BEN SHAPIRO: The omniscient being gave us flawed human beings this book.
This book was directed at a certain time and a certain place.
Right, the people who were living 3,000 years ago didn't have the same education and values.
The same evidence, the same scientific knowledge, the same 3,000 years of development we've had since Sinai.
And so God was talking to a specific people at a specific time.
*Snap*
JEFFERY: This is your reasoning, Yahweh?
They did not have the same education, evidence, and scientific knowledge as modern people?
YAHWEH: Well, yeah, of course I'm gonna talk to them in ways they'll understand, right?
JEFFERY: Talking to them in ways they'll understand does not preclude them from having advanced knowledge.
YAHWEH: How could I possibly get them to understand if they don't even have the right words to describe it?
JEFFERY: Give them the right words.
YAHWEH: Jeffrey, that's not how language works.
JEFFERY: Sure it is. Remember the Tower of Babel?
But I'm not even asking you to do anything as remarkable as what you did then.
*Snap*
Go into any typical grade school classroom of the 21st century.
And what do you see?
YAHWEH: Little kids?
JEFFERY: Yes, you see little children who also have no scientific knowledge,
No understanding, and no language to describe the world in advanced terms.
Just like the ancient Israelites
What happens is a teacher introduces new words and new concepts that even children can learn and apply.
Thereby becoming a part of their knowledge and language.
And that's just what a fallible human teacher can do.
Am I supposed to believe that the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient God
is utterly incapable of teaching grown adults about the actual nature of the Universe?
YAHWEH: Jeffrey, teaching scientific advancements and the nature of the Universe is... is not really the purpose the Bible anyway.
JEFFERY: And why not?
Just think of how compelling it would be if actual significant scientific advancements came from the Bible.
Well beyond human knowledge at the time.
Clearly that would indicate some kind of advanced outside influence, like from a God for instance.
When people see remarkable incongruent accomplishments, like the Pyramids or Stonehenge,
They have a hard time believing that human beings could do that all on their own without outside influence.
Even when they actually did.
But we don't get any of that from the Bible.
The Bible looks exactly like every other primitive civilization of the time.
A bunch of scrolls with no advance information to drive society forward.
Like what happened thousands of years later during the Scientific Revolution.
You thought it more appropriate for the Bible to closely resemble the other laws and stories of the day.
Apparently, You resemble them.
Not because they created You.
No, but because You, the most intelligent being in existence, could think of no better way to communicate.
That's the argument.
This leaves God with the unmistakable disadvantage of communicating in the exact same way
That all the false religions also communicate.
Pretty damning, and far too much of a compromise to be a viable solution.
*Snap*
BEN: So a lot of the Commandments are specifically directed at converting people away from more primitive practices
Toward less primitive practices. So let's take an example.
Animal sacrifices are, now we look at them and go, "That's pretty primitive. That's pretty terrible."
Right? So, there were Pagan practices in which animals were slaughtered on behalf of Pagan gods.
And the idea was that you were sort of appeasing these gods. And that this was supposed to be
And that this was the use of animal sacrifices for perverse purposes.
People weren't willing to give up those perverse purposes at the time.
God knew that, and so God converted the use of those purposes to... the- to the worship of Him. For example...
*Snap*
JEFFERY: Huh! Oh really?
YAHWEH: Jeffrey! I had to take their culture into consideration.
They weren't just going to quit all their perverse practices cold turkey, willy-nilly, and perfectly conform to my Commands.
JEFFERY: And?
Taking their culture into consideration didn't change that.
You spent half the Bible torturing them because of their disobedience
Even though you supposedly took their culture into consideration.
So what does it matter? It didn't work. You failed.
The whole point is that living up to your standard is impossible, even for modern people. Right?
YAHWEH: Yeah. So?
JEFFERY: So, You and Ben are having your cake and eating it too.
A primitive impossibility and an advanced impossibility are both impossible.
You of all people should have known that addressing them on their terms would not have worked.
And indeed, did not work.
YAHWEH: But it moved them in the right direction like Ben said. Didn't it?
JEFFERY: Despite You, and against You, but not *because* of You.
I mean, there's examples of the exact opposite of what Ben claims.
YAHWEH: Oh? How so?
JEFFERY: Well, Ben claims that You're taking them from more perverse practices to less perverse practices
But You demanded the illegality of things like gay sex and declared it perverse from the very beginning.
And people like Ben cherry-picked that as always being a perverse practice for all time.
But society did not see it that way.
Rather than move away from it, unlike Ben's cherry-picked animal sacrifice example,
Society ended up moving toward it, making it legal, condoning gay marriage,
And condemning those who wanted to punish homosexuals despite your commands.
Ben is cherry-picking while he's actually defending against the charge of cherry-picking.
*Snap*
BEN: My argument is that anything I say to you right now as a human being inherently is going to
Be different than it would be if I directed it to your descendants 2,000 years in the future.
Because that's how human language works.
There is no way to convey a written document or language to any human being
Without being confined by the context of the times in which people lived.
*Snap*
JEFFERY: Ben thinks immigrants should assimilate into the culture they move to.
YAHWEH: Yeah. So?
JEFFERY: When it comes to God though, he thinks it's God who needs to assimilate to the people
Rather than the people who need to assimilate to God.
YAHWEH: Not exactly. I'm still laying down the law.
And they still have to abide by it.
JEFFERY: But if Your laws needed to resemble the other laws,
How are they special?
Apply Occam's Razor.
Do Your laws look like their laws,
Because an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent,omnibenevolent, spaceless, timeless, causeless, foreskin-hating universe creator wanted them to understand Him?
Or is it because they themselves came up with the laws?
Which simply emulated other laws.
That already existed throughout that area
For at least a millennium.
The laws of the Hittites came 200 years before Yours.
The Code of Hammurabi: 300 years before.
The Laws of Eshnunna: 500 years before.
The Code of Ur-Nammu: 600 years before
Urukagina's Code: A thousand years before.
YAHWEH: Okay! I get it, Jeffrey.
JEFFERY: The point is that many of these laws from the same region
Were not only very similar or even exactly the same as yours
But many of them even had more advanced and detailed laws than Yours
That more closely aligned with modern sensibilities
Like laws designed to prevent the exploitation of the lower classes by the upper classes, for instance.
Ben gives the moral exemption to the Israelites.
But not to the surrounding moral codes that had already surpassed them.
Ironic, since the Israelites were the ones who supposedly had the advantage of divine insight.
You are supposed to be an objective standard.
Yet according to Ben, You take no issue with bending the rules
To assert certain fallible human sensibilities of a specific time and place
That sounds pretty relative to me.
You are not confined by space or time.
Not only can You convey a message that they will understand beyond the confines of their culture
But You know exactly how to do it.
Perhaps humans would have difficulty doing that.
But You're not human.
You're omniscient and omnipotent.
You're God! Of course, You could do that.
YAHWEH: Oh really?
This time, it's Ben who has a little something for you, Jeffrey.
*Snap*
BEN: You're asking of God an impossibility,
Which is to give a moral system that is completely unfit for a people
At the time that He gave it.
If God gave us the Torah now, I assume that it would look a lot more like the development of Western civilization
Than it did when it was given to a bunch of primitives- primitive nomads living in the desert
*Snap*
JEFFERY: *chuckles* How the mighty have fallen.
YAHWEH: What do you mean?
JEFFERY: I just find it funny.
Peope used to say things like, "It's impossible for God to create a square circle.
"Or a married bachelor."
Because those things are logical impossibilities.
Or they'd say things like, "It's impossible for God to do anything immoral
"As that would be against His nature."
YAHWEH: Yeah. So?
JEFFERY: But now we get people who claim that it was impossible for God Almighty to merely hand down a standard
Too difficult to follow. Even though they believe that's exactly what He did.
A standard supposedly too moral for the primitive savages living at the time.
Well are You God or not?!
No, apparently God had to tip-toe around these people and treat them with kid gloves.
YAHWEH: Well I sure as hell didn't do that.
JEFFERY: No, you did not. And that's part of the point. Again and again they disobeyed You, and what did You do?
Hell, just look at Ezekiel.
You slammed him with plagues, famine and war
Just because, as You Yourself said in the Bible,
They weren't even as good as the Nations that surrounded them,
Nations which were not handed Your moral system.
Yet curiously managed to be more moral
Even by Your own judgement.
You know what's especially telling?
YAHWEH: What?
Why is it that neither You nor Ben seem to understand that You were not handing a moral code
To just those specific people at that specific time?
YAHWEH: What do you mean? Of course I was!
I didn't hand it to anyone else!
JEFFERY: Of course You did!
How many Israelites were there during the Exodus?
YAHWEH: Uh, around 2 million.
JEFFERY: How many people are there alive right now?
YAWHEH: Almost 8 billion.
JEFFERY: You see? Strange that You would prioritize those 2 million.
And be so concerned about conforming to the culture of those 2 million
Knowing full well that there would be far more cultures to be concerned about in the future.
This was Your chance!
To let it be known, with no ambiguity, what You approve of
And what You disapprove of.
And yet we see at this time, no laws
Against transgressions that *demanded* Your acknowledgement!
Look at how You handled things like rape amd slavery.
By Your very command, rapists had to marry their victims.
And pay off their fathers.
YAHWEH: Well that was like compensation for ruining a woman's worth.
In their culture, if rapists had to provide for their victims, then maybe they'd think twice about raping.
JEFFERY: Ohh, I see.
More of that taking their culture into consideration.
Imagine the horror of being raped
Not only once, but to then have your rapist entitled to do it again and again
For the rest of your life as HIS punishment.
What a sick joke!
And that's because it was not illegal for a husband to rape his wife.
Make rape illegal?
No, you never made it illegal.
In fact, you down right sanctioned it.
You told them that they could marry their prisoners of war.
Did you honestly think it wasn't rape that was occurring within the confines of those sham marriages?!
As if women would have desire to have sex with the men who killed their families?!
This was the world You demanded! And You could not think of a better way?!
They were slaves. Which is something else You failed to properly condemn.
This isn't even advanced morality, Yahweh. It's downright elementary.
This is no slam dunk. This is stuff that should have been an easy lay-up for You.
YAHWEH: Jeffrey, slavery was a way of life for them.
If I had abolished slavery then and there
And if they actually listened to Me,
It would have ruined their economy. Their society would have collapsed.
JEFFERY: Huh. You know those were the exact same fears used to argue for slavery when it actually was finally challenged, and abolished.
But those fears didn't come to fruition.
If the Israelites were going to disobey You anyway as they did,
then why not include laws that would speak to the people of the future and be meaningful to them?
Even if such laws were supposedly unfit for the Israelites.
Why not announce with unmistakeable clarity, "Never own a slave?"
YAHWEH: But Jeffrey, slave abolitionists were actually believers.
They even appealed to the Bible.
JEFFERY: And so too were the slave-holders.
And they also appealed to the Bible.
That's the problem with ambiguity, Yahweh.
What if You were as unambiguous about slavery as You were about working on the Sabbath?
Your prohibition on cooking a goat in its mother's milk is crystal goddamn clear, (Exodus 23:19)
But whether or not You're cool with owning other people can be argued about back and forth all the live-long day.
Funny, huh? Priorities, I guess.
Despite all this, people eventually decided on their own
Which of Your laws to follow, and which to ignore.
Some people still condemn homosexuality, sure, but then they work all day on the Sabbath.
Nobody cares about how goats are cooked anymore, despite God Almighty Himself having weighed in on it.
Cherry-picking.
YAHWEH: Jesus fulfilled the law, Jeffrey. This is amateur hour now.
JEFFERY: Yeah, but they still know what the law *was,* Yahweh.
Which means they know exactly what You, the Creator of the Universe, liked and disliked.
Unless You just picked all those laws arbitrarily.
YAHWEH: Well ... no.
JEFFERY: *Right.*
So imagine the utter disregard someone must have, even the pious, to have knowledge of God's very preferences,
yet to ignore those preferences just because they technically don't have to abide by them.
Someone will know that You don't like the idea of eating shellfish, or mixing fabrics.
But then they'll do it anyway, because they have the Jesus excuse.
Or like Ben, they'll think that's only for a certain people at a certain time.
Doesn't seem like very good faith to me.
The world, the way people behave, their societies, and their laws.
All look exactly like we'd expect them to look.
If there were no God guiding them at all.