Re: Atheists are not the freethinkers they claim to be

[0019josh7100]

That was wonderfully done. . Free thinkers will one day inherit the earth. . .

[Acrimonator]

Wating for the answer, in form of "atheism is a religion to"... :D

[pandorachild]

Subbed. I like your manner and logic.

[MrDarkbloom]

A great example of theists not being able to see any other point of view except through the prism of their religious dogma is when they accuse people who reject their claims of 'hating god"! You reply that it's absurd because you can't hate something you don't think exists, just the idea of it or the logical consequences of the dogma, but they don't get it. They talk like their god is a real as anything else and simply assume you also believe it, but are in denail! So disingenuous.

[KasparHauser5]

Many when they think of atheists believe that atheists live in western nations and are typically college educated. But when you attempt to look at the entire headcount of atheists in the world, then you come to the conclusion that the average atheist is a Chinese factory worker living in China

[detersgumig]

@KasparHauser5 And let's not forget that buddhists are in fact atheists too. There are about 350 million of them.

[TheEarthAbides]

Hey SentientRaven, I always look forward to your videos man. Keep up the good work.

[Platypus2048]

Brilliant video!

Thank you :)

[PrecambrianLullaby]

Your vids are often worth the wait. I know you were talking to one person in particular but you are very well pointed and your sentiment applies generally.

[TheRumpletiltskin]

why can't i like this twice?!! excellent rebuttal.

[freethinker3161]

i loved when he named St. Tomas as a Brilliant thinker.  lol made me laugh. great rebut my friend.

[Danmill23]

That was awesome. Great thinking video SR. Excellent wrap up and final thought. I also admire and applaud your clean, organized and concise delivery ( in your second language). *tips his lid*

[samdavjunjun]

I'm glad you addressed this. I get a headache every time I see a religious person saying that atheism is a religion. It's like they subconsciously realize that the antiquated beliefs have no use in a modern world but they won't or can't cognitively accept it. I would suspect most don't realize what they are implying when they equate atheism with religion, but I suspect some do and still stubbornly hold on to that belief because they don't want to fathom life without religion.

[SonistheFatherofMan]

That's all fine and well except that atheists ALWAYS rule out the possibility of a supernatural explanation for an event. That's not only unscientific but it also limits your thinking.

[SonistheFatherofMan]

@SonistheFatherofMan Also I can show you many cases of atheists being authoritative; one only needs to look at Dawkins (everyone's favorite atheist) when he claims that teaching religious principles to children is tantamount to abuse. Also, he openly ridicules all theists at every opportunity.

[lilmarome]

@SonistheFatherofMan What's authoritative about showing how indoctrination of false beliefs and threatening your children with eternal torture is child abuse?

[hatredapathy52]

@lilmarome It is authoritative because you assume it is false. The parent is under a real impression that it is true and so the parent is only looking out for the best interest of the child, given what is "true."

[lilmarome]

@hatredapathy52 No we don't just assume that it's false. The parent obviously hasn't cared enough to research whether it's true or not or he just doesn't care that it's false.

[hatredapathy52]

@lilmarome Never mind what I’ve been saying. I’ve been getting off track.

Some atheists see Dawkins as an authority in these matters. So in this sense, he is authoritative. Dawkins argues against religion and calls it "child abuse."

His arguments are authoritative when uncritical atheists open The God Delusion and assume Dawkins is right. I’m not saying Dawkins is right or wrong. His uncritical readers are wrong when they don’t do further research to see whether Dawkins is right or wrong.

[lilmarome]

@hatredapathy52 I don't know about any atheists that do that.

[hatredapathy52]

@lilmarome The mere fact that so many people on YouTube criticize religion in general using arguments that Dawkins uses--this fact suggests to me that they have not done their homework. Now I will say Dawkins is wrong. To someone who knows better, to someone who has read books in philosophy, theology, or religious studies, Dawkins' arguments are weak, oversimplistic, and ultimately unconvincing. I strongly doubt that Dawkins and some of his readers have taken the arguments seriously.

[lilmarome]

@hatredapathy52 Or maybe the arguments are actually correct and people have researched them. But really the only argument that you need is that no one has ever proven that there is such a being as a god.

[hatredapathy52]

@lilmarome His arguments for evolution are convincing. I can accept evolution based on what he says. You and I both can do this research.

I cannot accept atheism based on what he says. His arguments against religion are unconvincing. A scientific argument for evolution is not the same as an argument against a designer.

That's not to say I find the design argument convincing. But the reasons I find the theistic arguments unconvincing have nothing to do with what Dawkins says about them.

[lilmarome]

@hatredapathy52 Then why do you even bring it up? Evolution has nothing to do with whether you believe in god or not, many theists believe in evolution.

[hatredapathy52]

@lilmarome If a parent believes in a religion, then this will shape his or her entire worldview. If this religion entails belief in something like hell, then the parent will want to convince the child that the religion is true to keep the child away from hell.

Religious experience is a much more powerful motivator than argumentation. Whether or not the experience is genuine is another question. But ultimately, the parent is only looking out for what is best for the child.

[hatredapathy52]

@lilmarome (cont'd) But suppose the parent did do the research. The cosmological and teleological arguments are much more convincing than most people give them credit for. They don't establish beyond doubt that there is a God. But they convince the believer that believing in God is not unreasonable.

[lilmarome]

@hatredapathy52 But the cosmological argument fails on every point. It's only convincing if you've already been brainwashed to believe in invisible gods.

[hatredapathy52]

@lilmarome That's not the point. In fact, I am running on the assumption that the parent is "brainwashed."

[Gnomefro]

@hatredapathy52 "A scientific argument for evolution is not the same as an argument against a designer."

It is when the entire reason to introduce a designer to begin with was because people thought it was impossible to explain life without introducing a designer. There's another aspect to it as well. Evolution is a "design" algorithm. It will achieve results without a designer or a mind behind it. That's the entire point, and why it is a scientific theory.

[Gnomefro]

@hatredapathy52 The effect of having such an explanation is that when we look for a parsimonious explanation we must chop off the unneeded designer according to Occam's razor. The reason for this is that there is always an infinity of possible unneeded things we could add to a hypothesis that is not supported by evidence. Not excluding superfluous entities simply make our explanations worse. This is why the concept of theistic evolution quite simply is braindead.

[Gnomefro]

@hatredapathy52 The only way you could get it to work somewhat is if you backtracked into Deism and said that the designer designed the laws of the universe, and not life itself directly. However, now you have a host of other problems, such as unfalsifiability, inability to distinguish between "god" and "nature", no justification for why the material phenomenon we call intelligence can exist outside the universe and somehow not need an explanation despite being the most complex thing we know of.

[BusinessIDBAI]

@SonistheFatherofMan

Provide evidence for a supernatural explanation and we'll consider it. You can't just assert something and act like it can stand on its own.

It is unscientific to assert without evidence, when you get that correct, we can talk about how atheists are unscientific or have limits on their thinking. Theists tend to reject natural explanations, no matter how much evidence is presented, that is limited thinking, not vice versa.

[BespokeGroupUK]

Free Thinking doesn't mean science, reason and logic. Free Thinking shouldn't be anything ese appart from thinking freely, so you can't put any bounderies on it.

[SentientRaven]

@BespokeGroupUK: Okay, with all due respect I'm killing the semantic bickering right away. Glenn provided a definition of free thought according to Wikipedia and that's what I'm going to in the interest of speaking the same language. As a result, that's what I mean, if you mean something else, fine, but we have a very clear and agreed upon definition here that is useless to debate any further.

I say this with all due respect, I just hate ending up in semantic bickering.