QualiaSoup has some great videos, although many of them are in the excessively tired “trying to convince Christians that their religion isn’t right” genre.
edit: Perhaps that’s not the best name for the genre; it’s more a kind of rational argumentation against ideas floating around the Christian memeosphere. But I’m still skeptical that it does very much good.
My intuition would be that nobody jumps the fence as a result of these sorts of things. They were either the sort who would have agreed with the conclusion without any argument anyway, or they will do mental gymnastics of all kinds in order to avoid believing the conclusion. But, having never really been religious, I’m probably wrong about that.
From what anecdotal evidence I have, I’d say it doesn’t have much to do with argument. People who discard their religious beliefs do so after feeling emotional alienation. The antagonistic context of a “my side versus their side” debate isn’t amenable to that.
It’s one thing to be told some (presumably good) reason to reject the God hypothesis. It’s another to be honestly forced to reconcile it with events in your life story. Maybe they just don’t “feel it” anymore; God’s presence in their life isn’t what it used to be. Or maybe they’re forced to wrestle with the problem of evil, because something bad happened to a loved one. Maybe they have a spiritual-but-secular experience that makes it seem like the whole God idea is small-minded. Whatever the case, it takes a kind of emotional punch and not just a line of reasoning.
I jumped the theist fence after reading a book whose intellectual force was too great to be denied outright, and too difficult to refute point by point. I hate being wrong, and feeling stupid, and the arguments from the book stayed in my thoughts for a long time.
I didn’t formalize my thoughts until later, but if my atheism had a cause, it was THE CASE AGAINST GOD by George H Smith. I was very emotionally satisfied with my religion and it’s community beforehand.
“way too many” sure suggests that they didn’t have cumulative effect. If they have some fixed chance of effecting change, but aren’t cumulative, then more is better, but raising that chance is more important. From your story, I’d guess that videos were important, but something else was necessary, too. So it seems very plausible that we are saturated in videos. (Did “Kissing Hank’s Ass” stay with you for years, or did you manage to forget it?)
QualiaSoup has some great videos, although many of them are in the excessively tired “trying to convince Christians that their religion isn’t right” genre.
edit: Perhaps that’s not the best name for the genre; it’s more a kind of rational argumentation against ideas floating around the Christian memeosphere. But I’m still skeptical that it does very much good.
The internet is full of atheists who grew up Christian.
As someone who took way too many whacks to the head to come around, I can tell you, it’s doing good.
I’ll take your word for it.
My intuition would be that nobody jumps the fence as a result of these sorts of things. They were either the sort who would have agreed with the conclusion without any argument anyway, or they will do mental gymnastics of all kinds in order to avoid believing the conclusion. But, having never really been religious, I’m probably wrong about that.
Then what is it that makes people jump the metaphorical fence?
From what anecdotal evidence I have, I’d say it doesn’t have much to do with argument. People who discard their religious beliefs do so after feeling emotional alienation. The antagonistic context of a “my side versus their side” debate isn’t amenable to that.
It’s one thing to be told some (presumably good) reason to reject the God hypothesis. It’s another to be honestly forced to reconcile it with events in your life story. Maybe they just don’t “feel it” anymore; God’s presence in their life isn’t what it used to be. Or maybe they’re forced to wrestle with the problem of evil, because something bad happened to a loved one. Maybe they have a spiritual-but-secular experience that makes it seem like the whole God idea is small-minded. Whatever the case, it takes a kind of emotional punch and not just a line of reasoning.
At least, that’s what I would think.
I jumped the theist fence after reading a book whose intellectual force was too great to be denied outright, and too difficult to refute point by point. I hate being wrong, and feeling stupid, and the arguments from the book stayed in my thoughts for a long time.
I didn’t formalize my thoughts until later, but if my atheism had a cause, it was THE CASE AGAINST GOD by George H Smith. I was very emotionally satisfied with my religion and it’s community beforehand.
“way too many” sure suggests that they didn’t have cumulative effect. If they have some fixed chance of effecting change, but aren’t cumulative, then more is better, but raising that chance is more important. From your story, I’d guess that videos were important, but something else was necessary, too. So it seems very plausible that we are saturated in videos. (Did “Kissing Hank’s Ass” stay with you for years, or did you manage to forget it?)
That “way too many” sounds more like “in retrospect, I can’t believe how much whacking it took to convince me / how thickheaded I was.”
At least that’s how I feel about it WRT myself.