Atheism is a Lie? | Mike - San Jose, CA | Atheist Experience 23.06

the reason I called in was I called him before talk to Matt and Tracy got hung up on like the most of us on here but yeah hopefully that what happened to me so soon I'll let this out let Donna answer and decide when to hang up there enough power so really what I want to talk about is I want to set forth an argument that atheism is a lie okay how can something that doesn't make a positive claim be a lie sorry I was gonna let go that's fine let me explain do you realize that we define atheism as the lack of belief in gods so I'm not convinced - God exists just like I'm not convinced fairies exist until you can come up with a way that both of those things are lies I because I'm sitting here and I honestly don't believe a god exists and I honestly don't believe fairies exist and yet you're saying I'm lying so we presume that we're experts about this the state of our minds right and correct yeah so are you are you saying I don't understand I can't fathom my own beliefs and and express them let me explain it this way let me explain it this way so first we have to both agree on our definitions so atheism is the lack of belief in a God and or the disbelief of a God and theism is the belief or having faith in God right basically if you if you're convinced - God exists you're a theist if not you're an atheist but your definitions are fine yeah go ahead faith is something where you're accepting the proposition is true without evidence correct I'm fine with that definition of faith I tended to define it as faith is the reason people give for believing something when they don't have a good reason okay it's more or less kind of the same thing yeah valid reason a valid form of evidence I would say sound but okay where whereas this belief is the the rejection of a claim or the assumption of the the claim being wrong no it's not is disbelief is not assuming you're wrong it's not being convinced that you're right it's essentially the difference between a jury not being convinced of guilt and a jury being convinced of innocence those are two different things yet the jury is not convinced with with or without evidence they the default so your theists are saying God is guilty of existing hello Oh buddy really know if God exists okay then if if nobody can really know if God exists then this conversation is useless right because you can't know and I can't know and all I'm saying is I'm not convinced that you're correct which means of the two of us I'm the only one that's close to being possibly right because you can't demonstrate your case and all my position is is that you can't demonstrate your case which means not only am I not lying I'm completely correct sorry dawn was gonna answer him we lost him we lost him he ran away Oh Mike who is on got disconnected in his back so there we go you there Mike yeah I monster here thanks for having me back I we didn't hang up on you yeah I realize I probably my reception maybe in one sentence recap where we were so we can pick up again so I want to make the argument that atheism is a lie just to run through the definitions again we went through theism we went through eight years and we went through belief and disbelief we went through faith and we were just about to go through knowing I think there's something else we should have fine yes a lie because to me yeah if somebody if I want to say that's a lie then it needs to be a dick claret of statement and in particular it needs to be not just a declarative statement which is false but which is knowingly false there needs to be some intent to deceive okay it has to be knowingly false there's to be an intention to be deceptive pretending acting hypocrisy how it was hypocrisy fall into that I think there are ways to dim it is difficult because we're talking about what's in somebody's mind I think there are ways to demonstrate intent through the things that you talked about like hypocrisy but what is the declarative statement that you're saying is a lie I'm saying that atheism in and of itself as an ideology is a lie okay no stop atheism is not a declarative statement so it cannot be a lie so we need to know what the declarative statement is that you think is a lie you say atheism is not a declarative statement perhaps you you're saying you're saying that it's more of a label or a term that we've put used to categorize to be that what you're saying no even if you went to what is the Atheist position my position is an atheist is that theism has not met its burden of proof and therefore I am unconvinced that's it so you could go a number of places from here it's like okay well you're you're ignoring evidence okay willfully ignoring evidence that might be a way or you secretly go in the closet at night and believe in God and and during the day you're yeah you know presenting another case with which of those two am I am I getting close to where you're coming from it's a little bit different so my idea is that if we accept the premise that no one has evidence if God exists or not and we accept the Prime Minister yet could never conclude that atheism is a lie because if you this is what I was acknowledging when you got disconnected if your position is that no one can demonstrate with evidence whether or not a God exists then there's no way for anyone to come down on either side of that which means you couldn't possibly demonstrate that it's either of them is a lie except that we had in practice that by the definition of their name they don't actually assert to know if God exists I don't dare you mean I don't care this isn't about knowledge it's a question about belief and reasonableness so theists believe there's a God I don't care if they claim to know it atheists do not believe in a God they don't claim to know that there is no God don't they but still believers have a faith in God which is the assumption that there is no evidence to begin with so they're not asserting knowledge yes they believe something without good reason we've established that that's faith whereas at the other hand we have eight years who claim they disbelieve God exists but their disbelief is actually based on the assumption that they understand what valid evidence or God would be yeah and they assert that this there is a lack of this valid evidence or that there's even contradictory valid evidence to establish their belief or no his belief rather No so this is this gets to the question of when people ask me what would convince you that God exists I have a stock answer that that is that I've used for years now but it's changed because I have no idea I am NOT pretending to know what it would take to demonstrate that a God exists just that it hasn't happened I don't need to know what evidence would prove string theory just that it hasn't happened I don't need to know what evidence would prove a God exists but if there is a God that God absolutely should know what evidence should convince people and has not presented it and therefore either that God does not exist or that God does not want people to know he exists yet if this is not about I'm not in any way assuming I know what evidence would prove a god and that evidence hasn't shown up I'm saying I have no idea what evidence would prove a god but if it shows up it will be recognizable as evidence for it just like I don't know what evidence would prove that fairies are real but as soon as that evidence is presented in a sufficiently reliable context to which it would warrant belief in fairies then I'm going to believe in fairies but I don't know what that evidence would be and in a god sense it would be a monumentally arrogant for me to assume that I know what would be the real problem here is that there are countless people running around saying hey we've got evidence for God and then people like me are saying oh really what is it and when they present the evidence it's not but this is a problem with with that position even though I agree with you probably 95 percent of the way well good I'm the problem with that in the end is that we agreed that no one has evidence for God no one can really know if God exists everybody in the end has to believe or disbelieve so in this kind of dichotomy where knowledge isn't really an option then then you're faced with a little bit of a different proposition because yes you either claim that you have good reason to believe something or you exercise faith exactly and if if what you said is true the latter about God who is true what you said was that God doesn't want everyone to know that he exists okay which if that's true if that's true then every believer every believer is by definition unwarranted in their belief because if God doesn't want people to know he exists then they cannot possibly have a justified position well they well if God doesn't want everyone to know correct that's true but if he wants a select few people to know not everybody has just a few yes I completely agree but if there's a God that's going around selectively revealing himself to people those people are the only ones that could possibly have evidentiary warrant that cannot demonstrate it to anybody else and it doesn't make a shit's bit of difference to me because until I'm presented with that evidence I am holding the only rational position that I can hold and it's not a lie I understand your position I do understand that but how am i lying then well the idea of atheism being a disbelief based on valid evidence or the lack of evidence assuming that you know that there is evidence for God or anybody has evidence that in itself is a lie what no no no no no no no no no no so for 20 years begging people to give us evidence please give us some evidence so you don't get to just call something alive I mean you can well let me ask it is let me ask you this what's what what's better to be arrogant or be ignorant arrogance you had to choose one arrogant would be better than ignorant that's the thing like the theists would choose ignorant I'm very well aware of that voluntarily choosing it through an exercise of faith and then calling in to say that atheists are lying and having no demonstration that we're lying we don't know but also by the way arrogance versus ignorant is a false dichotomy because there's monumentally [ __ ] tons of people who are incredibly ignorant and very arrogant about it the difference is they can't they cannot have not met their burden of proof it's not it's not alive for me to say you have not convinced me it's not alive for me to say I've evaluated all of the arguments for the existence of God that have been presented that I've found and explored and and also found them wanting it's not alive for me to say that if in fact there was a sound argument supported by evidence for the existence of God it'd be on the front page of every newspaper be the only thing people were talking about on TV it'd be a Nobel Prize it would have every organisation giving that the fact that that hasn't happened is the demonstration that theism has not met its burden of proof and under no circumstance is a rejection of a bald assertion rooted in faith with a declaration from you that nobody can have evidence for this in no way is that ever a lie to say I don't believe you okay I guess from your perspective I do understand your position your money you don't perspective that that a theism is a response to the theistic claim not a response to God's existence itself but to the theistic claim maybe in that 10 kind is invented twenty thousand gods are I'm not quite sure which one you're talking about well I'm particularly answer probably well I'm a Christian so I'm talking about the Christian God in general okay which is how is the Christian God for which we don't have evidence for distinguishable from a Hindu god that we don't have evidence for this is a thing so just as somebody who does who has had his own little bit of evidence to give me enough face to believe in God um this is the thing you cannot get that evidence without starting to believe you first yeah that's called a self deception or and it in no way answers the question that I just asked to say that you need to believe first in order to get the evidence is exactly the recipe for self defense self deception that's a con game what I asked was how is the Christian God for which you think there is no evidence distinguishable from a Hindu god that you have no evidence for that's kind of a loaded question you bet you can't I can't really I can't really answer that because the Hindu god and the Christian God might be the same it depends on who that Hindu and there no no they're not the same what what kind of [ __ ] Christian could possibly claim that the Christian God in the Hindu God might be the same dude what do you know this is this is the most bizarre version of Christianity I've ever heard to say my god might be the same as the Hindu god really all the Christian the Christian God is the creator of the universe and everything in it so therefore the Christian God is really the God of everyone it's whether or not that individual person acknowledges that or not it's not really it is the Hindu god or the Christian God of God all right so you're basically saying connection Jesus could be the same I'm saying I can't I can't I can't speak as far as the Hindu god I all I understand is that there's one God and one God that monotheism kind of how do you know that visible well it's kind of a the idea that that life comes from a singular cause or that everything sorry not just life but I thought you said we couldn't have evidence and this was a faith thing why are you talking about life now we can have evidence nobody could have evidence for or against this okay what I meant was definitive valid evidence so as to okay first of all evidence is right knowledge stop using the word valid it has a very particular usage in logic and what you're talking about is evidence which was is what makes a premise sound or not valid goes to the structure of the argument not that you would know that technical term the validity of the evidence not not in logical terms it's sure about the locally the ability to the evidence so now you think that there is evidence good evidence for God when before now said there wasn't not definitive so there's the difference between faith and knowledge right no no no no no no no no no no no no no no [ __ ] no we want this great evidence already set aside the notion of knowledge it's irrelevant belief is either warranted or it is not and if you think that there is evidence for when you say not definitive evidence to me that sounds like you're saying not sufficient evidence to warrant belief no I'm saying not sufficient evidence to warrant knowledge but there you know believe you don't have to have you know definitive knowledge it just has to be beyond the reach of having conversations why don't we have the conversation and give us give us the damn evidence there we go you're going with beyond a reasonable doubt right a reasonable doubt yeah sure so let's set up let's set up a courtroom where God is accused of existing and you need to demonstrate that beyond a reasonable doubt go first produce the defender I need to demonstrate that to myself right you need to demonstrate it'd be a starting point so reasonableness is not just a personal [ __ ] opinion reasonableness is demonstrated now you're everybody's gonna have a slightly different standard about how much evidence is required for various things extraordinary evidence or extraordinary claims are gonna require extraordinary evidence if dawn tells me that he just got a new pet poodle I'm gonna take him at his word for a number of reasons one because I know that poodles exist and people have him as pets I trust dawn because he has no reason to lie about it I understand I live in a world where this sort of thing happens and if it turns out that dawn is lying to me then I will change my mind and then I know something new about dawn and that he will lie about having a pet but having a pet poodle is in a completely different category from there is a being that exists inside and outside of space-time who is the creator of the universe who came down and took human form in order to sacrifice himself to himself so that we can have salvation from what he was going to do to us if we don't accept this and is completely obsessed about your sex life yes now you know the evidence the evidence for that claim would need to be vastly stronger than hey somebody told me a story hey somebody wrote something down in a book or hey I had a do you have any physical evidence for anybody ever rising from the dead apart from in a hospital where they're hard to stop and their resuscitated because death is a process find somebody that's been dead for a day and a half and they rise it that's kind of the thing if we have evidence that's demonstratable to everybody else then that kind of goes against that old idea that God does not want everyone to know he just wants a select few to know okay that's a dick I gotta go we are we are two minutes over where I said it was going to end the show next time yeah

Channel: The Atheist Experience

Views: 651,704

Rating: 4.8625641 out of 5

Keywords: atheist experience, the atheist experience, theatheistexperience, atheist, atheism, atheist vs christian, atheist debate, religion debate, atheism debate, Matt Dillahunty (Broadcast Artist), belief, faith, reason, rational, proof, evidence, logic, fallacy, religion, religious, science, secular, Skepticism, skeptic, questioning god, doubt, is god real, agnostic, agnosticism, evidence for god, Christianity, Islam, morality, evidence for jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, debate, Bible, Bible contradictions

Id: MWqVzwvL5zQ

Length: 19min 18sec (1158 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 14 2019