Atheism is AIDS to the Secular Public Square. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Richard Dawkins, Peter Boghossian

Jun 2024 25

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@sosaysthecaptain5580

2 years ago -@

The logic of "well, it's metaphorically true and useful" is what made me an atheist when I was fifteen. I have very little use for people who like Christianity for this reason.

@jills1521

I think the description from Professor Joshua Mitchell of secular demonstrations is one worth repeating. He calls it 'innocence signaling.' He and his book American Awakening speak in multiple important ways to the secularization/atheism happening all around us.

@stevemcgee99

12:00 I watched the debate on a channel and I’m pretty sure the explicit description of the attack was missing. I do not remember hearing it.

@inlightconsulting9456

Hey Paul. Rob here. For me, this is one of the more helpful videos of yours I have watched in a while. It seems something is coalescing. I really think a conversation on the principles of transformation would be helpful to you and TLC. Transformation is not only a process, but a framework for relationality. I haven’t figured out the hack to get on your calendar. I’ve become a member of the channel. What’s next? Have a strong day in the Lord.

@DanHowardMtl

36:30 Dawkins' final point is so ridonculously wrong that it's mind blowing. He appeals to fantasy!

@knightrider585

Isn't Michael Shermer believing ideas are real by being a "moral realist" a supernatural belief?

If people want a return to Christianity then that's what they should do: focus on church and prayer and repentance. Using Christianity as a tool subordinated to politics is not Christian, it is just secularism wearing a Christ mask. If we reject God, God withdraws, and the Babylonians invade. The problem is not God and not the Babylons, it is our faithlessness.

7:43 – “Belief in Christianity”? Did you mean something else? Or am I not following the point well? Are we to believe in the religion?

@maxdoubt5219

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPOMNdvKZtQ&t=160s&ab_channel=DarkMatter2525

#10

So the question is: can a society be mostly atheist and be happy and prosperous? It's happening now, so…yes.

#11

@freedomslunch

1:05:49 This is the heart of my argument against legal Christian nationalism. All nations are called to be Christian, but not through laws, but through the great commandment and the great commission.

#12

40:43 Vervaeke's true nature peaking out here. The arrogance of telling Christians what true Christianity is, civilization building code he has benefited from and now wants to deny, attempting to contain Christianity to a moral ethics without a personal and arenic God, without the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, and without an eschatology.

#13

@anselman3156

Hirsi Ali still spouting the propaganda rhetoric to justify the brutal, murderous, oppression inflicted on a whole population, many of them Christian, over decades.

#14

@EsseQuamViderity

How can you be sort of forced into something? The “sort of kind of” brain worm got you

#15

Serpentza is such a good channel

#16

@katedunning9467

This is all true but it doesn’t account for Progressive Christians. It’s not merely Christianity that keeps people from becoming woke.

#17

@marcusshera1232

Hume's is/ought distinction was a throwaway line btw. Just putting that out there.

#18

@theHermitcrabshow

Could you explain how hinduism is a western invention?

#19

@deschain1910

That virus vaccine metaphor from Dawkins didn't seem to support his position very well…
To take the metaphor on its face, it makes atheism seem just as unlikely to work as Hirsi Ali makes it sound, because when have we ever been able to just get rid of viruses completely and will we ever be able to?

#20

@elektrotehnik94

You want to give us a take-away?
I prescribe a rando convo – to heal you of your anxiety of "needing to give >a nugget of wisdom<, to belong" ❤️

#21

@KevinMakins

Wow. Love Johns critique of Christian nationalism at 41:00. Beautifully said.

#22

@bscottc1

The problem with these discussions today, is that between the bread, circuses and addiction to cell phones, who has time for Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, or Levi-Strauss, Foucault, and Derrida for that matter.

#23

Think about the opioid epidemic, or other drugs like alcohol and cannabis. We have every comparative advantage here in the U.S., but folks still succumb to vice despite the spiritual and material opportunities. There is something more at play than the opportunity to choose between the various isms an anities, something more basic and fundamental.

#24

@synchronium24

"Atheism is AIDS to the Secular Public Square"

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

#25

Comparing Christianity and Nihilism is comparing mole hills. Throughout it's 2000 years of history, what utter, horrific total human depravity (take that Calvin) has it really prevented? The answer is none – it has made things slightly less bad at best. This of course is taken from afar – up close you bet it matters. Even a fly tries to escape being swatted.

#26

@sharonlouise9759

In some ways I like where we're at. Culturally we're experiencing what there "is" without Christianity. Ultimately, I believe that the "end" of all of this will show that there is nothing else out there that is like Christianity. There is nothing suitable to replace it. I think one of the things they're missing is the profound change which happens to a person when they embrace Jesus relationally. The motivations of the Christian in relationship with God is not " ideas" or "secular things written out on paper." To me its like looking at a robot and expecting it to be human. They can only go with the robot so far, but it can never replace the human. Christian ideals are good because they are based in reality, but without Christ they lack meaning, substance and power.

#27

@skylinefever

When I read an argument for religions, I joke that otakus and weebs go Shinto.

I say it sometimes because I worked in auto repair. I saw a lot more moral purity in gow Shinto people screwed together most of their cars.

#28

@emmereffing

You missed the biggest hole in Dawkins argument: being free of all disease makes you infinitely more susceptible to disease. This is why many native populations are wiped out.

#29

Sorry Paul, but in regurgitating Ali's idea about atheism and AIDS what you are saying is just dumb. Just stop and think about it from a historical point of view. Before a time when there was any atheism as a organized train of thought, were things any better? Do I really need to recount all the myriad horrific ways in which humans treated each other with no signs of intellectual atheism (functional atheism has always been with us) on the horizon. What you are describing is merely a fantasy, and too simple to a fault. Ali says she's just saying to "stand for what we believe," not start the Crusades again (although in some respects they never stopped – warfare just turned to colonialism with the means of political superiority and technology) These public intellectuals like Dawkins and Ali really only offer up distortions and tortured superficial explanations. I find very little value in listening to them. Holland is telling a story about a story. All this stuff is just theatre, but I think the Greeks would be confused as to whether it's tragedy, comedy or satyr. This catharsis is largely onanistic self-satisfaction and often very smug.

#30

@richardparks4449

You have a CDC misinformation blurb on this one regarding HIV lol

#31

@papercut7141

Glad to see you sticking with non-controversial titles

#32

@steveleibering4341

Paul it does seem the secular sector has its origins in the Protestant Church. Nietzsche made the claim every Protestant would have to have their own church. I don’t think this is necessarily true but what has seemed to happen instead is groups have taken sola Scripture and as Jonathan has pointed too “all thing necessarily will have a hierarchy.” so what the Church 3.0 (1.0 being Catholic 2.0 being Protestant ) and the secular culture have done is put one scripture at the top, that being “do unto others.” The problem is the highest sola scripture without John V’s notion of background practices leave the jar of wisdom empty.

#33

@tgrogan6049

Paul of course covers up the history of Christian persecution of other religions. As a well read pastor I can only attribute this to extreme cognitive bias or dissimulation. Lets review all shall we:
364 Emperor Flavius Jovianus orders the burning of the Library of Antioch. An Imperial edict (11th September) orders the death penalty for all Gentiles that worship their ancestral Gods or practice Divination (“sileat omnibus perpetuo divinandi uriositas”). Three different edicts (4th February, 9th September, 23rd December) order the confiscation of all properties of Pagan Temples and the death penalty for participation in Pagan rituals, even private ones.
370 Valens orders a tremendous persecution of non-Christian peoples in all the Eastern Empire. In Antioch, among many other non-Christians, the ex-governor Fidustius and the priests Hilarius and Patricius are executed. Tons of books are burnt in the squares of the cities of the Eastern Empire. All the friends of Julianus are persecuted (Orebasius, Sallustius, Pegasius etc.), the philosopher Simonides is burned alive and the philosopher Maximus is decapitated.
So the Christian Church was very much like the Taliban or the Communists. See https://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/06/christian-atrocities-three-centuries-of-pagan-persecution/

#34

@Fool0f4Took

It's interesting that secularism often gets talked about as though it's a static Thing, fully cooked, a done deal.

#35

@hankkruse4660

John V. is a pietist.

#36

@stevecass7575

Hey Paul, can I have $10 for every time you say 'I think Tom Holland is right'? I don't want to have to work again! 🤣

#37

@TrebizondMusic-cm6fp

I've been reflecting on all this in relation to the Book of Mormon. The main civilization it tells of had religious tolerance but was Christian-based. An agitator who claimed to be atheist actively worked against the stability of the society under cover of his right to freedom of conscience and eventually ran afoul of the secular government (this is in Alma chapter 30). Since that society didn't exactly have the separation of Church and State that we do, the secular authority and the religious authority were closely allied, and the religious authority cursed the agitator with muteness. Careful attention to this account brings up subtleties that this video conversation is helping to highlight: that agitator's message bore a striking resemblance to "critical consciousness" and "liberation" ideologies, and if a rebellious liberatory nihilism has weakened our technocratic society, imagine what it did to preindustrial ones! And in fact, the societies told of in the Book of Mormon finally did succumb to corruption and destroyed themselves. The surviving chroniclers had little hope for our civilization unless we all repent.

#38

@faturechi

19:00 So Calvin has ALWAYS been Commie?

#39

@agapologia

"I'm a pragmatist, and I think Christianity works better." This is actually the main issue I have with how JBP formulates his stance on the truth of Christianity or just the existence of God. It's quite pragmatic/evolutionary. I would hope that the truth of something does not at all depend on whether or not it "works". If there were suddenly no more theists, that would not at all change the fact that God exists.

#40

@amc9329

If you ask a Utilitarian Atheist about who they would rather have to share space with, they are going to side with the Devil they know. It is all about tribal unity. Anti-authoritarians must have group cohesion to ensure competing dominionist ideologies don't take root. We have strains of Christianity that are at least on paper inclusive and resistant to othering nonbelievers, but they don't offer the same certainty that the more Evangelical authoritarian strains offer. As we watch group participation and identification with Christianity fall, we are seeing these groups grow more insular and outwardly violent toward competing ideologies. These same groups also become more vulnerable to charismatic con men because they fear the loss resources and of temporal control.

#41

@clintd3476

There are groups against groups with competing data sets of facts. Ali retelling a narrative of mass g*rapes contrasted with Non-Sionists journalists at outfits like the Greyzone (Blumenthal and Maté, etc) that contend the infant burning and grapes didn’t occur. It really is a topsy turvy tar pit.

#42