Conversational Atheist

Cosmic Skeptic at the ACSJ: "Does The Universe Have a Cause?"

Fantastic talk by Alex J. O’Connor (CosmicSkeptic) about a flaw in the ontological argument. I’ve previously made posts about the cosmological argument and how it’s used by theists to support the idea of a god, but this is an angle that I never considered.

I highly recommend you take the time to watch this video, or at least until the 23 minute mark (after that he takes questions and has an open discussion with the audience). I also recommend that you go follow Mr. O’Connor on social media under the name CosmicSkeptic. He’s an incredibly smart guy who runs a youtube channel with awesome content, and I’m sure he’ll be making even more of a name for himself as time goes on.

Link to Omegle conversation --> http://logs.omegle.com/b2e15ce14f7ae2d0

This was a short discussion I had with a nice guy named Gabriel. The main topic was the big bang, and why I believe that the big bang theory is true.

Something this guy asked was what started the big bang. Now, I don’t know, nor does anybody else to my knowledge. Gabriel thought he had a “checkmate atheist” moment which I was expecting. He said “If you don’t know, then how can you say it happened?” I explained that he asked if I knew how it happened, not if it did happen. The example I used was the tides. Humans observed that the tides came in and out before they knew why. Not knowing that the moon moved the tides didn’t mean that they didn’t know that the tides were real.

This is the same for the big bang. Gabriel asked me what evidence there was for the big bang, and I told him about the background radiation of the universe, the expansion of the universe, and the concentration primordial elements in the universe. He then asked where I got that information. I got it from reading scientific journals and looking at the published papers on the topics.

This is something I encourage everybody interested in science does- read scientific articles that have to do with something you’re interested in. It’s by no means a requirement, but it’s a good way to learn new things. I read those articles and studies because I wanted to know what evidence there was for the big bang, and I learned a lot.

Link to Omegle conversation --> http://logs.omegle.com/98a672ff12cf8c05

I’ll be honest, this conversation- although short- got me fired up. From the very start where they asked me to spell god with a capitol g I knew it wasn’t going to go well. FYI, it’s a letter, it doesn’t matter.

So they asked why I was an atheist and I explained it’s because “I haven’t seen any good evidence or reason to believe a god or gods exist.” Pretty standard. Their response to this is to say that it’s obvious that there’s a creator god watching over us and the evidence is in front of our faces. Of course, when I asked them to explain why they thought that and what evidence I was apparently missing, they said:

“oh my goodness, listen i cannot force you to believe anything..... its not my place .....thats for life to reveal when the time is right....as it seems, your heart is already hardened to his existence and you probably came on here to just convince me with theories that ive already heard of that he doesnt. but all i can tell you is my life would have been a mess if it wasnt for him. ive been a christian for 2 years now. and never looked back”

Now this got me mad. One, because they assumed my motives and intentions (which was an incorrect assumption) and two, because they gave complete non-answers to my questions and didn’t seem like they’d be answering anything else I had to ask them.

I informed them that they were incorrect about why I was there, and proceeded to say that obviously they had already written me off with their idea of what an atheist is like. Then of course they apologized if I was offended, and I said I actually was pretty offended. I said “I could have come on here and been an asshole to you, assuming you’re some dumb bible thumping christian, but I didn’t. Because I respect you as a person and I don’t like to get my information from harmful and exaggerated stereotypes. I thought I’d get the same respect.”

Did I go off a bit? Yes, and I’ll admit that. But it’s so frustrating when you try to talk to someone and they’ve obviously written you off from the start. I have it right in my prepared opening: “I like having honest and friendly discussions with people...”

So as an atheist who talks to a lot of theists, I’ve found that you can run into two types of people. There are some people who understand that being an atheist is lacking a belief in a god, and usually also understand that the reason for this lack of belief is due to lack of evidence or reason. Usually they disagree with you (which is why they’re theists) on this, but they at least are capable of having an actual conversation.

The other type of people I’ve run into are the people who say things like:

“You just don’t want to believe.”

“You believe in god but you reject/hate him”

“Your heart has been hardened so you don’t want to believe”

“You want to sin so you don’t believe in god”

Etc

Firstly, the idea that belief can be a choice is ridiculous. When you believe that a claim is true, it’s because you’ve been convinced that it’s true. You can’t choose to be convinced of something, you either are or you aren’t at the present moment. One thing I like to do when this topic comes up is to ask the other person to believe in unicorns. Then I ask them if they honestly can tell me that they now actually believe in unicorns. I even say that they can choose to believe in unicorns right now for the experiment, then choose to stop believing in unicorns afterwards. Most times they write this off as silly, because it is. You can’t just decide to believe in something or not believe in something-which is what I was demonstrating. But they usually miss the point.

Second, there’s this idea that atheists just don’t want to believe in god because they don’t like the god character presented by religion. Now, part of that is true: the god character in the three abrahamic religions is a vengeful, conceited, moral thug who doesn’t seem to have any regard for human beings based on it’s actions, and often makes easily avoidable mistakes. If that god exists, I certainly wouldn’t worship it. But if it exists and there is evidence to support the claim that it exists, then I 100% would believe that it exists. Belief of existence is not the same as worship. I believe that murder exists even though I don’t like the concept of murder.

In the three abrahamic religions (I’m not very knowledgable about other religions in the world such as hinduism, buddhism, sikhism, etc) there are specific passages that deal with the topic of non-believers. These passages range from saying we’re liars who just want to sin to condemning us to death (Psalms 4:1 and Quran 4:89 for example.) 

Many theists believe the things said about atheists in their holy books, which is a real shame since it just shuts down conversations before they even begin. How am I supposed to have an open and honest discussion if the person I’m talking to thinks I just hate god and don’t want to believe in him? Usually they just tell me to “open my heart” and go pray- which isn’t constructive at all.

Link to Omegle conversation -> http://logs.omegle.com/07f89eee52e9ae35

This conversation with a Jewish person was going alright, I learned a bit about some cool geology stuff while looking up stuff about their argument, but towards the end I lost it. I got fucking angry, and it’s because of the idea that “god is benevolent and suffering is actually good”

So of course I gave the obvious example of suffering: children with cancer. This person stuck with the idea that somehow these kids with cancer were suffering and it was good. So then I stepped it up by bringing up child molestation. And this is what fucking pissed me off the most. Here’s the exchange (my words are in bold):

“So when a child gets molested, that’s good?”

‘For the child? Yes. For the molester? No.”

“Alright then goodbye. I can’t talk to someone who can find any reason why molesting a child would be good. If I was your god and I knew a child molester was about to rape a child, I would stop it before it happened, not sit back and watch and say ‘I’m going to punish you later, and trust me this is good for you.’”

There are people in this world who actually believe that when a child gets molested it’s ultimately good for them and I can’t stand those sorts of people. The last bit (where I said if “I was god...”) I heard Tracie Harris say on The Atheist Experience. And honestly I think it’s the most powerful thing I’ve heard when it comes to morality and god. Logical arguments aside, how does somebody rationalize an all powerful, all knowing, and loving god with such terrible shit happening in the world. Twist it how you like to defend your god, but don’t sit there and tell me it’s good for kids to be molested.