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.)
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