Joe Schmid’s new god
Joe Schmid was, I hear, a popular atheist YouTuber whose videos I never watched, except one. Belatedly, people told me he provided good philosophical support for atheism, and I was never into that philosophical angle — I’m more of a naturalist, materialist atheist who relies on science. But that’s OK! We need all kinds. Except, too late, he recently announced that he was no longer an atheist. He’s a hard-core Catholic now.
I can’t say that I regret the loss. The one time I listened to him, he sounded like a babbling philbro idiot, and he and Alex O’Connor destroyed their own reputations as far as I’m concerned. I’m not actually surprised after that performance that he has now declared himself a Catholic.
Here, you can enjoy his antic, demented announcement if you want…or skip the goofy histrionics and I’ll just summarize it.
He was brought up in a Catholic family, and attended a conservative Catholic school, and became an atheist because of evolution, of all things. He doesn’t seem to know much science, and elected to go to grad school in philosophy. He was an atheist because evolution seemed so wasteful and cruel (remember that for a minute), and he couldn’t believe a good god had created humans by virtue of that bloody meatgrinder. That’s not a good reason to become an atheist, but OK, it takes all kinds.
He has since learned about fine tuning and theistic evolution, which removed that objection to god-belief, because he’s an idiot. The fine tuning argument is just an argument from ignorance, where he can’t imagine how natural laws could generate complex life without a god rigging the rules to enable living things to arise in tiny, specific environments, like Earth. It might seem like a good excuse to those with a predisposition to believing in intelligent design, but most scientists find the arguments unbelievable and unsupported.
But hold on to your hats, the arguments are going to get worse and worse.
The next reason he gives for believing in god is miracles, miracles that he claims are supported by physical evidence and thousands of eyewitness accounts. That lots of people who share a common belief in supernatural phenomena claim that they saw a miracle like, say Fatima manifesting in the sky, or that they knew a guy who knew a guy whose cancer went into remission after a prayer was said over him, means nothing, but they’re enough to convince gullible Joe that something metaphysical, not psychological, had to have happened.
That’s weak. But then just to prove he doesn’t have a skeptical bone in his body, his next proof of god is Padre Pio, an old fraud whose schtick was to wave around bloody wounds in his hands and feet, stigmata like those that would have been present in his crucified Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We aren’t supposed to wonder why a god would poke bleeding holes into a priest, he just did. It’s about the most useless, pointless miracle ever, but it was enough to convince Joe Schmid that the Catholic god existed. What a rube.
But the next ‘miracle’ is the worst of all. He cites the story of St. Maria Goretta. Holy fuck, this is classically Catholic sickness.
Maria Goretta was an 11 year old girl, a virgin (it’s very important that she was a virgin, otherwise she wouldn’t have been sainted). She was attacked by a 20 year old man who demanded sex from her, which she refused (also important, this is a story about chastity), so he stabbed her with an awl 14 times. She survived for a little while, giving the local doctors time to operate on her multiple times, without anesthetic, and she suffered horribly a long tortuous painful death, but the doctors, all male, claim that she had said, while reduced to screaming, unimaginable pain, that she forgave her attacker. Yeah, right, and Joe Schmid would consider this a documented miracle.
Joe Schmid calls this a profound and beautiful story
. Fuck you, Joe Schmid, there’s nothing beautiful about a young girl being tortured to death, you sadistic sick fuck. Recall, though, that he had become an atheist because of the abstract idea of generations of organisms dying over the long course of history, a wasteful and cruel process that he couldn’t imaging a good god presiding over; I guess it wasn’t personal and brutal enough to bring him to the joy of loving a personal, vicious god. I can tell that he had been brought up on the lives of Catholic saints and martyrs, standard training for Catholic children in the deep horrors of their hateful religion. He’s just returning to his youthful indoctrination in torture porn.
I have no problem with people returning to the comforting faith of their youth; I can understand some of the appeal of ritual, certainty, and community. I have no sympathy for people returning to a cult because they were inspired by a horrific tale about torturing a child.
Oh well, his career as an atheist is dead at last. I’m sure his star will be ascending among primitive, psychopathic religious adherents.
Also, I thought his weirdly frantic performance in the above half-hour long video was off-putting enough, but would you believe his next couple of videos, in which he tries to provide a more detailed justification for his freaky beliefs, are 7 and 10 hours long. No, I haven’t watched them, nor will I. There’s something wrong with that boy.
Rejecting the real world as cruel to move onto celebrating a cruel deity. Yeah, I’m glad I never heard of this guy until now.
Good post, PZ, I entirely endorse it. Overall.
But your knowledge of Catholic hagiography is weak, so a touch of fact-checking follows, which hopefully does not detract.
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It was allegedly Virgin Mary’s manifestation in Fátima (a place).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun
“The Miracle of the Sun (Portuguese: Milagre do Sol), also known as the Miracle of Fátima, is a series of events reported to have occurred miraculously on 13 October 1917, attended by a large crowd (generally estimated to be in the high tens of thousands) who had gathered in Fátima, Portugal, in response to a prophecy made by three shepherd children, Lúcia Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto. The prophecy was that the Virgin Mary (referred to as Our Lady of Fátima) would appear and perform miracles on that date. Newspapers published testimony from witnesses who said that they had seen extraordinary solar activity, such as the Sun appearing to “dance” or zig-zag in the sky, advance towards the Earth, or emit multicolored light and radiant colors. According to these reports, the event lasted approximately ten minutes.”
Again, not quite right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padre_Pio
“People who had started rebuilding their lives after the war began to see in Padre Pio a symbol of hope.[26] Those close to him have attested that he began to manifest several spiritual gifts, including healing; bilocation; levitation; prophecy; miracles; reading of hearts; speaking in tongues; making conversions; the odour of sanctity; and extraordinary abstinence from both sleep and nourishment: one account from a Capuchin friar even states that Padre Pio, during his stay at a convent in Venafro, was able to subsist for at least 20 days on only the Holy Eucharist without other nourishment.[31][32]”
(Premature by me? 50% of posts, but that should fix itself soon, I have not forgotten)
The human mind seems to be endlessly manipulable by nonsense.
If I was hungry enough and found the convent’s stash of crackers, I’m sure I could survive for three weeks on 500g of the things a day. Especially if there was plenty of wine to wash it all down.
I am happy to be corrected on Catholic nonsense.
Where I heard of Padre Pio was his claim to having stigmata. Telling me that he claimed lots of magic powers does not make me reconsider the accusation that he’s a pious phony.
He decided meat grinders are good.
His god wants people to suffer. It’s perfect.
* Wikipedia – Alessandro Serenelli
And he wants an attempted-rapist murderer proclaimed a saint in the religion he just joined. And thinks victims should accept their miserable role as an object lesson for anyone who hurts them, just in case they later say they feel bad about destroying lives and then join the club.
Every day brings more evidence that man created gods in his own image, not the other way around.
Tangential but loosely related:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/28/we-praise-god-australian-woman-feared-missing-in-nepal-flooding-makes-contact-with-family
because the centuries of technological advances that made our modern telecommunications system possible don’t warrant a mention.
And presumably their praise is directed toward the selfsame god that is responsible for sending the deluge to cruelly snuff out the thousands of ‘loved ones’ of the other families to whom their ineffectual thoughts and prayers are now offered.
But of course our suffering is evidence that god loves us. Fucking sickos!
Sky Captain @6 wrote:
That’s because if they can canonize someone like that, then, as he later gushes, “Yooou could be a saint!” with the same rapturous expression he wore while describing Maria’s suffering, i.e. a pervert having an orgasm.
.
I’m a little curious as to what arguments he thought were new, but not enough to listen to him any longer. I have to admit, he’s got a kind of Tom Holland Spiderman vibe going on, if he were playing Tobey Maguire’s symbiote suit evil Spiderman. Now I have to wash my hands from typing that…
“The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.” – Montesquieu
phillipbrown:
Oh dear. The dude was a straight-out goddist!
He practiced monodeism, not monotheism, but deities are deities.
Point being, that quotation relies on the existence of ‘the’ Supreme Being in order to make sense.
How an atheist would find that meritorious in any way escapes me. Tsk.
It is very very silly.
(https://dictionnaire-montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/en/article/1367167156/en/)
—
* Deism was the veil they used to try to square the circle.
The dude (Montesquieu) was a firm believer in a creator deity.
@11 John Morales
The theist presumably does believe, pointing out that their beliefs are stupid even if one assumes a god exists can be situationally useful.
Is it more likely the creator of the universe would arrange to inseminate a girl in her sleep, or that a jewish minx would tell a lie?
that quote from Montesquieu true enough and I would extend it to the belief in god who made everything for us it is vanity dressed in its sunday best
it is the opposite of humility and sets in the middle of the three middle eastern religions that so bedevil the earth and its people these days. It tries to make us all important more important then anything else.
the reason to reject god is the cruelty of evolution and reject is what he did it came out of fear and revulsion not disbelief. it is fear of death and suffering that motivates his acceptance of his religion. he is important to this god and will live forever in paradise if he follows the rules he chose to believe in
he could do us all a solid by just doing what the book says to do prey at home and shut the fuck up.
fat chance!
unclefrogy: “It tries to make
usmen all important more important then anything else.”FIFY. ;)
Miracles? Did his philosophical education not include the relevant bits of Hume?
Seems like there’s more of the atheist/skeptic community not worth paying to than the portion worth my time. One of these days I imagine I’ll get told what Alex O’Connor did. I don’t consume his content and I don’t know what he did.
I did find a smaller YouTube channel called Skeptical Heretic recently that seems okay. Admittedly I’ve been an atheist for so long now, it’s not a question of reinforcement, or re-hearing arguments I’ve heard a dozen times. Just nice to occasionally find some fellow atheists of quality are still out there.
Schmid is a philosophy major, and the Catholic Church have pretty much assimilated Western philosophy and made it theirs, just by enforcing their take on it and erasing others, almost since Jesus was last seen in the flesh. So if this guy had been raised Catholic, and never got any other grounding in reason or reality, then it’s almost inevitable that he’d cave to the prevailing lines of thought in his area of “expertise.”
This isn’t really a remarkable change for someone like Schmid. Some religious loonies will probably try to exploit this “atheist sees the light and comes back to the fold” story like they normally do, but given what I’ve read here (esp. those 7- and 10-hour-long videos!), I don’t think they’ll get very far with this particular convert.
tytalus @16
I kinda lean toward post-atheism myself. Most atheist content has bored me. Other stuff is cringe, like whatever Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Peter Boghossian or Jerry Coyne happen to be doing.
I do read Hemant Mehta from time to time. I watched some Genetically Modified Skeptic, but not often. They both seem ok on social issues. Mehta has had an arc, in which he had pissed Coyne off. A good sign.
Alex O’Connor (CosmicSkeptic) and Stephen Woodford (Rationality Rules) hit my radar about the same time back when I was hating on Sam Harris for his monomanic brain scanner eudaemonia years ago. They were both heavily influenced by Harris so I was not amused from the get go. O’Connor went on to pursue a more formal education which may have tempered his views? I dunno. Woodford belly slammed right into offering his take on transwomen in sports and later on maybe backpedaled a bit on being transcritical at least compared to most new atheists. They are both in my feed, but I rarely if ever care to watch.
I was struck in the OP by PZ’s not so subtle use of Art the Clown imagery. Still too soon after suffering with the 3rd movie. I did manage surviving the previous two.
Random note: in most Christian denominations, everyone who has received a Christian baptism is a saint ― it’s why Mormons are the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”, or most versions of the creed recited by Christians end with something along the lines of, “we believe in the catholic¹ Church, the communion of saints, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”. The process of canonisation does not make one a saint as such ― one already is ― it’s just that the Church has investigated one’s life and satisfied themselves that one’s life has made one worthy of veneration. A seal of quality, if you like 😉. There’s a bit of extra theology with it: saints adjudged to be canonical by the Church are believed to behold the Beatific Vision (i.e., have transcendent awareness of YHWH) immediately after death, (while the rest of us shlubs have to wait until after the Last Judgement for that), which is why they can intercede for us in Heaven. This doctrine was actually denied for a time by Pope John XXII back in the 1300s, which is often brought up in discussions of Papal infallibility. John eventually walked it back, presumably after a meeting where it was explained what it would do to the Church’s relics-and-pilgrimage rackets if capital-S Saints were no better than the common herd.
Random note 2: The cult of Maria Goretti was big in Ireland in the mid-20th century: she was not mentioned at all IIRC in the religious classes I was subject to, but my parents knew of many girls who took her name as part of their confirmation ceremony.
¹ Small “c” catholic, as in “universal”, not necessarily the Roman one trading under that name
Allow me to paraphrase Karl Marx: ‘Religion is the opium of the ignorant’. And, there is not enough space here, or elsewhere, to list all the evil and destruction caused by, and in the name of, religions.
For Ctulhu’s sake, no more catholic BS, please! Maybe bring up the entertainingly crazy groups instead. Are the raelians still using swastikas?
@erik333 @12 or raped. WTF with the minx crack at the little girl???
I almost completely missed the meteoric career of Joe Schmid!
I totally did and yet it feels like I missed nothing at all.
@ ^ Whatever happened to my blockquotes? Sigh.
First line meant to be a quote of the thread title here. Could swear I put them in.
@12. erik333 : “Is it more likely the creator of the universe would arrange to inseminate a girl in her sleep, or that a jewish minx would tell a lie?
Or that a child would be raped and made pregnant against her will and then in her terror have to lie about that literally for her life as the only way of preventing herself being stoned to death as pnsihment for being raped by the brutal, patriachial misognist & guillible society she lived in and could’t escape?
Using the word “minx” (Jewish – tech ancient Judean, Arab, Mongolian, Swedish, Senegalese or otherwise) to describe a very likely rape victim?! If she (Virgin / Mother – anglicised as Mary ) was ever real assuming the whole tale ain’t a stupid sexist myth that only later more awakened and thoughtful and feminist societies see for the seriously fucked up shit it is. Seriously? For Fucks sake! Victim blaming much? Not okay.
Expect better of you and please be better in future.
[OT]
You can use the > markdown tag here (the equivalent of a quote tag (<q>)), but it terminates at the first line break, so no blank lines within it (unless you use a nonbreaking space, for example).
(of course, PZ has, um, gumbified the standard quote tag here)
An irrelevant aside, but I hate the phrase “meteoric rise”. Since when has a meteor gone anywhere up down?
You misunderstand its import, NitricAcid.
Here: https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa-met1.html
Yeah, I know that it means “suddenly appearing”. But it’s still going down.
“But it’s still going down.”
Way to inform me you never bothered to look at my link’s content.
Here is a bit more context:
My knowledge of Catholicism is a bit haphazard, and does not come from formal instruction, but my understanding is as follows:
1) A person who is considered to be an actual saint (from Latin, sanctus, or “holy”) is someone “known” (or formally claimed by the Church, to be more epistemically accurate) to be in Heaven with God.
2) This “knowledge” (or formal claim) comes about because the person is associated with miracles.
3) The logic chain runs something like this:
3a) No one can perform miracles except for God.
3b) If a person is associated with miracles, the only way that could have happened is if God found favor with them, and performed the miracle on their behalf.
3c) God would not find favor with someone that he had condemned to hell, or to be in need of purging of sin.
3d) Therefore, if a person is associated with miracles, they must be in heaven with God, and be in God’s favor.
4) Since the person is known to be in heaven, and in God’s favor, they can intercede with God for additional miracles.
5) Therefore, saints can be venerated, and asked to intercede with God for additional miracles.
And thus, by a perfect chain of logic, we get the wonderful end result of a bureaucracy of saints.
(Asking why God needs a bureaucracy is strongly frowned on.)
As I understand it, it is still possible for a baptized person to commit a mortal sin, and be damned to hell, or have unforgiven venial sins that require purging. Furthermore, baptized souls may be in heaven, but are not “known” (see above) to be in heaven, because no miracles are associated with them.
About the OP:
Career go up; career come down. You can’t explain that.
Pretty much. I have had instruction, and best as I can tell they intercede, not guarantee. ‘Cos they are saintly.
A bit like psychopomps, but it’s prayers they ferry, and there is no guarantee of outcome.
Bit like a lawyer. A sinner’s advocate.
Here is the canon: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_two/chapter_three/article_9/paragraph_5_the_communion_of_saints.html
(That is what I love about Catholicism; it is all explicitly officially codified and indisputable)
What’s amusing is that it’s traditionally considered transactional.
Light more candles, crawl on your knees in pilgrimage, scour yourself, make promises.
@ 25 StevoR
Stevo you’re getting mad about a rape you invented in your noggin. Chill dude. X-D
(Maybe direct 1/10 th of the anger you feel about an imaginary rape to Harris’s support of genocide, eh.)
@25 StevoR
“Seriously? For Fucks sake! Victim blaming much? Not okay.”
I truly appreciate calling out a sexist comment. I do. But….
“Or that a child would be raped and made pregnant against her will and then in her terror have to lie about that literally for her life as the only way of preventing herself being stoned to death as pnsihment for being raped”
What’s the point of playing the “Holy Babble” game? A pregnant teenage would have be shunted off into a shotgun marriage, or outcast and shunned, or if the community really hated her family and people were bored, stoned to death. (But considering how truly common a pregnant teenager would be stonings were probably rare and just some hypocritical shoving into the corner is more common– very unpleasant and patriarchal and, yes, terrifying, but common).
But what would certainly have never happened would be a family would make up an utterly ludicrous and incredibly blasphemous story about Gd himself impregnating her. *THAT would be an absolute certainty of a stoning for perverse blasphemy.
I don’t see any point in this game of taking a story we don’t believe in and taking it literally and twisting it to make a cheap “gotcha”. If Mary ever existed it’s certain the virgin birth story was never told during her lifetime and she (nor her family) certainly didn’t come up with it.
@ ^ woozy : Good points regarding the actual Christian mythology & how unrealistic it is but that doesn’t change the misogynist nature of the comment which was the issue here.
Albeit, I dunno quite how “common” unmarried pregnant teenagers would’ve been in ancient Judea given the nature of its society and culture.
.***
@ The Trumpist Troll’s Support Troll : “@ 25 Stevo you’re getting mad about a rape you invented in your noggin.”
No, I’m calling out victim blaming in a comment about rape victims – mythological or otherwise. Describing any rape victim as a “minx” implying that a child invited their rape is just NOT okay.
I’ve already pointed out with solid evidence many times now that Kamala Harris did NOT support genocide. That is a simple fact and you lying about it over and over does NOT make it true. You are lying, Silentbob and I’m getting really sick of it and your bullshit here.
LISTEN TO THIS!!
LISTEN PROPERLY! PUT YOU EAR RIGHT NEXT TO IT! ENGAGE YOUR BRAIN! LISTEN OVER & OVER UNTIL YOU GET IT & UNDERSTAND!
Get Kamala Harrises words there tattooed on your forehead if that’s what it takes you to remember it & stop lying about her.
Kamala called what was happening in Gaza “outrageous.”
Kamala said Gaza “Broke her heart.”
Kamala stated that she ”got it” when it came to Gaza.
Someone that finds something “outrageous” and “heart-breaking” by definition does NOT support that thing.
So Kamala Harris did NOT support genocide.
Anyone repeating that lie is either ignorant or deliberately lying.
On this, you and, of course, the Dishonest Trumpist Troll “beholder” among a few others are acting just like Climate Science Deniers, anti-Vaxxers and Flat Earthers in that you are ignoring and rejecting the evidence that clearly proves you wrong. You keep spewing this PRATT (Point Refuted Already a Thousand Times) and you need to stop doing so. You also owe Kamala Harris an apology and you would do so if you were a decent human individual that gave a toss about the truth and had any personal integrity.
(That applies to the entire Abandon Biden-Harris movement and everyone who lied about and undermined Kamala Harris thereby helping install the orange dictator.)
PS. Have you apologised to chigau (違う) yet?
I have also noticed your continuing failure to answer the questions here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/08/11/this-is-what-happens-when-you-let-a-senile-fool-run-the-country/comment-page-1/#comment-2311021
As well. Please do so.
PPS. Telling that lie about Kamala (& other lies about Biden) has gotten Gaza gemocided totally and willnow seethem ethnically cleansed and the Palestinian cause totally destroyed.
Source : https://israelpalestinenews.org/ben-gvir-after-gaza-genocide-we-ethnically-cleanse-the-rest-daily-update/
THIS WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN UNDER A KAMALA HARRIS PRESIDENCY. IT IS HAPPENING BECAUSE TRUMP & HIS FASCISTS TOOK CHARGE.
Ultimately, the Abandon Biden-Harris mob have made the genocide far worse and ended the cause and lives of most of the people they supposedly cared about.
They should have supported Kamala and then pressured her after she had become POTUS and NOT beforehand when their actions made Trump POTUS and made the above linked fact, fact.
I wonder if we have something similar to Godwin’s law that the longer a Pharyngula thread goes on regardless of OP content the greater the chance it transforms into yet another relitigation of the 2024 POTUS election and consequences.