When it comes to the Bible, I believe false hope is better than no hope.

When it comes to God, I still haven't been able to prove that I'm not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaILTs-_1z4

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, June 29th, 2018 8:07am PDT - promote requested by Buck.

I'd prefer to believe that I'm not God, because if I am I'm doing a really shit job.

I believe we evolved communication to help our tribes. "Sabertooth lion over there!" "those berries give you mad gas, bro!" "hey, let's try to be civil with the neanderthals"

And so, we're wired to believe what people say, especially the ones who appeal to our hopes and fears. It takes conscious effort to doubt a good storyteller.

And such is religion.

The furthest a true scientist can get away from the belief in God is as an agnostic. All other proud claims of knowledge that He doesn't exist are just as religiously dogmatic as those this video claims to describe.

Which ironically is the only ridiculous claim.

I wasn't raised in the church nor did anyone ever tell me about the Lord. I came to believe in God and Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior entirely by personal revelation.

The information bubble that he talks about equally applies to secular society. Many elements of our society, be it entertainment, media, or education all point to the secular creation story. Watch basically any nature video and you'll see the indoctrination "blah blah evolution blah blah deep time blah blah deep time blah blah evolution" etc

I never had a Christian or spiritual friend, my friends and family all believed what I did. That wasn't by design since no one ever brought up God or spiritual beliefs to me. There was zero information coming into my life about God.

I developed an arrogance towards believers although I was incredibly ignorant about what they believed. I had cherry picked a few bible verses which I thought disproved their religion, and that's about all I had.

The majority of unbelievers are in the position I was in. I would have gone that way forever if God hadn't revealed Himself to me.

This video is partly true, as beliefs can develop in a bubble. Then it brings up the "truth" as the antidote, yet what is the truth according to the creators? They failed to define what it is, only that it wouldn't be a belief in God, with no proof for that at all. True believers in the secular story don't see that as faith, because of the indoctrination, ironically

Your account is over three years old, and you've only ever posted two comments. Both are within the past hour. You use the name "heretic" but talk up America's Favorite Sky Friend.

I call shenanigans.

Sorry Shiny, I posted directly to you rather than quote.

I'm glad someone else saw it at least. The summary of his entire point can applied to literally any topic, as you've pointed out.

Though not surprising after seeing the focus of the channel. It becomes clear he has a bone to pick with religion showing that the argument is formed emotionally rather than logically. I'd rather have seen an argument which was formulated around the bigger picture and applied to various topics than used as a poker to try and stick religion with.

As for the other persons comment on this being a young account, yes it is. Ok?

Do you understand what the word “atheist” means?

It simply means someone who doesn’t believe in god(s).

Gnosticism is the KNOWLEDGE of gods existence.

Anyone who claims not to be agnostic (regardless of their BELIEF in gods) is either lying or delusional.

An atheist is someone who actively denies the existence of God whereas someone who claims to be agnostic says that is something that is unknown and/or unknowable.

dictionary dot com/browse/atheist
dictionary dot com/browse/agnostic

edit for urls

Hmm . . . well there's an interesting claim! I should examine it closer because it sounds like bullshit.

Let's see here, dictionary.com, atheist, enter key aaaaaaaaaand:

"Atheist:
noun

1. a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings."

Well, there seems to be some words missing. Those words are "actively" and "God". In fact, there's even a Boolean, "or", that gives equal weight to both "denies" and "disbelieves".

So in other words, not only did your own link just shoot down your own argument, but you actually proved ChaosEngine's statement as being correct.

Well played!

Blah blah Scientific Method blah blah mathematics blah blah physics blah blah evidence-based deduction vs. shit someone made up whole-cloth that people believe in because it makes them feel better about themselves blah blah etc.

That's a logical fallacy. If someone posits a theory without any evidence whatsoever (i.e., god), it's perfectly reasonable to deny the claim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

People use the word "Atheist" to mean a couple of different things, you guys are describing the two meanings correctly. It's just genuinely a muddy term because usage is so split. Richard Dawkins has a handy disambiguation in the God Delusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability

Honestly I think "strong atheists" are mostly just a straw man created so believers can say "look, these atheists are just as unreasonable as us!". But I guess a few real ones exist.

You're correct about gnosticism, but incorrect about (a)theism.

And dictionary.com is also wrong.
Merriam Webster defines it as:
a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods : one who subscribes to or advocates atheism

If you ask google to define: atheist, you get:
a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

Theism/atheism speak only to BELIEF.

This chart explains it well

The chart is quite informative thanks. If you put aside your focus on believers in God (as that's a separate topic to my first post) and try and see the difference between atheism and agnosticism in relation to scientists, you'll see what I mean.

There is a great difference between one who "doesn't claim to know no god exists" and one who "claims to know no god exists". Exactly as described on the chart, on the definition of athiest from Merriam-Webster (one who advocates athiesm) and dictionary coms definitions and synonym study. Or Merriam Websters own distinction between the 2 "The difference is quite simple: atheist refers to someone who believes that there is no god (or gods), and agnostic refers to someone who doesn’t know whether there is a god, or even if such a thing is knowable."

Richard Dawkins would fall into the category of gnostic athiest I suppose. He is adamant that no God exists and he is fully at odds and advocates, actively, against such a belief. Whereas Thomas Huxley however, who may have coined the word 'agnostic' according to various dictionaries and other sources, is more someone who doesn't claim to know.

"Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorus application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, * Try all things, hold fast by that which is good"

Here he is actually describing a Biblical passage from 1 Thessalonians 5:21 "Test all things; hold fast to that which is good" which is the scientific method in a nutshell, regardless of what you think of the rest of the book.

He goes on "Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary
according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproved to-day may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, to-morrow."

A vast difference to the likes of some others in science today who boldly claim there is no God and ridicule those who might believe in one. Sorry for the long reply.

Yeah, there's a difference between "I believe there is no god", "I don't believe there is a god" and "I know there is no god". Not even Dawkins claims the latter.

As far as I'm concerned, it's Russell's teapot. I can't 100% say for certain that god doesn't exist, but weighing all the evidence, I can say that I find it extremely improbable that he DOES exist, and even if he does, he doesn't meaningfully impact my life, so I may as well ignore him.

Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with being an atheist.

It's 100% reasonable to say that "you don't believe in god" or even that "you believe there is no god". It's an opinion, not a statement of fact.

To me, the video sorta oversells the difficulty in identifying / escaping from "ridiculous claims", at least in comparison to my personal experiences.

I grew up in a very religious (Christian, Methodist) family / city / state / country. I was questioning the indoctrination at an early age (younger than 10), and rejecting it due to never receiving satisfactory answers to those questions by ~12. Actually, one of the most significant pushes for me was the ultimate reward/punishment thing. Zero consistency and open contradictions between different religions / sects / sources, etc. In symbolic logic, contradictions mean that one of your premises is wrong. Reconsider what you "know" and try again.

With regards to atheism vs (a)gnosticism, technically I'm an agnostic because I don't know with absolute certainty that there is no god / gods out there. However, in practice, I easily and comfortably would rather self-identify as an atheist. Why, when I don't know for certain? Because I also don't know that there isn't an Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Loch Ness Monster, or Leprechauns, yet I don't feel compelled to tell people that I'm "agnostic" about those things. No. They are pretty clearly human-invented bullshit, with readily apparent human motivations behind their invention. Sounds like religion to me.

That's basically Russel's teapot.

People have needs. Those needs can be exploited to produce a prophet or profit. Both accomplish the same objective.

heretic, my concerns with the account being unused until extremely recently relate to the problem of trolls. It isn't uncommon for aged / unused accounts to a site to be sold for the sake of lending an appearance of authenticity to a user with negative intentions. Your account being a full 3 years old with no visible activity until now made me think you could simply be a troll, looking to foment discord. Videosift has a fairly pronounced agnostic / secular bias, so this is exactly the sort of topic a troll account could easily manipulate to cause arguing.

Having seen your subsequent comments in this thread, I'm fairly confident you're not a troll. Still seems odd to me you waited this long to put the account to any evident sort of use, but that's certainly not a problem in and of itself. Hell, my account is over 11 years old with thousands of votes and hundreds of comments, and I've not bothered to upload a user pic.

Thanks for the reply. There's a part of me that wishes I had that much time to waste, but unfortunately not.

You're probably not interested in the details, but for what it's worth I first signed in during a time of heavy crunch at work. After that never really stuck around to become a member of the community, or any community for that matter. Work was taking its toll.

At the moment I'm getting ready to move country, again, so on the odd day I can spare some time. For whatever reason I ended up at an old site I used to visit (bluesnews) which lead me back here.

Now, back into hiding for X amount of years as work continues to beat me into submission