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Why I Am Not an Atheist

Lecture by Ravi Zacharias
messengersays...

He was doing OK for 30 minutes or so until he tried to blame "the most bloody century in history" on atheism, I'm assuming, because of their coincidence. Argument from coincidence means nothing, especially considering all the wars that have been waged in the name of one religion or another. My guess is our increased population and increased killing technology account for why we are able to kill more people.

With his attack on the student who insisted, "Everything is meaningless", he's committing the common error of conflating two different meanings of the same word. The student wasn't saying, "There is no such thing such that it has meaning, including this statement." He was agreeing that there is no teleological reason for our existence. Zacharias twisted his words with double meanings.

His insight about emptiness coming from indulgence in pleasure and the disappointment after is accurate, as long as the pleasure being indulged in isn't self-fulfilling. When I work hard to prepare something that will make others happy, I get immense pleasure before, during and after. It's only when I'm focusing on mundane things like computer games or (sorry y'al) the Sift that I feel pleasure during, but little pleasure after.

Also, people like working towards things. If you think that you're going to be happier once you reach a goal, you're wrong. But if you think you're going to be happier while you're reaching goals, you'll probably be right. If you'd asked Boris Becker how he felt after his first championship, he might have felt better. After that he realized that there was nowhere else for him to go. Sounds like he was also particularly prone to depression on top of that, though I know nothing of him.

Further, all these arguments from the Hong Kong tycoon to Becker to Hitler are anecdotal, and not statistically significant. None demonstrate anything except that it's possible for a person to reach material goals and not be happy. If they were conclusive, then by the same token one would only need to find a single suicidal believer to disprove religion from the other side. Statistics showing significantly less depression among religious people than non-believers would be meaningful, and they may exist. But they still wouldn't demonstrate lack of faith to be a wrong position, just a less advantageous one.

59:50 Does Zacharias think only religious people find meaning in their children? 1:01:00 Or that religious people don't try and find happiness in fame and wealth?

His final argument about being in error about the Christian religion as opposed to being in error about atheism overlooks all the evil things people are capable of only through justification by religion.

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