Stephen Law’s Evil God presents a challenge to theists: Explain why the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent god should be considered significantly more reasonable than an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-malevolent god. Many of the most popular arguments for god’s existence (first cause, intelligent design, fine-tuning) don’t give us any indication of god’s moral orientation. So is there any way to render Good God significantly more reasonable to believe in than Evil God?

Sorry again about the cold if it hurt the quality.

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The Evil God Challenge — Stephen Law [Cambridge University Press]

Stephen Law — Evil God Challenge [The Panpsycast]

Evil God Challenge — CFI UK [YouTube]

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We discuss the utility of fiction, the future of Christianity, and psychonautic Shaman biologists.

I’m still getting over a cold, hopefully it didn’t come through that much.

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Jordan Peterson on DNA, psychedelics, ancient humans [YouTube]

Rationality Rules — Atheists Are Not Murderers [YouTube]

Jordan Peterson — Waking Up [YouTube]

Matt Dillahunty / Jordan Peterson Debate [YouTube]

Game Theory — Playlist [YouTube]

Robert Wright — “Non-zero-sumness” [YouTube]

F*ck 12 — Chapo Trap House [YouTube]

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Jordan Peterson is an unusual Christian apologist. Beyond a few of the standard apologetic tropes he spouts (we need god to be moral, atheists aren’t really atheists, Judeo-Christian values created Western civilization, atheism leads to communism), he defends god by adopting a pragmatic conception of truth that allows him to circumvent traditional arguments surrounding god’s existence. He claims to be a Christian, but his Christianity is not one most Christians would recognize. And yet, many have tried to claim him as their own. We explore Peterson’s notion of Jesus, god, and truth, and touch on his belief that atheism is corrosive to civilization and to morality itself.

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Rationality Rules — Peterson’s Truth [YouTube]

Rationality Rules — JP Is Not A Christian [YouTube]

Matt Dillahunty / Jordan Peterson Debate [YouTube]

Bret Weinstein on Metaphorical Truth [YouTube]

Jordan Peterson on Truth — Transliminal Interview [YouTube]

Jordan Peterson on Truth — Waking Up [YouTube]

Jordan Peterson — Gawd [YouTube]

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Christianity has a long and romantic relationship with torture. The primary symbol of the religion is a torture device, God’s chosen method of providing salvation was a grisly act of public torture, and hell has been an object of fascination for Christian artists, writers, and church fathers since the beginning. As the religious scholar Karen King puts it, there are “torturous narratives at Christianity’s foundations.” Obsession with torture, though not unique to Christianity by any means, has always been in Christianity’s DNA. We also discuss the witch craze, the theologically-induced mass hysteria that led to gruesome acts against “witches” for centuries.

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Christopher Hitchens [YouTube]

Skeptical Examination of Torture [YouTube]

The Moral Arc – Michael Shermer [Amazon]

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds – Charles MacKay [Amazon]

The End of Faith – Sam Harris [Amazon]

Triumph of Christianity – Bart Ehrman [Amazon]

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Author Karen Garst joins me to discuss a range of topics, including the high level of religiosity among women, the influence of mythology, abortion, and her upcoming debate at Mythcon. She has recently released a book entitled Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith and for Freedom, which is the primary subject of our conversation today.

Women v. Religion [Amazon] 

If you’d like to hear Karen speak at Mythcon, you can buy tickets here.

Faithless Feminist Blog

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The discovery of evolution by natural selection arguably did more to reinforce naturalism than any other single discovery in science. However, not everyone agrees that Darwinian evolution was a blow against god. In fact, Alvin Plantinga, a Christian apologist, thinks that you can’t believe both in Darwinism and naturalism simultaneously — they’re incompatible. We discuss his famous argument and also wonder why god is such an incompetent engineer.

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Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism [wiki]

Alvin Plantinga on EAAN [YouTube]

Warrant and Proper Function – Alvin Plantinga (Excerpt) [Google Books]

rd23 Plantinga Schmantinga [Reasonable Doubts Podcast]

Massimo Pigliucci on EAAN [Rationally Speaking Blog]

List of Cognitive Biases [wiki]

A Critique of Plantinga’s Probabilities in EAAN [PDF]

(I didn’t cover this part of the argument, but I would’ve pointed out that in Plantinga’s Bayesian reasoning, he sets his priors absurdly low.)

Richard Dawkins on Evolution [YouTube]

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Author Evan Davids joins me to discuss why there is something rather than nothing, evolution, biblical literalism, whether Evan is really an atheist, the Fall, hell, abortion, and other topics.

Christianity No Longer Makes Sense – Evan Davids [Amazon]

EvanDavids.com

…

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Can abortion be morally justified? We know that Christians generally think it’s abhorrent. But once we’ve left religion behind, how should we draw a conclusion about such a contentious moral issue? Independent moral reasoning is something atheists, naturalists, and skeptics can’t avoid, so we shouldn’t shy away from intra-group discussion about one of the most important moral issues of our time.

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2014 Abortion Data [cdc.gov]

Fetal Pain: A Systematic, Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence [Journal of the American Medical Association]

Can Fetuses Feel Pain? [British Medical Journal]

Utilitarianism [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime — Donohue-Levitt Hypothesis [PDF – Quarterly Journal of Economics]

Freakonomics — Abortion and Crime [Freakonomics]

The Trolley Problem — Massimo Pigliucci [YouTube]

“But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” — J.S. Mill

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Is western civilization a product of Judeo-Christian values? Apologists claim that Judeo-Christian values influenced the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment so greatly as to deserve credit as the foundation of western values. So even if Christian beliefs are entirely untrue, could the mythology still be a useful fiction that created the west as we know it?

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Rationality Rules – Western Civilization is Based on Judeo-Christian Values [YouTube]

Nonstampcollector – Ten Commandments [YouTube]

The Basis of Western Civilization – Jordan Peterson [YouTube]

Western Civilization – Ben Shapiro [YouTube]

Richard Dawkins – Militant Atheism [YouTube]

Ben Shapiro – Ten Commandments [YouTube]

Sam Harris – Ten Commandments [YouTube]

Hitchens on Morality [YouTube]

Stephen Fry on Ten Commandments [YouTube]

Yaron Brook on Judeo-Christian Values [YouTube]

Sam Harris vs. Ben Shapiro [YouTube]

Ben Shapiro vs. Sam Harris — TMM [YouTube]

TMM on Ben Shapiro [YouTube]

Bible Verses on Obeying Governments [KnowingJesus]

The Myth of the Jewish Origins of the Renaissance [PDF]

Bertrand Russell — Why I Am Not a Christian [Amazon]

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Are we just electrified meat, or is there a ghost in the machine? Believers claim that naturalism cannot account for the phenomenal properties of consciousness, and tend to hold the position that the mind is more than the biological activity of the brain. We examine the conventional idea of the soul and how it conflicts with science.

*Update* I’ve since made a new and improved episode arguing against substance and property dualism here (Episode 23 – Is property dualism any better off than substance dualism?): https://audioboom.com/channels/4990493

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Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe

Steven Novella’s Excellent Blog [NeurologicaBlog]

The Neuroscience of Consciousness — Anil Seth [YouTube]

Consciousness – Anil Seth and Sam Harris [YouTube]

Crash Course Philosophy – Philosophy of Mind [YouTube]

Steven Novella and Sean Carroll – Intelligence Squared [IQ^2]

Causation and Emergence – Sean Carroll [PreposterousUniverse]

Sean Carroll – Zombies and the Hard Problem [Nautilus]

Substance Dualism – QualiaSoup [YouTube]

Richard Feynman – Science [YouTube]

The Interaction Problem – TMM [YouTube]

Mind-Brain Interaction and the Violation of Physical Laws – DL Wilson [PDF]

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Christian apologists, citing a few twentieth-century regimes, often try to conflate atheism and authoritarianism. They ignore the fact that most atheists are secularists and don’t advocate for any form of state atheism. They also ignore the fact that the policies of the atheist states they cite, most frequently North Korea and the Soviet Union, were transparently motivated by a totalitarian desire to control their populations. We discuss secularism, freedom of belief, religious toleration, Christian communism, and separation of church and state.

Part two of the consciousness series is taking a little longer than expected, so I thought I’d continue the atheism and the 20th-century series back from episodes eight and nine.

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Christopher Hitchens on Stalin [YouTube]

Church-State Separation — Christopher Hitchens [YouTube]

Michael Shermer — Intelligence Squared U.S. [YouTube]

The Gulag Archipelago — Alekandr Solzhenitsyn [Amazon]

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Can consciousness only be explained on a theistic worldview? Christians often appeal to the phenomenon of consciousness and argue that it’s unlikely or impossible on naturalism. We discuss substance dualism, the hard problem of consciousness, identity, intentionality, and the unclear role the material realm plays in theism.

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Christianity No Longer Makes Sense — Evan Davids [Amazon]

Evan Davids’ Official Website

…

The Neuroscience of Consciousness — Anil Seth [YouTube]

Consciousness – Anil Seth and Sam Harris [YouTube]

Thomas Nagel – What is it like to be a bat? [PDF]

Sean Carroll – Zombies and the Hard Problem [Nautilus]

Crash Course Philosophy – Philosophy of Mind [YouTube]

Rationality Rules – Argument From Consciousness [YouTube]

William Lane Craig on the Soul [YouTube]

Consciousness – Steven Pinker [YouTube]

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A forbidden religion, originally composed of only a few devoted followers, eventually swept the western world. Believers think that the rise of Christianity was so unusual to suggest it was miraculous, and they argue that the stunning growth and eventual size of their religion is evidence that God really is on their side. We explore the historical causes behind the spread of Christianity and try not to sound condescending as we explain that the popularity of a belief isn’t evidence.

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The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World — Bart Ehrman [Amazon]

Bart Ehrman Interview [NPR]

Christopher Hitchens [YouTube]

2015 Religious Demographics [Pew]

How Many Anatomically Modern Humans Have Lived on Earth? [PRB]

Your Logical Fallacy Is…

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Christians claim that the majority of the disciples were martyred for their belief in the resurrection. They were tortured and killed in horrible ways, supposedly for their beliefs. And who would go through that for a lie?

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Tracie Harris — Why Martyrs? [Atheist Experience Blog]

Were the Disciples Martyred? [EhrmanBlog]

Easter Reflection [EhrmanBlog]

Paul’s Execution [MappingTheMartyrs]

Stephen’s Martyr Legend [Acts 6-7]

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Liar, lunatic, or lord? C.S. Lewis says we have to make our choice. Jesus must have been one of these three things, and there are definitely no other options. We also discuss the historical Jesus and clarify a detail from last week’s Easter episode regarding the women’s discovery of the empty tomb.

I hope none of you have to suffer through church today! If you do, try to steal some money out of the plate (don’t get caught).

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“If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One?” [YouTube]

How Jesus Became God — Bart Ehrman [Amazon]

Misquoting Jesus — Bart Ehrman [Amazon]

Trilemma – Matt Dillahunty [YouTube]

Josh McDowell on the Trilemma [YouTube]

C.S. Lewis — Mere Christianity (audio excerpt) [YouTube]

…

The Ending of Mark [wiki]

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Today, we discuss the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the evidence for the Gospel stories, and what it’s all supposed to mean.

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Oldest Manuscript of 1 Corinthians 15:6 [Wiki]

The Ending of Mark [wiki]

Bart Ehrman on Gospel Eyewitnesses [EhrmanBlog]

Bart Ehrman on the Resurrection [YouTube]

How Jesus Became God — Bart Ehrman [Amazon]

TMM on the Resurrection [YouTube]

Matt Dillahunty on God’s Mysterious Ineptitude [YouTube]

Sam Harris on Jesus’ Miracles [YouTube]

Christopher Hitchens on Vicarious Redemption [YouTube]

Dan Barker on the “Good News” [YouTube]

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Once we get past the bloody and bizarre Old Testament, it’s all “Love thy neighbor” and “Help the poor” from there, isn’t it? We’re expected to accept that Jesus was a wise moral teacher and that the New Testament is a valuable document of morals, even if we aren’t believers ourselves. But the goodness of the New Testament isn’t as obvious upon examination, and it’s not entirely clear that it’s even better than the Old Testament. A respectable case can be mounted either way, but even if we decide that the New Testament is an improvement upon the old one, it’s still undeniably evil.

…

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Letter to a Christian Nation — Sam Harris [Amazon]

Christopher Hitchens on Vicarious Redemption [YouTube]

Nonstampcollector – Modern Christian vs. Jesus [YouTube]

Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis [Amazon]

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If naturalism is true, why do so many people believe in god? What is it about human psychology that has made belief in god, in one form or another, the default position for the overwhelming majority of human beings that have ever lived? The theory of religion as a byproduct provides a potential answer. It’s possible that religious ideas are byproducts of normal human psychological modules that evolved for other reasons. Our psychological evolution imbued us with theory of mind, decoupled cognition, agency detection, and other useful functions for social animals. These modules interact and misfire — creating beliefs in souls, an afterlife, and even gods.

…

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J. Anderson Thomson – American Atheists Lecture [YouTube]

Why We Believe in God(s) – J. Anderson Thomson [Amazon]

Steven Pinker on Byproduct Theory [YouTube]

Michael Shermer on Belief [YouTube]

Paul Bloom on Byproduct Theory [YouTube]

Paul Bloom on Dualism [Edge.org]

Why Would Anyone Believe in God? – Justin Barrett [Amazon]

The Believing Brain – Michael Shermer [Amazon]

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought – Pascal Boyer [Amazon]

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Why would God hide? If God wants us to know he exists, he’s not off to a great start. Being invisible, silent, and undetectable in every way isn’t exactly what one would expect from a god who wants you to know the truth. The Bible says, “Seek, and ye shall find,” but not everyone who honestly seeks becomes a Christian, or even a theist. How can this be if God wants us to know he exists, save us from hell, and have a relationship with us?

…

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Christopher Hitchens on Wishful Thinking [YouTube]

Christopher Hitchens vs. Alister McGrath [YouTube]

The Demon Haunted World [Amazon]

Theoretical BS on Divine Hiddenness [YouTube]

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What if you’re wrong? Aren’t you afraid of going to hell? Many Christians claim that their belief is the safe bet — they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. We examine Pascal’s Wager and decide if one of the most popular arguments in favor of belief should make us lose as much sleep as Christians seem to think it should.

…

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Pascal’s Wager [wiki]

Tracie Harris on The Scathing Atheist [YouTube]

Matt Dillahunty on Pascal [YouTube]

Christopher Hitchens on Pascal [YouTube]

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Are good actions commanded by God because they are good? Or are good actions good because God commands them? We discuss Euthyphro’s Dilemma, the apologists’ favored “third horn” solution, and revisit the Problem of Holiness.

…

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Euthyphro Dilemma [wiki]

William Lane Craig on Euthyphro [YouTube]

Apologist Matt Slick on Euthyphro [CARM]

TMM on Euthyphro [YouTube]

Hank Green on Divine Command Theory and Meta-Ethics [YouTube]

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If humans have no free will, can we assign praise or blame? Is it reasonable to condemn someone as immoral in a deterministic universe? We explore the concept of moral responsibility in a naturalistic world and distinguish between causal and moral responsibility. We also examine the problem of moral luck, which makes a case for determinism and against moral responsibility.

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Moral Luck by Thomas Nagel [PDF]

Compatibilism: Crash Course Philosophy [YouTube]

William Lane Craig on Moral Responsibility [YouTube]

Tumors and Behavior [The Atlantic]

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Do we really have free will, or are we determined to think and behave as we do? Most Christian worldviews take it on as an assumption, but their conception of free will can’t be justified.

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Hank Green on Determinism [YouTube]

Free Will by Sam Harris [Amazon]

Sam Harris on Free Will [YouTube]

The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee [Amazon]

Dan Harris and Sam Harris on Introspection [10% Happier Podcast]

Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart [PDF]

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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There seems to be genuine disagreement within the atheist community over religion and child abuse. We’ll explore the nuances and examine the instances where religion appears to be responsible for child abuse. We’ll also discuss whether the intellectual roots of religious child abuse can be traced back to the Bible and justified therein.

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Atheist Experience on Religion as Child Abuse [YouTube]

Richard Dawkins in a Hell House [YouTube]

Richard Dawkins on Religious Child Abuse [YouTube]

Spare the Rod Article [NYT]

Child Beating Article [HuffPost]

Child Deaths Caused By Medical Denial [MassKids]

Laci Green Sex Ed [YouTube]

Abstinence-Only Sex Ed [Article]

Hitchens on Circumcision [YouTube]

WHO on Circumcision [Article]

Religious Exemptions for Abuse [Pew]

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We discuss whether faith is a reliable foundation for belief. When arguments fail, believers often say that we just need to have faith. But is faith a valid way of knowing something?

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Matt Dillahunty on Faith

Steven Pinker on Epistemology

Richard Dawkins on Science

Jerry Coyne on Faith

“Living by Faith” (Hymn)

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We address 20 common objections to evolution, give some evidence supporting the theory, and try to figure out why some Christians have a problem with evolution in the first place.

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Objections (in chronological order)

1. Evolution is just a theory
2. Why are there still monkeys?
3. Why don’t chimpanzees give birth to humans?
4. You weren’t there!
5. Microevolution / Macroevolution
6. Evolution has never been observed
7. Evolution is unfalsifiable
8. Genetics conflicts with evolution
9. Mutations are always harmful
10. Random chance couldn’t make an organism
11. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
12. The Cambrian Explosion
13. Missing Links
14. Carbon Dating
15. Irreducible Complexity
16. Bacterial Flagellum
17. Abiogenesis
18. DNA is a language
19. Teach the controversy!
20. Evolution leads to immorality

…

Science in the Soul and The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins [Amazon]

Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth Miller [Amazon]

Richard Dawkins with a creationist [YouTube]

Scientific American on Creationism

Michael Russell on Abiogenesis

Popular Science on Abiogenesis

Most Recent Creationist Data on America from Gallup (2017)

TalkOrigins

Evolution FAQ

RationalWiki

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Believers often point to miracle claims as validations of their religious beliefs. This argument is the basis for other popular apologetics regarding the resurrection of Jesus, the power of prayer, and famous anecdotes of miraculous events, so let’s examine the bare bones of the argument from miracles.

Thank you to everyone who’s been leaving reviews on Facebook and iTunes, I’ve been stunned at the kindness of all of you!

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Rationality Rules on Miracles

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We discuss the Christian concept of Satan and wonder why he exists in the first place. Why would God make a perfect plan and then create someone whose primary purpose is ruining it? His ways are indeed inscrutable.

Hail Satan!

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Noah Lugeons interviews Chris Matheson

The Scathing Atheist

The Story of God by Chris Matheson

Atheist Experience

Barna Poll on Satan

Christian Apologist on Satan

Magic Tricks by Whalers

Hail Satan!

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Christians spend a lot of energy distancing themselves from the horrors of the Old Testament. Apologists often try to justify their diminishing or dismissing of the Old Testament’s authority by employing Covenant theology. We explore that idea along with other common arguments Christians use to ignore the bad parts of the Old Testament.

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Matt Dillahunty on the Old Testament

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Does atheism inevitably lead to social Darwinism? Are atheists implicated in Nazi eugenics? We continue our discussion from last week’s episode into the territory of Darwinism, eugenics, Hitler, and whether atheists are able to morally condemn the events of the 20th century.

[Part II of II]

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Hitler! Stalin! Mao! Any lengthy debate with a Christian apologist seems to lead to those names. The idea, either stated explicitly or implicitly, is that atheism inevitably leads to war, genocide, and the crumbling of society. So were the bloody atrocities of the 20th century the logical result of the spread of atheism? Many Christian apologists seem to think that the death of God lead to the cruelties of the last century, but this idea doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

[Part I of II]

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Mother Teresa’s work greatly increased the amount of poverty and suffering in the world and her reputation deserves to be exposed for what it is: a myth. She was not, by her own admission, a humanitarian who worked to alleviate poverty. She thought suffering was good for people and had no interest in alleviating poverty — pain brings one closer to Jesus. She worked tirelessly to impose misogynistic laws banning divorce, contraceptives, and abortions everywhere she could. She had warm relations with genocidal maniacs like the Duvalier family in Haiti, she took money stolen from the elderly and didn’t return it, she sold modern versions of indulgences, and she took donations meant to help the poor and used it to build convents instead.

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