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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to my channel Vice Rhino. Here today
Speaker 2: we're looking at a video on Greg Cochal's channel Stand
Speaker 2: to Reason. In this one, he's answering a listener question
Speaker 2: about how he knows that the Bible is true and
Speaker 2: not some other religious text. This is something that I've
Speaker 2: often wondered myself, and in my experience, apologists mostly just
Speaker 2: avoid this question, but when they do address it, it
Speaker 2: is often in one of two ways. Either they will
Speaker 2: get hyper focused on debunking one single non Christian religion,
Speaker 2: usually Islam. See David Wood and Michael Jones for examples
Speaker 2: of that. And the other is to pick some arbitrary
Speaker 2: attribute that the Christian God has that the gods of
Speaker 2: other religions don't, and then decide that a god has
Speaker 2: to have that attribute in order to exist. This can
Speaker 2: be many things, wanting a personal relationship with human beings,
Speaker 2: providing blanket salvation for original sin, the supposed unity of
Speaker 2: the message of scriptures written by dozens of people spanning
Speaker 2: hundreds of years, stuff like that. So let's see how
Speaker 2: Greg handles it.
Speaker 3: Okay, this question comes from Niggle.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna throw this out there. That person should
Speaker 2: change their screen name. At least I hope that's the
Speaker 2: screen name. If it's a real name, then they should
Speaker 2: either change that or go by their middle name or something.
Speaker 2: I know that etymologically speaking, it's not related to the
Speaker 2: word that I'm sure everybody thought of when they first
Speaker 2: heard it. But like the fact that I don't even
Speaker 2: need to tell you what that word is and you
Speaker 2: know exactly what I'm talking about, even if you didn't
Speaker 2: think of it immediately yourself, shows that changing it would
Speaker 2: be a good idea.
Speaker 3: A friend asked why he should pay any heed to
Speaker 3: the Bible, saying it's just one of many ancient holy books.
Speaker 3: How can I trust it is special?
Speaker 2: I go a bit further than that. It's not just
Speaker 2: that it's one of many ancient holy books. It's also
Speaker 2: that it has written just like any other holy book
Speaker 2: with mistakes and contradictions and plot contrivances and so on.
Speaker 2: There is nothing that really sets it apart in a
Speaker 2: way that speaks to its veracity.
Speaker 4: Well, this to me is similar when people ask the
Speaker 4: question there were three hundred gods. You look at all
Speaker 4: the religion and what makes you think yours is the
Speaker 4: right god? There are all these holy books? What makes
Speaker 4: you think yours is the right book?
Speaker 2: Correct? We are looking for you to explain not only
Speaker 2: why you believe what you believe, but also how you
Speaker 2: ruled out all the other religions.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, there's not all these holy books.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about, greg, There's the Quran, the Vedas,
Speaker 2: the Upanishads, the Patakas, the Sutras, the Talmud, the Mishnah.
Speaker 2: And that isn't even an exhaustive list of the sacred
Speaker 2: texts of religions that are still widely practiced today. If
Speaker 2: we open the doors to ancient religions, then there's a
Speaker 2: whole ass Wikipedia list going over the texts of all
Speaker 2: kinds of religions, from the ancient Egyptian ones to the
Speaker 2: Etruscans to the pre Columbian Americas and everything in between.
Speaker 2: I guess Greg's way of making the Christian text seem
Speaker 2: special is by ignoring the very existence of all the
Speaker 2: sacred texts of every other religion to have ever existed.
Speaker 4: In fact, I had a conversation with Wes Huff a
Speaker 4: couple months ago on this question. Do ancient Nerisium religions
Speaker 4: each have their own revealed scripture?
Speaker 2: He said, no, Ah, So the thing that you're latching
Speaker 2: onto that makes Christianity special is that its scripture was
Speaker 2: revealed by God and that it took place in the
Speaker 2: ancient Near East for some reason. But if we ignore
Speaker 2: the weird region lock that He's putting on this for
Speaker 2: some reason, then that means that at the very least,
Speaker 2: Islam and Hinduism are also special. The Quran is supposed
Speaker 2: to be a direct revelation from Allah, and the Vedas
Speaker 2: are thought by Hindus to be the result of God
Speaker 2: providing supernatural wisdom to the scholars that wrote them. Side note,
Speaker 2: Hindus actually have a polytheism that could technically be monotheism
Speaker 2: depending on how you look at it. Thing going on
Speaker 2: that is kind of similar to the Christian God, Jesus
Speaker 2: and the Holy Ghost are three independent individuals who are
Speaker 2: also all God. But also there's only one God and
Speaker 2: he is all three of them thing. So in Hinduism,
Speaker 2: Brahman is God, infinite and all encompassing. Different aspects of
Speaker 2: divine truth are represented by the God's lowercase G that
Speaker 2: manifests from Brahman. But back on topic, all this amounts
Speaker 2: to is you saying I think that if there is
Speaker 2: a true religion, then the God of that religion would
Speaker 2: have provided direct revelation of some kind, which ultimately says
Speaker 2: that you are taking your idea of what you think
Speaker 2: God should be and using that to determine which religion
Speaker 2: is correct, which comes pretty damn close to what I've
Speaker 2: been accused of doing when I say that God should
Speaker 2: reveal himself to everyone in order to end the debate
Speaker 2: about his existence once and for all. God doesn't need
Speaker 2: to conform to my ideas of what he should do.
Speaker 2: He's God. I'm just a lowly human. Well, maybe the
Speaker 2: real God is the Hindu idea of Brahman and Christianity
Speaker 2: was merely provided as a way for people of Greg's
Speaker 2: temperament to be able to worship the real God. Each
Speaker 2: religion's gods are just like rays of the Sun. After all,
Speaker 2: they are not the whole Sun in and of themselves,
Speaker 2: but they share in origin, and if you trace their
Speaker 2: path backward, they will take you back to the real God.
Speaker 1: Brahmin.
Speaker 2: Honestly, that makes a lot more sense to me than
Speaker 2: the petty asshole that is the Christian God. Inasmuch as
Speaker 2: an infinite being would actually care about us worshiping it,
Speaker 2: why would it care what path we take to get there?
Speaker 2: Would it not make sense to provide different paths to
Speaker 2: cater to different people's needs and temperaments, And why would
Speaker 2: such a being feel the need to infinitely torture people
Speaker 2: for using the wrong path? Greg, you're selling me on
Speaker 2: Hinduism here.
Speaker 4: There are sometimes there are. He used a special word,
Speaker 4: but like prophets or seers that will make proclamations, But
Speaker 4: there's no delivered scripture of their God revealing himself to
Speaker 4: people in any any particular way. So characteristically this is
Speaker 4: not true.
Speaker 2: Yes, there are non Christian religions with revealed scripture. You're
Speaker 2: just wrong here. I mean, maybe he's just ignorant. I
Speaker 2: could see it being a case of him just never
Speaker 2: having bothered looking into it and so trusting other Christian
Speaker 2: apologists when they say stuff like that. But Christian apologists
Speaker 2: are a deceitful bunch. You would do well not to
Speaker 2: trust them. To that end, I'm not sure that I
Speaker 2: trust that Greg is actually just ignorant, given that it's
Speaker 2: literally his job to note like this. If he's not lying,
Speaker 2: he is massively incompetent.
Speaker 4: Now you have the Koran. The Koran is written in
Speaker 4: a seventh century after Christ.
Speaker 2: So the New Testament was written in the first century,
Speaker 2: more than a thousand years after the Rigveda. If older
Speaker 2: means true, then Hinduism wins again because the Rigveda is
Speaker 2: older than even the oldest book of the Old Testament.
Speaker 4: You know, so seventh and eighth I guess. So you
Speaker 4: you know it's not really contemporaneous.
Speaker 2: Contemporaneous with what Jesus is. One of your qualifications for
Speaker 2: something being an actual holy book revealed by God that
Speaker 2: it had to have been written close to the life
Speaker 2: of Jesus, because then you can throw out most of
Speaker 2: the Old Testament as well. I mean, I'm not really
Speaker 2: surprised that you landed on Christianity if one of your
Speaker 2: requirements for something to be a legitimate holy book is
Speaker 2: that it had to have been written sometime close to
Speaker 2: when Jesus lived. It's not exactly a coincidence that most
Speaker 2: of the jesus Centric books were written closer to the
Speaker 2: time of Jesus than most of the non jesus Centric books,
Speaker 2: but I could just as easily flip this around. Clearly,
Speaker 2: the Quran is the real book of scripture because it
Speaker 2: was written closer to the time of Mohammad than any
Speaker 2: other holy book.
Speaker 4: So the Bible is unique here. The Hebrew and the
Speaker 4: Christian scriptures are unique in this regard. There are some
Speaker 4: other things that were there, But it isn't like everybody's
Speaker 4: got their book.
Speaker 2: Everybody does have their book. Some religions just don't pretend
Speaker 2: that their book is absolutely infallible, which again is another
Speaker 2: mark in their favor, as the Bible is quite clearly
Speaker 2: not infallible, even though Christians say it is.
Speaker 4: But we're back to this broader question. You've got a
Speaker 4: multiplicity of options, why choose one over the other? And
Speaker 4: the answer is very simple, the reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we figured you had reasons. What you are supposed
Speaker 2: to be doing here in this video defending your faith
Speaker 2: is explaining those reasons. Saying the reasons doesn't actually do that.
Speaker 4: The reasons take three hundred gods, I have no reason
Speaker 4: to think any of those gods are real, and I.
Speaker 2: Have no reason to think that your God is real.
Speaker 2: And this question was supposed to get you to explain
Speaker 2: why your God should be given more consideration than those
Speaker 2: other gods, which you dismiss offhand. And if you don't
Speaker 2: feel the need to explain that, then why should I
Speaker 2: feel the need to explain why I don't believe in
Speaker 2: the Christian God?
Speaker 4: And they all seem to be very much like the
Speaker 4: human beings who worship them, and just as immoral.
Speaker 2: Dude, you worship a God who, if the Bible is
Speaker 2: to be believed, both commanded and committed genocide. You worship
Speaker 2: a god who condone slavery. You worship a God who
Speaker 2: tortured a guy to win a bet with Satan. You
Speaker 2: worship a God who describes himself as so jealous that
Speaker 2: his very name is jealous. In the Exodus story, after
Speaker 2: your God freed the Hebrews from slavery, the Hebrews wanted
Speaker 2: to give thanks to the God that saved them, but
Speaker 2: they didn't know who he was or what his rules were,
Speaker 2: because he hadn't rever that to them. Yet so they
Speaker 2: attempted to give thanks by building a golden calf. This
Speaker 2: attempt to show their gratitude so angered him that he
Speaker 2: had to be talked down from murdering them all on
Speaker 2: the spot. Jesus was racist, calling gentiles dogs, and only
Speaker 2: begrudgingly healing a gentile woman's child, with the act being
Speaker 2: described as the dog eating the scraps from the table.
Speaker 2: I could keep going. The God of the Bible is
Speaker 2: a petulant, spoiled child on a power trip. Just because
Speaker 2: you refuse to see it doesn't mean it's not there.
Speaker 4: The God of the Bible is very different. He's not
Speaker 4: the kind of god that you would invent, all right, probably.
Speaker 2: And yet one of the most common defenses of the
Speaker 2: fact that the Bible, and by extension, the God of
Speaker 2: the Bible, condoned slavery is the fact that slavery was
Speaker 2: just a commonplace institution in the culture at the time.
Speaker 2: So either significant cultural change was impossible for a supposedly
Speaker 2: omnipotent being, or else it looks very much like this
Speaker 2: being was invented by people that were part of that culture.
Speaker 4: So, and one has to look, is there any good
Speaker 4: reason to believe one option over the other.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, that question is what made me an atheist rather
Speaker 2: than a member of a different religion or an agnostic.
Speaker 2: When I left Christianity, I took a look at the
Speaker 2: other options and found that they all had many of
Speaker 2: the same problems as Christianity. I have yet to see
Speaker 2: any religion that actually stands out from the crowd, and
Speaker 2: that includes Christianity. In fact, as a former Christian, I
Speaker 2: guarantee you that I put a lot more time and
Speaker 2: effort into figuring out whether there were good reasons to
Speaker 2: believe in the Christian God than I did for any
Speaker 2: other gods, and I still came back with nothing.
Speaker 4: Look, if somebody goes in he's got a pain, goes
Speaker 4: to the doctor, you have a bunch of doctors look
Speaker 4: at him, okay, and you have all different ideas about
Speaker 4: what's wrong with him. Okay. How does he decide which
Speaker 4: is the accurate diagnosis. He's got to think about the
Speaker 4: particulars and the reasons that the doctors give and find
Speaker 4: out which one's the most persuasive.
Speaker 2: Well, in most cases, the doctors would all likely agree
Speaker 2: on the cause because they follow the evidence to the
Speaker 2: apparent conclusion. And in the cases where there is disagreement,
Speaker 2: it's not about persuasion, it's about knowledge. The doctors don't
Speaker 2: know enough to give a conclusive diagnosis, so there will
Speaker 2: be several potential diagnoses which are then ruled out, not
Speaker 2: because of how charismatic one of the doctors happen to be,
Speaker 2: but based on probability. Problem X happens more frequently in
Speaker 2: someone in your demographic than problem why, so we will
Speaker 2: start treating for X and be prepared to pivot if
Speaker 2: the treatment doesn't work. You are the alternative medicine quack
Speaker 2: in the corner trying to sell the guy ivermectin for
Speaker 2: his broken leg and insisting that because the actual doctors
Speaker 2: are usually overworked and so don't have a lot of
Speaker 2: time to spend on him personally, they must not care
Speaker 2: about him. You do, You're willing to spend so much
Speaker 2: more time with him, So come and buy the ivermectin.
Speaker 2: It'll cure what ails you. No matter what what ails
Speaker 2: you might be, does you being more persuasive or charismatic
Speaker 2: make the ivermectin a good treatment for a broken leg?
Speaker 2: Because that's your argument for choosing a religion. As far
Speaker 2: as I can see.
Speaker 4: We go through this process all the time of trying
Speaker 4: to decide between options, and we use our thinking and
Speaker 4: reason to do so.
Speaker 2: And what I did that with regards to religion, I
Speaker 2: wound up an atheist.
Speaker 3: So so can you briefly say what those six things are?
Speaker 4: Just in well, it has that I.
Speaker 2: Skipped it, but just for context, the six things that
Speaker 2: she's asking him about are the six evidences that show
Speaker 2: that the Bible has supernatural fingerprints. His words, not mine,
Speaker 2: but he seemed like he was just going to say
Speaker 2: there's six reasons without actually elaborating as to what those
Speaker 2: reasons are. So I'm glad she asked him that.
Speaker 4: The Fulfilled Prophecy it does not have fulfilled prophecy.
Speaker 2: It has a list of over three hundred supposed prophecies,
Speaker 2: most of which, in my experience, weren't actually written as
Speaker 2: prophecies originally, and all of which, in my experience, are
Speaker 2: either too vague to be useful or else the authors
Speaker 2: of the books detailing the events that fulfill them left
Speaker 2: clues that indicate that they were actively looking for prophecies
Speaker 2: to fulfill when writing their stories. As an example, let's
Speaker 2: go through the ritual that I usually reserve, specifically for
Speaker 2: when someone mentions the three hundred prophecies, Roll the dice
Speaker 2: and see how prophetic it is. I got a ninety
Speaker 2: one this time, and number ninety one is Psalm twenty
Speaker 2: two to twenty two, and this verse is supposed to
Speaker 2: be a prophecy of Jesus resurrection being declared. Before I
Speaker 2: get into it, though, I would just like to point
Speaker 2: out a little bit of what appears to be list
Speaker 2: patting going on. This list contains eighteen prophecies that all
Speaker 2: come from Psalm twenty two, many of which involve duplicate
Speaker 2: or overlapping verses. I would argue that with so many
Speaker 2: prophecies so close together, it would be more appropriate to
Speaker 2: treat this entire Psalm as one single prophecy. But no
Speaker 2: matter twenty two to twenty two is predicting that Jesus
Speaker 2: resurrection would be declared. It reads quote, I will tell
Speaker 2: of your name to my brothers in the midst of
Speaker 2: the congregation, I will praise you. I really don't see
Speaker 2: how you get from that to proclaiming a specific person's
Speaker 2: resurrection in the future. This is essentially just the author
Speaker 2: saying I'm gonna go to church sometime in the midst
Speaker 2: of the congregation, I will worship God. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 2: you do when you're in the congregation, because that's what
Speaker 2: those words mean. See what I mean though, Like, this
Speaker 2: isn't even a prophecy. It's just a guy saying I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do this thing later. And this thing has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with a resurrection.
Speaker 4: It has an amazing unity from Genesis to revel in
Speaker 4: terms of the development of what I call the story
Speaker 4: of reality.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how a book so riddled with contradictions
Speaker 2: could be said to have a unity, especially given that
Speaker 2: some ofhow we determine authorship is by finding points of disunity.
Speaker 2: Sometimes this is within a single text, as with the
Speaker 2: books of the Pentituke. Sometimes it's when comparing text, as
Speaker 2: with the writings of Paul and the pseudo Apigrifha.
Speaker 4: It has definite, profound insight into the big issues, the
Speaker 4: big questions.
Speaker 2: One of the go to examples for apologists of the
Speaker 2: Bible being profound or insightful is the Golden Rule, something
Speaker 2: which could be found in most religions, many of which
Speaker 2: predate Christianity. But this also ties into what I said
Speaker 2: about slavery. Earlier. Apologists often defend slavery in the Bible
Speaker 2: by talking about how it was just a normal part
Speaker 2: of the culture, so God put regulations on it to
Speaker 2: stop it from being too bad.
Speaker 4: Back then, everybody had slaves. The whole world had slaves.
Speaker 4: You either a slave or a slave, basically. Well, I
Speaker 4: guess there might have been a middle class, but not
Speaker 4: much one. But so what God does in the law
Speaker 4: is he regulates it to minimize the negative impact.
Speaker 2: But and hear me out here, would completely outlying slavery
Speaker 2: in a society that considered it normal not be a
Speaker 2: powerful example of something profound or insightful. I still don't
Speaker 2: think it would rise to the level of supernatural, but
Speaker 2: at least then it wouldn't directly contradict your point here.
Speaker 4: That have to do with maybe the existential elements. Who
Speaker 4: are we, where we're going? Why are we important? Is
Speaker 4: there a God? Is there morality? Whatever?
Speaker 2: All religions deal with those questions. They just don't all
Speaker 2: have the same answer. So you picked the one with
Speaker 2: the answer that you.
Speaker 4: Like best, and then it answers those questions in a
Speaker 4: way that resonates with our deepest intuitions about the way
Speaker 4: the world is. Seems to fit. Okay, that's the third one.
Speaker 2: Maybe it resonates with your deepest intuitions, But given that
Speaker 2: Christianity is losing members to religious switching faster than any
Speaker 2: religion on the planet, then I'd go so far as
Speaker 2: to say that this is not a universal experience.
Speaker 4: Fourth one is it's a historical reliability. So it's a
Speaker 4: record of God intervening in history to show himself in
Speaker 4: different ways, most profound in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Speaker 4: But you can actually track the history because there's a
Speaker 4: lot of detail there, and we can show in many
Speaker 4: points that the history is accurate to the events they describe,
Speaker 4: you know, through archaeology and other sources, etc.
Speaker 2: And at what point do we start this history? When
Speaker 2: a talking snake convinced a dirt man and a rib
Speaker 2: woman to eat the fruit of a tree that would
Speaker 2: magically impart knowledge directly into their brains, thus condemning all
Speaker 2: of humanity for the crime of knowing the difference between
Speaker 2: good and evil? Would it be when God flooded the
Speaker 2: entire planet in a way that left no geologic record
Speaker 2: in order to kill everyone for liking butt stuff or whatever?
Speaker 2: What about when the Egyptians kept hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: Hebrews as slave for centuries, resulting in a mass migration
Speaker 2: of these people through the Red Sea without leaving any
Speaker 2: archaeological trace behind either of their enslavement or their subsequent migration. Now,
Speaker 2: are there some historically accurate details that can be found
Speaker 2: in various places throughout the Bible. Yes, but there are
Speaker 2: also some pretty wild inaccuracies that we know for a
Speaker 2: fact did not happen. So to call the whole collection
Speaker 2: of books historically accurate is just laughable.
Speaker 4: This is especially true in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
Speaker 2: Absolutely not for the life of Jesus. The best you
Speaker 2: can do is point to places that were mentioned in
Speaker 2: the Gospels that also happen to be real places, and
Speaker 2: also ponscious Pilot existed, though the other accounts of him
Speaker 2: paint a very different picture from the Pilot of the Bible,
Speaker 2: so I would actually add that one to the list
Speaker 2: of inaccuracies.
Speaker 4: But what's really key in this, as in particular with
Speaker 4: the Gospels, is that the record to accurate history that
Speaker 4: we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is a
Speaker 4: supernatural record of events.
Speaker 2: But how did you determine that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
Speaker 2: John were actually accurate. There are actually a lot of
Speaker 2: things that we know they got wrong, So them getting
Speaker 2: a few place names right isn't really going to do
Speaker 2: it for me.
Speaker 4: So we have supernatural history that's well attested to by eyewitnesses.
Speaker 2: Okay, the Gospels were all written anonymously, none even claimed
Speaker 2: to be eyewitnesses. The only eyewitness who wrote any of
Speaker 2: the New Testament is Paul, and his description of the
Speaker 2: thing that he witnessed places it firmly in the vision category,
Speaker 2: not a demonstrable historical event.
Speaker 4: That's the fourth reason. The fifth one is the power
Speaker 4: of this message, this book, this account of reality, when
Speaker 4: taken seriously to change and transform lives.
Speaker 2: Again, though literally, every religion changes lives. Winning the lottery
Speaker 2: changes lives. Watching a good movie can change your life.
Speaker 2: Help My life significantly changed for the better when I
Speaker 2: became an atheist. So by that metric, atheism must be true.
Speaker 4: In a very unique fashion.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry I cut it a little too early there.
Speaker 2: Could you explain what makes it unique?
Speaker 1: Please?
Speaker 2: Greg?
Speaker 4: And this is universal, doesn't matter where you live, when
Speaker 4: you live. Christian people who follow this not only are
Speaker 4: the individual lives changed, but whole cultures are transformed, like
Speaker 4: the Wesleyan Revival.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make it unique. Man, Every major religion has
Speaker 2: impacted culture in one way or another.
Speaker 4: And then, finally, the survival of this book through in
Speaker 4: the midst of tremendous persecution and criticism. Attempts to destroy
Speaker 4: it physically and through criticism have all failed.
Speaker 2: Okay, I guess we're done explaining the unique way in
Speaker 2: which Christianity changes lives and the Bible surviving isn't really
Speaker 2: surprising given the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. My
Speaker 2: question here is that if the Bible surviving for so
Speaker 2: long in spite of occasional attempts to eradicate it is
Speaker 2: evidence of its truth, then what are the apocryphal books
Speaker 2: that have survived despite centuries of direct commands from both
Speaker 2: emperors and popes that they be destroyed. The accounts of
Speaker 2: the disciples being martyred all came from such books, and
Speaker 2: apologist seem willing to credulously accept the martyrdom claims, but
Speaker 2: nothing else from them. But clearly God was protecting them
Speaker 2: in the face of persecution, right otherwise they would have
Speaker 2: been wiped out There's also the fact that all of
Speaker 2: the known manuscripts for the New Testament trace back to
Speaker 2: the Egyptian manuscript tradition, meaning that despite these books and
Speaker 2: letters undoubtedly being copied out in many locations, all were
Speaker 2: lost except for the ones from one specific province of
Speaker 2: the Roman Empire. It is conceivable that had the other
Speaker 2: manuscripts survived, our modern New Testament would be completely different
Speaker 2: than it is now. Of course, there is no actual
Speaker 2: evidence that it would be different, but it is impossible
Speaker 2: to say with certainty that it would be the same
Speaker 2: as to destroying it through criticism. If every claim in
Speaker 2: the Bible were conclusively shown to be wrong, the Bible
Speaker 2: would still exist. I'd even go so far as to
Speaker 2: say that Christians would still exist, given how many Christians
Speaker 2: deny evolution, which has been conclusively shown to be the
Speaker 2: process by which life on Earth diversified. Greg is one
Speaker 2: of those Christians. For the record, though he is willing
Speaker 2: to grant old ages, he sees evolution as being incompatible
Speaker 2: with Christianity. Also, for the record, many claims of the
Speaker 2: Bible have been conclusively shown to be wrong, and Christians
Speaker 2: do still exist.
Speaker 4: And it continues to be the number one best selling
Speaker 4: book of all history.
Speaker 2: The holy book of the largest religion on the planet
Speaker 2: is a top seller. Color me shocked. I wonder if
Speaker 2: all the Bible's left unread and hotel rooms count toward
Speaker 2: those numbers. Also, most churches I went to had enough
Speaker 2: Bibles available for everyone in the congregation to be able
Speaker 2: to borrow one if they forgot there's at home that day.
Speaker 2: These are the kinds of shenanigans that are liable to
Speaker 2: get you a dagger next to your book title on
Speaker 2: the New York Times bestseller list. So I'm not really
Speaker 2: impressed by this one.
Speaker 4: And those things taken together, it's a cumulative case.
Speaker 2: Because zero plus zero plus zero plus zero plus zero
Speaker 2: plus zero equals one.
Speaker 4: Apparently, the supernatural prophecy, the supernatural unity, the supernatural insight,
Speaker 4: the supernatural events recorded accurately. They are the supernatural change lives,
Speaker 4: and supernatural survival through time and persecution, taken collectively, is
Speaker 4: very powerful evidence that this book is not like any
Speaker 4: other book.
Speaker 2: I feel like the Kuran hits most of those points
Speaker 2: at least as well as the Bible does.
Speaker 3: What makes it easier to valuate compared to say, another
Speaker 3: religious text that might just be ideas about how to live,
Speaker 3: or maybe their ideas about ultimate reality or whatever it is.
Speaker 3: The thing about the Bible is that it's connected to
Speaker 3: normal life, like it's connected to history. It's not just
Speaker 3: one person's ideas that came to them that are untestable.
Speaker 2: You shall not put the Lord your God to the
Speaker 2: test Deuteronomy six sixteen. It sounds like, not only has
Speaker 2: she never read her own holy book, but she's also
Speaker 2: never read another religion's holy book. Greg sounds that way too.
Speaker 2: For that matter. It's two people who has never given
Speaker 2: any serious thought to the possibility that any other religion
Speaker 2: might be true, trying to come up with post talk
Speaker 2: justification for their lack of thought.
Speaker 3: You can't test somebody's Like if there's a single person
Speaker 3: who has a vision and says this is how you
Speaker 3: should live, well, there's not really a way to test
Speaker 3: if that really came from a supernatural being or whatever
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 2: That sounds an awful lot like Paul. She just described
Speaker 2: most of the basis for most of the New Testament,
Speaker 2: and Paul is the only New Testament author who even
Speaker 2: claims to have been a direct eyewitness to anything resurrection related.
Speaker 2: Everything else is anonymous authors repeating stories that they heard.
Speaker 2: Pro tip, don't accidentally describe your own holy book when
Speaker 2: explaining why you dismiss all the other holy books.
Speaker 3: But if God is acting in history, now, there are
Speaker 3: so many people involved writing about what's happening and how
Speaker 3: God is working through what's happening. And we can look
Speaker 3: back at history and see how these things happened.
Speaker 2: And when we do that, we see that they largely
Speaker 2: did not happen the way the Bible records them happening. Oops.
Speaker 3: And it's just connected with what is happening in the world.
Speaker 3: And so there's a way to look at it and see, well,
Speaker 3: what is the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead?
Speaker 3: Why should I believe that? It's not just somebody saying
Speaker 3: there's an afterlife? Okay, well what do I do with that?
Speaker 3: There's no way to evaluate that.
Speaker 2: Is she for real? How do these people not see it?
Speaker 2: Why are apologists the least self aware people on the
Speaker 2: entire planet.
Speaker 3: So we do have a way to look at it
Speaker 3: and figure out what is true. So does the advantage
Speaker 3: I think the Bible has.
Speaker 2: H No, the resurrection is just stories written down. There
Speaker 2: is no evidence for it. There have been many plausible
Speaker 2: scenarios put forth that explain the beginnings of Christianity with
Speaker 2: no need for an actual resurrection. But the thing that
Speaker 2: it all comes down to is the fact that people
Speaker 2: are capable of writing things down that did not actually happen,
Speaker 2: And so whatever may have caused these people to feel
Speaker 2: the need to write these things down doesn't ultimately matter.
Speaker 2: When looking at it from an evidential standpoint, the question
Speaker 2: merely becomes one of probability. What is more likely that
Speaker 2: a dead person came back to life, something that, as
Speaker 2: far as we can tell, fails to happen one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of the time, or that some people wrote down
Speaker 2: a story of things that didn't actually happen, something that
Speaker 2: we know happens all the time.
Speaker 3: In addition, there's and you mentioned the unity. I think
Speaker 3: the unity is a great argument because you have all
Speaker 3: of these authors over fifteen hundred years writing down what
Speaker 3: all comes together in a cohesive unity.
Speaker 2: Again, that says to me that not only has she
Speaker 2: not read any other religion's holy books, but she hasn't
Speaker 2: even read her own. There's not even a cohesive unity
Speaker 2: in the Gospels, in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus praised
Speaker 2: that God take this cup from him because he doesn't
Speaker 2: want to be crucified. But in John, Jesus is annoyed
Speaker 2: that anyone would think that he wouldn't be willing to
Speaker 2: be crucified, saying, shall I not drink the cup that
Speaker 2: the Father has given me? In Mark, Matthew and Luke,
Speaker 2: a man from Sirene is compelled to carry jesus cross
Speaker 2: for him, the implication being that his pre crucifixion torture
Speaker 2: left him two weak to carry it himself. In John,
Speaker 2: he goes out of his way to mention that Jesus
Speaker 2: carried his own damn cross, thank you very much. Yet, somehow,
Speaker 2: despite blatant and by all appearances, purposeful contradiction between the
Speaker 2: books of the Bible, we are supposed to believe that
Speaker 2: all of the authors had a unity of message and purpose.
Speaker 3: Of what God has been doing, Who God is, what
Speaker 3: he requires, what he's like. It all fits together. How
Speaker 3: does that happen over that period of time, with the
Speaker 3: changing culture and the different people.
Speaker 2: So if you were to actually read your own Holy Book,
Speaker 2: you'll see that the character of God does indeed change
Speaker 2: over time and with the culture. In fact, that's part
Speaker 2: of how we know that the Pentituke had multiple authors
Speaker 2: from different cultural traditions. Just looking at the three main
Speaker 2: sources for Genesis, we have the priestly source P, which
Speaker 2: is overly concerned with lineage, and, aside from a few
Speaker 2: of what appear to be scribal errors, never uses the
Speaker 2: tetragrammaton the four letters Y to HWH that are the
Speaker 2: name of God and Hebrew. Evidence suggests that the P
Speaker 2: source is actually a collection of sources that spans several centuries,
Speaker 2: both pre and post xilic. Funnily enough, the evidence is
Speaker 2: largely based on the unity of message within the P sources,
Speaker 2: despite the rather odd is cultural differences that place some
Speaker 2: parts as preexilic and others as post exilic. The Yaowist
Speaker 2: source J is concerned with human nature and the higher
Speaker 2: purpose that lies behind human events. The writing in the
Speaker 2: J source is so concerned with earthly things that God
Speaker 2: himself becomes anthropomorphic. He's planting a garden in Eden. He's
Speaker 2: sitting under a tree eating with Abraham. He's wrestling with
Speaker 2: Jacob and cheating at it. No less, the Elohist source
Speaker 2: E is very similar to JAY, but usually has God
Speaker 2: intervening through angels and dreams rather than getting involved directly
Speaker 2: as in Jay, or being rather above it all hanging
Speaker 2: out in heaven as in P. He tends to justify
Speaker 2: and explain things rather than letting the actions speak for themselves,
Speaker 2: and there are often contradictions between these sources. For instance,
Speaker 2: J is the source that has seven pairs of birds
Speaker 2: and clean animals on the arc, while P only has
Speaker 2: one pair of each. In Jay, the total duration of
Speaker 2: the flood is sixty one days. Well in P it
Speaker 2: is one year and eleven days. To quote Ea Spizer's
Speaker 2: introduction to the Anchor Bible translation of Genesis, my source
Speaker 2: for this section. Quote. The very circumstance, however, that our
Speaker 2: sources exhibit so many mutual disagreements should be enough to
Speaker 2: suggest that the channels through which much of the material
Speaker 2: has been handed down were fluid rather than fixed.
Speaker 3: It's because it's all coming from the same God.
Speaker 2: But the nature of that God is different depending on
Speaker 2: where we're reading, even within single books of the Bible,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what we would expect of a series
Speaker 2: of documents composed over centuries by human beings.
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially when none of those writers have the whole story.
Speaker 2: Fun fact, this is once again, one of the ways
Speaker 2: we can differentiate between sources in the Pentituke. Some of
Speaker 2: them had access to the others, but obviously the earlier
Speaker 2: ones did not have access to the later ones, so
Speaker 2: we can see corrections, annotations, and responses happening within the
Speaker 2: text itself.
Speaker 4: They just had a piece and they didn't completely understand it. Abraham,
Speaker 4: how did Jesus put it? Saw my day and rejoiced. Okay, well, okay,
Speaker 4: we don't have a lot of content there. We have
Speaker 4: a promise that we know given to Abraham as to
Speaker 4: a future fulfillment of a blessing Abraham a little piece,
Speaker 4: and each piece and this is why this course that
Speaker 4: we have at Standarison str dot Org.
Speaker 2: You know, I really don't trust this guy to be
Speaker 2: a good teacher, given that he doesn't seem capable of
Speaker 2: finishing a thought. But like, does he think that Abraham
Speaker 2: wrote some of the Bible? He seems to, which is
Speaker 2: weird because usually the people who don't want to acknowledge
Speaker 2: the various sources for the Pentituke like to attribute the
Speaker 2: whole thing to Moses, not Abraham. But I guess it
Speaker 2: could be that Greg is just taking the story at
Speaker 2: face value. With no critical thought being put into it,
Speaker 2: and assuming that when the story said that Abraham was
Speaker 2: aware of things, that must actually be true for the
Speaker 2: likely ahistorical person known as Abraham.
Speaker 4: Gets called the Bible fast forward. There's eight sessions fifty
Speaker 4: minutes each, five zero and it comes with a like
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty page syllabus that I put together,
Speaker 4: and I teach this to show the connectedness from from
Speaker 4: the very beginning the call of Abraham all the way
Speaker 4: to the advent of Messiah. It's all connected.
Speaker 2: Obviously, It's all connected. No one is denying that. This
Speaker 2: is like me saying that the first Star Wars movie
Speaker 2: is connected to the latest one. It is, obviously. But
Speaker 2: has there been a consistent theme or message throughout all
Speaker 2: of the Star Wars media? Absolutely not, And much like Christianity,
Speaker 2: there have been schisms in the Star Wars fandom over
Speaker 2: what media is best, what is canon, what is apocryphal, etc. Personally,
Speaker 2: I hold to originalism. The original trilogy is best, The
Speaker 2: prequels are okay, but cringy, and Disney Star Wars mostly
Speaker 2: sucks balls. No idea how and or made it through
Speaker 2: the Disney everything must be generic and bad filter. But
Speaker 2: the fact that and Or is good is probably the
Speaker 2: least controversial Star Wars opinion anyone could have.
Speaker 4: So there you go, and it's very obvious when you
Speaker 4: kind of go through it. That's the unity you're talking about.
Speaker 2: So if when you say unity you just mean came
Speaker 2: from the same general culture, so despite the many differences
Speaker 2: and disagreements, will have some elements in common, then I'd agree.
Speaker 2: But that's not a supernatural unity. That's the same unity
Speaker 2: that the Star Wars universe has.
Speaker 3: And just emphasize one more thing that you have in there.
Speaker 3: It's the insight into human nature that just blows me
Speaker 3: away sometimes.
Speaker 2: So her favorite bits of the Pentituke must be from
Speaker 2: the j source, because that's Jay's whole thing. Again, though,
Speaker 2: there's not any profound insight into human nature that is
Speaker 2: on a level that requires supernatural intervention, and often it's
Speaker 2: about on the same level as the other religions. So
Speaker 2: I don't see how this sets Christianity apart.
Speaker 3: The Bible knows who we are. God's revelation he has us.
Speaker 3: He knows who we are, and you can see the
Speaker 3: reality of that, and you can see the weaknesses of people,
Speaker 3: and you can see what God does through them, and
Speaker 3: it's just you see how people interact with Jesus, and
Speaker 3: it's just amazing. You can see the truthfulness of the
Speaker 3: way it portrays human.
Speaker 4: Being, resonates with our deepest intuitions about reality.
Speaker 2: I would argue that the Buddhist observation that suffering is
Speaker 2: intrinsically linked with desire is far more profound than anything
Speaker 2: found in the Bible. So what I got from this
Speaker 2: video is that there really isn't any reason to give
Speaker 2: Christianity or the Bible any more consideration than any other religion.
Speaker 2: It's just the one that Greg and Amy like best.
Speaker 2: That's it for this one. Today's comment to the Day
Speaker 2: comes to us from the heretic annihilator nine thousand, who
Speaker 2: says rejecting Christ causes eternal harm. Think about that one.
Speaker 2: I'm curious about this one. Who does it cause the
Speaker 2: harm to The implication seems to be that I would
Speaker 2: be the one being harmed because I wind up being
Speaker 2: tortured in hell for attorney, which just kind of shows
Speaker 2: God to be the immoral monster that atheists commonly say
Speaker 2: he is. I didn't do him any harm, but like
Speaker 2: a petulant child with a mean temper, in psychopathy, he
Speaker 2: throws me into a fire to burn forever because of
Speaker 2: a minor slight Thanks for watching. I'll be back next
Speaker 2: Friday with more, but if you need to get Yournino
Speaker 2: fixed in before then, my live stream with service every
Speaker 2: Wednesday eight thirty Eastern on my other channel, The Watering Hole.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Piper for being my editor, and special thanks
Speaker 2: is always to my patrons, who are the non Christian
Speaker 2: holy books that are dismissed by the apologists. That is
Speaker 2: my channel. If you'd like Greg to not actually know
Speaker 2: much about you, you can join us on Patreon for
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Speaker 2: dot com, slash vice rhano, or by supporting the channel
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Speaker 2: which is also where you find links to on my
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Speaker 2: See you next time.
Speaker 4: M