Note: What follows is a transcript of the above video, but I've embedded links here since there's obviously no description box on my blog.
I wanted to make a short video pointing out some pretty
amazing science denial and hypocrisy by William Lane Craig.
The short of it is that Craig recently called Young Earth Creationists an
embarrassment to Christianity on his Reasonable Faith Podcast.Craig calls out the Young Earth Creationists
because they are pretty much in explicit science denial.
Note: What follows is a transcript of the video above.
This is going to be a video reply to YouTube user
StupidTheist. Not to get all meta, but he left a video reply to my fourth video
on the Countering the Kalam series and has been expecting me to respond in
kind.I’ll link both our videos in the
description box, but this is kind of an “inside baseball” video; and I wouldn’t
recommend continuing with it unless you’ve watched both my video and
StupidTheist’s response.
This video is going to be a bit different than the other
videos I’ve put out since I don’t have an actual argument that I’m putting
forward or refuting. I’m going to talk about my deconversion from being a
fundamentalist Christian to being an atheist.And I really want to do this because I think it’s something that all of
us who’ve deconverted want to put out there to maybe help other people who may
be going through the same thing.I’m
hoping it’s also useful for life long atheists to help understand where the
“faithful” are coming from.
I’m going to give a brief overview of what my religious
background was growing up, there’s a much longer and detailed post about thison my blog that I’m going to link to in the description box.The long and short of it is that I was born a
Catholic and then my family converted to being fundamentalist Christian,
specifically Baptists, when I was about 9 years old.
Note: What follows below is a transcription of the video
Ahh
the Ontological Argument, where philosophers try to define god into
existence.
This
video is going to be about the modern, Modal Ontological Argument put forward
by apologists like Alvin Plantinga and defended by William Lane Craig.
This
is because the original Ontological Argument put forward by St. Anselm and
philosophers like Rene Descartes was refuted by philosophers like David Hume
and Immanuel Kant since the original argument assumed that “existence” was a
property.You can Google that, but
almost all modern apologists won’t attempt to defend that version of the
argument.
So
here’s the “Modal Ontological Argument” put forward by Plantinga:
Note: What follows below is a transcript of the video.
The next set of questions that apologists like to throw out
that religion supposedly answers is:
“What is the meaning of life?” and “What is our purpose?”
which is sometimes phrased as “Why are we here?”
What we’re talking about here is Meaning and Purpose, and
the issues are tightly connected logically, and because the apologists make the
same move with both topics.
I want to be completely upfront and honest here.These questions are more rhetorical than the
previous “Big Question” I tackled, so I can’t pretend to offer a specific
answer.What I am going to do here is
highlight the difference between atheists and Christians in how we attempt to answer
these questions.I leave it up to the
viewer to decide which approach is better able to answer these questions.
I will argue that the answer to these questions is that we
as individuals create our own meaning and purpose for ourselves.This is in stark contrast to Christianity
that argues meaning and purpose for humanity can only come from god.
Note: What follows below is a transcript of the video.
In the course of debate between atheists and theists of
various stripes, it’s inevitable that the Quote-Un-Quote “Big Questions” are
brought to the forefront.
Apologists love to ask things like:
“Why is there
something rather than nothing?”
“Why are we here?” or “What
is our purpose?” “What is the meaning
of life?”
Apologist Dinesh D’Souza likes to point out that science
can’t answer these questions, but supposedly religion can.
The problem here is that in each case, religion simply makes
up an answer and then pretends that it is better than no answer at all, or by
the answers we get from philosophy that is informed by science.
This sort of thing is bound to come up almost any time
that anyone leaves a religion and starts advocating against their former
beliefs.
It's the first online "No True Scotsman" that's been leveled my way, and I admit that I almost want to wear it like a badge of honor. To be fair, I've had it happen to me before in person, and I think that this makes for a very nice springboard to point out exactly how much of a believer I was. To be fair to my commenter, there is a bit I left ambiguous in my "About Me" post that led to his confusion.
