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@CosmicSkeptic Tells 4 Unlikely Stories: I'm Skeptical || SLP634 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Today I stood up for Alex O'Connor, who was critiqued by an atheist historian.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: Here is the context.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: Alex begins to talk about the Gallic wars and Caesar's justification for them.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: For example, um why do the Romans invade Gaul?
0:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have Julius Caesar's own words as to as to as to why he invaded Gaul.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: What are some of the reasons?
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Do we know?
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, one reason he gives is that the the the people there essentially are practicing human sacrifice.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: He includes this as one of the things that these people do, which you know it sort of carries some of the justification for invading.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, in his heart of hearts, Julius Caesar probably just wanted Gaul for himself, but he at least appealed to this notion.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: Now I could easily say, you know, look, there is this popular Judeo-Christian tradition which has this sort of which is totally okay with human sacrifice.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: And so he presents these two stories.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: In one story, Rome could be seen to be a crusader against child sacrifice.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: In another story, Israel could be seen to be an advocate of child sacrifice.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: How are we to decide?
1:03
SPEAKER_01: Alex then speaks about Genesis 22 and Exodus 22 and tries to make a case biblically that the Old Testament was pro-child sacrifice.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: He then returns to the instance of Julius Caesar.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Now I could say, look at this strange intuition that nobody thought, you know, like nobody can seem to sort of have a qualm with this kind of thing.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: Of course, in some Old Testament passages, Israel does end up having a qualm with human sacrifice.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a renegotiation of the principle.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: But I could say, but look, then you have this Roman tradition which looks at the human sacrifice of the Gauls and says, no, that's terrible, we're going to invade and we're going to civilize them, and say, see, so the the sort of respect for the sanctity of humans and the abolition of human sacrifice, we're really indebted to the Romans for that.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: I think that would just be a bit too simple.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Not only would that be too simple, that would also be uh completely against the evidence.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm Glenn Scrivener from Speak Life.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: Have you given the channel a subscribe?
1:55
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1:56
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1:59
SPEAKER_01: This point about Julius Caesar is one of many historical details that Alex has been pulled up on.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: And today I'm going to show you the critique.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to show you how I have stood up for Alex on this very point, but also how there is a pattern here that really needs addressing.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: I think there is healthy skepticism in Alex.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: I also think sometimes it tips into unhealthy skepticism.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about both those things.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: And I also want to talk about something that I think is bugging you, whether you agree with me whether you're a Christian or not.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: And the question bugging so many people, and understandably so, is why bother with any of this?
2:35
SPEAKER_01: Even if Glenn Scrivener is right on any of this stuff, why does it matter?
2:39
SPEAKER_01: You can be a Christian and hate me in this debate and still remain a Christian.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: You can be an atheist and actually agree with my position.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: So then why bother having a debate in which the Christian is advancing a position that is not integral to Christianity?
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, I actually have six reasons to give to you, so stick around till the end and we'll see why I think it might be an important conversation to have.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: I think there's an unhealthy skepticism in Cosmic Skeptic.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: And I think we saw it at the start of the video.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: I could say, says Alex, I could say that Julius Caesar invaded Gaul as a crusader against child sacrifice.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: I could say that.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: He entertains an alternative narrative that is not at all the most likely narrative, and that might have incredibly thin evidence behind it.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: But he seems to prefer an alternative hypothesis, a sceptical hypothesis, a non-Christian hypothesis.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: And to consider that unlikely story to be preferable no matter how weak is the evidence.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Or at least in the telling of that skeptical story, he feels like he has justification to remain on the fence.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to question that.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: And the thing that made me think about all of this, I wasn't going to do a video about this at all, and then History for Atheists, aka Tim O'Neill from Australia, posted this thread on Twitter that takes Alex to task on his handling of Julius Caesar here.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: He starts out by saying he's more on Alex's side than mine in terms of the debate, and he thinks that Alex had the stronger arguments.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's perfect, Tim O'Neill.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: But he also then said, this aside, I have found O'Connor to have a weak grasp of the specifics of history at times.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: And when he strays from broad historical claims to the details, he bungles things badly.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: I love the word bungles.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: So I was interested to see if he did so here.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: The discussion is long, two and a half hours, mostly historical-ish, though with a lot of discussion of biblical material rather than history per se.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of to and fro in the history of slavery, and he goes on and talks about that a little bit.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: But then he says one oddity that did catch my attention was around the 34 minutes 50 second mark, when O'Connor made some remarkable claims about the Romans and human sacrifice.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: He asks, why did the Romans invade Gaul?
4:50
SPEAKER_01: Noting we have Julius Caesar's own words as to why he invaded Gaul, and claims one reason he gives is that the people there essentially are practicing human sacrifice.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: This is odd because Caesar gives several justifications for his invasion in Book 1 of the Gallic Wars, including the Helvetian migration, threatening Roman territory, aiding Gallic allies against Germanic incursions, etc., but he says nothing about human sacrifice.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: His only mention of that is in chapter 6, paragraph 16, as an element in a digression on the society and culture of the Gauls.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: His account of the practice is rather matter-of-fact, with no hint of condemnation other than perhaps the observation that sometimes when no criminals were available for sacrifice, they resort to the execution even of the innocent.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: Nowhere in this account does he represent any overt distaste, let alone justification for his conquest.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: Caesar and the Romans certainly did have a distaste for Gallic human sacrifice, and perhaps if asked if this justified his invasion, Caesar would have thought so.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: But O'Connor seems to think Caesar said so in his own words.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: He did not.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay, maybe O'Connor has misremembered here.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: More importantly, he goes on to say, based on this slightly garbled idea that Caesar invaded Gaul to stamp out human sacrifice.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: This is O'Connor saying, So for the respect of the sanctity of humans and the abolition of human sacrifice, we're really indebted to the Romans for that.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: This is a remarkable historical claim.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of push back on Tim O'Neill on behalf of Alex O'Connor in a second, don't worry.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: To begin with, the Romans absolutely did not have any conception of respect for the sanctity of humans, even the most cursory examination of Roman history, with its catalogue of horrors, massacres, tortures, and wholesale death dealing would give a hint at that.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: But more recent history shows that cultures that do, theoretically, have such an idea about human sanctity can also be capable of horrors.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: More importantly here, the Romans would have found the very idea of such universal human sanctity not only alien but absurd.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: To them, some lives should be preserved in some circumstances, but the idea all were sacred and inviolable was inconceivable.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: That was a much later idea and fundamentally, if not solely, one that was very Christian in origin.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: So it's wildly anachronistic to think of Caesar of all people marching into Gaul to impose universal human rights.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: His brutality there was shocking even by Roman standards, which were pretty distant from anything we would recognize.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: The Romans didn't actually have a problem with human sacrifice per se, just with when and how those other people did it.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: He says some other great things over a number of different tweets and then says, the idea, the issue was one of human rights is ridiculous.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: So I decided I would I would stand up for Alex a bit.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: And so I I I said to him uh just today, I think his broader point with Caesar invading Gaul was to deliberately tell an unlikely story.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: I don't think Alex imagines that they fought for the abolition of child sacrifice, nor that anyone would have taken Caesar seriously if he claimed it.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: But in this part of the conversation, Alex is in the middle of saying, You, Glenn, can say Jews were anti-infanticide.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: I can also say Romans have expressed distaste for it and even acted against some practices of it.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: A kind of both sides argument.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: Then he finishes by saying, But that would be too easy.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: That last sentence is key for understanding what Alex is up to here, I reckon.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: I got the impression that by too easy he meant too simplistic and needing much more rigor.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: Now, at that point, both you and I, Tim, might say, it's not just simplistic to say the Gallic Wars were motivated or even justified by anti-infanticidal convictions, it's actually false.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: Both sides don't stand up to the data.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, just thought I'd put in a word for Alex's intentions here.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: Appreciate your work.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to defend Alex and what I think he's up to when he tells this unlikely story of Caesar crusading against child sacrifice and being a great hero for human rights.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: Alex doesn't really think that's a plausible telling of history.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't think anyone would believe Caesar if he had said such a thing.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: But Alex is reserving the right to say, I could sort of tell a story over here that makes that thing plausible.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's countervailing evidence against the Christian Jewish story, that they were the ones who fought against child sacrifice.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, Tim O'Neill said, okay, but I was less interested in what he was doing rhetorically and focused purely on the historical claims his argument here was based on.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: As you note, they were wrong.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: Caesar did not include Gallic human sacrifice in his reasons for invading Gaul.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: That claim was factually wrong.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: The Romans also didn't object to human sacrifice out of reverence for some sanctity of human life.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: Again, factually wrong.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they didn't object to human sacrifice per se at all, just to the barbarian and so improper, non-Roman forms of it.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: They were just fine with their own perfectly civilized versions of it.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: This is something O'Connor does when his arguments get beyond generalities and depend on historical specifics.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: He's not careful enough about getting his facts right.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: And this little interchange has made me think it's worth doing this video because I just see an unhealthy skepticism here, and this unhealthy skepticism is to prefer a story that is counter to the Christian story, no matter how likely that story is, no matter how tied to the evidence that story is.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: And as long as there's a non-zero chance of this contrarian take being true, the contrarian take is preferred to the credible take.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: And Tim O'Neill is a historian just says, look, no dice.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: You had to go trying to tell a contrary story, Alex.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work, it doesn't stand up to the historical data.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: But I do see this unhealthy skepticism happening quite a bit, like when Alex raised the issue of Exodus 22.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Alex drops it into his alternative telling of biblical history, in which the Jews are pro child sacrifice and the Romans are against child sacrifice.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: In the midst of trying to make that unlikely case, he says this.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Now I could easily say, you know, look, there is this, you know, popular Judeo-Christian tradition, which has this sort of which is totally okay with human sacrifice.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: The famous story of Abraham and Isaac, of course, Abraham doesn't sacrifice Isaac in the end, but it's the willingness to commit and indeed the sacrifice of his own child in uh reverence to this sort of strange ancient philosophical belief that they had, which we would never recognise today, that you should sacrifice your own children on on behalf of your philosophical convictions.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: Also in Exodus uh chapter 22, verse 29, there's this very strange injunction to sacrifice your children to God, which is like immediately renegotiated where where God says, you know, as with the Lamb.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Please pull it up.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: I frown and pick up the Bible and then read it out.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: Are you talking about Exodus 22, 29?
11:28
SPEAKER_00: I th maybe I've got the maybe I've got the verse wrong.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: What does that say?
11:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh Exodus 22, 29.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: That can't be a what's next?
11:39
SPEAKER_01: The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: Seven days it will shall be with his mother on the eighth day.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: On the eighth day.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: On the eighth day, you shall give it to me.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: The firstborn.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that you do with the oxen and the sheep.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: So it's like they were they were ransomed.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: And and I don't know what the what the price was, but but that was the the cost of that life was given towards the temple as as money.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Well that's what that's what they say, but in in that particular instance, it's even within Exodus.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: You're doing yeah, elsewhere in Exodus.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: Elsewhere in Exodus.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Let's not get caught up on that verse.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: There's some.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, but this is what I'm saying is this is my issue with with I think you're going to the Bible in a way that's alien to the way that anybody has ever gone to the Bible.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: This is my issue.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: I think Alex is very playful with ideas, and we love that about him, but he he's so playful with ideas, it becomes untethered from the data.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: And the Julius Caesar story becomes untethered from Caesar's Gallic Wars.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: And the whole story of Israel being pro-child sacrifice and pro-infanticide.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: Again, that sits very, very loose to the data.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: But Alex playfully puts these stories out there as though they're kind of equally plausible, but that's not how history works, and it's not really how biblical theology works.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: You're welcome to squint and cock your head and read child sacrifice into Exodus 22, but there's a far less suspicious and a far more holistic reading of Exodus that just says all of Israel is indeed God's firstborn son.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: Exodus 4 calls Israel God's firstborn son twice, and they do belong to the Lord, and the Lord, through the sacrifice of a substitute, the Passover lamb, is delivered from being a slave because Israel has always been the son.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the son that is meant to die is redeemed.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: That's the entire Exodus story.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: The entire Exodus story is that the son marked for death is redeemed, and through the sacrifice of another, redemption happens and life and liberation.
13:31
SPEAKER_01: And so, of course, the firstborn sons of every Israelite are ransomed in that way.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: They are redeemed.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: It is a reminder of what Israel is like.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: Exodus 13 tells you that you pay the temple for the firstborn children.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: You don't kill them.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: Exodus 20 says, you don't kill them, thou shalt not kill.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: And that is a commandment that was taken very, very seriously by the Jews.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: And they found child sacrifice disgusting because that's a cultic practice that violates thou shalt not kill.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: But they even found the familial practice of killing infants as disgusting because thou shalt not kill.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: But just as Alex gives an unlikely speculative view about Julius Caesar and his activities, he also gives an unlikely and speculative view of Exodus 22.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: It's utterly irrelevant to our dialogue unless he can show that it's either widespread or necessary.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: It is so far from being a widespread reading, it is so far from being a necessary reading.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: And what instead we have is historical records that it was the Jews that were against infanticide.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: It is the Jews that are against the killing of children based on Exodus.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: And the surrounding nations found the Jews and then the Christians to be odd because the Jews and the Christians were standing against this human universal.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: But Alex brings this very suspicious reading of the Bible.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: And I don't even think he believes his own telling of the story.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: At the end of the debate, we are asked what we should go away and think harder about, and I say this.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go back and think harder about uh what where was that?
14:58
SPEAKER_00: The the the Exodus uh Exodus 2229.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: 2229.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: I think it's easy to say that that's not.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: I th I think it probably was, but it's it's easy enough to say that it's not, but it's interesting.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: I think it's safe to say that it's not uh it's it's not a likely reading of the Bible.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Let's at least say that.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: It's not a likely reading of the Bible.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: For it to be relevant in this debate, it would have to be a widespread, massively impactful reading of the Bible that shaped the Jews to become a child sacrificing kind of culture.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: The very opposite happened.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: This reading, Alex's reading, is neither widespread, it is not necessary, and it is part of this unhealthy skepticism, which offers any contrary story to the mainstream narrative as preferable to the mainstream narrative, no matter how unlikely that reading is.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: But it's not just with Julius Caesar, it's not just with the Old Testament, also with the uh American founding, Alex seems to be unhealthily suspicious in different ways.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Of course, by the time you get to the uh American Revolution, you have uh men in a room writing these these declarations and these constitutions who at least themselves did not see themselves as engaged in a Christian project.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Jefferson is famously not a Christian, he's famously anti-Christian.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, him and Franklin were the Franklin men of the world.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Hubert Morris is the same, the man who the man who wrote the words.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: He also put it a pen, but this time to the Constitution, which is the actually legally binding one, which originally opened, you know, we the people of New Hampshire, New York, you know, and so on, and he put a line to it and said, We the people of the United States of America.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And he was once asked what he thought the hand of God was in forming this miraculous Constitution, and he said it was the work of plain, honest men.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: He didn't recognise such a thing.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the most important founding father might have been Thomas Paine, because Thomas Paine is the one who got this whole thing going in the first place.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people didn't really want revolution, they just wanted, you know, proper representation in parliament if they were going to be American subjects of a British rule.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: But Thomas Paine is the one who convinced everybody that actually we need revolution, we need to assert our rights.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: And we know that Thomas Paine was not a friend of Christianity.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: He wr he writes he writes thoroughly against Christianity to the extent that he had to live in exile.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: And then when he finally died, his bones were lost, and no one no one wanted to come to his funeral.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, he this is a this.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: He was once asked what his philosophy was.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: He was it was to act justly love mercy and uh work for human flourishing, right?
17:27
SPEAKER_01: And you'll recognize that you know, act justly love mercy is Micah chapter six.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh and then he adds the the sort of the humanistic gloss to it.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a another perfect example of some profoundly Christian ideas that have just been But these men at least saw themselves as working contra Christian.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they might have seen themselves as a Christian.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: And you you could say that that maybe you have a better sort of um grasp of their psychological motivations than they do, but uh I think it's a very important thing.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: When they say rights, when they say rights, they are showing us the intellectual genealogy, and it runs right through the heart of Christendom.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because that's it.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I want to talk about rights.
18:00
SPEAKER_01: Alex is leaning very hard on a very selective minority of founders rather than generalizing about all of them.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: Historically, the founders were overwhelmingly Christian, very mainly Protestant.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: They spoke in Christian language, they drew on Christian scripture, they used scriptural images, they advocated for Christian piety.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: What they didn't want was an established church of the United States of America, because ever since the Mayflower they had had a history of nonconformity against the Church of England.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: But these were incredibly Christian people.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying they were establishing a Christian nation, I think it's a post-Christian nation.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Which is not to say that it's an anti-Christian nation or a non-Christian nation in any way, shape, or form.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: As I said in my last video, to say post-Christian is a bit like saying post-industrialized.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: A post-industrial country is not non-industrialized, it is not anti-industrialized.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: It has passed through an epoch of industrialization that has marked it forever.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: And America is not founded as a Christian nation, it's a post-Christian nation in many ways, but it was founded largely, very largely, by Christians.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: But to focus on Jefferson, Franklin, and Pain as though they're representative of the founders, and to try to cast Governor Morris' line about the Constitution is the work of plain, honest men, as though he's talking about it being an irreligious founding, is is is just not what Governor Morris was saying.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: He's a delegate of Pennsylvania who said, While some have boasted in the Constitution as a work from heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean he's basically saying, like the Brits are saying this thing is from the pit of hell, right?
19:33
SPEAKER_01: And he's just saying, I'm kind of in the middle on this.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain honest men.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Which is just a very sober-minded thing, but I I think Alex is trying to make us think that because it's the work of plain honest men, therefore what?
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're meant to think that therefore it is entirely a secular project.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: But there are literally 10,000 other documents that you could consult from the era, many of which contain much scripture, many of which written by some very Christian individuals indeed.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: But I do see Alex sometimes as taking the challenge on himself can I spin this story in as non-religious a way as possible while maintaining some kind of factual basis?
20:13
SPEAKER_01: And as long as it has some kind of factual basis, I'll just tell that story.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: And the contrarian story is not necessarily the credible story, the one that's consistent with the data.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: I think the same thing happened when uh Alex mentioned Abraham Lincoln.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: It came in the context of me asking Alex, as an ethical emotivist, how would you have spoken against the slave trade?
20:33
SPEAKER_01: As an emotivist, what would you have said in 1800 if you were in the House of Commons and you were called upon?
20:40
SPEAKER_01: William Wilberforce is sick, Alex O'Connor needs to address uh the the abolitionist cause.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: What would what would you say from your I'm not sure what I would have said.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure if I would have been an emotivist in the 1800s, because I don't think the position had been invented yet.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: So I might have believed in some kind of objective moral principle that I might have appealed to.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: I might well have been a Christian, appealed to those principles too, but I might not have been.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: I might have been like Lincoln, a man who privately was reported to sort of have no belief in Jesus as personal Lord and Saviour, but just had a conviction that something about this was wrong.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know what I what I would have said at the time.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Um but the f but whether or not I could have rightfully condemned slavery then or done so now, I think is a separate question as to whether Christianity is the historical force that caused that abolitionist movement.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, do you do you doubt that it was Christianity that caused the children?
21:23
SPEAKER_00: In the UK, Wilberforce is of course uh deeply convicted of his religious beliefs.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, in the book that I wrote that we were debating, The Air We Breathe, I I quote Lincoln, who says, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded and imbrooted by its fellows.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: Lincoln did not speak like a moral anti realist.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: He did not speak like an emotivist.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: The people who have actually brought moral progress in the world don't tend to be those kinds of ethicists.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: He grounded his opposition to slavery in the divine image, the Imago Dei, the first page of the Bible.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And we are free to be skeptical about Lincoln and his.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Private beliefs, but there's a time when that skepticism becomes unhealthy suspicion.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: And there is plenty about Lincoln as a churchgoer and a man of faith to make us doubt the Alex O'Connor telling of this story.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just saying that sometimes, and I just mean sometimes, a story is told because it can be told, whether or not it is largely supported by the data.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that story being told is that it is a contrarian story.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: It is a skeptical story.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that helps us to follow where the evidence leads.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: And if such conversations are games in which you can tell a story as long as it has a non-zero chance of being true, then that will lead to playful and interesting conversations, but I don't think it will move as closer to the truth.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: The playfulness and the ability to be able to tell alternative stories, whether it's about Julius Caesar or whether it's about Exodus or whether it's about the US founders or whether it's about Abraham Lincoln, or whether it's about alternative counterfactual histories that would have gotten us to female suffrage via some other religious or non-religious route.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: The playfulness of being able to imagine an alternative history and an alternative story is interesting and fun, but at some point you've got to ask the question, are we being tethered to the history of what has actually happened?
23:16
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's parallel to the ethical emotivism issue as well.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: I asked Alex as an emotivist, how would you have entered the slave trade?
23:24
SPEAKER_01: And at that stage he guessed that he would have been a Christian in that time and place.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's great because it shows that if you live in the 1800s, you're going to think like a 19th century kind of a person, which is right at the heart of my thesis.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: My thesis is basically let's look at the actual data of the kind of forces that have actually shaped us and not imagine that there's some kind of non-Christian counterfactual history that might have happened, that might have developed things in other ways.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: When I actually ask Alex if you're there in 1800, what would you be?
23:55
SPEAKER_01: He gives the very plausible answer that I would probably be some kind of Christian.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: But therefore, it is only some kind of Christian that has any chance of ending the slave trade, which is kind of my point throughout the entire dialogue.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: And the reason why I ask, what would it be like for an ethical emotivist to kind of parachute in on a discussion about abolition is that an ethical emotivist would be no help whatsoever.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: While everybody else is trying to have a conversation about what we should do, an ethical emotivist comes along and tries to play a language game, and they will tell us what we mean when we say I am for abolition.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Really, at that stage, you're just saying boo slavery.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: And they can make us think about whether our antipathy to slavery is indeed truth apt, if it is able to be described as true or false.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: And they will make us notice that there is emotion involved and emotion being expressed in all these things.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: But as one side says, yay slavery, and the other side says boo slavery, an ethical emotivist is in no position to say that there is some ideal up here that can say that the yay slavery people are wrong and the boo slavery people are right.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: An ethical emotivist is of no use in abolishing the slave trade.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: An ethical emotivist comes in to change the conversation.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: We had been talking about what we should do.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: The ethical emotivist says, have you noticed what you're doing when you have this conversation?
25:14
SPEAKER_01: Which is interesting.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's interesting, it's fun, it's playful, it's not very useful for ending the slave trade.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: It's not really useful for any of these movements of human progress, actually.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: It's only useful as a meta-analysis of what those conversations are up to.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: And actually, I want to say that there is a true history of what happened with the Gallic Wars.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: Or at least there are much more plausible tellings of that history and much less plausible tellings of that history.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: And there are ways of reading Exodus, some of which are highly unlikely, and some of which are much more likely.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: There are ways of looking at the US founding, there are ways of looking at Abraham Lincoln that are really tethered to truths, and it's it's important that we tether ourselves to those truths and not simply remain on the fence so long as we've got some kind of somewhat plausible story to tell.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: But listen, right back at the beginning, I promised you six reasons uh why any of this stuff matters, and uh I I absolutely know that uh I I infuriate Christians and non-Christians at the same time.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: There are non-Christians who agree with my thesis, there are Christians who not only don't agree with my thesis, who just wish I would just shut up about it.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: So why bother with this argument?
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Well, just ask yourself the question: if you were a missionary to Cairo and you knew nothing about Islam, would you be a good missionary?
26:36
SPEAKER_01: You might be.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: You might know Jesus so well and you know the local language well enough, and just your lifting up of Jesus in Cairo is enough to make you a very fruitful missionary.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: But I would suggest that if you don't understand Islam and particularly Sunni Islam and its development within Egypt and Sufi practices that are also common within Egypt, if you didn't understand the relationship between those sorts of things and the ways in which a Sunni Muslim hears your Christian gospel, I suggest to you that you would not be as effective a missionary as you might be.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And here's the point we are missionaries to the post-Christian West.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: Do we understand the post-Christian West?
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Because here are some things that people just think naturally.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: It is a knee-jerk reaction to think all these things, right?
27:22
SPEAKER_01: Religion poisons everything, right?
27:25
SPEAKER_01: The church are the bad guys.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Everyone is a spiritual neutral, right?
27:30
SPEAKER_01: Both people and cultures can get on just fine without a transcendent dimension.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: Self-evident truths can be relied on, and they are not religious or metaphysical in any way, shape, or form.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that of course there's such a thing as equality, and it can be grounded in rationality.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: Faith, our friends think, means adding an extra dimension on top of real life.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: It's only faith heads that make claims to sacred truths and morals.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: Secularization is obvious, it's inevitable, it's good.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Christianity is therefore absurd, outdated, and bad.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: And they could not be more wrong about any of those things.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Honestly, all those things are confabulations of the post-Christian Enlightenment mind.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: This is the fairy tale that our friends are living with.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: This is what poisons everything.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: These are the lenses through which your secular friends see the world.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: These are the blinders that stop your secular friends hearing the gospel.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: And they are all ridiculous.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: But as good missionaries to the post-Christian West, we hold up Jesus, the rock.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: We also point out the sinking sand on which the world is basing its confidence.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: And if someone is convinced by my book, The Air We Breathe, let's say, I don't think it's a silver bullet.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't think people read, oh, look, Christianity did more for us than we had imagined.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna become a Christian now.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: But here are six things I think can happen if people start to take the thesis of the air we breathe seriously.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: Number one, there's a lot of myth busting that needs to go on.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Our friends have been told that Christians are the bad guys.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe not.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Maybe the Church of Jesus Christ is the greatest force for good that history has ever seen.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: I think that's absolutely the case, and I think that's an arresting and remarkable thing to say.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: And it certainly overturns the myths that imprison our friends.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, there is history respecting that is going on here.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: We are by nature chronological snobs looking back sneeringly at the dark ages behind us.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: And that really does colour how people will respect an ancient faith like Christianity.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: It's important to show how history has shaped us and how understanding our historical roots can help us to understand ourselves now.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: So this stuff is myth busting, it's history respecting.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: It's also neutrality busting.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: Our friends genuinely think they navigate the world via reason and evidence and what is self-evident.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: And they genuinely think that we, their believing friends, are these faith heads that have somehow drummed up within ourselves enough kind of spiritual gumption to take a leap of faith.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: And they think of themselves as neutrals.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: And they think of us as doing this strange thing that is utterly divorced from the everyday.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: Utter nonsense.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: We are navigating this world according to moral intuitions and presuppositions and gut instincts and stories that are kind of implicit and inchoate.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: We believe our way around the world.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: It's just that our friends believe their way through life, believing in at best a pale imitation of Christianity, if not some downright distortions of it.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: All this stuff kind of shows that we are not the neutrals that we think we are.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: So it's myth busting, it's history respecting, it's neutrality busting, it's belief spotting as well.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Our friends don't often imagine that they have any faith muscles to flex.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: We can say, look, you believe in these human rights, but it's it's it's like you're in a castle in the air, you're six miles up and you've got nothing underneath your feet.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: You don't need to leap up to these kinds of beliefs.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: You need something grounding you.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: And only Jesus will make sense of that stuff.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: And all of those first four things are clearing the ground for number five, fruit spotting.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, in evangelism, one of the things I teach people to say to their non-Christian friends is just to say, that's what I love about my church, dot, dot, dot, and just talk about your local church and the ways in which it has blessed you.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: And we're totally okay with that recommending the gospel to people.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: Are we able to think a little bit more broadly about the Church of Jesus Christ and the fruits that it has borne?
31:37
SPEAKER_01: I think it's not just an individual's fruits that recommend the faith.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's just local congregations and their life that recommends the faith.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: I think in aggregate and down through history, there is a remarkable fruit that has been borne by the gospel of Jesus.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: And I think many people are waking up to that fruit and wanting to trace it back to its roots, which is benefit number six of this air we breathe kind of thesis.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: And I I think the whole of this is really faith-forming.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: Because what we're kind of saying to our friends is that they have this kind of post-Christian vision of equality and compassion, consent, enlightenment, science and freedom and progress.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: And they have all sorts of ways in which in the post-Christian West these things have been distorted and disconnected from their roots in the gospel.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: But all of us are living in a culture that has been formed by these values, and we lean into those values and are kind of discipled by those values as we give ourselves to life in Western culture.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: All of us are being discipled.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: It's just we're being discipled by this, at best, pale imitation of the gospel, at worst, this photo-negative of the gospel.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: But I think waking people up to the ways that they already navigate their life shows them that they are already being formed in the everyday details of their lives.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: So if they see the fruits, like compassion, and then they're interested in meeting the one who is compassion, compassion on legs, love covered over in flesh.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: If they're interested in meeting Jesus, actually it becomes a lot more obvious to say to them, you now need to be formed by the true story in a true and intentional community.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: You need the gospel and you need church.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: But once you've recognized that you are being formed by a counterfeit faith, now you recognize you just need to lean into the true faith to open up scripture, to hear that story again, and to get alongside brothers and sisters to live out this faith-giving, fruitful story of the world.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: And it's really interesting that evangelism nowadays involves a lot of discipleship.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: It involves church community, thick church community, and people showing up in church, wanting something that is grounded and deep and rich and challenging and strange.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: Because they're wanting to dive in with both feet to the real story rather than to be semi-discipled by this other thing that has no life to it.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: So if I was a missionary in Cairo, I would learn about Islam and I would learn Islam better than my Muslim neighbor knows it.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, I am a missionary to the post-Christian West, and I need to know post-Christianity better than my neighbor knows it.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Because these are the lenses they use to see their world, and these are the blinders that means they're not hearing the gospel.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: And when people are given a true sense of who they are, where they've come from, and the difference that Jesus makes, they become Christians.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: So Iwn Hersey Al Lee or Neil Ferguson or Louise Perry or Mary Harrington or Tom Holland, a lot lots of people are taking this journey at that intellectual level, and lots of people are showing up in churches right now, taking this journey at a grassroots level.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: That's why I think it's important.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's vital.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna die in a ditch on this particular issue, but I'm going to risk annoying a few people by banging this drum a little bit.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: I've seen Christians hugely encouraged by seeing the church as a force for good.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: And I've seen non-Christians come to Christ through pulling at these kinds of threads.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes I will have conversations like this, and sometimes I'll write a book like The Air We Breathe.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: Mostly, though, I'm just into telling people about Jesus, and that's what 321 is about.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: Have you done the 321 course?
35:18
SPEAKER_01: Go to 321cour.com.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: It's a Christianity 101 that assumes no prior knowledge.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: Just start an account and you're in.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: Eight episodes that you can binge in a couple of hours or watch it over eight sessions.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: We'd love you to discover life according to Jesus.
35:32
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35:33
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35:36
SPEAKER_01: And why don't you subscribe to us so that we can catch you on the next one?
35:39
SPEAKER_01: God bless.