Great Atheist Bomb Drops!

[Music] [Applause] [Music] if God is dead everything is permitted that's what scares them well on the contrary that state assumes that human beings have no feeling about what is right and wrong Munir easin is the only reason you are virtuous because that's your ticket to heaven it's the only reason you don't beat your children to death because you don't want to go to hell it seems to me that it's insulting to human beings to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being this is conceivable a person wants to be a decent human being because that way he feels better because that way the world is better I would like to think I don't believe that I'm ever going to heaven or hell I think that when I die there will be nothingness that's what I firmly believe that does not mean that I have the impulse to go out rob and steal and rape and everything else because I don't fear punishment for one thing I feel worldly but I fear worldly punishment and for a second thing I fear the punishment of my own conscience I have a conscience it doesn't depend on religion and I think it's so without the people to besides even under in societies in which religion is very powerful there's no shortage of crime and sin and misery and terrible things happening despite heaven and hell I mean I imagine if you go down death row a bunch of murderers maybe who are waiting for execution that's cool if they believe in God yes ray dismiss reception that exists in the public mind about atheism oh there's lots of them but I would say the greatest misconception about atheism is that we're not nice people I think that a lot of people think morality comes from religion religion teaches that morality comes from religion and therefore if you don't have religion you don't have morality so I think the greatest misconception of atheism is that we're not nice and or immoral which of course cannot be the case it cannot be the case because all the data combats that the population of people who are non-religious in this country depending on your polls goes somewhere between 15 and 30 percent the population of atheists or non-religious people in federal prisons is 0.07 percent zero point zero seven of one percent so the the amount of people the amount of atheists who are committing crimes is tiny compared to the amount of atheists out there on the other hand if you look at it from a morality perspective from and from an outside perspective you can see what's happening people change churches for a reason they changed churches because they don't agree with the church they're in if they don't agree with the church they're in so they they say okay well this discharge isn't doing something it's not striking my moral fancy I'm going to go to this church over here because it does well that means morality is independent of religion and then what they do is they go to this church over here that says okay your morality is correct and God says so and then they say ah God gives me my morality right and that's that's it's kind of backwards but that's how the that's how it works the reality is that every single human pics their own morality morality is relative and everybody picks it everybody chooses it the only difference between an atheist and a theist is that an atheist will internalize it and say this is my morality and a theist will say this is my morality because I get it from my religion [Applause] if I could ask you if there's one thing you wanted people to remember that you could say about science what would that be that the universe is knowable and what one need not appeal to mystical magical forces to account for things even if a day arises where something unfolds in front of your eyes that you cannot explain just because you cannot explain it does not mean it is being driven by mystical magical forces it just means it's being driven by laws of physics that we know and you have yet to learn or that we have all yet to discover but the universe is knowable and that's an amazing thing it's knowable by our feeble human brain that rose up out of the you know the Serengeti it's the plains of Africa to rise up just to survive to not get eaten and we build a civilization where we have sufficient free time so that we can contemplate our place in the universe the second third is a little more pragmatic religion is our first that's why I'm so fascinated with it it's our first version of the truth it's our first attempt as a species it's what we tried when we didn't know anything we didn't know we lived on a spherical planet we didn't know that our planet revolved around the Sun we didn't know that there were microorganisms that explain disease we thought diseases came from curses or witches or ill wishing or Devils or dust devils we know anything from the childish terrified ignorant origins of our animal primate species we come to regen it's also a first attempt of philosophy our first attempt at morality our first attempt at health care actually but because it was our first it is our worst we now have better the nation's for all these dreads and we have cleared up all of these mysteries yet we still dwell and in some countries in some societies not just dwell but live under under a totalitarian regime that forbids us to think about the progress that has been made or denies us the knowledge that these advances have in fact occurred so it has become where once it probably was an aid to our survival a really great peril to our continued ability to live as a civilized species thus it seems to me that in point of its proposing of a totalitarian solution to what is after a real problem to it's ghastly reliance upon the supernatural rather than the much more miraculous much more beautiful much more elegant much more numinous much more harmonious natural explanations think how much lovelier Einstein and Darwin are think oh how much more elegant and persuasive they are than the idea of the burning bush or the for the eye or the or the demand that without circumcision there can be no redemption just just you should be doing over and over again is comparing the predictions or expectations under theism to under naturalism you find that over and over again naturalism wins and I'm gonna zoom through these it's not the individual arguments that are important it's the accumulated effect if theism were really true there's no reason for God to be hard to find he should be perfectly obvious whereas in naturalism you might expect people believe in God but the evidence to be thin on the ground under theism you'd expect that religious beliefs should be universal there's no reason for God to give special messages to this or that primitive tribe thousands of years ago why not give it to anyone whereas under naturalism you'd expect different religious beliefs inconsistent with with each other to grow up under different local conditions under theism you'd expect religious doctrines to last a long time in a stable way under naturalism you'd expect them to adapt to social conditions under theism you'd expect the moral teachings of religion to be transcendent progressive sexism is wrong slavery is wrong under naturalism you'd expect that they reflect once again local mores sometimes good rules sometimes not so good you'd expect the sacred texts under theism to give us interesting information tell us about the germ theory of disease tell us to wash our hands before we have dinner under naturalism you've expected sacred texts to be a mishmash some really good parts and poetic parts and some boring parts and mythological parts under theism you'd expect biological forms to be designed under naturalism they would derive from the twists and turns of evolutionary history under theism Minds should be independent of bodies under naturalism your personality should change if you're injured tired or you haven't had your cup of coffee yet under theism you'd expect that maybe you can explain the problem of evil God wants us to have free will but there shouldn't be random suffering in the universe life should be essentially just at the end of the day in theism you basically expect the universe to be perfect under naturalism it should be kind of a mess this is very strong empirical evidence now I know what you're thinking you're thinking but I can explain all of that I know you could explain also can I it's not hard to come up with ex post facto justifications for why God would have done it that way why is it not hard because theism is not well defined that's what computer scientists call a bug not a feature Amani wilcott famously said there will never be an Isaac Newton for a blade of grass in other words sure you can find some physical explanation for the motion of the planets but never for something is exquisitely organized and complex as a biological organism except of course that Charles Darwin then went and did exactly that we can paraphrase dr. Craig's message as saying there will never be an Isaac Newton for the cosmos but everything we know about the history of science and the current state of physics says we should be much more optimistic than that thank you try to convince people that there isn't why don't you just stay off was the was the question the question is if there if there is no God why spend your watching career trying to refute that why not just leave it alone and stay home fair enough well it's it's not my it isn't my whole career for one thing it's become a major preoccupation of my life though in the last eight or nine years especially since September 11th 2001 to try and help generate an opposition to theocracy and it's depredations internationally that that that is now probably my main political preoccupation to help people in Afghanistan in Somalia in Iraq in Lebanon in Israel so resist those who sincerely want to encompass the destruction of civilization and sincerely believe they have God on their side in wanting to do so the thing may be I will take the few minutes just to say something that I find repulsive about especially monotheistic messianic religion in it with a large part of itself it quite clearly wants us all to die it wants this world to come to an end you can tell the yearning for things to be over whenever you read any of its real texts or listen to any of its real authentic spokesmen not the sort of the pathetic apologists who sometimes masquerade for it those who talk there was the famous spokesman for this in Virginia until recently about the rapture say that those of us who have chosen rightly will be gathered to the arms of Jesus leaving all of the rest of you behind if we're in a car it's your lookout that car won't have a driver anymore if we're if we're a pilot that's your lookout that plane will crash we will be with Jesus and the rest of you can go straight to hell the the eschatological element that is inseparable from Christianity if you don't believe that there is to be an apocalypse there is going to be an end a separation of the sheep and the goats a condemnation final one then you're not really a believer and the contempt for the things of this world shows through all of them it's well put in an old rhyme from a an English exclusive brethren set says that we are the pure and chosen few and all the rest are damned there's ruin up in hell for you we don't want heaven crammed you can tell it when you see the extreme Muslims talk they cannot wait they cannot wait for death and destruction to overtake and overwhelm the world they can't wait for for a what I would call without ambiguity a final solution when you look at the Israeli settlers paid for often by American tax dollars designed if they can steal enough land from other people and get all the Jews into the Promised Land and all the non-jews out of it then finally the Jewish people will be worthy of the return of the Messiah and there are Christians in this country who consider it their job to help this happen so that Armageddon can occur so the painful business of living as humans and studying civilization and trying to acquire learning and knowledge and health and medicine and to push that can all be scrapped and and the cult of death can take over that to me is a hideous thing in eschatological terms in end times terms on its own hateful idea a hateful practice and a hateful theory but very much to be opposed in our daily lives where there are people who sincerely mean it who want who want to ruin the good relations that could exist between different peoples nations racist countries tribes ethnicities who say who openly say they love death more than we love life and who are betting that with God on their side they're right about that so when I say is the subtitle of my book that I think religion poisons everything I'm not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle I mean to say it infects in the you know most basic integrity it says we can't be moral without Big Brother without a totalitarian permission it means we can't be good to one another means we can't think without this we must be afraid we must also be forced to love someone who we fear the essence of sadomasochism at the essence of abjection the essence of the master/slave relationship and that knows that death is coming and can't wait to bring it on i say this is evil and though i do some nights stay home i enjoy more the nights when i go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and ultimate stupidity thank you then I'll give you one final thought experiment this is what you have to believe now if you're monotheistic we because we now know things we didn't used to know we know that the human species could be as not just 200,000 years ago it did it become separate from the cro-magnons and the rival premiums which could be as little as a hundred Richard Dawkins thinks two hundred thousand Francis Collins who did the human genome project who's by the way CS Lewis kind of Christian things one hundred thousand all right I'll take a hundred I'll take a hundred here's what you have to believe for a hundred thousand years humans are born as the primate species expectation of life what 25 years for the first few hundred thousand first few tens of thousands infant mortality right microorganism disease terrified earthquakes volcanoes extraordinary but and fights over land over territory over food over women of tribalism frightening two four ninety five ninety six thousand years heaven watches this with folded arms with indifference with coldness and then around three to four thousand years ago but only in really barbaric illiterate parts for the Middle East not in China not in China or where people can read or think or do science no no no in barbaric illiterate backward parts of the Middle East it's decided we can't let this go on we better intervene and what better way than by human sacrifices and plagues and mass murder and if that doesn't make them behave morally we just don't know what ants if there is a single person in this room who can bring themselves to believe anything remotely like that they convict themselves of being first very stupid and second very immoral and thus it seems to me that the case for divine intervention for the supernatural Falls and that we should be glad that it's fallen and thank you [Applause]

Channel: Dark Illuzionz

Views: 564,011

Rating: 4.7931857 out of 5

Keywords: Atheist, Atheism, Science, Technology, Science and Technology, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Isaac Asimov, Sean Carroll, Christopher Hitchens, David Silverman, Atheist Republic, Debate, Bomb Drops

Id: ikt8R_q0tBs

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Tetepupukaka53]

You seem to think that morality is obedience to an Authority, and not concerned with actual, moral judgement.

Is this true ?