 Today we're debating God of Genocide, a debate on biblical violence and we are starting right now. With our Christian guest Dr. Randall Rouser pictured on the right, thanks so much for being with us. The floor is all yours for your opening statement. Great, maybe I can just take an extra 10 seconds to read the debate resolution James, if that's okay. So the debate resolution, the Bible with its divinely commanded violence wasn't inspired by a perfect God and I'm arguing the denial. So now I'll launch it in my formal comments. So thanks to Modern Day Debate for the invitation to debate and to John for agreeing to participate. I'd like to start with the clarification of the scope of debate. My burden is not to provide reasons to believe the Bible is inspired by God. That's the subject of another debate. Instead we're debating whether the fact that the Bible includes particular texts describing divine violence is consistent with the Bibles having been inspired by God. Loftus is arguing it is not consistent whereas I am arguing that it is. The way I established that consistency is by providing a perfectly orthodox Christian account of how to understand the biblical text being inspired by God despite the presence of these troublingly violent texts. While there are many different types of violence we could talk about, for the sake of time I will focus on what are arguably the most troubling cases, namely passages where God is described as commanding the destruction and expulsion of the Canaanites in Deuteronomy 7 and 20 and Joshua 1 to 12. Christians have offered various different responses to this problem. One popular approach is to argue that while God did issue these divine commands, they're not themselves problematic when interpreted correctly and understood in historical context. For example, Paul Copan and Matthew Flanagan in their book Did God Really Command Genocide argue that passages in Deuteronomy and Joshua that describe God commanding the killing and expulsion of Canaanites from the Promised Land actually conform to the standards of just war. However, in my book Jesus Loves Canaanites, I argue that Copan and Flanagan's analysis fails and thus that the texts describing these actions meet contemporary legal definitions of genocide and ethnic cleansing. So it seems to me that the way forward is not to explain how in fact God issued these terrible divine commands, rather it is to explain how a text that is divinely inspired may consistently include some descriptions of God's actions that are literally false. Now no doubt some people will find that to be a surprising claim, so it is important to know it at the outset that it has always been a standard Christian position to recognize that the Bible contains descriptions about God which are literally false. For example, biblical descriptions of God having a body or being ignorant of future events or growing angry or of changing his mind or even of acting in time have all standardly been interpreted as anthropomorphic and thus literally false. And that is even true if the original human author himself did not think of them as anthropomorphic. In addition, central to the Christian understanding of Scripture is the notion of progressive revelation, according to which the divine nature and will are revealed more fully over time. For example, Exodus 3320 says nobody can see God and live, but Jesus reveals in John 14 9 that one can indeed see God in virtue of seeing him. Psalm 115 says God hates the wicked, but John 316 teaches that God loves the whole world. Such developing theology and internal critique is standardly interpreted in terms of progressive revelation. It is also understood to be divine accommodation. As any teacher adapts to the subject matter to the understanding of the student, so God adapts the subject matter of revelation to the audience. And adaptation can allow for some degree of accommodation to the errant epistemic horizons of the audience. To sum up, the presence of literally false descriptions of God in the Bible, including progressive revelation that accommodates fallible human perspectives, this just is part of standard Christian Bible reading. Before we go further, we should clarify how certain popular assumptions about the Bible and the nature of biblical inspiration make it seem problematic that the Bible would include false descriptions. Once we strip away those misguided notions, the perception of inconsistency dissolves. To begin with, it is popular to think of the Bible as functioning like an owner's manual for the human person or a set of instructions for how to get to heaven. Needless to say, there is no room for false statements within owner's manuals or life-saving directions. So if that is your assumption as to what the Bible is, you will predictably see a problem. But that is most emphatically not what the Bible is. For a more accurate picture, think of a famous textbook, The Norton Anthology of American Literature. This anthology is an expansive and diverse omnibus which spans four centuries of American history, consisting of the writings of men and women from a wide range of experiences, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The writings in the collection exemplify a diversity of genre and style, including poetry, short story, letters, speeches, novel excerpts, and much more. The editor selected the various texts that fill the pages of the book as a way to tell the story of the American people. The Bible is a lot like this venerable textbook. Like The Norton Anthology, it is an extremely diverse collection composed by many different people writing in different genres, including pithy wisdom sayings, poetry, prophecy, gospel, apocalyptic, law, epistolary, and so on. The text was composed in three different languages in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and written in several distinct cultural contexts over a thousand years. Far from being like a simple set of instructions for heaven, the Bible is a vast and diverse collection, an ancient library, and like any library distant from the reader and culture and time, it requires care and interpretation. Now let's turn to the other concept, inspiration. Many people assume this is a process in which God directly acts upon particular individuals, somehow taking control of their cognitive faculties and leading them to write down particular texts rather like a violinist moves a bow over strings. Again, with that image, one is not surprisingly incredulous that God would directly inspire people to write down false statements about God's nature and commands. But I believe this is also a false image, at least insofar as it is invoked as a general account of inspiration. The basic view of inspiration I accept here is a model of appropriation in which God sovereignly works as a divine editor. He perfectly foreknows what particular individuals will write and he appropriates specific writings into his collection, much as the editor of the Norton anthology appropriates the words of various Americans into his collection. The editor of the Norton anthology could have many reasons for including texts that convey views divergent from his own and using those texts to convey a different meaning than that intended by the original author. Similarly, God could have many reasons for including texts in the Bible that include views divergent from his own and within God's collection they come to convey a different meaning than that intended by the original human author. So how do we interpret this complex library? From a Christian perspective, the interpretive key is conformity to Jesus. In 2 Timothy 3, 15 to 17, Paul writes, From infancy you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Paul says here that the purpose of scripture is to make us like Jesus. And what does that look like exactly? When asked in Matthew 22, What is the greatest law? Jesus replied to love God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love one's neighbor as oneself. And keep in mind that for Jesus, neighbor means the outsider, the proverbial stranger, leper, prisoner, tax collector, Samaritan, or Canaanite. All the law and prophets, he said, hang on these two commandments. Thus, Christians have always recognized that the Bible reading should be guided by love of God and neighbor as Augustine wrote 1600 years ago. Whoever thinks that he understands the holy scripture or any part of them but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up a twofold love of God and neighbor does not yet understand them as he ought. Faithful Bible reading is that which brings about the increased love of God and neighbor to the end of becoming more like Jesus. Needless to say, if you interpret a text in such a way that God literally commanded actions which constitute contemporary war crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing, then you are not loving your neighbor, unless you are not reading the text as you ought. You might be wondering why God appropriated such a complex collection as this as his inspired word. The fact is, however, this complexity fits squarely within the logic of the Judeo-Christian tradition in which piety and devotion emerged through the very act of wrestling with complexity and questions. The background is found in Genesis 32, the famous story where Jacob wrestles through the night with the angel of the Lord who is the Lord. This story functions as an etiology, an account of the origin of Israel as a people. As Jacob wrestles with the angel, so God's people are to wrestle with God and the means to wrestle with him through his text. Jacob receives the name Israel, which is one who strives with God, and anyone who does the same likewise strives with God. In my book, Jesus Loves Canaanites, I describe various ways that Christians have wrestled with these passages in Deuteronomy and Joshua in accord with these formative ethical ends, love of God and neighbor. For example, accommodationists like Christopher Wright say the text describes an accommodation to morally imperfect standards of ancient warfare. Ancient allegorists like Origen interpret these texts as symbolic accounts of the soul's sanctification. Spiritualizers like Douglas Earl interpret the contrast between Rehabilit as intentionally subverting the very in-group, out-group distinctions that make violence possible. Finally, providential errantists like Eric Siebert find in the text a challenge to the Christian to read in solidarity with all oppressed peoples, including Canaanites. Well, in this opening statement, I have explained how a divinely inspired text may consistently include literally false statements about God. I did so by explaining that the Bible is not a simple road map to heaven or instructions for heaven, but a complex library of divinely appropriated human experience, encompassing figurative language, which may be understood to be literally false, progressive revelation, which includes a combination to some degree of errant perspective. The Christian is invited to enter into the process of this devotional reading with the complexity of the text in community, and they should do so always to seek to cultivate love of God and neighbor to the end of becoming like Jesus. And so to conclude, the fact that the Bible includes particular texts describing divine violence is indeed consistent with the Bible's having been inspired by God. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Rouser, and we will switch it over. But before we do, I want to say folks, thrilled to have you here. If it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, 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're from. Also, folks, thrilled as this Friday, Tom Jump will be taking on Arden of Eden on a controversial, juicy debate. So hit that subscribe button and that notification bell as well, as you don't want to miss that one. And with that, we'll kick it over to John Loftus. We're thrilled to have you here, John. Thanks so much for being with us and the floor is all yours. Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate being on the show. Thanks, Randall, for inviting me. We share some things on this view and we share our moral intuitions, that's for sure. And so let me proceed to read. There's so much divinely caused and committed violence in the Bible. It can be said that the fear of an angry punishing God is its most prevalent theme, hands down from the irrational and horrific punishments in the Garden of Eden to the irrational and horrific punishments predicted in the Book of Revelation and everything in between. We see an angry, cruel and barbaric God. That's his usual mode of operation. If people obeyed, they were rewarded, but woe to the people who didn't obey. No wonder serious biblical scholars argue that the God of the Bible is modeled after ancient kings who were themselves often cruel toward their own subjects. God is just like what we find in the story of Job. Job was a good man, but God destroyed everything he had, including killing sons and daughters and servants just to win a bet with Satan. Such a wanton disregard toward a human being is utterly reprehensible and barbaric. Kings could do that, but a perfectly good God should not do it. Tonight everything hinges on Rouser's moral intuitions. His moral intuitions cause him to believe in two contradictory, irreconcilable propositions. On the one hand, he believes the Bible uniquely and unmistakably reveals the actions and commands of a God. On the other hand, he rejects the violence in the Bible, which uniquely and unmistakably reveals a cruel God. To accomplish this feat, Rouser offers a scenario in his book to show we can sometimes trust our intuitions despite the lack of objective evidence. He asks us to consider a man who sincerely believed he was innocent of a crime, even though all the objective evidence pointed to his guilt. Rouser claims the man is in a position to know he's innocent because he personally knows that he's innocent, even if the objective evidence points to him. So let's picture this. There are several eyewitnesses along with video footage of the of the man killing someone with a gun he had purchased the day before, which was found at the scene of the crime with his fingerprints on it. With this objective evidence, the man should honestly accept that he has a serious case of amnesia or been drugged, hypnotized, or even lobotomized. He is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. And I think there's a psychological reason Rouser uses this particular analogy. It's because he is that man. He's the one who, as an apologist, must defend the existence and goodness of an imaginary deity at all costs, despite the overwhelming objective evidence to the contrary. The very fact he uses such an absurd analogy, in my opinion, is a tacit admission that the needed objective evidence does not exist. The reason Rouser retains the Bible is the divinely inspired revelation of a good God, isn't because of the texts in the Bible, it's because he imagines himself communicating with a divine friend who only exists in his head. He should love seeing the lyrics in the worship hymn in the garden, and he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own. In crass terms, Rouser is a sophisticated counterpart to a babbling bum who seems to be talking to someone else as he walks down the street. I mean no offense. Rouser is a brilliant man, passionate, likable. It's just that he uses reason and defense of the absurd. Well, what exactly are moral intuitions? On my view, they mainly stem from empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others and equal persons who are deserving of respect, dignity, sympathy, and compassion. Once we stop viewing and treating other people as non-persons and view them with dignity and of equal value, we are able to be decent human beings, kind people, compassionate neighbors, loving citizens, and global humanitarians. Upon realizing this, we inevitably will reject the Bible with its God as a product of an ancient barbaric era. There is no rescuing the God of the Bible since that God was created by ancient barbaric people. What we have in the Bible are the codified ethics of the moral intuitions of ancient people. It's time to be consistent by rejecting the Bible and its God in total. If Rouser still wants to talk in terms of moral intuitions, he should question several important Christian beliefs of his. He should reject the Adam and Eve story as reprehensible in what's best described as the mere quest for knowledge by the first pair of humans. Yet God punishes them along with every sentient being from the beginning of time with all the suffering this world has ever experienced. Furthermore, he should reject the belief that our sins make us deserving of intense agony forever in hell. He should also reject the belief that a contemporary, pure, and innocent person needed to die a horrible death on the cross to atone for our sins, punished as he was in such a gruesome way by such a kind, loving God. Rouser should reject his belief that his God only saves people who accept Jesus by faith in their lives, including the deathbed conversions of sex traffickers, drug lords, and mafia hitmen rather than saving good, kind, decent, loving people. In Rouser's book, Jesus Loves King Nights, Biblical Genocide in Light of Moral Intuition, he talks about the Jesus principle. This intuitive moral principle allows him to deny that God commanded the King Nights genocide. He writes, the Jesus principle is predicated on the assumption that Jesus is the final and ultimately authoritative locus of divine revelation. As a result, Jesus provides the final guide for all interpretive interpretation and application. So let's take a look. But before I do, I would find it strange if Rouser didn't accept the authority of Paul the most important apostle of Jesus. While Jesus doesn't explicitly affirm the King Nights genocide, Paul does. When preaching in Antioch, he said, quote, The God of Israel chose our fathers and made them great in the land of Egypt and led them out of it. And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as inheritance, Acts chapter 13. The book of Hebrews also affirms the King Nights genocide and the famous faith chapter appraises Rahab, appraises Rahab's faith, a prostitute who helped the Israelites destroy the city of Jericho by hiding two men who had been spies for the city. Now back to Jesus, leading up to a shocking conclusion. Jesus affirmed the truth and permanence of every letter of the law. In Luke 16 and 17, Jesus said it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one letter of the law to become void. In saying this, Jesus affirmed all the laws of the Hebrew God Yahweh who always seems to be threatening violence, committing violence, and commanding violence upon others. This includes killing witches, heretics, homosexuals, people who work on the Sabbath day, people who commit adultery, people who commit feciality, false prophets, and children who merely insult or strike their parents. Jesus also affirmed three morally atrocious biblical stories. Jesus affirmed the genocidal story of Noah. In Matthew 24, he says, as it was in the days of Noah's soul shall be at the coming of the Son of Man. For the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving marriage, up until the day Noah entered the ark and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. 2. Jesus affirmed the genocidal story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In Luke 17, 28 through 30, we read Jesus saying on that day, on the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Now for the shocking conclusion. 3. Jesus affirmed honor killings by stoning. This might shock you. The Pharisees accused Jesus of being too lenient in his observance of the law. So Jesus counterpunches them in Mark chapter 7 verse 9 through 12 saying, you have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions. For Moses said honor your father and mother and anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corbin that is devoted to God, then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Corbin is an air make word that refers to a sacrifice oath or a gift to God. The Pharisees allowed for this loophole so someone could make an oath to offer a gift to the temple like one would set up a trust fund in order to avoid giving it for the care of one's aging parents. Jesus's first scriptural quote to honor your father and mother is one of the Ten Commandments. Jesus's second scriptural quote that anyone who curses that is literally dishonors their father or mother is to be put to death is found in Exodus chapter 21 17 and Leviticus chapter 29. Jesus says the Corbin loophole sets aside these two commands of God for such a son would be disobeying a direct command of God by dishonoring his parents while the Pharisees would be disobeying God's command by not putting him to death. Deuteronomy 21 18 through 21 elaborates, if someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders of the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. Why, he's a glutton and a drunkard, that's what it says. Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. In this Jesus is affirming the Old Testament law of honor killings by stoning for only if both of the laws Jesus cites are to be obeyed can this analogy succeed that the Pharisees have set aside the laws of God in order to observe their traditions. Rosser is therefore impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Give up the Jesus principle or give up your moral intuitions. You can't have them both. Rosser claims both that God was accommodating his commands to their hardened hearts and or that God was progressively leading believers to civilized notions about morality down through the centuries. I say justifications like these can only mean God's revelation in the Bible is indistinguishable from him not revealing anything at all. If God can't do better than that, he might as well be dead to us. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are now going to switch into open conversation mode folks. Want to let you know though, before we do that, our guests are linked in the description and so we want to encourage you as you've heard both Randall and John's opening statements. Folks, their links are waiting for you down in the description and that includes if you are listening to this debate via podcasts. As modern day debate now is available on podcasts. If you haven't yet, pull up Modern Day Debate on your favorite podcast app and if you're listening via podcast, you can find both John and Randall's link or I should say links in the description of that podcast episode as well. So thank you very much gentlemen. The floor is all yours for open dialogue. I want to ask Randall, had you considered that passage about an honor killing from Jesus before? Yeah, I have an article on it called Does Jesus Command the Killing of Children in Mark 710 on my blog. So I think first of all, for example, the main issue there that Jesus is dealing with is the hypocrisy of his audience that they're picking and choosing what their traditions are and that the notion of the actual function of the law there with respect to the honor killing that you're referencing is actually incidental to the point that he's making and that he wasn't actually affirming the stoning of children there. What he is challenging was the hypocrisy of his audience. But to make that point, he's not going to address what is incidental to his point. What is more important, I think, is the way that Jesus interacts with the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8 where he says, let he who has sinned throw the first stone. And what he ends up doing there is what Jesus constantly does, which is to begin to deconstruct and dismantle some of the classic ways of understanding the law. So if I could just give a quick sort of general response, John, and I really appreciate, by the way, your opening statement there. So you referenced how not one jot or title of the law would pass away. Another important passage to keep in mind is where Jesus says in Matthew 517, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. So the issue there, I think that we have to keep in mind is Jesus doesn't come turfing the law. What he comes is to do is to radically reinterpret the meaning of the law. As he says on the road to Emmaus, or as it says in the text on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, 45, that he opened their mind so they could understand the scriptures and to see that everything was in fact testifying about him. So he radically reinterprets the meaning of the law. You know, I had this book once by John R. W. Stott. I think it was out to Sermon on the Mount. And he went through the Sermon on the Mount really exquisitely well. Have you seen that book yourself? No? Yeah, I have that book somewhere on my show. It's a good book. I mean, I thought it was anyway at the time. And he hammers on the fact that Jesus continually takes Pharisees and the scribes and the people of his day back to the actual commands, the laws of God. And to say that he's doing something different, I mean, that is emphatically what he denies in Matthew 5 and in Luke 16. He's saying, you know, I'm the one who's upholding the law and you are. And while he has a new covenant, you know, that's what Jeremiah talks about. He doesn't, he doesn't abrogate the law. I mean, that was one of his, I think, but don't you agree that was his main thing whenever challenged? Yeah, so he's, he's not rejecting the law. What he's doing is radically reinterpreting it in Matthew, beginning Chapter 5, he gives a new law. So Matthew seems to collect the writings of Jesus and or the teaching of Jesus into five sections, which seems to echo Moses and one of the themes then is that presents Jesus as a new Moses. He's not rejecting the law. He's radically reinterpreting it. So I gave the example of how the imprecatory psalmist talks about hating your enemies. But Jesus comes along in Matthew 5 and he says, no, I say love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That is a radical challenge to the voice of the imprecatory psalmist. So I'm not denying Stott's view is among the legitimate perspectives in this conversation. What I'm saying is there are many perspectives within this conversation of Christian theological interpretation of Scripture, which are consistent with moral intuitions that you and I share about the intrinsic wrongness of certain actions like ethnic cleansing and genocide. Might I give as well a special shout out or thanks for describing me as a bumbling bum or babbling bum? That was a nice line. You know, you're such a nice guy, you know, you are. And but, you know, your whole thing is that you have a personal relationship with someone, I would say, as a pretend being. And I can't help but not say that's what I think. And you get your messages from God and your principles of interpretation from God. And I find that, you know, I have to ridicule it. I just have to because you're operating from faith. And, you know, so you reason well, but you have a bad starting point. Well, ridicule doesn't get us anywhere. So I hope you don't resort to ridicule. I take that was a little bit of a playful poke on your part. Okay, but you made these two strong claims at the beginning. I didn't get get them down verbatim. But you said number one, and you said these are contradictory claims that I'm committed to. Number one, the Bible reveals the command of God. Number two, reject that you are to reject the violence of the Bible. And that there is some alleged contradiction here. But I think that my entire 12 minutes was devoted to showing that there is in fact no contradiction. It is fully consistent, recognizing, in fact, the plenary inspiration of all scripture, which is what I was tacitly or implicitly doing by giving a definition as to what I understood inspiration to be. It's all inspired. The question is how you interpret it. Every reader selects certain texts as control texts for an interpretive framework for other passages. The question is, why are you doing so? And I could go on some length about the primacy of interpreting through Jesus. But that is what I'm doing. And I don't think that you establish as a contradiction here. Well, you have, I didn't quote from 2 Peter, who affirmed the genocide of Sodom and Gomorrah and the genocide of Noah. But I did mention Hebrews and Paul. And while Jesus didn't mention the canine genocide, he did talk about the Noah and Sodom and Gomorrah. And I really liked your book and the first three chapters where you described the horrors of that, the stoning of how you pronounce her name, Sonia M. I saw that movie, by the way. That's highly recommended movie to see what a stony might look like. And your description of the Rwandan genocide, which I found it interesting that you said that 90% of them are Christians. I think you said Catholics and some of the Adventists. Of course, I raised questions in my mind is why would Christians be doing that to other Christians who have the same Bible? And I can only say that some of it has got to come from the genocide texts that we're reading that you're denying from God. And I think you're just being arbitrary about that because I don't like those because they're horrific and they are horrific and you shouldn't like them. But to say all of a sudden, well, I can tell you what God's word and what isn't, even though Gleason Archer disagrees and John Calvin disagrees and a lot of other people down through the centuries would not share your moral intuitions as you call them. I would call them empathy. I just find it quite arbitrary and capricious more in line with how you feel than how you should think. Well, I'm not particularly worried that Gleason Archer and John Calvin don't agree with me. One thing I did point out in the book is that this is not a new conversation. This is a conversation that goes back to the second, third, fourth, fifth centuries of the church. I spend a significant amount of time talking, for example, about how Origen and Gregory of Nyssa wrestled with these problems and developed these various, which I mentioned briefly, these allegorical, spiritualized interpretations. In the modern era, people like C.S. Lewis have done something similar. I referred to this other group I called new spiritualizers such as Douglas Earl. And then I better go on, people like Greg Boyd. There's a great diversity, the point being there's a great diversity of opinion among Christians as to how to interpret and appropriate biblical violence. And I'm arguing one particular interpretation, which is certainly consistent with my moral intuitions, but also is consistent with my theological framework and can affirm plenary inspiration of all scripture. So I don't think that there's evidence of inconsistency or of contradictory. You could try to make an argument that it's ad hoc somehow, but you may have to make that. I think that that's somewhat subjective. In the same way that you said, I use a reason and I reason in defense for the absurd. Well, absurdity is a relative term. That which you think is absurd in my beliefs, there are certain beliefs you may hold that I find absurd. So the fact that you label something absurd doesn't really get as very far. The question is, can you establish an objective inconsistency in the claims that I've affirmed? And I don't think you have. Well, I can't. And I think I know why. As looking through your book, I noticed that you had different principles. And one of them is called the first one is called the perfect God principle, you know, that God is perfect in knowledge and in love. And you say, what the Christian doesn't do is a quote on page 121, what the Christian doesn't do is surrender their commitment to the perfection of God. I may not be able to show you are inconsistent just as I couldn't show Gleason Archer that the Bible is not inerrant in every way. And you know what I mean, because he wrote the book on how to resolve Bible difficulties. He taught where I graduated from, but I never had a class with him. But I can't convince someone who isn't going to surrender their commitment to the perfection of God of anything. I shouldn't be required to do that. I do. I think that it's inconsistent, even if I can't. How could I do that? Tell me, how could I show you that? I can't, can I? Every person with every fundamental worldview, it's always very difficult to speculate on what would be the precise conditions under which you would revise some fundamental aspect of your worldview. But I will say this, that myself wrestling with the violence in the biblical texts did in the last 13 years bring about a radical change in how I think about and interpret certain passages. Now, what's going on there is a process of rational reflection and then based upon counter evidence to currently held beliefs, you revise those beliefs, which is what I've done, which I think is what rational agents should do. And I assume that it's the same for you, that you adjust your beliefs based upon evidence. Well, I mean, yeah, I agree with you. I think that Christians and before them, the Jews have revised their beliefs ever since God told Moses, you pass, let's see, I'll pass by you and you can see my behind. Because you can't see my glory in my face. I'll show you my behind. And so he did it and Moses was awed by his butt. Sorry. I do mean this respect. That's the polytheistic God, you know that? Yeah, he was, he had a physical body like when he walked in the cooler garden of the day. So you, yeah, at some point, you have to say we've gone so far beyond what the initial belief was. And we've changed in every generation due to circumstances, scientific discovery, social understandings that we are just, aren't we just building a castle in the sky one higher level each time and rather than sticking to the original revelation and we're just making shit up as you go. That's how it looks to me. That's how it looks to me. Yeah, I understand that. And so from the perspective of a Christian, the naturalist who's developing a naturalist interpretation of the world may ultimately be the one building a castle in the sky or on the ground as the case may be. So each one of us is seeking to develop a worldview and respond to counter evidence. And just just declaring the other one and their whole project absurd from your perspective, fair enough, that's what you think that is not a defeat or that's not an objection to that other person. Now, one thing that you said, so you said, well, what about the why don't you just go with the revelation that originally came? Why do you keep going beyond that? Well, actually, I address that in the talk by outlining the concepts of accommodation and progressive revelation, which are foundational to a Christian understanding of the Bible that God does gradually reveal himself progressively over time. And that God accommodates to the limited understandings of people at particular times and places. One thing that you and I can agree on as well is that the Hebrew Bible is written against the backdrop of an ancient Near Eastern understanding of the natural world, a three-storied universe, for example, a dome above the earth that holds waters above. And you've referenced the flood narrative in the flood narrative, the gates of heaven open up and water pours down. And that is in the language of the ancient Near East. What a Christian should do to understand that is say, whatever's going on theologically in that text is revealed to those people originally through the thought, forms and concepts of an ancient Near Eastern worldview. It doesn't mean that that worldview is being conveyed or commended to us to believe, but there are theological concepts being conveyed. And the central idea in the flood narrative comes in chapter eight, verse one, because I'm sure you know that the flood narrative is an elaborate chaiastic poem. And on chapter eight, verse one, it says, God remembered Noah and the overarching message of the flood narrative. And I agree that the violence is not genocide. We should be careful about using that term out of context, but it is violence, right? The divine violence of flood in the earth. That is a problem that we'd have to talk about as well. But the main message of the poem is God remembers the righteous. That's the main thing. And so we have to have these conversations with these texts and figure out what's going on as revealed to the original audiences that received them. Let me quote you, and I'm going to quote you favorably here on page 274. You get this right. This is the problem. You wrote it well. You might want to try to answer it. Okay. You said we are not dealing. I think you were using speaking for the skeptic here, but you wrote this. We are not dealing simply with misunderstanding for two decades, but to millennia or more. Moreover, critics will insist that the damage this has done to the credibility of the Bible and the witness of the church has been enormous. People reject Christianity because of crimes committed in the name of Christ and justified by way of biblical precedent. They reject Christianity because of very reasonable violent readings of the good book. They reject Christianity because even now many Christians continue to defend the ethics of the divinely committed genocide while dehumanizing canines as cancer. This misreading of biblical violence is not limited to the past. It continues down to the present. The last two sentences is your project to help us by not that. The first few sentences, you're not dealing with two decades, but two millennia has destroyed the credibility of the Bible and the witness of the church and the crimes that the church has done. You can't just say, well, sorry, I apologize on behalf of the church. You weren't there. You didn't do those things. Someone inspired them in the Bible, which were the catalysts or at least I would have to say partially the motivator. That's all we have to claim. We don't have to claim any more than that, but somehow they inspired it in some ways. Are you going to say, God, can you justify God's dealings for all that? Okay. So that comes in the last chapter, of course, you're quoting from. And I would just point out because I think I like this example that I gave. So maybe you appreciate it as well, because you're quoting that in the context of talking about insane clown posse. So I'm not a fan, I admit, but insane clown posse is apparently, well, they're a horror core rap group. And they've been around for, I didn't know who you were talking about. Actually, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, well, and so it's an interesting example. So this group came about in the early 90s, and they're known for having very violent and misogynistic lyrics. And they actually have their fan base is very rabid. They're called juggalos. And they're often known for perpetuating violence. And in about 2009 or 10, the two members of insane clown posse came out and said that our our rapping is all a shtick. And in essence, it's an act. And really what we're saying, if you if you listen carefully, what we're saying is that you need to recognize that we are all sinners and we need God. And they have this motif running through all their albums called the carnival, and they're appealing to the carnival as this framework for challenging people to repent and so on. And so there was an interesting ethical question there that the journalist John Ronson talked about, which is assuming that they're being up and up front about that that's actually true. Was it really justified to to fake your sort of this rebellious shtick for two for two decades? And yet you actually had a different message. And so yeah, I'm trying to give I'm giving there the devil's advocate critics voice as yours as you point out. Yeah. So which is, you know, I want to steal man objections, of course. So so so there you have, you could argue, well, it's not just 20 years, it's two millennia. Now. So the the one thing I do, as you would know, then in that chapter, however, is I point out the difficulty of making that a definitive objection, because in order to make that a definitive objection for a Christian, what you'd have to show is that ultimately, the degree of ambiguity that's been presented in that text, which is I point the text being scripture, so that you can have these viable debates about something as disturbing as divinely commanded genocide, you'd have to show that God cannot have morally sufficient reasons that would ultimately be borne out that that degree of ambiguity and so on would lead to a greater outcome in terms of the formation of individuals into being disciples of Christ. And I do think I think you've admitted that you can't really make that as an evidential case. You're left with the point of saying it seems to you that it's just excessive that it can't be justified. And I'm saying that doesn't mean it's not justified from my perspective. Well, I think that if we just think in terms of what could have been said, what could have been done, that wasn't, it makes it makes everything clearer. Like, I have a better 10 commandments. You probably read this in my book on non suffering coming out, because I had mentioned that in one of my chapters, and I don't need to read all 10 of them. But I came up with some better commandments than the ones that God supposedly did. Like for instance, commandment one could be something that you should not prohibit the freedom of conscience, the freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom of religion. That alone would prevent a whole lot of conflict and a whole lot of killing and a whole lot of war. Let me just give you two more, you know, second and the third commandments. But why couldn't, my question to you after our meetings is why couldn't God have done this? I too, you must treat every human being with the utmost dignity they deserve by treating them as they want to be treated. This means you should not harass, repress, and slave, or beat into submission anyone anywhere anytime under any circumstances, especially for the express purpose of slavery. And the third one, you should not treat women as inferior to men, nor shall you rape them or force them to marry or commit adultery, or kill them if they dishonor you, but rather treat them with equal respect and dignity as equally valued members of society with equal rights and equal privileges afforded to men. That's only the first three. You can people who want to see the others, you know, others that can read my book. Why couldn't God have done that? I mean, what you're doing in my questions, it seems to me is you're justifying after they affect what you believe God did rather than asking the more important question of what could God have done if he really existed. Thank you for that. So that's a good illustration of what I'm saying is the sort of the assumption that the Bible is just a should be a set of directions for how to get to heaven or an ethical code of how to behave and so on. And I'm saying it has, yeah, it's never been that that clearly was not God's intention. What God's intention was was to give us this very diverse collection of writings that describe the experience of God's people, Israel and the early church, early Christians, with all the diversity that you find in the Norton anthology of American literature. And I think that there is intrinsic value in such things as ambiguity, there is intrinsic value in such things as vagueness, in such things as a complex text or a complex film that you wrestle with that you have to watch multiple times that people debate about that they try to interpret. You know, there are some places that I think are very powerful that when we begin to think about how Jesus deconstructs violence in the Old Testament. So for example, in Matthew 18, Peter goes to Jesus and he wants to be benevolent. So he says, should I forgive our enemies, should we forgive our enemies seven times? Which you know, if you've had somebody offend you several times, seven can indeed be pretty benevolent. Well, Jesus says not seven times, but 77 times. And of course, it's, it's recognized that that is there. What he's doing is multiplying. You don't stop forgiving, but it's not just that it appears to be a reference back to Genesis chapter four, verse 24. Now, Genesis four is where all the cycles of violence begin. They of course begin with Cain killing his brother, and then it culminates with Lamech at the end of the chapter. And this is what Lamech says. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech 77 times. And so that starts the cycle of violence and retribution that if you offend against me, then I offend against you. Now, this is actually a band I do listen to avenge sevenfold. So nice heavy metal band out there. And that's a reference there to that. But what Jesus is doing there then is he's deconstructing that. He's saying, I believe this is a common view that Lamech said, retribution, violence, you visit upon people 77 times. Jesus says no, forgiveness is what you visit upon them 77 times. One more example, in Matthew, I believe it's chapter 15, when the woman of the Canaanite woman comes to Jesus. It's a Canaanite, right? And she's described as a Canaanite in the text. She asks for forgiveness or for healing for her daughter who's possessed. Now, interestingly, Jesus kind of brushes her off at first. And he says, it's not right to give the bread of children to the dogs. And that can be really shocking. It's called often one of the hard sayings of Jesus. But then, of course, what she does is respond, but even the dogs get scraps from the table. And then Jesus doesn't look ticked off like he's been shown up by this outsider. In fact, he congratulates her and blesses her and then heals her daughter. And one view of that and the view that I take in terms of interpreting that passage is that Jesus is blowing up the assumptions about the outsider, in this case Canaanites, that people had other eyes and dehumanized Canaanites. But Jesus, on this occasion, allows this Canaanite woman to elevate herself and become the hero of her own story in terms of her courageous and clever response to him. Now, I find that wrestling with story like this, you come about a deeper, more powerful and moving understanding of the truth that you're describing, then you might, if you just listed them off as commands. And I think that's one reason why the text is complex, because it invites us into that dialogue. You're interesting. You're one of my most interesting specimens. Humans are the most interesting specimens of them all. But you, again, you write on page 124, only when it becomes overwhelmingly clear that there is no plausible or possible alternative interpretation available, will one become obliged to surrender their prior commitment to the perfect, to the perfection of the author. It's hard to, and you are smart. Let's just say it, you're absolutely brilliant. I never doubted that, because you can do that. You have the ability to pull the resources of your wealth of knowledge to provide that possible interpretation of a canine knight, a woman who is described as a dog, and yet she's the hero of her story. That's just, you know, I find any woman, anyone being called a dog, anyone owning that to be implausible as a hero story. But, but just overall, you've got an answer for everything. And I commend you for that. But it's like, you can't actually, at that point, with that view, be honest with what's going on in these texts. There's a lot of views towards women in the texts, as a lot of things God could have done and didn't. And I find that you just, you say, well, it's not about a rule book, you know, or a law giving book. Yeah, it's a lot of things, but the rules that he gives ought to be good. You know, if you say that you can kill children for insulting their parents, or, or someone who commits bestiality, you know, that may be repulsive and against the law, but you I don't think we want to kill somebody for that. Or someone who commits adultery or works on a Sabbath. These are the kinds of things that the second person of the Godhead, you know, had to be in agreement with the father with to command. It's, you know, and there's obviously things he could have done differently. I find that you're too smart for your own good, too, too smart for the truth. And so what it comes down to is your experience with God. And that's why I said that earlier. And I find that delusional, not to offend you, but Yeah, no problem. So the Canaanite woman, so you said you don't find that plausible. So there's a few things here that the first thing to keep in mind is that so we interpret what Jesus does here against the backdrop of who Jesus has been shown to be elsewhere. And so time and again when Jesus is interacting with outsiders with the woman caught in adultery or the woman at the well, other Samaritans, tax collectors, lepers, and so on, that he's always welcoming. He's always reaching out to them. And so it becomes very anomalous that he doesn't do so here. So you're kind of thinking, well, then what else is going on here? And a charitable reading should invite you to be asking that question. And then as I said, the next point is that he is so excited. He said, woman, you have great faith. Your request is granted. He's not irritated by her quick rejoinder, which you could say if he was issuing just a racial slur to her or a dismissive dehumanizing term because he was disgusted by her ethnicity or something, well, then he'd be pretty irritated that he had just been shown up. But he has the precise opposite interpretation or a response, I should say. So in turn, our interpretation then would be there's something else going on here. And I think the very fact that she is vindicated then just shows that he is deconstructing some of these classic views of Canaanites, which is what he does with Samaritans, which is what he does with women, which is what he does with tax collectors and lepers and so on. So I do find that I don't think it's as strained as you're suggesting here. Where do you get the idea that a perfect God exists who inspires a perfect Bible? I mean, I remember back in seminary days, there was a big inerrancy debate. Howard Lindsell, you remember him, right? The battle for the Bible. And I think it was in the 70s. Everybody was commenting on the inerrancy. I mean, they had a hard line position. It's almost seemed like dictation to us. And so they had a debate over, do you have the theory and force the data to fit the theory? Or do you start with the phenomena? You know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you do. So what it seems like to me is you have a theory, right? And you're forcing, you would be like the Harold Lindsells, although I'm sure you reject his view of inerrancy. I know you do because I read it in your book. But you do it broadly except inerrancy. But you're asking to have a theory and fit the data to the theory rather than let's look at the data. Let's look at the data of the texts of the Bible and see what we have. That's where I'm starting. And you're not. Well, it seems to me that what you're describing is a sort of a naive, Baconian induction view where one does not begin with a particular interpretive framework for data when just begins gathering data and sees what you come up with. But in fact, nobody interprets data like that. We all interpret data from a background set of interpretive assumptions. The Christian does so as well as the atheist. Now, the interesting thing here is like you begin your opening remarks with the approach that I think I'm going to say is very one-sided. You're highlighting throughout all of the violence that you find off-putting and disturbing within the Bible. Fair enough. What you're doing, however, is I think the opposite of what many Christians do, which is they just look at the quote-unquote good stuff, where God is being gentle and kind and so on. I think both of you, you and that Christian, are in danger of exhibiting a selection bias. That you have a particular set of assumptions and you only read the text for those assumptions and then you both end up with a skewed perspective. And what I'm arguing for is to become aware of our assumptions and take in the totality and recognize that you get conflicting images here. And if you are a Christian, then you do believe God revealed this. And so the process of theological reflection is the process of working out the apparent contradictions. And if I have an answer for everything, which I don't, but even if I did, I don't think that is a bad thing. I do because we could just say, no, you don't. Yes, you do. No, you don't. Yes, you do. But I seem to see so much in there that you're blinded to. That's my view. Now, I'm going to show you a book. Hector Avalos, The Bad Jesus. Will he rest in peace? Yes, I love that man. But this is a book I recommend. Is that backward to you? No, no, we can see it, The Bad Jesus. The Bad Jesus, the ethics of New Testament ethics. And he, for anyone who thinks that Jesus was a good guy, a sinless guy, I'm just recommending that. We don't have to debate that and look into it so much. Just there it is. And you need to look at more than just the statement, Jesus was sinless. You have to ask yourself, like I'm asking, he endorsed certain things that you find repensible now. And so did his church, and so did the writings that were gathered into the church. And I don't think there's any way of getting around it and saying, well, no, Jesus really was against the genocide of Noah's flood, for instance. Whether it took place or not, the idea, and which it didn't, the idea is repensible. Yeah, well, fair enough. Again, I think that we have a little bit of a standoff here, because we both have different approaches. And I do think that we both have starting assumptions. You begin, for example, you clearly assume that if Jesus existed at all, he was just human. I begin with a different assumption, and then we're both going to read the text in a way that's probably going to confirm our assumptions and where things seem to bump up against our assumptions. We should be aware of that and then ready to revise our beliefs in light of that. So what I've tried to argue in the book, as you would know, and then also tonight, is that the Christian doesn't have to feel obliged to adopt any one particular view. But the Christian should recognize that there has always been a diversity of views about how to interpret these texts that refer to the commanding of divine violence. And I do think the most troubling or egregious ones are the cases in Deuteronomy 7 and 20, and Joshua 112, and a few other places like the Midianites in Numbers 31 and the Malachites in 1 Samuel 15, where actions are commanded which do seem to meet the contemporary legal definition of genocide and of ethnic cleansing. You referenced the Rwandan, so as I argued at some length in the book, if you really want to appreciate what is being proposed there, give a thick, narrow-tival description of what genocide looks like on the ground, and in particular intimate close contact killing, such as happened in Rwanda, which would have been much like what would have happened in ancient Canaan, if that in fact did occur as narrated. And then you need to consider, well, then could God really have commanded something like that? And if you think, no, he couldn't have commanded something like that, well, there's a whole other interpretive tradition well ensconced within the Christian church, going back to people like Origen, and you don't have to adopt his view, but just recognize you don't have to sacrifice your moral intuitions when you're reading the Bible. I appreciate your referencing Dave Grossman's on killing the psychological cause of learning to kill in war and society. I thought that I'd heard of that book before, and when he describes close contact genocide, it's it's harmful to the people who are performing the acts. And so one of my commenters on my blog simply asked, and I think he's right to ask, why didn't God just kill them? I mean, there's a certain way that we see God killing people and by snapping his fingers and a snake goes through a crowd and or snakes go through the crowd and they die, or my preferred method if God wants to kill off people, just reduce their mating cycles, you know, just keep women barren and wait a generation and you've killed them off. I mean, that is so simple, so easy, so clean, so nice and no pain that God apparently, here's my preaching voice getting involved, he didn't think of it, you know, those are the kinds of questions I ask. Well, there's something we haven't talked about here as of yet, which is the whole question of historicity. So I'm not a Bible scholar, I'm a systematic theologian, and I'm certainly not an ancient historian or archaeologist or anything like that, but yeah. So typically, although you got a hat that would go well with it, but typically, so the conquest of Canaan is placed at about 1220 BC, but from what I've read on this topic, which is a fair bit, there's a lot of evidence that in fact, the text, the Deuteronomic history of Deuteronomy and Joshua didn't really achieve the form in which we have it now until perhaps the time of the Josianic reform, so around the late seventh century, about 610 maybe BC, which would be, you know, 600 some years perhaps after the alleged events. So there's that, and that should raise a significant question for people, right, from a historical perspective, because Christians are so strong and arguing for the intimacy of the Gospel's references to the life of Jesus as being very important to belief in the veracity of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. They should then also consider perhaps 600 year time gap here and think what that might say about the history. And then there are also a lot of other archaeological issues that are problematic with the conquest narrative. So whether it in fact happened is another important question from a historical or archaeological view. The one thing I would say is this, that the faith of Christians does not rest upon the conquest of Canaan, whatever your interpretation of it, it rests on the death and resurrection of Jesus. That's what is central in the creeds. And so I think that's where Christians should really be focused on sort of defending their case. You're becoming a liberal. Not that you care, but you are. Okay, the term liberal is not a very informative term. Because liberal is a relative term, right? Liberal relative to some conservator or fundamentalist. I was actually called a fundamentalist about a week ago by somebody. So the one thing is to keep in mind that I do argue for plenary inspiration of all scripture and inerrancy. Inerrancy, as your reference, inerrancy with, now you said a general term of inerrancy. No, I affirm the inerrancy of the biblical text relative to or with respect to the intentions of the divine author, which may differ from the human author. So when the imprecatory psalmist says God hates your enemies, God may be appropriate in that into his scripture, but not affirming that sentiment he's doing something else with it. But still, I think it's all authoritative there and the Christian has to wrestle with it as they seek to be conformed to Jesus. Yeah, the inerrancy debate went from Howard Linzel for every jot and tittle to the idea that, no, what we're really dealing with is contextual. That is, it's inerrant based on its context as we can affirm that Genesis is myth, but that's its intended revelation. So it's inherently true in that it's communicating that myth well. Now, we're one step beyond that. Well, we're not having to worry about myth, but we can actually deny historical periods of time and just simply say it's whether it's divine, but it's still dividing that up and inerrancy is so watered down to those of us like myself who used to hold to the Linzel inerrancy at least one time, that it's no longer inerrancy. It's like, well, so I just now have to decide what was divine and what wasn't. And some people would say, that makes you God. I mean, that makes you the church, the priests, the Catholics, pope. You're the one deciding for yourself, of course, only yourself. But as you teach, then you're deciding for others. So as you know, in the book, I give an example from James Joyce, his famous novel Ulysses. And in Ulysses, there are some grammatical errors which were corrected by later copy editors. But they incurred the wrath of the reading public when he was recognized that in fact, those errors were included intentionally by James Joyce. So when he includes an error grammatically within the text, he's actually making another point with respect to the themes of the novel. And I don't think that's watered down at all. I think that's a very robust understanding of what Joyce is doing in his novel. By the same token, if there are human errors with respect to the voice of the human author within scripture, I nonetheless understand all of that consistent with divine authorial intents. I don't think that's watered down at all. I think what that is is a very robust understanding of what God is doing within this text and an invitation to the reader to wrestle with it again consistent with their moral intuitions. Now, I should just drop this in that moral intuitions like every other aspect of our reasoning are not infallible. So they can be wrong, they can be corrected. But nonetheless, they do provide a good prima facie starting point for reasoning. Yeah, you said that in your book, you said that that's moral intuitions provide a bedrock. But then later when discussing, I think the just war apologists, I think it was in that section, you said, well, we can always assume our moral intuitions are always going to be true. I could find that. But you all of a sudden, you change your mind. Oh, yeah, I said, in that section, you said our moral intuitions are fallible and prone to error, just like every other source of belief, page 157. So on one hand, you say it's our intuitions are the moral bedrock, such that God, you know, could not command the can I genocide yet later, you say they're fallible and prone to error. And I don't know why I don't know why you said that exactly. Maybe there's, there's no inconsistency there. So there there are all you have to do, for example, read James Cone's book, The Cross and the lynching tree where he goes with the history of lynching during Jim Crow era in America, more than 5000 people were lynched were killed 5000 African Americans. Probably the majority of those by people who were professing Christians, who thought this was a great thing when they were watching a black man or a black woman being strung up in a tree and hang to death. Now that right there is all you need for evidence that we can be very deeply in error in our moral reasoning. So that's pretty clear. At the same time, what we should do then is really reflect on our intuitions. If something seems to us to be wrong, then we should begin to reflect on that and say, is my intuition correct here? Or is it is it an error? And if we get to a point where we're still saying after some period of reflection, no, that just seems wrong to me. Well, then we are fully justified in believing that is definitely wrong. And so if you are in a situation like Rwanda in 1994, and your family begins killing your neighbors and you're this Hutu and you're thinking, it seems wrong to me, but everyone's doing it, even the pastor's doing it. Well, I think even if the whole world does it, but if it seems to you most fundamentally wrong, you're justified in retaining that moral intuition. So that's how I'm bringing those things together. I'm doing all the questions that you probably have questions for me, but I have two more that I'd like to ask you. In my talk, I talked about your moral intuitions. And I very first when I said, well, why don't you reject the Adam and Eve story from those same moral intuitions? Because that's the story that has produced all the suffering down through time that every sentient being has ever suffered, both man and beast. I would think that if you want to use your moral intuitions, you should reject the Adam and Eve story. Why don't you? It's not it's not a story that wreaks havoc or creates suffering or whatever you're describing there is particular interpretations or appropriations of a story. So for example, I think it was Lynn White in 1967 or 68 famously argued that the language of Genesis chapter one of Adam and Eve destructive for the environment, I think. Yeah. So tame the earth or whatever the language is, just escaping right now, the creation mandate, as it's often called, that that justified all sorts of reprehensible, indiscriminate use of the land and pollution and so on. I remember that. Yeah. So yeah, the reality here is that you can take and appropriate stories and justify all kinds of behaviors. That doesn't mean that the story itself is problematic. I think the Genesis one is a profound narrative, which does several things. It disenchants the world in the sense that it's saying you don't worship nature. There is one creator over all things. And that's what you worship that it gives structure and purpose to the world, which many people have argued was a major motivation for the development of modern science. And it elevates human beings to be in the image of God to recognize the intrinsic value of human beings that that it is that that we are to be valued and respected and cherished. And that human beings properly understood the creation mandate is not to exploit the earth, but to be a steward of it, just like a gardener tends the garden that he or she does not own, but has been commissioned to attend. That's our role. And I think properly understood Genesis one is a powerful narrative for creation care. I'm talking about Genesis three, you know, the fall is traditionally described to the Adam and Eve's actions. And probably isn't really the real fall. The real fall might have been the angelic beings had having sex with the stars of men and Genesis six, the first few verses, I mean, that may be the real fall. I've sort of read from some old scholars, but traditionally, the Adam and Eve story is led to the fall of all creation. That's what most people have believed in that that the fall of creation, which caused the pain and suffering and the eating of animals and and the the sizzles and the and the mayhem that otherwise is that people in the garden wouldn't have suffered. Yeah. So again, we're back to that same issue about how do you interpret and appropriate a story? So it's the story is one thing, how you interpret or appropriate is another. In terms of natural science, I mean, I accept natural science as it is given to us the major views of earth history. Earth is 4.6 billion years old. The Homo sapiens appeared when 100,000 years ago or Homo sapiens sapiens. And that there's a long history, a long evolutionary history before us have no problem with that. And that there's there's natural history, including death and so on before the appearance of human beings. So you have to interpret that. And there have been various interpretations of that. So that's a whole another conversation in a sense, but there is an ongoing discussion about that, that the point being, however, that the text itself doesn't bring about any of the negative effects that you're talking about what it is doing in Genesis three is providing an interpretive framework to understand that things are not as they should be that to use the language of Romans eight creation groans now and it does long for its own restoration in the future, which is of course the great Christian hope the new heavens and new earth. So to me, it actually properly understood provides a very powerful way to interpret and understand reality. And it's not a justification for violence. Well, women women were see a man were man is granted to rule over women at that point. I mean, and I think in the text, we have to look it up, but he shall rule over you. That kind of stuff apparently took place when when when they fell into sin. But okay, so you just simply would reject that. I mean, I'm glad to hear that. I think that there was never an Adam and Eve. I don't think science allows for that. There's there's never been a bottleneck in the scope of evolution where there's just been two people that became, you know, the people, you know, but but you know, it's like I welcome that but a lot of people would have trouble with that. Yes, I like you point out that the relationships between men and women after the fall are different than before the fall. And after the fall, it should not be viewed as normative, it should be viewed as descriptive. So there is brokenness and creation and we can recognize that and we can seek to redress it. But importantly, in Genesis chapter two, the description is of Eve coming out of the side of Adam. And as commentators will point out, the side suggests equality. And in fact, Eve is also described as a helper of the man of Adam. But in the same way that God is described as being a helper of human beings. So there's not a sense there of inferiority. Now was much of the Bible written from a patriarchal perspective? I think it was written from the perspective of particular patriarchal structures that God accommodated to those in the ancient Near East in the first century, perhaps, and you have to understand and interpret that and look for that and then wrestle with it, which comes back again to that whole invitation of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32. God is leaving you with a lot of wrestling to do. I'm glad I don't have to wrestle with that kind of stuff. It's a lot easier not having to do that. Well, you know what? It's something that Abraham does. Interestingly, at Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham challenges God. Are you going to really sweep away the righteous with the wicked and then he bargains them down from 50 to 10? It's what Moses does in Exodus 32, when God resolved to destroy the people and then Moses says you can't do that. It's what Job does throughout the book of Job, when he's constantly questioning God. And then at the very end, God says the one righteous person was Job after it all. And it's what the psalmist does time and again. So yeah, I do think that wrestling and questioning is in the DNA of Israel of God's people. And with the church grafted into that, I think we can own that and not be afraid of the questions and being afraid to recognize where there are challenges to our Christian beliefs. I have just one last question. I thank you for entertaining my questions. I think maybe you want us to debate so you can be put on the griddle of questions. And you pretty much figured you'd be able to come out unscathed because of how you interpret things. And you are never going to give in to anything but the perfection of God and his word. And I knew that. But on page 276, you misconstrued something. Now I'm going to get you on this. You have three, four propositions about what the Bible is and what the skeptic thinks about the Bible. And you mischaracterized our view. Now what I'm doing here is I'm going to write out our true view. I'm not going to mention how you skewed it, but you did skew it. You'll see it when I read this. This is what you should have said. Here's the problem of divine miscommunication. You said something about the guy who was going to make disciples and he did in fact make disciples. So what's the problem? Something like that. But one, here's what you should have written. If God is the primary author of scripture, then at the very least it should not lead to gross error such that it causes horrendous suffering as premise one. Two, the degree of ambiguity in scripture is inconsistent with a text that leads to gross error such that it causes horrendous suffering. Three, therefore scripture is not able to avoid gross error such that it causes horrendous suffering. And therefore God is not the primary author of scripture. That's the actual argument. Can you have you want to address that? Give you a chance to address that, Randall. And this is the last point before we have to go into the Q and A. So go ahead, Randall. All right. Well, thanks for the question. So you said, okay, you said. Clear and simple. Okay. You want to meet my wife. Yeah. We're in formal here. Yeah. That's my wife. Sweet. All right. Jesus. See you. Well, Ian, I've always wondered why there has to be interpretation of the Bible in God's word. You'd think God being who he is would make it clear and simple. Yes. Fair enough. This isn't fair. I'm getting double-teamed now. Well, but in terms of your statement of the argument, John, you said that I'm misrepresenting the skeptics. I think you did. Yeah. There's not simple one, there's not one view of skeptics. So I was trying to strongman an objection if you like your formulation of the argument better than the one I give. That's fair enough. So I can just leave it at that. I wanted to just come back to the other thing where you said I'm never going to give in. So in terms of, let me give an illustration and then I'll conclude and turn it back to James into the questions that they may be for us. So in Cuba, as you know, that because of the U.S. embargo that they still have cars from the 1950s that have been driven around for 60, 70 years. The interesting thing is if you want to keep a car on the road in perpetuity, you can do so as long as you're willing to replace more and more parts evermore. You need a new engine, you replace the engine, you can do so, et cetera, right? And it's the same thing with belief systems. So if disconfirming evidence of your belief system comes in, you can always revise the belief system in a lesser or greater way to accommodate for that apparent disconfirming evidence. And so you can't really falsify anything in an absolute sense because you can always revise the belief whatever it is, whether it be naturalism or Christianity or something else. And so it's very difficult, again, to come back to something I said earlier and I'll conclude with this, to just say at the outset, this is what it would take for me to give up my fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality. What we do have to recognize is that we can in principle keep revising our beliefs forever if we want to, but at some point we will probably find if the evidence gets to a certain level, that it's just no longer worth keeping the car on the road and that's when we park it and we get a new car or have a conversion of belief. And so you think I should have taken the car off the road years ago, but I'm enjoying my 1957 Bel Air. We will jump into the Q&A. I want to say thank you very much, folks, for your questions. Thank you so much to John and Randall. It's been a true pleasure and folks, they're linked in the description. If you have been here this long, folks, this far into the debate, well, hey, you probably enjoyed listening and so you can hear more as well as read more from our guests at those links in the description box. And so we are going to jump into it first with Will's question who says Randall, please explain, this is a verse they cite, they say in parentheses, I am the Lord and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. Yeah, so I believe that's from Isaiah. So I have a chapter in my book Conversations with My Interathes that came out last year where I talk about theories of nature and how to understand nature with respect to verses like that because in the ancient and recent world or in the world of the ancient Israelites, they understood, they didn't understand a discrete realm of nature as we understand today, that can be investigated by science. They understood natural events to be immediate expressions of the divine will. And so if you have an earthquake, if you have a flood or something else that automatically gets interpreted as the malevolent action of a particular deity. Now, one way to understand that is to say that that represents the accommodation to the understanding of those ancient people that God wanted to meet them where they were at. And so he revealed himself to them in the understanding that they interacted through him in the immediacy of nature. You got it. Thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Silver Harlow says, John, let's see, they are coming after you. They're grilling you for the ridicule they said. So let's see. In John's defense, Randall mentioned that he thinks it was good friendly poking. So we next up this one coming from Doubting Thomas. Thanks for your super sticker. Appreciate it. And Wills says, Randall, are you a quote, processed theologian unquote? The short answer is no. Process theology depends on a very elaborate metaphysic where the fundamental constituents of reality are processes rather than substances. And I'm not that I'm a metaphysical, I hold to a metaphysical view of substance. You got it. And thank you very much for your question. Mr. Lightning 20 says, so some of these are questions. Some are statements or objections. You could say Mr. Lightning 20 says, God drowned everyone, including babies and animals in Noah's genocidal flood because the world was wicked. Did this fix anything given the later genocides? So is that for me, I guess? I think I don't believe there was a flood. So yeah. Yeah. So again, I said, when we want to interpret what's going on in a passage like Genesis six to nine, the first of all begin to understand that what is going on there is that it is a chiastic poem and that the main message is that God remembered Noah, the bigger message that God remembers the righteous. And then what you do beyond that in terms of understanding that in terms of historical or something is an additional conversation. But there would be good objections to the concept of God judging people through that kind of divine violence in an active way for sure. Gotcha. And this one coming in from Will Stewart says, John, if scripture says that the communicable attributes of God include love, patience, justice, wrath, jealousy, and vengeance. Let's see, then how do you find the text showing those as a contradiction? I'm not discussing that. This isn't part of the debate. I mean, is there is he trying to say that there are contradictions? I'm supposing that there are contradictions between wrath and good. Well, what I'm saying is this. If you obey God, he's going to be good to you. You know, he's going to reward you. You know, actually, there's something to the prosperity gospel in the Bible, not entirely that because there's also no promises that disaster won't strike. But there's some of it that justifies the prosperity gospel. And yet, if you disobey, some of the harshest punishments will come down on you. I mean, that's the kind of thing I was mentioning in my talk. And that is, if you disobey, you got held pay. I mean, you could lose your children, you could lose your life, you could lose your property. And if I find those punishments extreme to the max, the God's wrath is really overpowering. Not that he doesn't show some love, but it's only if we obey. That's my view of the scripture. You got it. And doubting Thomas, thanks for your super sticker, as well as Libra. Laura, thank you very much for your support. Mr. Lightning 20 chimes in again says, did every firstborn child and livestock in Egypt deserve to die because Pharaoh wouldn't let them go as God was hardening his heart? Good question. So here's a good example I talk about in my book, Gregory of Nissa, theologian in the fourth century, in his life of Moses. He says, first of all, that it's wrong for God to condemn children for the actions of adults. And then he actually appeals in terms of an internal biblical critique to Exodus, chapter 18 23, where the prophet says there that each person should die for their own sin, not for the sin of another. And so then he says there must be a deeper spiritual meaning there. And so he actually spiritualizes that narrative and seems to dehistoricize it both on moral grounds and also on internal critiques based upon scripture itself. And that is what that tells us is that this is not a new question, right? This is a question that goes back to the early years of the church. And we do have these different traditions of how to interpret an appropriate scripture. So that if you do have these kinds of moral questions or problems that the question is raising that there are different interpretive frameworks that are available within the church. You got it. And thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Silver Harlow says if Genesis is to be taken as myth, might the fall be understood the way Pandora's box is understood? Well, so myth, I'm not sure how the question isn't intending that term. So myth can mean in popular parlance, not true. But myth in terms of the technical sense is a story, a narrative that conveys universal import for the structure or nature of reality. And there are various interpretations of particularly Genesis one to 11, which would qualify as mythic in that latter sense. So the issue is not whether this happened or not, but rather the issue is that these are narratives which which illuminate or tell us how reality is structured. And on that view, Genesis three is myth means that it tells us something about the fundamentally about the nature of reality that things are not as they should be. And certainly you could take a view of Genesis three as myth in that sense that it is conveying universal disorderedness and brokenness of creation. You got it in this question coming in from will says Randall scripture uses the same term quote unquote calamity to describe actions other than natural events, for example, the conquest of peoples, etc. Why assign the word calamity to only natural events? I don't know. I mean, that's that's a little to me. I'm not sure what what the issue is for the question or there. I think the translation can mean disaster. You know, I mean, but I don't know why it's confined to natural events. It may or may not be we'd have to look at the word. But what yeah, what happens in in terms of the text that I was focusing on here, which I do think are most egregious in terms of what a Christian has to wrestle with. And so again, Deuteronomy 7 20 is the Hrem passages. In other words, those are the Hebrew term that refers to giving over to destruction, that God is giving over the candidates to destruction. And so to my mind, those are those are the most troubling from a moral perspective. And that's where a Christian should really that's ground zero. If you can figure out how to wrestle with the parent genocide texts of Joshua of first Samuel of Deuteronomy, then you've gone a long way toward addressing biblical violence more generally. And that's why that was my focus tonight. You got it. And this question from Temujin Jag says, with thousands of different moral intuitions and exegesis regarding any holy book, how can you verify or falsify which one is correct? It's like, that's not quite the topic of today's rate. But if you want to take a crack at it, it's up to you. Well, from my perspective, as I kind of said at the outset, the topic of tonight's debate is not why I accept the Bible. So you're right. It is beyond the scope. I have written a few books defending my views as to why I believe Christianity is true. One of them, John, will be happy to see is right here. We co-authored this about eight years ago now, God or Godless. And I've written a few other books as well, defending my views. So in those books, I provide positive arguments for why I believe Christianity is true. In this debate, I'm trying to deal with an objection. And so I think that's all part of the package of the rational defense of belief is to look at arguments and grounds for your belief and also respond to objections. You got it. And want to let you know, folks, our guests are linked in the description. So we would highly encourage you. You can check out their links below. And we want to say a huge thank you to our guests. What I'm going to do, folks, is in a moment, I'm going to come back with a post credit scene, letting you know about some epic news for the channel that we're very excited about and you have to hear about. But let me just scan to be absolutely sure. I got every single question. And so we do want to say thank you so much to our guests. John and Randall, it's been a true pleasure to have you guys here tonight. Thanks. Thanks for having us, Tom. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. And great. Absolutely. We'll be right back with a post credit scene in just a moment. Thanks, everybody. So hang tight. Folks, that was an epic one. And I am so excited. Want to again say thank you so much to our guests. We really do appreciate John and Randall. And so thank you, guys. John and Randall, if you're listening, we really appreciate you. And so, folks, I am so excited about tonight's debate. I'm also excited about upcoming stuff that I've got to share with you. I don't know if you saw in the chat, I said we've got big news that we're going to drop at the end of today. And so, we are going to drop that news right now. But I want to first just quick say hello as you guys say, what a tease. Like, we are excited to have you here. So thank you guys for hanging out here. It's always a pleasure. Want to let you know, folks, I mean, I don't sure. I want to say hi. It's nice to, it's fun to say hi and get to hang out with you guys in the chat. I see you there. And folks, we are not on Twitch tonight. I've got to reset the connection to Twitch, so that way we'll be streaming there as well. So, I will only be saying hi to you in the YouTube chat tonight because the Twitch tonight is temporarily. It'll be back this Friday for this debate. This Friday, and this isn't the big news, folks. This is big news, but it's not the big, big news. This Friday, it's going to be a juicy debate. There's going to be a lot of triggering, folks. We want to let you know, no matter what walk of life you are from, it's true, you're probably going to be triggered at some point or another, whether you're Christian, atheist, Democrat, Republican, you name it, but we hope you feel welcome, nonetheless. The debates are juicy. They're controversial. However, we do hope you feel welcome. And so, I am pumped to say hello. Will Stewart, oh, sorry about my delay. Will, or I'm sorry that Will, that I did not get those other questions that you had. Thanks for letting me know that in the chat. But good to see you, and OXD. Thanks for coming by. And Will, thanks for coming by. Good to see you, as well as Converse Contender. Thanks. Oh, no. Did I miss your question? Converse, did you have a question that I missed? Let me know. And Nicholas Cato Strodes says Twitch is banned. Are we really banned on Twitch? That might be it. Maybe Twitch brought the hammer down on us because we were streaming on more than one platform and we're not supposed to. Twitch doesn't like that. YouTube will let us stream simultaneously, but Twitch won't. But here, the big news. You guys, I am pumped for this. So, we, about a couple of months ago, you probably remember we had a controversial debate. In particular, want to let you know, folks, we are pumped that our next crowdfund debate has been decided. This crowdfund strategy is something that we are using. There's several great things about it. One, it allows us to take more risks with honorariums for bigger speakers. And in this case, we're bringing on one brand new speaker who's currently working on his second doctorate. He's a Christian apologist. And we are also welcoming back. Are you guys ready for this? I'm about to show this. It's going to like, you're going to be like, whoa, pumped. I am excited. And I'm going to show you that we are for this crowdfund. Oh, two minutes, two seconds. I got to fix. There it is. Okay. Almost set. That's embarrassing. Thanks for your patience. For this crowdfund that you will see on the bottom right of your screen, you guys, this is going to be absolutely epic. 32 days from now, we are super excited to welcome Matt Dill Huntie back to the channel as we are going to host him and Dr. Kenny Rhodes debating whether or not there is strong evidence for God. This is going to be a big one, folks. Dr. Kenny Rhodes, as I had mentioned, is working up, working on his second doctorate right now. He's a very popular Christian apologist. He's partly on staff with reasons to believe and we are thrilled to have these guests. The way this works, folks, is in order for this to actually happen, basically in order for us to host this debate, we are raising the funds, which is just several hundred dollars more than last time. Last time we raised, I think it was 3,100 dollars. I want to show you that really quick, folks, in particular for the Michael Shermer debate with Michael Jones. So that is on screen right now. We have successfully done this in the past, folks. The link to this fundraiser for the debate between Kenny and Matt is, let me show it to you right now. In particular, we have this link in the description right now at this moment, and so we are excited to kick this fundraiser off. I have already put in 100 dollars to get the ball rolling. We are thrilled that this is going to be a big one, folks. We are wanting to say thank you both in terms of compensating them for their time. Not only that, but also giving a huge thank you to Matt. So in other words, the honorariums are built into the fundraiser, so the crowdfund is basically used to raise funds for these honorariums for our guests. And so long story short, we are thrilled that Matt is going to be coming back. That's why we were doing this fundraiser is to raise the funds for these guests. So what we really want to do is Matt has helped our channel immensely, folks. And so that is one thing is that we are wanting to basically increase the honorariums as a way of saying thank you for all that they have done. And so, folks, this meter on the far right of your screen basically shows the funds that we have raised as we are raising money for our guests, namely their honorariums for Dr. Kenny Rhodes. And I know that some people, I will mention, some people are like, hey, I think they should just come on and debate as entertainment for me for free. And they don't need honorariums. No. And it's like, well, I insist we are thankful for our guests, and we do want to give them, in this case, when it is a high profile debate, we want to actually gift them honorariums. And so that is why we were doing this fundraiser. And so we would encourage you right now, I'll put the link in the chat as well. The link is in the description. And so you can click on that link in the description as well as I'm going to throw it in the chat right now. And we would encourage you, I would, I am inviting you to join me as we raise funds for this project. And you might be saying like, oh, man, what is it at, like 15% like James? That's not a lot. I was like, are you sure you're going to make it? Believe me, we are determined folks. I don't care if we have to do a car wash in May and Colorado is pretty chilly in May. We are going to raise the funds. And this event is going to happen. We are thrilled for it. And so let me put that link to crowd fund. This time we are using instead of last time we used Kickstarter, we are now using Indiegogo. The cool thing is you can actually log in without your email. If you want to create account, you can create an account. However, the way this works is you can just log in through Facebook. This is actually pretty cool. So I'll actually show you this two seconds. Crowd fund. Let me show you first, as I had mentioned, we have done this successfully in the past where we raised, as you can see in the bottom right of your screen right now, that is the picture of the last debate we made happen through a crowd fund. That was via Kickstarter. And you can see it circled in red on the bottom right. We had raised over $3,100, which was absolutely epic. We're excited about that. But also folks, you can log in using your Facebook. So here's what if you go to the front page of Indiegogo, you can either put your email in there, or you can put your basically log in through Facebook, and you can actually help support the crowd fund that way. Now, here's the trick. If we don't raise the funds, the event doesn't happen. So you might be thinking like, well, like, I don't know, maybe I'm just like going to sit this one out. And it's like, and you're like, well, maybe I'll just watch it, but I'll sit this one out. It's like, well, you could do that. But at the same time, like, you might not actually happen if you do that. And so we are determined to make this happen. But we are asking for your help, as this is kind of a new strategy, as we are trying to host more high profile debates. And this one should be epic. I want to let you know we've also added new perks. And so a lot of the same ones from last time are still there. So for example, help ensure this event happens for the price of a cup of coffee, folks. You can help support this event, which we are really excited about. That's going to be epic. Just $3, the price of a cup of coffee, you can help support this event so that it happens. And so if you enjoy Matt, if you've enjoyed his debates in the past, which I imagine you have, Matt is a juggernaut of a debater. There's no doubt about it. No matter what side you're on, I think anybody would say that. And also though, if you help us make this event huge with $6, that helps as we are planning on putting out ads to make this event huge. Also though, here's some other ones. You can see your name on screen. So that would be in the ticker on the bottom of the screen. Your name read out loud at the end of the debate, as we will give thank yous to people who support on that tier or do that perk you could say through Indiegogo. Also $39 receive an embossed postcard. So this is a postcard. Oh, I have to upload the picture for it. Basically, it'll be a picture of the thumbnail for the debate. And then it'll have an embosser with the modern day debate logo on it, as well as a modern day debate t-shirt. That's another tier. So if you have not gotten a modern day debate t-shirt, we are pumped about that. That's epic. I love the t-shirts. Teespring does a great job. Modern day debate hoodie is the next tier. If you need a good hoodie, hey, might be a great way to do, sorry, I'm just giggling at somebody in the chat, but might be a great way to do that. And so let's see. In addition, Zoom chat, one on one with James, that is something that if you, for example, are like, hey, could I do like an hour Zoom chat and could you teach me everything you do through modern day debate with the software and all that stuff? Like, absolutely, we would sincerely appreciate your support for this event. And I could teach you how we do the modern day debate. You could say software stuff and how we make the show. It could be stuff on like debate, strategy, whatever. Dave Hill says, Twitch is a jealous stream. Thank you, Dave Hill, for letting me know that. I agree, Twitch is a challenge. But also this is a brand new one, meet and greet with the guests. So if you'd like to come on before the show actually starts on June 5th, this is something where you can basically get to meet the guests and I'll be there too, so it'll be comfortable so you'll know somebody. But yeah, you can actually say hello to Kenny and Matt as we're really excited about it. That's going to be a lot of fun. And so a lot of ways, a lot of different perks you can choose. We hope that's useful. Let us know if you're like, hey, James, you should add this perk. That would be awesome. Well, let me know. I'm like, I'm open to it. If you have ideas that we might be able to, what's the word, implement. But thank you guys for coming by. We are glad you're here. I want to say hi to you before I keep going on about the Epic event though. And so, Master Oftics, good to see you. Thanks for coming by. And Spicy Rose, glad you're here. Brian Stevens, good to see you again. Evil Atheist Dustpot, thanks for coming by. Algorithm, good to see you again. Hannah Anderson, glad you're here. Dave Langer, good to see you. Says, nice. I agree. It's going to be fun. And Mark Reed says, woo, thank you for your woo. And NYC says, I knew it was Matt. I told you, I was super excited as we were talking to Matt. And I was like, hey, Matt, we'd love to have you back. People would really enjoy watching you come back. And so this really does. We had already promised the speakers that are on Arrariums. And so we do want to invite you if you believe in the vision, namely of a debate platform, hosting debates for everybody to make their case on a level playing field, join us at that link to this crowdfund. And so it is at Indiegogo. So you might be wondering, well, why Indiegogo, James? I don't understand that. The reason is because Indiegogo has more flexibility. So a couple of examples would be like we can go back and edit it as the project is live. I still have to upload the video, actually. Little embarrassing. It's been, I'm been a little behind this week. I've got finals and everything going on. And it's been a crazy week for me. So crowdfund, I would say that this type of crowdfund, Indiegogo, I would say, frankly, they strike me as a little bit more nonpartisan, which is really cool. And so we like that. They don't have any particular stances on any issues. And this strategy, though, allows us to take bigger risks in terms of hosting bigger events. The next one that we might do, like no joke, this isn't guaranteed, but this one being successful, which we're confident we can pull this off. Because believe me, folks, I'm determined and I'm crazy. I mean, we're going to make this happen. I don't care if I have to do a car wash with tea jump, it's going to happen. And I also have a couple of tricks up my sleeve in terms of like making this happen, reaching our goal of 3,500. In particular, I am planning a 12 hour stream for the month of May. So that is going to be an epic one. You guys won't want to miss that. That's probably going to be on a Saturday and it will be, yeah, we're just going to be going from 9 a.m. roughly my time, which is 11 a.m. Eastern all the way until about 11 p.m. Eastern. So that's one thing we're going to do as an example, like we're determined, it's going to happen. Don't doubt it. Now in the event, let's say for some reason it didn't happen, which not going to happen. It's going to happen, believe me. But if it didn't, nobody gets charged. So we have a fixed fundraising strategy, which basically means like the event happens, and then that's the only time that people would actually have their donation go through. If the event for some reason didn't happen, nobody's charged. So just want to let you know, give you a reminder of like how that works. Resuad of Gore says the Taskmaster returns. Thank you. I don't understand what that means. And OXD says, I knew it was Matt Dillenty and Will Stewart says, James, just switched to StreamYard as the output and Twitch has no issues. It's in the licensing agreement they have with StreamYard. Oh, you mean I can stream on multiple platforms using StreamYards? Let me know. But yes, Brian Stevens, good to see you. Neoskeptic, thanks for being here. Mark Reed, good to see you again. Cytonav, thanks for being with us. Matt is back. We are excited that Matt is back. You guys, I predict that this debate will be huge. I think this is going to be one of those 100,000 view type Matt Dillenty debates because I don't know if you guys saw the last debate he had with Stewart in December has already hit 100,000 views. So we're excited. We want to have an impact on YouTube and we are excited about the future folks as we strive for this goal. And believe me, we're going to make it. We are absolutely determined. It's going to, it's absolutely going to happen. So thank you folks. And let's see. But yeah, Fox Sushi, I don't know if you're saying that Matt wanted hype. Matt actually, I was the one that reached out to Matt and I actually was the one that said like, let's do the increased honorariums to support the speakers as we do want to compensate them for their time. I mean, these are heavy kind of like heavyweight intellectual types. Like this is a big one. We're really excited about it. And not only that, but they also have significant influence in the atheism and apologetics world. And so that's a big thing too. But we do encourage you folks. We do really hope that you enjoy your time here at modern day to be. We really hope you feel welcome. And Jesus is Lord. Thanks for coming by. Good day to, good day to you, sir. Thanks for coming by. We hope you are doing well. Christian Prince years. Thanks for coming by. Neo skeptic. Glad you're here. Ursh man. Glad you made it. Clinton Rosh. Thanks for coming by. Let's see. Yeah, Clinton, I can understand how you'd want Matt to read the chat after the debate. That makes sense as we do want the debaters to focus on the debate, especially when we're going to give them an honorarium. And so we also want to of course remind everybody simultaneously, we really do want to ask people to attack the ideas instead of the person. 99% of you do a phenomenal job of that. Like, thank you. It's the 1% that sometimes will attack the person where we're like, that's not what we're looking for. We want you to attack the arguments. Doubting Tom, it's good to see you. Brooke Chavis, thanks for coming by. Evil Atheist Despot. We're glad you are here. And Mindbend 256. Pumpture with us. Converse. Glad to see you again. Says the Michael Jones and Michael Schermer was turned into a movie called IP Man is Christianity Dangerous. Only a VHS. That's really funny. By the way, because you made that video, I watched IP Man on Netflix and I loved it. It was an epic movie. Hilarious video says, when is Matt coming back? It's on June 5th. So yeah, we only have 32 days left for this fundraiser. And folks, so our goal is let's get a big kind of a push or a wave of a momentum to start this crowdfund basically off on a good foot where it's kind of getting that momentum where we start moving forward. And as I mentioned, I had already put in basically 15% worth of that 100% that we're going after. So I threw $100 in just to get the ball rolling. And so I want to encourage you to join me. And it's pretty quick in terms of like doing the pledge, like it's a quick and easy kind of trick. And so please do click on that IndieGoGo link. And that's how you can help make this event happen. And we are excited though. By the way, this one is it's going to be completely open to the public, even the live stream. So the last one, we did it in private. And then we were basically like, well, like, should we just have it be public? And just maybe people would be willing to give just because they're excited that it'll actually happen. That would be cool. And so we actually decided to do that. So let's see. Tiger Hitman, good to see you. JP Junior, thanks for coming by. And Urshman, yes, in this case, the honorariums will be split. So it is being split. And then we build into the crowdfund, we build in like the things like the taxes and then the fee. And then as I mentioned, we're going to have more promotion. So we are going to try to make this event absolutely huge, even bigger than the last one. And we're excited though, that one of the cool things is that it's going to be, what's the word I'm looking for, public. So people will be able to watch the live stream as well as the upload afterward. Resort of course is great to see Matt return any chance of getting set the Andrews to our Woody out smooth you. I could ask him, let me know, because I think it'd be fun. I don't know if he does debates or some people that just don't like debates. I don't know if he's one of them. He might be though, because I've never seen any debates with them. But let me know if you have, because the best predictor of whether or not a person is willing to come on is whether or not they've done a debate before somewhere else. I found that by sending a billion emails. Sunflower, good to see you. John Pelosi, thanks for coming by. Mark Reed, good to see you again. Bubble gum gun, thanks for being with us. And Brooke Chavis, thanks for being here, as well as Jesus is Lord. I can't remember, did I say hi? But we're glad you're here, Jesus is Lord. Also, I'm catching up with chat. You guys are moving fast on me, two seconds. Thank you, Brooke Chavis, who says, I will support this. We appreciate it, Brooke, more than you know, seriously. And Dave Langer says, your Twitch looks fine. People can still sub chat. I see all your old videos. Oh, that's good news. So it looks like we didn't anger Twitch. So it's probably just something with the restream software. So thanks for letting me know that. Brian Stevens says, woohoo, thank you. Thank you, Brian. We appreciate your support. Thanks for always hanging out here. And thanks for all your support in the past as you've helped us immensely. And I really do appreciate that. So Brooke Chavis says, I ordered my hoodie last week. That is super dank. I hope it is super comfy. And so thank you very much. Thanks for your support, Converse Contender. And Reefers Sheifers, am I saying it right? We're glad you're here. Thanks for coming by. Let's see, Nicholas Kato Strode says, I can connect my payment info with Facebook. Oh, do they have a chip for my hand too? That's funny. Maybe, I don't know, you'd have to ask. But Reservoir of Glory, oh, let's see, I got that one. And Experiments in Prebiotic Chemistry, glad you're with us. Ken McCracken says, I lack, well, thanks for being with us. And then Imran Khan, glad you came by. As well as Prince Vegeta, good to see you. Good day to you, sir. Pumped you're here. Hannah Anderson, of course, good to see you. As well as, thanks, human girl, for real. Five bucks really does help to stream or help support the fundraiser. So that seriously means a lot. Thank you for your $5 contribution. And then Fishfrog Dolphin, good to see you. Hilarious Videos says, I love watching Matt on here. Matt, as I mentioned, a juggernaut of a debater. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're excited about this event. And then Fox Sushi says, Dane, coffee is cheap in your area. Yeah, that's right. Last time I was in Denver, it was like $9 for a cup of coffee. So cup of coffee, I mean, for significantly less than a price of a cup of coffee, you can join in and help this event happen. So we do appreciate that. And then Berry Berry says, am I the first non-James donor? You might be. Let me check. Holy smokes. Thank you guys so much. I am super pumped. We already have four backers. And we're already at $236, which is absolutely epic. We are pumped about that. So thank you guys so much. We're off to an awesome start. So thank you so much for supporting it. And I'd have to look and see if you're the first non-James donor. It doesn't show me when it was, but let's see. Christian Prince years has been dating Melinda Gates. Good for you, Christian Prince. But yeah, thank you guys for your support. We do appreciate it. Nicholas Kato Strode says, you'd have to pay me. Let's see. We do want to say thank you Berry Berry for your support of this crowdfund. Thank you guys. Thank you all for your support for the crowdfund. If you don't like it, we do want to ask like, are you okay with just like, we don't want, it's like, it doesn't help if you trash it. Because it's like, I understand if you don't like it, but I mean, like when you're trying, it's like, I'm still trying to accomplish this. We are, and all of the other people that are like pitching in are trying to accomplish it. So if you're like, nobody's saying you're obligated to do it, like to pitch in. But for people who like try to trash it and they're like, this is stupid. It's like, we've already decided on this, like we're already going forward. And so it's like, I understand you're not being like in on it in terms of like throwing your support financially into it. Like nobody can blame you. But like when you, we do want to ask like, if you can't say anything encouraging, like feel free to not say anything at all. Because it's like, that's our goal on this channel. We do still think that this is going to be an epic event in just, you could say in spite of the fact that you don't. And so that's something that's just like, well, some people agree, some people disagree. But Doudin Thomas says some people might do the meet and greet. I hope I don't know. I have no idea how that's going to work. Like we're going to find out. But Brian Stevens, thanks for your support. And John Pelosi says, thank you. Thank you, John, for all your support. Seriously, you're one of the more positive people here. And that means more than you know. Seriously, it's really encouraging that you're always like that. Hannah Anderson says, at least you sorted out your color correction and your forehead isn't glowing. That's true. It's an improvement. So thank you, Hannah. And let's see, almost caught up in hacks says, thanks for your dedication, James. I'll definitely put some money in for it. Thank you so much in hacks for your support of this goal. So like I am pumped. It is going to be awesome. And believe me, folks, don't have any, don't have any sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? Doubt that this is going to happen. Believe me, we're determined to make it happen. Brooke Chavez says, may the fourth be with you. Thank you, Brooke. I appreciate that. I'm a huge Star Wars fan. Steam right now has a deal on Star Wars video games. So like you can get, I always wait until games go on sale. I got Star Wars Shadows of the Empire, the old Nintendo 64 game for $2, which is epic. So if you haven't checked it out on Steam yet, pretty cool. But Will says, yes, James, many more than you are, many more than you are now. Facebook, YouTube, Paris, linked all the same time. Oh, that's cool. That's good to know. Restream allows me, but I'm opening, I'm open to changing it up. Cinegeek says, does Dr. Rhodes have a solid way for people to contact him about potential debates? I reached him via email. So there's a lot of, if you go, if you look him up, check it and see if you can find his email yet. Otherwise, if you can't, by googling it, just shoot me an email. I'll connect you guys. Will Stewart says, all the comments will be in one space as well. Oh, that is convenient. Dave Langer says, Matt D versus Converse Contender would be an epic debate. So true. Toppot2 says, we're already at 170 and even beyond that now. So thank you, Toppot. I'm pumped to hear that. Sunday Worship says, Will be the hokage of YouTube. Believe it. I don't know what that means, but I do know that this debate is honestly, it's going to be epic. So I'm really excited about that. And then thank you, John, for your support. Seriously, it means a lot. Super dank as Will Stewart likes to say. And Hex says, Sif not have the modern day debate, not nanochip implanted. Yeah, you guys got to get that nanochip. Thank you, Brooke Chavez says, I just put in $100 on it. Thank you, Brooke, seriously for your support. I am excited. Holy smokes. You guys were already at $445. This is cruising. You guys, we're going to blow this away. I am pumped. So that is a lot. So thank you so much. Like this is seriously, it's going to be epic and have no doubt in your mind, folks. It is going to happen. So don't think anything like, Oh, I don't know if they're going to be able to do it. Believe me, I'm determined and I'm crazy. And once this semester gets done, I think we're going to have pretty much a debate every single day. No joke. It's pretty much going to be that. Plus that 12 hour stream is going to be gigantic. So thank you guys. We do appreciate it. Thanks for your super chat. Appreciate that says we love football. 14 football videos says next Islamic debate. We're hoping to have one this month. No joke. A Muslim fellow just reached out to me saying he wants to do a debate. So we are hoping to do it maybe at the middle of this month, probably on a weekend. That's at least what I think, but I'm still confirming it. He said he wants to get done with this semester first. So I guess he's in college. Mark Reed says, my contribution is number seven. Awesome. I'm so pumped. Thank you. Seriously, that is encouraging. And thanks for doing it at the seventh tier. That is rockin' awesome. Like that is encouraging, Mark. Thank you so much for your support. Let's see. Cinnamon Pano says, my name is Karen. I love Matt. And I'm glad to hear you do love Matt. We love Matt. We hope he's doing well and we really do appreciate all he's helped us with the channel with. And thank you, Saichu O'Nav, who said you most definitely got my support. Thank you so much for your support for real. And you guys, this is going to be epic. I am super excited for it. Dave Langer says, if you want a great Star Wars game, get Knights of the Old Republic. Oh, I got it. I did. I bought it like years ago and I'm still on behind. I got hooked on Star Wars episode one pod racer. I'm serious. Resolute, of course, is good luck with the crowdfunding. For major donations, would you consider shrieking the donor's name while twerking for the camera? That I don't know if I can help you with. But you could ask my friend, Steven Steen. But yeah, thank you so much. And Hax said, it may take me 24 hours to get my contribution, James, but it's coming. Thank you and Hax for that support. Really, it means a lot. So we are absolutely, we're determined. We're going to make this happen. And we've learned. I mean, that's the one cool thing. You guys, the best research in psychology, because this is like my study, this kind of stuff, in terms of what makes people confident, like truly confident is success in that particular domain. And you guys, we've already had that. So let me show you. I mean, you guys, we've already done this. I mean, we've done this in the past. I'm showing you the last one in January, where we raised about the same amount. This one, 3500 is like only if maybe about $400 more. And we've got a lot more subscribers, a lot more supporters. And so what you're seeing on screen on the bottom right, basically, let me try to zoom in on this so you guys can see it more clearly is that on the bottom right of the screen, what you are seeing right now is want to let you know, you guys, we are pumped that this is showing this, you could say the crowdfund that we did last time. And so let me just show you this dank crowdfund that we had success with in the past. And so zooming in, you can see on screen, what it says on the bottom right is 143 backers pledged 3141 to help bring this project to life. And we successfully did it. We've done it. We've got the experience. We know how to do this. And by the way, yeah, folks, this is again, a stepping stone is we plan on using the strategy. It's not guaranteed. We still have to figure it out. But my hope, no joke, is that by the end of the summer, we want to host Vosh and Dinesh D'Souza for a debate. So no joke. That's one of the things I'm considering. Another one might be Dr. Fuz Rana against Richard Dawkins. We plan on doing this to you could say host bigger and more epic debates to get bigger name people that are kind of like in the celeb world. Like I said, like Richard Dawkins type people. And so like, we're very serious. This strategy, I think it really can be successful. Absolutely. I mean, we've hosted Michael Shermer, New York Times bestseller, you know, pretty popular famous. And so we, we really do have like the ambition to get somebody that big on there. So I've got to go to a meeting you guys, I've got finals this week. So thank you guys for all of your support. I am excited about the future. Thank you everybody. I love you guys. I really do appreciate everything. So thank you so much for supporting this cause. Thanks for just hanging out at the channel though. Even if you never give a dime or even if you give a lot, we hope you know just by hanging out at the channel, it makes the channel a more fun place the more the merrier. And we hope you know, we mean that no matter what walk of life you're from Christian atheist, gay, straight, black, white, Republican Democrat, you name it. We really are glad you're here. And we hope you feel welcome. So thank you everybody for all of your support. I hope you guys have a great rest of your night. We'll be back Friday for a very controversial debate. You don't want to miss it you guys. That one's going to be epic. And so be sure to tune in for that. As you'll see on the bottom right of your screen to jump, we'll be debating Arden of Eden and it's going to be epic. Thanks everybody. And I'll see you Friday as we'll continue working on this goal. Thanks everybody. I love you.