Atheist Debates - Religion and Fear

[@Dillinger86]

"We are not sinners. We are not abominations. We were not born broken, and we do not need salvation. We embrace our right to think beyond the boundaries of religion. We are living and loving free from faith." ~Sarah Morehead

[@kennethpaulin8052]

+Steven R. AMEN!

[@ReidNicewonder]

His poster on the right reads: Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. - Arnold Lobel Nice beard you got there. :)

[@timauth]

I believe in the Tooth Fairy. If you don't worship her, she'll send you to cavity land forever when you die. I have proof in the form of a book. I can't explain how it all works you just have to have faith because the tooth fairy works in mysterious ways. Tooth Fairy cast a spell (aka god bless)

[@spacemunky53]

And the tooth shall be revealed the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

[@Ididntaskforahandleyoutube]

You're not helping.

[@spacemunky53]

@@Ididntaskforahandleyoutube fuk off you prick with ears!!

[@jimcarlson6157]

dont overlook the molar ogre

[@tomvalentino8802]

I was taught to be afraid of everything bc of my religion but then I learned the real monsters are the ones on the altar singing holy holy holy lord.

[@coreybuckley485]

Hey

[@beaukayson929]

I guess Im randomly asking but does someone know of a trick to get back into an instagram account? I somehow lost the account password. I love any help you can offer me!

[@seankyree1619]

@Beau Kayson Instablaster ;)

[@beaukayson929]

@Sean Kyree Thanks for your reply. I got to the site through google and I'm waiting for the hacking stuff now. Seems to take quite some time so I will get back to you later with my results.

[@beaukayson929]

@Sean Kyree it did the trick and I finally got access to my account again. I am so happy:D Thanks so much you saved my account!

[@DivineBanana]

i would buy a "as we learn more, we learn there is much more to learn." t-shirt

[@kobayashiMaroo]

I would buy a "doomed for failure, religion is" t-shirt.

[@WhitentonMike]

Thank you Matt. Once again your clear thinking and reasoning is most appreciated. This topic really strikes home for me as recently I have begun expressing to others my deconversion experiences. The melting away of supernatural fears has become a new found source of inner peace and strength for me. It was entirely unexpected.

[@gbotobaridilo2056]

Mike Whitenton, True sir. Check this out. gurudeseyesubai.org/a-word-on-religion-and-fear/

[@GaglianiGirl]

This whole thing about the world is actually a better place to live today for the majority of humans than it ever has been is something I came to realize and have taken upon myself to spread the word about. My whole life I've heard what a crappy world this is and how it's getting worse and worse. It drives me insane to hear this any more.

[@jeffcolorado]

Regarding the infallibility of the pope. When I was young and being raised in the catholic church, the pope wasn't considered infallible except under certain ceremonial circumstances, which I think was called "ex cathedra". There was never a blanket claim of infallibility, or at least there wasn't back then. I've been done with catholicism for decades, so maybe it's different now, but that's my recollection.

[@Nocturnalux]

Same. This also means that the pope’s comments also only make doctrine in certain circumstances. Meaning, the pope can say sort of nice things about queer people but if it’s not ex cathedra, it’s not doctrine making.

[@straubdavid9]

As far as I am concerned, if you can justify religion and gods, you can justify any irrational fear.

[@yanasto]

I've been watching you (and others on the Atheist Experience) and your debates and public talks for years. I so appreciate this project and the gentle and sympathetic way that you have approached this subject of fear (even though I haven't experienced a religious fear for many years now) - particularly your point about "being alone in a darkened house and feeling creepy" was so excellently put. I've been working my way through this project's videos because I have recently become the president of my college's Philosophy Club and I wanted to have better communication skills. This video has convinced me (without even really asking) to support the project. Thanks Matt.

[@mrloop1530]

What a nice and sympathetic comment. Pure joy to read. Thanks Arianna.

[@JMUDoc]

Religion never seems to tell us anything that science doesn't tell us first. Indeed, religion comes across to me as the guy on your quiz team who, after somebody else has already given the answer, always chimes in with "I knew that one!".

[@StefanTravis]

+JMUDoc "Religion never seems to tell us anything that science doesn't tell us first." I'm fairly sure science doesn't tell us that a magic man in the sky made the world, or that boiling mandrake root in goat blood is a cure for epilepsy. But I know what you mean.

[@brianmannion7097]

Its kind of like when apologists say god created animals *through evolution* Before evolution was discovered they would just say god created things.

[@fullup91]

Or, that the animals from Noah's Arc got to Australia, New Zealand and America because the continents were joined as Pangea.

[@sammysam2615]

In my own personal experience with religion and culture when meeting people who find out that I'm an atheist, the response I get isn't what surprises me but how the response is given. And it's not that I don't believe in God that bothers them, but that I don't believe in their God is the real shock. And that's the real problem when it comes to "God Argument" When asked if you believe in God, most religious people mean; "Do you believe in My God"

[@iansmith1965]

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear, is fear of the unknown"-H.P. Lovecraft.1890-1937.

[@hailtothevictorz]

Thank you Matt, you are one of the clear thinkers in my life that I really appreciate.

[@jpats6124]

As soon as people understand that there is no intent to anything, only cause and effect, fear disappears. The people with the most understanding and knowledge are the least likely to be religious, even if they know there is a lot more to be learned. It is concepts like karma, punishment and retribution that keep religion alive. Kindness to one another would be a much better MO.

[@01Sunshine234]

This was honestly a moving speech. Bravo, sir.

[@bonnie43uk]

I cant put into words just how wonderfully you encapsulated many of my thoughts. Excellent talk Matt.

[@TheDive25]

Love you Matt.. Keep doing what you're doing.

[@iggypopshot]

Ok, that's me being a patron, these are just too good. Thanks man.

[@iggypopshot]

Also... A hard back version of demon haunted world in the background ..... The 1st book that made me think more critically.... Big up Dillahunty.

[@rikk319]

+iggypopshot That book was the final nail in the coffin of my religiosity, too.

[@robinssssssss]

Matt Dillahunty Matt, I always look forward to watching each and everyone of your videos! :D

[@william999666]

These new videos your doing by yourself are great. Keep us posted so we can, ''Dare I say it, change the world!''.

[@nontheistdavid]

If god wrote morality on your heart then why do you need an instruction manual? :P Monotheism is ridiculous nonsense.

[@SteveFrenchWoodNStuff]

+nontheistdavid As is polytheism. Interesting question though.

[@conman2317]

+nontheistdavid Jesus died for your sins, reach out and praise him, God Bless

[@MINDYOUROWNBUISINESS]

+ReliveTheDream How about you do something for David before you go demanding he appease your bizarre ancestor spirit. You're very pushy.

[@conman2317]

MINDYOUROWNBUISINESS I'll pray for you

[@nontheistdavid]

ReliveTheDream This doesn't answer the question oh deluded one.

[@julianbufarull7602]

The thing about Matt when he's calm that makes so many believers transition is that his sheer honesty is astounding. He just looks like a dude trying to find out the truth.

[@MrNotch87]

This is good Matt. Short tempered Matt is annoying. He helped me so much when I was coming out of religion. If he acted like he does now, then I wouldn’t have questioned. I would have thought he was an “angry atheist”. COME BACK MATT!!!

[@d3x3d]

this is one of the best sermons i have ever heard. better than any word of god on any sunday ;)

[@AngryCanadian1971]

I would love to see Spencer Lucas get Matt Dillahunty in Ontario, Canada. Would be an awesome treat. The Non-Conference in Kitchener, Ontario with Prof. Lawrence Krauss was a huge success. People, here in Ontario, would be willing to dish out big bucks to hear Matt.

[@GreenmanDave]

+AngryAtheist I'm glad to hear it went well. I wish I could have come out. It's not too much of a drive for me (from the Detroit area) and I have a cousin who lives in Kitchener, but unfortunately life happened, so i couldn't get the time away. Is this going to be a regular thing in Kitchener?

[@AngryCanadian1971]

Not regular to Kitchener, Ontario. The 1st non-con was in Toronto. This was the second. Hoping that it's near me, I don't travel.

[@GreenmanDave]

I would be super happy if the next one would be held in Windsor, but I wouldn't want to put you out. ;) lol

[@AngryCanadian1971]

GreenmanDave HA , dude. Wouldn't put me out. I'd travel a little farther than that.

[@sbushido5547]

"Fear is the mind-killer." That's all I could think of for about the last half of the video. :P

[@Troubleshooter125]

+s bushido And yet wasn't the Bene Gesserit a religion of the _Dune_ universe? Certainly, they were demonstrably manipulative and worked to hide both that character of themselves and the goal: to create the Kwizatz Haderach. Interestingly, they, too failed.

[@sarahhess464]

+s bushido A man goes into a tent that stores all the food of tribe then eat all the food. The tribesmen catch him and find his actions evil and immoral so they drag him out. What will the tribe do for this evil act, A cast him out of the tribe, B kill him, C torture and kill him D eat him. behavior, death, life, reproduction, mate selection , conflicts,,history, survival and environment could effect what shape morals,culture and religion take and all will of course effect the genetic outcome of the tribe and of course if the offender lives or dies by either the environment or the tribe. If the thief lives and come across more thief's they could grow in strength and then they could attempt to prey on the other tribes. How much of morality is genetic and how much is taught.

[@jeffreyp1855]

+s bushido "The Spice must flow!"

[@Nocturnalux]

+s bushido Just hand me an Orange Catholic Bible, if you will. Ah, it's been ages since I read Dune but few works of fiction do a better job at tackling the way religions develop, what keeps them alive, what needs they fulfill and what ultimately drives them. Every religious person should read at least the first books...can't help feeling the whole series jumped the worm, if you will, once it got to book 4 or so.

[@sbushido5547]

Nocturnalux Yeah, I keep meaning to go back to it since I was so young when I first read the series that most of it went over my head. But that whole god-emperor worm thing is kinda strange.

[@CarbonOwl993]

When I was a kid the main reason I believed was for consolation. Ironically when I sat in church I knew in the back of my mind the stories and preaching from the priest was bullshit but I forced myself to try to cling onto the belief in life after death because the thought of one day not existing anymore was terrifying to me as a kid. It's a bit pathetic looking back on it that the only reason I wanted to believe and pray to a fictional magic jew from 2000 years ago was because it made me feel better about death.

[@Galakyllz]

Fear, I understood it as a child when I forced myself to get lost in a dense woods, over and over again, until I could no longer feel the sensation of "being lost". There is value in learning about oneself in this way, but looking back I wonder if it gave me a false-confidence of a sorts. If you aren't afraid of the world you interact with, are you actually confident within it? I'm not sure.

[@BassbaitGG]

for a split second I read the title as "atheist diabetes"

[@jesuiscequejesuis2267]

+BassbaitGG "atheist diabetes" As an atheist, is that something I should fear?

[@612Tiberius]

+Je Suis Ce Que Je Suis It's at least something that Matt himself must currently contend with.

[@Ididntaskforahandleyoutube]

We're not claiming that you positively have diabetes, we're just not convinced that you don't.

[@utah133]

Well, that fits me. I had diabetes and used to be a Mormon. I just rejected carbohydrates and ate meat a bunch... (Mormons eschew that) and now I'm an atheist without diabetes.

[@mercedeswalt6621]

Hahahahaha!

[@sweetsweatyfeet]

Fear works. Nothing cripples the rational mind like fear and nothing is more effective at doing this than the hell threat. This is why many people even though they've mostly abandoned their religious beliefs still cannot shake off the sheer terror of hell. That's because graphic depictions of hell fostered by imagination were deeply implanted in the their psyches during early childhood. Some former believers are so paralyzed by hell fear they have to seek out professional help. When that happens you realize just how debilitating childhood indoctrination can be.

[@landonsmith6235]

sweetsweatyfeet I loved this comment.

[@Lost-Lilim]

While I agree that religion as a whole isn't merely a tool used for control, I don't think it's disputable that religion has been used as a tool for control by specific groups. At one point the Catholic church used religion to be the dominant political force in mediaeval Europe, and still uses religion to attempt to control adherents to this day. Likewise many other groups have and continue to use religion in this manner.

[@Joemamahahahaha821]

For the common man it’s comfort and for the ruling class it’s control that’s why it’s so powerful. The controlling classes use it to control the people who are comforted by the same thing controlling them basically.

[@rogeliobenavides7307]

Thanks for such an amazing job you do. You have the answers for all the questions I had. Religion is keeping us from uniting also it is holding us back as civilization.

[@AlexVerbruggen]

Again very well explained by Matt. He's the most clear talk person I know.

[@colubrinedeucecreative]

Great points! Pretending that fear isn't there isn't realistic, it can only be taught to be managed, which is a great point there.

[@bschil1]

THANK YOU Matt great job as always!! One of the best talks on fear I have ever listened to. On many levels!!! THANKS!!!

[@purami14]

Probably your best lecture Matt.

[@JeremyMcCandlish]

note for self, starting from 5:00 the courage to confirm something is a direct product of not being afraid of not knowing.* -- how it works: Suppose I sense that X or Y (hopefully two complementary possibilities, a hypothesis and a null hypothesis), and that I intuitively prefer X, or don't feel that I have the tools to deal with Y. two scenarios: 1. "I only know how to recognize X" --> I'll assume X and use X to deal with all X's and Y's. 2. "I KNOW that I'm not sure if X or Y apply in [whatever system** I'm trying to work with...mathematical, physical, mental, whatever]. --> If X, what will I perceive (through thought, sense, instrument, or some other measurement)? If Y, what will I perceive? e.g.: How would I deal with a world where indecision/(delayed decision) has/does not have a concrete existence? 1. Einstein: "God [used to mean 'the decider of the state of the physical existence'] does not play dice". Eventually Einstein also came to terms with it, but someone could mark this as him being afraid of a concept of "or" built into the physical existence, and of how he would deal with it. 2. Someone else (can't even remember who): "I don't know, delayed decision definitely has a mental existence, why shouldn't it have a physical one? I really don't know, I've never perceived something waiting to decide which of two things it is... --> what would that 'waiting to decide' look like? What would it not look like?" [goes and takes some measurement] "Yup that photon was waiting" -- ( incidentally, if we take a similar measurement on a classical computer system, we find that the same hypothesis becomes false. ) We see that understanding any duality is a matter of accepting non-knowledge. That acceptance leads to being able to measure that duality a given system. And suddenly, comfort in not knowing becomes...extremely valuable. -- The above can also be understood as "how to ask God [here used to mean 'the decider of the state of all worlds]' a question". Seen this way, prayer becomes...equally valuable to the above, because both are really the same thing. -- *I read this somewhere...can probably find it and translate it if someone wants to see an outside source **I use the terms "existence", "world", and "system" interchangeably in this comment to refer to any thing (macro or micro, virtual or actual) with a measurable state edited many times for structural consistency

[@JeremyMcCandlish]

I wrote this having only viewed 5:00 through 6:50 or so. Of course you proceed to explain a large part of the rest [though not the whole] within minutes. Like minds think alike I guess

[@gnagyusa]

38:00 - actually, sleep is for processing and sorting the information our brain collected during the day. We have associative memory, which is why we are capable of creativity. During sleep is when our brain forms those associations, by trying out different existing memories, and activating them to find the best matches. This process is known as dreaming.

[@TReeves80013]

[13:05] Matt, you didn't have a "debate" with Sye Ten Bruggencate. You had an intelligent monologue while Sye played the role of petulant child. Through no fault of your own, I regard that as the worst "debate" I've ever witnessed.

[@straubdavid9]

+SweetLiberty01 Agree, I thought my head was going to explode after just a few minutes of Sy Ten's circular horsepucky. Next time I watch anything involving Sye, I will have to remember to take some Dramamine well ahead of time..

[@duke428]

I felt really bad for Matt while watching that one. The time and effort he wasted to go have a "debate" with a guy who refused to answer any questions or provide an argument beyond "We all know that god did it."

[@GodlessScummer]

That definitely was an embarrassing debate and that was certainly no fault of Matt's. Sye's arguments were just really poor. I think even most theists who watched it thought that Matt won.

[@robertcampbellii9787]

I saw that debate and I couldn't stand Sye. I'm a Christian, but I would 10 out of 10 times side with Matt against Sye. Such an embarrassing human being.

[@krazyaust7720]

@@robertcampbellii9787 If even the Christians are siding with Matt on this debate, that really shows something about Sye.

[@rayw3332]

Faith is believing without evidence. Science is accepting on evidence without belief.

[@dkazmer2]

This video is especially good, wow, in an excellent video series that doesn't really need the "debates" categorization. Hope this gets *many* more views. Shared.

[@carlstein3349]

Darwinian view of religion: - make up 4000 religions each with randomly different theologies. - let the 4000 religions argue it out for hearts and minds - the religions left standing will have some key strengths. - they scare the most about the consequences of not believing - they will make the most money, to fund a mass indoctrination campaign - they will have an emphasis on suppressing female rights to focus on breeding as babies can add to a religion faster than intellectual argument. Children are easier to indoctrinate than adults. - they will coach on illogical thinking - they will challenge as dangerous the use of facts and logic Now look at the current top most successful religions? Spot any patterns?

[@MendTheWorld]

Carl Stein You're absolutely right that competition and success of religions is a process analogous to natural selection, except that it ain't natural.

[@REDPUMPERNICKEL]

Right on Carl. Are you familiar with bicameral theory? It provides for those who make evolutionary assertions like yours, a fine and rational foundation. The bicameral theory leads me to believe that religions today are obsolete residues of an evolutionary process that spanned eight millennia beginning with the discovery of agriculture and ending about the time of Jesus. The process transformed humanity from unconscious tribal homeless nomads into modern conscious people. The history of civilization since Jesus is about our adaptation to this new mentality and for sure we see the process is ongoing. Cheers!

[@1TW1-m5i]

Don't forget untestable claims. The fastest way for s religion to wipe itself out is by making its untestable claims blatantly obvious, they must be a few steps away from everyday experience. If any claims are made, there needs to be an explanation of why they fail so much, like "yo u needed more fail" or it "it wasn't god's plan" or whatever

[@xommg]

I really like these discussions...they are much more satisfying than the game of sound bites and "gotchas" and banal anti-religious declarations that are so often found in comments. Thanks Matt!

[@jonathanrydberg8024]

Matt, this is my favorite video I've seen yet from the ADPP. Keep up the excellent work.

[@utah133]

Like Aron Ra, I'm an ex-Mormon. I'm now a rather hard atheist. I often think that our paths to atheism might have been a bit easier than that of those who were previously evangelicals. Mormonism is so ridiculous that it may be a bit easier to reject. Opinions?

[@exmormonroverpaula2319]

rationally, I tend to agree it's a bit easier to reach atheism for ex-Mormons. Once a person begins heading down the critical thinking path, it doesn't take long to realize that Mormonism is BS. Once out, I think it's easier to see the religious propaganda of other faiths for what it is. On the other hand, Mormonism does community extremely well. One of the results of this is that there's a surprising number of closeted atheists who remain active in Mormon wards. Bishops, even. For those atheists who can't stand living in the closet, there can be a lifelong search for satisfactory community in other forms. I spent part of last summer at an ecovillage in Missouri, Dancing Rabbit Community. I ran into another ex-Mormon there.

[@TacticalOtter2]

That beard wave though, two big thumbs up

[@blueredingreen]

Fear of the unknown and of uncertainty has arguably caused me much greater anguish in the context of my religious beliefs than any comfort my beliefs may have provided. Facing the prospect of having to spend eternity in a place (even if it's heaven) when I don't know what that place will be like or whether I'll enjoy it, is scary. Especially when a lot of the descriptions of heaven tend to include things I explicitly dislike. And there was a whole lot of uncertainty about whether I'll actually go to heaven, given the total silence on the part of God about whether I'm doing it right, and the stakes are infinite. Christianity was never all that compatible with me and my scientific mind. It just took me a while to figure that out. The fact that I'll one day simply no longer exist may at first have been more or similarly scary, but I had a much easier time accepting that than all these thoughts of eternity that I was simply trying to delude myself into being confident about, when I had no good reason to believe any of it at all.

[@lease2coach170]

Great point: the world, in fact, is NOT going to hell in a handbasket. As one example: In the U.S., rates of major crime are now just half of what they were 25 years ago. (FBI stats at www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm .) Yet people still talk about "the rise in crime" that's resulted from loss of faith--if anything, as nonbelief has proliferated, crime has diminished!

[@216trixie]

Matt, one of your best talks yet.

[@WessCNY]

This Halloween I will be going as Matt's beard. Take that any way you want.

[@trickygreen7307]

That book is the reason I became an atheist at 13. It has a wonderful "baloney detector" that really helps with evaluating claims.

[@LucasChoate]

great video Matt. thanks.

[@6perk]

Well done Matt! Can these videos become available on podcast please?

[@Bethos1247-Arne]

This is one of the best videos on that topic I ever seen!

[@johnd.shultz7423]

Bingo! In so many of us their is an unexamined/subconscious well of fear that is denied and suppressed,its a lot easier to avoid the Uncertainty in living and.lose oneself in comforting superstitions/formulas that keep humans from honest self examination( and therefore psychologically immature)The comforting belief/formula also needs to be defended with suspicion and aggression that has divided humanity from its inception..

[@luminyam6145]

Wonderful, insightful and thoughtful video. Thank you Matt

[@Sebastian-hg3xc]

So Matt, will you remove comments from authors that disabled replies so that they can spout their nonsense without being challenged? Other KZbinrs already do and I don't see the downside. :-)

[@agimasoschandir]

Low hanging fruit. Still challenge them in another comment

[@deeshannongarrison5115]

Okay, stupid question time here. What is fear anyway? How did it develop? Why are we humans such fearful creatures anyhow? Is it a leftover sort of survival instinct? Does it manifest itself weirdly because we no longer have to be concerned with rustling bushes but grooming, jobs, traffic and so on instead? True to what you said in the video - the more answers we find, the more questions we have.

[@TheRealSyncRow]

The carl sagan book placement reminds me of the needledrop's record placement too

[@johnrudy9404]

So many of the rules are based upon keeping the group together, which benefits the the rulers by keeping the money coming in and bodies in the pew.

[@johno9098]

Very well articulated and insightful.

[@teejay3272]

When you look at most of the "bad" things that take place, you'll most often find fear at its core. That's different than awareness or caution or trepidation. Fear is a powerful tool and THE emotion that is most easily manipulated for the gain of others. So world? Grow a pair. Thank you.

[@sangwaraumo]

I heard of you through AronRa. I love your talks, you are as honest as it gets and you also had s religious past. All the best

[@EdMcStinko]

36:35 That makes a lot of sense; at least I know of no real remedy to the kind of irrational fear you might feel in a dark, cold and strange environment.

[@wwickeddogg]

A hammer is just a tool for pounding nails. You can also use a hammer as a weapon. It can also have a prying tool behind the hammer head, or a ball or a peen. You can hammer other things as well and you could even use one as a door stop or to conduct electricity. Just because a hammer has a lot of uses doesn't mean that you can't simply identify it. Religion is the same. It is a tool for controlling people and just because it is also more complicated doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't define it thusly.

[@ronburgandy5006]

CHRISTIANITY IN A NUTSHELL: It's like a jealous lover with a gun pointed at your head. "Love me or I will pull the trigger".

[@juanvelez8564]

Not just Christianity. all the Abrahamic religions.

[@MendTheWorld]

Juan Vélez You're wrong. Not Judaism. I'm not saying it's nowhere in Judaism. it's just not a prominent part. You must consider that there are _reasons_ why both Christianity and Islam have grown immensely larger than Judaism from which they originated. Actually, there are _many_ reasons, and the one identified by Ron Burgundy is one of them.

[@SmoothNifty]

"otherisms" what a poignant thought. Thanks Matt you really help others in this journey of atheism and reason. Keep it up my freind

[@trexmtb4381]

thay using the ignorance of people and emotions in a manner that feels magical, thay provokes doubt in your thinking and does so in secret and make you not to work efficiently with that doubt they create, I learned this the hard way, and when you do doubts They have more confidence to continue doing what they do, they know when you are in doubt, they are trained to do so, have a good one.

[@joshuaprescod-campbell6961]

Hey, Matt, I agree with most of what you've said. I'd add that religion also inculcates a sense of shame in its body of believers, to reinforce the perceived holiness of their deities, to draw the line between man and God.

[@SmartK8]

Great. Thanks. Deserves million views and thousands of comments.

[@n.presley917]

+SmartK8 by way of Sturgeon's Law, the second part of that is more like a curse. ;)

[@markmeredith2328]

When ever any proponent of religion voices their favourite fable I always come straight at them with" Just how exactly does God manifest in the Natural world we inhabit. Thats what it all comes down to for me, if they can not answer that to my satisfaction, then God is simply a mental construct. Proud to be an Atheist.

[@Thormp1]

Believer: Your Relationship with god is simply a profound and dynamic relationship with the self, with your ego. This is why god can seem so very real to you. In a sense he is real. He is you. This is why god's opinions are so very often your opinions. This is why two believers of the same religion can both claim to agree with god's opinion but not with each others. When you pray and god gives you answers you are the source of those intuitions. You are simply having a conversation with yourself and don't even realize it. This is why god can always assuage any doubts of the believer. You see, "God" knows exactly how you think because he is you. He knows your tastes, your biases and all the gaps in your logic. Therefore it follows that "he" knows what arguments you will find compelling and what mental gymnastics you are capable of to ignore any arguments to the contrary. Ironically I probably can't convince you of anything I stated above because of the very fact that it is in fact true. You are "god". The next time you hear someone preaching or waxing poetic about god, Jesus, Mohamed or Joseph Smith, change all the names and pronouns you hear them say, in your mind, so that they refer to the person speaking and trust me you will get a whole new perspective on life. This is why believers have such a strong emotional reaction whenever they encounter a non-believer. They simply misperceive the non-believers rational skepticism about the supernatural and occult as an assault on their "god" which is to say their own personal identity. There are a vast multitude of religions and superstitious beliefs in the world that espouse many mutually contradicting doctrines. Therefore they cannot all be true. but they can certainly all be false. Even if one were actually proven to be true it would still follow that human beings have a rather remarkable propensity for making up entire religions from whole cloth. I think that all religions and other supernatural beliefs are cultural phenomena of purely human making. Much of this impulse in human culture is driven by peoples existential angst, their innate and instinctive fear of death. Their own death and the death of the people they love. It can seem easier to deal with death by convincing ourselves that it is not real. "My loved one is not dead they are in the afterlife", we tell ourselves. And "Of course I will never die! that's absurd!". You all need to grow up. Embrace the suck! And make the most of the time you actually do have. You are mortal. Death is real...... Get over it. I sincerely and earnestly do not believe that gods exist. But you have each other. Perhaps that alone could bring meaning to your lives. However if you insist on believing in supernatural claims at a minimum please do us all a big favor and don't give your hard earned money to religions pimps and hucksters.

[@RickyStall]

Thormp1 I like this, where did you hear this perspective?

[@zedekboat]

@@RickyStall DarkMatter2525 made a video on this

[@josed.vargas3961]

People who see you only on the atheist experience should really look at this channel, I think this would be an easier media for them to swallow and absorb considering many of the popular clips of AXP are knee-jerk rage/rant reactions

[@richardreddick5681]

of all the senses, seeing is strongest sense for a human being. When its dark we lose our strongest sense of reality... So its natural for fear to increase when we lose our best sense of reality.

[@leiabryanttheredneckfemini1445]

The only rule written in stone for my faith. "As ye harm none do as ye will"

[@secularteejay]

I view religions as essentially failed sciences. Religion was simply the discourse humans used when all causes in the universe were opaque. We very naturally as a cognitive and behavioral imperative formed descriptions of the world. We tell ourselves stories about our origins and about where we are going. Those stories, given our pervasive ignorance and our disposition to see agency in the world, entail being in relation to imaginary friends and enemies. We have this parent figure in the sky that watches over us and going to take care of us and demonic presences that we should really be worried about. As we achieved rationality and dozens of specific sciences were birthed, we see religion loosing on every aspect. On the front of human health and disease, science is winning the argument. With religion we used to get a diagnoses of demonic possession. Now we have the science of neurology and we know about epilepsy. It's loosing the argument ethically, and it will loose the argument spiritually. As science progresses it will just make a mockery of our past discourse about Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed and the supernatural. Its a process that we have to be intellectually honest about and give time to unfold. Galileo said it best "the Bible tells you how to go to heaven, and science tells you how the heavens go." He drew a line in the sand which separated spiritual belief and science. This is why our government is established in a secular way. So we can believe what we want and have that right. Our constitution protects this, and mentions nothing about God. So when Christians say "America is a Christian nation." I see hypocrisy and dishonesty. Religions all around the world constitute what we call "belief systems." We have the freedom to believe whatever we want and is a profound right in a free society. It is unstable to build a government on a belief system, due to how many religions there are. What you want is objectively verifiable truth and information around to which we all can agree. Once you have that then go to your church and practice whatever religious tradition your heart desires. But know the difference like Galileo did between how to go to heaven and how the heavens go.

[@secularteejay]

***** The self is an illusion. We can't reduce the experiential side to have intellectual conversation of information processing and neurotransmitters at the level of the brain. Some might argue that we are nothing but a pack of neurons. That misses the fact that half of the reality we are talking about is the qualitative and experiential side. So when we try to study human consciousness for instance by looking at states of the brain, all you can do is correlate experiential changes with changes in cognition. But, no matter how tight these correlations become, that never gives you license to throw out the first person experiential side. That would be analogous to saying that if you flipped a coin long enough you'll realize it had only one side. We have very strong third person objective measures of things like anxiety and fear. You can bring someone into a lab and if they say they are feeling fear you can scan their brains with a MRI and see that their amygdala response is heightened. You can measure the sweat on their palms and see that there's an increased galvanic skin response. You can check their blood cortisol and see that it is spiking. So these now are considered objective third person measures of fear, however if half of the people come into the lab tomorrow and said they were feeling fear and shown none of these signs and they said they were completely calm when their cortisol spiked and when their palms started to sweat, these objective measures would no longer be realizable measures of fear. So the cash value of a change in physiology is still a change in the first person conscious side of things and we're inevitably going to rely on people's subjective reports to understand whether our correlations are accurate. I'm not arguing that consciousness is a reality beyond science or beyond the brain or that it floats free of the brain after death. I'm not making any spooky claims about its metaphysics. What I'm trying to say, however that the self is an illusion. The sense of being an ego, an I, a thinker of thoughts in addition to the thoughts. The sense that we all have of riding around in our heads as a passenger in the vehicle of the body. That's where most people start when they think about these questions. Most people don't feel identical to their bodies, they feel like they have bodies. They feel like they're inside the body. Now that sense of being a subject, a locust of consciousness inside the head is patently illusory. It makes no neuro-anatomical sense. There is no place in the brain for your ego to be hiding. There are people who claimed to loose these feelings that the center dropped out of the experience so that you just rather than feeling like you're on this side of things looking on as though you're almost looking over your shoulder appropriating experience in each moment, you can just be identical to this sphere of experience that is all of the color and light and feeling and energy of consciousness. This is classically described by Buddhist contemplatives as self-transcendence or ego transcendence in spiritual, mystical, new aged religious literature. If you seriously want to take the project of being like Jesus or Buddha or whomever your favorite contemplative is, self-transcendence really is the core of the phenomenology that is described there. This can be experienced by anyone and while it tells us nothing about the cosmos or the origins of our cosmos, it tells you nothing about the divine authorship of certain books. It doesn't make religious dogmas any more plausible but does tell you something about the nature of human consciousness. The problem with religions is that they extrapolate from these experiences and make grandiose claims about the nature of reality. Because if you loose your sense of a unitary self, if you loose your sense that there's a permanent unchanging center of consciousness, your experience of the world actually becomes more faithful of facts.

[@1TotalJabroni]

Couldn't agree with you more, Sean Combs aka P. Diddy.

[@Gnomefro]

+Secular Atheist _"The self is an illusion."_ There's no reason to view it that way. _"We can't reduce the experiential side to have intellectual conversation of information processing and neurotransmitters at the level of the brain."_ Sure, but you can't reduce the operation of a computer to atomic theory either. You need a better set of conceptual tools to understand the system, such as, at the very least, logic gates etc, but chances are you'll want to start with a high level block diagram with much higher level abstractions to grasp what it does. What consciousness is - is an embodied reality model. What you call "the experiential side" is just the beliefs held by that model about what it experiences. There's nothing magical about experience - in particular, we don't need an explanation for how color and sound manifests in reality - they don't - they're attributes of the model. _"Some might argue that we are nothing but a pack of neurons."_ We are. We're also nothing but a pack of atoms, but those are levels of abstraction that don't give us any insight into what consciousness is. _"That misses the fact that half of the reality we are talking about is the qualitative and experiential side."_ That depends. The neuron abstraction can fully describe the system. It's just lacking in conveying higher level understanding of how it works. _"So when we try to study human consciousness for instance by looking at states of the brain, all you can do is correlate experiential changes with changes in cognition."_ No. We can also reverse engineer the logic and try to actually understand the system at an appropriate level of abstraction. There are plenty of brain functions that are understood on a circuit level today. _"But, no matter how tight these correlations become, that never gives you license to throw out the first person experiential side."_ Sure it does - when you reverse engineer the system to a level where you are able to understand the process that generates the internal reality model and the embodied subjective viewpoint within that model. Some people might argue that we're not justified in drawing that conclusion yet, because we don't have a full computational theory of consciousness yet, but personally I think it's so obvious what kind of system the brain is based on what's known already that I consider the slight induction unproblematic. In any case, I don't think it makes sense to call the self an illusion. It's a concrete system producing an experience of reality. There's certainly nothing less real about the self as the experience of anything else, so an appropriate question could be "An illusion compared to what?" At best you could argue that the words "reality" and "illusion" are synonyms IMO, which doesn't seem to be right, as there are legitimate usages of illusion that refer to different ways of experiencing things - that both would have to be illusions if everything is.

[@thomasmills3934]

Wow... formal debate in a KZbin chat room. (Quite well informed one at that.) ...impressive

[@Domzdream]

It's actually quite simple when you look at it without subjective bias. Religious people pray to their God, meaning they pray to their own subconscience. That is why they always happen to know what their God wants of them, what his plan is, whether or not this God is ambivalent or a God of vengeance. Whether he's meek and mild or whether his is a jealous or angry God. All you have to really do is swop the word 'God' with subconscience, and viola! it's all obvious. It took me a long while to realise this as a Christian, but when I did, it all changed for me.

[@arthurfonzarelli9828]

hard to listen to this mellow version of Matt, I prefer the version where he tears into idiots

[@billkeon880]

Excellent video. Thanks Matt

[@adammorvant]

Been thoroughly enjoying these videos. thanks Matt. :)

[@Mormormarianne]

Great video, Matt!

[@ssesf]

I watched this video at double speed and can recommend doing so. If you want to spend 40 minutes watching this video then do so by watching it twice at double speed!

[@vAndres49erz]

To anyone who can answer my question, I just had a interesting conversation with a christian. The whole argument I kept pointing out verses to him (mainly about slaves) and the only response I would get is "Well that was back then, you must understand the culture was different back then" how would I respond to something like that?

[@TheZooCrew]

+Andres Rodriguez Ask him why god was so horrible back then, because he supposedly commanded all of that.

[@silverharloe]

31:45 if you study Catholic rules and procedures, you'll see that the Pope isn't always infallible(*), he's only infallible when making pronouncements under certain circumstances... and you could safely bet that the council of bishops will not let THIS Pope ever have an 'ex cathedra' moment. (*) by which I mean, of course, "considered infallible by the rest of the catholics," since clearly outside of Catholicism, he's never infallible.

[@michaelbuckley966]

Great listening Matt.

[@greyfade]

22:00 - The argument from misophonia: I have marker rs2937573 genotype GG, near TENM2. This variant is associated with an increased myelination in the medial frontal cortex. The result is that when I hear someone chewing or shuffling or breathing heavily, I'm completely overcome with emotional rage-H͏̷͞A̕͞TE;KI̢͢͢L͘͞L-response. My mind is suspended, thought processes are muddled, and all of my attention and emotion and hate and anger and rage is focused _entirely_ on the person making the sounds. I'm not a violent person, generally. I don't hate people. But when someone is chewing loudly enough that I can hear them, it takes every ounce of energy and concentration I can muster to *not* beat the everliving fuck out of someone­-anyone. If dualism had any merit-if the mind were at all separate from the brain-my mind could rise above the sound and dismiss it; I could ignore the sound and the rage would not rise. My mind would control my biology. But rise it does. My biology controls my mind. Dualism is horseshit.

[@MendTheWorld]

greyfade Umm... Hope I never run into you. Gives me something else to be afraid of. Best of luck, tho'.

[@sillysad3198]

You are such a pleasant man, Matt, when you are not in power to hang up on callers.

[@top_gallant]

Dillahunty could start a cult. "Acknowledging you don't have certainty could also be empowering, because you no longer have to fear." All Hail Father Prophet M-Hunt

[@stevencurtis7157]

The cult of Atheistism, cats shepherding cats.

[@stevencurtis7157]

Haha, it could be a cult of personality, though, but that wouldn't be fair. Helping to alleviate people of their irrational fears is noble, not cultish.

[@kathleenzucati]

One of the great fears in life is finding yourself alone, without friends or family. One of the things "religion" does for you is to offer you a group that will act as friends and family to you as long as you "believe" the same as they do. Neither of these things is irrational. They are both justified; it's a shame there are no easier answers than to join a religious group in order to find that support group. You have to let go of your own thoughts and understanding and accept theirs, but in return you have people who will check on you, drive you places, talk to you, take you in if necessary...it may not be the worst trade you ever make. Some of us, however, no matter how much we fear total abandonment, wouldn't trade the freedom of our minds for a lunch date once a month and a church visit twice a week...we know the price we pay and will pay, but would prefer our thoughts be our own and our lives be lived in congruence and integrity with our thoughts. But it can be very hard. Very hard.

[@exmormonroverpaula2319]

kathleenzucati, there are some religions that don't ask you to believe absurdities, but still offer social support. The Unitarians are the largest one I know of. However, there are others, like the Society for Ethical Culture. Going outside the realm of religion, you might get lucky and find a secular group of some kind that offers social support. I once sang in a choir that had this in spades.

[@captaingrub2228]

Nice job! But somewhere in there you implied that cultural appropriation isn't total bullshit. But I'm just nit-picking. Loved it.

[@Questron71]

I understand that these debates often try to take on really complicated subjects, but i also strongly feel that it might be a slightly better way to impart all these thoughts if you'd cut the big themes into smaller bite sizes and would make videos a lot shorter. Almost three quarters of an hour of seamless monologue about such tricky contexts is tough to fight through. Even the half hour most of the older videos had were borderline stretched out to keep your mind firmly wrapped around the subject and to not just let the lecture swim around you due to its massive length (Privately i also feel a bit intimidated and stay away from all those three hour podcasts here on YT). Is there no way to try with some shorter clips between five and ten minutes and to look how responses are to that?

[@NakiaRogue]

I hope this does not sound like a flippy comment because it is intended seriously. If an important part of religion is the community, this sense of unity with others then it seems to me this makes the story of Babylon more ridiculous then it already is.

[@benway23]

Again, thank you for your work.

[@xiAGC123]

i'm not sure i agree that guilt is the fear of being exposed and punished.

[@santiagovinay]

One particular concern that i as a deist weigh a lot is: inequality in this world. Let me be clear, by inequality I do not mean only economic inequality. Im talking about people who born with terrible disabilities or who happen to lose all their psychomotor functions in an accident. These are people who live lives that nobody would like. Meanwhile, there are people who have all. This does not mean to make sense to me. All the injustice that exists in this world can't just be an accident. There has to be a hidden meaning behind it. I would like to know how is that an atheist explains all this inequality, is it just a simple accident?

[@bl4sfemer5150]

I only see a few letters, so I must ask if those are Joseph Campbell books behind you in this video...if so and if not, what are they? Joe C. is one of the dudes with whom I would loved to have had a sit down.

[@moknbyrd]

Great talk. Cool poster. Awesome book. :)

[@francinehalvorson4202]

you are a kind hearted person

[@JamieAllen1977]

2:40 Fear is healthy, it helps living things continue to live.

[@MendTheWorld]

jamie Allen1977 Good point. Interesting point. Fear sucks, though. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to just turn it off... esp. vestigial fears that no longer serve any useful function.

[@lease2coach170]

Enjoyed this, but, again, *please*: "criteria" is a _plural_ noun. The singular you're looking for (at 28:50) is *"criterion."*

[@MendTheWorld]

lease2coach1 such a common error, on par with "I am an alumni...".