Chris is a PhD candidate in Intelligent Systems (a sub-discipline of Computer Science); my focus is on evidence-justified beliefs and their argumentation as a means of conflict resolution both in computational and human systems.
He also won the 2010 Project Reason Prize from Sam Harris and earned a $10,000 check for his video.
GOALS
-Inspire atheists, secular humanists, and freethinkers.
-Provide support and solidarity for other former Christians.
-Inform the undecided.
-Generate discussion with the open-minded and intellectually honest religious.
-Cause the over-confident religious to question their unwavering certainty.
VALUES
His YouTube Channel is centered around using evidence and reason as the justification for beliefs.It is about letting the evidence speak for itself without having any preconceived biases about what it should say. (Unless, of course, those biases are based on previous strong evidence. But all biases should melt away in the face of new, stronger evidence.)
The ethic of this channel is inspired by the Secular Humanist tenets of testing beliefs and believing strongly only in beliefs for which we, as a species, also have strong evidence.
Tenets of Secular Humanism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
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Chris, calling god everything doesn’t make a lot of sense. ‘Everything’ has a name, the universe, it has no purpose, no thoughts, no goals, aims or objectives. It just is. How is pantheism different from an entirely god free universe? Well, if you take Occam’s (or Ockham’s) Razor to pantheism you get the natural world as it is seen by most atheists. You just remove the woo.
Further, how would you test the pantheistic hypothosis? How would the universe look if it just existed absent of any pantheistic god? It would be exactly the same. There simply is no god, nothing to appeal to, nothing to credit, nothing to be. Nothing. There is what there is and we call that the Universe. Surely that’s enough?
Finally, a god that is everything must include some truly horrible things, the ebola virus, the desire for some to torture, the sad painful deaths of most animals and many people; as well as the beautiful sunrises, rainbows and babies. Take the next step toward the truth and accept that there is no evidence for any gods, theistic, pantheistic or otherwise and refuse to believe in any until there is some evidence compelling enough to face a double blind test. Take the next step. There are no gods at all.
Paul, Chris does go into detail in his series on YouTube about God(s) and the lack of evidence for any God(s) to exist. The link is above in his “values” section if you want to check it out. He goes into extensive detail and has a very good series.
Amanda, That’s fine, but I saw this video on http://www.weareatheism.com and was surprised to see, what appears at least to be, an argument against theism in favour of pantheism. I have never held this worldview but others have passed from theism through pantheism to atheism. My hope is that he will, using the same logic and reason, make that extra step.
To me pantheism is theism without the directives, equally deluded, equally flawed. It’s a wishy washy woo filled universe just as invalid as its bankrupt parent.
Don’t worry Paul. I already moved on from pantheism long ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPfFx9JTQl8
As others have said, my presentation here was meant for completeness. I wanted people to see my complete journey, from conservative Christian to liberal Christian to Pantheist to strict Atheist to Humanist. If I had just skipped to the strict Atheism without showing how I had considered Pantheism first, that wouldn’t have been an accurate portrayal of my journey.
Paul, the video you viewed here is just one of an entire series that conveys the story of Chris’s “deconversion” from Christianity. He goes on to further explore religion using an epistemological approach and the above video reflects his position in March of 2004 during his journey. He moves on from Pantheism. The series is work in progress and absolutely fascinating. Here is a link to his YouTube channel and the entire series as it stands today: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A0C3C1D163BE880A&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_399556
His videos 2.0, the above 3.0, and 3.3.3 I share with friends to convey my own views and eagerly await future videos in his series!
You have really interesting blog, keep up posting such informative posts!
Chris, I have been watching your videos since the beginning and they have truly inspired me. I made a very similar overall progression from Catholicism to Christianity to Agnosticism/Atheism. I began watching during a point in my life in which I knew the logical next step but I did not yet understand why I was taking that step. I am what many would consider “uneducated” because I left college for medical reasons during my sophomore year and never turned back. I had reached a point where I exhausted my resources (I did not have the money for books, and had no access to a scholar’s library at a university) and did not know where to turn for evidence. Your definitions and the books mentioned in the videos helped me to proceed with my journey.
That was almost two years ago now. I still re-watch your videos from time to time to remind myself of how I got here and to keep myself in check. The biggest problem with pursuit of the truth is keeping one’s self in check and not allowing “ego” to come in. It is impertinent to continue understanding the perspectives of those who still live a lifestyle I have left behind. I just wanted to say… Thank-you.