Why Follow God? | Johnathan - Dallas, TX | Atheist Experience 23.12

is alright well thank you for that and we have now Jonathan in Dallas Texas who wants to explain why we should believe in God you're on with Jenna and Tracy hey guys hey John so I'm a believer I believe in God and I choose to believe in God the question I have is what makes my choice to believe in God and inherently inferior position to a non-believer why do you think you made a choice to believe in God well I've suffered a lot went to doctors what the psychologists look to other people to help nothing work so I said hey you know what I'll try any medicine that it takes to not suffer that shows the belief and suffering stops so I chose based only life since my mind situation but but belief doesn't actually work that way so it to say that you believe something means I guess is it fair to say that you chose to try it it worked for you and so you believed it I mean would that be fair I'm a believer but I'm a believer by choice I don't I don't see how I don't see how you could have someone how someone could say well you're not really I believe I don't think that's what's being implied just to be clear nobody's suggesting that you didn't that you don't believe her you didn't believe I think there's there's a lot of baggage that comes with the the word choice but I think that we can kind of set it aside basically you were having a hard time in life things nothing was working for you you turned to God and then your life got better is that about it but I wouldn't say nothing was working I was I'm very successful and you looked in my career academically okay I just felt I suffered there was something that was missing and I was told I was depressed by the medical community I was given all kind of drugs and it actually made me feel better it made me feel different but then after a while you you develop a tolerance then you go back to kind of how you or you got to build up more medicine I said something's not right about this approach so I said let me try a different medicine I'm willing to try anything even if it's believing in God if that's the medicine I have to take I will try that because I'm suffering okay I tried that I tried that medicine I haven't taken description pills since it's been six months ago and I was told that I need those things six months good yeah that so to me that's a miracle because I was i before that I had a condition I was genetically predisposed to be blah blah blah XYZ this which you are would you but I chose something different and that changed my trajectory that chose belief in it work so I so my question is what why is choosing to believe I'll believe about choice why is that inherently inferior to someone who's an atheist and that's what it comes down to the way we could talk about yeah I don't think that it's inferior I think that my label would be that you know there's a certain irrationality to it right so it's I would call it irrational but I would say that you know I it's I understand how brains work and so I understand you know based on the culture that we're in and what happened to you why you adopted the position that you adopt I get it it's not rational but there there's certainly emotional and you know the way the brain works reasons why you grabbed onto that I get it it but I I guess that's all I'm saying is it's it's not reasonable but it it makes you feel better so it makes you feel better so let me ask this question because it's unreasonable I'll even accept the fact that it's irrational okay what makes do you believe the arrest analogy of my beliefs do you believe that is inferior to your position I know I don't think inferior is is the right I mean if you believe that somebody being incorrect about their assessment of what is causing something is inferior to being correct there's correct and incorrect but then when you make just start making judgments it's up to you you know is it inferior is it I I wouldn't say it's better to believe things that are incorrect except X well what I'm saying what I'm well I mean if I'm saying that this doesn't demonstrate a God exist yeah I think that's correct but I think that what what you're basically if you're looking at a situation where your life is going to go in a bad direction if you're not doing this then I don't know that I would say being wrong is inferior for you because it might actually sounds like it might actually be in your best interest to be wrong so while in this Niq situation in this narrow application I can kind of see how I would have to like in making a judgment you're basically saying how is this bad because it's like my life is better as a result and I'm saying that I don't think that it justifies a belief in God but I'm happy that you're doing better and I certainly wouldn't you know say that it would be best if you go back to being dissatisfied and depressed fair enough I want to go back to the wrong piece because as I said you know I believe I can when I jump off this ten story building I can fly yeah yeah that was all fall down I might kill myself but I would definitely hurt myself let's take some some accent let's say pleasures possible pain life is possible to death yeah I think I think you're what you're doing is actually offering a great example right I think what you're saying is great so you can say in that example you are wrong yeah it's on all these assumptions yeah wrong look you're hurting you broke your leg or you're on your deathbed you fell right well I believe in so I believe in God that created everything so yeah I died what what judgment see don't we all sitting at where you can say hey you were wrong about that belief in God look he believed in not he doesn't exist so now you were wrong so you're still in to hurt there is no there is no judgement seat so this you could say this Pascal's worry about the wager I know there's all kind of terms for it but I want to get to the visceral meaning of it what does me fall off of a building and hurting myself you can say you're wrong you shouldn't believe you can fly now look at you well no I mean you're wrong wrong isn't about whether you get hurt right you could be right about something and still get hurt I could step up to defend somebody who's you know someone's being a bigot to somebody else or trying to hurt somebody else and I step in and do the right thing and then get my ass kicked right so it's like I can get I bought the book I want to talk I'm sorry coach Jeff I want to go back to the belief proposition about I'm wrong for believing that I can jump off of a 10 story building and I thought I should do that because we all have assumptions or we all have baseline axioms that we say if you think you live or you want to be you don't want to be in pain you shouldn't do that you can prove to me that I'm wrong for believing that I stood up off this building if I like life no there's no wait I'm not gonna into the should part of it right because when I'm using wrong I'm saying if you thought you could fly and you fell to the ground then you're wrong that you could that you thought you could fly whether or not you should or should not jump off a building is another thing that's an opinion right and you're right at that point you have to start looking at what is it that the person's trying to accomplish so that's part of what I was saying when you were trying to get to this inferiority thing right so if I'm looking at a situation where you're basically saying I will do anything to escape this depression and a belief in God helps me to escape the depression then I would say that you were wrong about whether or not whether you're wrong about thinking that it confirms the existence of a God but whether or not that is an inferior belief or whether or not that is a bad belief or something you should believe starts to get muddied by the fact that your life is actually improved right so the so now what we're looking at is if you want to judge whether or not that belief is helpful to you in your case you're saying yeah it was clearly helpful I was not happy now I'm happy but when you're looking at the building you're giving a great example of a different context where I can say you know not only was your belief wrong but there its inferior when you when you utilize the judgments of what the person's goals were right so for you the judgment of whether or not this belief is working for you is kind of up to you but whether or not it means that a God actually exists whether or not you're correct in that assumption is not answered by whether or not you feel better because you believe it yeah I don't believe my beliefs come from God because we're on the same page I thought so my question is why isn't the question of what did we do when we can't when we can't know something I can't know whether or not a God created actually my existence I don't know there was a creator of this existence I don't know I can't step outside of this dimension I'm in the third dimension so why should I not believe I'm not talking about proving that that God exists outside of dimension why should I not believe because atheism in theater is about believing I'm gonna say all right but I'm gonna say that if you're basically if there is a risk that your life would be worse if you stopped believing right like if for example what if you were calling the show and you said I was suicide and now I don't feel suicidal anymore because I believe in a God that loves me and you're asking me would I want to strip you of that belief knowing that you might go back to being suicidal my answer would be you know I might take the next call and let you believe it I'm trying to use a clear example so if you're telling me that that your life was not good previously you were not a happy person you were you had stuff going on that you were not satisfied with it you were at a point where he literally said at the beginning of calls something like I was willing to try anything I mean that's pretty desperate language I'm not saying you were suicidal but I'm saying you were at a point where you were kind of at your wits end with this stuff and then you found something you're saying I feel better and now you're saying why shouldn't I use this and it's almost like what if you care like Dumbo with the feather right if Dumbo thinks carrying the feather around is what's doing it and he can't do it without that feather then by all means carry the feather right but but do you think do you think looking at genetics and epigenetics that my choice could then change my nature but hold on for a second is not it's not just about feeling better because feeling better would just mean I feel better but I'm still doing the same thing but I feel better chemically my body doesn't require the same chemicals yeah I don't know I can't start do that I'm not your doctor I don't have your test results I can't speak to that so outside of my personal story cuz I don't want to go down to my story and say well this is your story I don't want it on this story I was just a backdrop that you asked me a question the real question I have it might be a philosophy little question is in for anybody why if I can't prove that God exists you can't prove their God is that this question has been going on for millennia we're not gonna solve it here so the question to me is why should I not believe so I believe so all right I understand where you're coming from I understand I get you okay so here's what I would say what we look at when we're doing this we are not looking into individual examples alright so what we just looked at were two very specific examples of somebody whose life was was you know in a quagmire of depression that now is feeling better and somebody that was going to jump off a building and then they ended up hurting themselves do you agree and you may not so I'm asking do you agree that in general it's better to believe things that comport with reality than things that do not that you that things will be better in your life if you actually make informed decisions that are most likely to be true yes given one condition given that it can be examined well so I mean but if it can't be examined would you have a position on it why would you have a position at all you could choose to believe whatever is the best okay in your mind so if somebody chooses to believe for example black people are inferior they don't have evidence for that you know and they're gonna argue about it and they're gonna pull their studies that are like their pet studies or whatever is that a problem what are they doing because of that my choice the belief my choice to believe in God isn't is it I'm not saying anybody's in fear or I'm making a position on my belief but no but what I'm looking at what you were saying about the idea of what is born fear and then they go and try to persecute me I don't care about their beliefs I care about the fact that they're trying to persecute me that is wrong okay so then what you're what so then to you even if something can't be examined it's not okay to believe it without looking at what the consequences are to that right you can't this law you can't go hurt somebody because of your belief this is my belief let's say my belief okay so that's anybody else let's say that somebody believes that aliens are abducting them all right I believe aliens are coming in a couple times a month and abducting me and I live in fear and I have children and I'm talking to them about these scary aliens and they're starting having nightmares and I can't prove it because these aliens are really tricky right I mean they don't leave any evidence there they're like basically knocking everybody out while they abduct me and do all these horrible things to me I can't prove but should I believe this no you should not because that belief is called causing you fear and causing you harm your parents fear you're in constant terror you just did not believe something that gives you terror okay so agent I want to believe something that's gonna not gonna give me care of my agency to do that okay but let me just make sure we're on the same page here so what you're saying is that if something can be examined and and a decision can be made that is evidence-based and informed then you think it's best to believe what's true that would be the first stage if I if I can examine it if I can touch of the vodka but I'd think we're doing well better examine and then your position is if you can't examine something and you can't know whether it's true or not that it's cool to go ahead and just believe it whether it's true or not as long as it serves you in some capacity in your life as long as it serves you for good yeah yeah what I mean I'll bring up the terror instance because that doesn't somebody being terrorized doesn't serve them for good so they shouldn't believe something that's gonna have a negative impact okay now so so belief in God serves you and you can't really examine the question and your philosophy is that I don't know but it serves me so I'm gonna say it's I'm gonna kind of hold it tentatively is true right I'm gonna Chuck no no no no hold it senator I'm going to choose to believe it okay so you're taking it as true I was just trying to be fair tulips God for me that was something that was for me it was good for me I'm not gonna just say I'm gonna withhold it I actually because I can't examine guys okay so you're saying that you accept it as true despite the fact that it cannot be determined as true or not true right because it helps right I could I couldn't examine it beforehand it that way you can't examine it now either all you can say is your life is better as a result yeah I can examine what's in the wait I can examine my life in the week we're on the yeah we're on the same page so now you're calling an atheist show and you're saying so what's the harm here right so what is the harm we're looking at this as like I said not on an individual level I will definitely say that there are exceptions to things right I'm not so black-and-white in my thinking that I can't understand nuances like we were talking earlier about whether or not people who are in the Methodist Church who want to support gay people should leave now that the Methodist Church has said we don't support gay people and one of the things we said was that when you look at it from the perspective of a pastor who's staying in the church to help these kids sudden that kids that are gay you suddenly realize like wow this person is staying in a church that is now anti-gay for good reasons right so it's easy to say like everybody should leave because they're just you know gay haters now but now I've heard you know this story from somebody saying I like gay people and I support gay people and this is why I'm staying so they they had given nuance to it right and what you're saying is hey there are individual stories where this belief in God helps somebody like my story and so what's the problem but we're doing more of a public outreach like public broadcasting and we're looking at this in a large general situation here right so you're your individual case notwithstanding will you agree that there's a broader context that religion exists in as well that is a larger social dialogue yeah I agree there is a larger social dialogue but the one thing I would say is that the larger social dialogue is made up of a bunch of individuals like me right you're right you're right they are they are individuals but a lot of those individuals don't have your perspective on this and they believe that it's true that a God exists and God wants them to do some really vicious things to other people in society and they are pursuing that through the law right I mean we see this so that's where I would disagree slightly there are people who do that but I would I would argue that all belief in God stems from the root of what I'm saying this is the root of it now as we get to the political and ancillary things people start using that to do you know atrocity that I believe other things but if you get to the root of why anybody believes it is what I just said I'll wait a minute now wait a minute wait a minute I'm willing to allow you to own your comments about your own life and your own thinking I'm not willing to let you say that everybody believes in God for the same reasons you do I don't agree with that I don't think you have the authority to make that statement about other people what I will what I mean is I can talk about faith my choice to believe is equivalence and faith so people who listen be honest nobody has examined nobody go is going out into the science lab and examine anything the reason why a theist can shoot down arguments because the fact of the matter is no fetus is bringing and what I'm trying to answer your question though right so what I'm trying to get to is why why you're saying like well why do you say this and I'm saying because there are people you said that if something if a person believes a thing and it's causing harm to themselves or others that yeah you think that's wrong and that that probably should be stopped right we agree with that and I'm saying that there's a lot of people that believe in God that are doing a crapload of harm not just on the whole planet but here in the United States especially there are a lot of politically active Christians who are like violating the rights of women violating the rights of gays who are trying to you know just promote horrendous policy decisions and in fact the laws with their religion they're trying to oppress people religiously and to put their religion into areas of the public where it doesn't belong these are people who aren't like you right these are people that are not saying this is a personal thing it works for me what's your problem these are people who are saying I'm gonna take my religion I'm gonna take my belief in God and I'm gonna hammer everybody who disagrees with me over the head using the law right they do that why would you just says they took their belief and said I'm gonna take it and do this other than yes they do because that's what I'm saying they're taking what I have in the net and I'm gonna make choice number two action one believe action two now I'm going to take their belief and write you yes right we're not the same page with their persecution what I'm saying the root of their action one is all the same I'm going to believe now they're say okay now I right so you're a pain we agree with you Jonathan we agree with you right here on the show people have called in and say why do you care whether I believe in God or not why do you care if someone believes in God and we say we wouldn't care any more about your belief in God than belief in Bigfoot if you weren't trying to push it on us in the legal arena so the fact is if everybody on the earth that believed in God was like you this show wouldn't exist a minute yeah amen we're on the same page amen yes so do you think is inherent beliefs or belief in God automatically makes you more susceptible to persecutor do you think atheist for people with nemesis Saints no I don't think it makes you more sinc here's the thing people will persecute when they believe they're authorized to persecute yeah it's nice I will say there's there may be and I don't know that this is a fact but there could be an extra umph to think in the creator of the universe wants you to go do some horrific thing but you can also do a horrific thing because you think the the king wants you to do go do you think you're entitled yeah do a certain thing or your lover with your lover wants you to do the kill her spouse you know I mean it's like you can do horrible things because somebody asks you to do them whether they're a god or not so I'll grant you that I think I think we're on the same page I did you in a it's these the people who believed in God would believe what I believe I think that would allow other people like atheists who don't who said I don't want any part of guys because if you think about it somebody promotes God and they're going out and they're doing all these things even a child can see there's something wrong with that you would think except lots of adults are still doing it yeah I mean I agree I think that if there was if we didn't have the political stuff happen and if it wasn't so oppressive if religion if people if some people in religions weren't doing such horrible things there might still be conversations about you know is this reasonable this is not but it certainly wouldn't be prompting you know like I said a theist community's an atheist it's in programming and there wouldn't this wouldn't be this this is a push back against a push right like we're getting there there's a religious intrusion and it's not just atheists that see it a lot of times religious minorities bring lawsuits because they're oppressed by like a privileged religious majority so it's not just atheists who have an issue and see the the benefit I guess to freedom of religion and that's another thing we we actually as a theist support in the ACA freedom of religion we want you to have the freedom to exercise and to believe and to do this what you want we we're fine having conversations about it we're not trying to infringe on anybody's beliefs and the people that want to infringe I think I would love to get better figures but I think it's a minority of Christians actually in the United States that are doing this I don't think it's mote I think most Christians really aren't that politically motivated I think they're kind of just doing their own thing or some of them are even out there doing good and if they were all doing that I think we'd be like dad Christianity is kind of benign belief in God it's kind of benign it's the people that don't treat it like benign that are the problem and that are creating the problem here right believers didn't do a better job they do I mean maybe people like you can help them do a better job like baby maybe tell your story to other people that are being political that are being haters that are being oppressive and just say like you know hey you're the whole reason that a theist get pissed off feel free to tell them ask them whether do bad things I'll do that I have one more question I want to hold to what time just one more question sir I so if the being oppressive I don't believe in I don't believe in proselytizing so I believe the best witness is for me to say what I'm saying but then they go do it and not have to explain myself up if somebody saw what I was doing that's the best witness there's a good life right live a good life from us so the question I have is do you think that you know secularism now does kind of the same thing that they accuse religions of doing when you're talking about they looked at the transgender movement and kids began mutilated you know kids get mutilated with circumcision but then now you're talking about kids getting their sex their organs changed at young ages and well I'm not sure that children are allowed to have no surgery right there's several instances worked kids under the age of 18 and indefinitely under the law under the age of 14 and definitely under the age of 18 have been influenced them to adapt or to believe that they are a different sex now wait a minute now yeah we just finished saying that as long as you're not a hater and as long as your religion isn't getting you to like impose on other people now and now we're going down the what's wrong with transgender people no I'm not hating I'm saying do you think that interest like just like religions can impose do you think that into this I think if you can choose your belief in God that kid can choose their gender right and I don't even call that any more choice to be fair but I mean if that kid you know if that kid is born with a penis and says I think I'm a girl I feel like a girl and I want to be called her yeah and she then I'm gonna call that child her and she and that's a girl and if you know Jim wants to be Stacy than Jim is Stacy and and I got no problem with that that's not that's not up to me okay just like what you're saying if it's not if they're not imposing on me they're not imposing on me if you want to get into like you know kids and surgery that's another discussion I am NOT that up on children I'm getting yeah it's you know kids are surgery but aren't getting served you know but still I I think in general I support trans sexuality and I want to you know trans women are women trans men are men I'm down with that okay all right fair enough all right thank you yes

Channel: The Atheist Experience

Views: 113,514

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

Id: jw78J_PqHyA

Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2019