J. J. McCullough is a Canadian Youtuber who mainly makes educational videos about culture and politics.
I recently came across this video, which premiers tonight, asking whether he believes in God.
I will resolve this market based on what he says his beliefs are in the video. If the video does not actually reveal his beliefs, I will resolve N/A.
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J.J.'s respone to the question was pretty vague, though that is probably in part because GMS asked, "What is your religious background?" and never directly said, "Do you believe in God?"
Summary of his response and how I interpret it:
He does rituals like praying and thanking God, but that doesn't necessarily imply literal belief in God, since he seems to do those things more for their own sake or for his own sake as a way of feeling gratitude for what he has.
He says that he doesn't believe in God as an active architect of life or as instituting the rules of living. This seems to rule out a traditional religious conception of God.
He describes his conception of God as "embodying a kind of force in the Universe that we associate with things that go right".
He uses the term "deistic", although he does it in the form of a question (asking whether the term describes what he believes).
Drew calls him a cultural Christian, but he never calls himself that, and Drew only used that term in response to the question above, saying that what J.J. believes is closer to "North American cultural Christianity" than deism. I don't think this qualifies for a resolution to, "Yes, he is a Christian," since he never self-identified as a Christian and doesn't seem to hold to any traditional Christian beliefs. Also, the term "cultural Christian" is not actually a subset of "Christian" - it often refers to people who are nonreligious but have an appreciation for certain aspects of Christian culture, which does seem to describe J.J. well based on his response.
He describes all this as "the faith tradition [he] was raised on", which does technically leave open the possibility that it's no longer what he believes. But he also says that "to some extent" he still thinks this way, and he never says that he has changed his mind about any of the traditions or beliefs he was raised in.
To me, this seems very much like, "Yes, but he doesn't follow any specific religion." He believes in God, or at least acts as if God exists for certain rituals, but he isn't traditionally religious, and sees God as a nebulously-defined concept of a force associated with good things happening. I suppose you could argue that he could still be an atheist or agnostic and only believes in God metaphorically or only pretends that God exists because he values the rituals themselves. So I could see the case for an N/A resolution. But I think we should go with how he describes his beliefs, since that is what the resolution criteria are, and even if it's just a metaphorical belief in God, he seems to describe himself as believing in God.
Thoughts?
@JosephNoonan I think him explicitly making the connection to the tradition he was raised in, and that tradition being Christian in nature, raise a better case for that resolution than you describe, but aside from that you've basically laid out why I pushed the other 4 down.
@Tetra Yeah, but he never actually calls himself Christian or says anything that would imply that he's a Christian (e.g., talking about Jesus). Plus, he described the tradition he was raised in as "secular", more than "Christian" (when he talked about the Christian roots of it, he was referring more to his parents' upbringings than his own).