Alex O'Connor's new work much better than the old. Exiting Christianity, I needed cogent reassurances that I wasn't alone, but diving into philosophy deeper has only benefitted me since then.
@@aodhfyn2429 What drove you away from Christianity? Really I don't believe any atheist is strayed away because of anything logical, but because they don't want to be told what to do.
But If we find someone's beauty to be enchanting can it really be illusory as you say? We are seeing them as they are after all. The beauty is only our natural conceptions being challenged positively. That is to say, enchantment of the kind I have just described is simply a genuine response to reality. (I'm not religious I should clarify, lest you think I'm defending anything. )
@@Arareemote well unfortunately there's a good bit of biology there too. Just like our brains are biologically setup to like cute things to protect them, our brain also actively suppresses red flags early on in a relationship to give us the highest chance of bonding and mating. Our nature is survival and propagation first and foremost. Our prefrontal cortex evolved primarily for emotional regulation and to be able to "snap out of it" so to speak. But on the flip I believe we are now TOO rational and have lost access to a lot of enchantment as a result. So there must be a balance
@@Arareemote"enchanting" in the context they use it is as if to "cast a spell" upon their desired object. It means they're not speaking in the Holy Spirit. To be "enchanting" or "enchanted" in the sense YOU mean it is is more like to be infatuated. And that's almost always illusory.
@@NicholasNugent-y3pWhile I certainly commend your self-confidence and bravery, after reading your response, I can't help but wonder if you may have misinterpreted what I said. I didn’t mean it in the way you’re suggesting, but I appreciate you offering your personal interpretation of my comment.
All God would need to do is show up and reveal that he is real and I'll accept that he is real. Not old stories, not other people claiming they have experienced God but actually show me he is real himself. This should be a trivial thing for God bur he doesn't ever do it, so I do not believe he is real.
Exactly but bible is just man made nonscence ,myths and fables all it takes is reading it to realize it and once you get informed by scholars it's over.
Some people saw and still didn't believe. They killed him on the cross. If God would say He is God, would you believe Him? How can you test God? Believe has nothing to do with physical or non physical proof. I bet if you saw a talking burning bush you would think you are insane. You actually do see these kind of signs everyday, but you ignore them. And if you turned your back at the thing you (claim) want to see and refuse to look and bend your eyes around it, you just become a liar. You don't want Him to be real so you can't see him. He is always there with you. There is similar proof that Cezar existed as there is for Jesus. It is surely quite trivial for God to appear in front of you, but in that moment you will die. He's looking for honest, gentle, humble, kind and selfless people. If you were to build a kingdom wouldn't you want to have the best people and not by mistake take evil in, that will torture the rest? He needs people who he can trust. And that's how he selects them. The ones who believe written testimony and experience of life. There is plenty of evidence too. The path to God is narrow and there are reasons why. He also is patient enough to give you a chance to become the sort of person he needs.
The entire point of Christianity is that you're living for the "Kingdom of God" and not your current earthly life. That's core to Jesus' teaching even prior to a Christian understanding of Jesus. Jesus preached that people shouldn't invest time and resources into making the world better, because his Kingdom would come soon anyways.
@@Robert-ob1mpNo, religion corrupts science, philosophy and art. Mosques are super boring because Islam prohibits depictions. Many philosophical questions were overlooked for centuries because "god did it" was accepted by an answer. And science is diametrically opposed to faith in it's essence.
@@MrCmon113 That is absolutely not true. In Matthew 25, 31-46, Jesus explained that those who took care of him will be parted from those who didn't. The people asked when they took care of him and he said "Whatever you did for one of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." This is a core component of theology; the understanding that Earth is not separate from the Kingdom and people are not separate from the Spirit. His teachings were absolutely centered around loving and caring for yourself, your neighbors, your enemies, and the world around you.
I'm a philosophically educated Catholic and I just love Alex's deep investigation of the depths of theism and religion. I think Bishop Barron laid out the solid case for God from reason alone in their earlier discussion and I am very hopeful that Alex's dedication to church will lead him to the source of personhood and meaning in life. Great guy.
There is no solid case for things not shown probable and in many cases proven impossible. The god of Abraham is man made myths and fables with added lies.
The question I would like answered though is, which God? I would agree the fine tuning argument makes for a very compelling case for ‘something’, God if you wish. But equally compelling to me is the existence of evil makes the Christian God, highly improbable.
@@vigilance3109 While I do believe the existence of evil would make me never to worship the christian god (or any god for that matter), I do not believe that it discredits the existence of the christian god (at least I think). The Bible describes such a being as all loving and omnibenevolent, both of which are garbage claims but not for the reason you are probably thinking. These claims have the presumed idea that the concept of morality and love can be objective when this is false (I come from the perspective of a moral relativist). So while these claims are false, I can easily see such a god existing who has the morals of the christian god, claims they are objective, but they are just subjective morals. Yes, it would mean he would be a liar but I don't believe that discredits the existence of him in the first place.
@@vigilance3109 Hi. I find a sublime irony in people finding "evil" a point against God. The point affirms the good and our God given call to the good. And evil is the absence of a good that "should be there". Final Causality. Love. St Thomas Aquinas. His metaphysical proofs from reason are solid. Why almost all of us believe in God naturally. Cheers
@@tommore3263No one believes in your god "naturally". Your religion is like any other religion. Belief in the trinity is as natural as belief in Tlaloc or Thor. Actually those are probably more honest, because a lot of pagans are just honestly mistaken and they're not trying to make up elaborate excuses.
Alex makes a great point on how throughout history people have pointed at scripture to justify political stances in both directions. How can the bible be a moral authority if there’s no agreement on how to interpret it? I’m reminded of Bertrand Russell’s essay and this quote on the bigotry of the church: “You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.”
What a misinformed statement. Progress assumes a standard and that standard is not self evident. Who decides the standard and where does it come from? This question must be answered before we start talking about progress this or opposing that.
"as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.” - its so much Bullshit in this sentence that I don´t even know how to start.
The Bible was created by the Church as an education tool because there were some teachers that were giving incorrect lessons. Evangelisation came before the Bible. The primary goal of any Christian teacher should not be rigid Biblical originalism, but to spread the good news. To use the Bible, or the Old Testament scripture, as an excuse to push certain perspectives is an ongoing issue for those who don't have a legitimate authority structure.
@@JohnFromAccountingthe Bible was not created by the church. 75% of the Bible is the old testament which had existed long before. The gospels were written by followers of Jesus or followers of the apostles shortly after. It was a long time before we can even talk about something like a church. Also: For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Matthew:18:20
At 58:16 Alex's word is δυσαγγελιον, δυσ is the prefix 'dis' meaning "bad", and αγγελιον or the root word 'angelion', which means message, and is also where we get the word 'angel'.
@@sofia-pv9xi i swear to God every time i see a comment even slightly related to Turkey or Greece some ultra patriot is spawned and forced to mention their country
Every time Alex makes an incisive point against Christianity and the Bible, Justin squirms a bit and says something like, "Yeah, that's a bigger conversation for another time." It's kind of telling when someone doesn't wish to openly grapple with concerning questions about their belief system.
You don't know Justin. It literally is a long conversation full of potential depth. They don't need to randomly switch topics and dive into that since it is covered elsewhwee
@@TheMeekTheMildI e seen Justin’s video where he gives his pitch for Christianity, and it is nothing but debunked theistic arguments. I have a hard time accepting what you are saying. There may be good theistic arguments but we are still waiting, and when something has been debunked, it’s time to move on.
@@TheMeekTheMildIn this interview, what submission did Justin make that Alex did not deftly field? In my bias analysis, I just come away from this interview feeling Alex was on a whole other level and the hosts couldn’t even mount an offense to push Alex on his points in any way.
Tbf the long conversation is just as easily summarized by the short logical dissonance of well that's a different time and place and doesn't apply today. Ignore the immutable nature of God and objective morality. Infanticide, slavery, murder, lying etc. All exist and can find 'justification' by just avoiding the contradiction with lengthy excuses that distill into 'context'
This was definitely an interesting conversation. I find Justin to be one of the easiest to listen to theists in the space of these conversations. Glad to hear that he found Craig's defense as off-putting as I did.
@@blockchainbaboon7617 It was on Alex's channel if you want the whole thing, but it was basically, "God wronged no one by commanding the Israelites to slaughter the Cananites"
@@EarnestApostate Ah thanks. I did hear that one. As a Christian myself I thought that Craig’s defense was rational and coherent but not the most succinct, elegant, or easy to swallow explanation haha. Your unease is justified Because his defense didn’t sit too well with me I looked into it a bit further, prayed, and found an answer that worked well for me.
But if you think belief in a God, or Christianity in particular isn't true, then by definition it would be a lie, and wouldn't you actively want people to not believe in a lie?
Some people willingly believe in lies however. Knowingly make the wrong choices. Go against rationality. Because often it's much more easy and convenient to do so lol. If people believe in the lie with you as well then it reinforces your own decisions, choices and maybe, just maybe, it'll help you forget it was a lie to begin with.
@@loledssdafd3429Why is this so hard for deists to understand? The burden of proof lies on the claimant. You claim your religion is true, you have to prove it. You can't prove you aren't constantly surrounded by invisible intangible elephants
I used to not like Alex. Really ironic I know but after I while I asked God to stop making me a jerk like this and forgive. I cannot remember what he said to me to make me dislike him but it passed. Watching this and listening to him, God showed me just how stupid I was. Thanks for this video guys, really good.
Help me resolve this. I am an atheist. However, I have always very much respected religious people and their beliefs. And in one way, I would also like to be a believer. My issue is that I am not. And I somewhat agree with Alex, that I dont really actively want to "convert" people to atheism. Now, I find some of my values crash with religious peoples view which they ground in religion, like abortion and social issues like gender/sex, homosexuality or transpeople. How do I reconcile my want to respect their beliefs but at the same time, I want them to agree with me on these issues?
You don't need to be a flower to appropriate a flower. weird analogy to the situation but my point is you don't need to be religious to appreciate religion and it's rich tradition and beliefs/practices. however if you really want to become religious while maintaining your liberal views, just join a progressive mor liberal church.
@yassin9161 I do appreciate religion in a lot of ways and find it very interesting. The questions is more like; should I just let people hold their values or should I actively try to convince them of my worldview. How can I sit and listen when SOME religious people spread opinions such as being pro life when that, in my eyes, is damaging to people and society
@@ggboygg2606 While it is both normal and proper to want others to have the same values as you, insisting that they do is unreasonable and possibly dangerous. A respectful point of view means that you not only know what their views are, but why they hold them and understand the differences of values that cause them to reason on something different than you. It's necessary, in fact, to do this in order to reason at all with someone you think may be hurting themselves or those around them. Just saying that someone or something is mostly nice has nothing to do with respect or truth
I like that, realizing skepticism can be picking things apart just to pick them apart, can interfere with appreciating an argument (like a painting) for what it is.
Justin: A Group of people that believed racism was good were wrong no matter when they lived. Also Justin: well you have to understand the context of the old testament and why God was a racist back then. Who is Doing bait and switch?
I have yet to meet any demographic on this planet who so unequivocally insist that all humans are all children of God, and thus made in his image. It was, after all, the Christian West who first abolished slavery, and also sacrificed enormous resources and lives to eradicate this blight from our world.
Alex, at this point of the conversation, presumes that his thinking can match God's thinking. Knowing human nature, God maybe saw that the only way to approach humanity is through selecting one particular bunch of people and making a covenant with them..... Then strengthen that friendship through both chastisement and blessings.
@@kbeetles ah yes it was necessary racism. Only such an intelligent being could make such a brilliant decision like making their particular followers able to subjugate other people groups. That’s not suspiciously evil and self serving at all.
@@bearinasuithaha8417God, being perfect - as His Creation proves for genuine Christians - used the fall of man (due to man's individual free will), to carve out a magnificent way - the only way - to lead as many souls as possible to choose Him and go with Him into the Eternal next Kingdom having cleansed it of all sin. It is a mindblowing way of erasing all the mess and exonerating the righteous followers of righteousness. This planet has existed for about 6000 years - 4000 years before Christ and 2000 years since He lived amongst us. We have seemingly some time left before He comes back, this time to rule for 1000 years down here - and then to destroy Satan and his lot and rescue His own - precisely as written in His inerrant snd perfect Bible. God Almighty - the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit... There is only One Truth. The way Alex suffers about the persecutionof animals and abhorrent cruelty of factory farming leads me to suspect that Christ will come for Alex at some point - once he himself makes the effort to knock the door properly... He left me as a hedonistic artist for 57 years before He came for me. Anyone who has been through such an enlightenment and has been born again KNOWS what Alex as yet cannot. It is a little embarrassing to hear a young man so blind to the actual Truth of this world, but he will get there, I believe - and we can mock him a little with good nature once He awakens to immortality and his state of grace following his redemption, God willing ... God Bless all atheists who are good at heart. ❤
I think the big think with sleeping on it is simply time. You're experiencing more emotional states over that period, so you get to include all of those in your ultimate decision.
A coarse and dismissive introduction to this thread, most atheists have genuinely sought to understand their counterparts, that's probably a major reason why they are atheists.
Beethoven 5 boring?! NEVER! Not with a milion other peaces next to it....But I love Alex. The one true humble 'atheist'. He makes a better case for religion then almost al christians.Thank you for inviting him.
No, I mean that I do not know exactly what it means to say that somebody is an atheist or a believer.....I think that is not for me to deside? I would call myself a ' maybe believer' .....Saying you want to believe but can not is a big thing...?
@@stealthylion11I think that idea applies a lot more than people may like. Particularly, when you view certain kinds of art, be it Noise music, abstract art, or typically unpleasant smells. The context of someone else's body alone can change how these things may be experienced, let alone other factors that may be more within your control (such as imagining a situation like Alex would). Personally, Alex's kind of reasoning doesn't have me enjoy these pieces more. Sure, I can grow more understanding of someone else's joy for a piece, but it doesn't make me like it.
The world is enchanting enough without religion. Why add the baggage of exclusiveness and divisive bigotry that comes with religions like Christianity Islam and Judaism?
religists like to hate people is why, god is an excuse to be a bully "it's not ME burning you at the stake, my god demands it" it's for cowards who can't own their bigotry and hate.
Hateful people are just hateful despite religion, but at least Christianity commands equality unlike the other religions you mentioned. Currently it's the anti theists who are the most hateful towards those with diverse world views. They've started the modern-day satanic panic by slandering and spewing hatred towards anyone who doesn't plaster themselves in rainbows and memorize pronouns and go along with societal gaslighting.
You cannot in good conscience, even as a atheist, put Islam and Christianity on the same standing. The world is getting worse due to secularism. Sweden is a perfect example of this. The Swedes have a good quality of life but one of the highest suicide rates in the world. If secularism is so good then why do we see all the countries with the highest suicide rates occur in secular countries? Because they have no meaning in life. And meaning in life can only come from a Creator who loves you. Modern Atheists are inconsistent because they will reject a Creator and meaning in life but find meaning in certain things despite it going against their worldview. Actual atheists of old, understood that without God, meaning ceases to exist. This is why atheists who took atheism to its logical conclusion like Nichetsze ended up going psycho and overdosing. Ironically, you most likely live in the West which has a good standard of living due to it being historically Christian and its laws stemming from the 10 commandments. Is it bigotry if the Bible condemns murder or rape? By your standard, everything is permissible which would allow life to cease to exist because if everything is perisble why not let everyone kill themselves using nuclear weapons. If atheism is so great, why don’t you move to truly atheist societies that haven’t been influenced by Christianity such as North Korea? Why stay in the West which’s foundation was Christian. Even Dawkins doesn’t deny this. Y Atheism is only appealing during times of ease which ironically was when it was developed in the modern times by people like Dawkins in their towers. Atheist scholars like Ayaan Hiram (atheist for over 20 years and a best friend of Dawkins) recently came out as a Christian and had a conversation with Dawkins recently on RUclips admitting their atheist philosophy is inconsistent and untenable.
It's really embarrassingly easy to discard ones life when an immortal one is promised in its place. The greatest consequence of living is death after all and that fades away under the enchantments of religion. I'm not religious by any means, but l can see the appeal of such things.
@@Arareemoteright because a life devoid of meaning and purpose, where love is nothing but chemicals, where your choices are dictated by molecules and "you" is nothing more but a spectator into a life that you have no say in, is so full of value and definitely not insignificant. If only everyone could realize that humans are nothing more than machines incapable of agency. Society would be so great!
Einstein, Nietche, Jung, Tesla + countless other GREAT (170+IQ) minds who seemingly never doubted the existence of God, and no one ever thought they were naive or gullible. As a rational human being who loves science and history I could NEVER pretend that i believe that the universe created itself withhout a cause and without meaning. I think you should first try being born and living life in a part of the world that was never influenced by Plato and Jesus (the entire western world) and maybe then youd notice pretty quickly what a society that has supressed God looks like. The closest to modern western world that you will get is perhaps Kommunism or Fascism in the developed world and basic hedonism in the underdeveloped parts of the world. This is easy to verify just point at a random place on the world map, look up how that nation operates and how it was founded and by wich principles it revolves around and compare that to actual demographic/topographic and youll see what separates modern highly evolved empathic societies from everything else.
Add illogicity, fallacious reasoning, straw-manning, refusal to accept the inevitable, and horrible 1st grade math skills, you get an atheistic worldview.
No profound spiritual experience? It's funny how subjectivists can never comprehend how a subjective spiritual experience could transform a person completely.
I think Belle and Alex need to go on a date. They are both adorable and the way she smiled from ear to ear every time she looked at him and and and twirled her hair a lot.
Alex is uniquely refreshing. I've grown tired of Atheists Clubbing theists. There was a time for that, I believe, but it's nice to see someone moving on.
Well unfortunately the word of God isn't much but a story written by humans to someone who isn't a Christian, right? Some try very hard to believe, I spent my childhood and a lot of my teenage years willingly going to church hearing the word of God constantly, yet I was left unconvinced by some means or another, and left the church to never look back. To hear the word of God again means nothing to me, and the simple answers given when questioned about the word of God often betrays the sand this castle is often built on.
Just emotions mapping onto reality? Well how broad and delving are your perceptions of reality and are these perceptions entirely trustworthy in and of themselves?.. this just seems to hold water poorly
@@Emperorhirohito19272 Are the immaterial, mathematical truths of geometry used to build the building and in which the material building participates less real than the material building itself? Dependent, finite material reality participates in the non-dependent, infinite, immaterial reality, not the other way around. human beings are enmattered souls, not ensouled matter. Etc
@@Joeonline26 sure they’re real. Mathematics is a framework we made up to apply logic in useful ways and describe the material world. That doesn’t mean there is such place as an “immaterial reality” what does this even refer to? What is this place meant to be? and we’ve gotten way off the topic of beauty. Beauty is an experience that humans have as a function of their brain which is a physical object. There is no evidence for the existence of a soul.
I have a problem with the term Judaeo-Christian: it seems to me that there is a world of difference between the Old and the New Testaments in so many brilliant ways.
The term Judeo-Christian is a lie. Modern day Talmudic Jews are the descendants of the Israelites who rejected the Messiah (think Pharisees, etc.). By rejecting Jesus, they rejected the prophetic nature of their own holy book and thus ceased to be Jews in the Biblical sense of the word.
@@nikokapanen82not true. Many early sects of Christianity dispensed with the Old Testament (Marcianism, etc). Depending on what books you place value on in the New Testament you don't need the Old to make sense of it.
@@ericbrant8983 You literally could not know who Jesus even is and if He is a real deal without the Old Testament. Without the OT Jesus could have been like Muhammad who would appear without any prior promises of his coming and would begin to claim this and that etc.
@@nikokapanen82 I agree. But there was an enormous sea change from the outset of the NT, starting with the revelation of Yahweh (the LORD) as Father, Son and Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism. The Trinity is a very different vision of God to the simple monotheism of the Old (an authoritarian cosmic loner). More than that, Jesus didn’t have a violent bone in his body, and his core ethic is love, not just of fellow Jews or Christians but of everyone regardless of race, gender or creed.
I studied local agricultural history here in Wisconsin during 1978-79. During the 1980s, I was a member of an organization that provided advocacy and support for family farmers.
Nothing could make me a Christian. Even if you could prove Jesus existed (which will never happen), you could never prove, like his alleged father, he's not evil.
You know them by their fruits. Look at people who truly want to live like Jesus compared to the murderous psychopaths who have always ruled this world and have always followed occultic religions. Self-serving pagans get rich and powerful in this realm, but the meek shall inherit the earth.
@@Captain_Fantasy Avery accurate name for your comment. You won't see any Buddhist monks in jail for theft rape and murder but there are plenty of Christians filling jails. Your comment is total and profound fantasy nonsense. Think Gandhi was a Christian?
When Alex was talking about paintings it made me think of Peter Hitchens and him seeing a painting of the last judgement and was a part of bringing him to becoming a Christian.
@WriteTraxtake it up with King James. "Necromancy" is the exact word the KJV uses in Deutronomy 18:11. Also, necromancy in warcraft isn't demonic, you're thinking of warlocks.
@WriteTrax i have not mentioned jesus. I wonder if you consider the Bible's message about necromancers true or not. That's why i asked about necromancers, not about Jesus.
@WriteTrax Why... Do you think that is what biblical necromancy is? If you think that's true, you believe in something supernatural that's not even biblical.
I like Alex, much in the same way that I like Michael Shermer. Both are great skeptics, and very pleasant, decent people. Both, I would argue, do in fact have fine Christian ethics. But I wonder if this self-identification as "skeptic" isn't exactly what holds them back? These people aren't like Dawkins or Hitchens, they're more muted, more anemic. Here's the rub - I don't think you can really ever understand Christianity if you're muted. Rather than more logic, science and philosophy, I believe it would do them more good to attend more funerals and perhaps work at a hospice. Some of that is projection on my part. I'm a fairly new and wobbly convert to Christianity, and I've just noticed how these real things - like funerals - tend to put you in a different position to really connect with reality. And skepticism can become pathological. If anyone wants a current example I think Candace Owens is a good one. Something happened to her, and now on the one hand she distrusts EVERYTHING ... and on the other is drawn into some rather un-Christian beliefs about the world. But the point is that skepticism is easy. It just requires you to be skeptical, and you can easily be skeptical about everything. It will eventually, however, express itself and a state of mind. And the more devoted you are to it, the more you'll be in the skeptical zone where whatever the object of your skepticism, you'll believe less in it. But when does the rubber meet the road? When do you just sit there and marvel at this world we inhabit, when do you ponder your exquisite consciousness, this feeling of self? Sure, you could get up and find all sorts of skeptical criticisms of consciousness, and you could wring out some anemic scientific "explanation". But it remains that our consciousness is weird. Even evolutionarily. You can rant on about how consciousness gave us this or that reproductive differential and so on, but what IS it and why do I perceive it, and what am *I*?! You, me and everyone alive on this planet has a subjective experience with consciousness, and what is that? Or you can philosophically claim that consciousness is just something that "emerges" out of our physical bodies, or babble on about timings in our brains and such. I've been there, done that. Ultimately didn't believe my own or the atheist/naturalist arguments. I am. I feel. I am conscious of myself and my surroundings. I experience something IN my consciousness. I can sit an wonder about *that* blue color, so deep and intense, so blue that it's the bluest of blue, and I can't help asking WHY it is that I have such an experience? This phenomenon is something else, and why is it like that? I guess that once I stopped explaining things away (through skepticism), and chose NOT to move on to the next topic while copping out, things began to change. Measured skepticism is necessary, but you also need to devote time to how you accept things. If skepticism is the highest value that you orient all of your perception towards first and foremost, I think the latter will suffer. Lastly I'll mention methodological naturalism. I believe most skeptics and atheists and naturalists are in that fly trap. Many have training in the sciences, and science has changed since Newton's time. No longer do scientists go to universities to study our universe - or God's creation - in order to honor God and understand what he made for us. Science has left that part behind, and the naturalistic worldview is now mixed imperceptibly with the scientific method. So now the scientific method is by definition naturalistic and only looks for naturalistic explanations of everything that is. Which is why more than one atheists have pretty much asked me to provide incontrovertible proof of God in a petri dish or a physics experiment at CERN. But it's silly to ask for such proof of a person that's outside of space, time, matter, and energy. God is more like math, or logic, and you cannot do STEM type science to "prove" such things. If your tool (science) can only by definition find naturalistic explanations, then no wonder you feel that there is "no evidence" for God. You saying that is *inevitable*. And as I said I believe that most skeptics/atheists/naturalists believe in a science that is methodologically naturalistic. This creates a bias, and it excludes a lot of things from their understanding, which is why they all predictably end up the same place. So the short of it: go to more funerals.
just a quick reminder that the first amendment conflicts with the first commandment "thou shalt worship whoever you want" and that the declaration of human rights gives ME more rights than god. and a history lesson cos the USA is a secular nation, not many people seem to know that, and the founding fathers were at best deists and certainly not christian. hitchens became a naturalised american purely because of the constitution. the UK is officially christian, the US is officially secular. is it annoying that the satanic temple has the SAME RIGHTS as the church?
Alex’s point about seeing something beautiful, then turning around and seeing something ugly, and how it makes him doubt the transcendent, really exemplifies how our outlook on life shapes how we perceive the world. When I see beauty contrasted with the ugliness in the world, it makes me appreciate beauty even more and strengthens my desire to bring about more of it. The ugliness, to me, serves as a testament to the goodness of the beautiful. But it seems for Alex that ugliness causes him to lose faith in the beautiful, which only makes things worse in the end, because without faith, there’s no motivation to act to improve things.
thats a naive way of seeing it. he is an atheism grafter, exploiting the ugly parts of this life to sell a monetized atheism manifesto with the end goal of a potential role in modern day secular politics. In reality himself and most ppl are very aware of the beauty in the world and how it has to be accounted for.
Having worked with war veterans, I've become convinced that the human capacity for catalyzing ugliness into beauty has a breaking point. Everyone has a different threshold, but there is an upper bound of atrocity, horror and sheer violation from which the isn't any recovery.
I agree. The problem of suffering is an eternal one, and I personally believe that outside of a religious context, it can break you and lead to a kind of nihilism. However, within a religious framework, suffering is contextualized across time. This is why the central image of Christianity is the Crucifixion, a horrific event. Yet, if you can manage to see the good brought about by it, you inoculate yourself against any form of complete despair.
without faith, there’s no motivation to act to improve things. ^this right here is patently false. Religious folk do not have a monopoly on caring about improving things, and I'd argue on average care FAR LESS about improving things since they believe the nonexistent afterlife is the thing that really matters, not this "test" of a life beforehand. I lost my christian faith many years ago. I know the world has some ugly stuff in it. It also has some beautiful stuff in it. Most of said things are out of my control but if I can help those in my immediate community, why wouldn't I? The whole religious take on "no faith means everything's pointless" is absurd, humans naturally have empathy toward fellow humans, and the fact so many religious people don't realize that is terrifying.
@@EnglishMike The truth is that I never heard it when he was a teenager. I'm referring more to the last 2-3 years. I really appreciate his work and his rhetoric.
I was homeless, got into drugs, went into prisons, then i got to know Jesus, He changed my life.. Now i make 22k weekly. have a home, a wife, a lovely daughter... A child of God. HALLELUJAH!
After I raised up to 325k trading with her I bought a new House and a car here in the states 🇺🇸🇺🇸 also paid for my daughter's surgery (Joey). Glory to God.shalom.
Adult is not a fixed term. Legal adult, fully grown, sexually mature, mentally fully developed? The first one is dependent on jurisdiction the other three all happen at different ages.
@@-Tholos- So you are saying you can't tell an adult from a child? That we cannot in society make a meaningful distinction between an adult and a child? Being female happens at different ages? Tell me more please. Also tell more about how being human supposedly happens at different ages? You paid a lot for that crack you are smoking? When does a female stop being female? When does a human stop being human?
@@-Tholos-In addition, human is just Homo Sapiens or other intelligent Homo groups too? Female according to sex organs? Chromosomes? Other characteristics?
44:56 not harming others is evolutionary. Our ability to pass on our genes most successfully was to be in groups where we cooperated, each did our share to our abilities, and were safe in person and property. We see evidence of this all throughout the animal kingdom. Pack animals discipline, punish, and expel members who harm the pack not because of moral intuitions. We do this on the cellular level through apoptosis. Attitudes have changed somewhat around things like killing innocent civilians, children, etc but it didn’t start from zero.
It's natural for some of those things to have changed too. Like it likely meant at times we had to leave the weak or disabled to die when we didn't have the resources to support them. I think morals from God is one of the most common things that's one of the weakest arguments. If we start from 0, we have our need to eat, sleep, shelter and reproduce. Then we had more complex problems to solve as more people settled in small areas that required efficiency, jobs, etc. At the end of the day all of our actions are still to satisfy a handful of core desires, like survival, reproduction, love and community, power and resources. All things that directly or indirectly support that survival. They are all natural trajectories of our own brains.
@@Pyrrhonian I agree and wonder why Alex and some of his peers seem to not just say this. This “mystery” of where morality comes from as if it’s the one thing somehow divorced from evolution.
@@bootskanchelsis3337 no offence to teens, we all have been one at some point, but they are morons. it's a feature, not a bug, but they are still morons.
The demographic evidence from the last 50 years is that once someone reaches their mid-20s, their religious or non-religious worldview rarely changes later in life, and given that an increasing number of young Americans are walking away from Christianity in their teens and early 20s, the future of the USA is almost certainly going to be far less religious and more secular than it has ever been before. So yeah, atheism is for teenagers _and_ it is for life.
Alex is a master of taking things of out context and exaggerating. I would love him to actually meet a historian who studies Jewish ancient society and discuss how Old testament was interpreted and lived through. It's completely irresponsible to sit here in 21 century and rant about the incident in the Book of Judges, extrapolating to the entire old testament and the whole Jewish society. Just childish.
@@vulkanofnocturne what he said is not an exaggeration about Alex. He also strawmans a lot. When you're merely clever - you cannot find truth. You need more than philosophical banter. Philosophy is a tool - it's a means to an end - not the end itself. Alex gets big props for his politeness - that makes his semantics sound more intelligent than Dillahunty's big bad wolf complex of huffing and puffing at a brick house, but he's just as full of hot air.
What if the experience of the negative situation was used for him to believe In God. Yes the bullet could have completely missed but maybe God sees a bigger picture knowing that Tom needed to be in the certain environment and with the certain experience (with cancer) for him to be willing to come to reality that God exist.
I like the idea of affirming dialectic. I look for truth, goodness and beauty wherever I find them across the spectrum. I put the truth, goodness, and beauty from one side together with that of its polar opposite and try to come up with either common ground or better informed, more incisive, more respectful disagreement--"forward balance."
I do believe there is something, but it is not the God of the bible, nor any other Religion. Religion is essentially man made for the purposes of control... simple.
Can't he see his misunderstandings of Christianity!? I have a lot of respect for Mr O'Connor, but you should have pointed out the full implications of what he says. He's correct that we all have intuitions - but never was it discussed where those came from. The bible says God wrote the law in our hearts. There's a perfectly reasonable answer. And it's further backed by C S Lewis' argument that where there is a hunger for something it stands most logical that that something exists. As for beauty drawing one closer to God and evil moving people away. It's a false dichotomy. Good and evil. Beautiful and ugly. Two separate categories. Furthermore, most people become Christians through an acknowledgement of sin and evil. Not of the beautiful. It's when we realise that this world is imperfect that we realise there must be a solution and then it becomes all to clear.
The Bible also says slavery is good, homosexuality is bad, contains creation mythology, global flood mythology, talking trees, talking animals and zombies. In short, the Bible is not a credible source of info - Christian scholars agree that Matthew Mark Luke and John were written by anonymous authors using fake names (to give more authority to their work).
saying Christianity is true as Justin does, without examining what truth means (beyond empirical, theological, testimonial-experiential truth; beyond truth as a word/term limited to language) is pretty limiting; is it not a relativising of 'truth' for the purposes of (ironically) making it into an absolute, to suit the believer's conviction? And Alex's last point at the end, that Justin says is nihilistic - not at all, he is simply acknowledging the unavoidable binary construct of life - where there is good, there is its opposite. If god is behind and beyond everything, then to simply call him 'good' is surely inaccurate; the negation of good, (bad, evil etc.) cannot exist separate from god if he is behind and beyond everything, since there can be nothing 'outside' of god (the very act of satan's disobedience must still in some way be 'of' god - where else can it come from?) therefore, in some way, it must too be a part of him - at the very least, god must be non-binary, certainly beyond good and evil at any rate. I appreciate how difficult it is to talk about these things, trying to apply reason/logic to such a nebulous concept as god, but there you have it. Please take my critique in good jest! I appreciate your work- I'm just curious of these topics because I've never come across any theology that confronts them.
By your definition of "truth" it is impossible to prove you have a rational mind. Therefore how are you sure you can trust your reasoning about anything? Secondly, God chose to limit his power when he gave his creations free will. The angels also had free will. The desire for power and sin is within all of us. Take away our capacity for evil and being good means nothing. Evil is necessary for goodness to exist. God is not to blame for the evil actions of others, because if he were, we wouldn't have free will
@@tobiaskvarnung3411 I don't have a definition of truth, it is a word like 'spiritual' or perhaps love, if it could be defined, it wouldn't be what it is, like god. Again, how can 'free will' be free of god's control, if by definition, there can't be anything 'outside' of god/his creation?
@benscraftymusings we are part of God. We carry God within us. Why wouldn't we be free? God granted us free will because because he loves us enough that he wants us to experience freedom, even if that includes choosing freedom from God. That doesn't mean he can't control or interfere in our lives. It's that he respects us enough to leave our mind alone. You walk away and wonder why he doesn't pull you toward him. He's not some crazy ex. He respects our autonomy and agency. He's a father who loves his creation, that doesn't mean he's abandoned us or don't exist just because we're free to rebel against him
I'm at 53:27 and the host has not finished his thought yet, but it made me think: Why does anything morally need to be *OBJECTIVELY* true? Using 'Racism' as the base, I would agree with the statement "Racism is wrong". Does that mean I think it is *objectively true* that racism is wrong? No. I think most of us would, and I think that is great. I want to be in a society that promotes this value and so we build one that in it. Does it matter if you can't point to an ancient scroll, a supreme being or an object in far off space and say "this is how we know for sure that x is wrong/right"? I don't think so. If that means I can't say the words "murder is wrong" or something like that, and you take 'wrong' to be it's most objective sense rather than just meaning "i think we should not do it" then fine, I agree. I don't see why it needs grounding when we can, most of us at least, think and agree on the important stuff. We have brains, i think we should use them to critically think, rather than passing off the thinking to someone/something else - even though that's what our brains want to do a lot of the time cos its easier lmao. I'd like to know what others think of this, and I'll see what the rest of Justin's thoughts are in the meantime!
Ah ok... Justin goes on to say "I want to live in a world where racism is objectively wrong" It's really interesting the way in which different people think. Maybe I'm misguided, and someone will correct me in the comments or later in life, but I really don't think a) it matters whether X is objectively wrong or not, and b) it's often a lot more complicated than a simple statement. There may have been a time where tribalism (which segregates further than racism) was a way to ensure the safety and livelihood of your family, in a time where basic needs that we consider today weren't often met. I can look back as a 21st century man and judge, but i can't say it was truly *wrong*. I'm ok with that. I don't want to live in a culture where that sort of thing happens and I want to live with other like minded people, and at least for now, thats all I think we need. I can understand why someone might find it scary to think like that, but I think once you stop thinking in absolutes you can take more things in
Pretty suspect how we’ve never seen Alex O’Connor and CosmicSkeptic in the same room
😂😂😂
Alex O'Connor is not really a CosmicSkeptic, so I do not think we will ever see a actual CosmicSkeptic with Alex O'Connor, but Alex O'Connor we have all seen likely several times.😉
Alex O’Skeptic
@@dougwitte4533Cosmic O’Connor
Good point- 😂 I didnt get it; until 7:02 in.. so Well put. Luv it.
As a Christian, Alex is the best neutral communicator of religion and skepticism. He avoids mocking and is open minding, asking genuine questions.
He’s not a Christian!
@@joefagan9335 i don't think Marc is saying Alex is a Christian. He's saying he's a Christian as context for what he says next.
It’s good he doesn’t mock your imaginary daddy in the sky.
Open minded? his brains closed more than a nuclear bunker during chernobyl
@@Benjamin-to2zqI’m gonna be honest your comment falls flat because the insult was pretty creative, you coulda just said it was rude or somthing
Good insult
I was so confused every time I heard someone quoting Tom Holland, I was like "I didn't know the current actor for spiderman, tom holland, was so outspoken about religion and ethics" lol
Same lmao
Who is it then? (genuinely asking) :')
He’s a historian :)
Is a very basic name honestly.
I have had this response from people when I have mentioned Tom Holland (the historian) 😂
Alex is someone who is genuinely in the pursuit of truth.
Except for when it comes to defining what a woman is though. Then he suddenly becomes a post-modernist.
Yep. But he is also super tough on letting anything get into his belief system. That's he only embraces truth one micro-drop at a time, and debates everything else.
😂
Unfortunately Justin is not.
Not at all, sadly.
It's cool how comfortable Justin and Alex have become with each other over the years. There is a clear friendship here.
brierly is two faced and dishonest, when there are no atheists around, him and his mates just atheist bash and bad mouth folks. odious person.
Er, I don't know about Westerners but here in Singapore, most of us have mates who have religions (or not) different from us. I mean, I'm Christian, but seriously, I have mates who are Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and nonreligious.
No big deal.
@@Chew81yeah that's common in the UK too
Justin is aware of comic arrogance and has to self control ike a lion to make the friendship work
@@Chew81 The point was more intended as a specific reference to their own relationship. If you look at their first videos several years ago you will notice that they are much more aloof.
I've always liked Alex. Infact, he helped me discovery Christianity. I owe a lot to him. Plus, he's just a nice guy who I think has a genuine inquiry.
Lmao
he be inquiring
I am not so sure he's such an innocent "nice guy" at all...
@@rociolevitowhy’s that? Do you think it’s a facade or rather the way he presents himself isn’t as a “nice guy”
I've watched one of his video when he was still using the name cosmicskeptic and he showed a edited image of a Bible website to prove a point. It was about Adam and Eve, he made it look like God says that they will die immediately after eating the fruit. The guy is a wolf in a sheep's clothing.
I love how Alex didn't want to reveal who his upcoming guest might be and you managed to trick him into revealing two of them
I think this is a far more interesting question: What would make Justin Brierly not believe in God? Anything?
There’s an old discussion on Alex’s channel where they discuss this. It would be the bones of Jesus or anything that absolutely disproves the Resurrection of Christ. As it says in 1 Corinthians 15:17. If Christ is not risen our faith is in vain.
@@JawrL95 it's pretty weird from JB to say that; to disprove something that wasn't proven in the first place.
But, I guess most christians probably think this way.
Its pretty much impossible to become atheist, agnostic made sense kinda.. but atheist? are just silly... how did they know?
@@The.Dark.Side.Official You are somewhat confused.
Atheist - has no *belief* in a god
Agnostic - doesn't *know* if there's a god or not
One is about belief, one is about knowledge.
Most atheists are agnostic; the have no belief in a god (therefore atheist) but they also don't claim to know if there is a god or not (therefore agnostic)
@@The.Dark.Side.Official
Strange question. How do people become theists? How did they know?
Becoming an atheist is simple: it happens when you are not persuaded by claims that a god exists. You probably don't believe in stories about Santa Claus, which technically makes you an "asantaclausist." An atheist isn't someone claiming he knows something, but a person who says he doesn't believe in certain propositions that are made.
A conversation between Tom Holland and Alex O'Connor would be really interesting!
YES PLEASE!
I think he's a bit busy saving New York City from the Green Goblin.
@@Pebble_Collector 😂😂 We need more Tom Holland jokes in the apologetics space
tom holland is many things, but he's not a philosopher... most of his arguments don't stand up under scrutiny.
I watch Alex for really one reason. I'm a philosophy major, years out of school. If I wish to do any philosophy its largely reading, and discussions just don't exist. Alex holds his podcast to a level I enjoy and recall. The type of discussions I miss having, at the level I enjoy and find engaging.
Alex and Justin represent so well the theme of the great writer, G.K. Chesterton's, "The Ball and the Cross." That novel is about an atheist and a Catholic coming together in a world that doesn't take either very seriously anymore because they don't take anything very seriously anymore; it's devolved to easy-going relativism. In our culture, everyone almost goes too far the other way and treats anyone with a divergent opinion as at best wrong and at worst evil; Justin and Alex are a breath of fresh air to be seen not only listening to one another, but genuinely seeming to enjoy what the other person has to say even when they disagree.
Great conversation. Appreciate you letting Alex kind of run free with his thoughts here even if they may not always align with the theme of the show.
It was really interesting to hear the beginning conversation on how framing art in varying contexts can completely change our attention, attitude, and affections for the work, and then segue immediately into Alex’s brand name change from CosmicSkeptic to self-titled. In terms of the art, I know for certain that is true. Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms used to be just a relatively pretty painting for me, and then I learned the story of Aaron’s Staff which budded almond blossoms as a sign that God chose him, and I absolutely fell in love with the painting. Since then, I find the painting beautiful, and I have it up on my wall in my bedroom. It wasn’t that the art changed, just my understanding.
I have the same beauty for the Universe without a God .. simply for the reason that In the naturalistic view there is no true evil .. there is only action and consequences.. no devilish demon ( ultimately Gods creation)luring us on the wrong path only the ever dwindling number of things we have not yet learned about
@svendtang5432
I agree that there is a certain beauty that saying, “God did it” kind of ruins. Things I find so interesting are learning about how life functions on the scale of individual cells and abiogenesis, because they show how mechanical life can be. I think the incredible, yet fascinating complexity of those things are ruined by slapping a label that says, “God did it” on all of that.
Atheist here. Loved and subbed. This is the kind of discussion worth viewing. I most appreciate your approach.
Guy de Maupassant was the writer who hated the Eiffel Tower and frequently dined in it! If you read some of his short stories, I think you’ll appreciate his fabulous sense of irony even more. I’d recommend “The Necklace” for a start.
I don't have much to say about the content of this episode, but the logo y'all dreamed up for this channel is S-tier. Very clever!
As so many times before, Britain has brought forth so many gems, such as Alex!
Alex put this well. This is better than his own podcast, because he's the guest and the focus.
Alex massively and ironically promotes his massive podcast on this tiny one. Excellent droll humor! :)
Justin has a much bigger channel as well. It's just Justin and Alex have become such close buddies that he is seen on this smaller channel as well.
Just because a podcast is smaller, it does not mean it has the same audience as a bigger podcast.
It may be smaller by comparison, but there's probably not much crossover between the audiences, meaning this is a great opportunity for Alex to draw in new listeners.
If there is a god, he sends men like Alex that ask us to do better. Bless you all
Getting my Masters in Theological studies (for fun) was the best (and hardest) thing (academically) that I have ever done. Theology is fascinating, truly.
Not wanting to get disrespectful here, but what can you actually do with a degree in theology?
@@corneliahanimann2173 Not much, LOL, that's is why I did it for "fun". I have an undergraduate in Mech. Eng. I guess you can do as much as with a degree in philosophy?
@@paulsacramento5995 I imagine so. In Switzerland you need to get a masters in theology to become a pastor/priest, but I can not at all imagine another job that would appreciate that degree.
I do see the appeal though, but in some sense, I feel that for topics of psychology or even literature- especially movie-literature, but more in a "trivia" sense, not in a sense where I would want to spend hours studying these topics in a book. I figured maybe I was underestimating the actual usefulness of a degree in theology, but I guess you solved that mystery for me.
Thank you
Getting a masters in fairies would be fascinating too.
@@froilanadiaz Gender studies?
First fifteen minutes was such a fantastic introduction into the mind of this person Ive never heard of before.
Overall this was a great talk.
Searching for answers, and being aware of our ability (or inability) to create the reality as we perceive it along with the driving forces that shape our world view. It is such a clear thing that we are more passengers to forces beyond our intellectual control, even more so when those forces are actually inside us (emotions and intuitions).
This was overall an engaging discussion brushing on these huge topics that hundreds of hours could be spent on.
What I'd like would be for God to reach into my brain and make me believe in him. This would benefit us both. He wants me to believe in him and I want to believe what's true. Since I'm requesting that this be done it wouldn't violate my free will. Since I still don't believe, it seems that God doesn't actually exist, he doesn't really want my belief, or he's irrational.
@@chuckgaydos5387 or you’re insincere and your real purpose was to write this post thinking that you’ve made a clever point.
The logic of solipsism. You have imported an objective image of what 'God' might be and then when you fail to see that image subjectively, you blame the object for not existing.
But God is not an object.
I’m not sure why you “still don’t believe”, but I encourage you to keep seeking the truth and asking questions.
@@michel-jeantailleur Of course God can never be shown to not exist because he can always be redesigned to overcome any objection.
@@Ornamentmountain That must be it. God knows that I and everyone else who claims to be seeking him aren't sincere.
I like Alex O'Connor's new work much better than the old. Exiting Christianity, I needed cogent reassurances that I wasn't alone, but diving into philosophy deeper has only benefitted me since then.
You heard all his arguments and you thank him for your maintained or new found belief? You must not have heard his arguments.
@@Ayymoss what belief do you think I have? It sounds like we may have a misunderstanding.
@@aodhfyn2429 What drove you away from Christianity? Really I don't believe any atheist is strayed away because of anything logical, but because they don't want to be told what to do.
@@RrRookiEeE Oh. You're one of those. The reasons are too many to just list, and I don't actually want to talk to you, so I won't be answering.
@@aodhfyn2429 Aka they're inexistent and unsubstantiated. And u dont want to talk to me because you know that.
Enchanting someone is mentally capturing them with illusion. Fitting that these two admit to it so freely.
But If we find someone's beauty to be enchanting can it really be illusory as you say? We are seeing them as they are after all. The beauty is only our natural conceptions being challenged positively.
That is to say, enchantment of the kind I have just described is simply a genuine response to reality.
(I'm not religious I should clarify, lest you think I'm defending anything. )
@@Arareemote well unfortunately there's a good bit of biology there too. Just like our brains are biologically setup to like cute things to protect them, our brain also actively suppresses red flags early on in a relationship to give us the highest chance of bonding and mating. Our nature is survival and propagation first and foremost. Our prefrontal cortex evolved primarily for emotional regulation and to be able to "snap out of it" so to speak. But on the flip I believe we are now TOO rational and have lost access to a lot of enchantment as a result. So there must be a balance
Exactly. They aren't with the Holy Spirit if they're "enchanting" anything
@@Arareemote"enchanting" in the context they use it is as if to "cast a spell" upon their desired object.
It means they're not speaking in the Holy Spirit.
To be "enchanting" or "enchanted" in the sense YOU mean it is is more like to be infatuated. And that's almost always illusory.
@@NicholasNugent-y3pWhile I certainly commend your self-confidence and bravery, after reading your response, I can't help but wonder if you may have misinterpreted what I said. I didn’t mean it in the way you’re suggesting, but I appreciate you offering your personal interpretation of my comment.
All God would need to do is show up and reveal that he is real and I'll accept that he is real.
Not old stories, not other people claiming they have experienced God but actually show me he is real himself.
This should be a trivial thing for God bur he doesn't ever do it, so I do not believe he is real.
Exactly their just myths and fables ,bible is man made nonscence all you have to do is read it to realize it.
Exactly but bible is just man made nonscence ,myths and fables all it takes is reading it to realize it and once you get informed by scholars it's over.
Same.
Some people saw and still didn't believe. They killed him on the cross.
If God would say He is God, would you believe Him? How can you test God? Believe has nothing to do with physical or non physical proof. I bet if you saw a talking burning bush you would think you are insane. You actually do see these kind of signs everyday, but you ignore them.
And if you turned your back at the thing you (claim) want to see and refuse to look and bend your eyes around it, you just become a liar. You don't want Him to be real so you can't see him. He is always there with you.
There is similar proof that Cezar existed as there is for Jesus.
It is surely quite trivial for God to appear in front of you, but in that moment you will die. He's looking for honest, gentle, humble, kind and selfless people. If you were to build a kingdom wouldn't you want to have the best people and not by mistake take evil in, that will torture the rest? He needs people who he can trust. And that's how he selects them. The ones who believe written testimony and experience of life. There is plenty of evidence too. The path to God is narrow and there are reasons why. He also is patient enough to give you a chance to become the sort of person he needs.
If he showed up, would you admit your worldview was wrong, and submit to his commands?
I think learning to live well should be the aim of not only philosophy but of science, art, and religion.
How do you relate that aim to art? ( I'm not disagreeing - just interested. )
@@Arareemote religious provides the fundamental means, science provides the physical means and art and philosophy allows a wrestling of the two.
The entire point of Christianity is that you're living for the "Kingdom of God" and not your current earthly life.
That's core to Jesus' teaching even prior to a Christian understanding of Jesus. Jesus preached that people shouldn't invest time and resources into making the world better, because his Kingdom would come soon anyways.
@@Robert-ob1mpNo, religion corrupts science, philosophy and art.
Mosques are super boring because Islam prohibits depictions. Many philosophical questions were overlooked for centuries because "god did it" was accepted by an answer. And science is diametrically opposed to faith in it's essence.
@@MrCmon113 That is absolutely not true. In Matthew 25, 31-46, Jesus explained that those who took care of him will be parted from those who didn't. The people asked when they took care of him and he said "Whatever you did for one of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." This is a core component of theology; the understanding that Earth is not separate from the Kingdom and people are not separate from the Spirit. His teachings were absolutely centered around loving and caring for yourself, your neighbors, your enemies, and the world around you.
I'm a philosophically educated Catholic and I just love Alex's deep investigation of the depths of theism and religion. I think Bishop Barron laid out the solid case for God from reason alone in their earlier discussion and I am very hopeful that Alex's dedication to church will lead him to the source of personhood and meaning in life. Great guy.
There is no solid case for things not shown probable and in many cases proven impossible.
The god of Abraham is man made myths and fables with added lies.
The question I would like answered though is, which God? I would agree the fine tuning argument makes for a very compelling case for ‘something’, God if you wish. But equally compelling to me is the existence of evil makes the Christian God, highly improbable.
@@vigilance3109 While I do believe the existence of evil would make me never to worship the christian god (or any god for that matter), I do not believe that it discredits the existence of the christian god (at least I think). The Bible describes such a being as all loving and omnibenevolent, both of which are garbage claims but not for the reason you are probably thinking. These claims have the presumed idea that the concept of morality and love can be objective when this is false (I come from the perspective of a moral relativist). So while these claims are false, I can easily see such a god existing who has the morals of the christian god, claims they are objective, but they are just subjective morals. Yes, it would mean he would be a liar but I don't believe that discredits the existence of him in the first place.
@@vigilance3109 Hi. I find a sublime irony in people finding "evil" a point against God. The point affirms the good and our God given call to the good. And evil is the absence of a good that "should be there". Final Causality. Love. St Thomas Aquinas. His metaphysical proofs from reason are solid. Why almost all of us believe in God naturally. Cheers
@@tommore3263No one believes in your god "naturally". Your religion is like any other religion. Belief in the trinity is as natural as belief in Tlaloc or Thor.
Actually those are probably more honest, because a lot of pagans are just honestly mistaken and they're not trying to make up elaborate excuses.
been waiting for this my whole life
Alex es valiente y honesto, hace un estupendo trabajo. Muy buena entrevista, gracias.
Alex makes a great point on how throughout history people have pointed at scripture to justify political stances in both directions. How can the bible be a moral authority if there’s no agreement on how to interpret it? I’m reminded of Bertrand Russell’s essay and this quote on the bigotry of the church:
“You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.”
What a misinformed statement. Progress assumes a standard and that standard is not self evident.
Who decides the standard and where does it come from?
This question must be answered before we start talking about progress this or opposing that.
"as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.”
- its so much Bullshit in this sentence that I don´t even know how to start.
The Bible was created by the Church as an education tool because there were some teachers that were giving incorrect lessons. Evangelisation came before the Bible. The primary goal of any Christian teacher should not be rigid Biblical originalism, but to spread the good news. To use the Bible, or the Old Testament scripture, as an excuse to push certain perspectives is an ongoing issue for those who don't have a legitimate authority structure.
@@JohnFromAccountingthe Bible was not created by the church. 75% of the Bible is the old testament which had existed long before. The gospels were written by followers of Jesus or followers of the apostles shortly after. It was a long time before we can even talk about something like a church.
Also:
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Matthew:18:20
At 58:16 Alex's word is δυσαγγελιον, δυσ is the prefix 'dis' meaning "bad", and αγγελιον or the root word 'angelion', which means message, and is also where we get the word 'angel'.
Greek words!!!Proud to be Greek.Thank you!
@@sofia-pv9xi i swear to God every time i see a comment even slightly related to Turkey or Greece some ultra patriot is spawned and forced to mention their country
@@tayahiabu2418And the Arabs like yourself are triggered by the Greeks and the Turks more than anyone
@@tayahiabu2418 So? There's no issue with that, is there? Also, I usually see this for India, tbh.
dysangelion, baspel
Every time Alex makes an incisive point against Christianity and the Bible, Justin squirms a bit and says something like, "Yeah, that's a bigger conversation for another time." It's kind of telling when someone doesn't wish to openly grapple with concerning questions about their belief system.
You don't know Justin. It literally is a long conversation full of potential depth. They don't need to randomly switch topics and dive into that since it is covered elsewhwee
@@TheMeekTheMildI e seen Justin’s video where he gives his pitch for Christianity, and it is nothing but debunked theistic arguments. I have a hard time accepting what you are saying. There may be good theistic arguments but we are still waiting, and when something has been debunked, it’s time to move on.
@@drzaius844 "That's been debunked!" Good one
@@TheMeekTheMildIn this interview, what submission did Justin make that Alex did not deftly field? In my bias analysis, I just come away from this interview feeling Alex was on a whole other level and the hosts couldn’t even mount an offense to push Alex on his points in any way.
Tbf the long conversation is just as easily summarized by the short logical dissonance of well that's a different time and place and doesn't apply today.
Ignore the immutable nature of God and objective morality.
Infanticide, slavery, murder, lying etc. All exist and can find 'justification' by just avoiding the contradiction with lengthy excuses that distill into 'context'
Excellent conversation! Thanks to all!
'It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring'- Carl Sagan
This was definitely an interesting conversation. I find Justin to be one of the easiest to listen to theists in the space of these conversations.
Glad to hear that he found Craig's defense as off-putting as I did.
Which defense in particular?
@@blockchainbaboon7617 It was on Alex's channel if you want the whole thing, but it was basically, "God wronged no one by commanding the Israelites to slaughter the Cananites"
@@EarnestApostate Ah thanks. I did hear that one. As a Christian myself I thought that Craig’s defense was rational and coherent but not the most succinct, elegant, or easy to swallow explanation haha. Your unease is justified
Because his defense didn’t sit too well with me I looked into it a bit further, prayed, and found an answer that worked well for me.
But if you think belief in a God, or Christianity in particular isn't true, then by definition it would be a lie, and wouldn't you actively want people to not believe in a lie?
Some people willingly believe in lies however. Knowingly make the wrong choices. Go against rationality. Because often it's much more easy and convenient to do so lol.
If people believe in the lie with you as well then it reinforces your own decisions, choices and maybe, just maybe, it'll help you forget it was a lie to begin with.
A lie isn’t just “something false”. A lie is something you believe is false, but which you say anyways to convince someone else that it’s true.
@@junemalory right. According to Alex, this would be the whole of religion.
@@Arareemote First it would require prove that it is a lie
@@loledssdafd3429Why is this so hard for deists to understand? The burden of proof lies on the claimant. You claim your religion is true, you have to prove it. You can't prove you aren't constantly surrounded by invisible intangible elephants
I'm Catholic. He is my favourite atheist.
Nuh uh I'm your favorite atheist
@@gloryholetoanotherdimensioni am your favorite pen is
I used to not like Alex. Really ironic I know but after I while I asked God to stop making me a jerk like this and forgive. I cannot remember what he said to me to make me dislike him but it passed. Watching this and listening to him, God showed me just how stupid I was. Thanks for this video guys, really good.
Very interesting talk! I really enjoyed the very relaxed, laid back chat and all three of you have really pleasant and calming voices 😄❤
I'm glad i looked at this channels other videos. I was thinking of Spiderman everytime tom holland was brought up
Am I picking up Belle has a crush or am I just projecting?
There’s something there for sure
Exactly what I was thinking. 😀
She definitely does..that 'philthy' flirt did a number for sure😄
Crush on who?
Help me resolve this.
I am an atheist. However, I have always very much respected religious people and their beliefs. And in one way, I would also like to be a believer. My issue is that I am not. And I somewhat agree with Alex, that I dont really actively want to "convert" people to atheism.
Now, I find some of my values crash with religious peoples view which they ground in religion, like abortion and social issues like gender/sex, homosexuality or transpeople. How do I reconcile my want to respect their beliefs but at the same time, I want them to agree with me on these issues?
What do you mean by you "want them to agree with" you?
You don't need to be a flower to appropriate a flower. weird analogy to the situation but my point is you don't need to be religious to appreciate religion and it's rich tradition and beliefs/practices. however if you really want to become religious while maintaining your liberal views, just join a progressive mor liberal church.
@@25meip for example I want people to be pro choice, pro lgbtq and all that because that is what I see is right
@yassin9161 I do appreciate religion in a lot of ways and find it very interesting. The questions is more like; should I just let people hold their values or should I actively try to convince them of my worldview. How can I sit and listen when SOME religious people spread opinions such as being pro life when that, in my eyes, is damaging to people and society
@@ggboygg2606 While it is both normal and proper to want others to have the same values as you, insisting that they do is unreasonable and possibly dangerous. A respectful point of view means that you not only know what their views are, but why they hold them and understand the differences of values that cause them to reason on something different than you. It's necessary, in fact, to do this in order to reason at all with someone you think may be hurting themselves or those around them. Just saying that someone or something is mostly nice has nothing to do with respect or truth
Remarkable that Belle has absolutely no poker face. Every emotion/micro expression is unfiltered. Lovely.
I like that, realizing skepticism can be picking things apart just to pick them apart, can interfere with appreciating an argument (like a painting) for what it is.
"Man is like a breath;
his days, like a passing shadow" Ps 144
Well spoken Alex, I feel thoroughly dis-enchanted 😂👍
Justin: A Group of people that believed racism was good were wrong no matter when they lived.
Also Justin: well you have to understand the context of the old testament and why God was a racist back then.
Who is Doing bait and switch?
Moral culpability increases with learning.
I have yet to meet any demographic on this planet who so unequivocally insist that all humans are all children of God, and thus made in his image.
It was, after all, the Christian West who first abolished slavery, and also sacrificed enormous resources and lives to eradicate this blight from our world.
Alex, at this point of the conversation, presumes that his thinking can match God's thinking. Knowing human nature, God maybe saw that the only way to approach humanity is through selecting one particular bunch of people and making a covenant with them..... Then strengthen that friendship through both chastisement and blessings.
@@kbeetles ah yes it was necessary racism. Only such an intelligent being could make such a brilliant decision like making their particular followers able to subjugate other people groups. That’s not suspiciously evil and self serving at all.
@@bearinasuithaha8417God, being perfect - as His Creation proves for genuine Christians - used the fall of man (due to man's individual free will), to carve out a magnificent way - the only way - to lead as many souls as possible to choose Him and go with Him into the Eternal next Kingdom having cleansed it of all sin.
It is a mindblowing way of erasing all the mess and exonerating the righteous followers of righteousness.
This planet has existed for about 6000 years - 4000 years before Christ and 2000 years since He lived amongst us.
We have seemingly some time left before He comes back, this time to rule for 1000 years down here - and then to destroy Satan and his lot and rescue His own - precisely as written in His inerrant snd perfect Bible.
God Almighty - the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit...
There is only One Truth.
The way Alex suffers about the persecutionof animals and abhorrent cruelty of factory farming leads me to suspect that Christ will come for Alex at some point - once he himself makes the effort to knock the door properly...
He left me as a hedonistic artist for 57 years before He came for me.
Anyone who has been through such an enlightenment and has been born again KNOWS what Alex as yet cannot.
It is a little embarrassing to hear a young man so blind to the actual Truth of this world, but he will get there, I believe - and we can mock him a little with good nature once He awakens to immortality and his state of grace following his redemption, God willing ...
God Bless all atheists who are good at heart.
❤
I think the big think with sleeping on it is simply time. You're experiencing more emotional states over that period, so you get to include all of those in your ultimate decision.
Alex & Jimmy Carr in conversation would make this young man very happy!
Would make this old Canadian very happy too
Cheers
Ricky Gervais
A coarse and dismissive introduction to this thread, most atheists have genuinely sought to understand their counterparts, that's probably a major reason why they are atheists.
Well reading this comment section does not show that
@@starwarsnerd1055 Whats that got to do with it?
Beethoven 5 boring?! NEVER! Not with a milion other peaces next to it....But I love Alex. The one true humble 'atheist'. He makes a better case for religion then almost al christians.Thank you for inviting him.
Why did you put 'atheist' in inverted commas? Are you pretending he's a Christian?
He isn't.
No, I mean that I do not know exactly what it means to say that somebody is an atheist or a believer.....I think that is not for me to deside? I would call myself a ' maybe believer' .....Saying you want to believe but can not is a big thing...?
@@IanM-id8orwhy would anyone do that you silly plumb
He needs context to appreciate Beethoven and beautiful works of art - oof, this guy is not in his body
@@stealthylion11I think that idea applies a lot more than people may like. Particularly, when you view certain kinds of art, be it Noise music, abstract art, or typically unpleasant smells. The context of someone else's body alone can change how these things may be experienced, let alone other factors that may be more within your control (such as imagining a situation like Alex would).
Personally, Alex's kind of reasoning doesn't have me enjoy these pieces more. Sure, I can grow more understanding of someone else's joy for a piece, but it doesn't make me like it.
The world is enchanting enough without religion. Why add the baggage of exclusiveness and divisive bigotry that comes with religions like Christianity Islam and Judaism?
religists like to hate people is why, god is an excuse to be a bully "it's not ME burning you at the stake, my god demands it" it's for cowards who can't own their bigotry and hate.
Hateful people are just hateful despite religion, but at least Christianity commands equality unlike the other religions you mentioned. Currently it's the anti theists who are the most hateful towards those with diverse world views. They've started the modern-day satanic panic by slandering and spewing hatred towards anyone who doesn't plaster themselves in rainbows and memorize pronouns and go along with societal gaslighting.
You cannot in good conscience, even as a atheist, put Islam and Christianity on the same standing. The world is getting worse due to secularism. Sweden is a perfect example of this. The Swedes have a good quality of life but one of the highest suicide rates in the world. If secularism is so good then why do we see all the countries with the highest suicide rates occur in secular countries?
Because they have no meaning in life. And meaning in life can only come from a Creator who loves you. Modern Atheists are inconsistent because they will reject a Creator and meaning in life but find meaning in certain things despite it going against their worldview.
Actual atheists of old, understood that without God, meaning ceases to exist. This is why atheists who took atheism to its logical conclusion like Nichetsze ended up going psycho and overdosing.
Ironically, you most likely live in the West which has a good standard of living due to it being historically Christian and its laws stemming from the 10 commandments. Is it bigotry if the Bible condemns murder or rape? By your standard, everything is permissible which would allow life to cease to exist because if everything is perisble why not let everyone kill themselves using nuclear weapons.
If atheism is so great, why don’t you move to truly atheist societies that haven’t been influenced by Christianity such as North Korea? Why stay in the West which’s foundation was Christian. Even Dawkins doesn’t deny this. Y
Atheism is only appealing during times of ease which ironically was when it was developed in the modern times by people like Dawkins in their towers.
Atheist scholars like Ayaan Hiram (atheist for over 20 years and a best friend of Dawkins) recently came out as a Christian and had a conversation with Dawkins recently on RUclips admitting their atheist philosophy is inconsistent and untenable.
It's really embarrassingly easy to discard ones life when an immortal one is promised in its place. The greatest consequence of living is death after all and that fades away under the enchantments of religion.
I'm not religious by any means, but l can see the appeal of such things.
@@Arareemoteright because a life devoid of meaning and purpose, where love is nothing but chemicals, where your choices are dictated by molecules and "you" is nothing more but a spectator into a life that you have no say in, is so full of value and definitely not insignificant. If only everyone could realize that humans are nothing more than machines incapable of agency. Society would be so great!
this looks like a good episode from the start. super excited to watch this
Our beautiful will say, who brings to remembrance and comes with comfort!
What would it take? Profound gullibility.
Einstein, Nietche, Jung, Tesla + countless other GREAT (170+IQ) minds who seemingly never doubted the existence of God, and no one ever thought they were naive or gullible. As a rational human being who loves science and history I could NEVER pretend that i believe that the universe created itself withhout a cause and without meaning. I think you should first try being born and living life in a part of the world that was never influenced by Plato and Jesus (the entire western world) and maybe then youd notice pretty quickly what a society that has supressed God looks like. The closest to modern western world that you will get is perhaps Kommunism or Fascism in the developed world and basic hedonism in the underdeveloped parts of the world. This is easy to verify just point at a random place on the world map, look up how that nation operates and how it was founded and by wich principles it revolves around and compare that to actual demographic/topographic and youll see what separates modern highly evolved empathic societies from everything else.
Add illogicity, fallacious reasoning, straw-manning, refusal to accept the inevitable, and horrible 1st grade math skills, you get an atheistic worldview.
No profound spiritual experience? It's funny how subjectivists can never comprehend how a subjective spiritual experience could transform a person completely.
@@RrRookiEeE you meant "theistic worldview"
@@frei6833
I meant what I meant, if you don't like it, prove me wrong, or shoot the deuce.
Brierly always comes off incredibly dishonest in his responses to Alex.
anytime money seems like it could be the motive, just know that it is
I think Belle and Alex need to go on a date. They are both adorable and the way she smiled from ear to ear every time she looked at him and and and twirled her hair a lot.
are you in heat?
@@aiya5777 That's probably not the pick up line Alex should use.
Alex is uniquely refreshing. I've grown tired of Atheists Clubbing theists. There was a time for that, I believe, but it's nice to see someone moving on.
It would take a regeneration of the heart through hearing the word of God to become a Christian. You're welcome.
Well unfortunately the word of God isn't much but a story written by humans to someone who isn't a Christian, right? Some try very hard to believe, I spent my childhood and a lot of my teenage years willingly going to church hearing the word of God constantly, yet I was left unconvinced by some means or another, and left the church to never look back. To hear the word of God again means nothing to me, and the simple answers given when questioned about the word of God often betrays the sand this castle is often built on.
Just emotions mapping onto reality? Well how broad and delving are your perceptions of reality and are these perceptions entirely trustworthy in and of themselves?.. this just seems to hold water poorly
Show that is not about materialism spent the introduction of the show talking about how beautiful the building they are in is.
They would say that beauty is ultimately transcendent in nature.
What's the issue here? The building is beautiful precisely because it points to transcendent reality, not because materialist reductionism is true...
@@Joeonline26 it’s funny how this transcendent reality is presented solely through real physical things
@@Emperorhirohito19272 Are the immaterial, mathematical truths of geometry used to build the building and in which the material building participates less real than the material building itself? Dependent, finite material reality participates in the non-dependent, infinite, immaterial reality, not the other way around. human beings are enmattered souls, not ensouled matter. Etc
@@Joeonline26 sure they’re real. Mathematics is a framework we made up to apply logic in useful ways and describe the material world. That doesn’t mean there is such place as an “immaterial reality” what does this even refer to? What is this place meant to be? and we’ve gotten way off the topic of beauty. Beauty is an experience that humans have as a function of their brain which is a physical object.
There is no evidence for the existence of a soul.
I have a problem with the term Judaeo-Christian: it seems to me that there is a world of difference between the Old and the New Testaments in so many brilliant ways.
Yes, there is, but we have the same God and the OT is needed to understand the NT.
The term Judeo-Christian is a lie. Modern day Talmudic Jews are the descendants of the Israelites who rejected the Messiah (think Pharisees, etc.). By rejecting Jesus, they rejected the prophetic nature of their own holy book and thus ceased to be Jews in the Biblical sense of the word.
@@nikokapanen82not true. Many early sects of Christianity dispensed with the Old Testament (Marcianism, etc). Depending on what books you place value on in the New Testament you don't need the Old to make sense of it.
@@ericbrant8983
You literally could not know who Jesus even is and if He is a real deal without the Old Testament. Without the OT Jesus could have been like Muhammad who would appear without any prior promises of his coming and would begin to claim this and that etc.
@@nikokapanen82 I agree. But there was an enormous sea change from the outset of the NT, starting with the revelation of Yahweh (the LORD) as Father, Son and Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism. The Trinity is a very different vision of God to the simple monotheism of the Old (an authoritarian cosmic loner). More than that, Jesus didn’t have a violent bone in his body, and his core ethic is love, not just of fellow Jews or Christians but of everyone regardless of race, gender or creed.
I'm just a lowly florida construction worker who's listened to Alex for years and always forget he's only 25
I studied local agricultural history here in Wisconsin during 1978-79. During the 1980s, I was a member of an organization that provided advocacy and support for family farmers.
Nothing could make me a Christian. Even if you could prove Jesus existed (which will never happen), you could never prove, like his alleged father, he's not evil.
Proving Jesus is a real person does nothing to prove the truth of his claims
@@TariqNavabiGaming So?
You know them by their fruits. Look at people who truly want to live like Jesus compared to the murderous psychopaths who have always ruled this world and have always followed occultic religions. Self-serving pagans get rich and powerful in this realm, but the meek shall inherit the earth.
@@Captain_Fantasy Avery accurate name for your comment. You won't see any Buddhist monks in jail for theft rape and murder but there are plenty of Christians filling jails. Your comment is total and profound fantasy nonsense. Think Gandhi was a Christian?
Lightbearer616, I’m sorry but that is such an asinine statement.
Is it just me, or is Belle having a crush on Alex? 😂
I don't feel that's an appropriate thing to comment on even if you are very confident in that statement.
@@AlexanderNunn-g1r shut up
Can you blame her?🥰 She totally loves him though...
It looked like it, but I don't know her baseline.
@OneLine122 some people are just bubbly all the time
A question Alex needs to consider is, at what point is military action warranted, to achieve a moral objective.
and is eating cats and dogs okay
When Alex was talking about paintings it made me think of Peter Hitchens and him seeing a painting of the last judgement and was a part of bringing him to becoming a Christian.
The universality of guys like Alex is the top reason I became convinced that the Bible's account of reality is true.
Even the bit about necromancy?
@WriteTraxtake it up with King James. "Necromancy" is the exact word the KJV uses in Deutronomy 18:11.
Also, necromancy in warcraft isn't demonic, you're thinking of warlocks.
@WriteTrax i have not mentioned jesus. I wonder if you consider the Bible's message about necromancers true or not. That's why i asked about necromancers, not about Jesus.
@WriteTrax
Why... Do you think that is what biblical necromancy is?
If you think that's true, you believe in something supernatural that's not even biblical.
(" I became convinced that the Bible's account of reality is true.")
smh
.
I like Alex, much in the same way that I like Michael Shermer. Both are great skeptics, and very pleasant, decent people. Both, I would argue, do in fact have fine Christian ethics. But I wonder if this self-identification as "skeptic" isn't exactly what holds them back?
These people aren't like Dawkins or Hitchens, they're more muted, more anemic. Here's the rub - I don't think you can really ever understand Christianity if you're muted. Rather than more logic, science and philosophy, I believe it would do them more good to attend more funerals and perhaps work at a hospice.
Some of that is projection on my part. I'm a fairly new and wobbly convert to Christianity, and I've just noticed how these real things - like funerals - tend to put you in a different position to really connect with reality.
And skepticism can become pathological. If anyone wants a current example I think Candace Owens is a good one. Something happened to her, and now on the one hand she distrusts EVERYTHING ... and on the other is drawn into some rather un-Christian beliefs about the world. But the point is that skepticism is easy. It just requires you to be skeptical, and you can easily be skeptical about everything. It will eventually, however, express itself and a state of mind. And the more devoted you are to it, the more you'll be in the skeptical zone where whatever the object of your skepticism, you'll believe less in it.
But when does the rubber meet the road? When do you just sit there and marvel at this world we inhabit, when do you ponder your exquisite consciousness, this feeling of self? Sure, you could get up and find all sorts of skeptical criticisms of consciousness, and you could wring out some anemic scientific "explanation". But it remains that our consciousness is weird. Even evolutionarily. You can rant on about how consciousness gave us this or that reproductive differential and so on, but what IS it and why do I perceive it, and what am *I*?!
You, me and everyone alive on this planet has a subjective experience with consciousness, and what is that? Or you can philosophically claim that consciousness is just something that "emerges" out of our physical bodies, or babble on about timings in our brains and such.
I've been there, done that. Ultimately didn't believe my own or the atheist/naturalist arguments.
I am. I feel. I am conscious of myself and my surroundings. I experience something IN my consciousness. I can sit an wonder about *that* blue color, so deep and intense, so blue that it's the bluest of blue, and I can't help asking WHY it is that I have such an experience? This phenomenon is something else, and why is it like that? I guess that once I stopped explaining things away (through skepticism), and chose NOT to move on to the next topic while copping out, things began to change.
Measured skepticism is necessary, but you also need to devote time to how you accept things. If skepticism is the highest value that you orient all of your perception towards first and foremost, I think the latter will suffer.
Lastly I'll mention methodological naturalism. I believe most skeptics and atheists and naturalists are in that fly trap. Many have training in the sciences, and science has changed since Newton's time. No longer do scientists go to universities to study our universe - or God's creation - in order to honor God and understand what he made for us. Science has left that part behind, and the naturalistic worldview is now mixed imperceptibly with the scientific method. So now the scientific method is by definition naturalistic and only looks for naturalistic explanations of everything that is. Which is why more than one atheists have pretty much asked me to provide incontrovertible proof of God in a petri dish or a physics experiment at CERN. But it's silly to ask for such proof of a person that's outside of space, time, matter, and energy. God is more like math, or logic, and you cannot do STEM type science to "prove" such things.
If your tool (science) can only by definition find naturalistic explanations, then no wonder you feel that there is "no evidence" for God. You saying that is *inevitable*. And as I said I believe that most skeptics/atheists/naturalists believe in a science that is methodologically naturalistic. This creates a bias, and it excludes a lot of things from their understanding, which is why they all predictably end up the same place.
So the short of it: go to more funerals.
Perform Hajj and salah, and perhaps you too can learn deeper truth.
Do you know that the eye of Horus is the eye of Satan?
just a quick reminder that the first amendment conflicts with the first commandment
"thou shalt worship whoever you want"
and that the declaration of human rights gives ME more rights than god.
and a history lesson cos the USA is a secular nation, not many people seem to know that,
and the founding fathers were at best deists and certainly not christian. hitchens became
a naturalised american purely
because of the constitution. the UK is officially christian,
the US is officially secular.
is it annoying that the satanic temple has the SAME RIGHTS as the church?
@@HarryNicNicholas
But many of the laws in America are not founded on the Satanic temple but on the Gospel.
appeal to emotion argument.... gross
Alex’s point about seeing something beautiful, then turning around and seeing something ugly, and how it makes him doubt the transcendent, really exemplifies how our outlook on life shapes how we perceive the world.
When I see beauty contrasted with the ugliness in the world, it makes me appreciate beauty even more and strengthens my desire to bring about more of it. The ugliness, to me, serves as a testament to the goodness of the beautiful. But it seems for Alex that ugliness causes him to lose faith in the beautiful, which only makes things worse in the end, because without faith, there’s no motivation to act to improve things.
It's a very interesting thought that I think I've noticed as well
thats a naive way of seeing it. he is an atheism grafter, exploiting the ugly parts of this life to sell a monetized atheism manifesto with the end goal of a potential role in modern day secular politics. In reality himself and most ppl are very aware of the beauty in the world and how it has to be accounted for.
Having worked with war veterans, I've become convinced that the human capacity for catalyzing ugliness into beauty has a breaking point. Everyone has a different threshold, but there is an upper bound of atrocity, horror and sheer violation from which the isn't any recovery.
I agree. The problem of suffering is an eternal one, and I personally believe that outside of a religious context, it can break you and lead to a kind of nihilism. However, within a religious framework, suffering is contextualized across time. This is why the central image of Christianity is the Crucifixion, a horrific event. Yet, if you can manage to see the good brought about by it, you inoculate yourself against any form of complete despair.
without faith, there’s no motivation to act to improve things.
^this right here is patently false.
Religious folk do not have a monopoly on caring about improving things, and I'd argue on average care FAR LESS about improving things since they believe the nonexistent afterlife is the thing that really matters, not this "test" of a life beforehand. I lost my christian faith many years ago. I know the world has some ugly stuff in it. It also has some beautiful stuff in it. Most of said things are out of my control but if I can help those in my immediate community, why wouldn't I? The whole religious take on "no faith means everything's pointless" is absurd, humans naturally have empathy toward fellow humans, and the fact so many religious people don't realize that is terrifying.
"think on behalf of.." was such an intentional snipe.
Very glad Alex pushed back on the "behalf" comment.
I like Alex is getting more humble about the complexity of human-religion relationship. He might notice that is deeper than he use to think.
You mean he's a deeper thinking than when he was an edgy teenager?
Shocking!
he used to be christian. pay attention.
I think he’s starting to take the threat of radical Islam seriously and believes we will need Christian soldiers to fight it. The enemy of my enemy….
@@EnglishMike The truth is that I never heard it when he was a teenager. I'm referring more to the last 2-3 years. I really appreciate his work and his rhetoric.
@@CMA418 You think so? I mean, indeed, radical Islam might look like a threat, but I think it is not the real reason.
I was homeless, got into drugs, went into prisons, then i got to know Jesus, He changed my life.. Now i make 22k weekly. have a home, a wife, a lovely daughter... A child of God. HALLELUJAH!
It's Christina Ann Tucker doing she's changed my life. A BROKER- like her is what you need.
After I raised up to 325k trading with her I bought a new House and a car here in the states 🇺🇸🇺🇸 also paid for my daughter's surgery (Joey). Glory to God.shalom.
I do know Christina A. Tucker, I also have even become successful....
Absolutely! I've heard stories of people who started with little to no knowledge but made it out victoriously thanks to Christina Ann Tucker.
There is her line!!!! Look down under this comment!!!! Ok
This dude still hasn't explained how "adult human female" is a supposedly incomplete/lacking definition. In what universe?
Adult is not a fixed term. Legal adult, fully grown, sexually mature, mentally fully developed? The first one is dependent on jurisdiction the other three all happen at different ages.
@@-Tholos- So you are saying you can't tell an adult from a child? That we cannot in society make a meaningful distinction between an adult and a child?
Being female happens at different ages? Tell me more please. Also tell more about how being human supposedly happens at different ages? You paid a lot for that crack you are smoking? When does a female stop being female? When does a human stop being human?
@@-Tholos-In addition, human is just Homo Sapiens or other intelligent Homo groups too?
Female according to sex organs? Chromosomes? Other characteristics?
@@niceguy191
Humans - Homo sapiens (all others are extinct)
Adult - legal adult
Female - No SRY gene
44:56 not harming others is evolutionary. Our ability to pass on our genes most successfully was to be in groups where we cooperated, each did our share to our abilities, and were safe in person and property. We see evidence of this all throughout the animal kingdom. Pack animals discipline, punish, and expel members who harm the pack not because of moral intuitions. We do this on the cellular level through apoptosis. Attitudes have changed somewhat around things like killing innocent civilians, children, etc but it didn’t start from zero.
It's natural for some of those things to have changed too. Like it likely meant at times we had to leave the weak or disabled to die when we didn't have the resources to support them. I think morals from God is one of the most common things that's one of the weakest arguments. If we start from 0, we have our need to eat, sleep, shelter and reproduce. Then we had more complex problems to solve as more people settled in small areas that required efficiency, jobs, etc. At the end of the day all of our actions are still to satisfy a handful of core desires, like survival, reproduction, love and community, power and resources. All things that directly or indirectly support that survival. They are all natural trajectories of our own brains.
@@Pyrrhonian I agree and wonder why Alex and some of his peers seem to not just say this. This “mystery” of where morality comes from as if it’s the one thing somehow divorced from evolution.
I doubt it would take much to make me believe again. Repeated answers to prayer would be a good start.
Atheism is for teenagers.
Those teens are very wise.
They don't rely upon baseless assertions for their beliefs.
.
@@bootskanchelsis3337 no offence to teens, we all have been one at some point, but they are morons. it's a feature, not a bug, but they are still morons.
The demographic evidence from the last 50 years is that once someone reaches their mid-20s, their religious or non-religious worldview rarely changes later in life, and given that an increasing number of young Americans are walking away from Christianity in their teens and early 20s, the future of the USA is almost certainly going to be far less religious and more secular than it has ever been before.
So yeah, atheism is for teenagers _and_ it is for life.
Religion is for children.
Well, I am young at heart.
Alex is a master of taking things of out context and exaggerating. I would love him to actually meet a historian who studies Jewish ancient society and discuss how Old testament was interpreted and lived through. It's completely irresponsible to sit here in 21 century and rant about the incident in the Book of Judges, extrapolating to the entire old testament and the whole Jewish society. Just childish.
"Alex is a *master* of taking things of out context and *exaggerating* " you're not bad at that either.
@@vulkanofnocturne Thank you! I am learning.
@@vulkanofnocturneand you’re the master of just saying things
It’s all sophist dross. I feel sorry for people who think there’s anything of substance to him
@@vulkanofnocturne what he said is not an exaggeration about Alex. He also strawmans a lot. When you're merely clever - you cannot find truth. You need more than philosophical banter. Philosophy is a tool - it's a means to an end - not the end itself. Alex gets big props for his politeness - that makes his semantics sound more intelligent than Dillahunty's big bad wolf complex of huffing and puffing at a brick house, but he's just as full of hot air.
Actually good conversation on this topic. Finally - kudos to this channel
What if the experience of the negative situation was used for him to believe In God. Yes the bullet could have completely missed but maybe God sees a bigger picture knowing that Tom needed to be in the certain environment and with the certain experience (with cancer) for him to be willing to come to reality that God exist.
I really like Alex.
This was such a fun conversation.
Alex definitely does very well with the ladies.
She's nearly falling of her chair towards him, what a stud.
I think seeing morality as a social tool might be even more interesting
Students shared "i" Am and our beautiful will say, Alex ye need not to be nervous concerning thy Friend kind of Love!
oh it is fascinating seeing young Mr. O'Connor growing into it...
can you facilitate John Lennox & Alex?
I came here from the Dawkins & Peterson debate. Dude, you've run away from the limits Dawkins still sits in.
All i know is this, I am always a better man on the days that i beleive in God, than I am on the days that i don't.
15:55 Alex O'Connor's approaches to Podcasts, Debates, Talks.
20:58 150,000 Subscribers. Difficult to explain that.
I like the idea of affirming dialectic. I look for truth, goodness and beauty wherever I find them across the spectrum. I put the truth, goodness, and beauty from one side together with that of its polar opposite and try to come up with either common ground or better informed, more incisive, more respectful disagreement--"forward balance."
I do believe there is something, but it is not the God of the bible, nor any other Religion. Religion is essentially man made for the purposes of control... simple.
I wouldn't need an hour and eleven minutes.
It takes just seconds to answer: "Blunt force trauma"
Can't he see his misunderstandings of Christianity!? I have a lot of respect for Mr O'Connor, but you should have pointed out the full implications of what he says. He's correct that we all have intuitions - but never was it discussed where those came from. The bible says God wrote the law in our hearts. There's a perfectly reasonable answer. And it's further backed by C S Lewis' argument that where there is a hunger for something it stands most logical that that something exists.
As for beauty drawing one closer to God and evil moving people away. It's a false dichotomy. Good and evil. Beautiful and ugly. Two separate categories. Furthermore, most people become Christians through an acknowledgement of sin and evil. Not of the beautiful. It's when we realise that this world is imperfect that we realise there must be a solution and then it becomes all to clear.
The Bible also says slavery is good, homosexuality is bad, contains creation mythology, global flood mythology, talking trees, talking animals and zombies. In short, the Bible is not a credible source of info - Christian scholars agree that Matthew Mark Luke and John were written by anonymous authors using fake names (to give more authority to their work).
"Ways of Seeing," a wonderful book and BBC program.
saying Christianity is true as Justin does, without examining what truth means (beyond empirical, theological, testimonial-experiential truth; beyond truth as a word/term limited to language) is pretty limiting; is it not a relativising of 'truth' for the purposes of (ironically) making it into an absolute, to suit the believer's conviction? And Alex's last point at the end, that Justin says is nihilistic - not at all, he is simply acknowledging the unavoidable binary construct of life - where there is good, there is its opposite. If god is behind and beyond everything, then to simply call him 'good' is surely inaccurate; the negation of good, (bad, evil etc.) cannot exist separate from god if he is behind and beyond everything, since there can be nothing 'outside' of god (the very act of satan's disobedience must still in some way be 'of' god - where else can it come from?) therefore, in some way, it must too be a part of him - at the very least, god must be non-binary, certainly beyond good and evil at any rate. I appreciate how difficult it is to talk about these things, trying to apply reason/logic to such a nebulous concept as god, but there you have it. Please take my critique in good jest! I appreciate your work- I'm just curious of these topics because I've never come across any theology that confronts them.
By your definition of "truth" it is impossible to prove you have a rational mind. Therefore how are you sure you can trust your reasoning about anything?
Secondly, God chose to limit his power when he gave his creations free will. The angels also had free will. The desire for power and sin is within all of us. Take away our capacity for evil and being good means nothing. Evil is necessary for goodness to exist. God is not to blame for the evil actions of others, because if he were, we wouldn't have free will
@@tobiaskvarnung3411 I don't have a definition of truth, it is a word like 'spiritual' or perhaps love, if it could be defined, it wouldn't be what it is, like god. Again, how can 'free will' be free of god's control, if by definition, there can't be anything 'outside' of god/his creation?
@benscraftymusings we are part of God. We carry God within us. Why wouldn't we be free? God granted us free will because because he loves us enough that he wants us to experience freedom, even if that includes choosing freedom from God. That doesn't mean he can't control or interfere in our lives. It's that he respects us enough to leave our mind alone. You walk away and wonder why he doesn't pull you toward him. He's not some crazy ex. He respects our autonomy and agency. He's a father who loves his creation, that doesn't mean he's abandoned us or don't exist just because we're free to rebel against him
I'm at 53:27 and the host has not finished his thought yet, but it made me think: Why does anything morally need to be *OBJECTIVELY* true?
Using 'Racism' as the base, I would agree with the statement "Racism is wrong". Does that mean I think it is *objectively true* that racism is wrong? No.
I think most of us would, and I think that is great. I want to be in a society that promotes this value and so we build one that in it. Does it matter if you can't point to an ancient scroll, a supreme being or an object in far off space and say "this is how we know for sure that x is wrong/right"? I don't think so.
If that means I can't say the words "murder is wrong" or something like that, and you take 'wrong' to be it's most objective sense rather than just meaning "i think we should not do it" then fine, I agree. I don't see why it needs grounding when we can, most of us at least, think and agree on the important stuff.
We have brains, i think we should use them to critically think, rather than passing off the thinking to someone/something else - even though that's what our brains want to do a lot of the time cos its easier lmao.
I'd like to know what others think of this, and I'll see what the rest of Justin's thoughts are in the meantime!
Ah ok... Justin goes on to say "I want to live in a world where racism is objectively wrong"
It's really interesting the way in which different people think. Maybe I'm misguided, and someone will correct me in the comments or later in life, but I really don't think a) it matters whether X is objectively wrong or not, and b) it's often a lot more complicated than a simple statement.
There may have been a time where tribalism (which segregates further than racism) was a way to ensure the safety and livelihood of your family, in a time where basic needs that we consider today weren't often met.
I can look back as a 21st century man and judge, but i can't say it was truly *wrong*. I'm ok with that.
I don't want to live in a culture where that sort of thing happens and I want to live with other like minded people, and at least for now, thats all I think we need.
I can understand why someone might find it scary to think like that, but I think once you stop thinking in absolutes you can take more things in