Christopher Hitchens Ripping Old Testament Apart

the study of the so-called 10 commandments allows us to return a pretty confident reply the whole story is one of muddle chaos inconsistency revision as one goes along temper tantrums lapses into rage insanity sadism vengeance and general losing of the thread this would argue either for a very muddled irrational forgetful inconsistent God or for no God at all but if we make the assumption that this mass of unresolved contradictions was the outcome of the ignorant struggles of a semi-literate frightened species of primates then the mystery clears up all by itself [Music] if it's the Old Testament they say as long as you can kill every other member of every other tribe leaving only the virgin females of the other team as captives for purposes unstated then you'll get to the promised land that's not moral teaching either you don't need to be an extremist or a fundamentalist to say well that is what the religion actually says but people who think talking to walls is actually a form of divine worship and it's another instance now not that I didn't bring it up laborious ly myself but I don't mind it again oh the difference between Tony and myself when he says he uses his giveaway phrase in the name of religion rather than as a direct consequence of scriptural authority which is what I mean when I talk about this are you no one's gonna deny are they no one is going to deny there are Awards of real estate made in the Bible by none other than Jehovah himself that land is promised to human primates over other human primates in response to a divided government - excuse me I'm sorry this sometimes happens that can't be denied when David ben-gurion was Prime Minister what he's still called a secular state he called in the agalya Dean and Finkelstein and the other Israeli archaeologists professional guys and said go out into the desert and dig up for title deeds to our state you'll find our legit that was the instruction to the Department of Archaeology they went after they conquered Sinai on West Bank they went even further afield looking for some evidence Moses had ever been that they didn't find any because the nether has been and never will be any but you cannot say that the foundational cause kasisvara in this region the idea that God intervenes in real estate and territorial disputes isn't inscribed in the text itself and not only in the Jewish text but thanks to a foolish decision taken in the early Christian centuries where it's decided not to dump the new but it and to start again just with the Nazarene story great Christian theologians like Marcion were in favor of doing that why do we want to bring the darkness and tyranny and terror and death and blood and cultism of the first books along with us surely we should start again no no we're saddling ourselves with all that so this is a responsibility for the Christian world to the King James Version famously says thou shalt not kill though the original Hebrew makes it very obvious that the meaning is thou shalt do no murder these transliterations by the way can be very hazardous and very useful the Hebrew word Alma for example means young woman that's all it means when Miss translated by King James's committee as virgin it very much alters the idea that a young woman will one day conceive and bring forth a son and a great deal of misunderstanding has resulted from that error in translation I'm reminded of the lady governor of Texas who during a controversy about bilingualism in the State House in Austin said English was good enough for Jesus Christ it was pretty good enough for her we haven't found any any society in which the Penal Code we've looked at reporters have searched we found no society in which the Penal Code approves of or is neutral about murder or theft or perjury adultery is is treated differently in different cultures but the murder theft and perjury are not one might argue that the Jewish people wouldn't have made it as far as they did to Mount Sinai assuming always that they did make the trip if they had been under the impression of murder theft perjury adultery were okay until they got there I mean I think it's very good to know that we're born into a losing struggle I think that the stoicism that comes from that and the reflection that comes now is very useful I'm not very impressed by people to say well I wish it wasn't true so I'll try and act as if it is it is true everything is governed by an entropy and decline and annihilation and disaster and you're born into a losing struggle and because you're a mammal Friday primate mammal you know you are and you know you're gonna die and that there'll be a lot of struggle and pain on the way I don't wonder well without anxiety and grief and pain and struggle I want I can't get it no one's saying about you but there's an offer it's me I spurn the gift I don't want what you want I don't want the feeling of eternal love and peace love and peace very very overrated in my view one reason one reason one one of the many reasons I just I should despise all religions equally but one I and I do in a way but one way which I prefer Judaism to the its rivals is that the emphasis is is more on justice than on love I want to go there a bit why is that not misanthropic of you that attitude doesn't mean I have to hate people well it means that means I respect hard it means a rare rectum I know it means I respect him enough not to offer them false consolation I do think it's important the realm of illusion will will not help you to cure this condition but you note that in the tenth commandment unlike the others there's no specific action that's being either condemned or recommended neither enjoy nor exported or forbidden or prohibited instead we've got the first recorded instance that I know of thoughtcrime it's not you're not supposed to do it it's you're not even supposed to think about it this is why those of us who maintain a critique of religion make the charge that it is implicitly totalitarian it can convict you for things that are only in your head for thoughts that have hardly begun to form and there's another reason I think why this commandment is somewhat sinister it appears to forbid the poor from resenting the rich if you want to make a left critique of it or if you want to approach matters from a free-market point of view it seems to crush the spirit of emulation and competition that's involved in wishing you had a better life some Jewish authors have argued that the prohibition it extends to actual neighbors in the sense of those who dwell in the immediate vicinity and some have said it only applies to covetousness of that sort but it would surely be a fairy poetry commandment that excused this exact same attitude it was directed at people further away and only then do you notice when that thought has occurred to you in the mind that you have it's always alive with subversive thinking you suddenly noticed that the children Israel are precisely and all the time being ordered to cover being enjoined to covet being told they must envy and hope to our necks the lands the flocks the herds and the women of neighboring tribes they're kept going by greed by the thought soon all these people's property will be yours and that you'll be licensed to take it by force and kill them and have the land and not the people this is perhaps why this ambition is perhaps why there are no prohibitions against say slavery or rape or genocide or child abuse in the sector parlance it's not a matter of leaving these out or applying situational ethics to a time that was not ours it's not that I don't think so such things have always been known of and usually deplored it's more I feel that such terrible things as rape so they enslavement genocide and child abuse are just about to be mandatory they're just about to be forced on people as things that they are not just must not do but must do if the conquest is to continue now as for the Amalekites listen the firstborn of Egypt every firstborn male child Nita has already been killed on a whim just so these people can make their escape under cover of night I don't remember the weather it's said of the firstborn of Egypt that they were members of the al-qaeda organization or whatever fantastic allegation you made against the Amalekites are so thoroughly destroyed that we'll never know anything about them like the Albert Jensen's we hardly know what the heresy was because of work thorough job the probe did see how the Christians loved each other by the way on these occasions what did the firstborn of Egypt ever do to this loving God that they should have their lives taken so his chosen people can run away what's moral about believing this what morally normal person will say they want the destruction of children for their redemption in Canaan the stuff that's in the 10 can MA dinesh that isn't to do with human morality is often highly immoral for example it's forbidden even to covet other people's goods or achievements and by the way among their goods are included their wives their women folk who are lumped in with chattel which goes to show these Commandments are created by men and not by gods they're created by the agricultural and masculine values of the time that's not a small point but there's nothing but for example to condemn the abuse of children there's only a vague demand the parents be respected after all this is coming from apparently a father there's nothing against racism there's nothing against slavery there's nothing against genocide partly because in these and ensuing chapters all those things racism genocide slavery are actually going to be not just recommended but enjoined made an actual injunction on the children of Israel they're going to be told to do these things so it seems to be very obvious that the what is known as religious morality is partly man-made and it shows it shows that it's made by a greedy and cruel partly evolved fairly highly evolved let's not run ourselves down too much primate species that turns out on examination to be as we now know 1/2 chromosome away from a chimpanzee [Music] you

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Keywords: Ripping, Judaism, Apart, Christopher Hitchens, Destruction, Religious, Morality, Best of, Amazing, Arguments, Clever, Comebacks, great, moments, agatan foundation, clips, Hitch, Best, argument, comeback, Antitheism, Atheist, Religion, Debate, Philosophy, funny, Science, nice, answer, anti-theist, anti, theist, intelligent, bright, smart, church, god, humanism, free will, theism, agatan, fnd, foundation, how to, YouTube, freedom, speech, First Amendment, Atheism

Id: 7SDhYO_xHMU

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2019