 Hey everybody, tonight we're debating whether or not the Bible promotes slavery and we are starting right now. With Matt's opening statement, thanks for being with us Matt, the floor is all yours. Thanks so much for having me, thanks to William for suggesting this. Does the Bible promote slavery? Yes, and frankly it's strange to be having this debate again because from my perspective there's nothing to debate, but clearly people disagree. On some occasions, the apologists I've talked to about slavery will try to massage the word slave and talk about servants or indentured servants or soften the biblical practice or claim that it had already existed or needed to be regulated or was the best thing for slaves and therefore it couldn't just be prohibited, but eating shrimp, unruly children and wearing mixed fabrics already existed too, but it didn't stop Yahweh supposedly from clearly forbidding them and prescribing a death penalty for them. On other occasions, they'll try to go after the second word in this issue here that's promote. So let's start there. What's it mean to promote something? Well, in the sense that I use the term promote in this case, it's to further the progress of or allow or encourage sanctioned support to back, endorse, advocate. And so you could flatly say slavery is bad and that would be clearly discouraging of slavery. You could fail to mention the topic at all, like I don't think Harry Potter book mentioned slavery, so it's neither discouraging or encouraging it, or you could flatly say that slavery is good and that would clearly be promotion. But you could also state that some slavery is good or some slavery is bad, which implicitly promotes some slavery and promoting some slavery is all that needs to happen in order to say that we're promoting slavery. You could also offer regulations that specifically define and allow the practice within certain limits. This also promotes slavery and furthers it because not only does not discourage it, it doesn't remain silent. It expressly allows it and codifies it into law. That is, it is a permissible act. If this entire debate is about whether promote simply means let's take out an advertisement to encourage it, then we've all had our time wasted. For example, if racism exists in a society, and it definitely does, just having a whites only sign promote racism. Yes, it does. It doesn't expressly say racism is good or we want more racism, but that sign promotes the practice and the perspective of racism. The same is true of a law that says you're free to discriminate against people based on race, and you can freely punch someone of a different race without penalty, but you would be criminally guilty if you killed them. That law promotes racism. So the second issue then is what slavery? Well, I went to the encyclopedia Britannica, because you know, that's a good place to start. And in encyclopedia Britannica, the is a condition in which one human being is owned by another. Slavery was considered by law as property or slaves were considered property or chattel and were deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons. There was just based slavery, which is for POWs and debtors, etc. And then race based slavery, which came around around the 14th century onwards, when he gained popularity. But the basics of race based slavery already existed in nationalism in rules against enslaving fellows, because most ancient civilizations that permitted slavery codified slavery and specifically had prohibitions against enslaving your fellow person, or they were under different rules. So in ancient times, how did we generate slaves? Well, we captured them in war, we kidnapped them, some slaves were born into it, some slaves were sold into it to satisfy debts, some people sold themselves into it to satisfy debts. It wasn't merely indentured servants, although that is also immoral, and I would argue a very subtle, slightly different form of slavery, where it's just legislated slightly less. But Hebrew slaves, if you read up on slave law, even in encyclopedia Britannica, Hebrew slaves were to be manipulated after six years. So the encyclopedia Britannica agrees with me that the Bible supports slavery. It just has a special set of rules for Hebrew slaves, so they have to be let go after six years. But that only applies to Jewish slaves, not Gentiles, not women. And Christian slave societies generally ignored that requirement, because they're not Jewish. Most groups had prohibitions against enslaving their fellow believers or their fellow in group. Many prohibited killing slaves and excessive cruelty, even US slavery had 10 different codes which forced the sale or emancipation of slaves that were maltreated. But even with those laws in place, that didn't prevent people from mistreating slaves. That mistreatment goes on because slaves don't have the same rights and opportunities to protest those sorts of things. So we've talked about what promo means, we've talked about what slavery means. What does the Bible have to say? Well, starting in Genesis, Noah curses one of his sons and all of his descendants to be slaves of his brother. God blesses Abraham with lots of slaves. Hagar, the slave, tries to run from Abraham's abusive wife, and God sends an angel to force her to go back to them and be submissive to the abusive situation she's in. In Joshua, God curses the Gibbonites to be slaves forever. Exodus 12-44 talks about how you must circumcise your purchased slaves and then they can eat a Passover meal. Deuteronomy 20 talks about acquiring slaves in wartime. And the interesting here is this word that's used about slaves requiring wartime is the same word that's used throughout. Depending on which Bible you're looking at, it might be translated into English as servant or sometimes slaves. But for example, in Deuteronomy 515, remember when thou wast a servant, that's Hebrew 5650 or ebid, which is the exact same word for servant, bondmaid, slave. It's used to refer to the Israelites when they were slaves, and it's used to refer to their practice of keeping slaves. That same word is used in Exodus and Leviticus to describe slaves. They are expressly listed as property. They are money. They are passed on to your descendants. They're not equal. They don't have the same rights. If you look into this, Deuteronomy 5 talks about how you're not supposed to covet your neighbor's wife, or his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's. All those things are property. And yes, that includes women too, although in a slightly different class, women just weren't considered equal. I did a separate video on that a couple years ago. And in addition to that thing about coveting in Deuteronomy, it also exists there in Exodus 20 as well. In Exodus 21, you get the actual law for how to deal with Hebrew servants. Beginning at the beginning, if you buy a Hebrew servant, six years will he serve, and in the seventh, he'll go free. And if he came in by himself, he'll go out by himself. If he were married, then his wife should go out with him. But if he came in alone, and you give him a wife, you get to keep the wife, because that wife isn't his, not even has no say in it. And if he says, hey, I love my master and I want to stay here, all my wife and children, I want to stay here, then you shall take him to the judges, Pierce is here, and he shall be your slave forever. That's a way to trick even a Hebrew slave into being a permanent slave. Similarly, there are different rules for selling your daughter into slavery. And then when we get further into Exodus 21, when it talks about rights, if you hit your servant or your maid with a stick, and he dies, then you'll be punished. Doesn't say killed though, just as you'll be punished. But if the servant lives for a day or two, then you will not be punished at all because the servant is your money. Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth doesn't apply, because slaves aren't free, they are property. They aren't free to have the same rights as others. Similarly, in Leviticus 25, it specifically says both thy bond men and their bond maids, which thou shalt have shall be of the heathen that are around you, of them shall ye buy bond men and bond maids. Moreover, of the children of strangers that do sojourn with you, of them ye shall buy and of their families that are with you, which they begotten your land, and they shall be your possession. And you shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for a possession. They shall be your bond men forever. Leviticus 19 has special rules. 19 verse 20 talks about whoever lays with carnally with a woman that is a bond maid, a slave who is betrothed. Instead of being punished, she'll be punished because she's not free. She's the property. She did wrong. So it doesn't say anything about who was consenting or anything else. It's just, boom, she's not free. That's what it says. She shall be scourged. They shall not be put to death because she was not free. But what about the New Testament? Surely, since, you know, we're talking about the Christian Bible and Christianity, surely the New Testament comes along and fixes all this. Except it doesn't. Ephesians 6, 5 says, Servants be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling and singleness of your heart as unto Christ. Colossians 3, 22, servants obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye services, men places, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. 1 Timothy 6, led as many servants of you who are under yoke, count their own masters, worthy of honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blaspheme. And they that have believing masters, let them not be despised because they are brethren, but rather do them service because they are faithful and beloved. Titus 2, verse 9, exhort servants to be obedient under their masters and please them in all things. 1 Peter 2, servants be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle masters, but also to the cruel. This is what the New Testament has to say. Now, I'm not an expert. I don't speak Hebrew. I don't speak Greek. I do use utilities to study these things. And so we know that the most common word for servant and slave in the Old Testament is ebb, which is 5650. There's also Nahr, which is 5288, which is for a young boy or girl servant. And in the New Testament, you've got a couple of different Greek words, doulas. It was just 1401, which is slave and theropod, which is 2324, which is attended. To be clear, the Bible consistently talks about buying people. Those people become your property right alongside your auction. It allows you to beat those people as long as they don't die within a day or two. They are your property. They do not have the same rights as free people. And it never comes out and condemns slavery. Jesus could have done it. He didn't. Jesus instructs slaves to obey their masters in Matthew 1024. Paul could have done it. He didn't. Paul asked for a single slave to be freed. And let's not pretend that this was the beginning of an underground railroad. At no point is there a clear statement that owning another person as property is immoral. There's not even really a hint of that. In fact, the Bible suggests the opposite, that you can buy people and you can own them. The same book that won't let you eat shellfish or mixed fabrics, the same book that has a death penalty for unruly children who won't listen, you're supposed to take them to the town elders and say that he's a drunkard and then everybody in the town gets together and stoned them. The same book that advocates the death penalty for all sorts of things, including picking up sticks on the Sabbath suggests that it's fine to own people as property. But if you're going to own another Jew, you got to let them go after six years unless you trick them. And then, oh, I forgot. Everybody gets to go free in the year of Jubilee. That's every 50 years. And when you compare that to the lifespan, man, slavery is awesome. Let me buy you and then let you go in 43 years. It's ridiculous to suggest that the Bible does not promote slavery. Thank you very much for that opening statement, Matt. And we're going to kick it over to Converse Contender, aka William, and want to let you know it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, folks. We are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion, and politics. And we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from. Christian Atheist, you name it, we're thrilled to have you with us. And with that, Converse, the floor is all yours. All right, thanks. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Perfect. I want to share my screen if that's okay. Okay, let's see. It hasn't kicked in through yet. Okay. All right, let's try it again. Okay, can you see that? Yes. Okay. Hopefully, everybody will be able to see without the videos on the side there. All right, so thanks, Modern Day Debate, and thanks, James, for hosting this. Thanks to Matt for agreeing to have this discussion. So I also want to thank Matt for taking the affirmative tonight, because the affirmative position, it just been in my experience. This isn't all, of course, but a lot of times Atheists don't like to take the affirmative position. Like I say, that's not all, of course. That's just been in my experience. So thanks, Matt, for doing that, and agreeing to this. All right. Does the Bible promote slavery? That's our proposition. I was in a super big hurry today, so I barely got this put together. But all right, does the Bible promote slavery? No. Obviously, you can see the answer there. Since Matt took the affirmative tonight, though, according to online debate logic, I can just say I'm not convinced and use defensive rhetoric to win. So am I convinced? No. I'm sorry about that. Might have to turn off my settings here for my notifications. No, I'm not convinced. So with that, Matt, just try harder to prove your claim, and I'll let you know once you've met your burden. Thanks. No, I'm just kidding. Actually, I'm not going to follow that tradition. Instead tonight, I'll be given a positive argumentation against the proposition. I will approach the topic by giving a case from the historical context, also from the biblical text. I will be building on what I call, anyway, the solid foods argument. So I'm missing a slide on here, so I will go ahead and lay it out here in just a sec. The solid foods argument comes from a principle in Scripture that says you give people milk until they're able to have solid foods, like a child, right? We get in Hebrews chapter five, we get in 1 Corinthians chapter three, 1 Peter chapter two, and Isaiah 28, 9. So 1 Peter chapter two, so put away all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk, by that you may grow up into salvation. All right. So as Jesus argues in Matthew chapter nine, he gives a principle of Scripture that there were some laws given because of the hardness of your heart. Christine Hayes, Dr. John Walton, many others have pointed out that the biblical, that the Bible's laws were not given as a principle for all time to be accepted. But before, I'm going to give an argument though here. So I wanted to say, like, I put this together pretty quick, you know, so I've been having a lot going on, got a newborn baby and a 10-year-old and a lot of stuff. So my spelling and stuff might be all, don't judge me. So first, I want to give the devil their due or give credit where it's due. I think that it's a bad apologetic strategy for people to say that the Old Testament ethics are fine law for even today. I'll come back to this, but briefly, Christ, Paul, the early church and most people who studied applied ethics for any amount of time disagree with you. Atheists stopped trying to convince Christian that this is the way they should believe if they accept the Bible. They didn't have a standard to judge from, or they don't have a standard to judge from. I think it's a bad argument as well. The atheists don't have an ethical foundation to stand on. So they're just telling us their subjective opinions. While that may be the case, it's irrelevant to the proposition before us whether that's true or not. Here's Dr. Josh, I'll talk to the other night. I just wanted to ask him his thoughts on de-topping. Does the Bible promote slavery? You said, well, yeah, I wouldn't take that debate because I don't think the Bible promotes slavery. That's why I used the word indoors because the Bible doesn't, on my view, it doesn't seem like the Bible actually promotes it is something. That's a sense of promotion. In other words, I don't think it's in the same class as love your neighbor. I think it's actively saying you should do this. The Bible is saying you should love your neighbor, but you don't think that slavery laws and stuff is promoting that. In other words, if somebody went through their life and they didn't love their neighbor, I think God would have something to say about that. If somebody went through their life and didn't own a slave, I don't think God would have anything to say about that. Some of my screens cut off here, so I can't really read the rest of this quote, but I think I have it pulled up here, so let's see. Before you non-believers are rolling your eyes, let me just say I give you some credit. Dr. Josh got multiple of his books. I'm really interested in the topics. Let's talk about biblical context. In the Bible, God had a family prior to creation. Dr. Michael Heiser points this out. In Job 38, 4-7, it says, wherever you were when I was laying the foundations of the earth, verse 7, when the morning stars were singing together and all the sons of God shouted for joy, the Bible teaches that God created people to be a communion with God out of the perfect generosity God shares existence with creation. In his book, The Unseen Realm, Dr. Michael Heiser lays out for us the biblical teaching God's interaction before the creation of the material realm. He says, most discussions on what's around before the creation omit the members of the heavenly host. That's unfortunate because God and God's sons in the divine family are the first pieces to the mosaic puzzle. He goes on to talk about the hierarchy of sons of God, B'n'hi'el, L'h'im, which are a higher responsibility and jurisdiction level, while angels are more like a messenger. I asked him about this when he was on the show. He talks about how Pharaoh, he talks about God's household and how Pharaoh is comprised of two words that mean great household. We'll come back to that. It's the same way in Pharaoh's household. There's the menial task and there's the important responsibilities. Even his chief cup bearer and his chief, his head chef is called Evad, servants, right? We'll come back to the households, but God created a family and had humans were created to be slaves to the God in the ancient Near East midst. Here's Christina. With the express purpose of freeing the gods from menial labor. Blood I will mass and cause bones to be. I will establish a savage man shall be his name. Merrily a savage man I will create. He shall be charged with the service of the gods that they might be at ease. So the grateful gods now and recognize the sovereignty of Martin and they built him a magnificent shrine or temple in battle on pronounced Mount L. The gateway of the God, the gate of the God, battle on the city that is the gateway of the God. The position and the function of the humans in the scheme of creation corresponds to parallels precisely the position of slaves and ascertaining society. The position and function of Martin at the top of the heart. I'm going to have to skip because I don't have a lot of time. Here is the biblical creation. Let's see a different picture emerging. The biblical God in this story, which I hope you have read, is presented as being supreme and unlimited. That's connected with the lack of mythology in Genesis 1 or rather the suppression of mythology. The biblical creation account is nondephological because there is no biography of God in here. God simply is. There's no theology, no account of his birth. There's no story by means of which emerges from some of the realm. So the biblical God's powers and knowledge do not appear to be limited by the prior existence of any other substance. Consider now the portrait of humans, humankind, that emerges from the biblical creation story in contrast to of any my age. In Genesis, humans are important. Genesis 1, humans are important. In fact, the biblical view of humans really emerges from both of the creation stories that they're going to read together, the story here in Genesis 1, and then the creation story that occupies much of of 2 and 3. The creation of the human is clearly the climactic divine act after this God can rest. And a sign of the human's importance is the fact that humans are said to be created in the image of God. This occurs in Genesis 1, verse 26. Let's make man in our image. All right. I'm going to have to skip through because I won't have, but she says that the roles are reversed. It's a polemic against these guys. So in the biblical context, John Walton talks about God ordering the universe from chaos and then people are created in God's image. But he uses his divine council, his divine family, as Dr. Heiser calls it. He says, let us make man in our image and in our likeness. Genesis chapter 1, verse 26. But then in verse 27, he says, so God created the man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them. He uses the singular he. All right. Skipping through Deuteronomy chapter 32. This is what Dr. Heiser calls the Romans, one event of the Old Testament, because God gave over the nations. When the most high gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. And then Deuteronomy chapter, I mean, verse 9. But the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob, his allotted inheritance. You'll see this portion, inherited, allotted heritage language. Come up later. Deuteronomy 4 says, and beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven. And when you see the sun and the moon and stars and the host of heaven, you'd be drawn away and bow down to them. So these things that the Lord, you got allotted to the other people under the whole heaven. So God allotted the other peoples, these lesser beings, when they rejected him, he gave them over to these beings they chased at Babel. This the story Deuteronomy 32 is talking about at Babel. He says, but the Lord has taken you brought you out of the iron furnace out of Egypt to be a people of his own inheritance as you are at this day. So he brings up the inheritance language again. Now, if you're an internet atheist or just somebody that doesn't enjoy Bible study or theology, you might say, oh, wait, this sounds like bloviation. How is this relevant? Right? So Paul on slavery. Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 18 says, anyone at any time of his call already was anyone at any time of his call already circumcised, let him seek not to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised, let him seek, not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God, each one should remain in their condition where he is called. But if you are a bond servant, when you are called, do not be concerned about it. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. In Galatians 2 3 says, but even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek yet, because the false brother secretly brought in who slipped in to spy on our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so they might bring us into slavery. To them, we did not yield in submission even for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. Galatians 2 15, we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also believe in Jesus and justify faith in Christ and not by the works of law because by the works of law, no one will be justified. Now 323 for faith came. We were held captive under the law. Paul uses this captive and slavery language about the law all the time. So then the law was our guardian. And the word for guardian there is actually a person that was a slave in the Greek in the Roman Empire that would take children to school and like have to babysit them all day and do things like this. He says, but we might be just by faith, but now the faith is calm. We are no longer under a guardian for Christ Jesus. You are all sons of God through faith, but as many as you are baptized in Christ, put on Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There is no male and female for you all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, you are Abraham's offsprings and air. Keep in mind this inheritance and air language. It'll come up. Relation for what I mean that the air, as long as he is a child is no different from the slave that he is everything, but he is under guardians. There's a term again for the slave and managers set date by his father in the same way. We also, when we were one more minute, yes, I'm sorry about that. I can speed it up. But you were under the law. Basically, he says that your slaves under the law, it cannot fail you. Paul says, do you accept certain decision in Christ will be no advantage to you. I testify against your men who accept certain decision. You're obligated to keep the whole law. You're severed from Christ. You fall away from grace. For you are called freedom brothers, but not your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but to serve one another. Love your neighbors yourself as to wrap up the whole law. So I didn't get nearly as much as I wanted to into that, but hopefully that'll get us started. You got it. Well, thank you very much for that opening statement as well. And want to let you know, folks, we are very excited for this epic upcoming debate at the bottom right of your screen. Globe versus so-called globe skepticism. You don't want to miss it next weekend. We are, by the way, in addition to a real life ghost hunter coming on this month for another debate. So hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. And with that, we're going to kick it into open discussion. Thank you very much, gentlemen. The floor is all yours. Okay. So I didn't know if you wanted to start first or if you wanted me to respond. For people, that was my opening. So I wasn't trying to rebut Matt's points, but yeah, I didn't know if you wanted to start us off or if you wanted me to get it started. I'm kind of good either way, but it's like when I listened to the opening and I took notes. What I find funny is that I referenced a whole bunch of verses that specifically talk about slavery, servants, the law related to slavery and servants, and every single verse that you did doesn't do any of that. Deuteronomy 32, no mention of slavery, same with 419, even in Galatians 324 through 29 where you were talking about the servant that carries them to school, that's the Greek word, pedagogos, which has nothing to do with slavery. It may be a servant, a household servant, but it is not tied to any of the Greek words about slavery, but even if it did, nothing in any of those verses says anything about getting rid of slavery. And so if the point is, as you claim, the Bible reverses the narrative of humans created for slaves, which simply isn't true because Ephesians 6, 6, 1 Peter 2, 16, all of these specifically say that you are to be slaves to Christ, that you are servants to God, others in the sense that man has a household as Christ as the head of this, as head of the church, that doesn't say slavery, but they're countless slaves to Christ. But it doesn't matter if the initial narrative is different than that for Marduk. What is undeniably true is that the Old Testament clearly legalizes, sanctions, endorses, and promotes unless you want to use some various, if you're going to try to win by saying, well, it doesn't promote because it endorses, but it doesn't promote, then this is just a waste of time. Because the point is, the Bible allows for slavery and codifies exactly how they should be slave. What verse did you present that reverses that position? Yeah, so thanks for clarifying. Hold on one second. I do have to ask you, if you're able to turn up your mic, it seems to have gone down just a bit since we tested it. Maybe even if you just speak up a little bit longer closer to the mic. Yeah, sorry about that. No problem. Are you able to hear me? That's better. Definitely. Okay, sorry about that. Yes. So with this opening, I've had so much going on. I apologize for you because I should have been more professional, more prepared. But I would just say that I didn't get all of what I wanted to get in there, of course. But what I'm pointing out is the meta narrative of the Bible, because it's easy. I've read this D.A. Carson that said a text that without a context is a proof text is a pretext for a proof text, right? And so I'm looking at the meta narrative. So I'm like, they're already polemicking the humans aren't slaves, they're important from the beginning, and then I'm moving through. So Deuteronomy chapter 32, when people basically give up on God and he gives them over, I'm pointing out that he allotted them to the other nations. So then anyway, moving through, all I want to say is that there's this notion of households and the engineers. And so there's an article written by Alara Culvertson and talked to Dr. Josh about this other night, where it talks about like, looking at slavery, there is no general definition for slave free and the engineering. So looking at slavery and the engineers is going to be, you have to look at it through a lens, right? They're looking at it in this article through the lens of households, because in the household, even one of the top people in the Pharaoh can be a servant, right? Joseph was said to be as part of the house of Pharaoh when he was the second, and he was the vizier of Egypt. And so I'm not arguing that there's not any type of slave slavery or servitude in the Bible. All I'm arguing is that as Christ said, it wasn't that way from the beginning. So basically in the same way that when a drug addict gets, let's say far off on heroin, right? Even if I think like doing drugs is completely immoral, I may allow for him to do methadone or her to make an improvement because that is an improvement in their condition towards the goal, right? And so I mean, maybe you want to start there and then I'll respond to some of your points. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like the solid food argument, which quite frankly, I countered that in my opening, along with your attempt to define promote rather narrowly. The solid food argument is this notion that for some reason, slavery already existed. And rather than just saying, thou shalt not own another human being as property, God decided to ease into the abolition of slavery by legislating it by saying, oh, let's make slavery not quite as bad as it could be. And then as these humans come around, they'll eventually get around to giving it up. Well, the first thing is there's not a single indication or inclination anywhere in the Bible that the goal is to get rid of slavery. But also, if God can tell me not to eat shrimp, not to have sex with someone of the same gender, not to pick up sticks in the Sabbath, not to wear fabrics of mixed cloth, then God can tell me not to own another human being as property. It is accidentally ridiculous to assert that God is so weak and feeble that he cannot tell people not to own people as property and instead must do the opposite to say, okay, go ahead and own people's property and you can beat them as long as they don't die within a couple of days. That is just ridiculous to me. Yeah, so there's a few points there, right? Like one is like, well, he can tell me to not eat shrimp, right? But he can't tell me to you know, to outlaw, serve, whatever. So here's the deal. If you look at this is an institution, right, like capitalism, okay, there are plenty of communists online that's going to tell you, look, you're a slave, if you work a job, and if you contribute to it, it's immoral. But there are a lot of other ones that say, hey, look, now that it's not true, you need to work, you need to work a job, right? Because you want to let them have all the power until we can get to the place where we can reform this entire institution. Because this is an economy, as Dr. John Walton pointed out. And as far as the God is weak thing, it's like, well, if he's going to, you know, allow these free people to, it has nothing to do with God's power, because with their freedom, right? God is shaping them. Even secular scholar Christine Hayes talks about this in her lectures that the laws, she talks about not only Paul, but the laws themselves and the earliest people except for Philo that were commenting on the Old Testament were saying that, well, these laws weren't given as like the one time, you know, all for one time, because there are many times like when humans are given, you know, the plants to eat, and then after the fall, they're given meat, they're allowed to eat meat. And then same thing with the king, like God, you know, they didn't need a king, but then he allowed for the king, because God is working with this barbaric group of people to shape them over time. But and then the last thing you mentioned was slaves. He said it twice now that slaves could be beaten as long as they didn't die after a day or two. And I just got to say, like even in, I talked to Josh about this the other night, and I said, you think that that's, you know, not what's being pointed out here, right? And he even writes in his book about this where he says that, which I got right here, he says, this is too extreme a position in the book. He says that the thing about the day or two is if a day or two or a few days later, something like that, or even a week or whatever, the servant in your household were to all of a sudden have like a concussion or something, right? And then because you, you know, you hit them on the back of the leg or in their back with the stick or something, right? It's saying that you're not going to be like, you know, held reliable for that. So, and then you mentioned judges where it says you take him to the judges. The word there is Elohim. It's actually the word for God or gods. Talk to Josh about this as well. I said, you know, it's something like you, you guys translated Elohim as judges in, in this first in your book. And he said, yeah, but it's only because we wanted to go all the way throughout with the NIV, but I, yeah, your points, you know, stand. So, I think there's something else happening here. Dr. Heiser pointed out that the parallel passage and Deuteronomy of this first leaves out that part about the Elohim. And he says there's a reason for that. It's because of their, they're getting rid of their household gods and their pledging allegiance to Yahweh as their, their patron God. And with that comes protection in the ancient world is how they looked at it. So I have other points that I can make if you're interested. It just seems like, I mean, the, the issue here is, does the Bible support slavery? And it sure sounds like you're saying, I mean, you say no, but then it sure sounds like you're saying, yeah, it promotes slavery, but it needs to do that because we have to have milk until we're ready for solid food. It promoted it once upon a time, but then it reverses it, but the passages that you point to to reverse to are meta analysis that don't ever mention slavery. So this is all not the Bible, even countering its own position, which meta analysis is your interpretation of, I don't know, I don't understand how your meta analysis that does not point to a single verse that says slavery is wrong gets to, to, to undermining what the Bible says about slavery, because it's clear the Bible does sanction and endorse slavery. And you're saying that was necessary, which is already an admission that the Bible does do it. Now I'm asking what verse says that slavery is actually immoral. Yeah. So all throughout the Bible, the word slave, of course, there's no word slave. It's in the, the Hebrew and in the Greek, but the word is always used as the negative. When I first talked to Dr. Josh about this, we've talked about this, I guess, half dozen times or something. And then the first time I talked to him though, he said, I said, yes, so you don't think that the Bible is saying the slavery is a bad thing. And he says, yeah, you know, there's some usury and about slavery that it's trying to like that it doesn't like, right? Because all the laws that it's pushing for it's like, hey, look, you can't do this to Hebrews, slavery or usury. He's like, and then the other thing is like with Christine Hayes at Yale, the thing she points out is all the things about like charity or morality claims about slavery and things like that. She says that it's always followed by it saying, because I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt and things like this, she's saying that like, you can't legislate people to follow like morals. So she's saying that it gives that as an indication that, hey, look, this is why you should follow because I'm going to judge you one day because I'm your master. Like I'm, you know, so and then with the gibbonites, you know, you mentioned the gibbonites, the story of the gibbonites, they came to the Israelites and said, hey, take us as your servants. We will be your slaves, take us. And they, they had to lie and say they were from a far away land in order to to get them to take them as their servants. And then afterwards, the Israelites were regretful that they even took them as their servants because now they're, they get an inheritance with Israel. I don't know how that is even, like I asked what verse in the Bible counters the verses that explicitly endorse and sanction slavery. And instead of getting any verse, I get something that you talked to Josh about, something that Christine said about, you can't legislate people to follow morals. Well, first of all, neither of them are the Bible, neither of them is a Bible verse. And Christine's wrong that you can't legislate people to follow moral morals. That's what the Bible does. That's what the 10 commandments are. And while we don't legislate every bit of morality, we legislate morality all the time. Yeah. So I think, and I don't mean this in this way, but of course, but I think it's more of a fundamentalist view of the Bible to look at it as a book like that, right? Like, well, what part of the book, you know, where it's got, it's like, well, there's no, there's no, what's the topic of the debate? Does the Bible promote slavery? Sure. So I don't care what Josh says, I don't care what Christine says, I don't care about your interpretations. What does the Bible say about slavery? I read verses about slavery, you did not. Yeah, I don't, I just don't see how you can go through everything that's being talked about about slavery is negative in the Bible and then say, well, it promotes it. No, it doesn't. No, you're wrong. Everything about slavery in the Bible is not negative. It is slaves, obey your master, even the cruel ones. It doesn't say that there's anything. It doesn't even have that there's anything wrong with slavery. It just says that your Hebrew slaves have to go free in six months, or sorry, six years, after six years. This is, to just read this and suggest the Bible is allowing slavery, it is legislating slavery, it is codifying it and saying you can do this and you can do this, it specifically says that their property, that they don't have specific rights that you won't be punished for things you do to them. And then to suggest that the Bible is saying slavery is bad is, I don't mean to be insulting one of the most dishonest interpretations I've ever heard. Can you repeat the last part? Sorry, I was flipping a page. What was dishonest? To look at the Bible that says that sanctioned slavery, that creates laws about slavery, that tells you who you can enslave, how much to pay for them, how you should treat them, how you can beat them, when you must let them go, how you can trick them into not letting go. And then just to look at all that and suggest that what the Bible is really saying is that slavery is bad is one of the most dishonest interpretations. This is literally like a Trumpism fake news. If any of those things are true, I might agree with you. Here's the problem is the thing about you can beat them. Are you saying that the things I just said are true? Allow me to make sure that are you saying that the things that the Bible doesn't tell you? I'm going to go through one at a time and you tell me when you say that the Bible allows you to beat your servant. Even secular scholars will tell you like it's not saying oh you can just beat your servant except for you know and as long as they don't what it's saying is that they had a corporal punishment back then where it's like you know I've watched old kung fu movies and the guys that are in Shaolin temple you know the monks will go and just like hit them if they're trying to break line or whatever. Anyway so what you have is here listen you're you're covering your face actually doesn't prove that the Bible promotes slavery when everything I don't need to prove anything you are being you are making an embarrassment of yourself right now. Hey have some composure. I was quiet. I was quiet. I can't help it that I'm going to double face bomb when you say something ridiculous. I'm letting you continue. We do you don't have to address it. Just keep it. Keep it civil here just to. Well I don't know what wasn't civil. Have some composure. What I'm saying is in terms of all of all of the people in the audience are excited to hear you guys and so just in the case in which we are able to hear each of you in your times in which you're speaking. Yeah so first of all again with the thing about Iran with being a slave like it's secular scholars aren't going to even agree with you on that. They will say that you know there was moderate correction if you you know you can't knock out a higher tooth of course things like this right well Josh even points this out in the book as one of the things he calls an extreme position that the atheist hate when that's not what it's actually trying to indicate is just how the English renders it. The other thing is that you said that you know the Bible so when you say promotes that that's not the same as something like condones right like allows for for example let's say that it's actually immoral in society to not be a vegan for example right. You said in your debate with Trent Horn that veganism is he said do you think that it's a rational position though ethical veganism you said no it's not rational it's an irrational position. Now if they were going to try to convince you that it it was the moral thing and let's say that it actually is would they be better off to just come at you and say stop eating meat today or would they say listen you don't have to buy factory farm stuff right we're going to regulate that industry then we're going to move to regulations on you know how the treatment of other you know um roaming animals or whatever right of course they would be more and so when you by the time you get and you brought up the slaves obey your masters is Tom Hollins points out you know the atheist right and as he points out like Paul's not saying hey look it's good to be a slave so just go and obey your masters like it's completely taken out of context the context is that in these times when the slaves are part of these households even one of them is called part of Herd's household right um they're they're being treated in in such terrible ways and then a lot of times that they thought well they thought at that point that if they were having something immoral done to them that it was actually going to reflect on them morally and he was saying look it's not going to just so we have pardon my interruption just so we have a even flowing conversation just so we don't go into kind of the rebuttal sections of too long speeches let's kick it back over to Matt to hear a response sure well there was no response to anything I said I was accused of saying things that weren't you accused me of saying things that weren't true does the Bible tell you how much you can pay for slaves um not not well first there's not like one thing slavery right so there's differences amongst serve does the Bible list a price for slaves in one yeah in one verse yes it does thank you so when I said when I said that the Bible tells you when the Bible are you gonna let me finish when the Bible tells me tells you how much you can pay for slaves you said that if any of that were true I would have a point well you just admitted that that's true does the Bible also allow you to beat your slaves as long as they don't die within a couple I said if all that was true no you said if any well all right oh my gosh so so you would like to congratulations we would have to rewind the tape and go back through everything I said to find out what the Bible says and what it doesn't say and then you want to try to get a technical video a victory because you want to go with a persnickety definition of promote as if we need to take out an advertisement and encourage it um when the point here who's talking now to be fair converse yeah go ahead so I went through the Bible because the subject of debate is does the Bible promote slavery now the only way you can try to get a no is by redefining either promote or slavery now you tried to redefine promote or go with a particular definition I won't say redefine go with a particular definition that is a promote as if I'm a promoter of an act like here you should do this but as I pointed out in my opening statement that that's not the only usage of promote it's not the only dictionary usage of promote and that there are a number of different ways to do it if you want to just say that the Bible does not say thou shalt enslave people I will agree with you in a heartbeat is that your point no of course not like I never in fact I don't think I've ever defined promote I think that I just asked Dr. Josh did he think that I don't care what I don't care what Dr. Josh says especially in an edited clip why well that was a phone call that we talked about anyway so it was an edited clip and Dr. Josh sat right next to me the last time I made this topic here and he agrees with me now if you he absolutely does he literally this was like three days ago okay specifically asking well and it doesn't matter what Dr. Josh says or what your interpretation Dr. Josh says it also doesn't matter what your interpretation of the Bible is I've asked repeatedly is there a verse respond okay so okay so not even not even most secular scholars are going to agree with the owner on these verses these same verses are brought up and brought up and brought up but the thing is that the it's not looked at in the ancient world in the same way so for example with capitalism let's say capitalism is immoral in reality right well if you even allow for it are you promoting it right even if you allow for it and let's say a democrat as who's a socialist is regulating it and trying to get market socialism or something like that right are they promoting capitalism because they're allowing for it I don't think so that's why they are that's why Dr. Josh on his book called it the Old Testament endorse slavery this is now completely wasted because William here is trying to say oh he didn't redefine promote but he agrees that the Bible endorses slavery allows for it to regulate it but everything about slavery in the Bible is all regulations everything on it because they're moving people away from it everything you don't know that you have no way to demonstrate that just like you have no way to demonstrate that just like you have no way to demonstrate your continual assertion that most secular scholars would disagree with me which I find to be ridiculous how many secular scholars did you pull to come up with that little nugget well here's the thing always saying is that I'm saying that that secular scholars aren't going to take these verses and say oh it says that um you know you can beat your slave as long as they can get up after a couple of days they're not going to say that and then like with the thing with obey your masters like atheist professors and like uh scholars historians have pointed out that that's not saying like it's good to be a slave so about your master's fact I quoted a verse from Paul said if you can gain your freedom do it that's not a verse against slavery that's a that's a direction to individuals to gain freedom if they can yeah because not a verse against slavery because in the roman empire you couldn't just gain um your freedom just by saying oh with you know I mean everything that's written about slavery in the entire bible is saying is is implying that it's wrong by saying look you if that's just not true okay well maybe you give me an example where I gave you tons of example because I'm the only one here who's going to be a single verse that includes slavery yeah you get no I'm the only person in this debate that quoted a single verse that includes slavery that's not true um all throughout my opening I quoted through um Galatians I quoted first Corinthians yeah I wrote them all down and I looked them all up and none of them include the Hebrew word or the Greek word that are being used with regard to slavery not one of them includes any of those words it is true nope I can prove it right now I mean uh Duelos is in first Corinthians chapter seven which I quoted Duelos is also in Galatians which I quoted uh multiple verses there in my slideshow it's in seven uh 18 through 21 right first Corinthians I'll pull it up minor chapter seven verses 18 through 21 and you say that Duelos is in there which is uh 1404 1401 yes art thou called being a servant care not for it but if thou mayest be made free use it rather that is not about slavery that is about can you can you free yourself but you said it that nothing I quoted had the word slavery in oh okay all right in that case I will retract that nothing that you quoted was an admonition against slavery the practice and nothing that you quoted was in any way countering the law and not a jot or tittle of the law shall pass away until all these things have come to pass yeah so the entire um the entire um letter of Galatians which I quoted a lot you know a lot of is the entire thing is Paul saying look you can't be justified by the law the law was a slave master already uh uh it's well the word there's used as a a servant all right and it's a servant and he says I mean that the air as long as the child is a child there's no different from a slave though he is the owner of everything but is under the guardians and managers those dates set by his father in the same way we also were children were enslaved by the elementary principles of the world in the fullness of time god sent for the son one of the woman one of the law redeemed those who were under the law that we might receive adoption as sons like many a manumission you mentioned um where you could actually get free of being a slave everything in this letter is about how the law is slavery and we uh for you were called to freedom brothers this is chapter five verse 13 only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh but through long uh uh but through love serve one another for the whole laws fulfilled in one word that you shall love your neighbor as yourself and so forth so that entire letter is about how the law is slavery and that if you go back under that yoke of slavery then you are indebted to do the entire law and you're cut off from price yes um the book of fine layman has nothing to do with the practice of slavery being a slave to the law this is about the difference between the noatic covenant and the mosaic covenant and whether or not you wanted to be a jew this this ties into the circumcision argument about whether or not you want to be under the fullness of the law or do you want to be amongst the Gentiles that's what this is about there's nothing in paul's letter that is slavery is immoral slavery shouldn't happen do not own people as people yeah i just i don't mind that right because it's a fact well no it's not a fact it is a fact show me a verse in the bible that says it is immoral to own people as property because i can show you verses that permit owning people as property and do not say that it's immoral yeah everything that you're gonna say every verse that you can come up with it's gonna say something like you know but if you're to own a slave you have to treat him this way and it's because it's assumed that this is a not something that would be a good thing right no everything in the new testament it's like you're wrong it's not every verse like that so christ is in first in Philippians chapter two it said it said to have although he exists in the form of god did not see the equality he had with god something to be held on to so he emptied himself taking on the form of a servant right so even god took on the form of servant for us and then in paul's other letters like philemon where he goes on to tell you know philemon take onesimus back no longer as a as a slave but as a brother and he basically tells him like hey look and i'm gonna come you know i'm gonna come by you know but i'll know you'll do more even then let him free right and then in another letter he says you know he's in he's sending onesimus out with the other brothers that are doing work for christ but also there's neither june or greek slave or free the verses you quoted about the obey your masters even like i said atheist historians have said like look that's just talking about like how the treatment of these slaves they were doing immoral things to them right like sexual things and that they could they were saying like hey look this sexual stuff we're doing and he's like you're not doing it like it's happening to you you're obey your masters but even the cruel one is because how are you what are you going to do get yourself out of it but if you can right free yourself from it you know but but if you're stuck there basically then you know it's not going to cause you to go out to not have salvation because you know you're not a slave to the law anymore you don't have that yoke the the the terminology of burden and yoke and slavery is all through paul's vernacular as a terrible thing uh to take a couple of his little verses out of context and say oh therefore he says the slave is a good thing and i just don't i'm not i'm not going to buy it well i don't care and i don't care what paul has to say because my point is i read you verses specifically and you mischaracterize those verses by the way talking about that all of them say if you take a slave and suggest it's a bad thing well if you take a slave is not at all suggesting it's a bad thing but leviticus 25 doesn't say if you take a slave it says both thy bondman and thy maids which thou shalt have shall be of the heathen that are around about you of them shall ye buy bondman and bond servant that is not remotely in the format that you suggested that you'd like to blow off so you're not even addressing i read and pointed to a bunch of verses not just one that specifically goes through and talks about actual slavery the the buying and selling of people you decided to go with well here's this meta narrative paul is really against slavery i'm not convinced paul is against slavery but even if he was paul isn't god paul is isn't jesus where's jesus's message why couldn't jesus have simply said all that stuff in exodus all of that stuff in leviticus all of those old law things that allowed you to own people's property all of that was immoral it has gone on long enough from this day forward i command you to not own people as property isn't he god couldn't he have done that yeah i don't i don't like the the uh the power argument right because i mean it's just gonna say that like all it's gonna say is that well couldn't god have not let them do anything really i'm not you know giving them these options or whatever right and not watch what they did and so if you if god wants freedom in the world to say anything like uh couldn't god have you know supernaturally zapped them and made them to you know completely be different people than who they were well i don't think that it's working like that right god's using the means of the world to bring about change in the world and through for his purposes and so while there's going to be you know these people that are going to continue with these verses and like to pick out a context but the thing is is that meant even with the um the leviticus chapter 25 that you brought up i'm seeing if all through the chapter right and so um but the thing is is that you know probably as well as i do that in hebrew right it's just going to have the terms right and so for example um joseph is is um called you know a servant of of uh he's in the house of pharaoh kings are called servants you know this josh mentioned this in the book this isn't to say that like um you know servitude is a good thing he even says in the book he's like hey look look i'm not trying to you know apologize for or anything it you know that's not going to say that like you know it's going to be compare you know comparable to like bad slavery in the united states transatlantic trade slave slave trade right but um you know at least i think that his book was pretty honest about some of those things where he adds in says like hey look but i gotta stop and say this you know like uh be careful if you're gonna try and use this first in this way because it in the original in the hebrew it's not really getting at what what you know what your point in there and so if your point well there are some things from your opening that i was gonna um you know say but but yeah i mean well if you're gonna go down this line of if god wants freedom he can't make robots then he shouldn't be giving all those instructions to kill people for all kinds of minor things i find it ridiculous to suggest that god uh just you know he doesn't want to he wants freedom so you should be free free to own slaves i mean slavery is the most anti-freedom thing that you could point to to suggest that god in the name of freedom must allow slavery is asinine but there was something else in my opening you wanted to get to and i agree with that actually and in his book uh bluist and malina um perma greger talks about how malina makes the same argument it was uh uh and malina you know what book you haven't pulled up well we have plenty of books but um malina argues that same thing he says hey look if um you know you're enslaving people you're not allowing them freedom to to choose whether to accept price because you're basically forcing them into it and he he was one of the earliest people to argue against the slave trade in um the transatlantic slave trade so but yeah i mean in the bible less relevant to whether or not the bible promotes slavery no it's exactly what you just said i was actually just bringing up exactly what you just said and saying yeah i um a church jesuit uh agreed with you on that i was just saying so and but i don't care that's the point i don't care you keep citing references this is just rhetoric this isn't even scholarship this is just rhetoric that's all it is what are you talking about this is just rhetoric it's just like vaughn said one day on screen i thought it was funny he this guy was giving all these facts he's like look dude even if you're right my rhetoric is so strong that you're just going to lose because my rhetoric is so strong are you suggesting that i'm the one using rhetoric here of course you only want skynes that's an incredibly strong delusion because what i'm pointing out is that i came to this debate to talk about what the bible says about slavery and you have talked about josh and christine and pulled up a book left and right and everything else and danced away in order to suggest that i'm just wrong and secular scholars disagree with me no evidence no argument just boom and now you want to accuse me of rhetoric i read from the bible i made a compelling case that is not even remotely controversial and you're just going to suggest that i'm just spewing rhetoric in order to win the fact of the matter is i'm right not even remotely controversial right when and the fact is that if you read that argument about slaves and households in lark holbertson's from the oil institute um even when i talked to josh last night um for like two or three hours we we were talking about how well yeah a lot of this stuff is contentious because it's like well does heber mean you know um and israelite is this anonymous like even the jewish blue is the oxford jew uh forget i can pull it up but and they even say that uh israelite and um and um heber are not the same term hebers were before that the land took their they got the inheritance of the land for example um with the inheritance where you can oh you can inherit them forever and blah blah well of course as josh was on the book like uh forever means like something like imperfectivity but there's it's debated about what that could possibly mean even with the inheritance thing that could be the household dr heiser argues that you know um this thing where it's like you go to the gods and pierce their ear if they want to stay in your household and then they become part of your family part of your household and they actually get inheritance for example uh abraham who when he didn't have an heir right an inheritor he um he said my sir god i don't have a seed my servant will inherit my things and so what i'm saying is all of this stuff is hotly debated and and while i can just grant everything and say okay even if all this stuff for the case christ is saying like in matthew chevron 19 that it wasn't that way from the beginning for some of the laws it's a principle that you can apply um and then uh you were given it because the hardness of your heart you're a barbaric group of people right so god used um certain laws to uh you know move you move you um forward right which laws and how do you know which laws well that's that's the point of scripture right is to is hermeneutics right so no i asked you a question well i was trying to answer it too when you interrupted me i was in the middle of my answer well i'm sorry you just got talking for a long time and i thought it would be relevant to have a discussion point that's fine well if you want to you know give some points that's fine but if you ask me your question in return then all i can do is respond right and so so what i would say is hermeneutics right like if you find something that all throughout the old testament um scholars agree that you know it's being talked of as like the worst thing you know that you can have done to you and then you get to the new testament and you have things like the list in what is it uh timothy where it says um you know list all these people liars these you know and then it mentions slave traders right and and when you get to find leman paul's telling you know him to take his slave back no longer as a slave but as a brother you get to paul's letters no difference can you agree he's talking about the laws this is this is a yoke on us it's a burden to us if you're a slave to the law sin if you're if you're um you know you're a slave to your sin right if you sin you're a slave to your sin like it's being used in every case as a negative but you're saying well it promotes it as a good thing i didn't say promotes is a good thing well what does promote mean if it's not promote means to further to advocate to endorse to sanction that's what i'm talking about i'm not saying that it was necessarily ever declared to be a moral good what i'm saying is that not only did it not prohibit it but it took steps that allowed it to continue and encouraged it would you advocate for something that wasn't good i mean even if you say promote is you are you are advocating you're advocating for the bible continuing to advocate for slavery because you think it's too much for gone to outlaw it no i think that it has been outlawed that's the opposite i'm not i'm not a bronze no no your point this was this this was the milk and tell solid food that it was your point was about strategy your point was you said like if the vegans were trying to convince me would it be better for them just to assert x and then boom or would it be better to ease into it and that was your whole thing would it be better for god to just outlaw slavery or to ease into it what is your answer which means you're what sorry what what is your answer to that my answer is that he's god he can do whatever he wants and if he's too weak to outlaw slavery you don't get to say you don't get to say that it's because he values freedom he clearly doesn't value freedom and by the way i don't think any of this was done by a god i think this was done by people but it doesn't matter because you by your very argument against why it doesn't prohibit slavery have agreed that it sanctions endorses advocates you just don't like the word promote which is the exact thing i predicted it's not that really it is not that really it is that i can assert it i can assert it is just as many times as you can assert it's not right exactly and we can go all day whatever so here's the deal like it's not fooling anybody well you said like five things they said let me just respond to a couple things right like when was that um so the servanthood thing right that um the bible promotes uh slavery and it and it doesn't never outlawed any place where's the verse that says um you know you that else are not on the slave or whatever right and what i was trying to say before i was in her last time is that the bible is not a book that's like every code there is right um the ancient your eastern law codes are more john walton points this out in his book the tour lost world the tour that they're more like ancient wisdom sayings right and they're not even supposed to be looked at as minimal sentences or anything right they're they're looked at as as these um uh not at the apodictic law um but more as case law so anyway um uh what else should you say there um yeah the thing about freedom it's like um you know well couldn't i don't see why god god's so weak why couldn't he just make them change their minds whatever it's like well to say to make somebody do something freely is is you know it doesn't make sense so to say like isn't he powerful enough to make them do something well yeah he can right but the whole point is is that god's the only reason why he created the world right is to have these free creatures and so to come into relationship with him uh freely so he can outlaw shrimp he can outlaw wearing mixed fabrics he can outlaw sex with certain people and not outlaw sex with other people but when you say the bible is not a book that's like every code there is are you suggesting that a prohibition against slavery just wasn't important enough for god to worry about what do you mean by that well if i agree we're not going to include every rule in law and code that could exist but you think we would include the most important ones and if it is truly immoral and truly repugnant to god to own another person's property why wasn't that one important enough to mention well if we were talking about importance right um the the vegans can say that you know that's pretty important you're going to say they're irrational um so that's going to be you know but but the other thing you did is um well i'll come back to that because i don't want to respond to your point directly but like um why didn't it outlaw the most important thing that's like saying like let's say the capitalism is immoral today right so would god come to us and say all right everybody in america has to stop or everybody in the world if you have to stop capitalism because immoral whatever right um that institution even num Chomsky pointed this out in a recent interview when he was um being interviewed he's like yeah i'm a vegan right but i'm not going to advocate for getting rid of um you know meat right now because of the chaos that would ensue right it's something that has to be um it's gotta be moved toward and so with uh for example uh capitalism uh if you're communist um you might say look market socialism into so forth right because otherwise it's just riot it's just riot anarchy until we get the power to do what we want to do with it now the other point about like why don't believe god did this you know it's just that i feel like that's the taxicab fallacy because the it's the taxicab fallacy is when you're going along with the internal critique and then you hop out and say well from my perspective i don't even you know well it's like yeah but the whole point is that you're going along with the internal critique right so you can't just hop out when you want right but but if you're just saying like that's your personal view or whatever that's fine yeah william it wasn't an argument i'm the only one here that's actually making an argument do we have questions i feel like i made an argument we've got about five more minutes until we're like you dodge to every question i'm still waiting for a verse that counters the verses that i gave that allows for slavery and you either don't give a verse you give an interpretation of a longer thing or you suggest that well what what you cited doesn't really promote slavery okay well well i mean i could i could just you know read point verses that's what you want i mean um for example um everything about it that's why i was trying to point to this thing about inheritance right because um they'll uh Paul points out that like if the inheritance comes by the law it is no longer comes by promise but god gave it to abraham by promise why then the law it was added the law was added why because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made but in place uh put in place through angels and intermediaries so forth right so the law i'm sorry what's i have to do with slavery well because the law which contains verses about slavery right was put into place because of the transgressions of the people it was to limit these transgressions right but it wasn't that way from the beginning obviously because um the promise i was given to abraham this was just until the seed could come or whatever right so um you do realize that do you play board games at all hmm it's not much no okay i play a lot of board games and um generally speaking a new rule overrides an old rule and a specific rule overrides a general rule general rules never override specific rules so if you have a specific rule that addresses slavery you can't counter it with a general rule that you interpret as addressing slavery especially if that general rule doesn't even mention slavery that's the way reasoning works for stacking rules and the bible the the 613 mitzvah is the law now like take a look at what jews had to do when when they got around you've got the Torah and when they're looking at the talmud the jews look at this and say why does the talmud or why does the Torah permit slavery why does god permit slavery he he brought us out of slavery and he gave us specific rules about how to enslave our own people but only temporarily but he allowed slavery elsewhere and now we're at a point where we find that to be immoral why did god allow it and so the talmud addresses these sorts of things but this is human beings explaining why they no longer accept what the bible says you're not going to find Jewish scholars who say ah the bible doesn't promote slavery because it absolutely does yeah so um the thing where you said we're like uh there's oh well it definitely says like here's how you enslave your uh your uh brothers or your fellow countrymen or whatever right um it says like things like well if you're somebody if your brother becomes poor and sells himself right everything that you see is saying like if someone sells themselves to you blah blah blah you know these are the regulations or whatever it's like well if it's fine I don't see why to regulate it first of all but second of all it's like the everything in the like everything about the bible is polemics um like I keep sighting secular scholars to to to you know so that you don't say oh well he's paul copan is what great day he's a christian so why would I believe all so that's why I'm I'm sighting scott college that um aren't christians who don't have you know what you're gonna say is a bias right and so um the whole point is that when you're reading something about like um you know if they something like if they don't get up out if they get up after a couple days blah blah they're about the uh you know uh corporal punishment it's the same thing for the child about you know uh they use the same rod whatever Josh talks about this but but anyway so the whole point is that even the thing about the giving nights that you pulled up the giving nights came to them to sell themselves in the slavery to them said buy us and take us we came from a far away place and when they found out no they didn't they were your neighbors that you're fighting against they regretted that they made a covenant with them and they didn't love them as slaves but because they were so like you know they're like well we have to honor our covenants because covenants were like a big thing in the ancient world so my whole argument is just that the same way that Christ says about divorce that um Moses gave you that law because of the hardness of your heart but it was not that way from the beginning it's the same way I look at paul and all these others talking about slavery and the law and the um the Old Testament saying that that law was a task master the law was um you know added because of transgressions until the seed would come the law was this thing because we were barbaric groups of people to shape us until Christ would come whatever but now we have this freedom and these false brothers come in to spy us out on our freedom and to try to enslave us once more and so if you want to say that like well the law has nothing to do with slavery or this versus it's like I don't know what to do like does the bible say I can own another person's property no um if you want to say like it does a certain verse well I'm not a Bronze Age Jew I'm not an Iron Age Jew I'm a Christian is there a passage in the bible that says I can own another person's property well in the Old Testament laws it was allowed for that but why can't you just say yes yeah because here's the whole point is the whole thing that you're saying own of another person as property right there are some implications that are being hidden in there there's some assumptions that are hidden right if you look at households in the ancient Near East the whole thing about owning another person's property um a lot so you know with Hebrew there's not a lot of those filler words in there somebody becoming part of your property or inheritance as I pointed to earlier Abraham's servant was the heir to all of his things and so being becoming um the Martin Dale Martin points this out at Yale where I rest my case what okay well rest your case that's just ready gotta I give you another minute it's not rhetoric it's tactic because the answer to that question was yes and you didn't want to get to the follow-up question was is there a verse or passage that says I'm not allowed to own a human being his property because the answer to that one is no and I'm not just going to sit here and waste time on a tap dance no it wasn't a tap dance I specifically addressed your point I said there are hidden assumptions in there I literally just got a message from Dr. Josh would you like me to read it sure read it out I can't describe it but he doesn't agree with your assessment of that is not the case I have a three hour video that we uh talked just the other night on the phone if you in fact I can just quote you for verses um from his book he says all this in the book about how he's uh about how atheists are too extreme on a lot of these positions we but yeah just to wrap up warning that we do have to go into the Q&A shortly if either of you guys have any final thoughts to draw together some of the threads from tonight's discussion let's go ahead Matt oh you should go first because I went first with the opening right okay well it worked in reverse order but wouldn't that mean no it's a bookend thing you have an advantage or disadvantage of going first and then potentially last but it doesn't matter I was waiting to it's fine I'm not it's not a big deal okay so I'll say that everything that is said about slavery in the bible is everything in the old testament is a regulation on the institution okay it'd be the same thing as if you walked up to it you know a liberal democrat socialist market socialist whatever and said hey look you promote capitalism because you want to regulate industries and capital is right um everything in the new testament the word slave and yoke and burden buried each other's burdens all of these terminologies um you know listing the centers with the liars and so forth with slave traders and and this and such all of these things that they're all slaves always used as a negative as a bad thing so to to try to say that promotion of something it means to allow for it to occur without immediately stopping it the same way a market socialist allows for a market to exist in capitalism even though they want to regulate it it's I think it's just short-sighted and really it's it's facile it's a it's giving a neat summary without the complexities of the actual issue we can kick it over to matt go ahead matt I read the actual verses and what they say I'll leave it up to the audience to determine if whether or not what William is saying is true were all of those negatives were all of those verses portrayed slavery is a negative when it says you shall buy your slaves from this and they become your property is it does it actually say that you can own people as property and pass them on your children yes it absolutely does does it ever say that you cannot do this no it does not does it ever say that slavery is immoral no it does not does it ever say that slavery is prohibited no it does not it is only through interpretation and reaching outside of there that you can even get to that conclusion so what the bible says about slavery I read those verses and there's more that I didn't read but they're similar this notion that the bible does not promote slavery either has to come down to well I'm using a very particular definition of promote I agree it endorses slavery it sanctions slavery but promote I would expect promote to be like a poster that says this is good you should go do that that I'm not interested in discussions that try to win a debate like that I'm also not interested in discussions where when I ask for a verse that counters something I get a bunch of sophistry and then accused of rhetoric you can go back and listen through the debate and we've got questions coming up who read from the bible who addressed what the bible actually said and who cited anyone and everyone under the sun in order to try to pretend that there's a meta narrative that all of its negative that counters all of this this is straightforward you got it thank you very much for those closing statements and I understand matt you're saying that book ending it in other words one person both starts at the very start and then ends at the very end what was your I just want to understand just because I always like new perspectives on how we can do things here I'm sorry I'm not sure I understood the question so I think you get an advantage when you go first because you get to open to the audience and then when you get to go last you get to find a word so it's kind of like you open to the audience and then you get to last word but would usually that's standard debate formats oh so you were just saying you wanted the I don't care I didn't really care I was waiting for an answer from Josh but standard debate formats or one of the standard bait formats is that you you go first you go second and then and at the end you get the last word because going first can be a disadvantage you are in the affirmative you are the one who has the case to demonstrate and so if you went first and then the other person went I well it's about debate procedure but it's fine if you guys think I don't care we're always happy to change things up and Jay Rivera 345 says William can you just admit the Bible was written by subjective minded human men of barbaric time and not inspired by an all-powerful God you can still believe in God but please don't pretend slavery isn't being promoted yeah so I did I actually called excuse me I actually called them barbaric myself right you know when Christ says the hardness of your heart but he's not the one to say it says the hardness of your heart Paul says it as well when when they look back on these things and Paul says the law was added because of transgressions and things like this but that doesn't mean that God didn't expire right that doesn't mean that God's not using these barbaric group of people and shaping them into a way into where they would be in a place to accept the Messiah for example last thing Dale Martin at Yale he had a thing where he went through the Roman Empire and their households right in one of his lectures on Yale's YouTube channel and he talks about households and how servants you know upward mobility all these things right and it's comparable to um you know employees and things like that where you could set one free but freed and free aren't the same and then he says that like only in that type of environment would even make sense to even have anything like Christianity where people are you know saying that a slave died on a cross a slave's death and he's God right Tom Holland makes the same point both atheists you would agree that it doesn't mean that God isn't moving people in a certain direction it also doesn't mean that God is moving people in a certain direction that actually needs to be demonstrated with evidence and it's funny how God needs to be cagey about slavery but not other things to move people away from their sin I'll give you the last word conversation so it was for you if you want okay yeah sure um yeah so think about this is um within institutions like an institution for a culture right um that's why I mentioned uh veganism or capitalism things like that in communism is because with an institution it's not as easy as just like um I want you to zap everybody and make them believe or whatever right that is wrong it's like with Matt he thinks veganism is irrational he said ethical veganism so to convince him I'm not gonna say you know well you should stop today I'm gonna say you know what do you think about regulating this industry or whatever right this one for Matt says Ian asked me thanks for your question says how do you address claims that biblical slavery wasn't as bad as antebellum slavery or the original Hebrew also means servant and thus isn't slavery yeah so it doesn't matter how bad it was or wasn't it doesn't matter how bad it was compared to some other form of slavery um what the bible advocates is immoral and to kind of address the last little thing uh it's a ridiculous um hyperbolic exaggeration to suggest that I was suggesting that God needs to zap everyone into believing something or zap everyone into obeying something God can freely come forward and say slavery is immoral and human beings can still disobey that instruction it is absurd to suggest that the only option or the one that I'm suggesting is that God has to force people to believe or make people do stuff no God can make a list and say here's all the things that thou shalt not do and it hasn't stopped people from doing it yeah I mean it's the same thing I uh just to pardon my just so we can keep on moving because we've got so many conversa Joseph Gatto says thanks for your kind words Joseph your support and then raw nakedness says slavery of jews lasted seven or fifty years slavery for others was a chateau bondage that was inherited via the mother yeah is that for me yep yeah so that's the whole point that you know I was bringing out with this inheritance language that's why I brought it up from the beginning right um even with did around me chapter 32 excuse me the whole thing about um and Yahweh uh when he said that um but Jacob is my allotted inheritance right God's also called the inheritance of the Levi's he says that Jacob's his inheritance he um and so forth so the the word for inheritance there right and um it's not uh so to inherit to have somebody pass down his inheritance is to have them be a part of your family like I say just read the articles on households and so forth right and see that's just rhetoric like all you have to do is just prove me by an article or by a scholarship right like so for all the like people who think that doing like this is like an argument to defeat my position I just I agree it's not an argument it wasn't intended to be an argument but every now and then when somebody says something I can't help but react when you suggest that passing your slave down to your children makes them a part of your family that's humorous sorry just it's not an argument it doesn't mean he's wrong at all I completely agree with William I did not in any way prove he's wrong yeah 100% because I could say my snorted laughter yeah because the the scholarship that I cited in that um you know Dale Martin talks about this in his lectures uh Laura Colbert students articles you know they they just talk about the the household unit right so it was just a different time different institutions like you know employees are it's it's wrong to be an employee maybe in the grand narrative of morality but that it's not in this you know where we are or whatever so you got it and ace acco says would you have a problem if the if the bible said that you could beat a non-slave is that for me or that's probably for Matt right I I have a problem with the bible or anyone else suggesting that you can beat anybody yeah I was I was thinking it was for you converse oh for me I think so okay when I have one yeah I think what the questioner might be saying is like hey look Matt are you just upset about this um you know corporal punishment thing because it's of a slave like is it what if it's like a free person that's what I took but maybe I'm wrong about that and I can just answer well yeah I mean if the bible said that like for example you know it said you can you know it's fine to beat people or whatever when it also says things like uh treat your neighbors yourself and you know you reap what you sow and all these different things like well yeah I mean I would probably say that's not in the line with the rest of it or whatever slaves aren't neighbors by the way well then slaves aren't neighbors by the way they're not co-equal they don't have rights when the bible talks about your neighbors it's talking about brethren when in the old testament to the whatever extent there's neighbors it's fellow Hebrews which have different rules for how you treat them and in the new testament it's talking about fellow Christians well not not exclusively because sure for example in Leviticus chapter 25 it does say that um you know sojourners and foreigners you should treat as your as your neighbor yeah I mean it says specifically that they're um you should not you should treat the stranger in the sojourner you know as a member of your Hebrew clan over your um your group so yeah but they don't gain the rights that other Jews have that's talking about being nice to people that's not about what rights they have I want to jump well that's yeah that's kind of debated because like I said before like just looking at a passage and with uh 2021 goggles on it's it's different from like whenever you read for example the that Abraham talking about his servant and herring inheriting his stuff like how do you take that and go like well even those are not you know he was his slave he's like well how does he inherit all the stuff because he came to be part of his household and it says that he was the highest member of his household or whatever right and so there's just a different hierarchy back in those days it's great to be a slave this one coming in from Stacey Florez says guys what do you think about slave goods sold in America and modern slavery that more slaves now than ever exist including online porn do you think biblical slavery is worse than now and great debate to both of you I have no idea what the statistics are right now with regard to slavery I know some information about human trafficking both within the sex trade and elsewhere but um I couldn't really answer because I don't have the numbers but I'm opposed to slavery in all of its forms um and right up to the one that's advocated for in the bible um yeah so there there are still um I don't have the citation on me but um there's still at least okay I can't remember if it was a million or more slaves right still in the world today of course um that's going to be in countries where you know uh in in countries like Africa as well as like Asian countries but um probably the shirt that Matt's wearing came from slave labor probably his cell phone came from slave labor probably the majority of items in his house came from slave labor like I mean I can understand somebody saying like hey look that may be the case and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna try and limit the amount of things that I purchase that are based on that but um you know it's like are you uh promoting slavery because you're allowing for those items to come into your home you're paying your money for are you promoting it I mean I I don't know it's just uh you got it and we'll jump into the next one this one for me for Matt Jake C says you focus on the evil of quote owning another person on quote if the bible only advocated for imprisonment slash labor in the exact same conditions but without ownership would that make a big difference to you it would make a difference I'm not sure that it would make a big difference um I'm not opposed to imprisonment for actual crimes but we've learned better about prisoners of war that we don't make them slaves anymore and we've have I wish we had rules that get us past war I you know one of these days in some pie in the sky thing maybe um but I think we've learned a lot since you know since the ancient Israelites wrote this stuff um so while it would be better um I don't necessarily agree with it you got it I just remembered folks our guests are linked in the description so if you want to hear more from our guests we've got more questions but I do want to let you know while you're here our guests are linked in the description in case you want to hear more we really do appreciate them and always want to remind you in the old live chat or comments after want you to attack the arguments instead of the person as you really do appreciate our guests and Avery Steven says under the conditions of the bible would you own a slave converse contender and how many would you own okay yeah I would I would never I would never own this life of course not would you be a slave under the rules in the bible no of course not um I would never want to be a slave nobody should ever want to be a slave like so if you ask somebody I've heard you ask this question a lot of people and it's like like if you ask somebody like would you be a slave under ball block conditions it's like yeah of course not who would want to be a slave like it's always talked about as such a lowly bad thing, right? It's the bottom of society in every case. And so whenever somebody says somebody sells themselves in slavery, like their specific version, say, if your brother becomes poor enough to sell himself in slavery, you shall not treat him like this or that, blah, blah, blah. And so forth. Nobody would want to be a slave. But if, let's say I was in the Roman Empire or in the ancient Near East, and I was, you know, an equivalent of a felon at that point, right? And I was, you know, escaped from my country, and I want to sell myself to a country that I believe has a powerful god or something like that. You know, for example, well, if it's a household that I think will allow for mobility and stuff like that, at that time, I mean, that's just a wholly different context. It's not even close to be like, would you be the slave under those conditions? Of course not. You got this one coming in from, do appreciate it. By the way, folks, we have so many questions already that I've got to let you know if you're listening right now and you're hearing this, we cannot take any more new questions. We want to get our guests out of here on time. But this one coming in from Chris Gammon says both, what do you think was the very first ever justification for owning another human as property? What do you think is the root of slavery? Thanks. Great. Well, there, I mean, there's obviously a couple of different questions in that. It seems like I mean, when I was reading the Descent of Man the other day, I found it interesting that, you know, Darwin said something like, although there were, you know, good things that slavery, you know, had in the, that provided in the ancient world, it is a barbaric, volleyball institution, whatever. And I come to kind of disagree with him, even on that little menial thing, it's like, well, did it even have like an institution for, you know, that could even allow for anything good to come out of it? I mean, somebody could maybe make an argument that, oh, well, ants and slave, you know, aphids or whatever. So it's natural and blah, blah, blah, but that's still a lame argument because it's a naturalistic fallacy. It's still not normal. To answer that, I hate to put on my apologies to that, but many apologists, not you, have suggested that slavery was a good thing because these heathen from the areas around you were where slavery is what allowed them to be introduced to the one true God and therefore permitted them the possibility of salvation. Yeah, sure. That's Louis de Molina argued against that. He was one of the earliest of his time to argue against that where he said that that's a bad argument because all you're doing is trying to justify why you're enslaved in somebody and is their conversion really legitimate, right? God goes to people where they are and sees that they'll accept. Rahab, for example, was a Canaanite prostitute and she was justified by her faith and how she responded to God, for example. This one coming in from Lorenzo Borelli says Mark 1231, quote, and the second is like similar, namely this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than this. I'm not sure what they were getting at there by the review. That's definitely what Mark 1231 says. Yeah, I mean, if all they're saying is like, well, look, the Bible, you know, Christ is, you know, saying like, think about the splendor of the lilies in the field and think about how they're dressed and so forth and, you know, treat your neighbors yourself and all these things where he's, you know, basically making like out like, but, you know, you just have to understand the context of the New Testament is even different from the Ancient Aries, even though there's overlap. But the Second Temple Period guys were talking about war against Rome, like the Maccabees and so forth, and Jesus was kind of responding like, no, we don't need to be warring. So go ahead. I'm so sorry, Converse. It sounds, if you're able to just move slightly closer to the, to the mic, the only reason I'm giggling is nothing personal. It's just because someone is saying it sounds like ASMR. Is that the abbreviation? But anyway, this one coming in from Ando Med says, CC, if you were a new leader of a society that allowed slavery, would you abolish slavery or create rules to regulate it? Please explain your answer. Yeah. So I would, I would try to abolish it by regulation. So for example, I remember I used to talk to a Muslim, Muslim gentleman, before I was back a Christian. And I, he used to tell me about how Mohammed, when he first went to Medina or Mecca, I can't remember which one, the pagans, instead of making them stop drinking alcohol, like cold turkey, like you're done, he used over, he gave, he used it over a generation or something like that, right, for them to wing them off of it. So that's the same principle about the milk is to wing children off the milk until they can have solid foods, for example. That's the argument I gave earlier about the, about the drug addict and allowing for methadone, even if you think drug use is wrong, because it gets them, it's an improvement, basically. Sorry, go ahead. I have a, I'm having a mental error. I did read the one, did I just read this one on, if you were a new leader of a society that allows slavery? Oh, okay. Sorry about that. I'm bouncing back between the chat. Nadir Ahmed, in the chat, by the way, says, Matt Dillahunty, would you accept, I hate putting on the spot, Matt, but nobody loves a call out more than me. He says, would you accept a debate with me on the Islamic debate topic, quote, is the Quran scientifically wrong? Well, we don't have to put you on the spot, but I will say that sounds interesting. So anyway, Will Turman says, why did God allow the Bible to be so convoluted, Converse? Yeah, I mean, so that's kind of why I gave that whole thing from the beginning, which, and that's why I said, look, this might sound like blobeation, right? Like, and just irrelevant. But the reason is because people got ordered the world and he saw that it was good, right? Then he completed it with man kind, right? The man fell. The things that weren't allowed for previously, now we're starting to be allowed for because of their condition. So for example, me eating meat was allowed for, for example, right? The king was eventually allowed for Christine Hayes has a lecture series where she does this where she goes through all of the it's not the electric series is a different where she goes through all these different things that is said that like, oh, you don't need a king, you don't this isn't something that you need, this isn't good, whatever. And it is eventually allowed for just to come back and say like they don't need a king or whatever. You got it. Then this one, Nadir Ahmed as well says Atheist have let's see. Okay, smack talk. Radcrab says contender does it by chance feel awkward trying to rationalize the endorsement of slavery while being white? Because I would never try and rationalize the endorsement of slavery. Like that's, I don't, that's not what I'm doing. In fact, I'm saying that the people who the people who were, you know, back in those times were so barbaric, right? That like Christ said, because of the hardness of their hearts, they had certain laws given to them, just to just because of how barbaric they were, for example. And so I would never try to rationalize slavery or something like that. You got it. And then being white, one more thing about that is being white has nothing to do with it, right? Like, so for example, Frederick Douglass talked about Christians who were fake for, for endorsing slavery. And then the other thing is like, that's the genetic fallacy, right? To say like, oh, well, why should a man get to speak about abortion? Or why should white people get to speak about slavery? Or why should, you know, it's like turning around to say, oh, should black people not be able to speak on white issues? Of course not. That's just a genetic fallacy. So I'm coming in for the next year. Oh, sorry, I was just gonna say, and to be credit, Converse did say that he would try to eliminate slavery by time limiting it, which is more than what the Bible did, not quite as much as I would do. So this one coming in from Nadir. Oh, we got that one. John, this one for you, for you, Matt, I think this must be, they don't say it, but they say Exodus 21, 16. I'm guessing they just want your opinion on it. They say, quote, whoever steals a man and sells him, anyone and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death. Yeah, that's about stealing a man. It's not about slavery. You could be stealing a slave, you could be stealing a free person and then trying to sell them into slavery. That's about trafficking in humans illegally. This is outside the law. You can traffic in humans legally because it says you shall buy your slaves from the heathen that surrounds you, even talks about prices for some of them. So that passage in 21, 16 is about man stealing. And even in antebellum slavery, man stealing was still illegal. You couldn't go steal somebody else's slaves. You got it. It's not a verse against slavery. This one coming in from, appreciate your question. Karag Nightwolf says, does the Bible promote slavery? The Christian says no, yet Ephesians six, five says slaves obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear, serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. Converse. Okay, sorry. Ephesians six, five, right? That verse is used throughout multiple letters in the New Testament. It's used by Paul multiple times. It's also used by, I want to say, Peter. As pointed out by, I told you, I said this earlier, like about Tom Holland, did a talk about this where he talks about the treatment and the time period. So a servant that, you know, was having something really bad done to them, for example, right? But they weren't able to free themselves, right? Because they, like, they might have been a criminal to out on a debt, or they might have been whatever the case, right? And so when Paul says free yourself, if you can, but if not, you know, obey your masters, whatever, he's saying that, like, look, this isn't going to reflect on you morally. This isn't something that's going to, you know, you're actually like trying to do this act or whatever. But, you know, if I'm, if I'm, you know, if he's wrong about that, you know, feel free to let me know. You got it. And thank you very much for this question. Dan Shire says, so God rain fire and brimstone because people sinned and wiped out humans in a flood, but he needs to quote unquote ease us out of slavery to avoid chaos. Yeah. So for example, with the verse given about Sodom and Gomorrah, this Genesis chapter 19, Abraham specifically argues in like, how, hey, if there are righteous people there, you're going to destroy the city. And he argues and down to 10 people, are there righteous people there, you're going to destroy the city. And God says, no, for the sake of the righteous people went on to destroy the city. And then he destroys it. So if you're going to say that, like, so like the, the, if you're God and you're using people to bring about the seed or the savior, right, then, okay, well, let's just destroy them. Well, no, right? Because the goal is to get to the seed. But in the meantime, as Paul says, because of transgressions, add a regulation or a law to the, to limit their sin. Gotcha. I am still seeing people in the chat saying it's hard to hear you if you're able to just move closer to the mic further yet. Sorry, I'm not sure. This one really close. And John Yen says, in a fallen world, there is slavery. So God regulates it. But there's also murder, theft and covening. Yet those are just straight up prohibited instead of being regulated. Why? Well, when it says the covetedness, right, for example, list the servants with it says, don't covet the, the servants of your neighbors, right? You know, so that's in with that one, for example. The, what was the other part? I'm sorry, they said, given that there's theft and murder and all these things, those are straight up prohibited. And so why is it that slavery isn't also straight up prohibited rather than regulated? Yeah, so for example, Abraham was allowed to, he lied about his wife. Other, I mean, there are many things that were allowed for Jacob was obviously not a great person. He done many things like soul than the birthright or the inheritance right from his older brother, for example, and so forth. Like God did allow for all these things in their time, right? But, but yeah, by the time they come out of Egypt and they had been under the Egyptians for 400 or something years or whatever, right? That's like if we were under American capitalism for what not even 300 years, but if you were to try and come in now and regulate capitalism by saying, stop it today, like you can't just do that because the whole economy would just collapse and people, I mean, it'd be terrible. So you have to regulate it. Cassian says, Converse, how is quoting the actual book that you're supposed to be debating about rhetoric? I'm really confused with your argument here. Matt, let's see, they said, I'm a huge fan and see, they said, thanks for keeping it on topic. But Converse will give you a chance to respond on how is quoting the actual book you're supposed to be debating, rhetoric? Yeah, good, good question. So I hear, so people will quote Abraham Lincoln saying something like, Well, if slavery is not immortal, I don't know what it is. Then they'll quote him by saying, Oh, yeah, well, what about when he said, if I could free something like if I could free the slaves and not outlaw slavery, I would do it or something like that, right? Well, say that I say that I hate drugs, right? But I'm a libertarian and say that I were to say in one of my writings, if I could get people to stop doing drugs, but allow it to be legal steel, so that people have the freedom to do it or not, you know, and then they say, Oh, so you're for drug use? Well, no, obviously, it's the that's why I gave the meta narrative, because it's not the verse itself. It's not that Abraham Lincoln said that, Oh, if I could outlaw slavery without without outlawing, if I could, you know, get people to stop doing it or whatever. Oh, so he's he likes the institution of slavery. People use that argument. Well, of course not. Right? It's just, you know, people that so, you know, I mean, I think it works in the same way with with this argument. You got it. This one coming in from Dylan Proster says, for CCD, you believe that God is omn, omnie everything and that the Bible is inerrant. And thanks so much, Matt, for doing this debate. Yeah, so I'm I'm a malinist, right? So I think that God takes less than perfect people and he has a plan that bring about the Messiah, for example. So he knew that that the Messiah would come about under these certain, you know, situations or whatever, right? And so, yeah, you got it. Thanks so much. This one comes from DMACC. This is a new one. Can you read Revelation 1813 and explain please? So Revelation 1813, technically the verse itself. So I have to look up the verse right before it. But it says cinnamon, spice and so on, as well as chariots and slaves. That is human souls. And let me kind of bounce back to the verse right before it. What was it? 18 what? 1813. I'll give you a chance to, when I pulled it up, it actually locked me into that specific verse. But I think they want the context of it read too. This one coming in from, I'll give you a chance to look it up. But I do want to read the next question just so we keep moving because we've got a lot. This one coming in from DMACC says, well, actually, let me give you a chance to actually find that. Let's see if we have one for Matt. We can skip past 1813 because the word translated as slaves, there's actually soma, which is just about a body or a soul. It means it would be like a person. Gotcha. Thanks for that. And then Will also has a question for you said, Matt, do the commandments of thou shalt not kill nor steal nor covet not entail the moral issues for slavery? Nope, they don't. And I address this and I'll do it really quickly. And that is specific rules override general rules because thou shalt not kill doesn't in any way prohibit the Bible from commanding you to kill over and over and over and over and over and over again as punishment and penalties. Go therefore and slaughter these people. Go therefore and slaughter these people. If you have an unruly child taken before the judges and, you know, then kill them, stone them to death. A general rule, thou shalt not kill or thou shalt not murder, which murders only a legal transgression, can be overrided by a specific rule. So thou shalt not, I'm not sure which of the 10 commandments, which would even loosely be interpreted as being in opposition to slavery. But it's not a specific prohibition against slavery. You got it. This one coming in from Thathaly and Guy. Let me know if I've pronounced it right. Thanks for your question. It says throughout the Bible, God has no problem telling people what he thinks is evil, such as other religions or people having sexual relations with their own sex. And why isn't slavery on the list converse? You know, well, along with those same people in Timothy, it does list slave traders. Now, one thing I want to say, though, is this is that you could you could convince me that the Bible promotes slavery. And I'm going to tell you how I'm just going to give you the standard. You have to have a solid term annuity, though, throughout scripture. So when you come up to things like Paul saying, like, Hey, look, if you can free yourself so forth and like all these things right about the law being a burden and slavery and a yoke on your neck. And, you know, we're free from that. We got our freedom in Christ. And he came to set us free from the law. All these things, it was added to the transgressions. When you read Christ and you say when he says, you know, something like, well, you were given, you know, the law about divorce because of the hardness of your heart, for example, so forth, all these things. And then he talks about Eiffel and it's for two, it's from the Old Testament and says, but I say this, if you can give me a hermeneutic where you can read because this is an internal critique of the Bible. So if you can give me a hermeneutic where you can read everything all the way through and read all those verses and then say, yeah, but it still says this in Leviticus, like, I need to know how to, you know, internally view all those other verses. You got it. And this one coming in from J.T. Alastair says in Deuteronomy 20, 10 through 18, God commands the Israelites to enslave the people of far away cities. He doesn't just allow it. He commands it. Now what? Converse contender. So can you give me the verse again? They said in Deuteronomy 20, 10 through 18. While you look it up, I do want to remind you, our guests are linked in the description, folks, and that includes at the podcast. If you didn't know, we do have a podcast, and you can find our guest links in the description box for each podcast debate episode as well. So we highly encourage you, if you're listening via podcast right now, you can find Matt or Converse's links down in the description when you're listening via podcast as well. Go ahead, Converse. Okay, so this says that, well, can you read them one time? Because I wanted to hear specifically how he said the first part of it. They said in Deuteronomy 20, 10 through 18, God commands the Israelites to enslave the people of far away cities. He doesn't just allow it. He commands it. Okay, he doesn't just allow it. He commands it, right? All right. So it says, for example, sorry, just my left front door. Nope. It says in verse 10, when you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably, and it opens up to you, then all the people who are found in there shall be your laborers for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, wage war against them and you shall beseech it. And so if you're just saying that like, oh, he commands that you have to, that this is, you have to do slave, have them as your slaves, right? This is the same thing that happened in every case of war, even up until modern times, right? After World War I, Germany owed a million dollars to Europe and had to work to pay off that debt. Same thing after all the wars, right? When you war, you have to expend, if you just look up the amount of horses and the amount that they take to eat per day by the ton and all the other things, to go up against somebody in war is not a cost efficient thing. So whoever you're fighting, you're battling against or whatever is going to, yeah. So that's the same thing that happened with Germany and other countries of course. So strange. I mean, I haven't had a question a bit, but you said that you give us a standard for proving it. And you wanted a solid hermeneutic that would allow you to read through the whole Bible and then go back and say, but it still says this in Leviticus. I think I could give that easily where not a jot or total of the law will change where Jesus is the primary and not Paul. Let God be true and every man a liar. Every bit of scripture is useful for instruction. But somebody just pointed out, and I skipped past Deuteronomy 20 because I didn't even view that as a direct command to enslave. And so here's a passage where the Bible actively promotes in the sense of instructing someone to enslave somebody else. And your response isn't, well, clearly the Bible promotes slavery. Your response is, ah, this is what happened in every war. After all, we need to feed our horses. Wars are expensive. All of that is irrelevant. All of those are red herrings to whether or not the Bible promotes slavery in those passages. Yeah. So, um, all right. So number one is, I don't know what that had to do with the hermeneutical principle to, you know, go all throughout scripture, right? But the second thing is that it's, you know, if you're warring with the city, if you're just going to say that, like, when Moses tells them here that to offer peace terms, and if it opens up to you, you know, then they're allowed to be your laborers, then, um, and they shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, then war against them, then are you just saying that, like, oh, well, you know, we shouldn't have done this in modern times and we shouldn't have. No, I'm saying the Bible promotes slavery. That is a passage that promotes slavery. And you, rather than acknowledging it promotes slavery, you're just like, well, this is what happened in war. Nobody cares if it's what happens in war. Nobody cares why it happened. It's irrelevant why it happened. It's irrelevant if it happened all the time. The subject of this debate is does the Bible promote slavery and you just read verses that expressly promote slavery and you waved it away with another red hermeneut. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Right. Yeah. So first, I don't see how it's a red herring, but second of all, um, when you have, well, what, how is that a red herring? A red herring is when you cite something irrelevant to distract from the fact. The fact is that passage promotes slavery. I ask a question. The fact is that I'm telling you what a red herring is. Do you want to know? No, you don't. I'm telling you where you're wrong. I specifically said, are you saying this and then you clarified. Just to be sure we get to hear from each of you. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I'm done. Okay. So whenever you said, whenever I, all I did was ask you, oh, sorry, you saying that this in modern times, blah, blah, blah. And you said, no, if I ask you to clarify, that's not a red herring by definition. You said that what I say, you said, I don't understand how it's a red herring or what, or what a red herring is. And I went to explain it to you and then you told me, you know, well, if somebody says, here's a verse that promotes slavery and you say, yeah, but that's what happened in wartime. That's a red herring because your response is completely irrelevant to whether or not the Bible promotes slavery, which was the point of the argument. Your response is about why it promotes slavery, which is an admission that it does. No. So when we say this is about slavery, we're, yeah, when we say this is about slavery, we're not saying, can you find a verse that says that, you know, that this is something that you can do instead of saying and saying that does the Bible as a whole, right? Does the Bible promote slavery as something good to be practiced? When you say that, oh, it, promotion. That's not the subject of debate. That is the dishonest refraining. Well, let me finish. When you say promotion is just like, oh, it's just like, well, you know, allowing for it to happen or whatever. No, promotion is actively encouraging the thing to be as good. You don't promote something that's wrong. That's not true. This one coming in from, we only have two more questions. Wizard of Rabaz says, tacit consent is kind of equal to endorsing converse. What are your thoughts? Sorry, what was it equal? They said it's equal to endorsing or, well, technically, that's exactly sharing it verbatim. That's what they said. It's endorsing. What, I'm sorry. I didn't get the first part. What is equal to endorsing? Tacit consent is equal to endorsing, they're saying. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm not arguing against that, right? When I talked to Josh the other day, his book says, did the Bible endorse slavery? And we went through it and we talked about it all the passages and things. I said by endorsement, you mean something like it allows for it. I've already stated that. I think that it allows for the institution, but it regulates it in a way to say, hey, look, this and usury, those, it says, you shall not do this, I'm the Lord your God. And it tries to regulate moral things, right? When the ancient Near Eastern Laws were not treated as if they were like, you know, the way that people treat them today. And Christina Hayes and others are pointing this out. But yeah, I just don't think endorsement, that's not what I'm arguing that the topic of the debate is, does the Bible actually promote it? Yeah, does the Bible promote slavery? Not does the Bible promote slavery is something good? I'm promoting you and this channel by agreeing to come here and do this debate. That does not mean that I'm saying you are good or the channel is good. But I definitely promoted it by saying, yes, I will agree to allow this under certain conditions. That is a valid use of the term promote. And for you to suggest that you are only modeling one particular version of promote with a couple of extra words on it is a dishonest treatment of this entire subject. No, so let me see the question for me. Let me end on this. All right. Number one is whenever you you say that, oh, whenever I come on here, I'm promoting it. If I go on to somebody's show that I don't like and I don't want them to have more views, for example, but I go on just to show them the wrong, for example, I'm not promoting their show. The promotion I got two definitions here is one says activity that supports and provides active encouragement for the furtherance of a cause or venture. And then second, the public publicization of a product organization or venture so as to increase its sales or public awareness. This is exactly what you do when you go on a channel, you are furthering their channel. Because if you say no, when everybody else says no, their content dries up. Promotion does not require what you think it requires. And this is a dodge. Yeah, that just sounds like a semantic dispute about the secondary usage of it's funny that you want to make it a semantic thing, because literally the overwhelming majority of people who will ever watch this debate will understand that you are the one who are trying to through a semantic technicality claim victory while denying what the Bible flatly says about slavery. You can't win a debate. I don't believe in that. On the notion of winning a debate either, but I think you can absolutely throw one away. This just proves it. If a communist works in a capitalist society and I say you're promoting capitalism, they're just going to look at me and say, why aren't you using promotion in that way? Because it's true. It's true. This is coming in from last question. Altavira 1, thank you very much, says what biblical instruction is direct abolitionist? But Congress, I'm not sure if you take that position. We'll give you a chance to respond. Sorry, I didn't. Can you repeat it? They said what biblical instruction or verse is directly abolitionist? Directly abolitionist. Well, for example, the letter of Philemon, take Anesimus back no longer as a slave, but as a brother. Paul writes, he starts all by telling Philemon that, hey, look, I know you're a good guy and all, but accordingly, though, I am bold enough to command you in Christ to do what is required. But I'm going to tell you as a Paul, as an old man, that's now a prisoner, and I appeal to you for my child, Anesimus, whose father I became, my imprisonment, formerly was useless to you, but now I'm sending you back, who's used to both of us and so forth. And he even says like, look, I'm going to send it to you. I don't want you to make this decision because I'm making you, I want you to make this decision on your own. And I know you'll do that and more. Yeah. And as I noted in my opening, that's Paul asking for the release of a friend that has nothing to do with the abolition of slavery, not remotely in the slightest. Let's not pretend like it's the beginning of the Underground Railroad. Literally, that was in my opening. Yeah, I think that's dishonest. I'll tell you why. This is, well, let me just tell you why. I'm listening. I can't help with my laugh at things that are ridiculous. That's fine. I want you to listen to the rationale first. The rationale is Paul met him in prison. He's not Paul's friend that he's been hanging out with for years. He met him in prison and he found out that he's an Anesimus slave. Oh, I know Anesimus. He's a friend of mine. I'll write him a letter and tell him to take you back no longer as a slave since now you're a brother in Christ. So that's just, I don't get that. That has nothing to do with the abolition of this institution of slavery. It's still about an acquaintance of Paul's an individual and not an institution. And yet you want to call me dishonest. Okay. Well, you specifically said this was one of his friends and now you're saying acquaintance. You don't think they were friends after being in prison? You don't think that you don't think that after being in prison and saying, I would like you to treat, I would like my other friend to treat this person as a brethren and not as a slave. You don't think that's the thing a friend would do? I mean, talk about picking myths. In order to just win a point, you're going to suggest that Paul wasn't friends with whatever. It doesn't matter. I'm the one grasping at straws here. Yeah. You're the one that said that this guy that Paul met in prison, well, they were friends. It's like, well, I'm pretty sure that if you advocate for the release of someone, if I tell one of my friends, hey, let this other guy stop being a slave, that counts as an act of a friend. But if you want to keep picking myths about the definition of promoting and whether or not somebody was a friend, I will let you continue to embarrass yourself. I'll let the audience judge. Me too. We will also say audience, my dear friends, whether you be atheist, Christian, agnostic, you name it, we are glad you are here. We hope you feel welcome and our guests are linked in the description. We really do appreciate them. So I want to say a huge thank you. Once again, Matt and Converse, it has been a true pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for hanging out with us tonight. It's been a blast. Thanks much. Thanks for having me. I'll be back in just a moment with a post-credits scene to let you know about upcoming debate, folks. So stick around and thanks again to our guests. It's been a great one. My dear friends, look at my face. Do you see how happy I am? Well, I want to say it has been a lively one. It has been a fun one. We love it. You know, these guys are passionate. Don't worry. I'm going to shrink this. You don't want to see this close up of my mug, but I do want to say we do appreciate our guests so much that it absolutely was lively. And that's what we appreciate is that these are passionate guys. And so I really do want to say thanks again to Matt and to Converse. And you guys, I am just thrilled. It's honestly been such a fun time doing this channel. And we are just getting started. In terms of modern day debate, we have a lot of big plans, my friends, in particular. Let me tell you about a couple of them right now. One is we are excited to host more Muslim versus atheist debates. A lot of people have let us know in addition to, don't get me wrong, Christian versus atheist is fun. But a lot of people have been telling me, hey, we really do enjoy the Muslim versus atheist debates. And so that's something we really do want to have more of. That feedback helps us a lot and want to say we are glad you are here, no matter what walk of life you're from. Whether you be atheist, whether you be Muslim, whether you be Christian, thank you so much for hanging out with us. And thank you for giving us the opportunity to try to serve you through this neutral platform as it is our goal to have a platform that is fair to everybody and that my dear friends, no matter what walk of life you are from, whether you be Christian, atheist, black, white, gay, straight, trans, you name it, my dear friends, politically, you might be conservative, you might be liberal, you might be a Biden backer, a Trump supporter, whatever it is, we are glad you are here. And we really are serious with this idea of having a true eclectic mix of people and want to say it varies. Well, first let me, before I go on and on, I want to say first let me say hi to you in the chat. I do love getting to say hi to you personally in the live chat as I see your names pop up as you're chatting. So thanks for saying hi and being involved in the live chat. Wizard of Fervazga to see you as well as Mac D and Auger as well as Sadie Marie Jones and Ender Wigan. Also Christian pride glad you were here as well as white girl with Instagram black screen. I don't know what that means but we're glad you're here as well as Baldiablo and search for truth and ACCO is the CEO for Colorado. Did you know I live in Colorado? I always get excited when you have because I saw Colorado biker was here earlier. He, I actually got to meet him in person, which is fun. And so I do love getting to meet people that we get to see in the live chat and then getting to meet in real person. And I have to tell you we are excited about a huge conference. We are, the pieces are moving in place. You know, it's technically still brainstorming, but we are very serious about it. A huge in-person debate conference in January. We are brainstorming on how we can do this, where we would do it, what debates we would have, which guess it is going to be huge though. And so I hopefully, maybe I'll get to meet you there as well. If a lot of viewers, for example, Chris Gammon and others are actually living in Texas. And so we probably will do it in Texas. It's still, like I said, being decided, but want to say hello, Benjamin Springer as well as what is truth. Thanks for coming by as well as Amanda. Glad you are here. Thanks for your support. Seriously, it means a lot, Amanda. And thanks, Brooks Sparrow, as well as the other mods. Hannah, we do appreciate all of you. And so thanks for being here as well as Pyro, Adam Baum. Thanks for coming by. We are glad you're with us as well as Daryl Frost. And Oliver Katwell, good to see you again. Says there always seems to be some tense passion when Matt is debating, but always enjoyable. I enjoyed as well. And that's true. Matt is a passionate guy. And I know that Converse sounded like he didn't sound passionate because I don't know. He didn't tell me, but I'm guessing there was maybe somebody like in the next room above him or next door that was trying to sleep or something. I don't know. I know that he's in a time zone east of me. So it's later. It's 9 p.m. for me in mountain time. For Matt, it's 10 if I remember right. Yeah, that's right. And then Converse, I think is Eastern. So it might have been 11 p.m. by the end of this. So, but yes, we do appreciate both of our guests' passion, even though, like I said, it seems like maybe you're like, is he passionate? It's like an ASMR session. Why is, by the way, why do people get a rise out of the idea of ASMR? Is ASMR just where you like whisper and you talk to people and just like, Hey, everybody, that, or is there some sort of like weird sexual thing about it? I didn't, I don't know if there is. I don't, I don't suggest there is, but for some reason, when you bring up ASMR, people, it like gets a rise out of people. David Frisken, and that was not, okay. David Frisken glad to see you as well as Milk Bone. Thanks for coming by as well as Filipino Skeptic and Matt C. Thanks for coming by and Lewis Giles. Thanks for coming by. I see you there in the old chat saying hello as well as, hold on, well, the chat's moving fast. Says, let's see. Didn't I see, oh, that said, let's see. Great show. I completely agree and all credit to the guests. We do appreciate them as well as Fox, popularize, to smash that like button, everybody. And I couldn't agree more. Do smash the like button. And I also have to tell you about this. You might be listening right now and you're like, you know what? I like this debate. I didn't get to catch all of it. James, is there a way that I can hear all of it? And you know, you might be thinking, if you're like me, I only have limited data. So when I'm like driving around, for example, I actually don't use too much data. I try not to. The reason being is if I can download something, I'll just listen to it that way. And that way, I'm not using my data because I think it's like, I know you got three gigs a month, four. I can't remember. I think it's three. But long story short, you might be wondering, can I listen to this another way? Well, here's one you can is we have our podcast and I'm putting it in the live chat. So that way, right now, you can click on it. I'm pinning it to the top of the chat. And we always put our debates, including this one on the podcast within 24 hours of the show. So that's really important is you might be thinking like, Hey, it'd be kind of cool to listen to this. And I only caught the last half. How can I listen to it? And like, well, you know, tomorrow morning, we'll already have it on there before noon. That's for sure. My goal. And that way you could listen to it that way. Hey, I muted myself. Very embarrassing is that we are encouraged, though, that so many people have said, Hey, I listen to the podcast while I'm cleaning, while I'm working out, while I'm all sorts of things. Bob, when he goes to the beach, side show, he tells me he's, he actually sometimes listens to it while he's on the beach. Lucky son of a gun lives in Florida, gets to go to the beach and listen to the modern day debate. Now that's, that's tremendous. Good for him. Cause I love listening to my favorite podcast and I can't complain. I like where I live, but Florida has always kind of been maybe my, my ideal spot, but that's my bias. But bubblegum gun. Good to see you as well as get real and can be glad you're back and Ethan Steinberg. Thanks for coming by as well as high inquisitor. Good to see you there. Shaggy Rogers. Glad you were with us as well as our Vacker, Al Sidir. Thanks for coming by and David Slott. We are glad you're here. It says, do you ever do any live debates in Colorado? I live in Denver. Oh, small world, David. We do plan on, my hope is to host one at Colorado state next spring. No joke. So right here in Fort Collins and that would be a lot of fun where it's still like there's a lot of planning that would have to be done. I would guess it would maybe be in March. If we do it, that would be a blast. And so it keep, you know, you know, keep an eye out in case it happens because it's still something that's like, I've reached out to a group to say, Hey, do you want to like collaborate and to make this happen? And they have said yes, but now we've got, there's so many details to work out. But so thanks for letting me know that glad you're in Denver. Beautiful. And John Yen, good to see you as well. And Dharma defender where you're glad you were here as well as Corey Springer. Thanks for coming by. And Corey Springer and Benjamin Springer. Are you guys related Corey and Benjamin? Are you guys brothers in the live chat? But let's see. And we can glad you're here as well as doubting Thomas and Chris Gammon says, Thanks, James. Thanks, mods. Thanks, both debaters. Debate was mega dank. It certainly was mega dank. It was juicy. It was fun. And Lorraine Drosophila. Let me know if I pronounce this right. We were glad you were here Lorraine. Thanks for coming by as well as Adam Elbilia. Good to see you again. It's like, yeah, it's like MACD. Thanks for your kind words. Super encouraging. I just saw that in the chat. Thanks for your that means a lot. And here we are. Thanks for coming by as well as what is truth. See has says, Hello, modern debate. Hope your day is going well. Thanks for that. And yeah, we are excited though, the links as I mentioned for the podcast. My friends, you might be like, well, I don't want to click on the links. Well, maybe you want to do it this way. You could consider pull out. I just this way it's convenient. And this way, if you were like, I kind of want to listen to modern day debate podcast. But do I want to look it up? And like, do I want to take the trouble to find it? If you're like me, I like breaking things in pieces, you know, I like to make it easy on myself. So what you could do is right now open up your favorite podcast app. I just opened up my favorite podcast app, which is podcast addict. And now you can see it looked right there in the middle, the middle logo on my phone. That is the modern day debate logo. You can click on that bad boy and then there it is. Now you can see, oh my goodness, all these debates waiting for you right there. So go ahead and pull it out right now is I'm telling you guys, I'm excited that people have found it useful that we've gotten positive view that it's so encouraging. So thanks for that positivity. Thanks for that encouragement. And then counterintuitive, good to see you as well as Max St. Arlin. Glad you are with us as well as Matt C and Dufryk, as well as Jesse Chappell. Is it Jesse Chappell or it's Jesse Chappell? Let me know. Pepper talks, I see you there in the live chat. Good to see you. And hey, the twitch chat, pardon my delay, Brooke Sparrow, good to see you as well as Surgeon General 777. And Nicholas Kato Strode, thanks for coming by. Thanks for that heads up about it being muted too. Surgeon General, good to see you and Brooke Sparrow. I am excited though, you guys. It is encouraging and we got to give you all the credit. You guys make this channel fun. Really, you really do. You make it fun. You guys have been such a supportive community as we are pumped that within three years, it's been fun to grow to 55,000 and within the next couple of days, 56,000 and we are determined. We're on a march by the end of this year to get beyond 60,000 subscribers and then by the end of 2022 to get beyond 100,000 subscribers. We are absolutely determined. We are absolutely optimistic, enthusiastic about pursuing the vision of providing a level playing field so that everybody has their chance to make their case on a neutral platform. That is our goal and our goal is also to be YouTube's kind of most respected neutral platform that people say, hey, that platform will give you a fair shake no matter what your position. Someday we want it to be the case that maybe Mr. Beast and PewDiePie are debating on Twitter and they say, you know what, let's take this to video. Is there someone who would be a third party who could moderate for us who's known for being fair? Our goal is that people would know us so well in the YouTube world that they would respond and tweets with our handle over and over and over saying, hey, modern day debate is a fair channel. They'll give you a fair shake. We will get there. It's not just an idea. That is the vision we're pursuing and we're going to get there and we want to say thank you for making that possible. Thank the debaters for making that possible. We're determined and we have these values, common shared values that no matter what walk of life we are from. Christian, atheist, Muslim, you name it. Everybody wants the deep questions of life discussed on a level playing field. They want it to be fair and so that is absolutely important to us. That's one of our core values that we stick to and we always will stick to and that's why we have said we will never put out a video, for example, that says like, oh man, look at how this person just had such terrible arguments or, oh wow, this person was such a jerk or you know, that's not our style. Our style is we always want to be neutral, objective and I'll be honest. We're not perfect. We are sometimes we do have a bias. That's true. But the fact that we're willing to admit it and be open to saying, hey, hold us accountable. Call it out if you say if you think that we're looking like we're trying to show favorites, call us out because that is a good thing that helps us to actually stick to that value knowing that there's that accountability where we're going to strive for objectivity even though you know we are human and so it won't be perfect in small ways. We might have biases but like I said, we are happy to have people call us out and we want to acknowledge it because there's something that for me, I'm just like, I'm not going to sit up here and be like, oh no, no, no, like we're fully neutral. We never show a bias like no, we probably do, maybe subconsciously or something, kind of you or I have a preference or something. So that's something that we want to eliminate and the only way you can eliminate it is if you first admit it's there, right? Because if you don't think it's there, you're not going to try to eliminate it because you don't think it exists. And so that for us is important. Another value we want everybody to feel welcome. We really do and we hope your day is made better by this channel. We really do mean that is that we have these shared beliefs, these shared morals in the sense that like I said, we want everybody to be treated fairly and we really do want to be a community that supports people, that people would say, hey, I actually feel like there's an emotional connection here where actually people care about me. I remember this is back in January and it still sticks with me is that a woman had mentioned in the live chat after a debate, I think maybe it was even after a debate where we had Matt on back in January where a woman had mentioned that that day her father had passed away, which is obviously heartbreaking for her beyond heartbreaking. And for us, it was so sad to hear because we thought, oh my gosh, it's got to be so hard. And we wanted to support her and we tried to offer, but I was so glad that she felt comfortable and that she felt supported from from because people in the chat were responding with support to her. They didn't know what her position was. They didn't know if she was Christian, if she was atheist, they but they were still nonetheless like, hey, I'm so sorry to hear that it was such a bad day. That is like, I mean, that's putting it lightly. We said we were so sorry to hear about that and our hearts go out to you. And so that for us is we do want to appeal again, like we have this shared value that we can appeal to each other and saying, hey, we really do want to care for people regardless of what walk of life they're from. We want to strive for something greater than just tolerating somebody. We might say, hey, tolerating somebody, that's the first step. And it's only the first step. We really want to be kind to people who disagree with us. And to say, hey, somebody disagrees with me, it's not going to be certainly not the first time. It won't be the last time. It is going to be so common. But nonetheless, we're going to rise above it and say, you know what, we can nonetheless treat each other well and not hold a grudge over it, not think of each other as enemies. And I do want to encourage you to do that, my dear friends. And I know a lot of you already do a fantastic job of that. And a lot of you are like, well, you know, I'm working on it and great job on working on it. That's encouraging because we really do want to support you. And speaking of you guys that you know, I've said this before, always want to encourage you any sort of lack of forgiveness, any sort of resentment or anger that you have somebody towards somebody. Remember, it's not hurting them. It's only going to hurt you striving to let go of that. And it doesn't mean you have to forget it. But sometimes I've heard people say, but if I forgive them, I feel like I'm saying what they did was okay. Sometimes they're like that, you know, so I can't forgive them because I know it wasn't okay. And it's like, but think about it. It really isn't that you're saying that what they did was okay. In fact, it obviously implies that what they did, that you recognize that it's wrong. Because you wouldn't say I forgive you if someone didn't do wrong to you. So for example, someone come up to you and they say, hello, glad to meet you. And you said, Hey, hi, I, you know, I'm James and I forgive you. And they're like, what? Like, why would you forgive me? I haven't done anything wrong. So to forgive someone means automatically, necessarily, it means that you actually recognize what they did was wrong. And so that's something that can kind of remind yourself is that you're not saying it's okay, but you are letting go of any sort of that resentment or anger. And it's like I said, you don't want to hold on to that. Don't let it eat you alive from the inside, my friends. But our Vakar, Alicid, you're good to see you as well as Frank Dorado says, Hey, all glad you made it Frank, we're glad you're here. And then thanks for your super chat messing around says James, you're an inspiration to act in good faith. Thanks for your kind words. Seriously, that's super encouraging. And I so it means a lot. It means more than you know, really. So thank you. And I am excited. I'm encouraged. You guys helped me to grow in so many ways. And I'm very serious about that in terms of kind of the philosophies that we get to encounter here or here here. Too many years is it's so helpful to me to get to kind of rub all those people all walks of life. And that's something we've said is like ideologically, as well as whether it be black, white, gay, straight, you name it. We're glad you're here. We really do want it to be based on paraphrasing in a very like non in a very like a very paraphrased way because I can't remember the exact wording verbatim. But namely that we Dr. Martin Luther King had said, looking at people based on their character, rather than things of like, are you, you know, you're a Christian, you're an atheist, huh? Okay, like, instead saying, Hey, like, I know you are, but like, I want to give you a chance and I've got to tell you some of the friends that some of the better friends I've ever had have been people in my life who were different walks of life, you know, totally disagreed on all sorts of things. But nonetheless, they are some of my most loyal, helpful friends. And then Lenio Barcelos says, modern day debate is a great representation of the First Amendment being practiced. Thank you for that. Seriously, that's encouraging. And then Darth Revan says, start doing what moderators do and check all guests to no matter who they are when they break the rules you establish. I agree. And if there's anybody breaking the rules that we haven't held accountable in the chat, let me know. We do want to do that. And so, but thank you very much. Let's see, I'm trying to catch up with the chat. It's moving fast. Thanks for your support hand or, well, thanks, Brooke and Hannah to in a row saying smash that like button. And I would encourage you please do smash that like button is it does help the channel. And so if you want to do a good D today, maybe you're thinking, Did I do a good D today? It's the end of the day. And I'm wondering, Did I do one? Maybe you did. Well, hey, why not do another? If you hit that like button, it does help us as we pursue the vision that we had said, Oh, providing a neutral platform so that everybody can make their case on a level playing field discussing these deep questions of life. And so, Justin A, good to see you as well as Sadie Marie. Thanks for your kind words and support. And amazing. Let's see here. Hi, inquisitor says calling you out on flat earth debates. I mean, really juicy. And we do have some flat earth debates coming up. It never ends. And then Darth Revan says, you do need to work on your moderation skills. A moderator's job is to stop needless discussion or banter in the debate, which you do not or which you do not do. You allow insults to fly unchecked. Yeah, you know, in some cases, I'm going to disagree on what a moderator's purpose is. And so it's the same way that people often just disagree on like the purpose of a YouTube channel itself. And so we are pretty hands off in terms of we don't want to restrict what the guests can say too much. Now, you know that everybody has a degree of like where we would draw the line in the sense that some people would say, you know, I'm going to draw the line of someone like, you know, says if they look at somebody funny, they're like, okay, well, we're not obviously going to do that. I know that you're not advocating for that. But I'm saying that there are some people that are honestly borderline like that. And then there are some people that are like, we won't say anything no matter what. And I was like, well, we'll say something at some point. But our kind of boundary for one that is maybe different. But I'm always open. You can always let me know if you think that's going on. And then let's see, Lenio Bersalos says, thanks for your kind words, Lenio, your support means a lot. And then stripper liquors, right? If you did not like this debate, or if you're tired of me telling you to click the like button, hit the dislike button. It helps in the algorithm either way. Does you know that? Like, so Zach says, thank you for being a neutral platform for these kinds of debates. I think these conversations are important. Thank you very much, Zach. Seriously, that means more than you know. And then messing around says James, you're an inspiration. Thanks for your kind words. That's right. I remember seeing thanks for that super chat as well. And then let's see. Darth Revan, gotcha, said, I never said restrict, but you have clear rules. That is all no censorship at all, just checking of people who do is all. Thanks for letting me know that. And I honestly didn't mean to represent you or misrepresent you. So I appreciate you clarifying. And then Wilmar, good to see you as well as bubblegum gun. Always hear bubblegum gun. Boring. Thanks for coming by. I see you there in the old live chat. Kurt L, thanks for coming by, says Muslim versus Christian. And then insidious vids. Glad to see you. And let's see here. Muslim versus Christian is something we do want to have more often. And then Hannah Anderson says, could you please look in your ban list for general shady and unbanned and thanks. I am happy to do that. Let me do it right now while I'm, so I don't forget. So Jessica, why we us? Am I pronouncing it right? Let me know. We're glad you're here as well as organic jerk. We're glad you're here too. Thanks for being organic and a jerk. But we are pumped you guys as it is exciting to see modern day debate. It's been a fun time here. Seriously. I enjoy this channel so much. It is a blast. There's something I wish I could do more, which is debate. You guys might wonder, maybe you're like, James, like, do you ever debate is I do have debates in the past. I used to do it back when I was like new at my program. But as I've gotten into the program and especially as I had one faculty member, not even like the fact that I moderate, I have backed off from the debates. Namely, I have, so I'm working on my PhD right now. And I did have one professor who even just because I'm associated with the channel just because it's, you know, modern day debate and I moderate or I host most nights. The professor said like they reported it to our chair and the department. It was to me baffling because it was like at that point, especially we really hadn't even had many controversial debates yet. And so for me, I was like, like, so we I do have to be careful about that is what I'm trying to say. And so it's been a challenge, but nonetheless, I do hope to get to debate more in the future. But as of right now, it's something that even though don't get me wrong, I like moderating. But the truth is debating is more, it's a little bit more engaging. In my opinion, it's more fun. Moderating is kind of almost like a like work in some ways. Now I enjoy that I get to listen to the debate. But I also oftentimes, sometimes the debaters will say, What do you think of my argument? And I'm like, I'm really sorry is that my when my attention is split between the chat. And then also like the question and answer list as well as like, then the bouncing around once and all of the Twitch chat, and then keeping an eye on like OBS, because I run OBS. And then also the debate itself, like that's all stuff that I'm keeping an eye on during the debate. Because OBS actually the classic OBS classic doesn't crash. But once in a while, it will have a connection issue. So there are things like that where it's long story short. Moderating is is not always it's not always it's not as fun as debating. It is fun for me. But it's still it's true. I think debating is more fun. So Buck McDaniel says, Thank you for hosting. I always love to see Matt. And then I wish, let's see. But thanks to your kind words, Buck McDaniel. Thanks for your support. And then Brooke Shava says, There's a question for you in Twitch chat. Thanks for letting me know that. Let's see here in the old Twitch chat. And let's see here. Brooke Sparrow says, None she has a question. Could you talk about your research in psychology? I just read your bio. Yes, I'm happy to tell you. So I'm an industrial organizational psychology, which is just a fancy way of saying the psychology of work. Like that's the best way to say it. And it's things like how do you motivate employees? Can you use psychological tests like personality tests or intelligence tests to select the best people for the job when you're trying to look for new people to fulfill fill positions, as well as preventing burnout or trying to alleviate burnout once it's already started, as well as leadership. So what in particular, what are the leadership traits? All that stuff is kind of what I researched. And so I've done research on like, do people's perceptions of social support at their organization, are they predicted by the amount of sleep they have? And like, yes, they are. So when people have less sleep, they tend to perceive their organization as less supportive. You might think that that was like, oh, well, maybe, you know, maybe that I'm not sure what would be the most intuitive explanation, it could be bi directional. Namely, maybe it's that those people, as a result of experiencing a less supportive organization, have less sleep because of that, you know, they just don't, you know, they're not as psychologically as well off as those who are more supported by their organizations. It could also be, though, that people who are that's the word I'm looking for, who have less sleep, maybe perceive their organization as less supportive as a result of having less sleep, because there's a lot of research that when you have less sleep, you tend to, you could say you tend to broadly speaking, to put it roughly, you tend to look at things more negatively, you tend to have more negative perceptions and emotions. And so it might be that poor sleep is why people, for example, tend to interpret their organization as less supportive. So that's one explanation. The research that I've done on it was not causal. It wasn't an experiment. So it's only correlational. And then I don't see any, I see general, I see general Amos. General Amaris is blocked. And then I see YouTube Surgeon General as a moderator. And then I see General Balzac as a moderator. I don't see anybody. That's the only person with the word. Yeah. It's the only person I see in the old ban list. So I don't know what, I know that somebody asked me to look for that. And so just so you know. And then, but I've got a wrap up. It's getting pretty late. So I want to say thanks everybody. I love you guys. Seriously, you make this fun. John Yen said, what's your PhD in? Oh, yeah. That's a yep. So like, you could say work psychology. And then Adam Elbilia said, what about trying and keep track of super chat questions? So then highlight them during the Q&A. So it will show on the screen. I'm pretty sure it will increase donations. Yeah, that's actually a great idea. What about trying and keeping track of super chat questions to then highlight them during the Q&A? It'll increase. Yeah, that's a great idea. Let's see. I love that idea. That's cool for real. And I am pumped. I have to think about how to do it. It's a little bit technical in terms of like loading the same screen that has the OBS on it, but it's a good idea. And I know that like obviously you can do it with different software. So Buck McDaniel, thanks for your kind words. And thank you, Saichu. And after your support, seriously, means a lot. And General Zod99, good to see you as well as Canadian Catholic. Glad you were here. And then amazing. We've got extra cool stuff though coming up. As I mentioned, that we've got a Flat Earth debate next week. We've got a debate on whether or not gravity exists. We do. So that's going to be fun. We also have a debate on whether ghosts exist, as we are trying to set up a debate with a real life ghost hunter. So that is going to be really fun. You don't want to miss that, folks, seriously. And I do love you guys. Thanks for your support. Thanks, Roger Schrum, for your support. So take care, James and all. Thanks for that. Appreciate that. That means a lot. And then Tippie Bear, good to see you as well as Louis Giles and Bal Diablo, stripper liquor, Jessica. Thanks for coming by, as well as Darth Revan Wilmar. Thank you guys. I love you guys, seriously. Joe Gravey, glad you made it. Thanks for coming by. I love you guys. I'm just pumped. You guys put me in a great mood. I hope you have a great rest of your night. And we are excited for it. Like I said, we're pretty sure we'll have three debates in the next week. So as I mentioned, hey, if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button because we have many more juicy ones to come. Thanks, everybody, and excited to see you next time.