The YouTube algorithm chose to stick a video titled What’s your best two minute apologetic?
in my face. I expected the usual nonsense, but was surprised to see something novel. It’s even more stupid than the usual fare, but at least this guy is attaching his name to this foolishness openly.
OK, it starts out all right.
I typically don’t like apologetics. It’s just not my thing. It doesn’t feel like a great, I don’t know, if someone is ready to look into Christianity, and come into it and genuinely search into it, they will. I don’t like apologetics in the sense of trying to argue people into we’re right, you’re wrong, like believe what we believe. I don’t like that but, you know, I kind of have to have some reason to believe what I believe, so someone asked me recently, why are you still a Christian? Why do you believe in Jesus? Um, and, like, not in like a motive sense, which I addressed a couple of videos ago, but like, why. Why specifically god, what’s your best argument for god, for Christianity, or for Jesus?
Hackles raised at the claim that he doesn’t like apologetics but is making an apologetics video anyway, but I think it’s fair that he’s just trying to explain his personal rationale, rather than doing it to convert others. Everyone should feel free to express their ideas, especially if they’re not trying to browbeat others with them.
Unfortunately, his ideas are stupid and ill-informed.
And I think that the best one to me is looking at history itself since Jesus. It is literally impossible to imagine what the world would be like if Jesus had never existed. It is literally impossible. We, because, because Jesus, and by extension the new testament and the Bible and Christianity as a whole has so shaped the entire face, definitely of the West and peripherally, at least, of, um, the global south and the east, so. So much that we can’t. We can’t imagine what 2026 would look like if Jesus had never existed.
His key point is that he believes in Jesus because his imagination failed. Approximately 6 billion people do not believe in Jesus, and about 15% of the world population are atheist, but this guy can’t imagine what the world would be like if nobody believed in his personal mythology. I agree that Christianity has had an impact on the world, but so has Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism. Being impressed by a contingent fact of history as a justification for your specific religion is just weird.
We also discover that this guy who claims history is the best evidence for his beliefs doesn’t know much of anything about history.
Like, we can’t imagine it, and it’s because so many things shifted because Jesus existed. And Jesus keep in mind, was not an emperor, not a warlord, not a leader, not a noble, not a writer, not anything that everyone else in history is known for and remembered for. He’s a traveling homeless preacher from the backwoods Nazareth in some small little Roman state. And shaped the entire world, including taking over the entire Roman empire in less than 300 years, without violence, without conquering, without, you know, literally just the germ of an idea, um, as well of course the power and the spirit of God, uh, moving through his people in that short amount of time to where we are today 2000 years later, where it’s transformed the entire face of the world. And I think that that is beautiful in the sense that true Christianity, yes, it’s been misused so many times, obviously, but true Christianity done right, done lovingly, done well, um, woos people to come to it. Um, and the spirit calls people, and it brings life to people. And that’s how the world is transformed. And that is what has shaped the world for 2000 years. And I think it’s really hard to argue against that. So it’s not necessarily an argument for divinity, but just the sheer fact that one person, a little nobody, shaped the entire world 2000 years later is massive to me. What do you guys think?
This bit reminds me of Islamic apologetics, where they insist that Mohammed was illiterate and unaware of the greater intellectual background of his time, therefore making his accomplishments all the more remarkable. The fact that Jesus wasn’t an emperor means the success of his philosophy was a miracle, as long as we disregard the existence of successful proselytizers like Paul and the absorption of Christianity into the dominant power structure of the time, the Roman empire.
You know who else must be beyond this bozo’s imagination? Karl Marx. A mere philosopher, and yet today 1.5 billion people live in communist countries. Isn’t it amazing that one person, a little nobody, shaped the entire world in only about 150 years? What took Jesus so long? It’s not necessarily an argument for Marx’s divinity, but I’m just saying maybe we should all dedicate our lives to praising him.
It’s also convenient that the apologist brings up the “no true Christian” fallacy. What fraction of the world is practicing True Christianity™? I think that undercuts his claim that Jesus reshaped the whole world, since the overwhelming percentage of believers are not going to be True Christians™ — some wicked corrupters have apparently hijacked Jesus’ version of Christianity, and they possess the truly successful worldview, which seems to involve the worship of greed, the rejection of science, raging misogyny, and building a culture where child-rape can thrive. You know, I can imagine a world, a better world, where that perspective did not exist.
Also, a True Christian™ would know that their Bible prohibits tattoos. Not that that matters to me, but I think those ugly-ass chicken scratches on his skin ought to mean that he is damned to hell, the hell of superficial irrational dingbats.
Without putting myself through the ordeal of watching it, I am going to make an educated guess that this guy’s argument is shot through with American exceptionalism. He sees his religion as a dominant cultural influence in the US, and simply can’t imagine what life might be like in places where it is a minority at best.
It’s 3 minutes long and surprisingly un-nauseating for an apologist video, and my brain glazes over the minute I hear the word “god”. But that doesn’t make the arguments any better.
I find it hard to imagine what the world would be like if lots of much more recent things had gone differently. What if Hitler had gotten killed in WWI? What it the 9/11 plot had been uncovered and stopped? What if Clinton had won in 2016? But that’s all down to the messy contingencies of history, not to some Divine Hand.
This isn’t that novel.
Xians make this argument often.
The claim is that xianity is responsible for the rise and spread of Western Civilization.
It isn’t true and never has been.
The roots of Western Civilization are deep, going back to the middle east and the invention of agriculture, writing, and metal refining and working by pre-xian religionists.
Then the pre-xian Greeks and Romans heavily influenced the West before xianity was invented, with such accomplishments as the Roman Republic and Empire.
The European Pagans also had input.
The Renaissance and the Enlightenment, both of which has little to do with xianity, were important shapers of the modern world.
The rise of Science is now the major driver of our economy and society.
Xianity was a late influence and mostly along for the ride.
The other thing this ignorant creep doesn’t know is that there is no such thing as Western Civilization.
It is an ever expanding collection of related cultures and civilizations that changes rapidly in Real Time.
The culture I was born and raised in is very different from the current west coast culture I actually live in now.
And it is very different from the mass of ignorance that he lives in, one that has apparently never heard of education, reasoning, or the Google search engine.
“Is there a prize for bad apologetics?”
Since religious apologetics involves brain death levels of rationalization, “good apologetics” is a rather obvious oxymoron, just like their apologetics of “Scientific Creationism”. One of the (many) funny apologetics occurred when the profoundly scientific illiterate WLC tried to “explain” physics to Sean Carroll. Craig is such an ignorant blow-hard, but he does know his ignorant audience.
https://skeptical-science.com/science/debate-notes-sean-carroll-william-lane-craig/
Regarding the “No true Cristian fallacy:
They are attempting to use the “No True Scotsman” fallacy argument, which anyone can search for on the web. There are over 45,000 different Christian sects, and it is a trivial exercise to find members of one sect who claim that theirs is the “True” church while all of those others are false. Catholics have told me that Mormons are not real Christians, Lutherans have told me that Catholics are not real Christians, Pentecostalists have told me that they are the one true church, Mormons have told me that they are the only one true church, and the list goes on and on, even to being quite circular. There is no Single Christian religion since there is no central authority that all the cults agree with, to define what that even means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
To view extreme hypocrisy in action, just look at how the professional “moralists” voted for a feeble minded, narcissistic, child sexual abuser, serial rapist, continual grifter, and general career criminal in the 2024 election:
White Evangelical Protestant: 81%
Orthodox Jews: 81%
Hispanic Protestant: 63% (even after all his Hispanic attacks!)
White Catholic: 60%
White non-Evangelical Protestant: 57%
All the remaining ones are under 50%, but none are near zero.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
https://aaim.us/voting-barriers-2024/
https://jewishvoters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/JVRC-Jewish-Vote-Analysis-09102025.pdf
https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” — Seneca (5 BCE — 65 CE)
What? You mean you’re NOT already offering up prayers to your own little Marx lararium at home? What kind of leftist are you?!
(Remember, the cooperatively-produced Trotsky figurine goes on the left hand side of the Marx portrait, and the red flags must not cover any of his divine beard).
raven@4:
And even the Arabic scientists made long-lasting contributions to astronomy and mathematics. At least until religious fanaticism took over and made that part of the world an intellectual backwater for centuries. Surveys taken in the US show that most of the US public is against the teaching of Arabic numerals in the public schools, despite not having a clue about what those even are.
I just wants to show another archaeology find that predates the Biblical creation of Earth.
“A museum-shelf mystery reveals 6,500-year-old human tooth pendant in Serbia”
.https://phys.org/news/2026-08-museum-shelf-mystery-reveals-year.html
Might want to update your selection of search engine. I hear Google’s crap these days because of AI slop.
zetopan @ 6
“At least until religious fanaticism took over and made that part of the world an intellectual backwater for centuries. ”
Ca. 1000 AD a sufi published the work “critique of philosophy/ detruction of philosophy” and this was the beginning of the reactionary backlash against translating ancient Greek books and building on their works in relatively intellectual freedom.
.
In Cordoba, the mutazilithes had argued that the natural world itself was a sign of god’s greatness and tgerefore needez to be studied. This movement was suppressed.
It’s reminiscent of the anecdote of Queen Victoria asking Disraeli for evidence of God’s existence and his citing the survival of the Jews.
Hey, why are all of you talking about apologies? Our glorious shiffer-brained leader has been teaching this defunct nation’s drooling masses that ‘real men’ never apologize? WTF!
“Is there a prize for bad apologetics?” – The Golden Crocoduck.
Mormon apologists do the same for Joseph Smith, who, in his ignorance, “couldn’t possibly” have recited bad KIng James Bible fan fiction using a couple of rock as magic glasses.
“And shaped the entire world, including taking over the entire Roman empire in less than 300 years, without violence, without conquering…”
Wow, the ignorance of history is truly astounding.
@12. larpar :
Yup.
See potholer54’s Golden Crocoduck 2025 here taking 19 mins to view.
@ Artor : That’s certainly one word for it..
Clearly this Ethan Renoe is unaware of the fact that quite a few people will argue that actually Jesus literally never did exist & is a purely mythological construct.
Whether that’s true or not is whole other question which FTB’s Geeky Humanist has a whole huge long series on see :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhumanist/2019/02/17/deciphering-the-gospels-proves-jesus-never-existed-review-preface-and-introduction/
Still.
Also what a confession of such a poor imagination and mind generally.
@4: “The claim is that xianity is responsible for the rise and spread of Western Civilization. It isn’t true and never has been.”
I don’t know about that: the missionary impulse was part of the justification for European expansionism and colonialism*. But then, that wasn’t an entirely beneficent process, was it? (A quote attributed to Gandhi comes to mind: when asked what he thought of western civilization, he replied that he thought it would be a very good idea).
*Granted, the Enlightenment shares some of that blame: read Locke.
@3. stevewatson :
I don’t. I find it fascinating and appealing if moot and frustrating doing so.
Pure luck and circumstances plays a pretty huge role in history. Probly far more than most folks are comfortable with I’d guess.
Also Alternative History / Parallel Universe is a whole sub-genre of its own with plenty of writers.making some great books out of.
The one that really gets me and is such a huge one is what if Kamala Harris had become POTUS now instead of senile evil Genocides Don Trump.
We’d be living in such a totally different and vastly better world if that had been so. If that “Sliding doors” moment had gone a bit differently in a few key ways leading to such an incredibly better outcome for all of our species and world. For starters, there’d be no war on Iran as proven here..
Then there’s Ukraine and Putinb’s genocidal invasionof it, global allies vs enemies & their respective treatments. Arbitrry petty Trumpist / Putinist “law of the jungle” vs (once) established international law & multilateralism. Also no RFK jr in charge of health, no masive blatant corruption, Trump rotting forgotten and despised in jail or the courts and not dominating every fucking day’s reality with his bullshit and so very, very, very much more.
All those who failed to fully support and unite behind her and vote for her and the Democratic party when it mattered have done our entire planet and species literally incalculable staggering extreme beyond superlatives harm. they should never be allowed to forget that.
PS. Then there’s the horrendous staggering irony (right word?) that those in the Abandon Biden-Harris / Uncommitted movement who wanted to punish former President Joe Biden & Kamala Harris* over Netanyahu’s (& Smotrich & Ben Gvirs)’ genocide ultimately enabled Netanyhau – Smotrich-Gvir and the very worst of the worst and sealed the Palestinians fate and total dstruction -and got Iranians killed too including the Minab schoolgirls because they failed to realise that Kamala Harris as POTUS was their ONLY and last best hope and the far better option for the Palestinians as well as pretty much every other person on Earth.
They claimed to care about Gaza but their lack of thought and lack of wilingness to listen to the warnings of what Trump would predictably do ultimately doomed the Palestinians most of all.
A Kamala Harris presidency was the Gazans & Palestinians only hope and yet those utter evil klowns willfully did all they could to prevent that outcome and have hereby killed the very people they supposedly supported & destroyed the cause they claimed to support.
.* Which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris notably opposed and tried to stop by calling for restraint, sanctioning extremist settlers and even withholding some weapons allof which should have been given more credit esp in the immediate post October 7th 2023 circumstances bu t wasn’t by bad faith, willfully ignorant and dishonest actors.. If only they had paid attentionand looked at the two and onl;y two choices of POTUS and future that were actually available. Too late now ain’t it.
zetopan @7, birgerjohansson @10.
Wikipedia – Islamic Golden Age, Decline
Most of the points I would make have already been made.
@2 – The video is just under 3 minutes, despite the title about “two minute apologetics.” Perhaps this is a clever ruse to get viewers accustomed to the over-promising of religion?
@14 – Joseph Smith and Mormonism. Mormonism fills Utah, spills over into other states, and has a larger international presence than most Americans would realize due to their missionary work.
Siddhartha Guatama (aka The Buddha) was born to a rich, royal family, but did not use his position to force his religion on his advocates. I don’t think Mohammed was royal or powerful outside his religion. Joseph Smith certainly wasn’t either.
Finally, there is an entire genre called speculative fiction or alternative history built around the question of “what if X was different?” So that one could easily pull up a thread like this:
Speculative fiction about what if Christianity never existed?
Other people have had this question and had better imaginations than the guy in the video. The first response in the linked thread is The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, which I have not personally read.
This reads like an illiterate 10 year old child’s school essay done in a hurry the night before.
Quite remarkable how uninformed he is, and quite obvious he never tried to check his claim.
It is not just possible (literally!) but is on the record.
An existence disproof.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory
(Inconceivable!)
Reginald Selkirk @ # 23: … what if Christianity never existed? … The first response in the linked thread is The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson…
The premise of which is that the “Black Death” of the 14th century had (almost) entirely wiped out the population of Europe: christianism plays a minor (invisible? – I read it long ago) role, but that book does not match the criterion of your question.
Where he says ‘Jesus’ he means ‘The idea of Jesus’. Where he means ‘The idea of Jesus’, I substitute ‘A lie about infidelity that got way out of hand’.
indianajones, nah. You are far too kind.
Were you to put it to him that when he asserts “It is literally impossible to imagine what the world would be like if Jesus had never existed.” he intended to mean ‘It is literally impossible to imagine what the world would be like if The idea of Jesus had never existed.’, I very much doubt he would concur. I’m like 99.999999999999 sure of that.
(The entire conceit is that Jesus is real, not that the idea of Jesus is real(
@23. Pierce R. Butler : “Other people have had this question and had better imaginations than the guy in the video. The first response in the linked thread is The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, which I have not personally read.
Read that years ago and would recommend. Thought-provoking and fascinating novel. Very well researched as usual with KSR and intriguing.
WARNING SPOILERS in the wikipage but :
I’d like to think that Karl would look at the old Soviet Bloc or modern China and have very strongly-worded questions, like “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!”
Technically I guess Jesus and the Jewish prophets and their mythology actually count as Asian rather than Western but it seems that “western” also covers southwest Asian as well a spolitically the Australia and Aoteaora / NZ parts of Oceania / Australasia. Of course, Christianity really took off more from Rome after their rising cult took over in that empire so there is that. .
I read that one. One of the arcs is that the in‑world powers that be develop a technique for pushing certain thinkers into hyper‑focused thinking that basically makes them geniuses, and which conveniently also cripples with OCD.
(Nasty, that — a form of enslavement)
[um, I got distracted — re #29]
Same motif in Known Space for the Tnuctipun (hyper‑competent slave‑engineers), just a different form.
@ 10 birgerjohansson
“Ca. 1000 AD a sufi published the work “critique of philosophy/ detruction of philosophy” and this was the beginning of the reactionary backlash against translating ancient Greek books and building on their works in relatively intellectual freedom.”
As a follow–up to @22 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain
I think you are working from some badly outdated historical theories possibly compounded by Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s outstanding ignorance of history, even the history of his own discipline.
There was an huge amount of philosophical and scientific work done in the Islamic world after Al-Ghazali to whom I assume you are referring.
Tim O’Neill has a long and interesting discussion of this in Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Al-Ghazali.
O’Niell seems to rather dislike Tyson for his amazing ignorance of history and dogged insistence on supporting idiot claims such as most or all of Europe thought the world was flat until Columbus disproved it. By the way, Columbus just did a “there and back” trip that proved much of nothing except there some islands way out there.
So it’s the tired, old conflation of ‘christ’ and ‘christians’ that wasn’t convincing decades ago and didn’t improve since.
Same bullshit argument as historical jesus references trotted around by christians, which invariably just refer to the cult, not the person.
I can play this game, too!
It is very difficult to imagine American pop culture without Star Wars, therefore Darth Vader and lightsabers exist. Prove me wrong. You can’t.
Just put a hold through Libby for the audiobook of The Years of Rice and Salt. I have access to multiple public libraries and the shortest wait was a month, unusual for a 20+ year old book..
Us oldies can always here the voice of Leonard Pinth-Garnell who would definitely host “Bad Apologetics.” And conclude with, “Well, that wasn’t very good, was it?”
https://snl.jt.org/char.php-i=31.html
Consider the lasting impact of the person who invented the wheel, and we don’t even know their name!
People who misuse the word “literally” drive me figuratively insane.
I just looked in our public library using the online catalogue.
The book by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt is on the shelf and available for checkout.
That wasn’t hard at all.
I only read what’s here, and not every word of that. I’ve been busy with more important things like sorting rusty bolts and splitting wood. But from the little I read before making a profane utterance and going out to do something more useful, I was reminded of a little snippet I snipped (source now long forgotten) from Peter De Vries, that the proof of God’s omnipotence is that he need not exist to save us. The apologetic argument seems to be that Christianity has so formed our institutions that it’s too late to stop. But then we seem to get a “no true Scotsman” argument to excuse all the bad things Christianity has done. But if he can cherry pick the bad things out of the Christian tradition, so can we. I think I’ll start with Jesus and work my way down from there.
The other thing it reminds me of is a comment by Harold Bloom that Hamlet is so embedded in our culture and language that he counts as a real character. Understanding that our culture consists of something more than history is not, however, the same as retroactively declaring that Hamlet existed in ancient Denmark.
Apologies if I missed something more important and profound here. If I have time I’ll go back and try to digest it more. Right now duty calls and I need to get out there and sort some drill bits or something.
[meta]
is a different claim to
because audiobooks are less readily available than printed books.
Not mutually-exclusive.
Like others have said, the claim that it is impossible to imagine a world without Christianity is very obviously untrue. I used to write alternate history as sort of a hobby, and it thrives on just that kind of speculation.
springa73,
springa73, different claims.
is not
(Point being Christianity needs no Jesus that actually existed any more than Mormonism requires the Angel Moroni actually existed)
PS: Jesus was a Jew. He was not Christian.
He did not found Christianity; Paul did when he reframed the movement so gentiles could join without becoming Jews.
(Yay — no need for foreskin‑lopping any more)
—
Christianity is fanfic.
Jesus allegedly claimed:
So, EVERY SINGLE JEWISH LAW STILL SUPPOSEDLY APPLIES, according to the NT.
Nevermind they were for Jews, not for gentiles.