Speaker 1: Imagine a king who decrees that sexual assault of female
prisoners is now allowed. We would all agree that makes
him a monster. Now consider the Koran, which allows taking
women captives as sex slaves. That's morally abhorrent endorsement of
sexual assault.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Everyone I speak to agrees on this. But when we
bring up biblical slavery, callers bend over backwards to build
a fortress of rationalizations. It was just gentle and dentured servitude,
they say, or proclaim that God was just regulating existing culture,
anything except the acknowledgment of what they should easily acknowledge
with a fictional king, or when discussing the Quran. To
be clear, Leviticus explicitly endorses buying slaves from foreign nations
as property for the rest of their lives, even allowing
the owner to bequeath them to his heirs. Exodus permits
beating them so long as they survive a day or
two before they die. Even Moses himself commands his warriors
to keep young virgin prisoners as sex slaves. It's clear
that the Bible contains full throated endorsement of slavery and
sexual violence. If you can easily reject these atrocities in
a hypothetical king or another religion's text. You owe it
to yourself to hold your own book to the exact
same standards. Owning human beings as property isn't moral just
because a book says that the character of God of
Abraham signed off on it. Ask yourself, why didn't the
all powerful deity write three simple words, thou shall not.
If you have any idea, give us a call, because
the show starts now.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, everybody.
Speaker 1: Today is July twenty six, twenty twenty six, and we
want to welcome you all to the Atheist experience. My
name is the Cross Examiner, and I'm excited to say
that today we have the Godless Engineer.
Speaker 3: How you doing, Hey, I'm doing pretty good, you know,
just you know, chilling out over here, having a good Sunday.
Speaker 4: I was working on getting a bunch of.
Speaker 3: Videos ready for the channel, well both of my channels,
because I got a Clips channel and then I've got
just my normal channel, So been trying to get those ready.
I've actually got like an actual response video that I'm
putting out this week, So that's going to be something
a bit different than normal.
Speaker 2: Oh really, what are you responding to, Oh, well.
Speaker 3: There's this there's been this popular thing going around where
they're they're trying like some some people are trying to
drudge up the Roman records for a historical Jesus, and
so it's like, you know, I'm trying to put it
into perspective and why they're not actually good records for
you know, proving his existence at least from a historical perspective.
Speaker 2: Right at least casting doubt.
Speaker 1: I know that there's an active discussion amongst you and
other people about the historicity of Jesus, but the lack
of records in a society as fastidious as Rome, who
had as many records as they do, does raise some
interesting questions as to the veracity of the claims that
Jesus even existed. What records are they trying to claim
are proof?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know the ones that they always
go for, like the Tastis and joe Cephis and everything
like that.
Speaker 2: It's nothing new or nothing new, got it? Okay, Yeah,
it's nothing new.
Speaker 3: They're just acting like, oh, look, you know there's this
there's these records, and so it's like every few years
people are like, oh wait a second, have they thought
about these and it's.
Speaker 1: Like, oh yes, and what is supposedly the single most
important question of their lives and many people's lives and
all the people's lives for the last two thousand years
who were Christian?
Speaker 2: Have they thought about these records?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they might have.
Speaker 1: Oh man, So how active is that debate right now?
Would you say of people sort of in academic serviles
or otherwise, of people sort of requestioning like, wait a second,
We've all just sort of assumed that the Jesus character
was real that points to a literal, single human named
Jesus who did these things. And maybe it's an amalgamation
like a Robin Hood legend or a George Washington saying
I could I cannot tell a lie type of stories
evolving around the character. Is that still up for debate?
Are academics still sort of writing about this?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, in different respects.
Speaker 3: I mean there's nobody that's out there, like I guess
directly making like a journal article necessarily journal article necessarily
that specifically like Jesus didn't exist. It's more like it's
more like there are several different people that are out
there writing articles which I'm actually going to be one
of those people that's writing an article not pushing mythicism necessarily,
but just from a different perspective analyzing biblical texts like
the original texts and everything like that, which I can
talk about later if necessary, if anybody wants me to,
but ententially, like I know, we there's some people out
there that have put that that actually have dronal articles
that are going to be coming out soon about like
whether or not pre Christian Jews expected at dying and
rising Messiah and then break think yeah. And then there's
a doctor Aaron Adair who is doing analysis on the
Josephus question specifically where he's actually been able to use
a style of metric method to prove that the testimony
of is more Eusebian in nature than josephin and so
he's got a paper that he's putting out soon about that.
So you know, it's a it's different parts of it,
and none of them directly say Jesus didn't exist, but
it's more like bits and pieces of the minimal mythsist
hypothesis that's actually making it through peer review and the
main minimum that system. You know, literature has actually already
been put through peer reviews. So it's not like we
need to do that again necessarily, but you know, it
always helps to have other people looking at various parts
of any hypothesis.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, that's a thing that distinguishes academic research from others.
And on both sides, right, you'll have a lot of
Christian theists who are trying to publish papers, and the
good ones all welcome that sort of scrutiny that you
want somebody to come in and attack your ideas, and
I think it speaks volumes that we may never have.
Speaker 2: You know, hey, here.
Speaker 1: Is proof that Jesus never existed, but it speaks volumes
to say that. Like, the question can be asked and
the proper answer at this point is we don't know.
Like the needle has moved from everybody presuming that this
was a real character to I don't know. And that's
a huge step for a lot of people to have
sort of said I'm not sure. The typical argument I
hear or a typical response I hear is I don't know.
But it's kind of irrelevant because what we really want
to talk about is did he perform miracles and all
of those sorts of things. But I think the question
of whether or not he existed. If you could get
to the bottom of that, that would be fascinating. If
you discovered a treasure trove of documents that all sort
of had bits and pieces of the story being punched
up over the decades into a single story like you
had with King Arthur or Robin dood and stuff, that
would be amazing, amazing evidence. And the fact that we
don't have it is means we have to just say
we don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that you know, it definitely speaks volumes
to the veracity of the claims that Jesus existed, that
we just simply don't have. Like the kind of evidence
that we have for other history figures, like even mundane
historical figures, we don't have the We don't have the
same thing for Jesus. And I think that considering how
important he was to the first century and to a
lot of people in the first century, you would think
that there would be some but there's just not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fascinating. Well, I'd like to get to callers real quickly.
We do have some callers in the cube, but our
other lines are open, so feel free to call in now.
At all of the information you see below here. We've
got phone numbers, we've got our U r L and
we also have online visitors who are visiting via TikTok
and things like that. So let me read in some
announcements and then we'll get to our callers. So we
have the first announcement, of course, is always about who
we are and what we do. We are the Atheist
Experience and we are a product of the Atheist Community
of Austin, a five oh one c three nonprofit organization
dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism,
and the separation of religion and government. This means that
you can give us tax free donations as many as
you want in fact, and know that not only is
it going to a good cause, but it also helps
you too. We are try streaming tonight, so a big
shout out to our viewers on TikTok and YouTube mobile.
If you are watching us on TikTok tonight and you'd
like to talk to us, just request to join and
we'll bring you up on stage. Please be sure, however,
that you're over eighteen years of age before doing so.
Now we do have somebody in the call. Dan is
the caller. I think we're waiting for him to get
cleared by our screeners, so looking forward to hearing from Dan.
I'll do another quick announcement while we're waiting for that,
because Dan's the first call I do want to take.
I will cut straight to the chase regarding the big announcement,
which is, as always, the Back Cruise. We're excited to
announce the launch of our twenty twenty six Back Cruise
August fifteenth, market on your calend at seven pm. Tickets
are now on sale and they're going fast. Half of
our available tickets have already been sold. They're going to
be exciting events all weekend, including a special guest lecture
on Friday, a community outing and activity during the day
on Saturday, followed by our annual members town hall, and
your favorite ACA shows filmed live from the Free Throat
Library on Sunday. Confirmed features guests include genetically Modified Skeptic,
the Antibot Thinker, Godless Engineer, You're going to be there,
j Mike Objectively, Dan Secularity, and Kelly Laughlin, who happens
to be our backup host tonight.
Speaker 2: He's listening in, Hi, Kelly.
Speaker 1: Look for more announcements in the coming weeks about other
hosts that will be attending. Tickets are available at ACA
Dot Show Slash Back Crewise. So Godless, you're going to
be at the Back Cruise this year.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am, and they asked me to come out,
and you know, I was trying to figure out how
it could work it in, you know, with my schedule
and everything, and luckily I was able to work that out.
So yeah, both Casey and I are going to be
coming out there, and it's going to be a great time.
Speaker 4: I can't wait to see everybody.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Have you been before?
Speaker 4: No, this will be the first time.
Speaker 1: Ah nice. I have been once and it was super
duper fun. Like the bat Just just witnessing the bats
is an amazing thing. But even more fun is getting
to see the library, talking to everybody sitting on those
fun shows where they have a lot of people hosting.
I'll be watching remotely this year, won't be attending, but
I wish you well and I hope you have fun there.
All right, we've switched to another caller here.
Speaker 2: We've got Julie.
Speaker 1: My name is Julie, she says, and I'm calling about
the current topic, slavery and the Bible at the Bible
said it was okay, Julie, are you on the line
with us, Yes, Julie, what would you like to talk about?
Speaker 5: H Well, I wanted to relate a conversation that I
had with a friend.
Speaker 6: And here it is.
Speaker 5: I'll just read a little bit of it to you.
It's a text. It says, dear John, I've been learning
a lot about the Bible lately, and it condones stoning
your child for talking back, selling your daughter to her rapists,
and beating your slaves until they are.
Speaker 2: Close to death.
Speaker 5: So what he said back was, thanks, Julie, I will
be sure to address these accusations and some future infographics.
Can you give you the arguments that suggests these conclusions.
It will be good to show both sides of the arguments.
So I wrote back, and I said, these are not
accusations or arguments. These are just relating to you what's
in the Bible. And so anyways, I thought it's pretty
funny and everything.
Speaker 1: And you know, is this a person you're in a
friendly relationship with or just some stranger on the internet,
or how did this collect it?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 5: No, this is somebody actually that we went to church
together when we were like in high school in early
college days, and you know, now we're in our sixties,
and you know, I left Christianity when I was probably
twenty years old, and I think it did a lot
of damage to me. So like, so, anyway, is this
guy he's still really really into it?
Speaker 2: Gotcha? John?
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts to are those accusations or do
those seem like kind of quotes from the Bible?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: No, yeah, those are direct quotes from the Bible. I mean, yeah,
definitely not accusations in that respect, simply due to the
fact that you know, you just got to be literate
and have a Bible and know which versus reach uh,
because I mean everything that you said are I mean,
there's summaries of the verses, they're not direct quotes. But
I mean, if you could, you know, providing him with
the direct quotes.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: I've been in conversations with people where they're like, what
what what version are you reading? Are you reading the
kJ V version? And I'm like, is that going to
make it better? Like if I read it in Old English?
Is that gonna make like the pronouncement to sell your
daughter into sexual slavery?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: Is that is that going to make it any better.
Speaker 3: And and you know they're you know, they're adamant about it,
you know, being out of context because of the version
you're reading, or you know, they want to frame it
as being indentured servitude only, and that's just a misreading
of the text. I mean, it's very obvious when it
says you may purchase slaves from the nations around you,
they may be your property for life. Like how else
are you supposed to read that? Like you're just like
all you got to do is be literate and just
know the words that are on the page exactly right.
Speaker 5: And then you know, like I also just went online
and like put those sentences into you know, AI and
looked them up, and they came up with the Bible.
Speaker 6: Versus that they matched up with. So you know, it's
really easy.
Speaker 1: So even even less literacy required that he could literally
if he wanted to google it himself and read the
words on the page.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you something.
Speaker 1: When you were younger and in the Christian faith, did
you do Bible study classes or Bible study organizations with
your church?
Speaker 5: Yes, all the time, although I tried to ditch alze
those about hiking.
Speaker 1: Or something, so did they What did they start with?
This has been a kick that I've been on for
a while. Like when I go to study a book,
like if I go to a book club, or we're
going to go to study a writer on a technical
issue or even a legal issue, that's my background.
Speaker 2: You you read a.
Speaker 1: Little bit about who is this and why should I
listen to them?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: That's kind of standard practice if you're.
Speaker 1: You really want to learn about a book, Like if
I'm going to study Lord of the Rings, I need
to study JR. O Token the time he was alive,
what his philosophy was, like, what was he trying to achieve?
Speaker 2: What other works did he do?
Speaker 1: But when people when I've been approached to do Bible
study in my life, the first thing they talk about
is things like Matthew, Mark Luke and John Jesus Loves You,
all of the fun stuff. They don't start with either
the Old Testament, the Bible, indoors of slavery, or the
earth is you know, the talking snake and all of
that sort of stuff. They start with the fuzzy stuff.
Then they get to the slightly like guilt creation stuff,
But they never seem to talk about the Bible endorses slavery.
The Bible contains stories where God is telling people through
his prophets and spokespeople to murder children and things like that.
Did you ever get told any of that stuff in
your Bible study?
Speaker 4: Pluss at all?
Speaker 6: No, none of that. I mean, it was really like a.
Speaker 5: Focus on the Gospels and the Jesus loves you stuff
and well, and speaking of the Jesus loves you stuff,
like on the highway where I lived, somebody put up
like four signs that said Jesus loves you and they
were on like a busy.
Speaker 6: Traffic circle. And you know, like.
Speaker 5: In California, you're you're not allowed to put signs up
on any California state highway. So it's a long story,
but I followed all the rules and the laws and
I took the signs down. They would have been taken
down eventually by by cal Trans, but I took them
down and there was a an address on there, so
I emailed that address and I just told them the
rules and stuff, and I told him, you know, like
you're you know, cal Trans could find you and basically
they take your sign down and then they're going to
find you if you want your signs you can come
get them. So I just said, well, I have your
signs if you want them. But I took them down
because the neighbors were all like bugged about them, and
you know, they're distracting and they're illegal, and so like
about a year later, a person who i'll call my
ex friend now, but they they said, you know, I
was really offended. You took those signs down and you
threw them away, which I didn't do. You actually recycled
them when the person never answered my email. But so
this person got when I explained, you know, what I did,
and then it was all legal and everything and I
did it for my community. And so they they're just
like really pissed off and they won't talk to me anymore.
And I'm like, wow, this person was like a friend
for like fifty years, you know what I mean, how could.
Speaker 2: They That's just so that's stunning.
Speaker 1: Like I've taken a lot of calls of you know,
family members kicking their kids out of the house when
they come out as gay or atheistic or things like that. Yeah,
I've heard of a lot of strife between friends when
people are actively sort of like protesting against religion or
things like that. But all you did was, you know,
take down some signs that weren't supposed to be there.
And in California has a lot of laws that let
citizens do certain things, Like in California, you can go
and if you see that a building is not eighty
A compliant, you can file a report and it incentivizes
you to do that, and California's working with that method.
So there are probably laws like you said that are like, hey,
you see something on the side of the highway and
you want to take it down, you can do that
if X, Y and.
Speaker 2: Z or true.
Speaker 1: So have you ever heard of that that john this
level of I assume you just told a friend. Oh,
by the way, this happened that. Can you believe somebody
had all these signs up illegally? I went and took
them down, and then they broke off a fifty year
relationship because you took the sign down, not their signs.
You just told a friend about some third party.
Speaker 6: Right right.
Speaker 5: I just brought up And they didn't even bring it
up until like a year later when we had some
kind of disagreement over something, and then they brought it up,
you know, So I thought, hmmm, So they've been harboring
this thing against me, like all this time. They never
said anything about it, and you know, I mean I
assume too that they were just ignorant and didn't know
the rules and the laws. And by the way, there's
a group, an atheist group, I think they're called the
Atheist Pirates or something in Los Angeles, and they go
out and they document all the illegal signs and they
take certain ones down, and you know, so, I mean,
I would join them if I were closer to them,
but I'm not.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have anything in your life like that
where somebody broke off a relationship with you because of
your beliefs and it was sort of like the mildest
of things.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, I had family members when I first
started posting like this. This is like more than fourteen
years ago, But when I first started posting about atheism
and everything, you know, I had some family members that
broke off contact on social media, but never like any
kind of friends that that broke off that kind of thing.
So I ended up breaking off some of my like
in real life contacts around here after I became an
atheist because of the fact that they I guess they
took my new position as like some kind of challenge
to like, you know, pick on me and bully me
as much as they could. And I guess I don't
know if it was maybe to bully me back into
believing or something, but but yeah, so, I mean I
ended up having to end that kind of toxic relationship.
But you know, I've got plenty of relationships now, like
like friendly acquaintances and everything like that that aren't necessarily.
Speaker 4: Atheists, and.
Speaker 3: So I mean, you know, it's it can be, it
can be a bit straining there On occasion.
Speaker 1: Julie was there were there other other things going on
and this was just an excuse or this was the
long Harvard rudge and it came out, what do do
some there was an excuse to bring it up.
Speaker 6: I'm not, yeah, you know what, like I'm not really sure.
Speaker 5: But the other thing is like this person knows like
nothing at all about.
Speaker 6: My religion or my faith.
Speaker 5: And they actually also like said that they didn't know
my feelings about Jesus had changed, is the one thing
they said.
Speaker 6: And they said that they.
Speaker 5: Basically acted like I'm some kind of like fallen Christian
and like I've made a practice of like not telling
anybody anything about my faith and my religion whatever it
might be, because I feel like it's none of their
business and you know a.
Speaker 6: Lot of them are just going to judge me.
Speaker 5: So so anyway, sisters, and I've never talked to her
any at all about you know, faith and religion.
Speaker 6: And although, like I.
Speaker 5: Said in high school is when I, you know, went
through a bad hard time with my family breaking up
and stuff, and I became a bored again Christian and
all that, and you know, it was told that Jesus
loves you and all that, and you know, I mean it,
you know it wasn't true. And you know, you figure
out after a while that you know, there is no
God there, Like there's nobody listening to you. There's nobody
that talks back and says, hey, you know, I'm.
Speaker 6: Going to help you or I love you.
Speaker 1: Was there any portion of your Christian experience that was
positive just to sort of give give that the other
side of fair play.
Speaker 2: Was there any positive association with that experience?
Speaker 6: Well? Yes, yeah there was.
Speaker 5: I mean what was positive is like we did a
lot of campeiging. We did a lot of out door stuff.
Speaker 1: Like you know, stuff that didn't require you to believe
in God. You could have you could have been a
bunch of atheists camping or a bunch of atheists. Well, no,
I'm just saying the activity that you enjoyed and that
was rewarding. That activity in and of itself does not
necessarily require that you be a Christian or a Hindu
or whatever.
Speaker 2: Anybody could go camping.
Speaker 1: They could have made it secular, but if you wanted
to come on this particular camping trip, you had to
be Christian, which I very sad.
Speaker 5: That's what it was because it was sponsored by the church.
And so one of the camps I went to was
called Quaker Meadow that was up in the Eras and
it was just like.
Speaker 6: A beautiful place. And I was just thinking of.
Speaker 5: One of the games that we played was called a
concentration camp.
Speaker 6: And what we would do.
Speaker 2: Is how old were you?
Speaker 5: It was called how old?
Speaker 2: Yeah? How old were you? Were you? How old were people? Playing?
Speaker 4: A game called all right in high school?
Speaker 2: And what you had was it about? Was it about
concentrating really hard?
Speaker 5: But no, it was about like like we divided into
two groups and like the girl the girls and the
boys had their own little groups.
Speaker 6: The each had a camp counselor.
Speaker 5: But like the whole maybe it was like one hundred
kids altogether, and so got divided into two big groups,
and one had to rescue the other groups from one
side of the camp and bring him to the other
side of the camp.
Speaker 1: And I tell you, these folks do some funny stuff.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw in the news, like
last month, there was a I think it was in Kentucky.
There was a Baptist church that simulated the execution of
the devil by using soldiers coming in using simulated machine
guns and shooting a guy on near the altar near
the front of the room, with like six year old
kids screaming and cheering on. The pastor had to get
online and do a follow up video once it was
leaked and explain themselves. And I think that speaks to
my reaction to what I hear from you, the signs right,
the reaction of the person regarding the signs. It speaks
to the time we live in. I think that the
scariest thing to me about religion is that it lends
support to somebody's idea that they know better than everybody else.
Because I am following Jesus. I am above the law.
To summarize it, right, I can put my signs there
even though it's against the law, because it's for Jesus.
There's a trend that you've seen, and I think the
New York Times just did a piece on this. Some
outlets did a piece on this of you're on a
plane and some Christians stands up and starts preaching to
the whole plane, right, and again, if the flight attendant
tells you to sit down, federal law says you need
to sit down and obey the flight crew, right, that
we need order in the sky to avoid problems. And
they ignore that. You know, they're again breaking the law
because God is on my side. They're so convinced of
this that they ignore parts of the Bible that say,
you know, give the government its due, obey the laws
of your land. That doesn't matter because in their mind
they're saving lives, they're bringing people to Jesus and protecting
them from Hell, and they are so convinced of this
reality that they want to go out and do these things. However,
part of me suspects that they aren't convinced, and it
is the doing of the thing that where they are
trying to convince themselves that they're convinced. If you get
my drift, like if I get up and do this
little drama in the sky, or if I clutch my
pearls about you taking your signs down, that shows that's
an objective demonstration that I truly believe. Therefore, I must
truly believe those little doubts that sit in the back
of my brain at night can be ignored because look
what I did. I don't know John, your experience there
with young indoctrination and getting kids to account, like I forget.
I think it was an organization called young Life that
I was invited to several times when I was in
high school, where it's like, hey, come and sleep over
at the church and hang out with your friends. And
I did it a few times, and sure enough, at
some point in the evening there was a there was
the hard cell.
Speaker 2: Did you ever go through that?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean growing up in the South, I mean, church was
a pretty central place, you know, and so whenever there
was any kind of like youth group activity, it.
Speaker 4: Was always oh, nice fun things.
Speaker 3: But then you know, they'd pull out the Jesus and
so obviously that was meant to like hook the younger
generation and everything, and in some respects it kind of
worked on me. I guess I would go in and
out of religious adherents, you know, while I was a
teenager and whatnot. I would never stop believing, but you know,
I would be like devout and then just sort of,
I guess just lacks a daisical I guess maybe is
a good way of describing it. And so, uh, I
definitely experienced that the whole hard cell of like, oh,
let's do something fun, but now let's learn about Jesus
and how you're a sinful, dirty bastard kind of thing.
Speaker 4: And uh yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Like the emotional equivalent of getting your Halloween candy and
there's a hidden chick track in the in the middle
of it that's telling you you're going to hell. Yeah,
So so Julie, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 5: Sorry, Yeah, Well, I was gonna say one of the
things I noticed about this person and other people that
are Christians, and not not all Christians, but they have
this like a smug look sort of like there it's
like the holier than now kind of or the self
righteous look or somehow that they're they think that there's
a God that like looks out for them all the time,
and their life's all planned out. And even I know,
there's like billions of people in the world, and.
Speaker 6: There's all these different religions, somehow like they're just I
don't know.
Speaker 5: I guess it's good to believe that you're a special person,
that you're you know, worthwhile and all that. But but
to think that, you know, like everything that happens to
you is just all planned.
Speaker 6: Out and God has your life.
Speaker 5: And but but all you other people, well you know
you're not you're you know, you're nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could get into a whole discussion about whether
or you know, if God could pick any version of reality,
if there's a nearly infinite timelines he could pick of
where I'm not an atheist, or I am an atheist,
or that person is a murderer or is not a murderer,
and he could create any universe he wanted to where
we're all still making free choices according to Christianity, but
we just make some good choices and all of that,
God somehow chose this timeline as the best one. Therefore,
the murderer and the child abuser and the atheists are
all part of God's plan. But using the logic of
you know, God has a plan for me, well, you
know this is all the best that God would want.
He wants a being to have made the choice where
he is an atheist or not, have been convinced to
be an atheist, and to make a choice to murder somebody. So, yeah,
it does get frustrating when you're dealing with somebody with
that smug look. However, I do view it as a
bit of indoctrination. I see that same look across multiple
different religious belief systems, and they all have contradictory claims,
so they can't all be right. But when you ask them,
what if you're wrong, you get a Usually you get
a big fat I'm not wrong. Like the concept of
being wrong is so it would if they were wrong,
or even possibly admitting that they might re wrong is
so shattering to their worldview that they push that way
way way out of the head. And that's what gives
them the self righteous power to stand up and preach
to the plane or to shout at people who are
walking on the sidewalk. You've seen these guys with the
backpacks on their back, with megaphones and telling people they're
going to go to hell.
Speaker 2: It can be very frustrating.
Speaker 1: So where is it going with your your associate to
whom you said, Hey, I've got these questions? Are you
framing it as questions?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 1: Like, what's up with all of these quotes in the
Bible that the black and white language says it's not
only okay but desirable to own slaves or murder babies
and things like that. Is that person somebody you have
an interest in continuing conversation with or you were just
trying to rub their noses in it for fun and profit.
Speaker 5: I just you know, I just brought that up. Yeah,
those those points, and you know you recalled the you know,
the answers of you know, let me turn it into
an infographic and show the two different sides.
Speaker 4: So it's like, well, you know.
Speaker 6: There aren't two different sides.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's in there, It's in the Bible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But are you But my question is are you
interested in having a genuine conversation with this person? Like
once they publish infographics back to you, are you like, hey,
are you would you like to have a cup of
coffee and talk about this and maybe you can explain
to me this passage or that passage in the Bible,
and I've got them highlighted here, explained to me how
I'm supposed to know that this doesn't mean what it
literally says, those sorts of questions.
Speaker 6: No, well, no, I'm not really interested in that.
Speaker 5: I mean, what I'm talking to him about now is
like he believes that our country is.
Speaker 6: A Christian nation, which is not true.
Speaker 1: You know, well, it depends on how you define Christian nation.
Like my response to him would be, what what do
you mean? Do you mean that it's a nation that
is populated by a majority Christian? That may may well
be true, but that's also irrelevant, right, Like, so what, yeah,
you know, to the extent it's true, it's trivial, to
the extent it's meaningful, it's it doesn't it's irrelevant.
Speaker 2: So well, he so.
Speaker 5: Believe he thinks that that Trump was appointed or chosen
by God.
Speaker 6: And if you believe that.
Speaker 5: And I went and looked up you know, well where
did that come from? And you know they said like
Franklin Franklin Graham was one of the ones that started
that that why you know, and then you know the
big history and there's a bunch of preachers that like.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm gonna I'm going to cut in here because
we're a five oh one c. Three, We're not going
to talk about specific political figures. So I will confirm, Yes,
I think people like Billy Graham did say various political
leaders are appointed by God. John, if you run into
those arguments of various political leaders being sent from God,
and what the implications are.
Speaker 3: There, Yeah, And I mean they typically you know, and
here to some sure, I think mainly from the Epistles
Appaulled I think where it says that the rulers, like
the earthly rulers, are appointed by God, and so like
they kind of go along with that kind of scripture
in order to verify that. But if that were the case,
then they would also have to admit that God wanted.
Speaker 2: Like other leaders they didn't aggressive greed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: But I also think that it's used in a way
that definitely absolves these leaders from any kind of scrutiny.
And I think that that is the real danger, especially
coming from you know, this this side of the isle
that seems to heavily vote to keep child marriage on
the books, that seems to want to want to hide
hide abusers in their particular on their particular side of
the aisle, they constantly want to do all of those things,
and it's all because of the Good.
Speaker 2: Lord, you know, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think if the argument is the Bible says God
anointed your leaders basically and picked them and all of
that stuff, then if they say, well, i'm gonna, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna say that means that I should praise and
support my leader when it's somebody I like, then they
should do it for somebody they don't like. On the
other hand, if they switch to the argument to say, well,
when it's God picked this other leader I don't like,
and that is God's creating a test for me to
go out and fight and protest and argue against this leader,
then the question is, how do you know which is which? Really,
all you're telling me is that the one you don't
like is the one you don't like, and the one
that you like is the one that you like. If
you're just gonna switch your interpretation of who God supports
and doesn't just based on that, you've got a real problem.
Because I think you pointed out the exact thing I
would bring up, John, which is when a leader does
criminal things. When a leader has various things that are
non biblical in their past that are felonies, there's all
sorts of reasons that you would expect a Bible thumping
Christian to say, this is the leader that God wanted.
You wanted to test me with. He wanted to tempt
me with this, and my job is to protest against him.
But they don't do that that.
Speaker 6: He was like King Cyrus.
Speaker 1: I don't even know who King Cyrus is, John, are
you familiar?
Speaker 6: He was a failed leader. He was some kind of
failed leader.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, I'm unfamiliar with that. Do you know anything more
about King Cyrus? John or Julie?
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know much
about King Cyrus.
Speaker 3: But I do know that the way that some people
prop up certain individuals, you know, in our current sociopolitical environment,
does a lot of harm. For one, because it really
intertwines this, you know, this sort of spiritual sense that
people seem to use in order to frame certain actions
in various ways that seem to be divine in nature.
And I think that once people can contextualize things in
a divine way, then that's it's it's just an easy
road to get them to accept that kind of behavior
as being normalized and being a good thing. And I
think that that's where you get the whole, the whole
mantra of you know, to get good people to do
bad things, you need religion. And I think that that
is very true, especially in this sense, because you know,
in order to get otherwise good people to agree to
these horrible actions that are undertaken by God in the Bible,
I think that you need some kind of like brainwashing
effect from religion. I mean, you know, to kind of
steal man. The other side of the argument here, what
they would probably say as far as like the slavery
issue goes and everything is essentially God was just regulating
it and they were doing better than the surrounding ancient
Near Eastern societies. But there are many aspects to Israelite slavery,
like the channel slavery that they employed that was actually
worse than the surrounding area.
Speaker 4: I mean, they were.
Speaker 3: Particularly harsh to their indentured slaves because like the indentured slaves,
they could only be freed every.
Speaker 4: Like seven years.
Speaker 3: I believe it is that you believe here whereas in
the surrounding ancient Near East, they were freed every three years,
and so you know, and then there's the whole you know,
pretty much status quo with the being able to beat
your slaves within an inch of their life and all
that kind of stuff. In the ancient Neurias Durn culture
around the Israelites, you had slaves that also had rights
and even in many respects more rights than the Israelite
chattel slaves had. And so if they try to come
at you with this whole idea that well, God was
just trying to progressively get them to a better solution
or something like that, I feel like, you know, the
response there to push back on somebody with is that,
why did an omni supposed, omni benevolent God and all
good God ever allow slavery, whether it was to progressively
get them there or not. I don't think that that
really matters, considering all of the minute things that God
requires of the Israelites and definitely expects them to follow.
I mean right down too. And this is a real
reference that you can use in the Bible. God expects
a certain kind of fire to be used to light
the incense in his temple, and there were there two
priests aaron sons that didn't use the right fire to
light his incense, and so God spontaneously combusted them. And
so with the fact that God definitely requires these laws
to be followed, these commandments to be followed, he could
easily issue a commandment like, hey, people aren't chattel. Don't
treat fellow human beings as chattel slaves. He could have
said that, but he didn't. Instead, he said, you may
buy your slaves from the nations around you, and they
may be your property, and you may bequeath them to
your children. So it's a lifelong service of slavery that
they cannot escape. And so that's what God directly says
in the book. He could have said otherwise and he
chose not to. There's a meme out there I post
sometimes that says God could have banned slavery, but he
banned shrimp instead, And that is the real.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he could say something right now, but he
chooses to, you know, just be the deadbeat deity or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he tends he's the world champion at Hide and Seek.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of people try to say.
Speaker 1: His appearances have a are strongly correlated in an inverse
relationship with the rise of cameras. All of a sudden,
the miracles and the talking to God and the God
visiting people goes way down as soon as we have
the our ability to record reality. So that's also an
interesting thing. So, Julie, thank you very much for your call.
It's been a long time here. I hope we got
your questions answered. Do you have anything else before we
wrap it up?
Speaker 6: No, but thank you very much. It was good to
discuss these things. So they've been on.
Speaker 1: My mind absolutely, Yeah, and I would encourage you to,
you know, try if you're interested, to have those good
faith questions with somebody, because you'll never know. If you say, hey,
could you explain me this passage? That passage you'll probably
get back with their pastors tells them. But sometimes you'll
get a wow, I didn't know about that. So maybe
maybe try one more volley with that person and see
what they say about some of those passages you cited,
and if you find any interesting results, give us a
call back.
Speaker 6: Okay, thanks to that.
Speaker 1: Thanks by Julie. So that was an interesting call. It
started out as sort of like, hey, let's talk about
this slavery thing.
Speaker 2: But that whole.
Speaker 1: I don't have to follow the law. Even this small
little no signs on the highway things sort of a
bigger concern for me. I don't know about you, where
there's this tendency in the Christian nationalist movement, especially to
say God is on our side, therefore it's okay if
our leaders are breaking laws, including the First Amendment, but
even just regular laws, you know, up to and including
corruption and bribery and all of those sorts of things.
To me, that's the worst of all worlds. That's where
you start seeing the thing that we always warn about
on this show, which is the scary part of religion,
is it's probably no big deal if you have these
quirky beliefs, but as soon as you think that you
know what this God wants, all of a sudden, nothing
will stop you. And that's to me, is scary. Are
you seeing those effects in your local area? I know
I'm seeing it at a national level and at my
local area. And I'm not even in the South.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: I'm in Maryland, which is technically in the South, but
it's not Southern.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And speaking as carefully as I can, it kind
of seems like to plenty of people in my state,
in particular, election laws do not matter, and especially eligibility laws.
I think that we need to be more focused on
following the law. But I think that it's kind of
funny that people that are out there yelling about law
and order, law and order are the first ones to
seem to want to bend or break the laws that seem.
Speaker 1: To you know, their needs laws for thee and not
for me. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, I was just gonna ask, are you ready for
our TikTok guests?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Please do bring them up? Okay.
Speaker 1: I know that you've got a connection to the TikTok things,
so I'm glad for you to to bring them on stage.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So we got Stumpy Nubs that's requesting up. Let's see
if Stumpy can get in here. He's loading in right now.
Hi there, Stumpy, are you over eighteen?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I'm definitely over eighteen. Cool.
Speaker 4: Cool, and then Reber pronouns.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure he heard us. There you go?
Speaker 4: Okay, Okay, cool, Stumping Nubs? What's up?
Speaker 3: What would you like to talk about today? There's Stumpy?
Speaker 2: Well, I think we have some delay on Stumpy's part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Stumpy I don't know if you can either get
on Wi Fi or get off Wi Fi.
Speaker 4: Hold on, I think we might hear something.
Speaker 2: Okay, I need the juice.
Speaker 1: Why why don't you just give us what you'd like
to talk about? We can get going on that. We
can't hear you, ump, no comperience. I don't know if
we had any prompt or anything like that, but we
can't hear you here. Maybe if we can hear you now,
got you now?
Speaker 2: All right? Perfect? Perfect? All right?
Speaker 7: So in Mark fourteen fifty one and fifty two it
talks about in the Greek it talks about a nianiskoi,
which is translated to a small slave child, And that's
in the story where Jesus is arrested and the small
slave child is with Jesus. So Jesus had a small
a slave child with him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Mark fourteen fifty one and fifty two it
says one of his followers was a young man who
was wearing only a linen garment. They seized hold of him,
but he ran off naked, leaving the garment behind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a very interesting that's an IV.
Speaker 1: Are you using a particular are you losing a particular? Translation,
because yeah, John, just read from NIV. Are you reading
a different translation?
Speaker 2: I'm going back to the original Greek where you have
do you I understand?
Speaker 1: But my question is do you have a big bolical
translation that we can look at that translates from the
Greek into slave.
Speaker 4: Uh? Yeah, well, I'm I'm looking it up right now.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 7: If you look up the word nia niskoi, you would
and it can't really be from a Biblical point of view,
because Biblical would be kind of biased.
Speaker 2: Towards, you know, Jesus being a great guy.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot a lot of the Biblical
translations that are not biased to be Jesus being a
good guy. A lot of the literal, like the literal
translation Bible is fairly neutral.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm not I'm not disputing you.
Speaker 1: I just trying to pull it up on my screen
so I can confirm what you're telling me.
Speaker 7: So if I was, I was using a Greek lexicon
when I was looking into it.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 7: So I mean I was using a couple of different
you know. I mean, obviously I was googling it and
then looking at the sources that were coming up, making
sure they were good sources, so that's not just Google worship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well so, so what I'm reading here is the naniscos.
Is that what you.
Speaker 2: Said, niskoi.
Speaker 7: There's a couple of different pronunciations, whether they're boys or girls,
but they're they're Yeah, it's it's an interesting category of
young men and women.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, well, I mean it says a young man youth,
you of a young attendant or servant, and servants in
this respect can be a bit, you know, on the
slave side, although I will say that Greek does have
a specific word doulos for slave that's.
Speaker 1: Used regardless of the hold on a second, regardless of
the great translation here. Just in my quick assessment using
some AI and some Google and looking at what the
academics are saying, the general consensus here is that this
was a bystander, whether it's a slave or not, That
this was not there's no indication of ownership by Jesus
of this person. It was just a bystander that this
happened to. Do you have any sort of response to that?
Speaker 2: Is that, are you familiar with the Bacchic rituals or the.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm asking, I'm asking in the text that
we have evidence I'm asking.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Understood, I'm asking in the text that we have, is
there anything that says This is a simple question. I'm
not trying to trap you or anything. I just want
to start to get you, okay. So is there anything
in the text that says Jesus owned a slave?
Speaker 7: Not directly, it is where I'm getting it is when
you look up the worship of Dionysus, it has all
the participants in that scripture, specifically for a particular worship
that includes Ananiskoi. There's a reason that he was wearing
a syndon. The syndon is particularly used with Dionysus worship.
So and it's it's a process that they go through.
Speaker 2: It's a ritual.
Speaker 4: I get that.
Speaker 3: But what I'm telling you right now is that throughout
the Gospels and Acts this is used to denote age
and not.
Speaker 4: Like you know the fact that the.
Speaker 7: Yes, I understand that it is. It denotes age, but
it also indicates the status because he's being referred to
out of all of the people. And if you look
at that scripture, right before he Jesus moves away from everybody,
he goes out alone into the garden to pray. But
all of a sudden there's this young child in like
a sheer cloth, you know, like out of nowhere. So
does Jesus not realize that he has this small boy
that's coming walking in behind him, you know?
Speaker 2: Or is he an attendant?
Speaker 7: If he's an attendant, then I would it would infer
of slavery and or more.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not exactly sure about the slavery aspect
of it, because it just seems to be like it
because it can be used for servants, right, which which
I agree.
Speaker 4: Can be conflated with a slave.
Speaker 3: But it seems to be more indicative of the age
of the person rather than their position.
Speaker 2: And I agree with you, I do not disagree with that,
And I would.
Speaker 7: Say a combination of both would give you where I'm
getting at. You know, it indicates the age that it
is a young man, and then also he is in
service to this this Jesus character.
Speaker 1: Nothing in the tip I've just read that whole chapter
from one through the end, Nothing in there indicates that
he is a servant to Jesus, that he's owned by Jesus.
It's literally Jesus goes away, Jesus comes back. Judas is
talking about what we need to do. A crowd shows up,
they arrest Jesus and oh, by away there was a
guy that ran away with naked. One could call it
a narrative flourish to here's something that happens in the
scripture all the time. I forget what the technical try
irm is called is used in these sorts of scriptures.
Speaker 2: But it is a flourish. It is a.
Speaker 1: Detail that's added to imply that there was some eyewitness account,
the argument being wow, they went out of their way
to say that there was this guy, and wow, he
had his clothes ripped off of him, his garment ripped
off him, and had to run away naked. Who else
but an eyewitness would say that. But nothing in what
I just read, and granted I'm only reading an IV
right now because it's fairly easy to go, but nothing
in here says in anywhere he even implies Jesus had
an owner slave relationship.
Speaker 2: With this boy.
Speaker 1: It really reads like a flourish that's just added to
try to establish like it was.
Speaker 2: A legit eyewitness.
Speaker 1: The same way that George Lucas went back to the
original Star Wars and added a bunch of robots around
and make it feel more realistic. That's what this line
seems to be. My second point before getting back to
you is if there was and this is this is
not I'm not saying that this is my argument. What
I'm saying is, this is a question for you, because
it sums up as I think I would have heard
it if there was serious academic discussion about whether or
not Jesus was a slaveholder. So when I look at this,
I see it looks like one of those punch up
lines from a script, making it look more realistic, almost comedy.
I don't see any discussion in this chapter about ownership,
and I think I would have heard of it if
there was any real evidence that there was an intent
to portray Jesus as a slaveholder, because that'd be a
great argument that we would use to say, hey, this
story is not good. So how would you respond to
all of those observations.
Speaker 7: So I would definitely say that the reference come.
Speaker 1: You've cut off. I don't know if you and just contemper,
could you repeat yourself this? You cut off right in
the middle of that. Go ahead, did you hear me?
Speaker 2: Now? We can hear you now, so go ahead.
Speaker 7: So I would say it definitely refers. It refers to
the worship of Dionysus. I think that that's really where
I'm getting at.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it across.
Speaker 7: It does not say it directly in the scripture, I
can see one hundred percent of that.
Speaker 2: However, it is implied.
Speaker 7: Through I mean, like you have the Alabaster with Mary
earlier in the Scripture of fourteen, where that is clearly
a Dionysus worship or excuse me, ah, it's clearly worship
of another God.
Speaker 3: Well, so, so there's there's there's a difference here in exo.
Speaker 4: Jesus and is of Jesus.
Speaker 3: And I feel like you're doing a bit of is
of Jesus here with your connection to Dionysus. And I
mean even in the Gospel of John where Jesus turns
water into wine, you could see like there have been people,
even scholars, that have tried to make a connection to Dionysus,
but even then that it's a weak connection. There's nothing
that directly connects it. There's just vague sort of similarities
in there. And I think that maybe what you might
be seeing, more so than a direct connection to Dionysus,
might be the underlying mystery cult aspect to Christianity, because
Christianity was a mystery cult Dionysus, the Dionysus cult was
also a mystery cult. But I would I would you
would probably be safer saying that there were that this
is evidence of mystery cult origins as opposed to a
direct connection to Dionysus, because I think that what you're
going to end up with in any kind of discussion
you have with anybody is that they're going to be like, no,
there's no connection to Dionysus here. But it would be
harder for them to be like, ah, there's no connection
to mystery cults, because mystery cults in general would would
have operated in similar ways. And I think that this
would be one of those scenes that you could potentially say, like, well,
this is the same thing that's done in the mystery culs.
Would be part of a culmination of arguments that you
could use to establish Christianity as a mystery cult rather
than any kind of direct influence from any one mystery cult.
Speaker 4: Does that make sense right?
Speaker 7: And I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying, because
obviously Jesus isn't Dionysus.
Speaker 2: You know, like we can clearly see that. However, where
I'm getting.
Speaker 7: At is you have with the story of Mary, specifically
she's got the alabaster. Well, if you look at the
back eye play, you see what that's used for, and
you see what it actually is.
Speaker 2: It's not what the church is translated into.
Speaker 7: It's something totally different, and it kind of makes the
story like wait a second, that that actually makes that
shit where work?
Speaker 1: You know, like in all fairness, yeah, no, I get
where you're coming from. I guess my question would be,
what would people do with this information. Let's assume there's
this very loose information, you know, uh, you could you
could take this to say, assuming customs of the time
were followed, and assuming this and assuming that this implies
that Jesus might have owned a slave. Right, So it's
a lot of assumings and you know evidence that's not
direct textual support. Right, So that's on one hand, this
but even if even if we could say that, let
me get to my sort of question here, even if
it say that that's okay, even if we could say that, yeah, no, no,
it really was the tradition of time and we had
time to do this on the show and not people
would say, so what, Jesus spent a lot of time
with slaves, Jesus spent times with prostitutes. This looks to
me like it's almost like a rom com where somebody's
going out the window naked, or you know whatever. It's
a it's a Keystone Cops moment or whatever. But even
if you could convince people that oh, yeah, that might
have been and what was implied by somebody at some
point in the history of writing all of this stuff down,
So what, like, is anybody going to change their belief
based on the possibility that maybe this might be somehow
implied by the author. And I'm not saying attacking your idea.
I'm just saying, like it it looks like it's not
that big of a deal.
Speaker 2: Go ahead.
Speaker 7: This is part of a bigger, bigger understanding that I
have gotten, and most of it originally it started with
The inspiration was doctor Amen Hillman, and I work with herbs,
and he has a book about ancient herbs, okay, and
what they were used for ancient ancient pharmacology.
Speaker 3: Am and Hillman's a piece of ship. By the way,
I don't know, I don't know if you know that
but he is wanted to go into that, John, Huh,
you'd care to elaborate, Well, yeah, I mean, Ammin Hillman's
been been pushing a whole bunch of conspiratorials stuff on
New Testament, new Testament deal, like New Testament ideas and
everything like that, and he's just been a really bad influence,
uh in the community in general. And so yeah, I
just I really don't I'm sorry, I really don't like
Almond Hillman. He's uh, I think that he's a really
bad influence on people. So through the spreading of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 7: Well if if these I like, I'm not necessarily disagreeing
or agreeing, like it's just the information source.
Speaker 2: Like I don't know the man personally, you know, Like,
well he's not right.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily fall into a genetic fallacy
other than the fact that he has a proven track
record of basically preaching crazy shit. And so I just
anything that you get from Emmin Hillman is just not
going to be a good source of information just because
of the fact that he is.
Speaker 4: He is that way.
Speaker 7: Well, I don't just listen to Amen Hillman, Like, I'm
not I'm not part of the group, the Satanic Congregation
as it may be. What I am, though, is I
am one that takes something from a source and I
backcheck it and I have found evidence that there's Honestly,
there's some that I haven't done, but there's some that
I have that it. Honestly, I don't see a problem
with what his interpretation is on some of it, like
it's there, and you know, with with.
Speaker 3: If the Dionysus thing is what you're saying is there
that it's not there and it's a demonstration of how
he's doing Dan.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that specifically. I'm saying like this, like
I'm very master specifically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but is this the same guy I think I'm
remembering who this is now? This is the same guy
that said the subtuagent is originally written in Greek and
that the Hubrew language didn't even exist.
Speaker 2: Is that the same guy not.
Speaker 7: The only guy that says that there's a couple of
people that.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're dealing with. Okay, yeah, I think now I
know who you're talking about, so let's leave him out
of it. I don't necessarily he lends any sort of expertise,
he claims if I recall correctly, he claims to be
an expert in Greek, and then he starts saying stuff
like the Hebrew language didn't exist, which seems like I've
not read any academic source that agrees with that. Now,
does that mean he's necessarily wrong, No, but I think
it's reasonable for me to reject his claims until I'm
presented with a little more rigorous study.
Speaker 2: So, but getting back to.
Speaker 1: My point, right, My point was, let's grant a few
things that this story follows some pattern that that mimics
or apes some traditions at the time that had to
do with slave ownership.
Speaker 2: So what well, question like, what so? But you're nowhere
close to that.
Speaker 1: The most, like, if I'm being generous, the most I
could give you would say, Okay, so this story has
elements that indicate that the author was aware of certain traditions, rights, rituals,
things like that. Right, And I'm going to ignore everything
I've read when I was googling this about you know
what the at academics. I'm going to ignore all of
that and grant that, Yeah, there's elements that indicate that
this person might have been a slave and it might
be related to this ritual or right thing. It doesn't
get you anywhere close to Jesus had an ownership relationship
with this person.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't.
Speaker 1: And I don't think anybody that cares about whether or
not the Bible is true is going to hinge any
decision based on this sort of you know, chain of
what ifs that leads you to the possibility that there's
a chance that this might have been the case. I agree, Like,
if we had more information, that would be stunning. Like
if we've unearthed some trove of documents that are authenticated
as coming from the same pen as the earliest examples
we have of the Gospel, than those documents say Jesus
owned slaves, that would change everything, right, that would be amazing.
But we don't have We're not nowhere close to that,
even if we give you all the toys to play with.
Speaker 2: That's my point.
Speaker 9: Do you see that I get where you're coming from,
and I don't necessarily I would have to look into
it more and really process before I give a full assessment,
because I mean, this is just a conversation on TikTok,
you know, yeh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I support you. I would
My next statement was going to be. Go out and
start writing on it. Go out and do the research
and write down and be honest with yourself. What is
the evidence I have, What are the logical steps to
get from what the words are in the scripts? Write
out your argument to the conclusion you're like, you'd like
to propose and be honest about what the best conclusion
can be that is supported by the evidence. And if
you get to a point where you can say it's
reasonable to conclude that this this means that Jesus owned
a slave, then publish it and get it reviewed.
Speaker 7: Sure, like that would be I get where you're coming from.
I'm more of a fence builder and a guy on
TikTok than peer reviewed study because I don't know of
too many peers of mine that would be reading this,
But I appreciate what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Well, the peers would be academics who on both sides of.
Speaker 7: The fence, right that would yeah, yeah, I'm I'm giving
here's a hobby.
Speaker 1: And I've read papers from people who started out as
fence builders and started out as like any you know,
any profession.
Speaker 2: Science does not discriminate wholeheartedly.
Speaker 1: There are gates you have to go through obviously, but
if you've got facts on your side, you can make
an argument and make a name for yourself.
Speaker 2: So I would encourage that. What are your thoughts, John.
Speaker 4: I mean yeah, I would.
Speaker 3: I would suggest that you do better research, with better,
better sources on it, just because of Amman, you know,
being conspiratorial in nature and everything like that, and it
kind of shows with you know, some with a lot
of the things that he says.
Speaker 4: About, you know, the Bible and and everything.
Speaker 3: So yeah, definitely look outside of one source or especially
Crackpont sources.
Speaker 4: So definitely do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I agree.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I definitely understand where you're coming from. I definitely understand.
And the thing is is, I'm in Hillman is not
my exclusive source understood. Like I have gone in and
looked through the lexicons myself. So if my research is incorrect,
it's coming from the lexicons themselves. Like I'm looking up
the word means boy, and I'm looking at all of
that active.
Speaker 4: The lexicons are not wrong.
Speaker 3: You're just trying to force an understanding that's not in
the text.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the classical mistake that atheists make all the time.
The classic I'm explaining, I'm explaining it to you. The
classic mistake that atheists and Christians make all the time
is they go and they don't they don't take they
don't go to seminary school, they don't go and learn Greek,
they don't go and learn Hebrew. And they take a
word and they run it through like what do what
are these translations?
Speaker 2: What are the meanings?
Speaker 1: And then they take another statement that says, look, this
is the original text for the English translation of this
particular passage, this verse, and it has this word in it.
Speaker 2: Therefore the meaning must be x right.
Speaker 1: And any academic I know, but I'm telling you this
is the type of mistake. It feels like this is
the category mistake of saying I don't know as much
as I need to know to actually make this judgment.
And any any academic I've ever read will say things like, well,
this usually means this, but sometimes it means this, and
we can't tell because of this blah blah blah blah,
or it was used this way in all the other
sections of the document that were written at the same
time by the same authors, So it's safe to assume
that this means this, et cetera. That's the level of
analysis that I think you should get to. So go
learn your Greek, go learn your Hebrew, and don't trust
on just translating one or two words or one sentence,
et cetera, and not know the context of everything, and
then we could still be wrong, Like I could go
study Greek, learn to all read it, and then not
know my history, which you appear to do. Where you're
talking about the rights and the rituals that were customed
at the time, So I may mistranslate this based on
not understanding the customs of the time. So I'm not
saying you're making that exact mistake. What I'm saying is
it feels like something where we're focusing way in on
one word and making a whole bunch of conclusions.
Speaker 7: And see I'm not when I say I'm translating it
word for word, I'm doing that. I'm doing a variety
of things. The other thing, one of the main things
that I do is look for contemporaries to the writings
outside of the Bible, so I can see what was
being used contemporary, you know, so the vernaculars and all
the So I'm not just willing nearly saying oh Almend's
right and fuck it.
Speaker 5: All.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, not by any means, Like I'm not talking.
I didn't say I didn't use Amend's name in that
whole thing. I just said, no, I understand.
Speaker 1: I was talking about that your category of mistake where
you know, we we know enough to think we can
make a conclusion, but we don't really know enough because
we haven't studied it. So, uh, you saying you're going
to get contemporary sources and all of that sort of stuff,
that's exactly the type of stuff you should be doing,
and the stuff that could lead to publishing a paper.
Speaker 2: I don't want to discourage yet. Yeah, like I have.
Speaker 7: I may be a mere fence builder, but my brothers
and sisters were a little bit smarter than me, got
a better degree, So like I know how to do
all that process. You know, not personally, but I have.
I should say it this way, I have access to
knowing how to do all of that if I just
didn't never thought about it being a fence builder. You know,
they're like, well you should think about it. Anyways, You
guys have more guests. Thank you for your understanding and
your conversation. You guys have a great day.
Speaker 1: Thanks you all right, see you stumpy, So John, when
you keyed in on Amen, hill I couldn't remember Hillman,
I should say, I couldn't remember. And then it hit
me and I remember the article that Richard Carrier wrote
last year, and I googled it and I found it.
The title is am and Hillman is not telling you
the truth. The Gospels do not describe pedophilia, and no
one was getting high on vaginas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has a lot of quacky things, but like
the one thing that I would probably hone in on
on that particular verse and Mark isn't isn't the the
you know, the whole discrepancy between servants and slaves and
all that kind of stuff, because that's really a go
in someplace where.
Speaker 4: The word in the way that its Jews is not going.
It's just the youth.
Speaker 3: My question would be, why is Jesus walking around with
a small naked boy like it Like that's kind of
a questionable thing. It's like is this a Michael Jackson thing?
Like who knows what's going on? Like it just I
feel like it provokes more questions, and it should provoke
more questions than that, like is Jesus.
Speaker 1: Like because it doesn't even say that. It doesn't even
say he was walking around. It doesn't even say he's
with Jesus. It just says this thing happened and a
kid ran away. Fact, Like that's it.
Speaker 4: So I would think that.
Speaker 3: You would be like, Jesus, why is there a naked
boy running out from behind you?
Speaker 4: Like, what's going on here, buddy?
Speaker 1: Like Yeah, if we had that level of detail in
the Gospels or any of this stuff, it would be
great because then you could then you could examine the
like the script, the scenes. But it just says everyone
deserted him and fled. A young man wearing nothing but
a linen garment was following Jesus, just a follower. When
they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.
So it's Keystone cops. I'm a follower of Jesus, I'm
wearing clothes. They come to arrest them, there's a kerfuffle,
they try to grab the kid, his clothes are ripped off,
and he runs away. Nothing in that implies sex or
slavery or anything that's like, that's the extent of it.
And if you're going to make the argument that all
people wearing this particular clothes because he used this particular
word were slaves, then you still have work to go
to say and he was Jesus's slave, because there's nothing
there either. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then after you ask Jesus, you know that, it's like, hey,
why is that kid running away from you?
Speaker 4: He's like, he's not doing anything wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the legal world, where it's like,
you know, if I'm going to accept something like Jesus
was a slaveholder, it's got to pass some level of trial,
because that trial it would be like, is Jesus known
for hanging out with prostitutes?
Speaker 2: Yes? Is Jesus known for hanging out with slaves? Yes?
Speaker 1: Is there anything in here that says he was doing anything?
Is there anything anywhere else in the Gospels.
Speaker 2: That talks about Jesus owning slaves?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Is you know, is there anything that says anybody that's
wearing this document is always a slave and belongs to
the nearest fictional character in their vicinity.
Speaker 2: No, Like, there's nothing here.
Speaker 1: So I get it's interesting, and as a hobby, go
for it. Go explore this, read up your history, read
multiple sources, learn Greek, learn history, and then decide whether
or not there's it's worth the effort to try to
propose that Jesus owned a slave, because if you could
convince people that this is true, it would actually be
mind bending for the Christian community. I think, maybe in
a good way for some people.
Speaker 3: Well, and I mean he was talking about using you know,
looking at the wider ancient context for him, and I mean, yeah, sure,
you could possibly do that, and you might come up
with some references. But my guess is that that probably
uses in conjunction with something else in order to indicate
like a young slave.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: In other and other things, especially in the Gospels, they
do have a word that they use for slave, and
that's dolos. If you look in Luke one eight, Mary
calls herself a slave of God and to indicate that,
you know, she has no choice but to you know,
allow God to impregnate her, which is a violation in
and of itself. But so like there is a word
for it, I would expect this word to be used
in conjunction with that word in some kind of way
in order to communicate that he was a young slave.
Speaker 4: But even then, you know, you would.
Speaker 3: Need to connect Jesus, you know, as being the owner
of this young slave in much of the same way
that Mary says, I am your slave lord in that
kind of way.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, there's a lot of way.
Speaker 3: There's a long way that you have to go in
order to make that argument work. I would focus on, like,
why is there a young naked boy running away from
you know, when Jesus is getting caught or whatever, Like,
I feel like that's a question that probably needs to
be answered first.
Speaker 1: Oh, I genuinely read it as one of the I
forget what it's called. I wish I knew the name
of academics on the Christian and non Christian when they
read the Bible will identify little phrases and scenes that
they say, this feels like we believe this was put
in here to it's fictional. It's a touch to try
to imply that this is from an eyewitness, Like if
it wasn't for him an eyewitness, you wouldn't have this
level of detail. Oh remember that guy that where the
cops came and grabbed his clothes and ripped him off
and he ran away naked. That seems like an eyewitness detail,
but it's not. Like so it really feels like that.
Let's change it from a slave to a prostitute, right,
because Jesus ministry to protutes all the time, and we
have the cops to show up, rip the clothes off
the girl, she runs away and cut to Jesus.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: You know that's that's the implication, But you just don't
there's no there's nothing there yet, Like there's a lot
of more work to do. And to one more point
I want to make with you, and I think this
is extremely important. The level of skepticism that you were
showing that I thoroughly encourage, I think should be recognized
that happens in the atheistic community when we're presented with
claims that aren't supported by evidence that would actually help
us if we're true, Like it would help our argument
to say Jesus was a slave owner, Jesus slept with prostitutes,
like all of that stuff would be would be, would
make it easier to demonstrate that this fictional character is
not as moral as as you make.
Speaker 2: Him to be.
Speaker 1: But if there's no supporting evidence for it, we reject
it because you haven't convinced us. So do you run
into that sometimes, John, where people call up with this
sort of like conspiracy theories about the Bible or something,
and it would be great, like, hey, this proves that
God was What was that movie that starts by saying like, hey,
all the Christianity relates to the signs of the zodiac
and then went on later to talk about nine to eleven.
It was this big, big film like ten to fifteen
years ago.
Speaker 4: Was it Zeitgeist?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah Zeitgeist is like the bane of everybody's existence, and
primarily because like that's what you know, I guess alerted
a lot of people to the idea of mythicism, and
it kind of like, you know, it might have gotten
people started down a path, but it was definitely like
it is bad, yeah, an obvious bad path the.
Speaker 4: Way that they go about it in that movie.
Speaker 3: So but but yeah, I do, I mean sometimes I
do get those, uh, and it's actually spurred in some respects.
It's spurred on like the the research that I've done
that I'm actually going to be writing about and hopefully
trying to get put into journals. You know, like there's
an idea that none of the New Testament documents existed
before the second century, and that that was all written
by Marcian or either Marcian Martian school, no Marcian or
a school of Martian Marcian you got me saying it
Marcian like scholars or not scholars but church leaders or
something like that, you know, authoring them and everything. And uh,
it's actually spurred my own research into that area, using
some stylometric tools and everything. So uh but yeah, I
mean that kind of skepticism at least led me down
that road, being like, I need to be able to
prove this, like, you know, accurately, and once you actually
find out that you can't do that, like, I mean,
it's a bit disappointing because it's like, how great of
an argument would that be, Like Jesus owned a slave,
especially a little slave boy like that. That seems to
be something that you would want to bust out. But
it's like, you know, here's an example of that. Right,
if you're a Civil War era slave holding Southerner, you
would be parading that scripture in front of everybody, right,
you would be saying, look, not only does God say
in the Old Testament to own slaves, Jesus him self
owned a slave. If it were that clear, it would
be front and center in the discussion. During the abolitionist movement.
Speaker 1: Prior to the Civil War, and I've never heard of
it in all the books I've read, so.
Speaker 2: It seems like it's not that clear.
Speaker 1: It's like it's a big bunch of bunch of jumps,
jumping to conclusions. Okay, So we want to send a
big thank out, thank you out to the people that
make this show happen every single week, and that is
our crew.
Speaker 2: They put the show together.
Speaker 1: We have video operators, audio operators, note takers, call screeners.
There they are chat my iterators, all of them fully clothed,
not running from the police naked for now that you
can see on camera. These guys really do an amazing job.
They're the people that really bring this on the air.
We have multiple shows in a row today, We've got
crew switching out, we have hosts switching out. It's a
technological wonder that it goes so smoothly every time. I
really do applaud them. Speaking of our crew, would you
like to be a crew member? Would you like to
be a guest on one of our shows? Would you
like to eventually become a host. Well, we're always looking
for new helpers, new talent, new volunteers to come in
and be a part of our production. So if you're interested,
please do email volunteer at Atheist Hyphencommunity dot org to
get invited. It's been only two callers. Very interesting, No,
I'm very disappointed, quite frankly, John, that we didn't get
anybody to come in and defend our statement that the
Bible endorses slavery. Any final thoughts on that concept?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and I mean, the Bible endorses several different
forms of slavery, and there's several different ways in order
to engage this particular topic.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's the the whole.
Speaker 3: Morality I guess of or the ethics of owning slaves
chattel slaves in what ways did the Israelites own slaves?
In what ways did God confirm that you could own slaves?
And then you know, you can get into the larger
question of why doesn't for the Christians out there, why
does an omni benevolent God ever attempt to even regulate
slavery people being owned as slaves?
Speaker 4: And you know, why does he do that?
Speaker 3: Why does he list women as property in in in
his Holy book? And why why does this suppose omniscient
being who is also omni benevolent? Why is he doing
any of this stuff when it's very obvious to us
slowly humans that we are that it is bad to
own another person as a channel slave. If we can
come to that conclusion, then God should have already known that,
and so that makes it an evil act, which by
evil what I'm referring to there is a deliberate harm
that's done to somebody or people. And I feel like
God in this particular respect in the Bible, the character
of God in the Bible is definitely doing evil in
that particular sense.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I totally agree with everything said. I really don't have
much to add. I will add as we bring up
if the crew can magic our backup host Kelly Laughlin
onto our screen to say hi, I will bring up
a quote. I have a favorite quote I have from
Robert G. Ingersoll, who was an atheist lawyer born in
eighteen thirty period eighteen thirty one thirty two thirty three.
Somewhere there he wrote this thing about the ten commandments.
You can google the whole thing, but my quote that
I think is relevant. He wrote, if Jehovah had been civilized,
he would have left out the commandment about keeping the
Sabbath and in its place would have said thou shalt
not enslave thy fellow men. He would have left out
the one about graven images and instead sow this excuse
me would have said thou shalt not wage wars of
extermination and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in
self defense. I you know, this is eighteen thirty.
Speaker 2: They're doing this. So Kelly thoughts, my thoughts Ingersoll was
a genius.
Speaker 8: I mean, that's I could say that perfect.
Speaker 1: So yeah, about your thoughts on the show, then I agree,
you're not going to get argue it with me.
Speaker 8: I you know, my biggest thought about the whole show
today was we didn't get We didn't hear the main
excuse that I always hear about slavery, that it was
different times.
Speaker 2: Then yep, yeah it is.
Speaker 8: So that was absent and I was really expecting to
hear that today and I was but interesting show. We
had a couple of good conversations. I did not hear
a good defense of slavery in the Bible at all.
Speaker 1: So no, maybe anybody listening might be able to call
in next week and give us this defense. Here's what
you're going to hear if you go to your pastor,
and you tell them all this, you're going to hear
what Kelly just said.
Speaker 2: It was different times. Sometimes it was.
Speaker 1: Not the same type of slavery as you're thinking about now.
The argument there is so what a it was b
Even if it wasn't, it's still owning another person that
that's morally repugnant. And then you're also here. God was
a political gradualist. He knew he couldn't outlaws slavely outright,
even though as godless.
Speaker 2: But I heard that one in a long time.
Speaker 1: So you use the wrong slave, and I'm going to
turn you into pillars of flame. Why couldn't he have
done that for you own a person?
Speaker 2: Boom?
Speaker 8: I hear that one all the time too, and always
wonder well, why couldn't God change people's hearts like he
changed Pharaoh's.
Speaker 2: Heart right right, right, right right right at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems, as I said in the intro, full
throated endorsement of slavery. And we know why. We all
know why sitting here. This is a product of a
tradition starting in the Bronze Age with goat herders who
were illiterate and didn't know where the sun went at night.
They had oral traditions, they wrote them down, and then
the thing became a political tool to create laws and
dictate behavior, and part of that was, Hey, we've got slaves,
how should we treat them?
Speaker 2: That's what the book is, at least in my take.
Speaker 1: But I'd be glad to be proven otherwise. So please
call back next week. Any final thoughts there.
Speaker 3: John, You know, I would say that I'm really surprised
that we didn't get anybody calling in to say that, Oh, well,
God was, you know, progressively getting better. That's another excuse
is that he had to progressively inch them along to
war words. And it just it kind of amazes me
that it takes what thirty five hundred years for God
to progress people towards not owning slaves, and even then
it lingers about in several different forms in our modern timeframe,
and it's led to many prejudices and everything like that,
when God could have easily stopped all that by just
being like, hey, don't own slaves, don't own slaves.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but the Bible has been used
up until the writing time of Ingersoll the eighteen thirties,
it was used exclusively to justify slavery, and only when
the Enlightenment had happened and we brought eye ideas of
morality that are independent of some deity, and we started
rejecting the divinity of kings, and we had these philosophers
come down. Did people reconsider what the Bible said? And
then they when they realized, you know, slaves or human
slavery's bad, they went back into the text, renegotiation with
the text and found pieces to say, we're abolitionists. Now
you shouldn't own slaves because this book says be nice
to your neighbors even though you bought slaves from.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was kind of like the humanist movement of
the early nineteenth century in Great Britain really kind of
got the ball rolling on that one. Yes, exactly, and
I'll grant it most of those people were Christian humanists,
but Christians had absolutely Christians had eighteen hundred years to
end slavery before that. It was the humanist part, not
the Christian part, that ended.
Speaker 2: It exactly exactly. The books existed forever.
Speaker 1: It was only once other things happened that people renegotiated
with the text and came up to a different conclusion.
Speaker 2: Because it's the great, big book of multiple choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I always point out that they had to reinterpret the
Bible in order to propose the abolitionist side, whereas the
slave holding side, the south side, the Confederates, all.
Speaker 4: They had to do was just read written from the.
Speaker 2: Book black and white words. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, I'm sorry, I'm just over here being
literate and reading God's word. That's a That's one thing
that I like to tell people. It's like, oh, I'm
so sorry that I'm literate and I can read. And
even then, you know, then they might say it was like, well,
go back to the original Hebrew. It's like, okay, fine,
let's bring up the Hebrew. And that that's when because
like if you're call, if you know how to look
up the interleanar and analyze words how they're using all
that kind of good stuff.
Speaker 4: You know, if you if you take the time.
Speaker 3: To learn how to do that, then you can definitely
shut them down quick because it's like it's very obvious
in the Hebrew that it's like, yep, that's a slave,
like because in the Hebrew it does conflate both a servant,
like an indentured servant, and a slave. It's all in
how they're treated. And so like you would only know
that if you knew like the Hebrew and the surrounding
context of the Hebrew.
Speaker 1: Correct, And that's extremely well documented discussed ad nauseum in
the academic literature. As opposed to naked boy wearing a
bearing a certain piece of clothing, it means he's Jesus' slave.
Just to bring it back to that, like, there's oh.
Speaker 3: Long, this we can go on and somehow connected to
a drunk God.
Speaker 1: That's that's the zeitgeist Part two.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks everybody, please call back next week,
especially if you've figured out why God endorses slavery.
Speaker 2: We'll talk to you then, Bye bye, see you on
the internet.
Speaker 10: To stop already, stop the hemry around you, buy shit. Welcome.
Speaker 2: Watch Talking Than Live Sundays at one pm Central.
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