a video from a famous youtuber, CHALLENGES ATHEISTS!
Posted on: January 21, 2007 - 2:31pm
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a video from a famous youtuber, CHALLENGES ATHEISTS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiVH-57Okyo
i had to repost a video i already made for a preacher for this guy's misunderstanding of atheism, but if he accepts it as a response, i'll make another one for the other points he made. anyway, i hope other people get involved. he seems like a nice guy, and it's hard to find nice smart people on youtube that are challenging atheists atm.
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Ignorant guys like this are a dime a dozen. We have to disprove a negative and doing something illogical will prove we are logical? Pure stupidity. If god is a green smurf and all smurfs are blue so I have to disprove the existence of a green smurf when no such smurfs exist then I have faith there isn't this green smurf which has never been shown to exist. I don't see where people have faith in something that isn't real, never has been real nor has ever been shown to be real.
Faith is the belief in something contrary to evidence. For us to have faith in a god we'd have to reject the evidence for the god and believe that evidence isn't real. Problem is, there is no evidence so by definition we can't have faith.
Christians believe their god resides on a mountain and Moses went up that mountain to talk to that god. We can go up that mountain today and see there are no gods. The Bible describes him as physical in nature bearing a face so there would be something to see up there. So if we go up there and see nothing the theist can conclude we don't have any evidence because we didn't find any. How can we have evidence of nothing? We can't.
So the theist's youtube challenge is illogical as it is impossible. It is entirely impossible to prove the non-existence of something that doesn't exist. Since there is no god we can say we have faith in nothing but that would conclude that we have no faith thereby supporting and rejecting the youtube theist's position at the same time, another cat in the box if you will.
He's attacking strong atheism and has missed out on an easy defeat to his argument.
If defining atheist as "No God" but defining agnostics as not atheist, you fail to see that agnostics have "no god" if you define them as something other than a theist. So his challenge applies to all of the agnostics who are "withholding judgement" and therefore lack a belief in a god, and are in fact atheists. (scary word syndrome)
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I agree that he has missed the point slightly - you can for example have an agnostic theist - but I also see the point he is trying to make. Personally I don't believe in a God in the traditional sense but I do believe tat there is an underlying order and unity to the Universe which we can't prove yet. So I guess that makes me an agnostic atheist.
"The World is my country, science my religion" - Christiaan Huygens
Why would you call "underlying order and unity" god or attribute it to a diety, snafu?
here's a nother very interesting response by an educated MUSLIM! ver y interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq-OKKlJ0mk
i just didnt wanna make another post for this, hope that's ok.
and paul has some interesting comments and corrections to hi video (pdoemon is an atheist)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6zkn8IcRHw
i've also been having to make some interesting videos lately. heh. youtube is fun.
hey uhhh you guys should make like, rationaltube. heh.
I also want to mention, that the coin in the safe logic is flawed. A coin being in that safe is possible, and perfectly reasonable. But that isn't what it's like to hear a christian preaching. Now if he had said, there is a 3-ton elephant in that safe, then I can say, no, there is no 3-ton elephant in your safe WITHOUT looking inside. I base my assumptions on what I know of the natural world, and god doesn't fit inside my lil red safe.
Bravo. Law of Non-Contradiction. Any argument or proposition that contradicts logic is false by definition.
1. The definition of atheism is crucial in the video. I dislike the use of even using a word like atheism because it is so broad and can be defined in so many ways, and can thus be misunderstood, thereby creating false philosophical problems. In sum, "atheism" does not mean: "I KNOW that there is no possible intelligent being that created or governs the workings of the universe that is logically non-contradictory." In the context that most atheists on the RRS forums define atheism, we mean two things:
A) Atheism means we do not BELIEVE in God, NOT that we KNOW God does not exist. Knowledge and Belief are two different things, and the maker of that video takes atheism to be a statement of knowledge, not belief. I say that I am an atheist because I do not BELIEVE in God. Whether or not such a God exists, we do not necessarily make a statement of epistemelogical knowledge, we make a statement of disbelief. That is, while I don't KNOW if a "GOD" exists, I do not BELIEVE it to exist. I base this on probability in that I believe there is a higher probability that God does not exist than God does exist and that secondly, and even if he were to exist, his existence is not germane or relevant to MY existence. I do not see any possible definition of God that is logically non-contradictory that would render such a God's existence as something that affects my life.
B) I am a strong atheist on Christianity. I know Christianity is false, just as I know Islam is false, Hinduism is false, Zoroastrianism is false, and Judaism is false. I claim incontrovertible, ironclad, infallible knowledge that all of these religions is false. Evidence? All of these religions posit Gods with logically contradictory properties and concepts.
When I say that I am an atheist regarding Christianity, I mean something different than my "atheism" with respect to a non-descript deistic God. I claim KNOWLEDGE that Christianity is false because of logical contradiction via the not fitting an elephant into a 6 inch by 6 inch safe analogy. In the video and even some responses to the video, theists will claim "God is beyond logic." NO. Nothing is beyond logic. Not even God. Nothing can have contradictory properties. It cannot be 12:00 am and 12:00 pm in one time zone simultaneously. Simply because something might exist in the "spirit world" (which I don't think exists) does not give it a "free pass" to escape the laws of logic.
Mathematics would be true in the spirit world just as they are in the real world. Logic is the same too. No matter what world we are talking about, math and logic are primary in ALL possible worlds. There is no possible world in which 1+1 does not equal 2. Likewise, there is no possible world in which something can be logically contradictory.
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Thus, I said before that I do not like defining atheism or really even using the word because it causes confusion.
At the heart of this whole problem are two questions:
1. Do you KNOW a proposition is false?
2. Do you BELIEVE that there is a strong but uncertain probability that a proposition is false, thereby rendering it irrelevant to your life?
With respect to Christianity, I answer YES to both questions.
With respect to a deistic logically non-contradictory God that has not been described properly by any religious tradition, I answer NO to the first question and yes to the second.
Any quibbling over terminology is a waste of time, because it boils down to these two questions.
What would the producer of the video in question have to argue with me if faced with this response? I doubt he would have anything to say.
In my experience, most people on this forum would anser the above two questions similarly.
If not, I would be interested.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
I read these two posts and I get the impression that words have no meaning. People are saying it all depends on how you define atheism and the youtube guy defined it in an unfair or improper manner.
And in the first quoted post we're also told that agnostics are really atheists. I suppose if i visited a theist website they'd be telling me that since agnostics are not atheists they are really theists.
The proper agnostic response to the claims of both atheism & theism is silence. The agnostic has nothing to say to either of these positions as they concern the existence of god or possibility of revelation.
But when the atheists bandy about and tell the world they are the paragons of Reason... the agnostics can speak to that position. Suffice it to say... atheism is not the most reasonable position available to man as man. (But maybe my definition of atheism is inadequate.)
Is there nothing to be said for the fact that atheists act on this belief? This active effort to go around spreading unbelief... it's a statement that is positive. If you don't know... and you act as if you don't know... then you are silent on the question, and act as a responsible agnostic. If you don't know ... and you act as if you know... then you are making a positive statement... and the world sees your belief... does the world minunderstand your belief for knowledge? Perhaps that is not your responsibility.
But you do act... despite the dissembling in the above quote... as if you know... when you claim to not know. I'm not sure how that squares with reason.
If religion existed in thought alone, you would be absolutely right in everything you are saying. Religion is not, unfortunately, just a thought-process within the brain. Religion reaches out and affects the world, and in the view of most atheists it does so in quite a negative way. How can one not act when faced with such circumstances?
What's more, it's a matter of probability. I don't know there are no unicorns, but that does not make me an agnostic about unicorns. I would not sit silently if someone proclaimed the existence of unicorns. Are you saying that you would? If someone lived their life as though vampires were real, would you not say anything to convince them otherwise simply because you can't prove with absolute certainty that vampires do not exist?
But what we're talking about here is Atheism as a counter religion to religion. B/c it's a belief that is spread into the world out of the minds of believers. If there's no evidence for either position then how can we be truly 'rational' while spreading belief?
What I am to understand is that reason compels us to action b/c theists are doing things and thinking things with which we disagree. But all we can offer them is a new myth. However, it's a myth that dresses in the clothing of reason and skepticism. And that clothing (often) prevents us from seeing it for what it is.
But the question of god is a bit more complicated than the question of unicorns and vampires. We live on the earth, that is also said to be the realm of unicorns and vampires. We can examine the earth and its creatures to attempt to discover more about both.
God understood as the creator of the universe is necessarily outside of the universe and will not likely yield to examination. And if we were to posit the existence of God he, as the creator of the universe and as the author of the laws of nature would be above both. Would the author of reason be above reason? Put differently, would man's reason be adequate to come to an understanding of something that created both the universe, and reason?
We live in a "whole" that we did not create. That is something we know for certain... and we cannot forget that if we seek to be reasonable. It stands to reason that it will be very difficult for us to come to a full understanding of "the whole". But in knowing that it is very unlikly that we will come to understand the whole, we know something about the whole... that being its inscrutable character.
But modernity has fooled us. And positivism makes atheism appear to be reasonable.