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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
41:46
A Dishonest Conversation About Evolution - With A Creationist!
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Time Text
As a creationist, I find the idea of evolution, especially atheistic evolution, unconvincing.
Why should I believe that life can arise from non-living matter, atheistic evolution, or that one living organism can reproduce another organism of another kind, i.e.
a bacteria producing a non-bacteria, even though neither have ever been demonstrated in a lab?
That's from Curtis. Hello Curtis, how are you doing?
Hello, Stefan. How's it going?
It's going well. How are you?
I am fantastic.
Been looking forward to this conversation for a while.
Excellent. I'll try not to screw it up then.
Let's cross our fingers, shall we?
Well, the question's pretty much exactly what I'm trying to say.
There's nothing really complicated about it.
I always hear from atheists and people from that side that one of the main reasons you go to atheism is because you like to Follow things that only have evidence.
And I have never seen any sort of evidence that life can arise from non-living matter, and I've never seen any actual evidence of the claims in evolution.
They'll get evidence of, say, evolution can turn a single cellular organism into a multicellular organism, and they say the evidence of that is that moths change from black to white, depending on whether it's pollution or not.
Which is a fraud. That one is a lie.
Which I know you know it's a fraud.
But there's never really any kind of actual evidence of the real play.
Are you white?
Yes, I am. Why are you white?
I was born that way.
I know, but why is your skin white?
I have less melanin in my skin than, I guess, people of African descent.
Why? Why?
Why would you have less of this melanin?
I don't really know why, because I am.
And it's okay. I didn't know why until recently either.
The reason that you have less pigmentation than people from Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, is because your ancestors grew up where?
Well, everybody came from the Middle East, but my more recent ancestors migrated to Europe, and that's where they came from.
Okay, so Europe.
So in Europe, is there more or less sunlight and sun strength than there is in Africa?
Less. Less, okay.
And so the best way to absorb vitamin D, which is necessary for survival...
Is to have less skin pigmentation, right?
The paler the skin, the more your skin is able to absorb vitamin D, right?
Okay. So the Africans...
And there's a reason why the slaves in America and in South America were in the South, and there was a reason there really weren't that many slaves in the North or in Canada.
It's because they died of rickets and other things that are the result of vitamin D deficiency.
And so when your ancestors moved North...
Those who had lighter skin were able to absorb more vitamin D from the scant sunlight, particularly in the winter months.
And as you go further north, you tend to get lighter and lighter skin because you need to absorb more vitamin D from less sunlight.
Whereas in Africa... We're good to go.
Look at your hands.
You know, that will be a pretty good example of evolution and that evolution occurred, you know, 40, 50,000 years, relatively recently.
Okay, right there. That's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
Now, within evolution, or especially atheistic evolution, the requirement is that eventually a single cellular organism can become a multicellular organism.
Saying that...
No, hang on, hang on. Listen, dude...
Are we just jumping from...
You said, give me an example of evolution, and you just immediately changed the subject.
Well, no. I'm trying to address what you're talking about.
Well, no. You're going off on another topic.
Let's talk about the skin for a second here.
Do you accept that your lighter skin is the result of evolutionary pressures on your ancestors in a less vitamin D-enriched environment?
No. No?
Okay. What's the other explanation then?
Well, it wasn't evolution.
Evolution... Well, this is the point I was trying to make.
What you're talking about is adaptation.
A species staying a species, a human staying a human and changing its skin color is not evidence that a human being can eventually reproduce a non-human.
You understand that this occurs at the realm of genetics, right?
Yes. Okay, so here we have genetic changes based upon environmental factors, right?
Yes. Okay, so that's an example of...
Evolution of a kind in that there are genetic changes based upon adaptation to local circumstances, right?
Yes, I completely understand and agree with adaptation.
So now you're talking about transitional species, right?
Well, not even transitional species, just anything.
Just some evidence that can show...
I don't know what that means. Again, can you ever give an example of a bacteria reproducing a non-bacteria or the actual process of evolution as a state?
I don't know, but I mean, are you looking for transitional species, like one animal becoming another kind of animal?
Yes. Okay, great.
You don't have to look at this right now, but there's a pretty cool website called TransitionalFossils.com.
And in that, you will find significant links.
And we've done this before on a call.
I don't know if you've heard it or not.
But there are significant links of transitional species.
Now, the reality, of course, is that All species are transitional species because all species are constantly subject to evolutionary forces.
But there are dozens and dozens and dozens here of transitional species between particular other species and so on.
And, you know, there's lots of evidence of this kind of stuff as well.
So, for instance, whales and hippos are two different species, right?
But whales in their flanks have leftover bones from their legs, from their hind legs.
I've actually heard this before.
I've actually heard this before, and those bones are actually used for mating.
It's used for mounting the females when they have sex.
It's not a leftover leg bone.
Is that right? Yes. My apologies.
I'm sure you're right. This is what I've heard and I'm certainly happy to be Corrected.
Leg bone.
I thought they were pretty deep in the skin and I can't imagine how they would be...
Well, I've heard these type of examples before and this is what I was talking about.
What I was trying to say earlier is that showing...
Well, even fossils are a completely different story because the only thing a fossil proves that there was once an animal that was alive and is now dead.
It doesn't prove that it ever reproduced and it certainly doesn't prove that it was...
It's not related to anything else in any sort of evolutionary sense.
It just shows there was once a living animal that is now dead.
But I'm talking about if evolution, if life changing from one form to another, one species to another, is a natural, observable, testifiable, verifiable process, it should be something that you can recreate in a lab.
I mean, you can say that it takes millions of years...
What? No, no, no. Hang on, hang on.
Okay, first of all, I'm just looking at this.
Hang on a sec. Hang on a sec. That's a big, big leap to say if something is true, we have to be able to recreate it in a lab, right?
Reproducibility is a fundamental...
Okay, dude, dude, are you going to let me finish the sentence?
If not, I'm going to move on to the next caller.
You keep interrupting me just to say start a sentence.
If there's a lot you want to say, have your peace and then I'll have my peace, but I'm not doing this cutting me off thing.
Continue.
All right.
Okay. So I'm going to read this thing about the hind legs of whales.
It says here, although whales lack external hind legs, they do have internal rudiments of the hind limbs and pelvic girdle.
This is from whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com.
And let's see here.
And it does look like there is...
These are tiny, tiny little bones deep inside the skin, and it does look like they're leftovers from the hind legs.
I can't conceivably see how they could be used for mating.
Can I read you something from discoverynews.com?
I didn't hear your response to my earlier thing about whether I could finish my sentence or not.
Okay, well. And then you just interrupted me again, so I'm pretty sure that you didn't hear it.
I was just trying to reply to what you were saying.
Well, no, but do we have an agreement that you're going to let me finish my thoughts before interrupting?
Okay, I thought you were done.
I'm sorry. No, no, because I asked you if we could do that.
That was sort of a condition of continuing the conversation from my standpoint.
If we have that agreement, that's fine, but you didn't actually respond to what I said.
Okay. I didn't think I was interrupting you last time.
I thought you were done. I apologize.
Okay. When you listen to this again, you'll see that I had about four sentences out of my mouth and you interrupted me, so please don't tell me you thought I was done because that means you simply don't have any idea how to converse to human beings and that's not where you want to go.
That doesn't save you from a little bit of rudeness, which I do sometimes too, so it's not the end of the world.
Okay. All right.
So go ahead and read me something. Okay, this is from discoverynews.com.
So, Discovery Channel.
Conventional thinking has long held that pelvic bones and whales and dolphins are evolutionary throwbacks to ancestors that once walked on land, are vestigial, and will disappear in millions of years from now.
But researchers from the University of Southern California and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles have upended that assumption.
Scientists argue in a paper that just published in the Journal of Evolution that cetacean, whale, and dolphin pelvic bones certainly do have a purpose in that they're specifically targeted by selection for mating.
I can send you the link to that if you want.
That's perfectly fine. I appreciate that correction.
Thank you. I will certainly...
I don't think I've used that example before and it was certainly around when I was a kid studying biology, but I appreciate the correction and let's move on.
Okay. Well, my whole point is that There is no actual example of this process happening.
You yourself, I've got you on quote saying that reproducibility is a fundamental science.
If it's not reproducible, then you can't really make any decisions or draw any conclusions about it.
Well, hang on a sec.
Can human beings create suns?
Like S-U-N-S? Can we create a sun in a lab?
Well, we can observe the sun. We can't observe evolution.
Okay, so observation is key, and you can observe the evolution without necessarily being able to have to create it in a lab.
Okay, well, can you observe evolution anywhere?
No, of course not. I don't believe there's much evolution occurring on the dark side of the moon or on Mars or anything like inside volcanoes.
Does it happen anywhere? I mean, my point is, if you can't see it, if you can't reproduce it, how is it scientific?
I'm sorry, I don't understand.
If you can't observe what you're talking about, and you can't even test it, you can't reproduce it, how is it science?
Are you saying that there's no fossil or genetic examples of evolutionary adaptation?
Evolution is a claim that life changes from one species to another, even though the word species has no definition.
But Wait, are you saying the word species has no definition whatsoever?
There is no definition for species.
Really? Really. It doesn't mean anything.
It means nothing at all.
Try to find out what distinguishes one species from another.
Why is a dog... No, no, no. Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Now, they're two very different things.
Species, a question of individuals having some...
Species. One, a class of individuals having some common characteristics or qualities.
Distinct, sort, or kind.
Two, biology. A major subdivision of genus or subgenus regarded as the basic category of biological classification composed of related individuals that resemble one another are able to breed amongst themselves but not able to breed with members of another species.
Three, logic. One of the classes of things.
Well, we have the biological one, but there are several other.
Well, even in that definition, you said species are animals that can't breed with each other, but dogs and wolves breed with each other.
Hang on, hang on.
But Curtis, the fact that there are fuzzy edges to biological definitions doesn't mean that the definitions are completely worth it.
That's a fallacy, right? Just because there are some questions that are difficult to answer and nature presents near infinite complexity which doesn't always fit perfectly into the conceptual formulations of human beings doesn't mean that therefore those characteristics are completely meaningless.
So for example... The fact that there's...
If I give you pure black and I say, what color is that?
You say, oh, that's black, right? And if I give you pure white, say, what color is that?
Oh, that's white, right?
And then at some point it'll be, you know, that black is kind of light black or maybe it's a little gray.
Like at some point, somewhere in the middle, you won't know what color that is, but that doesn't mean that there's no meaning to the words black and white.
So the fact that there are fuzzy boundaries to stuff, particularly in biology, which is a human imposition upon the near infinite complexity of the natural world, the fact that there are...
Inconsistencies, fuzzy boundaries that occur among a small number of species doesn't mean that the term has no meaning.
That's why I asked you three times, it has no meaning?
It's like, no, it's just that it's not always possible to apply it perfectly, which is, I think, natural.
Well, that's really, whether or not you agree with me on the species, there's really no point to the actual, what I'm trying to say.
The simple fact is, again, that The claim that a single cellular organism can become multicellular or that eventually a dog will reproduce a non-dog has never been demonstrated.
I feel like we're just going back and forth on this.
I don't want to waste all the time on that.
No, it has. Again, I'll go back to transitionalfossils.com.
Tons of fossil evidence of species in between other species, of transitional species, of evidence that species go from one kind to another.
There is tons of proof of this.
Well, no. Fossils can't prove that one species changed into another.
The only thing a fossil is is a rock in the shape of a dead organism, and it doesn't contain any DNA. It doesn't contain anything other than just what it looks like.
You can't say that you found a dead animal on the ground, so that proves it evolved into something else.
That's a non sequitur.
I'm sorry. Saying that something is non sequitur, I don't quite understand.
The fact that you have Animals that are in between other kinds of animals and that also fit in the evolutionary timeframe is certainly evidence for it, right?
Well, there's there's no thing to say that they are Evolutionarily related for example If dogs died off today and researchers are trying to research them 100 years from now, they could take the bones of a chihuahua, the bones of a terrier, the bones of a shepherd and the bones of a Great Dane and say, hey, look at how a chihuahua evolved into a Great Dane.
Except chihuahuas and Great Danes are species that live at the exact same time and are completely compatible with each other.
Finding an animal in the ground that kind of looks like another one and saying that it's smaller doesn't prove that one evolved into another.
It's not true at all.
And what you're saying about the fossil record, the geologic column that Charles Lyle came up with back in the 1800s has never been found.
You can't find a place in the world where you can go straight from the top to the bottom and all the layers of the way that's supposedly laid out according to the geologic column.
It doesn't happen. And, for example, well, again, you brought up your transitional fossil site.
Isn't that where you read to me about the whales from?
I mean... No, no, that's...
The whales thing, I just picked it out of my memory from when I was a kid where it was something that was talked about.
But, no, it's different.
Well, that's a perfect example, right?
It's a fraud. It's a fraud among many.
How many other... Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on, hang on. How is it a fraud?
Isn't that what they thought and then other people found better information?
Isn't that kind of how science works?
I think it was an error before, not...
Something that was lied about.
Well, possibly. I mean, you know that the evolutionary field is littered with the corpses of hoaxes and frauds.
So I can't assume that this isn't necessarily an intentional fraud because there's tons of intentional frauds throughout the evolutionary landscape.
And I can't think of another scientific theory that's true that has so many hoaxes and frauds associated with it.
I don't know. Still, compared to religion, I would say it's got nothing but shiny beacon of integrity and honesty.
Let me move on for a point here.
I've read both your books, UPB and Against the Gods, in preparation for this conversation, as well as watching a whole bunch of your videos.
I want to try to move the conversation on to the more specific topic of life from non-life.
But hang on, I don't, I mean, that's fine.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm trying to figure out, because I'm like, what standards of proof you would accept for interspecies evolution, right?
Which would occur over, I don't know, hundreds of thousands or millions of years or whatever, right?
I mean, human beings have been in wildly different environments for 70 years.
5,000 or 100,000 years and can still interbreed and have most of the same characteristics and so on.
So I'm trying to figure out...
We can't put the lab...
The lab is an impossible standard, right?
You can't have that as a standard for being able to prove something that takes huge amounts of time.
So what standard would you accept that is reasonable?
If it's an impossible standard, then you've just set up something where you're never going to be convinced.
And I want to know that because if the standard you have...
For proof is impossible, then there's no chance of having a reasonable conversation.
So given the paucity of the fossil record as a whole, they're hard to find and they're scattered all over the place.
As I said before, if all of the human beings in North America died and then a hundred million years from now they found the fossil record, we'd find one shin bone out of hundreds of millions of people.
So it's very scarce and very scattered and very hard to find.
Given all of that, What would you accept as a reasonable evidence for transitional species?
If what I've provided to you is not sufficient, what would you accept that is sufficient?
Well, I've already said, I think demonstrating what you claim to be a natural process occurring in a lab would be a really good way of doing it.
I mean, people always make the claim that it takes millions of years or whatever for evolution to happen, but of course it depends entirely how quickly an animal reproduces.
Bacteria reproduce much faster than human beings, so there's no reason to think bacteria should take nearly as long as a human being to evolve.
And yet we've never seen any change within even what we would consider simple life from one form of life to another.
The idea that it takes millions of years, if the world's four billion years old, every single day is four billion years from someday in the past.
So even if it takes a hundred million years for life to evolve, every day it happens.
There should be something changing.
And the fact that this is a theory that's been around for 150 years that nobody has ever Even attempted to demonstrate actually occurring, the best you can come up with is moths that are different colors or birds with slightly different finches with slightly different beaks.
I mean, they're still finches. The beaks are a little bit differently, but that's saying that because a beak's different, that means that a bird will eventually turn into something else is a completely different stretch.
There's no evidence of it.
I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding.
If you're saying, is there evidence of natural selection in the here and now?
Well, there certainly is. I mean, bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a pretty clear one, right?
Well, bacteria that's still bacteria.
The thing is, evolution says that bacteria will eventually be a non-bacteria.
Saying that bacteria becomes different kinds of bacteria is not the same thing.
No, okay, because you're talking about two different things.
Number one, you're saying provide evidence of evolution, and there's evidence of evolution in bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
And then you're saying provide evidence of intraspecies evolution, right?
And we talk about transitional fossils, and you reject that.
And then we talk about your skin, and you reject that.
that.
And so I'm curious what you would accept given that it's going to take tens or hundreds of millions of years and cannot be reproduced in a lab.
What evidence would you accept?
And if there's no evidence that you'd accept, that's fine.
I mean, I can accept that.
I just need to know that.
So I stopped giving you evidence when it's impossible to satisfy your standards.
I told you the evidence I would accept, but you're just saying that because of the way the theory of evolution works, it's impossible to test and prove.
Which sounds exactly like a bullshit theory.
If I say that leprechauns, to use an example that you love so much, if I said that gravity wasn't real but instead invisible leprechauns that can't be seen, tested, measured, or observed are really what's holding everything down.
Even if it's accurate, it's a completely useless theory because it can't be tested, observed, or verified.
And so how is saying that, oh, evolution, yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously you can't test or observe it, but what evidence would you accept?
I mean, I don't understand. If you're admitting that it can't be tested or observed, how can you then therefore say it's of science?
No, but you're, again, you're conflating the two things, and I'm sort of beginning to suspect that there's sophistry involved here.
You're conflating the two things.
So if you want to know some things which support the theory of evolution, number one, I guess, would be the universal genetic code, right?
So every single cell on Earth, bacteria, white blood cells, cells in the leaves of trees and on the tongue of the chameleon can read any piece of DNA from any other life form on Earth.
So there's some evidence there that since it's all the same building blocks that there's a common ancestor from which all life has descended.
Let me ask you about that. I'm sorry?
Let me ask you about that.
Actually, never mind. Sorry. Move on.
Okay. So number two...
The fossil record, you know, the simplest fossils are found in the oldest rocks.
Because it's a tenet of evolution that less complex things evolve into more complex things.
You don't start with the human brain and end up with single-celled organisms.
It kind of goes the other way around.
And so... The way that you would test the theory of evolution is to say, can we find significantly more complex species earlier in the fossil record that don't show up later and have no antidecents?
So, you know, the fossil record is pretty consistent.
And this is a Dawkins thing where he says, if you can find one fossil significantly out of sync, you will have taken a big hammer blow to evolution.
And I don't really think that's...
Now, the other one, you could say genetic commonalities.
I mean, you know all of this stuff, right?
I mean, that human beings, it always blows my mind, have 75% of the genes in common with mice and 80% with cows, because I guess they're bigger, 90% with cats and 96% of our genes we have in common with chimpanzees.
And again, that doesn't mean, of course, that we evolved from mice, except, I guess, some of the...
Europeans, but it does mean that way back there must have been some kind of common building block.
And the last thing I'll say, there is a fairly good branch that works insofar as the further along ago the genetics diverged, the greater the difference, right?
And so there is that as well.
In embryos...
All life forms, you've probably seen those things, I know, when my daughter was in utero.
Embryos have gill slits, tails, weird anatomical structures involving the spine.
All of the embryos initially kind of resemble each other for years.
For mammals and so on, pig embryos are used in classes because they look so much like human embryos and so on.
And so again, there does seem to be some commonality as far as that goes.
And again, bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
So there are some ways in which there is things that support the theory.
You know, obviously it doesn't prove it to you, but I think you can at least accept that it does support the theory.
Well, for example, like you just said, single genetic ancestor.
Because we all have some genetic commonality between us.
Why is the idea that we have genetic commonality between us not – why does it contradict the idea of a common creator?
What? Well, you're saying that commonality in DNA is evidence that we are possibly linked to the past as we evolve from them.
And so I'm saying I don't disagree with you.
There is genetic similarities between us and all living organisms.
That being said, if there was a god who created all living organisms, why would that not be true?
Why would you not see similarities between those organisms?
But no, Occam's razor would say that the simplest explanation is usually the best.
And if you already have a theory which doesn't involve a deity and explains the data, why would you want to introduce a deity?
I mean, you may for reasons of faith or whatever, but you wouldn't logically say, well, I need a giant omniscient ghost to make this theory complete when you don't need it.
Well, that's what we're talking about.
The theory of evolution was brought out as an explanation for the variety of species on Earth.
But what I'm telling you and what this whole conversation has been about is that the actual fundamental principle that a single cellular organism can become a multicellular organism or that one species will eventually evolve into another has never been demonstrated.
Right, because it takes millions of years.
It's like saying, Steph, you've never created a fossil in your living room in one afternoon, so therefore there's no such thing as fossils.
I mean, it's a silly standard, you understand, right?
Well, if you think testing is a silly standard for science, then I guess, but I don't.
Oh man, I've just given you five tests in a row that you agreed with, and now you're telling me that I'm rejecting testing.
Dude, I'm in my last straw with you.
If you want to make one other comment, that's fine, but this is ridiculous.
Okay. Well, like I was trying to say earlier that I think that the real – a good place to take this conversation is the actual idea of atheistic evolution, life from non-life.
I would like to quote from your book, Against the Gods, for a moment here.
He said, Man,
I love hearing my own writing.
I've got to tell you. It's good stuff.
But go on. I don't want to stroke your ego too much.
So when I read that, what I'm seeing is that you're saying that because every time we've ever experienced a consciousness, it's been associated with a brain.
So to suppose that you can have consciousness without a brain is to suppose something that is the complete contradiction of everything that you've ever observed.
Well, no, it's not just the contradiction of everything that I've observed.
It's the contradiction of that which...
Like, I don't have to observe gravity working to know that gravity is the result of the proximity of mass or the result of mass.
I don't have to go and test every piece of matter in the universe.
It's a principle. It's a universal principle.
So it's not what I have observed.
It's that consciousness...
is the effect of very complex biological interactions in the brain.
Therefore, since consciousness is an effect of the brain, then logically, I don't have to go and check or observe, it's just that there cannot be consciousness without a brain.
First of all, if there's consciousness and it has no impact on our senses whatsoever, then that's exactly the same as non-existence.
If there's something which has an effect on our senses or we can detect it in some manner, then it can be said to exist.
We detect either the thing itself or the effect of it.
So we either detect the black hole, which we can't really do very well, or we can detect the gravity well around the black hole sucking in juice from some nearby star or whatever.
So, no, it's not just, well, I have never observed it, and therefore, like, it's not empirical.
This would be more definitional.
Okay, well that kind of changes something there.
Let's see here. Alright, well that kind of wasn't exactly what I was thinking so I'll move on from that point.
I guess the only other real thing that I just wanted to talk to you about was something I heard you making a case about not too long ago, and that was the, but Jesus and his, I know this is kind of Going completely off the wall now, but Jesus said in the book of Matthew that, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And that was meaning God or Jesus did not want to be crucified.
And because Jesus didn't want to be crucified, the explanation for him dying is a post-facto explanation, trying to explain why someone died after the fact.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
If Jesus was the Son of God and had all powers, then how could he be nailed to a cross and die?
I mean, that's like, I don't know, killing Superman with a bag over his head.
You know, it doesn't make any sense.
So if he has these magical powers, then either he wanted to die, which is suicidal, which is obviously not great, or he didn't want to die...
And either then he chose not to use his powers, which meant that he wanted to die, or he decided, or he had no powers to use, in which case he wasn't the son of God.
So there was, I think, a challenge with the death of Jesus to the followers.
Okay, and you use that quote, the my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, as a reason explaining why, an example of God, or Jesus demonstrating that he did not want to be crucified.
I mean, I would also assume that he didn't want to die.
Well, yes. That's what you claim.
Okay. So my point is that this is an example of not being particularly well-versed on a topic and making judgments about it.
Jesus wasn't talking about not wanting to die.
He was quoting Psalms 22 verse 1.
And it was about, which also addresses the other point about pre-facto writing.
Psalms 22 verse 1 is from the book of Psalms, which is hundreds of years older than Christ.
And so he's quoting from this book and this chapter is also about his crucifixion, about his death.
It's prophetic about his death.
That's why he's quoting it.
So not only did God not Not only was Jesus not saying that he wanted to die, that's completely wrong, he was quoting scripture, and he was quoting scripture that proved his death was not a post facto writing, but was a pre facto writing.
I don't, sorry, maybe I'm certainly not up in my theology to the degree that you are.
So, does this mean that he did want to die?
Well, obviously, yeah. So he did want to die, and why did he want to die?
Well, that was a sacrifice needed for sins of the world.
Why was it needed? Why couldn't God have forgiven the world without killing his son?
Well, that was a plan that God wanted.
But why would God want to do that?
I mean, if I can easily do some good thing, but instead I have to strangle my child to death in order to do that good thing, clearly we would understand that me strangling my child, while it's certainly not necessary for me to do the good thing, is an evil action, right?
Well, would it be wrong for you to strangle your child?
Yes. Right.
So, therefore, it must be wrong for God to strangle or to kill his child.
Well, no, because Jesus voluntarily did it.
I mean, he wasn't doing something against his will, and he voluntarily did it.
He wanted to do it. But why was it necessary?
That's my question. Well, it wasn't necessary insofar as God can do anything he wants.
Yes. And that's the way God chose to do it.
Now, if you're asking me why God chose to do it, I have no idea.
That's his plan. That's the way he wanted to do it.
Does it give you no pause that God does something that is unnecessary and would be evil for any human being to do?
Does that not give you pause as to the virtue of God?
Or do you just simply say, I suspend judgment because God is by definition good, even if he does the opposite of what he commands other people to do, which is thou shalt not murder?
Well, God is not a person.
He's not someone on the same level as us.
The example I thought about is that imagine you buy yourself some land.
You've got some money, you buy some land, you go get some cows, you start breeding cows, and one day you go out on your land and you say, hey, I want a new belt and I want a steak dinner.
You go out to the cow, you slaughter it, cut it up, eat it.
Now, if I did that, if I walked onto your property, slaughtered your cow and ate it, I'd be charged with trespassing.
I'd be charged with animal cruelty.
I'd be charged with all kinds of crimes that you wouldn't be charged with because there's a difference between you and me.
you own the cows and I don't well except that the cows don't have a moral conscience and the farmer does not command them to follow virtue right Well, I don't know of anywhere in the Bible where it says God commands you to follow virtue.
Wait, aren't they called the Ten Commandments?
I do know enough about theology to know that they're not called suggestions.
They're commandments, right? Well, the Ten Commandments are...
Most people have a misunderstanding of what the Ten Commandments are.
The Ten Commandments were nothing more than ten rules that the average Hebrew could learn to stay good with God because most Hebrews back then didn't obviously speak or read and write.
Only the Levites, the priests did.
And so if you didn't have the text and you didn't know all of the regulations, which nobody outside of the priest class actually did know all the regulations, if you follow those ten rules, you'll be okay within the Jewish community as far as everything else goes.
But those rules were given to the priests by God, right?
Well, they were given to the Jewish people or the Hebrew people.
Right. To everybody. Okay, so this is what is moral according to God, which is thou shalt not murder.
There's no word that says that do it because it's moral.
God doesn't ever express any sort of do this because it's moral.
He expresses sovereignty.
He owns everything. He runs everything.
He gets to be in charge. So the pursuit of Christian virtue is a lie.
Because there's no way that doing anything that God says has anything to do with virtue.
Is that right? Well, Christianity doesn't say that it makes you a better person or it makes you good.
I mean, Christianity says the exact opposite.
Christianity says everybody's evil, inherently evil, we're all bad, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Not the Christianity I was raised with.
I don't know what sect you're coming from, but not the Christianity I was raised with.
Well, I'm talking about what the Bible says.
I mean, I know people say all kinds of things, but I'm talking about what the actual Bible says.
So the Bible does not encourage people towards virtue?
Not the word virtue, not the...
You don't do what you're supposed to do because you're trying to be a good person.
Sorry, the Bible does not want or encourage or command people to be good.
No, you can't be good.
Your good works are filthy rags to the Lord.
That's what it says. You cannot do good.
No one is good but the Father alone.
Christianity is not an attempt to make you good.
What is it an attempt for, then?
Well, it's not an attempt.
It's Christianity. Maybe I should have been a little bit more...
No, I'm fascinated. Honestly, this is not what I was raised with, and I had a whole bunch of Bible quotes when I was growing up, but if Christianity has nothing to do with virtue or being good or striving to be good, I'm fascinated.
Well, it's not. The vast majority of the Bible is nothing more than a history book.
It's recollection of stories.
Most of them have nothing to do with what you're supposed to or not supposed to do.
Most of them are just historical stories.
So when Peter says, for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge, what does that mean?
Well, I would have to...
This is where it gets kind of tricky when you're talking about Documents that were written in other languages.
I would have to look into that particular verse in the context of the greater section that's in to give you a better understanding.
But I mean, what I'm trying to tell you, do you disagree that Christianity teaches that people are inherently wrong or evil?
Is that something that you were taught?
Not to the degree that original sin commands the Catholic perception of the world.
I mean, we have a tendency towards sin and Satan runs the world, but you can, through faith and dedication to God and good works and striving towards virtue, you can get closer.
You can obviously be the same as God and there was only one perfect person and he got nailed to a cross.
But you can certainly become a better person.
You can reject temptation.
You can resist evil.
You can resist the seven deadly sins.
You can strive to be a better person.
And you can strive to emulate Jesus as much as possible rather than, you know, sloth and gluttony and lust and violence and all that kind of stuff.
So it's not that there's no...
The way I was raised, there are differences...
In your choices, in terms of how proximate you are to the teachings of Jesus.
Well, within Christianity, you're taught that doing bad doesn't make you a bad person.
You're bad, that's why you do bad.
Anything that human beings can do that would be considered good isn't them doing it, it would be God doing it.
I'm sorry, say that last part again?
You're not supposed to glorify yourself.
If anything that you do is considered good, it's not you, it's God or the Holy Spirit working through you.
But you can choose to let God into your heart or not, right?
You can choose whether to go to church, whether to read your Bible, whether to learn what the path of righteousness is and strive to step towards it.
That invites God to join you in the promotion of virtue.
But I assume you have some acceptance of free will here, that you do have some choices, don't you?
I mean, maybe you don't believe that.
I don't believe in free will. Oh, you don't believe in free will?
No. I don't know how free will is compatible with a God.
Sorry to interrupt. You don't believe that human beings can change their mind?
Well, can human beings change their mind within their own context?
Yes, but everything that happens in the world was predestined before the world even existed.
So you're changing your mind, but because God programmed it that way.
So the conclusion of this conversation is not up to either of us?
Well, everything's predetermined.
Okay. Well, God is telling me to move on to the next caller because I don't chat with robots.
Thanks for your call, man. I appreciate that.
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