Transcription
And unlawful knowledgeable wisdom to be unwise as an option. And then we you take medication by chance? Medication? Oh, not at all. Unless I'm breathing air. That's a certain type of medication I'm happy with. I mean, I desire truth fit. I I literally just don't have any idea what the hell you're talking about. Like, I can't follow even what you're saying.
We don't stone people to death. We don't kill people for not being virgins on their wedding day. Why do you think that is? What the hell does that have to do with my claim?
If a politician, right, you vote him in office, he's a Christian. He's going to be making moral decisions on behalf of the electorate, right? Right. What do you want him to all those where do you want him to draw his information from? From the electorate. So with the electorate, it's not all religious. What if the electorate asked him to do something immoral?
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My name is Andrew Wilson, host of The Crucible, popular entertainment channel on YouTube. Um, and today I'm going to be debating five different people on five different topics for five minutes. My first topic will be um, Christians have as much of a right to rule as secularists. Pleasure. There we go. Um, all right. So, Christians have as much a right to rule as secular people. Correct. Um, so just to kind of let me flesh it out a little bit for you very briefly. Yeah. So the idea is secularists say that only they seem to be able to have the power to push political authority. I push back against that idea and say no Christians also should be allowed to push political authority. And just because you're a secularist, it doesn't give you any additional right to have authority uh than a Christian does. So this idea of separation of church and state actually doesn't make a lot of sense to me because if Christians can push political authority as is their right then it seems that you're going to have Christians who are in the government and they are going to be ruling from their moral stance. Okay. Yeah.
I don't actually entirely disagree with this. Um, I would say though when we're talking about Christians in authority, I think that usually what they're talking about or the criticism is less so that they're Christian and more so that they're operating under a dogmatic ideology. And so under that concept, like do you think it's okay for people to use dogmas in a political sense like the Constitution? Like that kind of dogma? Um, why would the Constitution be dogmatic? Well, what is a dogma? Let's start with that. Um, a dogma is an appeal to some sort of unchanging authority. Is that what you think it is? I believe it is. Yeah. So, let's look at um let's look at this idea. We'll kind of flesh it out a little bit here. I think that it's fine. By the way, that I don't I'm not sure that the the Constitution is uh able to be changed in certain parts of it, right? Or or it stops becoming the Constitution, but I think the idea of what we have in America is dogmatic. the idea of well only secularists have the ability to rule because we have to separate out religious authority right and I don't think that we do need to separate out religious authority I don't even think we can and so if pe if politicians are going to rule from the uh from a moral stance what's going to inform their morals well it's going to be their religion and their dogma right so if that's inform if my dogma is informing my morals aren't I supposed to rule from my dogma well so I think this is kind of like you can you can be dogmatic without appealing to a dog more. You can be I think a better way to put this I think you can be secular as a Christian, right? So being secular to my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong is pretty much just operating outside of religious context. Right? So in government for example, I don't think the constitution is dogmatic because as you mentioned it's amendable. Something like the Bible, right? If that's your point of moral authority, I think you can operate under that. We all have some sort of moral system that we're appealing to. But I think that when push comes to shove, right, if there's an issue like evolution, for example, right, that's a lot of push back in schools right now, I don't think that you can appeal to evolution being false purely because it contradicts the Bible. I mean, you you technically can, but I don't think it's justifiable. Does that make sense? Uh- because it's it's nonfalsifiable. You can't if you're just going to assume that the Bible is true as your foundation. Mhm. That's operating dogmatically and I don't think we can really make progress that way. Yeah.
But that I mean that's just assertions, right? Like let's say that Christians did let's say they outlawed the teaching of evolution, right? So what what would what would even your argument be? If the argument is we have to outlaw prayer, we have to move prayer out. We have to move God out of schools. We have to move these things out of schools. Then when Christians are in charge, why shouldn't you be surprised when they say, "Oh, well, we're going to now we're going to move your stuff out. Now we're going to move your your nonsense out of here." Right. I I agree. Like if if Christians are in power, of course, they have the authority to technically do whatever they want. Yeah. But what my argument is that they have every much right they have they have as much right to utilize that political power and authority as secularists do. secular and secularists and atheists have no leg to stand on when they say, "Wait a second, Christians aren't allowed to push their power." Yes, they are. If if atheists are, Christians are, too. I I agree. Maybe the better way to put it is they are legally allowed to. I don't know that they're I mean, ethically, you can do whatever you want as well, right? But I don't think it's ethically permissible. I think that this is unethical behavior about it. Well, so for example, right, if we're pushing out something like evolution, I think that leads to a lot of downstream effects as far as like anti pushing out prayer. How so? Well, I mean, you you would have to admit that when you were a kid, maybe not when you were a kid, but at least when I was a kid, we used to pledge allegiance to to the flag, right? One nation under God. So, it gives a reinforcement of patriotism, an idea of solidarity with your countrymen, right? And and if prayer in school also creates solidarity between people, gives them purpose, gives them faith. There's all sorts of negative ramifications of pushing it out, right? Oh, wow. That goes quick. All right. Yeah, that went real quick. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead.
All right. So, your stance is um Christians have the right to rule as much as um secularists. Yeah. Okay. So, as a Christian, I uh I can't disagree with you too much on that. However, um you know, just because you're a Christian doesn't mean you shouldn't be in power. Um but what you do with your morals and values should not be portrayed in how you rule. And and I I'm a big believer in church and state or separation of church and state. So um you know there's there's a place for the uh for the relig religious aspect of your life and your upbringing and all that. Um but it shouldn't be um brought into more of a power stance. You can't separate church and state. Let me explain why. Have you ever uh elected a politician who's a Christian? Uh yes. Did you expect that when he ruled he ruled from his moral stances which were informed by Christianity? I would expect that he would have ruled uh based off of his policies, which what where like how's he going to figure his policies out other than what he considers moral in his brain? So um give me a second here. Sure. Take your time. Um, so I feel I feel like the the the the specific people that I would, you know, u um vote for, elect, his policies would specifically be uh what how I would feel would not be based off of his Christian morals. And that's just that's how I vote. So where do you want him to find his morals? Like in the trash can or like if you're electing if you're electing a person to be a who's a Christian, into office, right? What where do you want him to get his information for how he's going to rule morally? If you're a Christian and you point to some other stance and say that's more moral than my stance, then why are you a Christian? A second. Um, so, uh, Um, can you say that last part? If you elect somebody Mhm. to to represent you in your morals in government who is a Christian, why would you want him to rule from another stance other than Christianity? You would be then saying that other stance is more moral than his. So why would you be a Christian to begin with? Um, I mean, being a Christian is is kind of, you know, personally it's it's it's more of a of a comfort for me knowing that there's a a higher power, a creator. Um, but it doesn't inform your morals. It it um where my morals come from is kind of a collective of like um you know what you were talking with FTFE yesterday. um you know a collective of experiences and and and and you know I do lean so Christianity is purely cosmetic for you? Uh, I I tend I tend to hope it's not. Um, but you know, I mean, it sounds like it's purely cosmetic and you're getting your your moral information from intuition. Like, oh, this feels good. This doesn't feel good. But Christian ethics come from the teachings and and dogmas of Jesus Christ, right? The laid foundations of Jesus Christ. And if you move against those, you're you're moving into Antichrist territory, right? You're being antichrist. So, um, yeah, you can't you can't like pick and choose Christian ethics, right? That's that's a that's a fair assessment. Um, man, uh, all right, I I got to concede. Okay. Uh, this isn't really a topic that I I discussed too much. Um, but it was a No problem. Nice to meet you. You, too, man.
So, what uh what was the uh the claim again? Yeah, remember the claim? It's that it's that uh Christians have as much of a right to rule as secularists or atheists. Okay. I'm I'm a little confused as to why that I I don't I don't think a lot of people would disagree with that. What part do you think I think that a lot of people would disagree with it? I think then why do they get upset when Christians are in office and they make policy based on Christianity? Because they make policy based on Christianity, not the fact that they are Christian. H Well, okay. How do you want a Christian to morally inform their view for policym if it's not through Christianity? I'm not saying that it can't be through Christianity. It can't be because of Christianity. Why? Because it's not a Christian. Yeah. What does that have to do with anything? If a politician, right, you vote him in office, he's a Christian. He's going to be making moral decisions on behalf of the electorate. Right. Right. Where do you want him to all those where do you want him to draw his information from? From the electorate. So if the electorate it's not all religious. What if the electorate asked him to do something immoral? Well then that's a completely different thing. Well right then he should be informing his his viewpoint from his ethics which is going to be Christianity. Right. It's not a dichotomy. You can you don't either have Christian ethics or completely non- you can you can take your Christian ethics and apply them to a secular situation. No sure you can apply your Christian ethics to secularists but that would be ruling secularist with Christian ethics. Right. But then we agree that there's no issue with Christians or seculars having power. No, I don't think we do agree. So your idea here is you take issue if Christians make policy based on Christianity. No, because of Christianity. This is the law because Christianity says, not I am a Christian. I think this is bad. And also other people who are not Christians also think it is bad. Let's say that other people who aren't Christians do think it's bad. We go back to the electorate. What does the electorate say? We're going to but the politicians if the electorate happens to be Christian then why is there Christian ethics in in uh in politics? Why is there a problem with the creation of an imposition of your ethical view if you're in a position of power on people who don't want it for the same reason you wouldn't want Sharia law. But right now we have secularists who tear down ten commandments. They tear down prayer in school. They tear down all sorts of symbols that Christians care about. They tear down in fact based on they push through no not just based on the electorate. based on their agenda. There's a lot of things that people will get put in politicians get put in office, right, by an electorate. Sometimes maybe they're only going to go for one term or maybe it's their last term. They they don't do anything based on what the electorate is saying, but based on their own ideology, based on their own worldview. Atheist doing things randomly that nobody sometimes, but atheist I don't necessarily disagree, but the fact of the matter the fact of the the point is that that is irrelevant to whether it is done because of Christianity. if they're doing things on their own because uh uh you know because they think it's a good idea and then uh secularly from a Christian perspective uh people can say yes I like that that's a good idea but people from a secular persp non-religious people can also say I think that's a good idea and as an electorate as a non-Christian n or officially a Christian nation I obviously most people are Christian in this nation but not everybody and so that's the point of having the uh uh the republic that everybody when somebody says something's right and wrong. Where are they getting the that information? I think I I agree with you. Even as an atheist, I think we all at least in America are uh uh pulling from Christian uh I'll say values Christian ethics. Yeah. But so so if Christians But that's that's the dichotomy that I was bringing up before. You're saying as if you have to ignore Christianity. Yeah. In order to be a politician. And I don't think anybody's making that claim. No, no. I'm saying that politicians rule from atheism or rule from Christian ethics. They either rule from a lack of religion or through religious informed ethics. Well, I mean, and then still, I don't have an issue with your Christian ethics informing your secular decision that this is the law of No, how about your Christian ethics informing your Christian decision policy? If you want to change the government to be a Christian nationalist government, go I mean, how would that be changing the government? Because that's not the way it is. Yes, it is. The way of the government right now is that you can indeed craft policy based around Christian ethics. When you say because of Christianity, it doesn't mean anything. Like, oh, my morals come from Christianity because the Bible. It's like, yeah. So, what though? I don't I don't understand what the distinction here is. The distinction is the uh the reason the reason that this is a law, I think this is you might think what'sever the law is. You might think X is a good law because it aligns with your Christian ethics. I might think X is a good law because of whatever other reason. The fact the fact that your Christian ethics also informed us to the same conclusion. The point is that we we come to the conclusion we vote on that conclusion. Not you have your ideology and therefore you win. Nobody's disputing that atheists can sometimes agree with Christians or that Christians can sometimes agree with atheists when it comes to prescriptive claims and policy. That's not my claim. My nice person. Thank you. Andrew. Hey, see you again. You too.
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Okay. So, what's up? You think uh we should establish laws based on Christian ethics? Yep. Does that go against the Constitution? No. What part of the what part of the Constitution? 14th Amendment. Like, and what in the 14th amendment would we be violating? fact that we shouldn't establish laws based on religious belief. There's nothing in the 14th amendment that says we can't establish law based on our religious beliefs. So do you think that the morals established by Christianity in the Bible have not evolved since based on secular humanism? Wait, say that again. do not think that morals established in the Bible have not evolved due to secular humanism have not evolved. Yeah. I feel like so we don't stone people to death. We don't kill people for not being virgins on their wedding day. Why do you think that is? What the hell does that have to do with my claim? Well, all right. Well, then elaborate on your claim. Yeah. So I think that it's completely fine, completely appropriate for Christians who are in positions of power and authority to push their position, power, and authority based on their Christian Christian ethical belief even at the expense of atheists who don't really like that very much. So how would you feel if we lived in a Islamic state and people were making laws based on the Islamic belief? I I wouldn't like it. Right. So do you think that would be right though? Well, for that people culture they do it now. You think everyone in that culture? There's no way for me to establish other than through Christianity for me to say, well, they're not Christians and they're not ruling from a Christian ethic, so that's wrong. But from an atheist perspective for governance, you couldn't say that they were doing a damn thing wrong. What what is actually a problem with their population having Sharia law even? Why would an what? Like what's even an atheist objection to that? Well, I think that morals that were derived from thousands of years ago, yeah, just are not in they're not congruent with our current standard of living. So, morals that were established 30 years ago are Yeah. I think they're continually evolving. Yeah. So, if Sharia law, right, has a new doctrine every 10 years, then that would be then morally congruent for that uh for that area and that people. It would be great if Sharia law were to evolve. Yeah. It evolves all the time. There's all sorts of different precedents which say Christianity juristprudence all sorts of different things, right? Hasn't Christianity evolved as well? Uh well, it depends on what you're talking about when you say Christian Protestantism. Yes. It's that's always an ever evolving thing. When it comes to the traditional churches, not so much. But when you're talking about Christian ethics, it's this still doesn't really contend with the point that what's actually wrong with all of the Muslims having Sharia law if they want Sharia law. Well, you're assuming that they No. If if they all want true love, sure. But you're assuming that they are and you're assuming that the population here is just all Christian and want I'm not assuming it. I'm not assuming everybody there wants it either. What I'm saying is is that that is the the government status which is there, right? They are the ones who are in charge. They are pushing that authority from a from a secular perview. Like why is that wrong for that people group to even do that? Right? So if you go to certain parts of Pennsylvania, there are Jewish communities that kind of live by their own rules. Yeah. And Amish communities. Amish communities. Exactly what I'm referring to. Yeah. And that's fine for them, I suppose. But I think if you're talking about United States or the larger communities at a whole. Mhm. It's antiquated to rule such a diverse population based on ethics from a book that's 1500 years old. Why? Why? Why is that a problem? How old do you like philosophy? Sure. How old is that? How old are the books? How philosophy is modern? Modern philosophy is not at all. So like the Socratic method. Yeah. Would you say that's widely employed? Sure. Yeah. How old's that? I don't know why you're using this antiquated 2,000-year-old method in order to determine truth. But you don't, as a Christian, you don't even follow the morals of the Bible. You your morals have evolved as well. You wouldn't stone someone to death for being married and not a virgin. So, don't you think those aren't Christian ethics, though? That would be Jewish ethics. They originally were and then they now evolved. How would they be Christian ethics if those those things were there pre-Christianity? So, so how so, so explain your Christian ethics. Where do they come from? Because this was references in the Bible. Yeah, Christian ethics are going to be the teachings of Jesus Christ, right? The ten commandments, the duties set forth by the New Testament, right? That's going to be Christian ethics. So, do you you you adhere to all the ten commandments? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I mean, is there Oh, time. It's pleasure, man. Yeah, thank you.
Greetings, Andrew. Hello. Gabriel speaking. So, uh, can you repeat the question, please? Yeah. I think that it's um that Christians have as much right to rule as secularists or atheists. So, my answer is going to be yes, but no. We need to understand, we need to see to its fullest extent of what is Christian ethics in its totality. Not because of a different sect of denomination, but we need to actually be precise because there's going to be consequences from each decision we make, which is self-evident what type of nation we live in today where you have certain conservative Christians claim to be this nation is good, great, and greatest. But can that be tested? And if it were to be tested and it's proven that it's actually evil and corrupt because what of the what is the doctrine dogmas for example the declaration of independence I don't support the declaration of independence because it seems to be that's not the kingdom of god nor any representation of that because it seems to be a declaration of dependence proclamation in freedom versus proclamation in kingdom why because there's an actual leader a King thereof kings. There's a reason behind that. What the hell are you talking about, dude? Well, there has I have no idea what you're even talking about. Look, I understand. Look, to me it seems like if Christians were to rule and were to lead, my question is what type of Christian? Because obviously secular humanism, their fundamental foundation, their doctrinal substance cannot sustain. What if we just started with something simple like the ten commandments? The ten commandments. My question would be, are there anything prior to the ten commandments that we have to account for? And if we don't do that, I'm sure there's things prior that you'd have to account for, but let's just say that we started with that. Well, it has to come well there has to be if we account for the ten commandments, we need to know the reason why behind each commandment itself from the beginning to the end. So we have the totality of reason that is logical and rational to persuade people to submit themselves to obedience to to uphold that all the way through their life. But as for this nation, we don't do that. There there's problems with freedom in itself because you're allowing free will domain with corrupt individuals where technically we are. We're basically children who has been given an unlawful knowledgeable wisdom to be unwise as an option. And then we you take medication by chance? Medication? Oh, not at all. Unless I'm breathing air, that's a certain type of medication I'm happy with. I mean, I desire truth. I I literally just don't have any idea what the hell you're talking about. Like I can't follow even what you're saying. Unders.
Okay. So, should Christians rule instead of secular humanism? Yes. But no, there's a contingency plan behind that. I say yes to a Christian, but how can I trust that Christian when his Christian ethics are corrupt along the way or has been corrupt from the very beginning? Because that Christian that would just apply to anybody. How can you trust anybody? Anybody could their ethics could have been corrupted along the way. Anybody could have a problem with, you know, X, Y, and Z. That really doesn't have anything to do with anything though, right? Well, what's why draft any law? Some people are going to violate them. Well, the the point of a law is to be true. No, no, no. That's not the point of a law is to be true. Yes. to have a true sense of what is truth that is good that is deemed to be applied on the individuals groups of individuals in this domain. You should stop at a stop sign is true because and for the cause and effect it depends. Stop adding at a stop sign. You're you are not only taking care of yourself, you're taking care of people around you. But isn't it also true that you can blow through a stop sign and nothing happens? Then you you because of your failure and nothing happens, you were lucky that something you avoided. So it sounds like laws are there to restrict behavior based on outcomes that could be bad. Correct. And it can be prevented. But it really doesn't have anything to do with a truth claim. Exactly. Does it? Well, it does play a part of truth. Yeah. Like if we had a law that said when you walked indoors to this particular building, you have to take your hat off. If you left your hat on, what would be the negative consequence of that? Well, why would they have the law in the first place? Let's just say they do. Well, there's Well, it should care. And that's my point. Either it's 100% or it's nothing. Yeah. But let's just say they did. Okay. Right. What What's the truth we're trying to establish here? There's no truth claim we're trying to establish. interaction, maybe courtesy, professional or personal. Uh uh in a way, in a manner of a format that could exist in a actually ideal real world that we live in that it can be that possible way of living. That courtesy can be drawn from the laws reflection of what is desired intended. I'm lost again, dude. Oh, my apologies. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.