Speaker A
One of the reasons why I like doing this is people say to me, "Sam, do I ever get tired of debating with the religious?" No, absolutely I don't, because you never know what they're going to say next.
A compilation of atheist speeches challenging religious beliefs, exploring death, morality, and the nature of faith with sharp critique and humor.
Key Takeaways
- Religious claims often lack proportional evidence and rely on faith rather than facts.
- Death is final and natural, making life precious and meaningful without belief in an afterlife.
- Morality is subjective and derived from human society, not dictated objectively by religious texts.
- Belief in God varies widely and is often rationalized to maintain faith rather than based on consistent evidence.
- Critical thinking and skepticism are essential to avoid being misled by unfounded supernatural claims.
Summary
- The video features clips of atheist speeches debating religious claims and questioning traditional beliefs about God and the afterlife.
- Speakers emphasize the importance of evidence and facts over faith and highlight the inconsistencies in religious texts like the Bible.
- The concept of death is discussed as a natural end, with no afterlife, encouraging viewers to value life more deeply.
- The video critiques the idea of objective morality based on religion, arguing morality comes from human minds and societies.
- It addresses the diversity of religious beliefs and the subjective nature of defining God among different faiths.
- Speakers point out the decline of supernatural claims as scientific understanding grows.
- The video challenges the rationality of religious belief and the use of scripture to justify subjective opinions.
- It highlights the psychological and social aspects of religion, including the need for psychiatric help among some believers.
- The speeches encourage skepticism, critical thinking, and the separation of fantasy from reality.
- Overall, the video promotes atheism and agnosticism as reasoned positions grounded in evidence and personal responsibility.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Debate Enjoyment
- 02:29Comparing God to Fairies and Leprechauns
- 04:58Valuing Life and Death as Final
- 07:38Atheists and Agnostics on Belief and Morality
- 10:10Critique of Religious Claims and Miracles
- 12:38Morality and Responsibility Without Religion
- 14:36Diversity of Beliefs and Rationalizing God
- 18:16Psychological Aspects of Religion and Final Thoughts
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large, because they seem to be too simple, too [music] too connected, too local, too provincial. The earth. He came to the
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earth. One of the aspects of God came to the earth, mind you. And look at what's out there. How can you? It isn't in proportion.
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These are the good moments from the debate that I remember, and I like them all. Which moment will you choose? Write in the comment. And by the way, the original source is in the description.
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Thank you. The supposed good news of the gospel is really just solving a problem of its own making. It's like how much respect should you have for a doctor who runs around cutting people with a knife so he could sell them a
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band-aid. You know what I mean? So that's kind of what Christianity is. You are rotten. You are doomed. You are horrible.
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What do you think happens when you die? As Bertrand Russell said, I believe that when I die, I shall rot, and nothing of my ego shall remain.
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That's it? Yes. Yeah, nothing. [music] There's nothing else. How could it? How could it be otherwise?
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I mean, you have a brain, an evolved brain, which works by nerve impulses.
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And [music] when that decays, what could possibly be left? When you're dead, you don't know anything. It's just like before you were born.
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I think it was Mark Twain who said, "I was dead for billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience." When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts, and what is the
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truth that the facts bear out? Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe. Look only and surely what are the facts.
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Once you begin with the idea that there is a god who can do anything, it's laughably easy to then accept that there's a talking snake.
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Are you an atheist? For all practical purposes, yes. Uh, nobody can actually say for certain that anything doesn't exist, but I'm an atheist in the same way as I'm an a-leprechaunist and an a-fairiest and an a-pig-unicornist.
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So, you're not 100% sure God doesn't exist, but you're sure enough to make it practically... I'm as sure [music] as you are sure that fairies and leprechauns don't exist.
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And do you see an equivalence between the idea of God and the idea of a fairy and a leprechaun?
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The evidence for both is equally poor. Nobody reads the Bible more literally than atheists because we don't need to make up any excuses for when it says [music] something we can't allow it to mean.
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How many times have I brought up when people say, "Well, the Bible says this." And I say, "No, it doesn't say that." And they say, "Yes, it does." I'm like, "Show me." Well, I can't show you. Well, that's the way it always is, isn't it?
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But if I say that the Bible says something, I can bloody well show you right exactly where it says that. And when they say, "Well, it doesn't say that," then I show them. And they say, "Well, that's not what it says," becomes
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that's not what it means. Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation, at least not just.
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We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers. And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the
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United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would it be James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which, uh, suggests slavery is okay, and
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that eating, uh, shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith. Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount, a passage that is so radical that it's
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doubtful that our own defense department would survive its application. How do you find out if something's true?
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If you have all these theories of the different religions, all different theories about the thing, then you begin to wonder. Once you start doubting, you ask [music] me if the science is true. We say, "No, no, we don't
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know what's true. We're trying to find out. Everything is possibly wrong." Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong. Let us see.
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As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge, which is hard to recover from.
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What do you believe happens when you die? Death is death. What do you mean what happens when you die? When you die, you die. The organism decays, you fall apart, and you're not here anymore.
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Before I was born, there was a huge amount of time, perhaps an eternity, during which I did not exist. Didn't bother me one bit. After I'm dead, the same will be true. That's what death means. When this brain dies and decays,
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look what happens with Alzheimer's. Look what happens with our body when it falls apart. Death is death. The important thing to us atheists who know that we're going to die, it makes life more precious. If life is eternal, then life is cheap.
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We put more value on things that are rare and precious, right? So that we know that this might be my last moment, and I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to live it. I'm going to exalt in the beauty of
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all of it. To me, it's really strange that the rate [clears throat] of miracle appearances in the world seems to decline as our ability to investigate and film them on camera increases. It's just like mysteries have started going away. You
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know, once upon a time, there were pillars of fire, pillars of cloud, and manna from heaven, and all this other stuff.
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But we're still aware that we're reading fiction. Why then do so many of us suspend our judgment so that we can be scammed by people who would sell us felt insoles with embedded magnets? Enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories. [music]
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But make sure that there's a clear sharp line drawn on the floor. To do otherwise is to embrace madness.
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Part of the problem with Christianity is it allows people to claim that their morality is objective when it is not.
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You and I have the same morality. [music] You and I get our morality from the same place, our minds and our societies. The difference is... The difference is that I say my opinion is my responsibility. My morality is my
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responsibility. My choices [music] are my responsibility. You say my choices match this part of the Bible, therefore it's perfect. Therefore it's objective.
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Your assertion that the Bible gives objective reason is wishful thinking. [music] It's just you justifying your subjective opinions with a book [music] that you just pick and choose the phrases out of.
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All right, the sophisticated theologian stuff is kind of crap. Really what it means is they've figured out ways to rationalize their beliefs. They figured out ways to build up new protections and they've done it most of the time by
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softening the literal view. By becoming more in comport with the world. They all believe in God. But if you went around and asked the people around the table, well, what do you mean by God?
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What do you mean by God? What do you mean by God? You'd find it was all different. This is... This is a bad pun.
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This isn't... This isn't something that they all believe in. [music] They believe in belief. Belief? They believe that belief in God is so important that you should never even think about abandoning it, even if you have to change
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what you mean by God so much that it's just unrecognizable to somebody else. But then at least everybody can go around and say, well, I still believe in God.
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People who are well don't go to the doctor. It's only people who are sick who go to the doctor.
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And I said, there you go. We atheists and agnostics don't view ourselves as sick. We don't view ourselves as damned.
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We don't view ourselves...
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So, why not just create the chosen people in heaven? Leave everybody else out of it.
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Uh if the goal is to get some people specific with people who like you and who you like to spend eternity with you, that's the most efficient plan.
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Create those people in a location with you. What's What's a boneheaded way to do this? And that would be to create a universe, wait billions of years, create a man out of mud and a woman out of that
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man, tell them not to do something that you know they're going to do, and then threaten them with death. And then when they do it, don't kill them, just make their life difficult. Then go through a comedy of errors of having people fall
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or fail to love you or listen to you or obey you over and over, flood the world, start over again, confuse their languages in order to try to start over again, encourage war, gradually go from walking and talking with them to not
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interacting in any detectable way, and then magically impregnate a young girl so that you can take [music] human form as a sort of god man that's fully god but fully man, which doesn't actually make sense, so that you can sacrifice
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yourself to yourself as a blood magic loophole for rules you're in charge of, so you can set aside your own anger because that's the thing that we're being [music] saved from is god's wrath, then expect future generations to
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believe without sufficient evidence. If you knew nothing about science and you read Bible, the Old Testament, which in Genesis this is an [music] account of nature, that's that's what that is. And I said to you, "Give me your description
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of the natural world based only on this." You would say the world was created in six days and that stars are just little points of light, much lesser than the sun, and that in fact they can fall out of the sky, right? Because
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that's what happens during Revelation. So, to even write that means you don't know what those things are.
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So, everybody who tried to make proclamations about the physical universe based on Bible passages got the wrong answer. So, what happened was when science discovers things and you want to stay religious or you want to continue to believe that the Bible is
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is unerring, what you would do is you would say, "Well, let me go back to the Bible and reinterpret it." Then you say things like, "Oh, they didn't really mean that literally, they meant that figuratively." If Jesus' corpse was discovered and the
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resurrection proved to have been nothing. If the corpse of Jesus were found, then Christianity would be false. Of course it would be untrue then.
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Well, why wouldn't he just make another body? If he's God, why couldn't he just manifest another body or [music] an image of If he's God, why couldn't he just manifest another body or an image of a body? Why does it actually have to
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be his physical body? I'm sure there'd be theologians say, "You know what? We found Jesus' corpse, but you know what?
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God can make an image. God can do anything he wants. So, that body isn't Jesus. Jesus is a spirit." You know, anyway going Those who are healthy don't go to the doctor. It's only they who are sick.
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Christians have a pessimistic view of human nature. You think human beings are sick and need a doctor to be fixed up.
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You think there's something wrong with us and we need to be saved. But we atheists and agnostics don't view ourselves as sick. We don't buy into this supernatural mythological lie that you people are promoting that there's something actually spiritually wrong
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with humanity. When Jesus is crucified and these the graves are opened up, these people rise from the dead and they start walking around in Jerusalem. Which is often seen as one of the weirder passages in the New Testament and kind
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of hard to figure out. Really? I mean, so are there these are like zombie figures or something? Presumably they die again. There are a lot of even evangelicals who will say that, "Okay, that's that's like it's not really
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literal." If you don't think that's literal, why do you think other passages are literal? Well, that one defies probability. Okay, how about walking on the water? Does that defy probability?
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No, no, no, you can do that. You can do that. Let me see you do that.
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Well, Jesus could do that. Yeah, of course, cuz God empowered him. But God could empower these people to rise from the dead and walk around Jerusalem. If you're going to say this one didn't happen, why do you SAY THAT
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ONE DID HAPPEN? What grounds do you say that? Suppose you were walking by my house one day.
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You've been walking by for a long time. And I were to go up in the porch and say, "Hey, stop. I've got some good news. Good news for you people. Stop, stop stop.
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You don't have to go down in my basement. This is great news. You've been walking by all this time. You've been ignoring me.
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And I deserve to be recognized and honored. And you've been ignoring me and it's made me so angry and so mad that I just get so horribly mad. So I built this torture chamber down in the basement.
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And there's some hooks down there and there's some sharp things and there's some [music] vast some sneaky stuff and there's a furnace and there's some chains and it's horrible and there's flames. But you don't have to go down there.
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I sent my son down there. And And it was gruesome. I tell you it was really horrible. But that satisfied my anger. And now his blood was shed and now I'm now now you now you're free. You don't have to
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go down All you have to do come on up here. Just come up and tell my son that you love him and hug him and then you can move in with us. We'll live up in the attic and you can you can tell me how
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great I am. Uh you can you can you can just tell me you can just tell me how much you love me and we'll do that won't that be great?
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So would you keep walking? Where an atheism means simply as the word independence. The word independence is a negative word and this doesn't mean the philosophy flowing from that word is negative. The word independence mainly means simply free from dependency. And
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the word atheist, which is a negative word, means simply free from theism. And we say to the theists in the community, all right, if you want to believe in God, that's your business. If you want to pray, that's your business. You take
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[music] your marbles and go over there in the corner of your private life and you'll play your game. But that's not relevant to the living community now. It has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with the government. It
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has nothing to do with politics. It actually hasn't got anything to do with business. It has nothing to do with science. It has nothing to do with education.
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It doesn't make sense to say that God inspired the words because he wanted us to have his words if he didn't give us his words. We don't have his words because the originals don't exist and accurate copies don't exist. There are
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places where we don't know what the originals even said. So, your standard for accurate copy is perfection, is it not?
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I think if I copy the word ego and instead of writing ego, I write altos, that is an imperfect copy. A perfect copy would be a copy that copied ego as ego.
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Question about the Catholic Church but it doesn't condemn homosexuality, that question asked. Well, well, I'm afraid it it simply does. They, for example, thought that slavery was perfectly fine. Absolutely okay. And then they didn't. They thought until the year 2000 and then with a wave
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of the hand and a stamp of a seal, it was no longer true. Something that had been eternally or at least true for 2000 years suddenly wasn't. And what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says,
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"Oh, well, we couldn't know better because nobody else did." Then what are you for?
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Okay. The one thing that I think is really dangerous in many religions is that it gives people gold plated excuse to stop thinking. [music] I don't have to think about that because my religion says this is right, this is
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wrong. It's as clear as that. It's black and white. I don't have to think about this anymore. It's just a matter of faith. And this and we honor that. We say, "Oh, it's a matter of faith." We have to stop honoring people for
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stopping thinking. Why in large are religious people need psychiatric help and they need it desperately that any person who can posit his life in either irrational thought or fantasy thinking, escaping into a never-never land of unreality desperately needs some
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psychological counseling, some emotional help, and some intellectual food to chew on. Science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction and any holy book and any other fiction and destroyed it, okay, in
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a thousand years times that wouldn't come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, right, and every fact and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they'd all be back cuz all the same tests would be the same
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result. That's good. That's really good. As we know more and more that and it seems harder and harder to prove that anything might exist like that, where does that leave us?
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On our own. Which to my mind [music] is much more responsible than hoping that someone will save us from ourselves [clears throat] so we don't have to make our best efforts to do it ourselves.
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Your suggestion that God is only really a guru, a friend when you're in need.
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I mean, he wouldn't do anything like bugger around with Job to prove a point.
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And What if you're wrong? If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. I'm risking being wrong about every religion and you're risking being wrong about every religion except yours.
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Right. I don't know how much time you've spent worrying about other religions' heavens or hells, um, but I don't think it's probably very high.
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And I don't spend any time worrying about anybody's heavens or hells. What is faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence. Believing when there's no compelling evidence is a mistake.
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Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us or somebody who says everything [music] in this book must be considered the literal truth and
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never mind [music] the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book.
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You deny one less god than I do. You don't believe in 2,999 gods. And I don't believe in just one more.
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Right. If God is dead, everything is permitted. That's what scares them. Well, on the contrary, that's assumes that human beings have no feeling about what is right and wrong.
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Is the only reason you are virtuous because that's your ticket to heaven? Is the only reason [music] you don't beat your children to death because you don't want to go to hell? I don't believe that I'm ever going to heaven [music] or
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hell. I think that when I die, there will be nothingness. We don't buy into this ancient primitive [music] book of contradictory and unhistorical, unscientific words. These are just words on a page. This book was written by human beings. Human beings
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[music] make mistakes. When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant, he didn't suddenly believe in a miracle.
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He wanted to divorce her. Why? Because he knew exactly as we do where babies come from. He wasn't stupid. Nor was he pre-scientific. And it took a lot of convincing for him to accept what I believe to be the true solution,
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[music] that this was a unique miracle of God encoding himself into humanity. So, if your wife was pregnant and you know it's not you, the only alternative is that it's the Holy Spirit.
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That's a false David David Hume deals David Hume deals with this quite well. He says in the case of the laws of nature being suspended, you have to ask yourself, have they been suspended in my favor or um am I possibly under a
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misapprehension? I think it's Thomas Paine who asks um which is more likely, that the laws of nature are suspended or that a Jewish girl should tell a fib.
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We have to grow up out of this stuff, you know. You'd say, "Well, whoever believed that they ever thought that ever was the word of God?" Let me just tell you something. For hundreds and thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been
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in most places impossible to have or Sam and I would have been having it at the risk of our lives.
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Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face ingratiating way because it's had to give so much ground and because we know so much more. But you've no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong and when it
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really did believe that it had God on its side. Your God doesn't judge you on whether you're good or bad. It's all on how gullible you are. It doesn't matter how evil you are. All sins can be forgiven
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if you but believe. But if you don't believe, then it doesn't matter how good you are because the only sin that will not be forgiven is the sin of disbelief.
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Gullibility is the sole criterion for If I loved sin, I'd be a Christian. My son cried more at his first haircut than he did at his bris.
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Statistically, the the only long-term effect that it seems to have on people is it increases their chances of winning a Nobel Prize.
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I can't find the compulsory mutilation of the genitals of children a subject for humor in that way. At that moment, we have the records, I can show them to you, of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds in the United States
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[music] of boy babies who've died or or had life-threatening infections as a result of this disgusting practice that you that a person as humane as yourself can sit here and be and think of that as a fit subject for humor shows what I mean.
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Religion makes morally normal people say and do disgusting and wicked things and you've just proved my point for me.
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Shame on you for saying what you just said. Shame on you for saying it about your own son. What next? Cutting the labia of little girls? At least Judaism doesn't do that. What if What if a Muslim was to say to you just now, "My
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little girl cried more at her first haircut than when I cut off her clitoris." What would you think of me if I was to say such [music] a disgusting thing? Remember, we are not talking about detail here. We're talking about
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whether religion makes people behave better or not. true horror of religion. Okay, it allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions what only lunatics could believe on their own.
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Okay, if you wake up tomorrow morning thinking that saying a few Latin words over your pancakes [music] is going to turn them into the body of Elvis Presley, you have lost your mind.
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Okay. But, if you think more or less the same thing about a cracker and the body of Jesus, you're just a Catholic.
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that these miraculous events as described in the Gospels did happen. The Christian would simply say, "If God exists, miracles are obviously possible." Sure, I agree.
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The atheist has to say that whether or not God exists, miracles are impossible. They don't have to say that.
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You don't have to say that? Of course they don't have to say that. Is it possible for the Red Sea to be parted?
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Sure, why not? It is. Okay. Okay. Is it possible for a But, what does that do for us? Is it possible that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse?
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Okay. So, so here's our problem. Well, hold on. Yes or no? Is it Yes, of course it's possible.
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it's possible. So, that means that, you know, the miraculous events as described in Islam, uh you've got such a higher burden of proof than the Muslim does if you're having a debate with a Muslim.
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I I But, but but I'm looking at you right now. Right. You may assume that what I see is all material, but that's not what I see.
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And it's not what I believe. You want If you want to make that If you want to make that a scientific claim, you can, but I'm telling you it's a metaphysical [music] claim and to confuse the two is
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a mistake. Okay. You You can add any metaphysics you want. [music] People think do this all the time. The people who think Elvis is still alive. Okay. What What's wrong with this claim? I mean, why is this claim not vitiating our academic
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departments and corporations? I mean, I'll tell you why and it's it's very simple. We have not passed laws against believing Elvis is still alive.
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It just The problem is that whenever somebody seriously represents his belief that Elvis is still alive in a conversation in in on a first date, at a lecture, at a job interview, he immediately pays a price.
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Now, he can then he can rattle on about this is not a scientific claim.
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This is a matter of faith. You know, when I look at you, I see you might be Elvis. I mean, he he could he could do this.
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Okay? If we knew half of what we know now about physics, about and about biology and astronomy, the Abrahamic religions couldn't be founded in this day. None of them could be founded and believed in by people who knew what we now know.
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The human species is, let's say, at least 100,000 years old. It's probably much older, maybe a quarter of a million years. You have to believe this to believe in Abrahamic religion. Have to believe the following.
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That for let's call it 100,000 years, humanity is born, doesn't live long, mostly dies in childbirth, dies of its teeth, dies in terrible wars, famines, plagues, dies in fear because it doesn't know why there are volcanoes, doesn't know why there are plagues, doesn't know
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why there are earthquakes or tsunamis. Fear, misery, shame, terror, cruelty of all kinds. [music] And for the first 97,000 of those years, heaven watches like this.
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But then after 97,000 years of it decides we can't let this go on. We'll have to intervene.
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But only in the most barbaric and backward parts of the Middle East will we show our face to people who can't read, who are terrified, who are ignorant, who live basically with and like animals. That cannot [music] have been the case. Religion is false. I
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take my stand. Thank you. Is anything in that historical fact? Uh very little, probably. Um I think one important [music] thing to bear in mind is that ancient writers had a very different understanding of what fact or fiction was from from us today.
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But as a historian of of the Bible, I think there's very little that's factual. [music] King David?
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No. Moses? No. [laughter] So somebody said Jesus behind me. I don't think they were taking the Lord's name in vain.
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No, Jesus um most scholars would agree that he existed, yeah. What do you have to say to someone who has met the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ? I assure [music] you for my life, it has been no delusion.
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If you had been born in India, I dare say you would be saying the same [music] thing about Lord Krishna and Lord Shiva.
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If you had been born in Afghanistan, I dare say you would be saying the same thing about Allah. If you had been born in Viking Norway, you would be saying the same thing about Wotan. If you had been born in Olympian Greece, you'd be
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saying the same thing about uh Zeus and Apollo. The human mind is extremely susceptible to hallucination.
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May you come back on that, sir? But also, why is God so immoral? First of all, why is God so immoral?
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I don't think that God exists, but if we're talking about the God character in the Bible, it's a pretty horrible, jealous, angry being that advocates slavery.
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You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children, or you have a God who simply watches it and says, "When you're done, I'm going to punish you." Well, here's the thing though, if I were in a situation where I could stop
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a child rapist, I would. That's the difference between me and your god. Yeah. He watches and says, "I'm shutting the door and you go ahead and rape that child and when you're done, I'm going to punish you." If I did that, people would think I was
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a freaking monster. Yeah. And if you think that you uh you're you're sent to hell if you're bad and you're sent to heaven if you're good, if that's your reason for being good, you're not good. You're Pavlov's [laughter] dog.
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It's a very right selfish I don't think I there's a heaven and I don't think there's a hell, but you know what? Be nice anyway.
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There's not a Bible 3.0, [music] there's not a Quran 2.0, there's no new revelation from God to say, "Hey, uh you know, I said all this stuff about slavery, now I'm opposed to it. Hey, uh you know, when I said that uh here's
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what caused diseases or that you were unclean and shouldn't enter the temple, uh I'm at all those things are actually wrong, the germ theory of disease is right." [music] And none of that's been come out.
Speaker A
Well, there is kind of a Bible 2.0. That was the New Testament. That is That is the update for for the Christians.
Speaker A
Yeah. Uh except that it's worse than the first one. Well, that that's not exactly the point.
Speaker A
The point is there was an update, so Well Okay so In the update, it's not like Jesus came along and said, "Hey, in Exodus 21 where I was saying you could have slaves and beat them, we got that wrong or you got
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that wrong." That correction's never given. The reason I say it got worse, you look at Jewish tradition, when you're dead, you sleep with your fathers, there's no real clear notion of an afterlife. And then with the introduction of the New Testament, what
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you get is infinite torture and punishment for finite crimes, which is immoral. A lot of people think that morality comes from religion. Uh religion teaches that morality comes from religion and therefore if you don't have religion, you don't have morality. If you look at
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it from outside perspective, you can see what's happening. People change churches for a reason.
Speaker A
They change churches because they don't agree with the church they're in. If they don't agree with the church they're in, so they they say, "Okay, well, this this church isn't doing something it's not striking my moral fancy. I'm going to go to this church
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over here because it does. Well, that means morality is independent of religion. And then what they do is they go to this church over here that says, "Okay, your morality is correct and God says so." And then they say, "Ah,
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God gives me my morality." The reality is that every single human picks their own morality.
Speaker A
Uh morality is relative. The only difference between an atheist and a theist is that an atheist will internalize it and say, "This is my morality." And a theist will say, "This is my morality because I get it from my
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religion." Suppose it's all true and you are confronted by God. What will Stephen Fry say to him?
Speaker A
I'll say, "Bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our [music] fault? It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who
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creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? You could easily have made a a creation in which that didn't exist. It is simply not acceptable. The moment you banish
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him, your life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living." There are things greater than you in the universe that you do not understand and salvation awaits you.
Speaker A
I do admit there are things in the universe I don't understand. Okay. But my response to that is not to make up silly stories.
Speaker A
Or to believe intellectually embarrassing myths from the Bronze Age. But you believe whatever you want.
Speaker A
These were men who did not know what a germ or an atom was or where the sun went at night and that's where you're getting your wisdom. Anyway, Do you believe in God?
Speaker A
Me? The more I look at the universe, just the less convinced I am. If if your concept of a creator is someone who's all-powerful and all-good, and I look at disasters [music] that volcanoes, hurricanes tornadoes earthquakes disease, congenital birth defects. You
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look at this list of ways that life [music] is made miserable on Earth by natural causes, and I just ask, how do you deal with that? So, philosophers rose up and said, if there is a god, god is either not all powerful or not all
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good. where you damage areas of the brain [music] and faculties are lost and they're clearly It's not that everyone with brain damage is perfect has their soul perfectly intact, they just can't get the words out. This is the you
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everything about your mind can be damaged by damaging the brain. You can cease to recognize faces, you can cease to know the names of animals, but you still know the names of tools. I mean, the the fragmentation in in in the way in
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which our our mind is parcelated at the level of the brain is not at all intuitive and and there's a lot known about it and what we're being asked to consider is that you damage one part of the brain
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[music] and the mind is something about the mind and and and subjectivity is lost. You damage another and and and yet more is lost. And yet if you damage the whole thing at death, we can rise off the brain with all our
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faculties intact, recognizing grandma, and speaking English. You could start with death is preferable to life, but you don't get very far that way.
Speaker A
Stop suffering. Well, no, I'm saying you could start with death is preferable to life, but you don't get very far that way because Yeah, you do. You stop suffering. You just die.
Speaker A
Yes. Right, so you can start with the presupposition. Except that when you're dead, you are not being, so there's no well-being.
Speaker A
No. If you were editing the Bible, what what would you what would you take out?
Speaker A
Is there anything that you'd remove? Um no, um I mean, that's pretty controversial. Surely not all of the New Testament.
Speaker A
Paul. Anything that was written Paul. Just all of Paul? Yes. Paul wrote a huge amount of the New Testament. He was by and large the founder of the church.
Speaker A
He is the founder of Christianity. So, what What have you got against Paul? on and on and on. He's so down on humanity. He's just really kind of like, "Oh, you humans, you're so bad. You're so sinful." And it's like, "Oh, come on.
Speaker A
There's We're not that bad." The Hebrew Bible, everyone thinks that the God of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, is the kind of like vengeful, hateful, angry one who's like kicking ass all the time. And then the God of the New
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Testament is kind of like, "Oh, I love you." But it's not like that at all. The God of the New Testament, he's gone.
Speaker A
He's like not interested at all in humanity. Like he's not really present [music] in the New Testament. It's all about Jesus.
Speaker A
Cuz religion compromises your moral judgment. And I'm going to tell you two stories, and I want you to raise your hand after each story.
Speaker A
Suppose I were to break into somebody's home, this loving Christian family, mother, father, and children, and pets. They go to church, they pray, they contribute to charity.
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They're really, really great people. And I tied them up. And I tortured them. And I drown the cat in the bathtub.
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And I shoot the dog, and then I set the house on fire, and kill all those people.
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And then the police asked me, "Dan, why did you do that?" And I would say, [music] "No reason. The devil made me do it." Raise your hands if you think I am a moral monster.
Speaker A
Virtually every hand went up, right? The second story was this. I got out my Bible, and I opened the Bible to the book of Job.
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And you know what's coming. Remember how God tortured Job? He caused a wind to blow the the building over. The wall crashed against those children and killed his children.
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Killed his livestock and his animals. And it didn't say if he had a cat or a hound, but he killed it all. And And then God tortured Job in with boils and horrible things that happened. The Lord said unto Satan,
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"Have you considered my servant Job? That there is none like him in the earth. He's blameless and an upright man that fears God. He turns away from evil and still he holds fast his perfection.
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[music] He holds fast his integrity. God said this to Satan and then he said, "Although you moved me against him to destroy him without cause." So God, why did you do this to Job?
Speaker A
No reason. The devil made me do it. Raise your hands if you think the God of the Bible is a moral monster.
Speaker A
Can you guess what happened? Less than half of the hands went up in that audience. Isn't that proof that religion compromises our moral judgment?
Speaker A
The idea that that the Christian God is just is directly contradicted by the idea that the Christian God is merciful.
Speaker A
Perfect justice and perfect and any mercy are in are necessarily directly in contradiction. But most of your arguments are based on quoting the scripture as if it was some kind of a magic talisman. Oh, quote the Bible, that will make everything
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important. Well, it doesn't. Life is generally preferable to death, health is generally preferable to sickness, happiness is generally preferable to sadness. None of these are absolute locked in stone rules. From those things Okay, so if you [music] start with them
Speaker A
Yes, if you start not skeptical about those claims. If you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker A
I'm I'm not trying to be difficult. You're saying that those are your starting positions. Those are the things that you [music] accept I'm saying they can't be.
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on faith. No. Oh, you have a rationale for them. Yes. Let's hear it. I you already have.
Speaker A
Life is generally preferable to death because we're talking about our life and death is generally not in the interest of the living.
Speaker A
What are you going to do about all those books, the Bible? Oh, come on. This is a bunch of junk. I think that it should be thrown in a trash can, and the world [music] would be better off without it. Let's talk
Speaker A
about JC for a minute. We call him JC. He says, "I came not to bring peace, but the sword." You want that? He said, "I came not to I came to turn brother against brother and father against son." You want that?
Speaker A
He says, "Yea, even unless you hate yourself, you cannot come under me." This is the problem with Christian religion. It establishes unrealistic and irrational and immoral criteria by which to live, [music] and then it creates a loophole so that you don't ever have to
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be responsible for those actions. Christianity is not a moral system. It is an immoral system because it specifically says that there aren't necessarily consequences that you're going to have to pay because of a loophole. And what is the loophole? It
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has nothing to do with how good you are or how morally you act or anything else.
Speaker A
It has to do with [music] whether or not you're willing to be a sycophant to an idea.
Speaker A
And this is why religions are called faiths collectively because you [clears throat] believe something in the absence of evidence.
Speaker A
That's what it is. That's why it's called faith. Otherwise, we would call all religions evidence.
Speaker A
But we don't. I'm given what everyone describes to be the properties that would be expressed by an all-powerful being [music] in the gods that they worship. I look for that in the universe, and I don't find it.
Speaker A
What we have are copies that were made centuries later in most cases by scribes, some of whom weren't very good, and these copies that we have all have changes in them. We have thousands of copies, and these thousands of copies
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have hundreds of thousands of differences in them. And I got to a point where it no longer made sense for me to say that God had inspired the words of this text because we don't have the words of this text. And so what what
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would be the point of even saying God had inspired them? We don't have them.
Speaker A
And so this was another another sort of moment for me when I realized that in fact this older belief of mine simply wasn't credible.
Speaker A
If I tell my wife, "If you don't love me, I'm going to set you on fire." Am I a loving good husband?
Speaker A
If you set her on fire, then you never loved her to begin with. And if God sends us to hell, he never loved us to begin with.
Speaker A
Wrong. Okay. God has never revealed himself to me. I can say that with confidence.
Speaker A
I mean, he's not going to physically reveal himself Why not? Can Can he not do that?
Speaker A
Uh without destroying you, no. Then then how did he reveal himself to anybody else? Explain the Damascus Road experience. Isn't that a revelation directly to Saul?
Speaker A
Absolutely. And as far as And it didn't destroy him, did it? This is the young man Did it destroy him?
Speaker A
Right. He was a chosen vessel in a specific Okay. Look, oh my god, you're just making all kinds of excuses. I said can God do this and you said not without destroying you. And then I pull up an
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example where you have to believe [music] cuz it's in your book that God revealed himself somebody without destroying you. And now you come up with a post hoc rationalization that he was a chosen vessel. Can God make me a chosen
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vessel? Of course, I think he has. Why hasn't he? Now you just said that you think God has made me a chosen vessel, but you said that God couldn't reveal himself to destroy without destroying me. And then when I asked
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what it would take, I would say why could it happen to Saul? And then you say because he was a chosen vessel. So if I'm a chosen vessel, then clearly God can reveal himself to me without destroying [music] me, right?
Speaker A
So the answer to my original question was yes, he can. In this Yes, [music] he sure is. Of course. I mean, if you were to be If you were to be If you were to be an apostle, which their job is Their function has
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already been served. It's done. So apostles apostles have to believe before the revelation? No.
Speaker A
You've said I'm a vessel. [music] And that God can reveal himself to me. And then when I say why hasn't he, you say it's because I'm not an apostle.
Speaker A
And I'm asking, do you have to be an apostle before that you're you get the revelation?
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[music] And your answer is no. So it's irrelevant to why I haven't received a revelation yet. Don't you think that if God may considers me a vessel and reveals himself to me, that perhaps I might become an apostle?
Speaker A
Well, no, cuz I mean the the apostleship is already done. There won't be any more apostles.
Speaker A
so then God can't reveal himself to me because I can't become an apostle, right?
Speaker A
Well, not at all. He has He's He's here on No, he Brandon. Jesus Brandon.
Speaker A
Sorry. God has not revealed himself to me. Period. Full stop. Well, let me explain [music] how he's done this, except you just don't see it yet.
Speaker A
Oh, oh my god, Brandon. Brandon. Brandon. How can it be possible that something has been revealed to you, and yet you don't see it?
Speaker A
The The process of revelation intrinsically includes [music] the recognition of the observer. That's This is something different from "Hey, there is evidence for something and you just haven't seen it yet." versus "I have revealed this evidence to you, and you don't see it."
Speaker A
Do you think that the universe had a beginning? I don't know. I would I would suspect yes.
Speaker A
You suspect yes. Yeah, sure. How did the writers of the book of Genesis know that?
Speaker A
The scientific method has also revealed to us that the uh earth was formed about 4 and 1/2 billion years ago. That is much later than the sun. The gospel of the Old Testament account The Hebrew Bible account tells us that it was the other
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way around. So, got that bit wrong. All right. So, so so so we're Yes, the Bible is not So, sometimes it gets things wrong.
Speaker A
Sometimes it gets things wrong, you know? The The Bible is not a science. It's not listing out a scientist No, no, hold on a second. You can't now move the goal post, especially if you're still going to especially if you're
Speaker A
still going to miss. Is it telling us how the universe scientifically formed or not?
Speaker A
It's not telling us how the universe scientifically formed, because if it did, they would be outlining the history of the Big Bang.
Speaker A
the relevance of bringing this up in the first place? What are the lessons that you've learned?
Speaker A
The The truth doesn't hurt. Whatever it is. I remember um my mom only lied to me about one thing.
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She said there was a god. And um But that's because when you're working class mom, Jesus is like an unpaid babysitter.
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She wasn't hoping I'd be a doctor or lawyer. She hoped I wouldn't be stabbed to death in a bar room fight, you know.
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So, best thing to do is well, if he if he's god-fearing, then he'd be good.
Speaker A
Redemption after being oppressed is a very common myth throughout history. [music] And you can understand the psychology behind it.
Speaker A
The Native Americans in 1890 began a Messiah myth with a Paiute Indian, Wovoka, who received visions of God. He was thought to be the Messiah or the deliverer of the Messiah, in which the buffalo would all return, the white man would leave and go back to
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Europe, and life would become better again. This is what oppressed peoples do. They make up stories that makes them feel better. There's 50 more stories like this of of the geographical location, the time you happen to been born, the anthropology religion, the
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psychology religion, the [music] sociology religion. We we know exactly how this happens now, all the way down to the neurology, the neuroscience religion. We know that people are making this up. What's more likely?
Speaker A
It's obvious that all these other gods are made up. You already know that. You agree with me on that. You're all atheists for all those other gods.
Speaker A
So, I would just implore you to go one god further. Thank you. The virgin birth was down to a mistranslation of Isaiah, you know that.
Speaker A
I'm like these sorts of questions it's for What would you say? They don't They don't strike me as They're not getting to the point. I know that I know that thing about Well, and I don't know exactly how to
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construe that sort of truth. But we talked about the oppression of women, for example. It's like, how do you make a case on purely factual grounds that women should be treated as equals?
Speaker A
It's a moral question, and I know, that's exa- exactly I was dealing with a factual question, which is did Jesus have a father?
Speaker A
And you won't answer it. It's a different kind of question. Jesus had a heavenly father, like almost all mythological heroes.
Speaker A
So, he wasn't born of a virgin, then? So, you you're saying that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
Speaker A
I I said, first of all, that I don't I don't know how to mediate the fact-value dichotomy in that case. I said the same thing about the resurrection.
Speaker A
It's not It's not a value. It's It's a simple fact. I mean, did did did a man [music] have intercourse with with Mary and produce Jesus? That's a That's a factual question.
Speaker A
It's not a value question. What if you're wrong? Well, what if I'm wrong? I mean, anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Pink Unicorn and the Flying Teapot.
Speaker A
You know what it's like not to believe in a particular faith, because you're not a Muslim. You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you'd been brought up in
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India in India, you'd be a Hindu. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian God, in which, by the sheerest accident, you happen to have been brought up, and and ask me the question, what if I'm wrong? What if
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you're wrong about the Great JuJu at the bottom of the sea? I mean, do you actually believe in your Muslim faith? You believe that Muhammad split the moon in two? Do you believe that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged
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horse, for example? I I pay you the compliment of assuming that you that you don't.
Speaker A
No, I do. I believe in miracles. that? Yes. You believe that Muhammad went to heaven on a winged horse?
Speaker A
Yes, I believe in God. I believe in miracles. I believe in revelation. I mean, the point here is that let's assume I'm wrong, Richard.
Speaker A
Well, let's assume Let's assume I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm happy to concede that, Richard. I'm happy to concede it.
Speaker A
If you If you actually [music] believe Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse, that's an anti-scientific belief.
Speaker A
And that could be wrong. But that belief is wrong. But that doesn't change That doesn't change How do you know it's wrong?
Speaker A
Oh, come on. You're a man of the 21st century. I'm just asking. It comes back to my original question. The The rational position is the agno- The rational position is the agnostic position.
Speaker A
Why up there? What I mean The rational position I I didn't say up there. I didn't pick a place. You picked a place.
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why would a winged horse be the be the way to get to heaven if it's not up there?
Speaker A
I I asked I asked I asked a question about You asked about proof. I'm more for saying I can't prove it.
Speaker A
But can you prove he didn't do it? I mean, this is the This is the end of the debate.
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to heaven on a winged horse? I'm just asking on your criteria. I'm just asking on No, I can't prove it. And I can't prove it wasn't a golden unicorn.
Speaker A
The Bible does not teach the point of view that many people hold today about why they're suffering. Most people I know who think that uh who have the explanation that it's all because of free will, these are people who believe
Speaker A
that when they die, they're going to go to heaven. They also believe that there will be no suffering in heaven. And so, one might ask, will there be free will in heaven? If there's free will in heaven, but no suffering in heaven, that
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must mean that it is possible to have a world with free will, but without suffering.
Speaker A
So, why don't we have a world with free will without suffering? Well, it obviously wasn't set up that way, but it means that the free will explanation doesn't really explain the problem.
Speaker A
Paul also being our earliest source of the New Testament claims at one point that Jesus appeared to 500 people.
Speaker A
That's right. That's right. This seems to be some good evidence that we do have Uh no, I don't think so. I I Paul Paul knows there's a story that 500 people saw him.
Speaker A
Mhm. But I don't think that's evidence that 500 people saw him. That That's a claim. And so, a claim isn't evidence. Evidence is when you try to substantiate the claim. And so, how do you go about establishing whether 500
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people actually saw Jesus? Well, you look at what Paul says, and then you see are there other sources to corroborate it?
Speaker A
Um Paul's writing before the gospels. Uh, none of the Gospels mentions anything about this.
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Uh, or the Gospel sources. Uh, so Paul's our only source. And um so, is he right or not? Well, it seems like if 500 people saw him that this would be something that other people would mention.
Speaker A
Um, so I don't think we know. A lot of Evangelical Christians say, "Look, if you've got group visions, you can't have group hallucinations." That's right, yeah.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, how do you explain Mother Mary showing up to hundreds of people at one time?
Speaker A
Well, I think you really do need to explain why everything is set up so as to produce us.
Speaker A
It seems to me a gratuitous assumption to suppose that the universe is set up for us, right? Even on the Earth, there's a lot more different kinds of beetles than there are people. But, equally, there's lots more stars. Maybe
Speaker A
the universe is set up for stars, right? They're picking on us just seems completely gratuitous.
Speaker A
You think that God can be put to a scientific test like everything else. And if God is God, God is beyond the observation and verification process of science.
Speaker A
Oh, God is very definitely beyond the verification process of science. God has been designed to be beyond the verification process of science. This is one of the classic adaptations of religions is to create this gulf so that science can't get anywhere near God. By
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the way, that idea is completely absent. Folk religions, it's all the same. It's all one. It's just what everybody knows.
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And they have no concept of faith. They don't need a concept of faith. It's only once you start getting this separation between science and other things that people think they know when maybe they don't. That's when the idea
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of faith looms [music] and becomes a very attractive idea. And indeed it is. It protects the idea of God from disproof.
Speaker A
How are you aware of objective reality? I am aware of reality through my senses.
Speaker A
But, that's not what I asked you. I asked you how you're aware of what is objectively real, not what you perceive to be real.
Speaker A
So, when I use the term objectively in this context, I'm I'm using it in the sense of not subjective or not contingent upon any one mind within the scope of reality. So, you trust your senses and reasoning in order to
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determine what is real in your reality. Right? On what basis do you trust your senses and reasoning?
Speaker A
On their continued reliability of producing effective results. Okay, now when you [laughter] No, see, now the thing is No, no, let me ask you. The The thing that Suppose you have a baby that dies in agony only a few months after its birth, some
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from some disease that we can do nothing about. Tell me, can anything that happens in some afterlife remedy that or make it right? No, it can't. And the idea that God is calculating things in such a way that this baby's suffering is
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[music] weighed on the balance as something that can be compensated is pretty disgusting. But even if if it's possible, it's wishful thinking. Suppose you go to a restaurant and you you're going to have a four-course [music] dinner. And you
Speaker A
you you have the starter, and it's absolutely disgusting. What is the rational view to take about what the rest of the courses are going to be like?
Speaker A
Well, probably they're going to be disgusting, too, right? You don't say, "Oh, well, that was really awful, but the next course must be fantastic to make up for it." [laughter] I cannot conceive of anything that is more important than to fight the
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irrational and basically insane ideas of all religions, but in America specifically of the Judeo-Christian.
Speaker A
So, I was about eight, and my brother must have been 19. He came in once, [music] and uh I was doing something from the Bible, and I said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Oh, drawing Jesus." And he went, "Um
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who was Jesus?" I said, "Well, he was he was the son of God." He went, "Why do you believe in God?" Right? And my mom went "Bob shut up." And I knew she had something to hide. I went, "I was an atheist in an hour."
Speaker A
In an hour. If there is a God, why did he make me an atheist?
Speaker A
That was his first mistake. Well, the talking snake was his first mistake but They claim to have solved the biggest problems in philosophy while asserting that they cannot possibly be wrong and that no other worldview can do this, but
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they don't demonstrate the truth of the claim that no other worldview can do this. They shift the burden of proof and want you to prove that you can when what we're really [music] saying is that we don't have evidence that anybody can,
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including you. Saying that you could be wrong doesn't mean that you are wrong. It doesn't tell us anything about whether or not you're wrong. Bertrand Russell said, "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cock-sure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
Speaker A
There are big questions in this world. Some of them may forever be beyond our ken, but some of them appear to be discoverable. At this point, I see no reasonable justification for believing that God exists, [music] the subject of
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this debate. And I also see no reasonable justification for why anyone should ever again waste time debating someone who has no interest in debate but wants to merely claim that you're wrong because they're convinced that they have a special friend who ensures
Speaker A
that they cannot be wrong.
Topics:atheismreligion debateGodmoralitydeathskepticismfaithBible critiqueagnosticismscience and religion
