"Jesus Was A Radical Revolutionary!” - Reza Aslan Explains Why He Stopped Believing In Christianity

whatever you want to whatever wherever your spiritual views are the story of the god of Heaven and Earth coming down in the form of a baby and then dying for everyone's sins and then all you have to do is believe that story and you'll never die is a great story right and when you're 15 and you hear that you're like that's a good story so I fully 100 percent uh converted to this very conservative brand of Evangelical Christianity and then spread that story to pretty much everyone I knew until until I went to college and decided I'm gonna study this stuff because it's so great it's so fascinating who was the who was a teacher that messed you up in college to know who was it a girlfriend or a teacher who's a teacher I went to a Jesuit university and it was the Catholics that screwed me up the Jesuits who were like oh yeah you believe that stuff yeah intellectual uh priesthood in in the in the Catholic talk about Santa Clara yeah at Santa Clara yeah well modified Jesuits but yeah yeah like like liberation theology Jesuits you know that like that that hardcore uh uh Jesuits um they're the ones that turned you off from Christianity it's after being such a hardcore believer it's not that they turned me off of Christianity it's that they taught me the truth of the Gospel message they they they told me about Jesus the man instead of Jesus the Christ right they told me about the historical person who walked the Earth 2 000 years ago and said these things and what the context of what he said meant at the time and how we should read that today as opposed to the sort of spiritualization you know the metaphysical aspect of the of the things that he said the way that his incredibly radical revolutionary words and thoughts were defanged by the first church and turned into wishy-washy spiritualism or what we now call Christianity um they gave me an insight into the the original idea of what he was talking about how different are those two ideas Jesus the man and Jesus who became the Messiah how I mean Jesus the Messiah has no concerns for the cares of this world whatsoever his only concern is you know the world to come what does it matter what you eat in this world and what does it matter what you how you dress the only world that matters is the world to come and focus all your attention on that world and not not the vagaries of this world that's that's Jesus Christ Jesus of Nazareth was a radical revolutionary whose sole Focus was on the suffering of the people on this world right now and the power structures that were creating that suffering the Jesus Jesus Christ is everyone's the same we're all equal there's nothing between rich and poor everyone's the same Jesus the man said no the first shall be last and the last shall be first the hungry will be will be fed and those who are fed will go hungry right those who have will have it taken away from them and those who don't have will get it that's not we're all the same that's the reversal of the social order right that's the top and the bottom switching places is that more of a socialist component is that like a Robin Hood who who would he be in a the Jesus the man in a in a metaphoric concept I mean I think he's got more in common with Che Guevara than Robin Hood I mean again Jesus at no point in any of the gospels does Jesus talk about everyone is equal everyone should have the same that's not a that's not a Jesus line right that the world that I see is one in which everyone has the same that's socialism the world that Jesus talked about quite a violent world it was a revolutionary world and it was a world in which the first became last and the last became first like that's not a that's not a popular Viewpoint amongst you know the people in the category of first it's it's interesting though that they're the so the Jesuits in Santa Clara made you look at Jesus as the Messiah and the individual so then you went through the Journey there and then how did that bring you back to Muslim well so the kind of Evangelical Christianity that I had ascribed to is very rigid and at its core is this idea that the Bible is literal and it is inerrant and it takes 10 minutes of research to discover that both of those things are total [ __ ] like the Bible is riddled with errors I mean riddled with the most basic most obvious contradictions and errors um and that the idea that it should be read literally you know makes no sense at all and so once you start understanding the chasm between the man Jesus and how he became the Christ of Christianity it's really hard to continue to follow the Christ of Christianity any longer and so would you give some examples of that by the way like the most palpable errors that that you would just notice immediately yeah sure so Matthew Mark and Luke say that uh Jesus uh was crucified on a Thursday uh and uh the Gospel of John says it was like a Sunday so in other words it was before the Passover and the Gospel of John was after the Passover um you know Matthew uh has Jesus uh for some strange reason going to Egypt uh whereas Luke says has the same birth story says nothing about Jesus um uh in Matthew uh Jesus is born in what we would now recognize as probably um 10 A.D ish 8 or 10 A.D um and in Luke Jesus is born and what we now recognize at about 4 BC um so uh you know it's there's all these contradictions it's just very obvious clear contradictions the reason the reason I asked that because the obvious question is whether it's the Bible whether it's the Torah whether it's the Quran should these books these relics be taken literally or metaphorically not only should they be taken metaphorically they were never ever ever intended to be read literally do you think the authors the the author of Luke who says that uh you know in the year uh you know but I guess it's six six or six A.D um there is a census in Rome and the census requires everyone in the entire Roman Empire to stop what they are doing and travel to their father's Homeland so that they could be properly counted um for a for the um uh taxation purposes and so Joseph uh who lived in Nazareth had to travel to Bethlehem in order to be counted because his parents family was from Bethlehem okay there is no census of the entire Roman Empire in 6 A.D there's a small census in Syria but where Jesus lived did not Encompass that census census law under the Roman Empire is as clear as it gets you get counted where you live the purpose of Sensei of a census is taxation so we're here to count your stuff how many people are you and where's your stuff the idea that every once in a while everyone in the largest greatest richest Empire the world had ever known would have to stop what they were doing and travel for months at a time to wherever their forefathers were born in order and also bring their stuff I guess uh in order to be counted there is patently absurd and unhistorical now here's the important thing to understand about what I just said not only does It screw up the entire Christmas story that you tell your kids every day or every every Christmas but Luke who wrote that knew that that wasn't true he was living as a citizen of the Roman Empire his readers for Generations read that and knew that that wasn't true that's not how sin the census works I've gone through many censuses and that's not how it works they didn't care because the idea the notion that what was being read was meant to be read literally would never have even occurred to them the idea that scripture is a thing to be read historically and literally was born of the 19th century it's only been about a couple of hundred years since the very notion of biblical literalism has existed and it's existed as a result of the Scientific Revolution which said that a thing can only be true if it could be demonstrably proven true if it could be historically proven to be true that's what true means now that definition of true did not exist in the ancient mind right true had nothing to do with facts true had a much deeper meaning the truth of the the Nativity Story is that Jesus was born in the city of Bethlehem because that's the city of David and Jesus is the new David and he is going to recreate the kingdom of David and so therefore he has to be born in Bethlehem when everyone knew he was born in Nazareth his name was the Nazarene that's what his name was so you know it's it's only we in the modern world that have created this kind of fake uh and totally unnecessary filter through which we force all of our scriptures the Quran the the the the Torah the the gospels all of our scriptures to uh succumb to our particular definition of what is true without realizing that that definition of true is barely 200 years old and are you saying that the same rules apply to the Torah and also the Quran All gospel so it's all metaphorical what we call gospels are what we refer to as sacred history and we use that term sacred history specifically to differentiate it from actual history and by the way that is not to denigrate sacred history it's to understand it for what it actually is right there's a message that is being given to us over thousands of years and that message is important but you have to filter out the modern conceptions of how we understand you know facts and truths in order to actually really get to the heart of what that message is last question on this would most religious Scholars tend to believe with what you're saying or because I'm sure there's a large sect of religious Scholars and people of Faith whether it's Muslim Jewish Christian of every sect that'll say sorry Reza this is the literal word of God and thank you for your opinion but I'm sticking to the exactly what the Bible says so there's people of faith and then there's religious Scholars how do those two come to terms with what you're saying well among religious Scholars what I just said is the most basic element like fact number one the thing you learn on day one right be nothing nothing else that you do can happen until you understand that basic fact that it's metaphorical well that it's sacred history right so you can use figurative language metaphorical language you can extract history from sacred history there are ways that we can do that like we can look at the gospels and say these are the things that are most likely to be traced to the actual historical Jesus and these are the things not and there are centuries of methodologies that we can use to rely on to get a very accurate picture of the difference between the two people of Faith No no people of faith do not think in those terms right for people of Faith the scripture is God breathed it's divinely inspired and if it comes from God then it must be perfect in all ways and so what does historical context have to do with it right Jesus is literally God speaking to all Humanity so who cares where he lived who he was actually speaking to what the political and economic situation of the world in which he lived and how it shaped him what does that matter he has no context God has no context right okay so he just for three decades he lived in first century Palestine irrelevant irrelevant he's not talking to his fellow Jews he's talking to you and me so context has to be stripped from scripture for it to matter and Scholars say the opposite so if you like this clip and you want to watch another one click right here and if you want to watch the entire podcast click right here [Music]

Channel: Valuetainment Short Clips

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Keywords: Patrick Bet-David, PBD, PBD Podcast, Entrepreneur, News, Current Topics, Politics, Business, Entrepreneurship, Bet-David Podcast, Patrick Podcast, Patrick, Bet-David, Valuetainment, Valuetainment Podcast

Id: HW4PgL9V5oQ

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023