Most Unpleasant Character in All of Fiction

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[Music] welcome to another FFRF ask an atheist on facebook live this is where we answer common questions about atheism free thinkers state church separation and today about the Bible I'm Dan Barker I'm co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation which produces this weekly show and I'm a myth Paul the director of communications at the Freedom From Religion Foundation we work to keep state and church separate and to educate the public about the views of Northeast's we're often told that God is good but is that true today we're going to challenge that notion we're going to talk about the unpleasant God of the Bible if you have any questions you can ask them right here on Facebook or you can send an email to ask an atheist at FFRF dot org and who better to talk about this than than you because you have an entire book on the subject which is called god the most unpleasant character in all fiction and this came out two years ago and it was your eighth book you have had a book or two sins and tell us book then about the book and how it was inspired inspired that's a good word luckily even free thinkers can be inspired well you know the book started in 2014 Richard Dawkins had written a book The God Delusion you know his famous blockbuster in 2006 and there is a sentence in The God Delusion for which Richard Dawkins says he has been the most criticized and he is a sense about the God of the Bible let me read you that sentence he wrote thoroughly he says in the in The God Delusion chapter 2 the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction jealous and proud of it a petty unjust unforgiving control-freak a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser a misogynistic homophobic races infanticide 'el genocidal Phyllis idle pestilential megalomaniacal sadomasochistic capriciously malevolent bully well that's quite a mouthful done but then you add it to that well yeah so what happened was um Richard Dawkins emailed me said help I've been attacked by this the the Chief Rabbi of London called him anti-semitic you know for saying that but to his credit he later backed off and he says well you're attacking the character not not the Jews themselves you know and so Richard knows that I used to be a preacher and that I'd been a Bible student and all that so he asked me if I could help him he was making a powerful keynote keynote presentation he and I used Mac's you know it's kind of like Mac's keynote and a PowerPoint are like Protestants and Catholics you know we have different schools he was going to make this slide that he called a spider diagram where he had his sentence and then a 19 spider legs would go out with each of those 19 nasty descriptors and he wanted to be able to click on like ethnic cleansing and up would pop a verse - della to demonstrate it and I said well sure I'll do that and then after a while it became more than a thousand and then more than 15 hundred verses way too many for a slide and Richard said you know what this would make a good book like and I thought yeah good book and pun intended good in other words Richard Dawkins gave us Blessington I suppose so blessing from the non Pope wanting a good book yeah and so the book is called God the most unpleasant character in all fiction and so as I was doing the research I documented each of those 19 and that's part one of the book it's called Dawkins was right however I discovered that there were more than 19 so part two of the book is called Dawkins was too kind and I added eight more in a pyro maniacal and angry and so on since that time I have added three more so let's look at some of those for example if we wanted to click on ethnic cleanser for example you will find a verse like this you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land for I have given you the land to possess there's another verse in there that says go and attack amalek and utterly destroy all that they have do not spare them but kill both man and woman child and infant ox and sheep camel and donkey that's at first Samuel there's a whole lot more verses where God of the Bible is commanding committing or condoning total genocide of a whole group of people because he had promised his his lover the Israelites did he call her called them a wife and he was their husband this little love nest where they could live with him forever and not be threatened by other religions and so they had to go in and totally wipe out all the Canaanites another example is Jenna Seidel one of the words that Dawkins used verse in Deuteronomy that says you must not let anything that breathes remain alive you shall annihilate them another verse in Deuteronomy says and they obeyed orders and the Lord our God delivered him before us and we took all the cities at that time and utterly destroyed the men and the women and the little ones of every city and we left none to remain so there's all these examples of total genocide wiping out a whole group of people because they were the wrong religion and of course the flood Noah's Flood was the biggest example of genocide and who knows how many people if the story were true it's not a true story but if the story were true that would have happened at a time on our planet when there were roughly 20 million people and so think of that one flood killed 20 million people men women children pregnant women which is basically a kind of abort aside and even the cats and the butterflies and every living thing every living thing so the God of the Bible is definitely Jenna Seidel how do you square genocide with God is love yeah yeah so we just keep going through and there no no I mean yeah all we can intersperse our discussion with exam yeah and just as a preface down to our discussion of your book can you critique I mean it's very impressive that the book came about due to Dawkins suggestion and I'm sure a lot of our viewers would love to bring to fruition the way you did a book you know that that was inspired again in quotation marks but it's a Dawkins well that's great it was a bit of an accident and it was really kind of his idea that each of those would become a chapter sure so in my book each chapter I don't just spit out the verses I talk about the background the context what was happening what were some of the Hebrew words what do they actually mean and so on let's look at another one God is unjust and one example of unjust is that he promised to punish the children and grandchildren for the sins of the grandparents in Deuteronomy 5 we see I the Lord your God and made jealous God punishing the children for the iniquity of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me that's in Deuteronomy so yeah there's a lot of that stuff it seems does that make sense yeah of course not yeah I mean yeah I mean that that collective punishment and sort of you know and punishing someone for the sins of their forefathers I mean I'm sure everybody would agree on a basic model level that that's not what should be done but then a lot of and you're of course aware of these objections to your critique and we can start with the first one which is that you know you're taking this out of context and this is not only applied to the Bible but even to the other holy books that I am minimally familiar with the Quran and the bhagavad-gita but here we have of course discussing the Bible so what would you say to that I mean you're taking these verses out of context well I hear that a lot you know if you would take him in context you don't see and sometimes Christians will say well the real context is the whole moral arc of the story leading up to the death and resurrection of Jesus because we needed to be guilty of our sins but then Jesus would die for our sins the whole idea of sacrificing and shed blood of animals was so that Jesus would be the final sacrifice and so on so you hear that argument if you look at the total context you'll see that what God was doing the genocide was actually good for the planet he was trying to clean out sin but tell that to the parents of a three-year-old who were in one of these Canaanite villages as these big sweaty Israelite warriors come in God's warriors come in and they're about to chop off the head of that three-year-old did the warrior turn to the parents and say by the way if you look at this in the moral context of the arc of two thousand years until the birth of G this is actually a good merciful thing I'm doing would that have made any difference to those people in that day who were suffering those consequences by God so yeah you can go through the Bible you can find a few verses that say God is good god takes care of us right you can find those and those are what you hear from the pulpit but you can also go through the Bible like I did and find over 1500 examples of God not acting good not acting well acting in a horrible way and so who's taking things out of context right here you have a handful of verses that say this but here you have dozens of verses that show this if you look at the context and often in many of these verses I show here's what was happening before that verse after that verse here's what the words meant when the when the people who wrote them so it is a kind of a lame objection but I meet that objection let me read a few more examples I was surprised when I was doing this study that the God of the Bible actually not only commanded but actually committed rape Wow now that sounds kind of strong because God supposedly this physical spiritual being now I'm physical so how can God rape women but most theology says well God does his work through his instruments so God punished the Israelites through the neighboring tribes when their armies would come in well there's a verse in in Jeremiah 13 look at this verse this is the context of this verse is that the Israelites are asking why are we being punished in God said is because you're disobeying me and so I'm gonna punish you with these arms what happens when invading armies come into cities right what happens there's not only killing and plundering but there's a whole rape that happens in every arm so look at this verse in Jeremiah 13 the Lord has spoken it is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up and you are violated some verses say raped right so God's saying because of your iniquity that's why these so they're coming in here and you're being raped he goes on to say because you have forgotten me and trusted in lies I myself will lift up your skirts over your face and your shame will be seen that's God talking I mean even even if that was metaphorical yeah what a horrible thing to say you know even if one of our elected politicians were to make a really crude sexist joke threatening rape is saying I was just metaphorical I mean that's just really a crass thing to say but here's the God of the Bible directly says I myself and I have other examples of the Bible of God doing and you sort of preempted an my next question which is the counter that religious folks would have for you that it's not meant to be literal it's meant to be metaphorical or even allegorical and let me tell you the small tale about a person who I quite greatly admire but I found his attempt at making the bhagavad-gita allegorical to be lame and that's Mahatma Gandhi so the Gita is also very violent and the way that Gandhi said it can be made sense off is as an allegorical tale about the battle between good and evil I suppose you could do that but then you're pitching it at such an abstract level that it almost stops making sense so for the Bible what would be your response to that notion that is not meant to be taken literally it's meant to be taken at a different level well okay you can say a couple of things about that if it's not to be taken literally and it's just a metaphor why that metaphor I mean why they're ugly metaphor right what we can't say even if it were metaphorical and totally fictional we can then go into that mode and say well then in that fiction that was a horrible thing to do even if it wasn't true but this verse is talking about an actual invasion and most Christians believe that the Israelites were actually invaded by the neighboring the Babylonians and others who were coming in to persecute and destroy as God's punishment they did they don't think those battles were metaphorical they think they were real battles and so another good problem an objection to the metaphorical argument is to say well okay so there's a metaphor in the Bible we all know that right when Jesus said I am the door we don't look for hinges and a doorknob we know when he's called the Lamb of God we don't share off the wall we know there's figures of speech in the Bible right so the problem is where do you draw the line I think it's kind of convenient that a lot of these Bible defenders are just sort of pulling this defense out of their back pocket basically to say oh well I don't like this verse so that's metaphorical but I do like this verse so it isn't so why are they drawing the line there if you can draw the line there why not draw it all the way to the top and say that not only is the prodigal son a parable and not only are Adam and Eve a metaphor but what other characters like God Himself maybe Yahweh himself is just a big man and the whole thing then yeah yeah could be just one huge figure of speech that we're not meant to take literally and it's just a way that the ancient Israelites made sense of their lives at the time so that's that's that's a great answer another response or objection Dan that more pious folks would have to your book is that it's a matter of interpretation and of course you know tomes and tomes have been written trying to interpret the Bible you know give it a gentle face what would be your counter to that well yeah of course it is a matter of interpretation and you can see that when you look at the different translations in my book I used about 13 different English translations of the Bible and you can see the King James and the reams dawei and the New International Version in the American Standard you can look at all these English translation and you can see differences in the words for example in Isaiah 7:14 where God said I created Eve the word evil is raw which is the Hebrew word for evil the same word in the Garden of Eden don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil raw which is obviously moral evil but some translations don't say evil they're some of them say trouble or calamity I create peace and I create calamity well what difference does it make God's creating some kind of a mess whether you call it evil or calamity you can interpret these verses a lot of different ways either way you interpret these verses he doesn't come off very well if you're thinking about metaphysical cosmic evil with a capital e which I don't think the ancient Israelites even had that concept so the word raw and in most of their usage meant horrible moral evil physical things happening to people in the real world which is how you and I would show categorize evil so yeah there's interpretations there and you don't have to be an expert to notice that the experts I'll disagree with each other so whose interpretation you tend to cherry pick what you want to make your version of God be the best possible version shall we keep going through 30 more 30 racist Richard Dawkins says God is racist right here's a couple of verses in Deuteronomy the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the earth to be his people his treasured possession so the Israelites were chosen above everybody else they were put higher that's racism basically sure there's other verses there in Deuteronomy 7 3 says do not intermarry with those other people what if what if that happened in this country what if we said well you know Christians don't ever intermarry with Buddhists or Hindus or with or I would say is that evangelical don't intermarry with a Catholic right so I mean that is a kind of that is a racism it's the whole group of people and racism isn't necessarily just skin color or or ethnicity a racism can be you know a group of people within a group you know that you are but talking about racism dan didn't the race-based insinuations and the Bible have real life and real-world consequences because they were used to justify slavery segregation then the Bible very often and can can you talk just a bit about that well that's one of the new ones that I added to Dawkins list was slave monger we're not gonna go into that today but the Bible is really a slave manual and so a one group of people was considered superior to another and in the Bible you see the Israelites were considered superior there's a story in the twenty-fifth chapter of numbers that I talk about in my book it's about a high priest named Phineas and Phineas was the grandson of the high priest Aaron who was the big Aaron and Moses were the big big leaders who got the message directly from God and Phineas was a righteous grandson he was a priest also and so God had told the Israelites don't intermarry with the Midianites the Midianites are bad actually the Midianites were also descended from abraham so they were kind of like kissing cousins they were just kind of south of the Israelites and God said don't intermarry with them they're bad you know why they were bad they worshipped the wrong God they worship this God bailed payor makes a lot of sense and so don't intermarry with them at all and if you do these plagues will come and so what happens with kissing cousins I mean obviously there's going to be some intercourse in all senses of that word from groups to group why not you know the Westside story you know the whole idea of Romeo and Juliet this whole idea that there's us versus them there's our group don't touch them and so these plagues were happening and in spite of all that all of the death and all of the threats God saying you Israelis don't marry there was a Israelite man who then took a Midianite woman into his tent yeah you know the idea was the thing they got married they were gonna start a family cozbie and zemurray were their names we know that in numbers 25 so Phinehas got so angry that this man broke God's law and intermarried with somebody who was outside the Israelite he took a sword in his hand and let me read what it says here when fennec us son of eliezer our son of aaron the priest saw it he got up and left the congregation taking a spear in his hand he went after the Israelite man into the tent and pierced the two of them the Israelite and the woman through the belly and they died yeah so what if somebody were to do that today what if what if some even just evangelical you know preacher were to see a Christian marrying a Buddhist let's say or marrying somebody marrying a Canadian Hindu you know it was a mixed you're not supposed to mix with him what if that preacher then took a gun or a sword and went in and killed both of them what would happen obviously he would be held accountable and imprisoned and sentenced and imprisoned yeah it would be a hate crime you know I of the highest degree but you know what happened to Phineas he was rewarded Wow God said you you were you were rewarded for your zeal in keeping the race pure in obeying my orders so Phineas was rewarded with a perpetual priesthood unto all of his descendants so that's the kind of morality we find in the Bible bloody racism a bloody guarding of God's people it's kind of like a jealous possessive husband who says to his wife honey I really love you you'll be my wife but if you ever look sideways at another man I'm gonna tear your eyes out and I'm gonna burn your hair and I'm gonna spread cow poop on your face and and I'm not making this up that's in the Bible that's what God says to the Israelites all these things that he's going to do to them and so this not intermarrying and not mixing having a pure race not mixing with the impure people of other group that's all in the Bible then I think one of the most damning verses in the whole Bible is about the story of Job and it's in the chapter capriciously malevolent that's one of one of Dawkins lines capriciously malevolent you know the story of Job where Satan went up to God and said hey job is a good man he said blameless and he fought he neeo obeys you and he's got a wife and ten children and Catelyn he's prosperous and all that and Satan said to God I bet if you took away your protection you build a hedge around him if you took away the protection I bet you he would not and look at job verse chapter 2 verse 3 God answered the Lord said to Satan this was after he tortured job he tortured him right and killed his 10 kids have you considered my servant job you incited me against him to destroy him for no reason God admits he had no reason yeah he did this yeah and he's making a point of that because he said job's a good man there was no reason and yet he he allowed Satan to prompt him to destroy the man and kill his 10 children and Satan did it with God's blessing obviously in fact you know how many people Satan is credited with killing in the whole Bible do you know tell me that 10 those were the 10 okay that's yeah job's family in the whole Bible that's the only place where you see God killing hey what's the small personal tale to add at the 5th grader you know you're learning figures of speech in English and as patient as job came up and we had a Christian teacher mr. Gordon and he he told us the whole story about Japan even at that age it didn't make any sense to me at all and and so as I'm surprised as adults the whole notion of job being so horribly punished can make any sense to anyone whatsoever did you pronounce it job or job or what oh yeah oh he he he told us how it was Prahalis pronounced yeah and if you read the book of Job there is no moral tail there the only answer in the book of Job and there's been volumes written about job the only answer is that there's no answer God is powerful he can do what he wants and it towards the end job's wife came up to him and said why don't you just give up in a curse of God look what he's doing to you he's making you sick he's killed all your children he's killed all your livestock he's taken away everything you've got these boils and he's sitting in this pile of ashes but through all of that job did not sin with his lips yeah and he said if we're gonna receive good from God shouldn't we also receive evil yeah and there you go job even admit it in the book of Job you'll see that word evil God did this evil to job and even jobs friends in the very last chapter said you know we lament all of the evil that God did to you so the God of the Bible isn't evil God so now then we go from the micro-level the family of Job to the macro level which is genocide you know and I hope not too many believing people make this defense but some may say that if God's committing genocide like against the Canaanites maybe they deserved it maybe they did enough evil to deserve such a fate would you what would you say to that well you hear that all the time right on the one hand you hear people like William Lane Craig saying we're not supposed to judge God morally he's not under the same moral constraints that we are therefore God can do what God gives life God can take life yeah and yeah then as you just pointed out they do go ahead and judge God by saying well he had a reason yeah why do we need why does God need a reason if God had a reason we could appeal to the same reason ourselves and yet they say well the Canaanites were so bad historically yeah some of the Canaanite people were bad there was some child sacrifice there was some stuff going on just like in many cultures like in the Mayans and other cultures but the Israelites were no better if you look at the Israelites themselves they practice child sacrifice you know the story of Abraham and Isaac they didn't go through with it but Jephthah did yeah I have a whole passage about Jeptha who sacrificed his daughter he burned his daughter alive as a fulfilling a vow to God so it wasn't that the Canaanites were so horribly evil that they had to be destroyed you sometimes hear that well gods has this God's eye view of the world and he knows that sometimes you know sometimes you have to amputate a limb to save a life you have to do some horrible thing and we would agree yeah once in a while we might have to do some really bad things in order for a greater good sure but the parents you can at least explain why it has to be done if God can't explain why it has to done then it's just it's just a who cares why God does it it's capricious and besides that what difference does it make to those people in those days those Canaanites who were living their lives just like almost anybody else around the world some of them were horrible some of them were good and of course the the Israelites even offered up their children to pass through the fire yeah they were doing the same thing so that's sort of another back-pocket defense that they've got even if God has a higher moral example you and I with moral judgment can look at that God and we can say wait a minute my boss my dad my president my king did wrong just because you're the boss doesn't mean you're above criticism talking about bully yeah you know he's this malevolent bully there's a story in the 16th chapter of the Book of Numbers about a man named Korah KO RA so Moses and Aaron were getting these words from God and then they would proclaim to all the people the 12 tribes of Israel here's what God says and then they would go back into the tabernacle or on the mountain and come back down here's what God says and the Ten Commandments and all these rules and so there was a group of people Cora was their leader there were Levites they were from the priestly tribe they were saying very much what modern Protestants were saying to the Vatican to the Pope wait a minute why do we need you to tell us what God says why doesn't God talk straight to us which is kind of sensible that's the whole Protestant Reformation was that in fact a lot of Baptists have this doctrine of the priesthood of all believers you don't need some intermediary some Pope some priests to tell you what God says so Korah went to Moses and said hey Moses I got a question here he wasn't defying Moses he wasn't being rebellious he just had a question and he said why is it that God only talks through you guys to us why can't God talk to us that's a great question yeah it is a good question and he wasn't being like maybe disrespectful and he mean wouldn't any Christian want to ask the authority of any pastor or anybody I mean wouldn't you want to kind of know why do you have the right in the authority to speak to us like that and you know what happened in the book of number 16 when Korah what do you think Moses would have done at that question I mean knowing knowing the way the Bible is I can only guess it would have been nobody Pleasant fate for him well I think we have a picture don't we Bruce Moses got so angry at that question that he said Cora you are an evil man and he had the earth open up in Cora and all of his followers fell down into the earth they went all the way down to to the pit to the hell bottom and then the earth closed back up on him again and killed them all and then Moses said that'll show you you don't ever question my authority that's a goal defeat for asking a question it's a pretty surgical air strike too when you think about it here's all these God was able to go right through those people fell right in if you made a movie of that you'd need really amazing special effects I think that that would be something but anyway the whole point that story didn't happen we know that story did not happen that's a myth but the story was told to the Israelites to frighten them yes you don't question authority you don't question the gods leader so that's that's bullying that's using physical harm to bullied the people to obey you another thing I was surprised about is the God of the Bible is actually a Bordas Idol you know a lot of right-wing Christians to date or anti-choice in anti-abortion they think God is pro-life that's the opposite in the men but there are verses where God Himself actually commanded and committed and threatened abortion look at this verse in Hosea where God is talking about why the Israelites are being punished God said because she has rebelled against her God their little ones shall be dashed in pieces and their pregnant women ripped open what do you call that when you have a pregnant woman and you rip her open what do you call that that's a bore decide yeah that's God Himself speaking that sounds so gruesome yeah and it's not just that he's saying well this is just a consequence because you're bad it's it's him making the threat to the Israelites because United and obey me feel like the abusive husband telling his wife you know here's what I'm gonna do to you if you don't love me you look at some other guy just what's gonna happen to you there's another one in the Book of Numbers where there's a whole long passage but right in the middle of this big anti life God is not pro-life in the Bible God says may the Lord caused you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry God is making these women strong cares yeah one thing to say to anybody I mean it's ugly you know and you hear about the all these people talking about how God is just pro-life and he's good and he's wonderful and you find gruesome for this is just a tip of the I show just horrible yeah gruesome verses and talking of the tip of the iceberg then we can go on forever but what would be some other choice examples that you would give and maybe in some other categories well you know what you don't have to buy the book to get it we actually made let me grab this left up here we actually made a website where you can get all these verses for free it's called the unpleasant companion Dan you should be encouraging people to buy the book well yes of course you should buy the book obviously but if you don't if you just want the verses shot without the context right yeah and that's we have a website in my book I give the context in the words but if you just want a list of verses here you can go to this website it's called unpleasant god dot FFRF dot org and we call it the unpleasant companion there's Richard Dawkins and over here to the right you can see his famous sentence the God of the Old Testament and you can click on any one of these like if you want to click on the word jealous well here comes up all the verses for jealous you can see a jealous and avenging God is Lord here's all these verses where God says I am jealous and the God of the Bible is jealous you can click on any one of these others like capriciously malevolent and there you see job in more than just those verses that I gave you can see all these other things where God is capriciously malevolent to people you can see also the additional eight that I've down on the bottom left here there's eight additional ones like PI Roman I echo you can see pyro Menaka all this fire and burning in flames and punishment by burning in cities burned you can just quote all these verses and if you want to you can share them you can share it on Twitter or on Facebook if there's one of these verses you want to show to one of your friends yeah that you're arguing with well look at what it says no I found it extremely educational especially since I'm of a non-christian background but regardless of whether you're from a Christian or a non-christian background the verses that are cited on that web page are extremely eye-opening so you can use them in since that time I've added two more I added homicidal but I've also added here's homicidal the killing of humans that God threatened in it that God did himself slay utterly old and young both maids and little children and so on but just in the last week or so I added down on the bottom here there's no images yet but I added evil and terrorist there's many places where the God of the Bible describes his own actions as evil using the word evil and you can just read through all of these that's what it's reading Jeremiah thus saith the Lord behold I will bring evil upon this place and evil from God fell upon the cities and so on and there's a couple dozen verses where God Himself he uses the word evil to describe his own actions and yet if you can find two or three verses that say God is good that's supposed to erase all of that and there's also then you can also go to the very bottom and see terrorist and I was surprised about this but the word terror the terror of God and the Terrorism of God shows up all through the Bible God has made my heart faint the Almighty has terrified me I will make the atera there shall be great terror for the god is with the company of the righteous and on and on here's a few dozen verses of terror and if we put those together we can say according to the Bible itself God is an evil terrorist so go to that page share it with your friends and then you know and the front page of course it talks about the book the most unpleasant character in all fiction which you can read for a broader picture of that but there's one more question that Christians race can you think of that mother and enlighten me well Christians will often say well that was the Old Testament of course and that's being a standard defense even I know that that being of non-christian background since forever that the Old Testament is problematic maybe violent maybe but V believes so much more in the New Testament and the New Testament basically gets precedence over the Old Testament and Jesus is such a peaceful figure how would you respond to that well do you have that slide up there Bruce here's here's Jesus himself where he says and look at Jesus was not always a peaceful man he was violent and he was angry in the Bible a lot of times just like his father and Jesus said I and the father are one in John later in that same same chapter Jesus said the father is in me and I am in the father and then he goes on to say later in the book whoever has seen me has seen the father Jesus never criticized the God of the Old Testament he praised him and whenever Jesus quoted scripture he quoted those violent verses from the Old Testament if the New Testament really were a new corner of this moral arc that's being turned we're getting rid of the bad old days if the New Testament were really like that what Jesus should have said was I apologize for my dad yes he was a violent sexist home before a big bully I'm sorry there's a better way and the New Testament is obviously less violent yeah and we see in the New Testament a different use of the word evil from in the Old Testament so we do see some changes they were living in a different time and we do see a little bit more words about peace and love in the New Testament but all in all Jesus never denounced his father and in fact he based his whole life upon that Old Testament God and he says I and the father are one so he wasn't he wasn't really turning a corner what was building on this without denouncing it so I think it's a bit disingenuous for people to say well Jesus changed at all when actually he did not he never said such a thing and Jesus was pyro maniacal he threatened the lake of fire and a punishing Jesus said you should gouge out your eyes Jesus threatened punishment through hell Jesus said Jesus showed us how compassionate he was by saying in the Book of Luke that there are some slaves that you have that you should not beat as hard as the other slaves yeah because they didn't know better Chuck why didn't Jesus denounce slavery why didn't he say owning and controlling and beating human beings is bad he didn't he never once did that he never said a thing about abortion or a woman's dealing with an unwanted pregnancy Ernie that he was basically a chip off the old block he wasn't just a chip off the old block he said he was the old block himself so then and to supplement what you're saying a scholar Philip Jenkins has an entire book on this critiquing the notion that the New Testament supplants the Old Testament and makes it obsolete he says that's not true at all yeah so it's a continuation and there's a different book and you will will find some things the word evil in the New Testament often refers to the evil one you don't see that in the Old Testament as a nominative noun presumably the evil one was Satan so you'll see a switch in some of the theology within Christianity but and you also see a little more connection of the words evil and wicked dealing with humans moral behavior whereas in the Old Testament is mostly evil and wicked mostly the word evil deals with God's behavior so we could talk forever and ever about oh yes if you want but I think we have some questions did you want to say something else not on I mean all people could read your book and and and delve deeply into it yeah okay well thanks so do we have questions all right we do okay so Lindsey s says if God killed in a word killed Zinn quotes if God killed all of humanity and the animals for being sinful during the flood why the heck did he give humans freewill in the first place isn't that just setting up humanity for failure also I guess sea creatures weren't sinful enough they would have been fine during the flood yeah well the first dan lindsaym may know that you have written the book on the notion of free will also so could you answer that there's nobody better to answer that the notion of God and free will I suppose the flood than you yeah well the the question of whether humans have free will is an open question yeah I do have a book how free well explained came out last year I came out this year and the big question in that book of course isn't so much where the humans have free will or not we all assume we do even though we don't you know because of determinism but the question is does God have free will because whether you think we have free will or not free will requires an ignorance of the future if you know your future choices well then you don't have free will right so if God is omnipotent omniscient and omnipotent and a personal being and he knows his future decisions then he can't have free well now if you know the future you can't have free will but but yeah so think about Adam and Eve in the Garden God created these people and it's presumably a perfect God can only create perfect things right but then Eve and Adam sinned they took a bite of that fruit and they did something wrong and therefore the rest of us have inherited that sin yes that's a good question is sin genetic I mean it's because if it's if it comes from those two people down to us there must be some genes some sin gene or who knows original sin so the question then of course is why did Eve sinned if Eve was created perfect yes why does she sin and they always say well she had freewill conundrum yeah she had free will right God gave her free will but even if that's true even if Eve in Adam did have freewill they could have chosen good yeah why did they exercise their free will not to choose good why do they exercise it to choose bad there must have been some flaw in them to start with if there was a flaw in them who created that flaw right so there's a paradox yeah yeah yeah so if God created Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve did something wrong who's responsible for that because they didn't create themselves they didn't create that flaw within themselves that would cause them to disobey God so however you look at it it's a it's it she's right it was a big setup and of course the sea creature yeah I've never thought of that done what about all those fishes and mollusks and Smee I mean you know lobsters and oysters and all of those creatures which is the freshwater in the living and I wonder if it's possible for a bird to have floated long enough I think birds could sit on the what about ducks yes I mean it's a silly question because it didn't happen but yeah and then think about how many cultures actually did have some kind of watercraft yes canoes or whatever I mean some of them the Phoenicians some of them could have survived for that long I mean it's possible anyway it's kind of a silly story but in any event the whole point of the flood was genocide yeah God wanted to kill every living thing he and he in in the Bible he did and it was just those people on that one boat by the way the Bible doesn't call it a boat it was not a boat an ark is a box yeah like the Ark of the Covenant was a box yeah those those desert people didn't even have an idea of of navigable crafts they just thought about this flat box like a rafter with the walls kind of thing that would just lift up and then basically come back down again so when you see all these pictures of Noah's Ark looks like a boat or a crab that was not what the Bible says it was it was just this big rectangular thing which would not have worked yeah especially in the biggest storm in all of history it would have just toppled in in any event so another question here we're almost out of time aren't we Dennis Oh Nick Roberts sure if the Old Testament doesn't count why do Christians keep putting up the Ten Commandment monuments on public property that's a great question Dan and something we have wrestled with here in the office - yeah cuz you'll hear them say that well that was the Old Testament Jesus is the new yeah so we need to look at the Old Testament with a grain of salt or we need to put it in historical context and we don't live by the Old Testament anymore and that's a good question there then it is true why are you still quoting the 23rd psalm why are you still putting the Old Testament laws in front of this the City Hall in front of schools in that so they should be consistent they pick and choose why not put some of these aboard aside versus up why not put some of these Genocide verses up why not put some of these ugly things that the God the rape verse why not put that in every school and let the children read about the God of the Bible why are they cherry-picking should we go on here absolutely that all right so Kenzie last question okay guess we are all the time Kenzie Wilson since God wanted humanity not to have any other gods before me that's the first commandment and a whole bunch of other rules to live by wouldn't he have put the prophets in other places besides the Middle East people in the Americas yeah could not have known about this particular God for the longest time or knowing that their behavior was considered sinful yeah oh so sad in Africa yeah I mean you know I mean there's so many places that was so remote Australia yeah why not why not have those prophets why not why well because God is racist we already know that God picks one group of people to bring his special treasured group but the question goes on are those people who could have never known about the God of the Bible in Hell by default and I'm you know in Sunday school I remember thinking about that and if there's a verse in the New Testament says that if they have if they have heard the gospel then they're gonna go to hell so then wouldn't it be better not to send missionaries yeah yeah don't send the missionaries so that they can die without having heard in matings made a choice I'm an enrolled member of an American Indian tribe the lanai tribes a Delaware Indians who were on this continent who knows our ancestors way back twelve fifteen thousand years ago which by the way was six thousand years before the earth was created if you follow so all those millennia of human beings raising their families falling in love growing their crops hunting building their homes making the clothing and singing their songs and tell all the generations they didn't know how to be good to each other they didn't know how to be kind and moral and empathetic and altruistic and yeah they fought their Wars like everybody did too and but the human values they had were they so stupid that it would not have dawned on them that there's something wrong with killing without the Ten Commandments without somehow this Middle Eastern tribe saying we now have the copyright to these list of rules that now the whole world needs to live by and that is a good question and it kind of puts the light of the idea that that God cared about the human race when he waited until just the last few seconds of our of our history really to bring his gospel oh there's so much to talk about Dan but you're running out of time aren't we yeah yeah yeah we could do 10 shows on this absolutely we could do a whole show about the angry or about cannibalistic yeah look it up the God of the Bible is cannibalistic too so there's so much material and and of course you wrote a book that's consists of hundreds of pages so this a lot to talk about here and a lot to discuss and there's so many categories I mean and you added some year of your own - what Dawkins had to say but it's it's been a great discussion and thanks so much dad well thank you well that's our show for today and we want to thank everybody who works on this show Bruce Johnson in the control room and Loren doing the the computer stuff and Chris lines on one of the cameras hi Chris what else is Loren doing oh and buzz bus campers doing sound hi buzz he also does the sound for free thought radio and Bailey our communications what are you called Bailey Oh editorial assistant okay she's brand new here I'm doing one of the cameras saying thank you also for watching the show and don't forget our convention is coming up in San Francisco it's less than a month away now November 2 through 4 speakers include Salman Rushdie the former director of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards Adam Savage of Mythbusters the actor John de Lancie he's and one of the actors in Star Trek then Sara hater of X Muslims of North America the Liane Lord the award-winning stand-up comedian and another irreverent a comic actress the Saturday Night Live alum Julia Sweeney there on the right and also appearing at the convention will be in South hi dad the activist wife of a Saudi free thinker right ba Davi who's actually been flogged by the Saudi government and whose persecution and imprisonment have caused global outrage the Saudi government has been in the news just recently for actually disappearing and allegedly murdering a dissident who visited their consulate in Turkey in Istanbul so both in south and right ba da we are really courageous in South lives in Canada and will be gracing our so to speak our convention in San Francisco so you can register online today at FFRF dot org slash outreach slash convention and if you want to receive FFRF text alerts on your smartphone you can send the text send the text FFRF to five to eight eight six and some data rates might apply so we'll see you again next week for another episode of FFRF s-- ask an atheist thank you so much Dan [Music] [Music]

Info

Channel: FFRF

Views: 13,020

Rating: 4.8901601 out of 5

Keywords: Freedom From Religion Foundation, FFRF, Atheist, Atheism, Dan Barker, Amit Pal, The Bible, Old Testament, Richard Dawkins, God of the Bible, The God Delusion

Id: crn1T3Ynx2U

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 50min 46sec (3046 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 10 2018

Reddit Comments

Love Dan Barker!

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/herculesmarsh 📅︎︎ Oct 16 2018 🗫︎ replies