Yeah I’ve noticed the same thing regarding the confusion with the law between Israelite’s and foreigners. Which, even the law for foreigners is immoral, I can tell they are only trying to minimize the immorality of slavery in the OT as to say “Wasn’t that bad”. I feel it’s irreconcilable if it’s supposed to come from an omni-benevolent god.

Even when they fail to defend any immoral act in the OT they claim it’s the OLD law and Jesus changed all that.

Which I find odd, because didn’t Jesus say he didn’t come to abolish the old law but to fulfill it (Matt 5:17)?

Also, didn’t Jesus say you can beat your slaves and something about ‘as long as he doesn’t die within 3 days’? (Correct me if I am wrong).

I don’t recall anything Jesus said that he was against slavery, but knew it was happening and didn’t seem to have a problem with it, especially with comments like noted above.

p.s I am looking forward to your talk in Toronto! And your rebuttals to Josh Sommer! (Which I think you will do after your big Canadian tour!)

Right. Those are just dismissive rationalization. They have no coherent value. And you are right, this can be shown by showing how they would defend every religion; therefore they can defend none. If person A understands x and person B doesn’t, A should be able to explain x to B. If they can’t, then either A doesn’t really understand x, or B lacks the requisite skills to grasp what’s being said, in which case A should be able to show which skills B lacks that are causing the problem, and precisely how it’s causing the problem, and if A can’t do that, then A cannot claim to know B lacks any requisite skills.

As to the nick slavery argument, no, they are confusing the law for Israelites and the law for foreigners: non-Israelites were subject to full chattel slavery the same as or worse than the slavery practiced in all cultures around them. Only Israelites were excused, except from limited period indentured servitude. This is the same as all systems of the era, citizens were exempt from being enslaved and noncitizens were not. There is nothing remarkable at all about the Biblical system. Which is how we know it didn’t come from gods. Any more than the sun god gave Hammurabi his code, despite it explicitly saying so.

As to who would be good without religion: religion has to be replaced with an evidence-based system of rational habituation in empathy (learning the skill to see things from other people’s perspective and take that into account in one’s deciding), self-reflection (what sort of person do you want to be, in order to think well of yourself), and social contract theory.

You are absolutely correct when you’re mentioning how scary in a way “divine command theory” is. It literally takes away any accountability one has for committing evil deeds, because if god says its good, it is good by definition.

WLC uses this cringe worthy argument all the time. When Moses was told to kill all the Midianites, or Joshua to kill all the Amalekites, or Elijah to kill the prophets of Baal. Those according to Craig are morally justified under divine command theory.

Now any crime can be justified if “god” says so. Many believers that do good, don’t necessarily do it from the heart. many do it because of the incentives of the theological dichotomy of Reward vs Punishment. If im good i’ll get rewarded, so ill be nice. While non believers do good because they are good people. Im not saying all believers think this way, however, I’ve encountered a number of them to reasonably conclude that the incentives do play a big role. Many believers do good because they are good people. My question would be, would majority of them “be” good if their wasn’t a fear of eternal punishment/reward in heaven?

I often hear the OT slavery was normal back then. It was a different kind of slavery not like today. When Exodus 21 explicitly mentions how and why you should enslave someone and gives you specific instructions to do so.

When I point out the immorality in the OT and NT. I always get this response “You may have read the Bible, but you don’t understand it” or “Only born again Christians can truly understand the Bible and word of god”
Obviously fallacious!

I also get answers like “We can’t judge what is moral or immoral in gods eyes” “We are fallible humans, god is infallible, he’s too complex to understand”

What’s an answer to that? Firstly, I know they are assuming that their specific god of their specific denomination exists so they are already asserting without meeting the burden of proof. Moreover, if humans are fallible how did they determine what and who god is if he’s “too complex to understand”?
They usually say as aforementioned that only believers can truly see. Which is a fallacy that can also be used against them by any religion.

Thanks,

Justin