44:40 Final point- my main objection is not why is there evil and suffering. Rather, it is why is the supposed god that brought all into being a direct cause of evil and suffering? Why is really very little different from other gods in his cultural context? Why is he so inconsistent (the Bible is not univocal even though Christians say it is)? Why is he such a direct reflection of the men he called his own and their thinking rather than a profound and glorious break from the human discourse of the time? Why, historically, does he enjoy and desire the same things his fellow ANE gods did- sacrifices, temples, covenants, rituals, magic implements, odd rules and so on? Why did the god of the universe neglect the rest of the globe even though he is timeless, limitless and omnipresent? Why did he battle dragons, crest with dirt, fly in the clouds, enjoy the smell of flesh, etc as other gods? Why do moody and capricious like other gods? Why so human as other gods? Who so unclear on what is true and what is not (even though the Holy Spirit was promised to unify and lead into truth)? Why did he develop over time? All of these things read like a man made and evolving construct. I’m passionate because this is a fascinating topic. But also because it’s time Christians leave other people alone and admit the BigStory is unbelievable to the rest of us, not because we want to indulge in sin and suppress the truth (Rom 1:18ff), but because it’s simply unbelievable.
44:00 “Atheist often complain about evil, but when god does something about evil in the OT, they don’t like it.” This is another trope. God did very little about evil in this instance. He is merely contending with the Israelites and the scant few nations around them. What if populations in China, Africa, New World indigenous peoples, the Indian subcontinent, pacific islands, and so on? But all this is merely to say God is doing something about evil caused by man (thus violating freewill). More to the point, what if all the natural evil of weather and plate tectonic activity, viruses, poisons and venoms, predation, infections, and diseases? Finally, what god does do about evil in the OT is stop one evil menace with the hammer of another sometimes lesser menace. As an individual example- let us say in God’s justice he must have Levite priests’ daughters who play the harlot punished to maintain the purity of the levitical line. But why by burning them alive, presumably even when they are pregnant? More broadly, Why punish people by having their bodies bruised, bones broken, and heads bashed with stones? Why treat foreign slaves and war booty as permanent slaves rather than “indentured servants” like indebted fellow Israelites? Expand these punishments to the nation or tribal level with the genocides. Even in context do these things really reflect a god who thinks differently that the men who serve him (or more likely created him)?
27:28 True story, I came to faith by reading the Bible and apologists and fact-, claim-, and quote-checking and measuring them up against academic theology, philosophy, archaeology, and history. And I know many skeptics for whom the same applies to varying degrees. What of it?
33:30 These guys make it sound like there’s some conspiracy or sinister purpose to hide the subtitle of Darwin’s book. Not at all. First off, “flavored races” does not mean what these fellows think it means. Darwin speaks of races of cabbage for criminy’s sake. It simply means those species/races of organisms that are best adapted to flourish in a given environment. It is common usage to not include long subtitles on covers of [especially old] books. Try to find a copy of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark. Or The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. For more on this see “On ‘The Origin of the Species’: The story of Darwin’s title” The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. Or better yet, read Darwin’s book. But mostly, stop spreading misconstrued and divisive information. Please.
34:45. These guys are false here. Dawkins does think morality exists. He says that *the universe is morally indifferent.* Dawkins makes a case for morality in The God Delusion (chapter 6). You are echoing Turek’s Stealing from God (note, I dropped the subtitle). The question is one of objective morality. For that go to academic atheists (Rachel’s Elements of Moral Philosophy or plenty of others). On the question of whether your god is immoral in the OT- YES! Undeniably so. It was Paul Kopan’s “Is God a Moral Monster?” that really launched me onto my path to non-belief. Turek’s “atheists have no grounds to argue against God’s morality” statement is really a cop-out. Just read the Bible and then critically evaluate the justifications of God’s actions laid out by apologists. The very least you can then do is admit that atheists (at least toward Judea-Christian god) have solid grounding for not believing he exists [edit] So these guys gonna to say that Christians need to understand cultural and historical context for biblical genocides. This is serious apologetics acrobatics thinking. Read “Jesus Lives Canaanites” (subtitle dropped) by Randal Rauser. He’s an evangelical theologian formerly at Taylor Seminary. He does not try to sugar coat and dodge the issues like Kopan and other apologists do. Rauser (who was instrumental in brining the Ravi Zacharias issues to light when all others were willfully blind to it) is the most honest Christian I know. Finally, a true investigation into the context will reveal that Bible god is very much like the other preexisting ANE gods from whom he developed and evolved. To the genocides be sure to add a contextual study of God’s call for child stoning, daughter burning, toddler impaling, population drowning, mauling of boys by she bears, forcing parents to eat their children, enslavement of virgin girls after killing their families, threatening sacrifice of a child, destroying the first born of an entire nation, killing of babies to punish fathers, demands for first born, and much more. Context? Sincerely? Read deeply from the experts both inside and outside your belief traditions. And please admit that we who don’t believe have great reason for not playing your game.
The problem goes both ways. These guys deal with popular level atheism and speak of Dawkins being akin to one who argues biology after only reading a single bird book. I get it. But so too are Turek, Strobel, Koukl, JW Wallace and, yes, A Bannister. They are lauded amongst Christians but their arguments are really silly. Craig is a bit better, but still makes claims out of his expertise, quote mines, and strawmans/misrepresents atheism. I could write a book called How these Apologists Led Me out of Christianity. What you rarely see is these apologists dealing with the arguments of academic atheists like Graham apply, Quentin Smith, or Stephen Law. These academic atheists don’t make it their purpose to go about spreading atheism. But the Christian apologists focus almost entirely on spreading their beliefs. This is the problem. As an agnostic-atheist I have no problem living amongst Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and so on. But the constant noise Christian’s make in spreading their message and being divisive in communities and families is a pain in the ass (to put it lightly). This is why the popular level new atheists are so prominent. But again their lack of knowledge is matched by the likes of Turek, Comfort, and the hundreds of thousands of pastors and priests and laymen who spew their falsehoods. Everybody just be cool and alllow others to believe differently. Stop taking advantage of kids simple minds. Sheesh.
Presumably you guys are familiar with Thomas Thompson and others who simply maintain the majority of figures in the old testament are mythical. We will never know the truth of these claims but there is sufficient evidence to suggest all believers of the Abrahamic faiths should show a little more humility than you manage to show here.
There are a range of views on the old testament figures and scholars that make their case for them... You are stating one of many views and acting like it should be taken more seriously than just that... One of many views
@@noahfletcher3019Perhaps you are in danger of accepting the world was created in 6 days. Conflating scientific study and biblical mythology is not uncommon in todays world so you won't be lonely.
@@jeffbetts9420 I don't think so but your silly argument would lead somebody to believe anything. The fact that you don't notice that is quite unfortunate as you are attempting to seem smart but you are unable to follow an argument to its conclusion. You're trying to pose as a smart person right?... You're failing but Im assuming this is your attempt.
44:40 Final point- my main objection is not why is there evil and suffering. Rather, it is why is the supposed god that brought all into being a direct cause of evil and suffering? Why is really very little different from other gods in his cultural context? Why is he so inconsistent (the Bible is not univocal even though Christians say it is)? Why is he such a direct reflection of the men he called his own and their thinking rather than a profound and glorious break from the human discourse of the time? Why, historically, does he enjoy and desire the same things his fellow ANE gods did- sacrifices, temples, covenants, rituals, magic implements, odd rules and so on? Why did the god of the universe neglect the rest of the globe even though he is timeless, limitless and omnipresent? Why did he battle dragons, crest with dirt, fly in the clouds, enjoy the smell of flesh, etc as other gods? Why do moody and capricious like other gods? Why so human as other gods? Who so unclear on what is true and what is not (even though the Holy Spirit was promised to unify and lead into truth)? Why did he develop over time?
All of these things read like a man made and evolving construct. I’m passionate because this is a fascinating topic. But also because it’s time Christians leave other people alone and admit the BigStory is unbelievable to the rest of us, not because we want to indulge in sin and suppress the truth (Rom 1:18ff), but because it’s simply unbelievable.
44:00 “Atheist often complain about evil, but when god does something about evil in the OT, they don’t like it.” This is another trope. God did very little about evil in this instance. He is merely contending with the Israelites and the scant few nations around them. What if populations in China, Africa, New World indigenous peoples, the Indian subcontinent, pacific islands, and so on? But all this is merely to say God is doing something about evil caused by man (thus violating freewill). More to the point, what if all the natural evil of weather and plate tectonic activity, viruses, poisons and venoms, predation, infections, and diseases? Finally, what god does do about evil in the OT is stop one evil menace with the hammer of another sometimes lesser menace.
As an individual example- let us say in God’s justice he must have Levite priests’ daughters who play the harlot punished to maintain the purity of the levitical line. But why by burning them alive, presumably even when they are pregnant? More broadly, Why punish people by having their bodies bruised, bones broken, and heads bashed with stones? Why treat foreign slaves and war booty as permanent slaves rather than “indentured servants” like indebted fellow Israelites? Expand these punishments to the nation or tribal level with the genocides. Even in context do these things really reflect a god who thinks differently that the men who serve him (or more likely created him)?
27:28 True story, I came to faith by reading the Bible and apologists and fact-, claim-, and quote-checking and measuring them up against academic theology, philosophy, archaeology, and history. And I know many skeptics for whom the same applies to varying degrees. What of it?
33:30 These guys make it sound like there’s some conspiracy or sinister purpose to hide the subtitle of Darwin’s book. Not at all. First off, “flavored races” does not mean what these fellows think it means. Darwin speaks of races of cabbage for criminy’s sake. It simply means those species/races of organisms that are best adapted to flourish in a given environment. It is common usage to not include long subtitles on covers of [especially old] books. Try to find a copy of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark. Or The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.
For more on this see “On ‘The Origin of the Species’: The story of Darwin’s title” The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. Or better yet, read Darwin’s book. But mostly, stop spreading misconstrued and divisive information. Please.
34:45. These guys are false here. Dawkins does think morality exists. He says that *the universe is morally indifferent.* Dawkins makes a case for morality in The God Delusion (chapter 6). You are echoing Turek’s Stealing from God (note, I dropped the subtitle). The question is one of objective morality. For that go to academic atheists (Rachel’s Elements of Moral Philosophy or plenty of others).
On the question of whether your god is immoral in the OT- YES! Undeniably so. It was Paul Kopan’s “Is God a Moral Monster?” that really launched me onto my path to non-belief. Turek’s “atheists have no grounds to argue against God’s morality” statement is really a cop-out. Just read the Bible and then critically evaluate the justifications of God’s actions laid out by apologists. The very least you can then do is admit that atheists (at least toward Judea-Christian god) have solid grounding for not believing he exists
[edit] So these guys gonna to say that Christians need to understand cultural and historical context for biblical genocides. This is serious apologetics acrobatics thinking. Read “Jesus Lives Canaanites” (subtitle dropped) by Randal Rauser. He’s an evangelical theologian formerly at Taylor Seminary. He does not try to sugar coat and dodge the issues like Kopan and other apologists do. Rauser (who was instrumental in brining the Ravi Zacharias issues to light when all others were willfully blind to it) is the most honest Christian I know. Finally, a true investigation into the context will reveal that Bible god is very much like the other preexisting ANE gods from whom he developed and evolved.
To the genocides be sure to add a contextual study of God’s call for child stoning, daughter burning, toddler impaling, population drowning, mauling of boys by she bears, forcing parents to eat their children, enslavement of virgin girls after killing their families, threatening sacrifice of a child, destroying the first born of an entire nation, killing of babies to punish fathers, demands for first born, and much more. Context? Sincerely? Read deeply from the experts both inside and outside your belief traditions. And please admit that we who don’t believe have great reason for not playing your game.
The problem goes both ways. These guys deal with popular level atheism and speak of Dawkins being akin to one who argues biology after only reading a single bird book. I get it. But so too are Turek, Strobel, Koukl, JW Wallace and, yes, A Bannister. They are lauded amongst Christians but their arguments are really silly. Craig is a bit better, but still makes claims out of his expertise, quote mines, and strawmans/misrepresents atheism. I could write a book called How these Apologists Led Me out of Christianity.
What you rarely see is these apologists dealing with the arguments of academic atheists like Graham apply, Quentin Smith, or Stephen Law.
These academic atheists don’t make it their purpose to go about spreading atheism. But the Christian apologists focus almost entirely on spreading their beliefs. This is the problem. As an agnostic-atheist I have no problem living amongst Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and so on. But the constant noise Christian’s make in spreading their message and being divisive in communities and families is a pain in the ass (to put it lightly). This is why the popular level new atheists are so prominent. But again their lack of knowledge is matched by the likes of Turek, Comfort, and the hundreds of thousands of pastors and priests and laymen who spew their falsehoods. Everybody just be cool and alllow others to believe differently. Stop taking advantage of kids simple minds. Sheesh.
Presumably you guys are familiar with Thomas Thompson and others who simply maintain the majority of figures in the old testament are mythical. We will never know the truth of these claims but there is sufficient evidence to suggest all believers of the Abrahamic faiths should show a little more humility than you manage to show here.
There are a range of views on the old testament figures and scholars that make their case for them... You are stating one of many views and acting like it should be taken more seriously than just that... One of many views
@@noahfletcher3019 Same applies to all biblical teaching much of which is treated as gospel truth.
@@jeffbetts9420 well that's how I'll treat science then, since there's a range of views of one theory I'll just remain unconvinced of any of them.
@@noahfletcher3019Perhaps you are in danger of accepting the world was created in 6 days. Conflating scientific study and biblical mythology is not uncommon in todays world so you won't be lonely.
@@jeffbetts9420 I don't think so but your silly argument would lead somebody to believe anything. The fact that you don't notice that is quite unfortunate as you are attempting to seem smart but you are unable to follow an argument to its conclusion. You're trying to pose as a smart person right?... You're failing but Im assuming this is your attempt.