Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
PaperclipPerfector
13hr ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
One of the major atheist YouTubers, Joe Schmid, has announced his conversion to Catholicism.
What prepared the ground for him was apparently the cumulative weight of theistic arguments, and what pushed him to Catholicism were miracles.
Scott Alexander has investigated one of them more exhaustively than anyone could expect of him. I looked only into one other so far, the Zeitoun Apparitions, which I found genuinely baffling in a way not explainable by some tricks of the sun. That said, I'm surprised how easily a man I thought of as lucid and careful in his thinking jumped from miracles to theism, and from there to Catholicism.
One problem is miracles that don't support Catholicism. Schmid would need to wage a war against the wrong kind of miracles with the zeal matching any militant atheist. A move absent from atheist arsenal, dismissing some miracle claims as work of demons, is tempting for a Catholic but must be withheld because any competing religions can throw it back at them.
We could also expect Catholics to lead by points when it comes to miracle claims you can't just laugh off, given both their numbers and unique institutionalization of miracle investigation in Catholicism.
An even greater barrier is what you could call Divine Identification Problem.
"Beloved, believe not every spirit..." - Even if you are directly contacted by something higher, there’s no trustworthy way, from mere human perspective, to check its credentials, whether it is God or even genuinely stands for God. God could give you overwhelming evidence of supernatural intelligence and might without giving you overwhelming evidence of divinity.
(That raises the question whether the swamp of skepticism that I personally am growing weary of is escapable even in principle, but let's leave it for another time)
Of course, miracles should shift our priors, though the final credence of specific religion would depend on how inherently plausible we find it. In other words, how strong are our objections to its teachings.
Joe acknowledged some serious challenges, like the problem of evil and the doctrine of eternal damnation. Part of his response here was roughly “yes, it is a challenge, BUT look at evidence I have on the other side of the scale” which I found deeply unsatisfying given how easy this reasoning is to flip. Most disappointingly, he even brings up noetic effects of sin – which in my eyes is a meme-tier argument, uncompelling to the point of unintentional hilarity. Your reason, senses, heart suggest something against the true religion? So much the worse for the former!
Notably, Schmid is a reconvert, after spending a decade in atheism. There appears to be something psychologically interesting happening here. I've read many testimonies, and it seems like many (most, all?) former believers who were brought up in faith carry a permanent trace of it in their minds even after getting thoroughly blasted with atheistic rhetoric. As if a part of them still believes and fears disapproval of the God they turned their backs on. Some report still fearing hell at times. This kind of experience is totally alien to me, so I'll leave it at that.
Since his announcement last week, Schmid has dropped 7 hour "cumulative case for God" and 10 hour "miracles PROVE Catholicism videos, threatening a third one of comparable length today, all of which I will make sure to listen to as background to my Minecraft sessions at a later date, though it might take a while (my tastes are very…singular)
Did you mean to post this in the culture war thread? Seems not quite "fun"
I was hesitant where to post it, but quickly dismissed the culture war thread as this has nothing to do with politics.
This one seemed as the closest match, and hey, I personally do find philosophy and the connected blogosphere as one of the major sources of my entertainment
Culture war is often explicitly politics-related, but it's also something a little different from politics, and I think a lot of people would consider atheism/religion (or perhaps atheism/Christianity specifically) as one of the OG culture wars in the internet forum sphere.
I actually wonder now who/when/where the first internet flame war about the existence of God/god took place, and if it's still accessible somewhere, or if it's been lost forever to the sands of time. Most likely the latter. Likely no way of provably knowing that any given one was the first one, anyway, unless it could be traced to the very first instance of some message board technology such that one can be sure no earlier example could have technologically existed.
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