1 Atheist vs 25 Christians (feat. Alex O'Connor) | Surrounded

But when a child dies of leukemia, could there be a purpose to it? Did God command the ethnic cleansing of the land of Israel? I'm not saying the scribe made something up. I'm saying the scribe has a command. So where did they get that command from? From God? I had Jesus appear to me 3 years ago. I don't know what's happening there. I have to suspect it's some kind of psychological phenomenon.

Hi, my name is Alex O'Connor. I'm an atheist and host of the Within Reason podcast. And today, I'm surrounded by 25 Christians who, God willing, might be able to change my mind. My first claim is that suffering makes God's existence unlikely.

Good work. Heex, how's it going? How's it going? Nice to meet you, Sage. Why don't you just begin? Why, why is, uh, suffering or evil make God's existence unlikely?

I think we're confronted with two hypotheses: so atheism, naturalism, or theism. We should ask what we expect would occur under either hypothesis, and then we look at the world and we see what does actually occur. And what do we find? We find, I think most relevant here, a system of natural selection, the mechanism by which God apparently chose to bring animals and ultimately human beings into existence. A system which is defined by suffering. Survival of the fittest is the same thing as the death and suffering and destruction of the unfit. I'm told the very mechanism that God chose to bring about the human species as the ultimate end of his creation was one that is imbued with suffering, such that 99.9% of all the species, let alone animals, that have ever existed on planet Earth have been brutally wiped from existence into extinction. And I think that that's less likely on theism. If you assume atheism or materialism, not only do you explain this, you also come to expect it.

What is your, I guess, epistemology? How would you, how do you know that this is the case, that it's less likely, and that, you know, an atheist worldview, naturalistic worldview would look like the way it is today?

Of course, we don't know. But that's why I use the phraseology of unlikely. I think that if you were to tell somebody who was sort of in some, um, you know, Rulian state of nature, hadn't seen the world, and you said that the world has been created by an omni-benevolent, all-powerful God, what kind of world would that person be imagining? And if you dropped them into the world, if you, if you were given the opportunity to become a wild animal, like in 2 seconds, I was just going to turn you into a random wild animal somewhere on planet Earth. I think I like being a guy. I think you'd probably kill yourself before I had the opportunity because, you know, that the life of these animals is almost defined in terms of their suffering.

I guess I just don't really see how you can justify that claim per se. Um, what I would say is that if we actually take into account the holistic view of the scriptures, which I do think that you have to do, we see that it's actually much more coherent once you acknowledge that evil itself doesn't have ontology. Evil is not a thing. You don't look under a rock and say, "There's the evil." Right? So I'm not really talking about evil here because that's, of course, a moral term. I'm talking about suffering.

You can, you distinguish suffering and evil? So evil is a moral term. Evil means that something is bad, it's immoral. You need to have a moral ontology for that. Suffering is just any experience that's not wanted when experienced, right? And so even if you don't have a moral objectivism, you can still say that suffering exists. So here's a question: a deer gets its leg caught under the branch of a tree that's fallen over in the world, and it starves to death in confused agony. Why does God oversee this? And why does God set the natural world up such that events like this occur?

Well, because the ultimate view here is that, okay, pause. Nice to meet you. Good work. How's my man? Okay. So my first question to start out with is, what exactly about suffering makes this unlikely on the condition that God exists?

I think that if God is all-loving, then he probably wouldn't want his creatures to suffer. And so I think that the fact that they do suffer makes his existence less likely.

Okay, perfect. And is there some specific aspect of suffering that you're particularly honing in on? Horrendous, or whatever?

In particular, non-human animal suffering. Because I think that Christianity has a celebrated tradition of theodicies trying to explain why suffering exists: human free will, the development of the soul, higher order goods, all of this kind of stuff, none of which apply to the suffering of non-human animals.

Have you heard of the axiological expectation mismatch problem?

I have not.

Okay, so philosophers of religion have started to understand that the thing that actually generates a problem between God and suffering is actually the value system you attach to the very attribute of perfect lovingness. Because the problem of evil is an internal critique. You have to look at a very specific version of theism and how it defines perfect lovingness. I want to present to you a version where my version of perfect lovingness does not actually constitute a problem and a misalignment, that mismatch between the suffering of animals, just to say the profusion of suffering of animals, and existence of God.

So let's hear. What kind of God are we imagining that would allow and oversee and do nothing to prevent billions of years of untold animal suffering?

Right, so you're talking about non-prevention, or or setting up the system that is natural selection such that that it relies upon things like predation, disease. Well, the first part is, I don't agree with the whole setting up the system part. So I'm not one of those theists that believes that God does this select and pick idea of creating worlds. I don't think that God actually creates worlds. I think that God lets worlds develop according in a certain way. But because God can oversee an overarching narrative, he knows exactly how he can redeem anything. So the first, sorry, go ahead.

Could God have made it such that animals were all herbivores instead of, uh, carnivores and omnivores?

Yes, he could totally do that.

Okay, so, so had he done that, here's an instant way to to reduce by orders of magnitude the amount of suffering that exists.

But hold on, that's particularly assuming a value theory already that I haven't told you I'm adopting, that has a problem with the evil. So I have to give you my value theory first for you to show that misalignment. Let's, let's hear.

Perfect. Okay, so my value theory says that it's not the most important thing about a sentient creature is not what merely happens to them. It's about the total timeline of their life and how and where their life permanently ends. Meaning, if you were to judge an author of a narrative, and the first few chapters, let's say there's a lot of bad things happening, but the end ends with this crescendo where there's victory, there's redemption, there's beauty, and everyone in the story actually endorses their entire existence that they lived. They can look at their whole, they can look at the total timeline, and they actually each subjectively come to the conclusion, "I'm glad I was made, and I totally see what my suffering was for." That's the particular I'm, I'm using with. So we have to judge, hold on. We, like John Hick says, we have to judge the very nature of God's lovingness by what he does in the end, not these few time slices that we observe right now. For you to show that there's a problem, you have to show to me that the suffering of animals cannot be transformed, or intrinsically cut off from being transformed into a life that they will endorse.

There's a couple theses on the table, but sure, go ahead.

Okay, so, so are you talking about the end of their life is in their end of life on Earth, or you talking about the afterlife?

I'm, I'm anorm postmortem.

Because if you're just talking about life on Earth, then I would say that if you were, if you had an author writing a book and a character, if we were trying to figure out the relationship between that author and the person in the book, and that person in the book shows up for 5 seconds in the first chapter and is a child who almost immediately dies of cancer in an incredibly painful way, and there's no development, there's no, there's no sort of bringing back to life, and suddenly everyone's grateful for it, it's just this miserable, tragic experience, and I asked, "Well, what did the author not want to do for the story of the book, but want to do for that character?" I think it would be pretty damning. And also, when it comes to animals, we're talking about animals who, who are predated on from the moment that they begin existence. They sort of have disease. You know, zebras, when they're killed by lions, are often too big to be killed instantly, so they die over minutes with their windpipes caught in the jaws of a lion. How can this be developing a zebra, which, by the way, probably doesn't even have the same kind of first-person conscious experience that humans do, in order to sort of rationalize and abstract and learn from their, their sort of past and morally develop in that way? They just suffer. And, and, and what kind of God could oversee this?

Okay, so there's, there's a lot of assumptions on the table. Again, again, you're assuming a particular value system that I'm not. I'll tell you what I'm assuming here. What I'm assuming here is that God, a good God, would not allow unnecessary suffering to obtain.

Okay, gotcha. So we can talk. Age, we can talk about unnecessary suffering. We're talking about the just the justifying norms for suffering. You're saying it has to be in terms of necessity, which is an evil is only authorized by God if it's in connection to a greater good or prevention of a greater evil, correct? If there's some kind of justification for allowing that. But you're saying it's a necessary connection. Why? You, what's the term of necessity?

So, so perhaps I should say unjustified instead of unnecessary. Okay, so we both agree. I do not believe that God can authorize justifi, unjustified suffering. Tell, tell me how that example that I gave you, the deer with his leg starving, is justified because it's intrinsically redeemable. And my, the norms I'm working with is not this, this necessity condition that you're working with. Mine is about redeemable suffering, redeemability, or we call defeasibility, if that suffering can be defeated within the creature's life. And I'll define what I mean by defeat, which is that they can retroactively look back at what they went through and integrate it into your life history, where they look at their life.

I have to interrupt because the example I gave you is one where the deer dies. Yes, the deer dies. But here's the thing. What you're, you're probably talking about this post-mortem example. There's one thesis on the table. There's two philosophers that defend exactly what this goes through. One, one defends that animals will be given a martyrdom status. Well, God will be able to present them himself in a way to animals in the afterlife such that, in the same way you could give praise to a dog, and the dog emotionally recognizes that he's loved and that his life is worth living, right? To these animals that suffered like that, there's one view on the table, which is that God will give them a praiseworthy status where they will be able to, to actually see.

Can we talk about that claim? Because these animals are suffering for what? I mean, God, God might cause them to suffer, me, end, God might cause them to suffer a bunch and then essentially redeem them in the afterlife. But what for? Like, why do this? If, if I were to punch you in the face and then give you $20,000 afterwards, you might be grateful for the $20,000, but why couldn't I just give you the $20,000?

Well, see, so, so that's assuming, so I saw your debate with Trent. You've been voted out by the majority. Your seat. Good stuff. So close. Hey, nice to meet you, Hayden. How are you? Hayden, nice to meet you. Would you say that theism or atheism better accounts for the idea that suffering exists and a purpose for it?

Depends exactly what you mean. Uh, because of course, you might say that the world itself is more expected on theism. And since suffering, you know, needs the existence of the world, that it's theism. But granted the existence of a material world, let's say, I think atheism.

Okay. Why does suffering exist at all? Uh, like, in an atheistic worldview, what is the cause of suffering?

Oh, well, because however life began, it developed through a series of natural selection, which requires animals to develop senses that they wish to avoid in order to be more likely to survive. And that's why pain receptors evolve. In a world where not all of these pains are actually going to kill us, we're left with situations in which we're in a lot of pain but don't end up dying for it.

Would you agree that consciousness is necessary for suffering?

I would say, probably, yeah.

Does atheism account for consciousness?

Yes, that's what I was talking about a moment ago. Perhaps not. Maybe theism accounts better for consciousness than atheism does.

So if there is no consciousness, there is no suffering. Is that right?

That's probably true.

Yeah. So if atheism cannot account for consciousness, then it cannot account for suffering. Would you agree with that?

I, I, so I think what we're doing here is we're sort of slightly shifting the goalposts. Um, if, if you don't want to grant the existence of the material world before we start talking about this, we can do an argument from consciousness. But then we need to debate whether consciousness is more, is explicable on atheism. What I'm going to say is this. What I'm going to say is this: Consciousness may seem to imply the existence of a conscious creator of the universe. We're here talking about, I suppose, we're talking about Christianity. The claim was about God. But the God that you believe in, let's say, uh, if we grant that there is a creator deity who sort of brings about the universe of conscious creatures. Have you ever heard of the evil God hypo that Steven La popularized or came up with?

So the idea is that like, imagine that there's a God who brings about the world and creates the world, but does it maliciously because he wants human beings to suffer. He brings about a world in order so that human beings will suffer, right? That seems like a plausible hypothesis. And even if you think that consciousness points towards God, the kind of God that, that a lot of Christians think is a sort of necessary quality of God, which is to be all-loving, might not have to apply here.

Can I ask a question?

Yes.

If Christianity were true, is it plausible that suffering is necessary for God's purpose? For if Christianity is true, then I think it must be necessary because there'd be no other expl.

Okay, so we're not talking about whether or not Christianity is true. But if you're asking me if it's plausible that Christianity is true, and therefore suffering is necessary, I would say probably not. Because I don't think suffering could should be necessary or could be necessary in an atheistic worldview. I would agree with you. It makes no sense at all. But, okay. I would ask this question. So, so can I ask you, why, why then, if God exists and wants to come to know everybody and wants to love everybody and does so for the sake of human beings, why he chose to imbue the world with so much suffering that is at least seemingly completely inexplicable?

Are you a father?

No.

I'm a father. Mhm. I want my son to become just like I am, better than I am, I should say. I want him to become the best that he can be. Is it possible for him to become, to reach his potential without suffering in his life? Perhaps not. But there's two there. So suffering is necessary. There are a few things I want to say here. Firstly, that kind of moral development doesn't apply to non-human animals, as I've already said, right? That does not account for that. That does not account for the brutal death of animals. In the also, if I don't want to talk about your son, because it's tragic to think about, but somebody else's son has suffered and died immediately as a result of that suffering. They don't get to develop in the same way. I would agree that on a micro level, it's very hard to justify. And we can ask the question, why doesn't God intervene on all? You might be able to justify an amount of suffering, right? But the fact that there's so much gratuitous suffering in the world is what I think makes God's existence unlikely. There are some instances where maybe a certain amount of suffering brings about a certain amount of good in a situation that, by the way, would count as a justification. But when a child dies of leukemia and they're dead, could there be a purpose to it? What if, what if the death of the child brings their parents to God? Then perhaps, then then the parents should be grateful that their child got leukemia because it's doing the will of the Lord. Necessarily, that seems to me.

Please return to your seat. You're so cool. Hey, hey, how's it going? I'm awesome. I would love to pull back a little bit. Sure. And ask you, what are your values kind of rooted in and grounded in? Where would we start with?

Ah, so I'm an ethical emotivist, which is a form of ethical non-cognitivism. I don't think that ethical claims have truth value. I think they're expressions of emotion.

If we're pulling back a little bit, I remember reading at the end of Richard Dawkins' book, *The God Delusion*, that we can't trust our senses because evolution doesn't really care about making truth claims, it cares about surviving. I, I don't agree that. I don't think Dawkins actually endorsed that argument, but, but it's a good argument. CS Lewis, argument from reason.

Sure. But would you agree or disagree with that?

Well, I mean, I, I remain agnostic on what reason is. But I think it's a powerful argument when it comes to determining if suffering is wrong or right. So, okay. So crucially, I'm not saying that suffering is morally wrong outside of the senses that I, as an emotivist, will just express an emotion towards it, that I don't like it. I'm not claiming that it's immoral, that it's objectively bad. What I'm claiming is that suffering is unexpected on theism. It's an internal critique, right? Lincoln said of slavery, "If this is not wrong, then nothing is wrong." You don't have to believe that something's wrong, but if there is such a thing as objective morality, I don't think that it would consist in a God who oversees the amount of suffering that we have on planet Earth.

Timothy Keller does the story about Noah. Have you heard of the Noah story?

No.

No? Yeah. So he says, if you have a tent and you look in there and say, "Hey, I think I have some dogs on the tent." Maybe, for example, I have a golden doodle. He's a killer. That was just a joke. But we can move on. And if I said, "Hey, I have a golden doodle inside the tent," you would expect to see one. But if I said, "Hey, there's some no-see-ums the these little gnats are so tiny, they actually go through the screen." Sure. He says, "There's some no-see-ums in the tent." You might look in there and go, "I don't see any no-see-ums." Mhm. But of course, you don't see no-see-ums because nobody can see them. Okay, so just because there's maybe not a reason that we can identify, does it mean that there can't be a reason? Now, it's kind of cold comfort. That doesn't get us 100% of the way there, but it, it gets us part of the way there.

That's true. So, so the existence of evil is not logically, or suffering is not logically incompatible with God's existence. But it's a bit like if somebody came up to to me right now and stole my friend's wallet in front of me and shot him dead and ran away, and I was grieving. And somebody said to me, "Well, hey man, you don't know. That person might have worked for the CIA, and your friend might have secretly been harboring the nuclear codes, and killing him might have been good for the country, and he stole the wallet because that's where the codes were." And I would say, "Well, what evidence do you have for that?" And you say, "Well, look, just because I don't have evidence for it doesn't mean that there might not be some evidence that I don't know about." I would say, "Until I see why I should think that's the case, I'm not going to believe it. And I'm certainly not going to be less upset in my grieving over my friend because of the possibility that there could be an explanation for it." There's so much suffering imbued in the human experience. If somebody says, "Well, look, there could be an explanation." It's like, "Okay, fine. But let me know when you know what it is." Is I think the right.

Pause. You've been voted out by the majority. Please return to your seats. All right. Thank you. Good fun. Hello. Hey, nice to meet you. Meet you. Good. Repeat your claim one more time that suffering is unexpected if a good God exists.

Unexpected. So when you say unexpected, like you're caught off guard by it, or you're expecting like all good things to happen over time? That if I assume that there is a good God supervising and vigilating the universe, that I would not expect to see so much suffering, right? So much gratuitous, seemingly unnecessary suffering, right?

And you know, the most beautiful thing is that our God is not unfamiliar with suffering, as he suffered himself. So would you say that there is like some beauty in suffering in some way?

I would say that there, there can be sort of poetically. You can look at suffering and think that's a beautiful story. But I don't think that the person suffering, especially if they die as a direct result, might think that. Also, I think that if, if I knew someone whose child died of leukemia and suffered for it, right? And I went to them and said, "But hey, there's some beauty in the suffering, isn't there?" I think I'd be kicked out of the funeral, right?

Well, I would say, like, the same thing for a woman giving birth. Right? It's suffering. Like, it sucks, it hurts. Sure. But imagine you could have the giving birth without the pain of giving birth. Would you prefer that?

Of course. Yeah.

You will prefer that. So then if God can bring about the good stuff without the bad stuff, then there's no reason to bring about the bad stuff. So what we have to show is why the bad stuff is necessary to bring about the good stuff. Otherwise, it's not just, right?

Well, could you say that the result of why we suffer is because of the Fall of Man?

I would say not, 'cause I don't believe in the Fall of Man. Um, but I also don't think that that explains non-human animal suffering. The big thing that I want to keep pressing is that the theodicies that we talk about, free will, Fall of Man, all of this kind of stuff, I don't think applies to that deer with its leg caught under the branch that's dying in confused agony. What's this for?

So, what, what is it about animals that seem so like more important than a human?

It's not that they're more important. It's that, as you say, like it seems plausible at least that a human can suffer and then be sort of better off for it, or that they can enjoy poetry of suff, the poetry of suffering. Animals can't do that.

Animals can't enjoy the poetry of suffering?

Well, I wouldn't know. I never like talked to an animal and said, like, "Hey, I have..." They just haven't, they just haven't talked back is the problem. But I, I just don't see why we would expect that God would oversee this system of natural selection, billions of animals suffering and dying, predation, disease, eating each other alive, leaving each other to bleed out on the floor, and this is being supervised by an all-loving God.

Well, do you think that's God's intention from the very beginning of creation of all things?

I think that God oversees the mechanism. Mhm. God could have made it, for example, one example that I've already given is that God could have made animals herbivores, which just eliminates the problem of predation. I mean, there are some animals, there are, there are. But he could have made more of them. He could have made all animals herbivores, thereby eliminating the suffering of predation. So the issue of them eating each other, that's one issue. That's one way that God could have sort of, I think, quite trivially reduced the amount of suffering. David Attenborough once said of his documentaries, "People who complain that we put too much violence in the documentaries should see what we leave in the cutting room floor." The animal world is just filled with unimaginable suffering. Just predation is there. There's also things about like, you know, otters holding hands so they don't swim away without suffering. That's the question. Thanks so much. Fun conversation. It reminds me of that unfortunate time that Billy rode his unicycle to an open pothole. Yeah, didn't he like dislocate both his arms and break his leg and even lose a tooth? Yeah, I'm so glad he recovered from that. He went through such a treacherous process trying to sue and he barely even got compensated. It must have taken him like three to four months to get a lawyer. It was, it was horrible. Yeah, the sad part was his legal fees were comparable to compensation. I mean, I'm sure there's a firm out there that does online appointments and all the paperwork for you, and at no cost unless you win your case. You mean Morgan & Morgan, America's largest injury law firm. Morgan & Morgan specializes in a wide range of different personal injury cases. When you hire them, you don't just get a lawyer, they give you a dedicated legal team that does all the research and paperwork for you. That's right, Jules. They've recovered over $20 billion for their clients. Just in the past couple months, they saw verdicts of over $12 million in Florida, $2.6 million in Philly, and $6.8 million in New York. That's up to 40 times the highest insurance offer. And guess what? They don't charge for any sign-up fees or any other upfront costs. It's all free unless you win your case. Submitting a claim has never been easier. Whoa, that was weird. If you've also been a victim of personal injury or any other serious accidents, like our friend Billy, your case might be worth millions, and you're only a few clicks away from potentially changing your life. You can visit www.forthepeople.com/Jubilee to start your free claim today, or you can click the link in the description below. Thanks to Morgan & Morgan for sponsoring this portion of this episode. Could we please get back to the video?

My next claim is that God commands genocide in the Bible. Hey, how's it going? Nice to meet you. Right, this is a bummer of a claim, right? Like when you look at scripture, right? I agree, there is a myriad of problematic things we see in scripture, from genocide to misogyny to slavery, right? And I would say that we find genocide in scripture. I would argue though, do you agree with my claim?

Yeah, I think it's in scripture. Yeah. I mean, I think it's in there.

Okay, well, thanks for watching everyone. Yeah, this is good. Yeah, good stuff. So, I mean, but here's what I would say I ought to do with this claim as a Christian, if you're okay with entertaining that idea, right? So we see mass murder in scripture, right? And so one of my greatest friends, Rabbi Josh Stanton, he's a rabbi. The Hebrew scriptures are his. That's where we're finding these genocides, right?

Yeah. So, so to spell it out, we've got, I think the two most problematic: in 1 Samuel 15, the destruction of Amalek, and in the Book of Joshua, the destruction of Jericho and the destruction of Ai. So for the sake of the audience who might not know about this, in 1 Samuel, for example, the Amalekites are a Canaanite tribe. They're in the land that's been promised to Israel. Israel are instructed through the prophet Samuel. King Saul is told to completely destroy the Amalekites, leave nothing alive that breathes, kill man and woman, child and infant, cattle and sheep. And in fact, when Israel does this, they destroy Amalek, except Saul decides to keep the king as a captive, and he also saves the best of the animals. The prophet Samuel comes to him and says, "What have you done?" And he says, "Well, we, we kept the best of the animals in order to sacrifice to the Lord." And it says twice that God regrets that he made Saul king. Why does he regret that he made Saul king? Because Saul didn't follow his commandment to completely destroy the Amalekites by keeping the king alive and by keeping the best of the livestock. Saul says, "We kept the livestock alive to burn as a sacrifice to the Lord." And Samuel says, "What pleases the Lord more, burnt offerings or the following of his commands?" Sure. And so we know that we're talking about what I would define here as a genocide. Yeah, so it's in there, right? And I would say this is a great place where things like progressive Christianity serve us quite well, not in the idea that God is progressing, but humanity is progressing further to a greater understanding of God's ethic and justice. I would also say, when I look at scripture, I would actually be opposite for most of my contemporaries here. I don't read it as 100% literal. Like, I don't need scripture to be a history book, a literal book. So I look and I have to say, "Well, what is this telling me?" And it's an awful story, might I say, a story for us to have to go through and navigate. Right? And I would go back to my friend again, who was a rabbi, who we had this conversation just in friendship about how he reconciles to the Holocaust. I haven't been a part of this genocide, but he's talking about the one you're referencing in scripture. I wasn't around for it, but this is one that is in relatable human history that we can have family members that were a part of, right? And for my friend, who has had this not compromise his faith, that was the question I asked him, right? Like, this is a genocide that was against your people and your religion. And for people that really loved God on a deep and a profound level, like, how is this not shaking your faith? And for him, and for me, and for many others, as you look at scripture, I mean, I think that God is ultimately always pulling us toward greater levels of justice. And when we look into this story in history, like, I think people are recording a potentially historic genocide that they are trying to make sense of in their religious worldview. And so they're super imposing language for God.

Do you think God commanded this to happen?

I am not super interested in that conversation. But I would say, potentially. Okay. Because for me, the problem is that if you have God explicitly commanding this to happen.

Okay, pause. I think you're asking the Bible to do what it wasn't intended to do, is what I would say.

Sure. Then you've been voted out. Please return to your seat. I'm sitting. Okay. If he touched it first, if he touched it first, then yes. I need to get down. The adrenaline just a little bit after that run. Um, yeah, I think, um, what you bring is interesting. Like, I think, you know, if we were to look at the literal definition of Bible, I think we can see that God commanded a person to commit genocide. So I think we're aligned there.

You mean the definition of genocide?

Yes. Yeah. So with that being said, though, I, I think when we look at Christian theology in the full, when Adam and Eve decide to disobey God, um, technically, we're all, you know, subjected to death, subjected to the wages of sin, the penalty of sin. I'm not a perfect person. I deserve the worst, right? And that's because, and the only reason why I'm happily breathing is because, you know, Jesus saved me, right? And so when we look at this pretense, like because we fell, you know, I know this is a very unpopular thing. God can do whatever he wants, right? Whether it's, you know, genocide, putting us to death, you know, we've talked about suffering and all these things.

So can I ask you a question then?

Yes.

Suppose that you woke up tomorrow and you've been sort of transported into Canaan. You wake up and you're a Canaanite. And you think, "I haven't done anything particularly wrong." But you're a bad person, you're a sinner, right? And then the Israelites come knocking at the door. And you know that they've been sent by God. And they come to your door. And you say to yourself, "Well, I know that this is the will of God, even though it's really horrible. God can do whatever he likes." So you say, "Please don't kill me, Mr. Israelite. Instead, let me first betray my family to you because I know the will of the Lord." Would you allow that to happen?

I will contest it with this, right? We are all, we all fall short of the glory of God. It says that in Romans, right? So like, whatever I'm subjected to, I'm not entitled to a good life. Like, I think even me living is a gift from God. The fact that I can talk to you is a gift.

Do you think that applies to like infants?

Yes, unfortunately, yes. I know it's an unpopular opinion.

So you think infants are deserving of the treatment they're given in Samuel?

I think because we all fell, yes. I'm sorry. You've been voted out. Please return to your seat. That was so good to meet you. Hey, how's it going? Nice to meet you. Okay, uh, I disagree. I'd love to look at the case of the, uh, the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15. Sure. So 1 Samuel 15, it says he uses that phrase, "every man, woman, child," and then it lists off the animals, right? So we presume that by the end of that, if only Agag and the animal comes, comes back, that they're all dead. And then they show up right later, chapter 27 and in chapter 30, uh, even King Agag, his descendants come up in the Book of Esther. Yes, that's right. So like, if we, if we're, if we're saying, just for example, we have verification that there are children related to Amalekites who must have been there because it's Agag's children, where else would they be? And they're alive because his descendants go on through Haman, which comes up in Esther. So, yeah.

How do you... There are a few things to say. Firstly, one of the points where, uh, some of the Amalekites, uh, come up again, it's explicitly said that these are who escaped. These are people who escaped. And so it's possible that God commanded that all of Amalek was destroyed, and the word *herem* there means utterly destroy. That might also involve a driving out of the land. So it's possible that some of them escaped, and that's where we get the descendants from. That, that seems totally plausible to me. The question is, did God command a genocide? By the way, genocide includes forcible expulsion from somebody's land in a case of ethnic cleansing. What I'm looking at here is, did God command the ethnic cleansing of the land of Israel from people like the Amalekites, people like Ai, people like Jericho? And I think the answer is clearly yes. Like, for example, do you think that any innocent children, maybe let's not use the word innocent for theological reasons, but do you think that any infants were killed in the destruction of Amalek?

I have no idea. I don't think that it's recorded.

Okay, but you think that God definitely commanded the the killing of...

No, I don't think. I think that's, I think that's hyperbolic phrasing. And I, and I know I've heard you say it before. I heard you talk about this. You know, you've heard that before, that it's hyperbole. But I think you can demonstrate it in Babylonian Sumerian writings. Very similar. There's even, there's an Egyptian stele which says that Israel was wiped out and their seed was utterly removed. It was gone. And so we've got like comparable phrases used in other ancient Near Eastern communities, in their historical texts, that talk very similarly. But like, we know that the Jews persisted to exist in Israel, even though the Egyptians said that they were no more. And they, that text explicitly says, "man, woman, and child." That's hyperbolic language that even we use today. Like, for example, in World War II, there were those huge posters that were put up, "Every man, woman, and child is needed." You know, like that's...

I can read that and go, "Sure, sure." But so imagine, for example, I mean, there's a, there's a discussion at the moment about whether Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine today. Now, suppose a lot of people said, "But you're killing children." And Israel said, "Yeah, but that's just a product of war." Imagine if we discovered that behind the scenes, the Prime Minister of Israel had said, "Leave alive nothing that breathes. Kill everyone. Kill man, kill woman, kill child and infant. Kill the animals, kill the donkeys. Don't leave anything alive that breathes." Even if he was trying to sort of make a hyperbolic point, the fact that children are then dying as a result, I think that we could lay some blame at his feet here. We have God saying that those are the words that are recorded. Also, on the point of hyperbole, when we get into the Book of Joshua and the destruction of the nation of Ai, it's explicitly said that 12,000 people died that day, all the people of Ai. It says, it does imply that some people ran away because it says, I have it here in, uh, in Joshua chapter 8, when Israel had finished killing all of the men of Ai in the fields and the wilderness where they had chased them, and by the way, earlier it says, "not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel" because Israel sort of drew them out of the city and they'd pretend to run away and Ai runs after them. It says, "not a man remained in Ai." It then says, "when Israel had finished killing all of the men in the fields in the wilderness where they chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, the Israelites turned around, returned to Ai, and killed everyone who was left." If there was not a man who was left in Ai who hadn't run out and been killed in the wilderness, when they turn around and kill everyone who's left, who is it that they're killing? It's the women, it's the children. We're then told that 12,000 people fell that day, all the people of Ai, and it says, "12,000 men and women." So we know that women who were non-combatants were also killed. Even if there's hyperbolic language being used here, we know that we're being told that specifically 12,000 people died, including non-combatant women.

Uh, okay. So I think for the example in 1 Samuel 15, these are ancient texts, you know, it's literature. So we don't like go over and above like how interpreting literature works. So even though the text can say this is what God said, well, it's still in a literary form.

Do you think God said that? Do you think it's accurate?

Well, I mean, I wasn't there. I didn't hear it. I think that the Old Testament scripture is inspired, and I think that it doesn't fail in its representation of revealing God. Like, for example, like we talked about the New Testament, right? John chapter 2, he puts the, the, the temple expulsion moment at the beginning of his gospel. Do I think that John is actually concerned with the chronology there? No, I don't think that. I think it's a literary tool. So, and I think the Bible is full of that. They're literary texts, and they're assembled in a certain way. So I don't think that, uh, necessarily that means that God was the one using the hyperbole, but describing recording the events and sort of summarizing what happened.

Says, okay, so God commands to attack the Amalekites, but that does that mean that God is the one who did the hyperbolizing?

I don't think it'd be problematic. You mentioned the cleansing of the temple, and you said that even though the chronology is off, the, the point is recorded. If we had a story of the cleansing of the temple, if we discovered some early manuscript, some some version of John where Jesus goes into the temple, he starts cleansing the temple, flipping over tables, and then he starts beating up children, just starts punching them because he's so angry, right? What would you think of that? You'd probably think either it didn't happen, or if you could prove that it did happen, that Jesus was less moral than you thought he was. Or if for some reason people believed that that's what he did, I think it'd be a problem for you. And I think that if you're looking at a good God here, the fact that even this is reported as something that he said, and this is part of the Jewish tradition that basically nobody disputes is at least theologically accurate. But you to demonstrate children being killed in the Old Testament, you, you haven't actually shown that. So yes, I would find that to be problematic. But you haven't shown innocent children being killed in the Old.

There's the command to kill children, right? I just, we just went through all of that. So, so you think God was hyperbolizing?

I think scripture is hyperbolizing. I think the scribe is hyperbolizing God's command.

Okay, fine. So you think that the scribe has inaccurately recorded the command of God? Therefore, the Old Testament is so like...

That's not the same thing though. I'm like, I'm not saying the scribe made something up. I'm saying the scribe has a command. So where did they get that command from? From God, delivered through a prophet.

So, but did, did God say to the prophet Samuel, "Leave alive nothing that breathes, kill every man and woman"?

I don't, I don't necessarily know that. I would, I would think that because if he did, then we've got the command to kill innocent children. If he didn't, then we've got a problem of, of the accuracy of the Old Testament.

No, I, I don't agree with that at all. Like I said, it's literature, right? So God can say something and the recording of the event can employ literary devices like hyperbole, which is what I think is happening. I want to go to, to Jericho, what you're talking about there, because you talked about that a lot more. Uh, I think, for example, like with, with, uh, Jericho, we have all the reason to believe that Jericho is a military stronghold. Um, I think that's the case. I think that's historically accurate. And so we're not like, just looking at Israel going in and, you know, just, uh, just sort of killing for no reason, right? It's, it's a, it's a military conquest. I, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a single nation in all of human history that was founded without violence.

I agree, right? That's never happened. I understand why you would say it's problematic that God is instructing that, which, I get. God would not instruct that. I mean, you know, my country is thought of as beginning in 1066 with the Norman invasion, right? And like, maybe I can imagine there was some report that that said that, you know, that King was shouting, "You know, kill them, and then go and kill their wives, and then go and kill their children. Leave like, show no mercy." I can totally see someone saying that and them not being taken literally. But if God says that, this is still part of the eternal scripture of God that people have in their pews, that's in the hotel room, I don't know so much anymore in secular America. Do you open it up to a random page? Especially given the undertones of what's happening in the world right now. Honestly, I'm not, like, if I'm going to be completely honest, I think, uh, in the Book of Genesis, when God leads Abraham to the promised land, he says to them, "I'll bring you back here in several generations when the Amorite sin is is filled up." Like that language, "when the bucket is all the way filled," sinful people, right? And I, and I understand why that can be problematic. But when I, when I read the text, I believe that.

That God is allowed to judge people, being that he created everything, and he's allowed to use human beings to do that, including human beings. Okay, pause. You've been voted out by the majority. Please, your seat.

All right, really quick, before we begin the discussion, I'm going to give you this gift. And also use my point for the topic of genocide because you're saying that God commands genocide, correct? So you're making this God sound like a very hating God, that like hateful, just genocidal, like genocidal. Okay. So here's this personal gift I would like to to give to you. It says, "Cast your anxieties because he cares for you." The way how you're portraying this God when you say that very broad statement of God commanding genocide, I disagree. Because in the beginning of the Bible, God is love. At the end of the Bible, God is love. Our fellow peer, he stated that our God is a very just God. So can we argue that or say that even though this God, perhaps, like in the beginning of the Old Testament, that's where the genocide occurs a lot, we can also say that? So do you think genocide does occur? If it did say that in the Bible, I just want to say that like these people also went to heaven. It's not like they're getting like killed and punished in that moment. He's also taking these souls of the woman and children and taking them with him. If that's the case, but the whole argument is about God, like, okay, I have a question then. Do you think it's okay to kill people because they'll eventually just go to heaven anyway after you kill them? It's not about killing. It's just like people who get abortions doing their unborn children a favor by killing them in the womb, therefore giving them a fast track to heaven. This is a different approach to genocide, but I just want to say like, I don't think you get to inflict a side and then sort of just make up for it with the fact that you send them to heaven afterwards. I maybe you do. But the problem is that the Israelites are also sinful people. And when the Israelites are sinful, they get the prophet of God with literal stone tablets telling them how to correct their path. The Canaanites are sinful people. And when they're sinful people, they get the Israelites coming in and wiping. But our God is a just God. And I feel like even sinful people.

Pause. You've been voted out. Your chair.

Hello, hello. Hi Alex. Nice to meet you. So you, you pointed out several passages, but the prophets through and through condemn Israel in much harsher terms. And in fact, God dispersed them in much greater judgments because they were. And in fact, in Ezekiel, it says that because you were supposed to be the light of the world, you are judged all the more strictly and are more responsible. So God was just with Israel. In fact, he placed more of a burden and a mantle and a responsibility on them and judged them for it than he did the nations. And case in point, what's already brought up was the the the number generations that passed before the Amalekites were judged and the Canaanites were judged. But we can come back to that point. Okay, can I ask you then? Yes. How do you define genocide? Right. If I may, I actually have a question I wanted to ask you first. I think it's important to know what we're talking about. What is a genocide? Based on the word genome, obviously. Emically, we understand that it's you're taking it as a tribal seed line, which is fair. Be tribe, religion, I can I can understand. And we're talking about the destruction or attempted destruction of a people based on characteristics. Here's the problem. Genocide, the way it's, especially the way it's used today, implies that it's based on race. And that is categorically against the command of God to conquer the Canaanites. It had nothing to do with their race. It had to do with their sin. And in fact, this is so, you know, that when when AMC is attacked, right, Israel first warns another tribe that they're coming. Yes. And says, get out of here, cuz you were good to us when we came out of Egypt. AMC battled them when they came out of Egypt. He says to this other tribe, you guys get out of here. They warn them, right? Right. They don't say, hey, you get to stay here. They say, you've got to go. But we're going to warn you first that we don't totally destroy you. That's right. In other words, it does seem to be. I mean, why is it, why is it that Israel are going into this land, the nation? Why are they going into this land? Because it was the land promised to them by God. Why does it need to be cleansed? Because there are people in that land to be.

Chapter 7, chapter 9, he says, "Do not think that it is because of your righteousness or because of anything has to do with you that I brought you into this land, but it was because of the sins of the nations that I gave it gave it to you." This is Deuteronomy chapter 9. So it's not, it's not because he promised them based on some sort of ethnic requisite. He, in fact, the whole premise behind the destruction was the prototype of Sodom and Gomorrah. So, yeah. So, so, so then a question, which I type, because Noah was a question, which I think I'll know the answer to. Then do you think there was not one sort of good person? No, exactly. And that's the point. And if that's the case, that's why brought. Let me ask you a second question. Well, on. Let me, let me answer your question a little bit more fully. There any good people in Israel, in the nation of Israel, right? So let me answer your question. If the answer is that there were bad people in Israel too, why is it that they don't get killed as well? Well, the slaughter of the children has, the slaughter of the children has the same problem because it has to do with innocence. Okay, so let me address that. That problem. No, no. Nobody's innocent. But my my my specific question is, no, but you're saying the children in the in the land of Canaan are are innocent and they're being slaughtered. No, I'm not. That's not what I'm saying right now. What I'm saying is, what I'm saying is that I, I retracted the word innocent because I know it can be a bit tricky. Um, but what I'm saying specifically here is that if the reason why Canaan is destroyed is because they're immoral, there's all kinds of immorality happening within the Israelite. Hold on, hold on. Happening within the Israelite nation as well. If it's not about nation, if it's not about tribe, then why is it that Israel aren't told to kill the immoral people in their tribe, but only people in the other tribe? No, no, they are. And in fact, that's what they do. And in fact, the entire generation that was promised the promised land died out without seeing the promised land because of their sin. But not, but not at the hands of the Israelites. Okay, fine. But but the Israelites are not told to expunge their own nation of the ill. Their children and killing their animals. Give you a, yeah, perfect. I'll give you a thought experiment. Let's suppose, let's suppose that tomorrow, we find out that the, uh, pedophilia rings, that conspiracy theory is somehow true. Like, just imagine, like, uh, you know, V for Vendetta style, like imagine like hackers just broadcast everything that was was going on. The, the, all the blackmail tapes, the Diddy files, the whatever. Okay, you get the point. So you have, you have this sudden revelation of this grand conspiracy, and it's, and it's on a scale that no one ever imagined. Okay, would you say that there is justice in bringing those people? Obviously, no one would disagree. In fact, the public opinion on execution might change at that point. And even the guillotine might come back, who knows? If, but I wouldn't kill the children. No. Right. Okay, so I'm getting there. So we'll get there step by step. Let's start with the men and the women. So let's suppose this in this example, the conspiracy theory is true, and everybody finds out, and then everybody agrees that the men and the women that were involved in this pedophilia ring, let's say, uh, need to be judged. Okay. Someone has to do it. We have no problem executing them. We have the benefit of technology that gives us a bit of indirectness. But if you didn't have that, you would have to either do it yourself or have your execution. We're talking here about military execution of non-combatants, which is a war crime. Right? So no, no, no. It's a war crime. By quoting, yeah. But let me, but you've been voted out by the majority. It's.

Okay, it's great to see you. Let's hear it one more time. Well, okay, one thing when it comes to exegesis and actually try to understand what scripture is saying, I feel like we're playing an impossible game right now. One of my friends, Elijah, is bringing up these great points about how there's intermarriage, you know, talked about not to do that after we're driving out people. So crucially on that point, sure. It it says, totally destroy them. Do not intermarry with them. Do not. And and I can totally people say, well, why would they be told not to intermarry if they were told to destroy them? Because you can imagine that there's a bunch of people like who want to invade a land and take their daughters as wives. And God says, no, no, no, destroy them completely. Don't marry them. Don't interbreed with them. Don't, don't take them as captives. Kill them all entirely. This is not inconsistent with with the command of herem of utter destruction. My my point is though, we're playing an impossible game because we're reading this, or at least we're talking about it right now, like modern readers and not like ancient readers. I mean, it's almost like if somebody were to pull out the Book of Revelation right now and say, hey, look, the Bible says that he's going to pull people from all four corners of the earth. That must mean that the earth. I mean, I would just be going, that's not, that's not exactly how we interpret scripture. All right, that's time. I'm sorry. Really? Oh, I'm sorry, sorry, man. I'm sorry. We didn't time. Sorry, man. Thank you.

My next claim is is that there is insufficient evidence to believe in the resurrection. Okay. Okay. Nice to meet you. How's it going? This is a really interdisciplinary question for the resurrection of Jesus. And in my experience, it kind of boils down into two categories. M. The prior probability of the resurrection of Jesus and the data itself. So what I'm really interested in is the historical case of the resurrection of Jesus. Okay. I want to ask a clarifying question because I I would love to talk about data. But if I were to give you a model of the Gospels that I would call like the historical reportage model, which would says something along the lines of, the authors of the Gospels were close to the times and places of the historical Jesus. They rooted their historical work in eyewitness testimony and did not feel the freedom to make up historical facts because of that. We can extract all the testimonies from these Gospels and we have access to what the original eyewitnesses actually said and did. Okay. So who do you think of the eyewitnesses that the testimony is being based on? So this is where I'm not a walking encyclopedia, but I would say if you looked at all the testimonies, we have 21 unique testimonies that are going to be polymodal in nature. They're going to have semblances of independence and interdependence and some dependence because of the synoptic problem, all that stuff. If we were to get there, would that be enough for you to say the probability that the resurrection happened relative to any other countering theory is higher? Uh, no, I don't think so. So that tells me then that one, it could be the prior probability still though, that's an issue. Mhm. Cuz if that's not enough evidence, it's not that I think that the authors of the Gospels, specifically on the resurrection, can't be trusted to be giving an accurate account of what happened. Yeah, that's why I'm asking. If we had this historical reportage model and that was true, if it were true that they were reporting historical events, then it would be a historical event. Yeah. So let me clarify. I don't think that they are. Yeah, I got where. Let me clarify one thing here. The historical reportage model does not entail what the reporting actually happened. All I'm saying is that we can extract from there is that these were the actual eyewitness testimonies to the Risen Jesus. Okay. So I have a question for you. Do you think that Jesus is the only person outside of the people that Jesus and the apostles raised in the dead, do you think that he's the only person in human history that's risen from the dead? Yes. Okay. So Matthew's Gospel in Matthew chapter 27 says that at the time of the death of Jesus, the graves of Jerusalem opened and the holy ones got out of their graves and then interestingly says, then after the resurrection appeared to many, many of them walked around, appearing to many. Do you think that that happened? So I would just say that if the historical report model is true, then yes. So think, but hold on. The problem there is those are also talking about resuscitations, most likely not resurrections. Yeah, but what we're talking about here is is the graves of Jerusalem opening and many people getting out of their graves, walking around Jerusalem and appearing to many. I say yes. What's at? If this happened, this would be the most extraordinary event that's ever happened in human history. And yet, and then you're going to make an argument from silence. From there, some arguments from silence do work. It is, but then that's only one piece of evidence. It's not reported of the Gospels. It's not in Josephus. It's. So, but let me finish this because this is important. A lot of most Christian scholars, I think so, people like Dale Allison, for example, believe that this didn't actually happen. Well, I'm not interested when Allison is going to say. The door that this opens, what I'm interested in is what the data says. So if we have the historical reportage model, right? But you keep saying we have this model like that's fine. Let me give you some, let me give you some evidence for the historical reportage model. If this model is true, one of the things I would expect to see be things like undesigned coincidences within the Gospels. Tiny little. In for the sake of time, I, I understand what you're saying. So, so I think that a lot in the Gospels is historically reliable and a lot is not. Things like undesigned coincidences. You're taking a paropy by paropy approach to this? Or how is like, what methodology? Taking a story by story. I don't think that the. I think that's the. I don't think that's a good methodology. I don't think that the graves of Jerusalem were opened. I don't think that there were people around. Understand where com. If that's the case, and that means that at least the author of Matthew is willing to invent stories of resurrection in order to make a big difference there, right? Because I know I know you like to, for instance, you like to talk about the flight to Egypt and you like to say that Matthew invented the flight to Egypt. L. Um, no, Luke does. Luke's the one that doesn't mention it. Matthew's the one that mentions it. Sorry, sorry. Matthew, sorry. Yeah, Matthew. And then typically the way you run this argument is Matthew invented the flight to Egypt. Luke doesn't mention it. The reason why Luke doesn't mention it is because it didn't happen. Matthew mentions it and he tells us why to put Jesus into prophecy. Here's a counter hypothesis. What if it's just the case that Matthew is not making up historical facts and he's doing some sort of midrash? And what I mean by this is that he's looking at this historical thing that happened, the flight to Egypt, and taking this Hosea passage, which by the way, would be kind of a clunky passage to use if you wanted to make up a historical fact for prophecy because that Hosea passage is not inherently. I think we might. I have to be allowed to speak here. I think we had been slightly off topic. The problem with the birth narrative story is not just that a story is being invented to fulfill prophecy, although we're told that that's why it's done. The problem is that it contradicts the other account. That I'm totally fine with that. So if you look at the birth narratives altogether, I think there's room for one discrepancy. And that is that Luke doesn't mention it. L. Luke says that they go to the temple. What? Luke says that they go to the temple. Yeah. So, so hold on. Let me finish it. Luke says that the family go to the temple and present Jesus in Jerusalem. Matthew says that they go to Egypt. They're very far away from each other. And we're told that they stay in Egypt until after the death of Herod. This is a contradiction. No, I, I, so again, I. Okay, pause. You've been voted out by the majority. Please return to your seat.

Good, good to see again. Good to see you. Okay, so historical case for the resurrection. Well, before we get there, I actually, my main contention had to do with the example that was just brought up about the flight to Egypt. I mean, we can talk about it, but what I really want to know here is how we know that the the resurrection of Jesus historically. So, so can I start with a question for you? For example, do you believe that the graves opened and that the holy ones were walking around the city of Jerusalem appearing? Why repeated other Gospels anywhere? This is the extraordinary that's ever happened in history, right? So the also, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but also crucially, Matthew says at the time of Jesus's death, there was a huge earthquake. The second earthquake, the graves opened, and that then the holy ones appeared to people after the resurrection to many. So there's this very, very strange passage which seems strange on the surface, but also says that the the graves opened at the time of the crucifixion, but they weren't walking around and appearing to people until after the resurrection. It seems conf, it seems contrived unless they were like hanging out dead in open graves for like three days until they got up or something. It's a very, very strange passage which I think has no hyic behind. Sure, but that's not the same as the claim you originally brought up, which is the resurrection of Christ himself. Yeah. So what I'm trying to say is, if that's un, so if I were, I understand. So if I were to connect the two, what I would say, what I would say is the the historicity for the resurrection of Christ, um, has the same type of data that the historicity of the resurrection of these holy ones in end of Matthew, because, uh, the appearances of these holy ones and the appearances of Christ correlate, they correspond. And so the reports of their appearances is just as likely, uh, like for example, uh, you're aware of the passage in first obviously Corinthians 15, which is one of the earliest attestations of the, uh, you know, the formal, uh, traditional creed that states about, uh, the, uh, the resurrection of Christ and the appearance to 500. And this states within the first five, within five years of of Christ's resurrection. So arguably, yeah, I mean, it's unclear. I mean, are you, as I understand you, do grant that possibility? I grant the pool's very early. I don't know about five years. Sure, but well, the the tradition on which it's based because he's quoting a very specific midrashic formula. I agree. Paul inserts himself into that formula. He says, finally, appear to me. So at some point, the formula stops and Paul's own words. Actually, that that demonstrates the proof of the formula rather than rather than subverts it. So I, I don't know where the formula ends. That's fine. My point, my point is to say that there are early attestations that are no different in nature than the attestations of the, uh, the holy ones that rose from the from the. So crucially, so if you don't, if you don't, if you reject the resurrection of Christ based on the data of eyewitness testimony, then of course you're going to reject the resurrection or the resuscitation, let's say, either one of the holy ones, uh, based on the eyewitness testimony. F. If you believe that, I just know that a lot of Christians don't. So I establish that first, otherwise it's irrelevant. Let's forget about. So we did your passage. Can we do mine? Yeah, sure. We can forget about the the graves opening thing. Sounds good. So let's go to Hosea. If you don't, if you don't mind. So in Hosea, you have actually a fantastic example of how the, uh, the prophecies of Christ are being fulfilled at deeper multivalent levels, right? It's a metalepsis of prophetic fulfillment. To answer the discrepancy between Luke and Matthew, first of all, you have the time of the, uh, purification, right? For the the mother, it lasts 33 days after the circumcision of the infant, and therefore it's a 40-day period before they're presented at the temple. This takes place before they flee to Egypt. Now, I understand the difficulty in in the verse right after Luke's paropy about the, uh, presentation of the temple with Zachariah, because it says that they returned to Nazareth. Yes. He says, afterward, they returned to Nazareth. Maybe they went to Egypt in between. Exactly. That's what I'm trying to say. Can, can I, can I just say that that may be the case? I, I think that's an unnatural reading of the of the case, but I'll just grant you for a moment. Let's say that the birth narratives don't contradict each other. That's fine. Let's say that the birth narratives are not historically unreliable for that reason. Evidence of the resurrection. I'm looking for right now. Sure. I understand that. But I get where you want to add. But there are contradictions in the Gospels. That's a whole another. So, sorry, you've been voted out by the majority.

Okay, so there's one point you kind of keep going back to is the opening of the graves and you're saying we're not seeing that anywhere in history. And I kind of agree with what Ethan was saying is this is an argument of silence. So we don't see anywhere in history the destruction of Pompeii being written down through Vesuvius. This is a huge event, sure. Why don't we see that? But if we had accounts describing Pompeii around the time that happened and they just didn't mention it, you don't think that would be a bit suspect? Well, we don't, we don't see anything talking about the destruction of Pompeii. Sure. But if if we had accounts that were written about Pompeii at the time of the destruction and they didn't mention it, do you think that would be weird? Yeah, I do think that would be a little. We have accounts written about Jesus in Jerusalem at the time that this extraordinary event was supposed to take place and they didn't even think to mention it. So can I tell you why I think the story is in there? Because Jesus is supposed to be the firstborn of the dead. And Jesus is an apocalyptic prophet in the synoptic Gospels predicting that the end of the world is going to come soon, the general resurrection of the dead. And Jesus, Jesus is going to be the firstborn of the dead. So I think Matthew invents this story so that these people rise from their grave, but they don't start appearing to people till after the resurrection because Jesus is the firstborn of the dead. And this is the general resurrection. The reason it's invented is because of course, after Jesus dies, there is no end of the world, there is no apocalypse. And so Matthew invents the story in order to fulfill that. I think that's, you know, that's one hypothesis. But I think when we're looking at the Gospels, we have another hypothesis. We have this fact that, you know, we mentioned the undesigned coincidences. You're familiar with that, right? We have the fact that they go through a lot of historical information. So they get geography right. You agree with this? Yeah. So would you say that we have authors that are located within this area during this time period? Uh, I don't know if I can say that with confidence. And I think it depends on which Gospel you're talking about. Well, let's just go like the synoptics. The synoptics. So who do you think is the author of say, the Gospel of Mark? I would say it's Mark. That was John Mark, the author of, yeah. Now, why do you think that? Well, I think you're just kind of brushing off my question though. Do you think the authors were in that time period, during that, in that location? Even if that's the case, I think that the events were written down decades after they happened. Okay. But we are saying, but I'm happy to. Let's say, let's say that I granted it. Okay. So, so these accounts are at least based in eyewitness testimony. Fine. So what? Well, if we have people who are recording true information off eyewitness testimony, and why does that true information often contradict itself? In what way does it contradict itself? What's the date of Jesus's death? The synoptics say that it was on the Passover. John has it before the pass. So there's, there's a long, convoluted answer to that. It's how they use idioms in the language. I don't want to get into that. What time did Jesus die? So I, Mark says that it's 9 in the morning. John explicitly tells us that he's still standing before pilot at midday. So here's the thing. I'm going to grant you contradictions. Mhm. Is that not what we would expect to see from people recording real events? Not on these matters. I think why not? I've made this, I've made this argument myself. It's like, okay, yeah, maybe we'd expect people to sort of misunderstand the points. But if it's clear that the reason why John is putting the death of Jesus before the Passover is to present him as the Passover Lamb, then I think we have reason to suspect that it's been done on purpose. In other words, if we can explain why these contradict each other because the authors have different intentions, I think that proposes a better hypothesis is why they contradict. So specifically on Jesus's day, I don't have off the top of my head. I know there's an explanation for that. Maybe we could talk later and I can show it to you, but I don't have it off the top of my head. Okay. When, when Jesus is on the cross, there are two thieves next to him, right? What do they say? Uh, one says, I will. One condemns him and one says, don't condemn him. That's what happens in the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew, which are earlier, both of them mock him on the cross. Yeah. I don't see that being an issue. You don't see that as being an issue. Why would that be an issue? Because, because this is quite an important theological point being made. Jesus is forgiving his enemies right before his death. This seems to me, if the earlier Gospels, Mark and Matthew, say that this didn't happen, that and explicitly says that the people who were on the cross next to him were mocking him, this is a story that Luke has invented. Why would Luke invent a story like that to make a theological point, which tells us that the Gospel writers are willing to invent things in order to make a theological point? I think you're just assuming invention. Pause. You've been voted out by the majority. Please return to your seat.

Sorry, we don't have more time. In the resurrection, as you know, is the single most important issue in Christianity. If it doesn't happen, as Paul would say, then none of this matters. If it did happen, then everything matters and everything becomes much more important. Do you believe that the disciples of Christ, Paul as well, and others believed that Christ rose from the dead? I think that's probably the case. Okay. So you believe that they truly believed, not that they just made it up? But can I ask why you believe that they believed it? Sure. Well, I, I would say they believed it because it happened. That's okay. Fine. But how do you know that they actually believed it? How do you know that they weren't lying, for example? Because they were executed for it. So for, how were they executed? Um, some of them were executed by being sawed in half. Some of them were executed by being beheaded. How do you know that? Well, through the obviously the tradition and the historicity of the church. Well, those are two things. There's tradition and there's historicity. Well, no. So the tradition of the church, the idea is that when you say church tradition or holy tradition, it's not just this idea that, oh, we're just saying things and making things that are in line with Christianity, but it's actually this idea that we are following the trail and the lineage of Christianity. What I'm looking for is evidence of the Apostles' martyrdom for their claim that Jesus had risen from the dead. Only two disciples' deaths are recorded in the Gospels. It's Judas, who hangs himself, or there's another contradiction. He either hangs himself in Matthew, or in the book of Acts, he's described as falling over in a field with his head and his guts, his guts spilling out, right? It seems to be a difference. So Judas also, uh, is the brother of John, who's beheaded by Herod. We're not told precisely why. Every single other death of the Apostles relies solely, solely on church tradition. There is no historical evidence that they were martyred, and certainly not that they were martyred for their belief that Jesus was resurrected. In fact, even according to church tradition, the only person, the only disciple, the only apostle that was not martyred, do you know who it was? John. John, the one who makes the most theologically fantastical claims of all of the apostles. But obviously, we know that also by the tradition that they tried to kill John by boiling him in. I don't, I don't see any evidence that this actually happened outside of church tradition, and I don't trust that church. What, so for instance, what type of evidence would you be expecting to hear by people who do not care about those Christians? So for instance, the people in power in Rome, why would they be writing some, you know, incredible long tales about, we are going to kill the Christians because of this, this, and this? So that we. This goes both ways, right? Why would the enemies like report these martyrdom stories? I could say, you know, why wouldn't Christian writers be motivated to make such stories up? What I'm saying is that goes both ways. We don't know what actually happened. All we have is a tradition, a biased tradition that seeks to establish their martyrdom, that tells us that that's what's happened. We can know that they wouldn't want to just make this up because some of them also were killed. And when we now track that time later, there are saints in the 200s, 300s, 400s that are killed for having this. But crucially, they're not the eyewitnesses. They're not the people who supposedly saw this happen. So they could easily just be mistaken. Agreed. But what I am saying is that if those people in the 200s, 300s, 400s are saying that the eyewitnesses were killed, and they are holding to this same faith, and they are willing also to be killed, do you not think that this says something? If indeed that is what happened, it means that they heard that the disciples died for their beliefs. That's all we can know. We don't know whether that's true. We don't know whether that's. By the way, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that they didn't. I'm just saying that we don't know. In other words, I'm happy to just grant that the disciples did believe in the resurrection of Jesus and that they died for their beliefs. What I'm saying is that when people throw this out as if it's a historically attested fact, it's simply not so. What happened on Easter morning? I don't know. There's only one other option other than obviously that Christ rose from the dead. I would ascertain, and you can disagree if you feel free, it would be that his disciples, people who truly loved him, stole his body and somehow disposed of it. It could have been somebody else who stole the body and disposed. Who? But what motivation would they have to steal the body and dispose of it? So grave robbing was quite popular in that time. They were guards, remember? And well, there are guards that are only reported in Matthew. And what does Matthew say about the guards? He's the only person that reports the guards. And what do the guards do? They say that Jesus has has disappeared. And the high priests pay the guards to tell people that the body has been stolen. Now, what does Matthew say? He says, and this is a rumor that they went and spread that persists to this day. So the author of Matthew knew that there were people who were saying that somebody stole the body and intentionally puts these guards there, has this story of the high priest paying them off to to spread this rumor in order to combat that rumor. So we know that people in the early church before the writing of the Gospel of Matthew, impression, thought that the body was stolen. There's even Tulan talks about this. It's amazing. Tulan talks about a theory that some people were were spreading that the gardener had stolen the body of Jesus because he didn't want people to come and spoil his lettuces when they came to see him as a shrine. And I would agree that both seem illogical. But if we're just going to say that it was robbed, and then these disciples, this group of people, now are just not looking for the body or that again, which I would say is even more unlikely, that it is people who did not, someone who did not care about Christ, that now would steal his body. I feel like this would be also very a. There are theories that are suggesting, for example, that the authorities, either the Jewish or the Roman authorities, didn't want this to become some kind of shrine to believers of Jesus to go to after his death. And so they disposed of the body. There are all kinds of theories. Some people think that the body was eaten by dogs. Like there's all kinds of things that could have happened, which seemed pretty furious and unlikely. But to me, if you're trying to tell me that a man rose from the dead, you're going to have to do a lot more in the way of getting rid of these other. It would be the only clause that has an external force. Every other clause is also extremely illogical. But the clause where Christ raised from the dead has that external force. And that external force. Can you tell. Pause, guys, that's.

Time. Uh, so the first thing I want to ask is, do you have to have evidence to prove that something's real to believe something's real? Broadly, I think that can't be the case because there are all kinds of things that we believe without evidence, such as the existence of the external world and the laws of logic. Fine. But when it comes to historical claims, I think that yes, we we need some burden of proof. And how much historical claims do you need in order for you personally to believe that Jesus is real? That he was real. To believe that he was resurrected is a different thing. I think I would need probably more corroborative accounts of specific appearances that didn't contradict each other. Okay. What if I told you that Jesus still is revealing himself to people today? That's fine. But do you think he's doing so in bodily form to multiple people at once? Okay. So this is the thing. Is I believe Jesus is still alive today, and that he is revealing himself. He's healing and delivering people. And it would be absolutely impossible for Jesus's resurrection if Christians didn't have power. So if a Christian was powerless, then Jesus wouldn't have resurrected. But because there's still deliverance, miracles, healing, signs, wonders, visions, and dreams, that's evidence and that's living proof that Jesus resurrected. Because if he didn't resurrect, he wouldn't have sent his Holy Spirit as an advocate to fill the believer to operate and to be empowered to walk in signs, wonders, along with the wealth of other religious traditions which also have their visionaries too. As an outsider, I have to say, I can understand as a Christian, if you hear the story that someone saw Jesus, you might think that's plausible and think, you know, praise Christ. For me, I don't find it convincing because I see it happen all over the place. We see all kinds of visions. We see people seeing ghosts. We see people seeing Jesus. We see people saying all kinds of gods. And and by the way, that also, I don't think would really indicate the historicity of this particular resurrection account of Jesus of Nazareth. I had Jesus appeared to me three years ago. I was in my room, and he appeared to me, and he came and he gave me a big hug. He lifted me up. He turned me around. And the joy was unlike this world. And I'm telling you, like he's so real because I've physically seen him. But you know, I could say all day, my tangible encounters with Christ, I've seen signs, wonders, miracles. I've seen paralyzed people walk out of wheelchairs and not over time. I've prayed over people and I've seen broken bones go back into place. I've seen people delivered of demons. Like the very things in the Bible, I've seen come to life. And my life has been tangible evidence of the living God, of the living resurrection, that that he has risen. Because I wouldn't be able to see or do any of that stuff unless that happened. But as much as I can tell you, it right, it's up to if you want to believe it or not. So I'm fascinated by by your account. I always love to know what people see when they have these kinds of visions, the physicality, how Jesus appeared, did he fade away, did he walk out of the room, did he knock on the door, this kind of stuff. But but the crucial point is that if I had such a religious experience, I have no doubt that it would probably turn me into a Christian. And God willing, it will happen one day. That would be awesome. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened yet. And as far as that goes, to convincing anybody else, people will say that's not evidence, and it's not. But it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be for you. It's supposed to be the reason that you have to believe in God. And it's probably the best reason you could have for believing in God. Unfortunately, that's not going to do very much for me because these stories of sort of demons being driven out and kind of, you know, I think the only that demons seem to be more scared of than Jesus is a camera. You know, if I can see this kind of stuff happen, maybe that would increase my belief. But until it does, I just have to accept that that's something you experienced. That like the, the apparent visions of the disciples and other people that you've already mentioned, I don't know what's happening there. I have to suspect it's some kind of psychological phenomenon until I'm shown otherwise. Guys, I'm sorry. So thank you.

My next assertion is that Jesus never claimed to be God. What's up, man? Coy, coy. So talk to me, where does Jesus claim to be God? Yeah, so I'm curious, when you say that, are you including the Book of John? So I think that the Book of John is probably the least historically reliable in this case. So I'm talking about the historical Jesus. Yeah. I do think that there are a number of instances where Jesus appears to claim to be God in John's Gospel. Okay. But even if we think that he actually said that, I still think that there's reason to believe that he wasn't claiming to be God in the sense of being identical with Yahweh. When you talk about the historical Jesus, what else do you pull from other than the Gospels of things that he might have said? The things that he might have said, we only really have the Gospels. But there are multiple sources within the Gospels. What do you dated at? Uh, around 70 AD. I, I sort of go with the scholarly consensus. And so you have also a bunch of sources, the unique sources to Matthew and Luke. Uh, you also have this this potential source called Q from the German Furl. Right. All of this kind of stuff. John comes in the latest. And so when we're trying to figure out what the historical Jesus actually said, if we've got multiple sources all claiming that he said the same thing, then I think we have good reason to think that he actually said that. Claims like "Before Abraham was, I am," "I and the Father are one," "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father," only appear in the Gospel of John, not in any of our other sources, which I think makes them less historically reliable. Well, I like the claim. I got to come at a little bit different approach because I think that the Gospel writers are claiming that Jesus is God. Sure. Let's just go with Mark. As Mark starts, he talks about John the Baptist preparing the way for the Lord. Right. What is your response for that? Cuz ensuing Jesus comes. I have no problem. I've no problem saying that Mark is intending to portray. PR Jesus as God. It's not entirely clear, but I have no problem just granting that for the sake of this conversation. I think that the belief that Jesus is God is something that developed in early Christianity after Jesus died. I think there's nothing that Jesus said himself that can make us confidently say that he was walking around claiming to be God. What do you need in order to believe that Jesus is God? Because even if we take kind of this development in the Gospels, we can go before that. So would you say Paul's letters like Philippians and Colossians, would you say they were written before the Gospels? Uh, yes. Yeah, yeah. They were written before the Gospels. So if we're going for the Gospels, we have Paul claiming that Jesus is God in Philippians 2, where he's saying he was in the form of God, or maybe like a better translation would even be the essence or the nature of God. The problem I think with sort of quote mining in this respect is that there are quotes that point us in either direction. Even in the Gospel of John, so Paul, for example, says, uh, that there is one God, one God, which is the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ, seeming to separate them. Jesus says things like, the, my Father is greater than I am. He says things like, nobody knows the hour, not even the Son knows the hour, but only my Father in Heaven. He says, when he's crucified, in the first two Gospels, Eli, Eli, Lama sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I could point to these and say, these are Jesus claiming that he's separate from God. Well, there is a distinction from the Father and the Son. So we're not. But instead of quote mining, I could just quote the whole thing that though he was in the form of God, didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Sure. I also have no problem saying that Paul thought that Jesus was God. My ass. That's actually super clarifying for me. Because then my question is, what piece of evidence do you now need in order to believe that Jesus claimed to be God? Like, what, what is it for you that you would be like, you know what, that convinces me? Jesus in his own words saying that I am God. Right. But he does that in John, where before Abraham was, I am. Sure. So before Abraham was, I am. For start, as I've said, it only appears in the Gospel of John. We don't know if he at least said it once. And the claim is that he never did. If he actually said that, if he was going around claiming to be God in explicit terms, that's a great. Why is it that none of the, the Gospel writers thought it was a relevant detail to mention? It's difficult to now deal with it cuz you acknowledging. Pause. I'm so sorry. You've been voted out by the majority.

Great to meet you too. Hey, how's it going? Alex, it is great to meet you. I've been a fan of.

Yours for a long time, even though I'm a Believer. Thank you so much. That means all the more. You claim that this was a later tradition that developed. Is that correct?

Yeah, I think so.

Okay. When would you say that that tradition developed?

Probably fairly early on. I mean, the writings of Paul are decades after Jesus's death.

Okay. So do we have a better source for knowing what Jesus actually claimed than the gospels?

No, we don't.

Okay. So if the gospels are indeed the best source for understanding who Jesus was, do those gospels portray him as a Divine person?

Well, like I say, I think that there's only one gospel that unambiguously portrays Jesus as himself claiming to be divine, and that's the Gospel of John, which is the latest and most theologically motivated of all of the gospels. Even then, the claims that we're talking about, things like "Before Abraham was, I am." The Greek term there is "ego eimi." One chapter later, in John chapter 9, Jesus heals a blind man, and the blind man goes back, and people say, "Were you not the man who was born blind?" And what does he say? "Ego eimi." "I am." It's also just a way of identifying yourself and saying, "It's me."

I would want to know then, in the synoptic gospels, yes, are they claiming that Jesus is just a mere man?

I think that it's debatable what the synoptic authors are doing, but I'm happy to grant that the synoptic authors were trying to portray Jesus as God and thought that Jesus was God.

So that means all four gospel writers were intending to portray Jesus as God?

Correct.

Okay. Now, in the first century Hebrew culture, do you worship anyone other than God?

Depends what you mean by worship. So the Greek word for worship used in the New Testament is, I don't know how to pronounce it, "proskuneo" or "proskunein," something like that, which typically in the Hebrew is translated in the Septuagint to that word. "Proskuneo" in the Hebrew is a word which tends, which just means something like bow down before. So, for example, the same word is used when Jacob bows down before Esau. The same word is used when Joseph's brothers bow down before him when he's the, the governor of Egypt. The same word is used for King David, for example, in multiple books of the Bible.

But in the synoptic gospels, is Jesus portrayed as being worshiped?

I think at some points, yes. So, for example, at the end of John's gospel with doubting Thomas, uh, the beginning, in the birth narratives, of course. I think the birth narratives were forged in later additions to the New Testament.

I want to focus entirely on the synoptic gospels, because those seem to be the ones that you think are the most shaky on this. In the synoptic gospels, is Jesus, is the charge of blasphemy given against Jesus?

Yes, absolutely.

Right. Can you be given the charge of blasphemy merely for claiming to be the Messiah?

Well, let's find out. In the book of Acts, since Stephen has a vision before the Pharisees, what vision does he have? He looks up before the Pharisees and he says, "I can see God and I can see Jesus sat at the right hand of God." Separating Jesus and God. What do the Pharisees do? They stone him to death for blasphemy. So we know that you didn't have to claim that Jesus was identical to God in order to be stoned for blasphemy.

How about judging the entire world? Is that something that a, an, a human would do?

I, it would have to be a very special kind of human. I understand that you think that only God can judge.

Sure. So did the synoptic gospels, did the synoptic gospels portray Jesus as the one who is going to judge the world?

I think that may be true. The synoptic gospels may portray him as, as being that. What I'm asking for is, in Jesus's own words, or indeed in his own actions, claiming to be God. For example, a moment ago, you said that he was stoned for blasphemy. Can you be stoned for blasphemy for doing something other than claiming to be God? In the book of Acts, since Stephen is stoned for exactly that.

So do you agree that that at least isn't an indication that Jesus is claiming to be—

I don't know that they necessarily were stoning him for that exact thing. I don't know the exact context of that.

With that in mind, the divine birth of Jesus is another factor that's in all the synoptic gospels. In those gospels, Jesus is born of a Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit. It's only in two of the synoptic gospels, and in Luke's, at least, is probably a later edition. It wasn't in the original version.

Luke, regardless, is Jesus's birth portrayed as a normal human birth?

No, no, not at all. In all of the synoptics.

So if he's not a man, only two of them—

Well, well, that's fine. If he's not a man in these gospels, then what is he?

Well, again, I'm happy to say that the synoptic authors were portraying Jesus as God, especially whoever added the the birth narrative to Luke after the fact. That's, I've got no problem with that.

You just don't trust those gospels?

No. In the same way that I don't trust the legendary accounts surrounding the birth of Alexander the Great. I don't think that he was God either.

Is there a better, more reliable source for the historical Jesus than the gospels?

No. But within the gospels, there are more and less historically reliable points. So, as I've already said, there are seemingly sources. So, for example, when Jesus says something in Aramaic on the cross, when he says, "Eli, Eli," did Jesus—

Okay, pause. Sorry. You've been voted out by the majority. Please return to your seat. Good fun. Nice to meet you. Great to meet you. How's it going? I'm Mills. Nice to meet you. Me? I'm not a fan because I don't know who you are. But all the better. Well, the feeling is mutual. Yes. Um, but anyway, so, uh, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah. I don't know a ton about them. But okay. Well, they were found in 1943. Um, it is proven that they are about 2,300 years old. And you've got your Bible there. Do you know when crucifixion starts?

When crucifixion started? Yes. Uh, no, I don't think so.

Okay. So the Israelites, for instance, in King David's time, if you were found of blasphemy, how would they kill you?

H, well, there are different ways of doing it. You could be stoned, for example.

And who's "they"? Is it, is it—

Well, the Pharisees, of course. It was the Romans that killed Jesus, and they didn't kill him for theological reasons.

Would you do me a favor? Sure. Open up Psalms 22. Whatever you like. Psalms. King David wrote this. Psalms 22. Would you read it from the beginning?

Sure. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

What did Jesus say on the cross? "My God, my God, why have you forsaken—"

Go on. "Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out day by day, but you do not answer, by night I find no rest. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises."

It like, what are you looking for here?

Well, basically, if you go on, it basically describes crucifixion to the tea.

Sure. Can, can I, can I just stop you there? It, but let me finish. Written 800 years before crucifixion ever even happened. It even gets into the "Lambi, Lambi, La."

What does that got to do with Jesus claiming to be God?

Well, what this has to do with it is, I believe that the entirety of the word of God, just like in John chapter 1, "the Word became flesh and made its dwelling amongst us." I believe the entire Bible points to Jesus being the Messiah.

I, I agree with you. So that, that is my point. The Messiah is not the same as God. Jews didn't believe that the Messiah was going to be God.

Well, okay. Pause. Sorry, Lori. You've been voted out. Very nice to meet you.

In charge here? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Learning more about our God. That knowing, like, what happened in the Old Testament. He needed to have a representative to humble himself during these trials of the early beginnings of the Old Testament. For the sake of time, really need Jesus claiming to be God.

So my point is that He sent Jesus to be that human figure to represent God, so He can humble himself in His own creation.

So where does Jesus say that, "I am that person, I am God"? When he claims to say, "I am the light, I am the way, follow me. I am your God." He says, "I am your God. I am the light."

I feel like, so he says that, you just said, "I am your God."

I don't think Jesus says that. My apologies on misrepresenting, like, the whole entirety of the words in that verse. But he's still claiming that he is the light that has that connection to that higher God. And I feel like with that connection, that connection to that higher God, yes, that he is in that physical form. I also want to say, with the Virgin Mary, he has no father, and the angel blessed him with what he was saying to two mythical birth narratives. Yes. Which, by the way, that the gospels don't seem to have any knowledge of.

Well, hold on. With the Virgin birthing, that's come up twice now. Uh, at one point, Jesus' family in Mark's gospel, Jesus's family come out to him and say that they think he's lost his mind, which is a very strange thing for his family to say if they, if there was a virgin birth. And for the sake of flags, I just want to emphasize that Jesus is that human God form that he needed to humble himself so he can truly understand how humans work.

And I know how you know that that was Jesus. I want to, I want to emphasize that as well. Just, but by the very teachings that he said, and how—

Pause. You've been voted out. Please return to your seat. What's up, Alex? Hey, how's it going? Nice to meet you. Good. Good. Fan. I think that the general narrative of the Bible is the soon-coming Messiah. Obviously, there's some discrepancies and disagreements on the whole notion of whether Jews believe that the Messiah was God or not. But if we're looking at the New Testament as a whole, there seems to be this narrative from the beginning of the gospels all throughout Acts that the religious officials and everybody around this Jesus figure is trying to do away with this up-and-coming revolution or or whatever. Where you specifically note it with the blasphemy that that Stephen so-called died. I don't believe that they stoned him because he was claiming to be God. I think they stoned him because he was reaffirming this narrative that was so ethereal to the whole entire.

So what this got to do with Jesus claiming to be God?

I have no problem with saying that Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, the Christ, and that the Jewish authorities saw that as a threat, and that the Roman authorities certainly saw it as a threat that he was claiming to be the King of the Jews. Those were the charges that he was actually crucified on.

King of the Jews. Where does Jesus claim that he's God?

I'm just going to go back to John because it's the strongest source. And, and you, the multiple instances of of "I am." Like, even if it's just the, what you said earlier with that, the exactly how you quoted it. He says, "Before Abraham was, I am." Because Abraham in Jewish tradition, culture, seems to be this forefather of their faith. So it's like, how are you putting a man, just any man, above Abraham?

Well, he's not just any man. He's not claiming to just be any man.

I'm not saying any old man. And then there's God. And say, Abraham's statement reaffirms that. "I am." That you can't just say "before Abraham" because Abraham is the beginning of the Israeli timeline. Like, this is the beginning of their faith. So to say that.

So, for what it's worth, I don't think that Jesus, the historical Jesus, actually said this. But even if he did, saying "Before Abraham was, ego eimi" certainly seems to imply that he is maybe eternal, at least existed for his bodily form. That's pretty weird. But claiming to be God is a different thing. As I say, when Jesus walks on the water, the disciples think that they've seen a ghost. And what does Jesus say to them? "Do not be afraid. Ego eimi." Which most biblical scholars translate as "It's me," because sometimes saying "ego eimi"—

Okay, pause. You've been voted out by the majority. Good to see you again. All right. Two things. Have you heard of the Cloud Rider motif?

No, I don't think so.

Okay. Oh, Cloud Rider motif. Okay. Then I'm assuming you've heard of like the Two Powers in Heaven motif?

No.

Okay. There's a Jewish historian named Alan Segal. He wrote a book called "The Two Powers in Heaven," and what he talks about is there's this weird thing happening in the Hebrew Bible where there's almost like two Yahweh figures that they point to. So some verses, for instance, will say like, "Yahweh rained down fire from Yahweh." And so Philo of Alexandria, in the second temple period, talks about this Two Powers in Heaven motif, and he says, like, there's two Yahweh. There's the first power and the second power, but they're both Yahweh. It's almost like a sort of proto-Trinity, Arian view. That's one thing that I'll just kind of put there for now. Another puzzle piece here is, have you heard about the Cloud Rider motif? So in the Ugaritic texts, um, in the Baal cycle, we see Baal referenced as the one who rides the clouds. And I think you can see that actually adopted by the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible. Well, so Psalm 104 is like an exaltation Psalm, and actually talks about Yahweh being the one that rides the clouds in heaven. He is the king. I see that as kind of a poetic way of calling Yahweh the king over Baal. Are we on the same page there?

Sure.

Okay. Into Daniel 7, you'll see a Messianic passage there about how God will come down, and you'll see the Son of Man come riding in the clouds of heaven, and his kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom.

Do you think Daniel thought that the Son of Man was going to be God, since he says that he's riding on a cloud?

This is a really interesting point. I don't think that he did, because he was, he was a Jewish writer.

I lean on saying yes, but I don't know if I can say that with like absolute certainty. The Prophet Daniel was expecting the Messiah to be God?

I think so.

Oh, the Son of Man to be God? Who is—

That's a, that's a motif only applied to God.

So you have this cloud—

By the way, I, I do think that there are multiple things which people, even in Jesus's time, thought only God could do, things like forgiving sins. And when Jesus does these things, he's not doing so in order to prove that he's God, but in order to prove that the Son of Man has the authority to do—

I completely agree. I completely agree. This isn't that kind of an argument. This is an identification thing.

So where's Jesus claiming to be God?

Yes, that's where I'm going. So we have these puzzle pieces in, in place.

Sure. If you fast forward to the Mark's gospel, and I'm going to use Mark, let's do Mark. Jesus before Caiaphas. In Mark's gospel, Caiaphas asks, "Who are you?" And instead of just explicitly saying, "I am God," Jesus quotes Daniel 7, saying he is the Son of Man, the human one, who will ride on the clouds, and calls himself the second power. So you have this Two Powers in Heaven motif, the two powers, they're both God, and the Cloud Rider motif, and the Son of Man. He's quoting Daniel 7 to identify himself. After that, Caiaphas tears his robe and cries, "Blasphemy!"

I do think that that Jesus is making some pretty extraordinary claims of himself, such as being the Son of Man. But I still don't see why he's claiming to be God. If this were the way that he was trying to reveal his divinity to people, it'd be a strange and convoluted way to do it.

Psalm 82 also talks about God presiding over a council of gods, saying, "You shall be called gods." And Jesus quotes that Psalm when he's referring to his relationship with the Father in the Gospel of John. So, so even if in the Old Testament you have hypotheses, right, that this is not a Christological implication, and I have mine, and I, I get what you're saying where you're coming from, but to the ancient author, how obvious would this be?

So the best we have here is Jesus claiming to be the Son of Man, and that might indicate that might, yeah. But we don't predicate our hypotheses on the evidence we wish we did have. We go off the evidence that we do have.

That's right. And I don't think that there's any point at which Jesus says—

So you're saying that this is not—

All right, guys, that's time. Evidence, but not good enough. So, nice. Sorry, we haven't got more time. I wish we could. This chap over here just seems very also very knowledgeable, very enthusiastic, and philosophically minded as well. Why don't I bring you back?

So my claim, which might bother some people in this circle, and this is why I thought maybe we could find a little bit of middle ground here, because I represent a form of Christianity that a lot of people don't even consider as Christian. I'm a Latter-day Saint, also known as a Mormon. Awesome. And, um, my claim is that the restored gospel, also known as Mormonism, provides a conception of God that is more rationally defensible than any other credal Christian sect.

Okay. Oh, tell me why. I, I must admit, I don't know very much about Mormon theology. I know you also don't like being called Mormons, right? So I don't quite know what, what term, what term we generally are.

Know saints. Latter-day Saints. The Church. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ. Are theological claims, for example, um, the problem of evil.

Evil. Okay. So the way that we address it. So the problem really, so far as I can tell, that you have isn't so much with suffering, right? Because suffering could be something that is just, if—

I, yeah. In principle, it's sort of the amount of suffering, the depth of suffering.

Absolutely. So the issue really is injustice.

It's not injustice, it's suffering. And particularly suffering of non-human animals.

Okay. And, and, and fair enough. So with the concept of injustice, the Latter-day Saint conception of God is that God actually, His purpose is to make us become as He is.

Yes. Does that include animals as well?

Animals are part of the created order that will be redeemed along with the rest of the created order.

Okay. So what does suffering do for them?

Suffering is part of the inherent nature of the world as a fallen world.

Even for animals?

Yes. Even for animals. Whose fault is that?

Let me break it down. A lot of questions. Yeah. Let me, let me break it down like this. Sure. So if I have a child, and I want my child to grow up to become like me, my child needs to go out of my house. He needs to go into the lone and dreary world. And if that is the case, that means that there's going to be some level of separation between me and him. He's in the world of injustice. It's a world that is unfair.

Why is that world unjust and unfair?

Because I understand what you're saying. You want your, in this analogy, you want your child to become like you. And what's, what that's going to involve is encountering suffering, developing as a person, getting thicker skin. The only reason that you want that for your child is because they're going to live in a world where they're going to have to encounter that, and you want them to be better at dealing with that, right? If you were given the opportunity to give your child a life that was separate from you, where they went about and did their business, but there wasn't that kind of suffering, and you chose the one in which there was suffering just for the sake of it, I think that would be problematic.

Well, it's not, it's not that I chose to put them in that world. See, this is a difference in Latter-day Saint theology. That's what I'm interested in. Latter-day Saint theology, there is a pre-existence, and human beings, knowing the unjust nature of reality, have the choice.

Oh, they choose to. They choose to enter into the mortal state.

To pass through the way. To look at it is, there's this realm of injustice where anything can happen. I can go out tomorrow, my kid can get cancer, all these things can happen. And the idea is, we say, "But if you're willing to pass through the realm of injustice, this is a necessary—"

A necessary condition to reach your divine potential.

Come. Was it necessary? There's another thing about Latter-day Saint theology that's different. Like, for instance, God cannot create a square circle.

Why does that apply here? I mean, that because God cannot bring you to your divine potential because of the nature of the laws of reality.

Okay. But like, why, why not? Because you're just, you're just sort of restating that he can't do it. I want to know why.

I know what I'm saying is, is that there are laws that even God is bound by.

Now, which laws are relevant here? Like, which laws is, like, the law of non-contradiction, for instance.

Why does, why is— Explain to me how the law of non-contradiction binds God to not create a world where there's no suffering.

Because that relationship with God must be freely chosen. And God cannot force me. Because there is the question, why doesn't God just make us all happy?

That's a separate question. Because God can make a world in which there's no suffering, which you're still, in which you're still free to choose whether or not to follow Him.

I, I would say that that is a logical contradiction.

Okay. So maybe you can tell me why. Because right now, what you're telling me is that it's, it's illogical on the level of creating a square circle to create a system that a person can voluntarily choose to, to sort of exit the heavenly realm and go into in order to, whatever they need to do to get to God's ultimate—

Not get to God, to become as He is.

To fulfill their full potential. That has to involve not just suffering, but the kind, but the kind of suffering that we see on planet Earth. The, I'm asking why that's logically necessary.

A totally unjust world.

Okay. Because it is by passing through this realm that we have the experience of injustice that allows us to know what injustice is.

But why do we need to know what injustice is?

Because how else can you come to be like God? Kind of like the Adam and Eve story. There's the fruit of the tree of knowledge in good and evil.

So what is justice? How do you define justice?

Off the top of my head, I would say that justice is getting what you deserve.

Yeah. Right. Okay. And so the problem is that, like, you could imagine a situation in which there was nothing wrong, nothing bad, nothing evil, and therefore no need for this rectifying force of justice. It's a little—

Say justice is a good thing, but justice is a good thing in so far—

Hold on. Justice is a good thing in so far as it overcomes injustice. That's what it's there for. In the same way that chemotherapy is a good thing because it tries to overcome cancer. If I said that I was going to create cancer so that we could have the good of chemotherapy, and you said, "Why would you do that?" And I said, "Because there's no way for us to achieve the good of chemotherapy without creating cancer," you'd look at me like I'd lost my mind.

No, it's like saying, this is the, the better analogy. It's like saying to my son, "Son, the only way that you can become the way I am is to go out into that world where anything could happen and to persevere."

Okay. I, I still have qualms with this. But for the sake of time, I wonder, ask you about animals. Do animals consent to go into this—

The animal kingdom is part of the fallen world. They are part of the fallen order.

Do they feel pain?

I don't know. I, that's, that's more of a good question. I don't know necessarily where they—

What's your confidence level? Like, if I started strangling a dog in front of you, would you stop me?

Yeah. I think I think that I have an obligation to prevent the death of living creatures.

Not death. No, I'm not going to kill it. I'm going to strangle it. Keep it alive just so it can suffer more. You stop me from doing that?

Yeah. Why?

Uh, because I believe that God wants us to protect the created order. Okay. And to create goodness, light.

And would that be similar to like, you know, me stepping on a plant or something? You're just like, "Hey, don't do that, man. It's the created order." Or do you think it's because they're suffering?

I think it is probably because they're suffering. But I don't understand that suffering in terms of, of the way that humans suffer. Because you said that the reason why it's not so much of a problem for humans to enter the veil of tears and have to suffer is because they consent to do so before they're born. If animals don't do that, then I don't think that their suffering is justified on the same grounds.

Well, let me turn this around. Because while I think that you, you bring up some objections there, my claim is is that we have a better capacity to handle this than the credal Christian model.

Sure. Okay. And so would you agree with my claim that we have a better model than credal Christianity?

I don't, I don't know because I don't know enough because we've only been speaking for 10 minutes. Uh, there, there are probably things that it deals with better and things that it deals with worse. For example, you know, I've, I've spoken a turn on my show about the Gnostic cosmology, which I think does a lot to do away with problems like the problem of evil and the weird sort of seeming immateriality of Jesus in some passages and stuff. But there's a lot of problems with it too. There's a ton of problems, such as like God's Providence and the nature of why the demiurge created. All of these ideas are often times, I think, created because they better account for certain things over others. Don't think that's necessarily the case with Mormonism, of course. But yeah, I'm sure in some cases it does better, in some cases it does worse. In this case, I, I don't think it does anything more to explain the suffering of animals.

Your problem with the suffering of animals is that it's unjust.

No, it's not.

Then why do you, then what suffering? If suffering, if suffering ultimately is redeemed, let's say the animals on the other side, for all they suffer, they get the best possible animal future that you could ever imagine. And the animals get there and they go, "This is great. It was all worth it." The question then, it would be worth it. It's the injustice. The question is, why aren't they just given that without the suffering first? I can understand why that wouldn't happen with humans. For whatever, again, I, I want to clarify, I still have qualms with the idea, but let me just grant it for a moment. I can understand why you need to do that with humans before they get the, the knife reward at the end. But why the animals? Why cause them to suffer?

Human beings will suffer as well, unjustly. It's just the nature of an unjust world. The suffering of animals, I think, is unexpected if a good God is overseeing. But it's not a problem if ultimately they are compensated.

Well, I think it still is a problem because you don't just get to inflict suffering and then compensate people and think that that's okay. Have you heard of the Burlington Club?

Is a club? No.

If, if I have to inflict suffering on here, wait a second. Let me, let me, let me give you this example. There's an infamous club, a private members' club at Oxford University called the Burlington Club. There are a bunch of like, elite, posh kids who used to go around. They'd go to restaurants. They were incredibly rich. They would host a dinner, and then they would trash the place. They'd flip over tables, they'd smash things. They, they'd cover the walls and everything. It was absolutely devastating, just horrible behavior. And then when the owner came up and said, "What the hell have you done?" They just paid them off. They said, "Hey, have a bunch of money," and not only that, they paid them way more than the repairs are worth, so they could get away with it. Because the, because if anything, they've done those people a favor. No, it's still terrible, awful behavior. Because even if you've compensated someone for it, if you've caused them for suffering, which by the way, still hasn't been explained why that suffering exists.

30 seconds. Let me. It doesn't seem like it's worth it. Let, or if it's worth it, it doesn't seem like it's just.

Can be worth it though. For instance, a dog that's getting a shot has no idea what's going on. He's just thinking, "This hurts and is so terrible." And the thing is, is if it ultimately saves its life, it's worth it.

It's a compensatory reward for the suffering that's there. Everything can be redeemed.

View is life even worth it? Because if life is mostly suffering, even for the animals, then isn't the logical conclusion to end this project altogether?

That's a separate question. But if you had the opportunity to, to not have that dog need the shot, and you gave them the shot anyway, you created the need for the shot, and then gave them the shot and called them to suffer.

Latter-day Saint cosmology, God does not create the conditions where the shot is necessary. You're correct. And you're correct on credal Christianity, it does. And that's the biggest flaw with it, by the way. I want to give you—

That's just— Hey, Alex. It's been. Meet likewise. Yeah. See you later.

Jacob himself said that a lot of the people here might not even consider him to be a Christian because he's a Latter-day Saint. And I think the best thing that speaking to somebody like him does is reminding you that not all Christians are the same. There's not some uniform Christian worldview. Everybody who comes up is going to have a different opinion. And having Latter-day Saints in there who has a totally different theology to other Christian denominations, let's say, I think is a good reminder of that. Overall, it was a really great experience. If I were to give my totally honest opinion, I think it was that Alex O'Connor was able to kind of destroy a lot of credal Christianity because of the weaknesses in the credal Christian position. And as a Latter-day Saint, I couldn't help but feel like I think we have things that can help solve a lot of the problems that Alex has with credal Christianity. I think I probably disagreed with most people around this circle, Christian contemporaries included. But I tried to come in pretty curious. And so I actually feel like I'm leaving more informed and smarter on the other side of this. I'm sad to say I felt like we found no middle ground, only due to the fact we were talking about a lot of the lore of the Bible. However, if we were able to kind of tackle on real modern-day challenges, I feel like we could have found some middle ground. People don't ask questions enough. I have a lot of respect for Alex because other atheists that I've talked to usually they carry a lot of resentment and bitterness. But something about him is he can sit and have a mature, respectful conversation, ask questions. And also, something that I highly respect is that he knows the Bible maybe more than some Christians. I'm glad that I did this. I think that at the very least, the topics that were brought up in the short time we had work as an incredibly effective springboard for people to think about this kind of stuff. This will hopefully be the beginning of a fountain of useful information and content on those topics.