What the Bible does and doesn't say

ahran is the past president of atheist Alliance of America he was baptized a Mormon he says as a child he never saw himself as a member of the faith because he didn't know enough about it or religions he studied paleontology in Dallas he's a critic of creationism and promotes the teaching of science in Texas schools and he's going to give us a talk on what the Bible does doesn't and ought to say and as I mentioned Aaron is now taking the next step in the movement by running for office in his home town so without further ado I don't know if everybody here you I guess they can okay alright so in the movie what was it Fiddler on the Roof right we have I think of the actor's name was Topal right and he's he's giving some some witticism to one of his comrades and he goes and he praises it just like a rabbi when he says you know in the good book does it not say you shouldn't count your chickens before they're hatched and of course his comrades say well no that's not actually what the Bible says and so then he gets defensive right so somewhere it says something about a chicken I have these conversations with my family all the time by the way Seth thank you for that for that conversation with your mom is I so sided with that I had I heard that in my voice and my mother's voice it was very familiar so we always have these arguments where she says what's in the Bible and I said no that the Bible doesn't actually say that she goes well yes it does okay show me where it does well I don't know where it does even actually said it there's ways we can find it believe me do you remember any portion of because Google is an amazing thing I know you think a computer is just like a $1,500 deck of cards but really I think pewter could do all this other stuff we can find out immediately whether the Bible actually says that which version of the Bible or what doesn't matter but she's gonna run away from that she knows it doesn't really say what she wants it to say there's just a matter of interpretation and then we often have the argue the argument the other way we're all saying what the Bible says it does not say that well yeah actually it does and I'll show you right here and then there's fingers in the ears or there's a whoosh noise and there's a just a vacuum where my mom was and then a slammed door someone so you can't reason with them and then you get to the believers right and then the believers want to come up with all these weird interpretations about you know how it says that the but Yoda does the sky is stretched out like a tent right now I know where that comes from right now I'll explain that in a moment but they want to say that this is somehow supposed to be interpreted to it to explain how space is expanding we know it can't possibly mean that right but there are some things you would expect that the Bible should say you know the way that these people defend these things so that's what I'm gonna be talking about today you know three things the Bible says that they wish it didn't say three things it doesn't say that they wish it did and three things that we would need it to say before we could give it any credence at all and the first thing one that always bothered me was this interpretation of the serpent in the Garden of Eden right well that's Satan and everybody knows it's Satan until you ask somebody how do you know that the serpent in the Garden of Eden the first book of the Bible is Satan it says because it says so in Revelations I mean you think the guy that wrote revelations is the same guy that wrote Genesis how do we know where there's a correlation there though well it says that you know the serpent was or that says that Satan was that old serpent yep didn't mean he was that old serpent or that old serpent or you know there's a context thing so we have in the book of Genesis you have the serpent right who's cursed so that he will crawl on his belly all the rest of his days as opposed to say some of the rest of his days as opposed to say the first time Satan appears in the Bible where he's walking around as if God in the serpent never even had a falling out right you don't get the impression that serpent debt that Satan is crawling around on his belly talking to God and God says hey where you been I don't know oh I've been wandering around no it actually says in joke that he was walking which is a bit of a contradiction if you're gonna buy into the whole serpent thing but then if you look back in Revelations where it says it's a serpent was that or the Satan was that old serpent right it says yeah it says was that old serpent with seven heads which is the detail you think would probably be included in Genesis it would make I think the snake a lot more recognizable but you know it says he's a seven-headed serpent who's standing on the beach because a lot of this old mythology the serpent very often had legs a lots of mythical serpents had diminutive little legs and he could still scurry about like this they didn't have to crawl in their belly all the rest of their days and then if you listen we talk to the verse of the Bible the last one let's go to the middle right where Jesus says to the Pharisees that they are up den of vipers and that they are the descendants of Satan is Jesus saying that they are literally Satan or satanic or say or snakes are these supposed to be snakes are they supposed to be the Serpent's are they supposed to be Satan we realize this is just this is just an empty insult it's a common one but clearly we have leave job has Satan walking around and and like indict they've never even had a problem then obviously the serpent cannot be Satan and now of course we look back at the Middle Ages Edney in the early Renaissance for example we see all of the paintings by the great masters always depict the serpent as a woman which I thought was fascinating I didn't know that Satan was female but they and not just you know peripheral odd sort of artists we have the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo depicted the serpent as a female on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and I've been on the back of my book for example I've got a picture of me standing at the front door of no-trade dom cathedral how can you get more mainstream Catholic than that and there is a statue or the base of one of the statues is relief that shows the temptation at Eve and the serpent very clearly a female Naga this was the popular Church believe it never said that the serpent was actually Lilith who was supposed to be Adam's first wife this is a Talmudic legend the talmud doesn't actually clearly say that either you know just it's the way that people interpret things right so you have a toe modak legend then you have a legend this just people making up their own interpretations for how things are supposed to be but nowhere does the Bible say that the snake was supposed to be a serpent to the snake in the in Genesis was actually adapted from the the story of Lilith and the serpent who could not be tamed who hung out in the hula putri and Gilgamesh went walking through the garden right so we have liked some of the generations of Genesis right there in earlier mythology moving on we often hear about how the Bible defines marriage that the Bible defines a marriage as one man and one woman except it doesn't do that it's one man in his clone it's very often one man in his sister it's one man and his sister or his clone or an actual regular wife and her maid or it's one man and a few hundred wives and concubines you don't know what a concubine is that's a Libyan personal whore and then prisoners of war on top of that so the way that they define marriage is really one man and however many women he could afford to keep in his house it's pretty much the way that that works it's never one man in one month one other man I get that but we don't I don't really look at what the Bible defines anything because remember we talked about a book that says that bats are birds and that whales are fish when occasionally bats are also locusts because they define the Bible defines things by what they do rather than what they are so a whale is fish because it swims and so is a lobster and that's why we're forbidden to eat it except that Christians won't acknowledge that it's in the same chapter that says a homosexuality is forbidden but somehow they still say the homosexuality is forbidden but it's okay to eat shrimp I don't get where they justify this now the next one and this is a particular issue in the southern states the Ten Commandments everybody wants to erect a ten commandments monument in the courthouse and we had one judge in Alabama who was actually deposed twice just for erecting the Ten Commandments near there's a funny thing because not only can most Christians not recite what the Ten Commandments say none of them know what it means what I think it's fascinating the the thing about you know thou shalt have no other gods before me okay so and then we have and this is according to the Jews right who's this is a Jewish religion it's the Old Testament this is Yahweh saying you shall not have any other gods before me and then you have Jesus pipe up and say I am the way there is no other way to the Father but through me which to me puts Jesus in front of Yahweh so you have to work out some kind of contradiction where you make up a Trinity which is also not in the Bible to the best of my knowledge and if I get anything wrong ask Matt or be near Matt he'll definitely tell you where I get anything wrong he's good about that all right so that the Ten Commandments says believe it or not that it's not just that you're supposed to have you know you're not supposed to have false gods that's actually the 11th commandment that is also in Exodus 20 there's 11 commandments in Exodus 20 not 10 and then that list continues through Exodus 21 22 23 until Moses finally comes trucking down the mountain with all of the laws and all of the edicts that were given by God and then he realizes that he's only been gone a few days and his brother has erected a golden calf so he smashes the tablets because that's his decision and you know what does God have to do with anything right so he can just smash all of this and then he decides well I broke it now I have to go acting up get the second edition and for some reason the second edition is the one that says the Ten Commandments and it's interesting because God says I will write exactly what was on the first set they will be exactly verbatim except that they're not any of them it starts out with the first two Commandments are paraphrased yeah it's the same thought it's not verbatim it's not it's basically the same thing and then you get to the third community to something completely different where the hell did this come from it came from X's 22 23 24 20 21 22 and 23 the ones that Christians don't read right they completely omit those and then there's one one of those Ten Commandments the subsequent 10 in Exodus 34 that came out of nowhere it's not even in the previous chapters nowhere it was just mention for the first time and in these the real Ten Commandments the one the Bible says is the ten commandments the one that we should be putting up in the core now says this is the one that says for the fourth commandment instead of thou shalt honor your mother and for your thought oh good one why do you honor your mother and your father because disobedient children can be killed this is one of the commandments you can kill disobedient children that's why the commandment says honor your father and your mother that you will live a long life so but in the actual Ten Commandments in Exodus 34 it says that you are to kill your firstborn child on his altar now you can redeem your firstborn son with a goat or with a sheep but you better have something because it says nobody comes to me empty-handed and there are passages in the Bible where there's like Ezekiel or yes I think it's Ezekiel who is complaining that other people were taking this literally and they were actually slaughtering their own children in a sacrifice to God your firstborn son because this was the requirement and then you have to have that you have to keep the Feast of the leavened bread and keep the Feast of the weeks how many Jews we have in here anybody know what those eieven are no okay and the most important one of course the tenth one as that you can't boil a baby goat in its own mother's milk because that'll be creepy but it's not just the second set of tech commandments are all jacked up it's also that the first ones are jacked up because you know month about about keeping the graven images the 11th commandment in I think it's the second commandment that describes it as you know thou shalt not make any kind of depiction of anything that is in heaven or the earth second statement neither shall you worship them so the commandment is not that you're not allowed to worship graven image this the commandment is not that you're not yes you're not allowed to make graven images you are not allowed to depict any recognizable thing in heaven or earth which allows only abstract art only by omission so that's how I messed up that is right and I did another presentation talking about the ten commands going through those original ten and then the subsequent ten where we're talking about you know how are the Ten Commandments how how was the United States based on these Ten Commandments because in Texas we have the Ten Commandments out in front of our state capitol and when we complained about that the governor said it doesn't matter it's been there a long time as well it was there longer than you so shut up that's basically their excuse but they want it they actually put in our Texas textbooks our history textbooks in Texas now state or at least one of them says that our Constitution the United States Constitution is based on a covenant but who's calling me shut up [Laughter] our textbooks actually say that the US Constitution was based on a covenant between God and Moses and that Moses was a real person a historic person who was born in about 1250 BC this is in our history textbooks and I had to give a testimony to the Board of Education where and I said Moses is a mythical character this is somebody believed on faith who knew most scholars and archaeologists and so forth are now saying that there there can't have been to Moses and there's logical arguments why there couldn't have been to Moses and I'll give you just one of them just to being it easy and because I'm just making this up as I go along think about this when the Bible says that you had six hundred thousand men on foot in the town of Ramses right now this isn't including the old people this isn't including the children the women any other animals just six hundred thousand Hebrew men on foot right so this is the active warrior types and up and and these are in one town at a time when the entirety of Egypt had a population of only three million why didn't the Hebrews just own the whole country because if you've got six hundred thousand people in one town and they already outnumber most of the population elsewhere in any given town you'd think they would just take it over right no think about this way if they're gonna start from Ramses and they're gonna walk to Canaan right let's say they do something easy rather than using God's guidance let's say that they follow the coastline how can you get lost following the coastline and if they started out single-file one man walking at least one meter ahead of the next one which is a reasonable distance if everybody's walking single file because there's 600 thousand that just those guys you're not even talking about all the other people said we're talking about 2 million people now population 0 so it was the 600,000 the first ones would get to Canaan before the last ones left if they've left a single file and it would take roughly 2 weeks to get there but with God's help they end up wandering 40 years in the desert having I don't know having to eat bird bread or whatever the hills falling out of this guy I don't know what that story's about all right so that's three things that the Bible says that or the things saying things that the Bible doesn't say and we're talking with some things that the Bible does say the first problem that I had in reading the Bible I remember when I was 12 and I couldn't get any answers from my mom so don't it I'll just read it myself but I immediately came up to problems where I had to come ask mom what the hell's up firmament right nobody knows right it pieces of the permanent is described or it's described in pieces all over Genesis and a few other places and when you put them all together what it is is that the earth is according to Isaiah where they all want to point to this and say you know I say I said it's a circle which means it's a sphere no it means it's a circle the word they use actually meant like disc not sphere or ball and so the earth is this flat disc it's divided into four quadrants and it said under a giant crystal dome that has windows in it to let the rain in why because it's the snow globe in the bottom of an abyss so space is full of water and they have fountains that can bring the water in from the bottom and they have windows which bring the water in from above so where's the Sun of the moon and everything else that is in the expanse of the dome so the Sun and the moon are the same size as each other and they're both bigger than all the stars it gets a little confusing and they're all in the expanse up there and all of these things have personalities by the way the stars can come down to the earth and you know do battle with human beings or they can be trampled upon because they're that tiny so this is one of the things that I had a huge problem with there just the way that the Bible describes the earth is absolutely unrealistic according to everything we know about cosmology another thing that there's a lot of notes on this but I'm gonna skip them this was a big one abortion there are passages in the Bible that talk about ripping pregnant women open right and removing their babies right obviously killing them in the process that's not technically abortion I wouldn't think but there is a passage that seems to me to be exactly what abortion is and it seems to be a perfect description of that and of course every Christian I've ever talked to about this gets adamant in their denial of this so if a man suspects that his wife has been unfaithful he can bring her to the priest and the priest will concoct this potion which is a cursive potion and she's supposed to drink this potion and if it is that she has been unfaithful to him according to some translations her womb will discharge or her thigh will rot and fall away and I had the one left or right what are we talking about wouldn't we got one legged woman here that doesn't make any sense and then I found out that in some in some Talmudic references and I don't remember them off the top of my head and they're in my notes but I'm not going to search for them there are some Talmudic references that talk about how the fetus is considered by rabbinic scholars to be only water from conception to the first 45 days only water no consequence at all for the first 45 days after that and until birth it is a limb of the mother and one rabbi specific specifies that it is a mother's thigh which makes perfect sense now the thigh will rotten away that's why other translations say that the womb will discharge so what it means is if she was unfaithful and why would a guy think that she was unfaithful at a time when travel took a really long time to get anywhere and you could be gone for a month at a time you come home and maybe you didn't favor all of your wives said you come home and one of them is pregnant when you think she shouldn't be it's a good reason to suspect that she might have been unfaithful so she's pregnant would be the most likely it doesn't say ever that she's pregnant only says that the womb will discharge well how is it going to discharge if there's nothing in it right will rot and fall away there's only one way to interpret that the potion causes an abortion and then it says it specifies again that she will be barren and I say to the Christian so say well what if she was pregnant when this happened well it doesn't say she was pregnant I guess it doesn't say she's pregnant flies very strongly but what if she was pregnant when this happened and it's going to leave her barren but they can't accept that that is the obvious consequence there can't ever be an admission of abortion that is not only condoned by God but actually performed with his direct assistance and you should see the backpedaling involved in getting out of that one alright so the next one on my list that is a long list okay the definition of faith always comes up and this is a perplexing one for me because everything that I could find not just in the Bible but in the Quran and in the Bhagavad Gita and in the various tomes of some other religions - every time I come across a description or a definition of faith it says something or describe something that is consistent with the general dictionary definition of being a firm or confident belief that is not based on evidence right according to the Bible we we have things that we're hope for but are not seen looking at things that are not seen not seeing what is seen and then we have the logical fallacy of the circular argument routing back to the assumed conclusion right the question begging because there's a lot of logical fallacies involved in this but you are blessed if you can see what is not there do you hear the stories about you know how you have these undead Sates in Matthew that are wandering around downtown Judea as a result of Jesus being crucified which you know none of the other Gospels happen to mention but we as outrageous as that is and even though build the other Gospels didn't mention it we know that this was verified because they appeared to many witnesses many unnamed anonymous illiterate witnesses who never recorded any of it and likely were no more real than the zombies they were supposed to be reporting so what I often hear and this is very frustrating thing to me this is the projection and equivocation when it comes to faith now that's a big one for me I'm an epistle is I identify faith as being the most dishonest position it is possible to have because it is dishonest to state a fact that is not a fact if you're going to assert something is a fact and it's not a fact that's a lie but that's what all religions do assert things as fact that are not evidently but then worse than that many religious organizations and particularly creationist organizations proudly post as if this was something to be proud of their statement of faith wherein they phrase at different ways but they're making the admission that they have already rejected all the evidence there could ever be so that if what they believe is not true if evolution is true this is what we don't want him to die they will not accept or admit that they're wrong or have been proven wrong ever at any point and the only thing they admit is that they'll never admit when they're wrong they'll never admit that they're proven wrong I mean I think William Lane Craig even said something along this lines is effort if there's ever a conflict between the Bible and Scripture I mean assuming the Bible in science science got it wrong you just it doesn't matter what you can prove my interpretation Trump's that I'm sorry to use that word I should be more careful about objectionable language so one of the things that I get from from believers on the issue of faith is the equivocation and the projection the projection is that they want to say well you believe in science you have faith too right so now they're using an equivocation also because you know they want to use the context there's two different contexts at least in the dictionary you will not find this in Scripture but you'll find it in dictionary where faith is simply trust right that's a colloquial definition and then there's a definition that's consistent with religion which is the firm conviction that is not based on evidence right so they want to do this projections where you believe in science say you have faith in science when you get on an airplane you have faith that it's gonna fly and it doesn't matter that you base your understanding on on all of your past experience and all these statistics and all the data all the evidence that you need to not have faith right if you have if you have evidence you don't need faith and you don't want it if you have faith you could have evidence but you don't need it and you don't want it this is the way that I see it and then so they wanted to use this argument that you have faith so you're just as bad as we are and then they want to do the other side right where they argue that they're projecting that we have faith over I have belief in science then say what's the other side of that the equivocation with that that they are as good as we are in the same sense because of the way that they believe and it's very frustrating the way they use this equivocation for two different meanings combined and so it's the biggest verb and I had it up front just now with people that were handing out these little tracks then we're gonna talk about shortly right away he says when you get on an airplane you have faith that it's gonna fly right and then they use the other equivocation say well my faith is based on evidence no it's not every definition for what faith is and once again I'm not limiting this to the dictionary I'm taking it from Scripture from every reference describes what faith is all of them not just from the Bible but also in the Quran and also in the bhagavad-gita and as I said from from some other neo-pagan sources too they all describe faith the same way you're gonna believe what you want to believe because you want to believe it and it doesn't matter if it's true is a good summation I think and then obviously what what should the Bible say it would be nice if it would be a little bit more clear about divorce for example where does it it does the Bible permit divorce or does it not I got 10 minutes left okay good I might be able to make that does the Bible permit divorce or does it not Jesus says under no circumstances will accept and then give some sexual immorality whatever the hell that means right let's be a little bit ambiguous and then instead of saying be fruitful and multiply and dominate and subdue the earth I think that would work in the Bronze Age that seems fair at a time when you have huge in for mortality rates and you know liens but there ought to be a cut-off date for that so like when Ann Coulter talks about you know she says that the gas-guzzling SUV with the wet bar is the Christian Way right she wants to advocate now we have 7 billion people and we're eating up everything chewing up every resource and it doesn't matter what we give to our children because these are the end times and Jesus is gonna come roast everything anyway so it doesn't matter what we do to the planet it doesn't matter if there are any resources anymore the only thing that matters is my investment in oil and the next fiscal quarter and it doesn't matter what happens twenty years from now because I'll be dead then and screw all the rest y'all so I have to wonder about why we have so many people that are electing Christian dominionists end-times people right I mean how are you gonna get somebody how would you elect somebody to secure your future when they don't believe you have one yeah and then next let me see if I had anything else here the descriptions of the earth would it be nice if there was some accurate information in the Bible somewhere you could argue a translation error for pi for example there are some people who say that you know the Bible says the pie is round number there's some other people argue that so well there's allowances that you can make that it's you know that's actually a fair statement but this is really the best kind of apologetics we've got for the Bible right the Bible doesn't describe anything about the earth or our history or any of it accurately we know there was no Adam and Eve we know that there was no global flood and it's a sad thing that you are required to believe absolute horseshit for no reason as a requirement of salvation as Ken Ham puts it if you want to believe in salvation which is the second half of the Bible you have to believe in creation which is the first half of the Bible so he will make allowances that you must pretend and he said he's seen the evidence he's seen where you have brain cancer in dinosaurs right that are you know 66 million years old whatever and he says well that can't be good and God said when he created everything it was good so he's gonna take the book of stories which by the way it's not God talking I know that people can write stories people write holy books all the other holy books are written by people why not this one too so if you give people give you the choice are you gonna believe you no man are you gonna believe God well I'm gonna believe I'm gonna believe a story book and the earth itself proves the story book is wrong if God wrote one of them I'm thinking he wrote the earth the record in the rocks is going to trump the words of man and the interpretations and the 35 different versions of it however many there are and the you know 35,000 different denominator of Christianity which is just one of many religions how many different ways can we get this wrong it's one of the nice things about when you walk away from not just ten people will often move from one religion to another but it's more important when you walk away from faith entirely because when you do when you walk away from all religion when you walk away from faith and you follow evidence instead then there's one and only conclusion that everybody ends up zeroing in on because that's the way truth is whereas with religion religion is a blindfold and you're throwing darts and wherever the hell it lands you call up their bull's eye and that's your absolute truth and then you have a dozen people that all claim to have the absolute truth and they all contradict each other completely so logically one of them could possibly be a bit more likely infinitely more likely they're all wrong including science is going to be wrong on something and that's the better way to look at it rather than have your salvation determined by whether you believe right imagine judging people not on your actions but on your belief how immoral is that okay huge problem just with that for an eternal damnation especially I just want accurate information the only value that information can have is how accurate you can show it to be and if you can't show that it is accurate at all then it has no value at all and so when I go to and listen if I go sit in a church at some point and I listen to a preacher understand who's talking like I am right now I'm gonna be judging him on how much of what he says can I show is actually true and unfortunately of course with sermons I get nothing and I've got no there's nothing to compel me to believe there's no logic behind it that I have to walk away feeling completely dissatisfied and I don't have a strong closing like Seth did so I'm just going to say bye [Applause] hello yep oh here we go I just wondering if you could talk a little bit about your political aspirations and many challenges Ronnie any challenges okay well you would think that that you if you go into politics looking like a Klingon Disney villain that that would work against you but you know what being the atheist activist actually is worse so when people tell me to get a haircut in a shave and I like that I got 400 videos online you know you know people are gonna dig up stuff about you know whatever yeah I got 400 videos online it's already there so they're gonna have plenty of fun with that being taken seriously as a candidate is going to be difficult but we are trying we're working on my campaign is working on some publicity for the run and I actually honestly do not think I could possibly be as ridiculous as the Republican incumbent in my district already did he give you a brief example in the last couple of Elections there was no Democratic opponent I was the first Democrat to put in the Hat in the last three elections and I'm tired of going and voting for people when there's only Republican candidates and no Democrat is even running you know we got to hear too many times you know that this is a broken system your vote doesn't count don't participate you know protest by abstaining well we saw how that works right and now unfortunately those people have shut up because they realize oh we don't vote and this is what happens oh okay I'll try something else do you know something different next time but in in the primaries where there's just two Republicans running there arguing with each other and one of the Republicans said the you know said about the other in their debate he says well my opponent didn't pay his taxes because that back then it mattered and the other the other guy aterna says well he's inspired by Satan so this is to Christian dominionists in a rural right-wing religious community criticizing accusing each other of witchcraft so this is gonna be a fun run and once we can get some publicity up as I said it's gonna be I think hilarious and if I do nothing else I'm gonna drag this district to the left because we are so far to the right it's not possible to go any further to the right if you're a centrist if you want things to be balanced in the middle you're gonna have to go left for a long time well I have to get to the middle okay so that's that's the best way I can summarize my campaign at this moment were there any others okay okay this one oh this one okay honey get up here okay we just this is the anniversary two days ago you know Facebook told me it was two days ago a year ago [Applause] yeah this this beautiful Satanic couple came up to us at the reason rally they were something we're so over-the-top extreme but they were beautiful and the crowd parted and there's like this most gothic pair I've ever seen like their opening words to me as we want to tattoo you okay because you know that's what you do but yeah hers is an Asian dragon and mine is a Nordic dragon and this befits our ancestry and of course mine reps her hers wraps mine and we have a picture on her Facebook of the two dentist chairs and we're getting our tattoos he's working on me and his wife is working on her and we're holding hands and it was eight hours under the needle for this we're very very proud of it another question back here another question Erin Erin we have another question okay arm over here just mostly curious about your response got involved in a two-hour conversation with a pastor who in in after two hours he said after all Christianity is the oldest religion in the world which is why I follow it and my rebuttal was I don't know if I have my numbers exactly right but I believe Hinduism and some of the others go back five to eleven thousand years so what I'm looking for is your answer to this rebuttal he said eleven thousand year that's impossible because the Earth's only been around for six thousand that was his answer to me and I'm just curious about what I should say cuz I know I'm gonna run into him in two weeks again yeah okay well I think virtually everybody who has a degree in appropriate fields on this will agree that Christianity is based on Judaism which makes Judaism older than Christianity just given that right but then again the scholarly consensus is that Judaism is based on Zoroastrianism and we're talking about rabbinic Judaism which hasn't been around forever the book of Job is the oldest book of the Bible and it the book of Job was originally estimated to be something like 1500 BCE but now they're saying it's closer to 500 BC or 600 BCE and I think this is what I think is interesting is 600 BCE is when they contextually dated the Bhagavad Gita which was said to be 5000 years old right again it's not as old as the Rig Veda but you know the Bhagavad Gita's part of the Mahabharata so we could put we could date the religion at the formation of the Bhagavad Gita right 600 BC so our Western ISM guess what year 600 BC right Lao Tzu and Taoism 600 BC the Ionian Greeks and atheism 600 BC the happened it's like every religious perspective emerged at the same time and then subsequent to that centuries later we have Judaism and then centuries later we have Christianity and I've heard the people say that this is the oldest religion in the book I'd end up thinking dude you haven't seen the right book what was a bit much but I believe I came to Google everything you said right about the yeah I think easily yes and the reason I'm interested in an answer is because this guy wouldn't leave me alone and I know he's coming back because he's he I'm now debating but it turns out he's trying to defeat me I was told by our friend okay so thank you [Applause]

Channel: AronRa

Views: 334,240

Rating: 4.7814617 out of 5

Keywords: Fullerton, California, Freethought, Alliance, Symposium, Backyard Skeptics

Id: OPQr9mog3eo

Length: 38min 32sec (2312 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/EvilStevilTheKenevil]

A summary of the points made:

 

What the bible does NOT say:

• the snake in the Garden of Eden isn't Satan.

• The bible does NOT define marriage as one man and one woman.

• The Trinity^TM is not in the Bible.

 

What the bible ACTUALLY says:

• The Earth is a flat disk, set under a giant crystal dome, with the sun and the moon being bigger than the other stars, and being roughly the same size, within this dome.

• Stars can come down to earth and do battle with people.

• There are passages in the bible that detail the instructions for a test which will cause an unfaithful woman to have an abortion.

• The bible defines 'faith' as a firm and/or confident belief that is not based on evidence.

 

What the bible would need to say for it to be taken seriously (which it doesn't):

• Does the bible permit divorce or not?

• Be fruitful and multiply until? What if there are 7 billion people?

• Accurate information of history (the exodus), cosmology (creation), mathematics (pi), etc?

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