 Hey everybody, today we are debating theistic versus atheistic morality and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. This is going to be a fun one, folks. Basically, we have two experienced debaters. You could say more on the aggressive side but you could call it friendly aggression. Friendly aggression, it's gonna be a good time, folks. And we are going to debate theistic versus atheistic morality and wanna let you know, though, if it's your first time here and you love debates, consider hitting that subscribe button for reminders of upcoming debates, including, you'll see at the bottom right of your screen, the Bible and LGBT issues will be debated this Friday between Joel Patrick and Hunter Avalon. So that'll be an exciting one, we hope to see you there. With that, this is gonna be a total civil discourse. Just conversation, folks. Good old open dialogue, so there's no closings, no openings. We're gonna jump right into it. So I wanna say thanks so much, gentlemen, for being here. Wanna let you know, folks, I have linked both of our guests in the description so that if you're listening and you're like, hmm, I like that. Well, you can hear plenty more where that came from. That's why I put those links there just for you. So with that, gentlemen, thanks so much for being here. It's a pleasure to have you. Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. Absolutely. So with that, gentlemen, the floor is all yours. My man, Vecco, I think you wanna start off. Maybe if you have any questions for me, we can talk a little bit about it. Well, I'll say a couple of things for maybe real briefly, because as some of the people watching this right now know that you and I have been in this discussion quite a few times, and obviously you're no stranger to this debate either. So, but I'll just quickly say, in my opinion, that the difficulty when it comes to having this debate, at least from the subjectivist point of view, is that it comes, what it all boils down to is discerning what is objectively good or evil. And I think that the one thing that we are constantly left with in debates like these is that the materialist is ultimately left with nothing but subjectivity and some form of personal opinion or personal perspective, rather than any form of objectivity. So again, as I stated in one of our other debates we've had, I gave a little bit of a definition of what intrinsic is. When I say that something has intrinsic value, I'm saying that the nature of something is not separated from what it actually is. So for instance, water is intrinsically wet or liquid, music is intrinsically a sound, so on and so forth. So I guess my ultimate question is, because Scott, we hear a lot that you bring up a lot of objections regarding God's moral character. How do you, I mean, let me just ask you this real basically. What is your ultimate goal in presenting these objections to believers, to Christians? When you turn out the issues of God's moral character? Well, what I do it for is what I'm, basically what I'm arguing against or fundamental to Christians is to show them that the way that they root morality in God is contradictory and that God contradicts his own moral code, his own moral values as far as that goes. But that's why I do it, yeah. Oh, okay. So can you give us an example of a contradiction where God morally contradicts his own character? Well, yeah. I mean, if you want, I could put up the argument that I had with Esther. That was what the whole point of the argument was where I had all the different premises. I'll tell you what, I'll read the premises and then you can tell me at what premise you disagree. Okay? If you need me to put them on the screen, I can put them on the screen too. That's fine. Whatever you want. Yeah, we'll start by just reading them and then just let me know if I need to repeat them or anything. Premise one, God's nature is the root and foundation of morality. We agree so far? Yep, that's the Christian world of it, yeah. All right, so premise one, you agree with. How about premise two? God can do nothing that goes against his nature. Right, I agree with that. Premise two, you agree. Premise three, ordering people to do evil would go against God's nature. Well, we have to define what evil is, but we can go on from there and say, yes, it would be contrary to his, if we say moral evil, yeah, God would, that would be contrary to God's nature. And it would be fair. I mean, if we wanted to just say the word immoral instead of evil there, that's fine. It might work better just to say immoral. Okay, that would be the same. Yeah, that means the same thing what you were arguing there. So, okay, so you agree so far. Executing babies is immoral. Executing babies is immoral. I would say not inherently. No, so if it's contrary to God's will, contrary to his commands, then it would be immoral. Because anything we say that God is the essence of morality. He is where morality stems from. So therefore anything that is contrary to God's will, God's commands, God's nature, so on and so forth, would inherently be immoral. So then you would have to argue that it's within God's nature to order people to execute children and hurt children. That's within his nature to do. Well, again, if we're looking at it, if we're looking at it superficially, it would seem immoral to us. So, but again, if you don't have any, if you don't have a higher standard, higher than God, then I don't understand how you can, one can accuse God of being immoral in, you know, committing, you know, commanding or committing such an act. Well, it's interesting that you would say that it seems immoral to us, right? Why is it that our moral code that most of us would have that would say executing a baby is always wrong as a moral objectivist would say? Why is it that we all would say that? Most people would say that, but it's only when God orders someone to do it that that's morally acceptable. I'm confused. Well, why is my, actually let me say this right. Why is the way that I feel, I often hear from Christians that like I have a conscience that conscious and built in me from God, right? Why does my conscience go against what God's actions are? Because you're a finite creature. The reason why you even have this discussion in the first place is because there are such a thing as moral objectivity, moral truths, someone and so forth. So you have this innate discomfort with the idea of God giving us command because of what's innate in us as human beings that in us of well, for the most part, we talk about psychopaths, but psychopath excluded, but within every human being because we're made in the image of God, we have this innate desire to not bring unnecessary harm to anybody, especially the weak and those who can't defend themselves, the weak and vulnerable, so on and so forth. But that doesn't mean though that all of these things that every situation where somebody is quote-unquote killed is having that done to them in an unjust fashion. So of course these things are gonna seem immediately uncomfortable to us fallible human beings, but we're looking at a thread from a large rug and not looking at the whole picture. Don't you find that there's some irony in the idea that like if I were to ask someone like you or another Christian, would God ever rape somebody as a punishment? Like your instinct would be, no, that would go against his nature to have somebody rape another human being as a punishment, right? But for some reason, executing babies doesn't fall in that category, right? Like this one is so extreme for some reason. Why is it like more extreme to rape children than it is to execute them? Like why would one go against God's nature? Well, God could do everything. And then the other one not go against, yeah, not go against. Well, God has the power to do other things to babies. I mean, I know I see you sometimes ask questions like couldn't God have given these babies heart attacks or have them die in a plague or something like that instead of having soldiers come up and kill them directly as we see in 1 Samuel 15 and other passages. But again, I think what we're seeing here is that we're seeing examples of God putting a decree or an act of judgment upon a person or a people and through that judgment, those judgments, he allows men in this sinful nature to carry out the depraved deeds that they might do apart from the judgment that he decrees. So it's not necessarily God decreeing that these babies will be executed, but rather it's more of a judgment. I think if the Bible says that God is the Lord of all flesh and in Daniel chapter four, he has the right to do whatever he wants with his creation, even the inhabitants of the earth. So if he wants to wipe out a population through a plague, through some other type of natural calamity or through the calamity of sending another army to wipe out half of the population, he has the right to do so, but is he doing that out of an immoral stance? Well, who has the ability to accuse him of being immoral? Nobody does, especially if he is the arbiter of all things that are moral, if he's the arbiter of morality. Well, I think there's a couple of things I would say. Well, first, I mean, these words like morality and loving and stuff like they become meaningless when you use the actions God does towards people, in my opinion. When you say that somehow it's moral and justifiable to, well, actually, let me say it this way, under Calvinism, anything that's ever happened to a baby is decreed by God with his decree of will. Yes. God plans everything out from the very beginning. So this is another, I think quite a bit of a contradiction actually. So you take something like rape, child molestation or something along those lines and that is completely, obviously you would say first hand that is completely against God's nature of rape or harm children in that type of manner, right? But yet God decrees it. God plans it. He actually is the cause of child rape and what goes on in the world. I disagree with that. Well, God, do you believe that God has planned everything out that is gonna happen step by step, right? Right, but like I said before, you have two elements going on here. You have God decreeing a thing to occur and then on the other side of that, you have man's depraved free will, depraved actions. And kind of jump into the, I don't wanna, we can talk about the slavery issue a little bit later if you want, but one of the reasons why atheists seem to get mixed up with passages like what we see in Exodus 21, for example, is because they don't understand why God stepped in and gave these commands that we see in Exodus 21 in the first place. Because God is, obviously God is fully aware of man's sinful nature. So this is why he steps in and gives these commands for man to not do such and such, because had he not stepped in, man's sinful nature would provoke them to do far worse things than God would ever command the man to do. Well, God planned out their sinful nature with his decreed of will. Everything that is exactly the whole, everything that is exactly happening now is exactly the way that God decreed it. Whatever's happening now, people have, now I don't know why you can use the word free will because there's no free will in Caliphism. You guys can use the word free all you want. That's not true. But I'm still, so give me just a second, just to kind of finish my thought here. But when God with the decreed of will plans everything from the very beginning, every step of it, including the fall, including every atrocity that happens, which is weirdly, like I said, you would argue something like rape goes against God's nature, but yet God in his decreed of will has people rape people. He literally plans out a scenario where people will commit sinful acts and then somehow has to come in and punish people for committing the sinful acts that he decreed in the first place. Go ahead, my man. Okay, first of all, again, let me just bring a correction to you about Calvinist's perspective on free will. Calvinists do believe that man has a free will, but it is limited to their sinful nature, meaning that when you hear a man saying, when you hear Calvinists say that we, your man has no free will, we're talking about the ability to do that which pleases God. Okay, they cannot do anything that will merit God's salvation, merit God's grace, merit God's love, so on and so forth. All of these things come unconditionally from God himself. Okay, now, as far as man being able to do evil and stuff like that, well, you got Proverbs 21, which clearly shows example of God controlling the king's heart. You know, he's sovereign over all types of decisions made by people of power and stuff like that. But again, the other thing is, I'm sorry I have to repeat it, but we don't see any example of God directly prescribing or decreeing such atrocities as rape. Now, if you wanna look at the prophecies and the judgments that God has put upon a certain people, all he does is say that he's gonna put a judgment upon these people or a person, but as a result of that judgment, there's gonna come these other things that's gonna be subsequent to this judgment. And you may see, for example, people practicing cannibalism or rape and stuff like that, but that's not anything that's contextually prescribed by God directly. So if you have a verse that shows that, I would like to see that. Oh, no, no, no, what I was just simply saying is that the irony is that you'll argue so strongly that it's never possible that God would allow our condone rape, but yet he's the author of rape. He's the one who created what rape was. He wrote it with his decreed of will, right? If he didn't want rape, if he didn't want rape to exist, how about not decree it, all right? How about not bringing it into existence? Calvinists believe that, I'm sorry? What did he decree it? What did he decree it? I didn't say he decreed everything that's gonna happen. Everything that happens in a person's life is decreed by God. If God decreed, let me ask you this, if God decrees someone's gonna get raped, are they gonna get raped? And that's an error, yes. If he decreed it, it's gonna happen. Yes, does God decree people to get raped? No. He's never decreed it. We don't see any examples. Not in the Bible, no, no, no. But no, we see an example because every, okay, every, okay, let me, do you believe every moment of a person's life is planned out by God? Dude, your destination. I would say yes, but there's other elements to that person's life that I think, I think in general, God has a specific path for specific individuals, but there, I think subsequent to that, there are little details that a person does have the ability to make decisions that are not necessarily a part of God's decrees. Sure. But he or she has a general direction that they're gonna go, which is decreed by God. Well, like when God made Adolf Hitler, he knew exactly what Adolf Hitler was gonna do. He decreed Adolf, so basically all you're saying is that God thinks these things are somehow immoral, somehow these things like murder, genocide, killing babies, all immoral, go against God's nature, but somehow God makes people and tells people to do all these things and commits those same actions himself. Does things that are against his own nature? No, I don't see any example of God doing anything contrary to his own nature. Well, I mean, if you're just gonna define baby killing is morally good because it doesn't go against God's nature, then of course, I mean, we could do this with every, like I could say, I could use the whole lot, I could use a scenario like it's not absolutely wrong to take women and children as plunder because the Bible says you could take women and children as plunder. Well, under your worldview, when would it, how do you determine whether or not it's right or wrong? What are you basing it on? So if you're asking me, how do I determine if something's objectively right or wrong, that it's kind of incoherent when you're talking to a moral subjectivist. No, I didn't ask you if it's objective or wrong, I'm saying, how do you know that it's wrong? Oh, like under my own personal moral system. It would, yeah, I have a definition for morality. My definition of morality would be, morality is a distinction between right and wrong as it relates to conscious beings, right actions, being those that positively affect myself and other conscious beings, wrong actions being those that negatively affect myself and other conscious beings when it can't be avoided. So if I were to view that as a negative action or something harmful to that person, I wouldn't know that it was wrong under my moral system. Right, but you wouldn't be able to actually prove that though, you just kind of convince yourself though that it's actually wrong. Like prove what? Like prove that that's just my opinion? Yeah, basically. Because when you- Do you want me to prove that what an opinion is? I don't understand what you're asking me to prove. Well, it's obvious that it's your opinion, but I'm talking about something beyond that. If you're looking at an action that somebody's doing, how do you go about determining whether or not that thing, despite whether or not you like it, but how do you go about determining the moral value of that thing? Well, see, what you're doing is you're asking me how to define if it's a morally objective or is objectively moral. And I'm telling you, like you're the one who's claiming there's objective morals. Like you've got to kind of be able to make an argument for it and show that they exist. Simply pointing and saying, like, hey, you can't say something's objectively moral. Well, okay, no shit, that's what the point is. Like the point is, is that you're claiming objective morals. You're saying that they exist, rooted in God's nature. And then you're asking me questions, do you believe in objective morals? So I've told you, no, I don't believe moral. Okay, so then you admit then, when you make these claims about God being immoral and stuff like that, are you only doing this to show an alleged contradiction in God's moral character, or are you actually saying that God is a monster? Or do you believe that God- No, no, no, just to show contradictions. If you don't think baby killing is immoral, then yeah, it's not a contradiction. That's why I stopped with the argument. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So you won the argument, but you had to win it by admitting that killing babies isn't objectively morally wrong. So that's, unfortunately, that's the spot you're in. But the argument's defeated, yeah. Well, I wouldn't say that, again, I would say if you're asking me, murdering babies is wrong, yes, absolutely. That's why I'm a strong advocate against abortion. But again, because I don't see abortion as, see, and here's the thing, when it comes to certain cases of abortion, I do believe that there are some cases that I might be quote-unquote agnostic to, like for example, if a mother, if the life of a mother is in danger and it requires her to, you know, the baby to be aborted, I don't know personally where I would stand on that, morally speaking, but I wouldn't see, but what I do see is a woman who says she doesn't want the baby because she can't afford it or because, you know, she wants to keep her penthouse in Manhattan or something like that. That to me is, that's just downright selfish and I think it is put under the category of murder. But wouldn't you say it like at any point, as long as you're not kind of like, like if really is there any circumstances where a baby's born and it's healthy and everything's going okay, that it would be morally correct to kill it? Like basically what you're arguing is because the parents did something really, really bad, right? It was morally justified for God to send in human beings to execute children, right? For like, somehow you're gonna say those babies aren't innocent, right? Like those babies because of original sin, already are worthy of hell and whatever punishment God puts on them. Yeah, like so like technically God is justified. He could take all those babies, throw them in a pit of sharks and he would be completely justified because they were born with a sinful nature. Well, again, when we're talking about the word killing, I would say not inherently murdering babies is though. Murdering babies is absolutely inherently, I would say that. But how could you justify killing healthy babies when they haven't done anything and they would live a normal, like how would you say that's not murder? Well, from my finite mind, I can definitely find discomfort in reading passages such as First Sammy in 15.3, which also could be debated by the way, whether or not there's a hyperbole or if that was an actual thing or not. But again, my question is though, if we're going to say that, see we don't wanna worry about whether or not how I feel about doing a certain thing. We wanna know the intrinsic nature of the act in and of itself. Because there's a lot of things that I can do that might test a lot of non-believers, a lot of atheists, and maybe even some other Christians. But of course they can be detested by it, but we're talking about the inherent nature of the thing. That's what we're talking about. Yeah, and that's the point is that if you believe something has inherent value and you believe morals are objective and people have this objective value, then you need to demonstrate it. That's fine, you can claim it up and down, left and right every minute of the day. But if there's no argument, there's no just you just telling me, hey, my morals are really, really real, but there's no argument for it. I don't know what you wanna do with it. Well, we can tell, well, again, proof is different from persuasion. So I mean, just because you don't buy the argument that I'm presenting to prove that the objective morality exists, that doesn't mean that it's not true. I mean, all you wanna do- Well, I haven't heard the argument yet. There hasn't been an argument. You haven't made an argument. Now you've been interacting with my position quite a bit, to be fair. I'm not saying you've been avoiding making an argument or anything like that. But I'm just saying at this point, there hasn't been an argument yet. Well, I'd say I believe that the evidence of objective morality is simply by the fact that we have moral experiences. So the fact that you even raising these questions about, is it right or wrong for babies to be executed and so on and so forth, shows that this is inherent in the knowledge of justice, fairness, kindness, so on and so forth. That's, I think it's in every human. So humans in general, with again, some exceptions of psychopaths, are innately able to make distinctions between things that are good, evil, right or wrong. So that would be my proof of values existing. I don't know how that would look any different than what you would be if it was a moral subjective, if moral subjectivism was true. Like if you're just seeing people saying that they're differentiating right or wrong based on their own personal moral system, I don't know how as the observer, you would be able to actually, like how would you know those morals are objective just by looking at people and listening to people? People's like, yeah. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, finish what you're gonna say. No, I was just gonna say that the strongness somebody feels that their morals are really real are, it doesn't tell you anything. It just tells you that they feel strongly that the morals are objective. But I don't know just by saying, hey, people can have different, well, people do have different moral systems obviously. I think you would even disagree with subjective morality being the case in some situations. But anyways, I just don't know how you would recognize that they're objective to that fashion. Again, it's a fact that people have different opinions and different views on certain things. Okay, the question is, how do we go about determining that outside of our personal opinions or any form of subjectivity, the nature of the thing that's in question? Okay, so I think, I say that when a subjectivist is declaring that something is evil, something is good, that they're borrowing from a worldview that's external to their own, that's not their own. So they're saying that these things are bad. They're saying that these things are evil. But from a subjectivist standpoint, they can't really tell you why these things that they're declaring to be evil are actually immoral according to, they're just kind of arbitrarily throwing that out there saying, well, it's evil, it's evil. No, I think people just use language as a tool of communication. And I think when people use stuff like different words like bad, good, evil, monstrous, right? All they're doing is articulating an expression of their feelings, right? And the level of tension they're feeling toward something. So they may have a level of disgust that is different compared to lying, right? They may just say, hey, lying's bad, right? But then they say something like extreme child abuse. So that's extremely bad. This is monstrous, right? And what I think, what you're trying to argue is objective morality is just basically different degrees and how emotionally people feel about these issues and how they express them to people through words. Like I don't think they actually really think that there's this real evil out there because that's really problematic for Christianity because God could simply just eliminate this evil. But somehow it just stays around, ruining people's days every day. Well, I don't see that to be an actual problem for the Christian, to be honest. I think it actually explains, it actually helps us get a better understanding of how people behave, why people do things, why we are the way we are, so on and so forth. And ultimately it leaves us in a vulnerable position where we're totally dependent upon God for answers and for salvation, so on and so forth. So yeah, I guess I'll say that part. Let me see. So I think I have a couple of questions for you unless you add another one for me. No, no, just throw them out, man. All right, let's see. All right, so some of these questions I want to ask you and now one of our previous debates, I don't think I got a chance to argue because it seems like your position, your argument is mostly against God's moral character being contradictory. That seems to be most of your argument. You know, it seems to me you've at the point now where you realize that when you make a complaint about the behavior of somebody in the Bible or what God does, that it's only your opinion that it's actually morally evil. But now it seems like your argument is more about pointing out alleged contradictions in God's moral character. Am I correct about that? Yeah, I would say that I think in my early days of YouTube, I think I went the tactic of more making fun of people for the things that they thought were moral, like baby killing and slavery and owning women and children's property or plunder, taking it as plunder. Like to me, it's just a bizarre type of thing for people to argue that kind of stuff's moral because I don't actually think you guys think that stuff's moral. I think that you guys are just forced to be positioned because of the Bible and believe that. But yeah, no, to answer your question more specifically, yeah, I would say that more of the argument is to show that your God is contradictory. But with Calvinist, and this is what I do appreciate with you guys, you guys jump on the sword, right? You guys are willing to admit that it's not objectively morally wrong to execute babies. It's just morally wrong sometimes, right? So my argument doesn't work. It only works with Christians who seem to think that, well, that think that actual killing babies is immoral. But if you don't think it's objectively immoral, it doesn't work. Well, again, I would say that is objectively immoral to murder babies, but not to kill, but killing them is, I mean, to me, I mean, when you're talking about the word kill, as we see throughout scripture. Slice open with swords, you know. Okay, so kill, well, it doesn't matter how you kill it. Let's not confuse method with motive here. So because when we're talking about murder, that's something that's done with a sentient mindset there. You have to have some form of sentience in order to commit the murder. I mean, anything could be killed without any murder. But you're saying it's not murder because the parents did something wrong. Because the parents did something wrong, those babies deserve to die. It's not murder. Well, again, it's an act of judgment from God. So it's- A judgment for what? I don't understand, what's the judgment for? For the babies? Like, what do the babies do to the judge? Well, which passage are you talking about? First Samuel 15, that's good, that's fair. We always talk about that. So for First Samuel 15, what was the judgment? What did the babies do that they were being judged for? Okay, so for those of you who already know, because I think you already know, because I've seen you talk about this quite a few times in the past, this test. But for those of you who are not familiar with it, in First Samuel 15, three, you see God commanding through the prophet Samuel, to the king Saul to go wipe out the Amalekites, including the babies, the men, women, children, that's the livestock, and the children, and even the babies. Now, why does God give this command? Because of what we see happen with the Israelites in Exodus 17 and Deuteronomy 25, Numbers 14, so on and so forth. So the Lord had already promised a long time ago to have them wiped out. You know, again, going back to Exodus 17, and it was eventually fulfilled in the Book of Esther in chapter two. So what you see happening in First Samuel 15 was just the beginning of it. So the Israelites were supposed to kill even the children and livestock. Saul did all that, he was instructed, except, well, we don't know how to go into the detail about it. No, no, that makes sense. So the thing is so basically, it's moral to kill people that didn't actually commit the actions. Thank you, baby. My daughter came up. So basically, it's not immoral to kill people that didn't actually commit the actions that they're being punished for, right? So this is generations later, right? So what God does, and somehow this is just to be clear, this doesn't go against God's nature, it doesn't go against morality to kill further generations down for what their parents did. So if my grandparents committed an action that was bad, whatever, according to God's moral law, it would be completely justified of God to hurt my children generations later, who didn't actually commit any of those actions. Well, again, let's not confuse motive with method here. So again, if God is not a subject to our time, so a day is like 1,000 years and 1,000 years is like a day. So, 100 years from now, God could have already preplanned or ordained, decreed, whatever, an act of judgment upon this group of people for what they had did to another group of people hundreds of years later. So just- But it's not the same people though. It's not the same people. It's generations later. They didn't commit any of the actions. So you're saying it's the descendants, the descendants of the people. Right, exactly. But it's the same people, the same nation, but not the same individuals, right? So by this logic, it would be perfectly moral to kill the grandchildren, the great grandchildren, the Nazis for what they did. Because if moral, breaking the moral code equals that you can kill people and punish people generations later that didn't even commit the act, you don't see that there's any problem there? Wait, wait, wait, wait. If God is the arbiter of morality and he cannot and will not do anything contrary to his nature, then him passing on an act of judgment upon these people, even if it's centuries later, is not him being immoral. It's just him showing some sort of recommendation towards that people, towards that nation. Exactly. Of what happened to them. So just because we have so-called innocent people falling under that judgment, that doesn't mean that that's not proof that God is being immoral. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not in that part. But let me ask you, so what are they guilty of? Can you talk about the Amalekites in this case? Yeah, yeah, what are they guilty of? What did those people actually do? Those, those particular babies, the babies, the children, not the adults, but the babies and children, what did they actually do that they deserve to be executed? They, well, they didn't have to do anything. It's just moral, so like, like I was saying, so it would be perfectly moral under this rationale to take the great grandchildren of Nazis and just execute them. Okay, so- Because if that's moral there, if morals are objective and in every situation this is moral because God's nature is unchanging, how would it not be moral in other situations to do the same action? How is it immoral for God to do it? If he's the arbiter of all things, logical and moral, how is he contradicting his nature? Because he doesn't believe, because I would hope you would believe, but this is the problem. You don't believe it's immoral to execute children. Most people, I would imagine, I would hope that most people would think it's immoral to execute children. You don't. That's why it would be a contradiction. It isn't a contradiction, I'm telling you that. In order to win the argument, you've had to admit that killing babies isn't absolutely wrong or objectively wrong. It's just relative to the situation. I disagree with you on that. When you, okay, if I'm executing a baby, what do you mean by that? Are you putting like a moral aspect to that or? You don't know what executing a baby is yet there. I know what execute means, but- Okay, well, executing a baby. But I don't justify executing a baby. You're justifying God's actions and the actions that he gave to people to do. What I'm saying is that despite my fallibility, your fallibility and everybody else's listening, we don't have a means to prove that what God is doing is absolutely immoral. That's not the point. I'm not even trying to do that at this point. Listen, obviously, if you think all, if I name atrocious thing X and you just say atrocious things X moral, we're never gonna get to a point where we call it immoral. Because you're just gonna be willing to say whatever God does is moral, killing children, telling people that they could take women and children as plunder, genocide. You're just gonna say God's moral, therefore he can do it. So, okay, you're right. I'm never gonna be able to call it contradictory because you think every violent action God takes is moral. What I'm saying is that you can have, what you're gonna have is as your fallibility limits you to, it's just a decision to come to a conclusion that what he is doing is immoral. But you're not able to give us any type of measurement to determine that what he has. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that, Veckel. I'm not trying to say that he's immoral. I don't know why you keep saying that. I'm not trying to do that. I don't believe that objective morals, why would I do that? Okay, but you are trying to point out a contradiction. Exactly, but I lost that I lost it, my argument, because you were willing to say that killing children isn't objectively immoral. Well, so I can replace it with anything. Taking women and children as plunder, not objectively immoral, right? Because there are situations where God tells people they can go take women and children as plunder. Okay, again, not inherently, like I said, for even killing babies. Exactly, it's not always wrong to do those things. It's relative to the situation. Relative to the situation? Yes, it depends on the situation. If it's immoral to take women and children as property under your worldview. It depends on if God had told you to do it. If God told you to do it, it's moral. Okay, hold on a second. So are you trying to give us a contradiction then, or are you trying to, because it seemed like you're going back and forth between discerning what is objectively immoral and God's contradictory, or alleged God-contradicting character. No, what I'm saying is I was trying to do a contradiction, but I can't do it with you, because you're willing to admit that everything that I say is absolutely not immoral. Like killing children, owning women and children as property, taking women and children as plunder. What I'm saying- You'll admit that those aren't objectively wrong in every situation. What I'm saying- I can't win the argument. That's what I'm saying. What I'm saying ultimately- You win, but your God becomes this thing that you're explaining it is. Well, what I'm saying ultimately is that if you're going to accuse God of being self-contradictory, then we have to have a standard that you want to put him to, that you want to measure it to in order to determine that to be the actual case. But so- Oh, I agree. I'm trying to use your God's standard. That's what the point is. That's why I ask you the questions. But when I ask you the question, is it immoral to execute children, you say no, well, then, hey, I can't, if you say that's the standard, then I can't use that argument. That's the point, Beckel. Let's do it this way then. What I'm saying is that, okay, let's take First Sammy 15, well, we already did First Sammy 15. See, every one of these examples of God doing these, either decreeing or commanding these so-called atrocious things towards a people, okay? On the surface, superficially, they seem to be very disturbing. They are very disturbing to us human beings. We're foul of human beings, right? But again, as you read on in scripture though, God doesn't always leave things in, well, not everything. He doesn't always leave those type of events in a total mystery. And then just therefore making them look like some sort of monster. He just capriciously does these things. No, there's usually an explanation in hindsight afterwards as to why he gave these commands. And it's from there, if you're reading the passages in context, you can determine, well, well, again, this goes back to your subjectivity, but it will give you an idea as to why God gave these commands. Again, like we just went through First Sammy 15. Three, if we, if there was no, if God had not said in the elsewhere, in that same chapter, why he was giving this command to kill the Amalekites, then you would have an interesting argument and say, okay, this seems contrary to what God would do. But see, the thing is though, again, God does things differently in the way that humans do. He sees all things we don't. So, He does do things quite differently. He does, like we as Americans, what we don't do is we don't go in and say, hey, let's go kill the Germans, grandchildren for what the Germans did to us during World War II. That's right. We as Americans have a different set of morality than God does. God kills babies who have done, has done nothing wrong, did nothing at all, right? Because of what their great, great, great, or whatever grandparents have done, right? We don't, in wartime, America doesn't send soldiers in to kill, execute children. God does. When God has the ability to actually proof them that existence, but God apparently prefers the violent ways of the Old Testament. And once again, Veckel, your God planned all this out. Every act of rape, genocide, violence, baby killing, this is exactly the way, this is exactly the way that God wanted it. I would slightly change that, because what you're doing is you're making them up to be the author of evil, and that's not, again, that hasn't been demonstrated there. What you're saying, what you should be saying is that God has these decrees, these judgments upon a group of people, and then subsequent to those judgments, you have him allowing man in his depraved nature to do these things that are not decreed or commanded by God himself. And we see several examples of that throughout scripture. Wait a minute, you're saying God does not decree your whole entire life? I believe earlier you said that God doesn't. God will decree a certain, like I said before, God will give decrees on the path of somebody's life or people's life, whatever, so on and so forth. But if he's declaring an act of judgment upon a person, let's say, for example, he wants to send a gang after a family household as an act of judgment upon them. Okay, great, so what he's gonna do is, okay, I'm sending him out there as an act of judgment, knowing full well that they're gonna do something depraved. Now, that doesn't mean that God is not aware of what they're gonna do, but because we see, but at the same time, we do see example of God allowing man in his sinful and depraved state to carry out their sinful deeds as part of their judgment. It's not that God is declaring or decreeing that these guys should do it, or commanding rather, but rather that this is what's going to happen as a result of that judgment being upon them. I could give you a quick example of something just like that, and I say it. Well, I would just say that, I guess you have, you hold the position in Matt Slick, it sounds like, because Matt Slick's position, I know you're a big fan of his, is that everything is planned out from the very beginning, every inch, every detail of what the world is, what's gonna happen, is all preordained by God in the beginning. So you disagree with that. I'm sorry, I said it again, my daughter's. No, no, it's okay. You disagree with Matt Slick then, when he says everything's preordained from the very beginning, every action, every moment, every motive of a human being is all preordained by God. I would say it's, I don't know if Matt Slick actually holds that position, especially with his last debate with you, because he also asserts that there's indirect causation as well. Well, again. Well, I mean, it doesn't mean indirect, direct, it's the same cause, just God sets it up a different way. Like it's still what God decrees, what he wants to come to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's what happens. But generally speaking, yeah, if we're speaking on a more general level here, God has decreed for this person to grow up rich while another person will grow up poor or handicapped. Any violence that happens to him, any action that happens to him is decreed by God in the beginning. That's the one that makes these. That makes it a purpose and as well, right? Yes, because everything that exists is according to his will, his purpose. Like it's all playing out like a movie. Like a God wrote a script and this is exactly the way it's gonna play out. So all these things that you call moral, rape, murder, God wrote them out and had people do them. And then some reason he punishes them for the actions that he made them do with his decree of will. See, that's where you're not accurate. Again, if we got a perfect example of just that in Isaiah chapter 10. Isaiah chapter 10, you have God decreeing as an act of judgment upon the nation of Israel that the Assyrians will go and attack them. Okay, so after they were successful in doing that, God judges the Assyrians, but not because of what he decreed them to do, but because of a separate thing. What he decreed them to do, he didn't punish them for that. He punished them because of their attitude in what they did. See, so there's two different situations as to why you got God decreeing a person to do and calamity versus God judging them for something entirely different. And that's what you see in Isaiah chapter 10. So you don't see any example of God committing, calling somebody. Some Calvinists, unfortunately, do have this position and believe that God makes people do sinful things and I disagree with that. But- No, I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate it. We don't see any example of that in scripture. We only see people being condemned to hell for meritorial reasons, things that they've done, things that they've known, so on and so forth. Why is it you, why is it for so long throughout human history to have people gotten it wrong on particular moral issues that you would argue now would be immoral against God's nature? Why is it for so many years people treated women as like property might be an example? Something that I would imagine as Christian, you would argue that women deserve equal rights, should be treated as equal human beings. Why is it, like if it was so clear that it was the morally right thing to do for so long, why did it take so long for women to get rights if this was something that was built into us? Well, when you look in the scripture, during that time women were treated, they were obviously not treated in the same way that men were because I would say there was no police system back then where you have people upholding the law in the same fashion that we see police officers do today and so on and so forth. So things were kind of, I would say the judicial system, even though they had one was, I would say was not as advanced, not organized, but I wouldn't say disorganized, but maybe not as advanced as what we have today. So therefore it was kind of like the Wild Wild West in some, in most cases. So this is why if you had a woman who was on her own, she didn't have the covering or the protection of a man, I'm gonna have to step away for a second. If she didn't have the covering from a man, then that left her vulnerable to men who were out in the field in the wilderness, who would try to take advantage of her, try to rape her and so on and so forth. But if she was married under someone, she was under the headship and federal headship of a man, she was guaranteed a place to live full to eat and protection, so on and so forth. So obviously things changed now with things being more advanced, technologically speaking and so on and so forth. So we're no longer in need of that type of system now. I do apologize, I have to step away for a second. Yeah, that's fine. I would just say that... One sec. It's interesting that... Oh, please, yeah. Well, I don't know if you can hear, I was just gonna give a quick shout out for a couple of things. One, wanna remind you folks, if you're listening right now and you're enjoying it, which you must be, you're hanging out here, I have put both Skyler's link and Veckel's link in the description, folks, as they have their own channels with their own content and that way if you'd like to hear more, you have that opportunity as conveniently as possible. There's little links down there in the description box. Also though, wanna let you know tomorrow for the first time ever, I'm so surprised as regular as they are, Tom Jump and Nephilim Free still have not crossed swords yet. So that's going to be a really fun one. We are very excited about that. So I'm sure that Skyler will be watching. He likes to watch. It's gonna be great. So thanks so much, ladies and gentlemen. That's gonna be a lot of fun as they debate, did dinosaurs coexist with man? So that will be an interesting one. Okay, I'm back. You back. I cannot wait to watch them cross swords, you know. I just can't wait. I just don't hope they don't get entangled up, so I'll say. So true. No, I was gonna say in the response, I don't even remember what I was gonna say now. Here's the thing. Now I lost my thought. I don't know, Vekal, what was the last thing you were talking about? I'm sorry, I completely lost that. I forgot too, my daughter was distracting me, so. I know that's how I was thinking. I was like, poor Vekal. I've been there. I've been in that situation before. Right. We were talking about as God-making people do evil and then judging them for it. I think that was true. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I find that, well, yeah, and I mean, if you don't hold that position, that's good. I appreciate that. There's a lot of Calvinists to do, which is a very unfortunate position. I don't think it rashly makes sense. I would just say that, you know, I'm open definitely to morals being objective. I just don't see any reason to believe. I see when you look around the world and you see that something like I was talking about was women, women were literally property. Oh, yeah, right. For most of human history. For some reason, that moral we didn't figure out until like what, the 1900s, 1800s maybe, right? Maybe doing, you know, but like somehow this thing that's so important, objectively morally correct to treat women with respect and equal treatment. It's not found in the Bible really. It's not found, well, I mean, listen, women and children, women are sold as property over and over again. Over and over again. I challenge you to find me an example of consent in the Bible where a woman consents to marry somebody. I challenge you on that. I don't mean on that one. But again, see, here's the thing though, because you're coming into this with a modern eyes understanding of how that culture ran things there. Just because a woman might have been viewed in the fashion that we are looking at her now today, it doesn't mean that she was treated as some sort of lesser form of humanity or something like that. I mean, we see all kinds of scripture that glorifies women, that praises women. The first evangelist was a woman. We have examples in the scriptures where women are bringing correction to some of the preachers and there was no rebuke towards her. We see some women who act as authority over certain situations, someone and so forth. You see where they're tested for virginity and they're not virgins, they're executed on their wedding nights. They're tested for virginity. You may not test it. Oh, are you talking about, okay, the token of virginity, right? Yeah, yeah. If they're found not to be a virgin on their wedding night, they're executed. Well, here's the thing. Let's not twist scripture around a little bit. First off, for the audience who's not familiar with the token of virginity as expressed in Deuteronomy. What's happening there is that, again, this is the Hebrew culture now. So you can bring these up all you want, but that doesn't mean that it's immoral. The rules were given by God for the society. That's why I'm taking them up. That's okay, but if we're talking about morality, there's no way for you to validate that it's immoral. Are you just looking at it? No, no, that's not what I'm doing. But listen, I don't think that's what we're doing at this point. I'm just bringing up all these things that you say are objectively wrong and I'm showing you all the weird inconsistencies within your moral system, basically. So like at some point it's not immoral. It's not absolutely immoral to kill someone who's not a virgin, who isn't a virgin on the wedding night. That's not absolutely wrong to do. Well, you haven't shown us any example of that. But again, what you're talking about is the token of virginity for those of you who are not familiar with. In the Hebrew culture, when a man wanted to marry a woman, first he would give the husband, the woman's father, a certain amount of shekels and as a down payment. And then he would separate himself from her for about six to 12 months. And then at any given time, within that six to 12 month period, he could at any time surprise her with an entourage behind him, letting her know that he's coming for so on and so forth. They would all get together through the ceremony. And then there was a ceremony where they go into the chamber and had sex. And then in order to prove that the woman was a virgin, they would present to the congregation a sheet with a, you know, hopefully there'll be some, you know, bloodstained sheet on it to show that her hymen was broken, therefore proven that she was a virgin at that time. And then, hey, I mean, you know, it's a... By the way, God, that takes it back to the Old Testament. By the way, it's Deuteronomy 22. Verses 13 through 21 where it talks about if she's not a virgin on her wedding night, that they can kill her, they can execute her. You know, listen, these are the things that are important to the God of the Old Testament is you gotta have that virginity. If not, you execute it, you out. Well, I mean, if you bring that up, I mean, are you saying that's wrong for that command to be... No, it's just funny. I'm just funny, funny. Like I find it funny that like you claim to have this perfect great moral system, but somehow it's not immoral to kill people because they're not virgins on their wedding night. That's what I find funny. Well, I'm not saying that I have all understanding of everything that God commands. I mean, this is one of the reasons why if you go to my YouTube channel, I have a series called Uncomfortable because I'm speaking also for myself as a Christian that there are passages in the scriptures that me personally, I find to be sort of uncomfortable. But that in no way shape or form tells me that just because I'm uncomfortable, that it's absolutely wrong where there's some inherent contradiction on God's part. I totally agree, totally agree. In fact, what it does is just put you the position that you have to argue, baby killing isn't objectively morally wrong. It's not objectively morally wrong to do this. We're talking about here with women to kill people who aren't virgins on their wedding night. Yeah, no, it just tells you that your God's nature, within its nature, it's willing to do those things. Kill children and kill non-virgins on their wedding. That's all it's telling me. I agree with that. But again, if we gotta separate that from determining the intrinsic nature of the act in and of itself, those are two separate things. Did God command that babies be killed in 1 Samuel 15? Absolutely, He did. There's no denying that, you know? But is it immoral? That's a whole other different subject there. Well, the problem is when you keep going back, we gotta prove whether something's intrinsic. Like you have to prove that. I don't believe in things being intrinsic value or having intrinsic morality of some sort. Like you gotta prove that. Like that's not up to me to do. You already admit morals are subjective in some degree, just not all of them. So like, if you're going to claim things are intrinsic, I don't, you're gonna be the one who's gonna have to demonstrate that claim. Well, again, my view is that if God is the arbiter of all things, including the concept of morality, then to go against Him would be inherently wrong. That's my worldview. So I determine whether or not it's comfortable or whether or not it brings me other pleasure to do a certain thing. Doesn't matter. I have to determine, we use God as the ultimate measuring stick to determine the moral ontology of the thing. That's in question. Yeah, but just, I don't understand. How are you actually showing that He is the actual standard? How are you actually showing that? Well, even if I were to grant you objective morals exist, right? Let's say I grant you that. Let's just say that somehow we as human beings have objective morals, right? How would we link them back to your God? How would we know they're from your God and not something else? Well, I would say my perspective is simply that we determine good from evil right and wrong by simply looking to God and His word as the ultimate authority. So God by nature is omnipotent. He's omniscient. He's omnipresent, so on and so forth. So we look at scripture. Hold on, hold on. Yes. Okay, okay, good job, good job. Okay, she's throwing me off. All I'm simply saying is this is the way, this is why the Bible reveals to us only not what's wrong but why it's wrong. So for instance, and I brought this up in one of our other debates is the 10th commandment thou should not covet thy neighbor's house, so on and so forth. Why did God give this commandment? Because not doing so is contrary to His nature. Not because He says so, but because it's contrary to His nature. Now how is it contrary to His nature? Because we know that everything belongs to God. Oh my gosh, come on. I mean the vexels, yeah. Really quick, you guys are just gonna mention that we will go into Q and A very shortly. So within a few minutes, just because it's late where vexel is and he has to get up very early. So I do want to have a short and sweet one tonight. And so we'll try to wrap up our Q and A before the end of the hour. So I hate to cut you guys short, but if you guys are ready to go into Q and A in maybe a few minutes, I know that might be a hard transition to wrap up that fast, but whenever you do as soon as you can. If Skylar's okay with that, rather than just kind of cut it and go straight to Q and A because my daughter's getting crazy. Yeah, yeah, let's just go to Q and A, that sounds good. Absolutely, so thanks so much folks. It's been a total blast. Appreciate all of your questions. We're gonna jump right into it. So first up, appreciate your super chat from G-Man who says, is Skylar pro-choice? I'm pro-life. Gotcha, thanks so much. Stupid whore energy strikes again. She's back. She says wonder, Dr. Io ad absurdum. If God's nature just happened to be different, Christians would have a different set of morality. So Christian morality isn't mind independent. I think that's for you, Beckel. Mind independent. It's not dependent on our minds, I would say. You got it. Yeah, good. Thanks so much. Josiah Bradbury, appreciate your super chat. They said, two, Beckel, does might make right. I would say no. Gotcha, thanks so much. Next up, club or Caleb, as he sometimes likes to be called, says Skylar, it's not immoral for God to take a life by means of an earthquake or a man with a sword. It's his life to give and to take. Okay, if we follow that logic, it would be perfectly moral for God to take a baby, have a hundred men molested for 24 hours, and then strangle it to death, because God has the right to do what he wants with the clay. Okay. Gotcha, thanks for your super chat as well. Brandon Ardeline, who says, is something moral because God does it, or does God do it because it is moral? It's probably for you, Vettel. Okay, that's for me, all right. That sounds like, can you repeat the question again, is something moral because God does it? Yeah, it's kind of like a contemporary twist on youth afro. So they said, is something moral because God does it, or does God do it because it is moral? I say that something, again, where the Christian worldview says that things are good or evil, depending upon God's nature, character, essence, so on and so forth. So it's not that God is commanding these things arbitrarily. He's just the one that says, okay, I'll say that it's good. I'll say that it's good. We're saying that these things are determined to be such and such through the reflection of his nature, so on and so forth. So I don't hold to the, I don't believe that the youth afro dilemma is a good way to determine how we know whether or not the reason why God is giving a command or determining the nature of the thing. Gotcha, appreciate it. And next up, appreciate your super chat from Michael, the Canadian atheist. And by the way, I want to give a thanks to Veckel as we were originally going to go at one today and then I found out at a meeting I couldn't get out of and so he was flexible enough to work with us kind of a splitting time between both us and then trying to get to sleep on time and now also taking care of his kiddo. So we appreciate your flexibility. Then Michael, Canadian atheist said, the God of the Bible is a monster. Luckily it doesn't exist. Oh, Veckel, they're coming at you. Oh, man. Oh man, how many times have we heard that one? Well, there goes the subjectivity there. So, I don't argue with the opinions. I mean, do I not like certain opinions? Of course, I'm a human being just like everybody else here. But if you're making a subjective statement about God's moral character, what am I supposed to do with that? Gotcha. Thanks so much. Next up, appreciate your super chat from MaynardSaves who says, is it moral to use our God-given cannabis receptors? The good Lord Raptor Jesus says yes. It's because of his holy claws that the mighty cannabis plant grows here. So smoke movieotomy says, raw men. Gotcha. Thank you very much. Let's see. You're welcome. Sijafredo Sarabia, thanks for your super chat. He says, Veckel, if a God can take a child's life simply because he is God, or for, quote, sufficient reasons, how do you differentiate what that is? Namely, I think they mean morally sufficient reasons. And then not, or from a Satan who can do the same except take all the blame. So I think they're saying like, how do you differentiate that it is God or Satan if you say that God could have morally sufficient reasons for doing these things? Right. That's a good question. I would say we see no example anywhere in scripture where God is not involved in these decrees that may seem to be to us on the surface to be atrocious. So every one of these so-called atrocious acts or acts of judgment that God has put forth to a people is always clearly stated by one of the prophets. So God speaking through the prophets, letting us know that this is coming directly from him. So people, God will let his people know that it's from him or not. Gotcha. Appreciate your super chat from stupid whore energy. She's back and she says, why don't moral realists understand the concept of internal critique? I think she means Skyler being a subjectivist. That's a good question. If he gives an internal critique of Christian morality, like where's the actual problem there is what she's saying. If, I mean, Veckel, you might not even think there is. I don't know. I think sometimes people- I think Veckel's been pretty good, I think this debate with following the argument. But I think it's a legitimate, I think it's a little bit legitimate statement because man, so many times people just think I'm just trying to say God's a big, fat, meanie. I'm like, that's not, like that's so useless. You can imagine I just talk crap about Veckel's God to him. Like what is that gonna do for anybody besides probably make his enemies, right? Like that's not the point. The point is to show moral contradictions and to show why it seems his nature, what God does is actions are contradictory. Could you repeat the question again? I wanna, yeah, stupid whore energy. Have you, she said, why don't moral realists understand the concept of an internal critique, such as those done by Schuyler, a subjectivist? Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a jab at me. So I think we do understand the concept of a moral, I mean, of an internal critique. The question goes to is, what is your basis for on the conclusions that you're coming to when you see these, when you have this objection about an alleged contradiction with God's moral character, for example, what are you basing that on? Are you basing that on proper and honest exegesis of the text, hermeneutics, proper study of the word or are you coming in with a preconceived notion that there's already inherited our contradiction? Sorry about that. No problem. Next up, appreciate you talking about from our dearest friend. Oh, we have Sigefredo Sarabia. He slides in there in the super chat says, Schuyler, what's your explanation of morals? If it's cause we are social animals and reap the rewards, why are there still solitary animals who say otherwise? I don't know about that question. Read it one more time for me. I wanna make sure that I got all this. I'm sorry, James. This is, no, that's all right. My best guess is they're saying like, if you say that moral behavior is explained by social animals in groups being more moral and thus out behaving other groups that are amoral in their behavior, like they don't care about doing moral behaviors. They're saying, well, why is it that there are solitary animals who, they just go their own way and they don't do any moral good or bad toward others cause they're always alone. So I think they're saying like, why couldn't it have been humans just evolved that way? I, yeah, I can, hopefully it's a good question, but I do, I just depending on what animals they're looking at, there's complexity levels of what we would define as morality. I think something important to recognize is that even the way we as humans define morality, right? It's easy to say words like right or wrong. This is right to me. This is wrong to me. What do we really mean by those statements when we say them? You know, when you have a Christian atheist, they're gonna say what they mean by right or wrong is what goes against her with God's nature, right? With someone who's a moral, sorry, sorry, it's a moral subjectivist. They would say something more along the lines of what goes along with their emotion, their empathy, their being. Anyways, that's it. Gotcha. And by the way, G-Man is in the live chat, Skyler's old arch nemesis. They've had a lot of duels over the years and G-Man's having an after-show. I asked him if he would give me the link for it to put it in the description, but so G-Man, I don't know if you wanted me to tell. I mean, you're putting it in the live chat, so you must want people to know. So that we'll always let people know about after-shows, whether they be on either side or both sides. So next, go ahead. Just real quick, what was that last question about about the animals and stuff, because I had to stop. I think they're saying, why is it that we have moral behaviors in humans? We have this kind of propensity to be usually moral. And they had said, Skyler, if you think it's explained by evolution that way, that you reap the rewards by being more moral, and by rewards we mean more likely to pass on your genes, then why is it that there are animals that never developed this moral propensity? They kind of tend to be alone, and yet they survive just fine without morality. I think they're saying, so why is it, I think they're challenging that evolutionary explanation. Okay, it was a different question than what I thought. All right, go ahead. Gotcha, and thanks so much for your super chat. S.J. Thomason, she's here. She says, Skyler, how can a moral subjectivist condemn any moral actions in other cultures? It's just your opinion in all caps about another culture. It's, I don't know how someone with a PhD could possibly be so off the mark of what I'm actually doing after having a debate where I lay out all the arguments for what specifically I was doing was showing a contradiction in God's nature. But hey, if you just want to take an S.J. I'm just talking and complaining about other cultures and talking about how immoral people of the past were have at it, because at this point, I can't help you if you don't understand what the argument is. Gotcha, the next step, appreciate your super chat from our dearest friend Josiah Bradbury. So they asked, Veckel, how do you approve of God's actions if you don't have an objective standard to compare it to? If we cannot judge actions as evil, how can you do it judging them as good? Oh my gosh, I really want to answer this question. Can you get that question back to me after the next one? Absolutely, we do have others for Skyler. So let's see, we have four, Skyler, thanks for your super chat, Steven Steen, nasty guy, says Skyler is evolving into T-Jump with his clamshell chair. Oh my gosh, your chair does look like it's evolving into Tom's chair. Well, I look at every day that I don't come to being a little more like Tom Jump as a failure. So first we have to get the chair, next, well, I don't know what's next, but we'll have to see where this adventure goes. No, but I do, I love this. I was getting so tired of the computer chair. This chair's been taking up space, no one sits on it where it was. I was like, we're just gonna bring it over here where I'm nice and comfy and relaxed. I like it. You bet, nice chair. And that question for you, Veckel, was again, they asked, how do you prove of God's actions as good if you don't have an objective standard to compare it to if we cannot judge actions as evil, how can you do it for good? Well, again, the Christian worldview says that God may decree, command, or perform things that are beyond our understanding. You know, it may make us uncomfortable, but it doesn't mean that these things that we can judge these things as inherently immoral. If we're going to do that, then we have to assert that there's something outside of God, apart from God, that God himself is also subject to in order to make that judgment and discern that what God is saying, telling us to do here is inherently immoral. Why? Because we go by this thing over here and this is what God is doing over here is contrary to this thing, to this law, to this thing over here. See, but Christians don't do that. We say that God is the arbiter of these things. And according to scripture, by definition, God is the easily maximally great being. And one of his attributes is the fact that he can only do that which is good and just. So, but just because he hasn't given us at right away the explanation to why he's commanding or performing a certain thing, that doesn't mean that we can just jump to this conclusion that what he's doing is what he commanded, what he's doing is absolutely immoral. In order for us to determine that, again, we'd have to have some sort of system that's not contingent upon his nature or his being, his essence in order to determine that. So Christians don't have that position. Gotcha, appreciate that. And why does it subjectivist either? The subjectivists, again, as we already know, they only have their opinions and perspective. That's it. Appreciate that. And also appreciate thanks for your super chat from Sijafredo Sarabia who asks, Vekal, if you're arguing, quote, Christian morals, were there for throughout time before Christianity was established, what was the foundation for morals and how in how it below Christianity? I think they mean. I think I know what they're asking. Okay. Okay. What they're asking about is Christian morality, the morals that Christians hold today. If I'm understanding, are they different from before Christianity existed? I think that's what they're asking. Yeah, I think so. Okay. Well, Christianity says that the God we serve today is the same God that showed himself and did miracles during the time of the Old Testament. The question is whether or not we're under a different covenant or not. And the answer to that question is yes. So because there is no more theocracy, Israel still exists as a people, but not as a nation, per se, in the same way that we see in the Old Testament. So we don't see God giving commands to the nation of Israel to stone gaze, for example, or stone people who commit adultery or picking up sticks on the Sabbath, so on and so forth. Because we're under the new covenant now. Christians are not a theocratic theocracy where we kill people for not disobeying God and stuff like that. We're under covenant of grace, where we show love, so on and so forth. But then God still in his nature, he's not gonna go contrary to his nature. So he's going to judge those individuals who continue to perform these acts that are contrary to his nature. And he's gonna judge them in the next life, in hell, Hades, so on and so forth. But Christians, we're under the covenant of grace. So therefore we're not called to in this temple realm to do the things that God prescribed to the Hebrews in the Old Testament. Oh my gosh, I think so much appreciate that. And next up, appreciate your super jet from Brandon Ardeline, if the Bible doesn't prohibit rape, slavery, genital mutilation, war crimes, and spousal abuse, then should I stop being against them so I can be moral? It's a good question. Is that a question to me? Yeah. Can you ask that question one more time? They said if the Bible does not prohibit rape, slavery, genital mutilation, war crimes, spousal and spousal abuse, then should I stop being against them so I can be moral? Now, first of all, I think that question is ill-formed because he or she is suggesting that these things are prescribed in scripture. They are not, there's no prescription for a man to treat women in a disrespectful fashion. We just don't see any examples of that. We do see examples, maybe, if we're looking at historical accounts, you might see some examples of that, but you don't see anything that's directly prescribed by God to perform such things. So, and I forget how the question was asked. Should he stop doing these things if God did not say, could you repeat that last part of the question? Should he, I can repeat it one more time. So they said, and this is, it's not your fault. Frankly, it's difficult to like, it's kind of got an inflection. So they say, if the Bible doesn't prohibit rape, slavery, general mutilation, war crimes, spousal abuse, then should I stop being against them so I can be moral? If the Bible doesn't prohibit these things, should you be against them? Again, we go by the word of God. I'm not quite sure how to answer this question. I think I know where to go on, but I'm not quite sure. If we only go by what God has revealed to us as moral or immoral, and these things are determined based on his nature and his essence. So if we see examples of God condemning these things outside of his decrees, outside of his direct commands, then, oh my gosh. If we see God condemning these actions that are, then we can say that, yes, you should stop doing these things, or you should not do these things, right? But if we see God, if you see God, okay, if you see God giving commands, I'm sorry, guys. If you see God, okay, sorry about that, folks. We've spent way more than enough time on this question. But next up, I appreciate your super chat from Frank92, who said, for Veckel, why did God create Satan knowing that Satan would turn his back on him? Otherwise, if you'd like, I can go over to a question for Skyler and then come back to you, Veckel. With that question, I can answer real quick. For God's glory. Gotcha, thanks for that. Next up, appreciate your super chat from Michael, the Canadian atheist, who says, oh, Veckel, Ezekiel 1820 says the child will not share the guilt of the parents. So weird, huh? Or A, because they're from Canada. It's a point to Bible God views itself multiple times. It's wonderful. We're gonna give Veckel a chance to answer this so we don't have it teamed up on him. Okay, I'm sorry. Can you repeat the question? They said, Ezekiel 1820 says the child will not share the guilt of the parents. So weird, huh? Right, talking about the sins of the father. All right, well, basically what's happening here is that this is a, what he's talking about there is Ezekiel 18 where it talks about, if I'm not mistaken, it's about the people suffering for the sins of the father. I think there's a vast difference between God punishing descendants for something they've done directly versus them suffering a judgment based off of what their descendants, what the ancestors did. So it's kind of like, for example, a child being born with a deformity. Maybe they have no legs or arms. And let's say the child is suffering from a deformity because of the way the mother treated her own body while she was pregnant. Maybe she was doing drugs, she was getting drunk, she just was doing all kinds of bad things to her body and it caused this baby to come out with this consequential deformity. So that's what we're looking at when we look at the passages in Exodus 18. So it's not necessarily God passing a judgment to that child for something they didn't do or for something they've done, but it's actually as an act of judgment to that person, to their parents. And it's what we see in Ezekiel 18, sorry. Appreciate it. Next up, appreciate your super jet from Josiah Bradbury who says, Vekal, why is ancient cultures an excuse? Should God have been more worried about giving his people a good culture instead of mixed fabrics and shellfish? Well, the reason why he condemned the mixed fabric and shellfish and all that stuff because these were to show a reflection of how separated, how sanctified, well, I'll say separated for now, how separated they were as a nation from the rest of the world. So it wasn't because there was some, you know, God just threw that out there. And yeah, and same thing with the shellfish. I mean, I think there was for health reasons as well back then, I'm not quite sure, but God gave a command to do things and to not do certain things. And I'm really not sure how else I can answer that question, but. Gotcha. Appreciate it. And a couple in a row for Skyler. Otherwise, Michael Dresden, thanks for your super chat. First one that's not Trollish. They said, hit like best debate channel on the web. It's really nice of you. Appreciate it. Kind of wonder if you're still trolling. Next up, S.J. Thomas, and thanks for your super chat who said, the first to learn of Jesus's arrival and the first to discover the empty tomb were women. Phoebe and Junia were early church leaders slash disciples. So stick that in your pipe and smoke at Skyler. Oh, wow. Women are mentioned in the Bible. I don't know how that negates anything that I've said. Gotcha. Or this hour. Well, it shows again that, you know, despite what a lot of the non-believers say about women in the Bible, that women are respected. They are put in positions of where respect is required of them because they've done some great things. So it's not like the Bible, there's no instruction in the Bible, no prescription that says women are less informed than men are, less human than men are. It's just particular roles for different people. That's all. It's no different than you have a washing machine and you have a dishwasher. Okay, now both of them do what? They both clean things, right? But they both do different things, right? You wouldn't put your China, your finest China in a washing machine, right? Because that's not what a washing machine is designed to do. It would destroy that China. And same thing with putting a pair of pants in a dishwasher. You wouldn't put a pair of pants in a dishwasher unless you're absolutely desperate to get it clean. But you're not gonna get a thorough enough clean in a dishwasher with a pair of pants as you would with a washing machine. Gotcha. So clean things. Yeah, I guess you don't want, you know, women, you know, you don't want women to have consensual marriage or soul by and by and soul, yeah. I'll give a Skyler the last word because I think it was for Skyler and then we gotta keep moving. But if you can keep it short and pithy, we better try to wrap up. I would just say that I think it's funny that we talk about what we're gonna give women. Somehow we couldn't give them the right to, you know, have consensual marriage or not to be sold and bought as property, sold in a marriage to get their parents out of debt, the scripture says. But anyways, okay, that's it. Gotcha, stupid whore energy. Thanks for your super chat. Who says it's not that the Old Testament and New Testament weirdness is uncomfortable. It's that it doesn't make sense. We'll give you a chance to respond if you'd like, Veckel. Wait, can you repeat the question again? It doesn't make sense. They said, it's not that the Old Testament and the New Testament weirdness is uncomfortable. It's that it doesn't make sense. Ah, okay, gotcha. Yeah, well, of course it doesn't make sense because especially for people who don't study the Bible, who don't take careful consideration of what's stated in the Bible. I noticed that a lot of people that leave comments, like on a side chat that are atheistic, usually don't seem to make a proper distinction between prescriptive texts and descriptive texts. And so that's why I think somebody like that would make a statement like that, saying that it doesn't make sense. Of course it doesn't make sense because you don't study the scripture and you're already coming into this with preconceived ideas as to what's right, what's wrong, you know, what's wrong. Let's see, just to, let's see. Scott Lott, thanks for your super chat. Who said, Vekal, if someone you respect as a good Christian said that God told them to kill you, how would you respond? That's a fair question. I would say, well, give me the scripture that says that you're supposed to do this and for what reason? Gotcha, appreciate that. Next up, stupid horror energy, appreciate your super chat. Who says, quote, different covenant, unquote, is just moral relativism by another name. No, it's not different. It's not morals being changed or anything like that because the morals are still the same. Homosexuality, for example, as we see in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, is still looked into the eyes of God as an abomination. As with other sins, however, under the new covenant, those things are carried out, the judgments for those things are carried out in a different fashion. So that's not morals being changed, it's just the execution of the judgment being carried out differently, that's all. Gotcha, thanks so much. Appreciate your question as well. This one's from Von Hilton's children. He says, Veckel, next time you see your dad, tell him we say hi. No idea if this is an inside joke. This is Von Hilton's children, your friend. Yeah, I don't know if he's trying to say Von Hilton's my dad. I have no idea what that comment means. Oh, I don't mean either. Glad that I'm not the only one. General Balsak, appreciate your super chat. And that's the real name, by the way. Don't laugh, Skyler. How dare you? Said, supposing that the Christian God is true, are humans able to determine the morality of God using our own standards of morality? No, it has to be revealed to you by something external to yourself in order for you to know that. So otherwise, all you have is subjectivity, basing everything on personal opinion, perspective, so on and so forth. Gotcha, appreciate it. Next up, thanks for your super chat from Stupid Horror Energy, striking against as Veckel, you still think Pi is part of the metric system instead of being a constant of the universe as I heard you say to Brenda. Oh gosh, I didn't say anything of the sort. I just said, that's a whole long conversation there, so but I mean, that's definitely taken me out of context. So if you guys want to see the whole conversation, just go to, I think it was Jill's channel, Jesus' Lord's channel and see that discussion. But Stupid Horror Energy, definitely taken me out of context, so I'll just leave it at that. Gotcha. Next up, Cicero Serabia, a question for Skyler. Thanks so much, Cid. They said, Skyler, how does purpose arise in a purposeless world? Well, human beings tend to complete purposes with their brain. If you want to go any deeper than that, you're gonna have to ask somebody who's more qualified. Don't know. I don't know how all this comes to be. I don't know how human beings became conscience. I don't know how they developed this morality. There's different theories, things you can look up to. You can look up and do your own research on. Yeah, that's all I'll say. Gotcha, appreciate it. Thanks for your super-tent from Jeremy Pace, who asks, how can God be the moral standard and be defined as good without an objective standard for what good is outside of God? Well, God, again, God is the stopping point and the starting point. You don't go beyond Him. You don't go before Him. You don't go after Him. You don't go beside Him. He is the arbiter. When we say the arbiter, we're talking about He is the essence of these things. So this is how we determine what's good, what's evil, right, wrong, up, down, beautiful, ugly, so on and so forth. It's based off of God's being, nature, essence, so on and so forth. So everything other than that is purely subjective. Appreciate it. And appreciate your super-chat from stupid... Oh, we already got that one. And we already got that one. Thanks for your super-chat from S.J. Thomason, all up in your face, Skyler. She says, why did Peter, Paul and James go from doubting or persecuting Jesus to preaching for Him for decades despite being stoned, jailed and beaten? These are the worst arguments. Okay, listen, people fall for things all the time for whatever reason. People believe that's how cults are formed. It's how people get into cults and then all of a sudden you're fucking drinking Kool-Aid on some island, right? People are convincing. People get misled. Why do people do things because they actually doesn't even matter? People do things whether it's true or not, right? They believe things whether they're true or not and some people are delusional. So that's all I can say about it. Thanks for your super-chat. Josiah Bradbury, and by the way, Carmel Crunk and Stupid Horror Energy, thanks for your super-chats. We're gonna get right to them. But first Josiah Bradbury asked, Veckel, it may be more sanctified to have a good culture. I think they're asking regarding whether or not it was more important to do things like address these moral issues relative to what they've argued are non-moral issues like the different clothing, different types of cloth composing one type of clothing. Not sure I'm understanding the question. They saying that it'd be more sanctified to what? I think they're saying like, wouldn't it be more sanctifying to address those things that they expressed as moral concerns before addressing the things that they would argue are not moral concerns such as, whether or not you can cook, I think it was like lamb and milk in the same pot or? Right. Well, within the mosaic law, you have three different categories there. So you got the moral aspect of it. You got the civil aspect of it. And then you got the ceremonial aspect of it. So even though they're all under the same law, I guess you can say, you still have these three different categories on how the Israelites prescribed certain things to be done in their culture. I wouldn't necessarily say that all of those aspects were moral. Like for example, how to cook things, so on and so forth. Some of these things were just ordinary prescriptions to keep healthy, to keep clean, so on and so forth. Such as not eating certain animals. There's no moral, I mean, well, it would be immoral for the Israelites to immoral to eat certain animals, but I think there wasn't just a moral issue behind it. I think there was more of a health issue behind it as well. So that was back then. Thanks for my back there. Oh my gosh, appreciate that. Next up, appreciate your super chat as well. This one is from Carmel Crunk. Appreciate it. Has Skyler ever studied ancient Near Eastern culture in law codes? Formally, no. I mean, we do have, you know, we do have my main man, my partner in crime for the show, Skyla Fiction Show, who studied the ancient Near East as a co-host for a lot of these topics. Also, you may know him from Digital Hammer Abbey, but have I studied him formally? No. Gotcha, appreciate it. And thanks so much for your super chat from Stupid Horror Energy, as she likes to call herself. She says, women being plunder, having to marry their rapist, not being allowed to teach, men being the head, et cetera, it doesn't make sense to say Christianity is equal to men. I think they mean equal regarding men and women. Yeah, again, first of all, it doesn't matter if it makes sense to you and not first of all, okay, first of all, we have determining on whether or not this is right or wrong, good or evil. Secondly, again, a lot of that is taken out of context. If you just read the scriptures, you'll see that some of these things are prescriptive, and some of these things are just descriptive, they're just describing things that actually happen. So you gotta do a better job in making that distinction there. You gotta point to us versus that show us that it is prescribed for women to be mistreated in a certain way. And as far as women being plundered and stuff like that, this wasn't an ordinary commandment that God gave, okay? That was in a time of war, okay? And that's- It's a role to get through the situation, right? Well, again, but again, I mean, if there was no war, would you see God commanding them to do this? No, it wouldn't, you wouldn't see God commanding. You don't see any example of God, of two nations, Israel, over here, and then there's Syrians over here, mining their own business, and then God says, you know what, I'm bored. Let's go have our Israelite men over there just plunder these people, because I don't like them. No, you don't see any example of that. It's usually in a time of war where you have this one nation over here attacking Israel. So God, through his sovereignty, aids Israel in winning the battle, and instead of killing everybody, you know, he has some of them enslaved and put up his tributes. So I know that- So it's not immoral to own people as he's plunder. Just because you're not getting up on Veckel. I appreciate your super chat from Scott Lott, who says, Veckel, your killer Christian friend says it was revealed to him in prayer. So this is regarding the person who, if they were to, if it was a person you respect as a good Christian, said that God told them to kill you, how would you respond? And then regarding how you'd respond, they said your killer Christian friend also says it was revealed to him in prayer. Okay, great. Yeah, first of all, since I'm a Christian also, God would also reveal it to me that this was supposed to happen. So if it is truly of God, then God would also reveal it to me that this is gonna happen. So therefore I'm not gonna fight him. If God wants this to happen to me, then I have to be like the Christ because Christ knew ahead of time that he was gonna be, you know, beaten and whipped and embarrassed and then eventually put on the cross. So if God reveals it to me that this, my Christian brother is supposed to kill me and they've been told this as well, then I'm gonna take their word for it. But again, God has to supernaturally reveal it to me through the power of his word and through some other means of communication as well. Gotcha, thanks so much. And Stupid or Energy, thanks for your last super chat. She says, plunder is never okay whether at war or otherwise that you think it is is gross. Who cares? That's your opinion, right? Gotcha, thanks so much. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna wrap up. It's been a fun one and we were hoping to get done even earlier because I do wanna mention, as I said, Veckel's gotta get up super early. And so we do appreciate Veckel being super flexible in that we changed it to nighttime for the debate. So thanks so much, folks. Wanna give a last reminder, these gentlemen I've put their links in the description and we will hopefully see you as you can see at the bottom right of your screen this Friday for Hunter Avalon and Joel Patrick debating the Bible and LGBT. So thanks so much, though, gentlemen. Skyler and Veckel, it's always a pleasure to have you. Thanks for hanging out with us tonight. Yeah, thank you. And I really wanna appreciate you guys and your patience with my crazy daughter in the background, so apologize about that. No problem, the more the merrier. And so thanks so much, everybody in the chat. It's always fun. Appreciate all your questions. And yeah, I just am so encouraged. Especially I wanna give especially high praise and just thanks to those who are positive in the live chat and kind of welcoming people and kind of greeting people and saying, hey, everybody, appreciate that you guys are, that it's a community in some ways. I know it gets rough and tumble. Sometimes it's true. Live chat can be a little rough and we've got some pretty laxadaisical, hey, let a thousand flowers bloom. The only thing we censor is hate speech. So it's true. Sometimes it gets a little rough in there, but at the end of the day, it's kind of like, we argue, we debate, but it doesn't mean we can't be friends in the end, especially a tough time like this. So hopefully you're healthy and well, folks. I think we'll all agree on that. It's been a pleasure to have you. Thanks one last time to Skyler and Veckel for being with us. Thank you, my man. Take care, folks. Stay well and healthy. We'll see you next time.