SHAMWOW

This is pretty hilarious, Chris just sent it to me. I have a theory about all these Christians who claim they used to be atheists. As a philosophy, atheism requires a certain level of argumentative powers for someone to fully understand it. I'm talking like, at least a basic understanding of the most prominent philosophical arguments for and against a god (as in, nothing that mentions the Bible). This guy doesn't understand that, therefore I really doubt he used to be an atheist. Though, there are some pretty retarded atheists out there too (internetz), so maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

I think all the Christian public speakers who "used to be atheist" confuse atheism with "I just wasn't all that religious." They all just love mentioning their former atheism too, as if they think we could forget. I used to be a Christian, does that give my arguments more merit?



I don't know why I did this

1:10 - 1:25
So we should just assume the space outside that inner circle exists without any sort of evidence to prove or suggest that it does.

YOU CAN'T DISPROVE IT, SO THAT MEANS IT'S RIGHT.

1:25 - 2:08
No naturalist in history has ever claimed that it is impossible for something to exist if it has not yet been tested in a lab. See, the beauty of naturalism is its modesty. Naturalists acknowledge they don't know everything. That's why they test things in order understand the universe better, instead of accepting their hypotheses on faith alone. Every single one of them would acknowledge the existence of a god if there was legitimate evidence for one, but there isn't. As with all hypotheses, if there is no real evidence for something, you have to assume it is false until more evidence is put forward.

2:27 - 3:11
"They'll look at the laws of nature, cause and effect, and they'll say, therefore the universe must have a naturalistic cause. And they'll look at the stars and the planets and they'll say, those must have a naturalistic cause. And they'll look at life and they'll say that must have a naturalistic cause, which is why they're trying to create life in the laboratories to say, yes this is how it formed using the laws of nature."

I don't understand how scientists explain all their magical voodoo mumbo jumbo, so that means god did it.

4:00 - 4:07
lol.

4:27 - 4:48
Science does not explain the why, it explains the how.

5:17 - 6:10
"If naturalism's true, that means your brain formed by a random process which was not really interested in making you intelligent; all it cared about was making sure you make babies. So that means, 'cause you were formed by a naturalistic process that was not intelligently designed, well, you would have to believe that your brain is functioning properly without any proof that it is because you're using the brain in order to evaluate if the brain is functioning properly, which is circular reasoning . . . You have to be intelligently designed to be able to, with any level of certainty, claim that your brain is functioning properly and that your truth claims correspond with reality. Because if naturalism's true, you can't trust your brain."

First of all, intelligence was simply a byproduct of doing a better job at "making babies." Natural selection is not random.

Second, I love how he accidentally stumbled on something all naturalists already know. Precisely because our brain and our senses are limited, it is impossible to know with absolute certainty what reality exactly is. Our senses lie to us. That's why when people experience sleep paralysis, they think they're being abducted by aliens, or seeing ghosts or demons. It's why people think they're going towards that heavenly light when they're close to death, without realizing it's just the brain juicing itself up with drug-like substances to make the experience of death less traumatic. The scientific method was designed to take the human factor out of the picture; that's why it works. Once again, this guy is assuming that naturalism claims to know everything. Stop treating it like a religion.

6:56 - 7:27
lol.

7:40 - 7:46
"Beliefs, they're not genetic. My parents don't believe in god, and I do. *Funnyface* Watchya gonna do with that [bitch]?"

What, were you trying to bang your religious study partner, and you got sucked in too deep or something? This actually really surprises me, because you don't hear stories too often about a person being raised a freethinker and turning to religion, it's usually the other way around.

Regardless of this guy's experience (whether entirely truthful or not), the chances are good that you're going to be a Christian if you're raised in the United States. If you're born in Egypt, you're probably going to be a Muslim. India, Hindu. We have absolutely no choice in how our parents raise us to think. If they're good cruel at it, their belief system will be instilled into their children for their entire lives, where they will never have the capacity to think critically enough to question it. If anything, I suppose this guy's atheist parents raised him right - by teaching him how to think, and not what to think. Kudos, I guess.

7:48 - 9:46

"You don't see any of those [evolutionary] transitions [today]. Dogs make dogs. Cats make cats. Humans make humans . . . Now, if evolution was happening, you would expect one dog, of all dogs, slowly becoming something that's not a dog . . . But we don't have one instance of any of those, in any plant, in any animal, across all the species of all life."

Except for when wolves became dogs once humans domesticated them. And when new breeds of dogs are created by mixing ones that already exist. And when wild cats were domesticated and became house cats. And when apes became humans when they migrated to new areas that were safer and had more nutritious food, thus increasing the size of their brains.

DUUURR NATURAL SELECTION IS NOTICEABLE IN A SINGLE GENERATION

9:38 - 10:59
"It seems they want to say it [evolution] happened in the past, long ago and far away. You know, you can always tell something's a fairy tale when they say 'long ago and far away'. But the Bible, see the Bible didn't take place long ago and far away. Jesus came 2,000 years ago, people saw him [blah blah blah sins sins sins] . . . evolution can be disproved using modern scientific methods."

36 A.D. Jerusalem is not long ago or far away at all. You're right, 2,000 years isn't nearly enough time for the Bible to be translated, and retranslated, and retranslated to the point where the original is lost forever. It's not nearly enough time for those in control to choose which stories they want in it, and which ones they don't like too much and take out. It's not enough time for the memory of a brilliant philosopher to be butchered by ideological and corrupt shitheads in order to use and abuse his image for the power of submission.

Also, good job trying to debunk the scientific method and then saying you use the scientific method.

-------------

This isn't intended to be a god-bashing post, it's a religion-bashing post. I personally think there are reasonable arguments out there for a god. But this guy didn't use any of them. He simply did what all intelligent designers do, and just tried to poke holes in naturalism and evolution when none exist. Disproving something you disagree with does not automatically mean you're right, it simply means your opponent is wrong. You have to put something on the table.

Regardless, I'm sure this dude gets laid by a LOT of slutty catholic schoolgirls. Only in the pooper though, because that means they're still virgins.