In this video I talk about the passage from the gospel of John where it says that grace and truth came from Jesus Christ, and how unique that is. (This is inspired by an observation from Bishop Barron about how in religion it’s usually grace or truth, not grace and truth.) I take a look at some other religions and worldviews and how they have (by their own lights) either grace or truth, but not both.
Category: Missing the Mark
But What If It’s True? The Uncertainty of Doubt
In this video I discuss an interesting story told by Martin Buber.
An adherent of the Enlightenment [writes Buber], a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him, too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi’s room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, ‘But perhaps it is true after all.’ The scholar tried in vain to collect himself—his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yitschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: ‘My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.’ The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible ‘perhaps’ that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.
The Importance of Shared Rituals
This one is pretty much what it sounds like; a discussion of why shared rituals are so important to human beings.
Why You Should Watch Old Movies & Listen To Old Songs
In this video I talk about old movies and songs and discuss why it’s such a good idea to spend a lot of one’s entertainment time with older entertainment rather than things recently made.
Scientific Models and Epistemology
In this post I talk about what models—and scientific models—are and what they are not.
Authority Figures in Movies
In this video I look at how authority figures in movies are often portrayed and how misleading that is about how real leadership and authority works.
Straw Men
In this video I look at what straw men (the rhetorical device) are and what they are not.
Outside the Church There Is No Salvation?
In this video I look at the teaching that outside the Church there is no salvation, and what it actually means, and how it is often misunderstood.
Atheists Are Discouraged, Water is Wet
In this video I look at a trend of Atheist YouTubers talking about how they’re discouraged because views (and money) are dropping off on YouTube. (Note: this video was originally published in July of 2019, so that’s when the trend was. That said, at the time I’m writing this BionicDance’s last video was a “state of the channel” in which, I’m told, she said that she’s moving on to doing web comics, or some such. So I don’t think that the Atheists have become encouraged in the interim.)
As a bonus, at the end of a video there is a parody song which was a collaboration with Rob of Deflating Atheism (who did the playing and singing), The Battle Hymn of the Atheist Republic. It’s a lot of fun.
Nostalgia Over the Ages With Professor Rachel Fulton Brown
I had the great pleasure of having another conversation with professor Rachel Fulton Brown, this time about nostalgia over the ages, that is, what nostalgia was like in different time periods. It was a very interesting conversation.
The Game of Telephone & The Gospels
I sometimes would see people invoke the game of telephone (where kids sit in a circle and whisper things in each other’s ears, and then the last person says it out loud and everyone laughs at how much it changed) to try to show how unreliable human testimony is, and therefore how unreliable the gospels are. This is, to put it honestly, stupid, and I explain several different reasons why it’s stupid.
Godless Cranium’s Floor Cleaning Robot
In a tweet, Godless Cranium misunderstood the nature of creation, purpose, and meaning. The tweet itself doesn’t matter very much, but it’s a great starting point to talk about some interesting subjects such as creation, nature, teleology, happiness, etc.
Of Scripts and Editing
In this video I talk about why my videos are so often unscripted, despite everyone (even my enemies) agreeing that my scripted videos are much better.
Praying for BionicDance
BionicDance is (or at least was) a remarkably angry woman whose videos about mine involved a lot of outrage and (approximately) no thinking. In this video I ask viewers to join me in praying for her. If you can spare a prayer for her, please do. And feel free to skip the video and just say that prayer for her.
Logic Lesson: Special Pleading
In this video I gave a logic lesson as to what special pleading actually is. I had been running into an annoying number of internet atheists who thought that special pleading was making any kind of distinction, so I made this video to help them out.
The Lessons of Atheism+ 2.0
In this video (originally published in May of 2019) I talked about the atheist civil war which had been going on at the time, which some people called Atheism+ 2.0, and lessons that can be drawn from it.
