Reality Is On Our Side | Atheism: Bumping Into Reality | STR University
The real world is thick with evidence for God. Our latest Stand to Reason University course, “Atheism: Bumping Into Reality” explores three ways Atheism bumps into reality. To view the full course, visit https://training.str.org/index/.
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you are sad person living life of lies, I really pity you
Maybe I'm just bitter, but I haven't met one of these type who could represent our ideas honestly so any snark can basically be boiled down to exhaustion. Regardless, debunking time.
"Of all the questions we as human beings ask about what's true, or about what's important, or about what's meaningful, there is no more significant question to answer than this one: 'Does God exist?'"
It's only important if you believe in him. This is basically implying Pascal's Wager, saying without saying that the consequences for not believing are worth equal consideration to the consequences for believing, but we don't base our beliefs on some imaginary consequences your religion could have just made up (That being only one of the many problems with Pascal's Wager). For an atheist, considering the hell your religion is threatening non-believers with is the same as considering every other hell all the other religions threaten us with. Your religion is not unique in that regard, and so the question of whether a God exists or not has grown more meaningless to me the older I get.
"The way you answer that question sets an irrevocable course for everything that follows."
I mean, unless you have a death bed confession of faith. You make it sound like we can't change our minds.
"God's fingerprints so to speak are all around us."
I've heard this before and it was basically substantiated with "look around you" or "this couldn't happen without God, but I won't explain how I came to that conclusion or when I do explain I made several leaps of logic along the way." Hopefully you won't fall into such traps. Edit: You didn't by cleverly not even addressing it. You just threw it out there without ever feeling the need to defend it.
"Details of reality that Christianity can make sense of but atheism cannot."
Yeah atheism isn't designed to explain anything. It's just an answer to the question of belief, "Does a God exist?" and we answer no I don't believe a God exists. Hard to answer details of reality from just that. Fortunately atheists have other unique things we believe in that help us explain reality, but that is separate from our atheism.
"Stand to Reason University."
Maybe it's a slight dig, but what's with all these not real universities calling themselves universities. Separately, it seems kind of like an abandoning of your faith to put on the thin auspices of scientific rigor in order to evidence your religion. PragerU did it with conservatism and now you're doing it with religion.
"I'm here in my wood shop."
It looks nice. I think you'd be a fine carpenter.
"Atheism is the belief that there is no God."
Honestly, I'm disappointed. You failed the first hurdle. Atheism is not the belief there is no God. It is the lack of belief in any God or Gods.
A- without
theos- religion
We are bereft of your religion. This might seem like small peanuts but this is an important distinction to make. One is a positive claim about the lack of existence of God, the other is just denying acceptance of your own claim that a God does exist. What you're describing here is anti-theism.
"The atheist says."
I LOVE that you put "The Atheist" as the speaker of this statement. It's just…. so telling that you didn't bother reading ANY atheist literature in order to back up this claim. You didn't even put work in cherry picking the words of Dawkins or Dillahunty or anyone. I mean you could have probably taken these words from TMM, since they define existence as having location or persistence within space-time, which is basically the same statement. Like, I don't disagree with this statement, but this isn't even within the realm of atheism. This is cosmology.
"It is a standard move by atheists…"
No, this is what we always believed, even if we didn't have the words for it and even if some of us were combative. You're talking about anti-theists. It wasn't a move to avoid the burden of proof as you're implying here.
"I don't think that's honest, because no one writes best selling books about their lack of beliefs."
You do if the thing you lack a belief in has significant influence over the culture you live in. Your religion is kind of incomparable in that regard, in that it seeks to influence culture and politics in such a way that would impede on the rights of those who choose not to believe. Abortion rights, education on evolution, LGBTQ+ rights, etc. As soon as theism goes away, atheism goes with it. If you think a book can't be written about how theism has underserved those who don't believe and has undue influence over politics in America, then I'm sorry, but you just lack imagination. You can make a case for a neutral position of non-belief and if you can make a case, you can write a book.
"They do have a belief about God and it's that he doesn't exist."
Yeah and I get to believe that, but until I make a claim on his existence, you're stuck fighting against this strawman version of atheists that you want them to be, not atheists as they exist in reality. Believing something, and making a claim about something are not the same thing. I can believe God doesn't exist, but I can also say, I don't know whether or not he does, making my claim on him a neutral one of non-belief, not a positive one about how he doesn't exist. Basically, I get to live my life as if he doesn't exist and I don't have to make a single argument to defend that.Edit: I worded this confusingly. It's just easier to say, he's wrong here and we don't have a positive claim on a God. I don't believe he exists is the most accurate way of portraying my beliefs. The argument I was trying to make is that beliefs and claims are not the same thing but I don't have the right words for it yet.
"Don't be caught by that trick."
It's not a trick.
"God is the best explanation for the way things are."
Mmmh no I'd say he's the most comfortable explanation. Because saying God did it simultaneously explains nothing so there's nothing to think about, it validates your religion so you feel good, and it eliminates the uncomfortable position of not having an answer getting rid of any anxieties about the world you live in. It's the most popular answer until we discover how things actually work. God of the Gaps.
"Explanatory Power."
Mmh, you more or less got this one right. A shame you didn't have a bit on falsifiability as that's pretty important to the whole process so that we don't believe all sorts of ridiculous things the imagination could conjure up.
"A strategic insight."
You keep using words like strategy and such like you have to employ tactics as if every interaction between a theist and atheist is a debate where you're trying every angle to convert them. I don't know that seems a bit…. dishonest.
"We have a powerful ally. We have reality on our side."
I thought you were going to say God, for real. But hey I look forward to you proving it.
"If Christianity is true, then it is an accurate view of reality."
Not to be snarky or anything, but this is a tautology. Basically what you said here is "If my view of reality is true, then it is an accurate view of reality."
ChatGPT 4:
In the excerpt provided, the speaker, Greg, discusses his views on truth, its accessibility, and its relation to factual claims. Here's a critique of his positions, focusing on factual errors, logical inconsistencies, and areas of ambiguity:
1. **Equating Truth with Fact**:
– Greg begins by simplifying truth to "statements of fact," which aligns with a correspondence theory of truth—that truth is what corresponds to the facts or reality as it is. However, this simplification overlooks the complexities involved in philosophical definitions of truth, such as the coherence theory (truth as coherence among a set of beliefs) and pragmatic theory (truth as what works or is practically effective). His reductionist view could mislead listeners into ignoring these other valid perspectives.
2. **Empirical Verification of Truth**:
– He argues that truths are empirically verifiable and that if we couldn't verify them, "we would be dead in a day." This position implicitly supports a form of empiricism or verificationism, which is a stance that limits truth to what can be empirically verified. However, this approach excludes types of knowledge that are widely regarded as true but are not directly observable or testable, such as mathematical theorems or moral truths.
3. **Relativism and Self-Refuting Statements**:
– Greg critiques the notion that "truth is relative" by posing rhetorical questions that intend to show such statements as self-refuting. This is a commonly used logical argument against relativism; however, it oversimplifies the discussion about cultural and epistemic relativism, which can offer substantial insights into how different societies or frameworks construct and understand truth.
4. **Misuse of "Self-Evident" Truths**:
– He claims that certain truths are "self-evidently true," particularly regarding cosmological arguments about the universe's origin. Asserting that it is self-evidently true that "something cannot come from nothing" applies a metaphysical assumption universally, without acknowledging that this is a point of significant debate in philosophy of science and metaphysics. His use of "self-evident" is misleading because it suggests there is no reasonable counterargument, which is not the case.
5. **Confidence and Certainty in Beliefs**:
– Greg distinguishes between being certain and being correct. He rightly notes that one can be certain yet wrong, reflecting the philosophical distinction between psychological certainty and epistemic justification. However, his subsequent discussions sometimes conflate the two, particularly when discussing cosmological beliefs, which weakens his overall argument.
6. **Verificationism and Its Critiques**:
– By emphasizing that truth must be verifiable, Greg aligns with verificationism, which he critiqued in earlier excerpts. Verificationism is criticized for being self-refuting—the statement "a claim is meaningful only if it can be empirically verified" cannot itself be empirically verified. Greg does not address this inherent contradiction in his argument.
7. **Application to Ethical and Religious Truths**:
– He suggests that the same tests applied to empirical truths can be applied to "ethical concerns, religious concerns, details about God and about Jesus," which is controversial. Many philosophers argue that religious and ethical truths operate within different paradigms of understanding and verification than empirical truths about the physical world. Greg's assertion that religious beliefs can be known in the same way as empirical facts oversimplifies complex debates about faith, belief, and knowledge.
8. **Overlooking Non-Empirical Forms of Knowledge**:
– His framework does not adequately account for a priori knowledge (knowledge justified independently of experience), such as logic and mathematics, which do not conform to his criteria for truth but are essential foundations of empirical science itself.
Greg's discourse is rooted in a pragmatic and somewhat empiricist view of truth but needs a more nuanced approach to address the complexity of truth across different domains. His arguments could be strengthened by acknowledging the validity of other types of knowledge and truth, particularly in non-empirical fields.
Christianity best incorporates and explains our experience of the world and our own existential experience. Christianity takes logic seriously, and, indeed, grounds logic. Christianity is the most rational of religions, and therefore it can be recommended as superior to all other religious beliefs.
Here are some additional resources to help you better understand our position:
Why Would God Be the Best Explanation for the Existence of the Universe?
https://rsn.pub/3S8f26K
Christianity Is the Best Explanation for the Problem of Evil
https://rsn.pub/49k8bPn
Why God Is the Best Explanation for the Existence of Objective Morality
https://rsn.pub/4aYYVBb
Christianity as the Best Explanation
https://rsn.pub/3S7MZ7K
Atheism Isn’t Simply a Lack of Belief
https://rsn.pub/3HRlUkg
What Everyone Knows about Reality, Even the Atheist
https://rsn.pub/3HNmb7M
This dude is terribly misinformed. I am a very happy and accomplished human, with a happy and healthy family and relationships. Your god doesn't have a place in this. Not to mention all the science contradicting these geniuses.
Goddess Kali is not convinced 😂
….except there is absolutely no evidenc of "God's finger prints being everywhere". Funny how Physics, Chemistry, and Biology that is the culmination of the two do just fine without any apparent Devine Intervention.
Dad, how do we know god (Yahweh) exists? He is the best explanation for the way things are.
Dad, how do we know Zeus exists? He is the best explanation for the way things are.
Dad, how do we know Thor exists? He is the best explanation for the way things are.
You can apply it to every god because there is neither logic nor direct evidence showing the existence of any gods.
objective evil isent a thing and pretending otherwise is intellectually dishonest. whats good an evil is something we decide as society and doesn't need religion to explain since if everyone raped, murdered, and stole from there own it would cause more problems then it solves so even shitty people obey the laws of the land enough that they dont get ostracized by the greater community
I am god, prove me wrong.
Right out of the gate, this guy is objectively wrong. Atheism is not a belief that there is no personal god. That is not the definition of the word. Atheism isn't a belief in anything. Its actual definition is "The absence of a belief in a deity." It's the lack of a belief in a personal god. Of course, this is much trickier to "defeat" in an argument, so he builds a strawman right up front. Typical.
Additionally, atheism does not make any claims. It can't, because it's not a belief system or philosophy to begin with, so there's nothing to house any assertions. Again, all "atheism" means is a lack of a belief in a god or gods. That's it. It's from this point that many have made the observation, "Even the most devout religious person you can find is an atheist with regard to the other thousands of gods that have been proposed throughout human history aside from their own. The only difference is that atheists simply take it one god further." You believe in one only and no others. We believe in zero. You'd think we'd be able to find common ground, if only by that one commonality alone.
He also speaks as if atheism is comprised of a group. More evidence that he simply either completely misunderstands the concept of a lack of belief, or he is guilty of what he accuses "atheists" of and is simply being intellectually dishonest. Yes, people have written books about a lack of a belief in a god or gods. There's a slew of them. But they're not the Bible, so I guess they're probably not worth reading, right, guy?
Hypocritical, reductionist, dishonest, absolutist, dogmatic, polarizing… this guy is an embodiment of everything that's given Christians and other monotheists a bad rap.
If this guy believes that God simply and obviously is without explanation, why is it to him even worth discussing? Are the evil atheists trying to TAKE something from him?
"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for." – Douglas Adams
Is this guy honestly saying "as mankind, the only two options we can fathom is that either an almighty man made everything… or we 'came from nothing….. and therefore God made us?"
That's like saying the sun must move around the earth since we can't prove otherwise.
"Where did all this stuff come from if an almighty man didn't make it so."
This is how a child thinks. Are you honestly chuckling at atheists for not accepting that "God obviously exists because he just obviously does?"
It's strange to me that videos like this even exist. Why do Christians (singling them out due to the nature of the video) feel as though they need a strategy to defend their beliefs against atheism? Part of the video even says that the best answer is the right answer (which I do not believe is true but rather the answer that has the most evidence of and most repeatable most likely is, even then…) and the "best" and most logical answer requires leaps of logic to be "defeated". Why must they put so much effort into defeating someone else's belief as justification for their own. That is an illogical way to prove anything.
To me this has nothing to do with atheists and is only a big helping of kool aid.
If gods exists then you are happy to support his immorality? Do you support genocide, slaver, owning people as property, women marrying their rapist, keeping young virgin girls for the spoils of war(that is sexual rape and slavey BTW), incest of Noah's family to repopulate the world after the genocide, putting to death unruly children, people who work in the Sabbath or homosexuals? Etc
Are these the morals we should expire to upholding? Because these are the morals that god upholds and supports.
Do you really want this type of god to be the one true god?
Science can't find God because he is imaginary, the only place he exists is in your head.
Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, and the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough – I call it the one immortal blemish on the human race.
If you suppose that we live in "god's world" than their must be a conflict between "atheism" and "reality". But if we don't live in "god's" world the conflict lies between "religion" and "reality". And if we live in "another god's" world both "your religion" and "atheism" are in conflict to "reality". Except if it's a god who doesn't care about humans, the earth or the universe, he would be undistinguishable from "no god".
So, what is it? And how can we test and proof/disproof it?
"God" is NEVER the best explanation for anything in reality.
i've always found is pathetic how they don't understand that throwing out name god answers nothing.
it's a literal non-answer. no explanatory power.
repeating it doesn't add any credibility in any context.
Nope, nope and more nope. "God did it" explains NOTHING. You are no wiser with "god did it" than you are without it.
Nothing but opinion…opinion…opinion
Hey, Greg, if your deity is the best explanation for anything how about you explain the mechanisms that it has ever used to do anything in objective reality. How does your deity do anything objectively real? What particles and forces does it use and how does it use them? How do you know anything that it does? How do you measure its effect on anything? How do you uniquely attribute anything that happens to it?
I submit that your deity exists only subjectively, in your mind and your mind alone. There isn't anything that your deity actually is an explanation for, let alone the best explanation.
I reckon we need to look at the word 'know'. If a god is, as described by Christians, beyond time and space, than I argue that no one can 'know' a god exists. In order to say know a person needs to be able to show that knowledge to other people. Given belief is such an important word in religions, and belief and knowledge are not the same, then I suggest that no one knows if a god exists. Rather we have the state that some of so not believe one exists and other do.
the effect is that all believers are agnostic – since they lack direct knowledge – and atheists are also agnostic but take that lack of knowledge to say that they cannot believe in a god. I am the later and take it that, since I have not seen ant evidence of a god, I don't believe in one.