Mike seems like a nice, sincere guy. You can almost see the cognitive dissonance breakout like a hockey fight inside his head. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up getting traded to our team one day.
After this long in the game, I would be shocked if he or any similarly experienced apologist switches sides. However, if any apologist did, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's him. Guy's far too honest compared to his peers in the indoctrination industry. He's still got problems but they're small compared to anyone else I can think of on that side.
@30:36 I am so excited and glad to finally see this one brought up. This is the one that started it all for me. I was a Christian for 25 years and the last few years of my faith I read the crucifixion stories every Easter. On Easter of 2013 I read John's account and got to John 19:14 and felt a panic coming on. It said Jesus was still before Pilate at noon but I was certain that Jesus was on the cross from nine till three. It only took a minute to find Mark 15:25-33. Jesus was on the cross from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon. I had never felt more horrified before. I knew the implications of an actual error in the Bible and I had to know if there were others. I heard a voice in my head tell me I wouldn't get answers from a fellow believer and I started going on atheist websites to see if there were other genuine contradictions in the Bible. I saw a list of 100. I could explain away about 94 of them. This didn't make me an atheist. It made me a less naive theist who realized that the Bible isn't perfect. I also knew from reading Haley's Bible handbook as a kid that there were a bunch of counterfeit gospels circulating in the early church and since John is obviously the odd one out of the gospels, I figured John was a false gospel that made it's way into the cannon. But as I did more research I found more and more books or chapters that contradicted stuff I still believed, or containes historical errors or anachronisms. For example, as soon as I read 1st Thessalonians 4:15-17 I realized that Paul was a false prophet and thus not only is 1st Thessalonians not inspired, but since Paul wasn't inspired [and kind of contradicted Jesus' theology] that means that all of Paul's letters are non canonical. After a few weeks of this, in my head I had decannonized more than a third of the Bible and at least half of what's left I just hadn't looked over yet. At this point I wondered how I could say I believed in the Bible if at least a third of it isn't inspired? I then read that the Japanese Shintos believed that they were their Gods' chosen people and Japan was the land of the Gods. I laughed and said "Of course if the Japanese write a holy book, it's going to say that they are the chosen people." And then it hit me that the Jews did exactly that. The last straw for me was when I read 2nd Chronicles 25:12. I said "The people who wrote this clearly didn't know God." But then I realized that since everything I thought I knew came from the Bible that they wrote, if they didn't know him, then I couldn't possibly know him. At that moment I became a deist. Each time I had to change or give up a precious belief, I always made the minimum possible change. Eventually I asked myself "Wait a minute... if I only believed in a God because I grew up a Christian-and it was never proved to me -then how do I even know that God exists at all? How could we know one way or another?" I researched arguments for the existence of God and all of them were so bad, especially the word games like the ontological argument. By the summer I realized one day that I didn't have even a vestige of a belief left. I called myself an atheist for the first time and I've been one since. However, in all that time, I've never seen a single UA-cam video on apologetics or counter apologetics covering this (though I have seen it in writing). Again, seeing my first Bible contradiction didn't make me an atheist, but from that moment on I lost all sense of trust and had to check everything for myself and so becoming an atheist was inevitable at that point. Long comment so thanks for reading.
Great comment and a great example that shows Christianity is like a hot air balloon. Once you puncture it by finding the errors and incoherence, it deflates and falls to the ground, unable to recover, no matter how much hot air spouted by apologists. Also, you showed how we become atheists not by choice but by necessity.
@@archapmangcmg well I wouldn't necessarily say so, but for me it was. The strange thing is there are a lot of Christians who can become aware of major problems with the Bible, theology, and things like that but still believe. When I first deconverted, I assumed that other Christians didn't know about biblical contradictions and failed prophecies or else they'd react the same way I did. I've since become disillusioned. Many believers are satisfied with excuses that I couldn't accept. One thing I left out of my account was that I read and listened to a bunch of apologetics but they made excuses that I'd barely accept from myself, much less an all powerful being. Their response to biblical contradictions boils down to "It just looks like a contradiction but there's an obscure way it might not be. And as long as it's not certainly a contradiction then you can believe it's not." My reaction to that was that we're back where we started: we have a possible contradiction and there's little to no evidence that the harmonization is correct and even though I'm not perfect, I could have written it so that the meaning was more clear and less apparently contradictory. But just as I couldn't trust my life to a guard I can beat up, I can't have faith in a book if I can improve on it in some way. My Dad used to teach us that it's not enough to avoid wrong doing; we must avoid even the appearance of wrong 1st Thessalonians 5:22 (KJV). The word of God doesn't even look contradictory. But not every Christian was raised to that standard and strangely enough, some of them don't even believe in biblical inerrancy. There's nothing more frustrating than showing a Christian a contradiction or a failed prophecy and seeing them not react to it the way I did. But so far no one else has.
@@davidhoffman6980 Yeah, as much as I'd love for human brains to work better, they don't. A crappy excuse presented well is more likely to be accepted than a well-reasoned one presented badly. This is why, in practice, polishing up your presentation is so important for your chances of being believed. Strong words, confident manner, and just _having_ an answer, no matter how insane, are guaranteed to get a significant percentage of listeners to believe even the craziest of lies, like Flat Earth, Haitians eating pets, etc. Tragically, being true doesn't matter that much to a lot of people because they won't actually fact check.
Or even monotheists that don’t also ascribe to the tri-Omni qualities. Earlier versions of Christianity were more logically cohesive though less impressive.
And then we have the sociological question of why monotheistic communities totally outcompeted polytheism, Such that they could be completely suppressed.
So, the gospels are both the inerrant word of God and literary accounts of real events, told with all sorts of rhetorical flourishes to help convey the full significance, the metareality of Jesus's life to us poor humans. Given that we have preachers and apologists who explain the Bible to us anyway, why not just tell the exact, bare facts in writing, and let the religious professionals to interpret it, to flesh it out, and help us to really feel it? As always, God's not only an incompetent performer, but a ridiculously inadequate planner. Or non-existent, maybe.
@@istvansipos9940 Not in Mike's case. He knowingly said stuff that would get him fired and did get him fired for speaking the truth about the Bible and its problems. And he's still saying it despite it still causing him problems with evangelicals. No, in Mike's case, I think it's fear screwing with his reasoning.
@@archapmangcmg good ol' Mike insists on this magical thingie called g0d. Nobody has ever demonstrated the g0d thingie. Saying and insisting that it does exist and does interact with Homo Sapiens is a LIE. a.k.a. religi0n. Mike lies for a living
Textbook case of motivated reasoning. And Licona is such a smart guy, too. Just goes to show that being smart won't automatically make you a skeptic, it just gives you better tools to rationalize preconceived beliefs with.
One experiment reported in New Scientist (sadly, I've lost the issue, and would have to sign up to New Scientist in order to, possibly, find the article), detailed interesting results with religious people in fMRI scanners, which will, hopefully, shed some light on the subject. These people were told that the next person they would hear was high up in their belief system. What happened was, the "suspicion circuits"* of the brain literally switched off. It's the same part of the brain that switches off when we're asleep, so that we don't (usually) question the insane situations we find ourselves in, in dreams. My mother was a christian, and had a high IQ (she could easily have joined Mensa, but didn't like the snobby attitude of some of its members), so it bewildered me, as a child, how she could fall for the blatant bullshit of the bible. Obviously this was long before the study was carried out, and also long before I discovered just how awfully powerful, insidious and dangerous brainwashing is. I've talked to people who have said, "you can't call me stupid, I'm a lawyer/doctor/business person, etc", but I can call them stupid, because, when it comes to their belief system, it doesn't matter if they're a skillful surgeon, a successful business person, a sharp lawyer, etc, I might as well be arguing with a backward child. There is clearly NO proper critical thinking being applied, even though they are convinced that there is. *New Scientist's term, not mine.
Another great video! Thanks Kelly - very well structured and extremely interesting! It is a shame that some one as seemingly nice as Mike Licona has to work so hard to rationalise his beliefs
It's wild that people refer to their interpretation of Bible passages as "clear" and "obvious", when apologists have to spend this much time and energy drawing road maps to explain to us plebs what the Bible says. (Not to mention the fact that thousands of different religions have formed because of differences of opinion regarding said clear and obvious passages, but that's a whole new rant)
I love you, GG. You're so matter of fact with how you take apart these arguments , then you choose the funniest memes to drive home the point. It's a glorious combination.
My mom does get exasperated sometimes over my dad changing details, but she felt the same about her mother who would lie freely when giving tours and it's my dad who keeps trying to interrupt my mom's stories over the phone. Turns out there's more than 2 people in the world.
I think it was just: "Inerrancy shall be defined as without any and all errors*" And the the rest of the 6 pages was the list of exceptions, exemptions, and grey areas. 😂
Apologists: "Spotlighting is an ancient technique used famously by Plutarch that mention ls only the main character or main cast even though everyone knows that others were there." Me: "Cool. Is that a technique that God uses when communicating his holy word to all generations and all cultures?"
How far were the people who wrote and read histories willing to allow the truth to be stretched to make a point (either historical, philosophical, or theological)? Apparently there was no issue with saying that Julius Caesar calmed a storm, nor with Augustus healing numerous pestilences. Apparently it was OK to say that Asclepius was struck by lightning because he raised Polyanthus of Cyrene from the dead. Julius became a god after his death, as did Augustus. If these are accepted as merely corroborative detail, intended to add artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, then what can we say about the stories from the gospel writers?
I approach from the other direction. I have problems with internal inconsistencies of “the Bible.” For example, using the rules of whichever system they want to use, how does one explain the various versions across time, location, and culture? I wouldn’t even accept these answers for “which writings are Dragon Ball (Star Wars, Avatar, Marvel) canon?”
Good stuff GG! I have to take Lacona to task over the discussion of the New Testament misquoting the Old Testament on purpose. The example he gives is an appropriative change of meaning, not a misquote. If you look at where Paul (or whoever is pretending to be him) quotes the Old Testament, you will find it radically different from the passage he is quoting if you look back at the passage in your Bible. Two things were going on at the time. 1. The Septuagint, which was a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, was the version commonly used at the time. Meanings and ideas can change radically as you move from one language to another. All translations are interpretations. That impacts meaning. 2. Revisions and changes have continued shape the text. I know this would greatly displease Mike to hear, but it's true. You only need to look at the version of Jeremiah contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls (texts of Qumran) to see how much that book changed between the first century and the 12th century Masoretic texts we have attesting to our modern Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Many forces are at work when it comes to the different meanings, changed words and usage of quotations between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. To ignore them is to do a great disservice to the truth. Most Christians want their truth simple, but the truth is found in the complexity of reality which has shaped all things, past, present and future. It's so nice to put my degree work in Ancient Greek at Bible college to good use.
I must add to this: credit Mike Lacona for looking some truth in the face and deciding he will not compromise for the sake of his job. He makes many admissions here that I have to credit him for. I've had my eye on him for the past decade, and he was insufferable at the start. This present Mike Lacona I feel I could sit down and have a beer with to discuss the differences we have. He's still occasionally insufferable, but it's much less pronounced these days.
When they have to have long high level conferences to define inerrancy, and at the end still have disagreements, I don't think they have a useful word. It's as vague and problematic as...well, the bible.
Sin, soul, spirit, inerrant, god, faith, they've always argued about all of these without ceasing, without agreeing, but they want us to believe in all of them.
I recently heard Mike’s interview with Gary Habermas, on the minimal facts of the resurrection. Mike cornered him in so many unsubstantiated claims and outright lies, and wouldn’t let him off the hook. As you said, Mike is one of the few honest Christian UA-camrs I’ve heard.
i love the dogma, it will be yet another nail in the coffin of religion. the god folks are so set on bring right they don't realise that if you concede some points you'll get people on board with you, like, if someone was to say "god is only human, he's trying to work these things out too" i'd go, that sounds reasonable, i don't expect _that_ god to have all the answers. but no, god is the be all and end all and it's obvious, plain as the nose on my face that god is a human invention and can't be squared cos too many people were involved in the plot.
@39:13 "let's say couple is walking through a flowery meadow and a photographer takes a photo and photoshops it to make it a little prettier (paraphrase)." Ok. But would you Photoshop a photo that God himself took? Would you even need to?
The portrait analogy at 4:30 doesn't mention that Jesus contradicts the religion of his people as much as portrait of Lincoln leading the Confederate army would :/
On the whole I think that Mike's presentation is quite good. I personally do not like to say that the Bible is "inerrant," or "Inerrant in the original writings," as it is typically stated in many church statements of faith. There are several factors that need to be taken into consideration. 1) According to Irenaeus, Matthew was written first in Hebrew or Aramaic, and what we have in our Bibles is a Greek translation of the original. Moreover, Matthew likes to arrange his material in topical, rather than chronological order. 2) Neither Mark nor Luke were eyewitnesses, and were relying on the testimonies of others. 3)John was apparently aware of the existence of the other gospels, and generally didn't repeat what they had said unless he wanted to clarify something. 4) Sometimes one gospel writer will insert a detail that another omits. This does not mean that they contradict each other, however. To get the complete picture you have to combine the accounts. 5) The New Testament writers will often quote from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which may vary somewhat from the Masoretic Hebrew text. In a sense, all of this reinforces the historicity of the gospels. You have four different writers, acting somewhat independently, and coming up with slightly different versions of the story. What they agree on are all the main points. In the four gospels we have a pretty good picture of what the historical Jesus said and did.
1) scholars almost universally agree that Matthew is not a translation. 4) true but they DO contradict each other. None of these points (even if they were true) mean that the gospels accurately describe a historical Jesus. And they definately don't accurately describe a resurrection.
@@goldenalt3166 On the authorship of Matthew, I will put more credence on the testimony of a Second Century Church Father who was much closer to the facts than modern scholars, who often will dismiss the available evidence and then concoct an alternative theory based on circumstantial evidence. And while there may be apparent contradictions in minor points of detail, the gospels give us a pretty coherent picture of the life and ministry of Christ. And the early church was overwhelmingly convinced that Christ rose from the dead. The apostles witnessed it firsthand.
@@robertwheeler1158 Yes, the early church that survived was convinced. They also silenced a bunch of people who weren't. That's not very strong evidence. And if you believe the early church fathers, then Papius was an idiot so what he said about Matthew, if it is even the same document, doesn't mean much. Do you think that Mark copied Matthew because they use the same Greek words except that Matthew has better grammer?
@@goldenalt3166 If Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, than it is possible that Mark was working off of Matthew's original and did his own translation into Greek. Someone else, then, could have done the Greek version of Matthew that we have today.
@@robertwheeler1158 It sounds like you've never looked into why scholars are in agreement on this. Two people aren't going to make translations that match exactly especially if they are rewriting a document from another language such that its origin language is not evident. Mark was written in Greek. Matthew is a copy also in Greek. Papius is an idiot. This is not a mystery.
The biblical authors thought god wasn’t impressive enough so they exaggerated? Ok I’ll agree to that. Now the only question is, did god do anything at all?
The problem with the genealogy in Matthew and Luke is not just the discrepancies. It’s tracing the seed of David to the Messiah, through Joseph. Jesus isn’t from the seed of Joseph.
I agree that he deserves some respect for the reasons you mentioned but his apologetics also takes away some of my respect. He kept mentioning Moses, who, as we all know, most likey never existed at all, biblical scholars on both sides agree with it. The buy-bull is clearly errant, and no matter how much people like Mike here want to pretend and make excuses that fact will never change... 😅
i am not sure if the idea of inerrantcy sat well with me or not when i was Believer. I was taught and understood that the reason for the discrepancies was the authors were appealing to different kind of audiences. That explanation still did not explain how the Bible was inerrant even with those discrepancies
When he said women ask for details, I thought he was referring to like in romance novels where they describe the body of the sexy characters in detail, but then he explained what he meant and that was not what he meant at all so I was completely thrown off because I have recognized patterns in the way women think and the way men think and that’s what I assumed he meant because that’s the pattern I’ve noticed keep in mind I’m saying pattern on purpose here because I know it’s a pattern and not a thing that’s true for all women or men it’s just a thing that generally is the case in my experience. Also if he’s transphobic then I don’t fit what he said at all if he isn’t then I do but still it’s a really weird thing to say
36:25 then why don't you? Or do you? I mean, your perspective is the same as theirs back in the day. But it is not cultural. It is financial. 39:30 and now imagine that the artists adds a magic dude on a cloud in the background. And then the artists signs the picture with "only this 1 type of magic is real, the other types pinky swear are not, because they are just magic" now the picture analogy is perfect for the bible. Oh, and then the artist has to travel around the world and commit some genocide in the name of his picture. Details.
Ive said it before and I'll likely said it again. I would expect an omnipotent god that wants everyone to know it write that book could be understood by all without the need for human translation or interpretation. If an apologist could honestly make this claim I would certainly take their book seriously as no human writer could produce a work that could do this.
My word, think about how bad the argument "if there is no inerrant interpretation of the book, that makes the book faulty" is. There isn't an inerrant interpretation of your argument--that doesn't mean your argument is therefore faulty (it's faulty for other reasons--namely that it's self-refuting). Did God make humans so weak that they couldn't have a common understanding of a book? Nope. Rather, given that God can't just steam roll personalities but actually works with human personalities to sanctify them, some of those difficulties may well be there so that people would actually learn to talk to each other. Books are tremendous instruments of facilitating cross cultural communication. What I would expect to be true of the Bible is in fact true: what's necessary to be believed for salvation is quite easy to understand (just read Romans 10:9-13, 1 Cor 15:1-11). Our inabilities to understand things has nothing to do with how God made us, but has everything to do with our own sinfulness--the fact that people choose not to take time to seek understanding, and to consult their fellow human being to pursue understanding together.
Also, when you accuse us of "rationalizing", it rings just as hollow as the accusation "you really know God exists you're just running away from it" rings to you.
You lost me at “God can’t”. Is your deity omnipotent or is it not? Is it the singular source and arbiter of the rules of logic or is it simply bound by them as are we mere mortals? The tendency of apologists to cast their God as being impotent to control his own creations does not inspire any urge to worship in me, much less does it project any sort of divine perfection.
@Oxus21 Oh vei, what do they teach you at schools? A contradiction isn't a thing, but a non-thing. God can't create married bachelors not because of any limit on omnipotence, but because the very idea of a "married bachelor" is nonsense--it literally means nothing, since it's a contradiction in terms. It's like impugning omnipotence for denying that God can't create a "balragarock"--the term literally means nothing. But again, I'd only expect good faith interlocutors to get that. It's not that hard; there are plenty of people who actually try to understand Christianity before criticizing it(I can name many--Joe Schmid is a good model of this). You're just not one of them.
@Oxus21 And truthfully, this shouldn't be that hard for you to understand. If you said "an omnipotent God should be able to do anything whatsoever even if it involves contradiction", any possible objection you can raise against Christianity falls apart. "The existence of evil is incompatible with God". Well God has eliminated evil without eliminating evil! If you insist God should be able actualize contradictions, then any objection based on fundamental principles of reason fall apart. The Christian just doesn't insist on nonsense like the rabid atheist. But again, I wouldn't expect you to try to understand what you're critiquing. I expect that of good faith interlocutors, not atheists who live in the cognitive dissonance of thinking their objections are any good without studying what they're objecting to.
@@anglicanaesthetics Oh right. “Everything is possible through the power of Jesus Christ…except for all the impossible things.” Thanks for that pearl of totally not cognitive dissonance.
The bible has a couple of big problems when regarded as a whole. The first being the tortured plot involving the fall and salvation, but imho, the path from a local religion for local people becoming a world religion is a huge 180 by god. Which is it, the Hebrews being the chosen people or everyone? First god has a hissy fit and scatters humanity to the 4 corners made them have different languages. Why would he do that if he knew that the word of himself as son would need to be known to all?
the real problem is that it's not a book, it's a pile of scraps of paper written by god knows who (!) over hundreds of years translated, re-translated and edited to leave out bad stuff like the gospel of judas where god is the bad guy.
@@HarryNicNicholas I know, but the internal inconsistences have been well discussed. Paul's intervention to open the religion up to gentiles is also well covered, but one rarely, if ever, hears a critique of the biblical narrative as a whole.
Even if I grant divine inspiration of the Bible. That says nothing about what divine being inspired it. Just look at the Christians who argue that Satan inspired Muhammad to write the Quran.
The Moon swallows the Sun at every autumn equinox. This is why light is weaker than darkness for about six months/signs. aka the six "nights" in Genesis one. Jeremiah is the Moon as the savior. Zachariah (the male pointy thing that saves) is the Sun in this instance.
@@davidhoffman6980 Myth came before religion. There is also the tale of Ra (sun) riding across the celestial sea of stars (six nights Gen 1), in a barque (crescent moon). Noah aka Osiris enters his "vessel"at the same autumn equinox.
If you have to go to such links to show the Bible is inerrant by negating what it actually says - and the apologetic time and time again boils down to well yes it says X, but it really means Y is that same acrobatic grace given to the Quran or the book of Mormon? Oh, Special Pleading. Got it.
God has no errors! Theists revel in their unwavering confidence that belief based on faith is more credible than knowledge based on evidence. Errors are only claimed to exist by atheists just because they will insist on drawing conclusions only from reason applied to objective evaluation of evidence. Once you abandon rational thinking, it all becomes clear.
The gospels do not have contradictions. They have variances. Hundreds. Typical of any recordings of fast moving events using multiple eyewitnesses sources.
…or like a fiction related to multiple audiences, maintained separately for hundreds of years through oral tradition, and then recompiled and edited together.
Are you sure? Do you think the same person can have two different fathers? Can a person be born in two separate times seven years apart? Can an army at the same time have different numbers of men and horses? Okay, that one's OT not NT. And why isn't Jesus called Emmanuel?
@@archapmangcmg Jesus was a common name in 1st century Galilee. Emmanuel and Messiah are titles. Messiah has 300 +/- titles in all of scripture giving an indication of who we are dealing with. The Bible is often called the inerrant word of God. It is when reporting God's commandments, his prophecies, his character, anything about who God is. Inerrant from front to back. Surrounding that are standard historical accounts that contain exaggeration, hyperbole, and variances which are common in all historical writings. As they say, the winner writes the history. One writer records 3000 people at a sermon, another records 5000. There are no ticket sales or gate count. They are guessing. We can say with confidence it was several thousand. It is common to discount the entire Bible because of perceived historical errors but all this reveals is a person critiquing that which they don't understand, a prime feature of the internet age.
@@edwardvan5808 So when the Bible is calling God Love, it's right but also when reporting God talking about his cruelty it's also inerrant? Those are both "who God is" so the insanity of claiming both are inerrant is clear. Speaking of people talking about things they don't understand.
People defend the personal monotheistic god just like they have always defended and enable toxic parents. Same defense mechanisms, same excuses, for an imaginary surrogate parent.
Mike seems like a nice, sincere guy. You can almost see the cognitive dissonance breakout like a hockey fight inside his head.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up getting traded to our team one day.
After this long in the game, I would be shocked if he or any similarly experienced apologist switches sides. However, if any apologist did, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's him. Guy's far too honest compared to his peers in the indoctrination industry. He's still got problems but they're small compared to anyone else I can think of on that side.
The really good news for this guy is that his deity didn't lie, the bad news is that it doesn't exist and it was people lying all along.
The bit about terrible acoustics on the mount in Israel is straight out of Monty python. Blessed are the cheese makers?!
Follow the gourd!!
This guy certainly is fair for an apologist. Half of his arguments make the case against him.
@30:36 I am so excited and glad to finally see this one brought up. This is the one that started it all for me. I was a Christian for 25 years and the last few years of my faith I read the crucifixion stories every Easter. On Easter of 2013 I read John's account and got to John 19:14 and felt a panic coming on. It said Jesus was still before Pilate at noon but I was certain that Jesus was on the cross from nine till three. It only took a minute to find Mark 15:25-33. Jesus was on the cross from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon. I had never felt more horrified before. I knew the implications of an actual error in the Bible and I had to know if there were others. I heard a voice in my head tell me I wouldn't get answers from a fellow believer and I started going on atheist websites to see if there were other genuine contradictions in the Bible. I saw a list of 100. I could explain away about 94 of them. This didn't make me an atheist. It made me a less naive theist who realized that the Bible isn't perfect. I also knew from reading Haley's Bible handbook as a kid that there were a bunch of counterfeit gospels circulating in the early church and since John is obviously the odd one out of the gospels, I figured John was a false gospel that made it's way into the cannon. But as I did more research I found more and more books or chapters that contradicted stuff I still believed, or containes historical errors or anachronisms. For example, as soon as I read 1st Thessalonians 4:15-17 I realized that Paul was a false prophet and thus not only is 1st Thessalonians not inspired, but since Paul wasn't inspired [and kind of contradicted Jesus' theology] that means that all of Paul's letters are non canonical. After a few weeks of this, in my head I had decannonized more than a third of the Bible and at least half of what's left I just hadn't looked over yet. At this point I wondered how I could say I believed in the Bible if at least a third of it isn't inspired? I then read that the Japanese Shintos believed that they were their Gods' chosen people and Japan was the land of the Gods. I laughed and said "Of course if the Japanese write a holy book, it's going to say that they are the chosen people." And then it hit me that the Jews did exactly that. The last straw for me was when I read 2nd Chronicles 25:12. I said "The people who wrote this clearly didn't know God." But then I realized that since everything I thought I knew came from the Bible that they wrote, if they didn't know him, then I couldn't possibly know him. At that moment I became a deist. Each time I had to change or give up a precious belief, I always made the minimum possible change. Eventually I asked myself "Wait a minute... if I only believed in a God because I grew up a Christian-and it was never proved to me -then how do I even know that God exists at all? How could we know one way or another?" I researched arguments for the existence of God and all of them were so bad, especially the word games like the ontological argument. By the summer I realized one day that I didn't have even a vestige of a belief left. I called myself an atheist for the first time and I've been one since. However, in all that time, I've never seen a single UA-cam video on apologetics or counter apologetics covering this (though I have seen it in writing). Again, seeing my first Bible contradiction didn't make me an atheist, but from that moment on I lost all sense of trust and had to check everything for myself and so becoming an atheist was inevitable at that point.
Long comment so thanks for reading.
Thank you.
@@morgaelyn I'm always happy to share my story. Thanks for reading it. It's a long comment.
Great comment and a great example that shows Christianity is like a hot air balloon. Once you puncture it by finding the errors and incoherence, it deflates and falls to the ground, unable to recover, no matter how much hot air spouted by apologists.
Also, you showed how we become atheists not by choice but by necessity.
@@archapmangcmg well I wouldn't necessarily say so, but for me it was. The strange thing is there are a lot of Christians who can become aware of major problems with the Bible, theology, and things like that but still believe. When I first deconverted, I assumed that other Christians didn't know about biblical contradictions and failed prophecies or else they'd react the same way I did. I've since become disillusioned. Many believers are satisfied with excuses that I couldn't accept. One thing I left out of my account was that I read and listened to a bunch of apologetics but they made excuses that I'd barely accept from myself, much less an all powerful being. Their response to biblical contradictions boils down to "It just looks like a contradiction but there's an obscure way it might not be. And as long as it's not certainly a contradiction then you can believe it's not." My reaction to that was that we're back where we started: we have a possible contradiction and there's little to no evidence that the harmonization is correct and even though I'm not perfect, I could have written it so that the meaning was more clear and less apparently contradictory. But just as I couldn't trust my life to a guard I can beat up, I can't have faith in a book if I can improve on it in some way. My Dad used to teach us that it's not enough to avoid wrong doing; we must avoid even the appearance of wrong 1st Thessalonians 5:22 (KJV). The word of God doesn't even look contradictory. But not every Christian was raised to that standard and strangely enough, some of them don't even believe in biblical inerrancy. There's nothing more frustrating than showing a Christian a contradiction or a failed prophecy and seeing them not react to it the way I did. But so far no one else has.
@@davidhoffman6980 Yeah, as much as I'd love for human brains to work better, they don't. A crappy excuse presented well is more likely to be accepted than a well-reasoned one presented badly.
This is why, in practice, polishing up your presentation is so important for your chances of being believed. Strong words, confident manner, and just _having_ an answer, no matter how insane, are guaranteed to get a significant percentage of listeners to believe even the craziest of lies, like Flat Earth, Haitians eating pets, etc.
Tragically, being true doesn't matter that much to a lot of people because they won't actually fact check.
Polytheists generally don’t have the problem of having to defend a perfect god being imperfect
Or even monotheists that don’t also ascribe to the tri-Omni qualities.
Earlier versions of Christianity were more logically cohesive though less impressive.
And then we have the sociological question of why monotheistic communities totally outcompeted polytheism, Such that they could be completely suppressed.
Unpopular opinion:the pagans are closeted atheists
So, the gospels are both the inerrant word of God and literary accounts of real events, told with all sorts of rhetorical flourishes to help convey the full significance, the metareality of Jesus's life to us poor humans. Given that we have preachers and apologists who explain the Bible to us anyway, why not just tell the exact, bare facts in writing, and let the religious professionals to interpret it, to flesh it out, and help us to really feel it?
As always, God's not only an incompetent performer, but a ridiculously inadequate planner. Or non-existent, maybe.
Mike Licona seems very bright for an apologist. I can’t figure out how he hasn’t thought himself out of Christianity yet.
because it sells well.
@@istvansipos9940 Not in Mike's case. He knowingly said stuff that would get him fired and did get him fired for speaking the truth about the Bible and its problems. And he's still saying it despite it still causing him problems with evangelicals.
No, in Mike's case, I think it's fear screwing with his reasoning.
@@archapmangcmg good ol' Mike insists on this magical thingie called g0d. Nobody has ever demonstrated the g0d thingie. Saying and insisting that it does exist and does interact with Homo Sapiens is a LIE.
a.k.a. religi0n. Mike lies for a living
Great video ..well at least he admits there are errors (or at least not denying them) that is something ..I guess
That’s a step up from the usual excusigests playbook
Textbook case of motivated reasoning. And Licona is such a smart guy, too. Just goes to show that being smart won't automatically make you a skeptic, it just gives you better tools to rationalize preconceived beliefs with.
One experiment reported in New Scientist (sadly, I've lost the issue, and would have to sign up to New Scientist in order to, possibly, find the article), detailed interesting results with religious people in fMRI scanners, which will, hopefully, shed some light on the subject.
These people were told that the next person they would hear was high up in their belief system. What happened was, the "suspicion circuits"* of the brain literally switched off. It's the same part of the brain that switches off when we're asleep, so that we don't (usually) question the insane situations we find ourselves in, in dreams.
My mother was a christian, and had a high IQ (she could easily have joined Mensa, but didn't like the snobby attitude of some of its members), so it bewildered me, as a child, how she could fall for the blatant bullshit of the bible. Obviously this was long before the study was carried out, and also long before I discovered just how awfully powerful, insidious and dangerous brainwashing is.
I've talked to people who have said, "you can't call me stupid, I'm a lawyer/doctor/business person, etc", but I can call them stupid, because, when it comes to their belief system, it doesn't matter if they're a skillful surgeon, a successful business person, a sharp lawyer, etc, I might as well be arguing with a backward child. There is clearly NO proper critical thinking being applied, even though they are convinced that there is.
*New Scientist's term, not mine.
Another great video! Thanks Kelly - very well structured and extremely interesting! It is a shame that some one as seemingly nice as Mike Licona has to work so hard to rationalise his beliefs
It's wild that people refer to their interpretation of Bible passages as "clear" and "obvious", when apologists have to spend this much time and energy drawing road maps to explain to us plebs what the Bible says. (Not to mention the fact that thousands of different religions have formed because of differences of opinion regarding said clear and obvious passages, but that's a whole new rant)
I love you, GG. You're so matter of fact with how you take apart these arguments , then you choose the funniest memes to drive home the point. It's a glorious combination.
30:00 Wah! I wasn't expecting a musical jump scare!...
Fuck! I hate it when my feet don't work when I need to clean up. The struggle is real!
My mom does get exasperated sometimes over my dad changing details, but she felt the same about her mother who would lie freely when giving tours and it's my dad who keeps trying to interrupt my mom's stories over the phone. Turns out there's more than 2 people in the world.
Apologists are excusagists, plain and simple.
Of course, the Bible is also an apologetic.
Took six pages to define inerrancy, wtf?
there were lots of contradictions.... :)
And they didn't even end up agreeing with it.
I think it was just:
"Inerrancy shall be defined as without any and all errors*"
And the the rest of the 6 pages was the list of exceptions, exemptions, and grey areas.
😂
Hope you are all feeling well. Algorithm word word this this ❤
reward distributed, thank you have a nice day. :)
Apologists: "Spotlighting is an ancient technique used famously by Plutarch that mention ls only the main character or main cast even though everyone knows that others were there."
Me: "Cool. Is that a technique that God uses when communicating his holy word to all generations and all cultures?"
How far were the people who wrote and read histories willing to allow the truth to be stretched to make a point (either historical, philosophical, or theological)? Apparently there was no issue with saying that Julius Caesar calmed a storm, nor with Augustus healing numerous pestilences. Apparently it was OK to say that Asclepius was struck by lightning because he raised Polyanthus of Cyrene from the dead. Julius became a god after his death, as did Augustus. If these are accepted as merely corroborative detail, intended to add artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, then what can we say about the stories from the gospel writers?
I approach from the other direction. I have problems with internal inconsistencies of “the Bible.”
For example, using the rules of whichever system they want to use, how does one explain the various versions across time, location, and culture?
I wouldn’t even accept these answers for “which writings are Dragon Ball (Star Wars, Avatar, Marvel) canon?”
Good stuff GG! I have to take Lacona to task over the discussion of the New Testament misquoting the Old Testament on purpose. The example he gives is an appropriative change of meaning, not a misquote.
If you look at where Paul (or whoever is pretending to be him) quotes the Old Testament, you will find it radically different from the passage he is quoting if you look back at the passage in your Bible.
Two things were going on at the time.
1. The Septuagint, which was a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, was the version commonly used at the time. Meanings and ideas can change radically as you move from one language to another. All translations are interpretations. That impacts meaning.
2. Revisions and changes have continued shape the text. I know this would greatly displease Mike to hear, but it's true. You only need to look at the version of Jeremiah contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls (texts of Qumran) to see how much that book changed between the first century and the 12th century Masoretic texts we have attesting to our modern Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).
Many forces are at work when it comes to the different meanings, changed words and usage of quotations between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. To ignore them is to do a great disservice to the truth. Most Christians want their truth simple, but the truth is found in the complexity of reality which has shaped all things, past, present and future.
It's so nice to put my degree work in Ancient Greek at Bible college to good use.
I must add to this: credit Mike Lacona for looking some truth in the face and deciding he will not compromise for the sake of his job. He makes many admissions here that I have to credit him for. I've had my eye on him for the past decade, and he was insufferable at the start. This present Mike Lacona I feel I could sit down and have a beer with to discuss the differences we have. He's still occasionally insufferable, but it's much less pronounced these days.
When they have to have long high level conferences to define inerrancy, and at the end still have disagreements, I don't think they have a useful word.
It's as vague and problematic as...well, the bible.
Sin, soul, spirit, inerrant, god, faith, they've always argued about all of these without ceasing, without agreeing, but they want us to believe in all of them.
I recently heard Mike’s interview with Gary Habermas, on the minimal facts of the resurrection. Mike cornered him in so many unsubstantiated claims and outright lies, and wouldn’t let him off the hook. As you said, Mike is one of the few honest Christian UA-camrs I’ve heard.
i love the dogma, it will be yet another nail in the coffin of religion. the god folks are so set on bring right they don't realise that if you concede some points you'll get people on board with you, like, if someone was to say "god is only human, he's trying to work these things out too" i'd go, that sounds reasonable, i don't expect _that_ god to have all the answers. but no, god is the be all and end all and it's obvious, plain as the nose on my face that god is a human invention and can't be squared cos too many people were involved in the plot.
@39:13 "let's say couple is walking through a flowery meadow and a photographer takes a photo and photoshops it to make it a little prettier (paraphrase)."
Ok. But would you Photoshop a photo that God himself took? Would you even need to?
I loved that drawing of San Antonio!!
I think the space needle in your picture is actually the tower of the Americas.
That could be!
Are you talking about one of the gods or the invisible creator?
Zeus shallowed all the other gods and became the one true god,
The portrait analogy at 4:30 doesn't mention that Jesus contradicts the religion of his people as much as portrait of Lincoln leading the Confederate army would :/
25:18 That was still Matthew.
On the whole I think that Mike's presentation is quite good. I personally do not like to say that the Bible is "inerrant," or "Inerrant in the original writings," as it is typically stated in many church statements of faith.
There are several factors that need to be taken into consideration. 1) According to Irenaeus, Matthew was written first in Hebrew or Aramaic, and what we have in our Bibles is a Greek translation of the original. Moreover, Matthew likes to arrange his material in topical, rather than chronological order. 2) Neither Mark nor Luke were eyewitnesses, and were relying on the testimonies of others. 3)John was apparently aware of the existence of the other gospels, and generally didn't repeat what they had said unless he wanted to clarify something. 4) Sometimes one gospel writer will insert a detail that another omits. This does not mean that they contradict each other, however. To get the complete picture you have to combine the accounts. 5) The New Testament writers will often quote from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which may vary somewhat from the Masoretic Hebrew text.
In a sense, all of this reinforces the historicity of the gospels. You have four different writers, acting somewhat independently, and coming up with slightly different versions of the story. What they agree on are all the main points. In the four gospels we have a pretty good picture of what the historical Jesus said and did.
1) scholars almost universally agree that Matthew is not a translation.
4) true but they DO contradict each other.
None of these points (even if they were true) mean that the gospels accurately describe a historical Jesus. And they definately don't accurately describe a resurrection.
@@goldenalt3166 On the authorship of Matthew, I will put more credence on the testimony of a Second Century Church Father who was much closer to the facts than modern scholars, who often will dismiss the available evidence and then concoct an alternative theory based on circumstantial evidence.
And while there may be apparent contradictions in minor points of detail, the gospels give us a pretty coherent picture of the life and ministry of Christ.
And the early church was overwhelmingly convinced that Christ rose from the dead. The apostles witnessed it firsthand.
@@robertwheeler1158 Yes, the early church that survived was convinced. They also silenced a bunch of people who weren't. That's not very strong evidence.
And if you believe the early church fathers, then Papius was an idiot so what he said about Matthew, if it is even the same document, doesn't mean much.
Do you think that Mark copied Matthew because they use the same Greek words except that Matthew has better grammer?
@@goldenalt3166 If Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, than it is possible that Mark was working off of Matthew's original and did his own translation into Greek. Someone else, then, could have done the Greek version of Matthew that we have today.
@@robertwheeler1158 It sounds like you've never looked into why scholars are in agreement on this.
Two people aren't going to make translations that match exactly especially if they are rewriting a document from another language such that its origin language is not evident.
Mark was written in Greek. Matthew is a copy also in Greek. Papius is an idiot. This is not a mystery.
That’s not Space Needle (which is in Seattle, not San Antonio); it’s Tower of the Americas.
So you fall on the side of murder in the great Humpty Dumpty controversy.
The biblical authors thought god wasn’t impressive enough so they exaggerated? Ok I’ll agree to that. Now the only question is, did god do anything at all?
The problem with the genealogy in Matthew and Luke is not just the discrepancies. It’s tracing the seed of David to the Messiah, through Joseph. Jesus isn’t from the seed of Joseph.
😊
I agree that he deserves some respect for the reasons you mentioned but his apologetics also takes away some of my respect.
He kept mentioning Moses, who, as we all know, most likey never existed at all, biblical scholars on both sides agree with it.
The buy-bull is clearly errant, and no matter how much people like Mike here want to pretend and make excuses that fact will never change... 😅
i am not sure if the idea of inerrantcy sat well with me or not when i was Believer. I was taught and understood that the reason for the discrepancies was the authors were appealing to different kind of audiences. That explanation still did not explain how the Bible was inerrant even with those discrepancies
When he said women ask for details, I thought he was referring to like in romance novels where they describe the body of the sexy characters in detail, but then he explained what he meant and that was not what he meant at all so I was completely thrown off because I have recognized patterns in the way women think and the way men think and that’s what I assumed he meant because that’s the pattern I’ve noticed keep in mind I’m saying pattern on purpose here because I know it’s a pattern and not a thing that’s true for all women or men it’s just a thing that generally is the case in my experience. Also if he’s transphobic then I don’t fit what he said at all if he isn’t then I do but still it’s a really weird thing to say
It's perfect... and sometimes they improve on that perfection to contradict it and make it extra super perfect. 🙄
Have you ever covered that the Shroud of Turin is not authentic?
@@Hello_there-7pt No, didn’t think enough people believe in it to be worthwhile. Like flat earth.
Jesus personifies the sun.
36:25 then why don't you? Or do you? I mean, your perspective is the same as theirs back in the day. But it is not cultural. It is financial.
39:30 and now imagine that the artists adds a magic dude on a cloud in the background. And then the artists signs the picture with
"only this 1 type of magic is real, the other types pinky swear are not, because they are just magic"
now the picture analogy is perfect for the bible. Oh, and then the artist has to travel around the world and commit some genocide in the name of his picture. Details.
Ive said it before and I'll likely said it again. I would expect an omnipotent god that wants everyone to know it write that book could be understood by all without the need for human translation or interpretation.
If an apologist could honestly make this claim I would certainly take their book seriously as no human writer could produce a work that could do this.
My word, think about how bad the argument "if there is no inerrant interpretation of the book, that makes the book faulty" is. There isn't an inerrant interpretation of your argument--that doesn't mean your argument is therefore faulty (it's faulty for other reasons--namely that it's self-refuting).
Did God make humans so weak that they couldn't have a common understanding of a book? Nope. Rather, given that God can't just steam roll personalities but actually works with human personalities to sanctify them, some of those difficulties may well be there so that people would actually learn to talk to each other. Books are tremendous instruments of facilitating cross cultural communication. What I would expect to be true of the Bible is in fact true: what's necessary to be believed for salvation is quite easy to understand (just read Romans 10:9-13, 1 Cor 15:1-11). Our inabilities to understand things has nothing to do with how God made us, but has everything to do with our own sinfulness--the fact that people choose not to take time to seek understanding, and to consult their fellow human being to pursue understanding together.
Also, when you accuse us of "rationalizing", it rings just as hollow as the accusation "you really know God exists you're just running away from it" rings to you.
You lost me at “God can’t”.
Is your deity omnipotent or is it not? Is it the singular source and arbiter of the rules of logic or is it simply bound by them as are we mere mortals?
The tendency of apologists to cast their God as being impotent to control his own creations does not inspire any urge to worship in me, much less does it project any sort of divine perfection.
@Oxus21 Oh vei, what do they teach you at schools? A contradiction isn't a thing, but a non-thing. God can't create married bachelors not because of any limit on omnipotence, but because the very idea of a "married bachelor" is nonsense--it literally means nothing, since it's a contradiction in terms. It's like impugning omnipotence for denying that God can't create a "balragarock"--the term literally means nothing.
But again, I'd only expect good faith interlocutors to get that. It's not that hard; there are plenty of people who actually try to understand Christianity before criticizing it(I can name many--Joe Schmid is a good model of this). You're just not one of them.
@Oxus21 And truthfully, this shouldn't be that hard for you to understand. If you said "an omnipotent God should be able to do anything whatsoever even if it involves contradiction", any possible objection you can raise against Christianity falls apart. "The existence of evil is incompatible with God". Well God has eliminated evil without eliminating evil! If you insist God should be able actualize contradictions, then any objection based on fundamental principles of reason fall apart. The Christian just doesn't insist on nonsense like the rabid atheist.
But again, I wouldn't expect you to try to understand what you're critiquing. I expect that of good faith interlocutors, not atheists who live in the cognitive dissonance of thinking their objections are any good without studying what they're objecting to.
@@anglicanaesthetics Oh right.
“Everything is possible through the power of Jesus Christ…except for all the impossible things.”
Thanks for that pearl of totally not cognitive dissonance.
The bible has a couple of big problems when regarded as a whole.
The first being the tortured plot involving the fall and salvation, but imho, the path from a local religion for local people becoming a world religion is a huge 180 by god.
Which is it, the Hebrews being the chosen people or everyone?
First god has a hissy fit and scatters humanity to the 4 corners made them have different languages. Why would he do that if he knew that the word of himself as son would need to be known to all?
the real problem is that it's not a book, it's a pile of scraps of paper written by god knows who (!) over hundreds of years translated, re-translated and edited to leave out bad stuff like the gospel of judas where god is the bad guy.
@@HarryNicNicholas
I know, but the internal inconsistences have been well discussed.
Paul's intervention to open the religion up to gentiles is also well covered, but one rarely, if ever, hears a critique of the biblical narrative as a whole.
Even if I grant divine inspiration of the Bible. That says nothing about what divine being inspired it. Just look at the Christians who argue that Satan inspired Muhammad to write the Quran.
See my problem is with the J it wasn’t invented yet until 1524 so I don’t understand how these names I have a J
Can you get the Grammarly app and then fix your comment?
Except God doesn't make errors.
Christ (the summer sun) was recently crucified in Egypt. This happens at the autumn equinox. He is now the evil winter sun of five signs (Rev 9.5).
God's not very omniscient if he expects me to devote my life to a testimony where he was just phoning it in. Zombies notwithstanding
The Moon swallows the Sun at every autumn equinox. This is why light is weaker than darkness for about six months/signs. aka the six "nights" in Genesis one.
Jeremiah is the Moon as the savior. Zachariah (the male pointy thing that saves) is the
Sun in this instance.
I want some of whatever you're smoking 🚬
@@davidhoffman6980
Myth came before religion.
There is also the tale of Ra (sun) riding across the celestial sea of stars (six nights
Gen 1), in a barque (crescent moon). Noah aka Osiris enters his "vessel"at the same autumn equinox.
@@harveywabbit9541 I took want to become one with the universe and get those stoner revelations.
Bible Inerrancy light, now with 50% fewer absolute truths.
If you have to go to such links to show the Bible is inerrant by negating what it actually says - and the apologetic time and time again boils down to well yes it says X, but it really means Y is that same acrobatic grace given to the Quran or the book of Mormon? Oh, Special Pleading. Got it.
God has no errors! Theists revel in their unwavering confidence that belief based on faith is more credible than knowledge based on evidence. Errors are only claimed to exist by atheists just because they will insist on drawing conclusions only from reason applied to objective evaluation of evidence. Once you abandon rational thinking, it all becomes clear.
Yahweh, the all powerful, Hebrew god has a son. What for?
The gospels do not have contradictions. They have variances. Hundreds. Typical of any recordings of fast moving events using
multiple eyewitnesses sources.
…or like a fiction related to multiple audiences, maintained separately for hundreds of years through oral tradition, and then recompiled and edited together.
@@Oxus21 Perhaps the case for many ancient history accounts.
Are you sure? Do you think the same person can have two different fathers? Can a person be born in two separate times seven years apart?
Can an army at the same time have different numbers of men and horses? Okay, that one's OT not NT.
And why isn't Jesus called Emmanuel?
@@archapmangcmg Jesus was a common name in 1st century Galilee. Emmanuel and Messiah are titles. Messiah
has 300 +/- titles in all of scripture giving an indication of who we are dealing with.
The Bible is often called the inerrant word of God. It is when reporting God's commandments, his prophecies, his character, anything about who God is. Inerrant from front to back. Surrounding that are standard historical accounts that contain exaggeration, hyperbole, and variances which are common in all historical writings. As they say, the winner writes
the history. One writer records 3000 people at a sermon, another records 5000. There are no ticket sales or gate count. They are guessing. We can say with confidence it was several thousand.
It is common to discount the entire Bible because of perceived historical errors but all this reveals is a person critiquing that which they don't understand, a prime feature of the internet age.
@@edwardvan5808 So when the Bible is calling God Love, it's right but also when reporting God talking about his cruelty it's also inerrant?
Those are both "who God is" so the insanity of claiming both are inerrant is clear.
Speaking of people talking about things they don't understand.
Your long commercials turned me away. Bye.
How many times are you going to post that?
People defend the personal monotheistic god just like they have always defended and enable toxic parents. Same defense mechanisms, same excuses, for an imaginary surrogate parent.
Your long commercials turned me away. Bye.
What commercials?
You won't be missed.