David Pakman's Naive View Of Belief In God Is Ubiquitous

David Pakman is someone who I agree with about a lot but with whom I have some profound disagreements.  Among the most serious of those is that the guy is an extreme Bernie Sanders cultist, he and his producer, who I believe is Noah Ferguson.   As we get close to 2020 and it looks like Bernie and his cult risk the play-left throwing yet another election to Republican-fascists, that will turn into a definitive parting of the ways.  I've gone from respecting Bernie Sanders to thinking he's just another play-lefty like Ralph Nader and Jill Stein and all of the others who have played spoilers out of vanity or self-promotion or self-enrichment or, as in the case of Jill Stein and the Greens, something that stinks of stuff much worse involving billionaire money, foreign and domestic.  The Green Party is a cynical, stinking ploy that suckers idiots.  Bernie Sanders is certainly willing to risk becoming a part of that long, disgusting history.

I don't generally listen to Pakman's videos when they show up in the sidebar of "recommended videos" I assume his do because I do listen to Majority Report quite a bit.  This one came up with the title, "Caller: Does David Call Himself an Atheist?" and I decided to spend three minutes that I'll never get back listening to it. 

I have to say that the total banality of the caller and David Pakman's thinking on the issues of "theism" and atheism made me think of something,  the fact is, I've never, once, encountered an atheist who had a more sophisticated understanding of the belief in God than is demonstrated here. 

The caller raising issues of "theism" as if that was synonymous with the belief in the God of Christianity or Judaism or Islam or, really, any other kind of monotheism is nonsense.   I believe in God I am not a "theist" the more I read about these things the more I understand that "theism" is not an adequate description of what I or, in fact, most thinking believers believe.   You can contrast that with this question and answer of the theologian Jürgen Moltmann  "Atheism and theism are outside of the Trinity."  

It is clear from David Pakman's answer that his entire conception of belief in God has to be based in some primitive notion of "God in the gaps," a phrase which was invented by a Scottish evangelical preacher as a warning that that was a totally inadequate way for believers to think about the issues and about God.   I will point out it is also an entirely inadequate way to think about science because science is far more gaping chasms than it is solid knowledge.  Even some scientists will admit that.  When it is held up to be the entire legitimate means of knowing, it is entirely inadequate, as inadequate a means of explaining huge parts of human experience and even parts of the physical universe as the pagan, polytheists' explanation of thunder and lightning or the sun rising and setting.   

I have never, once, encountered an atheist who had an adequate or at all sophisticated view of even the questions involved.  I have found more, though very few, atheists who have a grasp of the actual meaning of science and what it can and can't do.  For that matter, I know very few religious people who have a realistic grasp of that.  Most of them have an absurdly unrealistic view of its capabilities and achievements.  

Packman's answer in this reminded me of nothing so much as Sam Seder's failure to find the word "Mammon" on a recent clip from his show, he thought "Mammon" was some kind of pagan god, though he couldn't even remember the word.  That was something he seemed proud of not knowing.  And I do generally listen to Seder's show which is far better than Pakman's.