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Apologist FAILS to whitewash Elisha and the Two Bears | Dr. Paul Copan: https://youtu.be/h_UKLPe2GT4
The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament: Volume 1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B094RF3CF3/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament: Volume 2: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B431SZTD/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1
Did the Old Testament Endorse Slavery? https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0CC13NMZR/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2
Follow Dr. Josh on Twitter: https://twitter.com/djhammurabi1?lang=en-GB
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Well now I want to see that painting…
Rationality Rules, Stephen, oh damn, thankyou so much for this! I'm so trying to get to a point to where I can patron and not wait. Though I did get Debunked! when you first did it! And thankyou to Dr. Josh! When I first watched Digital Hammarabi, it was only Megan, as Josh was in school, lol. Oh, and he can't go free after his 7 years, cuz he wants his family, I'd bet!👍💙💖💙🥰✌
Einfühlung (pronounced eín-fhoo-loong), which means “in-feeling” or “feeling into” – and first appeared (in print) in German philosopher Robert Vischer’s 1873 Ph.D. dissertation on aesthetics[i]. Vischer used the word to explore the human capacity to enter into a piece of art or literature and feel the emotions that the artist had worked to represent – or to imbue a piece of art (or any object) with relevant emotions.
Einfühlung adds a wonderful dimension to empathy (actually, the English word empathy was coined in 1909[ii] as a translation of Einfühlung), because it helps us view empathy not only as our interactional capacity to share emotions with others, but also as our ability to engage emotively with the world around us – and with the nuances and intentions underlying art, music, literature, and symbolism.
My favorite line from Leviticus, in the Douay (Roman Catholic) edition, is "The children of your slaves are also your slaves."
OMG! A month at church camp! Traumatised at the thought of it! A week nearly killed me!
Finally. I have more respect for the terrorist who literally read the holly book how to kill everyooooooooooooneeeee (Except Mathilda. :D) nonbelievers, than a woman priest or a gay friendly church. Moderate christians are the real trouble.
All the bullshit excuses christians make like "but that is the old testament" is moral relativism…. Propaganda of Viktor Orban is liberal communist are moral relativist who just make up the laws. No moral source.
Yep, Dr. Josh is an excellent scholar, and a very great person (sharp dresser too)! I still do not watch much of his content, I have to admit, because it's way freaking over my head, and the only part of any of it that I am interested in is that we have reality right in our freaking faces, so there's little need to try and find answers for the obvious in ancient texts by people who just didn't know any better, but rather work on refining our understanding, and with it our behaviors for a better now, and even better future. Unless of course we are doing so for some undeserved personal gain, and that pretty much sums up religion right there: tribalistic us against them mentality: We really need to grow up as a species, and start taking way more steps forward, and only look back for amusement and entertainment sake, which is what literature is good for.
Together with Andrew Seidel my favorite concerning our war against the far right neo confederate Christian Nationalist Dominionists that want our secular liberal democratic republic overthrown and replaced by a Christian theocracy…
His extensive knowledge is a weapon against the forces of religious tyranny…after Hitchens left us….and others betrayed our cause for MAGA far right ideology(Pinecreek, Shermer, Boghassian for example…) ….we are in need for intelligent and passionate voices against these authoritarian Christian Nationalists…
I can relate to Dr. Josh's deconstruction story. I was a fundamentalist creationist Christian of 18 years. I became an Agnostic when I did a deep dive into the historicity of the Gospels as well as the apostles and the history of how the Bible was put together. What took me from being just an Agnostic to an Atheist was when I saw how people will justify and excuse anything in order to protect their religious belief. I had a conversation with my best friend about slavery in the Bible after he brought it up. I had him read the verses that endorse slavery. We sat for an hour while he came up with excuse after excuse and I shot down each one. It was one of the most emotional painful things I've ever had to do. That was the moment I became an Atheist.
47:17 I love Dr Josh’s point here. The artistic beauty of the texts, the human creativity from which the texts are created, is just as important as the many visual art pieces of human artistic expression. But in worship, it is no longer art. Its then an idol and all the heavy irrational importance of idolatry replaces the beauty & appreciation. imo
I got to tell you, Joshua Bowen is one of a very few people who my ADHD doesn't cause me to get distracted and find something else to watch, who I can stay interested and watching for full interviews. There's like literally less than five people that capture my attention this long LOL
Leaving aside that there is no evidence that the Exodus happened, if it had this point where the Hebrew people possessed no slaves would have been the perfect time to point out that being a slave is an awful thing, and that they shouldn't enslave other people. But Dr. Bowen also implies another problem. The deity could have freed all of the slaves in Egypt, but no. The deity intervened and violated the free will of the Egyptians, but only did so selectively when it came to the issue of slavery. So the deity could have made himself the deity of all slaves by freeing them, but chose not to do so.
Great interview Josh! Best one I"ve seen yet! 😀
Wow, I think Ramadan is actually such a great example of how religions use tactics like shared suffering to build community. I'm not sure if it'd be unethical to deliberately do something like that in secular community building, it's nuanced
Stephen there is a concept from AI computer science that might interest you called a "Mesa Optimiser". Mesa is the opposite of meta, so where a Meta-analysis might be a study of studies, a mesa-analysis would be a study perfomed within a study.
In artificial intelligence, we design models to optimise some variable, something like minimising the error rate in classifying images or maximising the score in a game. We can think of evolution as maximising the probability that a gene will exist somewhere in the population at the next time step. Thats just what selection pressure produces, a tendency towards outcompeting other genes.
Importantly in AI, optimisers sometimes actually learn the wrong thing, but in such a way that they are very well optimised to the goal. For example, a very small chess model may learn that it should prioritize capturing material, and then only when the opponent only has a king left it will checkmate them. Even though we know that chess is about more than that, and that the best strategy would be more nuanced than this, it may be the case that the size of the networks architecture means that prioritizing material is the best strategy that can be implemented. It doesn't have the computational power for anything more sophisticated. If you anthropomorphise this AI and ask it what it wants, it will tell you it wants material, and it truly does. Winning is a byproduct to it. The AI is a mesa-optimiser at capturing material, and the situation as a whole is an optimiser for winning at chess.
In the same way, we are mesa-optimisers for the wellbeing of ourselves and our kin. What we want has nothing to do with gene propogation, our brains and sense organs arent sophisticated enough to even track such things. Being optimisers for morality is an effective proxy strategy for being optimisers for gene propogation.
I know you already know all the principles in terms of genetics and anthropology, I just thought you may enjoy some cross-disciplinary terminology and research.
If Dr. Josh would like to do something different for a change he could reply to apologists talking about the Elisha and the bears story. The mental gymnastics they perform for this one are wild 😅
Jushua Bowen is the best! His little asides are hilarious! I love how he speaks of his wife. I can't wait to hear him on your podcast again!
49:27 That sounds very much like the answer given by Laura Robinson of New Testament Review some time ago. It lacks evidence but gets around a lot of the standard pitfalls of Christian faith.
Slavery
Except for murder, slavery has got to be one of the most immoral things a person can do. Yet slavery is rampant throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. The Bible clearly approves of slavery in many passages, and it goes so far as to tell how to obtain slaves, how hard you can beat them, and when you can have sex with the female slaves.
Many Jews and Christians will try to ignore the moral problems of slavery by saying that these slaves were actually servants or indentured servants. Many translations of the Bible use the word “servant”, “bondservant”, or “manservant” instead of “slave” to make the Bible seem less immoral than it really is. While many slaves may have worked as household servants, that doesn’t mean that they were not slaves who were bought, sold, and treated worse than livestock.
The following passage shows that slaves are clearly property to be bought and sold like livestock.
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
The following passage describes how the Hebrew slaves are to be treated.
If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.’ If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever. (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)
Notice how they can get a male Hebrew slave to become a permanent slave by keeping his wife and children hostage until he says he wants to become a permanent slave. What kind of family values are these?
The following passage describes the sickening practice of sex slavery. How can anyone think it is moral to sell your own daughter as a sex slave?
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
So these are the Bible family values! A man can buy as many sex slaves as he wants as long as he feeds them, clothes them, and has sex with them!
What does the Bible say about beating slaves? It says you can beat both male and female slaves with a rod so hard that as long as they don’t die right away you are cleared of any wrongdoing.
When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)
You would think that Jesus and the New Testament would have a different view of slavery, but slavery is still approved of in the New Testament, as the following passages show.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)
Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)
In the following parable, Jesus clearly approves of beating slaves even if they didn’t know they were doing anything wrong.
The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. “But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given.” (Luke 12:47-48 NLT)
This website is designed to spread the vicious truth about the Bible. For far too long priests and preachers have completely ignored the vicious criminal acts that the Bible promotes. The so called God of the Bible makes Osama Bin Laden look like a Boy Scout. This God, according to the Bible, is directly responsible for many mass-murders, rapes, pillage, plunder, slavery, child abuse and killing, not to mention the killing of unborn children. I have included references to the Biblical passages, so grab your Bible and follow along.
It always amazes me how many times this God orders the killing of innocent people even after the Ten Commandments said Thou shall not kill. For example, God kills 70,000 innocent people because David ordered a census of the people (1 Chronicles 21).
God also orders the destruction of 60 cities so that the Israelites can live there. He orders the killing of all the men, women, and children of each city, and the looting of all of value (Deuteronomy 3). He orders another attack and the killing of all the living creatures of the city: men and women, young, and old, as well as oxen sheep, and asses (Joshua 6). In Judges 21 He orders the murder of all the people of Jabesh-gilead, except for the virgin girls who were taken to be forcibly raped and married. When they wanted more virgins, God told them to hide alongside the road and when they saw a girl they liked, kidnap her and forcibly rape her and make her your wife!
Just about every other page in the Old Testament has God killing somebody! In 2 Kings 10:18-27, God orders the murder of all the worshipers of a different god in their very own church! In total God kills 371,186 people directly and orders another 1,862,265 people murdered
The God of the Bible also allows slavery, including selling your own daughter as a sex slave (Exodus 21:1-11), child abuse (Judges 11:29-40 & Isaiah 13:16), and bashing babies against rocks (Hosea 13:16 & Psalms 137:9). **This type of criminal behavior should shock any moral person.**
**Murder, rape, pillage, plunder, slavery, and child abuse can not be justified by saying that some god says it’s OK.** If more people would actually sit down and read the Bible there would be a lot more atheists like myself. Jesus also promoted the idea that all men should castrate themselves to go to heaven: For there are eunuchs, that were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are eunuchs, that were made eunuchs by men: and there are eunuchs, that made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it (Matthew 19:12). I don’t know why anyone would follow the teachings of someone who literally tells all men to cut off their privates.
The God of the Bible also was a big fan of ritual human sacrifice and animal sacrifice.
And just in case you are thinking that the evil and immoral laws of the Old Testament are no longer in effect, perhaps you should read where Jesus makes it perfectly clear: It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid (Luke 16:17). There are many more quotes on this topic at my Do Not Ignore the Old Testament web page.
If you follow the links on this site you will learn about all the nasty things in the Bible that are usually not talked about by priests and preachers.
https://www.evilbible.com/
Watch "Context!!!!!!" by NonStampCollector
(A good video for believers who try to rationalise Biblical atrocities and immorality by saying "Out of context".)
Dr Josh !
If you are reading you are important for obvious reasons. You are part of reality transforming reality. My target audience are innocent and vulnerable children that would understand an injustice is being committed. To understand you have to dare you to read until the end or until you understand. I am a poet that writes prose to be understood better, all my work is poetry. I am a psychologist and I have discovered the greatest knowledge of all time is atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is the religious idea of the creator of the creation to conclude wrongly no creator exists because a particular idea of God doesn’t exist. The atheist logical fallacy would test your intelligence and honesty and the error in reasoning is easy to understand being honest and impossible lying to oneself. The atheist logical fallacy would make you doubt about other possibilities. The most life saving and urgent question that humanity can't answer and don't dare to ask is "is atheism a logical fallacy?". It is important that you understand I am not asking you to believe me, but to discover the truth by yourself thinking for yourself. You have to do your homework. You have to be willing to learn to understand reality. They want to make me believe I am crazy and ignorant and i think it is logically impossible the existence of the creation or finitude without the creator or infinitude. Wisdom is not "spam" to be destroyed. To end all the wars in the world and atheism and religion the discovery of the nature of God has to be news. Do you know what is God? If you don't know God is the creator of the universe is because they have deceived you manipulating the information with disastrous eternal consequences. The question "does God exist?" means "was the universe created by an eternal intelligent entity superior to oneself?". Humanity have misunderstood the nature of God personifying a metaphysical entity and tragically the victims are innocent and vulnerable children that are taught to believe instead of thinking rationally using the intellectual capabilities we were created and evolve with. To understand atheism is a logical fallacy you have to understand that the evolution of the species supports the idea that an eternal intelligence superior to oneself created the universe with a plan, order, design, organization, purpose. Atheism is the belief inmune to arguments that all reality is the universe. God is perfect justice with perfect knowledge with perfect hell and heaven because everything we do we do it to Ourself in perfect karma being the perfect Miracle of Infinite Possibilities of God's Life and Death. It is important that you understand I am not asking you to agree with me and I am suffering the most severe and devastating censorship in history in a social media era for many years trying to save lives with knowledge. To overcome a censorship the information that is prohibited has to be shared to be known. I am confident and i stand by my truth against humanity, that are defending an idea without any arguments. I hope for God's sake to be understood. Emergency. Lives were lost while I talked.
"Comparing slavery to NBA players, in any capacity of slavery, is just sick to me."
What about a form of slavery that is identical to being an NBA player? I'm not sure if this is simply dishonesty for the sake of propaganda, or you're really just this irrational and biased, but this statement is embarrassingly self defeating. You're begging the question. You're the one asserting this is slavery. That's the whole point you're arguing. Your opponent is arguing the idea that this is slavery in name only. They're saying that this is no different than being in the NBA, which isn't slavery, so on a fundamental level, this isn't slavery. You're completely dodging the point and inserting a moral judgement which proves that, at best, you're entirely irrational, and at worst, you're entirely dishonest.
For you, Steven, to go along with this kind of nonsense is a dark black mark on your credibility, and it's far from the first. The way you invite these people on, and fail to challenge their endless irrationalities goes entirely against your brand. My guess is that you view them as experts and superiors, so you shy away from challenging them more than you would others, but whatever your reason, you need to be a stronger man.
To be clear, none of this is a defense of these apologetics. Their arguments fail at every turn and fly in the face of reality, but you should know better.
If Dr Josh really wanted a proper Phd with a lot of standing he would have gone to Patriot University like that other Dr, 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.
Always fascinating to listen to someone who really knows their stuff …
Im so glad The Doctor took the time to talk about the history of the ANE, Saving the world from Daleks, and warding off the Stone Angels.
I'm in the middle of an argument in Youtube comments with a dude who started with: "You don't understand the Bible. Biblical slavery was only indentured servitude"
When I challenged him on that he explained that it was still OK because they rarely conquered other people so they didn't have many slaves 😱
So i hear a lot of Christians defending biblical slavery with context – they were living in a time with no social security and there was a reasonable risk of starving to death.
Has anyone asked if they think we should be allowed to bring back slavery today? The context isn't all that different. Destitute, starving people still exist. If someone declares bankruptcy, should they be required to sell themselves into slavery to cover the debt? And there are obviously a number of starving people in the nations around them.
Has anyone asked a Christian apologist if there is any reason biblical slavery laws couldn't be instituted today?
As an honest Christian, I can admit that the Bible does support a very specific form of slavery, or even violence against the slaves, not only in the Old Covenant, but also confirms it in the New Covenant, so Christians should stop acting like it doesn't, because they're only fooling themselves. However, the reason why the Bible supports those things, is because it doesn't make a distinction between a modern prison-system, and between slavery as such, so the biblical slavery is basically a primitive method of dealing with the criminals, and have nothing to do with chattel slavery.
Great seeing you two together in conversation 👍
Yes… "hiring" a servant…
Technically all humans are either agnostic theist or agnostic atheist.
Wow, another atheist who taught Sunday School as an atheist. I also taught Sunday School as an Atheist, a very secular version of the Jesus legend that focused on the life virtues, not the death cult salvation bullshit.
Thank you for this interview, I will check out Dr. Bowen's books.
The player’s CONTRACT FOR WORK is sold from team to team, NOT the player himself or herself. Why did you not start with that?
Hippie F'ing Christians are essentially Budhist who choose to keep their disgusting historic baggage.
While I appreciate the analogy of the Hebrew Bible interpretation and art more broadly, I can’t help but disagree. Art by people is inherently subjective and a religious text that is claimed to be by a tri-omni god should have no subjectivity at all.
Otherwise, God would be to blame categorically for all his believers who would burn for “misinterpreting” the word. (Not that it can’t be argued he does that anyway)For a believer, that shouldn’t be tenable.
Regardless, this was a great discussion overall!
Thank you for your work on this subject. Most fundamentalist believers are completely unaware of the extent of the condoning of slavery in the Bible.
LoL. I love him. He has been on TikTok for so long he's started to use some of the terminology. "Sick flex, bro".
I struggle with RR because he is confused about what a woman is, he embraced ideology not evidence and reason although he denies that.
Humans cannit change sex and overwhelmingly these 'trans' people are AGP perverts.
I could listen to Dr Josh for hours. And I do. Safe to say he's forgotten more about the bible than most christians will ever know.
Nice one, gents. An enjoyably illuminating and knowledgeable conversation as usual.
I find these highly educated theologians very interesting to listen to. I have had the pleasure to talk religion with my wife's family chaplain who used to teach theology at Harvard. I have thought so many times, how with the contradictions he knows and has discussed with me, does he still have faith. It's nice to see Dr Bowen discuss his personal transformation in faith for in this regard.