People treat religion like sports rivalry because they want their beliefs to be right. It validates them, and it makes them think they'll be rewarded for it. It's easy to brainwash religious people and keep them brainwashed when you push religion onto them from childhood.
People treat religion like sports rivalry because they want their beliefs to be right. It validates them, and it makes them think they'll be rewarded for it. It's easy to brainwash religious people and keep them brainwashed when you push religion onto them from childhood.
if Ali is who I think he is, then he's been a piece of shit for years. He and Mohammad Hijab are two of the biggest garbage and misogynists in Islam, and the reasons why other Muslims make fun of UK Muslims. I think UK Muslims, like so many people of other religions, don't know shit about their own religion or twist it to suit what they want - which is being so hateful to anything different.
Spoiler alert: It isn't all politics. It's politics, and emotion. No actual justification for her giving up on her Atheism and becoming a Christian outside of the fact that she's afraid that the only thing that can defeat "wokeism" is Christianity. Though admittedly, it helped her with her depression and potential suicidal ideation... but then, that's still not proof of God's existence.
Whatever. I'm glad she's happy at least, but fuck her for giving validation to Christian Nationalism.
She's basically reeked of self-hatred for as long as she's been a public figure IMO. Her story as an apostate might have had value, but then you find out who she's married to and this turn makes a lot more sense.
There's so many issues with the New Atheism "movement" in retrospect. What they did to conversations in a post-9/11 world weren't very productive.
Hitchens and Harris were especially Islamaphobic, but Dillahunty has only moved further left the older he's gotten. As a matter of fact, Atheism activism has pretty much been co-opted almost exclusively by Leftists nowadays. Probably because you can't really be a humanist and be conservative... and Secular Humanism seems to be the default moral standard Atheists gravitate to so as to have a standard to point to when questioned about morality.
Hitchen's positions after 9/11 were especially disappointing in retrospect given the positions he took for the 30ish or so years before that. Even brilliant minds can be subject to propaganda, I guess. Harris is more of your typical classic liberal and a very smart person. However his unwillingness to ever examine things from a geopolitical perspective was/is an insanely disappointing blindspot.
Lol, for over a decade he's been an atheist. Maybe longer, but that's how long he's been famous for being one. His start on youtube was as "Cosmic Skeptic", which was essentially a counter-apologetics channel.
He's dropped the CosmicSkeptic moniker as he's become a more famous philosopher and veganism activist (no longer vegan though).
Also... there's been a big kerfuffle over Wes Huff and Alex O'Conner recently.
He couldn't get ahold of Wes to debate him on what he said on Rogan, so a lot of other Christian apologists are running damage control for Wes, and he's actually shown up on that idiot Ruslan KD's youtube channel to talk about it.
3 hour vid, but if you're interested there are clipped shorter versions on youtube, but they're by Ruslan so they're edited favorably for him.
Lol, for over a decade he's been an atheist. Maybe longer, but that's how long he's been famous for being one. His start on youtube was as "Cosmic Skeptic", which was essentially a counter-apologetics channel.
He's someone you see in thumbnails but hadn't really engaged in any content until recently. Saw some videos on gnostic concepts and him talking to Bart Ehrman. Didn't really glean his beliefs from it.
With Ehrman being an atheist I thought it'd be interesting for him to talk to Wesley Huff because he's sort of in that area as a scholar but is very obviously a true believer, so was curious how the conversation would be different. As an aside I kind of find it awkward to saying you're a scholar of something while being a true believer. That seems somewhat invalidating to some degree.
I actually sat through the whole thing for some reason. It's just funny how this guy has a channel and talks to people the entire podcast was a series of this -
Alex - "This thing is wrong and here's why/I disagree with this and here's why"
Dude - Okay fair enough
????????
I don't have a habit of listening to christian apologetics but the way this dude was insistent on being magnanimous was just annoying and unproductive kinda. And at the end it's just about him and his audience praying for Alex to turn to God but not once offering anything compelling to him in that direction. Just silly to me.
He's someone you see in thumbnails but hadn't really engaged in any content until recently. Saw some videos on gnostic concepts and him talking to Bart Ehrman. Didn't really glean his beliefs from it.
Mhm. He's the real deal. He's got several conversations with the Final Boss of Christian Apologetics, William Lane Craig. And Frank Turek, that asshole who made the "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist" book. He doesn't do the politics-style sensational topics type of thing, yet he has grown a lot because he's got a reputation for being super agreeable even when disagreeing (which I hate. You wanna see him really cut loose, watch his debate with Dinesh D'Souza).
With Ehrman being an atheist I thought it'd be interesting for him to talk to Wesley Huff because he's sort of in that area as a scholar but is very obviously a true believer, so was curious how the conversation would be different. As an aside I kind of find it awkward to saying you're a scholar of something while being a true believer. That seems somewhat invalidating to some degree.
I actually sat through the whole thing for some reason. It's just funny how this guy has a channel and talks to people the entire podcast was a series of this -
Alex - "This thing is wrong and here's why/I disagree with this and here's why"
Dude - Okay fair enough
This particular situation is him just attempting to stand up for all of the other Christian Apologists who are pumping their fists at the thought of potentially turning Joe Rogan into a Christian (Inspiring Philosphy, Cameron Bertuzzi, Mike Winger, David Wood, etc), because of what it could lead to (potentially pushing his chud listener base toward Christianity). He can't say that Alex is wrong for calling Wes on his mistake, but he's gotta do something to minimize the blowback.
I don't have a habit of listening to christian apologetics but the way this dude was insistent on being magnanimous was just annoying and unproductive kinda. And at the end it's just about him and his audience praying for Alex to turn to God but not once offering anything compelling to him in that direction. Just silly to me.
I don't either, but I DO regularly listen to Atheist activist podcasts and call-in shows, along with watching religious debates (anything from Matt Dillahunty and the shows he's frequent), meaning I get opportunities to see what they're like when they debate the people I frequently watch. And of course, sometimes, they take clips from these shows and attack them to make their own reply videos... you get it. These moments are the only times I go to their actual channels to see their content, because I'm curious as to whether they're going to argue in good faith. I'm often very disappointed.
My favorite takedown of a presuppositionalist. One of my favorite Dillahunty debates too.
Baby Alex O'Connor and his fellow Brit Steven Woodford of Rationality Rules fame on The Atheist Experience back before Matt left the show.
As for the "praying for Alex to turn to God" part? Yeah, that tracks. But what was so infuriating to me is the fact that Alex is so goddamn experienced, well read, and good faith in these conversations, and we still got to Ruslan asking the same "Yeah, but are you sure you tried to be a Christian?" bullshit. Like, I'm certain Alex has forgotten more about theology than Ruslan will ever know, so for him to resort to just accusing Alex of not truly being a non-reluctant nonbeliever pisses me off so much.
Another 5 questions for Atheists from Braxton Hunter. In case you don't wanna watch the vid, the 5 questions are as follows:
1: "We have really strong arguments, at least from our perspective, that Christianity is true, like the Argument from Fine Tuning. The Arguments for Atheism don't work if we're talking about a limited God because they attack a lot of the "Omnis" of the God of classical theism. So by that logic isn't it safe to not take Atheism seriously since arguments in favor of it don't take into consideration all God claims, like those of a limited God?" Paraphrased of course.
2: "Many Atheist content creators pivoted to political content after Trump's election. Why do you think the election was so impactful to Atheists that it's making them stop doing Atheist activism content and start doing political content instead? What does it reveal about the culture?"
3: "Many Atheists are Determinists. If you're a Determinist and don't believe in Free Will, how can you justify holding people accountable for their actions? And if you do believe in Free Will and aren't a Determinist, how can you justify Free Will without God?"
4: "Richard Dawkins has caused controversy recently about the Trans debate. Lots of Atheists loved him and his biology knowledge when his science agreed with them but now they hate him thanks to him being a biological essentialist concerning trans people. Do you think he's right or wrong? Why?"
5: It's really just a fancy (and long) new way of asking the Watchmaker argument, but referring to a whole terraformed bio dome on Mars or something. "Would you assume that the biodome just appeared naturally via accident or would you assume someone built it?"
