I just about fell off my chair that someone with a degree could say that there was no match for Christopher Hitchens in intellectualism. He never brought a substantive argument to bear. He used sophistry and rhetoric in place of argumentation. You think "celestial North Korea" is the ultimate in intellectual argumentation? Seriously? That's just plain nuts.
I never lost my fear of death until AFTER I left religion! Understanding my place in the evolution of my species on this planet within given time and space of our universe brings overwhelming peace
Same here. My Evangelical mother was talking about how people that aren't Christians are scared of death and I looked her straight in the eye and said "no that's not true, because I'm not." She told me I should be, to which I repeated, "well sorry to disappoint you but I'm not."☺️
I agree with this I don't see how people can fall into nihilism... the fear is when you're in a fundamentalist religious group. I was a fundamentalist Christian for 40 years willing to die for my faith and I never really read much of the Bible and didn't really attend church. But it's indoctrinated into you so much by your culture you just assume God is real the Bible is right and there is a hell. I had a child out of wedlock and I was so fearful for my child that I made and kept a seven years celibacy covenant with God , because I know the Old Testament and New Testament overlaps and it doesn't really seem like all the old testament laws go away so I was worried about him punishing my child for what I did. I have zero fear of death and now that I'm an atheist and actually learned what was in the Bible, and I have zero fear of some punishment happening to my kid because of my life. So in studying and learning that none of the gods are real that's brought me a sigh of relief
"New Atheism" was four guys who wrote some books and did some interviews. If it "died", it is because they either they said their peace or passed away themselves. Atheism is obviously is not "new" is still very much around and indeed is growing rapidly.
How can "Atheism" be dead? I am alive and after 70 years, I still don't believe in FAIRY TALES. Until the Believers in FAIRY TALES can clearly demonstrate that their particular FAIRY TALE is, in fact, real, I will remain an ATHEIST.
It feels good to know that there are some older atheists, that reinforce for me that this is not a stage in which people express their discontent with religion before they latch onto another. Being free of religion is, without grandiosity of texts, a humble and beautiful way to go about life. I like that I don't have to live as if this life is only a trial before we get the real thing. I appreciare this, and to see others have done do so, for much longer than I have, feels nice.
Atheism will never be dead as long as people believe in Gods. I miss Hitch. No Rational Atheist Sam Harris 2 October 2015 at 15:37 · “No rational atheist (or “New Atheist”) holds religion accountable for every idiotic or unethical thing religious people do. We blame a religion only for what its adherents do as a direct result of its doctrines, such as opposing gay marriage or killing apostates. Atheism has no doctrines. It does not demand that a person do anything, or refrain from doing anything, on the basis of his unbelief. Consequently, to know that someone is an atheist is to know almost nothing about him-apart from the fact that he does not accept the unwarranted claims of any religion. Atheism is simply the condition of not believing in Poseidon, Thor, or any of the thousands of dead gods that lie in the graveyard we call mythology. To that extent, everyone knows exactly what it is to be an atheist-he has simply added the god of Abraham to the list of the dead. If a belief in astrology were causing people to go berserk-to deny medical care to their children or to murder unbelievers-many of us would speak and write about the dangerous stupidity of astrology. This would not be bigotry or intolerance on our part. It would be a plea for basic human sanity. And that is all that an atheist’s criticism of religious tribalism and superstition ever is. If you understand this, you will recognize any attempt to blame atheism for specific crimes, great or small, for what it is: A fresh act of religious demagoguery.” -Sam Harris
Is religion good for you? No it’s not there is hell in religion. There is unforgivable sin in religion. There is saying that you are born broken and need to be fixed. There are so many things that are psychologically unhealthy about religion.
yea religion is terrible. Religion coopts your brain so that you need it in particular to be happy. If you're not religious like most of us atheists, you're free to be happy and experience all the human experience has to offer without all the nonsense religious baggage put in to manipulate people for nefarious ends.
Militant Atheism just means they got tired of having their separation of church and state rights stomped on.
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Only country that has separation of church and state outside of communist countries is France. So if you want separation of church and state, move to France. US has no separation of Church and state in constitution. In fact it has God in constitution. It just allows freedom of religion. Germany - similarly it doesn't have separation of church and state. UK - United under God, with monarch being the head of state Religion. Italy - Do I need to explain? Poland - "Harmonious cooperation between religious communities and the state" Only France, and the commies. Only them.
While the phrase "separation of church and state" itself isn't in the Constitution - it comes from Thomas Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, where he interpreted the First Amendment as creating a "wall of separation" between church and state. The idea is present never the less in the First Amendment's Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Additionally: Article VI, Clause 3 states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States"
@@twalrus1" tail wagging the dog." Not sure I follow. Is the tail the church wagging the country? Or is it the church wagging the presumption of their God? Or another?
I disagree with the notion that there is nothing more to say about the case for atheism that hasn't already been said. Several weeks ago, I came across this RUclipsr Britt Hartley who deconstructed Hell in ways that I've never heard of. Sure, I've heard of lots of arguments about how Hell doesn't make sense from a moral point of view and that we have no scientific evidence that it exists and that Hell is a useful concept for the powerful to bamboozle the weak into obedience, but this Britt Hartley character told me about how she studied the scriptures and compared them to historical records to create a narrative that real historical events drove the creation of Hell in the popular imagination as a coping mechanism for hard times. Please do keep making these videos! I've been learning a lot from you, and when you tell me something I've already discovered on my own, it's wonderful to be validated by someone else's experience. I've followed several RUclipsrs who have speculated about the future of spirituality, but you are the one who I've seen put forth the most concrete vision for where we go from here. The sacred within me calls out to the sacred within you. The void within me calls out to the void within you. Namaste, fellow travelers!
@ansgarrutten2706 transcendence here refers to a subjective experience which is associated with objectively improved wellbeing. Britt explains that religion is not necessary for such an experience.
I wasn't always a militant atheist, i used to be one of those " keep it to youself" kinda guy. but since the rise of Christian nationalism , i am now i guess, a moderate ish militant atheist . Im not just gonna listen and just ignore these religious folks to say/judge whatever/whoever they want , tell us how and what you should wear, i can go on........... But i won't, just talking/writing about it make my blood boils. Greeting from a Greek Atheist🇬🇷.
My name is Rich, first time viewer, I love your program I went ahead and subscribed. Thank you for some sanity. I'm going to see what else you have to offer.
One topic I hoped you would address in this video is how atheists still have a needed role to play in protecting society from the encroachment of religious nationalism and what this looks like in light of the human need for religion
More specifically it's growing in countries like America. In the middle east it's declining. Over all in the word it seems to have declined a little. Fair enough. I'll take it as a win that it's growing in countries that have higher education and more freedoms
What she's not considering is that the false meaning you get from magic books also has harmful consequences in the real world. Believers are vulnerable to conmen, sexual predators, And especially in the case of the black church , learned helplessness. To escape fear of dying, you stop yourself from flourishing.
💯 I see net loss with any magical thinking, especially for women. Men have it made in the religious patriarchy but women continue to be devalued and dehumanized. No thanks.
This thinking is dangerous and elitist. Everyone is vulnerable to those things in a way or another. I would say that having a community, religious or secular, may help you not be victim of that.
@@josepheridu3322there's a Giant difference between a community looking for the truth in this reality and a community that pushes ignorance as the standard and actively pushes against knowledge and understanding. They are not the same.
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@@tinyshepherdess7710 Christianity was first society where women were cared for. Look at Roman Empire, pagan state, where women were seen as little more than slaves, and there was AN ACTUAL PATRIARCHY, and Christianity was seen as religion of Women and Slaves. Look at the Pagan Chinese Empire, where women feet were bound, not so long ago. Look at Hindu societies where women were burned with their husbands. In Christian societies women had rights. Including right to refuse to marry, because marriage required consent from both parties in the Catholic Church. Any rights women have in modern society, all came from Christian world view. Not atheist worldview, not some kind of pagan or Buddhist worldview, but from Christian world view. Nowadays the women are being assaulted on the street by violent gangs in the west, because you have abandoned Christianity.
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@@trinsit And where the idea of truth comes from? What is truth? - Quoting Pilate. The western idea of Truth comes from Greek Philosophy and Christian Theology, but if you ask a Buddhist, he will say that there is no truth. Christianity is, was and always will be about seeking the truth. If you prove beyond shadow of doubt, that we are wrong, we will accept it, but so far, you have not, and in fact the opposite happened.
8:00 id be curious to find out among those atheist who struggle with existential dread, how long have they been living with their new found awakening? Atheism in the beginning is hard, it is true. However, the longer you sit in those feelings you come to realize that just because we die and it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean life isn’t something beautiful or to be cherished. Purpose does not have to come from a divine being or a promise of eternal life. Sure, it can be harder to give purpose yourself to your life, but that’s the best part. You get to decide what your purpose is and do the things that bring you joy.
Just regarding Hitchens, Alex O’Conner (@CosmicSkeptic) did a video a while back examining all the fallacies and disingenuous tactics Hitchens used in debates. As a former fan of Hitchens I think it’s eye opening to see his tactics picked apart like that.
This is very well-considered and useful discussion. I appreciate you taking a serious look into these issues. It's unfortunate that many commenters (both the religious and non-religious ones) fail to see the nuance in your analysis.
I'm lacking words to express my admiration for your content! I left a cult years ago, I have healed since, but still, I'm learning a lot from your work!!
@@rlstine4982 Humans have been around for millions of years, religions only around for thousands of years. A million years ago the world was was 100% atheist because there was no evidence or need for any deities.
@@rlstine4982 Nah mate humans are millions of years old, but religions are only thousands of years old. Therefore a million years ago the world was 100% atheist.
@@JoBo301 It is what I said from the beginning. But superstitions and primitive forms of religions were there as well. It's not like 100% of mankind was atheist before the rise of civilized religions. It's a spectrum.
Do we really need to accept these religions and carry all these ridiculous baggage that comes with it OR do we endure the pain of walking in to the void? I think we should do the latter. I think humans will evolve to be able to easily walk into the void.
i just dont understand. How can anyone actually believe in religions as being objectively true, you'd have to be a fool. My human experience completely profoundly satisfies and fulfills me and there's no force to religion to my thought, i recognize that when people speak these things they stem exclusively from their own minds and not mine nor some sort of objective perspective. They may speak of it using language, and in that realm of discourse there's toxic power games that are played. Very obvious to me is that what goes on in your mind is not necessary what interpretations you make of it. You may perceive an angel give you their name, but that name is a construction of your unique perspective, and not a prescription for other's interpretations of their own experience. Enjoy my not thought out ramble..
I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking such thoughts! Long before I had tools to navigate the void, as a teenager, I was plunged deep into The Void, like a VFR pilot suddenly encountering IFR conditions. It was a really turbulent ride, and I can see evidence of The Void in some of my more recent memories, too. I feel like I'm at a loss for the correct words, but I feel more like I have The Void within me rather than The Void being a place that I go, so that there is always a chance of encountering it, but I have better tools than I used to. At the risk of being more than a little bit cheeky, what if what we're calling The Void can inspire the sense of enchantment and awe that you and many other say is an essential human experience? What if The Void is something that we can experience intentionally and mindfully and grow from it? Thinking of it this way, I remember a discussion on Reddit about Fakir Musafar and his fascination with "primitive" body rituals that he and his followers used to joyfully re-enact. If one were to be forced into such an experience without any context, it would be literal torture, and yet these people choose those experiences.
Atheism is much older than Christianity , and will be around as long as people are willing to look at theism with bare boned honesty. This so called new atheism is merely a particular crescendo that has been slowly building since the enlightenment age of the late 1600s. Until everyone is willing to think deeply for themselves instead of simply accepting ideas or tradtions from family and peers theism will continue on as easy comfort and easy philosophy for many.
It's doubtful you understand what rational is, or what an adequate argument entails. Telling someone merely to read something you found convincing , especially with no specifics is akin to baby talk. Either flesh out your argument or be prepared to be dismissed.
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@@FoursWithin Prophecy of Isiah was written before Jesus Christ was born. We have archeological proof for its existence (scrolls). Prophecy of Isiah is exactly playing out in the Gospels, and you can compare two together. Trying to argue it away, is irrational indeed. This always has been one of the main proofs of Christianity being the true religion, yet you atheists, and many others, unfortunately including Christians, forget about is. So I say, read Isiah. If you still don't believe me after that, then you are truly irrational. Like pretty much all of Atheism.
You are mistaken on a few counts. First it's not irrational to disagree with your opinions on the prophecy of isiah. Second its title is the book of Isiah. I understand you may be specifically pointing to its included prophecy however referring to it by the name it's known as lessens confusion. Third just because people aren't assessing the book of Isiah as you are doesn't mean they are forgetting or ignoring it. And four, and perhaps most importantly, claiming that one narrative proves another is not a sign of rationality. It could merely show in this instance that you are a believer in a religious belief system. With that in mind feel free to pursue your argument, unless you would like me to explain further why you cannot use the Bible to prove the Bible anymore than you can use the first half of the Quran to prove the second half.
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@@FoursWithin 1. It is not an opinion, it is facts. Fact is it was created before Christ and we have evidence that it was created before Christ. Fact is that the gospels follow the prophecy to the letter. My opinion is that you should read it, rather than dismiss it, just because you don't believe it. 2. Book of Prophet Isiah contains the prophecy of Isiah. 3. If people are not assessing the prophecy of Isiah it DOES mean they are either ignoring it, forgetting it, or just don't know about it. Those are only three possibilities. 4. That is typical rationalization. You have no proof that the prophecy isn't true, so you choose to ignore it. The difference between Quran is that Quran was all written at the same time, at least according to Muslims. So one book doesn't prove itself. However you irrationally equate that to the bible. Bible is not a single book, but a collection of books. Book of Isiah contains a Prophecy, and was written hundreds of years before Christ was born. The thing about this is that if there is a prophecy, and it comes true, it is a proof of itself. If for example I say that Trump will end war in Ukraine, and it comes true, it proves that I was correct in my assumption. However - that is something that I could had just had a lucky guess on, or have wishful thinking that came true. Prophecy however, does prove that the author had some kind of insight in the future, either supernatural, or some other, but if it is not supernatural, then you have to prove that it was not supernatural, if you want to prove that it was not supernatural. Your view is not at all rational, because you don't take facts like that into account. You only operate on pure skepticism, but your skepticism doesn't come from actually researching the topic, but by outright rejecting that there could be anything supernatural. And if you assume that supernatural events cannot occur, you go into circular logic. At best, if you were rational, you would at minimum say "I don't know if this insight is supernatural" But you simply dismiss it outright, without even taking a look at it. Which is obviously irrational.
I’m an atheist, and a strong antitheist. Sadly the racist parts of new atheism just got sucked into Christianity.
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Read book of prophet Isiah. If you still won't believe after reading it, then read new testament and compare it with Isiah. If you still don't believe, then I can say nothing to you, that would convince you I guess.
Sam Harris called new atheism a "publishing phenomenon". In short, it was marketing lingo. Some authors had atheist books, they developed a cool nickname (four horsemen of new atheism) and a fancy group name (new atheism), but that's all it was. (And to be clear for the unaware: _Sam was one of those "four horsemen"!_ ) So it seems ridiculous to bemoan the death of a term that never meant anything. What matters is atheism remains the rational position, and honestly the faster people can stop discussing new atheism the better.
As for "is religion good for us?" we should be very careful not to *only cherry-pick the good.* Because religion's a bundle: you get everything. The good and the bad. So I 100% support admitting the good religion provides, but "are Christians really new creations?" is a vid I keep pointing people to that really walks through quite a lot of facts/studies about the differences between religious and non-religious people. It does a good job admitting the good, but also covering the bad.
*Rationality* is the word summarizing opposition to any supernatural beliefs. (Assuming the definition of "supernatural" is things beyond our ability to have evidence of.)
The black church example feels weird, because irrationality hurts those people. The community doesn't, and the community is real, but believing irrational things prevents these people from pursuing real change. I wish I remembered the black pastor turned atheist who made these points clearer so I could name a video where he spoke on that topic, because he did a great job. And he approached it with a clear desire to help those people.
@@majmage " the black church sample is weird.." There's also the reality that pretty much no one is foolish enough to walk into a church and tell them "it's all a lie." or some equivalent. They'd just escort you out and think you were a creep or a Satanist. They wouldn't suddenly change belief on anything, except maybe their need for security.
@@FoursWithin Remind me: who was suggesting that the appropriate way to help them detach from believing a falsehood was to *dramatically throw open the doors mid-service and proclaim "it's all a lie"* without explanation? Nobody argued that. But you argued against that. Weirdly.
I agree. There are utilities mixed in with religion that we need to figure out how to uphold in a humanistic sort of way. We can’t just destroy everything without any plans for reconstruction. I certainly see that point. It would be beneficial if we could find a way to transfer over the god things while minimizing the bad, and that seems like that should be the goal moving into the future. Not everyone can recover and bode well after losing something we’ve had for thousands of years. The most empathetic thing imo is to minimize collateral damage as we shift into a more secular world
You HAVE to do a video with Frank Schaeffer, the "Atheist who believes in God", in a sense the founder of the religious right, who left it and despises it now. You two seem to be in very similar spaces, but 2 very different generations. That would be cool. You guys both speak to me, though I don't think of myself as an atheist, but hanging onto a very thin sliver.
If one thing is true among all religious believers is that they all want to know the truth. But they all cannot have the truth when they have different doctrines, different beliefs, and differents Gods while believing by faith. So what hinders them from obtaining the truth when they have both faith and prayers? After all, all things are supposed to be possible to one that believes. The answer to this dilemma can be clearly seen when one compares indoctrination (a way of thinking in which all religious converts have in common) to critical thinking, which is the antithesis of faith and religion. I) Indoctrination tells one what to think, where as critical thinking teaches you how to think. 2) Indoctrination says, "believe what you are told and do not doubt". Critical thinking says, "assume nothing, but rather, question that which you don't understand". 3) Indoctrination says, "believe without evidence". Critical thinking says, "believe because of evidence". 4) Indoctrination says, "l believe, therefore it is so". Critical thinking says, "ln the absence of evidence, judgement or decision making must be suspended until evidence is available". 5) lndoctrination says, "Truth is a matter of faith which is based on one's belief". Critical thinking says that truth is the extent to which a claim conforms to reality. 6) lndoctrination says that l can do all things because of what l believe. Critical thinking says, "Show me that you can do all things, and l will know that you are able to do all things". 7) lndoctrination says that if you don't believe as l do, then you are wrong! Critical thinking says, "We wait until the evidence shows who is right and who is wrong". 8) Indoctrination says, "Lean not on your own understanding". Critical thinking says, "Whose understanding shall l lean on if not my own?". 9) Indoctrination is that childish bully on the play ground, taking advantage only of the smaller kids. Critical thinking is that cival, humanitarian adult who has learned to treat people with respect just as he would like others to treat him with respect. 10) In the final analysis of all things, critical thinking does not mind being questioned where as indoctrination does not like being challenged. Since this is so, who then is proven to be dishonest, one who practices critical thinking, or the other who engages in indoctrination?! Indoctrination breaks the rules of reasoning, logic, and rationality, thereby giving way to naivete, absurdity, and an unrestrained arrogance for what may not be right nor true.
Even if we co-evolved with religion, you don't get the positive parts for free. For mostly Abrahamic religions, we also get whole communities mobilized against modern policies and modern medicine. You also get a fair amount of judgment for standing out too much, and your privacy isn't always respected. An atheist who made a conscious decision to ingratiate themselves for the material and psychological benefits (as "cultural Christians" for example) would also have to wrestle with their role in propping up regression. We also evolved to go with the group because our survival depended on it. Going with the group is not always a good thing.
I love Hitchins, but right now, the most important speakers to promote aren't atheists, they are Christian ministers who fight for religious freedom for/from everyone. The arguments they make are essential to a functioning democracy, and because they are delivered as sermons instead of education or politics, they can be dramatic and charismatic and compelling.
My son-in-law became an atheist for about five years. He was raised fundamentalist Christian. He once told me he thought believers were happier than atheists. A few months after this, he lost his job, house and car. He re-converted to Christianity, telling people that God got the job for him. That was about 12 years ago, and he (no longer married to my daughter) is still a Baptist. The stories from the bible, as well as other holy books, can be seen through a psychological lens. Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and others see psychological or sociological truths conveyed in these myths and stories. This is why they are passed down...they provide comfort or give us symbolic representations of our deepest fears and hopes. I think that is something like what Peterson is saying...though it's hard to tell with all the added gobbledygook of his excessive verbiage. My own journey took me from childhood - teen Christianity to Zen Buddhism and finally to reject all such labels and beliefs. The Buddha has some amazing teachings, like Jesus. But even the Zen variety of Buddhism has some supernatural beliefs. Einstein was widely regarded as an atheist. He made it plain in writing that he did not believe in any personal god. But, he believed in the god of Spinoza, that revealed itself in the workings and order of the universe. Einstein also said that people of the future would need a cosmic religion, and suggested something like Buddhism might fit that bill.
🤣🤣Yes people deciding not to accept stories without evidence is dead. EVERYONE should go outside and start worshipping the first person they find yelling at a tree
Britt, can we look to how Europeans adapted to more secular societies for guidance? Growing up (especially in evangelical churches), I always heard so much about atheism taking hold in various parts of Europe post WWII. And it's my understanding that most Europeans are still fairly removed from religion, so how did THEY adapt?
@nononsensespirituality Nationalism seems to affect the more religious here in America, though. And isn't the rise of Islam in Europe more due to an influx of immigration?
Eh everything changes all the time over time. As long as religions exist there will be people who dont believe in them. Alot of us still feel the same, its just less hype online these days
I'm definitely not an Atheist. (I've had to many experiences to show me so.) I don't believe in a God. (Man is always creating Gods to explain everything, with nothing to show.) I now consider myself as an 'Energist.' We are all made up of energy and energy can NOT die, but only changes form. Our energy moves on...
You definitely are an atheist by definition. You lack "a" (Latin for without or lack of, as in asymptomatic or asymmetrical), a belief in any god or gods "theist". It's that simple.
Love your lectures and your generosity and clarity of thought but you got this very wrong - Jesus was a Hebrew culturally and religiously, not a christian. Do please listen to greek scholar Dr Dennis McDonald and see the effect of Paul and Greek literature in the invention of Jesus. You might want to revise some of your views that attach you to christianity as you know it.
What is the difference between a " militant atheist " over a militant " Christian ". Both are annoying. Kids don't need religion since it's bad enough we trick them into believing in Santa Claus. As a kid in church you are told Jesus loves you and as an adult your told if you don't worship God and follow the rules he will crush you...nice teachings.
The issue with modern philosophy is that it stays only on the theoretical spectrum. Ancient philosophies and philosophies during the Enlightment period did not only revolve around God, but they provided a full moral code and guidance on how to live your life. This was the case even for non-religious oriented philosophies. If you want religion only for moral guidance and social interactions, then this is reduced to something like the philosophical schools in ancient Greece. No issue with that if you are a moderate atheist, but do you believe that the official religion will stay satisfied with such reduction of its role?
Just came accross your content ,you cover very interesting topics ,as a former fundamentalist i believe religious delusion is causing a haemorrhage in common sense ,religion should be fostering a community based compassion, i look forward to watching more of your videos
I admit I get frustrated when people call fighting back against discriminatory laws and practices "the left woke mob." So it's bad to recognize not everyone is treated fairly in the eyes of the state and to push back against that? I just don't see how this is a bad thing. My state is leading the country in the amount of anti-LGBT laws it is passing. Am I part of the "left woke mob" to not be quiet about these injustices and to work toward mitigating the harm they cause? I feel like the phrase "left woke mob" is used to dismiss the issues and the people they affect wholesale while also showing what little that person actually understands. Very convenient. I like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I read her book "Infidel" twice, it was one of the most impactful books I've read in my life up to that point. I'm disappointed someone so educated is using such a trite phrase to dismiss the lived realities of millions of people. There are valid criticisms to be made, for sure. As in every movement, there are people on the fringes that do and say crazy things. But using that phrase to dismiss the WHOLE is hugely disappointing.
@@MikeTMike Yeah. Though the idea of anything different than what they believe to be the right way of living is all the definition they apparently need.
It's a typical Christian cope of demonising anyone that disagrees with their theology when they don't have good reasons or sufficient evidence to defend that theology. Just read Psalm fourteen.
I don’t give a heck about religion mythology. So now I am an atheist. Look at history most of the wars are tied some way to religion too especially in the past.
The author is an ex-theist who split off from her very tight church, is sad about it, and figures we should all be sad about dumping belief, too. She is a professional grief consellor to such people, and is irritated that we don't share her sense of loss at ditching belief in God and Christianity. "I feel bad; you most feel bad too." Sorry, many of us don't.
I never knew what 'new' or 'old' atheism was until a few years ago, although I've been an atheist 40 years. What 'chapter' it is in, is irrelevant to me. Truth either is or isn't. Who cares what Hitchen's or Dawkin's opinions are. Fixating on the journey is cope. But, I'll take a listen for grins.
Great video. Keep speaking. I love what you say. Yeah, I read "The God Delusion" and about two thirds of the way through grew tired of it. Dawkins seemed to often misunderstand a lot about theology. So did Hitchens - but he was great at rhetoric. I think these days we need to be more honest about religion and not completely dismiss it. Rather we need to fight against fundamentalism and try to reorientate the nuttier parts of all religion.
Why aren’t we talking more about freedom of religion in these conversations. I understand that creating new traditions are hard but it seems to me like our best way forward is to return to the first step, creating new gods to explain the world we know now. That’s why I created a personal god, The Laughing God.
1. After Hitchens come Matt Delahunty, who's also never lost a debate. Followed by plenty of skeptics that are not slowing down. 2. There's nothing more to say, because there was never anything there to talk about. God not being proven or not being there leaves everything open. 3. It's not atheism that makes people feel worse. It's the lack of positive societal interaction because those communities have not been built up. People in religion that claim to feel moved by a spirit are actually moved by positive social interaction and music and enjoying each other's company. Same thing happens with all secular festivals where people gather to enjoy community with each other and enjoy music and laugh with each other. Has nothing to do with any God. What does have to do with your imaginary God is excuses to commit genocide, like "God's chosen people" Israel is doing right now. All up and down you get everything wrong out of your own fears of what's happening with religion.
I kept waiting for you to address one of atheism's current giants Matt Dillahunty. I'm sure you are familiar with his work. I learn from both of your takes on these issues on a daily basis.
These days my conversation with theists is if they make an incredible statement about some miracle, i just say can you do that or can you introduce me to the person who can. And we continue talking. I don't care for the fight, i try to find common ground. A lot of religious books these days i view as philosophy.
I go to the Unitarian Universalist “church” where I live and I find community there among like minded people. It’s not for everyone. One has to be cool liberal theists. I’m actually fine with liberal progressive theism. Its politics are my politics and I consider religious liberals to be comrades. In that sense theism isn’t the problem; it’s the conservatism.
The problem is language. Language is a set of symbols that may or may not fit reality, and there is a gap between reality and symbol. As long as we have language, we will always believe in nonsense.
Who would have thought!.... Atheism will become as meaningless as not believe in the tooth fairy or unicorns... (keep a thing in mind though, Islam does not care if you say you don't believe in their God)...
The idea that religion plays a usual social function is contradicted by what is happening. As you rightly say atheism is no longer really a movement. What is killing religion is indifference. People are becoming part of the nuns group. This is a voluntary choice. People stop thinking about religion and focus on having Sunday free and pursuing their own interests. If being member of a religious community was attractive they could just do it. But they don't because the religious life does not have that much of a pull. If we look at other countries Northern Europe have secular communities which have high happiness satisfactions. With regard to fear of death my observations of people is that they don't have it. When my mother died she was in some pain. She said that she had lived a happy life. But it was not time to go. There are some other people I have known as well who lived in happy marriages their work life was fulfilling but when it was time to go that was it. They were not concerned about the temporary nature of life or whether they would have statues put up to them. They were just happy to have lived a life
15:45 Comparing Jordan Peterson to church is not the same thing. He sees things more As A psychological professor not a preacher. The stuff he derives from the Bible is not what teaches in christian For instance, the Adam and eve story to him Is a allegory of consciousness, but to christianis how we became sinful.
It seems to me the dismissive nature of the historical accounts of the supernatural events around Jesus must be addressed in order to shore up any atheistic belief system....otherwise inconsistent realities naturally will be born from such beliefs
The historic accounts of supernatural events? You have to see that just because a few people said someone is a god and did god things, that that doesn't make him so.
Lady, there is no such thing as New Atheism. Not believing in Santa Claus will always be a non-belief, There would not be an y New Non-Santa Belief! Same thing for Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
If there is a lack of community among atheists , why don’t we build a community that gives us what religion provides without keeping religion around? You argue for the positives that religion brings, but those positives are centered around a belief in magic essentially. You don’t need religion to have community, soup kitchens, proper moral upbringing, good schooling, these are all things that are possible to be accomplished without the need to keep religion around.
Well then where are the Atheist soup kitchens, rescue services, aid to single mothers etc. The Catholic church for example spends millions every year to feed, house and heal people all over the world. The Atheist talk about it.
There are plenty of people out there who hate all forms of spirituality. And I do mean hate, not just disbelieve. They want nothing supernatural to exist just as badly as theists want God to exist. And they either don't understand or don't care that many spiritual practices are symbolic.
Since I mostly see you talking about New Atheism here...I want to note as a life-long atheist that its mostly attractive to people who are deconstructing and has never seemed to me to be a particularly stable way to go about things. The debates are just not that interesting if you feel secure on one side or the other. It's not even whether or not there are new arguments -- why keep beating your head against that issue? There's not much depth there, and certainly not a coherent "where do I go from here" ever built within the New Atheist framework if you keep focusing on whether or not deities exist. The online atheist community (initially dominated by New Atheist types) started to fracture in a big way when women and minorities started getting louder about racism and misogyny within the atheist community...and that was over a decade ago. A lot of the edgy New Atheist types went alt-right. So...I would hope New Atheism is dead. It's boring and its proponents are annoying at best. If some of those works help you deconstruct, fine, but that shouldn't be the be-all, end-all for you.
I'd say what does the most damage to Peterson's cause is his rampant misogyny. After that, the dangerous pseudoscience. His religious beliefs are the bottom of the list.
Jesus's parables? "He did not speak to them without a parable."(Mark 4:34) "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those outside, everything comes in parables SO THAT they may indeed look, and yet not perceive; they may indeed listen, and yet not understand; otherwise, they might turn back and be forgiven
You treat atheism as a political movement or an ideology to be viewed in opposition to religion, whereas actually atheism is simply an absence of faith. You can easily be an atheist *and* practice a religion. Faith is to religion what justice is to law, it would be nice if the two went hand in hand, but it's not necessary. Let's face it, there is no way that your average televangelist can believe in god, heaven and especially hell, otherwise they would know that they are going there.
This whole argument is deeply flawed. Firstly, it is not about atheism. It addresses something called New Atheism, which was really only focussed around Hitch and the 4 Horsemen. Speaking personally, I have never seen myself as part of a specific movement. I simply do not believe in gods. Ask any ordinary non-believer to label him/herself and you might get atheist, humanist or agnostic atheist but you wont get many people saying "I'm a new atheist." Secondly, whilst it may be true that there are no new arguments, the same is clearly true of theism. Would anyone say theism is dead? As long as theists exist, atheists will exist. As long as theists predominate and seek to convert, oppress, claim superiority and expect privilege, there will always be atheists who stand against them. Of course the details of the argument change but to conflate New Atheism with atheism itself and then to suggest atheism is dead is, frankly, ridiculous.
Ah well, at least there's always gonna be those free thinking intellectuals that'll know what's up about this particular issue. I can deal with this. My compassion is already maxed out man, I get it, humanity is a freaking mess. People totally underestimate how much suffering this religion bullshit causes.
The problem with New Atheism is that it got too political. You are not welcome in any important atheist communities if you don't have progressive views, even when Atheists in the East are conservative with no problem. Besides, in theory you can be atheist and believe in the supernatural (witchcraft, etc) but those atheists are also ostracized, even when they have just mild beliefs in the supernatural. In other words, new atheism is not "dead", but it was never alive in the first place becuase it is just cheap materialism pretending to be a wider category. It would be like Christians describing themselves as "theists" while using only Christian arguments.
@@skylinefever Labels in the West keep getting debased again and again by neolibs and woke idiots taking over, not only atheist groups, but even religious organizations. It is so tiresome that covert ideologies parasite genuine groups and communities.
Doug from the RUclips channel called “Pinecreek” is a very vocal conservative atheist. Sam Harris just spent the majority of his latest “Making Sense” podcast tearing apart the left and their identity politics.
@@shuai83 The sad thing is that there are good arguments for some forms of conservatism or conservative policy based on totally secular logical arguments, specially for economic and National purposes, and yet atheists sacrifice them on the altar of Progressivism. This attitude is kind of cultish.
That's what happens when geeks want to play video games without cheap poorly written LGBT stuff. They neither want the wokes nor the Focus on The Family Karen telling them what they are allowed to buy.
Hitchens was clever but his arrogance was off-putting. I don't think atheism needs more arguments, it needs a better society that people can live in and be happy without having to rely on religion. That means reversing a lot of the neoliberal moves that recent governments have made, and instead governments investing in people, infrastructure, housing, health, work-life balance, better designed cities etc. None of which is likely to happen under Trump. Even most of the "new atheists" arguments dated back to ancient times, except for arguments relating to evolution and natural selection. People just believe what they want to believe. Religion does offer one of the last non-coworker non-family communities though since no one knows their neighbors anymore unless its through church.
None of which is likely under Trump, and I doubt other candidates didn't sell out to Blackrock and Vanguard. The golden age is over and isn't coming back.
@@skylinefever I don't know if there ever was a golden age. There were ages that were golden for some people but not others. But it feels like we are about to take a leap in the wrong direction. I think Kamala would have been better than Trump but still not great. She would have been a sellout as well. America missed its chance with Bernie, at the very least he has integrity
You say that you have studied Jesus for over twenty years. I would be interested if you have a moral teaching that is unique to him. You also, demonstrably by the fact that you are an atheist, don't consider all of his teachings to be "good and true", so I would be very interested in the mechanism that you use to decide which teachings to follow and which to discard. From a personal perspective I would not place my trust in the teachings of someone whose critical thinking skills were so poor that they were convinced in the existence of the immoral monster Yahweh.
This has got to be the most ridiculous attempt at discrediting atheism I have ever heard. The term “New Atheism” Is a complete misnomer and obviously has been coined by those who wish to single out the more well known proponents of atheism. To say that just because the proponents of atheism are not coming up with new novel ways to point out the absurdity of Christianity is stupid on so many levels.
Why would I discredit atheism, as an atheist, and the term New Atheism at the very least defines a phase in publishing around certain authors like Hitch and Harris.
Great video... aside from all your white privilege language. That's trash, and it makes it very obvious that you didn't grow up around Black people, and your anti-capitalist stances show that you don't understand how wealth and freedom happen I agree that Christianity is much better suited for community and structure as needed. However I don't think arguments get that old because there's always newer people growing up who have never heard them . And I generally don't watch very many debates but I did watch that one with Alex O'Connor and I literally laughed out loud . It was a massacre but it wasn't even gotcha questions.. As far as religion being harmful I do believe fundamentalism is harmful and it would be great if fundamentalist Jews Christians and Muslims would become lukewarm religious people as in believing "the right thing to do is treat everybody fairly" But we are ways off from that , I also believe the far left and the far right need to be less tribalistic.
Ask an atheist to watch " computer generated animation of a living cell and they immediately realize they have been burned by academia and the,scientific community. It's really that,simple. This will be the catalyst for the collapse of atheism and all the words ever spoken on the subject melt away into irrelevance. A picture is truly worth a thousand words. Witnessing/ comprehending engineering is a base foundational inherent product of sentient beings.
@michaelnewsham1412 except the stats show upon witnessing the sheer complexity of a living cell Only a fraction walk away believing it could have mindlessly flopped itself together and mindlessly injected itself with coded information. That's why i said once computer animation of a living cell is required viewing in schools and universities the worm will turn . It's inevitable no matter how such knowledge is being suppressed today .
@michaelnewsham1412 my point is when computer generated animation of a living cell is required viewing in schools and universities the jig will be up . Why? Because a foundational aspect of sentient beings is to recognize clear engineering markers when confronted with it. . Again the stats show only a fraction can still convince themselves a cell mindlessly swirled itself together upon being confronted with the reality of precision information,driven complexity in a living cell .
10 Profound Losses You Experience with the Death of God! ruclips.net/video/dasJMCVPb48/видео.html
Checkout Alex O’Connor on Can Atheism Justify Human Rights?
I just about fell off my chair that someone with a degree could say that there was no match for Christopher Hitchens in intellectualism. He never brought a substantive argument to bear. He used sophistry and rhetoric in place of argumentation. You think "celestial North Korea" is the ultimate in intellectual argumentation? Seriously? That's just plain nuts.
I never lost my fear of death until AFTER I left religion! Understanding my place in the evolution of my species on this planet within given time and space of our universe brings overwhelming peace
Same here. My Evangelical mother was talking about how people that aren't Christians are scared of death and I looked her straight in the eye and said "no that's not true, because I'm not." She told me I should be, to which I repeated, "well sorry to disappoint you but I'm not."☺️
I agree with this I don't see how people can fall into nihilism... the fear is when you're in a fundamentalist religious group. I was a fundamentalist Christian for 40 years willing to die for my faith and I never really read much of the Bible and didn't really attend church.
But it's indoctrinated into you so much by your culture you just assume God is real the Bible is right and there is a hell.
I had a child out of wedlock and I was so fearful for my child that I made and kept a seven years celibacy covenant with God , because I know the Old Testament and New Testament overlaps and it doesn't really seem like all the old testament laws go away so I was worried about him punishing my child for what I did.
I have zero fear of death and now that I'm an atheist and actually learned what was in the Bible, and I have zero fear of some punishment happening to my kid because of my life. So in studying and learning that none of the gods are real that's brought me a sigh of relief
"New Atheism" was four guys who wrote some books and did some interviews. If it "died", it is because they either they said their peace or passed away themselves. Atheism is obviously is not "new" is still very much around and indeed is growing rapidly.
Preyz Gord for this wisdum and discernment
Agreed
Well, and there were big blowups over misigyny and racism within the communities where people considered themselves New Atheists.
How can "Atheism" be dead? I am alive and after 70 years, I still don't believe in FAIRY TALES.
Until the Believers in FAIRY TALES can clearly demonstrate that their particular FAIRY TALE is, in fact, real, I will remain an ATHEIST.
Nothing but a silly click bait title, and both of us took the bait.
From a 67 year old atheist.
It feels good to know that there are some older atheists, that reinforce for me that this is not a stage in which people express their discontent with religion before they latch onto another. Being free of religion is, without grandiosity of texts, a humble and beautiful way to go about life. I like that I don't have to live as if this life is only a trial before we get the real thing. I appreciare this, and to see others have done do so, for much longer than I have, feels nice.
@@corneliahanimann2173 Thanks for that, once you have the courage to look behind the curtain you cannot unsee the fact that there is nothing there.
Atheism is not dead in my life. I've embraced it very much so. 👍🏻👍🏻
Atheism will never be dead as long as people believe in Gods.
I miss Hitch.
No Rational Atheist
Sam Harris
2 October 2015 at 15:37 ·
“No rational atheist (or “New Atheist”) holds religion accountable for every idiotic or unethical thing religious people do. We blame a religion only for what its adherents do as a direct result of its doctrines, such as opposing gay marriage or killing apostates.
Atheism has no doctrines. It does not demand that a person do anything, or refrain from doing anything, on the basis of his unbelief. Consequently, to know that someone is an atheist is to know almost nothing about him-apart from the fact that he does not accept the unwarranted claims of any religion.
Atheism is simply the condition of not believing in Poseidon, Thor, or any of the thousands of dead gods that lie in the graveyard we call mythology. To that extent, everyone knows exactly what it is to be an atheist-he has simply added the god of Abraham to the list of the dead.
If a belief in astrology were causing people to go berserk-to deny medical care to their children or to murder unbelievers-many of us would speak and write about the dangerous stupidity of astrology. This would not be bigotry or intolerance on our part. It would be a plea for basic human sanity. And that is all that an atheist’s criticism of religious tribalism and superstition ever is.
If you understand this, you will recognize any attempt to blame atheism for specific crimes, great or small, for what it is: A fresh act of religious demagoguery.”
-Sam Harris
Is religion good for you? No it’s not there is hell in religion. There is unforgivable sin in religion. There is saying that you are born broken and need to be fixed. There are so many things that are psychologically unhealthy about religion.
these harmful things traumatized me and made me neurotic before I lost faith in the religion I was raised with.
yea religion is terrible. Religion coopts your brain so that you need it in particular to be happy. If you're not religious like most of us atheists, you're free to be happy and experience all the human experience has to offer without all the nonsense religious baggage put in to manipulate people for nefarious ends.
🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
@@pipi-mj5zi whats religion please explain
There’s also black and white thinking in religion…oh wait, I think that’s what you’re doing 😂
Militant Atheism just means they got tired of having their separation of church and state rights stomped on.
Only country that has separation of church and state outside of communist countries is France.
So if you want separation of church and state, move to France.
US has no separation of Church and state in constitution. In fact it has God in constitution. It just allows freedom of religion.
Germany - similarly it doesn't have separation of church and state.
UK - United under God, with monarch being the head of state Religion.
Italy - Do I need to explain?
Poland - "Harmonious cooperation between religious communities and the state"
Only France, and the commies. Only them.
God isn't church. God is just a signifier of a higher power. Church refers to religious doctrines and communities.
@@FoursWithin The tail wagging the dog.
While the phrase "separation of church and state" itself isn't in the Constitution - it comes from Thomas Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, where he interpreted the First Amendment as creating a "wall of separation" between church and state.
The idea is present never the less in the First Amendment's Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
Additionally:
Article VI, Clause 3 states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States"
@@twalrus1" tail wagging the dog."
Not sure I follow.
Is the tail the church wagging the country?
Or is it the church wagging the presumption of their God?
Or another?
That's why I like to study philosophy: I don't want to console myself with lies and tales. I want the hard truth.
Absolutely!!
I disagree with the notion that there is nothing more to say about the case for atheism that hasn't already been said. Several weeks ago, I came across this RUclipsr Britt Hartley who deconstructed Hell in ways that I've never heard of. Sure, I've heard of lots of arguments about how Hell doesn't make sense from a moral point of view and that we have no scientific evidence that it exists and that Hell is a useful concept for the powerful to bamboozle the weak into obedience, but this Britt Hartley character told me about how she studied the scriptures and compared them to historical records to create a narrative that real historical events drove the creation of Hell in the popular imagination as a coping mechanism for hard times.
Please do keep making these videos! I've been learning a lot from you, and when you tell me something I've already discovered on my own, it's wonderful to be validated by someone else's experience. I've followed several RUclipsrs who have speculated about the future of spirituality, but you are the one who I've seen put forth the most concrete vision for where we go from here.
The sacred within me calls out to the sacred within you.
The void within me calls out to the void within you.
Namaste, fellow travelers!
there is no need for transcendence to explain anything. that‘s atheism. period
@ansgarrutten2706 transcendence here refers to a subjective experience which is associated with objectively improved wellbeing. Britt explains that religion is not necessary for such an experience.
I will qctually look that one up, it sounds interesting, thanks for the recommendation
I wasn't always a militant atheist, i used to be one of those " keep it to youself" kinda guy. but since the rise of Christian nationalism , i am now i guess, a moderate ish militant atheist . Im not just gonna listen and just ignore these religious folks to say/judge whatever/whoever they want , tell us how and what you should wear, i can go on........... But i won't, just talking/writing about it make my blood boils. Greeting from a Greek Atheist🇬🇷.
You're doing the right thing. Abusive ideologies like Christianity and Islam shouldn't be tolerated by anybody.
My name is Rich, first time viewer, I love your program I went ahead and subscribed. Thank you for some sanity. I'm going to see what else you have to offer.
One topic I hoped you would address in this video is how atheists still have a needed role to play in protecting society from the encroachment of religious nationalism and what this looks like in light of the human need for religion
Atheism was around long before New Atheism, that's why it was called New Atheism. So maybe Hitch is gone, but Atheism is still growing.
Atheism is declining worldwide.
Athiesm is growing in general. Especially in countries with better education, gdp, equality and freedom etc.
@@davidspencer343
No its not. Look up the data.
I literally just did after you asked me to. Says athiesm is growing
More specifically it's growing in countries like America. In the middle east it's declining. Over all in the word it seems to have declined a little. Fair enough. I'll take it as a win that it's growing in countries that have higher education and more freedoms
Atheism is so much better than trying to pound the square peg of religion into the round hole of reality.
I lost religion when I was a kid, but I don't need to fill a hole. I do miss the community. I never needed a dictator, though. But, that's me.
What she's not considering is that the false meaning you get from magic books also has harmful consequences in the real world. Believers are vulnerable to conmen, sexual predators, And especially in the case of the black church , learned helplessness. To escape fear of dying, you stop yourself from flourishing.
💯 I see net loss with any magical thinking, especially for women. Men have it made in the religious patriarchy but women continue to be devalued and dehumanized. No thanks.
This thinking is dangerous and elitist. Everyone is vulnerable to those things in a way or another. I would say that having a community, religious or secular, may help you not be victim of that.
@@josepheridu3322there's a Giant difference between a community looking for the truth in this reality and a community that pushes ignorance as the standard and actively pushes against knowledge and understanding. They are not the same.
@@tinyshepherdess7710
Christianity was first society where women were cared for. Look at Roman Empire, pagan state, where women were seen as little more than slaves, and there was AN ACTUAL PATRIARCHY, and Christianity was seen as religion of Women and Slaves. Look at the Pagan Chinese Empire, where women feet were bound, not so long ago. Look at Hindu societies where women were burned with their husbands.
In Christian societies women had rights. Including right to refuse to marry, because marriage required consent from both parties in the Catholic Church.
Any rights women have in modern society, all came from Christian world view. Not atheist worldview, not some kind of pagan or Buddhist worldview, but from Christian world view.
Nowadays the women are being assaulted on the street by violent gangs in the west, because you have abandoned Christianity.
@@trinsit
And where the idea of truth comes from?
What is truth? - Quoting Pilate.
The western idea of Truth comes from Greek Philosophy and Christian Theology, but if you ask a Buddhist, he will say that there is no truth.
Christianity is, was and always will be about seeking the truth.
If you prove beyond shadow of doubt, that we are wrong, we will accept it, but so far, you have not, and in fact the opposite happened.
8:00 id be curious to find out among those atheist who struggle with existential dread, how long have they been living with their new found awakening? Atheism in the beginning is hard, it is true. However, the longer you sit in those feelings you come to realize that just because we die and it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean life isn’t something beautiful or to be cherished. Purpose does not have to come from a divine being or a promise of eternal life. Sure, it can be harder to give purpose yourself to your life, but that’s the best part. You get to decide what your purpose is and do the things that bring you joy.
Just regarding Hitchens, Alex O’Conner (@CosmicSkeptic) did a video a while back examining all the fallacies and disingenuous tactics Hitchens used in debates. As a former fan of Hitchens I think it’s eye opening to see his tactics picked apart like that.
Wow! So much Wisdom here. Wish everyone could listen to Britt Hartley
This is very well-considered and useful discussion. I appreciate you taking a serious look into these issues. It's unfortunate that many commenters (both the religious and non-religious ones) fail to see the nuance in your analysis.
I'm lacking words to express my admiration for your content! I left a cult years ago, I have healed since, but still, I'm learning a lot from your work!!
Interestingly, it is often forgotten that atheism has been within society since the birth of civilizations.
there was a time when 100% of humans were atheists and religion was unheard of
@JoBo301 Nah, it never happened. They were animists, or atheists ok, but there was never a time when human being were not superstitious.
@@rlstine4982 Humans have been around for millions of years, religions only around for thousands of years. A million years ago the world was was 100% atheist because there was no evidence or need for any deities.
@@rlstine4982 Nah mate humans are millions of years old, but religions are only thousands of years old. Therefore a million years ago the world was 100% atheist.
@@JoBo301 It is what I said from the beginning. But superstitions and primitive forms of religions were there as well. It's not like 100% of mankind was atheist before the rise of civilized religions. It's a spectrum.
Do we really need to accept these religions and carry all these ridiculous baggage that comes with it OR do we endure the pain of walking in to the void? I think we should do the latter. I think humans will evolve to be able to easily walk into the void.
I have videos on the void that you might find helpful.
I will be happy to join the trillions of wonderful creatures that have passed before me. Don't fear the reaper.
i just dont understand. How can anyone actually believe in religions as being objectively true, you'd have to be a fool. My human experience completely profoundly satisfies and fulfills me and there's no force to religion to my thought, i recognize that when people speak these things they stem exclusively from their own minds and not mine nor some sort of objective perspective. They may speak of it using language, and in that realm of discourse there's toxic power games that are played. Very obvious to me is that what goes on in your mind is not necessary what interpretations you make of it. You may perceive an angel give you their name, but that name is a construction of your unique perspective, and not a prescription for other's interpretations of their own experience. Enjoy my not thought out ramble..
I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking such thoughts!
Long before I had tools to navigate the void, as a teenager, I was plunged deep into The Void, like a VFR pilot suddenly encountering IFR conditions. It was a really turbulent ride, and I can see evidence of The Void in some of my more recent memories, too.
I feel like I'm at a loss for the correct words, but I feel more like I have The Void within me rather than The Void being a place that I go, so that there is always a chance of encountering it, but I have better tools than I used to.
At the risk of being more than a little bit cheeky, what if what we're calling The Void can inspire the sense of enchantment and awe that you and many other say is an essential human experience? What if The Void is something that we can experience intentionally and mindfully and grow from it? Thinking of it this way, I remember a discussion on Reddit about Fakir Musafar and his fascination with "primitive" body rituals that he and his followers used to joyfully re-enact. If one were to be forced into such an experience without any context, it would be literal torture, and yet these people choose those experiences.
Love your honesty. You’re a beast.
Beauty & The Beast 😅
Atheism is much older than Christianity , and will be around as long as people are willing to look at theism with bare boned honesty.
This so called new atheism is merely a particular crescendo that has been slowly building
since the enlightenment age of the late 1600s.
Until everyone is willing to think deeply for themselves instead of simply accepting ideas or tradtions from family and peers theism will continue on as easy comfort and easy philosophy
for many.
Atheism is not rational, read Isiah.
It's doubtful you understand what rational is, or what an adequate argument entails.
Telling someone merely to read something you found convincing , especially with no specifics is akin to baby talk.
Either flesh out your argument or be prepared to be dismissed.
@@FoursWithin
Prophecy of Isiah was written before Jesus Christ was born. We have archeological proof for its existence (scrolls).
Prophecy of Isiah is exactly playing out in the Gospels, and you can compare two together.
Trying to argue it away, is irrational indeed. This always has been one of the main proofs of Christianity being the true religion, yet you atheists, and many others, unfortunately including Christians, forget about is.
So I say, read Isiah. If you still don't believe me after that, then you are truly irrational. Like pretty much all of Atheism.
You are mistaken on a few counts.
First it's not irrational to disagree with your opinions on the prophecy of isiah. Second its title is the book of Isiah. I understand you may be specifically pointing to its included prophecy however referring to it by the name it's known as lessens confusion.
Third just because people aren't assessing the book of Isiah as you are doesn't mean they are forgetting or ignoring it.
And four, and perhaps most importantly, claiming that one narrative proves another is not a sign of rationality. It could merely show in this instance that you are a believer in a religious belief system.
With that in mind feel free to pursue your argument, unless you would like me to explain further why you cannot use the Bible to prove the Bible anymore than you can use the first half of the Quran to prove the second half.
@@FoursWithin
1. It is not an opinion, it is facts. Fact is it was created before Christ and we have evidence that it was created before Christ. Fact is that the gospels follow the prophecy to the letter. My opinion is that you should read it, rather than dismiss it, just because you don't believe it.
2. Book of Prophet Isiah contains the prophecy of Isiah.
3. If people are not assessing the prophecy of Isiah it DOES mean they are either ignoring it, forgetting it, or just don't know about it. Those are only three possibilities.
4. That is typical rationalization. You have no proof that the prophecy isn't true, so you choose to ignore it.
The difference between Quran is that Quran was all written at the same time, at least according to Muslims. So one book doesn't prove itself.
However you irrationally equate that to the bible.
Bible is not a single book, but a collection of books.
Book of Isiah contains a Prophecy, and was written hundreds of years before Christ was born. The thing about this is that if there is a prophecy, and it comes true, it is a proof of itself.
If for example I say that Trump will end war in Ukraine, and it comes true, it proves that I was correct in my assumption. However - that is something that I could had just had a lucky guess on, or have wishful thinking that came true.
Prophecy however, does prove that the author had some kind of insight in the future, either supernatural, or some other, but if it is not supernatural, then you have to prove that it was not supernatural, if you want to prove that it was not supernatural.
Your view is not at all rational, because you don't take facts like that into account. You only operate on pure skepticism, but your skepticism doesn't come from actually researching the topic, but by outright rejecting that there could be anything supernatural.
And if you assume that supernatural events cannot occur, you go into circular logic.
At best, if you were rational, you would at minimum say "I don't know if this insight is supernatural"
But you simply dismiss it outright, without even taking a look at it.
Which is obviously irrational.
Fantastic. Please keep them coming.
I’m an atheist, and a strong antitheist. Sadly the racist parts of new atheism just got sucked into Christianity.
Read book of prophet Isiah. If you still won't believe after reading it, then read new testament and compare it with Isiah. If you still don't believe, then I can say nothing to you, that would convince you I guess.
Sam Harris called new atheism a "publishing phenomenon". In short, it was marketing lingo. Some authors had atheist books, they developed a cool nickname (four horsemen of new atheism) and a fancy group name (new atheism), but that's all it was. (And to be clear for the unaware: _Sam was one of those "four horsemen"!_ )
So it seems ridiculous to bemoan the death of a term that never meant anything. What matters is atheism remains the rational position, and honestly the faster people can stop discussing new atheism the better.
As for "is religion good for us?" we should be very careful not to *only cherry-pick the good.* Because religion's a bundle: you get everything. The good and the bad. So I 100% support admitting the good religion provides, but "are Christians really new creations?" is a vid I keep pointing people to that really walks through quite a lot of facts/studies about the differences between religious and non-religious people. It does a good job admitting the good, but also covering the bad.
*Rationality* is the word summarizing opposition to any supernatural beliefs. (Assuming the definition of "supernatural" is things beyond our ability to have evidence of.)
The black church example feels weird, because irrationality hurts those people. The community doesn't, and the community is real, but believing irrational things prevents these people from pursuing real change. I wish I remembered the black pastor turned atheist who made these points clearer so I could name a video where he spoke on that topic, because he did a great job. And he approached it with a clear desire to help those people.
@@majmage
" the black church sample is weird.."
There's also the reality that pretty much no one is foolish enough to walk into a church and tell them "it's all a lie." or some equivalent. They'd just escort you out and think you were a creep or a Satanist. They wouldn't suddenly change belief on anything, except maybe their need for security.
@@FoursWithin Remind me: who was suggesting that the appropriate way to help them detach from believing a falsehood was to *dramatically throw open the doors mid-service and proclaim "it's all a lie"* without explanation?
Nobody argued that.
But you argued against that. Weirdly.
The last couple weeks have made me crave rational, balanced, nuanced perspectives. You earned my sub.
Britt, you're my new favorite atheist. I find your approach to these subjects to be spot on and well thought out. Thanks!
I agree. There are utilities mixed in with religion that we need to figure out how to uphold in a humanistic sort of way. We can’t just destroy everything without any plans for reconstruction. I certainly see that point. It would be beneficial if we could find a way to transfer over the god things while minimizing the bad, and that seems like that should be the goal moving into the future. Not everyone can recover and bode well after losing something we’ve had for thousands of years. The most empathetic thing imo is to minimize collateral damage as we shift into a more secular world
Asa non believer I. The supernatural gave me a lot to think about. Especially the privilege of disbelief.
Theology the most useless degree
Because it's a degree in fantasy.
@@CatDaddyGuitar exactly 😆
You've got to know your enemy. The best armies know the strength and weaknesses of their enemies.
Can you explain what you mean by Spirituality? Because to me it just means emotional.
You HAVE to do a video with Frank Schaeffer, the "Atheist who believes in God", in a sense the founder of the religious right, who left it and despises it now. You two seem to be in very similar spaces, but 2 very different generations. That would be cool. You guys both speak to me, though I don't think of myself as an atheist, but hanging onto a very thin sliver.
Thank you for some great content! Can you elaborate on terror management studies?
If one thing is true among all religious believers is that they all want to know the truth. But they all cannot have the truth when they have different doctrines, different beliefs, and differents Gods while believing by faith. So what hinders them from obtaining the truth when they have both faith and prayers? After all, all things are supposed to be possible to one that believes. The answer to this dilemma can be clearly seen when one compares indoctrination (a way of thinking in which all religious converts have in common) to critical thinking, which is the antithesis of faith and religion.
I) Indoctrination tells one what to think, where as critical thinking teaches you how to think.
2) Indoctrination says, "believe what you are told and do not doubt". Critical thinking says, "assume nothing, but rather, question that which you don't understand".
3) Indoctrination says, "believe without evidence". Critical thinking says, "believe because of evidence".
4) Indoctrination says, "l believe, therefore it is so". Critical thinking says, "ln the absence of evidence, judgement or decision making must be suspended until evidence is available".
5) lndoctrination says, "Truth is a matter of faith which is based on one's belief". Critical thinking says that truth is the extent to which a claim conforms to reality.
6) lndoctrination says that l can do all things because of what l believe. Critical thinking says, "Show me that you can do all things, and l will know that you are able to do all things".
7) lndoctrination says that if you don't believe as l do, then you are wrong! Critical thinking says, "We wait until the evidence shows who is right and who is wrong".
8) Indoctrination says, "Lean not on your own understanding". Critical thinking says, "Whose understanding shall l lean on if not my own?".
9) Indoctrination is that childish bully on the play ground, taking advantage only of the smaller kids. Critical thinking is that cival, humanitarian adult who has learned to treat people with respect just as he would like others to treat him with respect.
10) In the final analysis of all things, critical thinking does not mind being questioned where as indoctrination does not like being challenged. Since this is so, who then is proven to be dishonest, one who practices critical thinking, or the other who engages in indoctrination?!
Indoctrination breaks the rules of reasoning, logic, and rationality, thereby giving way to naivete, absurdity, and an unrestrained arrogance for what may not be right nor true.
Even if we co-evolved with religion, you don't get the positive parts for free. For mostly Abrahamic religions, we also get whole communities mobilized against modern policies and modern medicine. You also get a fair amount of judgment for standing out too much, and your privacy isn't always respected. An atheist who made a conscious decision to ingratiate themselves for the material and psychological benefits (as "cultural Christians" for example) would also have to wrestle with their role in propping up regression.
We also evolved to go with the group because our survival depended on it. Going with the group is not always a good thing.
I love Hitchins, but right now, the most important speakers to promote aren't atheists, they are Christian ministers who fight for religious freedom for/from everyone. The arguments they make are essential to a functioning democracy, and because they are delivered as sermons instead of education or politics, they can be dramatic and charismatic and compelling.
My son-in-law became an atheist for about five years. He was raised fundamentalist Christian. He once told me he thought believers were happier than atheists. A few months after this, he lost his job, house and car. He re-converted to Christianity, telling people that God got the job for him. That was about 12 years ago, and he (no longer married to my daughter) is still a Baptist.
The stories from the bible, as well as other holy books, can be seen through a psychological lens. Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and others see psychological or sociological truths conveyed in these myths and stories. This is why they are passed down...they provide comfort or give us symbolic representations of our deepest fears and hopes. I think that is something like what Peterson is saying...though it's hard to tell with all the added gobbledygook of his excessive verbiage. My own journey took me from childhood - teen Christianity to Zen Buddhism and finally to reject all such labels and beliefs. The Buddha has some amazing teachings, like Jesus. But even the Zen variety of Buddhism has some supernatural beliefs. Einstein was widely regarded as an atheist. He made it plain in writing that he did not believe in any personal god. But, he believed in the god of Spinoza, that revealed itself in the workings and order of the universe. Einstein also said that people of the future would need a cosmic religion, and suggested something like Buddhism might fit that bill.
🤣🤣Yes people deciding not to accept stories without evidence is dead. EVERYONE should go outside and start worshipping the first person they find yelling at a tree
I think "New Atheism" covered low hanging fruit like creationism vs evolution. It's still there if we need, but the conversation has outgrown it.
Britt, can we look to how Europeans adapted to more secular societies for guidance? Growing up (especially in evangelical churches), I always heard so much about atheism taking hold in various parts of Europe post WWII. And it's my understanding that most Europeans are still fairly removed from religion, so how did THEY adapt?
Poorly. Europe is experiencing a rise in nihilism, a rise in nationalism, and a rise in Islam.
@nononsensespirituality Nationalism seems to affect the more religious here in America, though. And isn't the rise of Islam in Europe more due to an influx of immigration?
Eh everything changes all the time over time. As long as religions exist there will be people who dont believe in them. Alot of us still feel the same, its just less hype online these days
I'm definitely not an Atheist. (I've had to many experiences to show me so.) I don't believe in a God. (Man is always creating Gods to explain everything, with nothing to show.) I now consider myself as an 'Energist.' We are all made up of energy and energy can NOT die, but only changes form. Our energy moves on...
You definitely are an atheist by definition. You lack "a" (Latin for without or lack of, as in asymptomatic or asymmetrical), a belief in any god or gods "theist".
It's that simple.
Love the camera upgrade!
Keep it up!
Love your lectures and your generosity and clarity of thought but you got this very wrong - Jesus was a Hebrew culturally and religiously, not a christian. Do please listen to greek scholar Dr Dennis McDonald and see the effect of Paul and Greek literature in the invention of Jesus. You might want to revise some of your views that attach you to christianity as you know it.
What is the difference between a " militant atheist " over a militant " Christian ". Both are annoying. Kids don't need religion since it's bad enough we trick them into believing in Santa Claus. As a kid in church you are told Jesus loves you and as an adult your told if you don't worship God and follow the rules he will crush you...nice teachings.
The issue with modern philosophy is that it stays only on the theoretical spectrum. Ancient philosophies and philosophies during the Enlightment period did not only revolve around God, but they provided a full moral code and guidance on how to live your life. This was the case even for non-religious oriented philosophies. If you want religion only for moral guidance and social interactions, then this is reduced to something like the philosophical schools in ancient Greece. No issue with that if you are a moderate atheist, but do you believe that the official religion will stay satisfied with such reduction of its role?
Just came accross your content ,you cover very interesting topics ,as a former fundamentalist i believe religious delusion is causing a haemorrhage in common sense ,religion should be fostering a community based compassion, i look forward to watching more of your videos
I admit I get frustrated when people call fighting back against discriminatory laws and practices "the left woke mob." So it's bad to recognize not everyone is treated fairly in the eyes of the state and to push back against that? I just don't see how this is a bad thing. My state is leading the country in the amount of anti-LGBT laws it is passing. Am I part of the "left woke mob" to not be quiet about these injustices and to work toward mitigating the harm they cause? I feel like the phrase "left woke mob" is used to dismiss the issues and the people they affect wholesale while also showing what little that person actually understands. Very convenient. I like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I read her book "Infidel" twice, it was one of the most impactful books I've read in my life up to that point. I'm disappointed someone so educated is using such a trite phrase to dismiss the lived realities of millions of people. There are valid criticisms to be made, for sure. As in every movement, there are people on the fringes that do and say crazy things. But using that phrase to dismiss the WHOLE is hugely disappointing.
@@jaclynlevy5644
Agreed.
Seems similar to the old folks calling anything new or different "communist"
@@FoursWithin
They could define "communist". No one can define "woke".😂
@@MikeTMike
Yeah.
Though the idea of anything different than what they believe to be the right way of living is all the definition they apparently need.
It's a typical Christian cope of demonising anyone that disagrees with their theology when they don't have good reasons or sufficient evidence to defend that theology.
Just read Psalm fourteen.
I don’t give a heck about religion mythology. So now I am an atheist. Look at history most of the wars are tied some way to religion too especially in the past.
The author is an ex-theist who split off from her very tight church, is sad about it, and figures we should all be sad about dumping belief, too. She is a professional grief consellor to such people, and is irritated that we don't share her sense of loss at ditching belief in God and Christianity.
"I feel bad; you most feel bad too." Sorry, many of us don't.
I never knew what 'new' or 'old' atheism was until a few years ago, although I've been an atheist 40 years. What 'chapter' it is in, is irrelevant to me. Truth either is or isn't. Who cares what Hitchen's or Dawkin's opinions are. Fixating on the journey is cope. But, I'll take a listen for grins.
Great video. Keep speaking. I love what you say. Yeah, I read "The God Delusion" and about two thirds of the way through grew tired of it. Dawkins seemed to often misunderstand a lot about theology. So did Hitchens - but he was great at rhetoric. I think these days we need to be more honest about religion and not completely dismiss it. Rather we need to fight against fundamentalism and try to reorientate the nuttier parts of all religion.
Why aren’t we talking more about freedom of religion in these conversations. I understand that creating new traditions are hard but it seems to me like our best way forward is to return to the first step, creating new gods to explain the world we know now. That’s why I created a personal god, The Laughing God.
1. After Hitchens come Matt Delahunty, who's also never lost a debate. Followed by plenty of skeptics that are not slowing down.
2. There's nothing more to say, because there was never anything there to talk about. God not being proven or not being there leaves everything open.
3. It's not atheism that makes people feel worse. It's the lack of positive societal interaction because those communities have not been built up. People in religion that claim to feel moved by a spirit are actually moved by positive social interaction and music and enjoying each other's company. Same thing happens with all secular festivals where people gather to enjoy community with each other and enjoy music and laugh with each other. Has nothing to do with any God. What does have to do with your imaginary God is excuses to commit genocide, like "God's chosen people" Israel is doing right now.
All up and down you get everything wrong out of your own fears of what's happening with religion.
I kept waiting for you to address one of atheism's current giants Matt Dillahunty. I'm sure you are familiar with his work. I learn from both of your takes on these issues on a daily basis.
These days my conversation with theists is if they make an incredible statement about some miracle, i just say can you do that or can you introduce me to the person who can. And we continue talking. I don't care for the fight, i try to find common ground. A lot of religious books these days i view as philosophy.
This stuff is fascinating to me, let's make new culture!
You tube is amazing it allows for a community of people to connect and discuss the human compassion that makes us grow
@@AlanObrien-if4ie yep, yep!
@@calmingwavesjulian I hope we keep simple logic and compassionate beliefs based on love and reason
@@AlanObrien-if4ie That's the goal.
Lol 10:40 that debate was painful to watch. As you said, someone needed to call it early. Felt sorry for Denesh.
I go to the Unitarian Universalist “church” where I live and I find community there among like minded people. It’s not for everyone. One has to be cool liberal theists. I’m actually fine with liberal progressive theism. Its politics are my politics and I consider religious liberals to be comrades. In that sense theism isn’t the problem; it’s the conservatism.
Is religion a dangerous delusion, or essential to our well being? The answer may be both.
The problem is language. Language is a set of symbols that may or may not fit reality, and there is a gap between reality and symbol. As long as we have language, we will always believe in nonsense.
I say it depends on which person it is given to. It's absolute shit to the aspie.
Pretty sure all the good things from religion don't come from the religion itself so can be replicated.
Who would have thought!....
Atheism will become as meaningless as not believe in the tooth fairy or unicorns...
(keep a thing in mind though, Islam does not care if you say you don't believe in their God)...
Why would the only rational explanation of the universe we have be dead?
Why wasn’t this titled Is New Atheism Dead
The idea that religion plays a usual social function is contradicted by what is happening. As you rightly say atheism is no longer really a movement. What is killing religion is indifference. People are becoming part of the nuns group. This is a voluntary choice. People stop thinking about religion and focus on having Sunday free and pursuing their own interests. If being member of a religious community was attractive they could just do it. But they don't because the religious life does not have that much of a pull.
If we look at other countries Northern Europe have secular communities which have high happiness satisfactions.
With regard to fear of death my observations of people is that they don't have it. When my mother died she was in some pain. She said that she had lived a happy life. But it was not time to go. There are some other people I have known as well who lived in happy marriages their work life was fulfilling but when it was time to go that was it. They were not concerned about the temporary nature of life or whether they would have statues put up to them. They were just happy to have lived a life
Okay. I never knew that there was a New Atheism.
15:45 Comparing Jordan Peterson to church is not the same thing. He sees things more As
A psychological professor not a preacher. The stuff he derives from the Bible is not what teaches in christian For instance, the Adam and eve story to him Is a allegory of consciousness, but to christianis how we became sinful.
2:35 lol! but there's no need for new arguments!
It seems to me the dismissive nature of the historical accounts of the supernatural events around Jesus must be addressed in order to shore up any atheistic belief system....otherwise inconsistent realities naturally will be born from such beliefs
The historic accounts of supernatural events?
You have to see that just because a few people said someone is a god and did god things, that that doesn't make him so.
@@daimend211wait til he hears about the historical accounts of Greek gods oh boy lol
Lady, there is no such thing as New Atheism.
Not believing in Santa Claus will always be a non-belief, There would not be an y New Non-Santa Belief!
Same thing for Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
If there is a lack of community among atheists , why don’t we build a community that gives us what religion provides without keeping religion around? You argue for the positives that religion brings, but those positives are centered around a belief in magic essentially. You don’t need religion to have community, soup kitchens, proper moral upbringing, good schooling, these are all things that are possible to be accomplished without the need to keep religion around.
Well then where are the Atheist soup kitchens, rescue services, aid to single mothers etc. The Catholic church for example spends millions every year to feed, house and heal people all over the world. The Atheist talk about it.
@ the church fucking better do those things seeing as they are TAX EXEMPT
Governmental institutions will replace these systems.
What I am hearing: you are a Hitchens fan. Period. That's really all there is.
There are plenty of people out there who hate all forms of spirituality. And I do mean hate, not just disbelieve. They want nothing supernatural to exist just as badly as theists want God to exist. And they either don't understand or don't care that many spiritual practices are symbolic.
Since I mostly see you talking about New Atheism here...I want to note as a life-long atheist that its mostly attractive to people who are deconstructing and has never seemed to me to be a particularly stable way to go about things. The debates are just not that interesting if you feel secure on one side or the other. It's not even whether or not there are new arguments -- why keep beating your head against that issue? There's not much depth there, and certainly not a coherent "where do I go from here" ever built within the New Atheist framework if you keep focusing on whether or not deities exist.
The online atheist community (initially dominated by New Atheist types) started to fracture in a big way when women and minorities started getting louder about racism and misogyny within the atheist community...and that was over a decade ago. A lot of the edgy New Atheist types went alt-right.
So...I would hope New Atheism is dead. It's boring and its proponents are annoying at best. If some of those works help you deconstruct, fine, but that shouldn't be the be-all, end-all for you.
I'd say what does the most damage to Peterson's cause is his rampant misogyny.
After that, the dangerous pseudoscience.
His religious beliefs are the bottom of the list.
Jesus's parables? "He did not speak to them without a parable."(Mark 4:34) "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those outside, everything comes in parables SO THAT they may indeed look, and yet not perceive; they may indeed listen, and yet not understand; otherwise, they might turn back and be forgiven
Is Pantheism and/or Panentheism Atheism?
You treat atheism as a political movement or an ideology to be viewed in opposition to religion, whereas actually atheism is simply an absence of faith. You can easily be an atheist *and* practice a religion. Faith is to religion what justice is to law, it would be nice if the two went hand in hand, but it's not necessary.
Let's face it, there is no way that your average televangelist can believe in god, heaven and especially hell, otherwise they would know that they are going there.
Stay curious. Curiosity is not given to god, but can still bring about meaning and passion.
Well, I guess I'll have to go back to old atheism.
This whole argument is deeply flawed.
Firstly, it is not about atheism. It addresses something called New Atheism, which was really only focussed around Hitch and the 4 Horsemen. Speaking personally, I have never seen myself as part of a specific movement. I simply do not believe in gods. Ask any ordinary non-believer to label him/herself and you might get atheist, humanist or agnostic atheist but you wont get many people saying "I'm a new atheist."
Secondly, whilst it may be true that there are no new arguments, the same is clearly true of theism. Would anyone say theism is dead?
As long as theists exist, atheists will exist. As long as theists predominate and seek to convert, oppress, claim superiority and expect privilege, there will always be atheists who stand against them.
Of course the details of the argument change but to conflate New Atheism with atheism itself and then to suggest atheism is dead is, frankly, ridiculous.
God is amazing
Imagination is much more amazing though.
It's the birthplace of the Gods.
@FoursWithin okay
Ah well, at least there's always gonna be those free thinking intellectuals that'll know what's up about this particular issue. I can deal with this. My compassion is already maxed out man, I get it, humanity is a freaking mess. People totally underestimate how much suffering this religion bullshit causes.
The problem with New Atheism is that it got too political. You are not welcome in any important atheist communities if you don't have progressive views, even when Atheists in the East are conservative with no problem. Besides, in theory you can be atheist and believe in the supernatural (witchcraft, etc) but those atheists are also ostracized, even when they have just mild beliefs in the supernatural. In other words, new atheism is not "dead", but it was never alive in the first place becuase it is just cheap materialism pretending to be a wider category. It would be like Christians describing themselves as "theists" while using only Christian arguments.
I often didn't get new atheism because I hate woke shit as much as the Christpill.
@@skylinefever Labels in the West keep getting debased again and again by neolibs and woke idiots taking over, not only atheist groups, but even religious organizations. It is so tiresome that covert ideologies parasite genuine groups and communities.
Doug from the RUclips channel called “Pinecreek” is a very vocal conservative atheist. Sam Harris just spent the majority of his latest “Making Sense” podcast tearing apart the left and their identity politics.
@@shuai83 The sad thing is that there are good arguments for some forms of conservatism or conservative policy based on totally secular logical arguments, specially for economic and National purposes, and yet atheists sacrifice them on the altar of Progressivism. This attitude is kind of cultish.
This must be Shrödinger's new atheism, because plenty of leftists don't like its collective stance on Islam
New Atheist become anti woke warriors and align with right wing
Annoyed me
That's what happens when geeks want to play video games without cheap poorly written LGBT stuff.
They neither want the wokes nor the Focus on The Family Karen telling them what they are allowed to buy.
@@skylinefeverto those privileged, equality feels like oppression
Brilliant !! Please, please, please keep up this vitally important work !!!!!
Hitchens was clever but his arrogance was off-putting. I don't think atheism needs more arguments, it needs a better society that people can live in and be happy without having to rely on religion. That means reversing a lot of the neoliberal moves that recent governments have made, and instead governments investing in people, infrastructure, housing, health, work-life balance, better designed cities etc. None of which is likely to happen under Trump.
Even most of the "new atheists" arguments dated back to ancient times, except for arguments relating to evolution and natural selection. People just believe what they want to believe. Religion does offer one of the last non-coworker non-family communities though since no one knows their neighbors anymore unless its through church.
None of which is likely under Trump, and I doubt other candidates didn't sell out to Blackrock and Vanguard.
The golden age is over and isn't coming back.
@@skylinefever I don't know if there ever was a golden age. There were ages that were golden for some people but not others. But it feels like we are about to take a leap in the wrong direction. I think Kamala would have been better than Trump but still not great. She would have been a sellout as well. America missed its chance with Bernie, at the very least he has integrity
You say that you have studied Jesus for over twenty years. I would be interested if you have a moral teaching that is unique to him. You also, demonstrably by the fact that you are an atheist, don't consider all of his teachings to be "good and true", so I would be very interested in the mechanism that you use to decide which teachings to follow and which to discard.
From a personal perspective I would not place my trust in the teachings of someone whose critical thinking skills were so poor that they were convinced in the existence of the immoral monster Yahweh.
This has got to be the most ridiculous attempt at discrediting atheism I have ever heard. The term “New Atheism” Is a complete misnomer and obviously has been coined by those who wish to single out the more well known proponents of atheism. To say that just because the proponents of atheism are not coming up with new novel ways to point out the absurdity of Christianity is stupid on so many levels.
Why would I discredit atheism, as an atheist, and the term New Atheism at the very least defines a phase in publishing around certain authors like Hitch and Harris.
Great video... aside from all your white privilege language. That's trash, and it makes it very obvious that you didn't grow up around Black people, and your anti-capitalist stances show that you don't understand how wealth and freedom happen
I agree that Christianity is much better suited for community and structure as needed.
However I don't think arguments get that old because there's always newer people growing up who have never heard them .
And I generally don't watch very many debates but I did watch that one with Alex O'Connor and I literally laughed out loud . It was a massacre but it wasn't even gotcha questions..
As far as religion being harmful I do believe fundamentalism is harmful and it would be great if fundamentalist Jews Christians and Muslims would become lukewarm religious people as in believing "the right thing to do is treat everybody fairly"
But we are ways off from that , I also believe the far left and the far right need to be less tribalistic.
subscribed. though I didn't agree ..
It's new born
Nonsensical statement.
you make really bad arguments
Ask an atheist to watch " computer generated animation of a living cell and they immediately realize they have been burned by academia and the,scientific community. It's really that,simple. This will be the catalyst for the collapse of atheism and all the words ever spoken on the subject melt away into irrelevance. A picture is truly worth a thousand words. Witnessing/ comprehending engineering is a base foundational inherent product of sentient beings.
Except if you look at the stats atheism is expanding, not collapsing.
@michaelnewsham1412 except the stats show upon witnessing the sheer complexity of a living cell Only a fraction walk away believing it could have mindlessly flopped itself together and mindlessly injected itself with coded information. That's why i said once computer animation of a living cell is required viewing in schools and universities the worm will turn . It's inevitable no matter how such knowledge is being suppressed today .
@michaelnewsham1412 my point is when computer generated animation of a living cell is required viewing in schools and universities the jig will be up . Why? Because a foundational aspect of sentient beings is to recognize clear engineering markers when confronted with it. . Again the stats show only a fraction can still convince themselves a cell mindlessly swirled itself together upon being confronted with the reality of precision information,driven complexity in a living cell .
Actually blah blah blah blah😅😅