Inspiring Philosophy Proclaims Mormons as Atheists (but not really)

[Devobah]

 

Happy New Year Everyone!

So, Inspiring Philosophy's resolution seems to be to come out swinging with a wild video on Latter-day Saints being Atheists. No this isn't anything to do with the statistics of Exmormons turning atheists after they leave the church, but rather that our beliefs about God are actually atheistic in their views. Or, at least, a very specific kind of atheism.

Than (the creator of the video's name) introduces the audience to Atheist Axiarchism. He describes it as more nuanced but then provides this personal definition: "But at a surface level, all this theory really says is that there are no gods or god and causal reality has a disposition for seeking value. There is no personal agent behind any of this. The universe itself has some sort of a mechanism by which it seeks to create value."

He then compares this with the idea that Latter-day Saints have of eternal law and intelligences. 

Basically he concludes that we believe that we are no different than God, citing Blake Ostler in a few instances. (It's honestly easier to just watch the video, because the only way that I can think of summarizing it would literally be to just quote what he is saying)

He then goes into Creation Ex Nihilo vs Materia, and basically says that since the "Mormon" God didn't create ex nihilo then nothing is dependent on him and is therefore not really a God according to theism (or perfect theism) and commenting on the LDS understanding of theosis. 

He finishes the video by offering 3 choices for Latter-day Saints:

1. Accept that we are outside theism and are atheistic axiarchists

2. Rethink our theology

3. Become Christian 

My thoughts on the video is that it's pretty well put together, but misses a few things and promotes Ostler's views as doctrine. His view of theism is also very strange. Theism is just defined as the belief in a god or gods, which all LDS hold to. He counters this in the video by saying that our definition of God is different, and therefore not the correct definition. 

What are your thoughts on this? I hadn't heard of atheistic axiarchism until today.

[The Nehor]

So anyone who is not an Abrahamic monotheist is an atheist? Everyone was an atheist until YHWH ascended to become a cosmic deity?

Edited January 3 by The Nehor

[Calm]

I don’t feel the need to match up to someone else’s specialized definition of God, just because he doesn’t like our view of God.

I am not going to accept his label and see no need for any LDS to do so.

Edited January 3 by Calm

[teddyaware]

24 minutes ago, Devobah said:

 

Happy New Year Everyone!

So, Inspiring Philosophy's resolution seems to be to come out swinging with a wild video on Latter-day Saints being Atheists. No this isn't anything to do with the statistics of Exmormons turning atheists after they leave the church, but rather that our beliefs about God are actually atheistic in their views. Or, at least, a very specific kind of atheism.

Than (the creator of the video's name) introduces the audience to Atheist Axiarchism. He describes it as more nuanced but then provides this personal definition: "But at a surface level, all this theory really says is that there are no gods or god and causal reality has a disposition for seeking value. There is no personal agent behind any of this. The universe itself has some sort of a mechanism by which it seeks to create value."

He then compares this with the idea that Latter-day Saints have of eternal law and intelligences. 

Basically he concludes that we believe that we are no different than God, citing Blake Ostler in a few instances. (It's honestly easier to just watch the video, because the only way that I can think of summarizing it would literally be to just quote what he is saying)

He then goes into Creation Ex Nihilo vs Materia, and basically says that since the "Mormon" God didn't create ex nihilo then nothing is dependent on him and is therefore not really a God according to theism (or perfect theism) and commenting on the LDS understanding of theosis. 

He finishes the video by offering 3 choices for Latter-day Saints:

1. Accept that we are outside theism and are atheistic axiarchists

2. Rethink our theology

3. Become Christian 

My thoughts on the video is that it's pretty well put together, but misses a few things and promotes Ostler's views as doctrine. His view of theism is also very strange. Theism is just defined as the belief in a god or gods, which all LDS hold to. He counters this in the video by saying that our definition of God is different, and therefore not the correct definition. 

What are your thoughts on this? I hadn't heard of atheistic axiarchism until today.

A response from the Apostle Orson Pratt:

IMMATERIALISTS ARE ATHEISTS

There are two classes of Atheists in the world. One class denies the existence of God in the most positive language: the other denies his existence in duration or space. One says, ‘There is no God;’ the other says, ‘God is not here or there, any more than he exists now and then.’ The infidel says, God does not exist anywhere. The Immaterialist says, ‘He exists nowhere.’ The infidel says, There is no such substance as God. The Immaterialist says, There is such a substance as God, but it is ‘without parts.’ The atheist says, There is no such substance as Spirit. The Immaterialist says, ‘A spirit, though he lives and acts, occupies no room, and fills no space, in the same way and in the same manner as matter, not even so much as does the minutest grain of sand.’ The Atheist does not seek to hide his infidelity: but the Immaterialist, whose declared belief amounts to the same thing as the Atheist’s, endeavors to hide his infidelity under the shallow covering of a few words.

…Nothing, and nothing only, is a representative of that which has no relation to space or time—that is, unextended, indivisible, and without parts. Therefore, the Immaterialist is a religious Atheist; he only differs from the other class of Atheists, by clothing an indivisible unextended NOTHING with the powers of a god. One class believes in no God; the other believes that NOTHING is god, and worships it as such. There is no twisting away from this. The most profound philosopher in all the ranks of modern Christianity, cannot extricate the Immaterialists from atheism. He cannot show the least difference between the idea represented by the word nothing, and the idea represented by that which is unextended, indivisible, and without parts, having no relation to space or time. All the philosophers of the universe could not give a better or more correct definition of Nothing. And yet this is the god worshipped by the Church of England—the Methodists—and millions of other atheistical idolators, according to their own definitions, as recorded in their respective articles of faith. An open Atheist is not so dangerous as the Atheist who couches his atheistical doctrines under the head of ‘ARTICLES OF RELIGION.’ The first stands out with open colours, and boldly avows his infidelity; the latter, under the sacred garb of religion, draws into his yawning vortex, the unhappy millions who are persuaded to believe in, and worship an unextended indivisible nothing without parts, deified into a god. A pious Atheist is much more serviceable in building up the kingdom of darkness than one who openly, and without any deception, avows his infidelity….

There is no more absurdity in calling Nothing a substance, and clothing it with Almighty powers, than there is in making a substance out of that which is precisely like nothing, and imagining it to have Almighty powers. Therefore, an immaterial god is a deified Nothing, and all his worshippers are atheistic idolaters.

Orson Pratt, Absurdities of Immaterialism (Liverpool, 1849), 11-12

[sunstoned]

I am not going to let some social media podcaster wannabe try to categorize and label my beliefs.  Someone needs to sic Dan McClellan on this guy.

[Devobah]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

So anyone who is not an Abrahamic monotheist is an atheist? Everyone was an atheist until YHWH ascended to become a cosmic deity?

I can't find it now (which is frustrating) but there was an early church father who described Christians as atheist, but atheists to other gods of other religions. I just thought that was a bit funny because this is essentially what is being done in the video.

[InCognitus]

40 minutes ago, Devobah said:

I can't find it now (which is frustrating) but there was an early church father who described Christians as atheist, but atheists to other gods of other religions. I just thought that was a bit funny because this is essentially what is being done in the video.

I'm not sure if you are thinking of Justin Martyr, but in his First Apology (chapters 5 and 6), Christians were charged with atheism because they were "introducing new divinities" and denying the "gods" of the pagans.  It seems like a similar tactic going on in this modern argument.  Justin Martyr wrote:

"Hence are we called atheists. And we confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity. But both Him, and the Son (who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him), and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and truth, and declaring without grudging to every one who wishes to learn, as we have been taught."  (Justin Martyr, Apology 1 Ch. 6)

I think it's just a way for atheists to find a way to attack our view, since all their normal arguments against Calvinist or Protestant views don't work on us.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, InCognitus said:

think it's just a way for atheists to find a way to attack our view,

This guy isn’t an atheist though, is he?  Seems like it’s just another version of we aren’t the right kind of Christian in his view, so he doesn’t want to share the label and heretic isn’t enough, he wants to deny us any sense of spirituality.

Edited January 3 by Calm

[Buckeye]

Caveat that I haven’t watched the video. 

Based on your description of Than’s arguments, it seems to me the fundamental issue is whether some being (God) created the material universe and defines what’s right/wrong verses the belief that the material world and righteousness are eternal realities outside of any specific being and God (better the Gods) choose to align with those realities and help others (us) to do so. 

If I’ve set out the issue correctly, the disagreement is really about the nature of God. I’m very comfortable disagreeing with Than. The Mormon view is better than his. Righteousness and matter do exist on their own independent of my, your, or any gods actions. Man can achieve a fullness, as have prior beings, and can become gods, by aligning fully with the principles of righteousness. And gods can cease to be gods if they turn away from those principles.
 

I don’t worship any particular being, but rather the principles of righteousness that form godhood. Critically though, I have no ability the learn and accept the principles of righteousness except that existing Gods found me, provided examples and means to become like them, and also provided a savior to perform an atonement so that I can wrestle to attain those principles rather than be damned the first time I stumble. There is no salvation but through our Heavenly Parents and Savior, though the attributes that make them gods are independent and not set by them. 

[InCognitus]

4 hours ago, Devobah said:

Basically he concludes that we believe that we are no different than God, citing Blake Ostler in a few instances. (It's honestly easier to just watch the video, because the only way that I can think of summarizing it would literally be to just quote what he is saying)

I just watched the video. 

His argument totally fell apart at the end when he proclaimed the Christian Trinitarian God as the most philosophically coherent option, and that Mormons should choose Christianity.

Furthermore, I don't think he realizes that the idea that "God and humans are the same kind; they are kin" (as he quotes from Blake Ostler) is purely biblical (Acts 17:28-29).  We are the same genus as God, as the text states.

He also misrepresents some of our views, such as him saying that Mormons believe that God "didn't create the plan of exaltation" (for example).

[InCognitus]

27 minutes ago, Calm said:

This guy isn’t an atheist though, is he?  Seems like it’s just another version of we aren’t the right kind of Christian in his view, so he doesn’t want to share the label and heretic isn’t enough, he wants to deny us any sense of spirituality.

Exactly right, it's just a repackaging of the "Mormons aren't Christians" argument.  I hadn't watched the video when I made my first comment.

Edited January 3 by InCognitus

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, teddyaware said:

A response from the Apostle Orson Pratt:

IMMATERIALISTS ARE ATHEISTS

There are two classes of Atheists in the world. One class denies the existence of God in the most positive language: the other denies his existence in duration or space. One says, ‘There is no God;’ the other says, ‘God is not here or there, any more than he exists now and then.’ The infidel says, God does not exist anywhere. The Immaterialist says, ‘He exists nowhere.’ The infidel says, There is no such substance as God. The Immaterialist says, There is such a substance as God, but it is ‘without parts.’ The atheist says, There is no such substance as Spirit. The Immaterialist says, ‘A spirit, though he lives and acts, occupies no room, and fills no space, in the same way and in the same manner as matter, not even so much as does the minutest grain of sand.’ The Atheist does not seek to hide his infidelity: but the Immaterialist, whose declared belief amounts to the same thing as the Atheist’s, endeavors to hide his infidelity under the shallow covering of a few words.

…Nothing, and nothing only, is a representative of that which has no relation to space or time—that is, unextended, indivisible, and without parts. Therefore, the Immaterialist is a religious Atheist; he only differs from the other class of Atheists, by clothing an indivisible unextended NOTHING with the powers of a god. One class believes in no God; the other believes that NOTHING is god, and worships it as such. There is no twisting away from this. The most profound philosopher in all the ranks of modern Christianity, cannot extricate the Immaterialists from atheism. He cannot show the least difference between the idea represented by the word nothing, and the idea represented by that which is unextended, indivisible, and without parts, having no relation to space or time. All the philosophers of the universe could not give a better or more correct definition of Nothing. And yet this is the god worshipped by the Church of England—the Methodists—and millions of other atheistical idolators, according to their own definitions, as recorded in their respective articles of faith. An open Atheist is not so dangerous as the Atheist who couches his atheistical doctrines under the head of ‘ARTICLES OF RELIGION.’ The first stands out with open colours, and boldly avows his infidelity; the latter, under the sacred garb of religion, draws into his yawning vortex, the unhappy millions who are persuaded to believe in, and worship an unextended indivisible nothing without parts, deified into a god. A pious Atheist is much more serviceable in building up the kingdom of darkness than one who openly, and without any deception, avows his infidelity….

There is no more absurdity in calling Nothing a substance, and clothing it with Almighty powers, than there is in making a substance out of that which is precisely like nothing, and imagining it to have Almighty powers. Therefore, an immaterial god is a deified Nothing, and all his worshippers are atheistic idolaters.

Orson Pratt, Absurdities of Immaterialism (Liverpool, 1849), 11-12

Don’t bring this up. We are trying to play nice with other Christians these days and copy them regularly. Saying they are more satanic than atheists isn’t going to help.

Seriously, this is Orson Pratt and his opponent playing with philosophical constructs off of intuitions. Neither are proving anything. It is just pitting one construct of God against another construct and pretending one is somehow obviously correct.

[InCognitus]

In case some of you haven't seen this, James Agnew of the "In Philosopher’s Garb" channel made this excellent logical and philosophical analysis of the video posted in the opening post.  James Agnew holds a Doctorate in Theology from Kairos University where he specialized in Kenotic Christology, and he is not a Latter-day Saint.

I wasn't going to watch this tonight, but I ended up listening to/watching the entire video (it wasn't a waste of time by any means, but I have a ton of other things I should have been doing!! ). 

I don't know if this guy uploads his video in 1.5 speed mode or not, but this is the first video of this kind that I didn't WANT to adjust to make it play faster, because the guy talks very fast and the video is edited well, and it is a steady stream of consciousness pouring out of his mouth (I kept waiting for him to pass out at some point for not taking a breath).

To summarize, Agnew totally roasts the other video, and you can tell that he respects Than (the guy that did the opening post video), but Than's arguments are terrible (but we already knew that).  And Agnew's analysis of Than's arguments are worth listening to if you have the time.

I'll quote part of his summary here (from the 41:42 point of his video), because he makes some good points about these types of arguments:

Quote

Now, this brings me to the final point I want to address with this argument and all arguments that resemble it. These arguments do not say really anything meaningful. They don't get us any closer to true beliefs about the divine. They don't help us rule out what is true and what is false. These arguments take certain words that have negative connotations in our culture and through a series of semantic gerrymandering and definitional games, they seek to force these terms with negative connotations onto those who we are ideologically opposed to. And this is done so that we can sit back and say, "Aha, look, now you have this bad term affixed to you. Don't you hate that? Don't you want to get rid of that bad term? why don't you just abandon your position and then you don't have that, you know, bad term anymore". 

And this allows us to seem like we are scoring points to those on our side of the ideological divide who are not very discerning about the critiques we're raising against others. And it really does look like a whammy if you just squint and don't look hard enough. And if you go look at the comment section of this original video by Than, you will see people cheering Than on as if he actually did anything in this video.

But I suspect that the Mormons who watch this video by Than are going to feel much like I feel when I encounter a classical theist who calls me an atheist because I reject divine simplicity or when a Muslim calls me a polytheist because I affirm that Yahweh is not just one person. They are going to note the issues I noted and they're going to note that the label affixed to them doesn't really mean much under the definitions provided and they'll they'll just carry on their way because instead of focusing on actual issues in their theology, we play this definitions game just so we could, "Aha I got you. I got this label that I got to slap on you. Don't you hate that? Look everybody, they're atheists". 

I like his phrase, "semantic gerrymandering". 

Agnew also says the reason he put out his video is to maintain integrity.  He says toward the end, "If I'm going to rip into the bad arguments from those outside the church or those outside my branch of Christian tradition, then my conscience, my integrity demands from me that I be an equal opportunity critic. I cannot treat the bad arguments from my friends any differently than I treat the bad arguments from my foes. And if I do that, then I'm just a spineless hypocrite."

I respect his integrity.

Incidentally, Blake Ostler also says he's preparing a response to the opening post video.

Edited January 16 by InCognitus

[Calm]

1 hour ago, InCognitus said:

I like his phrase, "semantic gerrymandering". 

It is a great description of what is going on, imo.

Quote

I cannot treat the bad arguments from my friends any differently than I treat the bad arguments from my foes. And if I do that, then I'm just a spineless hypocrite.

I second this.

Quote

Incidentally, Blake Ostler also says he's preparing a response to the opening post video.

How much attention is the video actually getting?

Added:  went and looked...47,000 views and 2000+ comments.  The comments seem excessive, I have no clue if the views are noteworthy for this kind of thing 

Edited January 16 by Calm

[Kenngo1969]

Is there any real difference between, "Yew Marminz ain't Christiunz 'cuz ya believe in the wrong Jeezuss!" and "Yew Marminz is atheists 'cuz ya believe in the wrong Jeezuss!"?     

 

Edited January 25 by Kenngo1969

[The Nehor]

5 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Is there any real difference between, "Yew Marminz ain't Christiunz 'cuz ya believe in the wrong Jeezuss!" and "Yew Marminz is atheists 'cuz ya believe in the wrong Jeezuss!"?     

 

I think it is more that any God that didn’t create all of reality doesn’t really count. It is basically limiting who can be a deity to the God of Abrahamic monotheists and maybe some primordial deities in some polytheist pantheons. The rest of the deities don’t count of course.

[InCognitus]

On 1/15/2026 at 10:50 PM, InCognitus said:

Incidentally, Blake Ostler also says he's preparing a response to the opening post video.

Blake Ostler's response is included in this episode of Scriptural Mormonism with Robert Boylan (for anyone who is interested):

The critique of the video in the opening post of this thread begins at the 29:13 minute mark of this video.  It's a rather brief critique compared to the rebuttal video I posted earlier, and there are no surprises.  Ostler thinks Than's logic is awful and also refers to it as "semantic gerrymandering".

[The Nehor]

Something about this was tickling a memory I couldn’t place but it just clicked into place.

In the Greco-Roman world the term atheos (godless) was a polemic against those that would not respect the state’s god. It was used against indviduals. For example it was part of the accusation against Socrates and was pretty false in his case.

The Jews and later the Christians were also atheos. This was not because they denied the existence of the Roman deities but because they wouldn’t worship them. The Jews mostly got away with it. The Romans mocked their “invisible god” sometimes but they also had a respect for anything ancient and the worship of their god went back a long ways. They got a special dispensation. There was some friction about it. Then you have the Christians show up. First it was seen as just a Jewish splinter religion but then it got popular and was telling lots of people not to worship the state gods or the cult of the emperor. This was unpatriotic. In the US the latter would be seen something like the equivalent of refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. Plus the Christians couldn’t claim their worship was ancient. They worshipped a very recent god that showed up and died via humiliating torturous execution for treason against the Roman state. While the persecution of Christians has been exaggerated as much more pervasive than it was there were some local persecutions of Christians and at least one empire-wide one.

Basically saying that this is the modern equivalent of worshipping the wrong kind of deity with a new flavor.