Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Jewish Philosophy: Four False Yet Popular Reasons to Be an Atheist

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

well I don't have to tell you that all the smart people are atheists all the people are really with it really up to date people are studying the coolest stuff those are all atheists people who are religious believe in God are hopelessly simple-minded ignorant um prejudiced superstitious and the rest it's definitely the intellectual Style to be an atheist would be instructive I think to ask people who are atheists why they are what good reason do they think they have for being an atheist there are reasons that are given I would wager not one in 20. of the people who called themselves atheists were able to be able to be able to give any of them but there are reasons that are given by famous people and I'd like to go through some of the more popular ones this evening and show you that they have no substance now there may be some that I'm missing some that you're aware of if I am missing them then I'd be very happy to hear about them and try to work on those as well but these are the ones that I see of most often and here most often so I picked them out in my own experience I don't know whether that would be representative of your experience there are two very short ones and two much longer ones which I'll break up into pieces the first very short one is this you're discussing whether X exists someone who believe X exists owes proof reason evidence that it exists because he says something exists the person who says X doesn't exist doesn't owe any proof he doesn't know any reason is the first guy who says it does exist can't give you a reason then the other guy wins by default

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1. 0:19well I don't have to tell you that all the smart people are atheists all the…
2. 4:42that there is no God which we will consider in a few minutes but the first…
3. 9:28be reduced to a kind of agnosticism where you say I don't know maybe one of…
4. 14:21now first of all the evidence that they are citing is incorrect in the last 20…
5. 19:14like evolution but then I have to believe in a jokester God who's just pulling the…
6. 24:04now let's suppose that his religion says nothing about the age of the universe but he's…
7. 28:16is that the whole of our science deals with five percent of the universe at best…
8. 33:01nobody was expecting yeah that's what everybody else is saying wow how can that be the…
9. 38:16but maybe God means something entirely different by you now let's see um how far is…
10. 43:04that was really horrific so I said to her if that's what you're suffering from your…

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