Why I will never take Alex O'Connor seriously
In order to “stress-test” my Christianity, I spent an ungodly amount of time between 2017 and 2019 devouring every YouTube atheistic material I could lay my hands on . From debates to speeches, from “Sam Harris best moments” to “The Hitch-slaps”, I must have looked at every YouTube channel with “sceptic” and “rational” in their name, I watched them all. Every waking moment I was not doing something I was obligated to was spent on YouTube watching atheist content.
It was around that time I first came across Alex O’Connor (Then Cosmic Skeptic) who by his own admission was still in his “new atheist” phase - This is how I perceived him at the time as well. In recent times, it seems he has gone through some sort of rebrand, dropping the name “Cosmic Skeptic” and becoming “more nuanced” about his criticism of Christianity. He describes himself as a “Non-resistant Non-believer”. I remained sceptical about this new Alex until I saw a conversation he had with Trent Horn.
In the conversation he talks about how he has really tried to believe in Christianity. He got a theology degree, he spent a year living with Christians and he still feels nothing. He said it would perhaps take a religious experience to bring him to faith. He has in the past admitted having a dream where he was about to die and then prayed the Lord’s prayer, but again nothing to that (and possibly there really is nothing to that, I have weird dreams about worshipping Dawkins from time to time too! Of course I joke, but I am serious about agreeing with Alex here). It was at this time I came closest to taking Alex seriously. “Maybe this is just an honest seeker of truth”, I thought. The only thing that stopped me from actually buying his whole story was this scriptural promise from God,
“And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
(Jeremiah 29:13)
And again,
“…let God be true but every man a liar…”
(Romans 3:4)
I had no objective proof that Alex was not being completely honest, he seemed genuine and I think he completely believed every word coming out of his mouth but I just chose to believe God over Alex and God promises that every one who searches for Him with their whole heart will find Him. I also have personal stories and know countless others of people I know who this has been true for.
However, the more I listened to Alex and his arguments against Christianity, the more reason I had to believe my intuition about his not being totally genuine. He has argued for instance, that YHWH in the Old Testament commanded sex with female captives of war in Numbers 31,
“And Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive? 16 Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.”
(Numbers 31:15–18)
I can understand this argument coming from a Muslim preacher who is trying desperately to defend child marriage or sex slavery in Islam as per Surah 65:4, 23:5–6, 4:24 and 70:30 but coming from an intelligent guy like Alex? This was a clear indication of bias.
I have a full article on Numbers 31 which I will link below but suffice it to say at this time that it never says God gave the command, Moses commanded it. The reason is that earlier in Numbers 23–25, the prophet Balaam had been hired by the Moabite king Balak to curse the Israelites but God would not let him, to sort of circumvent this, Balaam counselled Balak to send in Moabite women to seduce the Israelites and as they committed fornication with these women, God Himself sent a plague into Israel’s camp to destroy them. Moses here was saying those women who were part of those that seduced Israel should be killed and those that did not could be spared.
The indication of bias here is that if this was really a verse that troubled Alex as a guy who “wants Christianity to be true” and is really “Non-resistant”, the first step would be to investigate this isn’t it? In fact, how can you read Numbers 31 without reading 23–25? Before you proffer this as an argument against Christian ethics, should you not have read how Christians have responded to this? And if you do a five minute search on this, you will know this was connected to an earlier incident. This objection to me screams, “Ah! something I can use against Christianity and I shall look no further!”, the first chink in his “I am trying hard to find God but to no avail” story.
The second chink in the armour here has to be with how Alex consistently frames things with minimal concern for truth when he argues against Christianity. For example, the story of Jesus saying to Thomas,
“Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
(John 20:29)
Alex phrases this as teaching Jesus is against evidence since He rebukes Thomas for asking for evidence of the resurrection. The real story here however is a rebuke for REFUSAL to believe DESPITE all of the evidence. Did Jesus Himself not say,
“ If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”
(John 10:37–38)
Again in John 5:31–37, Jesus lists four witnesses of who He is, including John the Baptist, Moses and the very scriptures the Scribes and Pharisees had been reading all their lives. Jesus even acknowledged that if He was the only witness to who He is, his testimony would not be valid!
Again, before Jesus died, He said,
“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father.”
(John 15:22–24)
Again, all the disciples eventually believed in the things Jesus said to them just before He died,
“ His disciples said to Him, “See, now You are speaking plainly, and using no figure of speech! Now we are sure that You know all things, and have no need that anyone should question You. By this we believe that You came forth from God.”
(John 16:29–30)
So in light of all of this evidence, coupled with the testimony of at least 10 other disciples post resurrection, Thomas still refused to believe without seeing and touching the risen Jesus. This is the real story! Jesus did not demand that anybody believe in Him without evidence.
Even Jesus’ teaching of the gospel, His death and resurrection was not only based on the actual fact that He did it but also the Hebrew scriptures as well,
“Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things.”
(Luke 24:44–48)
And again,
“ Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”
(Luke 24:25–27)
Even the early church creed in 1 Corinthians 15 was rooted both in history and the Hebrew scriptures,
“ For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures”
(1 Corinthians 15:3)
The point is today, anyone who doubts the gospel can go to the Old Testament as evidence that the historical facts underlying the gospel were prophesied way before they happened!
But back to Alex…
Alex is also adamant that the “birth narratives” of Matthew and Luke are irreconcilably contradictory. Well, they are clearly not talking about the same timeline! Does it really never occur to Alex, this brilliant intelligent mind, to harmonize? In Matthew’s gospel, Herod orders to kill children “two years old and younger according to the time from the wise men” (Matt 2:16) showing the events recorded would have occurred sometime within the first two years of Jesus’ birth. Luke on the other hand is talking about the first days of Jesus’ birth. No?
The third chink in this story is Alex’s debate tactics. Case in point is Alex using very tired and well refuted “human and animal suffering” points in his debate with the Knechtles knowing fully well they are not philosophers and would not be able to adequately respond to them. But maybe I am uncharitable here and I will be willing to walk this back and say maybe Alex genuinely believed those arguments.
Fair enough, but what about his debate on Jubilee?
Alex O’Connor was super hyper sceptical about church history and the tradition that the apostles were martyred for their faith. “How do we know their faith was why they were martyred? Perhaps ‘later early Christians’ in the 300s heard these things and drew inspiration from what they heard to die for their faith!”. Alex just doesn’t know, he is not sure!
However, in the same debate, when it comes to things he wants to believe, Alex is very sure! He is very sure for example that Matthew INVENTED Jesus’ flight to Egypt so that he could fabricate a prophecy being fulfilled! Matthew INVENTED the mass resurrection of saints after Jesus death to make a theological point that Jesus is the firstborn from the dead! He is sure Jesus saying “I AM” is the same as the blind man Jesus healed saying “I AM” so nothing special and Jesus was not claiming to be God with that statement, ignoring the fact that Jesus was saying He existed before Abraham while the blind man was just identifying himself as the blind man that was healed- Isn’t this a distinction someone with average intelligence should be able to make?
So when it comes to the motives for martyrs dying, we cannot say! But when it comes to the gospel writers, Alex is not only certain they were inventing things, he has almost supernatural insight into their precise reasons for doing so. This is not an intellectually honest person!
Now, the final nail in the coffin for me is this..
Alex has gone around challenging Christian ethics on the grounds of slavery. He cannot stand the fact that an all loving God will endorse human beings owning other human beings as property.
Now, we have Islam, a religion that says this is perfectly acceptable behaviour today! Islam endorses slavery, sex with slaves, sex with children and suppression of women’s rights. Alex O’Connor will point out these issues with Numbers 31 and Exodus 21 and “It is shameful for women to speak in church” in 1 Corinthians 14 but will not say one word about Islam.
Worse still, Alex O’Connor will not show up to a debate where he was billed to defend a pro-Islamic position that Jesus never claimed to be God BECAUSE there has been a threat to the event by “Islamists”. The hypocrisy here is two-fold.
First, isn’t it funny that Alex has a problem with slavery and people owning other people while he himself is being owned by people who take Islam seriously? He has taken down his videos on Islam, he has shut his mouth about Islam publicly and he will not show up to a platform for exchanging and expressing ideas (something that is almost his entire life and livelihood by the way!) because of Islam. Isn’t this Alex O’Connor being a slave to those who take Islam seriously? Don’t they OWN Alex O’Connor if they can get him to shut up, not debate and take down his criticisms at will?
Secondly, whenever Alex is debating Christians on what he terms “God ordering genocide against the Canaanites”, he usually says, “Imagine you could go back in time and you were a Canaanite and Israelites are coming to wipe out you and your family , would you not resist this?”
I will flip this back on Alex,
“Imagine you were in 7th century Arabia during the time of Prophet Muhammad and you saw him and his band of merry men molest slave after slave after slave. Would you speak up against it?”. The answer of course is a resounding “No!”. This tells us Alex will look back on history with his comfy 21st century UK lens and judge God for not making rulings then he would make now! However, if he himself was in those cultures even granting his current lens, he would not dare speak up against the norm!
So think about this, Alex is precisely the kind of person who would not speak up against injustice whether in the 7th or the 21st Century, he will not even speak up in support of ideas he believes in when it is inconvenient for him. He does not feel strongly enough about his ideas to stake his life for them! He will not speak up in defence of liberty! So it appears he really does not have a problem with slavery or women’s rights to the extent he claims he does when he debates Christians (If he did, he would consistently speak up against these things whether in the Bible or in the Quran). These grievances and “moral discomforts” are just ammunition for him to attack Christianity with!
This is why I can never take Alex seriously. He is nothing special. He is as biased as your average new atheist and to be honest, I much prefer the four horsemen of atheism to Alex because they were at least willing to lambast Islam to the same degree and for the same things they lambasted Christianity for. They stood up against religion as a whole, Christianity or Islam. Alex, on the other hand, will rather be Islam’s slave. He has a very big mouth, pontificating with that posh British accent of his, when it comes to criticizing Christianity but will instantly crap his British underwear whenever Islam walks into the room.
Put a fork in this guy, I am done with him now!
And to all Alex fans out there, his excuse that he doesn’t know Islam as well as the New Testament is nonsense. He has publicly stated he is not as familiar with the Old Testament either but that does not stop him from criticizing Exodus and Numbers. Further more, he has read the Quran, has he really seen nothing to criticize? Does he not read the news and see everything people do in the name of Allah? Give me a break!
