The conversion of Alex O'Connor is a bit incomprehensible

Alex O'Connor was a quite long time atheist and skeptic who was active on YouTube, commenting and debating on the topic of religion, atheism and skepticism.

He has always been characterized as being extraordinarily calm, understanding and eloquent, always approaching these topics and these debates respectfully and in good faith, always trying to fully understand and acknowledge what the opposing arguments are, and what the other person in a debate is saying, without any judgment, without any distortions, without any unjustified assumptions, without any straw-manning, always understanding and acknowledging the argument, and giving a calm rational reasonable full response to it. I don't remember him ever saying anything belittling, disparaging, mocking or insulting to anybody, and always approached every person in an extremely respectful and amicable manner, and in good faith.

In other words, he always was pretty much the nicest skeptic debater out there. Someone who wanted to discuss these topics in a warm approachable manner with zero hostility or animosity, avoiding at all costs the other person feeling insulted, belittled or disrespected.

He became such a notorious "friendly skeptic" that he even got to have live debates with several big-name Christian apologists, like William Lane Craig.

Some time ago, however, for one reason or another he stopped being an atheist and became a deist, perhaps even an outright theist (although not a Christian.)

I honestly cannot comprehend why.

You can see a video where he explains a few of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God (or at least some kind of "god") here.

Not to belittle him, but his number one argument is not rational. Or, perhaps more precisely, he is jumping to a completely unjustified, and thus irrational, conclusion from the argument.

His number one argument is a form of "first cause" argument, although slightly different: Rather than arguing that the universe must have a "first cause" for its existence, he does so in another axis: He argues that every single thing is dependent on something else, usually a more fundamental thing. Something having the properties it does is caused by something more fundamental allowing it to have those properties. And that more fundamental phenomenon itself will have an even more fundamental underlying cause allowing it to exist, and so on. If we follow this chain all the way down we must inevitably end up in the most fundamental phenomenon that allows everything to be like it is, that allows everything to exist.

Even putting aside the subsequent conclusions for a bit, that notion is in itself not something that can be taken for granted. One of its biggest flaws is that it assume one single fundamental phenomenon that allows everything in the universe to exist and be like it is. He dismisses the possibility of there being more than one independent phenomena, ie. that don't depend on each other, being at the "bottom" of this vertical causal chain, perhaps allowing separate things to exist as they are, or doing so for the same things in conjunction.

It also disregards the possibility of mutual dependence of two or more of these "most fundamental" phenomena. In other words, phenomenon A depends on phenomenon B, and vice-versa, and they together then allow everything else to exist.

Anyway, that's just a side point, not the main objection I have. The main objection is, rather obviously, that from "there must be a most-fundamental cause for everything to exist as it does" to "that something is (some kind of) God".

It's that jump in logic that I categorically do not accept, and it genuinely baffles my mind why he does.

Even if there is some "most-fundamental cause" that allows everything to exist as it is, there is no reason or justification to apply the label of "God" to it. That's because that name (with or without a capital G) carries a huge amount of assumptions and baggage with it, and labeling something unknown with it automatically applies all those assumptions and baggage to that unknown.

This "most fundamental cause", if one exists, could well be just a completely mindless natural phenomenon, just like electric charge or gravity.

In other words, it's disingenuous to apply the label of "God" to such an unknown. It is pretty much a perfect example of an argumentum ad ignorantiam (or, perhaps a bit more precisely, "assigning characteristics to an unknown (in a completely unjustified manner)".)

Outright becoming a theist, or even just a deist, because of this is irrational. Starting to believe in some kind of "higher power" that some religions (like Christianity) get at least half-right (as he states in the video), is completely unjustified. It's just not rational nor reasonable. You are assigning theistic characteristics to something we know nothing about.

And that's assuming that this "most fundamental cause" even exists in the first place, which in itself is not a self-evident fact.

I genuinely have a hard time understanding how a skeptic of the caliber of Alex O'Connor cannot comprehend this.

(I really have to wonder if the King of Sophistry himself, ie. William Lane Craig, somehow managed to mess up his thinking. Advanced sophistry can be a powerful tool against the unwary.)

The idea of Jesus being punished on your behalf is completely asinine

One of the core tenets and talking points of (most of) Christianity is that Jesus became a human and was punished on your behalf, for your sins. That he carried the burden, he received the punishment so that you could be saved. That instead of you being punished for your sins, he took it on himself instead, to save you from eternal damnation, the consequence of sin.

This is often depicted as a form of "sacrificing oneself to save others", like if Jesus did the ultimate sacrifice to give humanity the opportunity to be saved from certain damnation. The ultimate form of altruism, the ultimate form of self-sacrifice in order to help others.

However, this entire idea is not just a completely perverse form of "justice", it's outright asinine.

When we get down to it, as many of these Christian apologists and preachers explain it, it's like a weird form of "karma": It's as if every crime, every evil deed, has to be "counter-balanced" with a corresponding punishment.

Because you have sinned, there has to be some punishment. Apparently it's just how it is. Apparently it's just not possible to forgive and forget your sins, your evil deeds: They must be compensated with punishment.

Ok, fine: Every crime, every evil deed, requires a punishment. Perhaps a bit harsh (because the punishment is not proportional to the severity of the crime), but it makes sense. But that's not the egregious part about it. Apparently, it doesn't matter who that punishment is done to, as long as there is some punishment. Apparently it doesn't matter if the punishment is done to a completely innocent third-party who was in no way involved in your crimes: As long as someone is punished for your crimes, that's enough.

They literally talk as if crimes go to one container, and the punishments for those crimes go to another, and the delicate balance between the two has to always be maintained. And punishments don't need to be just and fair: As long as the punishment is done, doesn't matter who it's done to, that counts.

Thus, innocent people being punished for the crimes of the guilty brings balance to the system and absolves the guilty.

Rather obviously this is a completely perverted form of justice. But worse than that, it indeed seems to allude to some form of "karma", where evil deeds accumulate and "punishment" must be done to counter-balance them. Which makes no sense.

And the funny thing is that this is, from a logical point of view, completely unnecessary: The belief that "if you truly repent for your sins, truly feel regret for them, and you truly make a complete 180 and decide on not doing anything like that anymore, God will forgive you and absolve you from your crimes" would be enough and completely logical. The part where God's Son needs to come to Earth as a human and be punished for your crimes in order to make this deal possible could be completely skipped and removed from the formula, and it would only make the entire thing more logical, not less. Sure, there might still be some discussion to be had about what kind of justice system this is, but at least the most egregious part of it would have been removed, ie. the part where there just has to be a punishment and, most egregiously, an innocent person can be punished on your behalf.

Be careful with "shotgun" and "rapid-fire" arguments

Oftentimes when a skeptic has a discussion with someone, not even necessarily a Christian / religious person, but also for example with a conspiracy theorist, that other person may engage in "shotgun argumentation" and "rapid-fire argumentation", and this is something that many skeptics fail to stop, even though they really should.

"Shotgun argumentation" is when tons and tons of tiny claims are presented all at once, in rapid succession, defending or attacking some position. There are two main reasons for such a tactic:

1. Just the sheer amount of arguments may make the claims more credible. After all, if only two or three arguments are presented, then that might not convince many people, but present twenty or thirty, and suddenly you have a much weightier argument! After all, there's an "overwhelming amount" of arguments and "evidence" for the position, so clearly there's something legit going on.
2. The other distinct advantage of this tactic is that when you present dozens and dozens of arguments, the chances that the skeptic will not have a proper answer to at least one of them increases dramatically. Thus, you can present argument after argument after argument, rapidly moving from one to the next (ie. "rapid-fire argumentation"), and immediately when you arrive at one that the skeptic has no immediate good answer for you can immediately jump to the opportunity: "See? You have no answer! I win!"

When skeptics engage in conversation with such religious people or conspiracy theorists, they should really stop that kind of argumentation on its tracks.

If the other person just starts making argument after argument after argument in quick succession, by the third or fourth one, when it has become clear that he is just going to spout a flood of dozens of such arguments, the skeptic should just stop it: "Wait, wait. Instead of doing this whole shotgun-argumentation thingie, how about we discuss one argument at a time? Just present me with one argument and we can discuss it."

The other, closely related type of argumentation is one where the other person does indeed present an argument, allow the skeptic to answer it... but then immediately moves to the next argument without even acknowledging the answer. The goal is simple: Go through argument after argument until he stumbles across one that the skeptic has no good answer to, and then declare victory.

As a skeptic, don't just allow that to happen: After you have properly answered the very first argument, if the other person immediately jumps to another, don't allow him. "Wait, before we move to something else, do you accept my answer or do you have some objection to it? If you don't accept my answer, what is the problem in it?" Just don't simply allow the other person to move on until he has either acknowledged the validity of your answer, or clearly demonstrated that he is figuratively putting his fingers in his ears and doesn't want to even listen to nor acknowledge any answers.

In some cases you may even be able to flip the entire situation on its head this way. In other words, rather than you being overwhelmed by a barrage of arguments and getting stumped by one of them, it may well be the believer / conspiracy theorist who gets stumped because he is just unable to acknowledge the validity of your answers, and you are not letting him proceed without doing that, or presenting a valid response. The rapid-fire shotgun argumentation tactic doesn't work if you don't allow it. 

"Questions atheists can't answer" is a dumb argument

One of the most common forms of Christian argumentation, which you can find tons and tons of examples on websites and video sharing platforms, uses the form "X questions atheists can't answer".

For some reason many Christians and Christian apologists believe that not only is this a completely legit form of argumentation but that it is, in fact, some of the strongest proofs of God's existence (and, obviously, that it's the God of Christianity described in the Bible.)

Yet, it's one of the dumbest forms of argumentation. That's because it's a direct textbook example of straightforward argumentum ad ignorantiam, ie. argument from ignorance.

("Ignorance" in the name of the fallacy does not refer to the person making the argument being ignorant. It refers to "not knowing (something)". In other words, it's an argument of the form "if you don't know (this thing), then my claims are true.")

It doesn't even matter if those questions can actually be answered or not. Even putting aside that question, even assuming that those question legitimately cannot be answered, that "atheists" indeed "can't answer" those questions, that means absolutely nothing.

Your position doesn't somehow become valid because someone doesn't know the answer to some question. It doesn't even matter what the question is.

As an example, even if someone can't answer the question "where did the Universe come from?" that doesn't somehow make the assertion of "God did it" any more legit. It merely means that that person doesn't know the answer to that question.

The idea behind the argument is genuinely strange. It's like an answer, any answer, somehow becomes valid if others can't give an alternative answer. "If you can't give me an answer of your own, then my answer is correct." That's, rather obviously, not how it works, at any level.

There are still open questions in science, that's certain. However, the correct approach to studying those questions and trying to find out their answers is not to just jump to a completely asinine "God must have done it!" Even if some questions genuinely have no answer, that doesn't somehow justify religious beliefs. It simply means that we don't know.

(By the way, this is something that too few skeptics point out when presented these "questions they can't answer". They fall into the trap of trying to answer those questions. The problem with doing that is that it inadvertently legitimates the underlying argument, in other words, that if the skeptic indeed can't answer the questions then it somehow gives credibility to the God claim. Skeptics shouldn't start answering any questions without first making it clear that it doesn't matter if they can answer them or not. It's not a valid form of argumentation. It's an argumentative fallacy.)