I always liked this quote from AaronRa “If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos. If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God. It would be dominant everywhere in the world with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it. And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true, revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity. It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader. If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that.” - AaronRa
Gods apparent lack of interest in self-revelation across times and cultures is likely my biggest doubt of any theistic religion (or that such a God has any concern for one’s theology).
UH OH. The Problem Atheists have is, They Unnecessarily Overcomplicate it God is simply the Existence of Love. Everybody Believes Love exists Simple. But infinite in Power and Expression. To ignore the Reality of that Is not only Unfortunate It’s Shameful
I've been listening to Seth Andrews' The Thinking Atheist podcasts in order. I'm still at about eight years ago, but someone called in and said that a very high-up politician in their country was a flerfer. Poland or somewhere in Europe. I'd have to dig back through dozens of hours of audio to find it again. But the idea that any politician could be THAT deluded and still get into office, or stay in office, anywhere in the world after it became known that they deny reality that hard is pretty frightening. The flat earth claim is so incredibly easy to disprove. (I almost said 'flat earth model', but there's part of the problem. They have no model. They have multiple models at best. Which is a huge problem if you're trying to challenge existing theories in science, let alone observable facts.)
for some people believing lies can cause more good than harm though. i mean theres no definitive way to prove any of us even really exist but it helps to live as if we do.
@@texanarchy666 Yes, but those nontruths are generally more conceptual in nature. Justice for example. Can you think of an example of a falsehood that has benefits in thinking it's true? (Mangled that sentence!)
@@davidjanbaz7728 Well, the simply fact that most historians agree that Moses is a fictional character and that the Exodus never happened seems to hurt a lot of uneducated believers.😂
Dear oh dear, this guy was one step away from saying, “look at the trees and then tell me there isn’t a god”. How on earth can someone have such poor arguments and expect others to take his claims seriously?
From what historians can tell in 1857 in Utah a story spread that on August 8, 1844 at a meeting in Nauvoo Illinois Brigham Young was transfigured into Joseph Smith in front of the crowd confirming Young was Smith’s true successor. Several eyewitnesses wrote about it, close to a dozen wrote about it. No one came forward to say it didn’t happen, not one. But we have contemporary records and journal accounts from that day in 1844. No one said anything about this miracle the day it happened, nothing in the meeting notes. Furthermore contemporary accounts demonstrate that some eye witness accounts that wrote about it were not even at the meeting. John D. Lee and Orson Hyde was not in Illinois, they were on a Mormon missions but they wrote about this miracle as though they were there. No one came forward to say they were not present. This nonsense that it takes a long time for false legends to emerge is bogus. Imagine if the contemporary records from that day were lost to history, we would have all these first hand accounts of this miracle and unlike the New Testament we have the originals. This miracle story remains in Mormon Church manuals to this day.
Listening to Mormon apologists defending a sacred text with shakier foundations than both the Bible and the Qu’ran (and the more I read the Book of Mormon the less convinced I became) is what convinced me that at worst apologetics is the art of defending the indefensible, pretty sure that Joseph Smith and some of his followers who went to Utah but died on the way “died for a lie” as well. However I can hear these preachers already saying that Mormonism doesn’t count since obviously Joseph Smith was a false prophet and the Bible warmed us about that (that was my mentality while I was a Christian), however I do wonder how first century Jews saw Jesus as if most of them didn’t convert to this new movement.
As one raised Mormon, I was going to point this exact story out too. One of my ancestors was there when this supposedly happened. He was a prolific journal writer. He wrote about that meeting. This supposed miracle dies not appear in his journal. And yet I grew up hearing it in church from childhood on. And that's not the only "miracles" that we got taught with ZERO contemporary attestations. But those stories had already become popularly believed by the first generation born into the religion. Does not take long at all, and this in a more modern time with greater literacy.
He says, “Debating the evidence doesn’t matter when it all boils down to: is this manmade, or is this from God?” when you can only arrive at an answer to that question by debating the evidence
The issue is always the same, believers place their knowledge of truth onto feelings, not rationally observable facts. Thus they can never be convinced, because there is no actually shared and agreed upon reality from which to debate. The very concept of objectivity is offensive to a belief, because after all beliefs can only exist in a subjective manner
Religion, besides being the biggest and most-profitable business in history, is an artifact of ancient times we so misunderstand, venally misinterpret, and casually disregard. Events happened that wiped out up to 90% of ALL life on the planet, not once, not even twice, but at least three, maybe four, possibly five times, between Noah, circa the mid-25th Century, and Ezekiel, at the Fall of Empires. Survivors were scared out of their freaking minds, by events that beggar description! The world was turned upside down, at least once, and possibly twice. Seas leapt out of their beds, washed over the land, dragging humans, beasts, and all manner of buildings across the landscape, depositing them helter-skelter. In reality, religion, especially in the past, was an effective crowd-control device. Imagine being Moses, on the far banks of the Red Sea, up against those lava-built mountains in southwestern Sinai, when human nature reemerged. Chaos, catastrophe, and overwhelming events WILL corral humans, for a while, but like an infant, there soon comes a time when none of their "toys" do the trick, and they set out to find out what there is to get into. I suspect Moses went up the hill to craft Rules of Conduct, when he was struck by inspiration. Who better to put the fear of god into humans, than God, Almighty? @@Cancoillotteman
Yesterday I bought a large coffee from Dunkin donuts when I was instantly teleported into an alien spaceship! And I actually have proof that this really happened. I have a receipt from Dunkin donuts for a large coffee.
As a high school English teacher, it has occurred to me lately that many stories we read use symbolism and allusions to other well-known stories. But what happens when those other stories are lost, and any clues as to what the symbols might mean are forgotten? The central meaning or purpose of the author is literally completely LOST, and there is no real way for a modern reader to know that, except a vague sense that what you're reading is missing quite a bit and makes little sense. (And then we, as humans, have the impulse to make up what it might mean.)
Like reading "Hobbit" with literally no supplementing lore that came from LOTR, Silmarilion and other works of Tolkien. It's still a story - a good story. But it's also only a small, very limited part of much greater whole.
@@FrikInCasualMode In college, I had a very Christian professor in a great books class who freely admitted he had no idea what was going on in the Book of Ezekiel. The visions read like a bad trip, and yet you can find "interpretations" that impose all kinds of symbolism onto it so it can somehow make sense. But generally, for symbols and figurative language to work, you have to know first what is LITERALLY happening, or at least what is LITERALLY referred to somewhere in the passage to build an abstraction on top of it. And since it is a "vision", it doesn't seem ANYTHING is literally happening, so it could mean anything you want it to mean, I guess, and that's what many believers run with.
@@FrikInCasualMode Not really. The Hobbit was largely inspired by folk tales and fairy stories that predate it. If you want to understand the author's influence and meaning in the work, that's where you should be looking. There are plenty of allusions and themes that connect the Hobbit to these earlier works. The Silmarillion and LoTR came after, and the author recontextualized the Hobbit into the Middle Earth mythos after the fact (if you're able to track down a first edition of the Hobbit, you'll see most of the trappings that connect it to the later works were not present in the original). The Hobbit is kind of the opposite: The author is adding meaning and significance to events in the story after-the-fact that were not there in the original writing.
This also reminded me of a documentary from 1996 (I had to look it up) called "Looking for Richard" featuring Al Pacino. I'll never forget that there was a question Pacino and his partner had about the play Richard III, because they just couldn't make sense of it. They had several professors they were interviewing about the play, and Pacino wanted to ask one of them this burning question they had (I don't even remember what the question was), and his partner was MAD and didn't want to ask these so-called experts their opinion on the play (he thought it shouldn't matter--that every person should have their own opinion about and not have it tainted by an expert's opinion). Finally the partner gave in, Pacino asked the question, and the professor, without missing a beat, said, "I don't have any idea"!!!! It was SO refreshing for an expert to admit not only that HE didn't know something, but that possibly NO ONE knows. That the context or reference had been lost to history. I'm looking for that clip. (I can't find it. But Siskel and Ebert loved that documentary, I guess. I had forgotten that.)
Reading any of the great Chinese stories would demonstrate this very well. Without knowledge of certain characters backstories and tropes and symbolism a lot of the meaning of the story is completely lost. Journey to the west is by far the best known (Monkey/SunWukong) but its a fairly dry repetitive book if you don't have a version with an appendix that explains some parts that wouldn't need explaining to a Chinese reader who is already familiar with the stories and beliefs that add so much more meaning to events within the story.
Similar versions of the arguments he puts forward for Christianity can be made for Islam and, yet, something tells me he wouldn't accept Mohammed as the last true prophet
Ancient Egypt and the Persian empire with Zoroastrianism influenced the small region of Judea. Christianity and Islam are Jewish sects. Judaism is a Zoroastrianism sect with other influences. The ideas of a Jesus also come from previous dying rising gods. Five of whom said to be born of a virgin. Osiris worship was on the wane as Christianity was on the rise. Osiris was the most important dying rising god of ancient Egypt. Funny monotheism started there with the pharoh akenaten. Before that a 200,000 year human history of animism and polytheistic belief.
Add the fact that at the time the info was passed person to person, and people is not precisely good at not changing details and the rest of the time it was subject to scribe errors... And yes, 20 years is plenty.
To the point of exploding legends from good stories - I think a great parallel in recent history is Kit Carson, who actually lived long enough to contest his own legends in dime novels and view the character portrayed there as an entirely different person. Despite frequently confronting and denying the outlandish stories in person, they persisted. In later life he grew a sense of humor about it, and would get asked by occasional fans if a certain fantastic story was true and he'd reply with some variation of, "It may be, but I for one have no recollection of it."
Roswell, 9/11, The JFK Assassination ... While in any of these cases there HAS to be a true story, they all have in common that by now a lot of competing stories are told that cannot all be correct. And it's less than 100 years for all of them. The Moon landings, Any sect "drinking the Kool Aid", the increasing distrust of election results...
The negative side of this would be Orson Welles. Hollywood and his detractors made sure the negative stories about him would continue for decades until the majority of people believed the lies. Was Orson perfect? No. But he was a brilliant person who had a career way better than most acknowledge or even know about.
Just to throw my OWN quick answer in, at the very beginning.... Christianity being a myth or legend is a CONCLUSION i have reached over decades of contemplating the nature of the universe, and reality
@pauligrossinoz In fairness, I'd guess a very small minority of Christians have actually read the Bible and almost nobody converted specifically because they read the Bible and found it compelling.
@@shassett79 - I was a Christian when I read the Bible. Reading the Bible for myself was what turned me into an atheist in the first place. *The road to atheism is paved with Bibles that have actually been **_read._*
@@pauligrossinoz Well judging by those who profess christianity but don't know about the nasty parts of the bible, it could be true. It's pretty amusing to watch "book banners" squirm when read some of the racy parts. Of course my brother's church fixed that problem by getting rid of the old testament and only using the new.
People spread crazy supernatural rumors about people within the lifetime of people involved all the time especially in parts of the world without formal education or writing, and however unlikely you think that is, it's infinitely more likely than a miracle God man. This claim is ridiculous to anyone who hasn't already drank the cool aid. If this guy heard all the miraculous claims about some Indian Yogi who started his own religion today he would just roll his eyes.
I was on capturing christianity recently reading comments and its insane the people still randomly talking about paulogia and how anyone who is a guest on his show is immediately worthy of dismissal or "james tour was right". So much cringe.
The concept of arguing that people were alive alongside Jesus, thus all things Jesus are true, is so ridiculous on its face. Most people alive 2000 years ago didn’t know most of the world existed at that time, let alone know anything about a very specific person back then.
And what they mean by "people were alive alongside jesus" is "the gospels mention people who existed in the same time period". George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all appeared in Grappler Baki so I guess that's real now.
"If something sticks with you, that is god..." I currently can't get 'Dance the Night Away' by the Mavericks out of my head. What should I call my new religion? Edit: the above happens to be true, but 'Only the Good Die Young' by Billy Joel would have been funnier.
If you want an excellent example of how a religion can generate mythical and legendary lore in a very short amount of time just study Mormon history. All the major supernatural founding stories of the church were established within the first two to three generations of the church.
@@davidwimp701 Yes, Jesus set up a ranch in Utah, and became friendly with the Cherokee's, they were amazed by his supernatural powers, ... he turned a horse into a newt.
You can study a similar phenomenon with cargo cults. Helping solidify the reality that this is something that is true about human cultures beyond christian offshoots i.e. it's not a derivative phenomenon.
Regarding Alexander, there are at least two known documents, for which we have the original autographs, which were written in his lifetime and mention him. One is a clay tablet from the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries, now in the British Museum (BM 36761), the other is a dated list of supplies from Bactria (Khalili Collections IA 17).
Many people like Paulogia are doing an important job taking on videos like these that to a life long atheist like me can feel like full of obvious tumbles in logic and outright lies. Theres people out there who need this stuff pointed out to them and as long as these claims keep being repeated by a new person there needs to be a new response.
Wouldn't it be great if reality was such that for every claim and assertion we hear we have to hear a refutation and/or counterclaim. I dare say we would be living in a much more secular world if that were the case.
As a lifelong atheist, I still scratch my head when grown adults believe fairytales yet lead very logical and real lives at the same time. The part I hate about the right, which I also am.
I think it is more effective when someone who is a former Christian counters the claims because they are far more versed in the Bible because they totally believed and even struggled with their doubts before totally deconstructing. Their experience and knowledge make them harder to dismiss by Christian apologists.
You don't need to give people's illogical claims the time of day. I don't think Paul does a great job of it either, like the thing on evidence of reptiles in government or a flat earth, if the evidence is disproven it's no longer evidence. In the end, no religious person is going to listen to what you have to say. They based their belief on feelings and emotion and trust in the stories they were told, logic won't work on them. Their arguments won't work on us either as they're not based on logic. It's chalk and cheese. People that are interested in changing their beliefs will do so on their own without the need of anyone elses input, they'll even do so in the absence of any input, just general scientific knowledge and critical thinking is enough. You'd need to block out everything contradictory but that would mean also taking away their bibles from them.
your comment begins with " someone had to design the universe " are you asserting that God is a person some kind of bean ? Are you anthropomorphize what created the universe ? I believe the creator of the universe is so beyond our comprehension and outside of any physical or temporal realm that we as humans can never truly know what it is . Any attempt to do so can only be pure speculation fueled by our personal biases and desires . Also I am curious I would like to know if you are a Christian and do you believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection ?
When I look at the Gospel portion of the Bible, they all read like fiction to me. This causes me to consider them to be drawn upon the known mythologies of that time period to make up this "Jesus story".
What exactly is it about the gospel story of the dead saints that supposedly got up out of their graves and walked around Jerusalem when Jesus died, that strikes you as made-up? 🤔 Dead saints rising from their graves is surely an everyday occurrence? Right? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@thucydides7849 Use of 'supernatural claims' is a red flag. But including stories like 'the Devil tempting Jesus for 40 days', Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, or even how the events surrounding the crucifixion...they appear to be told from someone on the outside. Also, things like 'multiplying bread and fish [twice] or any of the miracle claims. Not credible...and appear fictitious to me.
@@thucydides7849 How many historical documents are written in the third person style, and contain conversations with other people, including Jesus having a conversation with the devil?
I admire how you so skillfully and succinctly SCHOOL someone while remaining polite and respectful. You are the king of this kind of content and it's AWESOME!! :)
@@AnakinSkywalkerYTThat was literally a video by Imbeggar debating whether christianity is a myth or not. 😂 What has a video Paul made with Inspiringphilosophy got to do with this video? I'm not convinced that Paul got wrecked at all and apologists get wrecked every day. Still none have shown evidence of their claims and always end up appealing to emotions and "faith."
@@TheTruthKiwi ***what has a video Paul made with InspiringPhilosophy got to do with this video? The commenter is treating Paul as if he is the dark knight of apologetics, here to destroy the stupidity of religion once and for all and bring upon us a golden age of science and reason, a new enlightenment! ... Yeah... no. My point was merely to show that Paulogia's arguments for atheism are not *that* good at all, kind of mid tier to be honest. I've watched much of his RUclips catalog and have yet to be even minorly convinced of the lack of the Christian God, much less any diety. Paul's arguments (if you really look into them) tend to have a five step strategy behind them: *how* *to* *argue* *like* *Paulogia* *!* I: State claim II: provide a word salad explaining your claim in unnecessary detail III: make a strawman of the opposing argument by providing some obsurd, asinine analogy IV: restate claim several times (all with varying degrees of divergence from the original claim) V: wrap it up and pretend that you accomplished something Believe it or not, this is at least 80% of all the Paulogia response videos I've watched (and that list is quite extensive). ***I'm not convinced that Paul got wrecked at all and apologists get wrecked every day. Correct, just because an apologist looses sometimes doesn't make them bad or mean that they're wrong, I was simply responding to a severe case of P.S.S (Paulogia simp syndrome, a common disease among reddit anti-theists and discord moderators). As for you not being convinced that he got wrecked, that's because Paul never really shows his losing battles, and of those he doesn't debate live very often (its alot easier to debate over a screen to a guy like IP then to actually face them). All opinions aside, Michael Jones is just a good apologist in general, his rhetoric is top notch, his sources are valid, he is a logical dude, so without even thinking about atheism versus theism, it is to be expected that Paul would lose to him. Paul himself called Michael a very well researched individual, so there's obviously some credibility there. ***none have shown evidence if their claims and always end up appealing to emotions and "faith". I: you could say the same thing about Paul. I have yet to see a single video where he adequately responded to a legitimate apologist in a convincing way, and to be honest, I doubt he even really fools himself, it seems like more of a predisposition to *want* to be right that causes him to carry himself so well on the internet. II: Faith is defined Biblically as a strong trust, IP has "faith" in his sources, Paul has "faith" in his strawman fallacies, Aron Ra has "faith" in his emotional temper tantrums on stage with slightly elevated vocabulary, Apostate Prophet has "faith" in Allah SWT (sarcasm).
@@AnakinSkywalkerYT there is no "argument FOR atheism"... Atheism is simply _"*I AM NOT CONVINCED THAT THERE IS A GOD*"_ ... Full stop. No argument required. Now if you're saying arguments against many of the different gods that humans have made up throughout history then that's completely different - yes there are plenty of arguments against those. The bulk of theists arguments are god of the gaps fallacies. And for the Abrahamic god specifically, all 3 so-called holy books should be called hole-Y books.. they are full of gaping holes! 0:01 0:01
@@AnakinSkywalkerYT We will agree to disagree. I don't think Paul is strawmanning at all. He is using logic, reason and documented natural history to come to a rational conclusion. Do you not like outspoken atheists because you are afraid they might be right? How exactly is a muslims faith different from yours? Any of the Abrahamic religions could be right and they could ALL be wrong. The most rational and reasonable position is to withhold belief until sufficient evidence is found and proven and so far nothing supernatural has ever been shown or proven to exist whatsoever.
Our natives he in australia (come visit one day) arrived 50 000 BC believed in various gods, goddesses and spirits.Why are these less valued than Jesus or Allah or the Hindu gods..amen
I think that's an unfair comparison. This guy actually knows how to dress up his video with a mystique/spiritual, even intellectual, varnish. Sound design also sets his videos apart. PragerU's animations rely solely on mediocre translation, rotation and scale.
The fundamental problem with religion isn't the evidence. No amount of evidence will convince a Christian, that his religion is as made up as any other religion, because it's part of their identity. Try telling a Brazilian that their national soccer team isn't the best in the world, show them all the stats you want, it won't convince them, because part of being and feeling like you are Brazilian is believing that the national team the best in the world. Heck, in Brazil we even will say with a straight face that God himself is Brazilian, despite being able to look out almost any window in a city and seeing that trash isn't being picked up, potholes are everywhere, and the river smells like a shithole... So, to have a Christian admit that God doesn't exist, he has to abandon his identity. It's akin to finding out you're adopted, and your whole life up to now has been a lie...
You actually made a good analogy. Most Christians haven’t even read the Bible (certainly not all of it), don’t even follow Jesus teachings and yet they root for team Jesus. No matter what.
“No amount of evidence will convince a Christian” is very uncharitable. I was a Christian, now I’m not. So we can just throw out your original point. Granted, it may be harder to convince a Christian that their worldview is false given how deep a religious worldview goes. You don’t think an atheist would have to change his identity if he learned that Christianity is true and that the ways he acts are seen as immoral by god? See how your argument can just as easily be turned around on you? I’d just throw out the argument as it doesn’t really get us anywhere. Let’s be charitable to the other side
We, "skeptics", "humanists", "atheists" whathaveyou, need to shift from a syllogigical paradigm to the human paradigm- WHY do people cling to these ideas? Observing my religious family has convinced me that it matters not the heights of rational and empirical discourse. Society will stand or fall by its feet, and these feet are currently waist deep in auto-delusion. Ask them- "Do you care whether the things you believe are true?" True being, COMPORTS TO REALITY.
@@thucydides7849 yes but I believe that was also a choice you made, deconverting was a process you let happen. Op was saying that raw facts and sound logic is typically not enough for someone to forgo a part of their identity
@@marcomoreno6748 I like how you said "reality" like it's a thing that's been defined. I love these easy definitions that don't show any evidence of extensive philosophic reading.
"That didn't happen. I was there." I literally said this to a MAGA family member last weekend. His response was: "Well, it's foolish to trust your own eyes!". I just... what? 🤔
@@pansepot1490 I would say neither, muslims came later and christians have a long history of stea- i mean appropiating other people's cultures and ideas.
Ive been following your content since the early days, and I am still to this day impressed with the clarity and compactness of your writing and delivery. You are so very careful about your phrasing, which is very much appreciated. Thank you for consistently delivering the absolute peak of skeptical response to Christian claims, for years and years.
Yes, i totally agree. After many years dealing with the hyperbolic claims on all sides… paul has distilled the less exciting, but trenchant essence of these contriversies
Trump being the actual true president of the USA is 3 years old. And there’s 70M Americans who believe it. I don’t think the chupacabra can beat that. 😅
I figured I'd put this here, your approach to these conversations in your videos are what convinced me what I was taught about Jesus isn't likely or reasonable. Thank you, you do make a difference
As someone who was indoctrinated from birth I am extremely grateful for the work Paulogia and other similar channels do. This is a real honest inquiry.
I love the argument that the gospel writers couldn’t lie because they could be easily fact checked. This entirely misses that Jerusalem and the temple were besieged and destroyed, and the residents scattered, in 70 CE. Good luck finding a handful of witnesses after that without a way to google their phone numbers. Also, even tradition accepts that most of the gospels were written in other parts of the empire, in an era when traveling from Rome to Jerusalem might take months-not just hopping on a plane.
Thank you! "This entirely misses that Jerusalem and the temple were besieged and destroyed, and the residents scattered, in 70 CE." This single fact is the best reason _not_ to believe that the Christians were killed by the Romans for their claim that Jesus was resurrected. The Christians in Jerusalem up 70 CE to were very likely to also be Jews, and thus very likely to have been killed simply because they were Jews. The Roman legions were famously indiscriminate killers of Jews during the Jewish-Roman war. The legionnaires just didn't care. They likely didn't even speak Aramaic, and just happily killed as many Jews as they were allowed to kill, irrespective of their stated belief, or otherwise, in some Jesus dude. That was how the historian Flavius Josephus depicts that war.
What blows my mind is that in the age of google and internet and news accessible 24/7 still 20-30% of Americans believe Trump won the 2020 elections. And this guy thinks people believing a lie in 40 CE Judea is impossible. Now that I think of it, I wonder if he is among that 20-30%. 🤔
Heck, it took an entire culture 40 years to find their way out of a desert that normal people could walk in about 2 weeks. Travel was different back then.
Imbeggar's reasoning is extremely surface-level and simple. It equates to "If we descended from monkeys then why are there still monkeys? Gotcha atheist" Not sure what I was expecting but it was definitely more. Great response Paulogia!
Imbeggar is not trying to convince any non-believers. They are massaging the fragile egos of butts in the pews and applying a salve to any who might have heard simple non-believer rhetoric and began to have doubts.
Good to view another well thought out and entertaining video. I hope you're able to continue in this way for years to come. Any chance you can begin releasing podcast versions of your videos again? I love to listen to them on walks and bike rides.
the whole argument for "plenty of evidence Jesus existed" is also very much dependant on belief. In a hundred/thousand years scholars will have "plenty of evidence" of the existance of Bruce Wayne in the 21st century but that doesnt mean he is real or ever was.
Christianity is not the belief in the existence of Jesus. It's the belief that he was the son of god (worse, that he was the son of the god of the OT, a god that has nothing, whatsoever, to do with what Christians like to preach) and that he was resurrected. We have very little historical evidence for the real Jesus and absolutely none for the resurrection.
Mr Beggar: about twenty years ago, I got a new role within my employers business. I vaguely knew the head of department (enough to get an occasional 'check this out' email, the precursor to Facebook tagging lol) and within the time it took for me to be called to the office, get the news and return to the factory floor, rumours had started that I got the role because we were having sex. Twenty years later I still hear that that happened, despite both of us denying it. All because he was gay and I'm bi.
The story of George Washington praying alone at Valley Forge is another such myth. A pastor decades later told someone else that a person told him that they happened to be riding by (in heavy snow) and just happened to see and recognize George Washington praying alone in the snow. There is a famous painting of the incident. The supporter must believe many things to accept this story. 1. The guy was riding alone in heavy snow, despite armies of both sides in the area. 2. That he saw and recognized George Washington 3. That Washington would go off completely alone from camp despite possible enemy patrols to pray in the snow. 4. That Washington would pray at all like this, despite the well recorded information on his church and religious habits. This is an obvious fabrication based on wishful thinking and the tellers own bias, again to gain wealth and notoriety like the Betsy Ross story
Talking about embellishment within my lifetime, I've seen it inside a week. I was involved in some community projects one of which was our village Christmas lighting. There was a woman who was being particularly obstructive to our process, constantly complaining and standing in our way. One year a number of the volunteers dropped out at the last minute when we were actually putting the tree in place (and we are talking a very heavy 12m tree). It was cold and wet and it wasn't going well. Luckily some local businesses we knew helped out with some heavy equipment, but it still wasn't easy. Anyway, she turns up with other prune faced friend in tow, and complains that we haven't got the area completely coned off and beacons and whatever else they felt we needed and that she could have fallen down the hole for mounting the tree (the very one that we were lowering this 2 tonne tree into). Well I snapped at that point, and promptly asked them to go away, promptly, with haste, and several suggestions of what I thought of their opinion. I never got within 2m of one of the woman, though the one I knew better I did know better I got close and tried not to shout about what I thought of her helpfulness to the whole project. That evening we had a story going round the village, that I had physically thrown the woman (that I didn't get within 2m) into the mounting hole for the tree and had physically assaulted her........ Considering I was extremely well known in the village and everyone knew where I lived and I was quite open to talking to anyone at anytime about doing things for the village only handful of people actually asked me for the real story. And no she never pressed charges TL:DR a slanging match between two people turned into a full actual bodily harm claim within hours, despite one of the participants never getting close to the other participant and being a well known figure within the village
@@G_Demolished I'm not up to date on the latest God patch notes but that just implies so much. What is outside that maximum. Are there things that not even God knows? What if God's maximum is sufficient for us mortals but insignificant against the scale of the universe? Is the problem of evil/Satan's influence an exploitation of this vulnerability? Regardless, our fluid understanding of God in the face of his "immutable word" is a solid indication of human invention.
I agree. As a sportsman I have unlimited patience. When fishing, I can wait hours for a nibble that may never come. With religious apologists, my patience is very short. I think it's both the dishonesty and the lack of all encompassing, independent research on their part, that riles me up the most.
I really didn't get why he said that, it's not a Christian idea at all. Something like that can easily turn into idols and anyone who's read the bible knows how God feels about idols 😬
Thank you very much for breaking down what i would call nonsense from people who dont really think or want to think about what they are talking about. It will most likely lead to our future generations becoming better humans 💚🐢
I'm too doompilled to think humanity will have time to get better, but I'm really glad to have some humans left to hold hands with and comfort each other during religious onslaughts by the very people who are too scared to be caring, but think they have a monopoly on being caring/loving. If one believes in an afterlife, then one cannot be focused on the here and now of it all.
This video made me remember a conversation I overheard in the school liberary years back that made me shuckle. "So christians doesn't believe the big bang created the world, cause you can't get something out of nothing?" "Mmmm" "Then god couldn't have just randomly been there either, he had to have been created, so who made him? And who made the being that made him? And who made that being?". The bell rang at that moment, so I didn't get to hear the rest of their conversation, but it was a enjoyable, random moment.
I prefer saying, "no meaningful evidence" as a way to acknowledge the more subtle point there. I really don't think most people understand the point of clarifying "no evidence" isn't acknowledgement of possibility but just recognizing the spectrum of what "evidence" itself means. Many will just hear that "no evidence isn't correct" and run with it as an opening to reasonable possibility of whatever they want to be true. That is not how it works either. I think at some point splitting a hair for people that couldn't see the single hair in the first place isn't where one should bother :) Regardless, I always appreciate the precision and hope that more people can as well.
I think its actually appropriate to say there is NO evidence for christianity. There IS evidence CONSISTENT WITH Christianity... im not aware of any evidence FOR Christianity, and I think that's a critical distinction, as it is in forensics.
When humanity moved from tribal society to civilized society there was a need to adapt the various types of cult of the tribal ancestors to something at the image of the new ruling class that distiguish civilised urban development from the other neolithic urban development. No wonder that the top title of Jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords.
I disagree on some schematical details, but you hit the nail on the head. For those further interested I would suggest reading up on other homo species and other cousins of humanity. Race is intertwined with the history of not just Christianity but other religions.
I love how quick Christians are to tell you Jesus is largely accepted as being a real person as a means to boost their claim that Christianity is true... but totally ignore that we have even more solid proof, pretty much beyond all reasonable doubt, that Mohammad was also a real person. Does that make Islam true? Of course not.
"Almost all historians believe that that Jesus was a real person" "Sure, but most of those historians believe that Jesus was merely a mortal preacher and did not perform miracles or raise from the dead." "Well, those historians just have an anti-Christianity bias and can't be trusted." See, historian opinions count when they agree with Christians, but not when they don't.
Many believed that the end was near... within their own lifetime. Much of the theological contortion in Christianity comes from the fact that the end never came and that it never will.
This guy reminds me of my former Christian self when I just BARELY stepped one foot into apologetics and thought I was smart and well-informed..... 😆 boy was I wrong
I spin a wet football and demonstrate the water flowing/flying off the surface. I offer it as evidence that the Earth is flat since the seas don't fly off into space. Perhaps this is not the only "evidence" I have. Have I really presented evidence of the claim I am making? Or have I only actually offered evidence that I don't understand something?
I read forum posts regarding the game Cyberpunk 2077 where posters would complain about developers broken promises. With developers in those discussions saying some of those promises were never made.
This guy drips with the same underlying tone of condescension that infects so much of the rest of Christian apologetics. If you question the claims of the gospels, you just don't want to believe.
Which is great because I can tell it's bs. Now what? 😆 Do Christians really think the sermon on the mount is so amazing that someone who isn't already in their religion will just immediately think it couldn't have been written by a human hand? Most of it isn't even that great.
I really do sometimes wonder if people like this try applying the same arguments to people like Buddha. Sure, the story of Jesus has had a global impact over the last two thousand years. Buddhism had a similar impact, if not quite as wide spread, and the same arguments can apply, but he's not going to come to the conclusion that Buddhism and all the stories contained within are true.
Preacher- Your can’t trust mans word only god’s word can be trusted! Child - Who told you that? Preacher- It’s in the Bible! Child - Didn’t men write the Bible? Preacher- It was divinely inspired! Child - Who told you that? Preacher- I’m calling your parents!
This is literally the first time my phone has ever improperly responded to a video saying Google. I'm offended that Google apparently thinks I sound like him
Frankly, it's tiring to hear the careless dishonesty of beggar. It must be nice to know everything about everything and have immovable opinions about the everything which he knows everything about. So cute.
Jesus was apparently so imposing, that we have no written evidence of him until decades after his death! Surely that means he must have been God, right?
Another telling thing I've noticed over the years is that when discussing this with Christians, they NEVER bat an eye or object when you say decades "after Jesus's death". Then never ONCE say, "Jesus never died! He ascended bodily into heaven until this very day!" Most Christians keep two sets of books in their mind, but with THAT particular part of the belief, most have forgotten to keep that second set of books.
It always amazes me how easily Christians will fall into the false dichotomy of non-belief vs belief in their personal view of god. Thanks for everything you do, Paul! Keep it up and we'll be watching!
If one has even an introductory knowledge of historical critiques of Christianity, one should know that the disciples being "sincerely wrong" is a valid argument. Whenever I hear an apologist ignore that fact, I know they are either uninformed or intellectually dishonest. Sadly, I think it is usually the latter.
It's weird how he addresses that there were a bunch of other gods with stories of impossible feats before Jesus, but then points to the stories of impossible feats of Jesus and claims imagination can't account for them. So... what about all the other impossible feats of gods? Were those too big for human imagination, or are those all true as well? He misses the point of the similarities between Jesus and other figures, which is that these kinds of religious stories didn't have to be true for them to have appeared and spread around. People can make up anything, and even one year would have been enough time for Paul and "Mark" to have established the core of the Jesus legend based on messianic Judaism and assorted Mediterranean folktales. And he also ignores that Pauline Christianity was intentionally spread to people outside of Jerusalem, to people who weren't there when Jesus lived, who didn't know the disciples, and who apparently believed whatever Paul claimed about Jesus citing only visions and the Prophets as sources. The idea that "it couldn't have been made up" is probably the weakest argument of all.
I think when people question religion, they are questioning ALL religions and ALL gods. In fact, even the most devote religious folks are non-believers towards the thousands of "other" gods humans have worshipped over time. I just disbelieve in one more god than the most devote religious folks.
This is one of those colloquialisms that I wished would go away. Christians are not “atheists” of other gods. You cannot be a theist and an atheist simultaneously because that’s the literal definition of a contradiction. To be a Christian you HAVE to be a theist(someone who believes in the existence of a god), full stop. Them not believing in other pantheons of gods doesn’t make them an atheist. The word atheist is not used to describe a persons believe toward a very specific god, it’s used as a general term to describe someone general position on the god debate in whole. A person does not say “I’m a theist for the Christian god but I’m an atheist for Zeus”. The reason they don’t say that is because atheism refers to a wider, more broad belief on the god question. Being a theist means you believe in one or more gods. So a person who believes in one of more gods but doesn’t believe in Zeus is still a theist. From your view, would this person be a theistic atheist? You realize that term “theistic atheist” is completely nonsensical right?
@thucydides7849 Ok, then I'll say we are all NON-BELIEVERS about almost all of the gods that humanity has ever worshipped. Some of us just go one god further. Better?
@@6862ptc So, you accept the modern definition for the cause of gravity? Does that mean you're actually pretty much a science-denier because you deny the various other explanations for gravity given throughout history? After all, don't science-deniers just deny one extra step than you do? If you're going to rip of Ricky Gervais, you should at least cite him. And we can see how absurd the line of reasoning actually is when we apply it to something outside of your confirmation bias.
@@angusmcculloch6653 If you think Ricky Gervais came up with that quote you have no business even being in this discussion until you educate yourself a bit. The list of philosophers who have made the "I disbelieve one more god than you" quote is a long one. The point being it's an argument involving probabilities. 1. There are thousands of gods that were believed in equally throughout history by different cultures 2. Religious people disbelieve in all those gods but one, their own. 3. The probability that all those other gods could be fake and yours are correct is quite small. Therefore, your most logical belief should be that all gods are equally fake. As far as your "science denier" argument that accepting the modern definition of the cause of gravity implies science denial because it dismisses various historical explanations for gravity. However, this argument is flawed for several reasons. 1. Accepting a modern scientific understanding of gravity does not equate to denying historical explanations. Scientific progress is characterized by refining and building upon previous theories based on new evidence and insights. When the scientific community adopts a new explanation, it is not a denial of the past but an acknowledgment of the evolving nature of knowledge. 2. Comparing acceptance of the modern definition of gravity to science denial oversimplifies the complexity of scientific discourse. Science denial typically involves rejecting well-established scientific principles without credible evidence. In contrast, accepting the modern definition of gravity aligns with the current scientific consensus supported by empirical observations, experiments, and rigorous testing. 3. The implication that science-deniers and those accepting the modern definition of gravity are both denying one extra step is misleading. Science-deniers often reject well-established scientific principles, whereas individuals accepting the modern understanding of gravity align with the prevailing scientific consensus. The two positions are not symmetrical; one is rooted in evidence-based inquiry, while the other rejects established scientific knowledge without valid reasons. Finally, your "science-denier" argument does not accurately reflect the nature of scientific inquiry or the distinction between accepting the modern definition of gravity and science denial. It is crucial to recognize the dynamic and iterative nature of scientific progress rather than equating acceptance of contemporary theories with denial of historical perspectives.
@@6862ptc Well, first, you start with a strawman. I never said Gervais was the first. So your first entire little rant there is just a no-go from the start. What I said was that you got it from him. But, if I'm wrong you can tell me what philosopher you got it from. I'll trust you to be honest. A. That whole syllogism can only work if all gods are equally likely, which you didn't even put as one of your premises, so your syllogism is logically invalid. Next time you do this, you need to include a premise that all gods are equally likely. The problem with that is it's an assertion, so you'll need to develop another premise from which the premise "all gods are equally likely" logically follows. B. Yes, by definition, accepting the modern explanation for the causes of gravity means you reject, for example, Aristotle's explanation for the causes of gravity. The two claims are mutually exclusive. C. All that you've done here is asserted that there's a particular process by which you find some things persuasive. In the well-known conundrum, the process can't prove itself true. So you have a process why you think this particular scientific answer is correct and reject all of the ones it replaces. Similarly, a religious person has the process they find one deity's existence persuasive and reject the others. D. Again, well-established according to a process that you find persuasive but which, again, is logically incapable of proving its own truth. So, all you've done is give a reason *why* you accept certain scientific theories and reject previous ones. None of that changes the fact that you accept only a few of the many thousands of scientific theories in history as true at any given point in time and reject the others. Now, by the logic you pushed, that should make you almost as much a science denier as other science deniers. I, of course, would say that argument--like the one you made--is absurd. But, you also opened with a straw man and a rant and missed a necessary premise in your syllogism. So, it seems you have a little trouble controlling your emotions and have probably had elementary courses in logic or philosophy. Keep going, try to keep a more open mind, and subject your arguments to a bit more critical thinking. Also, make sure to get back to me with the name of the philosopher (and from which work) you picked up the "probability" argument. Outside of that, I don't think there's much reason for you to respond.
i'm absolutely cackling at his big gotcha being *"IS HE TRUTH?"* i feel a question like that can only be answered "Mu." Mu is a Zen concept that roughly means "nothing/empty." my favorite description of Mu is "un-ask this question."
Answering the title cold: Religion is distinct in my mind from theism. And as a general rule of thumb, religion is fine, so long as 'god/s' are kept out of it. Religion is shared community, ritual, and values.... Theism is myth pretending to be fact.
I emphatically disagree. Belief is the acceptance of a claim without evidence. Faith is the acceptance of a claim despite evidence. Combine the two and you have a superstition. Codify the superstition and you have religion. You can have community, values, and ritual without religion. I can be with a group of people that values giving and celebrates a holiday around the winter solstice… without participating in a religion in any way. You cannot have religion without disregard for reality. Disregard for reality is how people earn Darwin awards. I can’t say this “…. is fine.”
I like your definition, however I tend to see the control over people and the desire for personal gain for the leaders as key components of religions. I tend to think that the community aspects and beliefs happen without religion then religion comes along and distorts it for the gain of the leaders.
@@unduloid are definitions prescriptive or descriptive? Descriptive. What specifically is wrong with the description I provided… Or are you just trying to lazy your way to defending your ego?
I am a cousin of a famous athlete of the early 20th century. During his playing days, he was described in some newspapers as being six feet tall. He was under 5'10. Myths take no time. I read years ago that the US president who exceeded all the others in athleticism was the sitting president, and the fact that he was the leading scorer on his college basketball team was offered as evidence. He was never on the team and was never a starter on his tiny private day school's team in the late 1970s.
I always liked this quote from AaronRa
“If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion’s gods, an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos. If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God. It would be dominant everywhere in the world with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn’t possibly compete with it. And you wouldn’t need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true, revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity. It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader. If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that.” - AaronRa
He has a fine way of stating things in a way that it becomes readily understandable.
Gods apparent lack of interest in self-revelation across times and cultures is likely my biggest doubt of any theistic religion (or that such a God has any concern for one’s theology).
Aaron always cooks 5-star meals when he gets into it.
UH OH.
The Problem Atheists have is,
They Unnecessarily Overcomplicate it
God is simply the Existence of Love.
Everybody Believes Love exists
Simple. But infinite in Power and Expression.
To ignore the Reality of that
Is not only Unfortunate
It’s Shameful
@@damianedwards8827Why does "love" require me to donate 10% of my paycheck to it?
We have a politician running for governor of Georgia who believes the world is flat. Is she wrong- yes. Does she believe it? Yes
@rboland2173 Pretty sure it's Kandiss Taylor.
he mentions that in the video "would you die for something you knew was a lie?" cuz ofc ppl believe things that r false
I've been listening to Seth Andrews' The Thinking Atheist podcasts in order. I'm still at about eight years ago, but someone called in and said that a very high-up politician in their country was a flerfer. Poland or somewhere in Europe. I'd have to dig back through dozens of hours of audio to find it again. But the idea that any politician could be THAT deluded and still get into office, or stay in office, anywhere in the world after it became known that they deny reality that hard is pretty frightening. The flat earth claim is so incredibly easy to disprove. (I almost said 'flat earth model', but there's part of the problem. They have no model. They have multiple models at best. Which is a huge problem if you're trying to challenge existing theories in science, let alone observable facts.)
for some people believing lies can cause more good than harm though. i mean theres no definitive way to prove any of us even really exist but it helps to live as if we do.
@@texanarchy666 Yes, but those nontruths are generally more conceptual in nature. Justice for example. Can you think of an example of a falsehood that has benefits in thinking it's true? (Mangled that sentence!)
Every dead religion was just another thing people 100% believed was real at the time. Yours isn't special, no matter which one it is.
even Gods die when people forget their names....
Ah, were SOOOO hurt you said that!
@@davidjanbaz7728
Well, the simply fact that most historians agree that Moses is a fictional character and that the Exodus never happened seems to hurt a lot of uneducated believers.😂
@@davidjanbaz7728try in your first language. I don’t think your English level is up to it.
@@democrat7441 who are you talking to? What are you referring to?
IMBeggar? More like "I am begging the question" am I right?
... I'll see myself out.
😂
Dear oh dear, this guy was one step away from saying, “look at the trees and then tell me there isn’t a god”.
How on earth can someone have such poor arguments and expect others to take his claims seriously?
From what historians can tell in 1857 in Utah a story spread that on August 8, 1844 at a meeting in Nauvoo Illinois Brigham Young was transfigured into Joseph Smith in front of the crowd confirming Young was Smith’s true successor. Several eyewitnesses wrote about it, close to a dozen wrote about it. No one came forward to say it didn’t happen, not one. But we have contemporary records and journal accounts from that day in 1844. No one said anything about this miracle the day it happened, nothing in the meeting notes. Furthermore contemporary accounts demonstrate that some eye witness accounts that wrote about it were not even at the meeting. John D. Lee and Orson Hyde was not in Illinois, they were on a Mormon missions but they wrote about this miracle as though they were there. No one came forward to say they were not present. This nonsense that it takes a long time for false legends to emerge is bogus. Imagine if the contemporary records from that day were lost to history, we would have all these first hand accounts of this miracle and unlike the New Testament we have the originals. This miracle story remains in Mormon Church manuals to this day.
Listening to Mormon apologists defending a sacred text with shakier foundations than both the Bible and the Qu’ran (and the more I read the Book of Mormon the less convinced I became) is what convinced me that at worst apologetics is the art of defending the indefensible, pretty sure that Joseph Smith and some of his followers who went to Utah but died on the way “died for a lie” as well.
However I can hear these preachers already saying that Mormonism doesn’t count since obviously Joseph Smith was a false prophet and the Bible warmed us about that (that was my mentality while I was a Christian), however I do wonder how first century Jews saw Jesus as if most of them didn’t convert to this new movement.
"translated into Joseph Smith"
Do you mean "transfigured?"
As one raised Mormon, I was going to point this exact story out too. One of my ancestors was there when this supposedly happened. He was a prolific journal writer. He wrote about that meeting. This supposed miracle dies not appear in his journal. And yet I grew up hearing it in church from childhood on. And that's not the only "miracles" that we got taught with ZERO contemporary attestations. But those stories had already become popularly believed by the first generation born into the religion. Does not take long at all, and this in a more modern time with greater literacy.
He says, “Debating the evidence doesn’t matter when it all boils down to: is this manmade, or is this from God?” when you can only arrive at an answer to that question by debating the evidence
That moment seriously left me gobsmacked. It is evidence that these people are stuck in a mental rut.
"Beggar " is a perfect name for someone whose entire apologetics strategy consists of begging the question.
Mankind has been fighting about, er, "debating" that for 3,250 years and counting, with no end in sight ...
The issue is always the same, believers place their knowledge of truth onto feelings, not rationally observable facts. Thus they can never be convinced, because there is no actually shared and agreed upon reality from which to debate. The very concept of objectivity is offensive to a belief, because after all beliefs can only exist in a subjective manner
Religion, besides being the biggest and most-profitable business in history, is an artifact of ancient times we so misunderstand, venally misinterpret, and casually disregard. Events happened that wiped out up to 90% of ALL life on the planet, not once, not even twice, but at least three, maybe four, possibly five times, between Noah, circa the mid-25th Century, and Ezekiel, at the Fall of Empires. Survivors were scared out of their freaking minds, by events that beggar description! The world was turned upside down, at least once, and possibly twice. Seas leapt out of their beds, washed over the land, dragging humans, beasts, and all manner of buildings across the landscape, depositing them helter-skelter.
In reality, religion, especially in the past, was an effective crowd-control device. Imagine being Moses, on the far banks of the Red Sea, up against those lava-built mountains in southwestern Sinai, when human nature reemerged. Chaos, catastrophe, and overwhelming events WILL corral humans, for a while, but like an infant, there soon comes a time when none of their "toys" do the trick, and they set out to find out what there is to get into. I suspect Moses went up the hill to craft Rules of Conduct, when he was struck by inspiration. Who better to put the fear of god into humans, than God, Almighty?
@@Cancoillotteman
Yesterday I bought a large coffee from Dunkin donuts when I was instantly teleported into an alien spaceship! And I actually have proof that this really happened. I have a receipt from Dunkin donuts for a large coffee.
Have you independently verified it? Quick! Put that reciept in a CT scanner! We need to verify its existence!
@@phillyphakename1255 It is true i was there... when he bought the donuts.
@@Julian0101and I saw him 3 days later. Walking, talking and enjoying more donuts. This is truly a miracle
Spot on!
I wonder where Krispy Kreme leads...
As a high school English teacher, it has occurred to me lately that many stories we read use symbolism and allusions to other well-known stories. But what happens when those other stories are lost, and any clues as to what the symbols might mean are forgotten? The central meaning or purpose of the author is literally completely LOST, and there is no real way for a modern reader to know that, except a vague sense that what you're reading is missing quite a bit and makes little sense. (And then we, as humans, have the impulse to make up what it might mean.)
Like reading "Hobbit" with literally no supplementing lore that came from LOTR, Silmarilion and other works of Tolkien. It's still a story - a good story. But it's also only a small, very limited part of much greater whole.
@@FrikInCasualMode In college, I had a very Christian professor in a great books class who freely admitted he had no idea what was going on in the Book of Ezekiel. The visions read like a bad trip, and yet you can find "interpretations" that impose all kinds of symbolism onto it so it can somehow make sense. But generally, for symbols and figurative language to work, you have to know first what is LITERALLY happening, or at least what is LITERALLY referred to somewhere in the passage to build an abstraction on top of it. And since it is a "vision", it doesn't seem ANYTHING is literally happening, so it could mean anything you want it to mean, I guess, and that's what many believers run with.
@@FrikInCasualMode Not really. The Hobbit was largely inspired by folk tales and fairy stories that predate it. If you want to understand the author's influence and meaning in the work, that's where you should be looking. There are plenty of allusions and themes that connect the Hobbit to these earlier works. The Silmarillion and LoTR came after, and the author recontextualized the Hobbit into the Middle Earth mythos after the fact (if you're able to track down a first edition of the Hobbit, you'll see most of the trappings that connect it to the later works were not present in the original). The Hobbit is kind of the opposite: The author is adding meaning and significance to events in the story after-the-fact that were not there in the original writing.
This also reminded me of a documentary from 1996 (I had to look it up) called "Looking for Richard" featuring Al Pacino. I'll never forget that there was a question Pacino and his partner had about the play Richard III, because they just couldn't make sense of it. They had several professors they were interviewing about the play, and Pacino wanted to ask one of them this burning question they had (I don't even remember what the question was), and his partner was MAD and didn't want to ask these so-called experts their opinion on the play (he thought it shouldn't matter--that every person should have their own opinion about and not have it tainted by an expert's opinion). Finally the partner gave in, Pacino asked the question, and the professor, without missing a beat, said, "I don't have any idea"!!!! It was SO refreshing for an expert to admit not only that HE didn't know something, but that possibly NO ONE knows. That the context or reference had been lost to history. I'm looking for that clip. (I can't find it. But Siskel and Ebert loved that documentary, I guess. I had forgotten that.)
Reading any of the great Chinese stories would demonstrate this very well. Without knowledge of certain characters backstories and tropes and symbolism a lot of the meaning of the story is completely lost. Journey to the west is by far the best known (Monkey/SunWukong) but its a fairly dry repetitive book if you don't have a version with an appendix that explains some parts that wouldn't need explaining to a Chinese reader who is already familiar with the stories and beliefs that add so much more meaning to events within the story.
Similar versions of the arguments he puts forward for Christianity can be made for Islam and, yet, something tells me he wouldn't accept Mohammed as the last true prophet
Exactly 😊
Prolly doesn't wanna take that on for fear of his own skin. I don't blame him, actually . . .
Amaterasu, Odin, Zeus, and Bramha would also like a chance to be considered along side ancient sky god YHWH.
Ancient Egypt and the Persian empire with Zoroastrianism influenced the small region of Judea. Christianity and Islam are Jewish sects. Judaism is a Zoroastrianism sect with other influences. The ideas of a Jesus also come from previous dying rising gods. Five of whom said to be born of a virgin. Osiris worship was on the wane as Christianity was on the rise. Osiris was the most important dying rising god of ancient Egypt. Funny monotheism started there with the pharoh akenaten. Before that a 200,000 year human history of animism and polytheistic belief.
What prophecies did Mo-Ham-Mad make?
Even 20 years sounds very plausible for a time when supernatural acceptance was common place
Definitely
Add the fact that at the time the info was passed person to person, and people is not precisely good at not changing details and the rest of the time it was subject to scribe errors... And yes, 20 years is plenty.
@@Paulogia 70% of your arguments are "what does that mean?" or "define that phrase" when you're really missing the whole point of the video.
We've seen it happen in less time much more recently.
@@younoa8783 the whole point of the video is "it's true because I feel like it is" so there's not that much to work with.
To the point of exploding legends from good stories - I think a great parallel in recent history is Kit Carson, who actually lived long enough to contest his own legends in dime novels and view the character portrayed there as an entirely different person. Despite frequently confronting and denying the outlandish stories in person, they persisted.
In later life he grew a sense of humor about it, and would get asked by occasional fans if a certain fantastic story was true and he'd reply with some variation of, "It may be, but I for one have no recollection of it."
Roswell, 9/11, The JFK Assassination ...
While in any of these cases there HAS to be a true story, they all have in common that by now a lot of competing stories are told that cannot all be correct. And it's less than 100 years for all of them.
The Moon landings, Any sect "drinking the Kool Aid", the increasing distrust of election results...
The negative side of this would be Orson Welles. Hollywood and his detractors made sure the negative stories about him would continue for decades until the majority of people believed the lies. Was Orson perfect? No. But he was a brilliant person who had a career way better than most acknowledge or even know about.
kit carson didn't raise the dead
@@raysalmon6566 Or at least he had no recollection of doing so.
@@raysalmon6566 Neither did the deity you worship.
Congratulations on using "begging the question" in the proper way!
Thank you! 😃
Came here to say exactly this.
Please sir may I please have a query?
I love how calm and collected Paulogia is!
Just to throw my OWN quick answer in, at the very beginning.... Christianity being a myth or legend is a CONCLUSION i have reached over decades of contemplating the nature of the universe, and reality
But mostly from just reading the Bible.
@pauligrossinoz In fairness, I'd guess a very small minority of Christians have actually read the Bible and almost nobody converted specifically because they read the Bible and found it compelling.
@@shassett79 - I was a Christian when I read the Bible. Reading the Bible for myself was what turned me into an atheist in the first place.
*The road to atheism is paved with Bibles that have actually been **_read._*
@@pauligrossinoz Well judging by those who profess christianity but don't know about the nasty parts of the bible, it could be true. It's pretty amusing to watch "book banners" squirm when read some of the racy parts. Of course my brother's church fixed that problem by getting rid of the old testament and only using the new.
People spread crazy supernatural rumors about people within the lifetime of people involved all the time especially in parts of the world without formal education or writing, and however unlikely you think that is, it's infinitely more likely than a miracle God man. This claim is ridiculous to anyone who hasn't already drank the cool aid. If this guy heard all the miraculous claims about some Indian Yogi who started his own religion today he would just roll his eyes.
I was on capturing christianity recently reading comments and its insane the people still randomly talking about paulogia and how anyone who is a guest on his show is immediately worthy of dismissal or "james tour was right". So much cringe.
As if saying “James Tour was right” doesn’t render one immediately worthy of dismissal!
James tour was right @@just_some_guy_on_the_internet
"God is truth. You can't make that up."
Are you kidding me? That's one of the stupidest claims I've ever heard.
"Is religion just another myth, fairytale, or legend?" Yes. Well, that was easy. Next!
The concept of arguing that people were alive alongside Jesus, thus all things Jesus are true, is so ridiculous on its face. Most people alive 2000 years ago didn’t know most of the world existed at that time, let alone know anything about a very specific person back then.
And what they mean by "people were alive alongside jesus" is "the gospels mention people who existed in the same time period". George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all appeared in Grappler Baki so I guess that's real now.
"If something sticks with you, that is god..." I currently can't get 'Dance the Night Away' by the Mavericks out of my head. What should I call my new religion?
Edit: the above happens to be true, but 'Only the Good Die Young' by Billy Joel would have been funnier.
Thx for the ear worm 🙃
I thought that was Van Halen lol
dancism
I'd add "Iceland" from the spectrasonics sound library being divine, as well. It's my favorite sfx and is always in my head lol.
So stalkers are all divine?
If you want an excellent example of how a religion can generate mythical and legendary lore in a very short amount of time just study Mormon history. All the major supernatural founding stories of the church were established within the first two to three generations of the church.
They also extended the Jesus story by having him visit North America. They also had a written account of his visit and lots more.
@@davidwimp701 Yes, Jesus set up a ranch in Utah, and became friendly with the Cherokee's, they were amazed by his supernatural powers, ... he turned a horse into a newt.
You can study a similar phenomenon with cargo cults. Helping solidify the reality that this is something that is true about human cultures beyond christian offshoots i.e. it's not a derivative phenomenon.
Same is true with that crazy scientology cult
@@bonnie43ukDid the horse get better?
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke)
Regarding Alexander, there are at least two known documents, for which we have the original autographs, which were written in his lifetime and mention him. One is a clay tablet from the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries, now in the British Museum (BM 36761), the other is a dated list of supplies from Bactria (Khalili Collections IA 17).
Many people like Paulogia are doing an important job taking on videos like these that to a life long atheist like me can feel like full of obvious tumbles in logic and outright lies. Theres people out there who need this stuff pointed out to them and as long as these claims keep being repeated by a new person there needs to be a new response.
Wouldn't it be great if reality was such that for every claim and assertion we hear we have to hear a refutation and/or counterclaim.
I dare say we would be living in a much more secular world if that were the case.
As a lifelong atheist, I still scratch my head when grown adults believe fairytales yet lead very logical and real lives at the same time. The part I hate about the right, which I also am.
I think it is more effective when someone who is a former Christian counters the claims because they are far more versed in the Bible because they totally believed and even struggled with their doubts before totally deconstructing. Their experience and knowledge make them harder to dismiss by Christian apologists.
You don't need to give people's illogical claims the time of day.
I don't think Paul does a great job of it either, like the thing on evidence of reptiles in government or a flat earth, if the evidence is disproven it's no longer evidence.
In the end, no religious person is going to listen to what you have to say. They based their belief on feelings and emotion and trust in the stories they were told, logic won't work on them.
Their arguments won't work on us either as they're not based on logic. It's chalk and cheese.
People that are interested in changing their beliefs will do so on their own without the need of anyone elses input, they'll even do so in the absence of any input, just general scientific knowledge and critical thinking is enough.
You'd need to block out everything contradictory but that would mean also taking away their bibles from them.
your comment begins with " someone had to design the universe " are you asserting that God is a person some kind of bean ? Are you anthropomorphize what created the universe ? I believe the creator of the universe is so beyond our comprehension and outside of any physical or temporal realm that we as humans can never truly know what it is . Any attempt to do so can only be pure speculation fueled by our personal biases and desires . Also I am curious I would like to know if you are a Christian and do you believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection ?
Never allow the truth get in the way of a good story.
That was the motto of the "Weekly World News" and it served them very well!
Like the newspaper editor says in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance": "Print the legend."
When I look at the Gospel portion of the Bible, they all read like fiction to me. This causes me to consider them to be drawn upon the known mythologies of that time period to make up this "Jesus story".
100% Deavon.
What exactly is it about the gospel story of the dead saints that supposedly got up out of their graves and walked around Jerusalem when Jesus died, that strikes you as made-up? 🤔
Dead saints rising from their graves is surely an everyday occurrence? Right? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Why does it read like fiction to you?
@@thucydides7849 Use of 'supernatural claims' is a red flag. But including stories like 'the Devil tempting Jesus for 40 days', Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, or even how the events surrounding the crucifixion...they appear to be told from someone on the outside. Also, things like 'multiplying bread and fish [twice] or any of the miracle claims. Not credible...and appear fictitious to me.
@@thucydides7849 How many historical documents are written in the third person style, and contain conversations with other people, including Jesus having a conversation with the devil?
I admire how you so skillfully and succinctly SCHOOL someone while remaining polite and respectful. You are the king of this kind of content and it's AWESOME!! :)
Imbeggar isn't even really the "debate" kind of apologist. I remember Paulogia got absolutely wrecked by InspiringPhilosophy once.
@@AnakinSkywalkerYTThat was literally a video by Imbeggar debating whether christianity is a myth or not. 😂
What has a video Paul made with Inspiringphilosophy got to do with this video? I'm not convinced that Paul got wrecked at all and apologists get wrecked every day. Still none have shown evidence of their claims and always end up appealing to emotions and "faith."
@@TheTruthKiwi ***what has a video Paul made with InspiringPhilosophy got to do with this video?
The commenter is treating Paul as if he is the dark knight of apologetics, here to destroy the stupidity of religion once and for all and bring upon us a golden age of science and reason, a new enlightenment!
...
Yeah... no.
My point was merely to show that Paulogia's arguments for atheism are not *that* good at all, kind of mid tier to be honest.
I've watched much of his RUclips catalog and have yet to be even minorly convinced of the lack of the Christian God, much less any diety.
Paul's arguments (if you really look into them) tend to have a five step strategy behind them:
*how* *to* *argue* *like* *Paulogia* *!*
I: State claim
II: provide a word salad explaining your claim in unnecessary detail
III: make a strawman of the opposing argument by providing some obsurd, asinine analogy
IV: restate claim several times (all with varying degrees of divergence from the original claim)
V: wrap it up and pretend that you accomplished something
Believe it or not, this is at least 80% of all the Paulogia response videos I've watched (and that list is quite extensive).
***I'm not convinced that Paul got wrecked at all and apologists get wrecked every day.
Correct, just because an apologist looses sometimes doesn't make them bad or mean that they're wrong, I was simply responding to a severe case of P.S.S (Paulogia simp syndrome, a common disease among reddit anti-theists and discord moderators).
As for you not being convinced that he got wrecked, that's because Paul never really shows his losing battles, and of those he doesn't debate live very often (its alot easier to debate over a screen to a guy like IP then to actually face them). All opinions aside, Michael Jones is just a good apologist in general, his rhetoric is top notch, his sources are valid, he is a logical dude, so without even thinking about atheism versus theism, it is to be expected that Paul would lose to him. Paul himself called Michael a very well researched individual, so there's obviously some credibility there.
***none have shown evidence if their claims and always end up appealing to emotions and "faith".
I: you could say the same thing about Paul. I have yet to see a single video where he adequately responded to a legitimate apologist in a convincing way, and to be honest, I doubt he even really fools himself, it seems like more of a predisposition to *want* to be right that causes him to carry himself so well on the internet.
II: Faith is defined Biblically as a strong trust, IP has "faith" in his sources, Paul has "faith" in his strawman fallacies, Aron Ra has "faith" in his emotional temper tantrums on stage with slightly elevated vocabulary, Apostate Prophet has "faith" in Allah SWT (sarcasm).
@@AnakinSkywalkerYT there is no "argument FOR atheism"... Atheism is simply _"*I AM NOT CONVINCED THAT THERE IS A GOD*"_ ... Full stop. No argument required.
Now if you're saying arguments against many of the different gods that humans have made up throughout history then that's completely different - yes there are plenty of arguments against those.
The bulk of theists arguments are god of the gaps fallacies. And for the Abrahamic god specifically, all 3 so-called holy books should be called hole-Y books.. they are full of gaping holes! 0:01 0:01
@@AnakinSkywalkerYT We will agree to disagree. I don't think Paul is strawmanning at all. He is using logic, reason and documented natural history to come to a rational conclusion.
Do you not like outspoken atheists because you are afraid they might be right? How exactly is a muslims faith different from yours? Any of the Abrahamic religions could be right and they could ALL be wrong.
The most rational and reasonable position is to withhold belief until sufficient evidence is found and proven and so far nothing supernatural has ever been shown or proven to exist whatsoever.
Our natives he in australia (come visit one day) arrived 50 000 BC believed in various gods, goddesses and spirits.Why are these less valued than Jesus or Allah or the Hindu gods..amen
I admire your commitment to accuracy, especially the part about what “evidence” really means
Since that creator is ripping off PragerU's boring cartoon style, it's clear they're targeting the same audience.
Probably
bro u cant be hating on imbeggars animation while watching this channel XD
I think that's an unfair comparison. This guy actually knows how to dress up his video with a mystique/spiritual, even intellectual, varnish. Sound design also sets his videos apart. PragerU's animations rely solely on mediocre translation, rotation and scale.
The fundamental problem with religion isn't the evidence. No amount of evidence will convince a Christian, that his religion is as made up as any other religion, because it's part of their identity. Try telling a Brazilian that their national soccer team isn't the best in the world, show them all the stats you want, it won't convince them, because part of being and feeling like you are Brazilian is believing that the national team the best in the world. Heck, in Brazil we even will say with a straight face that God himself is Brazilian, despite being able to look out almost any window in a city and seeing that trash isn't being picked up, potholes are everywhere, and the river smells like a shithole... So, to have a Christian admit that God doesn't exist, he has to abandon his identity. It's akin to finding out you're adopted, and your whole life up to now has been a lie...
You actually made a good analogy. Most Christians haven’t even read the Bible (certainly not all of it), don’t even follow Jesus teachings and yet they root for team Jesus. No matter what.
“No amount of evidence will convince a Christian” is very uncharitable. I was a Christian, now I’m not. So we can just throw out your original point. Granted, it may be harder to convince a Christian that their worldview is false given how deep a religious worldview goes. You don’t think an atheist would have to change his identity if he learned that Christianity is true and that the ways he acts are seen as immoral by god? See how your argument can just as easily be turned around on you? I’d just throw out the argument as it doesn’t really get us anywhere. Let’s be charitable to the other side
We, "skeptics", "humanists", "atheists" whathaveyou, need to shift from a syllogigical paradigm to the human paradigm- WHY do people cling to these ideas? Observing my religious family has convinced me that it matters not the heights of rational and empirical discourse. Society will stand or fall by its feet, and these feet are currently waist deep in auto-delusion. Ask them- "Do you care whether the things you believe are true?"
True being, COMPORTS TO REALITY.
@@thucydides7849 yes but I believe that was also a choice you made, deconverting was a process you let happen. Op was saying that raw facts and sound logic is typically not enough for someone to forgo a part of their identity
@@marcomoreno6748 I like how you said "reality" like it's a thing that's been defined. I love these easy definitions that don't show any evidence of extensive philosophic reading.
It's a crime you don't have WAY more subscribers. Your work is superb.
"That didn't happen. I was there."
I literally said this to a MAGA family member last weekend. His response was: "Well, it's foolish to trust your own eyes!".
I just... what? 🤔
The same applies to "it did happen, I was there"
But instead of the maga one, it's an atheist
I always love the argument: the stories are so original and bat shit crazy that it must be true!
I usually hear that from Muslim apologists about the Quran. I wonder who came up with it first and who copied.
"Do you really think someone would do that? Just go into the fora and lie?"
@@pansepot1490 there’s a principle of embarrassment, but it’s often grossly misapplied by apologists.
@@pansepot1490 I would say neither, muslims came later and christians have a long history of stea- i mean appropiating other people's cultures and ideas.
I remember one Muslim saying of the Quran, 'A human could not have written this.' Having read the Quran(online) I'd say I could write a BETTER one.
Word games like imbeggar is playing are the stronghold of those without anything else to rely on.
Ive been following your content since the early days, and I am still to this day impressed with the clarity and compactness of your writing and delivery. You are so very careful about your phrasing, which is very much appreciated.
Thank you for consistently delivering the absolute peak of skeptical response to Christian claims, for years and years.
Been following you for years and your writing and presentation have improved significantly! Such high quality!
Is a cocklebur god?
Yes, i totally agree. After many years dealing with the hyperbolic claims on all sides… paul has distilled the less exciting, but trenchant essence of these contriversies
We see how this crap happens present day. Did chupacabra exist? It's myth is less than 50 years old, and has been extensively embellished.
And the "stolen election" of 2020.
Trump being the actual true president of the USA is 3 years old. And there’s 70M Americans who believe it.
I don’t think the chupacabra can beat that. 😅
Yeah we literally have Qanon people and flat earthers present day. This argument should be a total non starter.
@@nathanjasper512 yeah, people are very silly where things they have come to believe are the topic
I figured I'd put this here, your approach to these conversations in your videos are what convinced me what I was taught about Jesus isn't likely or reasonable. Thank you, you do make a difference
I appreciate that. I'm glad.
As someone who was indoctrinated from birth I am extremely grateful for the work Paulogia and other similar channels do. This is a real honest inquiry.
I love the argument that the gospel writers couldn’t lie because they could be easily fact checked. This entirely misses that Jerusalem and the temple were besieged and destroyed, and the residents scattered, in 70 CE. Good luck finding a handful of witnesses after that without a way to google their phone numbers.
Also, even tradition accepts that most of the gospels were written in other parts of the empire, in an era when traveling from Rome to Jerusalem might take months-not just hopping on a plane.
Thank you!
"This entirely misses that Jerusalem and the temple were besieged and destroyed, and the residents scattered, in 70 CE."
This single fact is the best reason _not_ to believe that the Christians were killed by the Romans for their claim that Jesus was resurrected.
The Christians in Jerusalem up 70 CE to were very likely to also be Jews, and thus very likely to have been killed simply because they were Jews. The Roman legions were famously indiscriminate killers of Jews during the Jewish-Roman war. The legionnaires just didn't care. They likely didn't even speak Aramaic, and just happily killed as many Jews as they were allowed to kill, irrespective of their stated belief, or otherwise, in some Jesus dude.
That was how the historian Flavius Josephus depicts that war.
What blows my mind is that in the age of google and internet and news accessible 24/7 still 20-30% of Americans believe Trump won the 2020 elections.
And this guy thinks people believing a lie in 40 CE Judea is impossible.
Now that I think of it, I wonder if he is among that 20-30%. 🤔
Heck, it took an entire culture 40 years to find their way out of a desert that normal people could walk in about 2 weeks. Travel was different back then.
Its about a month from Corinth to Jerusalem for those who Paul wrote his letter to and even then he only names 2 people Peter and James.
@davidgray6959 Or rather, it didn't, because that story isn't true - as so many stories in and around the bible aren't.
Imbeggar's reasoning is extremely surface-level and simple. It equates to "If we descended from monkeys then why are there still monkeys? Gotcha atheist" Not sure what I was expecting but it was definitely more. Great response Paulogia!
Imbeggar is not trying to convince any non-believers. They are massaging the fragile egos of butts in the pews and applying a salve to any who might have heard simple non-believer rhetoric and began to have doubts.
As a dolphin: Yes, we made this video hehehehehe.
Have another fish.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
Dolphins aren't fish
@@NazotoThey eat fishes.
@@Nazoto Your right! Did you know dolphins are the second most intelligent species on the planet? Right behind mice
Good to view another well thought out and entertaining video. I hope you're able to continue in this way for years to come.
Any chance you can begin releasing podcast versions of your videos again? I love to listen to them on walks and bike rides.
Working on it! Should be back this week.
the whole argument for "plenty of evidence Jesus existed" is also very much dependant on belief. In a hundred/thousand years scholars will have "plenty of evidence" of the existance of Bruce Wayne in the 21st century but that doesnt mean he is real or ever was.
Santa Claus
Christianity is not the belief in the existence of Jesus. It's the belief that he was the son of god (worse, that he was the son of the god of the OT, a god that has nothing, whatsoever, to do with what Christians like to preach) and that he was resurrected. We have very little historical evidence for the real Jesus and absolutely none for the resurrection.
Another elegant, thoughtful and compelling video! Thank you, Paul, for all of your incredible work this year!
That is kind. Thank you
Mr Beggar: about twenty years ago, I got a new role within my employers business. I vaguely knew the head of department (enough to get an occasional 'check this out' email, the precursor to Facebook tagging lol) and within the time it took for me to be called to the office, get the news and return to the factory floor, rumours had started that I got the role because we were having sex.
Twenty years later I still hear that that happened, despite both of us denying it. All because he was gay and I'm bi.
The story of George Washington praying alone at Valley Forge is another such myth. A pastor decades later told someone else that a person told him that they happened to be riding by (in heavy snow) and just happened to see and recognize George Washington praying alone in the snow. There is a famous painting of the incident.
The supporter must believe many things to accept this story.
1. The guy was riding alone in heavy snow, despite armies of both sides in the area.
2. That he saw and recognized George Washington
3. That Washington would go off completely alone from camp despite possible enemy patrols to pray in the snow.
4. That Washington would pray at all like this, despite the well recorded information on his church and religious habits.
This is an obvious fabrication based on wishful thinking and the tellers own bias, again to gain wealth and notoriety like the Betsy Ross story
Talking about embellishment within my lifetime, I've seen it inside a week. I was involved in some community projects one of which was our village Christmas lighting. There was a woman who was being particularly obstructive to our process, constantly complaining and standing in our way. One year a number of the volunteers dropped out at the last minute when we were actually putting the tree in place (and we are talking a very heavy 12m tree). It was cold and wet and it wasn't going well. Luckily some local businesses we knew helped out with some heavy equipment, but it still wasn't easy. Anyway, she turns up with other prune faced friend in tow, and complains that we haven't got the area completely coned off and beacons and whatever else they felt we needed and that she could have fallen down the hole for mounting the tree (the very one that we were lowering this 2 tonne tree into).
Well I snapped at that point, and promptly asked them to go away, promptly, with haste, and several suggestions of what I thought of their opinion. I never got within 2m of one of the woman, though the one I knew better I did know better I got close and tried not to shout about what I thought of her helpfulness to the whole project.
That evening we had a story going round the village, that I had physically thrown the woman (that I didn't get within 2m) into the mounting hole for the tree and had physically assaulted her........ Considering I was extremely well known in the village and everyone knew where I lived and I was quite open to talking to anyone at anytime about doing things for the village only handful of people actually asked me for the real story. And no she never pressed charges
TL:DR a slanging match between two people turned into a full actual bodily harm claim within hours, despite one of the participants never getting close to the other participant and being a well known figure within the village
I can disprove the Christian God in three words: omnipotence, omniscience, incompatible.
Just wanted to share what i say to christians and ect
That’s why they stopped claiming the omnis. Now it’s “maximally” powerful or “maximally” knowledgeable.
Well, I think they're just incompatible with omnibenevolence right?
The only "omni" trait the christian god seems to have is omni-incompetence.
@@G_Demolished I'm not up to date on the latest God patch notes but that just implies so much.
What is outside that maximum. Are there things that not even God knows? What if God's maximum is sufficient for us mortals but insignificant against the scale of the universe? Is the problem of evil/Satan's influence an exploitation of this vulnerability?
Regardless, our fluid understanding of God in the face of his "immutable word" is a solid indication of human invention.
Well done. You unfailingly demonstrate patience in the face of complete nonsense that easily sends me into paroxysms of cursing and spitting.
Das a good ass word
When one starts with getting them to believe in a Santa the groundwork has started.
I agree. As a sportsman I have unlimited patience. When fishing, I can wait hours for a nibble that may never come.
With religious apologists, my patience is very short.
I think it's both the dishonesty and the lack of all encompassing, independent research on their part, that riles me up the most.
"If something sticks with you ... that's god"
Wow. So that means that Avengers: End Game and multiple episodes of Doctor Who are god. Good to know ...
I really didn't get why he said that, it's not a Christian idea at all. Something like that can easily turn into idols and anyone who's read the bible knows how God feels about idols 😬
Ugh. Imagine End Game being your god. Bad call on your part, bro.
@@dolfuny"vibes are god" is a huge aspect of many christian churches, particularly evangelicals.
Sir, your voice of soft spoken rationality has been a huge comfort to me over couple years I have deconstructed my faith. Happy New Year!
👍congrats and happy new year to you too 😊🎉
Thank you very much for breaking down what i would call nonsense from people who dont really think or want to think about what they are talking about. It will most likely lead to our future generations becoming better humans 💚🐢
I'm too doompilled to think humanity will have time to get better, but I'm really glad to have some humans left to hold hands with and comfort each other during religious onslaughts by the very people who are too scared to be caring, but think they have a monopoly on being caring/loving. If one believes in an afterlife, then one cannot be focused on the here and now of it all.
@@yippieskippy2971 As long as we keep thinking and questioning, we'll be alright. I'll hold your hand symbolically during these trying times
Great video Paul! You made many great points that could be elaborated upon further.
OMG HI DEREK.
@@marcomoreno6748 😍😍
This video made me remember a conversation I overheard in the school liberary years back that made me shuckle.
"So christians doesn't believe the big bang created the world, cause you can't get something out of nothing?" "Mmmm" "Then god couldn't have just randomly been there either, he had to have been created, so who made him? And who made the being that made him? And who made that being?". The bell rang at that moment, so I didn't get to hear the rest of their conversation, but it was a enjoyable, random moment.
Yup exactly. Without hyperbole and idiocy religion could not even exist.
You have to undestand that when these people say "evidence", they mean proof. They don't know what evidence means and would argue it to death.
And proof is either a colloquial term as used in spirit distillation or a mathematical term.
I prefer saying, "no meaningful evidence" as a way to acknowledge the more subtle point there. I really don't think most people understand the point of clarifying "no evidence" isn't acknowledgement of possibility but just recognizing the spectrum of what "evidence" itself means. Many will just hear that "no evidence isn't correct" and run with it as an opening to reasonable possibility of whatever they want to be true. That is not how it works either. I think at some point splitting a hair for people that couldn't see the single hair in the first place isn't where one should bother :) Regardless, I always appreciate the precision and hope that more people can as well.
that's good phrasing, yeah.
What do all religious testimonies have in common?
Desperation.
I think its actually appropriate to say there is NO evidence for christianity. There IS evidence CONSISTENT WITH Christianity... im not aware of any evidence FOR Christianity, and I think that's a critical distinction, as it is in forensics.
What could possibly qualify as evidence for a being through whom “all things are possible” or that was “all-knowing”.
@@MarkLeBay Wouldn't you have to be all knowing to know if someone else was all knowing?
@@MarkLeBay that's definitely a problem, as almost ANY state of affairs is consistent with such a being.
@@dbt5224 yeah, that's what pisses me off about presups so much
When humanity moved from tribal society to civilized society there was a need to adapt the various types of cult of the tribal ancestors to something at the image of the new ruling class that distiguish civilised urban development from the other neolithic urban development. No wonder that the top title of Jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords.
I disagree on some schematical details, but you hit the nail on the head. For those further interested I would suggest reading up on other homo species and other cousins of humanity. Race is intertwined with the history of not just Christianity but other religions.
I love how quick Christians are to tell you Jesus is largely accepted as being a real person as a means to boost their claim that Christianity is true... but totally ignore that we have even more solid proof, pretty much beyond all reasonable doubt, that Mohammad was also a real person. Does that make Islam true? Of course not.
"Almost all historians believe that that Jesus was a real person"
"Sure, but most of those historians believe that Jesus was merely a mortal preacher and did not perform miracles or raise from the dead."
"Well, those historians just have an anti-Christianity bias and can't be trusted."
See, historian opinions count when they agree with Christians, but not when they don't.
The author sounds so naive. His argument boils down to, "Isn't it obvious God exists?".
I would tell Iambeggar that we have no idea what the first century Christians actually believed.
Many believed that the end was near... within their own lifetime. Much of the theological contortion in Christianity comes from the fact that the end never came and that it never will.
“When the legend becomes fact, Print the legend.”
it is quite suspicious that i rarely see a christian with one eye missing.
Right?!?
Great video! I love your approach in responding to these types of videos. Levelheaded and rational.
This guy reminds me of my former Christian self when I just BARELY stepped one foot into apologetics and thought I was smart and well-informed..... 😆 boy was I wrong
Yeah, these true believers make the least convincing arguments for their "truths". Just pitiful.
It's almost like Mr Beggar's entire video can be boiled down to "C'mon, guys! Isn't it obvious? Eh? Eh?"
I spin a wet football and demonstrate the water flowing/flying off the surface. I offer it as evidence that the Earth is flat since the seas don't fly off into space. Perhaps this is not the only "evidence" I have.
Have I really presented evidence of the claim I am making? Or have I only actually offered evidence that I don't understand something?
Well, all the religions contradict each other. So yes. I don't believe any one is correct.
I read forum posts regarding the game Cyberpunk 2077 where posters would complain about developers broken promises. With developers in those discussions saying some of those promises were never made.
This guy drips with the same underlying tone of condescension that infects so much of the rest of Christian apologetics. If you question the claims of the gospels, you just don't want to believe.
"instead of labeling positions, let's just present the positions."
Beautiful
I want to give props to the dolphins that made this video. Top notch quality
The dolphins will not be mocked!
Wow. That just completely collapsed at the end. "You can just tell.'
Which is great because I can tell it's bs. Now what? 😆
Do Christians really think the sermon on the mount is so amazing that someone who isn't already in their religion will just immediately think it couldn't have been written by a human hand? Most of it isn't even that great.
I really do sometimes wonder if people like this try applying the same arguments to people like Buddha.
Sure, the story of Jesus has had a global impact over the last two thousand years. Buddhism had a similar impact, if not quite as wide spread, and the same arguments can apply, but he's not going to come to the conclusion that Buddhism and all the stories contained within are true.
Preacher- Your can’t trust mans word only god’s word can be trusted!
Child - Who told you that?
Preacher- It’s in the Bible!
Child - Didn’t men write the Bible?
Preacher- It was divinely inspired!
Child - Who told you that?
Preacher- I’m calling your parents!
Reddit atheist type arguments be like:
Reddit theist rebuttals be like…..
@Jcs57 I don't use reddit plus even if I do that doesn't make your strawman any better
The god description is man made and makes no sense to a thinking person.
This is literally the first time my phone has ever improperly responded to a video saying Google. I'm offended that Google apparently thinks I sound like him
Frankly, it's tiring to hear the careless dishonesty of beggar. It must be nice to know everything about everything and have immovable opinions about the everything which he knows everything about. So cute.
Yes. But realize this, Imbeggar has first led themselves into dishonesty- so they may lie to others without qualm.
Thank for using "begging the question" correctly. It's a very important in discussing God as a causative agent. Love your videos.
Thank you for another year of great polite examination of apologist claims. They're always fun.
Jesus's miracle of the loaves and fishes was a slap in the face to all the people who brought their own lunch.
Well according to the bible none of them brought any food except that one kid (which is kinda insane)
Paul makes me want to be a better atheist.
*Better person.
@@pansepot1490 Well that too.
Which Paul: Paulogia or Paul of Tarsus or both?
@@grepora Paulogia.
I miss these types of Paulogia videos. It was nice to get one at the end of 2023.
Jesus was apparently so imposing, that we have no written evidence of him until decades after his death! Surely that means he must have been God, right?
Another telling thing I've noticed over the years is that when discussing this with Christians, they NEVER bat an eye or object when you say decades "after Jesus's death". Then never ONCE say, "Jesus never died! He ascended bodily into heaven until this very day!" Most Christians keep two sets of books in their mind, but with THAT particular part of the belief, most have forgotten to keep that second set of books.
It always amazes me how easily Christians will fall into the false dichotomy of non-belief vs belief in their personal view of god.
Thanks for everything you do, Paul! Keep it up and we'll be watching!
If one has even an introductory knowledge of historical critiques of Christianity, one should know that the disciples being "sincerely wrong" is a valid argument. Whenever I hear an apologist ignore that fact, I know they are either uninformed or intellectually dishonest. Sadly, I think it is usually the latter.
The Jesus of the Bible sounds like he had schizophrenia to me.
Hey Paul what was the title of thatgraphic novel you wrote about dinos? I'd like to find it and do a review of it for my channel.
Neozoic.
It's weird how he addresses that there were a bunch of other gods with stories of impossible feats before Jesus, but then points to the stories of impossible feats of Jesus and claims imagination can't account for them. So... what about all the other impossible feats of gods? Were those too big for human imagination, or are those all true as well? He misses the point of the similarities between Jesus and other figures, which is that these kinds of religious stories didn't have to be true for them to have appeared and spread around. People can make up anything, and even one year would have been enough time for Paul and "Mark" to have established the core of the Jesus legend based on messianic Judaism and assorted Mediterranean folktales. And he also ignores that Pauline Christianity was intentionally spread to people outside of Jerusalem, to people who weren't there when Jesus lived, who didn't know the disciples, and who apparently believed whatever Paul claimed about Jesus citing only visions and the Prophets as sources. The idea that "it couldn't have been made up" is probably the weakest argument of all.
I think when people question religion, they are questioning ALL religions and ALL gods. In fact, even the most devote religious folks are non-believers towards the thousands of "other" gods humans have worshipped over time. I just disbelieve in one more god than the most devote religious folks.
This is one of those colloquialisms that I wished would go away. Christians are not “atheists” of other gods. You cannot be a theist and an atheist simultaneously because that’s the literal definition of a contradiction. To be a Christian you HAVE to be a theist(someone who believes in the existence of a god), full stop. Them not believing in other pantheons of gods doesn’t make them an atheist. The word atheist is not used to describe a persons believe toward a very specific god, it’s used as a general term to describe someone general position on the god debate in whole. A person does not say “I’m a theist for the Christian god but I’m an atheist for Zeus”. The reason they don’t say that is because atheism refers to a wider, more broad belief on the god question. Being a theist means you believe in one or more gods. So a person who believes in one of more gods but doesn’t believe in Zeus is still a theist. From your view, would this person be a theistic atheist? You realize that term “theistic atheist” is completely nonsensical right?
@thucydides7849 Ok, then I'll say we are all NON-BELIEVERS about almost all of the gods that humanity has ever worshipped. Some of us just go one god further. Better?
@@6862ptc So, you accept the modern definition for the cause of gravity? Does that mean you're actually pretty much a science-denier because you deny the various other explanations for gravity given throughout history? After all, don't science-deniers just deny one extra step than you do?
If you're going to rip of Ricky Gervais, you should at least cite him. And we can see how absurd the line of reasoning actually is when we apply it to something outside of your confirmation bias.
@@angusmcculloch6653 If you think Ricky Gervais came up with that quote you have no business even being in this discussion until you educate yourself a bit. The list of philosophers who have made the "I disbelieve one more god than you" quote is a long one.
The point being it's an argument involving probabilities.
1. There are thousands of gods that were believed in equally throughout history by different cultures
2. Religious people disbelieve in all those gods but one, their own.
3. The probability that all those other gods could be fake and yours are correct is quite small.
Therefore, your most logical belief should be that all gods are equally fake.
As far as your "science denier" argument that accepting the modern definition of the cause of gravity implies science denial because it dismisses various historical explanations for gravity. However, this argument is flawed for several reasons.
1. Accepting a modern scientific understanding of gravity does not equate to denying historical explanations. Scientific progress is characterized by refining and building upon previous theories based on new evidence and insights. When the scientific community adopts a new explanation, it is not a denial of the past but an acknowledgment of the evolving nature of knowledge.
2. Comparing acceptance of the modern definition of gravity to science denial oversimplifies the complexity of scientific discourse. Science denial typically involves rejecting well-established scientific principles without credible evidence. In contrast, accepting the modern definition of gravity aligns with the current scientific consensus supported by empirical observations, experiments, and rigorous testing.
3. The implication that science-deniers and those accepting the modern definition of gravity are both denying one extra step is misleading. Science-deniers often reject well-established scientific principles, whereas individuals accepting the modern understanding of gravity align with the prevailing scientific consensus. The two positions are not symmetrical; one is rooted in evidence-based inquiry, while the other rejects established scientific knowledge without valid reasons.
Finally, your "science-denier" argument does not accurately reflect the nature of scientific inquiry or the distinction between accepting the modern definition of gravity and science denial. It is crucial to recognize the dynamic and iterative nature of scientific progress rather than equating acceptance of contemporary theories with denial of historical perspectives.
@@6862ptc Well, first, you start with a strawman. I never said Gervais was the first. So your first entire little rant there is just a no-go from the start. What I said was that you got it from him. But, if I'm wrong you can tell me what philosopher you got it from. I'll trust you to be honest.
A. That whole syllogism can only work if all gods are equally likely, which you didn't even put as one of your premises, so your syllogism is logically invalid. Next time you do this, you need to include a premise that all gods are equally likely. The problem with that is it's an assertion, so you'll need to develop another premise from which the premise "all gods are equally likely" logically follows.
B. Yes, by definition, accepting the modern explanation for the causes of gravity means you reject, for example, Aristotle's explanation for the causes of gravity. The two claims are mutually exclusive.
C. All that you've done here is asserted that there's a particular process by which you find some things persuasive. In the well-known conundrum, the process can't prove itself true. So you have a process why you think this particular scientific answer is correct and reject all of the ones it replaces. Similarly, a religious person has the process they find one deity's existence persuasive and reject the others.
D. Again, well-established according to a process that you find persuasive but which, again, is logically incapable of proving its own truth. So, all you've done is give a reason *why* you accept certain scientific theories and reject previous ones.
None of that changes the fact that you accept only a few of the many thousands of scientific theories in history as true at any given point in time and reject the others. Now, by the logic you pushed, that should make you almost as much a science denier as other science deniers.
I, of course, would say that argument--like the one you made--is absurd. But, you also opened with a straw man and a rant and missed a necessary premise in your syllogism. So, it seems you have a little trouble controlling your emotions and have probably had elementary courses in logic or philosophy.
Keep going, try to keep a more open mind, and subject your arguments to a bit more critical thinking. Also, make sure to get back to me with the name of the philosopher (and from which work) you picked up the "probability" argument. Outside of that, I don't think there's much reason for you to respond.
Like the line from The Man Who shot Liberty Valance: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Before I watched this video i was a Christian, and afterwards I'm still a Christian😇
It's good to have a strong fantasy life. Enjoy!
@@dguy321 same to you my guy... Same to you.
Good. Nobody is trying to make you no longer Christian. Well not Paulogia at least.
i'm absolutely cackling at his big gotcha being *"IS HE TRUTH?"*
i feel a question like that can only be answered "Mu."
Mu is a Zen concept that roughly means "nothing/empty."
my favorite description of Mu is "un-ask this question."
Answering the title cold: Religion is distinct in my mind from theism. And as a general rule of thumb, religion is fine, so long as 'god/s' are kept out of it.
Religion is shared community, ritual, and values.... Theism is myth pretending to be fact.
I emphatically disagree.
Belief is the acceptance of a claim without evidence.
Faith is the acceptance of a claim despite evidence.
Combine the two and you have a superstition.
Codify the superstition and you have religion.
You can have community, values, and ritual without religion. I can be with a group of people that values giving and celebrates a holiday around the winter solstice… without participating in a religion in any way.
You cannot have religion without disregard for reality.
Disregard for reality is how people earn Darwin awards.
I can’t say this “…. is fine.”
I like your definition, however I tend to see the control over people and the desire for personal gain for the leaders as key components of religions. I tend to think that the community aspects and beliefs happen without religion then religion comes along and distorts it for the gain of the leaders.
@@goosie8207 you described a cult. All cults are religious but not all religions are cults.
This is not how religion is defined, so... no.
@@unduloid are definitions prescriptive or descriptive? Descriptive.
What specifically is wrong with the description I provided…
Or are you just trying to lazy your way to defending your ego?
Wow, that apologetic video really devolves into “believe Christianity based on vibes.”
This is one of your best videos. Very well done.
I am a cousin of a famous athlete of the early 20th century. During his playing days, he was described in some newspapers as being six feet tall.
He was under 5'10.
Myths take no time.
I read years ago that the US president who exceeded all the others in athleticism was the sitting president, and the fact that he was the leading scorer on his college basketball team was offered as evidence. He was never on the team and was never a starter on his tiny private day school's team in the late 1970s.