also, somewhere this video goes off on a tangent discussing abortion and morality and what impact atheism has on it...these are issues to be voted on and decided. considering that I don't know of one outspoken atheist in government(and there would probably just be one if that) it's impact is not that great. "non-religious" people make up less that 15% of the US population it's impact. the video also doesn't give any good examples of how the US's version of BoR is bad or how it could be better.
the video assumes that the bill of rights version of separation of church and state will lead to the restriction of belief. when infact it limits the government from assisting or restricting any religion. restricting things such as a government sanctioned day of prayer. but protecting the rights of victims of 9/11 to grieve in their own way. the establishment is whats to be restricted and the rights of the individual protected.
perhaps I should say "he"(Professor Strehle) and possibly a bad title...if anything i kept watching to hear any good examples of how it would lead to(or if there is already) some oppression of religion in the states...but the only thing that even came close was the examples used by other countries. but I haven't read anything about hitler using separation of church and state. All I've read is he's made treaty's with them because he wanted to minimize opposing forces.
His response to question 3 ignores certain assumptions that we humans make in deciding what is right and wrong for ourselves, namely that we seek to eliminate suffering in defining what is "right" or "wrong". Hence, if a fetus cannot feel pain, there is nothing objectionable to aborting it. Problem solved.
The position you are describing is either hedonism or utilitarianism. That is by far not the only ethical theory out there. Also, it has to be a bit better than an assumption, because assuming something wrong is a lot different from showing that something actually is wrong.
@Epydemic2020 - Even if it's just a starting assumption; "Given that we want X, we should do Y", it's still a method of picking a better course of action from another. So yes, atheists CAN pass judgement on issues like abortion, you just happen to disagree on their structure of morality, as I would disagree with yours.
E.g. what does it mean for something to be "actually wrong"? If it's because God says so and God is a perfectly moral being, then what does it mean to be "moral" or "immoral"?
If we turn it into a "I want X, and I must do Y in order to achieve it" we aren't talking about anything that should be called "morality". Then the abortion debate becomes statements of preferences. "I like babies more than a womans choice, and abortion is inconsistent with those goals" vs "I like a woman's choice more than killing babies and abortion is consistent with that". Ted Bundy can even chime in and say "i want to rape people, therefore I should rape people".
I would argue that morality is just a description of what we should or shouldn't do regardless of what we personally want. For example, if Ted Bundy should not commit rape, even if he personally really wants to.
Empathy, compassion, family, and society. If you need fear to be morals, you have problems. I don't need fear to keep me in line. I can see why i shouldn't do bad and why going good is a good thing. the golden rule.
...the voices in my head (that say that abortion is ok) "God" does NOT mean I have any less of a foundation for my values than someone who does. The same goes for people reading too much into books.
I can't help but disagree with a lot this man has to say. Most people have already covered it in the comments section so I'll just say this:
He says that best foundation for morality is theism because one needs an outside/transcendent judgment on what is valued. This cannot be true if there are hundreds of thousands of accounts of transcendent judgment. I'm not saying secularism is better but that we have the same problem, so he can't say that theism is better. The fact that I don't call...
It is interesting that you chose to object to the part about morality. My vids thus far have primarily been about morality. If you are interested in getting a full grasp of what the theistic means by saying atheists/naturalists have no obj moral foundation available to them, check out my playlist on objective morality.
I completely understand why a theist would say that atheists/naturalists have no objective morality. What I disagree with is that the theist (usually) claims that he has objective morality. It would be harder to argue against if everyone's "objective moralities" lined up perfectly, but they often don't. My point is also that if a person's conception/belief in god(s) is subjective, then the morality that follows would also be subjective. In other words, God's existence has...
...to be objectively true in order for the morality to be objective. Since God's existence appears to be a subjective matter, varying from person to person, I disagree that there is "objective morality," until persuaded otherwise, of course.
Interesting approach. It is not often I hear a new objection to morality, they tend to fall into familiar categories.
The existence of God is definitely an objective matter. "God exists" is a statement of fact. It is true or false independently of my preferences or opinions. The idea that different people hold different ideas of God in their head does not imply that the belief is subjective, but that some groups may be more right than others (or all groups may be equally wrong).
Right, I know what you mean that "God exists" would be true/false regardless of your thoughts. However, I fail to see the objectivity in guessing what God's nature is like. According to you, my belief that God wants everyone to eat sand once a week is an objective one, yet it's based on nothing factual, just thoughts floating around my head. Maybe you can help me out.
Your belief that God wants you to eat sand is not subjective. You are making an objective claim.. you just aren't making an objective claim which has a high probability of being true. To determine what God wants or likes, you need to present some sort of reason. The moral argument would be an example, if The Bible has authority that would be a good example of how to know his desires as well.
Saying "God wants you to eat sand" isn't a claim about morality. It is an objective claim about what God wants. The foundation of morality is not God's desires (because desires are subjective). I made a video that might help clear this up. It is called "objective and subjective defined".
Right. So the objective/subjective dilemma is cleared up. Thanks! But I still don't see how a morality being objective in nature means that it has a better foundation. I don't see how that necessarily follows, especially since it is true that there are many conflicting claims about the putative objective morality. In other words, how is an inconsistent objective morality an better than an inconsistent subjective one? I feel as though the inherent problems are the same.
If morality is objective, then it isn't inconsistent. If morality is objective then when people make contradictory claims about morality, one or more of them is wrong. Just like people can come to different answers on a math problem, that doesn't imply math is inconsistent, it just implies one or both of the people doing the math problem is wrong.
Right, but unlike math, "objective morality" has no current way of being tested. At least, that is what I know. Maybe you could enlighten me.
Until then, I feel the problem remains: how do we know who is right/wrong with respect to morality? It seems to be the same problem with subject moral frameworks.
I did a video called "the argument from disagreement" where i offered some tips for drawing correct moral conclusions.
We all have a realm of innate knowledge about morality, but not all moral claims are self-evident. The most common way to increase your ability to make accurate moral judgement is to learn more factual information. (for example, if you think reincarnation is true it will impact your view of morality, but reincarnation must be either true or false).
@twaallen32 I like the points you're making and I agree with you 100%. But it is hard to describe to someone that their "objective morality" is not any more likely to be true than somebody's "subjective morality", if the basis for the "objective morality" cannot be proven.
I think his point is that even if we agreed morality was objective, and God was it's standard it would mean nothing since we would have no way of knowing what God considers moral, or immoral. For example since we can't know whether God thinks beheading apostates is moral, or immoral we might as well use our own reasoning to decide. We might not be better off, but we'd certainly be no worse off than subjectively choosing what we think Gods opinion is.
In fact I would argue that we're better off using our own reasoning (as opposed to emotion) because it you're a homophobe you're going to believe God hates homosexuals, and that you're morally justified in hating them, and treating them badly. Without God you have to justify morality yourself, and there is no non-religious justification for believing homosexuals are an abomination.
Also, I find it very irritating how Christian apologists keep harping on about Nietzsche as though he represented the final destination of atheistic philosophy. Nietzsche was a ridiculous pseudo-philosopher who stopped believing in god and then, in modern parlance, got all emo about it.
The best of rationalist philosophy is put forward by Russell, Parfit, Drescher, Singer.
By the by, I do not believe Russell would have identified as agnostic.
Chalk it up to personal prejudice if you like. I hold him in contempt because he makes no sense, and often seems to be *trying* not to make any. That seems to me the least desirable possible trait in a philosopher.
Thanks for doing the interview, it was interesting!
To be honest though, it seems abundantly clear to me after this interview that Dr Strehle is more interested in historical smears of secularists than in making an argument against church-state separation on its own merits. That argument would have to leave history behind. Whether the French enlightenment was antisemitic or not has bugger-all to do with what the best policies are for 21st century America.
I disagree with this professor. He seems to be putting Christianity up on a pedestal because all his concerns about Separation of Church & State involves Christianity and the Bible. That discredits the notion of Sep of church & state from the get go because you not applying it across the board. It is bias. And he committed the fallacy of association by pointing out Hitler subscribed to it. So what. The differences are far to great to compare.
1. Hm, word engineering anyone? "Secularism is the belief that government or other entities should exist separately from religion and/or religious beliefs." (Wikipedia) How ignorant of the historical context of secularism in the USA is this man? (Hm, yes, that was a rhetorical question). 2. Since when is Nietzsche the last call for non-religious moral? Also, I am stunned at his ignorance about the current and past discourse about how to derive values from science.
He is actually spot on in saying that you cannot derive objective values from science. David Hume proved that pretty clearly when he formulated the is-ought gap. I have a video coming up where I will explain that in more detail.
@Epydemic2020 If you limit yourself to objective as in derived from deduction you are of course right, but if you allow for an inference to the best explanation as a means to approach objectivity than you are not longer right. I, of course, hold the later position. Also, I grant him the argument of atheists not having no access to transcendental values, but his argument that science can not produce value judgements per se is severely flawed.
Hitler wrote: "I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.." As a boy, Hitler attended to the Catholic church and experienced the anti-Semitic attitude of his culture. In his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler reveals himself as a fanatical believer in God and country.
USA is NOT a Christian nation and never was. It is a nation of diversity founded by those fleeing religious tyranny and the only country with a constitution against the combination of church and state. It was founded as a secular nation and its Founding Fathers intended to keep it that way. The United States of America is based on the notion that all men are created equal and stands for "freedom for all" despite one's race, wealth, or religious views.
Is Professor Strehle not familiar with the way Christian societies consistently treated Jews, e.g., forced conversions, Inquisition, taking Jewish children from their parents? The seeds of anti-Semitism--particularly, but not exclusively, European anti-Semitism are found in the New Testament and the Christian church.
BTW, the wall of separation metaphor originated with Baptist Roger Williams, who spoke of a "wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world."
(con't) Also, can Professor Strehle provide a citation to the specific "recent Gallup poll" in which, he asserted, 53% of college and university professors said they hate Evangelicals? Thanks.
He said, "The reference comes from p. 149 of Rodney Stark's What Americans Really Believe? This material is published by Baylor University and is based on polling data developed by the Gallop Organization, but I may have made a mistake in attributing the statistic to the Gallop Organization. (Keep in mind I was doing the interview off the top of my head for the most part.) In looking back at the book, it actually seems to attribute this specific statistic to another national survey...
... Even so, the statistic represents the intense animosity, and if anything, understates the problem. Anyone who attends attends religion conferences in academia understands this animus and the empowerment of the left-wing. See Ari Goldman, The Search for God at Harvard, or my book, The Separation of Church and State, chap. 4. "
@Epydemic2020 There are a number of problems. I happen to have a copy of Stark's "What Americans Really Believe." The statistic Professor Strehle offers in the video does not accurately reflect what appears in Stark's book or in the source on which Stark relied, i.e., The Institute for Jewish and Community Research's monograph "Profiles of the American University (Volume II: Religious Beliefs and Behavior of College Faculty)." While Professor Strehle invokes his "doing the interview off...
(con't) ...the top of [his] head" as an apparent reason for his audience to grant him some leeway--not an unreasonable request--one wonders why, in the context of doing an interview "off the top of [his] head" Professor Strehle didn't feel the need, at least, to temper his rhetoric and be somewhat more tentative in his declarations. For example, neither Stark's book nor published data on which it relies ever says that college and university professors "hate" Evangelical Christians. This is...
(con't) ...especially important given the question Professor Strehle had been asked about persecution of Christians in the United States. The Institute for Jewish and Community Research actually found that 53% of college professors had "cool/unfavorable" views of Evangelicals--quite a bit different from "hate." Moreover, Professor Strehle doesn't contextualize this at all. For example, other Christians (e.g., Catholics and non-Evangelical Protestants) had a *substantially* lower...
(con't) ..."cool/unfavorable" rating--in the case of Catholics, it was a mere 13%, non-Evangelical Protestants a mere 9%. Contrary to the impression that Professor Strehle appeared to be trying to create, when the full picture of professorial views of Christians are examined, they are favorable overall. Even in his statement that you quoted, Professor Strehle continues to push the inaccurate picture he attempted to paint to in the video, e.g., by saying there is "intense animosity" among...
(con't) ...faculty vis-a-vis Christians. He even goes on in his most recent statement to make the baseless assertion that the 53% statistic "understates the problem." In his response to you, Epydemic, Professor Strehle wasn't talking "off the top of [his] head." There's no excuse for this distortion of the data.
While I won't quibble over the meaning of 'recent', I'll simply note that the Institute for Jewish and Community Research's data are from 2007--4 years ago. And I see no...
(con't) ...relationship between the Institute and the Gallup organization. Given the distortions in Professor Strehle's presentation, one could be left with the unfortunate impression that he invoked Gallup to give his claim more credibility.
Finally, in his response to you, Professor Strehle says, "I may have made a mistake in attributing the statistic to the Gallup Organization." May? Fn. 7 in chapter 2 of Stark's book is quite clear about the source of the statistic. It's not Gallup.
(con't) Even on this point, after Professor Strehle has had a chance to refresh his recollection by looking at the book and, therefore, is no longer speaking "off the top of [his] head," he is still not being accurate in his presentation. That casts a pall over everything else he said in the video.
It would be nice to see Professor Strehle correct all of this. More importantly, Epydemic, *you* should know that you were not getting accurate information here. Thanks a lot.
@TheNakedAtheist "If you asked non-evangelical Christians what they thought of evangelicals you'd likely get a significant percentage of "cool/unfavorable" responses."
I didn't get the vibe that he thought the only source of anti-semitism was the enlightenment. I don't think he would object to listing other sources of it as well.
(1) What does it mean to call the French Enlightenment antisemitic? In the US, we were a strongly Christian nation practicing slavery and dealing with the indigenous population in the worst possible ways for a period extending far after the Enlightenment. Does that mean that the Christian movements in the US were racist? I don't think so.
(2) What does it mean to call the French Enlightenment anti-Christian? It sounds almost like everything follows from that.
You misquoted him. He said "we don't just want left-wing secular or atheistic people within the public forum". The word "just" is crucial to his argument. He made it clear he wants secular and atheistic people to be part of the "great conversation" as he called it, he just doesn't want those to be the only voiced permitted.
Also, I don't understand the need to bring up the Nazi's, but ok. Just go right ahead and invoke Godwins law in your video, as opposed to waiting for it to crop up in the ever devolving comments section of youtube.
I've paused this video at point 3 because I take issue with the wording of the question as well as the answer. You are (both) correlating the terms "atheist", and "scientific reasoning", these two are not directly related or interchangeable. A person's values are not reflected entirely by their ability to grasp scientific concepts, science has nothing to do with atheism, it just so happens that many highly logical, intelligent people conclude that there probably isn't a god. Unpausing now
It's hard to say. His answer to your excellent question 14:25 seems unclear at best. He mentions the people of Georgia having some say in how much religion they want in public schools.
People seem to think that students can't pray or read Bibles in school. The only thing Christians really can't do is have a school sponsored club or pray publicly at a school sponsor event. A teacher must be neutral as possible. Comparative religion, secular study of religion, is all that is good.
When he talks about graduation I wonder. Grad is supposed to be about coming together to cerebrate kids. prayer changes peoples perspective. Some change it to God others change it to how angry they are that to attend graduation, they are left out of parts of the ceremony despite earning the right be a 100% participant.
Someone just gets up there, often a school official and imposes his view. "Let us pray."
That takes away from others. This event should be neutral and student-focused.
If you ever interview him again I would love to hear him explain his response to 14:50 in terms of schools. He mentions public square, but schools are part of that.
Should the people of Georgia be allowed to
"teach creationism in schools"
"teach religion as fact like sunday school"
"have religious clubs that are school sponsored."
"change state standards for graduation to include religious classes"
What exactly are the boundaries he wants for public schools?
Plus, while I agree that the Nazis were an Anti-Christian movement, they were not anti-religious as a whole but mixed up all kinds of silly beliefs, for example some of Pagan origins and Hitler himself clearly saw himself as sent by the "Vorsehung", some kind of destiny that wouldn't fit into a rationalist world view.
However: Thanks for asking for clarification on that point. Great job as an interviewer!
Again, he repeats that Hitler was Anti-Christian and yes, that may be a justified position if you think you can trust the table-talks as a source, but that's a different issue than the separation of church and state. The Nazis made a law that gave a new constitution to the Protestant church and Hitler spoke out in public for the election of the "Deutsche Christen" in the Protestant church which campaigned with the slogan "ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Kirche" / "one people, one Reich, one church".
@FujiwaraNoGo I'm pretty sure that in Left wing nations they have what is called wealth re-distribution, money is stolen from others and given to those who have less. In America we call that robbery.
I still don;t fully understand what this guy's deal is. He believes religious people, specifically Christians, are under-represented. In this video he sights the history books having more women and black people than christians and also claims that they focus too much on the bad, as opposed to the good, early christians, like the Puritans, did. . . cont.
Hate to tell him this since he is published and probably has a better grasp of history than I do but, grow up. It's not the historians fault that puritans enjoyed burning people and keeping women stupid. They just report on what they find and they found a lot of burnt corpses. Deal with it. Just be glad we aren't from Spain who are almost singlehandedly responsible for the near extinction of the aztecs, mayans, and the olmec.
Just for the record even though the bill of rights originally only applied to congress the 14th amendment made the bill of rights apply to all states.
...His language treats atheism as a religion. 16:10 "Atheocracy" makes no sense unless you think atheism is a religion. Religions have set rules & creeds. A theocracy seeks to legislate behavior to its creeds.
Atheists believe there is no god. It's the only thing they all have in common. They don't even agree about fighting religious belief. So what would an Atheocracy legislate?
The statute is disrespectful. So I have to pay for statues of an execution in public parks?
I agree. I don't think his definitions of secularism and and especially atheism represent reality. I think they serve to justify himself - Secularism means taking away religion and atheism means God doesn't matter.
You can't build arguments on def that don't represent reality, build a case & pat yourself on the back.
"I define 4 types of Christians. The 4th type are ones who would murder their family in God's name. This concerns me so we need to move Christians out of society"
This prof defines things as he pleases to suit his agenda. His definitions of secular and atheism being prime examples.
He does a lot of "cookie cuttering" and labeling relying heavily on external ideation. Iimposing philosophies on people and acting like they only behave accordance with them, unfairly gives him leeway to say what people "REALLY" think or mean and elevate drafts to the same level as reality. Being "based in something" doesn't mean it is the same as it.....
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. I don't know if you are messing with me or what, but every single one of your comments has had a fallacy so far.
I will have a vid explaining what post hoc ergo propter hoc is shortly. In short, observing a sequence or correlation of two variables is not sufficient to prove causation.
19:16 He had a lot of talk about how secularist atheistic ideas were started in the 40's. It's ironic the pledge was changed to include "under God" at this time.
19:23 he claims everyone has to serve "somebody". I know he is refering to bob Dylan a little. Not everyone serves a somebody. Some of us serve principles, ideals, or things like humanity. I think the focus on serving things with agency is a bit myopic.
bible supports abortion, murder, genocide, slavery, infanticide, rape, bigotry, & incest... are these the same values he supports, too?
it seems that he's backward ass Christian, who only accepts the good parts of the bible & compartmentalized the rest?
i don't get it, why a smart man would mental-masturbate to an ancient, mythical, jewish-tyrannical phantasm in his mind created by an ancient, unscientific and bigoted sheep-herders.
the relationship is worship me or be tortured forever.
15:25 FALSE! The declaration isn't a formal government document. US govt didn't even exist then. It was a document signed by unelected rebellion leaders. Anyway, how could mentioning "nature's God" and "creator" in a document imply that a non-existent govt is based on religion? Even he knows he overstepped.."Following John Loch's..."
Time and again he impresses a philosophy onto someone/thing and implies they treat it like a creed. People DO have their own ideas and draw from many philosophies.
The founding fathers really did draw from John Locke when they mentioned our unalienable rights. In the first draft they literally plagarised from him. An essential part of John Locke's theory requires the existence of God. What you choose to infer from that I don't really care, but that is a factual observation.
It's wrong to give Locke's ideas equal status to the actual document. If we're technical about it, those ideas were considered unworthy and taken out of the final draft. People do more than simply borrow ideas from others. People do have original ideas, I don't think this prof acknowledges.
The implication that the declaration est. God in govt is false. The doc has nothing to do with govt. It could say "God is Government" wouldn't matter. The Constitution est. US govt, not decl.
Lockes ideas weren't taken out. They were plagarized. The only difference is that they changed "property rights" to "pursuit of happiness".
People have original ideas, but they definitely borrowed that one.
He isn't arguing that God should be in government because of what the declaration of independence says, he is saying that our constitution has theistic ideals carved into its roots, and that people often don't realize that. I don't think there is any deeper meaning intended.
"in fact it's worse than that. The declaration of independence says that the government is based on religion"
The constitution and declaration are different documents. What he said is not true. The vauge references to "nature's god" and "creator" do not support his statement. There is no link between decl and constin.
No one has a monopoly on ideals. If fairness, equality and democracy are theistic ideals than I agree with you, but they are ideals that are not limited to theism.
8:48 ridiculus. Most historians agree that the very statute he refers to is the ROOT and INSPIRATION for the 1st amendment. We have religious freedom because government is secular.
12:43 No such Gallup poll exists. An IJCR poll found 53% of professors had "unfavorable views" (not hate) toward EvC. Everyone has a right to dislike the actions taken by organized groups that impact their own lives. That's not oppression.
There is no atheistic philosophy. Comparing atheism to a religions is not the same. Atheism has no creeds and it's they have very different worldviews. He defines his own terms and Magnanimously claims this is what is happening in government.
If all these ideas came from the French Revolution? Based on what? 2 judges?
What is the evidence linking secularism to the French Revolution.
I don't think anyone is arguing an atheistic philosophy exists. Many atheistic philosophies exist. Get a group of people with shared values, goals, and sense of identity and you will have a group. It doesn't matter if that group believes in God or not.
As far as the French are concerned, he is just pointing out that the enlightenments version of separation of church and state represses religious freedom and he doesn't think we should follow in those footsteps.
I think he believes an atheistic philosophy exists. He refers to an "Atheocracy" later. This makes no sense if he believes atheists have very different philosophies. Atheists only agree there is no god. They don't even agree on things like religion is bad.
There is a group of people who believe blueberry pies are delicious. That's all they can be shown to agree on. Does a Blueberry-pie-lover-ocracy make any sense?
Lol This will cause a lot of frustration among the liberal atheists out here. Anyway, I agree with his main point. The idea we can't have religion in state is ridiculous. The idea that we have to remove the ten commandments from a court room for being a religious symbol is ridiculous. I mean, common we have a statue to a god on the capital building and you don't see anyone complaining. It's all politics against Christianity. I think we should just stick with what is on the Constitution.
"we have to remove the ten commandments from a court room for being a religious symbol is ridiculous"
Either we put up every religion's version of the ten commandments or take it down; but any middle ground can be viewed as contradictory to the constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Either every religion gets a slice of the pie, or no one does. That is the only fair way to do things.
I part about "respecting an establishment of religion" is quite relevant.
If Lincoln was purely a religious figure rather than a historical one then yes, but of course Lincoln is a historical figure. If we did want to make a monument on government property to a purely religious figure, then either every religion gets a place for its own monument, or no religions get a monument. Again, that is the only fair way to not respect, "an establishment of religion."
@MaximumAxiom "I part about "respecting an establishment of religion" is quite relevant"
How? This has nothing to do with congress making a law respecting an establishment of religion.
I was referring to the fact that the Lincoln Memorial was made after a Greek temple. The Washington monument is an Obelisk. Have you never heard of the Apotheosis of Washington? Religion is part of our culture. To try to hide it would be stupid.
I will back this up with facts in my inevitable response, but I would not trust what this man says Epydemic. At least 80% of his answers were based off of faulty information, faulty logic, or didn't actually address your question. Again, I will elaborate in a video response this week.
Well, in a way he is right on the textbooks. Even James W. Loewen, a professor of sociology on the far left, noted that history textbooks treat religion as rather irrelevant, and only include information on it in certain roles in "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, 2nd ed." Unfortunately, he doesn't really elaborate on this in that book, and references other works.
The titles are always dramatic. If you watch the whole video you will see the title has historical significance, as it is derived from something Jefferson said in a letter to William Short on Oct 31, 1819.
I'm bothered by how this guy wants to equate Jews, blacks, and women with fundamentalists. You can be born into a gender or race, but fundamentalism is a philosophy that one holds.
If someone's philosophy says it's OK to murder abortion doctors, I have no problem persecuting them for those beliefs. If some people hate fundamentalists or evangelicals, it's from things they've said or done, not how they were born.
It is a good idea in theory, a bit more difficult to make actually happen. I didn't know this guy liked church and state until I talked with him (I was originally going to do an interview about things like the davinci code, gospel of thomas, armanra letters, etc). I don't know of anyone else who has strong opinions on sep of church and state, especially not one with equal qualifications.
The dictionary defines secular as of or relating to worldly things as distinguished from things relating to church and religion. So if secularism is a religion than what's the absence of religion?
It's just plain false that people can't talk about religion in the public square.
A politician could deliver a sermon if he wanted to, nothing stops him from doing that. The only line is when you expect others to participate in your religion in a public forum.
The bill of rights protects minorities from the majority.
Many of these Commandment monuments explicitly state they are the "foundation" of US law. Not true & I shouldn't have to pay for that or the indoctrination of kids in public schools because most people think it's a good idea. It's everyone's money he is using to pay for what the majority wants.
15:20 Compare the 1st 3 commandments vs Decl. of independence's "nature's god" and "creator". So vauge they could be Spinoza's God.
Also, regarding having a moral anchor. He believes the religious have some sort of objective moral anchor, but that is premised on the actual existence of a god and that the will of that god is somehow known and accurately written down somewhere. I don't believe there is a god, so I hold that his moral objective anchor doesn't exist. I don't see how something like The Universal Declaration of Human Rights can't provide a human-made anchor. Civilization is not automatic, we have to work at it.
Not quite. Objecitve morality requires a God as its foundation.. but that doesn't imply that we can only know of his will by reading it. Certain moral truths are intuitive and self-evident.
I didn't mean to imply that the UDHR was a case of objective morality since I don't think objective morality exists. I think prehistoric man daily did many things that we would consider immoral and they wouldn't, the Romans would find it a strange question if killing someone for fun was always wrong (bread an games) and some time from now people are going to look back on us and consider us immoral for killing animals for food instead of using in vitro meat production.
I don't actually disagree with you, but those objections just don't contradict my position. I talk about that more in my vid "the argument from disagreement".
I don't actually disagree with you, but those objections just don't contradict my position. I talk about that more in my vid "the argument from disagreement".
Watched that video and if we take my Roman example, I guess the closest would be your Nazi example, except the Romans set up killing games for fun. I don't think "misinformation/other" applies in the Roman case, because they didn't think the gladiators were subhuman. They could acquire their freedom and become full Roman citizens. "We don't disagree about the important stuff" I strongly disagree with the Romans. I don't see how the last two arguments in that video apply either.
I had a look at that comments section and found one response (and one reference to that response) of yours to the Roman games. You say that the entertainment the killing provided was a partial reason and that the gladiators "consented" because they were already "doing capital punishment". It's debatable whether that's consent in any meaningful way, and many, like the Christians fed to the lions, hardly gave their consent, and the public still came to enjoy it.
Let me mix the Roman games example with my animal example for a question: Based on your objectively grounded moral intuitions, would you say that it is objectively immoral to introduce an animal into an arena, make it suffer and then kill it solely for purposes of entertainment? Most Spaniards a few decades ago would have answered no. Today most would answer yes.
It depends upon the objective scientific information that you have as to whether or not you think killing animals is consistent or inconsistent with your moral sense. Even if we don't know the extent to which animals share the properties we recognizes as valuable, that lack of knowledge or disagreement about how valuable they are doesn't disprove objective morality in any way.
"It depends upon the objective scientific information that you have as to whether or not you think killing animals is consistent or inconsistent with your moral sense." ?? I think even people of old were aware that other mammals howl and attack when you prod them with a sword. The information is the same: you're causing suffering. If anything qualifies for being part of an innate moral sense, it would be causing suffering to another being that can suffer, for fun.
"Even if we don't know the extent to which animals share the properties we recognizes as valuable" ?? Again, how have we not intuitively known for millennia that if we kick a dog or jab a sword into a cow, it will suffer? It seems, on your reasoning, anyone could argue any kind of behaviour based on the premise that all the scientific data is not in yet and that only their god has all the data, so I can do it because it says so in book x, which my god wrote/inspired.
I think it'll be interesting to see how the Abrahamic religions, that all have animal sacrifice and/or animal consumption in them (arguably also animal torture in the case of sending demons into pigs which caused them to suffer drowning deaths), fare in a likely future world where the killing of animals, who are capable of suffering but incapable of consent, has become immoral due to better, more ethical alternatives.
Anti-Jewish feelings arose in the French Enlightenment because they were anti-bible?? What? I seem to remember a recent apology from the current pope about Christians branding Jews Christ-killers throughout the centuries. Schopenhauer et al were clearly anti-semitic, but Martin Luther wrote a whole book on his anti-semitism: "On the Jews and their lies".
I accidentally edited out where I said "just to clarify, are you saying being an ahteists leads you to commit atrocities like the nazi regime?"
He said "no, that is certainly not necessarily the case. We don't have many purely atheistic societies to draw from, they are just one example. I am not arguing religious people are better than atheists, I am just opposing the idea that it is religion has a nefarious effect on society and that removing religion necessarily solves these problems"
this is horrible. he replaces his lack of scientific knowledge with religious dogma. Atheists cant have morals... weird... how did humans get along for hundreds of thousands of years before jesus? or is he a young earther too?!
@pyro666926 ? How do you mean....? God gave (made) the law (moral law) before Jesus came in the flesh. Morals wasn't "created" with Jesus. They are written in our hearts. That's why they are objective. Even if you believe in a young earth or not, the moral standard is a mirror of how God is. Holy and perfect, sinless.
That is not a lack of scientific knowledge, you merely aren't understanding what he said.
He isn't arguing that atheists can't have morals, he is arguing that atheists can't provide a foundation for objective morality.
Just because you can't provide a foundation for objective morality doesn't mean you can't get along with other people.. in fact it doesn't even mean you can't believe objective morality exists.
@Epydemic2020 all true, but it necessarily means I have adopted the morals established by religion, all while denying the "truth" of religion.
Society has established these norms, and organized religious doctrine came after. It is not I who adopt the morals of religion, it is religion who has seized the norms of society, long ago, and made them its own. I do not harm people because I posses empathy, and recognize that person is sentient, it is not because a God instills fear in me.
Once again I am impressed. The idea that Christianity was a liberating religion is interesting and ironic in some ways. But when considering the time & social context from which it grew out of, it DOES strike true. In the hands of ancient roman-era judaic literalists it's easy to see how the laws and lessons throughout the old testament would work out PRETTY oppressively to a people. The concept of sacrifice and liberation from sin WOULD be pretty pro-freedom for the time.
yea i found that iteresting too. Religion is often thought of as dogmatic and legalistic in modern times.. but if you go back to the time of Jesus he is opposed to legalism and so is paul.
He's my philosophy prof. right now. O_O
13deathKISS 3 months ago
@13deathKISS
lol, is that how you found this video?
Epydemic2020 3 months ago
@Epydemic2020 He assigned it because we would be quizzed on it.
13deathKISS 3 months ago
WOW this guy has No grasp on philosophy at all. Sickening. Bertrand Russel , Agnostic?! lol
ericpao81 4 months ago
also, somewhere this video goes off on a tangent discussing abortion and morality and what impact atheism has on it...these are issues to be voted on and decided. considering that I don't know of one outspoken atheist in government(and there would probably just be one if that) it's impact is not that great. "non-religious" people make up less that 15% of the US population it's impact. the video also doesn't give any good examples of how the US's version of BoR is bad or how it could be better.
OskyATL 6 months ago
dislike.
the video assumes that the bill of rights version of separation of church and state will lead to the restriction of belief. when infact it limits the government from assisting or restricting any religion. restricting things such as a government sanctioned day of prayer. but protecting the rights of victims of 9/11 to grieve in their own way. the establishment is whats to be restricted and the rights of the individual protected.
OskyATL 6 months ago
@OskyATL
How does the video assume anything? I am merely asking questions and getting one person's opinion.
Epydemic2020 6 months ago
perhaps I should say "he"(Professor Strehle) and possibly a bad title...if anything i kept watching to hear any good examples of how it would lead to(or if there is already) some oppression of religion in the states...but the only thing that even came close was the examples used by other countries. but I haven't read anything about hitler using separation of church and state. All I've read is he's made treaty's with them because he wanted to minimize opposing forces.
OskyATL 6 months ago
His response to question 3 ignores certain assumptions that we humans make in deciding what is right and wrong for ourselves, namely that we seek to eliminate suffering in defining what is "right" or "wrong". Hence, if a fetus cannot feel pain, there is nothing objectionable to aborting it. Problem solved.
Venaloid 8 months ago
@Venaloid
The position you are describing is either hedonism or utilitarianism. That is by far not the only ethical theory out there. Also, it has to be a bit better than an assumption, because assuming something wrong is a lot different from showing that something actually is wrong.
Epydemic2020 8 months ago
@Epydemic2020 - Even if it's just a starting assumption; "Given that we want X, we should do Y", it's still a method of picking a better course of action from another. So yes, atheists CAN pass judgement on issues like abortion, you just happen to disagree on their structure of morality, as I would disagree with yours.
E.g. what does it mean for something to be "actually wrong"? If it's because God says so and God is a perfectly moral being, then what does it mean to be "moral" or "immoral"?
Venaloid 8 months ago
@Venaloid
If we turn it into a "I want X, and I must do Y in order to achieve it" we aren't talking about anything that should be called "morality". Then the abortion debate becomes statements of preferences. "I like babies more than a womans choice, and abortion is inconsistent with those goals" vs "I like a woman's choice more than killing babies and abortion is consistent with that". Ted Bundy can even chime in and say "i want to rape people, therefore I should rape people".
continued
Epydemic2020 8 months ago
@Venaloid
I would argue that morality is just a description of what we should or shouldn't do regardless of what we personally want. For example, if Ted Bundy should not commit rape, even if he personally really wants to.
Epydemic2020 8 months ago
Serve Somebody ???? Serve Humanity :-) That's better then anything Serve Supernatural
sidharth0384 10 months ago
Empathy, compassion, family, and society. If you need fear to be morals, you have problems. I don't need fear to keep me in line. I can see why i shouldn't do bad and why going good is a good thing. the golden rule.
dont ever let the church in our government.
RainK9 10 months ago
@RainK9
Nobody is arguing that people need fear to have morals.
Nobody is arguing that we need to let the church in our government.
Epydemic2020 10 months ago
@Epydemic2020 i do,
i'm just posting my thoughts smarty.
RainK9 10 months ago
facepalm.
RainK9 10 months ago
Is that the same retard TheoreticalBullshit pwned a few months ago?
JohnWoo 10 months ago
@JohnWoo
Let me guess, you only watched his responses and not my rebuttals?
Epydemic2020 10 months ago
Oh double the derp in this video.
mecher3k 10 months ago
...the voices in my head (that say that abortion is ok) "God" does NOT mean I have any less of a foundation for my values than someone who does. The same goes for people reading too much into books.
twaallen32 10 months ago
I can't help but disagree with a lot this man has to say. Most people have already covered it in the comments section so I'll just say this:
He says that best foundation for morality is theism because one needs an outside/transcendent judgment on what is valued. This cannot be true if there are hundreds of thousands of accounts of transcendent judgment. I'm not saying secularism is better but that we have the same problem, so he can't say that theism is better. The fact that I don't call...
twaallen32 10 months ago
@twaallen32
It is interesting that you chose to object to the part about morality. My vids thus far have primarily been about morality. If you are interested in getting a full grasp of what the theistic means by saying atheists/naturalists have no obj moral foundation available to them, check out my playlist on objective morality.
Epydemic2020 10 months ago
@Epydemic2020
I completely understand why a theist would say that atheists/naturalists have no objective morality. What I disagree with is that the theist (usually) claims that he has objective morality. It would be harder to argue against if everyone's "objective moralities" lined up perfectly, but they often don't. My point is also that if a person's conception/belief in god(s) is subjective, then the morality that follows would also be subjective. In other words, God's existence has...
twaallen32 10 months ago
@twaallen32
...to be objectively true in order for the morality to be objective. Since God's existence appears to be a subjective matter, varying from person to person, I disagree that there is "objective morality," until persuaded otherwise, of course.
twaallen32 10 months ago
@twaallen32
Interesting approach. It is not often I hear a new objection to morality, they tend to fall into familiar categories.
The existence of God is definitely an objective matter. "God exists" is a statement of fact. It is true or false independently of my preferences or opinions. The idea that different people hold different ideas of God in their head does not imply that the belief is subjective, but that some groups may be more right than others (or all groups may be equally wrong).
Epydemic2020 10 months ago
@Epydemic2020
Right, I know what you mean that "God exists" would be true/false regardless of your thoughts. However, I fail to see the objectivity in guessing what God's nature is like. According to you, my belief that God wants everyone to eat sand once a week is an objective one, yet it's based on nothing factual, just thoughts floating around my head. Maybe you can help me out.
twaallen32 10 months ago
@twaallen32
Your belief that God wants you to eat sand is not subjective. You are making an objective claim.. you just aren't making an objective claim which has a high probability of being true. To determine what God wants or likes, you need to present some sort of reason. The moral argument would be an example, if The Bible has authority that would be a good example of how to know his desires as well.
Epydemic2020 10 months ago
@Epydemic2020
"...you just aren't making an objective claim which has a high probability of being true."
How do you know? My objective morality is just as good and likely as any unless we know something about god(s).
twaallen32 10 months ago
@twaallen32
Saying "God wants you to eat sand" isn't a claim about morality. It is an objective claim about what God wants. The foundation of morality is not God's desires (because desires are subjective). I made a video that might help clear this up. It is called "objective and subjective defined".
/watch?v=v6Ca5GErszA
Epydemic2020 10 months ago
@Epydemic2020
Right. So the objective/subjective dilemma is cleared up. Thanks! But I still don't see how a morality being objective in nature means that it has a better foundation. I don't see how that necessarily follows, especially since it is true that there are many conflicting claims about the putative objective morality. In other words, how is an inconsistent objective morality an better than an inconsistent subjective one? I feel as though the inherent problems are the same.
twaallen32 10 months ago
@twaallen32
If morality is objective, then it isn't inconsistent. If morality is objective then when people make contradictory claims about morality, one or more of them is wrong. Just like people can come to different answers on a math problem, that doesn't imply math is inconsistent, it just implies one or both of the people doing the math problem is wrong.
Epydemic2020 10 months ago
@Epydemic2020
Right, but unlike math, "objective morality" has no current way of being tested. At least, that is what I know. Maybe you could enlighten me.
Until then, I feel the problem remains: how do we know who is right/wrong with respect to morality? It seems to be the same problem with subject moral frameworks.
twaallen32 10 months ago
@twaallen32
I did a video called "the argument from disagreement" where i offered some tips for drawing correct moral conclusions.
We all have a realm of innate knowledge about morality, but not all moral claims are self-evident. The most common way to increase your ability to make accurate moral judgement is to learn more factual information. (for example, if you think reincarnation is true it will impact your view of morality, but reincarnation must be either true or false).
Epydemic2020 10 months ago
@twaallen32 I like the points you're making and I agree with you 100%. But it is hard to describe to someone that their "objective morality" is not any more likely to be true than somebody's "subjective morality", if the basis for the "objective morality" cannot be proven.
AntiTheocracy 10 months ago
@Epydemic2020
I think his point is that even if we agreed morality was objective, and God was it's standard it would mean nothing since we would have no way of knowing what God considers moral, or immoral. For example since we can't know whether God thinks beheading apostates is moral, or immoral we might as well use our own reasoning to decide. We might not be better off, but we'd certainly be no worse off than subjectively choosing what we think Gods opinion is.
(cont)
TheNakedAtheist 10 months ago
(cont)
In fact I would argue that we're better off using our own reasoning (as opposed to emotion) because it you're a homophobe you're going to believe God hates homosexuals, and that you're morally justified in hating them, and treating them badly. Without God you have to justify morality yourself, and there is no non-religious justification for believing homosexuals are an abomination.
TheNakedAtheist 10 months ago
Also, I find it very irritating how Christian apologists keep harping on about Nietzsche as though he represented the final destination of atheistic philosophy. Nietzsche was a ridiculous pseudo-philosopher who stopped believing in god and then, in modern parlance, got all emo about it.
The best of rationalist philosophy is put forward by Russell, Parfit, Drescher, Singer.
By the by, I do not believe Russell would have identified as agnostic.
simplic1000 11 months ago
@simplic1000
I am not sure why you would classify Nietzsche as a pseudo-philosopher.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
Chalk it up to personal prejudice if you like. I hold him in contempt because he makes no sense, and often seems to be *trying* not to make any. That seems to me the least desirable possible trait in a philosopher.
simplic1000 11 months ago
@simplic1000
I don't agree with Nietzsche, but I didn't get the same vibe about him.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
Thanks for doing the interview, it was interesting!
To be honest though, it seems abundantly clear to me after this interview that Dr Strehle is more interested in historical smears of secularists than in making an argument against church-state separation on its own merits. That argument would have to leave history behind. Whether the French enlightenment was antisemitic or not has bugger-all to do with what the best policies are for 21st century America.
simplic1000 11 months ago
No mention of Christopher Hitchens, who has written much about the subject ?
JBC814 11 months ago
I disagree with this professor. He seems to be putting Christianity up on a pedestal because all his concerns about Separation of Church & State involves Christianity and the Bible. That discredits the notion of Sep of church & state from the get go because you not applying it across the board. It is bias. And he committed the fallacy of association by pointing out Hitler subscribed to it. So what. The differences are far to great to compare.
Fishqueen1972 11 months ago
1. Hm, word engineering anyone? "Secularism is the belief that government or other entities should exist separately from religion and/or religious beliefs." (Wikipedia) How ignorant of the historical context of secularism in the USA is this man? (Hm, yes, that was a rhetorical question). 2. Since when is Nietzsche the last call for non-religious moral? Also, I am stunned at his ignorance about the current and past discourse about how to derive values from science.
timeofwonder2009 11 months ago
@timeofwonder2009
He is actually spot on in saying that you cannot derive objective values from science. David Hume proved that pretty clearly when he formulated the is-ought gap. I have a video coming up where I will explain that in more detail.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020 If you limit yourself to objective as in derived from deduction you are of course right, but if you allow for an inference to the best explanation as a means to approach objectivity than you are not longer right. I, of course, hold the later position. Also, I grant him the argument of atheists not having no access to transcendental values, but his argument that science can not produce value judgements per se is severely flawed.
timeofwonder2009 11 months ago
Comment removed
timeofwonder2009 11 months ago
Comment removed
timeofwonder2009 11 months ago
I can't find any information suggesting that Jefferson wrote anything that was not intended to be published.
MrSamuelSpade 11 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Hitler wrote: "I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.." As a boy, Hitler attended to the Catholic church and experienced the anti-Semitic attitude of his culture. In his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler reveals himself as a fanatical believer in God and country.
MrSamuelSpade 11 months ago
USA is NOT a Christian nation and never was. It is a nation of diversity founded by those fleeing religious tyranny and the only country with a constitution against the combination of church and state. It was founded as a secular nation and its Founding Fathers intended to keep it that way. The United States of America is based on the notion that all men are created equal and stands for "freedom for all" despite one's race, wealth, or religious views.
MrSamuelSpade 11 months ago
Is Professor Strehle not familiar with the way Christian societies consistently treated Jews, e.g., forced conversions, Inquisition, taking Jewish children from their parents? The seeds of anti-Semitism--particularly, but not exclusively, European anti-Semitism are found in the New Testament and the Christian church.
BTW, the wall of separation metaphor originated with Baptist Roger Williams, who spoke of a "wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world."
ProfMTH 11 months ago 13
(con't) Also, can Professor Strehle provide a citation to the specific "recent Gallup poll" in which, he asserted, 53% of college and university professors said they hate Evangelicals? Thanks.
ProfMTH 11 months ago 3
@ProfMTH
I'll ask
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020 "I'll ask."
Thanks!
ProfMTH 11 months ago
@ProfMTH
He said, "The reference comes from p. 149 of Rodney Stark's What Americans Really Believe? This material is published by Baylor University and is based on polling data developed by the Gallop Organization, but I may have made a mistake in attributing the statistic to the Gallop Organization. (Keep in mind I was doing the interview off the top of my head for the most part.) In looking back at the book, it actually seems to attribute this specific statistic to another national survey...
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
... Even so, the statistic represents the intense animosity, and if anything, understates the problem. Anyone who attends attends religion conferences in academia understands this animus and the empowerment of the left-wing. See Ari Goldman, The Search for God at Harvard, or my book, The Separation of Church and State, chap. 4. "
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020 There are a number of problems. I happen to have a copy of Stark's "What Americans Really Believe." The statistic Professor Strehle offers in the video does not accurately reflect what appears in Stark's book or in the source on which Stark relied, i.e., The Institute for Jewish and Community Research's monograph "Profiles of the American University (Volume II: Religious Beliefs and Behavior of College Faculty)." While Professor Strehle invokes his "doing the interview off...
ProfMTH 11 months ago 2
(con't) ...the top of [his] head" as an apparent reason for his audience to grant him some leeway--not an unreasonable request--one wonders why, in the context of doing an interview "off the top of [his] head" Professor Strehle didn't feel the need, at least, to temper his rhetoric and be somewhat more tentative in his declarations. For example, neither Stark's book nor published data on which it relies ever says that college and university professors "hate" Evangelical Christians. This is...
ProfMTH 11 months ago 2
(con't) ...especially important given the question Professor Strehle had been asked about persecution of Christians in the United States. The Institute for Jewish and Community Research actually found that 53% of college professors had "cool/unfavorable" views of Evangelicals--quite a bit different from "hate." Moreover, Professor Strehle doesn't contextualize this at all. For example, other Christians (e.g., Catholics and non-Evangelical Protestants) had a *substantially* lower...
ProfMTH 11 months ago 2
(con't) ..."cool/unfavorable" rating--in the case of Catholics, it was a mere 13%, non-Evangelical Protestants a mere 9%. Contrary to the impression that Professor Strehle appeared to be trying to create, when the full picture of professorial views of Christians are examined, they are favorable overall. Even in his statement that you quoted, Professor Strehle continues to push the inaccurate picture he attempted to paint to in the video, e.g., by saying there is "intense animosity" among...
ProfMTH 11 months ago 2
(con't) ...faculty vis-a-vis Christians. He even goes on in his most recent statement to make the baseless assertion that the 53% statistic "understates the problem." In his response to you, Epydemic, Professor Strehle wasn't talking "off the top of [his] head." There's no excuse for this distortion of the data.
While I won't quibble over the meaning of 'recent', I'll simply note that the Institute for Jewish and Community Research's data are from 2007--4 years ago. And I see no...
ProfMTH 11 months ago
(con't) ...relationship between the Institute and the Gallup organization. Given the distortions in Professor Strehle's presentation, one could be left with the unfortunate impression that he invoked Gallup to give his claim more credibility.
Finally, in his response to you, Professor Strehle says, "I may have made a mistake in attributing the statistic to the Gallup Organization." May? Fn. 7 in chapter 2 of Stark's book is quite clear about the source of the statistic. It's not Gallup.
ProfMTH 11 months ago
(con't) Even on this point, after Professor Strehle has had a chance to refresh his recollection by looking at the book and, therefore, is no longer speaking "off the top of [his] head," he is still not being accurate in his presentation. That casts a pall over everything else he said in the video.
It would be nice to see Professor Strehle correct all of this. More importantly, Epydemic, *you* should know that you were not getting accurate information here. Thanks a lot.
ProfMTH 11 months ago 9
@ProfMTH
Are you still planning on doing a video response?
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@Epydemic2020 "Are you still planning on doing a video response?"
Yes. Spring break approacheth. :-)
ProfMTH 11 months ago
@ProfMTH
If you asked non-evangelical Christians what they thought of evangelicals you'd likely get a significant percentage of "cool/unfavorable" responses.
TheNakedAtheist 10 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@TheNakedAtheist "If you asked non-evangelical Christians what they thought of evangelicals you'd likely get a significant percentage of "cool/unfavorable" responses."
I suspect you're right.
ProfMTH 10 months ago
@ProfMTH
I didn't get the vibe that he thought the only source of anti-semitism was the enlightenment. I don't think he would object to listing other sources of it as well.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
What is he trying to say with his first four sentences starting at 4:46? Enlightenment thinking is intrinsically antisemitic?
jeb31415 11 months ago
@jeb31415
I think he is just saying that the enlightenment was antisemetic. I didn't see where he implied that was intrinsic.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemiic2020
(1) What does it mean to call the French Enlightenment antisemitic? In the US, we were a strongly Christian nation practicing slavery and dealing with the indigenous population in the worst possible ways for a period extending far after the Enlightenment. Does that mean that the Christian movements in the US were racist? I don't think so.
(2) What does it mean to call the French Enlightenment anti-Christian? It sounds almost like everything follows from that.
jeb31415 11 months ago
"We don't want left-wing secular atheistic people within the public forum." --17:05
Hmmm...probably not what he meant to say.
jeb31415 11 months ago
@jeb31415
You misquoted him. He said "we don't just want left-wing secular or atheistic people within the public forum". The word "just" is crucial to his argument. He made it clear he wants secular and atheistic people to be part of the "great conversation" as he called it, he just doesn't want those to be the only voiced permitted.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@Epydemic2020
You are right.
jeb31415 11 months ago
Also, I don't understand the need to bring up the Nazi's, but ok. Just go right ahead and invoke Godwins law in your video, as opposed to waiting for it to crop up in the ever devolving comments section of youtube.
schr4nz 11 months ago
@schr4nz
He mentioned nazi's in the last video in passing and 90% of the objections were about nazis, that is why we went back to that topic in this video.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
I've paused this video at point 3 because I take issue with the wording of the question as well as the answer. You are (both) correlating the terms "atheist", and "scientific reasoning", these two are not directly related or interchangeable. A person's values are not reflected entirely by their ability to grasp scientific concepts, science has nothing to do with atheism, it just so happens that many highly logical, intelligent people conclude that there probably isn't a god. Unpausing now
schr4nz 11 months ago
Neil Degrass Tyson had a great rebuttal to the public school issue this professor brings up.
watch?v=zEP50dxfRAw&feature=relmfu
CMrace 11 months ago
@CMrace Great video
schr4nz 11 months ago
@CMrace
I don't think Strehle would disagree w/ that video.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
It's hard to say. His answer to your excellent question 14:25 seems unclear at best. He mentions the people of Georgia having some say in how much religion they want in public schools.
People seem to think that students can't pray or read Bibles in school. The only thing Christians really can't do is have a school sponsored club or pray publicly at a school sponsor event. A teacher must be neutral as possible. Comparative religion, secular study of religion, is all that is good.
CMrace 11 months ago
@Epyde
When he talks about graduation I wonder. Grad is supposed to be about coming together to cerebrate kids. prayer changes peoples perspective. Some change it to God others change it to how angry they are that to attend graduation, they are left out of parts of the ceremony despite earning the right be a 100% participant.
Someone just gets up there, often a school official and imposes his view. "Let us pray."
That takes away from others. This event should be neutral and student-focused.
CMrace 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
If you ever interview him again I would love to hear him explain his response to 14:50 in terms of schools. He mentions public square, but schools are part of that.
Should the people of Georgia be allowed to
"teach creationism in schools"
"teach religion as fact like sunday school"
"have religious clubs that are school sponsored."
"change state standards for graduation to include religious classes"
What exactly are the boundaries he wants for public schools?
CMrace 11 months ago
@CMrace
""teach creationism in schools"
"teach religion as fact like sunday school"
"have religious clubs that are school sponsored.""
I don't think he supports any of those three, and I don't actually think he would support the forth either but I am less sure of that one.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
Plus, while I agree that the Nazis were an Anti-Christian movement, they were not anti-religious as a whole but mixed up all kinds of silly beliefs, for example some of Pagan origins and Hitler himself clearly saw himself as sent by the "Vorsehung", some kind of destiny that wouldn't fit into a rationalist world view.
However: Thanks for asking for clarification on that point. Great job as an interviewer!
dointime85 11 months ago
@dointime85
Thanks
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
Again, he repeats that Hitler was Anti-Christian and yes, that may be a justified position if you think you can trust the table-talks as a source, but that's a different issue than the separation of church and state. The Nazis made a law that gave a new constitution to the Protestant church and Hitler spoke out in public for the election of the "Deutsche Christen" in the Protestant church which campaigned with the slogan "ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Kirche" / "one people, one Reich, one church".
dointime85 11 months ago
@FujiwaraNoGo I'm pretty sure that in Left wing nations they have what is called wealth re-distribution, money is stolen from others and given to those who have less. In America we call that robbery.
mcap52 11 months ago
I still don;t fully understand what this guy's deal is. He believes religious people, specifically Christians, are under-represented. In this video he sights the history books having more women and black people than christians and also claims that they focus too much on the bad, as opposed to the good, early christians, like the Puritans, did. . . cont.
Dogschach 11 months ago
Hate to tell him this since he is published and probably has a better grasp of history than I do but, grow up. It's not the historians fault that puritans enjoyed burning people and keeping women stupid. They just report on what they find and they found a lot of burnt corpses. Deal with it. Just be glad we aren't from Spain who are almost singlehandedly responsible for the near extinction of the aztecs, mayans, and the olmec.
Dogschach 11 months ago
Just for the record even though the bill of rights originally only applied to congress the 14th amendment made the bill of rights apply to all states.
vicious3579 11 months ago
@FujiwaraNoGo
that wasn't the fallacy. Observing a fact is not a fallacy. Inferring causation was.
"Left-wing nations tend to have less poverty and lower crime" therefore "the more of those we have the better" is the fallacy.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
Final thoughts part 2
...His language treats atheism as a religion. 16:10 "Atheocracy" makes no sense unless you think atheism is a religion. Religions have set rules & creeds. A theocracy seeks to legislate behavior to its creeds.
Atheists believe there is no god. It's the only thing they all have in common. They don't even agree about fighting religious belief. So what would an Atheocracy legislate?
The statute is disrespectful. So I have to pay for statues of an execution in public parks?
CMrace 11 months ago
@CMrace
He provided stipulative definitions for atheism right at the start of the video.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
I agree. I don't think his definitions of secularism and and especially atheism represent reality. I think they serve to justify himself - Secularism means taking away religion and atheism means God doesn't matter.
You can't build arguments on def that don't represent reality, build a case & pat yourself on the back.
"I define 4 types of Christians. The 4th type are ones who would murder their family in God's name. This concerns me so we need to move Christians out of society"
CMrace 11 months ago
Final thoughts
This prof defines things as he pleases to suit his agenda. His definitions of secular and atheism being prime examples.
He does a lot of "cookie cuttering" and labeling relying heavily on external ideation. Iimposing philosophies on people and acting like they only behave accordance with them, unfairly gives him leeway to say what people "REALLY" think or mean and elevate drafts to the same level as reality. Being "based in something" doesn't mean it is the same as it.....
CMrace 11 months ago
@FujiwaraNoGo
Do you realize you committed that fallacy in your comment about left-wing nations?
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@FujiwaraNoGo
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. I don't know if you are messing with me or what, but every single one of your comments has had a fallacy so far.
I will have a vid explaining what post hoc ergo propter hoc is shortly. In short, observing a sequence or correlation of two variables is not sufficient to prove causation.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020 What Fujiwara said is correct! It does not matter whether there's causation, or correlation. No logical fallacy!
indignant99 11 months ago
@indignant99
He observed correlation and concluded causation. That is indeed a fallacy.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
His obsession with French culture is a bit strange.
19:16 The pledge was changed to include "Under God" just before the Atheistic secularist french enlightenment started taking over?
19:23 Why can't a person serve a thing or ideal? "humanity" or "freedom"
CMrace 11 months ago
@CMrace
I don't get you objection to 19:16.
As to 19:23, I don't know exactly what he meant there.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
19:16 He had a lot of talk about how secularist atheistic ideas were started in the 40's. It's ironic the pledge was changed to include "under God" at this time.
19:23 he claims everyone has to serve "somebody". I know he is refering to bob Dylan a little. Not everyone serves a somebody. Some of us serve principles, ideals, or things like humanity. I think the focus on serving things with agency is a bit myopic.
CMrace 11 months ago
@E
bible supports abortion, murder, genocide, slavery, infanticide, rape, bigotry, & incest... are these the same values he supports, too?
it seems that he's backward ass Christian, who only accepts the good parts of the bible & compartmentalized the rest?
i don't get it, why a smart man would mental-masturbate to an ancient, mythical, jewish-tyrannical phantasm in his mind created by an ancient, unscientific and bigoted sheep-herders.
the relationship is worship me or be tortured forever.
FREEAMERICANOW69 11 months ago
15:25 FALSE! The declaration isn't a formal government document. US govt didn't even exist then. It was a document signed by unelected rebellion leaders. Anyway, how could mentioning "nature's God" and "creator" in a document imply that a non-existent govt is based on religion? Even he knows he overstepped.."Following John Loch's..."
Time and again he impresses a philosophy onto someone/thing and implies they treat it like a creed. People DO have their own ideas and draw from many philosophies.
CMrace 11 months ago
@CMrace
The founding fathers really did draw from John Locke when they mentioned our unalienable rights. In the first draft they literally plagarised from him. An essential part of John Locke's theory requires the existence of God. What you choose to infer from that I don't really care, but that is a factual observation.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic
It's wrong to give Locke's ideas equal status to the actual document. If we're technical about it, those ideas were considered unworthy and taken out of the final draft. People do more than simply borrow ideas from others. People do have original ideas, I don't think this prof acknowledges.
The implication that the declaration est. God in govt is false. The doc has nothing to do with govt. It could say "God is Government" wouldn't matter. The Constitution est. US govt, not decl.
CMrace 11 months ago
@CMrace
Lockes ideas weren't taken out. They were plagarized. The only difference is that they changed "property rights" to "pursuit of happiness".
People have original ideas, but they definitely borrowed that one.
He isn't arguing that God should be in government because of what the declaration of independence says, he is saying that our constitution has theistic ideals carved into its roots, and that people often don't realize that. I don't think there is any deeper meaning intended.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic
"in fact it's worse than that. The declaration of independence says that the government is based on religion"
The constitution and declaration are different documents. What he said is not true. The vauge references to "nature's god" and "creator" do not support his statement. There is no link between decl and constin.
No one has a monopoly on ideals. If fairness, equality and democracy are theistic ideals than I agree with you, but they are ideals that are not limited to theism.
CMrace 11 months ago
8:48 ridiculus. Most historians agree that the very statute he refers to is the ROOT and INSPIRATION for the 1st amendment. We have religious freedom because government is secular.
12:43 No such Gallup poll exists. An IJCR poll found 53% of professors had "unfavorable views" (not hate) toward EvC. Everyone has a right to dislike the actions taken by organized groups that impact their own lives. That's not oppression.
CMrace 11 months ago
6:38 You have to read Mien Kamph?
watch?v=YP_iNCGH9kY&feature=player_detailpage#t=403s
There is no atheistic philosophy. Comparing atheism to a religions is not the same. Atheism has no creeds and it's they have very different worldviews. He defines his own terms and Magnanimously claims this is what is happening in government.
If all these ideas came from the French Revolution? Based on what? 2 judges?
What is the evidence linking secularism to the French Revolution.
CMrace 11 months ago
@CMrace
I don't think anyone is arguing an atheistic philosophy exists. Many atheistic philosophies exist. Get a group of people with shared values, goals, and sense of identity and you will have a group. It doesn't matter if that group believes in God or not.
As far as the French are concerned, he is just pointing out that the enlightenments version of separation of church and state represses religious freedom and he doesn't think we should follow in those footsteps.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
I think he believes an atheistic philosophy exists. He refers to an "Atheocracy" later. This makes no sense if he believes atheists have very different philosophies. Atheists only agree there is no god. They don't even agree on things like religion is bad.
There is a group of people who believe blueberry pies are delicious. That's all they can be shown to agree on. Does a Blueberry-pie-lover-ocracy make any sense?
CMrace 11 months ago
Lol This will cause a lot of frustration among the liberal atheists out here. Anyway, I agree with his main point. The idea we can't have religion in state is ridiculous. The idea that we have to remove the ten commandments from a court room for being a religious symbol is ridiculous. I mean, common we have a statue to a god on the capital building and you don't see anyone complaining. It's all politics against Christianity. I think we should just stick with what is on the Constitution.
owchywawa 11 months ago
@owchywawa
"we have to remove the ten commandments from a court room for being a religious symbol is ridiculous"
Either we put up every religion's version of the ten commandments or take it down; but any middle ground can be viewed as contradictory to the constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Either every religion gets a slice of the pie, or no one does. That is the only fair way to do things.
MaximumAxiom 11 months ago
@MaximumAxiom How is posting the ten commandments a "law respecting an establishment of religion" by congress?
Do you also think we should remove the Lincoln memorial and the capital building?
owchywawa 11 months ago
@owchywawa
I part about "respecting an establishment of religion" is quite relevant.
If Lincoln was purely a religious figure rather than a historical one then yes, but of course Lincoln is a historical figure. If we did want to make a monument on government property to a purely religious figure, then either every religion gets a place for its own monument, or no religions get a monument. Again, that is the only fair way to not respect, "an establishment of religion."
MaximumAxiom 11 months ago
@MaximumAxiom "I part about "respecting an establishment of religion" is quite relevant"
How? This has nothing to do with congress making a law respecting an establishment of religion.
I was referring to the fact that the Lincoln Memorial was made after a Greek temple. The Washington monument is an Obelisk. Have you never heard of the Apotheosis of Washington? Religion is part of our culture. To try to hide it would be stupid.
owchywawa 11 months ago
I will back this up with facts in my inevitable response, but I would not trust what this man says Epydemic. At least 80% of his answers were based off of faulty information, faulty logic, or didn't actually address your question. Again, I will elaborate in a video response this week.
HonestDiscussioner 11 months ago 7
@HonestDiscussioner
Well, in a way he is right on the textbooks. Even James W. Loewen, a professor of sociology on the far left, noted that history textbooks treat religion as rather irrelevant, and only include information on it in certain roles in "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, 2nd ed." Unfortunately, he doesn't really elaborate on this in that book, and references other works.
jcrebel18 11 months ago
I want is glasses...
aveyowyns 11 months ago
Do I have your permission to use this footage in a video response?
HonestDiscussioner 11 months ago
@HonestDiscussioner
of course
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@FujiwaraNoGo
Did anyone argue humanism is a religion? That seemed pretty random to me.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
Okay . . . I'm nine seconds into this . . . the title does not fill me with confidence.
HonestDiscussioner 11 months ago
@HonestDiscussioner
lol, the title is dramatic but has historical significance.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
quiet euthanasia? please tell me that was just used for effect and you aren't actually serious?
alexporterfield 11 months ago
@alexporterfield
The titles are always dramatic. If you watch the whole video you will see the title has historical significance, as it is derived from something Jefferson said in a letter to William Short on Oct 31, 1819.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
I'm bothered by how this guy wants to equate Jews, blacks, and women with fundamentalists. You can be born into a gender or race, but fundamentalism is a philosophy that one holds.
If someone's philosophy says it's OK to murder abortion doctors, I have no problem persecuting them for those beliefs. If some people hate fundamentalists or evangelicals, it's from things they've said or done, not how they were born.
ManicEightBall 11 months ago
Good thing these types of interviews.
How about getting together on the table two of these men, atheist and theist obviously with compatable qualifications.
saintpine 11 months ago
@saintpine
It is a good idea in theory, a bit more difficult to make actually happen. I didn't know this guy liked church and state until I talked with him (I was originally going to do an interview about things like the davinci code, gospel of thomas, armanra letters, etc). I don't know of anyone else who has strong opinions on sep of church and state, especially not one with equal qualifications.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
The dictionary defines secular as of or relating to worldly things as distinguished from things relating to church and religion. So if secularism is a religion than what's the absence of religion?
It's just plain false that people can't talk about religion in the public square.
A politician could deliver a sermon if he wanted to, nothing stops him from doing that. The only line is when you expect others to participate in your religion in a public forum.
That shows respect for all of us.
CMrace 11 months ago
@CMrace
His example was the ten commandments on the supreme court. What'd you think of his answer there?
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic
The bill of rights protects minorities from the majority.
Many of these Commandment monuments explicitly state they are the "foundation" of US law. Not true & I shouldn't have to pay for that or the indoctrination of kids in public schools because most people think it's a good idea. It's everyone's money he is using to pay for what the majority wants.
15:20 Compare the 1st 3 commandments vs Decl. of independence's "nature's god" and "creator". So vauge they could be Spinoza's God.
CMrace 11 months ago
Also, regarding having a moral anchor. He believes the religious have some sort of objective moral anchor, but that is premised on the actual existence of a god and that the will of that god is somehow known and accurately written down somewhere. I don't believe there is a god, so I hold that his moral objective anchor doesn't exist. I don't see how something like The Universal Declaration of Human Rights can't provide a human-made anchor. Civilization is not automatic, we have to work at it.
wimsweden 11 months ago
@wimsweden
Not quite. Objecitve morality requires a God as its foundation.. but that doesn't imply that we can only know of his will by reading it. Certain moral truths are intuitive and self-evident.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
I didn't mean to imply that the UDHR was a case of objective morality since I don't think objective morality exists. I think prehistoric man daily did many things that we would consider immoral and they wouldn't, the Romans would find it a strange question if killing someone for fun was always wrong (bread an games) and some time from now people are going to look back on us and consider us immoral for killing animals for food instead of using in vitro meat production.
wimsweden 11 months ago
@wimsweden
I don't actually disagree with you, but those objections just don't contradict my position. I talk about that more in my vid "the argument from disagreement".
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@wimsweden
I don't actually disagree with you, but those objections just don't contradict my position. I talk about that more in my vid "the argument from disagreement".
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
Watched that video and if we take my Roman example, I guess the closest would be your Nazi example, except the Romans set up killing games for fun. I don't think "misinformation/other" applies in the Roman case, because they didn't think the gladiators were subhuman. They could acquire their freedom and become full Roman citizens. "We don't disagree about the important stuff" I strongly disagree with the Romans. I don't see how the last two arguments in that video apply either.
wimsweden 11 months ago
@wimsweden
I covered the roman objection several times in the comments section of my vid on the argument from disagreement.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
I had a look at that comments section and found one response (and one reference to that response) of yours to the Roman games. You say that the entertainment the killing provided was a partial reason and that the gladiators "consented" because they were already "doing capital punishment". It's debatable whether that's consent in any meaningful way, and many, like the Christians fed to the lions, hardly gave their consent, and the public still came to enjoy it.
wimsweden 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
Let me mix the Roman games example with my animal example for a question: Based on your objectively grounded moral intuitions, would you say that it is objectively immoral to introduce an animal into an arena, make it suffer and then kill it solely for purposes of entertainment? Most Spaniards a few decades ago would have answered no. Today most would answer yes.
wimsweden 11 months ago
@wimsweden
It depends upon the objective scientific information that you have as to whether or not you think killing animals is consistent or inconsistent with your moral sense. Even if we don't know the extent to which animals share the properties we recognizes as valuable, that lack of knowledge or disagreement about how valuable they are doesn't disprove objective morality in any way.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@Epydemic2020
"It depends upon the objective scientific information that you have as to whether or not you think killing animals is consistent or inconsistent with your moral sense." ?? I think even people of old were aware that other mammals howl and attack when you prod them with a sword. The information is the same: you're causing suffering. If anything qualifies for being part of an innate moral sense, it would be causing suffering to another being that can suffer, for fun.
wimsweden 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
"Even if we don't know the extent to which animals share the properties we recognizes as valuable" ?? Again, how have we not intuitively known for millennia that if we kick a dog or jab a sword into a cow, it will suffer? It seems, on your reasoning, anyone could argue any kind of behaviour based on the premise that all the scientific data is not in yet and that only their god has all the data, so I can do it because it says so in book x, which my god wrote/inspired.
wimsweden 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
I think it'll be interesting to see how the Abrahamic religions, that all have animal sacrifice and/or animal consumption in them (arguably also animal torture in the case of sending demons into pigs which caused them to suffer drowning deaths), fare in a likely future world where the killing of animals, who are capable of suffering but incapable of consent, has become immoral due to better, more ethical alternatives.
wimsweden 11 months ago
Anti-Jewish feelings arose in the French Enlightenment because they were anti-bible?? What? I seem to remember a recent apology from the current pope about Christians branding Jews Christ-killers throughout the centuries. Schopenhauer et al were clearly anti-semitic, but Martin Luther wrote a whole book on his anti-semitism: "On the Jews and their lies".
wimsweden 11 months ago
oh my atheism makes me a nazi, didn't know that
Uhmu45 11 months ago
@Uhmu45
I accidentally edited out where I said "just to clarify, are you saying being an ahteists leads you to commit atrocities like the nazi regime?"
He said "no, that is certainly not necessarily the case. We don't have many purely atheistic societies to draw from, they are just one example. I am not arguing religious people are better than atheists, I am just opposing the idea that it is religion has a nefarious effect on society and that removing religion necessarily solves these problems"
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020
I know. It's just rhetorical trick he uses. There is no actual correlation between being religious or not and being an asshole. But i love sarcasm ;D
Uhmu45 11 months ago
this is horrible. he replaces his lack of scientific knowledge with religious dogma. Atheists cant have morals... weird... how did humans get along for hundreds of thousands of years before jesus? or is he a young earther too?!
errrr*teethgrind* this is so aggravating
pyro666926 11 months ago
@pyro666926 ? How do you mean....? God gave (made) the law (moral law) before Jesus came in the flesh. Morals wasn't "created" with Jesus. They are written in our hearts. That's why they are objective. Even if you believe in a young earth or not, the moral standard is a mirror of how God is. Holy and perfect, sinless.
mcriot80 11 months ago
@pyro666926
That is not a lack of scientific knowledge, you merely aren't understanding what he said.
He isn't arguing that atheists can't have morals, he is arguing that atheists can't provide a foundation for objective morality.
Just because you can't provide a foundation for objective morality doesn't mean you can't get along with other people.. in fact it doesn't even mean you can't believe objective morality exists.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
@Epydemic2020 all true, but it necessarily means I have adopted the morals established by religion, all while denying the "truth" of religion.
Society has established these norms, and organized religious doctrine came after. It is not I who adopt the morals of religion, it is religion who has seized the norms of society, long ago, and made them its own. I do not harm people because I posses empathy, and recognize that person is sentient, it is not because a God instills fear in me.
pyro666926 11 months ago
Once again I am impressed. The idea that Christianity was a liberating religion is interesting and ironic in some ways. But when considering the time & social context from which it grew out of, it DOES strike true. In the hands of ancient roman-era judaic literalists it's easy to see how the laws and lessons throughout the old testament would work out PRETTY oppressively to a people. The concept of sacrifice and liberation from sin WOULD be pretty pro-freedom for the time.
NearVSMello 11 months ago
@NearVSMello
yea i found that iteresting too. Religion is often thought of as dogmatic and legalistic in modern times.. but if you go back to the time of Jesus he is opposed to legalism and so is paul.
Epydemic2020 11 months ago
A lot of opinion and spin. cool.
hereticinred 11 months ago