atheists huh they say some random things right well i could listen to many atheists for hours
and feel like i learn a lot like better questions to ask and new ways to absorb information
but what if those arguments are wrong what if there was a theist who could debunk
some of the top atheist arguments what if
hello i'm the skeptic i watch videos on youtube that make extraordinary
claims whether that's flat earth or strange conspiracies but mostly the claim that a
god is real and then explain why i can't accept their position before we get into today's video
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that would be awesome in this god squad video ben shapiro interviews william lane craig the
christian theologian and apologist will can debunk some of the top atheist arguments and i thought
it would be good to learn something new since those top atheists inspire my line of thinking
i want to know why they're wrong let's talk about a couple of those philosophy arguments from 101
that are constantly trotted out i've had similar experiences the most common one that i've heard of
course is the problem of evil the suggestion that how can god be good if so much evil takes place
in the world the more sophisticated version of the argument to me is not the problem of human
evil which seems pretty easily disposable but the the problem of natural evil things happening
to children a child with cancer how does a good god rule over a world in which children die of
of natural causes in which kids are born with tay sachs in which horrible things happen to
good people yes in dealing with this problem i think it's really important that we distinguish
between what i call the intellectual problem of evil and the emotional problem of evil oh
deep i'm looking forward to this one there is no doubt that emotionally the evil and
suffering in the world make it very difficult to believe in god it's a tremendous emotional
obstacle i don't think passing off bad things that happen as just emotional as a good way to start
but intellectually considered dispassionately as a philosophical problem it's extraordinarily
difficult to show that there's either any inconsistency or improbability between the
existence of an all-loving all-powerful god and the evil and suffering in the world wouldn't it
be good to just answer the original question it sounds as if you're saying that it could
be impossible that there is a compassionate god because there is evil in the world the atheist
would have to show that it is either impossible or improbable that god has morally sufficient reasons
for permitting the natural and moral evil in the world is this first debunking just a shift in the
burden of proof if someone doesn't believe that an entity is real why should they then
need to prove what its moral justifications might hypothetically be and how could he possibly show
that we're simply not in a position to make those kind of probability judgments with any confidence
and so i think that the problem of evil as difficult as it may be emotionally intellectually
it lays a burden of proof on the shoulders of the atheist which is so heavy that it has
proved to be unsustainable did that even answer the question no not even close here william you
dropped your burden of proof these days the other argument that is brought up an enormous amount is
the supposed backwardness of the bible itself and biblical morality so we're just ignoring the whole
if there's a god why is there evil question what even is this did i miss something this
happens largely with regard to for example homosexual marriage uh it's been brought up
uh with regard to abortion which i think is more again easily disposable because i think there's a
solid secular argument in favor of the protection of human life but homosexual marriage is the one
that most often comes up you also hear arguments that the bible permits slavery uh so if the bible
is so wonderful then why are there all these weird sections of the bible where it talks about wiping
peoples from the earth where it talks about where it talks about enslaving other human beings some
things that we would certainly consider moral evils today are contemplated by the bible and not
banned by the bible so why why is that well let me address briefly first this question of slavery
when we hear the word slavery ben we think of slavery as it existed in the american south
and as you know that is nothing like the system that existed in ancient israel oh justifying
slavery this should be good in ancient israel there was no social safety net sponsored by the
state there was no poverty program so if a man got himself into a situation where he couldn't
pay his debts he could keep his family together and retain his self-respect by selling himself as
an indentured servant who could then be treated in any way the new owner saw fit including beatings
as long as the new slave wasn't killed and owning any offspring that slave had in the time that the
slave was owned it doesn't matter how it's spun it's just wrong until he could work off his debts
and then he would have to be set free after seven years he had to be set free in any case
no no don't try and spin it to sound good foreign slaves were enslaved for life then there's the
case of female slavery wherein females were given the same rights as women some treated as though
they were married which i can only assume meant pleasing the owner as a wife should because you
know consent wasn't exactly a thing a few hundred years ago let alone when the bibles were written
and then there was this case of unmarried female slaves being sold as wives is being forced as a
wife better than being forced into labor you can try to make slavery sound appealing but it's not
it's just simply not so this was really a form of indentured servanthood it wasn't slavery as
we think of that term please really stop trying to justify it it's just embarrassing this was
actually an anti-poverty program and in some respects i think it's better than what we have
in modern western culture which destroys families or maybe it's not a perfect system but still the
answer isn't sell yourself to become a slave whereas in ancient israel a man retained his
self-respect he worked for an income he paid his debts he kept his family together
and that to call that slavery is just a gross misrepresentation when is it okay to own
another person never the answer is never even if they're struggling to find work it's still never
the answer will always be and should always have been never the first thing you mentioned i've
i forgot homosexual marriage yes was that it for debunking atheist slavery arguments seriously okay
then tell us why homosexual marriage is wrong with respect to some of these other moral questions
i think we need to remember the first premise of the moral argument if there is no god then
there are no objective moral values i hope you didn't sidestep near to a cliff a sidestep
that big would have you falling off the edge everything is socioculturally relative so who's
to say that the moral values of a society that discriminates against people and oppresses people
is worse than one which is liberal and tolerant we just sort of assume that the the liberal values
um are the ones that would be objective when in fact they're just as relativistic
as any of the other ones on atheism but atheism doesn't offer a moralistic position atheism simply
rejects a claim that there are gods you can say that atheists become immoral because they
don't believe the thing that creates the morality but morality should be what is accepted for the
well-being of our species as a whole not what some people think a deity says is moral which given the
book that most of these morals are cultivated from has an abundance of things that aren't
actually beneficial to the well-being of the human race we can't really accept it so if we need god
to be the anchor point for objective moral values and duties we cannot escape the question
when thinking of moral right and wrong well what does god think of this who cares it would just
be a hypothetical until it's demonstrated that there even is a god to listen to you
can't govern human well-being on a hypothetical but sure carry on about gay marriage and if god
proscribes something it seems to me that's entirely within his right i thought it was
man that wrote the bibles trying to guess what a god was saying so surely it's more honest for a
theist to say at this point it's entirely within the right of what man thinks a god is saying
still it's not but you know what i mean if god were to say thou shalt not eat beans or thou
shalt not eat pork or thou shalt not eat shellfish that would be our moral duty and we should obey
it that is his prerogative as the moral law giver and the supreme good is it though is it
you're not offering any reason to accept that there is a god let alone to accept what man
thinks it's saying and so if god says my plan for human sexuality is heterosexual marriage
that's his prerogative but is it correct and there is no basis for calling that i think into question
there absolutely is if there was an all-loving god why would it give people the choice to love
who they wanted but then tell them that some choices are wrong it's ludicrous i want to
go back to slavery for just a second so it is true that that hebrew enslavement the jewish
enslavement of others is really more indentured servitude i mean there's a whole section in i
believe it's it's numbers or leviticus i think it's leviticus maybe where where it speaks just
specifically about the slave who doesn't want to leave and you're supposed to pierce his ear on
the doorpost as a punishment for him not wanting to leave in all of this um but by the same token
enslavement of people who are not inside the the israelite inside the jewish kind
of tradition that's not proscribed so the idea of war captives is obviously
taken into account and not banned so certain things are banned in the bible certain things
are not bad now the way that biblical believers have practiced over time is that very early in
the church's history they're already starting to eliminate slavery although not for people who are
captured and then over time the west is the first place to eliminate slavery altogether specifically
citing the sections of the bible that talk about human freedom and the innate value of every
human being so is that an evolution of morality or is that a realization of a fundamental principle
that was originally given to people who couldn't necessarily understand the full extent of the
principle i think i think it's the latter and i love the way you put it i think that's nicely put
jesus said something very much like this with respect to old testament regulations on divorce
uh they asked him whether or not it was lawful to divorce a woman for any reason and jesus said
moses allowed you to write a certificate of divorce but it was not so from the beginning
and he cites then the creation story of genesis of adam and eve i thought we were talking about
slavery not divorce answer the bloody question williams said that jesus said that moses said
how many times is the buck going to be passed i feel myself getting more and more irritated at
the lack of any real justification for anything and said what god has put together let not man
put asunder oh of course someone else did it so what jesus was saying there was that
the law of moses was a temporary prescription accommodating the hardness of heart of the
people at the time but it didn't represent the perfect will of god so something in the bible
isn't perfect it sounds as if that's what's being said so if something isn't perfect how
can we demonstrate which parts of the bible are perfect and which aren't i would guess
that because there's a chance that some of it could be imperfect that then actually most or
all of it could be imperfect which would then question why any of it should be listened to
for human marriage which was grounded in the creation story so how exactly do we determine when
we have moved beyond the biblical text in terms of the evolution of that morality when are we
fulfilling a broader goal that was that you know was kind of held back by temporary constraints
and when are we moving utterly beyond it and again here i'm thinking of same-sex marriage so
when it comes to same-sex marriage the argument is now being made by people in liberal churches
including including people to judge who's running for president that basically
jesus was seeking equal respect for everyone he cared about the least of these and the
prescriptions on homosexuality were really more and homosexual activity were not eternal
precepts but were really attempting to crack down on the promiscuity of the time
or they were temporary expedients in other words it was wrong to be gay then but it's not now
where does it say that in any holy book that these rules are time sensitive you can't be gay
on monday to wednesday but thursday through sunday fill your boots it's just dumb yeah
i i think that's clearly false when you look at these uh regulations both in the old testament
and then they're repeated in the new testament in the strongest terms in romans chapter one
there's no doubt that paul is thinking of this as a moral law that has abiding significance i think
this is what they meant but i can't demonstrate it yeah sure sure and it's grounded again i think
in the creation story that god has created human sexuality he's created man and woman uh in such
a way that the fulfillment of that relationship will take place within the safety and security
of a heterosexual marriage and those that have homosexual thoughts should deny who they are
and please an entity that hasn't been demonstrated to be there instead of living the life they want
to following the moralistic way of the life determined by those that have human well-being at
the core okay and that outside of that um sexual activity is not to be indulged in and this is a
a law that god has given us for our good so i do not think that this is capable of
simply being relativized to time and culture that god if it was real sounds like a dick
as arguments go i don't feel like anything was debunked here just a few major sidesteps
and nothing was really confirmed however maybe you thought william did debunk some atheistic
arguments let me know in the section below but i'm going to skeptic some top atheist arguments
are still valid and waiting to be completely eradicated don't forget to hit the like button
and subscribe if you haven't already from me the skeptic stay safe keep thinking logically
and ask questions skepticism is the first step towards truth see you next saturday
you