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Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to my channel Vice Rhino. Here today,
Speaker 3: I'm looking at one of Mike Winger's twenty questions live streams.
Speaker 3: I'm only focusing on the first question for this one,
Speaker 3: as the majority of the questions he addresses are either
Speaker 3: rather dull or have already been responded to by other creators.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's a couple in there that I'll get into
Speaker 3: in later videos, but I don't plan on turning this
Speaker 3: into a series, as I did with his response to
Speaker 3: an atheist article. So the question we're addressing today is
Speaker 3: does scripture promote evil things? To which the answer is
Speaker 3: a very obvious yes. All you have to do is
Speaker 3: look at the various passage on slavery. There are other
Speaker 3: issues where the answer is slightly more nuanced and might
Speaker 3: depend on what you mean by promote, but given that
Speaker 3: there are rules about who you're allowed to keep as
Speaker 3: a permanent chattel slave in the Old Testament, as well
Speaker 3: as commands for slaves to obey their masters, even the
Speaker 3: cruel ones in the New Testament, and commands for Christian
Speaker 3: slave owners to just not threaten their slaves rather than
Speaker 3: set them free, than any reasonable understanding of what the
Speaker 3: word promote means will apply. The Bible promotes slavery, but
Speaker 3: I'm sure we'll get into that in more detail later,
Speaker 3: so let's take a look before we get into it, though,
Speaker 3: just a quick content warning. This one gets into the
Speaker 3: topic of rape, including some biblical instances of child rape.
Speaker 3: I don't go into graphic detail at any point, but
Speaker 3: I understand that that might still be a very difficult
Speaker 3: and painful topic for some people. So if that's you,
Speaker 3: feel free to skip this one.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get to the first question today before
Speaker 2: I tell you more about any of that stuff, and
Speaker 2: that is this one quite a challenging one. I've been
Speaker 2: challenged the anonymous question it says I've been challenged with
Speaker 2: the accusation that the Bible promotes killing, rape, and slavery,
Speaker 2: quoting numbers thirty one fifteen through eighteen.
Speaker 3: So yeah, this is a verse where we need to
Speaker 3: get into exactly what is meant by promote if you're
Speaker 3: not familiar. Numbers thirty one fifteen through eighteen is Moses
Speaker 3: explaining that allowing women to live after conquering a city
Speaker 3: will result in them corrupting the people of Israel, causing
Speaker 3: them to act treacherously against the Lord, and thus forcing
Speaker 3: God to kill a bunch of them with a plague.
Speaker 3: So to avoid that, kill every man, woman, and male child,
Speaker 3: but keep the female children alive for yourselves. In context,
Speaker 3: it arguably gets worse. They've already conquered the Midianites and
Speaker 3: taken a bunch of women captive. So not only was
Speaker 3: Moses commanding child rape, he was also commanding the execution
Speaker 3: of civilian prisoners of war as a way of exterminating
Speaker 3: their culture, also known as genocide. So does this count
Speaker 3: as the Bible promoting killing, rape, and slavery. I could
Speaker 3: see how someone could argue that it does to promote
Speaker 3: something is to actively encourage that thing. And this is
Speaker 3: not a command for modern readers of the Bible to follow,
Speaker 3: but just a story about something that did happen sure,
Speaker 3: Presumably Moses, the guy who could speak directly to God
Speaker 3: and was God's representative on Earth at the time, was
Speaker 3: commanding genocide and rape as a proxy for God, meaning
Speaker 3: that it was God commanding genocide and rape. But it's
Speaker 3: still not a command for later readers, it's a retelling
Speaker 3: of events. Of course, this is a matter of interpretation somewhat.
Speaker 3: The Bible is a slippery book that even though most
Speaker 3: modern Christians will talk about this like I just have
Speaker 3: pointing out that it's a story of something that did happen,
Speaker 3: not a command from God to continue doing it. There
Speaker 3: still have been Christians throughout the years who have seen
Speaker 3: these examples of holy genocide commanded by God and decided
Speaker 3: that they were meant as an example of how to
Speaker 3: act in war, leading to holy war's galore. But whether
Speaker 3: you see it as actively promoting bad things or just
Speaker 3: telling a story of a time when bad things happen,
Speaker 3: it is a true statement that the telling of these
Speaker 3: bad things is attempting to them in a positive light,
Speaker 3: meaning that whoever wrote this section of the Bible did
Speaker 3: not see a problem with completely wiping out another culture
Speaker 3: or forcing little girls into sex slavery, which then leads
Speaker 3: us to wondering, why would we want the God that
Speaker 3: Mike believes wrote that book to be the source of morality,
Speaker 3: even if this wasn't technically an instance of promoting those behaviors.
Speaker 2: So let me say there's two things going on here.
Speaker 2: We're going to read the passage in numbers, but there's
Speaker 2: two things going on here, at least in my opinion,
Speaker 2: and the two things are one understanding things in context.
Speaker 3: Which in this case makes it worse, as it takes
Speaker 3: us from the already heinous killing in sex slavery to
Speaker 3: outright genocide.
Speaker 2: That is, actually knowing what the Bible says, because for
Speaker 2: someone to say that the Bible supports killing, rape, and
Speaker 2: slavery is manifestly wrong.
Speaker 3: Leviticus twenty five forty four through forty six. As for
Speaker 3: your male and female slaves whom you may have, you
Speaker 3: may buy male female slaves from among the nations that
Speaker 3: are around you. You may also buy from among the
Speaker 3: strangers who sojourn with you, and their clans that are
Speaker 3: with you, who have been born into your land, And
Speaker 3: they may be your property. You may bequeath them to
Speaker 3: your sons after you, to inherit as possessions forever you
Speaker 3: may make slaves of them, But over your brothers, the
Speaker 3: people of Israel, you shall not rule one over another ruthlessly.
Speaker 3: Is it manifestly wrong to say that that passage supports slavery.
Speaker 3: Rape at least gets treated as a crime, albeit is
Speaker 3: a property crime against the man who owns the rape victim,
Speaker 3: with some cases having the punishment for rape being for
Speaker 3: the rapist to marry the victim and in others for
Speaker 3: the rapist to be executed, and should the rape have
Speaker 3: happened in a town, the rape victim also gets executed
Speaker 3: along with their rapist. It's like the authors of the
Speaker 3: Bible knew that rape was wrong, but they didn't know
Speaker 3: why it's wrong for killing. The Bible lays out the
Speaker 3: death penalty for all sorts of scenarios, everything from gathering
Speaker 3: sticks on the wrong day of the week to being
Speaker 3: a disobedient teenager, to being gay and more. Of course,
Speaker 3: Mike would likely defend that by pointing out that those
Speaker 3: are executions for breaking the law, not extra judicial killing,
Speaker 3: which kind of distracts from the fact that the law
Speaker 3: calling for the death penalties for these ridiculous reasons is
Speaker 3: immoral in and of itself. But also finay Has in
Speaker 3: numbers twenty five took it upon himself to murder a
Speaker 3: couple for committing the crime of being a mixed race couple.
Speaker 3: The result being that God was pleased with finay Has
Speaker 3: and lifted the plague that had been afflicting Israel. Yes,
Speaker 3: strictly speaking, they wouldn't have been mixed race in the
Speaker 3: way we understand race today, but they were from different tribes,
Speaker 3: and that story has definitely been used to oppose allowing
Speaker 3: mixed race couples as recently as the nineteen sixties, and
Speaker 3: by the nineteen sixties, I mean literally still to this day.
Speaker 3: There's even a Twitter account that has the handle at
Speaker 3: numbers twenty five eight, and the user named Fina has
Speaker 3: tweeting out things like America for whites. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: guess add racism to the list of bad things that
Speaker 3: are promoted by the Bible.
Speaker 2: So that you can do you could show the passages
Speaker 2: in context, talk about them, and we'll work through some
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 3: Okay, But how do you deal with the fact that
Speaker 3: the context makes it worse? Honestly, specific to slavery, that's
Speaker 3: where I've seen some of the most egregious cases of
Speaker 3: people taking verses out of context, and the people doing
Speaker 3: that are the apologists. Like that time when Alan Parr
Speaker 3: put a graphic cup in his video that says that
Speaker 3: Exodus twenty one five through six says, but if the
Speaker 3: servant declares, I love my master dot dot dot, and
Speaker 3: I do not want to go free dot dot dot,
Speaker 3: then he will be his servant for life, when in
Speaker 3: reality it says, but if the servant declares, I love
Speaker 3: my master and my wife and children and do not
Speaker 3: want to go free, then his master must take him
Speaker 3: before the judges. He shall take him to the door
Speaker 3: or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an all.
Speaker 3: Then he will be his servant for life. So Alan
Speaker 3: took out the parts of the verse that mentions the
Speaker 3: slave's wife and children and the part where they are
Speaker 3: physically disfigured to be marked as permanent slaves. And if
Speaker 3: we read the surrounding context, the reason the wife and
Speaker 3: children are brought up here is because it says in
Speaker 3: verse four, if his master gives him a wife and
Speaker 3: she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her
Speaker 3: children shall belong to her master, and only the man
Speaker 3: shall go free. So he took a passage that clearly
Speaker 3: has a slave owner holding a temporary slaves family hostage
Speaker 3: in order to press them into becoming permanent slaves, and
Speaker 3: tried to turn it into a passage that says that
Speaker 3: slavery is voluntary and temporary, with some slaves being treated
Speaker 3: so well that they've choose to become permanent slaves. In
Speaker 3: my experience, Christian apologists are far more likely to be
Speaker 3: ignoring the larger context of a verse than the atheists.
Speaker 2: The idea of killing. I mean, God forbids killing. You
Speaker 2: shall not kill, you shall not murder in particular.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, but the Bible also says if a man
Speaker 3: lies with a male, as with a woman, both of
Speaker 3: them have committed an abomination, they shall surely be put
Speaker 3: to death. Their blood is upon them. So you can't
Speaker 3: say that it does not promote killing. Best you can
Speaker 3: do is hype up the distinction between executing someone for
Speaker 3: insignificant crimes and murder.
Speaker 2: And so the Bible doesn't support killing, Like someone's going
Speaker 2: to go out and just start killing people and be
Speaker 2: like the Bible supports me killing people like Obviously, this
Speaker 2: is a crass, horrible, and immoral way to try to
Speaker 2: represent scripture.
Speaker 3: Is really crass an immoral to represent scripture as saying
Speaker 3: the thing is that Scripture says, and interpreting it in
Speaker 3: a way that Christians have interpreted it. You can say
Speaker 3: that your interpretation is that it doesn't promote killing and
Speaker 3: claim that your interpretation is the correct interpretation, but that
Speaker 3: doesn't change the fact that plenty of people have been
Speaker 3: murdered in Jesus' name, with the murderers invoking scripture as
Speaker 3: their justification. Hell Jesus himself said, but as for these
Speaker 3: enemies of mine who did not want me to reign
Speaker 3: over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me
Speaker 3: in Luke nineteen twenty seven. Now, sure that was in
Speaker 3: a parable. He wasn't literally telling his disciples to go
Speaker 3: out and kill people, but the parable was about how
Speaker 3: God's subjects should act while waiting for the Kingdom of
Speaker 3: God to appear. Super easy to interpret that as a
Speaker 3: command to, you know, slaughter people that are seen as
Speaker 3: enemies of God.
Speaker 2: And then in slavery, I mean, if the rules in
Speaker 2: the Bible that were regulating a practice that was world
Speaker 2: has been worldwide for most of human history, slavery, if
Speaker 2: those rules have been put in place during state early America,
Speaker 2: all this slavers would have been executed.
Speaker 3: So your defensive slavery in the Bible is that everyone
Speaker 3: was doing it and some people did it worse. Dude,
Speaker 3: you believe that the commandments in Exodus were given to
Speaker 3: Moses on Mount sign I write after the Hebrews had
Speaker 3: been freed from slavery. What better time to pass on
Speaker 3: a command to not enslave people? But no, the law
Speaker 3: on Exodus is about the proper way to keep slaves,
Speaker 3: which includes beating them to within an inch of their life,
Speaker 3: coercing people into becoming permanent slaves by holding their families hostage.
Speaker 3: And as temporary as the slavery was for men, no
Speaker 3: such restriction was on women. They are permanent slaves.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I've often heard preachers talk about how special Jesus was
Speaker 3: because his teachings were so radical for the culture that
Speaker 3: he was in, which isn't entirely true, but let's just
Speaker 3: go with that. The argument for why Jesus was so
Speaker 3: special is because of how radically his teachings diverged from
Speaker 3: cultural norms. But as soon as slavery comes up, suddenly
Speaker 3: the all powerful creator of the universe has to give
Speaker 3: into peer pressure. Everybody's doing it. How do you expect
Speaker 3: the all powerful, all knowing creator of everything to have
Speaker 3: done any better than just the average culture at the time.
Speaker 3: What a weak god you worship?
Speaker 2: Did you hear me?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I heard you describe how weak and pathetic your
Speaker 3: God is.
Speaker 2: Right, and slaves, if they ran away from somebody who
Speaker 2: is a slave owner, they would the town they ran
Speaker 2: to would be forced to provide them a place to
Speaker 2: stay and required not to send them back to the
Speaker 2: person they ran from.
Speaker 3: Yep, that is one of the laws regarding slavery in
Speaker 3: the Bible. Worst case scenario from my side of the
Speaker 3: argument here is that this means there are contradictions in
Speaker 3: the Bible. In one book, it not only says that
Speaker 3: slavery is okay, it gives detailed instructions on exactly how
Speaker 3: to perpetuate the institution of slavery, and in another it
Speaker 3: offers protection for escaped slaves. But as it turns out,
Speaker 3: there are a number of potential interpretations of this verse.
Speaker 3: One is that, since it comes immediately after rules about
Speaker 3: how military camp is to be organized, the escape slaves
Speaker 3: are presumably from the enemy army, and it just makes
Speaker 3: good tactical sense to take them in and hope that
Speaker 3: the other slaves realize that the Hebrews will take them
Speaker 3: in and provide for them if they escape, thus encouraging
Speaker 3: their enemy slaves to escape, making the enemy army weaker
Speaker 3: as a result. Another interpretation hinges on the fact that
Speaker 3: the escape slave is given a choice of all the
Speaker 3: Hebrew towns to live in. This makes it clear that
Speaker 3: it's an escape slave from one of the other nations
Speaker 3: in the area, not from somewhere else in Israel, and
Speaker 3: the command is meant to honor God. If the slave
Speaker 3: is escaping into Israel, then clearly that's because they want
Speaker 3: to worship the Hebrew God, and it would be a
Speaker 3: dishonor to God to turn that person away. So rather
Speaker 3: than being a case of the Bible being against slavery,
Speaker 3: it's merely just a way that they're supposed to treat
Speaker 3: escape slaves from other nations so that they can look
Speaker 3: better by comparison.
Speaker 2: You see, It was just it's very different, like these
Speaker 2: are the actual policies in place.
Speaker 3: Good point, these are the policies in place. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you realize this, but people don't always behave
Speaker 3: in strict accordance with their policies. So I find it
Speaker 3: interesting that you are comparing the policies of the ancient
Speaker 3: Hebrews to the behavior of those who engage the American
Speaker 3: slave trade. Now, obviously it's much harder to find accounts
Speaker 3: of actual behavior in the ancient Near East than of
Speaker 3: Americans just a couple centuries ago, so the available data
Speaker 3: skews more towards policy for the ancient Near East and
Speaker 3: behavior for American slavery. But we do have access to
Speaker 3: the actual laws regarding slavery in the United States, and
Speaker 3: quite a number of them seem to have taken their
Speaker 3: lead from the Bible. In most states, killing a slave
Speaker 3: was to be treated as the same crime as killing
Speaker 3: a free white person, with some states having exceptions for
Speaker 3: accidentally killing a slave while engage in what they call
Speaker 3: moderate correction. Now, notably, this moderate correction exception applied to
Speaker 3: wives and children as well, so slaves essentially had the
Speaker 3: same legal protection against bodily harm as free white women
Speaker 3: and children. In some states, such as Louisiana, cruel masters
Speaker 3: could be forced by a judge to sell their slaves.
Speaker 3: So when we actually look at the policies of slavery
Speaker 3: in the United States. We find that it's not that
Speaker 3: much different from the policies of the ancient Hebrews. In
Speaker 3: some ways, it's actually better. There was no provision in
Speaker 3: the Bible that a slave could be removed from a
Speaker 3: master who is deemed be too cruel. Of course, we
Speaker 3: know from history that the actual application of these policies
Speaker 3: was imperfect to say the least. Why are we assuming
Speaker 3: that the ancient Hebrews strictly adhered to their legal code
Speaker 3: when more recent historical examples suggest that the legal code
Speaker 3: was merely a way of assuaging the guilt of the
Speaker 3: people who might be more sympathetic to the plight of
Speaker 3: the slaves. Yes, we own slaves, but don't worry, they've
Speaker 3: got legal protections, so surely it's not all that bad,
Speaker 3: you know, exactly like Mike is doing here.
Speaker 2: Of course, in the New Testament, we're called to an
Speaker 2: even higher calling.
Speaker 3: And that calling is to not threaten the slaves that
Speaker 3: you're still allowed to own. I'm not sure how that's
Speaker 3: a higher calling. It seems like God could have had
Speaker 3: the foresight to just outlast slavery explicitly at some point,
Speaker 3: But there is no Bible verse that just flat out
Speaker 3: says that owning other human beings as property is wrong,
Speaker 3: so don't do it.
Speaker 2: So what you can see is that this is just
Speaker 2: like absolutely manifestly not true.
Speaker 3: Now what I see is you ignoring the context both
Speaker 3: in the Bible and in the American legal codes. You
Speaker 3: know that thing that you're accusing anyone who would say
Speaker 3: that the Bible supports slavery of doing.
Speaker 2: Like, it's just not true that the Bible supports killing,
Speaker 2: rape and slavery, Like, that's a lie. That's a lie
Speaker 2: somebody's believing.
Speaker 3: And that's the pot calling the kettle black, which come
Speaker 3: to think of it as a weird saying this day
Speaker 3: and age with a stainless steel pots and it's white
Speaker 3: plastic kettles, should probably update that one. It's the toaster
Speaker 3: calling the kettle white. It's a dishwasher calling the fridge silver.
Speaker 3: It's the sink calling the toilet porcelain. I don't know,
Speaker 3: let's workshop it comment down below what you think we
Speaker 3: should replace the saying with.
Speaker 2: And then the heart issue comes in, and this is
Speaker 2: this is the part that's the harder one to deal with,
Speaker 2: and that is understanding the fear of the Lord.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if there really was a God that existed who
Speaker 3: approved of slavery, I would be scared of that God.
Speaker 3: Why do Christians think that living in fear of their
Speaker 3: God is a good thing.
Speaker 2: That this is the beginning of wisdom if we approach
Speaker 2: God and this Okay, I'm going to tell you guys,
Speaker 2: just me talking here, flow of thought, and I don't
Speaker 2: know how to fix somebody on this issue.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not your job to fix people, right
Speaker 3: like when you lie about what's in the Bible regarding slavery.
Speaker 3: I don't see it as my job to get you
Speaker 3: to see the error of your ways. I merely point
Speaker 3: out the lie so that the people who see my
Speaker 3: videos are less likely to just trust you at your
Speaker 3: word in the future. I can't make you stop lying,
Speaker 3: but I sure as hell can call it out when
Speaker 3: I see it.
Speaker 2: All I know how to do is point it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that, except you're not doing a very good
Speaker 3: job of it so far. I've referenced at least nine
Speaker 3: passages in the Bible. More if you lump all of
Speaker 3: the slaves obey your master's passages from the New Testament
Speaker 3: in together, and when you brought up American slavery. I
Speaker 3: reference the actual legal codes of various states in order
Speaker 3: to point out the difference between the law and the
Speaker 3: behavior of a culture, to explain why it's disingenuous to
Speaker 3: compare the legal code of one culture to the actual
Speaker 3: behavior of another culture in order to make one culture
Speaker 3: look better by that comparison. And you have referenced one
Speaker 3: Bible verse that says escape slaves are to be protected,
Speaker 3: and said, n uhh, a bunch. So which of us
Speaker 3: has provided more content?
Speaker 2: I wonder, right? All I know in the conversation is
Speaker 2: to change the subject from understanding a passage in context.
Speaker 2: If that's not if that's not important to them, if
Speaker 2: that doesn't matter to them, it's even offensive to some people.
Speaker 3: Seems like you might be one of the people who
Speaker 3: finds it offensive, given how blatantly you're avoiding the actual
Speaker 3: context of the claims. Also, I haven't watched this through
Speaker 3: in its entirety yet, but I'll bet that when we
Speaker 3: actually get to the verse in questions numbers thirty one,
Speaker 3: fifteen through eighteen, he won't bring up things like the
Speaker 3: war code of Deuteronomy twenty that explicitly allows the Israelites
Speaker 3: to conquer a city and use its citizens as forced labor,
Speaker 3: or the slave laws of Livitus twenty five that allow
Speaker 3: you to buy permanent chattel slaves from surrounding nations and
Speaker 3: foreigners living among you, and will instead focus on the
Speaker 3: fact that those verses are found in a narrative portion
Speaker 3: of the text, a part explaining what did happen and
Speaker 3: not proclaiming what should happen. In other words, he will
Speaker 3: only use as much context as is convenient for his argument.
Speaker 2: Well, I've I've discussed these things online with people who
Speaker 2: when I go, well, when you look at it in context,
Speaker 2: and then they start mocking and ridiculing me for looking
Speaker 2: at something in context. And I want you to think
Speaker 2: about the depth of self confusion that is there when
Speaker 2: you actually don't want to understand the Bible in context
Speaker 2: because you might not hate it so much. Now you're
Speaker 2: missing the point there. When people do that, it's because
Speaker 2: that is often a dismissive excuse given by a Christian
Speaker 2: who is confronted with a challenging verse. To them, the
Speaker 2: context doesn't actually matter to the argument. It's more about
Speaker 2: the idea that there is hypothetically a context that could
Speaker 2: make the verse sound less and moral than it actually is,
Speaker 2: and sometimes this is true. For example, earlier when I
Speaker 2: talked about the rape laws. In the one where the
Speaker 2: woman is executed for being raped in a town, the
Speaker 2: Hebrew words used there do not necessarily denote rape, just sex,
Speaker 2: and the verse right before it is talking about a
Speaker 2: married woman cheating on her husband. So from this context
Speaker 2: we can understand that particular verse to be talking about
Speaker 2: consensual sex between a woman who is betrothed and a
Speaker 2: man who is not the man she is betrothed to.
Speaker 2: Still heinous and a moral to execute someone for cheating,
Speaker 2: but it's not necessarily rape. Now, I would actually argue
Speaker 2: that the omission of the words that denote nonconsensual sex,
Speaker 2: which are found in the subsequent verses are because of
Speaker 2: the ancient Hebrew attitudes about sex. It says right in
Speaker 2: the verse that the reason the woman is being executed
Speaker 2: is because she was in the town but did not
Speaker 2: cry out, which suggests that the authors of this text
Speaker 2: thought that the only reason a woman would not cry
Speaker 2: out in such a scenario is because she wanted it. Apparently,
Speaker 2: the idea that someone could have said, if you scream,
Speaker 2: I'll kill you just never occurred.
Speaker 3: To them. So I'd argue that it would still include
Speaker 3: rape victims, but I acknowledge that the intent of the
Speaker 3: authors was not to include them. It's still a heinous
Speaker 3: and immoral law, but it's ever so slightly less so
Speaker 3: when you understand the context. All this to say that
Speaker 3: I have always found myself giving way more in the
Speaker 3: way of context than the apologists that I'm responding to.
Speaker 3: And I've still frequently had Christians in my comment section
Speaker 3: accusing me of taking things out of context because that
Speaker 3: seems to be a thought stopping technique that allows them
Speaker 3: to just assume that knowing extra context will make all
Speaker 3: the problems just go away. They don't actually need to
Speaker 3: hear what that context is. They just need to believe
Speaker 3: that such context exists.
Speaker 2: Like that's then you're dealing with the heart issue. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I stop talking about the context and I want
Speaker 2: to start talking about the heart.
Speaker 3: Well, your heart appears to be rotten, and you haven't
Speaker 3: actually given much in the way of context except to
Speaker 3: say it's there, trust me, bro, which is exactly the
Speaker 3: thought stopping technique that I said it is.
Speaker 2: This is a challenge every time. It's always difficult. As
Speaker 2: proverb says like, when you bring correction to someone who's
Speaker 2: like a fool, they may turn and attack you. They
Speaker 2: may hate you for it, but a wise man, if
Speaker 2: he's corrected, he will love you for it.
Speaker 3: Yep, more thought stopping techniques. If atheists don't respond positively
Speaker 3: to the vague claim that context makes the verse better,
Speaker 3: then that's okay. That person's just a fool. Meanwhile, I've
Speaker 3: seen Mike mock and belittle people that he disagrees with
Speaker 3: without addressing the point that they were making, which means
Speaker 3: that if we take this proverb seriously, Mike is a fool.
Speaker 3: Of course, he'd likely say that whatever he was corrected
Speaker 3: on doesn't count as correcting, because it only counts if
Speaker 3: the correction is correct. But then that brings us back
Speaker 3: to the atheist being told that they are taking verses
Speaker 3: out of context as a defense against the immoral the
Speaker 3: Bible says, with zero explanation as to what context could
Speaker 3: possibly make some of these things better. Like, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: have been told that when I quote for Samuel fifteen
Speaker 3: to three as demonstrating that the God of the Bible
Speaker 3: sometimes commands genocide, that I am taking it out of context.
Speaker 3: I've even had some people try and explain the context
Speaker 3: that verse says, now, go and strike Amelek and devote
Speaker 3: to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them,
Speaker 3: but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox
Speaker 3: and sheep, camel and donkey. So from Mike's perspective, I
Speaker 3: have been corrected on this point because a couple people
Speaker 3: have told me that I took it out of context.
Speaker 3: But I would ask what context could possibly make that okay?
Speaker 3: In what scenario is it okay to invade a city
Speaker 3: and go out of your way to slaughter every person
Speaker 3: in the city indiscriminately, including all the children and babies.
Speaker 3: And the context I was given when people actually tried
Speaker 3: to explain it is that Amelek attacked Israel first four
Speaker 3: hundred years earlier, and they killed women and children. So
Speaker 3: does this count as a correction? The genocide is justified
Speaker 3: now because they tried at first several generations earlier. Hell no,
Speaker 3: that'd be like England deciding to nuke the United States
Speaker 3: off the map because they're still mad about the American
Speaker 3: Revolution in seventeen seventy six, except not today, in another
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty years from now. So have I
Speaker 3: actually been corrected. Was it morally okay for God to
Speaker 3: command genocide and retribution for something that nobody alive at
Speaker 3: the time was even involved in. I would argue no.
Speaker 3: So the thing is, I actually agree with that proverb.
Speaker 3: I have taken correction on a number of occasions, and
Speaker 3: I actually love being proven wrong because when you prove
Speaker 3: me wrong about something, that means I get to learn
Speaker 3: a new thing, and that's fucking awesome. But apologists and
Speaker 3: their audience often just assume that they'm yelling. But the context, though,
Speaker 3: counts as issuing a correction. So if that doesn't convince
Speaker 3: the people pointing out that the Bible supports and promotes
Speaker 3: immoral shit, then they might be fools who don't care
Speaker 3: about the context.
Speaker 2: There's two things that stand out to me as I
Speaker 2: was thinking about this. One is arrogance and the other
Speaker 2: one's entitlement. Now forgive me, I'm already triggering people. I
Speaker 2: know it because I just used some really strong words
Speaker 2: to describe a posture of somebody who looks at God
Speaker 2: and thinks you owe me, and you've got some explaining
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 3: Does God not owe us an explanation if he wants
Speaker 3: us to not only believe in him but actually see
Speaker 3: him as the benevolent figure that Christians claim he is.
Speaker 3: How can God be benevolent but command genocide? Those two
Speaker 3: things are mutually exclusive. Why is it arrogant to expect
Speaker 3: God to make some amount of sense? If anything, the
Speaker 3: arrogance is on the part of the apologist, who expects
Speaker 3: you to just assume that they are correct when they
Speaker 3: say context fixes things without actually explaining how. Now he
Speaker 3: does claim that he's going to do that later in
Speaker 3: the video, so we'll see how that goes. But I
Speaker 3: find it interesting that rather than lead by addressing the
Speaker 3: actual question, he chose to instead dedicate the first part
Speaker 3: of his argument to attacking the character of anyone who
Speaker 3: doesn't blindly accept the second part of his argument, almost
Speaker 3: like he knows it's going to be inadequate and wants
Speaker 3: to prime his audience to see anyone who points out
Speaker 3: his inadequacies as arrogant, foolish, and entitled. If he had
Speaker 3: a good argument, it could stand on its own merits
Speaker 3: without preemptively attacking the character of the people who disagree
Speaker 3: with him. So the fact that he feels the need
Speaker 3: to do this speaks volumes about his confidence and the
Speaker 3: actual answer.
Speaker 2: But I think that these are the two issues that
Speaker 2: lead to those I think God owes me that when
Speaker 2: I think God owes me, or he owes humanity, that
Speaker 2: he creates humans, and he owes us certain kinds of
Speaker 2: better treatment than say, judgment or punishment or or something
Speaker 2: like sorrowful death of a child or something. And I
Speaker 2: think you owe me better than that, God. That's a
Speaker 2: sense of entitlement. And if we approach God with that,
Speaker 2: we act like God is our servant and we are
Speaker 2: his master.
Speaker 3: I very strongly disagree. Y'all like to say that God
Speaker 3: is a father figure to us, we are all well
Speaker 3: God's children. Well, if I treated my children the way
Speaker 3: that God treats humanity, family and children's services would remove
Speaker 3: them from my custody, and I'd likely go to jail.
Speaker 3: Why is it arrogant to expect God to meet a
Speaker 3: standard that is so low that most people have no
Speaker 3: problem meeting it without even trying. There's also this misguided
Speaker 3: assumption that just because God is the creator, he doesn't
Speaker 3: owe anything to the sentient beings he created. And that's
Speaker 3: actually a pretty common theme that's addressed in science fiction
Speaker 3: a lot. We created this android whose abilities effectively render
Speaker 3: him a sentient being. Do we get to treat him
Speaker 3: as property, a machine that we created to serve us,
Speaker 3: or do we grant him rights as a sentient being?
Speaker 3: And usually the conclusion is that the creator cannot enslave
Speaker 3: their creation just by virtue of the fact that they
Speaker 3: are the creator. When the creation attains sentience, they are
Speaker 3: now entitled to the same rights as any other sentient being.
Speaker 3: So once again, humans, when struggling with difficult moral questions,
Speaker 3: come out with a higher standard than apologists are willing
Speaker 3: to hold God to.
Speaker 2: That's I don't know how to fix that except to
Speaker 2: point out the folly of it.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry that you think humans deserving rights is a folly,
Speaker 3: but that's a you problem.
Speaker 2: God doesn't I mean, he lovingly provides for us. But
Speaker 2: to think that he owes us that is a different step,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 3: Even if I agreed that God doesn't owe us anything
Speaker 3: and can give all the babies cancer that he wants
Speaker 3: without us having any grounds for saying, hey, that's bad. Actually,
Speaker 3: it still remains a fact that Christians claim that God
Speaker 3: wants everyone to be saved. The Bible claims that God
Speaker 3: wants everyone to be saved. So if that is a
Speaker 3: true statement, then it's not even a question of whether
Speaker 3: or not God owes us an explanation for his actions.
Speaker 3: It's that having a coherent explanation for his actions would
Speaker 3: cause more people to come to salvation. So it just
Speaker 3: makes sense that in light of the goal of saving
Speaker 3: more souls, he would provide explanations for his actions.
Speaker 2: This is a passage where God judges a nation, and
Speaker 2: an entitlement mentality says, he's not being nice to them,
Speaker 2: he's being he's being judgmental, he's judging. He's actually killing people.
Speaker 2: Like God can't do that. We deserve better than that.
Speaker 3: In the case of this particular passage, the judgment he
Speaker 3: is passing on the nation is to have all of
Speaker 3: their men, women, and boys killed and their girls forced
Speaker 3: into sex slavery. If a judge sentences a child to
Speaker 3: be raped as a punishment not for something that she did,
Speaker 3: but just for being born into a society that did
Speaker 3: bad things, then that judge is heinous and immoral. That's
Speaker 3: not a sense of entitlement on my part. That's a
Speaker 3: sense of decency and morality that you claim was given
Speaker 3: to me by God. So if God offends my God
Speaker 3: given sense of morality. The least he could do is
Speaker 3: offer some kind of explanation without going through apologists who
Speaker 3: have to open their explanation by insulting me.
Speaker 2: And arrogance is thinking that you can tell God what
Speaker 2: his business is.
Speaker 3: Sure, whatever, it's arrogance to expect God to act in
Speaker 3: a way that makes sense according to the book that
Speaker 3: God gave us and the sense of morality that God
Speaker 3: also supposedly gave us. As Orwell wrote, in the end,
Speaker 3: the party would announce that two and two made five,
Speaker 3: and you would have to believe it. And as a
Speaker 3: Christian apologist once said.
Speaker 4: If somewhere within the Bible I ow to find a
Speaker 4: passage that said two plus two equals five, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: question what I'm reading in the Bible. I would believe it,
Speaker 4: accept it as true, and then do my best to
Speaker 4: work it out and to understand it.
Speaker 2: I think when you approach a passage where God punishes sin,
Speaker 2: there are two diametrically opposed responses. One Wow, sin must
Speaker 2: be really bad or two wow, God must be really bad.
Speaker 3: And when the punishment for sin comes in the form of, hey,
Speaker 3: these kids are going to be raped, for the crime
Speaker 3: of being born into a bad society. The correct viewpoint
Speaker 3: to take there is, Wow, God is really evil.
Speaker 2: I think that we need to fall on the sin
Speaker 2: must be really bad category lest we move into a
Speaker 2: type of philosophical insanity. I mean the idea that God,
Speaker 2: that the one who knows the hearts, who knows the purpose,
Speaker 2: who knows the plan, who's who's morally pure and perfect,
Speaker 2: that he is the one who's in error as we
Speaker 2: read him punishing sin, and sometimes that punishment, I would say,
Speaker 2: overflows onto onto even kids. And that's intense moment, And
Speaker 2: that's like, Wow, this is It doesn't get any more
Speaker 2: intense than this.
Speaker 3: You heard it here first, Folks, Mike thinks that the
Speaker 3: idea that torturing children can be morally justified is less
Speaker 3: absurd than the idea that the God of the Bible
Speaker 3: could just not be all that great. Like, Buddy, you
Speaker 3: are actually making the case for atheism here. You are
Speaker 3: literally stating that the God you believe in is supposed
Speaker 3: to be morally perfect and pure, and because you believe
Speaker 3: in him, it then becomes inconceivable that you could think
Speaker 3: of any of his commands as immoral, going so far
Speaker 3: as to extend that to the torturing of children in
Speaker 3: his name. Yeah, the idea that this God is morally
Speaker 3: perfect and also tortures children as punishment for the society
Speaker 3: that they were born into is logically incoherent. Pence, such
Speaker 3: a God does not exist.
Speaker 2: But yet I'm coming from a posture of I respect God,
Speaker 2: I trust God, and I know that he has an
Speaker 2: eternal and perfect plan for all the future things.
Speaker 3: In other words, your position can only make sense if
Speaker 3: you begin with the assumption that God exists and is
Speaker 3: morally perfect. All else must be rationalized into those two beliefs,
Speaker 3: no matter how logically incoherent that rationalization is.
Speaker 2: So I look and I say, God, you have a
Speaker 2: right to judge your creation as you see fit, and
Speaker 2: you have reasons, whether I'm always familiar with them or not.
Speaker 2: That's the fear of the Lord. That's the beginning of wisdom.
Speaker 3: No, that's literally shutting off your brain and not thinking
Speaker 3: about things that make you uncomfortable, because you would rather
Speaker 3: believe that there is a sufficient moral justification for genocide
Speaker 3: and the torturing of children than even entertaining the possibility
Speaker 3: that you might be wrong about the existence of God
Speaker 3: and let's just.
Speaker 2: Quickly run through the numbers passage and I'll show you, guys,
Speaker 2: how context is sometimes rejected in these discussions. I'm going
Speaker 2: to read verses seventeen and eighteen because these are the
Speaker 2: verses that people often read. Now, therefore, kill every male
Speaker 2: among the little ones, and kill every woman who is
Speaker 2: known man, who has known man by lying with him,
Speaker 2: that is, having sex. But all the young girls who
Speaker 2: have not known man by lying with him, keep alive
Speaker 2: for yourselves.
Speaker 3: Yep, pretty heinous. Not sure how any context could make
Speaker 3: the genocide and rape better.
Speaker 2: Here, this is how I've heard this verse promoted online
Speaker 2: when people say things like the Bible supports rape, This
Speaker 2: is how I've heard it used.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is very clearly Moses commanding rape and genocide.
Speaker 2: So the Israelites are to go out into other nations
Speaker 2: and they're to just kill everybody except for the girls
Speaker 2: they keep alive so they can have him as And
Speaker 2: here's the term i've heard used, sex slaves.
Speaker 3: What else would you call? That? They are keeping the
Speaker 3: girls alive for themselves, not to set free, not because
Speaker 3: it would be wrong to kill them, but for themselves.
Speaker 3: What did Israel do with female prisoners of war. Well,
Speaker 3: dude around me twenty one tens through fourteen gives us
Speaker 3: some insight. When you go out to war against your enemies,
Speaker 3: and the Lord your God gives them into your hand,
Speaker 3: and you take them captive, and you see among the
Speaker 3: captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her
Speaker 3: to be your wife, and you bring her home to
Speaker 3: your house. She shall shave her head and pare her nails,
Speaker 3: and she shall take off the clothes in which she
Speaker 3: was captured, and shall remain in your house and lament
Speaker 3: her father and her mother. A full month after that,
Speaker 3: you may go into her and be her husband, and
Speaker 3: she shall be your wife. But if you no longer
Speaker 3: delighten her, you shall let her go where she wants.
Speaker 3: But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall
Speaker 3: you treat her as a slave. Since you have humiliated her,
Speaker 3: so force them into marriage. Give them a whole month
Speaker 3: to get over the fact that you just killed their
Speaker 3: entire family. Then rape them. If you change your mind
Speaker 3: about keeping them after you've done that, let them go.
Speaker 3: Sure it does end by saying that you can't sell
Speaker 3: her or treat her as a slave after you've raped her,
Speaker 3: but that only applies if you are not happy with
Speaker 3: her after the fact, if you are happy with her,
Speaker 3: she remains your sex slave. I suppose this means you're
Speaker 3: never allowed to sell her, but being a permanent sex
Speaker 3: slave hardly makes her not a sex slave.
Speaker 2: Let's unpack that a little bit. The killing is judicial.
Speaker 3: Ah, Yes, good old fashioned judicial genocide. If you read
Speaker 3: some of that context that you complain that atheists like
Speaker 3: to leave out, you'll see that this is Israel attempting
Speaker 3: to completely wipe out the nation of Midian, complete and
Speaker 3: total genocide. Calling it judicial doesn't make it not genocide.
Speaker 2: And it is rare. It is like this never happens,
Speaker 2: and it's forbidden to happen at other times. It is
Speaker 2: only through the direct command of God. So this is
Speaker 2: a judicial command.
Speaker 3: Where the fuck are you getting that from? Dude around me?
Speaker 3: Twenty actually lays out pretty clearly that genocide is not rare.
Speaker 3: It is in fact the norm, at least for cities
Speaker 3: that are near Israel. The ones that are far away
Speaker 3: just get turned into chattel slaves if they choose to
Speaker 3: surrender or have all their men slaughtered, and the women
Speaker 3: and children turned into slaves if they choose not to surrender.
Speaker 3: Those aren't rare exceptions. Those are literally in a section
Speaker 3: titled laws concerning warfare.
Speaker 2: God is judging and he's not suggesting in this past,
Speaker 2: which easily, especially in a cancel culture like we have now,
Speaker 2: where you could take one sentence out of context and
Speaker 2: then you condemn a person because of it.
Speaker 3: Him whining about cancel culture aside. I'd just like to
Speaker 3: once again point out that I have provided way more
Speaker 3: context about this verse than Mike has, and so far
Speaker 3: all he's got to defend it is that the genocide
Speaker 3: was a judicial one, and he got there not based
Speaker 3: on additional context, but just by asserting that it was
Speaker 3: as though we're obvious from the verse in question, which,
Speaker 3: if it were obvious and somehow did actually make the
Speaker 3: verse better, would mean that taking this verse on its
Speaker 3: own would not actually be decontextualizing it, rendering Mike's complaints
Speaker 3: here entirely pointless.
Speaker 2: This is meant to be a statement in context. Anybody
Speaker 2: who cares about understanding the text rightly knows this is
Speaker 2: specifically about the Midianites, specifically about a group of people who,
Speaker 2: according to the text of scripture, had hundreds of years
Speaker 2: of rebellion against God, and now their whole society and
Speaker 2: culture has to end.
Speaker 3: Oh, finally he's giving us some context us not just
Speaker 3: from that verse. But unfortunately, as I've already discussed, this
Speaker 3: actually makes it worse. It's like he's saying, if the
Speaker 3: Israelites wiped out one single city and took their girls
Speaker 3: as sex slaves, that would be bad. But because they
Speaker 3: did it to all the cities that belong to this
Speaker 3: one specific culture in a coordinated effort to exterminate that culture,
Speaker 3: that makes it okay. Like no, man, that makes it
Speaker 3: way worse.
Speaker 2: Do you catch that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I fucking caught that, goddamn genocide apologist.
Speaker 2: Any of the males who would survive and live on
Speaker 2: into adulthood would probably continue the same disgusting and perverted
Speaker 2: culture with bestiality and who knows what kind of other
Speaker 2: things were going on.
Speaker 3: Aside from the fact that there is no evidence that
Speaker 3: they engaged in such practices at a higher rate than
Speaker 3: the ancient Hebrews themselves did. What you're saying here is
Speaker 3: that the ends justify the means. Morality doesn't come from
Speaker 3: God's nature. Morality is utilitarian, count up the bad things
Speaker 3: and the good things and calculate the impact. When the
Speaker 3: bad things add up high enough that genocide becomes less
Speaker 3: of a bad thing than allowing that culture to continue,
Speaker 3: go ahead and commit genocide. It's now morally justifiable. This
Speaker 3: is exactly the position that apologist will accuse atheists of
Speaker 3: holding when they are making the moral argument for God.
Speaker 3: Utilitarian ethics are bad because hypothetically you could use them
Speaker 3: to justify bad things like genocide. And yet when the
Speaker 3: genocides of the Bible come up, apologists immediately apologists immediately
Speaker 3: switched God, damn it. I know how to snap. I swear, piper.
Speaker 3: Can you put a snapping sound in there to make
Speaker 3: a sound like I can? Actually, I can snap my fingers.
Speaker 3: How about put one of those there to match with
Speaker 3: my snap if I don't get it on the next take.
Speaker 3: And yet, when the genocides of the Bible come up,
Speaker 3: apologists immediately switch to the utilitarian ethics system to justify them.
Speaker 3: I snapped for real that time. That was fun. And
Speaker 3: what's worse, they often lump things like homosexuality in with
Speaker 3: the reasons why a culture is so bad it needs
Speaker 3: to be exterminated. Starts off with incest, and then it
Speaker 3: goes into adultery.
Speaker 4: Then it goes into offering your children to.
Speaker 3: Molek homosexual sins and then bestiality, which, if I may
Speaker 3: take a moment to get political, is why y'all need
Speaker 3: to not vote for the guy that has the support
Speaker 3: of the Christian nationalists. The people who say cultures deserve
Speaker 3: to be wiped out for being accepting of homosexuality should
Speaker 3: not have political influence.
Speaker 2: False worship. Of course, some think it's no big deal
Speaker 2: if you're worshiping a false God, but that's where we're
Speaker 2: going to be disagreeing with God on that topic.
Speaker 3: So to be clear, he just said that worshiping a
Speaker 3: god other than the one that he worships is a
Speaker 3: crime that justifies genocide. It is fucking terrifying that he
Speaker 3: has as big a following as he does, So this.
Speaker 2: Is not something to be repeated. This was a one
Speaker 2: time thing, right. It happened just as they're entering the
Speaker 2: land as God's judging and removing those nations.
Speaker 3: To be clear, by judging and removing those nations, he
Speaker 3: means leading the Israelite army in a campaign of genocidal
Speaker 3: conquest against people whose chief crime was having already lived
Speaker 3: in a place that God promised he'd give to someone
Speaker 3: else later.
Speaker 2: Why is it, though, that the women are killed and
Speaker 2: the young girls are left alive? Is this like a
Speaker 2: type of sex slavery? As I've heard it presented online
Speaker 2: from many people and those who present it to me online,
Speaker 2: I'm convinced that most of the ones I've interacted with
Speaker 2: they don't care what it really means.
Speaker 3: Again, notice that before he can explain whatever context he thinks,
Speaker 3: justifies that he must first poison the well against anyone
Speaker 3: who would dare to question the morality of this passage,
Speaker 3: thus priming his audience to uncritically accept his answer. After all,
Speaker 3: he just pointed out that it's those arrogant, entitled, and
Speaker 3: foolish atheists who don't even care about the justification here.
Speaker 3: So if you hear his justification and find it to
Speaker 3: be inadequate, you must be an arrogant, entitled, and foolish atheists.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't want to be like them, would you? This
Speaker 3: is manipulative and gross.
Speaker 2: Like they don't care. They get angry when I try
Speaker 2: to explain it. There's the hard issue. I set aside
Speaker 2: those conversations because that's I'm spinning my wheels you don't
Speaker 2: care about the truth here, You're just you to want
Speaker 2: to be mad.
Speaker 3: Don't like my explanation. It's just because you're angry and
Speaker 3: don't care about truth. That's the only reason there's no
Speaker 3: chance that Mike is wrong. So you must just be angry, foolish, arrogant, entitled,
Speaker 3: and not care about the truth. What a fucking piece
Speaker 3: of work this guy is.
Speaker 2: So here's a few of the background things you want
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 3: This.
Speaker 2: You read about this in numbers twenty two through twenty five.
Speaker 2: Those those four chapters right there. The king of the
Speaker 2: Midianites hired Balim, who was who's a prophet and to
Speaker 2: prophesy like basically curse the people of Israel. Baalim can't
Speaker 2: curse them because God is protecting them and God's gonna
Speaker 2: bless them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the story that has the talking donkey in it.
Speaker 3: Are you sure you want to be bringing attention to
Speaker 3: elements of the story that make it clearly mythological in nature.
Speaker 2: So multiple times he tries and fails. The one thing
Speaker 2: he does do is he seems to give Baalim baylic
Speaker 2: advice that what he needs to do is cause them
Speaker 2: to sin against God and So what the Median Knights
Speaker 2: do is they send their women who are trained in
Speaker 2: sexual practices as part of their religious orgies and stuff
Speaker 2: like that that they do in their cult, and they
Speaker 2: send their women into amongst the Israelites who start basically
Speaker 2: prostituting themselves out in religious fashion.
Speaker 3: And as always when it comes to religion and sex,
Speaker 3: it's the woman's fault. You can't expect the men to
Speaker 3: exercise any kind of self control after all. So clearly
Speaker 3: the women corrupting the Hebrews was a crime that justifies
Speaker 3: a total annihilation of the culture the women came from.
Speaker 2: So their prostitution is something that is meant to draw
Speaker 2: the Israelites away from God so that God will curse them,
Speaker 2: because the Midi Nites just want to destroy the Israelites.
Speaker 3: So it was defensive prostitution. They knew the Israelites were
Speaker 3: going to wipe them out either way. So this is
Speaker 3: an attempt for them to preserve their culture against an
Speaker 3: existential threat. How is this supposed to make the Israelites
Speaker 3: look like the ones that had the moral high ground?
Speaker 2: Now do you see this a very different context than
Speaker 2: what you think reading those two verses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it now looks way worse. The people they were
Speaker 3: fighting against were desperate to defend themselves in any way
Speaker 3: they could. Because the Hebrews were already intent on wiping
Speaker 3: them out completely, and because the way they chose to
Speaker 3: do it involved sex, they are now justified in wiping
Speaker 3: them out completely in your eyes, Well, were they justified
Speaker 3: before the women started seducing them, because that's what they
Speaker 3: were already planning on doing. The women seducing them didn't
Speaker 3: actually change anything.
Speaker 2: If you look at numbers twenty five we get a
Speaker 2: little more details.
Speaker 3: Oh so you mean that verse that has been used
Speaker 3: to justify an opposition to interracial marriage, that one, because
Speaker 3: that's where that one is.
Speaker 2: While Israel lived in Shatim, the people began to whore
Speaker 2: with the daughters of Moab. That's I kept saying, Midi Nites, Moabites.
Speaker 3: Excuse me, Oh my god, he doesn't even know his
Speaker 3: own book. This is a different genocide. This is actually
Speaker 3: the one that was justified with the anti miscegination sentiment.
Speaker 3: The later one in numbers thirty one justifies the killing
Speaker 3: of the women who have had sex with men by
Speaker 3: reference the plague that happened when they were fighting against
Speaker 3: the Moabites, and the Israelites started having sex with the
Speaker 3: Moabite women. These are two different genocides, Mike, not the
Speaker 3: same one. Once again, your attempt to add context is
Speaker 3: actually making it worse.
Speaker 2: These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods. Right,
Speaker 2: so it's sex and idolatry are combined here in that culture.
Speaker 2: They're part of the same thing.
Speaker 3: I don't know that actually reads to me more like,
Speaker 3: if you want to have sex with me, you have
Speaker 3: to come to church with me, rather than come to church.
Speaker 3: It's where the orgies happen. And given that Christian women
Speaker 3: often behave in that same way today, except with a
Speaker 3: touch more subtlety, and it ostensibly being about marriage rather
Speaker 3: than sex, usually I tread lightly when pronouncing judgment on
Speaker 3: that style of gaining converts.
Speaker 2: These invited the people to the sacrifices, and the people
Speaker 2: ate and bowed down to their gods, so yoked themselves
Speaker 2: to the ball of pure and the anger of the
Speaker 2: Lord was kindled against Israel. And so this is all
Speaker 2: part of the judgment. This is the background of the
Speaker 2: judgment that then comes upon them.
Speaker 3: Keep reading, Mike, I dare you give this passage it's
Speaker 3: full context and read at least to the point where
Speaker 3: a couple gets murdered for being from two different cultures,
Speaker 3: and with God praising the murderer for taking it upon
Speaker 3: himself to kill someone for such a non crime.
Speaker 2: And the judgment is, Hey, you need to remove these Midianites.
Speaker 2: They're a cancerous culture. That is what they are. That
Speaker 2: their culture is going to destroy you, and morally and
Speaker 2: religiously and spiritually. As God's setting up his people, they're
Speaker 2: going to see how important it is that they keep
Speaker 2: themselves clean from the ungodly practices and beliefs of the
Speaker 2: people around them.
Speaker 3: Okay, what he just said is rubbish, but I just
Speaker 3: want to point out that he has now gone out
Speaker 3: of his way to avoid some pretty important context in
Speaker 3: order to make the original verse we were talking about
Speaker 3: better than it actually is. And this is why when
Speaker 3: people like Mike say, but the context, though, they often
Speaker 3: get laughed at and dismissed. It's because they are the
Speaker 3: kings of ignoring context. I gave you the full context
Speaker 3: of the original verse in question. I gave you the
Speaker 3: full context of numbers twenty five. I gave you the
Speaker 3: context of the rules that the ancient Israelites had regarding
Speaker 3: warfare and the female captives of war. I gave you
Speaker 3: the context of their laws regarding slavery and the commands
Speaker 3: about slavery in the New Testament. Mike said that he
Speaker 3: would give context, made assertions about the real meaning of
Speaker 3: the original verse in question without providing anything that would
Speaker 3: back up those assertions, and then talked about a completely
Speaker 3: separate event as though it were the same event. And
Speaker 3: he did so ostensibly to explain why keeping the young
Speaker 3: women alive for yourselves doesn't count as rape. But without
Speaker 3: actually doing that, best we can get here is a
Speaker 3: justification for killing the women that had have sex. No
Speaker 3: good justification, mind you, just an attempt at a justification. So,
Speaker 3: given the amount of context I provided as compared to
Speaker 3: the amount you provided, the idea that the atheist side
Speaker 3: of the argument is relying on taking things out of
Speaker 3: context is just completely and utterly ridiculous. Mike has even
Speaker 3: demonstrated that he doesn't understand the context that he is
Speaker 3: giving by getting confused in ConFlat eating two separate genocides
Speaker 3: as one event. So if he can't even be bothered
Speaker 3: to get the minimal context that he's presenting, correct. Why
Speaker 3: would we expect him to understand anything about the larger picture?
Speaker 3: I would give him the benefit of the doubt normally,
Speaker 3: as this was recorded live, and you can make mistakes
Speaker 3: while recording live. I know I do it a lot myself.
Speaker 3: But he clearly prepared for this answer before going live.
Speaker 3: That's a pretty big mistake to have made well prepping.
Speaker 3: If the question had just been one that he saw
Speaker 3: in the chatwell streaming, and he hadn't prepared but was
Speaker 3: working for memory, then I'd cut him a bit of
Speaker 3: slack here. But that's not how it went, so I won't.
Speaker 2: And so let's talk about the girls though.
Speaker 3: Oh so he is going to address it. Okay, let's
Speaker 3: see how this goes. My hopes aren't terribly high at
Speaker 3: this point, but can't do any worse than the last one.
Speaker 2: Right, because this is the part are they sex slaves?
Speaker 2: And this is the response to that Deuteronomy twenty one
Speaker 2: to ten.
Speaker 3: Oh God, your justification for them not being sex slaves
Speaker 3: is to go to the verse that points out that
Speaker 3: they are forced into marriage and raped. Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 2: Dude, they are left alive, but for what purpose? Deuteronomy
Speaker 2: twenty one to ten tells us about the sort of POW's,
Speaker 2: and you're even calling them POW's.
Speaker 3: Forcing a prisoner of war into marriage after killing her
Speaker 3: entire family is super duper immoral. And even though the
Speaker 3: passage ends by saying that she's not to be treated
Speaker 3: like a slave, it's still treating her like a slave.
Speaker 3: She doesn't get to choose to not marry the man.
Speaker 3: The man has to choose to not want to marry
Speaker 3: her anymore. If you are forced to marry someone and
Speaker 3: have sex with them, then that is sex slavery, even
Speaker 3: if that's not how the authors of the Bible would
Speaker 3: have defined it.
Speaker 2: When you go out to war against your enemies and
Speaker 2: the Lord your God gives them into your hand, and
Speaker 2: you take them captive, and you see among the captives
Speaker 2: a beautiful woman and desire to take her to be
Speaker 2: your wife, and you bring her home to your house,
Speaker 2: here's the procedure. Okay, this is the what if like
Speaker 2: you see her and you want her to be your wife,
Speaker 2: not your sex slave, your wife.
Speaker 3: If you force someone into a marriage against their will
Speaker 3: and part of being married includes having sex with them,
Speaker 3: that is sex slavery. This passage makes it quite clear
Speaker 3: that the woman has no choice here.
Speaker 2: Here's the procedure that God puts in place for them
Speaker 2: in that culture. This is unheard of for them. And
Speaker 2: you bring her to your home, to your house, she
Speaker 2: shall shave her head and pare her nails, and she
Speaker 2: shall take off the clothes in which she was captured
Speaker 2: and remain in your house, and limit her father and
Speaker 2: her mother a full month.
Speaker 3: You strip her of her possessions. You shave her head
Speaker 3: and cut her nails, a humiliating procedure, and then you
Speaker 3: give her one whole month to be sad about the
Speaker 3: fact that you killed her family. How noble.
Speaker 2: The shaving, the hair and nails and all this, these clothes,
Speaker 2: this is all about a few things. I guess there's
Speaker 2: three things going on here. One is ritual purity, okay,
Speaker 2: levitical law, laws of Israel. Lots of religious purity that
Speaker 2: goes on there. So she's separating herself from the impurity
Speaker 2: of the culture she was part of before. And then
Speaker 2: religious stuff she may have been part of.
Speaker 3: No, she is not separating herself from it. She is
Speaker 3: being forcibly separated from it by the man she is
Speaker 3: being forced to marry.
Speaker 2: And she's gonna take off the clothes in which she
Speaker 2: was captured. Why because her status is being elevated.
Speaker 3: Stripping someone of their clothes and forcing them to wear
Speaker 3: what you give them is what you do to prisoners,
Speaker 3: not someone whose status you are elevating.
Speaker 2: She is not going to be a slave for sex.
Speaker 2: She's not gonna stain those clothes.
Speaker 3: How does for her out of her clothes not read
Speaker 3: as sex slavery to you?
Speaker 2: And she'll remain in your house and lamit her father
Speaker 2: and her mother a full month. You can't touch her
Speaker 2: for a month.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if she's not over them by the end
Speaker 3: of that month, then tough luck.
Speaker 2: I guess this is the opposite of sex slavery. You
Speaker 2: can't touch her.
Speaker 3: No, the opposite of sex slavery isn't you can't touch
Speaker 3: her for thirty days. The opposite would be you can
Speaker 3: never touch her without her explicit and enthusiastic consent. She
Speaker 3: must be set free immediately, not forced out of her
Speaker 3: clothes and have her hair, her nails forcibly cut. Saying
Speaker 3: you have to wait a month before raping her is
Speaker 3: just sex slavery with a probationary period.
Speaker 2: This is she goes through a morning process the greeting process,
Speaker 2: and then after that you may go into her and
Speaker 2: be her husband, not her. She's not your concubine, right,
Speaker 2: she's your wife.
Speaker 3: What if she doesn't want to be Mike, where is
Speaker 3: the provision for what she wants in the scenario? Where
Speaker 3: does it command the man to only go into her
Speaker 3: and be her husband if she wants him to. And
Speaker 3: even if it had that provision, she is now living
Speaker 3: in the midst of people who killed her entire family
Speaker 3: for having a different culture than them. The power dynamics
Speaker 3: there basically ensure that, no matter how she actually feels,
Speaker 3: if she wants to survive, she has to at least
Speaker 3: pretend to want to marry her captor. And that's that's
Speaker 3: not a good thing. That's basically sex slavery.
Speaker 2: So this is different. This is definitely not that kind
Speaker 2: of sex slavery stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes it is. I'd actually argue that the ordinary form
Speaker 3: of marriage that is laid out in the Old Testament
Speaker 3: is also a forms sex slavery all by itself, without
Speaker 3: even getting into the fact that they'd force their captives
Speaker 3: into marriage. But putting that aside, this is explicitly a
Speaker 3: forced marriage, and it explicitly states that sex is involved
Speaker 3: in this force marriage, air go sex slavery.
Speaker 2: And then it goes on and tells you what if
Speaker 2: you don't like her, because this is u's abuse and
Speaker 2: throw away as the idea of sex slavery. But now
Speaker 2: that doesn't happen verse fourteen. But if you no longer
Speaker 2: delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all fine and good. Okay, no, it's not
Speaker 3: all fine and good, but let's pretend it's all fine
Speaker 3: and good for the moment. What if she no longer
Speaker 3: delights in you or never did to begin with? Do
Speaker 3: you see how putting the choice one hundred percent on
Speaker 3: the man here actually does make it sex slavery. If
Speaker 3: I force someone to marry me at gunpoint and then
Speaker 3: have sex with her, would you consider that marriage to
Speaker 3: be legitimate? Would you consider that sexual act to not
Speaker 3: be rape? Because that is what is being described here. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean sword point, not gunpoint, but you get the idea. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if I get tired of her, I'll let her go,
Speaker 3: and at that point she can go wherever she wants.
Speaker 3: Aren't I benevolent? No? Absolutely not. This is heinous and immoral,
Speaker 3: and these are the rules laid down by the God
Speaker 3: that you claim is the source of morality.
Speaker 2: You shall not sell her for money, nor shall you
Speaker 2: treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know those purity rituals that you explicitly
Speaker 3: stated were meant to separate her from her culture and
Speaker 3: her religion. Well, it turns out they're rather humiliating if
Speaker 3: you're forced into them. Everything else about this is immoral
Speaker 3: as fuck, but at least the authors of this passage
Speaker 3: recognize that the women would be humiliated by being forced
Speaker 3: into it.
Speaker 2: Right, you wronged her because you brought her and his
Speaker 2: wife and then you sent her away.
Speaker 3: No, the sending away isn't the humiliation. The sending away
Speaker 3: is because of the humiliation. The humiliation is the killing
Speaker 3: her family, taking her clothes away from her, forcing her
Speaker 3: to cut her hair and nails before raping her. That's
Speaker 3: the humiliating thing happening here, and realistically, letting her go
Speaker 3: free at this point is likely to either be a
Speaker 3: death sentence or to have her turn into prostitution out
Speaker 3: of desperation. Her entire family is gone, and she's now
Speaker 3: living in the middle of a culture that doesn't take
Speaker 3: kindly to foreign women or women who simultaneously are not
Speaker 3: virgins and not married. So how is she supposed to
Speaker 3: make a living now? This is one of those verses that,
Speaker 3: if we ignore the larger cultural context, seems like it's
Speaker 3: at least trying to be decent, but in light of
Speaker 3: the larger cultural context, is actually another cruelty. She has
Speaker 3: to choose between trying to please her captor sexually and
Speaker 3: being cast out to live in destitution at best.
Speaker 2: But you will send her away free as a free person,
Speaker 2: as a wife who has been sent away, not as
Speaker 2: a slave you can sell. She is not your property,
Speaker 2: so you're not allowed to profit off of ruining her life.
Speaker 2: But you still ruin her life here no matter what
Speaker 2: happens at that point. Catch that, Yeah, I fucking caught
Speaker 2: that goddamn rape apologist. The hardest part for I think
Speaker 2: our hearts today to get through is the idea that
Speaker 2: God is the rightful judge of mankind and that you know,
Speaker 2: even though you know he's like, you can't just co
Speaker 2: kill people. This is wrong. There are times where God
Speaker 2: brings of flood, God destroys sodom and Gomorrah, or God
Speaker 2: commands go in and bring my judgment down on those people,
Speaker 2: and it has happened very small number of times throughout
Speaker 2: human history.
Speaker 3: The passage that you read to prove that it wasn't
Speaker 3: sex slavery was literally part of the law. It wasn't
Speaker 3: about a specific time. It was the general rule for
Speaker 3: how war is to be done and how prisoners of
Speaker 3: that war are to be treated. What's more, you didn't
Speaker 3: address the fact that it wasn't just about how it's
Speaker 3: sex slavery, it's about how it's child sex slavery. How
Speaker 3: do you think the Israelite army determined whether or not
Speaker 3: a woman had lain with a man before You think
Speaker 3: they were stopping to look for the hymen in the
Speaker 3: middle of their battle. No, it would simply be that
Speaker 3: young enough girls were assumed to have not had sex.
Speaker 3: And since we love context, the cultural context there was
Speaker 3: that girls typically got married around age twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 3: So the most generous interpretation here is that thirteen year
Speaker 3: old children were given a month to get over the
Speaker 3: death of their parents before being forced into a marriage
Speaker 3: with one of the people that was responsible for their
Speaker 3: parents' death. And, as I predicted, Mike included as part
Speaker 3: of his justification here the idea that this is not
Speaker 3: a command of how to behave, but a story about
Speaker 3: a time when this thing happened, which doesn't actually justify it.
Speaker 3: And since it's a command from God, presumably such a
Speaker 3: command could still be given today, which is a terrifying thought.
Speaker 3: But yeah, gross, Mike, that's it for this one. Today's
Speaker 3: comment to the day comes to us from David Ducharme,
Speaker 3: who says consent must always be enthusiastic and unanimous in
Speaker 3: every situation. This was on a video of mine from
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, and I don't remember the context, but
Speaker 3: I feel like Mike needs a reminder of this fact.
Speaker 3: The women who were prisoners of war in the Bible
Speaker 3: were likely not giving enthusiastic consent in the scenario laid
Speaker 3: out by the laws regarding captive women that Mike read
Speaker 3: from the power dynamic present there makes that all but impossible.
Speaker 3: So please, Mike, learn a thing or two about consent
Speaker 3: before you start trying to defend immoral Bible passages. Thanks
Speaker 3: for watching. I'll be back next Friday with more, but
Speaker 3: if you need to get your unofix in before then,
Speaker 3: I livestream with service every Wednesday, eight thirty Eastern on
Speaker 3: my other channel, The Watering Hole. Thanks to Tim Robertson
Speaker 3: for being my patroon and sponsorship Smander, thanks to Piper
Speaker 3: for editing my videos, and special thanks as always to
Speaker 3: my patrons, Sam Stangler, Tarik Sharif, Chad Fertig and Kenneth
Speaker 3: Muehler Peterson and all the rest who are the contexts
Speaker 3: that is left out by the apologists? That is my channel.
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Speaker 3: can be found at links dot vice rhino dot com,
Speaker 3: which is also where you'll find links to my other projects.
Speaker 3: Yif for whatever reason you want to send me stuff
Speaker 3: my pobox addresses in the description, see you next time.
Speaker 3: I should not have political political influence. Political is why
Speaker 3: y'all need to vote for the not stop it? Stop
Speaker 3: it literally my editor interrupting my recording by texting me
Speaker 3: how dare they? I could just put my phone on silent?
Speaker 3: What if she doesn't want to be Matt, Matt, this
Speaker 3: is Mike. They're both shit if for whatever you've read that,
Speaker 3: but fuck off, fucking porky pig that one