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