I’ve been on a years-long search for any religious apologist, theologian, or just a believer worth a damn and so far, I haven’t found it. I’ve brought this up in many videos and occasionally, I have questions about it.
I don’t know that I’ve ever really spelled it out, exactly what it is that I’m looking for. Therefore, I’m going to try to do that today, at least to give people a place to look if they have questions.
I considered doing this as a YouTube video, and I might do that at some point, but it would be a short video, probably being something extra I’d dump on a Saturday, and with my extended lead time, currently nearly 3 months, it wouldn’t really make sense, at least to me.
First though, a little background. I’ve been looking at religious claims for decades now. I’ve been doing it on YouTube for many years. So far, I have found nothing that is remotely impressive to a non-believer, specifically a skeptical non-believer. I don’t care about emotional claims. I don’t care about heartfelt pleas. I don’t care about what anyone wants to be true. I am only concerned with what is actually true in the real world that we all share.
That’s the kind of person that the religious are afraid of. We are not looking for their god. We have no emotional trauma that they can take advantage of. We understand their beliefs as well, and usually better than they do. So what can they possibly say to us that will matter?
That’s my question. Because if these beliefs are true, then they ought to be able to present evidence to us that goes beyond “I have faith” and “it makes me feel good” and apparently, that simply doesn’t exist. Religion appeals to the gullible and the stupid. It doesn’t make any sense to the skeptics, who aren’t interested in the empty claims and magical thinking, we care about the actual evidence that these things actually happened and are factually true.
I am constantly searching for someone who can go beyond the emotional appeals. So far, I can’t find anyone. I’ll get people like William Lane Craig and John Lennox, both of whom are ridiculous jokes who believe for emotional reasons and have nothing of substance to back them up. I want someone who can completely leave faith behind and go with the facts. I want someone who can go beyond “it seems to me” and who clearly has a profit motive. Don’t express your unsupported opinions as if they were facts, actually present the evidence to back your claims up. There seems to be no one like that across the religious spectrum.
All apologists fail since it’s their job to convince the already faithful to remain that way. They have no vested interest in taking on the skeptics, and frankly, I am not impressed by any atheist debater that I’ve seen so far, although a lot of that is not their fault. If you really try to drill down to the problem, which is the fact that they have no evidentiary support for anything that they’re saying, the religious just won’t talk to you anymore. They know they’ve got nothing. The entire discussion is stacked against rationality from the start. Why would they bother when they know they have easy pickings among the religiously delusional?
Even among academics, they are still swimming in faith-based nonsense. Professional theologians, people who know the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic backward and forward, still take every bit of it on faith. Sure, you can tell me what the Bible says. You just can’t show that the Bible is true or valid or worthwhile. I don’t care what the book says unless it’s worth my time to consider it in the first place. Back it up first. Nobody can. Nobody even tries.
It seems like this is a fool’s errand. No one on the religious side, and this goes for any religion, can go without the security blanket that is faith. There is nothing else for them, whereas I find nothing of value in faith whatsoever. I have faith in nothing. I go where the evidence leads, to the best of my ability to determine it. I am not going to treat religion like a special case. It doesn’t get a double standard. I will evaluate the case for religion in the same way I evaluate anything else. It must be demonstrably true or I am going to set it aside, at least provisionally, until it can bring that evidence to the table. I might respect theists more if they could be honest and admit they’ve got nothing, but they can’t. It’s got to be true because it provides emotional comfort, but that doesn’t mean anything in the real world. Your feelings don’t impact reality, but instead of admitting that, they just hide it behind empty claims and irrational implied threats and then they stop talking to you at all because they’ve got easier prey over there.
So the search goes on. I don’t expect to ever find anything, but at least I tried, which is a whole lot more than I can say for the religious. Sad, huh?
re: I have found nothing that is remotely impressive to a non-believer, specifically a skeptical non-believer. I don’t care about emotional claims. I don’t care about heartfelt pleas. I don’t care about what anyone wants to be true. I am only concerned with what is actually true in the real world that we all share.
In the real world, religious stuff will never, ever be about a search for the truth. The objective, demonstrable facts do not interest them. Look at the way religion functions: to meet safety, security, hope needs (emotional comfort needs). You can’t meet those needs if you acknowledge the Bible is just full of factual and textual errors (it is); Chock full o’Nuts (non-evidenced, non-demonstrable assertions). If, as a Catholic, you acknowledge that pope is fully fallible (he is) where are you going to get that final authoritative (I know for sure comfort) from?
Faith does not function as a search for the truth. It functions as a way to stop looking for the truth because you already have “the truth” in your back pocket. That is how it meets people’s safety, security, hope needs; that is, all the emotional comforts and secure feelings.
re: It must be demonstrably true or I am going to set it aside, at least provisionally, until it can bring that evidence to the table.
Then you will never, ever find what your looking for because religion functions to meet safety, security, hope needs (emotional comfort needs). Again, it is not even trying to meet any truth needs but operates as a defense mechanism against finding the truth.
Religion is highly irrational and emotional and, at this point in time, it is not a search for the truth. No major religions currently are. Again, they are defense mechanisms so you can stop searching for that hard road: truth, reality. It’s about comfort needs and security needs. It’s got nothing to do with searching for the truth. Otherwise, these folks would be out there questioning and probing and digging, but if any of them did too much of that they’d be deconstructing their “faiths” left, right and center and all their emotional comforts right along with it.
re: no evidentiary support ✓ re: They know they’ve got nothing. ✓ re: The entire discussion is stacked against rationality from the start. ✓
Because rationality is not the problem religion is trying to solve. But, you need/want false comfort, false hope, false security, (tell me lies, sweet little lies) religion has got you covered.
How it is functioning is way more insightful than what it says about itself: “Oh, yes we follow the evidence, and we are on a search for the Truth.”❌
No, they don’t care about truth, which is why I keep saying they don’t care and they get upset at that because I think they know they should care. They just don’t. Occasionally, you’ll find the random theist who is willing to be honest with themselves, but that’s sad too. What’s worse, refusing to admit that you don’t care, but still not caring, or happily not caring and not understanding the problem with it? I honestly don’t know.
I don’t expect to find what I’d like to find because I know it doesn’t exist. At least at the end of the day, I can say I honestly tried, something the religious are intellectually and emotionally incapable of doing. They pretend that they are after the truth but it is painfully simple to show otherwise. It’s easy to show the double standards and the willful ignorance, but it doesn’t matter because, as we all know, they just don’t care. They’re immature little children playing games because they can’t handle the world that they live in. If that’s not the most pathetic thing you can say about the religious, I don’t know what is.
re: they know they should care. ✓
re: I don’t expect to find what I’d like to find because I know it doesn’t exist. ✓
re: At least at the end of the day, I can say I honestly tried ✓ Absolutely.
re: double standards and the willful ignorance ✓
re: immature little children playing games because they can’t handle the world that they live in.✓ Exactly, –and- you could also say, that is their completely ineffective way of dealing with the real world they live in.💌 To them, imagination is their weapon in the war against reality.
One of them told me not long ago: “even if it is fiction, it reveals truth that reality obscures.” And yet had not one example. It is like they think reality can be beaten with enough imagination (making up stuff). I say the most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your “heart and spirit” of something your mind knows you have no demonstrable, objective evidence for.
These people have no clue what any of those words mean. It’s really absurd.
✓—Exactly. 💯%❗