Greg Koukl: How to Respond to a Hardcore Agnostic
Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason answers the question, “How do you respond to hardcore agnostics who are radically skeptical of all religion and unwilling to make a decision?”
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What in the world is a "radical skeptic?" A person is unconvinced until they become convinced. What does 'extreme unconvinced' look like? And hardcore agnostic… "I'm not just unsure, I'm incredibly unsure!!"
Total non-sequitur demonstrating a lack of understanding of metaphysics and epistemology.
I love seeing the Plato book in the background.. one of the first (if not the first) to bring up the morale argument 😅 (against protagoras)
The last statement "if you are going to be intellectually honest", it's the key statement, because unfortunately, many people don't want to be truly intellectually honest, but only kind-of intellectually honest, or straight out dishonest (and you can see it in the comments section).
Many people don't care about truth, they believe whatever they want to believe, illuding themselves that to believe something to be true, makes it actually true..
And skeptics replying with "But Christianity has no evidence, there is no evidence for God's existence, the Bible is not reliable and it contradicts itself, it's wishful thinking, it's blind faith, etc etc etc", proves exactly Greg's point: those skeptics are either ignorant of the evidence for God or Christianity, or they believe something false about it or misunderstand it, or they think the evidence it's not satisfactory or enough or that God should make Himself more obvious (which is a logical fallacy, called "personal incredulity fallacy").
Glad if this helped, God bless!
I totally agree!
You're agnostic regarding which rugby team is the best? goodness gracious.
This is just meaningless word play. Sorry, Greg
Empty talking from proffessional believer , saying nothing .
Yes we are very skeptical of 2000 year old claims of miracles and resurrections written down 40-90 years after the events by anonymous authors who spoke a different language than the actual eye witnesses would and are at best 4th hand accounts. Question: why aren’t you????
Your opinions of their level skepticism dont make them wrong or you right just cause you feel differently you discredit any points they do make to justify your own it seems
You realize how crazy you sound
I feel sorry for these lost souls
I truly do.
Greg, have you ever argued someone into the kingdom?
Greg Koukl—-you are the kind of person who pretends to be smart. Your job is keep Christians from walking away. First, skepticism is not a point of view—it is a reaction. And being skeptical is not the problem—you are. You are skeptical of anything you don’t believe at first. Since you present no evidence for God, and then you expect someone to believe in God just because you say he’s real, and if they don’t you have to go after their skepticism rather than doing your job of presenting evidence. Now, you would say next that there’s lots of evidence for God, however, you just say it but don’t present it. Any evidence that theists try to present is anecdotal, arguments from ignorance, feelings, thoughts, and of course the Bible—none of these things are evidence. If I tried to get you to believe in a different religion using your tactics-you would be skeptical of it. Then I should say that you don’t even understand your own skepticism—sound familiar? You can’t draw a conclusion from a presupposition like you do when you simply assume that there is a god and then try to tune up someone’s perspective so that they will share your misconception.
Bottom line——it doesn’t matter what a skeptic, agnostic, or atheist thinks, feels or believes—you should be able to present evidence for your god regardless. If your god is so real, then it shouldn’t be so hard to prove him now should it? The fact that God needs books and preachers and desperate apologists like yourself to speak for him, and he cannot speak for himself, ever, is pretty good evidence that he does not exist. And you would say the same thing about any other god. So stop going after the skeptics and go after yourself and ask yourself: “how come I can’t prove God?”
I think its ridiculous to think that the most extreme skepticism would lead one to believe that a man died 2000 years ago and then rose from the dead. I also don't think the base claims undergirding that claim are much better either. At a base default level, the truth claims of Christianity are not much better than any other religion which is why agnostics exist in the first place.
To be fair I think you can say that there are unfalsifiable concepts like a deistic God that you cannot know.
But of course, as with Russels teapot, you can act as if they don’t exist while acknowledging the possibility it may exist
It’s amazing how many people think this type of skepticism makes them “erudite”. LOL.
Agnosticism is the view that the nature of existence or non existence of god is probably unknown and unknowable nothing can be known about existence or non existnce of god because we all have limited minds we are bilogical beings then state that how can we if there is a god exists or not we dont have any evidence on existence and non existence of god they are more rational being thats why we cant prove nor disprove god
Agnostic and atheists are more intelligent than believer
Agnostic asks questions they are logical rational they are skeptical okkk
Amen. Nice insight.
Glory to God.
Great analysis. Thanks for breaking it down. This can be used in so many arguments and situations.
Good argument, my friend.
Excellent video!
you don't respond, Romans 1. you live out your life reflecting the way Christ live and that can move their heart or cannot
Your teachings are amazing!!!!! I'm taking notes.
Skeptics do not necessarily think that religious claims are false. They merely claim that the religious claims have not met their burden of proof.
Importantly, being an agnostic does not mean that there is a 50/50 chance of theism being correct or incorrect. It does NOT mean being a fence-sitter.
Agnostic simply means not knowing for certain. Just as we are all agnostic about there being life on Mars. We don't KNOW either way if there is life on Mars, so we are agnostic about knowledge of life on Mars since there is little compelling evidence to think that there is life there.
Agnostic=don't know.
Good points as always, Greg!
Also, why don't people come to Jesus? We read: "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil." —John 3:19
Most arguments/debates are just 2 people talking past each other, each with different definitions of logic. Unless you can actually agree on what constitutes logic, you are both wasting your time.
This is a circular answer.
Enjoyed this very much. I've got nothing against agnostics but I think he's right. Cleverish indeed.