How I Got Over My Fear of Hell (as a Lapsed Catholic)

uh i have covered i tested positive for covert 19 a few days ago and i started experiencing symptoms a few days ago which has not been the most fun experience of my life but it does seem as though the phase of not being able to get out of bed without wanting to claw my own brain out with a shovel uh has passed and it has been a while since i've spoken to you guys on camera so i thought that now i'm feeling a little bit better i managed to drag myself into the shower and i thought if i can do that i can drag myself in front of a camera as well so i thought this would be a good opportunity to ask you guys on twitter follow me on twitter if you had any questions so that i can make a video just checking in and proving to you that i am not in fact dead although to be honest with you with the way that i'm feeling at the moment that might actually be preferable what's your stance on capital punishment well there are different resolutions of thought on this there's firstly the question of whether somebody should ever be essentially deserving of death for certain crimes that they've committed but secondly there's this question of whether the institution of capital punishment practically speaking is something that we should advocate for as far as the first question is concerned this is going to be complicated for me by the fact that i don't believe that free will exists if you're interested in why i'll leave some links in the description and in the little cards up there but yeah i don't believe that free will exists so i think that the idea of retribution as traditionally thought of isn't really going to work in this instance so a lot of the advocacy for capital punishment takes the form of saying something like you know these people deserve it right by committing horrible crimes like rape and murder they essentially forfeit their right to life and they deserve to be killed for what they've done and i can understand this sentiment i mean after all by putting someone in prison you're spending taxpayers money essentially allowing this person to continue living until they die of natural causes many many years from now and why should we be paying for the sustenance of someone like that who's committed such a horrible crime when we could just kill them and save us all a lot of money and time well firstly i'm not entirely thrilled about giving the state the legitimacy to kill people as it sees fit i mean who's going to determine which crimes are those that are deserving of capital punishment but perhaps more troublingly is the way that capital punishment can be used as a kind of political tool such as in the example of ricky ray rector ricky ray rector was executed in the early 90s by the state of arkansas for the murder of a police officer but the case is quite a controversial one because rector actually attempted suicide he tried to shoot himself and essentially gave himself a lobotomy in the process obviously completely destroying his cognitive capacities when he received his last meal he'd requested pecan pie as a dessert he left that dessert on the side telling the officers who were taking him to the execution chamber that he was saving it for later this story is obviously tragic enough already but what makes it only worse is that many have thought including people like christopher hitchens that the reason this execution took place when it did was because it happened to coincide with the 1992 presidential election and bill clinton personally made a point of going to arkansas to oversee the execution of ricky ray rector presumably to score some points in his home state okay so that's one thing but i think the most primary concern that i have with capital punishment are cases of miscarriages of justice okay at least in the case of life imprisonment there's at least some chance that if someone has been wrongfully imprisoned some kind of amends can be made they can at least be freed perhaps given some money something like that whereas obviously if you take someone's life there's no coming back from that right and a person's life is the greatest thing it's that it's the most that you can take from them and so in an ideal quote-unquote world where we could know for a fact who was guilty and who was innocent maybe there'd be a more concrete discussion to be had about the ethics of capital punishment but as far as i'm concerned until we have what i think is the unavoidable prospect of innocent people sometimes being charged for crimes they didn't commit the idea of anybody being put to death as a result of such an instance is too horrific to even spend any time thinking about and i think that that alone should give us reason to reject the institution the political institution of capital punishment even if we think that in principle it can be justified as an atheist do you still fear hell i'm guessing not but how did you progress to not fearing it anymore i'm so glad that i get to address this i made a video a few years ago called something like why i as an atheist i'm afraid of hell essentially outlining the fact that because i was brought up as a roman catholic i was taught as a child at least implicitly that there was this real place called hell that existed it was this fiery place of brimstone and torment where you'd go for eternity to suffer for your sins if you don't repent and turn your life to jesus and yeah that's a pretty scary prospect to be thinking about especially at a young age and i said in that video that even though at that point i was an atheist i couldn't help have these psychologically lingering fears where i'd have these moments where i'd kind of snap into this sense of i'm going to hell i'm going to suffer and then i'd snap out of it again but it'd be quite a scary thing to think about but i'm glad to report that that doesn't happen anymore and i'm especially glad to report this to those of you who took it upon yourselves to let me know that the reason that i was fearing hell was because god was simply still trying to reach me in one of the most immoral and terror inducing ways that i could possibly imagine it doesn't happen anymore but i know that a lot of you still feel the way that i felt back then and so let me explain some of the ways in which i overcame this fear hoping that that can help you too we first need to note that the hell that i was afraid of is a specific kind of hell right it's the it's the hell of traditional catholicism it's what the philosopher jonathan kovanvik has surmised into four theses okay i've just pulled them up here so that i don't miss any out but govanvig says that the traditional concept of hell has four theses first the existence theses that is to say hell exists it's a real place it's not some kind of metaphor or some state of non-existence second anti-universalism that is hell isn't empty right you could say that there is this place called hell but then no one actually ends up going there uh that's not part of the traditional doctrine there are actually people in hell three the no escape thesis once you're in hell you can't leave hell there's no possibility for your escape and consequently this means that hell is eternal and fourth is the thesis of retribution the people who are in hell are there because they deserve to be so now i won't go into it in depth right now but a lot of atheists like to claim that the christian god is an evil god or something like this i've argued elsewhere that if the christian god does exist then it's a god of perfect justice it's a loving god that is to say if you think that the christian god exists but is evil you're not actually thinking of the christian god because the christian god at least according to christianity is by definition perfectly just and perfectly moral what this means is that the god that i believed in and the hell that i believed in uh had this underlying sense of justice right if i was afraid of going to hell the only way i could end up in hell is if a perfectly just god sent me to hell right so the only situation in which i could actually end up in hell in in the way that i was afraid of at least was if a perfectly just god sends me to hell but it follows from that that if he did i would actually deserve to be in hell now there are a few things that we can take from this none of kavanagh's theses uh imply that this hell needs to be a place of severe suffering right but that's the hell that i was afraid of so we'll add that onto the pile um we could say something like well this this idea of hell that we have of suffering and torment that lasts for eternity surely nobody can ever be justly sent there i mean a lot of people think that you know you can't have an infinite punishment for a finite crime i think that there are ways to argue around that point but at the very least it seems plausible uh that a hell as bad as the one that i was afraid of is not one that anybody could be justly sent to but if that's the case bearing in mind that i was afraid of the christian god sending me to hell the only way that the christian god can send me to hell is if he does so justly but if no one can justly be sent to the hell that i was afraid of then clearly i shouldn't be afraid of being sent to that hell because there's no way that i could be sent to it if that makes sense but even if we just accept that it is justifiable to send some people to hell then there's this weird sense of consolation from the fact that by definition this would be just right like i mean if it is genuinely the case that i deserve to be in hell which is i'll remind you the only way that a just god could send me to that hell is if i deserve to be there genuinely i like to think that if i actually deserve to be in hell that i'd be happy to end up there now my immediate response might be to say something like but obviously i don't deserve this no one deserves this no one deserves to be in eternal punishment and brimstone and fire and all of this kind of stuff but remember if that's the case then because you can only go to hell if you actually deserve it then you won't go to hell and if it is the case that i actually deserve to be in hell then reflecting on it i think to myself well the kinds of sins that the average human being commits are certainly not deserving of the kind of punishment that we hear about in these horror stories of being tormented and tortured and held by the devil and stuff right so like you realize that there are different christian views on hell right the one that was hammered into you as a child isn't the only one that exists some people think that hell is literally just separation from god right it's not like active torment it's just being in a state of disunity with god which maybe when you're in it and you realize that god actually exists and you were wrong all along does cause a form of suffering the suffering of knowing that you could have been with you know perfect love and justice but you're now not that's a form of suffering but it's worlds apart from this kind of like being whipped by the devil and over a cauldron and being kind of having your skin ripped off and all of this kind of nonsense and if that's the case then like yeah i mean i guess it would kind of suck to end up there but i've got to say i'm a lot less scared of that kind of prospect than the kind of thing that i was afraid of before so basically i guess to summarize the hell that i was afraid of was one that was just so bad it was it was torturous and fiery and horrible and and to the extent that when i think about it now i just don't think there's any way that someone could be justifiably sent to a place like that at least not someone like me maybe some people on earth deserve that kind of thing but certainly not me and most other people on planet earth i'd like to think but if that's the case if it really is this place that's so bad that no one deserves to go there then remember that because the only way that i could be sent there if christianity is true is if a perfectly just god sends me there then if i genuinely don't deserve to be there i've got nothing to be afraid of because he could not send me there the big consideration that changed everything for me is realizing that if christianity is true then the god that exists is a perfectly loving perfectly just god and that's what i'd want to drill home if you're scared of the existence of a perfectly just god then maybe you should do some self-reflection and think about why that might be for someone like myself who likes to think that i live a fairly just life at least to the highest extent that i can i think that if that christian god does exist i've got nothing to be afraid of because that god would be a god of perfect justice and perfect love and so would treat me accordingly what are your plans for the future vying to be the fifth member of the four horsemen of atheism um no presuming you mean the four horsemen of new atheism there i hope it should be clear by now that i'm really not trying to affiliate with the new atheist movement i know i kind of used to i used to really really really like christopher hitchens i've even got a bust of him side on my shelf just there if you hadn't noticed already and of course i've had richard dawkins on the podcast and would love to have sam harris on too but i really don't think that these guys are particularly uh how can i say this um theologically adequate i i don't know i don't really know what i'm trying to say i guess i just haven't found their philosophy if it can even be called that particularly adequate when it comes to discussing the existence of god i mean christopher hitchens obviously a fantastic polemicist but just nothing of philosophical substance as i've discussed at length in a previous video again the link is in the description uh richard dawkins fantastic scientist yada yada but again i'm reading the god delusion who was it um that's right it was terry eagleton's eagleton once wrote imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the book of british birds and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read richard dawkins on theology and i think he's probably right there i mean there's a reason why over the past three years of studying philosophy at oxford um someone like richard dawkins hasn't been named once except to be essentially ridiculed in the science and religion paper it's a bit unfortunate but it's kind of just the way it is i think the biggest skill that the new atheists had collectively was their oratory skills right they could debate they could speak to an audience and they could win them over right but when you actually sit down and analyze the philosophical substance of what they're saying you find that there's not actually much substance to be analyzed in the first place so no i mean i'm not trying to kind of make atheism a big deal it's just kind of it's just kind of there it's just yeah i don't believe in god what do you do i don't really want to make a make a big song and dance about it i'm also increasingly entering into this debate about the usage of the word atheism and whether it's appropriately used to describe simply a lack of belief in god i've always very strongly advocated that atheism just means a lack of belief in god but studying at university i found that this just kind of doesn't exist in the academy right like in in academic works it's always used the term i mean atheism and it's always defined in all of the dictionaries and all the philosophical dictionaries as the belief that god does not exist and i thought that you know whatever it doesn't really matter because whatever term you use what matters is the actual belief i mean i could call myself an atheist i could call myself a theist by which i mean that i don't believe in god as long as you understand what i mean by the term it doesn't matter right but there is actually a really interesting discussion around the term and whether it even makes sense to say that atheism is just a lack of belief in god that is essentially a brain state whereas theism is not a brain state but a proposition right theism is something that can be true or false and so it seemed that atheism which appears at least on the surface to be the negation of theism would also have to be some kind of proposition but if it's just the lack of belief in god then it's nothing more than a psychological state which it seems weird to contrast with a proposition and you know in the past i've appealed to the greek origin of the word i've said look i mean the the greek a meaning without and theos meaning god put together to make atheism uh that's what atheism must mean but like i mean this is clearly not a very helpful way to define terms i mean the the greek origin of the word idiot is from idios meaning private um and you know i'm sometimes um somewhat of a private man does that mean i'm an idiot well i mean that's not why i'm an idiot but you see what i'm saying it's not particularly helpful to just refer to the greek origins of terms to give us an indication of how we should be using them today did you plan on being a professional musician when you were young plan is a strong word there but uh yeah i mean i did want to be a musician that was my first love and i still do love playing music in fact i'm i still put out music i'm still in a band i'm in a band called baker street um we fairly recently put out some new original music it's a song that we wrote uh if you want to check it out i'll leave a link in the description you can see me playing the guitar and singing i hope it's not too cringe uh yeah check it out um i still do it from time to time but i don't know if it's a viable career path anymore what's one topic that you don't have a definite opinion on as of yet that's a great question i think the obvious answer here is abortion although you know there are obviously individual like specific circumstances in which it's fairly obvious that an abortion would be moral or immoral uh when someone asks the broad general question what do you think of abortion it's like man i i don't know i don't know if i have like a precise underlying principle that i can confidently say this this is the position on abortion that i have in a way that i might be able to do with something like animal rights i mean there are so many different things to consider and of course it goes without saying that because i'll never be in a position to actually experience going through an abortion it makes it all the harder to to place the argument psychologically speaking um so it's very it's very difficult philosophical terrain to navigate um but i'm hoping to clear it up soon i'm hoping to do a lot more reading a lot more study a lot more have a lot more conversations um so yeah watch this space and we'll try and try and settle my mind on that at some point anyway i probably would have liked to answer a few more of your questions but i certainly feel like i'm about to have another vomiting fit so before that happens i think i should probably sign off so yeah it's nice to be back behind a camera even under these circumstances i'm not sure exactly when it's going to be that i'm going to finally actually start uploading frequently and consistently i've got a few things to catch up on when this disease finally leaves my body uh but when i start feeling a little bit better i'll be back on the grind making some proper videos and getting that content out there now that i'm a full-time youtuber for the first time ever so thank you so much um for allowing me to be able to do that and i'm sorry that i'm currently sick i'm not able to make any videos but i tell you what sick as i may be there's something even sicker and that's internet security that's right just before i go i want to take a moment to thank my wonderful sponsor of this video expressvpn expressvpn is a virtual private network designed to protect your internet security when browsing online the online world can be a pretty scary place and it doesn't help that there are hackers out there trying to steal your data and big tech companies mining your data to sell to advertisers and that in the uk internet service providers isps are required by law to keep logs of my online activity for up to a year and yeah browsing on incognito mode isn't doing anything to hide it from them so that's why for quite some time now i've been using expressvpn it's an incredibly simple app that runs on a computer or a smartphone and it encrypts all of my network data tunneling it through a separate secure server which hides my data from my isp and if i'm on an unencrypted wi-fi network will prevent hackers from stealing my data thing is the cost of a lot of vpns is that they can slow down your browsing but i found expressvpn to be lightning fast so i can keep working at my usual pace to connect all i have to do is pull up the app choose one of the huge number of server locations to connect to i'll choose new york and turn it on and just like that see how fast that was i'm now browsing securely and since expressvpn hides your location placing you wherever in the world you want to be you can also use it to access content that's been banned or is unavailable in your region which is just the cherry on top and here's the best part you can get three months of all of this completely for free by simply using my referral link just go to expressvpn.com forward slash cosmic skeptic or click the link in the description and just like that you'll have that extra bit of peace of mind when browsing the internet but anyway thank you all for watching thank you all for sticking around with the channel even though i completely disappeared to sit my exams and now come back telling you that i'm too ill to make any actual content but i'll get back on it as soon as i can i promise don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already too thank you for watching and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Alex O'Connor

Views: 295,247

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism, vegan, veganism

Id: mmO9kLOpUL8

Length: 19min 2sec (1142 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021