New Atheism and its Critics
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- Опубліковано 27 кві 2020
- New atheism is dead (and this video killed it). But what can we learn from it? Today I discuss and build upon Kaufman's Philosophy Compass article "New Atheism and its Critics".
Article: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...
Website: www.majestyofreason.wordpress.com
Book: www.amazon.com/Majesty-Reason...
1:00
The "New Atheist" (NA) movement
3:00
Uninterested in philosophical discussion
4:14 :)
4:29 No realistic solutions to the problems the implicate religion
5:20 Derogatory toward religion
6:55 Belief in God is delusional
7:55 :)
8:09 7 intellectual mistakes
8:18 *1a Scientism
9:31 *1b Theism is a scientific hypothesis
11:09 *2 You can't prove a negative
12:02 *3 Lacktheism
15:52 *4 Burdon's of proof
16:23 :)
17:12 *5 No evidence for God's existence
18:48 *6 Misunderstanding of God and Theism
19:28 *7 Philosophical errors
21:40 Political elements of NA
24:28 What can we learn from NA
Isn’t there a difference between saying “I don’t believe in a god because I haven’t seen convincing evidence” and “There is no god” which is a positive statement / claim?
@@dorarie3167 Don’t tell them
Here's an example that hits on all the points: ua-cam.com/users/BitchspotBlogvideos
The misunderstanding is the other way around. "New Atheists" address what people actually believe, not what some obscure philosopher has come up with as a defense.
People don't murder gays for an "unactualized actualizer" or for whatever is implied by Feser's 50th Ontological Argument.
It's perfectly ok to spend your time in an academic circlejerk if that's fun for you, but don't shit on people, who are actually trying to make positive changes for others.
@johnwilliamson3752
You completely dismiss the concern about the atrocious suffering religion causes every day, because certain people don't address the newest Argument from Contingency, but your own argument is to write "tips fedora" over and over again.
That Dawkins impression changed my life.
lolol
If that changed your life, his Swinburne impression will change your career.
He should do video of just him doing impressions. Please majesty of reason?
Seriously that was so good lol
20:02, saving timestamp for next time lmao
This is arguably the best critique of the New Atheist movement I've yet seen, and that's coming from someone who identifies as a New Atheist. Great work.
Liked and subbed.
Cheers,
- Ozy
Hey Ozy, I wish you were still doing videos yourself!
This is my favorite video I’ve seen in a while. While my atheism is more or less the product of their efforts, I quickly realized that I should look elsewhere if I wanted to be as philosophically rigorous as possible. They certainly have their positives, but I see the flaws now in hindsight. Well said, Joe.
I share a similar belief history; the first atheists I found and also the ones who convinced me were quite disrespectful and derogatory towards theists.
He completely ignored all arguments for why religion is harmful.
@@mrmob6166
If they convinced you and not Joe or ppl like him then maybe they were doing sth right...
@@MrCmon113 To state that religion is harmful is to first assume that religion is false (at least, particularly in the case that there exist some religions in which ignorance of them brings greater harm, such as traditionalist Christianity). If these religions are already dealt with in a logical argument (that, for example, traditionalist Christianity cannot be true because of argument X, Y, Z...), then an argument on the basis of harm is moot since the religion has already been deemed false and thus shouldn't be pursued
@@elbretto6062 I don't think that there are no possible consequences of a religion's harm which fail to overlap with consequences of a religion's falsity. For example, the religion could be true in a certain more limited sense (e.g. moderate or liberal Christianity), while simultaneously causing harm in some of its less enlightened forms (e.g. fundamentalist evangelical Christianity replete with science denial); this would suggest major reform to said religion as a response.
As another possibility, it matters whether a false religion is merely a relatively benign social/cultural phenomenon or whether it is a harmful institution that needs to be much more actively opposed.
I’m an atheist, I don’t agree with everything you said but there are some pretty good points in here
Much love
29:45
Popular Christian apologetics did the same for me (although unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll likely ever be able to formally study philosophy). Even if popular level apologetics gets a lot wrong, it still started me truth seeking.
Great video!
Much love
New Atheism died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I received a notification from Majesty of Reason: "New atheism is dead (and this video killed it). But what can we learn from it?" That doesn't mean anything. It might have been yesterday.
Do you not hear the noise of the grave-diggers? Do you not smell the godless putrefaction??
New Atheism is alive and well. Religious belief continues to decline at an accelerating rate throughout the industrialized West. The New Atheists' fearless exposition of the absurdity of religious belief has helped move the needle. People are not afraid to challenge the nonsense of virgin births, talking snakes, elephant headed gods, and magical crackers.
You can waste your time quibbling over essences and unactualized actualizers and other BS--things that most believers don't care at all about.
@@publiusovidius7386 No one is defending any believers, this is a philosophical video simply pointing out the problems with New Atheism. Atheism is a respectable position but New Atheism is quite childish.
@@kachiakabogu5619
Yet each of the "New Atheists" have spent more time adressing what people actually believe than academic philosophers over the last 100 years combined.
While you argue about whether a causal chain can be infinite, people are throwing gays off rooftops and enslaving others with divine justification.
Debunking the 100th iteration of the Ontological Argument is a fun hobby. Fighting religion is a moral duty.
There is no such thing as "New Atheism", you just cling to the axiom that religion can't be bad.
I’m glad I discovered this channel, this is a great breakdown of the new atheist movement. From a theist who has many intellectual atheist friends I’m glad someone cleared up this distinction!
You're the most serious philosophy UA-camr I come across thus far. I hope you will continue this journey and let us take part of it.
I think you do a great job on philosophical questions. This is more cultural criticism and the scope of this is very narrow.
I’ve been wondering what new atheism was for a while I finally decided to search it up and found this video, so thank you man. Great vid!
Great video man! Just a question: why aren't you a theist?
I find many arguments convincing!
1) The Pruss cosmological argument from contingency
2) the kalam cosmological argument
3) the modal ontological argument
4) the moral argument
5) the argument from consciousness and the existence of minds.
6) The fine tuning argument
7) the argument from degrees of perfection
8) The argument from justice
9) The argument from human desire
Etc
Thank you!
I will be going over some of these arguments in the future, so we will have to display some patience for my answers to your question. :)
@@MajestyofReason thanks ! I suggest you read the excellent book "The blackwell compagnion to natural theology". Frankly it's the best book on natural theology that's out there😉
It is not, like, enormously silly of you that you find those arguments convincing, but i dont, because my standards of evidence are a little bit higher. The main problem with most of them is the god of the gaps fallacy... just take any of those arguments, replace word "God" with some atheistic word (chance, randomness, universe, nature, reality...) and compare those two arguments to see for yourself which one is more convincing.
Interesting. I became an atheist by way of the new atheist rhetoric and have been uncomfortable with some of the topics described in the video. Thank you for putting words toy disquiet. I think these days I would identify as an agnostic generally but that I do have belief that some conceptions of God are not instantiated in our reality.
Joe, big fan of your work and channel, but what are your thoughts on the following statement?
People who have the epistemological state of "lacking a belief in God" should not primarily adopt the label of atheist, but rather adopt the label of non-theist as their primary self-label.
The reason I think this matters is because atheism as a label can often be used as a "bait and switch" unless modifiers are added ("positive, negative, strong and weak").
Would you agree with this?
What are your thoughts on Matt Dillahunty?
This channel has become my favorite.
I love the critique about scientism. It’s one you’ll hear again and again from online atheists.
How do you psychologize speaking in tongues or any other reported religious "experience"?
Have you read William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience”?
@@glof2553 I have not. Does he say anything insightful about the experiences of Gideon with the wool, Elijah on Mt. Carmel, or Thomas fingering the risen Jesus?
Hi Joe, great video.
I think that, besides the fact that you're right about the lack of interest of new atheists on the intellectual arguments for theism, their main target has been always blind-minded, antiscience, dangerous, fanatic, dogmatic religious indoctrination, of which we know there's a lot out there. So, as well as putting all religious views in the same punching bag is wrong, it is a mistake thinking that there's always a solid philosophical background behind religion, or that there's a necessary interdependence between religion and philosophy that force the debate to be always in the philosophical arena.
Speaking of which, it is well known that the philosophical debate about the existence of God and, in affirmative case, which version of God is there, is not at all solved, and there's no hint that it will be solved soon, so maybe a debate about philosophy itself as a reliable method to solve it should be on the table. The main question could be: What evidence do we have of pure reason finding any definitive truth about concrete reality without needing any empirical evidence to support it?
And about the definition of atheism, I would say, don't worry about that. I mean, not even Graham Oppy is worried about that. There's a lot of cynical people and skeptic people in the world that are not necessarily subscribed to the cynicism school of thought or to the skepticism school of thought. It's perfectly ok to be an atheist in a psychological way but not in a philosophical way, such differentiation doesn't have to diminish the professional work of atheist philosophers.
This is why I prefer listening to people like Shelley kagan , Sean carroll Graham oppy and Alex malpass
Yesss!
@@MajestyofReason just finished reading Shelley kagans book Death. An excellent read for anyone interested in philosophical arguments about death, afterlife and if we have an immaterial soul or such
@@jezah8142 Kagan is so great.
Great video! I echo the thoughts of another commenter in having found the new atheists increasingly frustrating and unpersuasive over time, in contrast to their initial impact on my thinking as a youngster. I hope this isn't the last we see of your impressions... 20:20
Ahahaha I'm glad you liked the impression
This is basically the best channel on YT.
Best philosophy channel for sure
I didn't know Tom Holland was into philosophy!? Haha, great video mate, really well explained. Subbed.
Very well thoughtout, but are we not going to talk about how his impression of Richard Dawkins was absolutely 100% accurate?
Ironically the new atheists commenting in this comment section serves as an crystal clear demonstration of the points raised in the video.
Perspective and self reflection eludes them.
Great video.
The only thing ironic is you having never attempted to get any perspective.
I don't identify in any particular way "at the end of the day", and think that in order to learn one's position (including mine, of course9 a dialogue needs to take place. This is because these words are used in so many different forms.
Especially now that dictionaries have started to list "lack of belief" as a description of atheism (Merriam Webster, and Oxford) their usage become increasingly difficult to deny.
One can add the whole "well, yes but in academia .." but that doesn't work. We have to judge the room, so to speak. No one cares if you read more books than others, they only care about whether or not you are convincing. You .. not whom you can quote.
I use "atheist" a lot of the time because it sort of gets me "75% there". Whomever I speak to think to themselves "ok, so he doesn't believe in god" and again - that is most of the way there. we still need a conversation to iron out the details, but if I say any other word - even agnostic, most people's yes start to glaze and we have a much longer conversation ahead of us.
My approach, and I made this my mantra years ago, is to look at what we have good or bad reasons for accepting as true or false, and sure enough philosophy is a helpful tool here, but I do still feel that a lot of special pleading, or .. maybe special treatment is awarded theism where I don't feel it is warranted.
I embrace the naturalistic framework because it is demonstrably there. Very few people denies that it is there (assuming I am not a solipsist, or in a simulation and such things). I also take it as support of it being there that the theist also accepts that it is there.
Of course, the theist suggests there is something more than the naturalistic framework. A supernatural framework, or to be diplomatic - an alternative farmework. The problem with this is that it is NOT demonstrably there, so where is the justification for accepting it as true?
When I ask this question to theists, I am told that I am just being blinded by scientism and that I demand that the fabric of an alternative framework has to be possible to "process" within the naturalistic framework before I accept it, and this is simply not true.
I do not deny the possibility of alternative framework, but without a justification for accepting it ias true I do not have a good reason to do so.
It seems to me to be a massive argument from ignorance fallacy too when the gods of certain parts of theism gets to be introduced as undetectable in any way and yet - somehow - the theists of this world know they are real.
The thing is, if it is undetectable to me, it is undetectable for the theists too. Unless they are claiming some type of special ability that the rest of us do not have access to, they are just as lacking in the good reasons to accept it as true as the rest of us.
Yet, I am told that I have to entertain it as possible.
The evidence that was introduced in this video as examples I think are apart of this argument from ignorance. We are reminded that we cannot prove consciousness and things like that. Are we then to take that as a justification for god, because I do not agree with that. A god still needs a justification for itself.
I was disappointed to hear how certain atheists miss basic points of philosophy on this and see that these examples show up in an argument for evidence for god.
Just because we don't know this part over here, and because that part of there is mysterious, does not open the door for "therefore god". I am not saying this was the argument made, but the examples made it sound like it was.
God - any god, still needs justification for IT. The fact that we don't know how to explain consciousness can and should be filed in the "yet" drawer. We have been around for a portion of a blink of an eye on a cosmic scale, so to speak. How about we give it a second?
An alternative framework may indeed exist, but without a methodology - ANY methodology to analyze it, I do not see that we have good reason to accept it as true. The closest we get is "I don't know", and as was also said in this video .. it is an hypothesis. One among many, and I have not yet found good reasons to accept it.
Otherwise, great video. Despite what it seems like, I enjoyed it and it stirred my thoughts a great deal. I imagine that was the idea, so thank you for that.
@johnwilliamson3752
Bet you get into heaven for defending your faith so effectively.
How are you an American imitating an English accent and not making me cringe, you are blessed sir.
ahahaha
Great talk. Loved your last point. There is a lot about New Atheism that is annoying. Still, it did make a lot of religious people really think. I meet a lot of those people on various forums and I think they would thank the New Atheists simply for that reason.
❤️
I would echo this. For example, I love Clifford's analogy of the shipowner in his Ethics of Belief, but it was Hitchens/ Fry's debate on Catholicism (specifically the question of condoms & AIDS) that led me to that deeper philosophical point.
There is people right now that are not being horribly mistreated or murdered because of the work of Harris and Dawkins. There is no one that's being spared torment because of a circlejerk around causal finitism.
Hey Joe! At about 7:30 you say that beliefs are not inherently rational or irrational, but that a person can be rational/irrational based upon their own experience. I get the point, but would that mean that a person could be rational in this day and age being a young earth creationist? I find that hard to accept!
Very good vid. Great points. The worst thing about this is that I suspect that most new atheists who watch this will discredit you're opinion assuming you're some 'religious nut' and that will therefore not learn anything. Hopefully I'm wrong. I saw a new atheist in the comment section who seemed to have appreciated the vid and that does comfort me.
I find it pretty interesting that some new atheist channels got smarter over time and ended up abandoning new atheism. The best example is Alex from Cosmic Skeptic.
Alex is a good example
Nice critique, I am a new atheist in many ways, but I am starting to understand the power of specificity, implying categories for them too. Or you may come to associate specific narratives, a person or a group as unique to their ideas. Building vocabulary and distinctions gives you grounding
Great video!
Ok, first... love your shirt! Second, I think your videos are examples of intellectual honesty regarding the topics you present, which I appreciate quite a lot. It is not as common as people think. I agree with the mistakes you present in regards to the new atheism, I would like to add just one more, which I would guess is paralleling your sixth objection, and that is the lack of any intellectual curiosity on the part of the new atheists. I believe this to be one of the stronger reasons for the breakdown of the discourse between them and their opponents. Now, I might be accused of psychologizing them, because I am criticizing a property of their character and not a property of their arguments(even if it can be argued that curiosity has normative value as epistemic virtue), but I believe there is a case to be made why is this important. Most of the pubic debaters from the new atheism wave are not just scientists, but also science communicators. These people make it very clear that they stand from their position of authority. As science communicators, they bear social responsibility for the image of science and the people who engage with it, which they present to the general public. The fact that they don't represent the interests of the whole scientific community, specifically the religious scientists, from their positions of authority is one problem. But a completely different issue is the fact that they argue for the value of scientific curiosity, only to completely disregard it in their engagement with religion. They lack any will to engage with religions as systems of ideas, often reducing them to a set of digested normative statements, without any ethical, ontological, or epistemic framework behind them. And the image of the scientist, as lacking the will to engage with these ideas, presented by them, is something they should bear responsibility for.
@@thotslayer9914 Nah
@@thotslayer9914 Its a fan art of the main protagonist from The Sandman comic by Neil Gaiman
The skit at 16:14 is hysterical
Came here looking for copper and i found absolute gold. Great video! Subbed.
Sometimes I wonder why some people think that laws of nature describe regularities when civil laws affect what people do. If I stop a car at a stop sign, that's partly because I know that I may get a traffic ticket when I don't stop there when I should. But if laws of nature are descriptions, they don't cause what they describe. A description of the law of gravity doesn't make anything fall. So I want to know what causes the regularities. Is a law of nature somehow built into it?
Excellent question. The metaphysics literature on laws of nature is vast. I lean towards a causal powers approach, but I needa research it further.
@@MajestyofReason Thank you, Joe. Years ago, an empiricist philosopher didn't understand my question when I asked, "Are laws of nature regularites or do they cause them?" So I think some kinds of empiricism are metaphysically superficial.
@@MajestyofReason I lean toward a causal powers approach, too, because I believe that what a person, a place or a thing can do depends on its nature.
I subbed because I like your approach to Philosophy
You have a logical fallacies posted but it seems to be missing "Argumentum Ad Logos", the more irredeemable intellectual violation for new atheists.
Would it not be right to reject the definition of theism as "a belief in God" using the same method you used to reject the definition of atheism as "a lack of belief in God"? E.g., deists believe in a god, but they are not theists, right?
10:00 Read any religious scripture and you will find the gods all theists believe in to be empirically manifest. Their worldviews are ultimately grounded on scientific claims that are false (e.g. breath spirits).
Great video. I remember when I was atheist I used to based my arguments on info from Sam Harris and mainly Dawkins.since I come from a Environmental Science background. I was never a big fan of Hitchens though since he was more limiting on Classical thought. When I began my second B.A in Philosophy I quickly saw how dead most of the arguments New atheist use. They do not advance science but rather reduce it to a deterministic ideology that no serious scientist (let alone the great scientist of the past) ever held. While im not a christian I do consider myself a Deist. New atheism holds back society with its dreadful limits in thinking. If you are consistent with Harri's view then even you deny the Universe did not come from nothing then I challenge you (if you are an atheist) to follow your materialistic view to its step by step conclusion. I assure you that you will end mocking yourself because that is what you end up with like it or not. Its basic Philosophy of Science Central Issues courses.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video!!!
Yeah, it is surprising how little philosophy plays a role in new atheist thought. They would benefit greatly from gaining a proficiency in it. :)
Is it possible that Lawrence Krauss misinterpreted quantum states( or whatever they call it) where it disappears and then reappears but that’s only known within the universe. And doesn’t dark matter or energy expand the universe not “nothing”?
@@SpaceDin0 No. Dull answer I know but no. Heck the title of his book has that same claim to begin with. To be fair Quantum mechanics is a rather unstable field. It relishes in obscurity and abstract matter that doesn't always serve a potential factor in the field. But Im sure what I first posted still stands. Im not saying he is a liar. By no means. What I am saying is that he misses the mark. Despite his honest intentions.
Maximus Atlas I wasn’t supporting him because in all honesty I despise the guy. I was thinking he tried to use quantum mechanics and expansion for his claim.
" If you are consistent with Harri's view then even you deny the Universe did not come from nothing then I challenge you (if you are an atheist) to follow your materialistic view to its step by step conclusion. I assure you that you will end mocking yourself because that is what you end up with like it or not."
Can you please expand on this please , i'm not really getting what you are saying here.
“Superstitions of illiterate herdsmen” made me chuckle.
Great video joe!
How does theism predict consciousness? Certain forms of theism might, but I've not heard 'is conscious' as any part of a definition given for God.
If one attribute of god is omniscience (knowing everything) then surely god itself would have (or be) a truly objective consciousness.. due to the absolute awareness required to know everything.
you are so good dude! Very sophisticated :)
22:40 I agreed with everything in this video except for this point, when you said that religion contributed to anti-slavery and that fanaticism is just as bad when it's atheistic.
I think religion also made slavery seem ok for a while due to the obvious endorsement of slavery in the bible, i think you are overstating religion's benefits.
And the part about fanaticism is true, except i think the point here is religious fanaticism is easier and more common and that's the problem, I agree that you shouldn't bring psychology into debates, but religion is this only thing in the world that u get raised with and you are expected to hold in a lot of places in the world ( like where i am from) , i think in my opinion you understated this point, the point that religions is in most cases dogmatic or encourages dogma, no matter how many religious people that are not dogmatic that we know , there are many more that are dogmatic and that's the problem.
It is fairly important to admit that the twentieth century was perhaps the worst in human history, in no small part due to virulently anti-Christian movements in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
@johnwilliamson3752
The bible supports slavery in the clearest way possible and that's your response.
You yourself are evidence for antithesism. You are an example of what religion does to people.
your little laugh at 6:19 was just too cute!
The only one among the “new atheists movement” or the ‘four horsemen’ that I still respect in the broader sense got to be Daniel Dennett (I haven’t seen the whole video yet, while writing this).
Great analysis of the new atheists. Sam Harris in particular was very influential on me a few years back, but as I became a little more philosophically literate, I started to see the lack of substance in many of his arguments and statements. Like you said, the new atheists are rhetorically very good, which is what drew me in initially, but they generally lack much philosophical sophistication (aside from Dennett). I think that they were most valuable in bringing out a much needed public discussion about the role of fundamentalist religion in politics/ public life, particularly in the United States, but beyond that I don’t find much value in them.
That you still maintain your belief in "fundamentalist religion" as some separate phenomenom from religion only shows that you haven't understood anything Harris said.
@@MrCmon113 what in my comment gave you the impression that I think that fundamentalist religion is different from religion? If you’re saying that fundamentalist religion is equivalent to religion as a whole, then yes I disagree with that. Fundamentalism is one expression of religion, but there are religious moderates and liberals as well. Harris has explicitly acknowledged this as well on more than one occasion. He’s concerned about religious moderates/liberals only to the degree that he thinks they inadvertently provide cover for fundamentalists, which I think is a fair point to some extent, but is largely overblown. He is right to criticize fundamentalists (young earth creationists, biblical literalists, etc.) so vehemently, but I think that liberal religion is an overall positive force in the world, and attacking “religion” as a whole, as the new atheists generally do, is mostly unhelpful. A distinction between fundamentalist/ conservative and moderate/ liberal religion should be maintained partly for this reason.
@@MrCmon113 this isn’t to say that there aren’t problems with moderate/liberal religion as well, I just think that the problems are far less significant than those of religious fundamentalists, extremists and conservatives at a societal/ political level. Religious moderates/liberals also tend to be ethically and politically in line with most non-religious/ secular-minded people, so I really don’t think it’s helpful to lump them in with religious fundamentalists by just referring to “religion” in general as the problem.
This is good. Thanks.
I really find curious how we are (and by "We", I mean atheists, agnostics and skeptics in general) so obsessed with self-criticism in a way that the "other side" is not even similar. While we criticize new atheism, which since ever aimed to be a popular moviment and not a academic one, I don't see the same worries from the religious side. I don't recall hearing sophisticated christian philosophers such as Craig, Plantinga or Feser (just to cite a few) calling out priests and pastors for bad apologetics. Even them seem to sympathize with poor accounts of naturalism such the stupid Ivan Karamazov quote from Dostoevsky "if God does not exist, then everything is permissible". Plantinga himself has developed an argument according to which is perfectly rational to believe in God without any reason (!). Many of then consciously admit that They believe in God based on faith and even if the arguments fall apart They will keep going as believers (how this can pass as intellectual honesty?). And yet, when atheists don't get the arguments strictly together They are accused of being unreasonable. I am not claiming that We shouldn't have high stardards as naturalists, nor trying to justify the mistakes made by New Atheusm. But it's kind of unfair to demand always strong reasons for naturalism when theists can't held account for very basic questions about theism foundations such as: "what kind of substance is a soul?", "in which sort of 'reality' the supernatural exist" or "how 'imaterial' agents can cause 'material events'?" Just my two cents.
This is a good point, and I think you're right. I wish *all* -- theists and non-theists alike -- would criticize their own side, calling everyone to a higher standard. :)
David Bentley Hart and Ed Feser do, in fact, critique William Lane Craig at length, such as his bizarre understanding of God. But to argue that religious philosophers haven’t made any arguments for substance dualism is false. William Lane Craig has criticized Lewis’s Trilemma. I could, if you wish, cite literally dozens of examples of this, though I don’t intend to determine if non-theists are more likely than theists to critique their “own side” (although I reject the idea that agnostics and atheists are on the same side). If it turned out theists were more likely to criticize their own side than non-theists, what consequence would this have for your own thinking?
Indeed, the vast majority of philosophers of religion aren’t like Joe or Graham - I would guess between 75 and 90 percent are religious. Are these people really less likely to have arguments for substance dualism, or to critique their fellow theists?
If you’re actually interested in this, John Eccles and Karl Popper wrote several books defending substance dualism, though Popper wasn’t a theist. The most recent major books defending it come from Richard Swinburne’s *Are We Bodies or Souls?” and Peter Unger’s *All The Power in the World*.
@@randomperson2078 Thanks for the reply. Those are all very interesting points, but They completely miss the main issues I was addressing. So, there We go:
Firstly, I never said that “religious philosophers haven’t made any arguments for substance dualism”. What I said was that the basic questions for theism such as "what kind of substance is a soul?", "in which sort of 'reality' the supernatural exist" or "how 'immaterial' agents can cause 'material events', are still open to debate and don’t have a solid foundation, as They should, When it comes to fundamental questions. People can come up with good arguments for the existence of almost everything, including unicorns and Santa Claus. But that doesn’t mean that the idea has a solid epistemological foundation because of that. Arguments for the soul, for example, typically try to explore weakness on the naturalistic explanation of the mind and then try to demonstrate that just a “immortal soul” could fill the gap. And once again, by doing this, the fundamental question of "what kind of substance is a soul?" remains not answered and is dodged, at best.
Secondly, my other point was not that philosophers of religion, mainly the theist ones, don’t criticize each other views, which, of course, doesn’t make any sense. So, your statements that “David Bentley Hart and Ed Feser do, in fact, critique William Lane Craig at length, such as his bizarre understanding of God” and “William Lane Craig has criticized Lewis’s Trilemma” are completely irrelevant for dealing with what I was saying. What I said, in fact, was that sophisticated religious philosophers usually don’t attack popular well disseminated visions of God and religion, even when They are intellectually poor. For example, people on the naturalistic side sometimes talk about Richard Dawkins - one of the most brilliant biologists and science popularizers in the world - as If He was a moron and philosophically illiterate just because He doesn’t provide the more articulated arguments against God’s existence. Clearly, there is an imbalance of expectations here. My whole point is that religious philosophers keep saying that atheists should raise the bar of the discussion and stop comparing God to “Santa Claus” or “an invisible man in the skies” when, at the same time, They don’t do their own homework calling out pastors and priests that incentivize this infantile vision of God in their own religious communities.
And thirdly, you attempt to “school” me when it comes to substance dualism fails once more to address the issue at stake. My claim was against the resorting to supernatural beliefs as a form of substance dualism specifically. I never claimed this applies to all possible forms of substance dualism. You could, for example, be a Platonist, believing that numbers and abstract objects in general exist in a “separated reality” from nature and still be a consistent atheist. Btw, as far as I know, Popper, Eccles or Chalmers never postulated the existence of a soul or any other “supernatural substance” in order to build their case for dualism. The same thing can not be said, obviously, about Swinburne and Unger, which are religious philosophers. In the end, you’re just proving my point here.
Thanks once more for the opportunity to engage in the discussion and I hope this clarifies what I said (and also, what I didn’t say altogether).
@@MajestyofReason
How exactly do you imagine the future? It's 4023 and there's still slavery and people beating their children and throwing gays off rooftops, because you haven't adequately adressed the 10000th iteration of the Ontological Argument yet?
Do you really think it's only permissible to speak about the God of academic philosophers and not the gods people actually believe in?
What an excellent video 👍
You didn't mention the king of rhetoric. Hitch
He was amazing.
I didn't understand. Why must God be immaterial? Can't it be material? Can't a material mind be a product of the universe?
Great critique! But I have to disagree with your first point, it's not that we refuse to address them is bc we strait up don't believe in Metaphysics in the first place. But we should still engage in discussion and conversations.
What would be an example in which the non-believer is question begging when they say, "show me the scientific evidence for god."? This is not a gotcha, I'm just curious how the non-believer uses that a decent amount to question beg. I would say it's some sort of error to suggest that science is the only way to prove something, but I can't really think of a decently used case where they question beg using that line of reasoning.
if gods are real then where are they? if we cant detect them in any way and i have found no viable evidence, then why the shit shoud one go around assuming one or more gods exist??
Thank you for your comment!
So, note first that I did not claim in this this video that any gods exist. (In fact, I am an agnostic).
Second, the claim that 'the only way to justify belief in x is to detect x' is self-defeating, since there is no experiment by which we could detect the truth of *this very principle*.
Third, nowhere did I say that we should go around assuming gods exist.
@@MajestyofReason Hello. I didnt say you claimed anything, i merely asked a question for those who do believe in the gods, and then they or anyone else for that matter can comment.
Second, i think you either believe in some god or you dont. If you dont then allow me to say you are an atheist.
@@sethecxHello! Would you allow someone to say that you are a theist on the grounds that (1) you either believe that there are no gods or you don't believe that there are no gods and (2) you don't believe that there are no gods? If you would, then the usage introduces unnecessary confusion resulting in the possibility that the same person is both a "theist" and an "atheist". If you would not, then why think Joe would?
@@dimazhyvov170 why call me a theist if i dont believe in gods? not sure i understand what you mean.
@@sethecx why call Joe an atheist if he doesn't believe that there are no gods?
18:00 an argument that I've heard is that an all-powerful god doesn't predict anything because it can do anything. An all-powerful god would be consistent with both consciousness and eliminativism, or any other possibility, because it can do anything.
If it weren't for the new atheist era many of us wouldn't have really engaged too much with the philosophy of religion. Consider it in the same way a pop version of a music genre can be what leads you into the more underground and interesting pieces within that genre. Limp Bizkit might eventually get you to listen to Nirvana! Thinking about it, Dawkins had a role at Oxford concerning the spread of scientific knowledge/interest in the public, so I guess you could argue an appeal to rhetoric might have been effective, albeit quite shallow?
Besides the "no evidence" pedantry, as a theist, I sympathize with New Atheists given the historical context. Christian fundamentalists, while not representing the intellectual heights of theism, had and still have influence in American politics and society. These fundamentalists have no interest in supporting their ignorant and often dehumanizing rhetoric with competent philosophy and have no qualms about psychologizing atheists and even other Christians as dishonest and evil. Many Christians make incompetent arguments against abortion, homosexuality, and science from the pulpit to a wider and more gullible audience than the New Atheists do for atheism.
The New Atheists were philosophically incompetent and often bigoted, but is it worth critiquing them when their fundamentalist opponents make similar philosophical errors, have more political influence, lie about natural selection and LGBT people, and are unwilling to challenge their beliefs? New Atheists are condescending toward Christians, but are they as bad as the fundamentalists who abuse LGBT people and ostracize their daughters for seeking abortions because they did not teach them about their bodies?
It is telling that many former New Atheists are commenting that they quit because they realized the intellectual errors and pedantry of New Atheism while many former Catholics tell me that they apostatized because of years of irreversible physical and psychological abuse and distress.
If you had understood anything any "New Atheist" said, you wouldn't just label anything uncomfortable as "fundamentalist". Indeed your attitude is the bulk of what they criticized.
In describing religion, you missed "coercive." I hear that one tossed out a lot. Oh, and "word salad" if one tries at any length to respond to the rhetoric. It can be quite frustrating. It's hard to have a meaningful conversation using sound bites.
Thank you for taking the time in your videos to sufficiently expound on your viewpoint.
"All Dawkins had to do is turn the page" implies that Dawkins actually read Aquinas instead of just Googling the five ways and taking them all on at first blush, which he clearly did.
I don't think the New Atheist you are critiquing care about philosophical thought experiments about Gods that do not interact with physical entities in any measurable way. Their issue is with the Gods that supposedly do interact with the physical world in measurable ways, and the religions that make that claim.
So when they are demanding scientific evidence for God, they were very likely talking about a totally different God than the one you defined.
One major critic point among New Atheists is in fact that Apologists like to use the "philosopher" God in defense of their lived religion God. Using the philosopher's God that is defined in such a way that it has no testable physical features or interactions to make arguments about God unavailability to scientific inquiry, while hiding the fact that their God supposedly interacts with the world. In many cases not just being historically interactive but even being very interactive in this day and age.
14:27 sounds about right
Commenting on a 4 year old video... well it's new to me. I have a lot of respect for Joe and some others like him (Alex O'Connor comes to mind), but I think that while some of these criticisms are reasonable, I think Joe isn't using the same charitable approach toward New Atheism that he brings toward other positions he critiques. For example, the "you can't prove a negative" seems pretty clearly to be referring to empirical claims e.g. Russell's Teapot.
I would add that another thing that people like Joe who deal with theism and atheism as intellectual, philosophical questions, fail to recognize that this is an intensely specialized and rare view on the subject. It's an intellectual fetishization of what is blatantly mythology. What the vast majority of people mean when they speak about a God is almost entirely dissimilar to the gods of classic or neoclassic theology. If the subject of the existence of god(s) existed entirely as an academic, intellectual, philosophical question, I certainly don't think people would object too much to whatever positions others take. I don't know anyone outside of philosophy circles who care about what "qualia" is, and what it entails. I'd be happy to leave it to you... "think it up, big brains! Enjoy!". But that's not the *real* discussion going on in most of the world about Gods, and for most people engaging with apologetics, they are just rational cover for the myth they subscribe to. While I find it easy to take someone like Joe seriously in nearly everything he says about the subject, his failure to notice the elephant in the room is shocking to me. Joe specifically digs into this in his Point#6. If you look at what people actually believe, it does resemble mythology and superstition rather than a deeply reasoned philosophical position. www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/04/25/when-americans-say-they-believe-in-god-what-do-they-mean/
"Nearly eight-in-ten U.S. adults think God or a higher power has protected them, and two-thirds say they have been rewarded by the Almighty. By comparison, somewhat fewer see God as judgmental and punitive. Six-in-ten Americans say God or a higher power will judge all people on what they have done, and four-in-ten say they have been punished by God or the spiritual force they believe is at work in the universe.
In addition, the survey finds that three-quarters of American adults say they try to talk to God (or another higher power in the universe), and about three-in-ten U.S. adults say God (or a higher power) talks back."
I think Joe is flatly mistaken on this point, and I think it is a dramatic failure in contrast to how correct he is about so many aspects of the subject. I don't know how often Joe gets to speak to "normal" theists. I grew up in a religious home, and know many religious people, and I can say with certainty that the theism in my household, and in the households of many people I know, are undeniably not similar to either classical or neoclassical theism. It shares a closer family resemblance to the Olympian Gods than the philosophical ones.
I appreciate how far you have gotten since this video, because oh dear, this was garbage. I double checked, and I do not think you once defined new atheism. And I am pretty sure you would not call anyone science worshipping, and would not claim someone holds scientism, atleast without some quotes.
Honestly a I got a bizzare whiplash from this compared to your current videos. Good job coming so far from this!
Yeah, I'd like to know his current views on this myself.
It just seems like religion is a holy cow to him and he's ignorant of why people reject it entirely.
You should debate Bill Craig except do your Dawkins impression the whole time. It's the debate we deserve! :D
lolol
@@MajestyofReason Curious on your take Joe: What would your take be on a situation where a theist and a "lack theist" get in a debate but rather than taking the position "God exists", the theist takes the position that "I simply lack the belief in the non-existence of God?" A sort of a-atheist if you will? Would the debate be over then because no one is defending anything but both debaters are simply stating their psychological states? Be curious on your thoughts on this.
@@anthonyrowden Excellent question! I think you hit the nail on the head: they're simply reporting their psychological states without any robust philosophical content being asserted. There simply wouldn't really be any disagreement or debate going on here; it would kind of be like one person saying 'I'm thirsty' and the other saying 'I'm hungry'. :)
It is only when one of them actually makes some claim -- for instance, that one rationally ought to be an a-atheist -- that the debate gets going and that burdens of proof start to arise.
@@anthonyrowden "The theist takes the position that 'I simply lack the belief in the non-existence of God?'"
That's a very strange concept for a debate. Most debates have some topic that's in dispute. We don't usually see a debate between two people who agree, and perhaps this illustrates why. The debate would be over before it began! The theist would say that she lacks the belief in the non-existence of God, and the lack theist would acknowledge also having this lack of belief and thus ends the debate.
On the other hand, it is a bit odd to call this person a theist when she simply lacks the belief in the non-existence of God. Technically, shouldn't every theist believe in some sort of god? It's funny that she would have this belief which could be a serious point of dispute between these two debaters, and yet that's not the topic of the debate. It seems like a wasted opportunity.
@@Ansatz66 I think the idea is that a debate could be labelled "does God exist". And professional atheist Philosophers take atheism to mean that they answer the question "no" or "not likely" while the theist answers "yes" or "likely". Unfortunately many atheists just say "I lack a belief" as a way of not having to present a positive case while in the literature atheism is considered a real position and not just a lack of one.
Whatever ways I may have been slightly annoyed by some of your points, it was completely melted away by your spot on impression of Dawkins, lol.
Why many dislikes?
To be fair, literally every single invective thrown at religion by the New Atheists, really do apply to many forms of religion (though obviously not to all instances of it, which is where the criticism must lie). It is trivial to think of examples where the word con-job applies perfectly well. The issue comes with painting all religions with such a broad brush. And something that always annoyed me greatly by most of the New Atheist writers was the abysmal attacks on philosophy. The only one of their member that ever seemed to have at least some respect for philosophy was Sam Harris, and even he would often throw all of moral philosophy under the bus.
A red heart to you ❤
I'm so grateful, when u said "certain portions of islam" :) Muslim myself and I hate that generalization. The problem is that the "salafiy" scene are the loudest on UA-cam but be sure that there not the only voices out there for Islam. I'd appreciate when u provide some type of book list for philosophy, intend to buy also your book :)
Yes! I really dislike that generalization, too. I was very careful with my language there. :)
I have book recommendations for you!!! Check out my video "What is Philosophy?".
Much love
@@MajestyofReason Thanks Joe! I got "Philosophy 1 - A guide through the subject" from the library and I must say I'm loving it already. I intend to read every recommended book throughout this year. Can I keep you updated about my progress and contact you when I have questions? Oh and btw, prepare your next book recommendation list when I'm done reading the books :)
The Quran is an essential portion of Islam. If you reject anything in the Quran, you reject Islam.
@@MajestyofReason
It's not a generalization, it's taking the Quran seriously about what Islam is.
1. invent a "new-" label
2. define the label as an arbitrary category meaning "utterly stupid,bad".
3. put the label on a whole person,book,... that isn't 100% perfect all the time (to dismiss everything they say.)
4. don't correct anyone using the "new-"label (bad) to dismiss the "old-label (good)" ideas or when they throw in everything they don't like.
5. "profit"
if new-theïsts would exist, almost no believer would be an old-theïst.
How many of the 2.2 billion christians + 1.billion muslims + ... billion other believers are trained philosophers or have bad arguments for believing ?
Yeah, I also want to add that no one ever has likely been persuaded by whether causal finitism is true or whether metaphysical possibility exists. No one has ever read one of Joe's papers and stopped beating his wife or hating gays.
Such a great vid and Dawkins impression
Oh Joe just a slight correction at 4:30 islam has nothing to do with female genital mutation it is actually haram [forbidden]
Muhammad maintained the practice after migrating to Medina and is recorded as approving of the practice in four hadith. Two other hadith record the sahabah (Companions of Mohammed) engaging in the practice. The Qur'an contains no explicit mention of FGM. However, Qur'an 30:30, by exhorting Muslims to 'adhere to the fitrah' indirectly, but ineluctably exhorts Muslims to engage in FGM
Hey Omar, This is an excerpt from Wikipedia. I found it odd since you said it has nothing to with Islam and yet 80% of FGM is attributable to Muslims and FGM is found only in or adjacent to Islamic groups.[3] The 20% of FGM attributable to non-Muslims occurs in communities living in FGM-practicing Islamic societies (e.g. the Egyptian Copts[4]), or to non-Islamic societies that have been hubs of the Islamic slave trade (e.g. Ethiopia and Eritrea[5]). About one in eighty (1.28%) non-Muslim women are genitally mutilated world-wide.
I'd love to hear your response on this.
Most of the Islamic schools of thought don’t consider FGM haram, you could search up the maliki, shafi, hanafi and hanbali pov
That's complete bullshit.
Sadly, this video is full of gatekeeping. Science might depend on epistemic presuppositions, but so does golf, and neither need the academic philosopher to come to their rescue.
There is a place for debates about premise one of part one of the old Kalam, but there is also a place for plainly and unequivocally stating that a book written by superstitious desert dweller thousands of years ago should not dictate our lives today.
Calling people delusional is not the faux pas you make it out to be. Many great thinkers, religious among them, made this very claim. Just open Plato’s Republic at 514a.
Amen.
First again!
This seems to be a pretty good critique a far as I can tell. It seems to have problems however, for example in the way you've never mentioned why and how this movement has been called 'New Atheism', also in the way you've inaccurately painted the whole movement with various claims, without really succeeding in clearly defining at ideas to adhere to New Atheism.
This leaves me with the impression that either very few specific persons are 'New Atheists' - though you've stated yourself that there's disagreement among them on some important topics - or an awful lot of atheists happen to be 'New Atheists' for adhering to one, two, or three of those stated features of New Atheism... It's quite vague and dubious, is what I mean here.
Additionally, it seems that you've ascribed to some claims a general scope they don't actually have, and have painted as 'simple mistakes' arguments that pertained _not_ to theistic scholarly works, but to some theistic preachers and their movements. Case in point, what you've dismissed as rhetorical flurries in some cases were actually digs at doctrines such as biblical inerrancy, biblical literalism, coranic literalism, christian islamic and judaic creationisms, and at institutions such as the southern baptist church, the mennonites, the Muslim brotherhood, the Salafi, etc, etc.
Overall, and although I've mentioned these cases where your criticism doesn't seem to hold, there are many cases where it definitely does, with great effect. It just needs more nuance and clarity to my liking.
@John Williamson Let's see if you can think. Do you have a comment or question that is in any way relevant to my points or my views? Because communism is neither a form of atheism, nor 'atheistic', duh. Basically for the same reason that fascism is neither a form of theism, nor 'theistic'. Compare apples with oranges as much as you want, it won't make what you say any more compelling or logical even.
What's your thoughts on _christian_ bonapartist regimes like the First French Empire, murdering millions of people just for believing in divine right monarchy? I certainly _don't_ support either those christian empires or these communist empires.
Key point is: what they have in common is not religion or lack thereof, but their imperialism and totalitarianism. Next time, learn what you're talking about before making irrelevant and thinly veiled attacks that nobody cares about. 🥱
absolutely brilliant Dawkins impression
Ok I'm a tradcath and I love you so much 😂. I'm just gonna stop with new atheists and read intelligent ones.
Much love❤️
@@MajestyofReason but, I would like to defend a bit the "lacktheist" interpretation, more of a practical point of view. Sry for my English : I'm French.
Let's consider some kind of 3 line 3 columns board : columns are beliefs, lines are reasons to believe. We have "belief that God is real, absence of belief, belief that God isn't real", as columns, and "reasons to believe that God is real, no reasons to believe anything, reasons to believe that God isn't real", as lines. All intersections can exist because you can have an irrational stance, so there we have a problem. If we want to call thing simple, and rejecting the lacktheist proposal, multiple very different intersections will have the same name, for an example, at the intersection of agnosticism (no clues about God existence) and lacktheism, you'll have atheists, and at clues that God doesn't exist and belief that he doesn't, you'll have atheists too. In fact, two thirds of the board will be atheists.
There's the exact same problem, in this board, with agnosticism : it will be the name for "having no clues at all" and "having clues that God doesn't exist"
We have multiple solutions :
- Saying "lacktheist will be called agnosticism", but a lot of philosophers (Like Kant if I remember well) advocated for agnostic theism, saying that we don't know about God's existence, but that we can have Faith. Even more, some said that we only have proofs that he doesn't exist, or that we can't have proofs about his existence (Igtheism), and advocated for Faith at the same time. My own brother is an agnostic (center line) theist.
- Using the lacktheist interpretation to solve the problem : atheism will be splited in atheism-lacktheism, and anti-theism.
- Burning the fcking board and killing everyone advocating for it's use.
To solve the agnostic problem, lacktheist doesn't give any solution. And we have one more problem : igtheism isn't here. Ow and... We didn't put hope. Yes because why not ? No in fact I heard multiple time this third information about hope, like "I think God doesn't exist, I have proofs, and it awfull" isn't the same that "And it's perfect". You could hope that God exist.
So even if lacktheism started being practical to separate strong atheism and soft atheism, we saw that, rapidly, and indefinitely, you will be lacking words and intersections, so maybe distinguishing anti-theism and atheism-lacktheism is helpful, but it let us go in an indefinite regression where we need more and more words.
My proposal ? Burn the board, and take the time to explain yourself, ok ? If you have the time to engage on this topic, you have the time to say "I believe that God exist, I don't have clues and think I can't, but I hope that God exist" without saying "I'm an agnostic enthousiast theist".
Hope I was helpful, at least more than AWFULLY LONG OW MY GOD.
Not letting us see the bottom half of your shirt is anticipation torture
We need to know why. This is an important matter, if true
5:38 All of those words apply to someone who believe jesus was literally resurrected, Mo actually rode a winged horse or there where flying monkeys, which makes up most of religious people.
You have highlighted my recent n past experience very crisply .
The zombie new atheists are still in the internet making crying remarks.
Subbed
I agree with most points in this video, but I feel like it kind of misses the point. The New Atheist movement formed to combat religious rhetoric, not religious philosophy, so of course New Atheism operates more rhetorically than philosophically. It is all well and good that there are thought-provoking arguments for the god of the philosophers, but the New Atheist is more concerned with the Abrahamic god since that is the god with undue political influence.
I’m not so sure about that. Consider, Eg, that Richard Dawkins proceeds through a whole host of natural theological arguments (Eg Aquinas) in his God Delusion book. Daniel Dennett does the same thing and addresses Aquinas etc. And both Harris and Hitchins engaged in public debates about arguments for and against God’s existence, including debating WLC (in the former case).
This videos Gold. Good work!
I think Blaise Pascal and C.S. Lewis showed us the limitations of expertise long before new atheism became a thing. When it came to theology and apologetics Pascal and C.S. Lewis and other intelligent theists who ventured outside of their areas of expertise were terrible at defending their faith or giving good reasons to believe in a god.
10:25 i see this claim made ALOT. But that surely depends on the god your talking about. Threating god as if it has an agreed upon defenition is a trick only performed by the theists who holds to one god. For everyone else there are diffrent assumptions.
So the question then becomes. If god interacts with the world, we can surely in principle measure this interaction. (see the invisible gardner parable)
Science isn't some philosophical materialist notion, but a method. The method by which we detect things in reality.
We can detect things by absance, by their effects upon their surroundings, and by direct measurements. Surely god has to fall into one of those categories. For all "mysterious" ways he interacts with us are surely to be considered ad hoc. Especially if you notice that the same religions claim direct interaction in previous 'undetected' times, such as when we convinciently had no way of measuring them.
In some religions he talked directly to people in the past, performed miracles, and had a very personal relationship with us. Now hes an absent dad, or we can atleast find him in principle if the theists want to be consistant with the claims they make.
This problem is commonly known when one talks about dualistic systems, but one just happens to ignore it (or not) whenever its suitable for the debate when it comes to theism. Either god interacts with the world, and is subject to science, or he doesn't act at all. Switching between the two whenever its suitable is a fun philosophical exercise, but doesn't do much if you want a consistant worldview imo..
Just look at the response to the invisible garder from theists..
Couldn't have said it any better.
Regarding the "atheist dictators killed millions" bit, they'll usually come back with the "they didn't kill in the name of atheism" response. Great video though!
Much love
Stalin who persecuted Christian priests: *sweating profusely*
They didn't kill people because they didn't believe in sufficient bullshit.
As we speak people are horribly mistreated with explicit justification of holy books. But to Joe, the only allowed way to engage with religion is to debate academic philosophers, that 99.99% of believers have never heard of. No one beats their children, because they're persuaded by the 100th iteration of the Ontological Argument.
22:32
Come again?
funny thing about bew atheism is that there is nothing "new" in new atheism
Wow your Dawkins impersonation is on point. Just slow it down a tad. 😂
You say that a belief can be irrational for people to hold, but a belief itself can't be irrational. But when people say a belief is irrational, what do you imagine they mean other than it's irrational for people to hold? Your objection here is uncharitable and disappointing.
I don’t think you’ve fully appreciated my point, though🙂
The point is that rationality is individual-specific, and individuals have vastly different evidence bases. Relative to some evidence based, a belief may be irrational; but relative to others, it may be perfectly rational. Eg, relative to someone like a professional theistic philosopher who has thought about the question and has lots of reasons for their view, their belief in God would most certainly not be irrational. But relative to someone who just blindly believes whatever their pastor tells them, belief in God may very well be irrational for them. Thus, saying that “belief in God is irrational” just overlooks a crucial fact: that people have different evidence bases, and that while *some* people’s belief in God might be irrational, *ohers’* belief won’t be.
@@MajestyofReason Thank you for the reply.
@@MajestyofReason
Fair enough, but people still hold religious views in contexts and for reasons where we'd call them delusions if we hadn't explicitly removed religious belief from that category.
The fact that the cause of the physical reality couldn't be detected by physical instruments also denies the existence of miracles in the real wolrd. If God makes miracles in the physical world, it means he somehow interacts with physical reality, which means God could be detected by physical instruments. By if the cause of physical reality can't be detected by physical instruments, this fact denies christianity.
If the cause of physical reality can't be detected by physical instruments, then we probably need to invent better physical instruments.
It sounds to me like you're complaining about them doing philosophy the same way they're complaining about clergy doing science and clergy complain about them doing theology. Except of course they don't call what they're doing theology or philosophy, the clergy don't call what they're doing science, and none of them are trying to do philosophy when actually everybody is.
Also your complaint about the word atheist vs the word lacktheist is bad etymology. The dictionary is a history book, not a rulebook.
Unless you're French, or something. But that's just a matter of linguistic trivia
Why should it be a legitimate criticism of "New Atheism" that offering philosophical critiques of theism hasn't been it's primary focus? The average theist and non-theist alike has little if any interest in those types of arguments, and are unlikely to find them understandable, let alone persuasive.
As for the "burden of proof" critique, I think some context might have been helpful here. When an atheist claims that theists have the burden of proof, they mean that if a theist hopes to persuade them that God exists, then it's up to the theist to provide good reasons to accept that conclusion. That seems to me like a perfectly legitimate requirement, and it would be no different if the roles were reversed.
As to the definition of an "atheist" as someone who lacks belief in God (as compared to having a positive disbelief in God), the complaint that such a definition could apply to inanimate objects or organisms incapable of holding such beliefs strikes me as just a bit silly. It hardly needs stating that the term "atheist" refers to a person having a particular cognitive attitude to the proposition, "God exists", not to a stone, a block of wood, or an infant. Finally, if someone had no concept of what mermaids, leprechauns, and dragons are, it would still be perfectly true to say of such a person that he doesn't believe in mermaids, leprechauns, and dragons. Why would it be inappropriate to say that when the thing he doesn't believe in happens to be a particular deity?
@@thotslayer9914 Yes, many.
@@thotslayer9914 Can you be more specific?
@@thotslayer9914
You're trying to derail the conversation and yet your username plainly documents how religion made you into a misogynist.
Do you believe "thots" need slaying, because of the 54th Ontological Argument?
With Paula White and Kenneth Copeland having immense influence, you have to be joking pulling up “new atheists “ for not being intellectually serious....😂😆😂😆
To call the critique of 'lack of evidence" as a 'mistake' seems presumptive and a little disingenuous.
Your example that theism predicts consciousness is making a lot of assumptions because we can't even agree on a definition of life, let alone a definition of what consciousness even is.
Is AI conscious? A dog? Bacteria? Virus?
What were your other examples? Because I bet they're all based on stretched assumptions as well.
"They have nothing whatsoever to say on where those fields came from"
Again, you come across as disingenuous. Just because Krauss' book might not explain where quantum fields might come from, it doesn't mean that there aren't naturalistic explanations for these. Some examples are the many worlds interpretation, there's some interesting applications of the universe to information theory, Penrose' cyclical universe ideas, and many more.
Also how do you even define 'nothing'? Do you understand that there's strong evidence supporting the existence of virtual particles? How do you explain the Casimir effect? At one moment 'nothing' exists, then suddenly a virtual particle seemingly pops into existence.
Many points you make are decent, but for some of your points you seem to be very quick to draw conclusions and call some of these positions a 'mistake' when I won't accuse you of straw manning, but you do seem to be cherry picking.
How silly.
This is hopeless amatuer and I guarantee its going to be a video that you will cringe when watching again once you get over yourself. (-and this video killed it. *zooms in with camera with fake cringe face* LMAO you are joke.)
Its interesting that you care about context when it comes to burden of proof but suddenly you are a stickler when it comes to only people being capable of delusion while beliefs themselves are seemingly disassociated. To answer the questions you seemed to have missed the answers to:
New Athesists condone witholding respect for faith. that is their practical solution. Stop treating faith as a virtue. It isn't.
You can't prove a negative, there is no god, and similiar statements are just shorthands for what is supposed to be obvious: Believe what you believe based on the evidence for, not the lack of evidence against it. The only reason this is ever stressed is because theists for centuries have tried to use logcial falacies to make people believe nonsense.
I can't believe how utter sheltered you must be believe that people in religions and the religions themselves are not proporting to be true and are making real claims about the nature of the universe. The people that will cut your f*&%ing head off because you don't believe what they believe REALLY believe it and really do believe things like:
earth made in 7 days...
magic places called heaven and hell...
fetuses have souls...
sin exists...
gods communicate with humans...
Religious are already tribalistic and having been killing each other over their religious since before recorded history.
Religious people already demonize atheists
Religions prevent you from coming to the table when love is put forward when it teaches you that you will go to hell for stupid infractions
Theism explains nothing and is a stupid idea. Atheists or specifically New Athesists apparanetly are simply asking people to treat stupid ideas like they are stupid instead of just ignoring the elephant in the room that wants to take away your rights.
Did Someone piss in your cereal this morning HOOOOOOLY
@@onlyabdelix yeah. The guy in the video
The irony
@@joshuaherrera358 schizo rant
Interesting how no one had anything interesting to say in the responses.
Religion actively hurts people. We don't have to debunk the 542th Ontological Argument before doing something about it.