10 Minutes of Religion being Pulled Apart by Peter Atkins

In this video Peter Atkins, a renowned Chemist, critiques the concept of God, challenges the logic of religion, and discusses its adverse impacts on society.

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Sources:
1. Peter Atkins - Fallacies in Arguing for God?
2. William Lane Craig vs Peter Atkins: "Does God Exist?", University of Manchester, October 2011
3. Religion Harms Society | Peter Atkins | Oxford Union

[PocoToro]

I would rather have questions that can not be answered than answers that can not be questioned.

[gilsonsangulukaniphiri]

No waffling but precise and to the point. Thanks again Mr Atkins.

[josephbelisle]

That was a great video. Peter Atkins is a clear and concise speaker of reason, logic, evidence, science and critical thinking. A credit to humanity if there ever was one.

[dennyworthington]

"Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool." Voltaire

[planmet]

We know that less than one million years ago we were savannah apes roaming East Africa, and before that (5 million years ago) we were rainforest apes, and 35 million years ago we were something like a macaque monkey, and before that likely a ground predator - possibly like a small canid. So at which stage did we suddenly become superstitious and create a God? It must have been quite recently - perhaps 15, 000 to 10, 000 years ago - when farming communities started to form and nomadic herders settled. Religions relate to rulings for communities - eg. love thy neighbour, there are references to domesticated animals. If a God did exist he would have been a power for all existence - not an anthropomorphic imagining that only modern humans could communicate with.

[allanilett]

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have both played a part in my de-conversion.

[r.pres.]

As a US Army veteran and gay man, I bothers me that the USA is the only developed first world country that is so strongly influenced by religious beliefs in our sociopolitical sphere. The number of religious followers in the USA greatly exceeds that of all other developed first world countries. This is one of the major reasons why USA politics are so polarized and fractured.

[aaronmarygreenwood]

Lovely. So gentle and calm and honestly rational.

[beaurex]

“We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.”
― Christopher Hitchens

[toni]

Terrific speech. Fully expected from Oxford.

[tulpas]

Magnificent! Thank you for posting this! ❤

[threeofive]

I have said that it is possible to conceive of a religion that if the entire global population believed it to be true, the world would be a better place. It would be a religion of non-violence with no prejudices in terms of race, sexual preference, etc. As for the existence of a god, I have placed the odds at about 10, 000 to 1 that a god existed _at some time_ . I place the odds at about 100, 000, 000 to 1 that if a god does exist, it is the god spoken of in some religion sometime in human history.

[michaelbean]

One of the problems I have with religious belief is that none of the supernatural claims it makes can be falsified or verified in any way...yet believers will cling to those claims as if they are factual..."YOU JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE!!" I see no reason to accept any of it as real or true because I've never been shown anything that gets me there...and the claims all sound like primitive, childish non-sense, because as far as I can tell that's all it is.
And in case anyone is wondering...science does not claim that the "big bang" was the beginning of the Universe, nobody knows the actual origin, it may have existed forever. The big bang is as far back as anyone can investigate because that is where our time line began...humanity might not even have the capacity to understand the beginning of it's existence anymore than an ant can know where that sidewalk they are crawling across a came from.

[ikenosis]

"All Religions pride themselves on developing analogies, normally after the truth has been discovered by Scientists."

-Peter Atkins

[FQofNambour]

"Abnegation" = the action of renouncing or rejecting something e.g. "abnegation of political power". I'm 77 years old and that's the first time I've heard the word used. Thank you Peter Atkins for your beautiful use of the English language.

[joevignoloru]

The lengthy and ongoing religious based land dispute in the middle east is all the evidence you need of the corrosive effects of religion on humanity.

[jeffmcmahon]

People don't need god; but god certainly needs people.

[rjung_ch]

Can I share this with a deeply religious person?
What will they think of me?
Maybe what I think of them on this topic?

I am not only an atheist, I am more than convinced that it's a sickness of society to keep it alive, a bad joke created over 4000 years ago in western societies, longer in other cultures. And yet they want to cling on these thoughts.


I'm going to have fun as long as I am here on this planet, don't want to leave it either, but am amazed what they are finding. Evidence is scientific, superstition is not.

[Lordidude]

Can't wait for the theists embarrassing themselves by addressing anything but what is talked about in the video.

[DreamMonsterX]

Someone just commented me on another channel, that 'God' is going to directly talk to him about his plan. Didn't God talk to Jim Jones and other death cult's leaders about 'their' plan? Why I can NEVER trust a Christian. 'WHO' in the... is talking to them? Another Christian said it's about having a 'personal' relationship with Jesus. OMG, people have personal relationships with REAL people. DO NOT have personal relationships with characters from movies, books and dreams, unless you know them in 'real' life.