Atheist Debates - What should/shouldn't change your mind about God

What changed my mind was after watching Atheist experience years ago. I noticed that all the arguments fell apart once actually questioned and thus I could only fall upon faith. Then I noticed that faith is useless and does more harm then good if followed. When I first started questioning my faith I saw Christopher Hitchens and I initially hated everything coming out of his mouth but as I intellectually approached what he was saying it started to crumble my foundations of faith. I then found Matt Dillahunty and the Atheist Experience and begun to hear people fall short constantly when trying to prove a God. Thank you Matt Dillahunty for being a force of nature.

If God was all powerful, he wouldn't need apologists to defend him.

What shouldn't convince me? Gaslighting. Circular reasoning. God of the gaps -arguments.

The Licona debate was wild. Mocking Matt's skepticism while giving arguments from trash can lid ghosts and ouija board demons like a schoolgirl at a sleepover.

Hey, Matt. Just wanted you to know that I'm glad I found your content. I was raised into a somewhat cult like spiritual environment. After years of estrangement, mental illness, and tough situations, my therapist helped me become agnostic and introduced me to a philosophy podcast. You who have the courage to stare the world in the face (as you have in debates), and proclaim "You're wrong." While firmly planted in your reasoning, demonstrating your position eloquently and (I think) very patienly. While those firm in their faith can not fully appreciate the good you're doing in the world, the disillusioned of us, with unsupportive families, friends, and communities. Are now able to find people like you. Your efforts are most appreciated, and I can see you worked very hard to build something for the rest of us to appreciate. Sorry for being long-winded, but your content stands out, and I learn a lot from your values. I'm sure you are a figure to more than just I. Please continue to stand in for us who maybe weren't given a fair chance at deciding what was important to us. Thank you for helping me become an individual. Sincerely - a 20 something minnesotan guy

I have no doubt many Theists will be annoyed by Matt`s answer to this question but the answer he gives (that he just doesn`t know) is really a practise in humility and not arrogance or dogmatism. For Theists to think otherwise really shows their own unhumble and unsophisticated understanding of this topic.

Matt you are looking like the logic Gandalf with that beard. I love it man❤

Uh oh, looks like someone forgot to “look at the trees” 🤣

We could have empirical evidence that an entity with extreme power exists, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a God - or even any specific God. All we would gather from this entity appearing is that it exists. It still has a lot of work to prove that it’s divine, should be worshiped, has the power over life and death, created the universe, etc. When you follow these thoughts logically, it is insane to believe that people accept belief in a specific God claim without any of the above claims getting met by any form of evidence. Honestly, if a personal God did exist, we don’t live in that universe solely based off how ours operates.

God should change my mind. I've asked God to do this. He won't do it so... Me not believing in him is justified.

What should? Show me the god. What shouldn't? Not showing me the god.

What would convince me that (a) god exists: showing up in person. What would convince me that the being is, in fact, a (or the) god: I’m unsure. But the god should know what would convince me.

Another excellent video! Thanks Matt, glad to see you're not just looking well, but looking great. Hope you're feeling great too.

Looking sharp! Good videos lately.

Matt, I've always liked your answer. 👍💙💙💙🥰✌

Thank you for the reasoned and well thought through exposition. It is refreshing to hear this debated without heated emotion.

I've seen lots of people get chopped into pieces and then come back to life. They're called magic tricks.

Personally, being asked what would make me believe in god is on the same level as: What evidence would you need to believe that the earth is flat? What evidence would you need to believe that Santa is real? What evidence would you need to believe that astrology is a serious science? And so on. It’s not that there’s no evidence for god, it’s that there’s ton of evidence that religion is a social phenomenon and gods are manmade mythology.

re - 12:30 That decapitation thing happens in The X-Files. It turns out that the headless corpse had a twin brother.

5:00 I grew up in a Pentecostal church. They taught that there were tongues prayer languages that were quiet utterances between you and the Christian god and there were also messages for the church that were vocalized loud enough for everyone to hear. Those messages that were allegedly for the edification of the church body were always supposed to have a prophetic message from someone (usually a separate person) who offered the interpretation of the gibberish message. A couple of things were funny about this. 1. once in a while, two people started calling out an interpretation message, and they almost never started the same way. (oops) One person always backed down and the other person continued. 2. there wasn't necessarily any correlation between the length of the message in tongues and the length of the interpretation. Most of the time, the interpretation went for considerably longer than the gibberish.