Reflecting on My Conversation With Bret Weinstein and Other Atheists | with John Heers (WAWTAR)
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- Опубліковано 21 кві 2022
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First Things Foundation: An Honest Conversation w/ Jonathan Pageau: • An Honest Conversation...
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This is so beautiful man. Ive been talking to my friends and gf a lot about christianity ever since i saw the light. And it feels like something is breaking. I live in Stockholm, Sweden (one of the most secular places on earth) but a lot of people recently have been telling me that they have begun to understand 'it' (that way of thinking and looking at the world), that they are no longer scared of religion or think it's weird. And some have even told me after understanding the way to read scripture that "If this is what that means then maybe... even I'm a christian?"
Jag hoppas att du har rätt. Jag bor i andra änden av landet, och ber för att Sverige ska få uppleva en levande kristendom. Vi är ett fattigt land utan Gud.
Well unless they believe Jesus was sent down by a creator omni deity (which is also himself) to fulfill the master plan of the universe by having himself get killed in order to take away punishment for the sinful nature that we have(that god gave us).
@@thucydides7849 unitarian christianity is much deeper and makes much more sense
I love this guy. Following JBP turned me onto Pageau and he’s made me think really hard about my own perception of Christianity. It’s weird how the old ways of looking at this come full circle and become the new ways of looking at it.
I was a huge fan of the new atheists in the 00s, however I rewatched the debates after taking a course in formal logic and found the atheist position to be full of fallacies. It's not that the atheists have no good arguments its that a lot of the debates were won on rhetoric , reframing the debate and fallacious reasoning rather than rigourous logic. For instance here are some atheist presuppositions:
"You cant prove a negative"
By the standards of formal logic, yes you can.
"The burden of proof is on the one that asserts the positive"
By the standards of formal logic it's not
"Atheism cannot have any blame attributed to it in the same way as a religion can because it is a non entity."
By the standards of formal logic blame can be attributed to it.
This is the tip of the iceberg as well. The atheist position is not nearly as strong as I had previously thought.
As St. John Chrysostom states, unless a man become a fool, that is, unless he dismiss all reasoning and all wisdom, and deliver up himself unto the faith, it is impossible to be saved. The Holy Spirit working in hearts is ultimately what converts.
While it is the Holy Spirit which converts, some people do become convinced by reason. Take Saint "Doubting" Thomas for example, he wouldn't believe until he had touched the stigmata of Jesus and Jesus entertained his request. Blessed are those who do not see and still believe, but it is still acceptable to come to faith by reason.
I mean, you literally talked to Jordan about theosis, that's way more effective than "sharing your testimony."
I don’t know about that.
Your testimony is personal. And therefore, I would argue most real. Christ in me.
And theosis can be abstracted & generalized toward the direction of objectivism (treating salvation and the saved as an object vs a person-the subject/object, the being)
Which is the whole problem of modernity. And the subject/object divide.
The testimony is theosis personified. The incarnation is God personified.
Christ in me (and us). Toward God all in all.
@@WhiteStoneName
I think your testimony is great for solidifying your relationship with others who already have faith or solidifying your community. But for people who don't have your experience, I'm not sure how your personal testimony is supposed to bridge the gap to them and what they're going through. Sometimes they can relate, but the strength of testimony that you listed is simultaneously the weakness: namely that it's personal.
@@deschain1910 I can see that but I would say this,
The personal includes the transcendent,
The subjective includes the imminent,
The objective has neither.
@@WhiteStoneName I would agree. Unfortunately, a person needs to be able to perceive those things for them to matter to the listener, and if the person is too far away they can't see. I think the path has to be paved with both objective and subjective.
@@WhiteStoneName i think that another problem with your testimony is that it can act like you have already arrived. Stories of Saints are better and also protect you a bit more from personal pride.
I'm one of those 1000 people going, "you know what....?" Your awesome Jonathan! Thanks!
The beautiful thing to see, and I think what is being so engaging for the people in these talks(Vervaeke, Weinstein, Peterson, etc) is the lack of a sales proposition. It is very difficult to talk to atheists because they usually think you are trying to sell them something or catch them in a trap that forces them to agree with you. Likewise, It can be very hard for atheists to find Christians to talk to who aren't doing exactly that: trying to trick them or debate them, either into converting or converting the audience who is listening.
Its just an open dialogue, where both sides are given a free pass of credibility at the outset. Is it leading to conversions? Who knows. But where we are is at a point of lack of dialogue and misinformation, so just having a functional conversation where perspectives, ideas, and information are mutually shared is an end unto itself.
I think atheists don't understand what "give me evidence" means. For starters, Moses' life was turned upside down after meeting YHWH at the burning bush. He was so changed, in fact, that he went from not being a leader to leading 2-3 million Hebrews out of slavery. Let's be honest. Most atheists aren't even prepared to handle seeing God for themselves. Only God can change hearts. It's not the other way around.
Oh God yes
@@trans-octopusspacealien8883 awesome agreed. waiting on Yahweh to talk to me. he reaches out i will accept the premise. else is just a proposition and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE.
@@trans-octopusspacealien8883 Also most religious ppl even hardcore beleivers would shit their pants if GOD actually conversed to them
There's the problem. Both sides are not equally credible. One side is making claims they can't support and the other side is saying we don't believe you. The more credible position is not accepting the idea until the idea can be supported.
As someone who really loved watching the new atheists smash Christian's in the 00s, one of my biggest surprises was when I took a course in formal logic and rewatched the new atheist debates and found the new atheist arguments to be full of fallacies. And many internet atheists still parrot them.
"You cannot prove a negative"
Yes you can prove a negative
"The burden of proof is on the one who asserts the positive"
No its not
"Atheism by virtue of being a non entity cannot be blamed for anything in the same way as theism can"
Yes it can be.
If anyone is curious about any of these just ask and I'll explain each of them from first principles.
It's not that the atheists have no good arguments it's that the majority of the victories were more due to the reframing the debate so that the atheist side had to put up no defence whereas the theist side had to put up a 100% defence. And anything short of 100% defence of theism was considered a "victory" by the new atheists.
I've never been interested in such debates because the theists don't recognize that they share the same metaphysical framework (modernism on naturalism) as the skeptics and try to argue from it to theism. That isn't to say that there are no plausible arguments for theism, but in my mind the question isn't whether or not such an entity as God exists in reality but rather whether or not reality itself is better understood as theistic. So a fruitful conversation would be something like a debate on metaphysical naturalism vs metaphysical theism. But that's probably just a quirk of my thinking. I don't know anyone else who approaches things this way.
“A non-entity cannot be blamed”
It’s like saying you can’t blame a “lack of parents” on negative outcomes… of course you can. What functioning person would say that you can’t have a conversation on how a child is damaged by being raised without parents.
can you explain the fallacies?
Personally, your conversations with atheists and people of other faiths than Christianity tend to be the ones I enjoy the most, even if there is little or no bridging of the gap. It's just so exciting to watch, and I hope you'll keep doing them!
Newman said something very similar, "It is as obsurd to argue men as to torture them into believing." Argument can maybe be a good launching off point but Faith is an act of the will in response to Grace and if you're coming from a completely rationalist viewpoint, no amount of argument will get you over the top.
"Some people come to Christianity by rationality" indeed the investigation of cause is one of them also the limit/end of rationality as he says.
4:11 this is why I love listening to Jonathan because he won't give the pre-programed answer. I can't stand Christians who try to articulate the faith like that, the way you do it feels more human, and to me at least much more profound. It gies Christianity answers to the modern world
Yep.
Sure. If it's a question about approach then there's definitely credit to what you're saying, but if you're speaking strictly about the truth then there's no way around arriving at the "plain and old cliché" of God being Good and Jesus Christ being the Messiah who was sent to the world, to die for the world, so that the world could find everlasting life, because God loved the world so so much.
C.S. Lewis came to Believe through rationality. It certianly can get alot of us 90% there. And that 90% is probably actually closer to authentic believe, than 100% of someones believe who blindly just accepts the things theyve been told since birth and just puppets the words back.
I find it kind of arrogant when people write "if only this person had heard this argument/read this book, they would agree with me". John Vervaecke is probably more knowledgeable than any of us, he probably knows the argument you are putting forward and a counter argument and a counter-argument to a counter argument.
And yet he still doesn’t get it. Hmmmm
@@SkullOfTheAbyss Or it could be that you are the one who does not get it. I'd be willing to bet a lot on that...
@@KRGruner an emotional take always gets a positive response.
@@SkullOfTheAbyss That's a very bad reason for emotional takes. If positive responses are your main goal, rather than Truth, you are well on your way to perdition.
Who else can do what only God can do? A Christian does well to share his experience in the Faith and understand that his responsibility is not larger than his capacity.
Good selection for the clips channel
Two types of knowledge, exemplification is the important way of teaching. Avoid propositional information and embrace participatory information as a way of expressing yourself. This puts people into intuitive knowledge mode rather than particular knowledge mode.
This is hilarious. I was just sitting in a car with Fr. Peter Heers and now I'm listening to this video and thinking "This guy talks EXACTLY like Fr. Peter!" How weird.
... then I looked at the info on the video and saw his last name, which had me laughing out loud
Love your process. Leave the door open to more conversations. Be led by the Spirit!!
Thank you Jonathan. I think you have things to say that are worth hearing and I've enjoyed the conversations I've seen on your channel so far. You are absolutely right about people getting defensive and clamping up when they feel like their interlocutor is trying to verbally trap them or has an agenda that won't allow for an unscripted conversation. You may not be able to beat any of these guys in a debate, and even if you could, they would likely not want to come back and would ponder where they went wrong and plug up the holes in their arguments. What won't happen is them becoming believers because they couldn't answer a pointed question on the spot. I changed my beliefs and it was a slow, and difficult process. The reason I listen to you even though I don't believe in God, is because I don't sense an agenda, or dishonesty like I do when I hear William Lane Craig speak, or Frank Turek, or any apologist. The same with Jordan Peterson. He was the first Christian intellectual I could listen to because he was genuine and not defending/spreading an ideology. When I discovered him, I stopped watching other content on UA-cam: film criticism, anti-sjw content, politics, current events, and spent about a month binging on every video of him I could find. Eventually I got his books. Because of him I got married and started making my bed and started standing up straight. And through him I found you. So far, I've been interested to hear what you have to say. You are one of three Christians I listen to, the others being Jordan Peterson, and the third being Epidemic2020 who sadly isn't uploading anymore. I don't think any serious person who values a peaceful dialog between people who disagree wants to see your channel turn into just another apologetics channel.
Thank you.
"I am not responsible for another individuals encounter with grace" YES
Love your work and your approach Jonathan
You are right Jonathan. Its not your job to convert them or convince them. God moves people through grace and when we see the truth of it we are then flawed by gratitude.
It is our job to evangelize
I can totally relate, there's this push like as a Christian you're supposed to be some kind of missionary in your every day life pushing God at every opportunity but this conversation comes very close to my personal feeling about it!
People communicate about God in different ways not just with tracts and Bible verses pushed at people.
You mentioned briefly a possible conversation with Sam Harris, please make this happen! 🙏
Jordan doesn’t fall under the “atheist” umbrella
Excellent question by John Heers. This is what Jonathan's channel actually accomplishes in this vlog/podcast ecosystem of sense-making.
Perhaps John Vervake would profit if he read Christ the Eternal Tao? I do love the way you try to share the truth in the terms that your interviewers use. Reaching them using their own terms I think helps to open the door if only a crack. It is patient, loving and spirit led! You are planting seed. Praying for you!!!
Jesus' "Your sins are forgiven," is a pretty radical introduction to a stranger. (Matt. 9:4-6)
Love John Heers and "Why Are We Talking About Rabbits".
It's tricky. I needed the rational arguments to escape atheism, but it wasn't the arguments themselves that did it, it was God responding to prayer for a couple of months. And even getting to the point that I was willing to try praying sincerely, wasn't through rational arguments that anyone else made, they were my own arguments as I processed the way the world was. There was only one argument, I suppose, that really "unlocked" the consideration of religion for me, and it was an atheist who produced the argument, probably without even realizing it. It's that it is very hard to find any proponent of atheism that can make an actual case for atheism. They are always defining themselves as not agreeing with something someone else said. This, for the first time, made me realize that atheism isn't anything worth considering, because it doesn't even have any actual content. It does not answer any questions, it merely refuses to answer any questions.
7:20 I often say, “you can be right and be wrong or be wrong and be right”
there's alota walls up.... so alota walls gota fall. I find it very amazing that you can even converse in there space. May it be profitable ...
I feel like they are making a similar point about the post modernist that Andrew Klavan is making about the romantic poets in his new book, “The truth and the beauty”.
Jonathan, you are saying rightly.
When Christ came to Earth, some people still didn't believe Him! Who do we think we are that we can put together a tidy group of sentences to convince the Truth to others!
It was words that brought non-christians to the religion
Well said
what does the light have to do with the dark ?
Kingdom energy, people
Just different styles of planting. God made us each unique parts of the body hallelujah
It is so nice to see someone talking about Orthodoxy. Do you know Greek?
Your method of engaging in conversation with Bret, and other "atheists" makes me appreciate Christianity more. And I guess I'm an atheist if I've got to be forced into a box. Thank you!!
Paul knew his day was the end of days and the beginning of kingdom time and the gentile inclusion was the new creation fulfillment of all the OT movement. He always spoke and strategized this way on mission and hoped to reach unto the end of the know world and now we are the apostles to that end. What Jonathan is doing is the same thing Paul did: Presuppositional apologetics
5:15 “it’s a rationalist impulse…”
Amen. God can and does work through reason. But not exclusively and necessarily.
I can thoroughly recommend some time after leaving christianity to slip into an easy atheism, which will give you breathing time to process, to reflect, clear your head of the divisive dogma, you may go back if that's what you desire, you may stay as an atheist or you may use that time to open yourself up spiritually to new paths that are more reflective on whom you are as a person, a kind of sabbatical time.
THIS is how evangelism is done, not by aggressively hunting for scalps on the streets.
I have found that many people half- accept God must be real, but are quite shy about reaching out to encounter Him within themselves.. When I am engaged in deep conversation with such people, sometimes I say "Let's play a pretend game, OK? If they consent, I say "Ring,ring!" and pretend to answer my phone. "Oh, it's for you." And as I hand the phone to them I say "It's God.". Their reflexive emotional reaction -- often startled, and pulling back -- helps them see the feelings underlying their process of reasoning.
What do you do when they hand out to grab the phone?
Reach out*
@@dylansaus I laugh and tell them what most people do. I love those brave ones.
Look, if you're saying what is shining in front of you in the moment, then you are staying open to what the Holy Spirit wants to say through you. Don't be something you're not. God bless you!
Get John to read "God, History and Dialectic". It will throw a huge wrench into his Neoplatonism
You assuming he hasn’t
@@LKRaider Oh has he? That's great if so. I haven't seen much of his content
Mr. Pageau, it seemed as though Bret was Reprobus'ing - and deflecting the monk and the river; nothing close to more than human. at 4:51 Well, i am saying some of it.
I don't see how atheism is defended based on merit. What is the merit of subjective division and moral relativism?
atheism makes no claim to these propositions. it only takes into the probability if a supernatural entity exists and what the evidence is for it. All other aspects are conversations tied but not implicit in the claim of atheism. I dont see how christian theism has any merit.
@@philipfry6428 Why only talk about what something isn't and what you don't see? Defending something on merit takes saying something of substance not just cynicism about the position of others.
@@philipfry6428 Does atheism have any way to justify the existence of an object standard of morality or rationality?
@@SageStudiesGunnarFooth no, and neither does theism, other than claiming god is the objective standard(this is not objective, it just shifts it subjectively to a supposed supernatural entity's subjective standard) . also can you prove their exists and objective standard in the first place without appealing to said god
Because you don't think it is, but others try to rule your life because of it?@@boltrooktwo
If you take out the human added hyper-spirituality and politics.... Christianity is the most rational religion in existence. Even modern Judaism as most commonly expressed seems to have been Christianized due to this quality.
nobody ever said "we got married because of a sound logical argument."
sure, people justify their relationships with arguments after the fact, but logic does not lead one to love.
i respect christianity, but i don't like jealousy. that's why i'm a polytheist. if someone choses to love jesus, that's their perogative and i will support them in that. it's the presumption that "i love, therefore you must love" or just "you must love" that makes me angry. like, who are you to tell me what my relationship with spirits is? if your god is so good as to inspire some sort of singular, exclusive devotion, let him do the talking and stop all these silly human apologetics.
Please please. Talking to atheists is a foolhardy idea
Edit: I don’t mean being rude or non cooperative such as “pass the salt” “ yes, thank you”
I mean any involvement in serious topics that touch your growing faith in Our Lord. This is sacred - do not cast pearls unto swine - they will surely turn and rend you. Don’t do it. It’s an ego trip.
Postmodernism 🤮
The problem with belief is the basis for the belief has never been established/demonstrated. You can argue about existence all day long, but if you never demonstrate that existence, the arguments are all moot.
@OutsiderSoul The basis for a belief should be what you can demonstrate to be factual in nature.
There is no verifiable evidence of the supernatural. Maybe something is happening (although i don't think so), but until you can replicate, test and explain it, it's all just guessing.
I admit i had to look that word up, but i would say it's an accurate portrayal of materialism. Your problem is you can't demonstrate anything that doesn't stem from the material. So by default, the materialists are correct. Epiphenomenalism is easy to demonstrate. Shut down the brain and consciousness, emotions, etc. all shut down. Impair a brain and one's personality can change. It all links back to a material brain.
"...despite the fact that there is well over a century worth of replicable experimental evidence in favour of it." I'd love it if you could point me to any of this "evidence". Please?
@OutsiderSoul First, that's not a reference. All you did is tell me about a paper. But i was able to find it and the funny thing i found is nobody else is citing it.
I also contend that while NDEs may have similar elements, they have differing elements too. If the NDE is religious in nature, it's the predominant religion to where they live a majority of the time. Nobody in America has NDEs that depict the hindu religion. And vice versa.
And then there's the idea that the study you cited uses people's reported personal experiences as evidence. You know as well as i that personal experience is a bad form of evidence, as no one can verify the experience. Just because they may be similar does not mean that's proof of anything.
@OutsiderSoul I'm referring to the one your comment seemed to jibe with. If you want me to address a specific study, then you need to cite that study, please. A link to the study would be great!
Btw, i've never seen YT delete comments with links. Give it a shot and see what happens.
No one else is citing it means no one supports the paper. It happens when others have looked at the work and found it wanting. It's been out long enough.
Veridical perceptions just means truthful perceptions. Meaning they accurately described the surroundings, verified by third parties. They would not qualify as "personal experiences" as they are not experienced by just one person. Everybody in the room saw the same thing. It also means the person wasn't dead, just close to it.
When did you give me papers on PSI? You alluded to them, but you didn't provide a link or even the title to the paper.
@OutsiderSoul My fault. I missed those references. Sorry.
After review, they are all meta analysis. Meaning all they did is compile previous studies into one big study. Which seemed to show a hit rate of approximately 28% on average. Isn't that what you'd get if you just guessed?
None of them answered the question and most asked for further study. None of them described a mechanism by which this may be happening. All they did was see if one person could guess what another person was thinking and that was from a prepared set of thoughts. That's my thoughts on the studies. I have no problem with further research, but they are a long way from showing psychic ability is a real thing.
Even if we were to be able to demonstrate PSI as a thing, it's still stems from a material brain. Without the brain, no PSI. So no, materialism is not dead.
@OutsiderSoul Proof is when a brain shuts down, so does consciousness. If a brain is injured, personality can change and/or intelligence is affected. It all stems from the physical brain.
The greatest trick god ever pulled was getting into the minds of men.....unfortunately that was where his powers stopped working and hes been stuck there ever since.
Philosophically speaking is the worst argument any human being has made ever, because abstractions have little value in the real world.
By "abstractions" do you mean "illogical mysticism?"
@@proudatheist2042 No I mean anything created in the mind that has no relevance to reality.
There is a cultural context of one God. The passage in John 8: 14-18, would clearly and literally suggest that Jesus and the Father are two separate witnesses. Abrahamic culture honors fathers and sons in family lines where the son is raised to be like the father in all things and authority, this cultural understanding contradicts much of the Trinitarian view and theology of God. Why is it so important that God the Father is only immaterial spirit in Trinitarian theology when it contradicts cultural context? There is still only one God in the context of scripture that attention and worship is given to and that is Christ when you understand John 14: 6, Romans 8: 14-18, and Revelation 3: 21.
One thing you’ll rarely find an atheist say is that Jesus was a piece of slime.
Thats fascinating to me.
I mean if you’re totally certain that god isn’t real, there’s no divinity to reality, then Jesus is just another con man.
So why is it so hard for atheists to say the sentence, “Jesus was a bag of shit”
Try it. Try asking an atheist to say that. They can’t. Oddly.
Why is that?
Tried it. Rolls off the tongue quite easily actually. So what’s your point? But there is a reason not to say it even though you could - we know as little about Jesus (if he existed) as Christians do, so why slander the chap?
Because when you look at His actions, He was actually a really cool dude. Even when I left the church after being born again, I still deeply respected Christ because what He taught was universal. Even if you didn’t believe whether He was God’s Son or not, His actions and teachings were always legit. Even though I didn’t consider myself Christian, I practiced what Jesus taught because they all seemed like really good ways to live as a good person. And I do believe that because I tried to live my life by Him, He was always there even when I didn’t believe. God works in really mysterious ways.
No, I necessarily don't think so. Some of what he said was good; some, such as condemning non-believers to Hell. not so much.@@umiluv
@@steinbeck1805 lmao. Say it
@@gregoryt8792 Ah yes, I’ve come across his works. And no, he doesn’t actually. Convince “any jury” I mean.
Love your process. Leave the door open to more conversations. Be led by the Spirit!!