I see you growing older. As you say "this cannot keep going on", this is often the conclusion when you've spent time trying to have conversation with people who are disingenuous. the problem is they often act and appear as intellectually rational and open-minded but they are not and this eventually lead the one who is open to rationality and capable of re-evaluating his or hers position to be incapable of keeping their emotion in check, your inner self becomes infuriate that this point is not over and that the conversation hasn't moved on to a new point of contention, and your outer self feels less and less capable of tolerating the absurdity of the show, at the same time you know that anger and annoyance, where you all the sudden feel a urge to stand up and say "Ahhh shut up motherfucker, you damn well know i am right so stop acting like a clown" wont help you or the conversation, there lies the problem of human.
Dinesh is an idiot. He is basically saying that the new testament came into existence to get rid of the old testaments atrocities. That is the most ridiculous logic I have heard. The bible is the bible is the bible. The new testament can change things as much as they can but what is still in the old testament is still and always be there. You cannot rewrite the bible to suit your needs.
Alex is talking to Dinesh, Dinesh is talking to the audience. Alex trying to have a conversation, Dinesh trying to convince the audience. One is engaged in a debate, the other is frantically posturing
The body language, the amount of eye contact, everything in this debate showed that Alex was the stronger one. Yes, I'm aware that this is an extremely biased take, but I still believe it.
He's not having a 'logical discussion' he's just 'being a preacher' - "Explain this." - "We'll it's not about explaining a specific thing, you have to see the bigger picture and the progression of the story" - just long winded convoluted nonsense to avoid answering the questions
That’s a bit disingenuous. The primary purpose of a public debate is to convince the audience. If you convince the opposition, that’s just a bonus. Of course you could have a public discussion that aims to explore and formulate opinions in the participants, but that is clearly not the case here. Alex has formed an opinion prior to the talk, and is using a selected text to support that. Both speakers are primarily trying to persuade the audience, not each other.
@adamzain6770 That's actually fair. They are both trying to convince the audience. But in this style of debate, where they just give opening statements then the rest is entirely conversational, it didn't play out that way. The conversation started with them asking questions and then quickly changed from Dinesh talking to Alex to talking to the audience. I think this is both because he was avoiding nearly every question Alex asked and didn't want to face him directly, and I think he knew that Alex would challenge any answer he gave to him directly so he spoke away from the questions, away from Alex, and so many things in a row that Alex couldn't reject all of them as quickly as he was spitting them. You're right that him speaking to the audience is just part of being in debate, but for this format and for what Dinesh was actually saying, it definitely felt like a sign of his discomfort
If I were an atheist conference organizer, I would invite him to every event. The incoherent garbage that come out of his mouth does more to undermine Christianity than Alex could ever hope to do.
William Lane Craig is currently the worst by far, as he is far more intelligent and articulate than D'Souza, and is very influential with a broad reach in the Conservative world, and is associated with numerous notable Christian Universities, including Biola in SoCal.
That’s the problem with religion. They fall in love with their God/Founder so deeply that they will bend over backwards to defend outdated morals and philosophy. It truly reminds me of the way abuse victims defend their abusers.
To be fair, in context that quote is just about the only halfway rational thing Dinesh said in this whole clip. He's not wrong; we still do this today, pretty consistently. And he did say it was unethical.
7:30 time stamped and noted for the record, un freaking believable. This man needs to experience the normal course of war first hand, and then see if he can still talk so callously about genocide, as if it's all just part of God's glorious plan.
Alex, it looked painful. It was painful to watch. The only saving grace is watching how well you held it together. He's not worth debating. Not at your level. Peace! 🙂
@@n.h.moreno Dinesh Joseph D'Souza (born April 25, 1961) is an Indian-American RIGHT-WING political commentator, author, filmmaker, and CONSPIRACY THEORIST! I was not familiar with who he is until this video. Now it makes sense! Thx
@@n.h.moreno I went to one of his events when I was younger (I was invited by a family friend). It was a republican gathering of sorts. He spoke nothing but nonsense for an hour and got a standing ovation. I was shook.
Him having grown up in India and then claiming that the sacredness of life was something that was introduced post Christ is ludicrous. Like growing up in Mumbai did too not even hear about the discussions on morality by Jains and Buddhists and Hindus way before Christ
I presume you are a Hindu. How much of the Gospels have you read to understand the life of Christ that you expect Dinesh to learn about Hinduism? Mumbai has lots of churches too! And what Hindu morality are you talking about? Your religious epics are about wars and battles( killing and bloodshed for honour and glory)
@@ivanpinto1233 It is funny you ask how much of the Gospels have you read when you proceed to show your blatant ignorance of the Hindu sanskrit literature and the FULL epics. the Bhagavad Gita, the Manasollasa, the Ramayana, the Puranas, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Itihasa all dive into the morality and ethics Hinduism expands on. The war and bloodshed you talk about are, of course part of some texts like Mahabaratha and Ramayana, but not the focus.
@@centerloper The ignorance is mutual. Hindus don’t read Christian scriptures too and so it is hypocritical to ask Christians of their awareness of Hindu scripture.
Yep. I once posed the Amalekite question to W.L.Craig, and he said that any injustice done to women and children was resolved in the afterlife. This is the dangerous part of fundamentalism: the view that the real world is just a test, and has no value, in terms of human life or anything else, except as a ticket to Heaven.
@@petretepner8027 He's the only one with the guts to say what his belief system stands for without trying to hide from it. It's no different to ISIS and how they're the only people who apply at every turn the teachings of the Quraan and hadeeth. To apply the teachings of these religions without hypocrisy is to think and to do atrocious things. They survive in our modern day with our modern sense of morality in being sugarcoated and in running away from the facts. I've grown up Muslim, and I've seen time and time again Muslims hide the facts of Aisha's age, or ignore the inherent injustice and cruelty of creation, or the misogyny of the tradition. When I've managed to bring them face to face with it, they've gone silent. Others have run around in circles contradicting themselves at every turn. The simple antidote to the poison of these religions is integrity.
@@petretepner8027 in a sense that is because Dinesh is not willing to just outright accept it. I suppose that's a good thing? but when even your apologists will turn away from your book, I'd start to have a sneaking suspicion that the "objective" morals are nowhere to be seen.
So Dinesh defends the bible by refering to the fact that most christians don't actually believe what's written in the Bible because their own moral sense, tells them it cannot possibly mean what it says?
First they go "oh it's the old testament" wait a second, was the old testament not sent down by your peaceful and loving god Jesus? The irony is mind blowing.
Alex, this is the first time I've seen someone put this guy in his place. You came prepared and didn't back down when listening to his word salad. Keep up the good work.
I assume what he is trying to say is that because god cannot be wrong, that what has been prophesied must be fulfilled as without the fulfillment of these prophecies it would place a all-knowing, all-telling entity such as god as a liar or untruthful which would contradict the stated fact that god is a perfect ‘entity’ (wasn’t sure what word to use lol). I enjoy listening to Alex as a Christian as he usually gives a very fair and honest opinion during most conversations I’ve seen however, I thought he come off as incredibly rude for his normal standard. I wanted to hear the other guy explain his answer but he continuously interrupted him. To be fair it sounded like his explanation was poor hence the beginning of my comment however, I’ll never really know what he was going to say as he wasn’t allowed to finish his thought unfortunately
This is the exact verse that killed my belief. I was in Sunday school, we were talking about this verse, and I kept asking “but if God is loving why would he murder babies and animals?” The teacher kept trying to just move past it and eventually actually asked me to leave the class, and I had to wait for my mother before the main sermon started. I literally got in trouble in church for asking why genocide was okay in the Bible. We’re never going to move forward as a species until we can put religion in the rear view mirror.
@@Orca_mammal 😂😂😂 can't be since that's not his real name nor is it possible to be anything he is. Besides, there's a logical validity in pointing out how inability to grasp concepts so that's not ad hominem either. There's a reason why it's legal to cross examine a witness to prove his reliability as a witness. Same goes for verifying the intellectual fitness, or in this case lack thereof, of the person making an "argument" for the lack of a better word.
@@SabeerAbdulla it's ad hominem because you are attacking the person not the argument. Logic 101. It might be hypocritical of him sure but it doesn't address the validity of the argument.
@@gurgleblaster2282 again, not attacking the person but his ignorance, lack of awareness, irony impairment and in fact, a lack of argument. He _failed_ to get an answer which led him to change his views. That's an argument from ignorance. None of which is an ad hominem since it's true that his faults are the reason he got the wrong answer. It isn't a fallacy if it's true. 😄
Only if we want the interview to be broken up into tiny interviews to be milked as much as possible while the full thing is locked on the aliens' private channel.
Hitchens doesn't even have lips anymore, let alone is he (it, since it's just a collection of rotting meat and stench) let alone is it using them to smile with.
@@ryananon779 , it's called an idiom, idiot... He has been dead for a while, we are all aware. It's also a joke, as both Hitchens and I are atheists. I see it went WAY over your head. Don't be so stupid, you might hurt yourself...
@@ryananon779 , thanks Captain Obvious! Look up what an idiom is. While you're at it, also look up what a joke is, since you clearly don't see them when they are right in front of you...
@@lSomeRandomGuyl Agnostic in that context generally means "agnostic atheist", which indeed just a lack of belief (which is what you said). A gnostic atheist would assert "I know certainly that a god doesn't exist". Just a semantic difference is what I'm getting at
What you saying? that you don't know what you believe? Time to be honest with yourself, you either believe in God and the Bible or don't. There is not a third option.
And because God never actually appears to anyone to give any orders, what all of this means is "The Church, full of fallible human beings, said it's okay, so that means it's moral."
It is an issue of scale to them, not quality. Which is just another form of "might makes right". If they want to insist God has a superior morality in virtue of God's properties or what God knows, that's one thing. But they ALSO say that we cannot equal or acquire these... so what good is any of it? In addition, if the wisdom of man is foolishness to God, yet there is a ton of differences between robust thinking and not robust thinking and/or ignorance that is plainly discernable, well, that is as bizarre as it is disgusting to me. They have no moral high ground.
Belief in the Bible (and Quran) is rooted in one-or both-of two things: ignorance and/or cowardice. To believe that disagreeing with a book so obviously wrong about so many things, and so routinely contradictory to itself, comes with the penalty of eternal damnation and hellfire is cowardice. Morality without consistency, rationality, and, most importantly, civility is not morality, it’s madness.
@@almightyzentacoyou could perhaps say that the New Testament has such. But if you include the old then I don’t see how there aren’t numerous conflicting views between the different time periods and different morals
I don't understand why Dinesh is getting used for these kind of debates. For decades he has been doing the same embarassing arguments. I watched the whole debate and it was aggravating to hear him try his tricks. A thoroughly pitiful and disingenuous debater.
At least WLC is honest enough to say, that in his highly educated glib opinion, that genocide is a good thing, if, "God" commands it. Naturally, if WLC had been born in the Middle East, I think he might have been an apologist for Osama bin Laden.
Dinesh is actually skilled at debate. Hitchens himself praised Dinesh in 2009 saying if he could pay Dinesh enough money, Dinesh could argue Hitchens' own position as a trained lawyer and debater.
I agree. It was a struggle to watch it one sitting with his dishonesty and Gish galloping. I was constant sighing and telling him to get to an actual point. ‘Let me explain it this way…’ 🙄
Yes, after Dinesh tries to explain God's behavior, Alex could have pointed out, _"You are not describing God picking sides. You are describing the evolution of a Tribal War God into a later monotheistic belief system. You are describing evolution in a social paradigm."_ And Alex could also point out that, _"Christianity does not get to claim ownership of the Enlightenment. Just as you are describing the evolution of a tribal war god into your Christian god, morality has evolved as well, and Christians do not get to claim ownership of it. The evolution of modern thought broke free from Christianity and gave us the Enlightenment. Modern Christianity came along for the ride."_
That’s a good point but there’s actually a debate to be had here. There’s good reason to think we never make it to the enlightenment without Christianity. And not good reason from a theological standpoint, good reason can be found merely from looking at the history of thinking leading up to the enlightenment, and the fact that it happened where it did.
@musix4me-clarinet, there is no evolution of god here. Because early xtan were cuckoo believed nonsense of end times. when Roman completely destroy insraljuda which effectively ended jawdism, they didnt want to accept the common public narrative that it was the Roman multiple Gods ending the nonsense of Yahweh, they instead started proclaiming that yahweh ordered Roman to destroy. The nonsense of abrhmik crp would have ended then and there had there been no Xtian and there would be no islm today.
@@RichardWilliams-bt7ef I agree, somewhat. I believe we can argue that the Enlightenment came about _because_ of Christianity, but I would argue that the seeds to the Enlightenment fell from the trees planted in Greek philosophy and before the fall of the Roman Empire. Christianity ruled the Dark Ages and it was a return to the earlier Greek philosophical foundation that broke them free. It was Christianity's theocratic rule that kept them in the Dark Ages.
@@Musix4me-Clarinet I agree about Christianity's theocratic rule being a detriment, but I also think there's something to be said about the possibility that the Enlightenment was enabled by the unprecedented combination of both influences; the combination of the aptitudes cultivated by Christian thinking, as well as the aptitudes cultivated by ancient Greek thinking.
@@rwill128 Okay. What uniquely Christian ideas from 33 AD until the Enlightenment might have brought us to the ideas expressed in the Enlightenment? Or even, what uniquely Christian ideas have persisted through the Enlightenment to our current societal norms?
Referring someone to Dennis Prager is considered a forfeited argument. Dennis Prager never makes any good arguments about anything. His videos are some of the most cringe stuff on RUclips
I mean, it’s getting that way with everyone to the right of not killing homeless people for sport. Like they just make up the strawman in their minds and then argue against those ideas that they just came up with instead of even trying to understand what people are talking about.
It’s too bad that Christians don’t allow themselves the freedom of saying, “okay, this actually all works better as a spiritual metaphor and not historical.” Much richer that way anyway
Agreed - still problematic but at least less so. I’m a fan of Gregory of Nyssa, who for example has a passage saying that when the Hebrews left Egypt they didn’t literally despoil the Egyptians as this would be immoral. And he makes the broader point that a literalistic reading of the text must be rejected if it ascribes immorality to God.
Gregory of Nyssa. “The Life of Moses” (Book II, chapter 45): “Therefore, just as it is impossible for the sun to be a cause of darkness, so too it is impossible for the Good to be a cause of any evil. Consequently, if a passage of Scripture presents to us something which seems unworthy of the Divine nature, we must not believe the passage to have that sense.”
As perplexing as it is to find myself agreeing with Dinesh, there is a difference between the ‘law’ referred to by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, and the genocidal historical narrative deified by the Old Testament and the ‘law’ Jesus referred to. Remember, Jesus also said “ I have come to save you from the traditions of your forefathers.” This is very much a denunciation of the historical narrative, the savagery and inhumanity that the ancient people ALL justified by saying their gods or God condoned it. Alex is a bit missing the point. That said, Dinesh is a serpentine apologist.
Alex: "genocide is evil, do you agree". Theists: "yes". Alex: "then the God of the bible is evil". Theists: "but you don't understand the development and the fulfillment and the love and sacrifice and blood of christ and my other excuses..."
Evil to you, I have no problem with sinners going to hell, I do have a problem with God saying do x or face consequences and humans putting their kids through those consequences aka do x or face death, the fact that one did not follow through with doing x and now the children had to face the consequences of the adults not choosing to follow x is sad but I don’t blame God for the disobedience of those who think God should bow down to them, if God exists then all of existence is his whether you like it or not
@japexican007 i don't believe in your god, for me every argument against him is more evidence for the positive claim of its non-existence. But i will act like he was real for a moment, and had all of the characteristics he is said to have. You said you have no problem with people been sent to hell. But you also said that you are sad because people are send there for doing "X". Your god is all knowing and all powerful, he knew in the first day of creation that Timmy would do X and die and go to hell. He knew it from day 1, and yet chose to create Timmy instead of creating Sam who would not do X and go to heaven. In Mathew 7 13 you can see that most people are supposed to go to hell, since heaven has a narrow gate. So your god made this world knowing that not only Timmy, but most of human kind would suffer forever in hell. Having the power necessary to not do that and do something better. Sure you can say that this is the "best" but that is just lack of imagination and an Ad hook argument. The simplest explanation is that the god of the bible either does not exist or is evil, or he is way less powerful than theists seem to believe he is. Lastly, even if this world was "his" just because i have a kid that does not mean i can put him in a basement and light it on fire just because he disobeyed me. Not even if "his brother made him do it".
@@Gaston-MelchioriTimmy has the freewill to also not end up in hell. And God is just, he knows how to judge each person accordingly. Heaven has a narrow path because most people choose to be their own god, and they have all the right to do so and live the way they want
And he does it well. Clearly what Dinesh is talking about is a gradual improvement in human ethics to an extent brought about by new testament values. Which rather goes to show that it all comes from people not Yahweh.
@@formulaic78 . The main problem for me, is that religious fundamentalists cherry-pick where in the moral development of humanity THEY think WE should ALL remain. Certain rules of their particular ideology are sacrosanct and immutable, others are flexible, and allowed to evolve and adapt to changing social mores. All scriptures were written by the religious leaders, usually in collusion with the corresponding secular leadership of the day, as a way to command unquestioned obedience. Sometimes these rules were for understandable social reasons, or to teach healthy habits to uneducated members of the community. As the tribes became bigger and less homogeneous, these rules were adapted to ensure the maintenance of the status quo. It's much easier and cheaper to control population by indoctrinating them with promises of rewards and punishments in the afterlife...and reduces the need to actually provide either material rewards or physical punishments in this life.
@@terrorkf looking at Jesus to cement our decision is not a valid statement in order to believe in a superstition. Even if God does exist, the writings of the bible is too flawed for someone who is a moral authority. It is going to be based on people if they are going to love the God that you believe in.
@@3xrcodm hey all I'm saying is that Jesus is at the center of Christianity. If anyone is going to have a valid reason for rejecting Christianity, it should be because of Jesus. The Bible is inspired by God, not created by God.
@@terrorkfJesus is really just *this* guy in human form. The more palatable sequel to the same story. Diet Old Testament God. You can’t really take one without the other.
His debate strategy forces his opponent to focus on the point at hand rather than wander. By doing that he controls the topic and forces Dinesh to be on his game or look the fool. This guy is great at debating. The way he speaks, his notes, and presenting open doors his less skilled opponent can't close. He had him boxed in before the debate started.
It's literally a poker tell. You can be sure his "hand" sucks when he's avoiding eye contact. When he has a strong "hand," he makes eye contact with ease because it's natural.
He’s preaching to the audience instead of actually engaging in the conversation. He got backed in to a corner he couldn’t get out of and instead of addressing the actual question he’s desperately trying to win the audience over.
Probably because Alex is being hostile, interrupting him every two seconds, not listening to what he says, and just generally being unpleasant. There's something in philosophy called the principle of charity. It's basically our duty as philosophers to consider the best possible arguments of our "opponents" so as to avoid precisely the sort of dogmatic shouting-down that Alex engages in in this video.
I recently pointed out to an online Christian apologist that Christian salvation doctrine allowed for Clergy child violators to go to a blissful eternity if they "repent to Jesus" before they die, while also condemning the surviving victims to eternal torment if the act caused them to lose their faith. What was her "defense"? She didn't have one. She criticized me for "questioning God's wisdom" even after I made it clear that I don't even BELIEVE her God exists! It was like she was afraid that a bolt of lightning would strike her down if she admitted that the standard Christian salvation doctrine was actually horrifically unjust. That is the dark side of what religion too often does to (presumably) otherwise good people.
Valerie, this goes to the now famous saying: In life there are good people doing good things, there are bad people doing bad things.........it takes religion for good people to do bad things.
@@valerielhw Good question. The problem as I see it is the "lack of the ability to think deeper." The "Word of God," needs to be understood as much more than just "the Bible." Christian's hold to the teaching of the Bible as being complete in their whole intent, however the Bible never says "The Bible is the Word of God." The Idea of the Word, is the "Logos," the singular complete reason of life, the message from God, and explicitly stated as the Gospel (1 Peter 1: 23-25, Romans 10:17). the Bible needs to be understood for what it is. Part is history, part is poetry, part is prophecy. Each needs to be read in context of the culture of the time it was written in. The whole message reveals that God guided the mind and heart of man to arrive at a certain specific point of understanding... this understanding as a whole is what we would call the complete message, the gospel, or the Word. This is why things need to be understood in context. If the Word was a song, then many Christians are not able to explain the whole of the "song" as they haven't studied it enough. They can respond to the song, but have not learned how to play it themselves, because they thought about it enough. The message of the scripture is easy, and God pours outs strict judgement for those that oppose it. In Mark 10, Jesus explains that we must learn to pick-up children, and become as a child to enter his kingdom. That's easy to know and read, but to gain true understanding takes spiritual growth and abandonment of oneself. That's why the gospel is hard for people to understand in it's fullness, they don't think deep enough about the message, nor do they apply the simple truth, thus they never gain a proper understanding of it. In this video, Alex shows that he is not seeking to understand, he is misrepresenting the text. As the other man is trying to lead him down a road of reasoning, Alex blocks and pushes back, interrupting often. One will never find God unless they open the eyes of their heart to see the whole of the message.
That’s it isn’t it. Christians tend to have all the answers until they’re backed into a corner and then they revert to “god works in mysterious ways.” It’s such a cheap and silly cop out.
"Christianity invented the just war concept where women and children were out-of-bounds" The Jewish and Muslim women and children of Jerusalem after it was captured during the Crusades would like a word with you, Dinesh.
He's literally trying to defend genocide from a supposed benevolent and all powerful god. A god who, supposedly, has all the power to not allow it to happen and yet, somehow, cares about the context of the time? Is god's own objective morality subjective?
HEY! God pulled on his Jack boots and did a little dance. Dinesh knows, he's tapped directly into the mind of the ultimate being. If he doesn't know it ain't worth knowing. 😂
I don’t think he’s defending it. I think he’s dismissing it. He agrees it’s bad. But he’s being hypocritical. He’s saying they’re too stupid to understand god at the time.
Really at the end of the rabbit hole, the whole point of going down this line of thinking and argumentation is that it shows the utter folly of believing in an omnipotent god with a very questionable and shady past (to where it is clear God/Yahweh is just the war God of the ancient Jewish pantheon). Meaning, if you're a Christian, that is 'the Father' your scriptures are referring to. It's so blatantly obvious, and where Christians screwed the pooch was buckling themselves to the idea of the Trinity (and that their 'god', which is Jesus, is actually 'one with the father'... I.e. Yahweh). Thus, tying themselves to the morality of a tribal war God. They can certainly say that Jesus 'transformed' the message from Old to New Testament, but then that kills the whole charade because Jesus claims to be one with the father (and further along, the holy spirit)... So God sent his son to clean up his 2nd mess? That an omnipotent and all powerful God realized he screwed up, sent his son (himself) to rectify his own wrongs and moral confusion, to set the record straight for humans to move on from "eye for an eye". Like, that's great and all, but all that does is put Jesus as a moral philosopher, of whom was predated by other moral philosophies that share similar maturation (like in Confucianism or Buddhism). So, Jesus wasn't even cutting edge. His morality isn't "more special" than say Confucianism or Buddhism, which had been practicing for half a millenia before Jesus. The folly being pointed out here is that he was just an apocalyptic preacher and moral philosopher at the end of the day. And that the entire point of Jesus' existence in terms of Christianity is to right Yahweh's wrong, defeat death and resurrect, and become a conduit for humans to have a "relationship" with Yahweh. And of course, throw in all the psychological trauma of putting eternal damnation as a punishment for refusing this "deal"). So, Dinesh talked about Jesus' fulfilment, which down to brass tax, was simply a way to clean up Yahweh's questionable past and to enter in a new kingdom/deal with humanity. Again, the very next question is... Why does an omnipotent being require such troubleshooting and multiple chances (don't forget he messed up with his first attempt and flooded every inch of earth as a result). Seems like Yahweh is an utter moron (kinda like most tribal war gods are from mythology). At the end of the day, the second you attach Jesus to Yahweh via the Trinity and Jesus' own ramblings about the God of the Old Testament, combine that, and the whole thing breaks down and the entire essence of the story becomes so blatantly illogical.
He’s literally not doing that. His argument is bad, but he was not supporting genocide. Stop making shit up just because you don’t like the guy. It’s pretty disgusting.
@@cmar6461 let's put it this way: he's talking about genocide and all he says is "you have to understand the context". It's the same as "genocide is bad BUT". He might not outright be saying "genocide good" but he's trying to justify it. That is in fact a form of defending it.
Some people kind of look at the Bible like it's almost a biography of God changing His mind on how to think about humanity. Initially, He's a right bastard but he softens up over the course of several centuries. D'Souza is trying to articulate this point of view, but he's not great at it. Essentially, he's trying to say "it's Act I, bro. This is a redemption arc. You're misunderstanding the narrative if you're oblivious to the way the character changes on down the line." What's interesting to me about this is that it's a very main-line, liberal Christian interpretation of the book, and D'Souza is quite reactionary.
@@ch4z_bucks Unreliable narrators. :-) But yes, the Bible's text is at odds with the meta-narrative in many places. It's one reason why many denominations don't accept the "every word is the literal truth" position.
This Dinesh guy once said in a debate with Hitchens that he views the Christian-led slaughter of his forefathers in India as a positive since it was to spread this particular religion. I kinda stopped taking him seriously after that.
Dinesh: " i dont view it that way". Translation; " I will say and do anything to keep the football of faith in the air such that I not have to confront either my own mortality, or the problems we face as species". I genuinely regard people like this as abject cowards.
Literally this. Listening to stupidity is contagious. These are same idiots complaining about censorship. However, the fail to realize that not all ideas are equal and deserve respect.
It is clear to anyone who is actually being honest and paying attention that the slow evolution of our moral framework has been accomplished in spite of our religious texts, not because of them. It has taken thousands of years of Bible readers ignoring and reinterpreting what their book said.
I think it is more complicated than this. Ideas unfold over a very long period of time, but fundamentalists tend to be dogmatic and resistant to change. The sane idea can pull us in multiple directions over the short and long term.I definitely think the Bible and Christian thought, as well as the Greek phikosophies, are the seeds that grew into the modern West, the idea of democracy, universal sufferage, civil rights, the quest for truth etc. Ideas are complicated things and they unfold in myriad of ways. They don't just do one thing.
@@almightyzentaco sure, ideas evolve or serve as platforms for new modes of thinking. But, what about Christianity specifically, and exclusive of other faiths, makes it the engine for developing Western thought? What if in an alternate timeline Buddhism spread across Europe like Christianity did? How confident are you that the result would be 'worse'? And if the word is divine, why did it not get us there sooner? Even if we accept that humans need to adapt and accept God's teachings over time, the indirectness of how we got there raises questions
@CodexEvans you guys always say this but a core belief of Buddhist thought is that if your a bad person in this life a afterlife of torment will await you and you will reincarnate as a lesser being like a animal this idea can be used to justify horrible atrocities as well amd in ways can be seen as more harmful than Christian thought because it equivicates bad people with animals something that is incompatible with Christian thought
@@joemiller7082 At least we can see zealots exist even without religion. Plenty of people believe corrupt and nonsensical things dogmatically that their media or experts tell them to. Life is complex and thinking is hard.
Despite the comments below, (which I TOTALLY understand, because...well...it's all batshittery!), I understand where you are coming from. I TRIED to give them the benefit of the doubt when I first left religion, but after a while, it's like watching the same 2 minute clip over and over and over and over and over...It's great once or twice, but at 100 times of hearing the same thing and hearing it destroyed in SO MANY different ways, it's just too much.
Isn't it interesting how Christians slowly started to become more civilized after God stopped directly communicating with them. It's almost like their human intuition was more valuable then his advice to developing those traditions Dinesh keeps bringing up.
Naw, it's inspired by God and corrupted by tyrannical-authoritarian men, oppressors like the state and organized religion; it was written and perverted by certain men - any oppressive acts stated as being okay or just will be examples of that. Dinesh does however illustrate perfectly his belief is ungrounded.
And what did the people who wrote it got from it? Jesus was crucified and atleast a bunch of the apostles were killed because they believed. Noone of them benefited.
@@dietmarhaudegen3932 1) we don’t know that Jesus EXISTED, never mind was crucified. 2) we know of ONE documented case of a person claiming to be a disciple being crucified for his faith. 3) meanwhile, the people who sought religious power got it. Pretty big benefit.
I am full glad that you have broke this into clips because I cannot imagine listening to dinesh blather for longer than ten minute spurts--you are so strong to be able to do that for the full length of this discussion
His point was that it was necessary- had we not bombed and instead made it an infantry battle, the causalities would have been much, much higher, especially among our own soldiers but even for the soldiers and civilians of the Japanese and German armies. His point (though poorly made and failing to explain why the two situations are analogous) was that the genocides of the bible were somehow similarly necessary
@@worthlesshuman5041 except the order of events is different, AND not everyone was killed. Let’s take Japan, thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed with the nuclear bomb. That was intended to STOP the Japanese men (who incidentally were also the aggressors) from going on with the war THEY started. WHEN they surrendered the killing stopped. Had OT-“God” been in control, either Japan all the Japanese military personnel would have been killed, whether they surrendered or not, AND after that the whole of Japan would have been carpeted with nuclear bombs leaving no one alive. Didn’t happen. So humans are better than the OT-biblical God. However, Dinish is right to some extent: morality is subjective, although I’d argue that we have an evolutionary basis for it. Which leads us generally towards keeping others alive unless we feel threatened in our own existence.
@@JimBobJoeB0b Yeah, that's one of the main problems I have with the premise of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god. Like, I get he wanted to give humans free will and all, but if he's gonna make miracles and divine judgment anyway, why wouldn't he just do what's morally right in the first place?
A lot of people are making fun of Dinesh here. But you can’t blame him. If you had to defend the Bible you would also end up backed into a corner like this by someone like Alex. The truth is, the Bible is an indefensible document. There’s nothing Dinesh can do while trying to uphold the morality of an immoral God. Anyone will look foolish defending a foolish book.
That’s because people claim The Lord God The Almighty is benevolent when it is clearly not the case. The Lord God The Almighty is the God of good and Evil and has the capacity to act Evilly which he does in this case. It is fuelled by justice as The amalekites attacked the Israelites and it was vengeance. Is it very brutal yes and it showcases the brutality of a God who is also very Evil being the God of Evil. Does this mean he is completely malevolent. No he is also the God of Good and there are countless examples of his grace as God ,the son, Jesus Christ. I do not hold the same arguments as the fellow arguing against mr O’Connor but I offer a different Christian perspective. This idea God or The Lord God The Almighty is completely benevolent is evidently myth. God or The Lord God The Almighty states he is a vengeful and jealous God in the bible. That is showcased brutally with the amalekites. The logical fallacy some people make is to say God is benevolent. It is clearly not the case. But we must remember the Evil showcased here was fuelled by a Good quality also which is justice so it is actually quite the complex yet also in another sense simple moral combination.
@@Ordinaryorion777 Ok. That is one perspective, and I respect your opinion. Here is an alternative opinion: the people that wrote the Bible portrayed God in a way to justify the enslavement and murder of other people because what they were trying to do was justify going to war against them. In other words, the reason why God acts like a tribal war God in the Bible is because the people who wrote it were tribal warlike people, and thus wrote about a God that sided with them in everything and justified all their actions and murderous ambitions.
@@Ordinaryorion777 You are entitled to your perspective but I will differ from the other commenter and say your perspective is not particularly plausible or respectable. A God that is simultaneously supremely good and supremely evil is inherently bizarre and unlikely. By contrast, it is not just inherently likely but historically commonplace for one culture's myths and beliefs to be subsumed into those of a later culture, with apparent contradictions being either erased, or rewritten, or explained away somehow. This is what happened with the Bible: the vindictive polytheistic God of the ancient Hebrews was morphed into something else entirely with the addition of Christian writings and beliefs, but because of the supposed prophetic links and how the competition between early Christian sects turned out, Christians today still have to explain away moral contradictions that are obvious to children. There's no reason to think this nonsensical being exists, and less reason to admire it.
Dishesh's argument - "it gets better later on in the book......so..it's ok" ...and then has the nerve to be arrogant about this as if it's some sort of highly intellectual argument that Alex can't grasp..
D'Souza apparently misses the point that he is implying that "god" went through some sort of personal development from an "eye for an eye" tribal war god to a benevolent "turn the other cheek" father in heaven. D'Souz's arguments are incredibly weak. He should have played the standard "get out of jail"-card of Christianity which is to exclaim that god's ways are mysterious but always just and moral since it is not in god's nature to do anything less than perfect. He should have said that it is Alex's problem if he does not see the beauty, mercy, and wisdom in the orders of the old testament god.
The whole "Yahwe" and "God" tangent makes it seem like this particular deity underwent some kind of "character development" (as is the case with protagonists in pretty much all fantasy stories). This unfortunately opens a pandora's box of "Well, if the deity changed back then, and is not, in fact a stable and neverchanging entity, then who's to say that god hasn't developed just a bit further over the last 2000 years and has realized it's actually ok to be gay etc." . That seems pretty problematic when you want to use this kind of entity for _absolute_ morality and wisdom
The funny thing is he did too! Dr Justin Sledge just put out a video on his channel Esoterica about the Origins of YHWH, and how he’s changed over the years. Originally he was part of a pantheon, as well as being ritually married- and wasn’t at all a primary god of that region save for some select.
I'm gonna go ahead and guess over 90% of the time it isn't dishonesty. They start from a conclusion that must be true in their eyes (the God of the Bible is the true God and defines what is moral). Then they work from there to make sense of the world. Everyone does start from some conclusion that they can't prove and assumes must be true. In this argument, Alex is assuming his moral intuition is true (though he has noted doubt on that in the past, but I am just going to be working with what we see in the clip for fairness sake.) At a base value though, most people will at least assume what they can perceive with their senses is true, when we really have no way to truly verify that.
I agree. Hopefully Alex will take better care of his health by not smoking and not drinking too much. While Alex and Christopher have key personality differences, Alex is incredibly intelligent, well read, willing to ask hard questions and debate with notorious people.
I love how Dinesh keeps looking away and gesticulating into the air...as if he felt ashamed to look into Alex, being in shame for the nonsense he is spewing.
@@chinkasuyaro8983 So, you mean the guy gets humiliated in every debate he participates? Because that is exactly what happened here, and that is why I assumed he was acting in such way
7:03 This is a blatant lie. For example, in the text Mahabharata, much older than Bible, the laws of war are laid out, laws such as you have to battle on a designated battlefield only, you cannot kill your enemy after the sunset, you cannot kill any noncombatant which includes the likes of charioteers who are present at the battlefield but are not combatants- killing of anyone else including women, children, farmers, traders and so on would be the lowest of the sins for a soldier.
Correct. Even Ram committed a sin by killing Bali and his re-incarnation Krishna was punished for it. Even god's avatars are not spared the punishment for sin.
Parts of the Old Testament were compiled probably earlier than Mahabharata (5 BCE vs 3-4 BCE or so), and as for how long the oral tradition had lasted before everything was codified, it's a bit speculative and hard to prove, it seems
Exactly. It’s called Dhanyur Veda and explains the law of warfare, how to fight with dignity and with honor but fair and not become a barbarian after the battle. You already gave some good examples of what not to do. There are so much more. There are as you said, a group of people which are absolutely forbidden to kill, not even harm and that’s women, children, brahmanas and old men. They are not even considered punishable if they do something wrong.
That could well be because India (or at least parts of it) was more civilized than Europe and the Middle East at the time. This could be a late influence of the Indus Valley (Harappa) Civilization up to about 2000 BCE, which based on the archeological evidence is believed to have been perfectly peaceful.
‼️ I suggest The Lion and the Unicorn by George Orwell. Written during a Nazi raid of London, “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are 'only doing their duty', as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.”
My favourite part was when Dinesh took 2 seconds from his filibustering, droning on and on as a diversion, to accuse Alex of filibustering. I literally had the word in my head when he said it. Comedy gold.
what's so hilarious is that Alex is visibly pissed by Dinesh's unwillingness to stand behind God's orders for complete and total genocide, but when William Lane Craig essentially says "yea, my God is verifiably evil. So what? He's still God so deal with it", Alex responds "Alright then, fair enough." Alex prefers the honest evil of William Lane Craig over the dishonest good of Dinesh. Me on the other hand? Some day I want to see someone angrily dismantle William Lane Craig's unabashed embrace of pure evil, and walk out of the room without letting him get another word in. I do NOT prefer the evil of that man. It doesn't calm me down that he is "honestly" evil.
I’m at the point where I just fucking love honesty ☠️ in a world of lies there is nothing more comforting than someone owning their abhorrent positions. I sympathise immensely with Alex; even though Craig holds disgusting positions the lying by Dinesh is just nauseating.
You will prefer it. One day... See, after spending enough time in humanity, going among humans, you'll eventually notice how phony so many of them are. And I don't mean the 'expected dishonesty,' like a woman lying about her age, or a man lying about his income, etc... No, there are FAR worse dishonesties practiced every day by so very many people... Spend enough time among them and you'll come to find 'honesty' to be a refreshing change from the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the masses.
@Impermanentstrue, everybody knows it is an objective perfectly accessible fact of tthe world and that is why most of humanity in history is immoral except this tiny sliver of time and chunk of region I call my context.
Religions evolve - the surrounding society provides the selection pressure, the reinterpretations of their texts and traditions are the mutations. The reinterpretations/edits/tapdancing that allows the religion to remain viable in current society are the mutations that spread through the religion.
Old Egyptian religion and laws which are more than 2000 years before the old testament forbid the killing of children , women , old men, disarmed men , captives in war.
It's honestly ironic that that the "Evil" pagan religions often showed more humanity and morality in their laws than the "Good and Holy" abrahamic ones.
Dinesh should have gone the route of "Death is a gift" for the Amalekites so he could have at least argued that they were gifted with eternal life in heaven, so it's all a wash anyway. It would have followed suit with every other argument a Christian can come up with. An argument that is unable to be demonstrated by evidence or argued and even worse, never brought up again in their own texts. It's the perfect cover for immoral religious folk.
No, Dinesh. In this case, "Fulfilment" means "To completely ignore the old testament, except for those parts which, through deliberate mistranslation, will appear to promote the mistaken notion that Jesus is the messiah."
Dinesh is completely unaware that he is defending Alex's pov. He has twisted his brain into such a knot, that he doesn't know what is up and what is down..
dinesh is a liar, hypocrite and disingenuous. he thinks that if he speaks louder than his interlocutors or starts his sentence with "any intelligent person knows (insert preposterous claim here) then he is in the right. it's torture to listen to his drivel.
I saw a video explaining hell as a mistranslation for a word referring to the city trash dump. Sick people (sinners) were forced to live their away from society. Catholicism started the idea of hell to mentally enslave everyone because if they acknowledged reincarnation nobody would obey them.
Such a shame millions are born into cultures where they never learn of Christianity and thus are doomed to hell for no fault of their own. May the all-knowing benevolent god bless them.
Dinesh lost when he opened his argument with "would you all really listen to anything Alex said if he didn't have an english accent?" I mean talk about clutching at straws at the very beginning
Alex the best thing you did was end the debate with dinesh with a yes or no moral question. No idea if it was planned but it leaves an ever lasting impression. If it was happenstance then great. If it was planned bravo
Watch the full debate: ruclips.net/video/UMKkX8qRHsw/видео.htmlsi=P6REUaZt8b06RaSK
In case you missed it, Alex, they’re doing the same thing again to the Palestinians as you speak.
@@MoodyG Guarantee he didn't miss it.
He just called you not intelligent
Unintelligent* @@Panikdemet
I see you growing older. As you say "this cannot keep going on", this is often the conclusion when you've spent time trying to have conversation with people who are disingenuous. the problem is they often act and appear as intellectually rational and open-minded but they are not and this eventually lead the one who is open to rationality and capable of re-evaluating his or hers position to be incapable of keeping their emotion in check, your inner self becomes infuriate that this point is not over and that the conversation hasn't moved on to a new point of contention, and your outer self feels less and less capable of tolerating the absurdity of the show, at the same time you know that anger and annoyance, where you all the sudden feel a urge to stand up and say "Ahhh shut up motherfucker, you damn well know i am right so stop acting like a clown" wont help you or the conversation, there lies the problem of human.
I genuinely think that an atheist pretending to be a Christian for the sake of debate could make better arguments than Dinesh
Well, an informed atheist defending Christianity in a debate is a very interesting force, would be fun to see more of that
A genius among us couldn't make this nonsense come out right.
@@ThereIsNoLord Well, Jordan Peterson would disagree with you!
This tends to be the case for most Christians.
Ben Shapiro did better than this, which is fairly damning
You slaughtered him, Alex, as though he were an Amalekite child
I feel bad for finding this funny
😂 bro
Hahaha, straight to hell all of us
Most underrated comment.
Gahh dayum
Alex: *quotes the bible verbatim*
Dinesh: "That is a ludicrous misreading of what's happening"
Alex: misses the overall context of the Old Testament
Dinesh: A text without context is a pretext
Verbatim: which translation!!
@@ArthurvanH0udt Greek.
And now you understand how a Trump supporters mind works
@@Adiusa0874 Ahh so genocide needs context... Wow... You're beyond evil i hope you understand this.
It's not often Dinesh gets beaten in a debate. It's always.
He give Trump a run for his money for world salad nonsese. Not a shred of evidence needed to back up his ridiculous claims!
Delusional comment.
That is very funny.
😂
Dinesh is an idiot. He is basically saying that the new testament came into existence to get rid of the old testaments atrocities. That is the most ridiculous logic I have heard. The bible is the bible is the bible. The new testament can change things as much as they can but what is still in the old testament is still and always be there. You cannot rewrite the bible to suit your needs.
Alex is talking to Dinesh, Dinesh is talking to the audience. Alex trying to have a conversation, Dinesh trying to convince the audience. One is engaged in a debate, the other is frantically posturing
yo I was going to say the same thing. very true assessment
The body language, the amount of eye contact, everything in this debate showed that Alex was the stronger one. Yes, I'm aware that this is an extremely biased take, but I still believe it.
He's not having a 'logical discussion' he's just 'being a preacher' - "Explain this." - "We'll it's not about explaining a specific thing, you have to see the bigger picture and the progression of the story" - just long winded convoluted nonsense to avoid answering the questions
That’s a bit disingenuous. The primary purpose of a public debate is to convince the audience. If you convince the opposition, that’s just a bonus.
Of course you could have a public discussion that aims to explore and formulate opinions in the participants, but that is clearly not the case here. Alex has formed an opinion prior to the talk, and is using a selected text to support that. Both speakers are primarily trying to persuade the audience, not each other.
@adamzain6770 That's actually fair. They are both trying to convince the audience. But in this style of debate, where they just give opening statements then the rest is entirely conversational, it didn't play out that way. The conversation started with them asking questions and then quickly changed from Dinesh talking to Alex to talking to the audience. I think this is both because he was avoiding nearly every question Alex asked and didn't want to face him directly, and I think he knew that Alex would challenge any answer he gave to him directly so he spoke away from the questions, away from Alex, and so many things in a row that Alex couldn't reject all of them as quickly as he was spitting them. You're right that him speaking to the audience is just part of being in debate, but for this format and for what Dinesh was actually saying, it definitely felt like a sign of his discomfort
It's extremely hypocritical of Alex to condemn genocide while simultaneously publicly slaughtering Dinesh on stage....
Good one! 😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@WayWalker3 You got us in the first half not gonna lie lol
Comment of 2024, I love you
Dinesh is amongst the worst Christian apologists.
If I were an atheist conference organizer, I would invite him to every event. The incoherent garbage that come out of his mouth does more to undermine Christianity than Alex could ever hope to do.
Insufferable wanker
William Lane Craig is currently the worst by far, as he is far more intelligent and articulate than D'Souza, and is very influential with a broad reach in the Conservative world, and is associated with numerous notable Christian Universities, including Biola in SoCal.
@@What_If_We_Tried By "worst", I understood @jwcarlson to mean "least competent".
Dinesh is among the worst people, period.
Dinesh D'Souza quoting Dennis Prager is like a flat earther quoting an alchemist.
😂😂😂😂
Yeah, I'm nicking this one.
DUMB & DUMBER..............I laugh at both of them, ha ha ha ha .
Amen
TBF alchemists started what today know as chemistry.
So I think the poor alchemists don't deserve to be compared to Praguer
Imagine defending a millennia old genocide because you are a fan of their mascot.
Well, ‘sponsor’ really, rather than mascot
🤣🤣🤣👍👍👍
Well Said
That’s the problem with religion. They fall in love with their God/Founder so deeply that they will bend over backwards to defend outdated morals and philosophy. It truly reminds me of the way abuse victims defend their abusers.
I think we have a present-day analogy for this level of special pleading in MAGA.
"The incineration of women and children is the normal course of war." What a quote
Indeed, one I live by even today...
To be fair, in context that quote is just about the only halfway rational thing Dinesh said in this whole clip. He's not wrong; we still do this today, pretty consistently. And he did say it was unethical.
@@iamtheiconoclast3unless it’s commanded by God. Then it’s ethical. So that’s ok. 👍
7:30 time stamped and noted for the record, un freaking believable. This man needs to experience the normal course of war first hand, and then see if he can still talk so callously about genocide, as if it's all just part of God's glorious plan.
Good catch
Alex, it looked painful. It was painful to watch. The only saving grace is watching how well you held it together. He's not worth debating. Not at your level. Peace! 🙂
But, you know how famous Dinesh D'Souza is right?
It is crazy that he got to this level!❤
@@n.h.moreno Dinesh Joseph D'Souza (born April 25, 1961) is an Indian-American RIGHT-WING political commentator, author, filmmaker, and CONSPIRACY THEORIST!
I was not familiar with who he is until this video. Now it makes sense! Thx
@@tomhenninger4153 and a convicted felon, even if Trump pardoned him, he was convicted of campaign fraud.
@@n.h.moreno I went to one of his events when I was younger (I was invited by a family friend). It was a republican gathering of sorts. He spoke nothing but nonsense for an hour and got a standing ovation. I was shook.
@@republic8360 It definitely is NOT A CULT.
Somehow....
Him having grown up in India and then claiming that the sacredness of life was something that was introduced post Christ is ludicrous. Like growing up in Mumbai did too not even hear about the discussions on morality by Jains and Buddhists and Hindus way before Christ
I presume you are a Hindu. How much of the Gospels have you read to understand the life of Christ that you expect Dinesh to learn about Hinduism? Mumbai has lots of churches too! And what Hindu morality are you talking about? Your religious epics are about wars and battles( killing and bloodshed for honour and glory)
@@ivanpinto1233 It is funny you ask how much of the Gospels have you read when you proceed to show your blatant ignorance of the Hindu sanskrit literature and the FULL epics. the Bhagavad Gita, the Manasollasa, the Ramayana, the Puranas, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Itihasa all dive into the morality and ethics Hinduism expands on. The war and bloodshed you talk about are, of course part of some texts like Mahabaratha and Ramayana, but not the focus.
@@centerloper The ignorance is mutual. Hindus don’t read Christian scriptures too and so it is hypocritical to ask Christians of their awareness of Hindu scripture.
@@centerloper The Bhagavad gita is basically a sermon given during a battle and the book I have heard most Hindus revere the most.
@@ivanpinto1233 I agree yes looking into Dinesh's background he grew into a family of Roman Catholics so the OP was unfair in asking that of him.
Yep. I once posed the Amalekite question to W.L.Craig, and he said that any injustice done to women and children was resolved in the afterlife. This is the dangerous part of fundamentalism: the view that the real world is just a test, and has no value, in terms of human life or anything else, except as a ticket to Heaven.
And yet Craig's response, wicked as it is, is still more coherent than D'Souza's.
@@petretepner8027 He's the only one with the guts to say what his belief system stands for without trying to hide from it. It's no different to ISIS and how they're the only people who apply at every turn the teachings of the Quraan and hadeeth. To apply the teachings of these religions without hypocrisy is to think and to do atrocious things. They survive in our modern day with our modern sense of morality in being sugarcoated and in running away from the facts. I've grown up Muslim, and I've seen time and time again Muslims hide the facts of Aisha's age, or ignore the inherent injustice and cruelty of creation, or the misogyny of the tradition. When I've managed to bring them face to face with it, they've gone silent. Others have run around in circles contradicting themselves at every turn. The simple antidote to the poison of these religions is integrity.
true
@@petretepner8027 in a sense that is because Dinesh is not willing to just outright accept it. I suppose that's a good thing? but when even your apologists will turn away from your book, I'd start to have a sneaking suspicion that the "objective" morals are nowhere to be seen.
@@petretepner8027 Agreed.
So Dinesh defends the bible by refering to the fact that most christians don't actually believe what's written in the Bible because their own moral sense, tells them it cannot possibly mean what it says?
Yup. These fools always wreck themselves.
While still saying that you can't have morals without God and the Bible....
First they go "oh it's the old testament" wait a second, was the old testament not sent down by your peaceful and loving god Jesus? The irony is mind blowing.
@@harixav THaT's tHe OLd tEStaMenT! to dismiss why it doesn't count. Next breath, assert how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy.
@@utubepunkand Jesus never had a bad thing to say about anything in the Old Testament
Anyone who cites Prager as a biblical authority can never be taken seriously. Ever.
Apologists are all jokes and none deserve to be taken seriously anyways. They are wilfully ignorant philosophical toddlers by trade.
why?
@@sluluyPrager is the Dr. Phil of Bible scholars 😂
@@sluluy Lol
Why did you include the word "biblical?"
Alex, this is the first time I've seen someone put this guy in his place. You came prepared and didn't back down when listening to his word salad. Keep up the good work.
You know Dinesh is in big trouble when he's using Dennis Prager as a reliable resource.
Thats because Dinesh has no idea of or particularly cares about reliable sources, given that his job is spewing misinformation in service of Trump.
I honestly had to rewind because I could not believe what I heard
So… a perfect God had to develop???
God... Evolved? 👀
Sounds like Dinesh espouses some form of process theology.
God had his training wheels on at the start. Gotta ease into it, nice and slow.
Yes. That’s the implication of his argument. Lol.
I assume what he is trying to say is that because god cannot be wrong, that what has been prophesied must be fulfilled as without the fulfillment of these prophecies it would place a all-knowing, all-telling entity such as god as a liar or untruthful which would contradict the stated fact that god is a perfect ‘entity’ (wasn’t sure what word to use lol).
I enjoy listening to Alex as a Christian as he usually gives a very fair and honest opinion during most conversations I’ve seen however, I thought he come off as incredibly rude for his normal standard. I wanted to hear the other guy explain his answer but he continuously interrupted him.
To be fair it sounded like his explanation was poor hence the beginning of my comment however, I’ll never really know what he was going to say as he wasn’t allowed to finish his thought unfortunately
This is the exact verse that killed my belief. I was in Sunday school, we were talking about this verse, and I kept asking “but if God is loving why would he murder babies and animals?” The teacher kept trying to just move past it and eventually actually asked me to leave the class, and I had to wait for my mother before the main sermon started. I literally got in trouble in church for asking why genocide was okay in the Bible. We’re never going to move forward as a species until we can put religion in the rear view mirror.
Says the guy named Indian "nuclear" under a video that referenced the nuking of Japan. Irony impaired much. 😂
Ad hominem@@SabeerAbdulla
@@Orca_mammal 😂😂😂 can't be since that's not his real name nor is it possible to be anything he is.
Besides, there's a logical validity in pointing out how inability to grasp concepts so that's not ad hominem either. There's a reason why it's legal to cross examine a witness to prove his reliability as a witness. Same goes for verifying the intellectual fitness, or in this case lack thereof, of the person making an "argument" for the lack of a better word.
@@SabeerAbdulla it's ad hominem because you are attacking the person not the argument. Logic 101. It might be hypocritical of him sure but it doesn't address the validity of the argument.
@@gurgleblaster2282 again, not attacking the person but his ignorance, lack of awareness, irony impairment and in fact, a lack of argument. He _failed_ to get an answer which led him to change his views. That's an argument from ignorance. None of which is an ad hominem since it's true that his faults are the reason he got the wrong answer. It isn't a fallacy if it's true. 😄
He says 20.000 women and children in a building, That must have been one hell of a building........a liar will lie
It was a megablock in Mega City One, from Judge Dread. I saw that documentary.
The story was obviously, on its face, ludicrous. Not only is Dinesh a hopeless debater; he can't even lie well.
I Think that Alex should represent humanity if we ever encounter aliens
He will convince them to give us all their technology and make peace probably!!
Only if we want the interview to be broken up into tiny interviews to be milked as much as possible while the full thing is locked on the aliens' private channel.
@@MicaiahBaron isn't the two hour debate on Pangburn the whole thing? I'm sorry but I don't understand. Can you explain what you mean?
And other people like Paulogia, or Myth Vision, and any of us that denounce authoritarian and/or genocidal societies, and religion in general.
No he shouldn’t, and he’d agree
Watching Dinesh flop around like a fish out of water is HILARIOUS! Hitchens is smiling at you Alex!
Even Dinesh is thinking, 'Get me off this ride. JESUS CHRIST'
Hitchens doesn't even have lips anymore, let alone is he (it, since it's just a collection of rotting meat and stench) let alone is it using them to smile with.
@@ryananon779 , it's called an idiom, idiot... He has been dead for a while, we are all aware. It's also a joke, as both Hitchens and I are atheists. I see it went WAY over your head. Don't be so stupid, you might hurt yourself...
I hope not....otherwise dinesh is right.
@@ryananon779 , thanks Captain Obvious! Look up what an idiom is. While you're at it, also look up what a joke is, since you clearly don't see them when they are right in front of you...
Dinesh claiming Alex is "filibustering" is probably the most ridiculous part of this.
Yeah, coming from the guy who tried to use his time to ask Alex questions as monologue happy fun time, that was rather rich.
The crowd was really good in holding back their laughter.
Ask dinesh to define “filibuster “ and he’ll talk about anything and everything else until the entire audience begs for the Q&A
The second it came out of his mouth, I thought it was a projection.
He accuses everybody of that 😂
As an agnostic, I'm grateful for Dinesh's complete incoherence in helping to reaffirm my beliefs/lack thereof.
FYI Lack of belief is atheism. But I don’t really care what you call yourself
@@lSomeRandomGuyl Agnostic in that context generally means "agnostic atheist", which indeed just a lack of belief (which is what you said). A gnostic atheist would assert "I know certainly that a god doesn't exist". Just a semantic difference is what I'm getting at
What you saying? that you don't know what you believe? Time to be honest with yourself, you either believe in God and the Bible or don't. There is not a third option.
Same argument as William Lane Craig. "God said it's okay, so it's moral."
“God said it’s okay, so it must be moral” would be more accurate.
Yes
And because God never actually appears to anyone to give any orders, what all of this means is "The Church, full of fallible human beings, said it's okay, so that means it's moral."
It is an issue of scale to them, not quality. Which is just another form of "might makes right". If they want to insist God has a superior morality in virtue of God's properties or what God knows, that's one thing. But they ALSO say that we cannot equal or acquire these... so what good is any of it? In addition, if the wisdom of man is foolishness to God, yet there is a ton of differences between robust thinking and not robust thinking and/or ignorance that is plainly discernable, well, that is as bizarre as it is disgusting to me. They have no moral high ground.
"It's okay if God commands it, even if immoral." was my WLC take.
That's not actually a good satire of dinesh's argument, his argument is " sure it wasn't moral but God changed their minds eventually"
Dinesh lost in the sauce
He's a convicted conman yet some how still has a platform. Its kinda nuts. Dude is either a fruitcake or the best grifter ever.
Spluttering, sinking fast.
I know right? Imagine being an atheist or a christian and hand wringing over a group of people that we should be glad dont exist anymore.
He must be hittin the sauce
Belief in the Bible (and Quran) is rooted in one-or both-of two things: ignorance and/or cowardice.
To believe that disagreeing with a book so obviously wrong about so many things, and so routinely contradictory to itself, comes with the penalty of eternal damnation and hellfire is cowardice.
Morality without consistency, rationality, and, most importantly, civility is not morality, it’s madness.
Dinesh is so arrogant.
And so dumb too
You mean, he's christian.
I'm a big fan of his inability to have the answers to the questions that really matter. It's a dizzying roundabout ride.
Often times religious zeal breeds arrogance
@@TheFirstAtom You really have to look at the full version and how he started this debate. Arrogant snob.
The mental gymnastics on display is literally incredible. Well done, Alex 👏
Dinesh squirming while trying to pretend the Bible has some sort of overarching moral logic to it.
I think the Bible does pretty clearly have an overall thrust. It's not just a random collection of unrelated books.
@almightyzentaco yeah the people in here have the most pendulum logic of reasoning.
@@almightyzentacoyou could perhaps say that the New Testament has such. But if you include the old then I don’t see how there aren’t numerous conflicting views between the different time periods and different morals
The new testament is worse.
@@pinklemon-m5v can you elaborate? (Not arguing, just want to know your point)
I don't understand why Dinesh is getting used for these kind of debates. For decades he has been doing the same embarassing arguments. I watched the whole debate and it was aggravating to hear him try his tricks. A thoroughly pitiful and disingenuous debater.
At least WLC is honest enough to say, that in his highly educated glib opinion, that genocide is a good thing, if, "God" commands it. Naturally, if WLC had been born in the Middle East, I think he might have been an apologist for Osama bin Laden.
It is no different than any (religious)apologist out there.
There is no one respectable who would take dinsesh's side of the debate, yet there is an appetite for the debate all the same, so here we are.
Dinesh is actually skilled at debate. Hitchens himself praised Dinesh in 2009 saying if he could pay Dinesh enough money, Dinesh could argue Hitchens' own position as a trained lawyer and debater.
I agree. It was a struggle to watch it one sitting with his dishonesty and Gish galloping. I was constant sighing and telling him to get to an actual point. ‘Let me explain it this way…’ 🙄
Yes, after Dinesh tries to explain God's behavior, Alex could have pointed out, _"You are not describing God picking sides. You are describing the evolution of a Tribal War God into a later monotheistic belief system. You are describing evolution in a social paradigm."_
And Alex could also point out that, _"Christianity does not get to claim ownership of the Enlightenment. Just as you are describing the evolution of a tribal war god into your Christian god, morality has evolved as well, and Christians do not get to claim ownership of it. The evolution of modern thought broke free from Christianity and gave us the Enlightenment. Modern Christianity came along for the ride."_
That’s a good point but there’s actually a debate to be had here. There’s good reason to think we never make it to the enlightenment without Christianity. And not good reason from a theological standpoint, good reason can be found merely from looking at the history of thinking leading up to the enlightenment, and the fact that it happened where it did.
@musix4me-clarinet, there is no evolution of god here. Because early xtan were cuckoo believed nonsense of end times. when Roman completely destroy insraljuda which effectively ended jawdism, they didnt want to accept the common public narrative that it was the Roman multiple Gods ending the nonsense of Yahweh, they instead started proclaiming that yahweh ordered Roman to destroy. The nonsense of abrhmik crp would have ended then and there had there been no Xtian and there would be no islm today.
@@RichardWilliams-bt7ef I agree, somewhat. I believe we can argue that the Enlightenment came about _because_ of Christianity, but I would argue that the seeds to the Enlightenment fell from the trees planted in Greek philosophy and before the fall of the Roman Empire.
Christianity ruled the Dark Ages and it was a return to the earlier Greek philosophical foundation that broke them free. It was Christianity's theocratic rule that kept them in the Dark Ages.
@@Musix4me-Clarinet I agree about Christianity's theocratic rule being a detriment, but I also think there's something to be said about the possibility that the Enlightenment was enabled by the unprecedented combination of both influences; the combination of the aptitudes cultivated by Christian thinking, as well as the aptitudes cultivated by ancient Greek thinking.
@@rwill128 Okay. What uniquely Christian ideas from 33 AD until the Enlightenment might have brought us to the ideas expressed in the Enlightenment? Or even, what uniquely Christian ideas have persisted through the Enlightenment to our current societal norms?
"Did you kill all the camels and donkeys Saul?"
"No, my bad"
"FFS Saul, I give you one fucking job..."
"I should have known you would do that since I know all, but I 'regret' making you king" - great foresight he had there
Referring someone to Dennis Prager is considered a forfeited argument. Dennis Prager never makes any good arguments about anything. His videos are some of the most cringe stuff on RUclips
Yup. One of the most obvious propaganda mills
Absolutely. But I also think he himself is one of the smarter conservatives out there. Which is rather strange.
He is one creepy AF guy.
I mean, it’s getting that way with everyone to the right of not killing homeless people for sport. Like they just make up the strawman in their minds and then argue against those ideas that they just came up with instead of even trying to understand what people are talking about.
If this gets enough likes, chances are, it will read this for itself.
Worst defense of Christianity I’ve ever heard in my life.
It’s too bad that Christians don’t allow themselves the freedom of saying, “okay, this actually all works better as a spiritual metaphor and not historical.” Much richer that way anyway
Agreed - still problematic but at least less so. I’m a fan of Gregory of Nyssa, who for example has a passage saying that when the Hebrews left Egypt they didn’t literally despoil the Egyptians as this would be immoral. And he makes the broader point that a literalistic reading of the text must be rejected if it ascribes immorality to God.
Gregory of Nyssa. “The Life of Moses” (Book II, chapter 45):
“Therefore, just as it is impossible for the sun to be a cause of darkness, so too it is impossible for the Good to be a cause of any evil. Consequently, if a passage of Scripture presents to us something which seems unworthy of the Divine nature, we must not believe the passage to have that sense.”
"Worst defense of Christianity I’ve ever heard in my life."
Likely so. There were no Christians at the time of the Amalekites.
As perplexing as it is to find myself agreeing with Dinesh, there is a difference between the ‘law’ referred to by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, and the genocidal historical narrative deified by the Old Testament and the ‘law’ Jesus referred to. Remember, Jesus also said “ I have come to save you from the traditions of your forefathers.” This is very much a denunciation of the historical narrative, the savagery and inhumanity that the ancient people ALL justified by saying their gods or God condoned it.
Alex is a bit missing the point.
That said, Dinesh is a serpentine apologist.
Alex: "genocide is evil, do you agree".
Theists: "yes".
Alex: "then the God of the bible is evil".
Theists: "but you don't understand the development and the fulfillment and the love and sacrifice and blood of christ and my other excuses..."
Evil to you, I have no problem with sinners going to hell, I do have a problem with God saying do x or face consequences and humans putting their kids through those consequences aka do x or face death, the fact that one did not follow through with doing x and now the children had to face the consequences of the adults not choosing to follow x is sad but I don’t blame God for the disobedience of those who think God should bow down to them, if God exists then all of existence is his whether you like it or not
@japexican007 i don't believe in your god, for me every argument against him is more evidence for the positive claim of its non-existence.
But i will act like he was real for a moment, and had all of the characteristics he is said to have.
You said you have no problem with people been sent to hell. But you also said that you are sad because people are send there for doing "X".
Your god is all knowing and all powerful, he knew in the first day of creation that Timmy would do X and die and go to hell. He knew it from day 1, and yet chose to create Timmy instead of creating Sam who would not do X and go to heaven.
In Mathew 7 13 you can see that most people are supposed to go to hell, since heaven has a narrow gate.
So your god made this world knowing that not only Timmy, but most of human kind would suffer forever in hell. Having the power necessary to not do that and do something better.
Sure you can say that this is the "best" but that is just lack of imagination and an Ad hook argument.
The simplest explanation is that the god of the bible either does not exist or is evil, or he is way less powerful than theists seem to believe he is.
Lastly, even if this world was "his" just because i have a kid that does not mean i can put him in a basement and light it on fire just because he disobeyed me. Not even if "his brother made him do it".
@@Gaston-Melchiori oh wow an atheist doesn't believe in God, who would've thunk it
@@japexican007Ad hominem is not an argument.
@@Gaston-MelchioriTimmy has the freewill to also not end up in hell. And God is just, he knows how to judge each person accordingly.
Heaven has a narrow path because most people choose to be their own god, and they have all the right to do so and live the way they want
Wow, that was just full blown insanity. I can not wrap my head around how anyone can sit and defend that religion that way.
"Everybody does it. So what's God for?" beautifully put, Alex
Alex is committing a genocide of apologist’s’ arguments, debate by debate.
And he does it well. Clearly what Dinesh is talking about is a gradual improvement in human ethics to an extent brought about by new testament values. Which rather goes to show that it all comes from people not Yahweh.
@@formulaic78 . The main problem for me, is that religious fundamentalists cherry-pick where in the moral development of humanity THEY think WE should ALL remain. Certain rules of their particular ideology are sacrosanct and immutable, others are flexible, and allowed to evolve and adapt to changing social mores.
All scriptures were written by the religious leaders, usually in collusion with the corresponding secular leadership of the day, as a way to command unquestioned obedience. Sometimes these rules were for understandable social reasons, or to teach healthy habits to uneducated members of the community.
As the tribes became bigger and less homogeneous, these rules were adapted to ensure the maintenance of the status quo. It's much easier and cheaper to control population by indoctrinating them with promises of rewards and punishments in the afterlife...and reduces the need to actually provide either material rewards or physical punishments in this life.
Wow did u really say genocide is better than those who argue against it
THIS is why I finally started to question my faith. This is why I am no longer a Christian.
We need more voices like Alex.
Really? Well I hope you looked into Jesus to cement your decision. Since it seems like Jesus is the center of Christianity.
@@terrorkf looking at Jesus to cement our decision is not a valid statement in order to believe in a superstition.
Even if God does exist, the writings of the bible is too flawed for someone who is a moral authority.
It is going to be based on people if they are going to love the God that you believe in.
@@3xrcodm hey all I'm saying is that Jesus is at the center of Christianity. If anyone is going to have a valid reason for rejecting Christianity, it should be because of Jesus. The Bible is inspired by God, not created by God.
@@terrorkf wasn’t Jesus God? Or do you conveniently ignore the Trinity also?
@@terrorkfJesus is really just *this* guy in human form. The more palatable sequel to the same story. Diet Old Testament God. You can’t really take one without the other.
His debate strategy forces his opponent to focus on the point at hand rather than wander. By doing that he controls the topic and forces Dinesh to be on his game or look the fool. This guy is great at debating. The way he speaks, his notes, and presenting open doors his less skilled opponent can't close. He had him boxed in before the debate started.
The fact that he can't even look at Alex is so incredibly telling.
It's literally a poker tell. You can be sure his "hand" sucks when he's avoiding eye contact.
When he has a strong "hand," he makes eye contact with ease because it's natural.
Alex is a snake....
@@leegrant7333 AHHH...............you must be a brainwashed Bible thumper, very sad that you think that way.
He’s preaching to the audience instead of actually engaging in the conversation. He got backed in to a corner he couldn’t get out of and instead of addressing the actual question he’s desperately trying to win the audience over.
@@leegrant7333cope and seethe 😂
I notice that Dinesh daren't look Alex directly in the eye when he's gish-galloping his BS.
Dinesh doesn't have the balls, he's got no stones
Probably because Alex is being hostile, interrupting him every two seconds, not listening to what he says, and just generally being unpleasant. There's something in philosophy called the principle of charity. It's basically our duty as philosophers to consider the best possible arguments of our "opponents" so as to avoid precisely the sort of dogmatic shouting-down that Alex engages in in this video.
I recently pointed out to an online Christian apologist that Christian salvation doctrine allowed for Clergy child violators to go to a blissful eternity if they "repent to Jesus" before they die, while also condemning the surviving victims to eternal torment if the act caused them to lose their faith.
What was her "defense"?
She didn't have one. She criticized me for "questioning God's wisdom" even after I made it clear that I don't even BELIEVE her God exists! It was like she was afraid that a bolt of lightning would strike her down if she admitted that the standard Christian salvation doctrine was actually horrifically unjust.
That is the dark side of what religion too often does to (presumably) otherwise good people.
Valerie, this goes to the now famous saying:
In life there are good people doing good things, there are bad people doing bad things.........it takes religion for good people to do bad things.
Christian’s are confused about the true teaching of the faith, that’s because nobody understands the gospel is it’s fullness.
@@jonathantrask330
Why would the gospel be so hard to understand for the average person if it is truly God's word?
@@valerielhw Good question. The problem as I see it is the "lack of the ability to think deeper." The "Word of God," needs to be understood as much more than just "the Bible." Christian's hold to the teaching of the Bible as being complete in their whole intent, however the Bible never says "The Bible is the Word of God." The Idea of the Word, is the "Logos," the singular complete reason of life, the message from God, and explicitly stated as the Gospel (1 Peter 1: 23-25, Romans 10:17). the Bible needs to be understood for what it is. Part is history, part is poetry, part is prophecy. Each needs to be read in context of the culture of the time it was written in. The whole message reveals that God guided the mind and heart of man to arrive at a certain specific point of understanding... this understanding as a whole is what we would call the complete message, the gospel, or the Word. This is why things need to be understood in context. If the Word was a song, then many Christians are not able to explain the whole of the "song" as they haven't studied it enough. They can respond to the song, but have not learned how to play it themselves, because they thought about it enough. The message of the scripture is easy, and God pours outs strict judgement for those that oppose it. In Mark 10, Jesus explains that we must learn to pick-up children, and become as a child to enter his kingdom. That's easy to know and read, but to gain true understanding takes spiritual growth and abandonment of oneself. That's why the gospel is hard for people to understand in it's fullness, they don't think deep enough about the message, nor do they apply the simple truth, thus they never gain a proper understanding of it. In this video, Alex shows that he is not seeking to understand, he is misrepresenting the text. As the other man is trying to lead him down a road of reasoning, Alex blocks and pushes back, interrupting often. One will never find God unless they open the eyes of their heart to see the whole of the message.
That’s it isn’t it. Christians tend to have all the answers until they’re backed into a corner and then they revert to “god works in mysterious ways.” It’s such a cheap and silly cop out.
Dinesh doesn’t even have a ball to look at Alex while answering, what a loser.
Alex, your frustration here was palpable. I must congratulate you for keeping your poise.
There is no better argument against Christianity than the Bible.
Nonsense.
Yup!
@@signposts6189 How so?
Explain.
In detail.
We need as much to laugh at as possible.
@jonnyrondo507 What do you need explained exactly?
@@signposts6189 How can you even ask that question?
Try reading comprehension or go away
Alex: "it's unnecessary to kill women and children"
Dinesh: "I disagree, I dont see it that way"
ooooh... sh...
A very telling moment about Dinesh and those that think like him.
@@Vegeta-4101 And these people have the right to vote.
Timestamp? Dinesh did say that, but not in relation to that Alex quote.
@@cmar6461 you asking for the timestamp but saying that was not said? It was towards the end.
@@cmar64617:26
"Christianity invented the just war concept where women and children were out-of-bounds"
The Jewish and Muslim women and children of Jerusalem after it was captured during the Crusades would like a word with you, Dinesh.
He's literally trying to defend genocide from a supposed benevolent and all powerful god. A god who, supposedly, has all the power to not allow it to happen and yet, somehow, cares about the context of the time? Is god's own objective morality subjective?
HEY! God pulled on his Jack boots and did a little dance. Dinesh knows, he's tapped directly into the mind of the ultimate being. If he doesn't know it ain't worth knowing. 😂
I don’t think he’s defending it. I think he’s dismissing it. He agrees it’s bad. But he’s being hypocritical.
He’s saying they’re too stupid to understand god at the time.
Really at the end of the rabbit hole, the whole point of going down this line of thinking and argumentation is that it shows the utter folly of believing in an omnipotent god with a very questionable and shady past (to where it is clear God/Yahweh is just the war God of the ancient Jewish pantheon). Meaning, if you're a Christian, that is 'the Father' your scriptures are referring to.
It's so blatantly obvious, and where Christians screwed the pooch was buckling themselves to the idea of the Trinity (and that their 'god', which is Jesus, is actually 'one with the father'... I.e. Yahweh). Thus, tying themselves to the morality of a tribal war God.
They can certainly say that Jesus 'transformed' the message from Old to New Testament, but then that kills the whole charade because Jesus claims to be one with the father (and further along, the holy spirit)... So God sent his son to clean up his 2nd mess?
That an omnipotent and all powerful God realized he screwed up, sent his son (himself) to rectify his own wrongs and moral confusion, to set the record straight for humans to move on from "eye for an eye". Like, that's great and all, but all that does is put Jesus as a moral philosopher, of whom was predated by other moral philosophies that share similar maturation (like in Confucianism or Buddhism).
So, Jesus wasn't even cutting edge. His morality isn't "more special" than say Confucianism or Buddhism, which had been practicing for half a millenia before Jesus.
The folly being pointed out here is that he was just an apocalyptic preacher and moral philosopher at the end of the day. And that the entire point of Jesus' existence in terms of Christianity is to right Yahweh's wrong, defeat death and resurrect, and become a conduit for humans to have a "relationship" with Yahweh. And of course, throw in all the psychological trauma of putting eternal damnation as a punishment for refusing this "deal").
So, Dinesh talked about Jesus' fulfilment, which down to brass tax, was simply a way to clean up Yahweh's questionable past and to enter in a new kingdom/deal with humanity. Again, the very next question is... Why does an omnipotent being require such troubleshooting and multiple chances (don't forget he messed up with his first attempt and flooded every inch of earth as a result). Seems like Yahweh is an utter moron (kinda like most tribal war gods are from mythology).
At the end of the day, the second you attach Jesus to Yahweh via the Trinity and Jesus' own ramblings about the God of the Old Testament, combine that, and the whole thing breaks down and the entire essence of the story becomes so blatantly illogical.
He’s literally not doing that. His argument is bad, but he was not supporting genocide. Stop making shit up just because you don’t like the guy. It’s pretty disgusting.
@@cmar6461 let's put it this way: he's talking about genocide and all he says is "you have to understand the context". It's the same as "genocide is bad BUT". He might not outright be saying "genocide good" but he's trying to justify it. That is in fact a form of defending it.
We can definitely add D'Souza to the list of people we don't need to debate anymore.
So this Dinesh fella reads the story of a horrific genocide and says that anyone who reads it for what it is, is misreading it? I'm confused...
Some people kind of look at the Bible like it's almost a biography of God changing His mind on how to think about humanity. Initially, He's a right bastard but he softens up over the course of several centuries. D'Souza is trying to articulate this point of view, but he's not great at it. Essentially, he's trying to say "it's Act I, bro. This is a redemption arc. You're misunderstanding the narrative if you're oblivious to the way the character changes on down the line." What's interesting to me about this is that it's a very main-line, liberal Christian interpretation of the book, and D'Souza is quite reactionary.
@@dumpster_fiyahit also flies in the face of what the bible says god is, a constant, unchanging.
@@ch4z_bucks Unreliable narrators. :-) But yes, the Bible's text is at odds with the meta-narrative in many places. It's one reason why many denominations don't accept the "every word is the literal truth" position.
This Dinesh guy once said in a debate with Hitchens that he views the Christian-led slaughter of his forefathers in India as a positive since it was to spread this particular religion. I kinda stopped taking him seriously after that.
@@m.n.executor1902 He's a grifter and a convicted felon. Tbh, Alex is sullying his own brand by dealing with him.
You made it so clearly that the only argument he could have made is that the god of the Old Testament is not possibly the same mythical god.
Dinesh: " i dont view it that way".
Translation; " I will say and do anything to keep the football of faith in the air such that I not have to confront either my own mortality, or the problems we face as species".
I genuinely regard people like this as abject cowards.
Just listening to Dinesh made my IQ drop.
That was ridiculously painful.
Literally this. Listening to stupidity is contagious. These are same idiots complaining about censorship. However, the fail to realize that not all ideas are equal and deserve respect.
It is clear to anyone who is actually being honest and paying attention that the slow evolution of our moral framework has been accomplished in spite of our religious texts, not because of them. It has taken thousands of years of Bible readers ignoring and reinterpreting what their book said.
I think it is more complicated than this. Ideas unfold over a very long period of time, but fundamentalists tend to be dogmatic and resistant to change. The sane idea can pull us in multiple directions over the short and long term.I definitely think the Bible and Christian thought, as well as the Greek phikosophies, are the seeds that grew into the modern West, the idea of democracy, universal sufferage, civil rights, the quest for truth etc. Ideas are complicated things and they unfold in myriad of ways. They don't just do one thing.
@@almightyzentaco sure, ideas evolve or serve as platforms for new modes of thinking. But, what about Christianity specifically, and exclusive of other faiths, makes it the engine for developing Western thought?
What if in an alternate timeline Buddhism spread across Europe like Christianity did? How confident are you that the result would be 'worse'? And if the word is divine, why did it not get us there sooner?
Even if we accept that humans need to adapt and accept God's teachings over time, the indirectness of how we got there raises questions
@@almightyzentaco but using a god to define morality ensures a crowd of zealots will always hold society back from progress.
@CodexEvans you guys always say this but a core belief of Buddhist thought is that if your a bad person in this life a afterlife of torment will await you and you will reincarnate as a lesser being like a animal this idea can be used to justify horrible atrocities as well amd in ways can be seen as more harmful than Christian thought because it equivicates bad people with animals something that is incompatible with Christian thought
@@joemiller7082 At least we can see zealots exist even without religion. Plenty of people believe corrupt and nonsensical things dogmatically that their media or experts tell them to. Life is complex and thinking is hard.
Remember this dude was convicted of Campaign Finance Fraud.
And pardoned by Chump. Grifters looking after Grifters
Not very pious of him.. 😂
Maybe it’s just me but wow, Christian apologists are becoming increasing difficult to listen to. I can’t even take them seriously anymore.
you actually took them seriously at one point then?
How long did that take, lol?
Despite the comments below, (which I TOTALLY understand, because...well...it's all batshittery!), I understand where you are coming from. I TRIED to give them the benefit of the doubt when I first left religion, but after a while, it's like watching the same 2 minute clip over and over and over and over and over...It's great once or twice, but at 100 times of hearing the same thing and hearing it destroyed in SO MANY different ways, it's just too much.
You took them seriously before?
Religion is bullshit, surprise
The nerve he could even utter the word filibuster 🤦♂️
Was gonna do my laundry today but that’s all the IRONY I can handle huehuehue
Self projection is what the kids call it these days i hear. Accuse others of what you are doing yourself.
Dinesh looked cornered and unarmed. Alex held Dinesh's feet to the fire and Dinesh appeared extremely annoyed at this.
Isn't it interesting how Christians slowly started to become more civilized after God stopped directly communicating with them. It's almost like their human intuition was more valuable then his advice to developing those traditions Dinesh keeps bringing up.
Imagine expecting something else in a debate with Dinesh. Not a serious actor. At all
Not serious, not honest, not worth listening to
Completely clueless, or completely dishonest, about Christian history, claiming they left women and children out of it.
He is fluent in pretzel.
This dude is the Deepak Chopra of Christianity.
I can't imagine anyone seriously debating Dinesh, lowers the discourse level
"Repudiated, Transformed, Transfigured" A flowery way of saying 'God changed his mind'
Dinesh illustrates perfectly that the book was written by people, not inspired by any god.
Naw, it's inspired by God and corrupted by tyrannical-authoritarian men, oppressors like the state and organized religion; it was written and perverted by certain men - any oppressive acts stated as being okay or just will be examples of that. Dinesh does however illustrate perfectly his belief is ungrounded.
So true..
And what did the people who wrote it got from it? Jesus was crucified and atleast a bunch of the apostles were killed because they believed. Noone of them benefited.
@@dietmarhaudegen3932
1) we don’t know that Jesus EXISTED, never mind was crucified.
2) we know of ONE documented case of a person claiming to be a disciple being crucified for his faith.
3) meanwhile, the people who sought religious power got it. Pretty big benefit.
@@basildraws Testify the truth my brother sapien. 🧠
Dinesh should have never gotten on camera with Alex. He can turn any sensible Christian into an Atheist.
I am full glad that you have broke this into clips because I cannot imagine listening to dinesh blather for longer than ten minute spurts--you are so strong to be able to do that for the full length of this discussion
In his WW2 example, Dinesh explains that Christians still bomb women and children all the way into the 20th century...
Yeah but we felt bad about it…kinda…not really
His point was that it was necessary- had we not bombed and instead made it an infantry battle, the causalities would have been much, much higher, especially among our own soldiers but even for the soldiers and civilians of the Japanese and German armies. His point (though poorly made and failing to explain why the two situations are analogous) was that the genocides of the bible were somehow similarly necessary
@@worthlesshuman5041 except the order of events is different, AND not everyone was killed.
Let’s take Japan, thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed with the nuclear bomb. That was intended to STOP the Japanese men (who incidentally were also the aggressors) from going on with the war THEY started. WHEN they surrendered the killing stopped.
Had OT-“God” been in control, either Japan all the Japanese military personnel would have been killed, whether they surrendered or not, AND after that the whole of Japan would have been carpeted with nuclear bombs leaving no one alive.
Didn’t happen. So humans are better than the OT-biblical God.
However, Dinish is right to some extent: morality is subjective, although I’d argue that we have an evolutionary basis for it. Which leads us generally towards keeping others alive unless we feel threatened in our own existence.
@@worthlesshuman5041that’d be an acceptable idea if God weren’t powerful enough to stop it.
@@JimBobJoeB0b
Yeah, that's one of the main problems I have with the premise of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god. Like, I get he wanted to give humans free will and all, but if he's gonna make miracles and divine judgment anyway, why wouldn't he just do what's morally right in the first place?
A lot of people are making fun of Dinesh here. But you can’t blame him. If you had to defend the Bible you would also end up backed into a corner like this by someone like Alex. The truth is, the Bible is an indefensible document. There’s nothing Dinesh can do while trying to uphold the morality of an immoral God. Anyone will look foolish defending a foolish book.
True - but Dinesh has a particular talent for it.
You can't blame him? He chooses to defend the bible. Nobody forces him to.
That’s because people claim The Lord God The Almighty is benevolent when it is clearly not the case. The Lord God The Almighty is the God of good and Evil and has the capacity to act Evilly which he does in this case. It is fuelled by justice as The amalekites attacked the Israelites and it was vengeance. Is it very brutal yes and it showcases the brutality of a God who is also very Evil being the God of Evil. Does this mean he is completely malevolent. No he is also the God of Good and there are countless examples of his grace as God ,the son, Jesus Christ. I do not hold the same arguments as the fellow arguing against mr O’Connor but I offer a different Christian perspective. This idea God or The Lord God The Almighty is completely benevolent is evidently myth. God or The Lord God The Almighty states he is a vengeful and jealous God in the bible. That is showcased brutally with the amalekites. The logical fallacy some people make is to say God is benevolent. It is clearly not the case. But we must remember the Evil showcased here was fuelled by a Good quality also which is justice so it is actually quite the complex yet also in another sense simple moral combination.
@@Ordinaryorion777 Ok. That is one perspective, and I respect your opinion.
Here is an alternative opinion: the people that wrote the Bible portrayed God in a way to justify the enslavement and murder of other people because what they were trying to do was justify going to war against them. In other words, the reason why God acts like a tribal war God in the Bible is because the people who wrote it were tribal warlike people, and thus wrote about a God that sided with them in everything and justified all their actions and murderous ambitions.
@@Ordinaryorion777 You are entitled to your perspective but I will differ from the other commenter and say your perspective is not particularly plausible or respectable. A God that is simultaneously supremely good and supremely evil is inherently bizarre and unlikely. By contrast, it is not just inherently likely but historically commonplace for one culture's myths and beliefs to be subsumed into those of a later culture, with apparent contradictions being either erased, or rewritten, or explained away somehow.
This is what happened with the Bible: the vindictive polytheistic God of the ancient Hebrews was morphed into something else entirely with the addition of Christian writings and beliefs, but because of the supposed prophetic links and how the competition between early Christian sects turned out, Christians today still have to explain away moral contradictions that are obvious to children. There's no reason to think this nonsensical being exists, and less reason to admire it.
Inconvenient truths, Dinesh just can't handle them, will TRY to change the subject, at every turn.
Dishesh's argument - "it gets better later on in the book......so..it's ok" ...and then has the nerve to be arrogant about this as if it's some sort of highly intellectual argument that Alex can't grasp..
D'Souza apparently misses the point that he is implying that "god" went through some sort of personal development from an "eye for an eye" tribal war god to a benevolent "turn the other cheek" father in heaven.
D'Souz's arguments are incredibly weak. He should have played the standard "get out of jail"-card of Christianity which is to exclaim that god's ways are mysterious but always just and moral since it is not in god's nature to do anything less than perfect. He should have said that it is Alex's problem if he does not see the beauty, mercy, and wisdom in the orders of the old testament god.
The whole "Yahwe" and "God" tangent makes it seem like this particular deity underwent some kind of "character development" (as is the case with protagonists in pretty much all fantasy stories). This unfortunately opens a pandora's box of "Well, if the deity changed back then, and is not, in fact a stable and neverchanging entity, then who's to say that god hasn't developed just a bit further over the last 2000 years and has realized it's actually ok to be gay etc." . That seems pretty problematic when you want to use this kind of entity for _absolute_ morality and wisdom
They'll have to make a new new testament
@@alb1reo Exactly! That's what I thought - wouldn't it be just oh so clever to have The NEWEST Testament?! Turns out some guy wrote exactly that =)
@@Thomas-gx3ti Islamists sort of have done that with their Quran.
The funny thing is he did too! Dr Justin Sledge just put out a video on his channel Esoterica about the Origins of YHWH, and how he’s changed over the years. Originally he was part of a pantheon, as well as being ritually married- and wasn’t at all a primary god of that region save for some select.
Occam's Razor: The god of NT is different from the god of OT. Marcion is the only theologist who makes any sense.
Why are Christian apologists so utterly dishonest?
I'm gonna go ahead and guess over 90% of the time it isn't dishonesty. They start from a conclusion that must be true in their eyes (the God of the Bible is the true God and defines what is moral). Then they work from there to make sense of the world. Everyone does start from some conclusion that they can't prove and assumes must be true. In this argument, Alex is assuming his moral intuition is true (though he has noted doubt on that in the past, but I am just going to be working with what we see in the clip for fairness sake.) At a base value though, most people will at least assume what they can perceive with their senses is true, when we really have no way to truly verify that.
The honest ones end up as "bible scholars."
The honest ones end up as atheists.
They are not dishonest if they are intoxicated. “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” - Karl Marx.
It's a job requirement.
So what Dinesh is saying is that God base his moral principles on the people of the time. He just wants to “fit in”
Hitchens has a successor. Great job here.
Agreed, Dinesh has really filled the void that Hitchens left
@@alberttwangle893 Something is created in void in Dinesh's pants. I believe he's not just a promoter of Trump diapers, he's also a customer!
I agree. Hopefully Alex will take better care of his health by not smoking and not drinking too much. While Alex and Christopher have key personality differences, Alex is incredibly intelligent, well read, willing to ask hard questions and debate with notorious people.
I love how Dinesh keeps looking away and gesticulating into the air...as if he felt ashamed to look into Alex, being in shame for the nonsense he is spewing.
Well, he's preaching to his fans not talking to Alex at all.
He's... talking to the audience. Have you ever been on a stage?
He's probably hallucinating straws in the ether and mentally grasping at them.
Dinesh doesn't behave any different in any debate that I can recall... and you got 50+ likes for this presumption. Tribalism will never die.
@@chinkasuyaro8983 So, you mean the guy gets humiliated in every debate he participates? Because that is exactly what happened here, and that is why I assumed he was acting in such way
7:03 This is a blatant lie. For example, in the text Mahabharata, much older than Bible, the laws of war are laid out, laws such as you have to battle on a designated battlefield only, you cannot kill your enemy after the sunset, you cannot kill any noncombatant which includes the likes of charioteers who are present at the battlefield but are not combatants- killing of anyone else including women, children, farmers, traders and so on would be the lowest of the sins for a soldier.
Correct. Even Ram committed a sin by killing Bali and his re-incarnation Krishna was punished for it. Even god's avatars are not spared the punishment for sin.
Parts of the Old Testament were compiled probably earlier than Mahabharata (5 BCE vs 3-4 BCE or so), and as for how long the oral tradition had lasted before everything was codified, it's a bit speculative and hard to prove, it seems
Exactly. It’s called Dhanyur Veda and explains the law of warfare, how to fight with dignity and with honor but fair and not become a barbarian after the battle. You already gave some good examples of what not to do. There are so much more. There are as you said, a group of people which are absolutely forbidden to kill, not even harm and that’s women, children, brahmanas and old men. They are not even considered punishable if they do something wrong.
@@Limemill, I agree. The story of Adam and Eve (and Lilith, missing in the OT) are even older, probably as old as the Mesopotamian times.
That could well be because India (or at least parts of it) was more civilized than Europe and the Middle East at the time. This could be a late influence of the Indus Valley (Harappa) Civilization up to about 2000 BCE, which based on the archeological evidence is believed to have been perfectly peaceful.
‼️ I suggest The Lion and the Unicorn by George Orwell. Written during a Nazi raid of London,
“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to
kill me.
They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against
them. They are 'only doing their duty', as the saying goes. Most of
them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never
dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of
them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will
never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has
the power to absolve him from evil.”
Quoting Dennis Prager as a scholar to support your argument is certainly a choice.
Well, he does have a "university." 😂
My favourite part was when Dinesh took 2 seconds from his filibustering, droning on and on as a diversion, to accuse Alex of filibustering. I literally had the word in my head when he said it. Comedy gold.
'YoU aRe TaKinG iT oUt Of CoNtExT' a classic.
Yeah, my response to that is always, "Fine, provide the proper context that renders this acceptable."
ruclips.net/video/PK7P7uZFf5o/видео.html
After we take all the horrific commands god gives out of the Old Testament, it’s a pretty nifty book, if you like fairy tales.
what's so hilarious is that Alex is visibly pissed by Dinesh's unwillingness to stand behind God's orders for complete and total genocide, but when William Lane Craig essentially says "yea, my God is verifiably evil. So what? He's still God so deal with it", Alex responds "Alright then, fair enough."
Alex prefers the honest evil of William Lane Craig over the dishonest good of Dinesh. Me on the other hand? Some day I want to see someone angrily dismantle William Lane Craig's unabashed embrace of pure evil, and walk out of the room without letting him get another word in. I do NOT prefer the evil of that man. It doesn't calm me down that he is "honestly" evil.
@@artawesome30 They are both foul, and the reason they are treated differently by Alex is because they are different.
WLC The Greatest Of All Time✌🏻❤
I’m at the point where I just fucking love honesty ☠️ in a world of lies there is nothing more comforting than someone owning their abhorrent positions. I sympathise immensely with Alex; even though Craig holds disgusting positions the lying by Dinesh is just nauseating.
You will prefer it. One day...
See, after spending enough time in humanity, going among humans, you'll eventually notice how phony so many of them are. And I don't mean the 'expected dishonesty,' like a woman lying about her age, or a man lying about his income, etc... No, there are FAR worse dishonesties practiced every day by so very many people... Spend enough time among them and you'll come to find 'honesty' to be a refreshing change from the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the masses.
@Impermanentstrue, everybody knows it is an objective perfectly accessible fact of tthe world and that is why most of humanity in history is immoral except this tiny sliver of time and chunk of region I call my context.
“No one thought murder was bad until Jesus “-an actual human being Daneese desooza
Dinesh D'Souza is jumping about all over the place.
God is flicking his brain, making him dance to his tune.
I have only one question:
Do we agree that killing all the infants of the "enemy" is immoral?
God doesn't
Those who explain away the use of evil, create it.
Exactly.
Dinesh is struggling within the first few minutes to not say.... God changed. LoL
God became woke.😮
God invented wokeism.
JESUS CHRIST, GOD IS A LIBERAL!
Religions evolve - the surrounding society provides the selection pressure, the reinterpretations of their texts and traditions are the mutations. The reinterpretations/edits/tapdancing that allows the religion to remain viable in current society are the mutations that spread through the religion.
@@njhoepner
Adapting its validation undermines its worth.
@@rabblewolf4851 True. We'd be better off if we could all just admit its a human product and treat it like philosophy.
Old Egyptian religion and laws which are more than 2000 years before the old testament forbid the killing of children , women , old men, disarmed men , captives in war.
Thank you . 🍀🍀🍀
Dinesh D’Souza lives in the Roman Catholic bubble.
It's honestly ironic that that the "Evil" pagan religions often showed more humanity and morality in their laws than the "Good and Holy" abrahamic ones.
The Bible says the Egyptian s were evil. Perhaps the Bible is evil.
Are you taking about Heka?
Dinesh should have gone the route of "Death is a gift" for the Amalekites so he could have at least argued that they were gifted with eternal life in heaven, so it's all a wash anyway.
It would have followed suit with every other argument a Christian can come up with. An argument that is unable to be demonstrated by evidence or argued and even worse, never brought up again in their own texts. It's the perfect cover for immoral religious folk.
No, Dinesh. In this case, "Fulfilment" means "To completely ignore the old testament, except for those parts which, through deliberate mistranslation, will appear to promote the mistaken notion that Jesus is the messiah."
Yes, seems like the Jewish Messianic Movement was hijacked by the Romans, and texts created to support that effort.
Dinesh is completely unaware that he is defending Alex's pov. He has twisted his brain into such a knot, that he doesn't know what is up and what is down..
dinesh is a liar, hypocrite and disingenuous. he thinks that if he speaks louder than his interlocutors or starts his sentence with "any intelligent person knows (insert preposterous claim here) then he is in the right. it's torture to listen to his drivel.
The title perfectly sums up my feelings throughout Dinesh's digression into irrelevant details.
“The spirit of forgiveness” except for the part about damning others to Hell if you don’t believe.
I saw a video explaining hell as a mistranslation for a word referring to the city trash dump. Sick people (sinners) were forced to live their away from society. Catholicism started the idea of hell to mentally enslave everyone because if they acknowledged reincarnation nobody would obey them.
Such a shame millions are born into cultures where they never learn of Christianity and thus are doomed to hell for no fault of their own. May the all-knowing benevolent god bless them.
Such blatant blackmail does work on low IQ people though. An excellent manipulation tactic.
@@Baronnaxbasically proves that God is either an incompetent planner or a sadistic narcissistic psycho.
@@Baronnax One cannot be benevolent while owning their own personal torcher dungeon.
Dinesh lost when he opened his argument with "would you all really listen to anything Alex said if he didn't have an english accent?" I mean talk about clutching at straws at the very beginning
He’s 100 right
Thanks!
Dinesh arguments are as well put together as his outfit.
You absolutely buried him 😂😂
Alex the best thing you did was end the debate with dinesh with a yes or no moral question. No idea if it was planned but it leaves an ever lasting impression. If it was happenstance then great. If it was planned bravo
thats why most christians are quiet about Gaza