In this video, I answer seven questions that I received while role-playing an atheist at a Christian High school. This video includes my REAL thoughts on the existence of Jesus, the multiverse, prophecy, and more. It is from the recent video titled “A Christian Role-Plays an Atheist to a Group of Christians.”
BOOKS MENTIONED:
1. Evidence that Demands a Verdict: https://amzn.to/3f5ue18
2. The Return of the God Hypothesis: https://amzn.to/3fdO4qW
3. Is God Just a Human Invention? https://amzn.to/3uGu1bf
Time Stamps
0:00 Intro
1:04 The Existence of Jesus
2:51 The Multiverse
5:14 The Emergence of a Mind
7:06 Prophecy of Jesus’ Birth
9:41 Jesus is the Standard for Love
12:35 Jesus is the Standard for Morality
14:33 Evidence for the Resurrection
VIDEOS MENTIONED:
1. Interview with Stephen Meyer (Return of the God Hypothesis): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV-FSYQiE5s
2. Is the Christian God a Genocidal Bully? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW12NwudLHc
3. How Archaeology Supports the Bible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_k4noV95kk
4. What is the Evidence for the Soul? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD7OCHl1odA
*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)
*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)
*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)
FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell
TikTok: @sean_mcdowell
Instagram: @seanmcdowell
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If you were actually trying to represent atheist, you should have answered with an "I don't know" to some of the questions. Atheist don't claim to know everything, and actually try to get to truth and not knowing isn't a weakness. Atheism is just the answer to 1 single question: ¿Are you convinced that a god exists? – No, I'm not convinced. That's it.
To be honest: I don‘t take the multiverse as an answer to fine tuning, but am still a little offended, because of what you said about it.
How is an intelligent God the simpler answer, when we then have to go into why he designed it that way, how he designed it that way, his nature, etc., which would all be part of the same question? The multiverse theory might be harder to grasp, but so is nature in general (try to explain a child how lightning, and thunder work, and ask if it was harder to understand than Santa Claus).
You know that bread is designed, and that‘s why you ask who made it. You don‘t know that the universe is designed, so why would you ask who made it? Physicists, and philosophers both come to the conclusion that in an infinite universe / in an infinite amount of universes, everything that could possibly happen will happen. We are beings that are possible. So in an infinite multiverse without a god, we would necessarily still happen.
Sorry if I come of brash, but this really bothered me. I hope the rest of the video will be good.
I think your goal was good, but the role playing is not the way to do it properly.
Hi Sean. I want to commend you for your intelligent discourse and politeness with skeptics. I've have watched many of your videos but only the portion of this video, the part when you talk about Bible prophecy and Jesus being born in Bethlehem. I do some studying of apologetics, not much really, but enough to know that the skeptics do not argue that Jesus lied about his place of birth, at least I've never heard that argument. The prevailing argument is the earliest writings from Paul and Mark do not know anything about Jesus being born in Bethlehem. It was Luke who later inserted the Bethlehem story into his gospel knowing Jesus needed to be born in Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy. You "straw man" the skeptics point of view instead of "steel man", in other words you did not address the actual skeptic argument but a weaker argument that you could easily discredit which makes me less likely to trust you on other matters. I hope in the future you steel man the skeptics arguments if you want to be seen as a reliable and creditable apologist. For anyone interested here is a link to the actual skeptic point of view… https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-jesus/2013/09/26/b08e8272-1c98-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_story.html
There's no historical evidence of Jesus.
Who is that brother James? Was Mary not a virgin? How many brothers or sisters did Jesus had? Why aren't they mentioned in the scriptures?
But most importantly: it doesn't matter if a guy named Jesus, pretending to be the son of God, ever existed.
If we could prove he didn't (we can't) that would invalidate the scriptures.
But proving the existence of a guy named Jesus who died thinking he was sent by God wouldn't prove his claims where true. There have been a lot of people pretending to be of divine origin, there's still a lot nowadays. That doesn't make their claims true.
Not sure why people are so upset at your video, I thought you did a good job portraying athiest viewpoints honestly.
Sean, thank you!!!!
How do you know the universe is "fine tuned"? We have no way of knowing how much latitude (if any) there is in any of the physical laws and constants. And proposing an intelligent creator is NOT a simple answer. You have zero explanation for how IT originated, where it resides, what it is composed of and by what means it created a "fine tuned" universe. Those are pretty big gaps in your explanation. In fact they are at least as big and probably a whole lot bigger than a universe that came into existence by itself from nothing. And there is one final really, really big problem with your creator hypothesis. Have you ever considered how fine tuned a creator would have to be in order to be able to create such a fine tuned universe? You have solved nothing. You have merely shifted the problem under the guise of having solved it. This is not even an impressive attempt at solving the problem. It is merely an impressive attempt to pretend you have. And the multiverse is merely a possible explanation for what we perceive (through our biased eyes) to be an explanation for the universe we inhabit. It is not proven and science makes no claims that it is. By the way, bread makers and universes have little in common.
As far as consciousness is concerned, we do actually have a physical candidate to explain it. It resides in the human skull and its origin can be explained by evolutionary theory. There are good reasons why having consciousness aids survival and reproductive success. Your grand assertion that there is no explanation how it could come from what you call “dead matter” is merely words strung together with no evidence to support it, no matter how forcefully you express it. Sure there is much we don’t know. It is hard to perform experiments on the human brain, because most people are rather fond of their brains and don’t like them being experimented on. Claiming consciousness as deriving from a non physical “soul” is utter nonsense. You have zero evidence for such a thing. Again, you are focusing on one of the big unsolved mysteries of science and pretending to offer an explanation. Come to think of it this is standard procedure for Christian apologists. While I usually prefer to stick with facts, I will stray a bit here and offer an opinion. This is not even impressive logic. It is as weak as water and actually borders on, if not actually being, dishonesty.
And then you commit the next apologist’s sin. Claiming that “everything came about by accident” is merely using a straw man argument, which is a pretty low intellectual tactic to employ. Before you go about misrepresenting the non-theistic view any further, here is the truth.
(1) the universe may have come about by chance or perhaps it was inevitable. Nobody knows. We can not do any experiments on the NOTHING from which the universe may have arisen for the simple reason that we do not have any of it on which to perform observations or experiments.
(2) life probably did come about by a chance event resulting in self-replicating molecule. Life is a chemical process and chemicals can and do actually get formed by natural chemical processes on planets. Nobody yet knows exactly how it happened, but progress is being made by a few researchers working on shoestring budgets. And before you shout down “chance”, be aware that chance is a known natural phenomenon, which is a whole lot more than can be said for a supernatural creator manipulating atoms, by means unknown, here on our tiny speck of cosmic dust. And the universe is a big place (like really, really, really big and then some – we don’t even know how big). Life only had to arise by chance once on one planet i.e. ours.
(3) once life has started, Darwinian evolution by natural selection explains (no need to pretend otherwise) the diversity of life we see on our planet today. You seem pretty confused about how human emotions like “love” can come about. Love (like ALL human emotions) evolved because it had an evolutionary adaptive advantage. And likewise you are clueless about “human value”. I suggest you read Dawkin’s book “The Selfish Gene” which explains the genetic origin of altruism.
I wont comment much on morality, other than to say that I hope Christians do not claim some kind of monopoly on morality, because I can produce plenty of evidence that you do not. In fact in my opinion (ok, just another opinion, I admit) it is immoral to lie to people (especially small children) about such things as gods, heaven, eternal life, souls, hell (especially) etc, particularly when one is making a living conning people out of their money when doing so.
You are obviously a smart guy, but you are sadly misled (like so many) by the nonsense that has been inculcated in your mind by people and institutions that I see as immoral. I don’t think I can be any clearer.
How to debunk atheism 101: Post yourself as a athiest and put a set a arguments, then debunk those arguments yourself. Now atheism is defeated. 😂
Think for a second about the Atheist child in that school who finnaly thought his or her position was being treated and presented with respect and honesty.
What a cruel unnecessary act and no matter your intent it will always be a dishonest representation.
I was curious how Sean would answer these questions from a Christian perspective, but as an atheist I feel like I have heard these responses before. Especially regarding the multiverse, appealing to "simplicity" (which William Lane Craig likes to do) is really not how you determine if something is true or not. We use simplicity as a guide when we have two competing theories that explain the same evidence, but at the moment, we don't have any evidence for God or the multiverse. They're just hypotheses. There are tons of things in our world that are horrendously complex and yet the evidence shows they are true; in fact there are many equations describing matter at the subatomic level that can not be solved, we can only guess at the solutions or make approximations. I'm sure it would have been easier to say Zeus created lighting at some point too, but that didn't turn out to be true did it? It was the physics involving static electricity discharging from clouds, which when you analyze the chemistry and physics is fairly complicated.
And as for needing some explanation, the problem is you can apply the same question to God. And if you claim that God is somehow "eternal" and does not need a cause, then that just sounds like special pleading. Why is it possible for a conscious designer not to require any cause, while any other nonconscious phenomenon which may have created the multiverse (or the multiverse itself) must require a cause?
With respect to morals being objective…all I have to say is there is no real evidence for that. Appealing to your emotions is, I think by definition, a logical fallacy. Just because I feel something is true doesn't mean it really is true, and just because I feel something is bad doesn't mean it is universally bad, in the same way that just because I like one flavour of ice cream it doesn't mean everyone else should like that flavour as well.
I think I'll let the historians argue about Jesus' resurrection though :).
Wow. What horrible arguments, lackluster logic, and ignorance of epistemology.
Of course, if the professor was sincere, he would have gotten an actual atheist to speak.
Messiah just means saviour. If you look throughout history and the bible there have been many Messiahs. Only one, however, was not a jew.
I am an atheist if you going to pretend to be an atheist ask these type of questions when you're in church why does God love to kill babies and infants when he doesn't have to why does God endorse slavery and teaches you how to beat your slave and why doesn't God cure cancer actual questions
this is kind of weird. Why do you pretend to be an atheist? And why the fuck do you have your intro music volume that high? I dont care what you belive in but this is kind of fucked up. Shouldent athiests speak for themselfs? I dont understand why its ok to do this shit to kids. If you are going to tell them that they are going to talk to an athiest than atleast give them someone who doesnt belive in god and someone with good arguments. This will only make their lives harder because of the fact that they hasn't ancountered anyone who dont agree with their belives.
I am curious with the multiverse, is there even any scientific evidence of it besides Marvel?
I have another question on the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, wasn't there a consensus undertaken by the authority at that time that caused Joseph and Mary to return to their hometown, is there any records of this aside from the records in the Gospel?
The fact that you pretend to be an atheist instead of actually getting a real atheist says a lot about you and your dishonesty.
This is interesting, not because I in any way have to defend my stand as a Atheist, but as you Christians in particular have made it your enemy and main point of interest to try everything to paint Atheism as something wrong or even devilish. Just as we do not believe in a God, or a Satan, you also don't believe in Satan, you think there must be something bad, like Satan as Evil exists, Evil people exists.. Like Hitler, if Hitler exists/existed, so does the Devil, am I right in that conclusion? Or any other figure of speech, Josef Stalin, well any "Evil" human being in the history of humans.
So Atheists must be possessed by the Evil spirits right? That's what it is or?
You "roleplayed" as a Atheist whilst discussing faith in a God or a Jesus with a biased crowd of kids attending a religious, Christian school.. These kids know nothing but what they are told and have been told since day one of Church. If your whole point is to teach people to love each other.. That's Jesus word isn't it? Love your next, don't force your beliefs onto others and so on? That's exactly what most of you Christians do. Yes I haven't read all of the Bible, just the important part and the 10 commandments, do not kill, do not lie all that.. I admit, there is not much for me to get from that book anyways but the moral of the story, or the moral of it all is simply that we all, culturally live by the 10 commandments, even Muslims, Hindus or whoever else..
Even though all the rules of a, your God, or whatever it is.. Don't kill, don't rape, don't love another man's wife.. I probably misinterpreted a few of them, but despite all this, culturally we all live by this simple rule, to not kill or to not steal..
Very simple, yet we kill each other over different beliefs.. America is not innocent in the war on Islam, or terrorism, or whatever you call it. On the other end of the gun, there's a poor man or woman struggling to feed his family, who got a few $ to pick up a gun and go shoot at someone else (American soldier or whoever) even if they don't necessarily know what, who or why they are fighting the white man from the western world.
In all honesty, after watching your roleplay video, the only thing I could really think of, was just this.. Why are we even discussing faith in this world.. All the pain, all the suffering just so that one group of people can say their God or their belief is the greatest and the only way. I don't care what you believe, or what you practice, no matter if it is Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Hindu even.. Just stop portrait those who question your faith as some sort of Evil or Devilish person. We are just like everyone else, we struggle to feed ourselves, our families.. We live, we breathe and we die just the same. There is no difference in the end, we all die. Maybe there's an afterlife, maybe there's just nothing.. One thing we all know for sure, disagreeing is human, killing each other over it is inhumane.
Don't kill your neighbor over coffee because he believes wrong. Agree to disagree and get on with your friendships!
The one Christian I'm subscribed too, extremely good faith, no pun intended
Exodus 20:16 "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
We get human value in the same way we throw out the immoral teachings in ancient scripture such as the Bible, and just focus on the moral ones: through secular, rational discussion. Atheists are far more likely to embrace LGBT community, marginalized and persecuted communities, and generally live and let live, in a way that demonstrates that morality from a practical standpoint is the province of atheism above all others. I don’t find a lot of love coming from evangelical Christianity, and I was born into that community. I found it to be morally repellent and got out as soon as I could.
I beg your pardon! What is the purpose for this! Why don’t they use a real atheist as me or one of the known atheist, who don’t buy into all this nonsense religion represent!. Is this a kind of revelation in box and later all these students will say- now everyone can see we have the right faith! This is cheap and stupid and by cheap I mean too easy. Show your balls and get Sam Harris or whatever else which can argue against none evidence based claims !. And these students are so brainwashed that they never will dare to ask critical questions about a creator. For who created the creator. Back to square( why not read Bertrand Russell and argue about it fair and square) no way
why did you pretend to be an atheist? you just provided yourself way easier counterpoints for you to knock down. why didn't you just invite an ACTUAL atheist to talk over these points with you? do you not have complete faith in your god to provide good enough answers to questions that aren't curated around your own parameters? are you scared of BECOMING one?
You're a genuinely pathetic liar. You were dishonest. You're not an atheist, you cannot in good faith argue atheist points. You gaslight these students. You lied to them. You told them "this is what an atheist is", but you are not an atheist, so nothing you said or did was true. You're just coming up woth excuses for having done something you knew was wrong.
I'm an atheist today but I was raised jewish. You Christians also have the 19 commandments, being built upon our religion and all right? "Thou shalt not bear false witness". Everything you did, was bearing false witness. You do not witness atheism. You therefore bore false witness about atheism.
If you truly believe in your God, then you know you have sinned, and that your God will judge you for all the harm you cause.
But you don't actually believe in your God do you? You'd know something like this was wrong if you actually believed.
Why didn't you invite an actual atheist to do it? Wouldn't that have been more authentic and honest?
We have to act as there is no God (like Grotius said) because his existence is indeed indifferent to our life.
The concept of right or wrong comes from from the alienation of the In fact without laws there is a perpetual state of war because there is no authority to actively decide what is wright and wrong. And we have seen that through history. In the Roman law it was considered right to kill a thief that entered your house; it was right to abandon your wife if she can’t have children; it was right to abandon a newborn baby girl on the street if the pater familias didn’t want another kid. In 1200 Italy it was normal to kill other people in a battle between families, people weren’t punished for that. The problem of God (and I am a Catholic) is that he has no real earthly authority. Humans have a very broad sense of right and wrong. Amerinds would abituale practice cannibalism and and Catholics burned them at the stake because of this practice. Is it really right and good to burn someone at a stake to prevent them from eating dead human beings? Todorov ironically commented that at least Amerindians were eating people that were already dead and not killing anyone. From these example we can see that even killing someone else is not universally right or wrong. It depends who you kill and when. Also, what about those tribal traditions that worshipped natural elements and not gods? Where did they get the morality from, if there is one?
I've wonder how god was made…
Maybe you should let an actual atheist do this talk instead of putting yourself in the position of potentially strawmanning us.
If you had confidence in your apologetics, you'd allow us to speak for ourselves.
Imagine being so afraid to be challenged, that instead of inviting someone who disagrees with you, you invite someone who agrees with you and professionally lies about disagreeing with you. a Christian who had never been anything other than a Christian obviously will never be able to properly represent an atheist, doubly so if he only pretends to do so in service of reinforcing his own beliefs and the beliefs of others who agree with him. It's like having an argument with yourself in the shower. Of course you'll win! Your "opponent" only posseses the knowledge you do, and will say what you expect them to say, which you no doubt already have a rebuttal to because if you didnt you wouldn't believe it!