3 BIGGEST Mistakes Made by Atheists

[Music] why hello my fellow apes i hope you're well a while back you greatest of all possible patrons voted on which topic you'd like me to tackle next and i was hoping almost praying even that you didn't choose to hear my views on abortion because quite frankly that's a very very difficult subject both in terms of science and philosophy and i only just dodged that bullet with you instead opting for the three biggest mistakes made by atheists however i've never been one to take the easy road and so let it be said that i'll tackle silver and bronze within time so what are the three biggest mistakes made by atheists does the fact that we don't eat enough babies make my list or that we just want to sin or as cameron batuzi claims is the fact that we believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence among the three okay uh the next one is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is that what it is yeah extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence so it's important to actually like instead of just relying on a slogan and saying that like okay claim you know claim victory and like all my work is done because i said this one thing no you haven't even really begun no this unsurprisingly doesn't make my list but hey i now have another video idea and so there's that all right so before i give you what i consider to be the top three mistakes let's first lay some groundwork as has been said many times before atheism is a weird word since we don't typically define people by what they're not in terms of inferring one's positions on aesthetics ethics epistemology and metaphysics the label atheist is pretty damn useless there's atheists who are religious atheists who are not atheists who are moral realists atheists who are not atheists who believe the universe is eternal atheists who don't atheists who are determinists atheists who are not and so on and so on unlike the isms of christianity communism veganism etc atheism isn't actually an ism at all since it has no practices philosophy or ideology thus to say that atheists make any other mistake than believing in god is pretty clumsy given this let me clarify that from here on when i refer to atheists i am specifically referring to non-religious people who have the goal of one achieving and maintaining separation of church in the state and two are attempting to encourage religious people to reconsider their faith and the last thing i want to say before getting into it is that all three of what i consider to be the biggest mistakes compete for first place and so the order that follows is arbitrary so far as i'm convinced one of the biggest mistakes made by atheists including my former self is dismissing religion as complete and utter nonsense and of course we're not alone in doing this the religious do it too in fact because they reject the sociological view of religion they are in general more dismissive of other religions than we are the christian dismisses the muslim practice of ramadan just as the muslim dismisses the hindus worship of cows just as the hindu dismisses the norse notion of falhalla and the norse dismisses the christian ritual of sacramental bread indeed when we consider religion through the lens of what's actually true which to be fair is what the vast majority of proponents claim it to be mockery and dismissal are among the most reasonable responses but when we consider religion through the lens of sociology which again the religious almost never do there tends to be significantly more than meets the eye but before i expand upon this let me still man the dismissing attitude that i once held because believe me i totally get it from a very young age i was forced to confront the ugly side of religion and i've consequently had to reach deep down to find the baby in the bath water as a child i had to put it mildly a turbulent upbringing i was born into a broken family with an alcoholic mother and an emotionally shattered father who worked away on oil rigs for half the year because of the unfortunate circumstance i frequently stayed at neighbors and friends having little to no structure and i suffered from extremely distressing and vivid hallucinations now this isn't the time nor place to go into details but i share this as to convey the reason for how i from a very young age became intimate with the so-called problem of evil hiding under the stairs i was forced to wonder why does god allow mum's friend to hit me when i haven't done anything wrong why have my toys been sold for vodka and yet my friends get to keep theirs why precisely have i been abandoned to this ghastly situation have i done something wrong should i be praying in a different way was i bad in a previous life or something simply i needed to understand the way in which the world works so that i could survive it thus from the moment i could coherently reason i deeply cared about why we are here and for what if any purpose in england we don't have separation of church and state and so the person of authority at my school was a priest after heeding his lecture on god's omni attributes of him being all-powerful all-loving and all-knowing i approached him with a few questions with one being why did my little sister die before her first birthday his answer was a non-answer he told me that she is now in heaven as happy as can be and so all the pain she suffered has been eclipsed now even from the age of nine i found this answer as unfalsifiable as it is unsatisfactory then as i got older i observed as we all have religion caused good people to do bad things i watched family members who wouldn't say buu to a goose express explicitly because of their religion discussed at homosexual relations others in the neighborhood campaigned against stem cell research courtesy of the doctrine of life starting at conception and others still sought to corrupt education by pedestaling creationism over evolution and so i get it when you see members of the westboro baptist church being as ignorant arrogant and close-minded as seemingly possible outright dismissal of religion feels appropriate but in my opinion this is a big mistake sure jesus didn't resurrect but easter is worth keeping if only to celebrate and appreciate our pagan and christian history in my video titled an atheist perspective of religion i spoke of the sociology of religion at length covering beyond the presence of snakes and religious myths the seemingly inhumane practice of sky burial and the surprising utility of valhalla but here i will give just one more example ramadan the fourth pillar of islam the ninth month of the islamic calendar ramadan is a yearly commemoration of muhammad's alleged first revelation lasting between 29 and 30 days from one sighting of the crescent moon to the next it's observed by muslims as a period of fasting prayer reflection charity and community and throughout the commemoration the spiritual rewards are believed to be doubled this for rather obvious reason encourages muslims to generously help those less fortunate during a month so hot as to literally mean scorching heat now it's no secret that in its infancy islam was a conquering movement the american historian and philosopher will durant said of the hasty expanse that the explosion of the arabian peninsula into the conquest and conversion of half the mediterranean world is the most extraordinary phenomenon in medieval history indeed within a generation muhammad had countless people under his authority and he and his commanders were smart enough to know that if their empire was to endure then solidarity is to be sowed they needed to unite those that they had conquered not only under one authority but one culture a shared vision a mutually experienced struggle and a mutually glorious reward if they couldn't install trust and community if they couldn't get the various settlements to treat each other as brothers and sisters they knew it would be all for naught and ramadan so effectively achieves this that you'll be hard-pressed to contrive a more obvious social cohesive ritual it's no coincidence that iftar the mill that breaks the fast typically consists of large social gatherings in a buffet style where neighbours break their fast together enjoying the same food and insulin spike the shake zade grand mosque alone feeds up to 30 000 people every night needless to say countless studies have found that communal eating provides social and individual benefits from increased happiness increased satisfaction with life greater trust of others more frequent engagement with local communities larger number of friends and so on the british anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist robin dumber has went so far as to say that social eating may have evolved as a mechanism for facilitating social bonding now there is significantly more that can be said about the sociology of ramadan i would in fact happily dedicate an entire video or even a chapter of a book to it but for now i'm sure you get my point in a scientific factual sense religion is utter nonsense muhammad wasn't visited by an angel and he didn't fly a winged horse but he was and will always be one of the most important figures in human history thus abolishing the laws that enforce ramadan is justified but dismissing ramadan completely because it's predicated on a falsehood isn't necessarily the smartest move likewise to christmas it has historical cultural and sociological value and that in and of itself is more than enough reason to celebrate it [Music] another one of the biggest mistakes that makes my list is assuming that theists maintain the doctrines of their denominations i know i know you'd expect a hindu shaivi to maintain the doctrines of shavenism but this just isn't how it works the cafeteria picking and choosing of beliefs is ironically the most consistent religious practice and so whilst one might call themselves a shaivite it's a mistake to assume that they maintain even the central doctrines now to give credit where credit is due i was originally going to run with an alternative mistake in place of this one but the moment i read topotzer's comment i binned my script atheists myself included very often assume the beliefs of theists based on their denomination but not only can these assumptions turn out to be wrong they can as a consequence discourage theists from questioning their faith since they will reason we're not really interested in having a sincere conversation or to put this all another way religious people tend to be members of a specific denomination such as say protestant christianity or sunni islam and what this means on paper at least is that they endorse a set of specific doctrines and beliefs so if someone claims to be a sunni muslim then you think it's reasonable to assume that they believe that the redemption of human beings is entirely dependent on faith in allah now one such objection to this doctrine is that it's grossly immoral if true then many of the most wonderful charitable and decent people are bound for hell simply because they're not convinced by an intellectually bankrupt proposition however bringing up this objection without first clarifying whether the sunni holds this belief is a mistake as if they don't and in my experience some of them don't then you've wasted both of your time i get it though having to make no assumptions about individual calvinists somewhat renders the word calvinist redundant but unfortunately this is necessary until one has clarification of what doctrines they endorse but to be clear if one is discussing calvinism as an entity in and of itself than assuming the relevant doctrines is more than justified but when one is having a discussion with an individual calvinist it's a mistake to assume that they maintain the relevant doctrines a third mistake made by atheists is describing malice when ignorance is suffice again this isn't unique to atheists it turns out that so far as i'm concerned most of the biggest mistakes made by atheists are made by humans in general but for reasons we get into it's my opinion that atheists are highly prone to make this mistake and it's unfortunately one that constitutes one of the largest obstacles preventing religious people from questioning their faith a few days ago i shared a quote from megan phelps roper expressing the same sentiment and your responses to that post have helped me realize that it's important to stress two caveats the first is that this isn't true of public debates in public debates interlocutors are representing a pro and composition and are pretty much obliged not to give any ground there are some exceptions of course but more often than not public debates revolve around presentation and rhetoric rather than truth and the second caveat is that i'm not suggesting that it's worthwhile maintaining the assumption of good intent when you have decent reason not to rather i'm expressing that unless you have adequate reason to think otherwise assuming good intent is a highly effective opening gambit in questions on miracles voltaire wrote the following once your faith sir persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd be aware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life in days gone by there were people who said to us you believe in incomprehensible contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to now then commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so nothing could be more convincing certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices this is often paraphrased as those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities and it's damn true if you want someone to rob females of their autonomy convince them that life starts at conception if you want people to burn alive those that make scientific advancements convince them that science is heretical and if you want ben shapiro to refuse an anniversary invitation from his friend dave rubin convince the former that the creator of the universe considers the latter an abomination if we were having an anniversary party would you come if i was inviting all the crew that we all know and we was just an anniversary party we're just having a party and uh and i'll even throw in some kosher food for you to make sure you don't have to bring your own you know honestly i'd have to think about it i'd have to think about it in the same way so that's interesting to me that's that's a different thing indeed when once an absurdity is accepted atrocity inevitably follows and yes of course absurdities are found in all sorts of ideologies not just religion but to paraphrase george carlin when it comes to absurd insane ridiculous beliefs you have to stand in or in or of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims religion religion but here's a difficult question does this make the perpetrators bad people i mean the result is nasty and the perpetrator tends to deliberately intentionally achieve said result but is this because they're fundamentally nasty people or might they simply be ignorant might they be eager to commit atrocities simply because they're convinced of absurdities consider for a moment megan phelps roper who was once a member of the westboro baptist church phelps rupa has one of the most incredible character arcs in history and in her inspiring ted talk she shared with us the approach that got her to question her faith with the first of the four components being not assuming bad intent the first is don't assume bad intent my friends on twitter realized that even when my words were aggressive and offensive i sincerely believed i was doing the right thing assuming ill motives almost instantly cuts us off from truly understanding why someone does and believes as they do we forget that they're a human being with a lifetime of experience that shaped their mind and we get stuck on that first wave of anger and the conversation has a very hard time ever moving beyond it but when we assume good or neutral intent we give our minds a much stronger framework for dialogue or to put this all another way in religious language no less hate the sin not the sinner many ideas deserve condemnation but this isn't necessarily true of those that hold these ideas by treating others with respect no matter how gross and infuriating their views i for one have had in private settings at least considerable success in not only getting them to question their views but also reconsidering my own responses and in some cases being sent back to the drawing board altogether and that my fellow apes wraps up what i consider to be the three biggest mistakes made by atheists i originally intended to include among my list the mistake of morally and politically gatekeeping secular activism but after seriously considering counter-arguments and especially a certain reductio i changed my mind i'll probably speak about this in its own video next month and our title is something along the lines of moralizing atheism but for now thank you kindly for the view and an extra special thank you to my wonderful patrons and those of you who have supported the channel via other means i sincerely appreciate it oh and uh you probably won't see me for a bit because as you can probably tell i've got a cold so i'm not gonna be able to record for a while although i have the movie voice now in a world where alex o'connor and drew mccoy go on a vegan adventure

Channel: Rationality Rules

Views: 81,705

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Id: ODvTo-vy8zE

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Wh- why is the guy's nose popping out in the middle of the title box...it's fuckin off putting

[u/YashMudgil13]

Who is that painted guy?