You’re Not Supposed to Exist (If Atheism Is True)

To turn that Bayesian argument around: Given that God does not present itself, the most likely explanation is simply that he doesn't exist.

Sir Sic video incoming.

I've been saying this for a while. If there is no God, and atheistic naturalism and evolution are THE truth, then this means that you and I are absolutely nothing more than a collection of chemicals and water that was squirted out of the hind end of an uncaring, apathetic univers a billion years ago by nonintelligent, amoral, valueless, indifferent processes. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

If it turns out that this is true, and if I am ever convinced of this truth, then guess what? I'm not going to care about anything that happens unless, and ONLY unless, it directly affects me. When I see a "tragedy" on the news, I'll shrug my shoulders. When I see a friend or acquaintance with cancer, I'll simply say that it stinks to be you. When I see someone get hit by a car and paralyzed, I'll just nod and realize that this person was so unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but oh well, that's the breaks.

If you think that way about me, that is fine as well. It will not matter, because I will not care.

This is not to say that YOU cannot care or should not care. If you want to, go ahead and waste your time and energy on lamenting on tragedies, fine. I do not care. I do not care if you care that I don't care. We are clumps of chemicals thrown together by nothing, and in 300 years, we will be nothing except worm food.

What is the difference today between Napoleon Bonaparte, the traders of people in North Africa, the purchasers of those people in England and the Americas, the abolitionists who tried to stop this, and the people themselves who were bought and sold? Answer- nothing. All of them are nothing more than a collection of dry bones the color of the moon. None of it matters, and no one cares.

So go ahead and live this meaningless existence and do what you will, for this is the whole of the law. It won't last forever, so get all you can now while you can. If you crush some blobs of chemicals in the process, well, it sure stinks to be them, doesn't it? If you get crushed in the process, too bad for you.

Scream all you want that I am wrong. Show me otherwise. Go ahead. If there is no God, then I am indifferent to all of you and will simply yawn at anything you say.

Hey testify,
Long time Christian and ive watched and liked your content for a few years now. While i usually agree with you on some arguments regarding materialism, this one about the development of consciousness is kind of flawed.

They have come up with a rather compelling theory regarding the development of consciousness, and a lot of it just boils down to animals trying to be better hunters. To be more in depth each thing that we do is a process that took millions of years for animal brains to figure out, walking, seeing, hearing, smelling. And humans in particular took a rather unique approach to developing as a species. A normally prey animal slowly becoming better at being a predator, and once we became a hunter gatherer community we started to see the value of working with other animals like wolves, we began to learn how to out think the things we were hunting, finding easier and safer methods of hunting.

It wouldnt be until some 8000 years ago that humans became what could be considered a undeniably intelligent species, and built civilizations.

So consciousness is not something that just showed up out of nowhere, each animal just had different factors that led to their level of consciousness

Thanks for the video. I was an convinced Atheist for many years. Reflecting on consciousness was one of the main reasons that made me doubt my atheism. I think that aome version of the argument from consciousness is probably the best argument for God.

1. High level mammals exhibit consciousness. Proto Homosapiens were conscious. Why do levels of self awareness and conscious behavior track so closely with brain size?
2. The justification of "Science of the Gap" (science will eventually solve a problem) vs "God of the Gap" is the inductive argument that over time we see the former continue to explain more and more while the latter explains less and less. If you are going to claim consciousness as a data point, how can you ignore the 1,000's of other data points that favor an opposite conclusion?

“Their were just atoms floating around.” How did those atoms get there

You maybe trying to prove god exist, but you are not trying to prove how is your version of god true and why it isn't man-made

Problem with this argument is, that if we do not know how consciousness arise, we can not say that it is more probable on theism. If we do not know how it can be caused, we can not give potentional causes probability. So this do not work for any side of this question. BTW I am theist.

The brain is merely the control interface for the physical body, while our non-physical soul is the one pulling the strings. Consider 'The Immortal Mind' by Dr. Michael Egnor.

It seems everyone believes self aware consciousness can exist without cause. The question is are we the first uncaused intelligent cause, or has the much greater 'I am' preceded us? Given the unlikely accidental existence of the finely tuned universe and life itself, Inference to the best explanation suggests the latter.

I frankly do not think this is a good argument at all.
I do appreciate that you at least say that under theism, there is a prediction that consciousness would exist, and thus, given the existence of consciousness, that should make theism more likely. This is a much better argument than many make; very few people arguing this point bother to make predictions explicit. However, when deciding things like this, you have to ask by how much should something shift your belief. Atheism does not make a prediction; it is a lack of a prediction.

So, supposing consciousness exists, what hypothesis, or types of hypothesis, increase in likelihood? Theism is only one potential cause. As you say, panpsychism also increases. The evidence should help you discriminate between potential explanations. At best, you could say consciousness could act as WEAK evidence for theism, since it does at least predict it where naturalism doesn't.

When deciding the question of theism vs atheism or any of the other explanations behind these questions, the best way I am aware of to come to a decision (or lack thereof) is to tally all of the predictions each explanation offers, how strongly the evidence favors what explanations, and then try to do as formal an analysis of the data as you can. Bayesian probability is the best way to do this, in my opinion, even if it is subjective, and I appreciate the brief reference to it here. Some people come to religious conclusions based on this, some people don't.

Anyway, I appreciate the video's attempt, but find that it simply assigns far too high a confidence in the conclusion then would be reasonable given the evidence.

Lots of assumptions here. But I guess if you want your beliefs to be superior somehow, this is one way to go about it.

Even god does exist it is a a hole and produce a lot of shite
god is not love god is fear.

consciousness is just an adaptive tool for survival. EVERYTHING! we will still be a long time from understanding how exactly the connections of neurons generate consciousness, or how plastids ended up in our cells, but that doesn't mean that the better explanation is like: well, it's all part of God's plan. The evidence is that everything is too complicated and we don't understand it, so go and donate to the temple renovation😂

You’d have to demonstrate why consciousness couldn’t come from a natural universe. Secondly when you say you aren’t relying on God of the gaps you’re just not telling the truth, as in this video you constantly demonstrate a lack of understanding of scientific understandings of consciousness, you demonstrate in this video that it’s your lack of knowledge that leads you to throw away consciousness coming naturally. Thirdly, unlike religion, science is growing in knowledge and has shown us many things we didn’t previously know. When we say science will one day show us the answer, that isn’t blind faith, that is based on past experience and the fact that scientists are actively making progress right now. Religion will always be faith, while science will lead to solid answers as it has in the past. With religion we will never know tomorrow what we don’t know today. You also underestimate just how much scientists know about this field while unfairly discrediting what little you do know, favouring a guess.

Ha! Joke's on you! I'm aselfist. I believe in God. I believe in you. But I don't believe that I exist. Let's see you deal with that!

Try this: It was asked whether, if a tree falls in a forest and no - one is there to observe it, then does it make a sound. The answer is no, since existence is something attributed by the human mind at least. Therefore, if humanity ceased to exist, by this argument, then the universe would not exist as the universe could not be observed and its existence described. You might hypothesise, from inquiry, that the universe existed prior to humanity but your observations would occur in the here and now, not then. To give the required existence to the pre - human universe we must posit another pre - existing conscious observer. Furthermore, to observe something entirely, you must stand, or be able to stand, outside of it. If we consider the soul to exist and have its being in, or associated with eternity, then we produce the required place from which to observe the universe. By introducing the Father we provide confirmation of the hypothesis that existence is a consequence of observation. If the hypothesis is denied then a pre - human existence is a conjecture to add to the observed existence of the present. Since a confirmation trumps a conjecture, God exists.

People always forgot, that any number divided by infinity is zero. Meaning, your existence (one possibility) will never happens randomly in an infinite set of possibilities. You need Someone to reduce that possibility from infinite to a coubtable number. Thats the math answer to God.

The "logic" answer is, you will still not exist in a random chance of infinite possibility, because something that will destroy you or prevent your existence, suddenly existed the same time as you, also has the same chance as your random existence. For that, you need Someone to make sure you exist and then endure

im an atheist but this quite a good video explaining the problem given its short timeframe
one issue is with your god of the gaps contr-argument. i still think you are right but your reasoning is flawed. imagine i explained thunders saying "god makes them" and upon hearing god of gaps argument i rebutal with "thunders are phenomena which exists, we know them and its already our datapoint"
i think that better argument is that countiousness is immaterial phenomenon and science can only examine material.
another issue is that its a challenge to naturalism rather than atheism which to be fair was mentioned.
this exact argument changed my mind about naturalism. now the most plausible explanation are A - immaterial can exists or B - countiousness doesn't exist. im not sure which is correct but i think there is no other solution

The thing is your man made religion won't explain anything, our only way of understanding the universe is science. and we may never find the answers but does it really matter?

I'm still an atheist.

Just because theism might currently seem like the best explanation for something, and an atheistic worldview doesn't have an answer, that doesn’t automatically make theism true. The best explanation still needs supporting evidence to actually be considered true. Only with proof can it genuinely be called the best explanation.

Just because theism might currently seem like the best explanation for something, and an atheistic worldview doesn't have an answer, that doesn’t automatically make theism true. The best explanation still needs supporting evidence to actually be considered true. Only with proof can it genuinely be called the best explanation.

Atheists actually believe that the universe magically created itself without a wizard even casting the spell

Your "abductive argument" for consciousness is functionally indistinguishable from a god-of-the-gaps argument. Just as ancient societies invoked divine intervention to explain phenomena like thunder and lightning, your argument resorts to a god or supernatural force to account for the current mysteries surrounding consciousness. Your underlying logic is analogous to the following::
Premise 1 (Observation): Lightning and thunder are incredibly powerful, destructive, and unpredictable forces of nature.
Premise 2 (Observation): Humans are utterly helpless in the face of these forces.
Premise 3 (Background Belief): All powerful and uncontrollable phenomena are caused by powerful entities.
Premise 4 (Background Belief): The most powerful entities are gods.
Premise 5 (Background Belief): Gods often express their emotions and intentions through natural events.
Premise 6 (Background Belief): Negative and destructive events often signify anger or displeasure from a powerful entity.
Inference (Abduction): Therefore, the best explanation for the powerful, destructive, and unpredictable nature of lightning and thunder, coupled with human helplessness, is that a powerful, supernatural entity (a god) is causing them. Since they are often destructive and awe-inspiring, they must be expressions of that god's anger or displeasure.

I’m a converted Christian from atheist

Hello. I am an agnostic atheist. I define 'agnostic' as to have insufficient knowledge or available information that justifies changing one's default position. I define the default position as the one an individual holds prior to hearing a claim for the first time. My default postion is atheism.

I define 'atheism' as suspending any acknowledgment as to the reality of any particular god until sufficient credible evidence is presented. My situation is that I currently have no good reason to. acknowledge the reality of any god.

And here is why I currently hold to such a position. Below are 12 facts that I must consider when evaluating the claim made by certain theists that a particular god exists in reality. To be clear, these are not premises for any argument that concludes there to be no gods. These are simply facts I must take into account when evaluating the verity of such a claim. If any of the following facts were to be contravened at a later time by evidence, experience, or sound argument, I would THEN have good reason to acknowledge such a reality.

1. I have never been presented with a functional definition of the term 'God' that serves to unify the differing and conflicting aspects of such a deity.
2. I personally have never observed a god.
3. I have never encountered any person who has claimed to have observed a god.
4. I know of no accounts of persons claiming to have observed a god that were willing or able to demonstrate or verify their observation for authenticity, accuracy, and validity.
5. I have never been presented with any sound logical argument, which also introduced demonstrably true premises that lead deductively to the inevitable conclusion that a god(s) exists in reality.
6. Of the many logical syllogisms I have examined arguing for the reality of a god(s), I have found all to contain a formal or informal logical fallacy or a premise that can not be demonstrated to be true.
7. I have never observed a phenomenon in which the existence of a god was a necessary antecedent for the known or probable explanation for the causation of such phenomenon.
8. Several proposed (and generally accepted) explanations for observable phenomena that were previously based on the agency of a god(s), have subsequently been replaced with rational, natural explanations, each substantiated with evidence that excluded the agency of a god(s). I have never encountered vice versa.
9. I have never knowingly experienced the presence of a god through intercession of angels, divine revelation, the miraculous act of divinity, or any occurrence of a supernatural event.
10. Every phenomenon that I have ever observed appears to have emerged from necessary and sufficient antecedents over time without exception. In other words, I have never observed a phenomenon (entity, process, object, event, process, substance, system, or being) that was created ex nihilo - that is instantaneously came into existence by the solitary volition of a deity.
11. I have observed religious people accepting all sorts of supernatural claims on very dubious evidence. This gives me good reason to reject such highly impropable claims from credulous and superstitious people where their veracity can not be examined.
12. All claims of a supernatural or divine nature that I have been presented have either been refuted to my satisfaction or do not present as falsifiable.

ALL of these facts lead me to the only rational conclusion that concurs with the realities I have been presented - and that is there is no good reason for me to acknowledge the reality of any particular god.

I have heard often that atheism is the denial of the Abrahamic god. But denial is the active rejection of a well established truth despite overwhelming evidence substantiating its verity. I am not aware of any evidential facts that substantiate this claim.

Atheism is simply withholding such acknowledgment of that truth until sufficient credible evidence is introduced.

It is natural, rational, and prudent to be skeptical of unsubstantiated claims, especially extraordinary ones.

I welcome any cordial response. Peace.

The existence of consciousness makes sense under naturalism. While its emergence may lack intentionality, consciousness itself provides clear survival advantages. The real mystery lies not in why it exists, but in how it arises—how subjective experience emerges from objective chemical processes. Theistic explanations don’t clarify this. Instead of identifying mechanisms, they simply reframe consciousness as “spiritual,” which adds no explanatory power. It merely relocates the problem to an even more obscure domain. Strip away the theological noise, and we’re still left without an explanation for consciousness. Even if a god exists, we remain in the dark about how or why such a being would bring consciousness into being—or even exist at all.

"Naturalism of the gaps"
Nice. I'll be using that term from now on.

Blind faith in science is a bad argument because it's not even faith, it's builded upon reasoning.

anything that doesn't make sense let's throw a god into it

I don't want to dog you too much, but a lot of this hinges on the premise that subjective experience is meaningful in any way. It has meaning because we provide it meaning, but the generation of life and consciousness from an atheistic view is pretty simple to understand when you stop assuming humans are special. Intelligence formed because it was beneficial to proto-humans to be smart. Other animals are smart up to a point because past that, it stops benefitting them to be intelligent. There's also the immense span of time it takes for meaningful changes to occur from natural evolution, so it's not something we as a civilization have had time to adequately observe, as we've been studying our universe for a relatively brief period of our existence as a species.

Generally speaking, things happen because it makes sense for them to happen. Life exists because proteins that linked together tended to link together. Ones that formed structures capable of producing more of themselves inevitably form more of themselves. You may ask "Why did they form that way in particular?" They didn't. It happened over an immeasurable span of time in a scenario that enabled it. If something can happen, it will eventually happen if the circumstances enable it.

As for consciousness itself, you're trying to understand why you think, and religion answers it, but I don't feel it's the answer. It was simply beneficial for proto-humans to dwell on things, so the ones that did lived long enough to reproduce more than the proto-humans that didn't.

The quality of our intellect is built on an uncountable amount of failures. For everything that got to proceed to the present day, billions of other things died out because they didn't work.

The atheist worldview can’t even explain or justify truth without using themselves as the main source. Heck they can’t even justify why their six senses are reliable without saying they blindly follow it.

That doesn’t mean you put god into things you don’t yet understand. Considering you have no reliable evidence for god.

I am curious to see how AI will influence this argument in the future

I've thought a lot about how the world itself works. We have molecules and all that and physics. But where does energy come from? Molecules get their behaviour from atoms, but why do atoms have that behaviour? Protons, electrons and neutrons...But where does the positive and negative charge come from? And why does the different combinations of electrons and what not cause the different behaviours in atoms? There's always a gap where something just magically happens

I REALLY NEEDED THIS! WITHOUT GOD WE WOULDN'T EVEN EXIST!!!! THE ENERGY HAS TO COME FROM SOMEWHERE!!! God is the Energy! He IS!!!!!!

It's awesome that no one EVER can say where the universe came from, thus making God a VERY plausible thing to exist, because if He is infinite, He has the power to create the Universe, using His energy. Since what is standing doesnt move until an external force moves it, there is nothing Atheits os Scientists can claim to deny this statement 😂😂😂

bUT atHEiSM iS mEREly a lACk of BElieF in gOD

What about Deuteronomy 22 29

Great video.

A few objections to this video coming from a Type A reductive physicalist:
1. Consciousness isn't anything above and beyond the expression of brian states. Whether you adhere to identity theories and say that mental states just ARE brains tates or is an emergent property of brains, both of these models fit well into a physicalist model. I'm also a qualia quietest who finds phenomenal consciousness to be incoherent, and therefore don't find p-zombies to be even conceivable. Ergo, the notion of brains being cold computers is baseless and not built on any solid modal evaluation. Besides, disembodied minds( i.e. god) are nonsensical and theists build this assumption into this argument.
2. The problem of Evil poses a problem, as this god entity created conscious beings knowing that they would suffer when it could've just made unconscious enties instead. This is especially true if you take the notion of p-zombies seriously.
3. If consciousness is supposedly more likely under theism because this god wanted a close relationship(which isn't biblical, mind you) how can they account for divine hiddenness? Why isn't this god obvious to me despite being conscious?

P.S. This entire argument is a texas sharpshooter, anyway. it's effectively defining something with having a specific predilection for somehting that already exists( consciousness.)

The proclamation of Atheism , in itself , is a refutation of Atheism .The very reality of Human Conciousness demands a Source , and only God can logically be the Source .The Human Mind can not be shown to be sourced from the Natural world because it emerges from and is part of the Supernatural .

Reminder that if the Brain was the source of Human Conciousness , literally any Brain Damage should destroy it completely .But not only do countless people retain their Cognitive capabilities , some have had an increase in IQ after said damage .A Man even survived after losing 90% of his Brain .