TOP Atheists BEST Arguments Against God. How Bad Are They?

i am always very seriously interested in people's best arguments for something i spend a lot of time looking for best arguments as i'm studying theology or apologetics that kind of thing a lot of time googling and searching and checking for articles that might give me the best argument for an issue or against an issue even against my own positions on things i learn a lot that way and this article purports to do that it says that it gives the three famous atheists and their best arguments ultimately against god so this is what we're gonna be talking about today um now normally this would be the monday video but hey it's not on monday and b it's not mark it's not in the mark series this is just like a one-off i'm coming back to the mark series in two weeks this week i'm doing this next monday i will be doing an interview with tim stratton on the free will argument for god's existence so we're very apologetic heavy in the next two weeks and we're gonna be going through this article this is by uh the author sam wickstrom and let me just i preface it with this this article does not represent all atheists i just i came across this article at some point in the past i took it down a note and said maybe one day i'll do something on this i'm not doing the mark teaching for two weeks and so i just went to my old notes and pulled something out to talk about and then spent way too much time on it so so here we go this is this is low-hanging fruit i fully admit it there are five reasons five arguments against god there will be time stamps in the description if you want to bounce around after this video's you know we've recorded it and all that and we've got the time stamps we'll put it there and you can bounce around i'm not trying to hold you captive but here's the deal the first four of these arguments are circular they're bad they're cringy in all reality now they may not sound that way when you first hear them but we'll think through them critically they're even self-refuting for the most part the fifth argument against god is very difficult now sam wickstrom in the article presents a weak version of that argument probably the weakest version of it i'm going to talk about it in more detail though the argument itself the problem of evil is is a challenging and difficult argument so we will talk about all that kind of stuff there's gonna be a long video if you don't like long videos you didn't click it probably anyways but i'm gonna go through all in detail i don't want to waste any of your time i think this is all very valuable stuff i mean what's more important than the existence of god in in our worldview it changes everything about everything and if christianity is true and evidentially true as i say yes it most certainly is then guess what um that changes everything too and then this whole simple gospel of jesus is lord and give your life to christ and trust in him and be forgiven and and be restored in relationship to god and all these things are actually true like that's reality well that that's what i think however that is not what this gentleman thinks sam extreme and by the way sam if you're watching this video um this is gonna feel like a personal attack it really is not i don't mean it that way in any way shape or form i don't know you sam i'm not really trying to respond to you on a personal level i'm gonna i'm gonna offer you some personal things as we go through this video but mostly i want to deal with these arguments because even though i would call this low-hanging fruit and i would say that these arguments are self-refuting i also think that what you've written here it represents tons of content that i hear from atheists all the time i mean this is why i would deal with low-hanging fruit not to straw man my my opponent so to speak but rather to recognize there's a real need to deal with these arguments even if they're bad arguments because they're so prevalent in the online world the most common atheist arguments i hear are the worst ones and i don't say that to be mean but this is honesty this is just clarity here i think you guys would appreciate that much all right so we're going to dig into it oh hold on there is a reader's poll am i religious yes all right richard dawkins he's the first guy that's the guy with the glasses there and richard dawkins is the first atheist who's considered one of the top atheists let me read to you what sam writes about richard dawkins richard dawkins is an english ethologist evolutionary biologist and author he wrote the 2006 best-selling book the god delusion in that book he made some pretty compelling arguments for atheism and i think it's hard for me to see here but i think it's right around here in my bookshelf maybe it's right about there anyway right around there and um yeah i have a copy of the god deletion now this is what um other atheists have responded to richard dawkins as whether he's a top atheist or not so what i want to do right now is read to you i want to read to you what it was written by um michael roos about richard dawkins and specifically about his book the god delusion because here's the thing if you as an atheist think richard dawkins is a fantastic proponent of atheism what that means is that intellectually you are on the bottom rung of atheism yet that is where most atheists are and that is why i want to make this kind of video so let me read it to you from a from a fellow atheist a philosopher michael roos he says the following but i think first that these people do a disservice to scholarship their treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being yet that would be richard dawkins that would be christopher hitchens sam harris matt dillahunty that that's that's this this class of people richard dawkins in the god delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or re of religion course proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing as i've said elsewhere for the first time in my life i felt sorry for the ontological argument if we criticized gene theory with as little knowledge as dawkins has of religion and philosophy he would rightly be indignant conversely i am indignant this is michael roos here speaking i am indignant at the poor quality of argumentation in dawkins denet hitchens and all others in that group i've written elsewhere that the god delusion that stalking's book makes me ashamed to be an atheist let me say it again let me say also that i am proud to be the focus of the invective of the new atheists they are a bloody disaster and i want to be on the front line of those who say so now soon we'll see that this is not these aren't just empty words we're gonna actually go through the argumentation that's presented by richard dawkins echoed by sam in this article here and we'll see right now specifically what is wrong with this thinking so here we go and uh welcome to the to the live stream i'm pastor mike winger i do theology and apologetics all the time online um i have tons of verse by verse teaching as well as lectures on specific you know trying to break down specific tough issues especially the tough issues of theology and also apologetics which is what we're doing today so here we go this is the article he says quoting richard dawkins from his book the god delusion we are all atheists about most of the gods of hum that humanity has ever believed in some of us just go one god further richard dawkins the god delusion so the first argument is this we're all atheists we're all atheists so the first argument best argument number one argument we're all atheists let's read through the article here and try to understand how this reasoning works in this argument dawkins is pointing out the obvious fact that we all look at historical religions with plenty of skepticism it would be absurd to believe that zeus and thor really do exist or that the gods of ancient egyptians are still out there wandering about when a religious person stops to consider this it will be a painful truth for them to realize that their religion is very much the same as those in the past so it will logically follow that their religion is likely the same kind of desperation for supernatural control in the universe these kinds of simple arguments are what made me seriously struggle to believe in the god of the bible but the beauty of it is that this argument can easily be applied to all religions okay so that's really two issues two very different issues that are overlapping in this first argument we're all atheists first let me say this um for those who are interested in looking for like philosophical arguments like a thoughtful argument where you're like premise one premise two or if this then that you won't find that in this article and you won't generally find that on in online atheism or what i like to call pop atheism pop level atheism you will generally find criticisms critiques uh rhetoric and and just assertions but that's what we have here so first the assertion is number one there is little difference between monotheists and atheists there's very little difference right we just believe in one less god than you you're practically an atheist in fact even says we're all atheists i i recently saw uh i guess aaron raw had tweeted that out that everyone's an atheist um i think i think that's what he had tweeted out and anyhow the second issue we'll cover one at a time the second issue is going to be if you have consistent standards hey hey christian hey buddhist hey whoever you are if you had consistent standards then the reasons you have for rejecting other religions would make you reject your own religion boom and that that is actually a whole movement of online atheism called street epistemology i have a video on that uh if you search up mike winger street epistemology probably find it dealing with the manual for create creating atheists which that's exactly what that is so first let's deal with the first issue is it true that believe that christians just believe in one more god than the atheists and that that's a small issue that's a small thing right it's just one less god so this is so weird that this is even being brought up that i have to try to bring a response like believing in one god literally is the difference between atheism and monotheism so if that's the whole difference then how can one say you're basically an atheist when the only defining attribute that keeps you from being an atheist is present in your life let me give you some examples you're a bachelor too i'm just married to one less person than you no no no you're you're not a bachelor the very defining trait of a bachelor is that you're married this is kind of a big deal or if someone says hey i'm collecting unemployment you can collect unemployment too because you just have one more job than me no that doesn't work this is completely irrational this this is a five-year-old should be able to work through this but this is actually a very popular atheist argument i've seen this many many times in comment sections in in twitter posts especially twitter is is like where it's at apparently for atheism and um yeah this is a big difference it's a big difference one god makes all the difference in the world right like if you're in court and you believe in one more murderer in the courtroom than the other people well you're you're saying guilty instead of innocent now it makes all the difference in the world all the difference in the world you know just you name anything in your life like i you know you're cancer-free you just have one more cancer than me this is just it's it's dumb like this is just actually dum-dum level thinking it's just snark and shallow thinking not only that but if you do believe in god it radically affects your entire worldview because atheists who say it's just one less god and act like it's a small thing we'll also go on to talk about the virtues of atheism and how once they shed themselves to their horrific belief in god they were freed from it well they obviously think belief in god is a big deal when they say things like that so how can it all of a sudden not be a big deal it's just snark and shallow thinking now let's deal with the second issue the street epistemology side and that is that consistent standards would make you reject all religions let me explain to you guys how this works um i come to you let's say i'm the atheist you're the christian and i come to you and i say i say christian tell me this why do you reject thor tell me the reasons why you reject thor and i start to say things like well there's no evidence for thor and then you say aha and that's why i reject christianity and then i say well why do you reject hinduism and you say well because they don't have any sort of real revelation from god and i say ha and that's why i reject christianity so i just apply whatever you say and what's what's interesting about this is this no thinking is required whatever you say like fill in the blank i'm just going to say that's true about christianity this is kind of a blind faith kind of way of working through this stuff it's called the outsider test of faith and a lot of christians don't know how to handle it they don't know how to work through it and that's okay i understand that but let me explain now what some of the differences are between say hinduism or let's take their example thor worship right part of the whole pantheon and believing in thor and all those different gods what's the difference between that and christianity here are a few differences that i jotted down and i've got links in the description i'm going to share with you as well that let you follow up with these things because you're going to be like mike you didn't give details well yes i did hours and hours and hours of details and carefully unpacked theological and apologetic arguments and philosophical arguments for god that are all going to be in the video description so the first one is cosmological arguments so cosmological arguments and and by the way let me just preface this if you're the atheist and you're thinking mike those have all been debunked haven't you seen rationality rules i'm like yeah oh i've seen it they haven't been debunked like you're still on the bottom rung guys they haven't been debunked there's a do a little more research on this please i beg you because it's it's the derision towards christianity that keeps you as an atheist you won't think deeply about it because why should you because you hate it i'm and i know that doesn't represent everybody but it does represent a lot of the bottom rung atheists right other atheists who are up higher you'll you you could probably agree with me here yeah normal typical bottom rung internet pop atheism is is really a lot of it's fueled by bitterness towards religion and towards christianity in particular and so we have this oh that's been refuted i just i just run the other way now well there's cosmological arguments and there's plural there's a bunch of these but one example is the kalam cosmological argument i have a video in the description where i interviewed braxton hunter and he gave a great explanation going from a simple view of it to a deeper understanding and answering skeptics objections from the comments during the live stream by the way the kalam cosmological argument or cosmological arguments in general they don't work for thor so this is a legitimate reason why i can reject thor but but embrace monotheism right because the cosmological arguments don't function for pagan deities they just don't function these see pagan deities what we you know colloquially put a little g on the little gods they just don't have the same kind of being the nature or the same kind of ontological status right that god monotheism presents so then the arguments that prove one often don't work for the others cosmological arguments work for god not thor that's my point till theological arguments this is arguments from design and you could go two different branches on the teleological side this is to say biology shows evidence of design and intention and this is whether or not you believe in evolution did you hear that whether or not you believe in evolution that's a separate argument but teleology a biological design shows evidence for a creator but you can also run the argument through the laws of physics and through the constants and qualities that we have in the universe itself and i have a link in the description where a physicist luke barnes goes through this argument in detail thoughtful deep we're going to take you past the bottom rung at least if you were still an atheist you'd be higher up on the rungs at that point um then number three the moral so i've given you two arguments now the teleology doesn't work for thor but it works for god moral arguments moral arguments that god is the grounding for objective moral values and duties i have a whole playlist of videos by one of my favorite guys dr william lane craig and he goes through the moral argument it's like four hours of content okay this is going to go deep and it's going to answer objections and and and he's so good at explaining this stuff on a level where the rest of us can understand it but without losing the philosophical um goodness of it and so yes now now this is where a lot of atheists go mike when you say moral argument for god what you're really saying is atheists are immoral and here i'm like get off the bottom rung guys i'm not saying that i'm not saying that and christians are never saying that but this is the constant i've had this conversation lots of times hey how do you account for moral values and duties you're saying i'm immoral i'm a good person i'm not saying that i hate you you know like i'm like okay this is unfortunate um that's not what we're saying uh the moral argument's a lot smarter and better than that actually i would argue that you are a moral person maybe not good but you're at least a moral person and that that is the evidence that we're presenting for god at any rate god can account for this because he is the necessary being thor cannot account for this because you can't ground those morals in the person of thor the way you came with god so thor fails the euthyphro dilemma whereas god passes it with flying colors there's also an argument from moral knowledge which uh you can also present that's a whole different argument there's more than one moral argument for god the argument from beauty and yeah you should take the argument from beauty seriously if objective beauty exists god exists now i have a link in the description that goes through that in detail probably you're not familiar with this argument it's it gets a lot less press than other arguments for god but there's a link down below where you get a philosophical defense of the argument from beauty the argument from free will that is coming next week when tim stratton comes on and i interview him on monday like as if i'm not going to be on the phone with him i don't know why i'm doing that i guess because i was talking to him yesterday on the phone at any rate i'll deal with that next week the argument from free will and yeah then when i once i've done it i'll put a link in the description in a week that'll be there as well the resurrection of jesus is an argument that works for christianity doesn't work for thought right historical evidence for the resurrection of jesus it doesn't work for thor if jesus rose from the dead thor is not a god okay it actually works against thor so i have a uh video down below that's over three hours of two historians giving i think it's over three anyway it's a very long video it's it's two historians giving you know historical evidence a case for the resurrection of jesus and that is also down in the description below now this kind of evidence you never see other religions marshaling this kind of evidence never ever ever no you don't you see little snippet things but you can't go deep you can't go deep into islamic prophecy the way you came with the bible which is number eight prophecy i have my whole evidence for the bible series i put that playlist down below but prophecy fulfills scripture excuse me prophecy shows that scripture is inspired by god that he predicts things ahead of time then later they come to pass now if you think well that's just the bible proving the bible you're on the bottom rung no it's documents from his history that cover massive amounts of time written by different authors and we can actually separate the prophetic the prophetic foretelling from the fulfillment that we can confirm through outside sources okay that becomes something very different than the bible proving the bible come up off the bottom rung so comparisons to other religions are great here because islamic prophecy i had a conversation with someone recently where they said there was a convincing islamic prophecy and that this islamic prophecy was that muhammad had prophesied that in the future or in the end times dishes would speak to one another continually now the the idea is well this is satellite dishes this is a prophecy about about satellite dishes now i try to have consistent standards if i saw that prophecy in the bible i would never use it because i would say why on earth would i have thought at the time that this could refer to satellite dishes this is this seems to be a modern use of a word that didn't have that ancient use this is called anachronism reading into the past something that was never there in the first place well as you read more and more about muhammad you realize he thought that birds could talk to people he said solomon had conversations with birds he said that alexander the great traveled to the edge of the earth where the sun fell into a pool of mud and there he met a group of people that lived on the edge of the earth where the sun went into the mud when muhammad said that dishes talked he actually meant dishes talked what a great way to compare religions and say ah for the same reason i reject islamic prophecy i accept biblical prophecy because it passes the muster it passes the standard so i love the comparisons number nine yeah there's a lot of evidence for christianity and for god number nine all out for one that people don't appreciate very much and they should personal experience now i have experienced god in my life he's really truly changed my life okay i don't usually offer that as evidence for you but it's at least evidence for me if you were to come to me and i had no idea about any of this evidence and you said mike why do you accept god and reject thor i could say well god's changed my life and thor hasn't and that's a sufficient evidence now it won't prove it to you i get that but at least i should take seriously my own experience with god and whether or not you believe that i'm in my right mind or whatever else i should i should at least take that seriously and i think that that's very smart to do but when i'm trying to do apologetics and evangelism with with evidence i usually present other things than my personal testimony although i wonder if i should present my testimony more in that regard because i am convinced that jesus really changed my life and i think my family even the ones who aren't following the lord would probably agree and that's pretty powerful number 10 last one i'll offer then we'll go on and do more like i said there's gonna be a longer video um because i got a lot of talk about because as i kept digging in i was like oh there's more i want to share um the the fact that i have all this evidence for christianity this is number 10 is evidence against thor is evidenced against hinduism buddhism and even atheism right evidence for one religion is evidence against competing claims so when i marshal a case for christianity not only is that showing christianity true it's also invalidating other competing claims wherever those claims match christianity they may be true but where they disagree with it they will then be false that's just reason so the bottom line is this for an informed christian the challenge the outsider test of faith tell me why you reject thor and i'll tell you why i reject christianity well that doesn't work for an informed christian because the informed christian's like well wait a minute when i compare my reasons for having christianity as a truthful thing in my mind i know this is true the reasons i have for that don't work for thor and in fact work against thor you have strengthened my faith thank you very much what a great what a great thing the outsider test of faith proves that christian faith is legitimate so the the phrase that we often hear online we often hear repeated by skeptics and cynics that there is no evidence for god there's no evidence for the bible no evidence for christianity it's not only not true but it reveals something and this might change our approach to those people it reveals that they have such a shallow understanding of the evidence for god of the evidence for christianity that they are in this incredibly confident state where they feel they can dismissively say that none of it exists what does that mean it means maybe we can try to babystep them into seeing the evidence start with just one piece of evidence pick one of those videos i just i linked down below or one of the books i'm going to put down there and just send it to one person and say hey can we just look at this one piece of evidence and spend some time on it and you want to put a crack in the dam of that firm feeling that there's no evidence because the most popular level of atheism pop atheism really does think that none of these evidences exist or that random youtubers have utterly refuted them with their five minute videos and so often when when i watch even um what's the guy that does the crash course in philosophy when i looked at crash course and philosophies you know his treatment of things like the ontological argument or um you know pascal's wager or these different arguments for god it's embarrassing i'm not even a philosopher and i've spent some time on these things and i'm like this is bad like he he didn't even represent it properly like that's not even it so you want to find right what i'm trying to do here find the best argument for god not your worst representation of it yeah all right so the um the article goes on to say scrolling down no that's indoctrination that's next the article says and i'll try to get on your screen here it's a little hard for me to find okay here we go right here when when a religious person stops to consider this it will be a painful truth for them to realize that their religion is very much the same as those in the past so it will logically follow that their religion is likely the same kind of desperation for supernatural control in the universe you know what happens is when i stopped to realize the evidence for christianity real evidence like documented philosophical historical different kinds of evidences then i go wow it logically follows that christianity is actually true and not a desperate attempt to control the universe but rather a realization that god has revealed himself in christ that is the most important thing ever then he goes on and says these kinds of simple arguments are what made me seriously struggle to believe in the god of the bible that breaks my heart sam that breaks my heart man i don't know if there's still an open door for you to reconsider these things but i hope so i hope there's an open door because i've just given you a list and there's links in the description so follow it up don't take my summary okay follow up pick those arguments whatever's the most interesting to you and start pursuing those things and realize realize there's more to think about here than what you've realized you had an unthinking christianity and then you went and moved to an unthinking atheism through slogans and bad reasoning and i think that represents a large number of people all right let's look at number two number two is about indoctrination and this is a quote also from richard dawkins second argument from richard dawkins we'll then move on to other other top atheists in his view do not indoctrinate your children teach them how to think for themselves how to evaluate evidence and how to disagree with you do not indoctrinate them teach them how to do those things then he goes on and says dawkins challenges religious people to train their kids in critical thinking instead of in religious tradition in this way the child will choose whether or not religion is true and real remember this phrase which is irrational we'll remember that just rather than being constantly told by trusted friends and family that it is this is a challenge to religious people because religion continues almost entirely because of the indoctrination of children children are the easy are easy targets because they trust that the adults around them have life figured out and are vastly more intelligent than them dawkins is pointing out that if we train children to think critically rather than indoctrinate them we will have an atheist society in a single generation and there's a little preview of frederick nietzsche big mustache all right we'll come back to that in a minute okay let's talk about this argument it's ultimately based on an assumption i see an assumption here it that is the assumption is i don't know if you caught it that that there are two mutually exclusive options for parents either you teach them that a religion is true or you teach them to think critically and the two are incompatible that's the assumption now this is just a purely um this is a richard dawkian assumption okay this is like a document thing right richard dawkins is one of the guys he's like religions like one of the worst things in the world and that's not true it's not historically true it's not sociologically true but it's true in his head and so that changes the way you view religion you view religion through such lenses of bitterness all religion right all religion and there's plenty of people like this that feel the same way that you can't reason carefully about it it's like if you've ever had someone you really hated and then they did something very nice and you had to find a reason why the nice thing was actually bad i remember a video an atheist did on me not too long back i did a video on uh stephen anderson who's a um who's a total whack-a-doodle um and everybody should not follow his stuff and he he's anyway i did a whole video on it and uh steven anderson calls for all kinds of horrible treatment to homosexual people and he believes that they're reprobate and they can never be saved and i'm just it's so unbiblical it's so ungodly and it's so harmful so i did a video on it well the before i did the video i had atheists reaching out to me like mike you're gonna comment on steven anderson you're gonna comment on stephen anderson like you could tell it was that kind of attitude like you're gonna say something huh you conservative net jab and uh and so i did do a video um not because of them but because of stephen anderson because it didn't need comment i did the video and then i had an atheist respond to my video after asking me for it where i condemned and condemned steve anderson and the response was some popular atheists don't remember his name doing a video explaining how mike winger might look like a good guy here but just so you know he's just as crazy as stephen anderson he's just the nicer looking version of crazy let's make sure we know he's still a villain and that's the whole response right like you can't i can't do anything possibly positive because i'm just that kind of villain and i'm just like come on guys like this is revealing more about you than it is about me that's for sure i'm not offended i i don't care but i think it's revealing so let's talk about this is it possible to teach critical thinking and the truth of a religion yes why not the only reason why you could say it's not why you would say this dichotomy exists this mutually exclusive category of teach religion or teach critical thinking why you could keep those apart is only if every religion is false and based on lies if every religion is false and based on lies then you can't teach critical thinking in religion because the adopting this is adopting irrational thinking but that's only true if atheism is true do you catch the circularity of this if atheism is true you have a choice to teach your kids critical thinking or religion if atheism is not true you can absolutely teach religion and critical thinking at the same time and that is of course circular reasoning this isn't an argument for atheism this is an argument from atheism it assumes atheism is true circular arguments fail that's kind of like a nice simple rule of life generally true circular arguments fail now indoctrination has different definitions here's one definition of indoctrination and i'll put it on screen teaching someone to fully accept the ideas opinions and beliefs of a particular group and not to consider the other ideas opinions and beliefs or the ideas of other groups so don't even think about it just adopt it believe what we're saying don't think about or even consider other people's ideas now if that's what you mean by indoctrination then um then that's something that happens on a human level it's not a religious thing it certainly happens in an atheist community where we won't even really consider the arguments of other people being presented we'll just look for the quickest rebuttal and run away from them as quick as possible and i'm i know this doesn't represent all atheists i think it represents the majority of those i see online though and that's why i'm doing this video i i want to maybe this feels like a rude wake-up call but i want it to be a wake-up call you aren't even thinking like you think you're thinking but you're not that you're not seriously considering all you're doing is grabbing and looking at arguments and christian things and religious things in order to find something to complain about or deride not to really understand and to process and that is indoctrination now if you mean uh by indoctrination just teaching your kids things yeah we should all do indoctrination in that sense but really nowadays most people mean something else by it they mean kind of like thought control that prevents people from reasoning and that i'm opposed to which should be obvious should be obvious i'm opposed to that many christian parents are uh although it's a problem amongst many christian parents just like it's a problem amongst many atheist parents hinduis parents buddhist parents whatever it's just a human problem is that many of us don't do critical thinking for a resource on this let me point you guys to natasha crane natasha crane is fantastic for parents who want to help their kids learn how to critically think and not only that she'll even teach you how to critically think i have a link to her blog down below which is a very popular blog well-known blog and she has a resource called the fallacy detective it's a book for like five six-year-olds on how to teach them how to do fallacies yeah well this is a christian catch this guy's atheists be proud of us right this is a christian resource where she's giving other parents the ability to teach their kids how to work through fallacies and work through them properly not like rationality rules on youtube where it's not right it's like that's not how the fallacy works at any rate i think that uh you guys should check out her resources especially if you're a parent so look at this also speaking of critical thinking um and by the way christian christianity has had some of the greatest critical minds of all time right and most of the great thinkers in the past have been religious people there's there's just no correlation between being religious and not being able to think now the atheist will be like well you're just being inconsistent but that's your assumption right that's your assumption if atheism is true they're being inconsistent but if atheism is not true if you're trying to make a case for atheism which doesn't assume it's truthfulness then you can't say that right this can't be part of your case for atheism speaking of critical thinking let's go back to the article and notice what he said about the conclusion he says the child will choose whether or not religion is true and real rather than constantly being told by trusted family and friends that it is kids don't choose what's true and real right none of us choose what's true and real because we believe in objective truth and objective reality which means i'm discovering truth i'm not choosing it now if kids could choose what's true indoctrination would be entirely appropriate i could just tell you it's true and then you choose it and now it's true because you chose it so all that would matter is getting people to choose things but this is and you could say it's sloppy writing but i think there actually is maybe some hints of relativism that's going on here and relativism the way it works is it invades pieces of our worldview and makes us inconsistent so we need to find where it's invading us and we need to root it out yeah you don't get to choose what's true it's it's true or false you want to discover it we discover truth we don't choose it and that's why i'm a christian and why i'm not a progressive christian frederick nietzsche has a um argument as well that the article provides okay here's frederick nietzsche with his famous mustache and um very impressive i must admit very impressive i just how do you keep the food out of that i don't mind's already getting too long frederick wilhelm nietzsche was a german philosopher the article says cultural critic poet philologist and i don't remember what a philologist is is that like a philosopher i mean the study of philo could be love philosophy wisdom i don't know and latin and greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on western philosophy and modern intellectual history and here's a quote from frederick nietzsche he says i and it's probably friedrich you know i'm probably pronouncing wrong but i have not come to know atheism as a result of logical reasoning remember this guys i have not come to know atheism as a result of logical reasoning and still less as an event of my life so it's not experience and it's not reason in me it is a matter of instinct now this is considered an argument now for atheism and here's the argument atheism is instinctual you are naturally atheist and so therefore you should stay an atheist because it's a natural thing let's read it atheism is completely natural a primary tool of critical thought is to remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence bottom rung atheism guys i have a whole video on that in the description extraordinary claims require extraordinary events i'm going to talk about it today but i have a whole video on it it's not as smart as you think it is when someone tells you that they saw a velociraptor in the forest you're going to need evidence to believe them i agree their claim is pretty extraordinary so you would require some outstanding evidence for their claim well i don't know i don't even know what outstanding means i would require evidence for their claim religion is treated the exact same way if a muslim man tries to convert you to islam you're going to need some evidence for his claims about the truth of his religion yeah i agree that's an important point about religion that the burden of proof is on them to prove their fanciful ideas well that's also true but it's also true of atheism the only reason people are convinced so easily about the madness of religion is that their parents or friends tell them about it and they trust those people i believed in christianity for a long time catch this guys the only reason the only reason people are committed so easily about the madness of religion is that their parents or friends tell them about it and they trust those people i believed in christianity for a long time and when i had the strongest doubts now we're getting a mind inside the mind of sam as he was going through his doubts when he had those strongest doubts here's what he would do he would remember that his parents friends fellow church-goers and extended family wouldn't lie to me he says about something so important atheism is instinctual but so is trust which makes his entire argument self-refuting we'll come back to that in a second um all right we'll come back there's another argument from frederick nietzsche but okay this is this is confused um there are two different issues going on in this in this argument in number three here atheism's instinctual one is that atheism itself is like an instinctual natural thing and the implication he doesn't say it the implication is that we should believe whatever comes naturally okay that's a problematic claim but that's that seems to be the argument the second issue is that belief in god requires extraordinary evidence which he never defines he never explains and nobody ever does i've asked i've asked like lots of atheists asked explain what you mean by extraordinary evidence give examples and i don't get them i have a whole video on that like i said anyhow the notice the double standard atheism is supposed to be believed without reason or evidence that's argument number three yet we should only believe in god if we have quote extraordinary evidence okay stop for a minute this is like religious brainwashing to the max you should believe atheism with no evidence and without logical reasoning but you should only believe religion if you have extraordinary evidence whatever that is this is not critical thinking this sometimes atheists realize that they don't have what's technically a religion and so they feel like because religion is irrational they're automatically rational and it causes people to not be reflective on their own thought process let's handle these issues now is atheism actually instinctual meaning that if people just grew up in a social void they would become atheists naturally this seems to be false there are sociological studies that reveal that we have and i'm going to be careful how i word this a natural tendency and receptivity to belief in supernatural agency that is to say that religious beliefs come naturally to human beings now this can be overcome with education and cultural environment meaning that you train generally speaking there's always exceptions maybe niche was an exception but generally speaking you have to train people to become atheists they will naturally believe in some kind of supernatural agency beyond the world god gods you name it they're naturally going to do that so that's a problem because that means that if the argument is about what's instinctual and children have this natural disposit disposition towards religious belief then that's an argument for christianity or for theism or for at least religion right it's at least an argument for religion and against atheism this argument actually backfires on itself and reveals a a um double standard of irrational thinking extraordinary evidence required here no evidence required here so is atheism instinctual probably not um but what if we held that center consistently and we said you should only believe what comes natural well we're going to believe all kinds of well it's not that we're going to believe all kinds of weird things it's that we're going to lose all kinds of important and true things that we do believe now if we hold that we believe what's instinctual right whatever doesn't have to be trained that's what i should believe well then why would anybody believe in evolution right whether you believe it or not why why would you like you for for the atheist especially now there's christians who believe in evolution and christians who don't but for the atheist it's like just about all of them believe firmly in the theory of evolution of you know especially common descent and abiogenesis they kind of come with the package of atheism you kind of have you have to have that theory it has to happen naturally without intervention of any supernatural thing so you're sort of stuck on that view whether you like it or not it's the only game in town but you don't believe this because it came natural to you right you were educated into it you were taught it you didn't like a four-year-old you were like i'll bet there's a bunch of transitional fossils in the ground like you didn't you didn't think about this like i suppose that there are i think that the rna theory of abiogenesis is really very likely you know he didn't yeah he didn't think any of those things um there would be no copernican view of the universe you wouldn't be thinking that the sun and the earth are flying through space really fast and the earth's going around the sun you wouldn't be thinking these things naturally you only get them through education and you can call that indoctrination but that's only if it comes without critical thinking and it doesn't have to so yeah i think that the current growth of atheism the spike in growth of atheism that has happened recently is due to the promulgation of atheism in our universities as well as online in fact when i started doing youtube videos a few years back five years ago six years ago when i started kind of like first putting content out i would get atheists who commented on my videos who do you think you are atheists own youtube atheists own the internet this is our domain and it was and it was kind of true in a lot of ways that uh that yeah but but now christian you know christian channels are breaking through we're getting more information out there and we're kind of dispelling some of the content that's been out there so here's the problems with this claim one it's self-refuting since atheism isn't generally a natural thing for people it's not that's not true so then it refutes itself you would then have to be religious of some kind if you thought what's natural is what we should believe number two is an inconsistent standard because they only app they only want to apply believe what's natural in religious contexts and then they want to use it for atheism which doesn't work but they don't want to apply it to all the other things they believe right their understanding of gravity their their their understanding that planes can fly like you wouldn't naturally think a giant metal object can fly right you had to you had to learn that it's not natural finally let's come to the second issue does belief in god require extraordinary evidence and again i have a whole video on this with more detail but let me just say the short answer is no and the reason is because you don't know what you mean by extraordinary evidence and uh this was shown in my debate with matt dillahunty where he can't even give an example of of the kind of evidence let me put the question the way i'll put it to you guys if hypothetically jesus existed 2000 years ago died on the cross was buried in a tomb rose from the dead and he was physically alive let's pretend that happened historically what kind of evidence hypothetically would you look back and expect to find that's a huge key here that they always ignore expect to find when you look at the historical record what sorts of evidence would you expect to find if it was true that's how you should start every investigation if this is true what kind of evidence would i expect to find and what evidence is being offered and then is it more likely that it's true than false based on that evidence that's critical thinking right now with the evidence for the resurrection of christ i've asked on twitter and this is what i did my video on i was like what evidence would you guys call extraordinary and they i got answers like if we found a bible on the moon with video footage or images packed into the bible placed there by aliens that show and prove that jesus really came out of the tomb and was alive afterwards and i'm like that's what you'd expect like sure that would be great evidence i agree that'd be but you wouldn't expect it like if the resurrection is true you wouldn't historically expect to have to have aliens in the universe who observed it recorded it documented it and then preserved it on the moon for us to find later like that's irrational and that's the problem with the extraordinary evidence claim it's always irrational let's apply it to the velociraptor scenario he says if you saw velociraptor i would need outstanding evidence he says well i just need evidence okay look if you have video footage and i've reason to think it's not been tampered with and and why do i expect video footage pardon me for the rapture but not for jesus because there were no video cameras like you don't expect video footage where there are no video cameras this is kind of like thinking 101 right just normal thinking here but i do i have video evidence or you could show me bones from the raptor dna that shows that it's fresh you could bring other eyewitnesses who have no apparent reason to lie about it and seem to be confirming with slightly varied accounts of the same event to show that they're actually giving their own account i have some of that in the new testament i have this stuff with jesus so yeah that's normal evidence though uh for us today normal evidence is video footage normal evidence is is eyewitness accounts back in the day we have textual evidence for jesus we have archaeological evidence we have eyewitness evidence and we have good historical and critical uh research that goes and brings it all back to the first century to the time of christ and things like the conversion of paul and all this anyway many of you have heard this stuff before there's content on the resurrection down below and basically yeah you just need normal evidence to prove any claim normal evidence it just has to be good evidence decent evidence all right next issue here he says that in his own journey um and i'll put it on screen for you i believed in christianity for a long time and when i had these strongest doubts i would remember now i want you to fill in the blank here if you're a christian when you have the strongest doubts what do you remember when you have the strongest doubts what do you remember do you like sam remember that your parents fellow friends fellow church-goers and extended family wouldn't lie to you about something so important i don't when i had my strongest doubts which i did when i had my strongest ouch which were pretty strong losing sleep i did not remember that my pastors friends leaders that they wouldn't lie to me what i thought was how would they even know how do they know it's true what i thought was is there historical evidence for the resurrection yeah i didn't go into it knowing that there had anybody even studied this like i just went into it i was shocked that for 2000 years ago we had such great evidence i mean great evidence to support it i was i was shocked that there were these thoughtful arguments for the evidence for the resurrection for the evidence for the existence of god as well also for uh prophecy in the scripture a very neglected uh prophetic apologetic that um i've done content on myself so i was surprised by all that stuff but i also go yeah but i also have experiences with god that do make more sense thinking that they were real experiences with god than they do thinking that i'm crazy because i don't have these kinds of experiences with everything at any rate i didn't remember that other people told me it was true i didn't remember that and oddly enough he contradicts himself by saying atheism is instinctual therefore you should believe it but he also says trust is instinctual but he wants you to reject that because it's an inconsistent standard don't trust those people i'm not saying you should i'm just saying the standard here isn't consistent it's not right what's missing from sam's reasons for why he left the faith he didn't stop and ask have i experienced god that's kind of a big deal right do i have historical prophetic philosophical arguments for god for the evidence of jesus for the evidence of the bible being god's word again we see an inconsistent standard here he went from a christian who didn't think critically sam forgive me i'm not trying to insult you i'm not but you went from a christian who didn't think critically to an atheist who doesn't think critically i'm not trying to marginalize you um that's just what your article represents i hope you'll change your mind and if you're watching this a year from now maybe sam's changed his mind okay let's not hold it against him i just thought he'll probably watch this because he's in the video right so maybe a chance to talk to him a little bit about it if you want to talk to me sam give me a call actually go to bible thinker dot org send me a message and we'll get it we'll get in touch with each other so the straw man of christianity in argument number three to conclude it is that the only reason to be a christian is because your parents friends in church say so and by the way my parents were not following christ my father was the first one to try to talk me out of my christian faith and uh and as i increasingly became a stronger christian growing up there was increasing resistance to me being one in the first place and most of my friends were not really christians at all at any rate that's just my story but um number four let's look at argument number four christianity was from the beginning oh we put it on the screen here we go this argument is going to be about religion being desperate desperate and here we go the quote from frederick nietzsche is christianity was from the beginning essentially and fundamentally life's nausea and disgust with life merely concealed behind masked by and dressed up as faith in another or better life now to the informed christian you immediately recognize this quote as being pure mockery that is utterly baseless but if you are a pop atheist you think that's exactly what it is so let's talk about it in more detail or maybe you're just a christian prone to bitterness i think those who i'm speak pastorally here those who are prone towards bitterness towards towards leaders towards other people in their lives they will be drawn to this kind of argumentation it just fits their mentalities okay religion is desperation he says i have also noticed that this uh this painful truth about religion it's made up of people who are intensely afraid of reality that's you guys you christians out there you're just intensely afraid of reality and of the truth of the human condition and i want to i'll just preface this look at how he assumes atheism to prove atheism this is another circular argument right because this isn't reality unless atheism is true so we're intensely afraid of reality and the truth of the human condition religion comes from our hatred for our loathsome existence and our deep desire to deny the actuality of death and future loss however if we can be united in our disassociation disasso dissociation sorry from real life we can be happy we can call this dissociation faith i'm always enamored by the weird definitions of faith that atheists will offer ignoring you know actual linguistics use in greek and hebrew in the bible or in actual careful thoughtful christian theology faith is just trust right it's true it's a choice to trust but we'll call this dissociation faith and together we can be free from the horror of existence religion allows people to forget that we are on a rock zipping through the cosmic abyss at hundreds of kilometers per second and that eventually our sun won't even exist our planet will not even be a memory and this truth is something that people desperately scurry away and hide from the reality is all we have is each other connection in this life anything more is hopeful delusions i'm going to argue that this isn't even something you have on atheism but at any rate let's look at this in more detail and let's respond to this argument that religion is desperation i'm going to walk through this kind of like piece by piece and unpack it and if you find this argument impressive i hope that this video is helpful for you i've also noticed that this this painful truth about religion is made up of people who are intensely afraid of reality and of the truth of the human condition now i asked you guys to notice that that phrase there that it assumes that atheism is true in order to prove that it's true this is the absolute best example of circular reasoning right you christians you know how i know you're wrong because you are desperately denying the truth of atheism that's how i know think about it best argument best argument top atheist best argument coming from frederick nietzsche brilliant guy but brilliant people can be stupid too and a lot of them are there's brilliant people on every side of every argument if you believe something wrong there's a brilliant person who agrees with you always so that just doesn't help so how though does christianity handle the human condition are we really intensely afraid of reality in the truth of the human condition actually christianity unlike say new age beliefs or the beliefs that we're all divinity and we're just sort of discovering our you know like christian science type stuff that type of thing is very different than christianity christianity is a sober view of the human condition right because all religions aren't the same christianity says you are sinful you are fallen and you have judgment coming upon you because of your wickedness this is a sober and scary reality like this is hardly a make-believe fairy tale to just make everyone feel good it's a sober reality about judgment coming upon mankind but it also teaches that humans are made in god's image and that we have this incredible value and we have this incredible potential to know god and to love god and to love others and we have this incredible daunting responsibility before god one day for all those things it teaches that god loves us but there is only one way jesus it's exclusive this is not something people like even even christians will try to get around it sometimes to try to get away from the exclusivity of having faith in christ or the idea of hell i mean there's obviously where christianity has this concept of hell right this is not a fairy tale that was made to just cause people to think happy thoughts it's just not right that would be a more new age type view of things or christian science like i said these other views they're more fairy tale style religion okay that's that's the view not christianity here's a question though how does atheism do the same thing how does atheism handle the human condition and the reality of what's going on is it possible that atheism is actually afraid of reality and that atheists are denying the truth of the human condition i think it is and i can give a case for it in atheism you don't have any real grounding for believing in moral values and duties this has caused many atheists to deny the reality of moral values and duties and then play weird word games about subjective and objective but basically it just causes them in that worldview to deny that those moral values and duties are real that it's truly always wrong to torture a baby for fun like you can't really say this on atheism it's always wrong no matter who agrees or disagrees it's always wrong to torture a baby for fun that's true an atheist is kind of a place where their worldview is forcing them to deny that scary reality why is it scary because it also means that things i'm doing are wrong no consciousness there's many atheists that would actually agree and say like like sam harris say hey consciousness is an illusion you don't really exist you just think you do who's the you thinking you do i don't know because that would require you it's self-refuting but at any rate you don't exist and you're just you're just having a delusion that you are which again is self-refuting but guys like daniel dennett the atheist philosopher would agree there is no consciousness on atheism i think atheism is denying the obvious here i think they're denying reality in order to support atheism i think they have a belief in atheism that forces them to reject obvious truths about reality moral values and duties consciousness how about purpose true purpose we have a real purpose and a function in life now that could be scary because you have a purpose you can be failing that purpose but on atheism you must deny your purpose beauty no real beauty on atheism objective beauty ultimately they're going to deny a lot of things because they deny god that atheism is the is the fuel in the fire that is burning up consciousness and morality and purpose and beauty i think that this argument backfires as well it's a painful truth about atheism it's made up of people who are i wouldn't say they're intensely afraid of reality but i would say they are rejecting reality and the truth of the human condition and that atheism is driving them to do it right even richard dawkins the biologist says that you when you're doing biological work you have to constantly remind yourself that even though everything you're looking at appears really well designed it's not designed like you have to keep telling yourself this you must indoctrinate yourself against the obvious thing you're seeing let's go on he then describes religion and says it comes from catch this religion's origin it comes from our hatred for our loathsome existence and our deep desire to deny the actuality of death and a future loss yet yet atheism also has a rejection of future loss which is hell and judgment and standing before god i've met atheists who are very happy at the idea that they that they will have no eternal life because they think it would be unpleasant especially hell or they have weird views of heaven like they think heaven would be bad and boring and they don't want to be there and i just think you're you're not really not really thinking about that like you maybe you don't maybe your view of heaven is like that you know harpson cloud and singing 24 7. um and that's that's that's from a bugs bunny cartoons when you're a kid like that's not that's not from scripture so at any rate the the denial of hell and of judgment is a great comfort to many atheists it's a great comfort to them so this argument works both ways as well it can work both ways but does religion actually come from my hatred for my loathsome existence and my deep desire to deny the actuality of death and future lies uh no christianity comes from obvious facts about god and morality which we would call natural revelation right you can arrive at that through critical thinking and two special revelation through jesus and the bible which can be historically proven and critically looked at textually proven there's actually a whole area of research that's just like the the textual connections in scripture about the unity of the bible that goes even beyond my jesus in the old testament stuff at any rate you have a special revelation of god in christ and that's also recorded in the scripture which means that christianity is based on the idea that god has revealed himself to us and we can confirm this by looking at these sort of miraculous elements in the religion it's also based on real personal experience which is a good argument for god it just doesn't convince you because you didn't have that experience like i did okay but it but it should be good for me and those who've had it and those who haven't had it should ask for it and seek it and ask god to reveal himself to them so let's have fair scales is there some loss that atheists might be trying to deny yes judgment and control over their lives that god would have is there some loss that christians could be trying to deny yes they could be trying to deny that they're gonna die and then cease to exist but does that mean they are because there is some loss that could be there no there's evidential reasons to support christianity this argument assumed atheism was true and concluded it was true now let's read this in more detail because i want to read again the part where he describes christianity the description of christianity here reveals more about the atheist sam than and many atheists online than it does about christianity so looking for the word however there it is however if we can be united in our dissociation from real life assumes atheism is true we can be happy we can call this dissociation faith and together we can be free from the horror of existence religion allows people to forget that we are on a rock zipping through the cosmic abyss at hundreds of kilometers per second and that eventually our sun won't even exist and our planet will not be a memory will not even be memory and this truth is something that people desperately scurry away and hide from now let me just say that does not describe christianity what he's described there is more like buddhism buddhism does actually have a view that they want to escape right escape that is the goal of buddhism and different branches in hinduism the idea is this whole experience is torture and we want to get out of it by not caring about it by transcending it and by escaping this reality and then you just kind of stop existing that is the goal in buddhism there's different branches in buddhism but that is the goal in buddhism at least in a prominent number of buddhists okay that would that would be a desire to escape the horror of existence i get that however however this is not christianity in any way shape or form christians are very sober and real about suffering and about the difficulties of life and about how hard it is and how bad things are that's definitely true so yeah christians are not to dissociate from reality we recognize it's all going to burn you may have heard that phrase before it's all going to burn man it's all going to burn we just add in addition to the to the temporal and quick burning nature of life we add that there is accountability for this life and there are eternal consequences for it as well positive and negative and i think that the question you have to ask is is there evidential support for that is there reason to believe that you can't just purely assert that it's false it's just circular reasoning again finally he concludes with this phrase look at how the atheist describes reality here the reality is all we have is each other connection and this life anything more is hopeful delusions is there evidence supported for this no it's pure assertion it's indoctrination based on the definition i offered earlier it is not critical thinking that's all we have however there's a problem on atheism we don't have each other we don't have connection and we don't really have this life because on atheism i think the consistent atheist would say that i'm not really here in fact if you want to grant consciousness i think consciousness itself human consciousness is an argument for god's existence a strong one right but but if i'm just if i'm just a meat robot if i'm just brain and chemicals firing then then i'm not even the same mic who started recording this video i'm the same it's not even a consistent i don't continue to even exist from second to second i'm just the firing of chemicals and electrons in my mind i'm not even a me so we don't have each other on atheism i think that that's a hopeful delusion on atheism um number five okay this is the hardest argument absolutely the most difficult one and it comes from epicurus and i don't want to joke about this the other ones were cringe-worthy arguments but they're common so i want to deal with them this one is a very difficult argument and it's also incredibly common probably the most the strongest and most common argument against god it is the argument about evil so let's read it and however i'll preface it with this this version of the argument of evil is like the most cringy version of it but i'm going to talk about it in more detail and give it more respect than that okay so epicurus was an ancient greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called epicureanism only a few fragments in letters of epicurus is 300 work written works remain and here's the quote from epicurus is god willing to prevent evil but not able then he's not omnipotent because he doesn't have the power to do it if he's able but not willing then he is malevolent i would i would argue against that and i will in a moment but if he's both able and willing then whence cometh evil there's a whole actual argument in response to that interestingly enough um is he neither able nor willing then why call him god okay the argument is that god can't be either either he's not good or he's not powerful and it's impossible for god to be good and powerful at the same time because he would have stopped all this evil stuff that goes on so this is the problem of evil let's read sam's entry on it apologists and theologists theologists alike have been grappling with the problem of evil for nearly a thousand years and i'll tell you why listen to his interpretation of the scenario it's because it's a paradox that can not be solved paradoxes such as the problem of evil clearly show us that the concept of god is contradictory in and of itself and therefore is impossible it's not even possible it's not logically possible religious people will say that god is outside of space and time and doesn't have to follow the natural laws of reality so he can deny logic i just want to smack my forehead several times during this again this is the worst version of the problem people i'll deal with it more seriously though the only problem with that is logic is not a natural law of space and time it's a law of reasoning that applies to concepts and that's why the problem of evil remains a common source of doubt for religious people logic can't be pushed to the side religious people will have to explain why god is in contradiction with his own attributes because he's either impotent he doesn't have the power he's malevolent he's evil or he's apathetic to the suffering of his creatures therefore evil or he doesn't exist applying occam's razor it would be reasonable to say that he doesn't exist if i had a dollar for every time people wrongly applied occam's razor on the internet i would be wealthy okay so like i said this is a cringe version of it let's deal with that but let's also deal with it in more detail at the same time um whenever you're given a dilemma this is a dilemma actually it's a quadrilema right you're given four options and you're being told these are your only options the first thing you need to ask is things like do i actually have other options are these really my only four options look you either give me fifty dollars or you give me a hundred dollars it's up to you okay are those really my only two options and in that case obviously no so let's look at this again and just ask is there another option um how about this how about a very biblical option which is that god allows evil temporarily and he brings goods out of that scenario he's accomplishing good things during the time where evil is going on he's working it together for good like romans 8 28 says and that he will put an eventual stop to evil and then there will be a new heaven and new earth wherein righteousness dwells this is a major theme in the scripture god using evil for good temporarily and then and then bringing about an ultimate wonderful permanent state where there's no evil in fact there are philosophers that will argue that the only way to have the optimal world is to first have a world or a a season a time where you have a sub-optimal world so that suffering can exist and then later you have your optimal world because you need benef there's benefits that come in suffering and you need to carry those into that eternal world and i think there's a strong argument that can be made for that oddly enough it's so biblical that's what's trippy it's so biblical there's so many scriptures i talk about them all the time about god using our suffering about god working all things together for good about how your character is being changed by the things you go through all that kind of thing and you believe this too you probably do already that there's hard times in your life you went through that you look back on and you would have wished them away if you could have but you look back on it and you go man i'm so grateful for what i learned through that i'm so grateful for the good that came out of that and there's other times you can't do that right you don't know what good came out of it i'm not saying you can always figure it out in fact i'll argue against that but at least you know it's possible right it's possible and if it's possible that god might be doing something good through allowing the suffering and evil in the world temporarily if that's even possible then the logical problem of evil fails completely and it has failed the logical problem of evil is not used by pretty much any philosophers at all right now right atheist philosophers atheist philosophers don't use the logical problem of evil which is what he's presenting here they don't use it at all it's the worst it's the worst argument uh worst way to present the argument from evil so you're given a dilemma the dilemma is are these my only options and the answer is no they're not it could just be that god will eventually stop evil god is all-powerful god is all good god is allowing evil therefore he must have a reason and he must be putting it to an end at some point both of those things are taught in christianity it may follow that if there's a true religion it'll be a religion that offers a solution to the problem of evil because it's a significant issue and religion christianity in particular does offer a solution to the problem of evil buddhism does not for instance thor does not offer a solution to the problem of evil there isn't a theodicy on thor by the way the theo let me talk about theodicies for a minute a theodicy is an attempt to explain the problem of evil it's something like like the author said it's been going on for ever and ever right for thousands of years they've been talking about theodicies explaining the problem of evil what what sam doesn't realize is that a lot of the theodicies are actually pretty successful in different areas and i would say i think i like a cumulative cumulative response to the problem of evil that is gathering multiple theodicies it's okay to have multiple explanations for an event i'm gonna have multiple ways of explaining why different evils are going on in the world and i'm going to offer some of them to you today here is some of those things soul building there is a soul building theodicy and philosophers have spent a lot of work on this and basically the idea is that suffering causes growth of character it causes opportunities to express courage it allows for the opportunity to to express the greatest kinds of love and to do things like forgive like if there wasn't any kind of evil or suffering in the world then forgiveness wouldn't happen yet forgiveness is one of the most beautiful and wonderful goods out there my i'm so grateful like i'm i love god a lot more because of the forgiveness i've received in christ than i would if he had just made me in heaven perfect i just do like there's a good that's coming out of the whole scenario fall and forgiveness so we wouldn't have this without suffering you wouldn't grow without suffering and children who live lives with no suffering end up being lousy adults and we know this maybe you are this and that's just the reality is we've got to go through hard times yeah my allergies kicking up got to go through hard times in order to have godly character that's just part of what happens and the scripture the bible abounds with this sort of teaching this is thoroughly entrenched in the christian belief system is that your suffering brings about goods okay that's the soul building theodicy it would explain a lot of the suffering that goes on but not all of it i don't think maybe it could explain all of it i don't know um anyway the free will theodicy is also there and guys like um alvin plantinga brilliant highly respected philosopher has offered a free wealthy odyssey next monday i'll deal with tim stratton will offer one as well and uh or the people argument for god excuse me he has a theodicy as well maybe we'll talk to him about that too but the uh the free wealthy odyssey is is just this like that if you're gonna allow people to make free decisions you can't bar them from doing bad things like that's not freedom and so the guard from the garden of eden to the book of revelation we see this freedom playing out in the bible we see it in reality as well that a lot of not all the evil a lot of the evil that we see in the world the most egregious kinds are human to human evils or human to animal evils that are being done by somebody's free will or as a consequence of allowing free will so this explains at least some of it another theodicy would be like the natural law theodicy and that is the idea that um i actually had an atheist ask me mike why is it that i stub my toe that's what i want to know how is it that stubbing my toe which hurts a lot is somehow working together for good and it may be that part of the reason why there's things even some natural disasters and stuff is partly although it may have to do with cosmic battles and things that are going on yeah i think that's a possibility i just have very little discernment to know when they're happening um at any rate it also can just be about natural law that god wants a system of an ordered universe he wants it he wants you to be able to do scientific experiments and have consistent results he wants you to be able to make choices and be able to predict the consequences he wants you to live in like a real world that really happens now right not a not a make-believe world where you do something and god decides the outcome uniquely each time where you pull the trigger and a marshmallow comes out because god doesn't let you shoot people but rather well part of that's free will but another part of it is just natural law having consistent natural laws you know for the same reason you stubbed your toe for the same reason that mudslide happened for the same reason there was a hurricane that's also the same reason that you could plant crops and you can you could you could grow them consistently it's the same reason why you can conduct any scientific experiment it's the same reason why we can just kind of have a livable world an existence do i think that fully answers no i think it's interesting i think it's something we should consider christianity offers several different answers another one of them and this might be kind of hinted at in the book of job is an answer called skeptical theism and skeptical theism is a theodicy where you basically say we're not in a position to know why god would allow different evils in the world and so we should accept that we don't know and be okay with that that's skeptical theism so another way of looking at it like is like this let's say that um i asked you um how many planets are in the universe and you're not a physicist okay you're just you how many planets are in the universe and you can go google it and rely but i'm trying to just ask you you and your own resources do you know how many planets are in the universe and you like me would be like nah i got no clue like a lot like more than five you know like there's a lot of planets in the universe there's countless planets probably i guess i mean i really don't know because i don't have the knowledge and nor the ability to gain that knowledge i would just have to rely on somebody else so i would rightly say i don't know how many planets are and i didn't expect to know and so it's not a big deal here's the thought you have to ask would i with my human limitations with my cognitive limitations with my experiential limits with my observational limits right with my with my historical limits being stuck in just this little tiny time zone of my life would i expect to understand why god allows a forced fire to kill animals in australia would i expect to understand that not do do i understand it no would i expect to would i anticipate being able to figure out distant evils and hard problems and troubles that go on why this child we've been praying for is dying would i expect to know the answer and i think the answer here generally speaking is no i don't expect to know and now if i don't expect to know then how can me not knowing be evidence against god not knowing something you never thought you should know is just evidence of your limitations it's not evidence of anything else and so that's the skeptical theism perspective i hope i've explained it simplistically and and thoughtfully enough and i take a cumulative answer i would say yeah all of these theodicies and more i find interesting and i think what they do is they give us very a lot of ways to answer the problem of evil not just the logical problem but even the sort of practical experiential problem or the probabilistic problem of evil that are these are just other terms for different variations of the problem i think they give us a cumulative answer that's very strong and very thorough i'm going to recommend a book and it's in the video description by clay jones and it's a book on why god allows evil i highly recommend it in that particular case it's not a video i'm putting in the description it's a book and the reason is because i think this problem requires you to patiently think and in particular i think reading his book and patiently thinking it through is going to be of great value to you if this problem bothers you he's a brilliant man philosopher smartypants and all that he's devoted much of his philosophical life years and years and years to the problem of evil and this book is a very accessible popular level writing on the topic now christianity not only gives you an explanation for evil and a lot of ways to understand and deal with the fact that there's evil in the world it also gives you something so wonderful it gives you hope of a solution to the problem of evil and this is understated when atheists talk about the problem christianity says here's not only an explanation of the issue perspective and wisdom on how to handle it but here's a solution too you feel this intense problem it you might even say the problem of evil is so bad that i would think if any religion's true it better deal with this issue and christianity deals with it on the explanation side and it deals with it on the other side which is the the resolution side so i can explain it and i can resolve it in christian faith you're you may still be dealing with the emotional problem of evil where you're just like okay all that intellectual stuff thanks thanks that helped but i'm still just stuck torn apart by the emotions and for that i say look and i'll be very pastoral here the solution here is just wait on the lord trust in god understand that even in your weakness and in your emotional being overwhelmed god is still working just wait and trust in him sometimes we're at the bottom but there's going to be a time where you're not there anymore and you just need to wait on him and trust in him and rest in him and here's advice that you can't give as an atheist there is just no hope there is just no solution there is just to suck it up that's the way it is and i'm i think that makes atheism not only intellectually inferior which we'll talk about in two seconds here but also pragmatically inferior right christianity is better than atheism in that it doesn't leave people as a void all right let's look at a little bit more detail here in this problem of evil where he says that paradoxes such as the problem of evil clearly show us the concept of god is contradictory in and of itself and therefore is impossible okay well again this is the logical problem of evil it's the paradox view of it it makes god impossible here's what clay jones the philosopher who specializes in this topic he says i don't know even one atheist today who uses who even uses the logical problem of evil they've given it up and then he clarified i meant the academic atheists village atheists use it all the time yeah so go to the book why does god allow evil that's clay jones down below great book but there's more it actually gets worse because the argument here that the atheist offers is uh it can actually backfire it can actually spring back and backfire on the atheist and here's the reason why excuse me it doesn't back from the atheist i think when it backfires it's a wonderful thing here for you atheist friend i think it backfires on atheism i think the atheism is is messed up by this argument because the problem of evil assumes one thing that doesn't make sense on an atheist worldview which is evil moral evil that there's immoral qualities of wickedness or evil or badness in different behaviors and it assumes that that's a real thing going on in the world and then you have to ask the question how on earth is moral good and evil a real thing on atheism right you're acknowledging the problem but the problem itself is evidence for god the problem of evil is evidence for god and yes in another sense after you've admitted god's existence and you accept evil then you go okay now we have to reconcile this with god's nature which christianity i think does very well i think it does it very well but it's but it's a it's the paradox is the atheist saying um i'm an atheist i i don't believe in objective moral values and duties yet what about the problem of evil i mean the atheist response to the problem of evil is a it doesn't exist and b there's no solution and that that would be the consistent perspective on it and i think here atheist i just want you to be delivered from this insufficient worldview that you're holding and it can't be healthy for your heart to have these those kinds of things going on so evil and atheism are ultimately incompatible um then the article goes on to say religious people will say now look at this i love when people predict how others would respond right so he's like here's the best argument and here's how the religious people are going to respond but look at what he thinks our response is religious people will say that god is outside of space-time and doesn't have to follow the natural laws of reality so he can deny logic have you christian have you ever heard someone i mean maybe you have but if have you ever heard somebody say this oh the problem of evil yes it shows that god is is paradoxical his omnipotence and his goodness can't work together but you know it's okay because god can deny logic right he can just deny logic isn't that amazing solution problem solved let's go to church like who says this where is this coming from yet it just what it reveals is that this atheist along with many others they honestly don't know like they think they found a really solid argument but they don't know philosophers don't even atheist philosophers don't use this they think they know the religious response but they're just making stuff up or they're talking to some wackadoodle who doesn't really know what they're talking about and they're repeating those claims anyway setting setting that aside setting that aside um he then goes on to say the only problem with that is the logic of oh hold on let's skip ahead a bit um where is the part where he says ah here we go and that's why the problem of evil remains a common source of doubt among religious people or for religious people and here's where i want to be super straight right yeah this absolutely is a common source of doubt for religious people the problem of evil is probably the number one argument against god that i think people are persuaded by impacted by especially when they're going through really hard times and they can't explain it and my encouragement is this i get that this is an effective and powerful argument that does draw some people away from god other christians it has like no effect on them right it just has no effect on them whatsoever but some it's really pulling them towards unbelief rejecting god or even just bitterness towards god and to that i say that's why evil is character building this is part of the character-building nature of evil this is part of the real trials and real changes that go through our lives but christianity does offer intellectual answers to the problem of evil it also offers emotional help to the problem of evil but if you reject god you lose both of those you can't explain the problem of evil's existence and you would seem like you'd have to deny it to be consistent you can't offer any solution to the problem and it ends up putting you in a worse position yet ironically some atheists are proud of their lack of any hope like he kind of boasts about having a hopeless perspective of the universe as if it's like tough-minded but it's not it's just it's just not true it's kind of a weird thing so this in summary has been five of the best arguments against god presented by an atheist one where all atheists which ends up being circular it assumes there's no evidence for god and the evidence actually supports christianity we talk about that give you a bunch of links to follow and to follow up on second indoctrination which presents a false dichotomy acting like you can either teach religious things or teach how to think critically which just assumes atheism's true another circular argument false the third one is that atheism is instinctual and that backfires because atheism is generally not instinctual and it's also an inconsistent standard and there's all sorts of things atheists believe that are not instinctual and they think everybody should believe and they don't apply that standard there it's a special standard made to fight religion and it works for religion instead of against it number four religion is desperation and again he had just said in three that atheism was instinctual yet now in number four he offers a whole case that religion is desperation which means that you have this instinct driving you to be religious ironically but this is also circular because saying religion is desperation assumes that atheism's true and religion's false that's why you can call it desperation and not simply observing reality and atheism can also be desperation and so that would backfire and number five the problem of evil a truly difficult problem a really hard but truly answered issue in the christian worldview and if you take away christianity and you want to be an atheist you should at least evaluate how you're handling the problem of evil because you're not you're just using it as a club to beat christianity on the head but we have good answers and good good responses for that and i hope you guys would consider it this has been a study of a random atheist article i mean i was not going to be teaching the mark series for two weeks and so i just went into my old notes and show notes like ideas and said oh here's an article this will be quick and easy i ended up spending a lot more time on it than i wanted and making a lot longer video than i had originally planned but i do hope that you guys find it really and truly fruitful and helpful and encouraging and if you're an atheist who wants to go deeper tons of links below thoughtful careful reasoning it's not just preaching i hope you'll check it out god bless you

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 173,204

Keywords: three top atheists and their best arguments against God, 3 top atheists, best athiest arguments, best atheist arguments against God, what are the best arguments against God, top atheist arguments, top atheists, who are the top atheists, mike winger, best arguments against God, best arguments against Christianity

Id: c159bJUL0t0

Length: 83min 6sec (4986 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020