Sargon of Akkad and Jonathan Pageau - New Atheist Failure

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The outro to my videos was written by Matthew Wilkinson

The music at the opening is Russian Eastern Overture, by Rimsky Korsakov.

[belzibubtom]

Chesterton really hit the nail on the head with, “When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything”

[jiminycricket]

Jordan Peterson opened the door for me and I decided to return to Church one year ago. I am Catholic and raised in the new age Church fell away probably 18 years ago. I oddly enough was super attracted to the Traditional Latin Mass and I haven’t missed a Sunday in a year. I will say I feel much more whole as a person then I did one year ago and I had been a mess for awhile since the loss of my father. To anyone who read this good luck!

[christiansweden]

“When I went over to Mordor for the first time, I had to explain to my wife and my family that people over there are very different. It's a strange world compared to my nice house in the Shire.” – Frodo

[jonmonkman]

"The modern man can hardly get away from ritual except by entering a ritualistic church." -GK Chesterton

[storytellers]

One of my favorite podcast style talks you have done. Sargon was one of the people who initially led me to Jordan Peterson, who in turn led me to your work. It's great to finally see you two meet.

[CH-krdf]

I used to go to church and felt like I was among ridiculous people. Then one day God showed me my own ridiculous self. Humility is a hard pill to swallow but necessary. You don't go to church to do God favors. The church is Christ's bride and you must protect her at all costs. You also do it for yourself and community. To leave your children your culture you have to sacrifice your time and energy to preserve it.

[poordoubloon]

Sargon sounds like CS Lewis’ journey.

Watch out that you don’t go on any trips to the London zoo, or you may end up the most unwilling convert in all of Britain.

[kukumatz]

Sargon is talking a lot like someone who's gonna be Christian in a couple years 👀

[artemkarnaukh]

Thats a fascinating discussion. What is also fascinating that the orthodox guy Jonathan from post-catholic post-protestant Canada returns me, the guy from orthodox Ukraine, back to my orthodox faith. We live in a really strange world...

[peteschaub]

I've always found atheism to be especially anti-Christian, at least in the sense that they are much less forgiving of Christianity's inconsistencies than they are of other faiths. If you listen to them discuss other religions like Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism etc they typically ignore their most obvious problems and focus on the beauty of the narrative.

[cw]

This guy: "I have a Youtube space where I give my opinion. I really see the value in Christianity, the Christian story, the Christian ethic. Our culture is suffering without it." Also this guy: "Oh I am NOT going to church."

[kyrieeleison]

As a former new atheist, the answer is to orient themselves towards God. And yes, Church fathers were very helpful for me, particularly Aquinas and Bonaventure.

[MrMaxBoivin]

A major problem our society has is an epidemic of narcissism. Those new atheist are guilty of that more than most. They are so smug and full of themselves, they can't believe in some greater than their self. They will never be able to find God until they will humble themselves (nor will they be able to be very intelligent; when you think you know it all, you can't learn anything).

[Randaed]

What makes this so sad, is the realization that English Catholicism was actually such a rich, hearty, healthy culture; that it produced many great martyrs and saints, almost all of our cultural holiday traditions in the English speaking New World, amazing folklore and mythos... but they've done such a great job of burying that since Henry VIII that Sargon, a history buff and English man, doesn't even realize that. 😭

[worldnotworld]

It was in my forties that I first discovered the incredible intellectual traditions of Christian theology, starting with David Bentley Hart's critique of postmodernism, and it led me out of atheism into Catholicism. The New Atheists have succeeded only in encouraging ignorance of these traditions, but once you see what's actually there...

[naikhanomtom]

He's completely missing the point. 'we need a non religious version'....that's already where we live. He needs to find God.

[eveningstar]

I'm really glad to hear Sargon speaking about this. Shows his intellectual development.

[MissyJ]

The pure amount of converts from irreligious/atheist households i encounter at church, especially coming from that upbringing myself, really puts a nail in the idea you have to grow up religious to believe in God.

[colmwhateveryoulike]

I used to see things like this. I had dropped religion studying science and attended skeptic new atheist conferences but found they were missing the actual figurative truths of these narratives.

Several years later I was an ecologist who couldn't trust human convention and was suicidal so often that I was willing to sacrifice everything to seek a true purpose and carve out a niche doing the job the Bible and my professors had told me to - stewarding my world. I immersed myself in nature thinking she would tell me what rules to follow or kill me in the process.

What happened is that truth itself turned out to be the same thing as love and literally physically manifested answers to my questions in a manner that only a conscious, supernatural creator could. So I kept following threads of evidence over years until I knew it was true enough to be reverentially spoken to as God. I explored eastern spiritual disciplines to where they could not answer. I had a kundalini awakening but entrusted it to God and at that point He began to push the Bible on me. And it became apparent that of all narratives, this one could not be figuratively true without being literally true. I reassessed my new atheist arguments and they all fell apart given what I had experienced. They told many lies that seem sensible to anyone who has not witnessed miraculous signs and wonders.

I recommend that you try talking to what you sense as truth/love and follow the evidence. I am now a fool to intelligent people like me but the truth set me free. God bless you.

[jeffkillpack]

The problem with any such atheism, ironically, is their tendency to pick up 'religion' in in other [and often more dangerous] forms. 'Religion' that was baked in one person's mind in a day kind of thing.