Why Is God Hidden From Us? Lukas Ruegger vs Alex O'Connor

[@somethingcool0808]

The whole idea that an atheist should put in work and is secretly just harbouring a lack of receptiveness to god, could be argued for the theist as well who fervently accepts god, and would continue to do so if faced with poor evidence. Why is it that the theist is not expected to constantly search to disprove his own beliefs in the same way that the atheist is expected to seek god out to have any valid claims to make?

[@stylis666]

Hm... probably because they have an abusive relationship that is encouraged to be maintained by dishonesty, logical fallacies and thinking errors. I think we should talk about that instead of asking why atheists don't want to join the victims in their abuse.

[@TheFranchfry]

Actually, the theist is asked to explore doubts and to grow in belief - not necessarily to try and disprove it, but to say something like: “Believe, and then you’re good for life” is a display of being uninformed.

[@divinegreat2552]

Imagine the created telling the Creator how it wants to be treated all because said Creator gave the "created" free will.

[@Marniwheeler]

@@divinegreat2552 So the creator wants free will, but only if the created doesn't use it for asking the creator questions he doesn't like? Is this your position?

[@wayfa13]

@@TheFranchfry"the theist is asked to explore doubts and to grow in belief" where? Show me. It's 'actually' a grave sin to test god and you are commanded by god to let go of doubts, turn away from temptation and not to even exercise thoughts that lead to unbelief. Again, you are commanded to come to Jesus like a child*, to have Faith and lean not on your own understanding. smh. *because children trust and believe blindly

[@pixiestyx]

Regarding the argument comparing a relationship with God with an online relationship, it would be more like being in a chat room that shows only one user online (yourself), and sending message after message receiving no response. Eventually you begin to respond to yourself, and then tell people you have an online relationship with another person. But you can't show anyone any messages from that person or proof that they exist, because none have been sent except from you.

[@martynspooner5822]

Well put, I like your reasoning it is a good analogy.

[@Z4r4sz]

There is a funny picture with a kid holding a hose to his mouth, whispering "I love you" into it... and it goes through the hose over his head right into the ear on the other side. Thats how christians look. Self-absorbed and delusional.

[@justsam7919]

And then a place of worship (churches, mosques etc) are chat rooms with multiple people that think they are talking to a higher being, but really they're just in a chat room with each other.

[@Z4r4sz]

@@justsam7919 And the moderator pretends to speak for someone who is never there.

[@joannware6228]

Atheists are always quick to assert their humility and open-mindedness. Yet they are very insulted and react vehemently if they see anything Christian. It almost seems that they have been instilled with a hatred. It's as if Christianity is the greatest evil that has ever existed and threatens them personally. It's strange.

[@EnglishMike]

Well that was a frustrating 90 minutes. I understand why the discussion focused on Alex's personal experience, and he raised some very good points about divine hiddenness and nonresistant nonbelief, but the fact that Lukas and Justin ended up practically giddy over the prospect of Alex nearing his Road to Damascus moment shows that the most powerful arguments for divine hiddenness as evidence against existence of God were left untouched. First, there's the very fact that Alex is just about the best case scenario of a nonresistant nonbeliever who has dedicated years of his life to understanding the Christian faith to the point of participating in most if not all the activities expected of a typical Christian believer and yet has _still_ been unable to flip the switch from unbelief to belief speaks volumes for the chances of the billions of people who do not have the luxury of time and resources to indulge in such pursuits -- i.e. they have no chance. Hence it was a very parochial discussion from start to finish, with no relevance at all for anyone who wasn't raised in a family/community that isn't a least nominally Christian. That brings me to the second issue -- what I call the birthplace lottery. Unless you're born in a time and place where you're indoctrinated in the Christian faith as a child, or at the very least, a place where Christianity is not taught as a false or alien religion, then you're almost completely out of luck. 99.8% of all Turkish citizens are registered as Muslims at birth, and even the most optimistic religious surveys show that only 0.5% of the adult population are Christians, at most. What does that say about the power and motivations of God when a little childhood indoctrination is enough to inoculate a person against Christianity for life? I know Alex has raised the geographical (and historical) distribution of religions in the context of divine hiddenness in a previous discussion, so I am puzzled as to why he didn't at least mention it this time. As with any scientific or legal analysis, statistical outcomes are far more conclusive than personal experience, and it's amazing how quickly God disappears when you pull back from, say, personal accounts of miraculous escapes from car wrecks to the ebb and flow of fatal road accident statistics as car safety standards and driving patterns change over the years. Finally, there's famous example which again shows why any dissection of Alex's personal experience of divine hiddenness is moot. Jeffrey Dahmer is perhaps the most notorious serial killer in American history, killing at least 17 boys and young men before he was caught and jailed in 1991. But before he himself was murdered three years later, a local pastor involved in prison ministry befriended Dahmer and eventually led him to the faith and baptized him, even receiving a written testimony about how God had miraculously saved him from another murder attempt while in jail. There's little doubt that Dahmer was a Christian when he died. Ignoring the fact that God appears to have chosen to remain hidden from Dahmer until after his decade-long killing spree, there's the fact that all of his victims were young -- 14 to 32 -- and from impoverished and vulnerable backgrounds, many of them from gay ethnic minorities. Unlike Dahmer, who had nothing but time to ponder the nature of life, death, and eternity while languishing in prison, his victims had no such opportunity either in life or death. It's possible, even probable that some of the victims were Christians, but it's almost certain that most were not, and since God knew they were going to be slaughtered before their time, Christians need to explain why they were not presented with at least the same opportunity of salvation that their murderer was given before he died. Of course, I picked a very emotive example here, but the same could be said for the tens of thousands of young non-Christians who died in the 2004 tsunami, or the millions who have died in famines in Muslim countries in Africa over the last few decades. Christian apologists love it when the discussion focuses on the experiences of Christians and non-Christians living in societies where Christianity holds significant sway in society because it allows them to pretend that God gives everyone a reasonable chance to choose to be saved. The divine hiddenness objection explodes this pretense, but only if you expand the discussion beyond the parochial interests and personal experiences of a bunch of western middle-class apologists and philosophers.

[@sullivanle]

Mike, this is one of the best comments I've seen on KZbin. I wish this level of analysis was present in my students (or most people for that matter). I'd love to know where you grew up.

[@controlthedreams]

Some powerful arguments here mate

[@abnerruiz4011]

Omg thank you. Theist are on a god tier in mental gymnastics. They easily switch from opposing ideas when it’s convenient for them. They basically want to have it both ways.

[@eros7909]

I absolutely agree with everything you said, it was difficult to watch, I only imagined the two of them saying to themselves “ he’s so close”, “we almost have him” all while forgetting that Alex has done his due diligence and turned up bupkis. The part that bothers me the most is if the Christian god really does exist it still would not be worthy of worship for all intense and purposes this god is a monster anyone saying otherwise hasn’t read the text. Thanks for your insight Mike well said and we’ll written.

[@EnglishMike]

@@sullivanle 😊You're too kind. That's the first time I've had to deploy the blush emoji on a KZbin comment! FWIW, I was born and raised in the UK (Glasgow, mostly) before moving to the US for work as an adult. As for the analysis, well, all I can say is that while I have only recently discovered the term "divine hiddenness" it was one of the key factors in my deconversion from Christianity. In other words, I've put a lot of thought into the subject over the years.

[@Fernando-ek8jp]

Pretty much all of the answers given by Lukas work for pretty much every other religion and magical explanation

[@theunrepentantatheist24]

yes quite. But the vast bulk of people who grow up in countries dominated by Christianity when they see a flashing light - find Jesus - they don't find Allah.

[@Fernando-ek8jp]

@@theunrepentantatheist24 Yes, but that's due to geography and cultural exposure. The vast bulk of people who grow up in countries dominated by Islam find Allah, and those in catholic nations see a Saint or the Virgin Mary

[@bluetoad2668]

If you research pre Abrahamic religions you find very similar stories that then crop up in the he Bible and Koran. Look at the Sumerian religion for example - there is a great flood for one thing. It gets very uncomfortable for Christians, Jews and Muslims when they find that their holy books are just a rehash of older civilization's best guesses at an explanation of the world. But this is hardly surprising - we are intelligent creatures and we need answers and understanding and explanations for what happens to us. We need to know where we came from and where we are going, especially in the distant past when life was so brutal. The same need for understanding led to science and the modern world.

[@Fernando-ek8jp]

@@bluetoad2668 I agree that "holy" books have immense cultural and historical value

[@stothem477]

Yeah their loving God who is going to send 95 percent of the human race to burn for eternity in unimaginable torture. And gives children flesh eating bacteria and allows people to get severe mental illness that completely ruins their life and turns it into a living night mare. Because someone 6k years ago ate an apple.... f you don't love and serve THAT... You should burn for eternity ❤️ yes...

[@ryanjosephlock]

I don't understand Justin asking "why not try on Christianity in a leap of faith" at 1:00:40. Why doesn't Justin try on Islam for a year? Like seriously, why doesn't he do all practices, grow a beard and truly walk as a believer of Mohammed? I would tune into that podcast.

[@ryanrogers3610]

It's probably not a live option for him. If it seemed like Islam might be true, then I'd hope Justin would do just that. Alex seems drawn to Christianity on some level.

[@ryanjosephlock]

@@ryanrogers3610 What makes Islam "not a live option" for Justin? He seems to think it's an option for Alex, so just not sure about how that's different?

[@nagranoth_]

@@ryanrogers3610 that's nonsense. He says to try it on because there is no suggestion christianity might be true, then it follows he should become a muslim specifically because he doesn't believe it.

[@XRamenmaX]

@@Crashawsome or the likely case, neither are.

[@TgfkaTrichter]

@@ryanrogers3610 yes, which makes sense. 90% of arguments, that Alex deals with are probably stated by christians. Islamic apologetics are terrible in comparision. They are basicly still at a "look at the trees" level, like Ray Komfort. He also has made some very bad experiences debating at least one islamic apologist.

[@lexaray5]

I'm so glad that you've been discussing this argument recently. As someone who used to be a devout believer and actually lived a "christian lifestyle" until the age of 20, everything that I had learned about Christianity and the bible made it seem like it would be impossible for me to be able to leave the religion the way I did: exclusively studying the bible and going to church/youth group/bible study until I couldn't justify all of the logical issues that kept coming up. How can we reconcile the way god is described in the bible as being so obvious when we can't seem to find any evidence he exists? But, unlike you, a "religious experience" wouldn't change my mind because I've actually had those. Why is that not persuasive to me? Because I've since had even more powerful "spiritual experiences" without the need of a god. I don't believe anything supernatural is happening. There is limited research on this, but it seems some people are prone to "spiritual experiences" and others are not. What is definitely true is that a religious experience with the Christian god alone does nothing to hand wave away all of the logical flaws in the bible. Edit: the research paper I mention is called "Sensing the presence of gods and spirits across cultures and faiths"

[@Yasmine_0_]

I would also add that different people from contradictory religions have "spiritual experiences", so if we were to consider that experience as a valid argument, we would run into the issue of reconciling those world views. But I have to say, as an agnostic, I decided not to give up on spirituality, and to still explore it. Because subjective as it is, that experience means something to me. But if I do end up becoming spiritual again(probably non-religiously), I don't think I would ever attempt to argue for it philosophically or logically.

[@japexican007]

@@Yasmine_0_ that view is quite simple to harmonize, God exists but so do false gods aka fallen angels and demons, also the antichrist spirit which leads people away from God to worship false deities or even place themselves as God which i see everyday

[@Yasmine_0_]

​@@japexican007 that's an interesting take. But I would argue that it makes it really hard to know which religion to follow. Cause that's what I used to think about Christianity and Judaism when I was a Muslim. And I have a friend who I trust very much who says she had a pretty damn convincing spiritual experience. I would also wonder why God, being all-powerful, would allow for those experiences especially when a lot of people find them beautiful and convincing. I get having the devil as an antichrist spirit leading you toward temptation and ruin, and you have to fight against it. But why would God confuse people as to allow for beautiful consuming experiences from various religions?

[@japexican007]

@@Yasmine_0_ “makes it really hard to know which religion” interesting, I see what religions have to offer and it seems quite simply to know which are deceiving you and which aren’t, guaranteed salvation is only claimed by one religion, not to mention Christianity is the only one that makes sense of all the pain and suffering caused by the human dilemma, not to mention it makes sense of God’s holiness why our sins separate us from he that is without sin, but I guess we don’t see eye to eye on this, I trust God, God bless

[@Yasmine_0_]

@@japexican007 okay... It's nice that you seem to have found what you see as the best and truest religion is. I can't say the same for myself unfortunately.

[@Kookie-lq9sk]

As a teenager contemplating suicide, going out at night and looking up at the beautiful stars begging god to reveal himself and to make the suffering stop, I was met with complete silence. It was only imagining my mother and grandmother crying over my body that I forced myself to continue living. I will never forget that moment, that soul-crushing silence. God is not hidden, god is non-existant

[@Jonathan-A.C.]

Yeah, I get it. If it can’t work in the most crucial of moments, it no longer something worth investing in. Even if there somehow is a God or Gods out there, there is no evidential reason to believe

[@bike4aday]

Same here. What I did differently though was surrender completely to the silence. I sat up, closed my eyes, focused on the silence, and let go of all resistance. The release of suffering that came from that moment forever changed my life. What the silence showed me was that the cause of my suffering was also empty.

[@QuiveringEye]

@@bike4aday I find it very comforting knowing that my suffering is not part of some larger plan where I get run over in the process. It makes predictive behavior and control over my surroundings much easier when I understand that humans are still animals.

[@joannware6228]

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. John 16:33 (KJV) "Do you believe this? The standard human approach is, “Well, if God is omnipotent, then why doesn’t He come up with a better way?” Some things must be left in the hidden counsels of God, and this is one of them, but suffice it to say that suffering is a most effective school-master. Consider the Apostle Paul’s assertion…" (3) And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; (4) And patience, experience; and experience, hope: Romans 5:3-4 (KJV) Ken Axelson "Thought For The Day"

[@QuiveringEye]

@@joannware6228 If God's plan is for us to suffer, he can go fuck off. If his system is that we need to suffer to learn, he's a fucking monster. It's a really ridiculous viewpoint.

[@ItsAlicein]

The only "overwhelming experience" that probably made me at least "believe" in god happened to me when I was very young (like 5 years old young) and it was the genuine, irrational fear of accidentally saying that I didn't believe in god (even just in my head) that I developed this compulsive and obsessive habit of saying phrases like "I believe in god or else I'll go to hell." So yeah, it's very weird that an omniscient god would do that, especially to a 5-year-old since it only traumatized me and made the whole relationship based on fear instead of love and respect. Long story short, when I stopped believing in god, the irrational fear went away like magic. It took about 12 years until I got to that point.

[@DrErnst]

what if that fear was a religious spirit.. a deamon for instance who run the show and makes you miss gods love.. legalism is from rhe devil Gods grace and the gospel brings freedom as you are saves by grace by faith..

[@tariq_sharif]

@@DrErnst Is that the same god who commanded his chosen followers to smash the heads' of babies against rocks because they were born into the wrong tribe, yep very loving, right ?. The time to attribute any action to an entity is to FIRST demonstrate that entity exists. So when (and if) you EVER present verifiable evidence of god or demon's then perhaps is the time accept that they interact with the physical world. Until then, to what level of depravity are you will to be lower yourself as a fellow human to defend the indefensible actions of your Yahweh and his clone Jesus (who said he would bring the sword) ? How depraved are you, as a fellow human, to accept that for the only reason of non-belief i will be subject to unimaginable pain for eternity in hll (according to Christianity/islam) ?

[@DrRyguy24]

@@DrErnst What if that fear was the irrational fear of a 5 year old?

[@damonm3]

I felt similarly. I think religion based thoughts like these is abuse. No child should be afraid of Santa clause right? I am into Mormon peoples stories as I was briefly Mormon for a year in my early 20s. A brief look at the history deconverted me in a matter of weeks. But the way kids are brought up in demanding religions is often times very abusing. Very harmful. It’s too bad most kids don’t feel safe enough to speak to their parents about these irrational thoughts. They think they’ll be punished. Super sick

[@Alyzzardo]

To me it was "you do things so you get into heaven" and I couldn't fathom some of the things people were willing to do to each other just to get into heaven. I thought it was the most selfish religion(s) I've ever seen, but sadly the most popular. The bible does in fact say some horrible things new testament and old that convince people to say or do horrible things that I argue are objectively just bad regardless of culture or historical influence. There are no excuses besides selfishness and personal gain and I just see that as a scam within itself.

[@jacobcluff6382]

I do appreciate this Christian channel; they seem more open minded and honest than most.

[@KBosch-xp2ut]

They’re hardly open minded. They might be a little more polite than some, I guess.

[@jacobcluff6382]

@@KBosch-xp2ut "more than most" When everything else is just terrible, the bar isn't necessarily very high.

[@zucc4764]

CosmicSkeptic is an atheist channel tho

[@jacobcluff6382]

@@zucc4764 and? I'm an atheist who watches an atheist channel that covers some Christian content and I comment that the christian content is not as terrible as most I have seen. I dont know what you are trying to imply here.

[@TitenSxull]

It's definitely different than the kind of evangelicals and fundamentalists I'm familiar with here in the US.

[@NN-wc7dl]

Why are people so concerned with "the resistance" against God instead of questioning why people want there to be such a thing? It seems that wanting God to exist is the main reason for most people's beliefs in God(s). The "wanting" seems to be at least as questionable as "the resistance".

[@svendtang5432]

Especially when you regard the rewards. Even if they are unproven.. Pascal’s wager is showing it’s head here.

[@leahcimmmm]

“It seems that wanting God to exist is the main reason for most people’s beliefs in God(s).” I’m not sure about this at all. This sounds like a nice way to discredit the reasons theists have for their belief, but if we actually go around asking theists for their reasons, I am pretty certain we’ll never hear a “Because I just want God to exist.” Of course, it could be that theists just don’t want to admit something like that, but it seems ridiculous to me that most people’s belief in God [like you said] would just be based on their desire for there to be a God.

[@lrvogt1257]

@@leahcimmmm : William Lane Craig said, basically, that he lowers the bar to belief because he wants it to be true. The truth of belief is that it is socialization from one's parents and peers. Most people believe whatever their parents believe and tend not to change. In my personal experience, most of them don't think about religion much and just pay lip-service to it. They just go along to get along.

[@vickigroesbeck1104]

Especially considering the almost-certain survival advantage our predecessors had from belief in a God/afterlife, providing incredible comfort and encouragement after we suffer tremendous personal loss that might otherwise make us unwilling to continue living.

[@leahcimmmm]

@@lrvogt1257 He showed up recently on Capturing Christianity to talk about what he said. Have you seen it? "Most people believe whatever their parents believe and tend not to change." I don't really think I have to dispute this. My comment's not really about this point. Do these parents just "want" God to be real, and are therefore just passing their desire for God to be real to their children?

[@Thundawich]

I don't like that they were kind of conflating 'resistant non-believer' with 'someone who wouldn't want to worship the christian God'. It is entirely possible for someone to be non-resistant in the sense that if evidence of theism were shown to them, they would believe God exists. But then for them to ALSO have the opinion that the christian god, as presented in the bible, is not something worthy of much respect.

[@SquishypuffDave]

I believe Alex is pre-empting the counterargument that God has no reason to reveal himself to anyone who would not desire a relationship with him. This is a surmountable objection, but focusing specifically on people who are open to worshipping God if he exists is just a more powerful framing.

[@Thundawich]

​@@SquishypuffDave Sure, but you can still acknowledge the distinction before focusing on one group rather than not noting a difference. Grouping those two together will give many the impression that anyone that thinks God's character, as described in the bible, is malevolent will automatically be resistant to any evidence presented for god's existence.

[@SquishypuffDave]

@@Thundawich Ah, gotcha. Yeah I agree with that.

[@Fernando-ek8jp]

Alex was incredibly lenient in this debate. Another glaring issue wasn't addressed: that the only two options aren't atheism and Christianity. Christians don't have the monopoly on "spiritual experiences"

[@CranberryJoghurt]

A reason for kind of lumping those two groups together that I've heard before, and that made sense to me, is: If someone is non-resistant and is shown sufficient evidence for a (christian) God, and if they then believed in that God (which they would have to if not resistant to it), then, that God, by definition, would be all-loving and good. It seems logically impossible to not respect a purely good entity. So, if there was evidence for the christian God, and you weren't resistant to believe, it would follow that you would worship that God. Now I guess you could say that there's more than the christian option for a God - as in, "I'm not resistant to *a* God, just the christian one". But imo then you're already assuming that whatever evidence you would get couldn't possibly be for the christian God, so you would be resistant against that kind of evidence - and it seems fair to me to call that resistant non-belief. If you reject possible evidence (however unlikely such evidence, that would also clear up all of the issues with the christian God, might be), that seems like resistance. There's probably more to dissect there with regards to other options for God that I can't wrap my head around right now (as in, I don't know if rejecting any God would somehow automatically imply resistance to theism in general), but I think for this debate specifically, when arguing with Christians, it seems innocent enough to conflate "christian resistant non-believers" with whatever else resistant non-believers might or might not be possible to exist. tl;dr: "someone who wouldn't want to worship the christian God" would have to be a "resistant non-believer" in some way.

[@Edgarbopp]

It’s so obvious to me. The quantity and quantity of evidence that should be expected to sufficiently prove a extraordinary claim like the existence of a loving personal god is in no way subtle. Clear, tangible, repeatable and testable proofs are a absolute minimum. God presumably would have the knowledge and resources to provide this evidence and has not.

[@davidevans3223]

The free world exists because of the bible if you see freedom as good then that's only possible with Christian culture it's not opinion look at the atheists cults veganisum or infinite gender theory where gender is a feeling outside of biology like a spirit or socialism all are oppressive and damaging all use moral justification for forcing there beliefs on everyone else. We have to progress we can fix our own problems but of course takes time it happens fast look how far we have come

[@davidevans3223]

Scientists say the chances of the universe being so precise like gravity etc fine turning that there must be infinite number of universes all with different values so one has to be right for ours. So they say infinitely unlikely no evidence the universe can be any other way. Then the free world couldn't exist without the bible that's a fact cause and effect.

[@gigafuq8751]

@S Gloval There are scientific models built by falsifiable evidences that explain the development of planets from matter. When compared to the description of Earth's creation in Genesis, the observable models in my opinion hold more credence and better explain the origin of planet Earth within our known reality. Is it impossible that God willed Earth into existence? Or perhaps that he was the catalyst that started the natural process? No, but I can't prove that he was the cause either. Since there are evidences on how the Earth formed naturally without the need for a first mover like God, I am personally far more convinced in that explanation and don't consider the Genesis narrative a viable option

[@Z4r4sz]

@S Gloval Search for "scientists planet formation observed" and for me its the first result. "Researchers used the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope to find and study the planet. It is a gas giant orbiting an unusually far away young star." No god involved. Your turn. When has anyone observed god?

[@zacheryeckard3051]

@S Gloval The only "personal" things are those that are projections or experiences of (and thus entirely contained within) human brains. If 'God' is personal, it's not a god. It's no more real than anything in imagination.

[@The-Rest-of-Us]

My problem with the ontological argument is that depending on your cultural background you can replace the term “God” with anything else and the argument is just as valid - try it with “Allah”, “Zeus”, “The Matrix”, “Our AI overlords”. So it doesn’t really tell us anything then does it.

[@amsprich]

This is a pretty interesting exercise. I like the idea of using this method of helping people understand what their arguments sound like.

[@audrakoch431]

As a Christian, Alex is by far my favorite atheist thinker. I really appreciate his openness, level-headedness, and the way he clearly articulates his thoughts. Looking forward to future content! :)

[@stylis666]

I think it's boring. He seems to avoid discussing the nature of theistic religions: the fact that it requires and encourages people to rely solely on logical fallacies and thinking errors to come to unfalsifiable conclusions. That is not something a loving being would or even could do, but what an abuser does. But hey, you're free to enjoy your abuse and to set it as an example and to pretend it's not harmful. So, yay, I suppose. I think it's pathetic that you willingly and blindly do, but whatever. You're free to be pathetic.

[@theunrepentantatheist24]

he is the atheist Christians love the most - he's like a playful puppy - never offends anyone. I think in time he will harden and go on the offensive. It's money - his channel attracts a lot of Christians. I only came here as I thought Alex would do a proper job on the divine hiddeness problem - but he is pandering to Christians once again.

[@margaretbarrett6087]

Wow, a non judgemental christian 👍

[@audrakoch431]

@@margaretbarrett6087 Wow, a respectful atheist! 👍(at least that’s what I’m assuming lol)

[@margaretbarrett6087]

@@audrakoch431 Touché 👍Actually, although I’m not a christian, or religious, I’m not an atheist.

[@ShadowMewto]

I'm glad to see people having formal, freindly and respectful debates in the modern day and age.

[@andresvillarreal9271]

I can not accept any ontological argument unless there is a clear definition of god. Definitions based on "more perfect being" assume that there is a way to quantify perfection. Arguments about contingency also depend on definitions that have not been provided. In the end, instead of being real ontological arguments, the so-called ontological arguments are based on feelings and are therefore not ontological.

[@crazyprayingmantis5596]

I've still never heard a coherent consistent definition of what this God thing actually is. If you press hard enough you'll normally eventually get some answer along the lines of God being a "spirit" Then if you press hard about what a spirit is and do we have a reliable method to confirm that spirits exist, shit starts getting weird and vague and just outright crazy

[@DanDan-eh7ul]

For me though, even if they did provide a clear definition, I still can't accept it. Every version I've heard is some form of "I define God as a thing that, among other things, exists.... Therefore God exists." I flatly reject the idea that things can simply be defined into existence, no matter what words you want to use to define it.

[@Vhlathanosh]

@@DanDan-eh7ul and it's not just that. You want to disapprove their definition? Ask another theist in their circle. They all have different definitions.

[@crazyprayingmantis5596]

@@DanDan-eh7ul Totally agree, but a consistent coherent definition would be a nice starting point, at least then we would know what we're lacking belief in. But you're right.

[@Wertbag99]

@@crazyprayingmantis5596 Reminds me of a guy I met. He said "I define god as air. Its all around us and its necessary for life. Do you believe in air?" "Umm, sure?" "Ah ha, you can't be an atheist because you believe in a version of god!" Ugh.

[@happymaskedguy1943]

This conversation feels weirdly cathartic - like resolving an argument with someone you care about and moving on together, once again on the best of terms.

[@happymaskedguy1943]

@Gary Allen I think it was more like a recognition that disagreements can be amicable. And if people are happy to have a long and friendly conversation, they are far more likely to go away and really think over everything that was said. It's simply unrealistic to think that a heated debate will ever change an opposing side's perspective. If an experience is ugly and unpleasant then your opponent is all but guaranteed to bury it and entrench themselves even deeper into their views.

[@zephyr-117sdropzone8]

@Gary Allen You're mad about friendliness? You and the other cucks in this comment section prove atheists don't give a shit about cordiality but only want their view over everything else. No wonder you people have murdered billions!

[@jimscott9974]

Remaining hidden is remarkably easy for imaginary beings, and very convenient for their followers.

[@InShadowsLinger]

“Just trust me, give up all your reasoning faculties and suspend disbelief and then if you just believe anything without a shred of evidence and thinking about it, then god will reveal herself to you.” The older I get the more it is amazing to me how much credence people give to religion and how much time is wasted listening to demagoguery and empty words.

[@Mouse_007]

Correct me if I'm wrong but people who believe fall into two categories, those who where brainwashed from childhood, and those who unable to otherwise cope with some unbearable life problem needed to believe for the placebo effect. The former never had a choice and the latter, in desperation, decided to shed all logical reasoning in search of a solution, sort of like a person with (insert chronic health condition here) will give all their money away for fake cures.

[@InShadowsLinger]

@@Mouse_007 I was not talking about personal/private believe. What I am awestruck about is how a functioning adult with a college degree or doctorate can sincerely peddle this snake oil to others, or have philosophical arguments about it. It is one thing to delude ones self if one is not able to face reality, it is whole another thing to try to delude others.

[@Mouse_007]

@@InShadowsLinger I understand, thanks. I feel the same way.

[@waido_]

“Herself”? What kind of weirdos are you listening to?

[@sopsychomattic8165]

@@waido_ Technically, God wouldn't have a sex/gender

[@TuckerWilson12]

To me, divine hiddenness is the single best argument against a personal God. And frankly, every other argument against can be reduced back down to divine hiddeness: "Alright, well why doesn't your defense against [insert atheist argument] make sense to me? Why doesn't God clarify this for me?"

[@mikebrigandi_]

Pascal’s wager is the best proof of god

[@smith6907]

@@mikebrigandi_ No it's not. Which God are you going to wager on? Thor? If I said there were fairies living under my bed that sent you to hell if you didn't believe in them, would you believe in the fairies under my bed?

[@SquishypuffDave]

@@smith6907 The fairies under my bed send you to double hell, which is twice as painful as regular hell. Therefore, belief in them is twice as justified.

[@BA.77777]

@@mikebrigandi_ Pascal’s wager has nothing to do with arguing for or proving the existence of god, it only has to do with investing in the belief IN CASE god exists. It’s basically an insurance policy. The main problem with imo and why I find the reasoning so weak is that you cannot force belief if you don’t believe. Meaning that the best one might do if they are a non-believer is pretend to believe which would be as damning if not more than just straight up not believing if god does exist in the end. “Oh sorry mr. god, since you know everything, you clearly are aware I was just pretending… I guess you must be pretty angry… maybe I could ask for forgiveness?” And in fact do forgive me if you were joking.

[@Ichabod_Jericho]

What if god is hiding inside black holes? You’ll look real dumb come judgment day

[@mattskatter]

I had a religious/feeling God experience when I was around 18 or 19 and it did make me hold on to my faith for a while longer than I would have if I hadn't had it. However, it still wasn't enough for me the more I came to learn of biblical inconsistencies, the universe, and the problem of suffering/evil. I haven't believed for close to 5 or 6 years now and I sometimes wonder how different things would be if I hadn't had that experience.

[@stultusvenator3233]

You had a feeling that was natural and can be induced many ways, religioun convinced you it was (whatever version) was tied to a made up god. Y9ou convinced yourself at that point having been pre-conditioned too. It is a clever mind trick to mentally enslave one, best described as the God Virus, it seeks to implant and spread.

[@spiritrealminvestigator6342]

I'm also curious. What was your experience?

[@DJeMo]

Some say BIBLE (basic instructions before leaving earth) but we can't ignore the fact the Bible has passed through man, even kings according to history so it was used for power and control, so it's got to be twisted to an extent but with the true messages to thoughts within, going way back and how we have so many religions it's clear the original source or whatever that might be, has been hidden, book burnings, secret knowledge, religious wars, when the true message is empathy and peace, that is our humanity that is what we are born with till this environment zaps it from us...... but let's even go as far this environment and our engine within in it....soul aside.... our current biology the body itself is a trap to the five senses, trapped to those bands of frequency in this realm, and the universe and all it's energy's matter is all around us but be are limited by our frequency band of those senses.... I always thought that's the jam we are in and the reason no further understanding from a dimensional view point seems achievable.... As for the God question, a wise man once said if you allow for evil and accept that it is in this world, how could one be ignorant to dismiss it's opposite..... Love you.....

[@stultusvenator3233]

@Indrid Cold who me ?

[@stultusvenator3233]

@@DJeMo WHOA with the woo woo and word salad. Bullshit,Indoctrination,Before,Learning,Error There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.!

[@jonathanwilcock71]

I truly appreciate your honesty and gentleness in this debate Alex. Thank you

[@STAR0SS]

The argument sounds a lot like "unless you're willing to forcefully delude yourself into my religion you're a resistant non-believer". Also Lukas Ruegger seems to always speak from the point of view in which theism is true, which I find very telling.

[@zephyr-117sdropzone8]

And you also speak from the point of view that it is not true, which I find very telling.

[@unduloid]

A God that can't be detected, does not communicate and is unnecessary to explain how the world functions probably does not exist. You know, makes sense.

[@stylis666]

Oh, but he _does_ communicate! - says the liar to the fool. Special revelation, I think it's called. It suggests that you're blessed more if you believe based on no evidence than if you believe after being presented with evidence. It's totally not abusive if god suggests that, or allows a book to suggest it on his behalf. It's totally only abusive if people do that, for some reason, probably special pleading or some other abusive suggestion. I'm just saying, if we are to believe theists that their god does communicate, they're saying they like being abused and that they think you should love it as well and submit to the abuse. I'm still waiting for Alex to bring that up.

[@phillipsmusic3871]

It's nice to come home and see this uploaded just now

[@anthonynorman7545]

That ending about the scam was the most sweet cherry on top to end with!!

[@hardlyreal934]

I must say: I have had at least one overwhelming "spiritual" experience that made me say out loud, in private, "I can never deny the existence of God again". But only days (perhaps hours) later, I was back to my sceptical agnostic self. I refer to this experience often - but it did not make me a theist.

[@hardlyreal934]

@@random-ks8et Sure. I was just walking alone at night as I quite often did. It suddenly seemed as if everything of which I was conscious was itself conscious. It wasn't a 'feeling'. It was an 'experience'. I somehow absolutely 'knew' that I was not alone out there looking at the stars by the water's edge. It was palpable. Truly palpable. It was like an 'awakening' to another reality or, I suppose I should say, a truly 'higher' consciousness. By comparison 'the world as we know it' is like a dreamless sleep. The 'awakening' was not to 'nature' or 'beauty' etc. it was very specifically an awakening to another consciousness. It had to be God. Who else right? So, from my lips came the seemingly self evidently true words - "I can never deny the existence of God again". I'm a 'spiritual' kind of guy anyway. Poetry, music, love, peace etc. but I am deeply concerned with 'reality' and 'truth' so I have no inclination to superstition and mythological nonsense. I have always conceded or even insisted that the world cannot be what it seems. I am a philosopher. I have never taken any drugs or been involved with mind altering practices of any kind.

[@wannabe_scholar82]

@@hardlyreal934 wow that's interesting. what do you think caused the experience?

[@Mouse_007]

I had what I thought was an undeniable religious experience when I was young. What I have learned since then is sometimes things affect the human brain, and just because I experienced something unexplainable, it was a great leap, with no other evidence or research, to conclude it was god.

[@agentdarkboote]

@@hardlyreal934 You could make it happen again by ingesting or inhaling certain substances with increasingly well-understood mechanisms of action in the brain. I know you don't need convincing, but I think the more people who are aware of the neurochemical origin of these experiences, the better. Alternatively you could get way into meditation and have this happen again if drugs make you apprehensive. As a very curious person, I just find these experiences so interesting to explore, and they really can teach you things about the nature of your own mind. Or maybe you're not so interested in having the same experience again. Whatever floats your goat!

[@margaretbarrett6087]

Although I do not subscribe to the naively anthropomorphic biblical version of ‘god’ I do think there is a source and purpose to existence, the immensity of which is far beyond our comprehension in our present state of spiritual infancy. We are all on the lower rungs of a trillion rung ladder of knowledge and enlightenment, and the best we can do is to try to climb the ladder armed with the philosophy that makes the most sense to us (or the least non sense, since nothing about existence makes sense, and I speak as a physicist). Beliefs, doctrine and dogma are not important; the only thing that matters is how we live our lives, doing as much good and least harm as we can.

[@corys9521]

I usually side with Alex based solely on the fact that he has the superior accent, but this discussion had me feeling all sorts of ways.

[@LoaThunder]

Your content has been nothing but amazing recently

[@joannware6228]

Atheists are always quick to assert their humility and open-mindedness. Yet they are very insulted and react vehemently if they see anything Christian. It almost seems that they have been instilled with a hatred. It's as if Christianity is the greatest evil that has ever existed and threatens them personally. It's strange.

[@LoaThunder]

@@joannware6228 You cant generalize a group of millions of people?

[@joannware6228]

Daily Verse "Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal." -2 Corinthians 4:16-18

[@biedl86]

@@joannware6228 Hebrews 11,1 is quite the epistemological suicide. Cross referencing it doesn't make it any better. There is no wisdom in _"looking at the invisible"_ really.

[@joannware6228]

@@LoaThunder I'm talking about you.

[@drumrnva]

It's interesting to hear Lukas in this context. He's somewhat more reasonable when not doing his scripted content... content which I find unbearably smug. 😬

[@ChadThunderc0k]

I agree. Before listening to this discussion, I was expecting him to be unbearable, but I'm glad that I was wrong

[@Ansatz66]

Perhaps he is more polite in a face-to-face conversation, but he doesn't seem more reasonable. He seems to be struggling to figure out what he wants to say. His parts of the video feel quite aimless, as if he is lost and grasping for ideas about how to deal with divine hiddenness. "If there was no meaning to the universe, why did we even find this piece of meaning that the universe is meaningless." I wonder if even he understands what he was trying to say there.

[@joannware6228]

Atheists are always quick to assert their humility and open-mindedness. Yet they are very insulted and react vehemently if they see anything Christian. It almost seems that they have been instilled with a hatred. It's as if Christianity is the greatest evil that has ever existed and threatens them personally. It's strange.

[@uninspired3583]

@@Ansatz66 to be fair that doesn't mean he isn't reasonable, only that he isn't presenting well on the spot. I know very well what it's like to be searching my brain for what I know is there, only for words and thoughts to just not show up for me in the moment. This has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with charisma or polish.

[@jimothynimajneb622]

I’ve always thought Lukas was a good and likable guy, even just from his scripted content, but I do agree he can come off quite smug and pretentious. And I also find him to be straight up wrong on a lot of topics.

[@vorpal22]

I was a Christian for the first 22 years of my life, and for the last 22, I have been an atheist and philosophical Taoist. I find that it is true that Christians expect non-believers to constantly challenge themselves to have faith, but they do not do the same thing with other religions or with nonbelief, and most of them know nothing about most other religions or spiritual philosophies. For example, I have talked with hundreds of Christians, and only two have ever asked me what philosophical Taoism is, and only maybe 10 knew. I find that Christians have a desire to talk AT you and not WITH you, which is extremely condescending and off-putting as it invalidates the experience of all non-Christians. They elevate their religion and put it on a pedestal (I did the same thing as a Christian) and view other religions as jejune and ridiculous while not recognizing the same traits in their own. Furthermore, I find the proselytization obnoxious. I have no desire to convince anyone else that philosophical Taoism is true, because that would be blithely arrogant and obnoxious since I have no proof for it: it simply best mirrors my experiences. I do not care if someone else is or is not a philosophical Taoist, and I find it offensive that Christians feel this incredible need to - via threats, force, coercion, and cultural mixing to make it Christianity more palatable - make everyone Christian.

[@andyzar1177]

Very interesting! I agree with a lot of this, not all though. Good news are meant to be shared, unfortunately many Christians don’t even know what the good news are and turned it into the worst news ever hhaha. Peace brother!

[@SenEmChannel]

With me taoism is way of life, a lifestyle. Of course i dont believe in ying yang theorie or any unviersal truth that Taoism offer. Beside of that, Taoism is good lifestyle to live in peace.

[@vorpal22]

@@andyzar1177 Thanks! Same to you.

[@vorpal22]

@@SenEmChannel I find yin-yang is a metaphor for how many things are only defined because their opposite is defined, and if you tend to exert too much effort to go in one direction you may well end up at its contrasting result, but I certainly don't believe that masculinity is blah and femininity is the other blah and what not. I do find a lot of the philosophy applies to my life as someone with a very painful and debilitating autoimmune disorder, and as someone who has pummeled my brain with dissociative anaesthetics (think dextromethorphan, nitrous oxide, and analogues of PCP, PCE, and ketamine), which is what led me to a state of existential nihilism that was only reconciled when I stumbled across a copy of the Tao Te Ching that my mother had. Now I am able to not interpret pain as suffering, and I go with my natural harmony, and everything gets done in its own time. In that, I find a lot of peace. I'm curious what brought you to Taoism, if you don't mind me asking.

[@SenEmChannel]

@@vorpal22 what brought me to Taoism. Im asian. My society through Taoism in my face when i was born. Many business in where i place is about Taoism, Buddhism and fung xui. Sure Taoism can give us harmony, balanced, peaceful life. But i dont think it is truth of universe. Just like medicine can help overcome sickness, but it doesnt mean medical knowledge is the truth of universe. In my country, most of people think Taoism is truth of the truth. The frist principles of universe, unchanged law of cosmos, and that cause so many trouble. I still apply some principles of Taoism into my life and i love it. But there are still many problems that i will share with you in my country. 1. Because people in my country is worship Taoism. Any lifestyle that different than Taoism is bad. 2. Taoism with ying yang theorie. Dont accept thing like homosexual or gay. 3. So in ying yang. They believe women is negative, men is positive. Men and women cant lived apart from each other. But men should dominant women because they positive, and women is listen to men because they negative. If women have move power than men. That break ying yang balance. That why my asian country cant get better in thousands of years in history. There are many problems of extreme taoism. I sure you are not extreme one. But that is what i have to live with.

[@JediMasterEzio]

Alex, you never cease to amaze me with your thought process. You are far wiser than your age lets on. Drew is great and all, but you're the GOAT, lol!

[@japexican007]

“GOAT” follower of baphomet

[@JediMasterEzio]

"G"reatest "O"f "A"ll "T"ime....

[@Wertbag99]

@@japexican007 No, Baphomet also doesn't do the real.

[@letsomethingshine]

@@japexican007 Don't call Yom-Kippur Jesus/Joshua that.

[@joshuathomas512]

Still #1 atheist KZbinr by wisdom at least lol

[@WepSearch]

what an amazing conversation, thank you

[@kirkmarshall2853]

I am convinced that the Hidden God argument is good enough to push one all the way to positive atheism. It did for me at least.

[@Jaco9307]

I would probably agree, and watching this was very frustrating as it was barely actually talked about beyond the very limited perspective of Alex himself. The actual convincing parts of the argument were barely touched on. As an example, the geographical nature of religion is a big part of why the argument is so strong, but it wast even mentioned.

[@theunrepentantatheist24]

@@Jaco9307 yes because it was a christian centric discussion. 2 christians and 1 ex christian. Alex wants to be friends with everyone and not hurt their feelings

[@Jaco9307]

@@theunrepentantatheist24 While i dont particularly like how Alex handled himself this time around, i also do not agree with baseless conjuncture about why that's the case.

[@zephyr-117sdropzone8]

Its one of the worst arguments ever. Are you actually serious? LMAO

[@kirkmarshall2853]

@@zephyr-117sdropzone8 god doesn’t exist and you’d have to be an uneducated fool to think there is a god

[@HealingSwordsman]

Also this video resonated with me - i was a Christian who was doubting left the faith and went to University to study philosophy and took every course i could that related to my search of God at all. Im still Agnostic to this day, i didnt have the fortitude to go further than Agnostic. I hope Alex finds his answer

[@insanityskies48]

I just wanted to commend both of them for the way their arguments are presented. They're coherent and well made. Also, the fact that they both managed to stay on topic the entire time, is impressive. I often see debates or conversations where one will go off the rails and start talking about something completely unrelated. And neither of them got heated or resorted to name calling, or blaming, or yelling. And I think it is important to have more conversations like this, where we can build that bridge between atheist and theist, because taking the low road does not help anyone on either side, and only increases a divide that doesn't need to be there.

[@EnglishMike]

If anything, they didn't expand the discussion enough. Focusing the entire hour on Alex's personal experience as a non-resistant non-believer allowed Lukas and Justin to ignore all the problems divine hiddenness throws up when considering the experiences of billions of non-Christians around the world. The fact that they clearly believe Alex could be closing in on his "Road to Damascus" moment tells me they barely had to engage with the main issues with divine hiddenness.

[@Skyla22222]

this is ABSOLUTELY EPIC. thank you!!!

[@megannharris1032]

I love the compassion and understanding present in this discussion, though Alex's point was not addressed liked I had hoped it would be

[@klburt73]

I think Alex’s “summary” at 1:03:30 or so is a great encapsulation. But there’s a point I don’t see often addressed that seems important. So much attention is given to whether people like Alex are “non-resistant” or not; but what about the believer? How do they know that they are being resistant or not to agnosticism/atheism? All the lines of concerned questioning directed at Alex over his non-belief…. Should they not also be considered by the believer over their belief? And, as a corollary, if Alex should agree to “act like a Christian” to see if that helps him see the truth of Christianity, why should a believer not act like an atheist in order to see if, experientially, non-belief is actually true? That said, I thought both sides here comported themselves respectfully, and I thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. I think, though, with Alex, that the theist side needs to better grasp the objection of the hiddenness of God: Name ONE relationship where one side stays this hidden when the other side is wanting a fulfilled relationship. In any relationship that we can imagine, such is an avoidance of communication and, at best, a reluctance to commit to the other.

[@daviddeida]

How can one act as an atheist

[@klburt73]

@@daviddeida Well, at the very least, they would cease praying, worshipping, trusting, acting as if there is a God. You can make your own list, but the point stands. If “acting like the other side” is needed to known its truth, then the same applies to believers as to non-believers. Or so it seems to me.

[@daviddeida]

@@klburt73 Does that not imply there is someone who can choose to act rather than the brain choosing over which there is no control.Or do you think there is an entity that has free will and control over what they do ?

[@peterpehlivan157]

Hey, Alex. I feel the trajectory of my mental life has been very similar to your own. I've been obsessing with philosophy since highschool. I've watched you since you were 17 and soon learned to pay attention to how you see the world versus how I see it, since we're almost the same age (you're almost a year older) and we were both trying to get to truth in metaethics and other central topics. Sometimes I got to certain ideas first (I think psychological egoism is a good example), other times you got to them before I did (I think free will being an illusion is an example. I stuck around with compatibalism for a while) (I didn't try to copy your belief, I just happened to reach the same conclusion by thinking on my own). The mental history we share is also happening with seeking God, which has also been a thing occuring to me since 2021. For me, I had a revelation and after that I started reading Paul Tillich (and Karl Barth, whose works were annoyingly difficult to find online). I had, and continue to have, very hardcore naturalist views, but I wanted to see if I could make it work. Soon after, you told your audiance that you've been talking personally with believers and seeking God yourself. I have given up on it a bit, mainly because I think emotional development is kicking-in regardless, and also because I'm not sure how it can be squared with a naturalist worldview in a convincing way. If the similarities continue, you likely see it this way too or will soon. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said I feel like you're like my lost brother from England. There are probably some substantial differences, but I don't see them so far. I'm into Effective Altruism and thinking about AI, but I doubt these are topics far from your alley. Will be happy to meet you some day, as it hasn't happened yet.

[@muslimcrusader5987]

Dang

[@JBFJBFJBF]

I'm sort of in a seeking phase when it comes to the existence of God too. Surprisingly, I don't think I find the idea that there could be more than just seeing a naturalistic world that strange as I did a year ago. Im still not sure how i feel about it though. I'd like to hear your reasoning for why this aspect of your beliefs is so strong.

[@peterpehlivan157]

@@JBFJBFJBF Sure, thanks for the important question. I'm a naturalist almost entirely because of the strength of the inductive argument from science's success. Essentially, my view is that by taking all of the achievements of science at once into consideration, a picture emerges about what the world is really like. I like to call it the scientific, or naturalist, worldview. The implications of this worldview can be noticed if you take all of science - especially physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience - into consideration. Them being that we are a species of primates continuous with the animal kingdom, and have appeared as an output of evolution, which is an entirely physical process. The key steps here are, first, keeping the entire bulk of scientific discovery in mind and, secondly, asking what are its implications. You'll get a worldview that looks like a half-finished puzzle, but whose overall theme is obvious from the pieces that are already in place. Maybe an example would be good. Sometimes people have a dream of something that then happens the next day. This seems surprising and some of them suppose something supernatural has occurred. But if we consider the number of dreams they have in their life, it is statistically likely that a coincidence like this would naturally happen. The inductive argument tries to support the idea that the same is true of anything that at first seems outside of the scientific, or naturalist, worldview. When you pay closer attention, it's actually continuous with it.

[@justaway6901]

@@peterpehlivan157 Everything is a possibility. But science only respects them if they have a satisfactory evidence. Aliens could be real, but since we don't have enough evidence to actually make a conclusion, science says that "we don't know". We could all be just in a dream of a Lovecraftian god or in a simulation. But without sufficient evidence, it would be counterintuitive to believe in those things.

[@emoteenjoyer]

Gold medal parasocial comment here

[@MatthewCaunsfield]

The extended section Alex had with tackling the "fake it til you make it!" approach was very interesting!

[@daemonhristidis5613]

I think when it comes to God as a whole, you can never prove or disprove it's existence. But if it's a God that is categorised, like a certain God of a religion(Islam, norse) then you can disprove or prove it based on a lot of variables such as teachings, history, past mythologies, cultural adaptation ect.

[@Z4r4sz]

When I want to prove a person is real right now I would never think about using any of those. This is exactly why theists will always fail when challenged to prove their gods existance.

[@joannware6228]

Daily Verse "Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal." -2 Corinthians 4:16-18

[@japexican007]

@@Z4r4sz what does a person have to do with God?

[@MarcelRiegler]

I'm honestly annoyed how often religious people will use these very disparate definitions interchangeably. They'll say "Some being existed that created the universe, therefore my God's commandments to not do gay stuff is the truth". Huge leaps everywhere.

[@Z4r4sz]

@@japexican007 Persons are real than any god. I can conclusively prove persons exist. Theists cant use any reliable method to prove the existance of their gods because the best theists got are fallacious arguments and lies.

[@emoteenjoyer]

"that I'm sort of being scammed out of my sinful ways." 1:24:30 This was a hilarious sentence for me to hear, gave a good laugh 😄

[@thischurchbasement]

i find these smiles unnerving i've seen them to often is it a smile of piety? maybe its just me at any rate this whole "case of alex" thing gives me goose bumps

[@frederickfairlieesq5316]

Religions may have survived for thousands of years because they provided some evolutionary advantage, but I believe the main reason we participate in religion is because we know from a young age that death will come for us eventually. And it is this fear of death that perfectly explains why some of us cling to the hope of immortality offered by religion. As long as we fear death, religion will persist.

[@kattihatt]

You should believe in things that are true, and not just cause they give you comfort.

[@daviddeida]

As long as we need meaning beyond biological function it will exist.

[@ThadMiller1]

Evolutionary? No, Religions are not that old. ^^

[@daviddeida]

@@kattihatt Do you think there is someone who has a choice about what to believe

[@kattihatt]

@@daviddeida yes.

[@Wertbag99]

The OT claims that god appeared many times, in a burning bush, in a pillar of fire, as a voice from the sky or as an old man. He is claimed to have sent angelic messengers and to have granted his prophets the ability to prove His existence on demand (Elijah calling fire from the sky). Yet for the thousands of years since these claims have been made we see nothing of the sort. Divine hiddenness isn't just that He doesn't appear, but also that its claimed He used to but doesn't anymore.

[@Yourhighnessnona]

The closest thing to God on Earth we have now is Beyonce. Let that sink in 🙏

[@Nov_Net]

1. God's supernatural appearances to people in the Old Testament doesn't mean that people who have not received such divine revelation have no reason to believe in his existence. In other words, creation itself is testament of God's existence for all mankind. Whether you agree with this or not, this is what the God of the Bible at least puts forward as the universal evidence for his existence. Increased revelation to a particular group or people at specific times doesn't negate or guve people without they special revelation an excuse. 2. God intervenes in humanity im different ways depending on the time period or era. Now that the messiah has come and initiated a new testamant with his ressurection, God shows himself differently to all mankind by personally changing the hearts and souls of people. When God intervened in so called more spectacular ways, Israel still failed despite receiving more evidence than the regular folk.

[@Z4r4sz]

@@Nov_Net *_"Now that the messiah has come"_* Eh? What? Where? When? Did the whole world miss this event but only you know about it somehow?

[@Nov_Net]

@@Z4r4sz are you a troll?

[@Z4r4sz]

@@Nov_Net No. Are you an idiot?

[@andrehanderson]

This is the way debates should be conducted--gently, respectfully, thoughtfully

[@biedl86]

I found this discussion rather funny, for one particular reason. Lukas interpreted your assessment about the magic of the ontological argument in a very specific way. You haven't said ones in this talk, what's magical about it for you, and he didn't bother to ask that. He doesn't consider the possibility though, of seeing magic or aesthetics within an argument, but still finding it flawed. And I think he does that for the purpose of having a skeptic available, who confirms his believe in the validity of an argument, which confirms his faith based position. He kept on coming back to this too right until the end, still not even considering to ask you, what's magical about it for you.

[@BornOnThursday]

I thought the same.

[@biedl86]

@@BornOnThursday Lukas really seemed trying to squeeze out that admission, how Alex is closer to God, due to the magic of the ontological argument. It seemed somewhat desperate.

[@deuslapis5247]

Oh no this is gonna turn into one of those "I got this atheist to agree with me that the ontological argument is sound" or "Atheist stumped by ontological argument". I really hope Lukas is more honest than that, but frankly, he's done things much more dishonest than that.

[@BornOnThursday]

We await the "debate review" by Lukas...

[@biedl86]

@@deuslapis5247 I've just watched a bunch of his videos and came to the conclusion, that you might be predicting something which could most likely happen. He uses arguments from authority. Wasn't he mentioning in this talk how useless they are? He talks about good peer reviewed science for making a case against animal suffering, in which he calls out O'Connor's confirmation bias, while animals are, scientifically confirmed, leading a happy life. Meanwhile in another video he uses a pol from Dillahunty's channel, where 85% of the people refuse to worship God, while standing before him, to make a case for the atheist denying God's existence, even though Romans 1,20 (which he doesn't mention, but he argues along those lines). I'm staggered by how different he came across in the discussion with Alex. Maybe God was watching over this talk.

[@HassanRadwan133]

Fabulous discussion ❤️ I lean towards belief in God, but the gap between that and belief in Christianity (or my former religion, Islam) is enormous. I'm more likely to believe in a mysterious God whose main concern is not whether we have a relationship with him/it or not but rather how we struggle with the cards we're dealt for some wisdom - that is beyond me.

[@DISCO-munication]

You sound like a deist to me (I'm an atheist). I think I can accept and respect such beliefs.

[@thedude0000]

Just asking, if the god does not care about a relationship, what makes the god care about our struggles? Why care at all?

[@tesmith47]

They are related religion

[@HassanRadwan133]

@@thedude0000 Yes of course, why should God care about our struggles at all. I'm simply speculating about what he/it *might* care about. I agree with Alex that there is a strong case for nonresistant disbelief. Therefore if there is a God, it seems to me that belief/relationship could not be his main concern. So if that is the case and *if* God cares about anything, then it seems to me that it might be simply how we struggle with the cards we've been dealt. I mean how we live our lives within the confines of our nature and nurture. Whether one is Atheist, Agnostic Deist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever cannot be God's main concern given his choice to remain hidden - but simply how we tackle the different hurdles life has put in front of us. I'm just speculating of course. I am personally somewhere on the spectrum of Agnostic Atheist and Agnostic Deist - but I do think the arguments for a First Cause are reasonable. I just have no idea where that leaves me. (Thus the speculation.)

[@thedude0000]

​@@HassanRadwan133 First and foremost, I am not remotely being antagonistic against your comment or your view/belief. I was just asking the question, because to me, I do not see a difference. If someone says, "God cares about relationships" versus "God cares about our struggles" Both are equally baffling to me and would require the same level of evidence.

[@ajbowley2725]

My dad died.... due to the way that human psychology works, I have the character profile of my dad build in my own consciousness. I could have a conversation with my dead dad, and from what my brain knows about his personality, I could give myself advice from my dad's modelled personality that resides within my own brain. The way human psychology works people don't have to be dead for this to happen in fact my wife knows what I'm thinking before I express myself a lot of the time because she has built a very accurate model of my personality within her own consciousness. It would not surprise you to learn that we can do the same with a fictional character from a story book, we can internalise a model of their personality and have a conversation in our own mind with a fictional character who could give us a valid and sound Advice based on our understanding of their wisdom. I think this is exactly what's happened when people have a conversation with yahweh or Jesus, or Allah, the repply is from what we know, have read or been told about the supposed personality of these characters. it makes total sense and is entirely naturalistic explanation based on exact understandings of how our psychology works. It also explains why God's morals are different, depending on which denomination of Christian is asking the question, because the personality of God that they have built in their own mind is based on their specific denominations ideas about god. If God is the highest moral authority and has perfect morals then what the individual believes his perfect morals is unsurprisingly what god's going to tell them to do. The Bronze Age israelis thought it was morally correct to keep slaves and to own people as property, unsurprisingly the God that they imagined agreed with them. Almost every Christian I know of does not believe that it's appropriate to own people as property, so they have to do backflips to explain how it wasn't really what god wanted, or they have to accept that God's morals have changed. Clearly occam's razor would have us believe that since we already understand about model personalities within human consciousness this alleviates all of the problems and therefore the naturalistic explanation is clearly more likely to be true. My wife and I read a story book together one of the characters in The Story had such an admirable personality, traits and way of dealing with life and such a generous nature that we both fell in love with the character, we felt we had a genuine relationship with this character such that when they died we felt real grief and loss. Would you accept our personal experience of grief and loss and a relationship with this character to be evidence that this fictional character really existed? Or is it more plausible that the current well understood psychology of human beings such that they can model other people's personalities would be a better explanation? It is entirely possible to have a relationship with an imaginary character.... it's probably harmless right up until the point that somebody tells you that your magical imaginary friend wants you to fly aircraft into the Twin Towers. Not realising that relationships with imaginary characters are imaginary is inherently dangerous. Believing in myth that has an underlying moral to share and having a relationship with fantasy characters is not harmful necessarily....as long as you know that these relationships are imaginary.

[@biggzz3131]

Very well said. This has been in the back of my mind for a few weeks because now that the "God" voice is gone from my head, I'm trying o make sense of how my brain actually works; rather than how I think god 'wants' me to think.

[@joshuaboulton1343]

Looking forward to this

[@sgt7]

Well it was a discussion rather then a debate or interrogation. Everyone listened to each other, were respectful. They kept on topic. They were clear. So people can take what they want from it. I think it was a valuable discussion.

[@eaweeks21]

Loved the discussion. The strongest point to me on divine hiddenness that I didn't really see discussed is that the believer is committed to believing that no one in ALL of history has EVER died in a state of true non-resistant non-belief.

[@darlenegriffith6186]

Can you explain further what non-resistant non-belief is? I've heard this term before but struggle to fully understand it.

[@eaweeks21]

@@darlenegriffith6186I think Alex explained this better in the video than I could, but I would say a person that is sincerely open to believing in God but is genuinely not convinced. If someone dies in this state, it is in direct conflict with the concept of a loving God. If this has EVER happened, then this poses a problem. Resolving this problem, it seems, requires one to reject the person's sincerity (they are being deceitful in their sincerity either knowingly or unknowingly).

[@أحمدإبراهيم-غ4ه9ط]

That would be a strange position to take.

[@zephyr-117sdropzone8]

@@eaweeks21 "Nonresistant nonbeliever" is still resistant otherwise they'd be a believer. Simple.

[@justaway6901]

@@zephyr-117sdropzone8 Oh no agnostics left the chat

[@dontworryaboutit5490]

The atheists on Reddit have swarmed the comment section. Their Enlightenment knows no bounds! Being condescending just shows how smart they are.

[@MarkLeBay]

10:48 “fine tuning” is a terrible argument. If God existed, God is even more fine tuned than the universe.

[@freddan6fly]

"Why Is God Hidden From Us? " - because he seems to be as real as the invisible pink unicorn in my garage.

[@H4FF]

The idea of a "reverse divine hiddenness" has always been my view on religion as a whole. To me it seems rather obvious and intuitive as an explanation; the development of our brains to the degree that we question our surroundings seems a logical consequence of a need to understand our environment in order to survive. I am not a biologist, but that is my first reaction to the question of how I would explain the development of existential questions. To me, it seems that we always look for explanations, reasons, meanings for the why and how in our lives. What causes lightning and thunder? Must be Donar, the thundergod. Why do this earth and its inhabitants seem so perfectly fine-tuned for this incredible diversity of fauna and flora to exist? Must be a creator. I have never understood this need to pinpoint a seemingly overly simplistic explanation to these questions. To me it seems so obvious to simply accept reality as it is - I do not need to understand the foundation of our universe, even though I find it incredibly interesting. I am at peace with the thought that we probably never will. An all-encompassing explanation for incredibly complex questions however, that is simply suspicious to me. It seems a way to conjure up understanding where there is yet none - the pretense of knowledge because not knowing is somehow the scarier of the two options.

[@bike4aday]

If there is no Donar that causes lightning/thunder and no creator that fine-tunes the universe then why do we think there is an "I" in the head that controls the mind/body? That's the key to understanding all of this. You said "accept reality as it is", but what is your criteria for is-ness? Do you see thoughts as themselves or do you see their content as what-is? If I sit down and try to do nothing, but yet everything keeps happening on its own as a bunch of impermanent phenomena, then where is the permanent "I" and what is it actually controlling? How is mind/body any different from a rain storm or a galaxy of stars? If you start digging into these questions, looking for a continuous self with awareness and attention, then you'll start to see what Jesus and Buddha were talking about, and I don't mean as suggestive concepts to fill the gaps, I mean literally, viscerally seeing what theyre talking about, just like looking under the microscope of the scientist that discovered bacteria.

[@H4FF]

@@bike4aday I don't see how your question follows from mine, at all. I don't see why our own conception of self is necessarily correlated, to be honest. We're all temporal. What I mean by accepting reality as is, is this: to accept the things that happen to us. Whether that is the loss of loved ones, shitty days, or phenomena we may never fully comprehend or understand. They happen, and instead of forcing an explanation that is often rather crude, I believe in simply bending with the wind. Let life's challenges roll off you like rainwater off a leaf. Obviously, we all perceive reality as slightly different. However, I think we can still say that certain things objectively happen or have happened. Our interpretation as far as cause and effect and so on goes might differ. As far as the mind and body being different from the elements or the stars, they are part of a living organism that is trying to make sense of its surroundings in a constantly changing environment. I don't really see what you're trying to say, to be frank.

[@bike4aday]

@@H4FF That's okay, I can try to clarify. I agree with everything you said about acceptance, by the way. What I'm trying to point out is a double standard. What's being applied to rainstorms is not being applied to organisms. So for example, you said we're all temporal. If temporalness is being seen, then experience will be that every phenomena knows itself as itself and is arising and passing away very quickly with no independent, continuous subject to take credit for knowing the phenomena. But that's not what most people see, right? What most people see is lack of temporal nature, AKA a continuous subject called "I" that is experiencing the phenomena independent from them. So we look at a rainstorm and say "there's no Donar up there controlling that", but then we look in the mirror and say "that's bike4aday, the controller of this". What Jesus and Buddha saw was temporal reality. They saw luminous, transient, groundless, non-dual reality and that's what they were trying to communicate to people who saw a dull, solid, grounded, dualistic reality, which is what most people still see today, regardless of conceptual belief structure. Maybe all these words sound like gobbly-gook, but I'm trying to describe this distinction because it is essential to understanding religion and why it is the way it is.

[@H4FF]

@bike4aday Right, I mostly get what you're trying to communicate, I think. With regards to "understanding religion the way it is", do you mean the understanding of us as subjects in a greater story? Seeing ourselves as part of a greater whole, as opposed to essentially seeing ourselves as the beginning and end of our "reality" (since, as you said, we are the continuous subject experiencing the world around us - and thus our world begins and ends as our lives/consciousness begins and ends)? Or am I still misunderstanding part of what you're saying? I suppose essentially my question simply is, what about this precisely is essential in understanding religion, to you?

[@bike4aday]

@@H4FF I want to answer your last question first. The way it helps to understand religion is by putting all regular and mystical experiences into a larger context which is the progressive development of sense of self. When the sense of self is solid, then the world appears solid. When the sense of self is transient, then the world appears transient. What major religions are describing at their core is the experience of going from one extreme to the other; from delusion to truth. A lot of people that follow religion haven't gone through the entire process so what happens is the teachings get corrupted and we end up with all these ideologies that take away from the actual point and purpose. Anyways, the one point I was trying to make about your original post was this: If the nature of thunder/lighting and body/mind are the same (process, dependent, temporal, changing), then why do we perceive one as a self/being and not the other? There is a conflict here.

[@hardywatkins7737]

Just once isn't enough. There needs to be some regularity, some consistency. I suffered narcissistic abuse in my mid 20s, ... got traumatised, had a breakdown, developed a belief in something that might save me from my predicament. I had a near death experience in the midst of a panic attack ... met the light, which told me i had learned to love and told me to look after my body better. Thirty years later and nothing. Not a peep. That thing just vanished, never to return it seems. Frankly, in huindsight i believe it was just a defensive and somewhat delusional and self flagellating reaction to abuse and trauma. The expereince of meeting the light - a hallucination crafted from my desperate and shattered mind.

[@Cmkrs34]

I get you. Im sorry you have suffered much. But you make a good point. You would hardly marry someone and only speak or show your love once!!!!

[@canonicalgio7837]

I don't get how people who believe Christianity based on faith somehow don't believe in any other religion because their is not enough evidence? Like most people who are Christian say atheists should take Christianity based on faith but not Islam or Buddhism etc because they have no evidencee? Doesn't make sense to me

[@zephaniahgreenwell8151]

I don't know why only Alex can be considered resistant to "God". Both Justin and Lukas are resistant to any god outside of the Christian paradigm.

[@RayTheomo]

the craziest thing is: these discussions never change minds. unless a person was already well on their way, one way or another.

[@yerocb]

As always, a great discussion. I've given the Christian god plenty of chances and he hasn't taken them. If he exists, he blew it with me years ago, and if he sends me to hell for it, that's on him for knowing ot would happen.

[@jgoeg8922]

You might be resistant 😉

[@Mar-dk3mp]

why you Godless and Souless people are so obessed with something you do not believe, so God and Jesus??? Just get away with it, Godless people, right???😏.

[@Mar-dk3mp]

It is not that how he works. God has his own plans and it is not up to you to decide when it will finish your life, but to him, you can not believe on him but at the end of days you will understand him... That is the problem that Godless people do not get about him.

[@Mar-dk3mp]

@@jgoeg8922 why you Godless and Souless people are so obessed with something you do not believe, so God and Jesus??? Just get away with it, Godless people, right???😏..

[@Mar-dk3mp]

@Gary Allen why you Godless and Souless people are so obessed with something you do not believe, so God and Jesus??? Just get away with it, Godless people, right???😏.

[@artistryartistry7239]

Debating theists is pointless. They can literally just offer up anything they can imagine that fits within the constraint of the conversation or tell you " you can't understand the mind of god" Or "God works in mysterious ways." And what are you supposed to do with that? "Why is there evil?" "Well sky daddy thinks evil is necessary." Now you're in the position where you must make a case against the unknowable thoughts of an imaginary being. Good luck with that one.

[@Kafirman666]

genetic diseases is not necessary if he is the best designer.. what's so necessary about me being born handicapped? that's how I would argue it... I may also add what's the necessity of creating parasites like tapeworms!! not a single theist was able to defend these two evil "necessities"

[@machtnichtsseimann]

Some truth to that. I feel the same way about debating Atheists, well, the ones who absolutely "know" there is no God. Yeahhhh, right. Go on with your arrogance, though, you Cultists. You sound exactly like the Fundamentalist Christian preachers I've heard who absolutely knew who was going to Hell or not. Same pride, different world-view. One assumes there is no God, the other presumes the Mind of God.

[@Kafirman666]

@@machtnichtsseimann based on what a God is according to religions... I know that god doesn't exist and can't exist.. because the reality of this world contradict with the concept of god existence. let me put it this way.. does a cheap TV full of engineering mistakes indicate the existence of a god or just the existence of cheap lazy creator who doesn't care about his clients?

[@moonshoes11]

@@machtnichtsseimann Seems like an equivocation fallacy. If a God exists and remains hidden to a person, that person has legitimate reason the be an atheist. If a God doesn’t exist, a believer doesn’t have a legitimate reason to believe. Hence the discussion of Hiddenness.

[@stevelayton1271]

It would be like debating the magical powers possibly possessed by Harry Potter with J. K. Rowling. She can change the written facts and claim total authority.

[@benjones1452]

This was a lovely debate perhaps one of the best I have ever heard. :)

[@tonydarcy1606]

For all the erudition, I still don't understand why the claimed God doesn't show up and put the philosophers out of business. And how about Him doing some real stuff in the world like ending poverty, disease, wars, global warming etc ? Too much to ask of a universe creator ? It seems so.

[@dannyboi_663]

I'm loving the calculated chess Alex has going. If he experiences God, that'd be amazing. If not, he raises important questions for Christianity through live demonstration. Closer to truth either way. Can't wait to see what happens!

[@littlebitofhope1489]

The one I use is: 1. Nothing supernatural exists: No worries. 2. There is a god and god is kind: No worries because a kind go is not going to punish you for not believing. 3. There is a god and it is Cruel: No worries because nothing you do will please a cruel god, and they will punish even if you do it right because they are cruel. No worries because there is nothing you can do about it.

[@joannware6228]

Atheists are always quick to assert their humility and open-mindedness. Yet they are very insulted and react vehemently if they see anything Christian. It almost seems that they have been instilled with a hatred. It's as if Christianity is the greatest evil that has ever existed and threatens them personally. It's strange.

[@littlebitofhope1489]

@@joannware6228 The hatred is yours because it is always Xtians I see bringing it up. I can't speak for other atheists, but having you people tell me all the time that I will be tortured for all eternity for the brain your god supposedly gave me is a bit off putting. And also the way you use "'I'll pray for you" as a F U does not give me the warm fuzzies towards you. And then there is your persecution complex. You act like the victim when you can't win an argument, and yes, you view any challenge as "hate". Maybe stop doing that. I don't hate you, but I do find you mildly annoying.

[@japexican007]

@@littlebitofhope1489 2. God doesn’t “punish you” you willingly separate from God by your sins, God is holy as such he cannot be with that which is unholy, but also you don’t get punished for not believing, once again if I tell you that you’re going to get hit by a bus if you keep walking and you don’t believe me, the fact that you didn’t believe me wasn’t the cause of you getting hit by a bus

[@littlebitofhope1489]

@@japexican007 Not true. Tell me, why did you feel the need to lie?

[@drumrnva]

The thumbnail of Lukas is just perfect.

[@paultaliesin1862]

The Problem of Divine Hiddenness is a bit like the Problem of Evil: It doesn’t refute some form of deism or other fairly “abstract” view of a god-like deity. Where it causes issues is with particular theologies - like Christian theology - which posit to know a god who is omnipotent, omniscient, and makes efforts to reveal himself to us for our salvation. It is in that context that the idea becomes full of contradictions. Beware mixing these two concepts, as apologetics often does - using an argument to prop up an abstract deist concept and then making the unwarranted leap to a specific god like the Abrahamic god.

[@zephyr-117sdropzone8]

Evil doesnt even exist. So there goes your problem. Neither does suffering, that's subjective completely. There goes your problems. Divine Hiddeness is bullshit, since China and every other part of the world witness Jesus/God appearing to them in dreams, visions, etc. I met God twice, not face to face, but my grandfather and uncle talked to Jesus 3 times, face to face. You ever think maybe the biggest reason God has abandoned the West is because of how secular and sinful it is? Ever? We're by far the most sinful of all the countries, we spit at God constantly. I don't think any good being would even waste his time anymore.

[@dogeatsock]

This is a great point. I wonder if Alex could have a podcast with a non-theist believer? This would allow for alternative conceptions and definitions of “God” (if you even want to use that word). I think the evidence against theistic arguments is very strong, but it seems like other questions don’t get answered if you were to remove the theistic elements.

[@icikle]

It always pains me to hear belief framed in a way that its a choice. Belief is never a choice. In that regard, there is no such thing as resistant belief. If you are convinced of something you cannot help that. The resistance may be externally portrayed, but internally you still believe it.

[@daviddeida]

It also pains me materialist think there is an entity choosing what to believe rather than simple brain function.

[@MrCmon113]

Precisely.

[@Timkast]

17:11 “Take the example of smoking….” 🤦🏽 Yes! Let’s! I’ll wait…..

[@mjholiday557]

To ask the question "Why is God hidden from us?" means that we already ASSUME that "God" exists. "Why is the Tooth Fairy hidden from us? -That which does not exist is not "hidden" from us; it is simply non-existent. Most of us are "hidden" from our true selves. If we were to know and fully comprehend our true selves each of us would know that we ARE "God."

[@matiasdg]

What makes you think our "true self" exists?

[@mjholiday557]

Because to any reasonably intelligent person, it should be obvious that our "false" selves exist, therefore it stands to reason that our "true" selves are a possibility. Because we are (most of us, anyway) owned, operated, manipulated, and programmed by a corporate society whose sole interest in us is that we produce goods and consume them so that their profit$ increase. That fact means that we live in an artificial world where we are out-of-sync with our natural selves and with the natural world. That is our "false self." If we were to reject a world that has been created to produce armies of "workers" and insatiable consumers, and learn to live in sync with our natural selves and the natural world, we would then be our "true selves." @@matiasdg

[@ilmt]

Alex's "final statement" quite resonated with me (a bit after the 1:00:00 mark). I have a natural tendency to look at people and situations in a way that paints them in a good or better light - my wife both adores and hates it at the same time :) - for instance in traffic, if someone cuts me off, or is speeding - I tend to go, yeah, but maybe they are late for a really really important meeting, or they are driving someone sick, or something like that - instead of being angry and still swearing on them being just considered douche 10 minutes after that happened (which they most probably were). But I can't 100% deny the possibility so I give them the benefit of a doubt. I was doing basically the same with Christianity - every time a new doubt or contradiction came up I quickly came up with a reason why it is so, and why it is reconcilable with the God we wanted to be true. Yes, the one we wanted to be true, the one we were taught about, but the one which is not written about in the Scripture, or at least it looks like that for a layman without several degrees in theology and Greek/Hebrew languages is not. I had to do so many excuses and justifications why the differences are there, and the differences from the real world I realized I'm doing it because I wanted it to be true and because I was brought up as if it was being true, but in the end, it doesn't seem to be true. In the end, the discrepancy between the God I was taught about, what is written in the Bible, and how reality seems to work was too big so I wasn't able to reconcile all 3 together without changing the meaning of the Bible so much that it lost all value - once you can't take anything in the Bible literally, how do you know what it actually tries to say?

[@Z4r4sz]

*_"once you can't take anything in the Bible literally, how do you know what it actually tries to say?"_* With absolutely no indications given in the bible, how can you possibly determine what is meant to be taken literally and what isn't?

[@fatimamubarak7170]

@@Z4r4sz consistency, truth is always consistence

[@ronaldbezemer8439]

36:24 From the contrary: How certain can a believer be that he is non-resistant that if God is not there he is not putting up any barriers?

[@ermiasmulat8856]

barriers to non existence? How is that possible to begin with?

[@DaddyBooneDon]

Alex, I have to admit it's been interesting for me as a Christian to watch your journey. I'm glad you're open to God. I hope that one day the hiddenness of God becomes a non-issue. Having had a profound religious experience at the beginning of my conversion, I can say that it does give me a point of no return on the question of God, but life is full of times when I feel far from God and vice versa. It's times like that I remember my former pastor's advice: the Christian experience is based on Facts, Faith, and Feelings. The feelings are the last concern. Sometimes I don't feel anything, but when I can focus my faith on the facts, the feelings (of closeness, intimacy, revelation, etc) eventually come. I hope this helps. Bless you for always sharing your thoughts

[@mrs.butterworth400]

Don Boone What’s facts are you talking about? Literally the only reason anybody in the world believes in any religion is because of something that I call the birthplace lottery. Unless you're born in a time and place where you're indoctrinated into the Christian faith as a child, or at the very least, a place where Christianity is not taught as a false or alien religion, then you're almost completely out of luck. 99.8% of all Turkish citizens are registered as Muslims at birth, and even the most optimistic religious surveys show that only 0.5% of the adult population are Christians, at most. What does that say about the power and motivations of God when a little childhood indoctrination is enough to inoculate a person against Christianity for life? The fact that many Christians (Not all of course) believe that other believers of other religions are gonna burn in hell for all eternity when the vast majority don’t believe in Christianity because of the spawn point they were given in life is totally unfair and illogical.

[@DaddyBooneDon]

@@mrs.butterworth400 tell that to the millions of Chinese christians led to the Lord by Chinese evangelists

[@DaddyBooneDon]

@@mrs.butterworth400 the facts I'm talking about are the historicity of the person of Jesus and the Resurrection

[@habe1717]

@@DaddyBooneDon “Millions of Chinese Christians” So…. less than 1% of the total Chinese population? That doesn’t discredit “birthplace lottery” at all.

[@octs609]

@@habe1717 its like a chinese men are bank robber fallacy. Just because a million chinese men are bankers does it compare to billion.

[@frankiemiller5364]

Live as if God is real? But which God should one aim to live in accordance with? How would one chose which religion to “act as if it is true?” Just put names in a hat and randomly pick one? Go with the one the people around you happen to believe?

[@majestic-domination]

This is why I can't take religious people seriously.

[@pinecone421]

Yeah it’s not like we can just choose to pick whichever religion we find the most likely to be true … ?

[@japexican007]

Perhaps the one that makes logical sense, has evidence for its claims and backs up its claims, not to mention Is worth following

[@japexican007]

@Soselo Dzhugashvili why is that?

[@japexican007]

@Soselo Dzhugashvili I mean why is it that you think the reasons you gave apply to Christianity? isn’t that assuming you’re view is true?

[@meme-gd2pk]

I didn't get much out of this. It was civil, even friendly, but very little ground was covered.

[@particube]

"If I experience something like a flash of light I'll become a Christian" Man. This whole discussion was just three people trying to convince themselves that Christianity is more intellectually serious than it actually is.

[@shadow67876]

How do you know if it's a hallucination anyway. The brain glitches all the time. Anyone who has had schizophrenia knows that what you perceive if not necessarily reality. True evidence would be if multiple people all witness this impossible event at the same time and place, not one individual.

[@stylis666]

Indeed. There is still no reason to even consider a god a possibility. And if he starts believing with the first hallucination that convinces him it's not a hallucination I give up on him completely. If he's not even asking if a loving being could require and/or encourage people to start believing based on the fallacious arguments and thinking errors, I don't really see how this is a productive discussion. Divine hiddenness isn't compatible with a loving god that bars one from entering heaven if one doesn't fall for the thinking errors and logical fallacies that are the only "evidence" for its existence and i'm wondering why it's never brought up. It really seems that the more that someone studies philosophy, the dumber they become.

[@batbiebel]

@@stylis666 Or maybe they overcome the unwillingness to consider god as a possibility.. I believe there's no such thing as a god or gods, but I have yet to see a sound argument that they are impossible. I'm enjoying winessing Alex outgrow the dogmatic lack of belief atheism that's so prevalent on youtube.

[@agentdarkboote]

@@stylis666 It might hearten you to know that back in 2015 in the US according to Pew Research, 7.1% of the public were atheists, 41% of scientists were atheists, and a whopping 73% of philosophers were atheists. I think the tendency of philosophy is not to make people dumber, but instead to be less confident in their own beliefs. To me, this is a good thing. Based on other recent content from Alex, I don't think we have to worry too much that a single hallucination would do it. I think he was just trying to have a friendly conversation, and maybe he was not feeling very confrontational on the day that this was shot, I know I have those days. In other places he seems to be a much sharper interlocutor, offering significantly more pushback.

[@Solbashio]

i like connor but he gives this bullshit more creedence than it will ever deserve

[@peterp-a-n4743]

Alex totally nails it @ 1:01:00 Theists not even realize that they can only play tennis without the net.

[@japexican007]

This is assuming atheism is true, such that we can just reverse it and say atheism is just a delusion to the response of those who do not want God to exist because that would imply they would have to acknowledge their sins and give an account to God

[@peterp-a-n4743]

@@japexican007 you certainly _can_ reverse it but one gives a very parsimonious account from a point of view we're all born into, based on minimal assumptions which we all can agree to and one gives a highly convoluted account based on preposterous assumptions that are simply not necessary. If you start with magic ie. presupposing something that serves as a _sufficient_ explanation _for anything_ and which you in turn have to give no explanation for or even by design think as intrinsically inexplicable, you can fantasize literally any worldview and "reverse" it from your idiosyncratic one. (the myriads of mutually contradictory worldviews based on the assumption of magic presented by the thousands and thousands of different religions are a testament to this fact)

[@japexican007]

@@peterp-a-n4743 what is “magic” but something that has yet to be understood, but yes you can accept simple instead of true, but what is simple except by the person understanding it, I consider naturalism ie non-consciousness to be more faith based than consciousness guiding life, the requirements for unguided processes are far more complex than someone guiding those processes towards life but I guess it depends on wether you fit God into your view or not thus God is simple in my view but to you Quite the opposite

[@cameron339]

@@japexican007 Nope, what you "want" to exist is irrelevant to what actually exists. If you're only believing in god because you "want" him to exist than you've already lost the argument.

[@zephyr-117sdropzone8]

@@peterp-a-n4743 God existing isn't magic. God is perfectly fit within naturalism. Just a broader view of it.

[@trifonTAF]

Great debate. That question is actually what made me leave mormonism at 19, way before I heard about any other argumen. I then called myself an agnostic for a while, but at least I ditched the idea of religion altogether.

[@rcnfo1197]

"Divine hiddenness is another form of the problem of evil." Absolutely! And it goes to the heart of the Christian claim that God is love, and to the Christian evangelical emphasis on having a "personal relationship" with Jesus. You can't have a relationship with someone who doesn't respond, who is never there, and who let's all, believer and nonbeliever alike, innocent and guilty, suffer alone through all the chaotic creative and destructive forces that shape our world. Christian apologetics is tiresome for its repetitive arguments that fail to answer this central issue.

[@jensraab2902]

Isn't it funny, well, more like sad or perhaps scary, that fanatical fans of celebrities who think that they are in love with them and that these celebrities should reciprocate their obsessive infatuations have more of a case than Christians because these celebs at least are known to exist? Frankly, sometimes hearing a Christian talk of the personal relationship they claim to have with this god that never shows its existence in any way is not unlike that stereotypical pitiful guy in high school who has "a girlfriend who lives in Canada".

[@MrCmon113]

​@@jensraab2902Reminds me of a guy I knew who tried to get with a girl all throughout high school and she clearly had zero interest. It was entirely one sided, but he didn't stop simping. The church simps for a guy, who regardless of his existence clearly doesn't care for them at all.

[@ParadoxProblems]

The naturalistic view seems to explain existential quandries quite well. Evolving to recognize patterns in order to survive, we attempt to rationalize more and more of our reality. Eventually we come to something for which our biology and our evolved sense of consistent logical frameworks seem to be inadequate to resolve and we cover up the hole in our understanding with a nice looking tapestry of a god.

[@maxrusty3596]

Wow so eloquently put, it's something I've tried and successfully and not so successfully explained many times in my life but never heard it out so simply. Well done.

[@Nov_Net]

That starts off with the false assumption that we are trying to resolve an inadequacy with our logucal framework, rather than using our logical framework to come to a rational conclusion based on our reality. Assumptions never make good addresses.

[@maxrusty3596]

@@Nov_Net You missed the point entirely sir.

[@Nov_Net]

@@maxrusty3596 no, I'm showing how his assumptions about theists are not a method of determining reality. Sure it sounds nice and makes atheists feel at ease, but it's an assumption and a poorly generalized one at that

[@maxrusty3596]

@@Nov_Net Lol it's so funny how u can twist it around and make it seem like it's something to make ppl feel good and not just a very reasonable and logical way to think about the human experience and how we cope with a lack of understanding.

[@lazysloth8448]

I respect your evolution about some arguments for/against religion but I don't understand or share some of them. I would be really interested if you give more details about it someday !

[@lambdanebula8473]

You should keep in mind the distinction between something you can prove to yourself and something you can prove to others, because while these are usually the same, that isn't always the case. If you happen to see an animal that appears to have the head of a lion and the body of a bull, and you have no reason to doubt your cognition despite looking for such a reason, then that very well may be proof enough that such a creature exists in some capacity. However, it would be irrational for someone else to believe you, because they don't have the same information you do, nor could you convey that information without something being lost. Alex says he'd be come the most prolific christian apologist if he had an experience like this with the christian god, but that would be very irrational. It would be reasonable for him to say that he is rational in coming to the conclusion that god exists, but that wouldn't make any christian apologia any more rational. The attempts at logical deduction to the existence of god, the rational argument, always fail, but that doesn't preclude the validity of an argument made from evidence, the empirical argument. As it stands, no one has ever succeeded at making a valid empirical argument that the christian god is more likely than not to exist. However, the nature of empirical information is such that it can never be completely ruled out, but again, even if you can make such an argument for your own adoption of the idea, that doesn't entail that you can necessarily make an argument for anyone else to adopt the idea. At the end of the day, while it is possible that the christian god exists, or any god for that matter, we currently don't have good reason to adopt this. Rationally, it is more likely than not that such an entity doesn't exist, and based on every christian whose perspective I've heard on this topic, they too don't have enough evidence, even to themselves, to rationally conclude that an entity meeting that description exists, unless of course, if they are withholding crucial information. The problem of divine hiddenness is only a problem for those who have adopted the view that the christian god is real. They have to reconcile that idea with the lack of evidence for god's existence. The rational conclusion is, of course, that the christian god is not real, but if you are unwilling to make that conclusion, you still need to explain why an entity like the christian god, who we have no reason to assume would remain hidden, still remains unevidenced.

[@a_b897]

Excellent comment, well said!

[@happymaskedguy1943]

I don't believe in a god because I don't personally find it plausible, especially given our endless ignorance to the workings of the universe. Not because I want to 'get my sin on'.

[@bakedbeans5494]

Nah.

[@fr.hughmackenzie5900]

can't believe we hide to to wait to last 90 secs (1:27:30) for someone to say "even more powerful, people's moral sense, - vast majority of people do seem to go around as if they owe a moral obligation to Someone".

[@SouthernMenace]

I found the first half of the debate quite lacking in substance, and I think Alex hit the nail in the head when he commented about philosophy not being a good way to investigate the god question. It was a meandering, non-committal conversation that was not rich in arguments. The second half was more interesting, and I think some points about divine hiddenness were brought up. I think the fact that both participants are in a friendly conversation made things a bit too 'safe'. Some civil 'hostility' when discussing those matters can be a useful tool in bringing up more incisive arguments and defenses. As it is, it was more of a bar talk than anything else (which is not a problem, of course). I guess I just wanted Alex to challenge all the presuppositions and philosophical meandering a bit more, like he did at the end. I feel his theological conversations are lacking the fire behind his vegan ones, where he does a great job in isolating individual arguments and breaking them apart without giving the opposition a lot of space to wander away. Finally, I get the point about YT Atheism, in how it can 'infect' someone with more radicalized opinions (and the comparison with politics was spot-on), but at the same time, I feel the need to highlight the fact that we have all sorts of atheists promoting content that's relevant for them, in their own social and cultural context. I think it's much easier to be a passive agnostic when you are surrounded by nice people having theological conversations in the UK, where this is not at the forefront of the christian debate. People in the US or Latin America won't have the same luxury, since the religious debate in those places is much more charged and, in many cases, dangerous. The same applies to talks about the Islam or Hinduism. I'm happy to say I'm a very vocal atheist, and this is because my life was touched by religious confrontation and shenanigans quite a bit, and I didn't need YT to get me to that point. Thanks for the video and the discussion.

[@jeremyn4397]

Yep, its all fine and dandy to have polite conversations about beliefs until your rights are being taken away from you because some dogmatic zealots have political power.

[@Jonathan-A.C.]

I mean there’s a time and place for different things. I think this video largely was great at what it sought out to do. It was aiming to delve into certain complexities in a very open and patient way, which it did. Some videos are meant for very assertively going into certain points within this topic, and hammering in a position.

[@FuzzyJeffTheory]

I would love to see a video explaining the reasons to take the ontological argument seriously, and rebutting your original video. Because while I’m no professional philosopher, it still seems laughably bad to me

[@DanDan-eh7ul]

Alex actually did an April fools podcast with Stephen Woodford called "Why I'm Christian now" where he pretends to be Christian and steelmans the ontological argument and discusses it for half an hour. It's a really good watch.

[@deuslapis5247]

He did also discuss it with Joe Schmidt in the arguments for god tier list video Alex did. They go into a lot more detail there.

[@FuzzyJeffTheory]

I checked out both his April 1st and Tier List videos and I remain unimpressed. Alex focuses a lot on the Anselm form of a ‘greatest conceivable being’. The argument goes that if the greatest conceivable being does not exist in actuality, then there is yet a greater conceivable being, which does exist. Yet this makes the large leap in assuming that this new greater conceivable being is a coherent concept. The greatest achievement of ontological arguments is their extreme sophistry I think mere exposure to as much philosophy as Alex has leads him to give more credence to nonsense to bullshit arguments than he should

[@deuslapis5247]

@@FuzzyJeffTheory well I'm not sure I can do it justice here but I'll try my best. Essentially, what the ontological argument does is set up a choice: is it possible for a necessary being to exist? If so, then that being would by definition exist in all possible worlds, including the actual world. If we establish simply the possibility of a necessary being, in any form, we can then deduce the actual existence of this being. Mind you, this doesn't prove god, but rather a necessary being, whatever that may be. It's an interesting argument because it establishes the idea that you do not need to prove the existence of god, but only the possibility, because once you get there, the ontological argument brings you all the way to the actual existence of that being.

[@justadude7752]

@@deuslapis5247 aand so what prevents me to use this argument for any form of being? Not just gods? Necessary being could be any one thing. As long as you just stick the point of them being necessary onto them. Seems pretty pointless to me.

[@carel-bartviljoen3465]

All I’ll say is, we need more conversations between Deflate and CosmicSkeptic

[@kgistiano8420]

Awesome podcast. 👌

[@doug196]

The three believers in this video perplex me because they’re obviously bright men, yet to be so familiar with the arguments against a god and be so entrenched in belief is mind boggling to me. Yes, I once believed as they do, but I was an uniformed sheep that didn’t ask questions. After I started asking questions and discovered skepticism, my continued belief became impossible. These gentlemen, lovely as they may be, and I don’t mean to be condescending, appear to be fully brainwashed in a way that supersedes their intellect.

[@michaeldillon3113]

For anyone who is seriously interested in the evolution of ideas of ' god ' particularly post Nietzsche, there is a wonderful old TV series called ' Sea of Faith ' now available on KZbin. Sea of Faith was pretty duced by the Cambridge academic Don Cupitt . The ' Sea of Faith ' organisation was a controversial group of clergy who came out as non believers a generation ago . Influenced by Wittgenstein they understood that ' belief ' is a linguistic creation . Idealism posits that reality is a mental creation but Wittgenstein emphasised that much of our reality is a linguistic creation . So if you say ' I don't believe in god ' you really have to ask what do you mean by ' I' ' belief ' ' god ' and so forth . We get idolatrous in taking linguistic concepts as things that are real in themselves . Wittgenstein was an engineer originally and had a very practical approach to the world . He didn't appreciate philosophy that had no obvious useful application. The Sea of Faith clergy did not believe in god because they understood that that idea was just that a linguistic construction. However they carried on being clergy because they thought that religious ritual and structure were useful for society .✌️

[@mdug7224]

Great conversation. Thank you Interestingly enough, I had just watched Aron Ra interviewing John C. Wathey PhD., author of The Phantom God: What Neuroscience Reveals about The Compulsion to Believe. There were certain points that complimented what was in this vid.

[@stylis666]

Oh? Thanks for bringing that up. I haven't seen that. Seems a lot more interesting than this horseshit about some dude's fan fiction and Alex paying lip service.

[@lindacarroll5018]

I'm so grateful for Alex. There are so many aspects to the 'God' question. I don't believe in 'God' but I've had transcendent, numinous experiences of great bliss, beauty and a sense of oneness. Beyond the aesthetic experience there is the stark question of the ethical/moral struggles that thrust us into The Dark Night of The Soul. I have experienced a great sense of Love, compassion, empathy for ALL Sentient Beings but the reality of how life is so brutally savage for so many beings, leaves me in despair. I suppose the 'God' question doesn't really exercise me. Certainly, unless the aspiration to Universal Love is powerful enough within each human heart, I feel we are on our own BUT maybe 'God' is a Becoming. Not a He/She/It but some kind of mysterious source of Being struggling to become a fully conscious MIND that is holistic - Truth/Beauty/Oneness/Goodness. If we have no LOVE then All the aesthetic beauty of the cosmos remains a magnificent show without Heart/Soul/Spirit for ALL the truly personal/subjective human experiences that we crave.

[@wayfa13]

yeah, a candy flip can do this, but do go on, hearing acid trip stories is very entertaining =)

[@justaway6901]

Word Salad yummy

[@zephyr-117sdropzone8]

The problem of evil and suffering makes no sense. People are commanded to end suffering and bring good to the world. Why you require God to do that is beyond me.

[@bike4aday]

Oneness experiences are partial or close encounters with no-self and impermanence which is the appearing of omniscience and omnipresence which IS God. God is not a separate self in the sky, it's the no-self in everything.

[@MegaLuros]

There is a fundamental difference between "I would not like to worship such a god" and "I would not like to live in a world where such a god exist". It's like saying that not liking war is lacking belief in the existence of wars. There is tons of things in the world that many people don't like, that does not make them less real.

[@johngleeman8347]

I've never heard a good explanation for why God had plenty of time to personally show himself to the characters in the bible, but the rest of us in the modern age aren't worth his time apparently. I want my burning bush and road to Damascus before I'll give him the time of day. Spare me the middle men.

[@daviddeida]

5g of dried magic mushrooms in a dark room.

[@nicoletaungurean5230]

You do not want a burning bush! Yes, that is the level.

[@johnnyblack4]

Why is worship of anything necessary, let alone a villain like the Christian god?

[@davenchop]

certain people have an inert desire to be a slave. maybe somewhere down the dna line it was a benefit and other like us have no desire for any creature real or fake commanding us to bow and sing its praises or burn for eternity...

[@japexican007]

It’s not necessary, there’s plenty of people who go into the lake of fire for worshipping Satan instead

[@Mkeusquealbby]

​@@japexican007 are they worshipping satan or are they simply just not worshipping the christian god

[@MrCmon113]

​@@japexican007It's funny how your religion combines all of the downsides of monotheism with all of the downsides of believing in evil demonic forces.

[@Kruppes_Mule]

In the early part of this discussion they go from discussing arguments and then switch from these arguments to then asking why EVIDENCE doesn't move you..... because EVIDENCE is sorely lacking and the ARGUMENTS are just that.... and for most of us the arguments have sufficient counters to be meaningless without substance to support them.

[@antitheistvegan]

It’s amazing to me how much time and energy is spent discussing make-believe, wish thinking and intellectual laziness.

[@33sosa85]

But you are just like them. Preaching on your veganism. You literally followed the protocols of the elders of veganism: rule 1) tell everyone that you are a vegan, rule 2) tell everyone to accept veganism

[@happyderp2282]

@@33sosa85 this is a faulty attempt at leveling. Veganism as a moral stance is based on observations made on the way humans treat the animals they breed and slaughter. Religious morality is often, if not entirely based on the *unobservable*

[@33sosa85]

@@happyderp2282 well as I understand motives of veganism are based on: 1) redudction of animal cruelty 2) better health in comparison to animal products 3) environmental conservation. These factors could be observed, yet the alternative of following global veganism has not been observed. There is no proof that vegan diet is better than an omnivore diet (alot of vegans supplementing vitamin k2, d3 and b12 since they know they cannot get these from plants), and also eat huge amounts of omega 6 plant fats like sunflower oils and peanut butters. But they believe it is the healthiest thing in the world and wants to convert others. Also, if they replace all animal farms with crops, the level of agrochemical required will be unfathomable, as well as land degredation. There is alot more to write but the only arguement that stands in veganism is the possibility of less animal cruelty. So... its not that far off in the aspect that they believe and proselytize in something that isnt proven.

[@Wertbag99]

With the reach, power and impact of religion, I don't see a problem with investing time and energy to discuss it. It's been said "if religion is true it is the most important thing to know, while if it is wrong, that is the most important thing to know."

[@bolt7]

@33 Sosa I'm not equipped to discuss the health aspect, and while there are some health benefits (eg. reduced cancer risk), I'm not entirely sure that that massively outweighs the increase in planning necessary to get all your nutrients. What I can say is that both points 1 and 3 are clear cut. 1) Removing the trillions of animals factory farmed yearly would obviously massively reduce suffering. The sheer scale of the master makes it so even with the assumption that their experiences are orders of magnitude less tangible. 2) The argument from "if we eat less animals we need to grow more plants" completely ignores the crops we grow to feed domesticated animals. By the sheer inefficiency of an intermediary animal, we already produce enough calories to feed the world several times over. Of course it wouldn't be suitable to eat exactly what's being grown for animals, but changing what's grown is a matter of logistics, not impossibility. It's not going to happen overnight after all. And yes, some ruminants graze for some of their calories, but that still leaves the majority of their food sources to be redistributed.

[@ryry854]

In regards to the online relationship with Julie and wondering if she's real: it's worse for a relationship with God. Its like you are in the chat room typing away, but you are getting NO response. Then someone from another chat room is telling you that there really is another person on the other side of the planet that wants a relationship with you. You say well you've had no response and they tell you that you might be in a relationship even though you've had no response from this supposed other person. The whole argument is asinine.

[@Skyla22222]

THIS! 100% THIS! I have also used a similar theme to the analogy. Here goes... So, Christians say we are in a burning building (the sinful world, heading for death) and there is a fireman (Jesus) holding out his arms to rescue us from the flames, but we (atheists) are "actively are choosing to reject the salvation" so deserve to die. BUT, here's what the analogy REALLY looks like to me; This apparent fireman is literally nowhere to be seen, and everyone is screaming at me to take his hand but I'm telling them that not only can I not see a fireman, but if he's behind all the smoke, he's not even shouting for me!! I cant hear him! If he is there and wants to save me he should make his presense very obvious so I can be saved by him. They (Christians) claim they can see and hear him, so why can't everyone else!? Very frustrating.

[@bike4aday]

​@@Skyla22222 Sometimes it's the obvious things that go unnoticed. A common description for revelatory experiences is that they are clear, obvious, in-plain-sight, right here, right now, independent of setting, like a fish suddenly becoming aware of the water around it, an epiphany, a sudden realization, a "wow how did I not see that" moment, a "of course, how could it be anything else" kind of experience. I don't think there's any utility in blaming ourselves or something else for not having had this kind of experience. We know what makes people more prone to having them and it just so happens to be very beneficial for our mental and physical health (of course!). Things like turning away from hatred and greed, forgiving yourself and others, letting go of painful clinging, being present in the moment, mindful awareness, deep relaxation, compassion - this stuff drastically increases the chances for mystical or divine experiences and the best part is there's nothing to lose! It's all good and wholesome! In other words, instead of looking for a man with a yellow jacket trying to save you, shift your attention to the present situation, become very engaged, very intimate with what's happening, act naturally from the heart, and watch the unfolding.

[@jensraab2902]

@Ryry: It's even worse than what you say. Christians say that this mysterious person on the other side of the planet not only wants a relationship with you - no, you are expected to love that person. And that your eternal fate hinges on that. It's insane. If there were a loving god, with all the Christian "omnis" *(all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving),* then this god would *know* that this approach doesn't work with most of us, would thereby condemn us to eternal damnation (of whatever sort your particular flavor of Christianity believes in), despite having the *power* to prevent that, all the while claiming to *love* us. I call BS on that.

[@subplantant]

Definitely agree with thumbnail change 👍