Lesson to be learned: you can kill, stone, torture or enslave people, and if christians come by and tells you "hey! that is immoral!", you can simply just reply "you are taking this whole situation out of context, and you will not be able to understand the context anyway", then it will be okay.

If morality changes on a whim, then it's not objective.

This whole video is basically a model of my trip from being a christian to being an atheist. I was raised to be a christian. I started with the assumption that god's morality is perfect and his commands must reflect that, and the inconsistencies eventually drove me to a kind of madness which I could only escape by honestly weighing the evidence. Eventually, something had to give, and luckily that ended up being my religion.

Craig said that when god drown all the children in the flood, he was "conferring an inestimable good" on them. Can you get much more depraved than calling drowning children "an inestimable good"?

It blows my mind how Christians ascribe loving nurturing qualities to the biblical god. I just don't get it.

Atheistic Agenda? Wait a minute.. .did we elect a leader guys? I didn't know we had organization

"Theism provides a sound foundation for objective moral values" Is that so? I don't remember Thor saying much about morals.

How do I, as an atheist, determine my morality? Same way a theist does, by making it up. We just don’t lie and said god told us

There is a phrase that I grew up with that blinded one from god's messed up nature. It goes like this: "God is good all the time, all the time god is good." Also, usually one person will say the first half and if there is a group of people/one person, they always say the second half. Only after I came to the realisation that I no longer believed in God did I realise how cult-like it must seem from the outside.

Gawd is so loving that he orders genocide, endorses slavery, allows for thought crime, and has accepted animal and human sacrifice. So loving. Makes me feel warm inside.

"God is loving, generous, faithful, kind" grandfather Nurgle, the lord of all, the lord of decay, is the same too

I watched every video of this channel since the start, it helped me answer many questions as a christian. Now an atheist. Coming back years later, and still one of the best damn videos on the internet. I will download and preserve these videos. They are so very precious.

My morality comes from empathy. Which a natural emotion in humans and other social mammals

I've always seen it as an Atheist's basis for morality is based on empathy and understanding, but a theist's is based on devotion, tradition, and faith. Same can be said for any followers of tyrants

All Christians need to see this. It's so true.

Craig and his ilk are a part of the reason i am an agnostic leaning atheist today.

Christians:“Have you found Jesus?” Me: No, where is that son of a bitch? I’ve got some words for him!

This video should end any argument for an objective more law giver of the bible. The only argument against this is to close your eyes, put your hands over your ears, and repeat, "LALALA,I can't hear you, LALALA"

The best policy is to agree with Craig and accept that the creator exists. If we argue with him, he will feel inspired to carry on preaching. His objective is not to convert people, but to sell books. In this context he has succeeded.

This needs to be shown to all humanity

KZfaq's algorithm doin' their magic. I actually like this because I am a non-theistic person living in the Philippines wherein our parents do simply force us all to be religious. As a non-theistic, though I don't condemn the existence of God, I also do not believe in God; I like the idea of having a God, believing you are never alone that brings more hope to some people BUT I don't think that the "God" as what the bible describes is to be worshipped because of alot of things. I am not very open to people in sharing ny thoughts that I "don't" believe in "God" 'cause my parents would most probably disown me and I'm scared but mannn this gave me confidence that I'm not alone and I have found alot of knowledge from your videos. Thank you so much. Maybe one day, I will finally break free from this religion and I'm going to thank you for that...one day...I hope one day

I just about cried. You articulated exactly why my brain turns to mush when it listens to WLC.

I can't help but wonder if the people who give this video a thumbs down actually PREFER having an "objective" moral excuse for committing various atrocities. It's sickening really.

God's loving nature.. diseases, hell, thought-crime, natural disasters, the amount of prayers unanswered etc.. how does Craig have a career in anything?

The classic parental double standard "Do as I say, not as I do."

2:22-3:22 I love how he's literally just talking about and explaining the judo-christian view of their monotheistic god and religion. But he won't let his atheist opponent use Christianity to fight back. Wow almost like there's a double standard and they're afraid of their own shitty book being used against them lol

You just can't argue with this. PERFECTION

How KZfaq fathomed that putting a pro-Christian ad before this video was demographically relevant is beyond me

This video may as well be titled "Why the Context Argument Ain't Worth Squat".

That was very well explained and easily digestible (for those of us mouth breathers that can't read a sentence without falling asleep) Kudos to you Sir, keep it up!

What I’ve heard from christians over the years regarding the murderous god of the Old Testament: “Since god is the giver of life, then he can take it away”. So they’re good with it.

I never get why what follows from accepting a god as the moral source, directly points to chritianity like... ok even if christianity is the one religion that "knows" the one god whom is the source of all moral laws, which out of the 10,000 denominations is the one that interprets the bible the right way? Pure nonsense

I'm an athiest. There are no objective moral standards, man must struggle to create a moral code-- man, including the religious, have been very bad at this. It is difficult.

Idk if it was Sam Harris saying in a debate "if you used the bible as a moral guide in any civilised country today you'd be arrested" I'm not a biblical scholar but from what I know he's right. May have been Dan Barker or Daniel Dennet?!. But one of the heavyweights 😊

Greetings, NonStampCollector. I am certainly no atheist, however, after twenty-five years as a devout Protestant into Christian apologetics, I left (over a year ago). I appreciate much of what you have expressed via creative dialogues. I must say, you do bring into light, in an entertaining way, what is smoldering under their bushel.

your devastating rebuttal to Craig here is exactly what I wished Harris had done

Man this was awesome! I am going to listen it again right now, the whole parts of it were just brilliant bits of logic, wordsmithing and Bible knowledge. I'm sooo subscribing to you.

Let's look at 2 Samuel 11&12 david became king, get a soldier's wife pregnant, had him sent to the front fighting line and left to be killed. For taking the man's wife and having him killed God's punishment was to kill the baby while david walk away free. Such a moral punishment from a living God

Just remember that Christians talk about their martyrs who were burned to death (by the Romans - eg Nero and his "human candles"; by other Christians of different sects) and mauled to death in the Roman games. These vile actions are rightly called inhumane etc. But they are accepted in the Bible when God orders it. Nero and other emperors called themselves gods...

Oh dear, you've opened Pandora's box. I used to be a benevolent atheist. Now I'm going to hunt them critters down.

Bill has no problem assuming an eternal god but can't cope with an eternal Cosmos. He preaches about a loving, compassionate god, while denying the stupidity and brutality described by god in his own book. When it comes to his religious belief Bill focuses on faith since he cannot prove his god is real.

Wonderful! Thank you! Listening to this video took me back to the intellectual collision I had with the devoutly Catholics woman who taught the Philosophy of Ethics course (at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio in the 80's) using her husband's textbook. I took it because Philosophy of Ethics is a required course for all students; &, being philosophy, I naturally expected it be like the other 2 required courses: Intro & Metaphysics, & utterly DEVOID of theology! It was so bad-- a devout Catholic using a Catholic-slant textbook to teach philosophy-- that I ended up AUDITING the same course the next year, taught by someone else, using less-theological textbooks, just to be sure I'd gotten the IMPORTANT content, in the midst of fighting with Mrs Blair the whole semester! She'd structured her class assuming her students would be Christian, but XU admits everybody, & I'm a Universalist. Unitarian-Universalism is a religion that teaches no one religion has the whole Truth, & that God gave us minds so we'd THINK; & that it's up to each of us to learn as much as we can, & form the beliefs that make personal sense to US. UUs encompass the entire spectrum from quasi-Biblical theism all the way to atheism. I was raised Universalist by parents who'd strayed from Christian faiths. I took the learn/think/evolve beliefs teaching seriously, & my personal faith has been in a state of continual evolution since 6th grade. By the time I was in college, I was challenging the popular culture notion that God loves us. My argument was: as imperfect, finite beings equipped with imperfect, finite minds & perceptions, how can we PRESUME to know God's true nature? How can we properly comprehend what's so much larger & more perfect than us? It's a similar argument to one put forth in the video, but, lacking detailed knowledge of God's contradictory behavior in the Bible, I'd arrived at it thru pure philosophy, which was indistinguishable in my mind, at that point in my life, from my theology. Confronted with Mrs Blair's religious slant, I entered into a semester-long debate with her, writing theological rebuttals in the proper philosophical format taught in Intro, which she'd return the next class with written point by point "corrections" on the back. Naturally, I then furthered my Universalist-driven argument correcting her corrections; which she then returned, having corrected my corrections of her corrections of my NON-Christian theological perspective of her presented material! That debate, plus the fact I dutifully regurgitated her lessons at test time, earned me an A for the course! On her last set of corrections, she added that I'd obviously taken a certain course. I smiled, because she still didn't get it! Being raised a Universalist is not the same thing as taking a course! What was I reacting to...? This video hit it on the head!

Looking at a woman with lust on ones heart... Damn guess I've been bound for hell since my first day of Kindergarten.

I love your logic. It's flawless.

NonStampCollector, I recently converted from the religion (or cult, if you will) of Jehovah's Witnesses I had been apart of since I was born. It wasn't one particular thing that opened my eyes, it was more of a culmination of me always being afraid of the god I worshipped (whether it be something bad I did or might do or just was aware of the fact that my god has so many restrictions over me), which, as a result, made me skeptic of his existence, even as a child. Therefore when I started browsing the "satanic, evil, materialistic, worldly" Internet, the time it took me to walk away from "The Truth" was pretty fucking quick. This was about 1-2 years ago I started on the path out. I'm 18, still live with my Jehovah's Witness family but I sense signs that they could listen to reason and possibly abandon this cult. They don't attend The Meetings (church) barely at all much anymore and are mostly living what the congregation would call a "worldly life" yet still hang strong that Jehovah god is real and that I'm an atheist apostate who is under the influence of Satan and when I question their god their response is that I just can't understand him and that I question things too much. So my question to you is, which of your videos do you think would be best to show one of them and then start the chain link? If my belief is true that they will listen to reason, I think that one of your videos could plant the seed of doubt. I really liked the Quiz Show because it's hilarious and encourages the viewer that abandoning Yahweh (or Jehovah) can be beneficial and that not believing in the Bible doesn't mean there is no meaning to life. I feel that I would only have one shot so please give me your best recommendation. I want this badly because it kills me inside knowing that my 1 and 7 year old nieces may be blinded their entire lives by this "society" or "organization" if they are forever under the influence of their parents (my sisters). I know that there are some atheists who cringe at the fact of another atheist being a hypocrite and trying to convert a Christian much like they would an atheist, but I feel I'm justified because their position abandons logic and reasoning and encourages contradictions and incomprehensibleness. Besides a video recommendation, I would love for you (or anyone) to inflict some knowledge to me on how I should go about doing this. Coming up to one of them and using a method like "hey, watch this video! It will expose the Bible and Jehovah's Witnesses!" will probably fail. Thank you for reading.

It mesmerizes me to see how religious people cling to the idea that objective morality can only come from some old book that they personally consider to be the one and only one containing the true words of God. Unless I am mistaken, there is no objective consensus as to which religious text is the right one. Therefore, as long as the right text cannot be objectively identified, the theistic morality is just as objective as the individual preference for a specific religion/sacred book is...

I like how it was explained to me that morality is like health. A person can call things healthy or unhealthy without an "objectively" healthy state. One person's healthy is not the same as another, but just because one person is different that does not mean their unhealthy, but a person can be "objectively" unhealthy and be called out for it.

You've overlooked one important fact about morality. If the god of the Hebrews commands his chosen people to commit genocide, it's good. He is always good because he invented goodness. It's only logical.

"Objective morality" makes as much sense as light without wavelength. Objective: of no bias, personal feeling, or influence; outside self and mind. ex: the speed of light in a vacuum. Subjective: of bias, perception, and feeling; inside self and mind. ex: how interesting a topic is. Even if there is a god and that god dictates to you their personal morality, that morality is subject to that god. For morality to be objective, it would need to exist outside the self, to be demonstrable and observable regardless of feeling and person. But morality is what one thinks of an action, what one considers ought be done or ought not be done. Objective morality is impossible. You can no more have objective morality than you can colour without light.

You missed the point of the video by 180 degrees. I wasn't trying to assert a case that objective morals exist. You also take issue with the apparent contradiction of an atheist calling themselves an objectivist. OK, you may be completely correct about that. But the point of the video was just how TERRIBLY inconsistent and self-contradictory the Christian view of objective morality is. I'd say that no atheistic view could ever be anywhere near as problematic, if I were asserting one.

Let me simplify this "All objective morality comes from holy books (YOUR Bible)" stuff: There is not, never was and CAN NEVER BE any sort of "morality" derived from a book which says that if you behave in certain ways, you will be rewarded in Paradise forever; But if you behave in OTHER ways, you will be tortured unimaginably for ALL OF ETERNITY. This is NOT "morality." It's boot-licking, butt-kissing, groveling subservience, and it's ENTIRELY self-serving, regardless of whether your actions are good or not! 🙏

Theistic morality is the most gross moral relativism imaginable. Since it defines everything a certain individual does or says as good. The only objective morality is based on sound principles instead of authority.

Hey, NonStampCollector. I've watched and loved every one of your vids. Absolutely well done, mate. Have you a fb? :)

Your work is amazing! I appreciate your Herculean efforts to spread logic and enlightenment. Be sure that I 'share' these videos as widely as I can... Thanks.

What's disgusting, is that if you DID convince a Christian that Yahweh is okay with slavery, they wouldn't realize he's a monster, or that he doesn't even exist. Instead, they would just say "well, if this book written 2000 years ago says slavery is okay, then that means it's okay!"

William Craig did narrow it down to just christianity vs atheism, but in the end it is just another speech of apologetics that can literally be applied to any and all religions. jews can say this, muslims can say this, any religion with a written text can say this! the whole debate is nothing but the proverbial fallacy of "one way or another and nothing else" and it really is pointless if you narrow it down to just christianity.

The next time someone tells me that I have no objective standard keeping me from doing what I like I will tell them yeah but that's ok for the time and culture of my people and in the right context etc.

Got an atheist on the subject of subjective and objective morality a few weeks back.. After legit saying "those moral laws were for the Isrealites" I pointed out that if those moral standards aren't applied the same when time or place changes, then it is not objective. I added that if god changed his standards, that too would not be objective. It furthermore implies god either planned for morality to be subject to change... Or that god had changed his mind. - Sadly, the dude I was talking to couldn't understand why a moral law being being diffrent in one time or region meant it couldn't possibly be objective. Such was his idiocy and cognitive dissonance.

Good one, if context bares any weight in the matter, then it's not objective

God has a doubled standard. He asks people to do all these thing because its moral but then does the same things himself or worse.

watching in 2019 sept and still loving it..

I didn’t know David lee Roth was a theist and debated Sam Harris

Infallible simply means that you are unable to be corrupted. "Omnipotent", on the other hand, means that you can do all things. That's why I specified "perfect" and "omnipotent" seperately. If they were one and the same, I would have just said "perfect". Do try to pay attention.

OK. Well, I suggest that you carefully consider that you've been misled, and that by committing your life to this god, you are committing your life to a ridiculous fantasy that makes a fool of you.

When I had a discussion on this topic with an evangelical friend of mine, he simply said to ignore the old testament and that its all about Jesus and the new testament. I really didn't know what to say to that.

1:22 that was Craig pleading the fifth

Curious how Craig wants to only talk about a generic theistic god yet calls it a "he/him", kind of like he's talking about his Christian god in reality.

One of the reasons Christianity as a religion has survived so long is that it adapts. For example, when people believed the earth was flat Christians said the bible was proof of this and to say otherwise was heresy. When science irrevocably proved otherwise, Christians said the bible always had proof of this. In time, if science is able to prove evolution beyond doubt, Christians will find proof in the bible of it. The religion will survive because of that vagueness.

Objective morality is called empathy. That's why Jesus said, "Do unto others as you'd have them do to you". You don't need a religion to understand that. - de-converted Christian

"The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible." Mark Twain

I don't know how I missed (or just can't remember that I'd seen) this most important and intelligent (and crackingly entertaining) presentation on your page - but I recommend it as the antidote and irrefutable rebuttal to any theist (and particularly Christian or Muslim) claim, regarding the source of "objective" morality being any holy book, which advocates murder, violence and slavery, in ANY context. Great work

I didn't say atheism was a religion in itself. When I brought it up, I was referring to people who celebrate a spirituality or life force, but don't believe in any sort of deity. An atheist is a person who doesn't believe in a deity, although it says nothing about any other belief.

thank you for this. now, to read some delusional ad hominem christian comments because there is no argument against this.

Sometimes I don't think religious people reads the book carefully

A good portion of Scripture is about how we are to live our lives. In fact, Paul wrote that all of it was to train in righteousness, which is how the Bible says we are to live. 2 Tim. 3:16. Read through Proverbs and you'll see what I'm talking about. The power in my argument is not (at least fully) in the threat of hell, though many focus on that. One of the things that convinced me in college was the practicality and truth in Scriptures about life now, though the books are 2000+years old.

I love how the advertisement in the middle of this video was about the new testament 🤣

Objectively moral, altruistic behavior is not exclusive to humans. Chimps, gorillas, dolphins all show complex social structures where individuals look out for the well beings of others in their families, packs, and in the case of dolphins, dogs, even across species. It doesn't even take higher brain function for this behavior either. Families and large packs exist downwards as well. Many of the fish who have tiny brains still live in 'schools' for protection, even though many of them will still be eaten. An individual ant has basically no brain function in the sense that humans even think of 'brain,' and most individual ants can't reproduce themselves. Yet the ants have a complex society where the individual performs actions that are beneficial to their colony, but not to them individually, in other words, altruistic actions... NONE of these animals can read the Bible. So the Bible has no explanation for their altruistic behavior. Instead this is evidence that altruistic behavior actually has evolutionary origins. And the mechanism of natural selection is much more consistent with altruistic behavior than the Bible. Those species survived and thrived where individuals looked out for others of their own species. This is not to say there aren't individualistic species that can thrive. They have their role in the ecological system as well.

Man if Jesus had just made up a different god that would have dodged the argument that god is a horrific monster with a split personality

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion - Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate Physicist.

More people need to see these videos. I don't understand how Christians can just go on ignoring this information.

I absolutely loved this video. While I believe the swear words were well placed and meaningful, it will unfortunately turn off the people I wish the most to share it with. They will get distracted, or offended. Well, that's their problem, not yours. Thanks again for taking the time to make this.

NO kidding on that (8:00 to 9:00) time stamp ( or is it nontimestamp?) ;) I could go with a creator other than the bible for the very reason of god's evil acts and enability to follow his own moral code. Again the god of the bible shows his character in his actions NOT his words. I saw this as a child and condemned myself because I did not see what "everyone" else saw. I thought I was the problem and hated myself, belittled myself and self punished myself in many ways. I thought that I was wrong in so many things because "everyone" else said I was wrong, without proofs or reason they said it. I finally realized that it was not my inabilities to understand, but theist's inability to ask questions. I found through reading many different books on many subjects that theists are like abused children going to the ultimate abuser. In abusive house holds the father, like god, can never be questioned for the wrath of the "Father" would befall them. Mother would be silent and the child would be forever punished for trifling transgressions. The son would either become a "super star" without fatherly acceptance/honor or would slip into a depression of despair and self hatred. God is by far NOT moral, loving, caring, ethical, forgiving, all powerful, omnipresent and all knowing. The bible proves that, his own testimony proves that he IS a coward, liar, hypocrite, rapist, murderer, evil and not a really nice being. The bible proves that god needs a shit load of drugs and a hell of a lot of therapy in anger management before he is released from the mental ward.

I just love the way you present stuff. It is brilliant. And what I think about people is that they are using their own logic and reason and choose from what is good from the book. They read from a book having all the bad and good stuff and then using their logic and say that the good thing said in the book was from God. They use THEIR logic, not word of God, who says many worst things.

The belief that things become moral as soon as god does them, leads to people deciding that god wants something they want and, coincidentally, wants them to do whatever they want to do - however immoral.

I wish I had found this channel sooner. Great, great content.

Sorry I have to correct you at 11 min mark. It is Iron age bullshit.

I am explicitly quoting your premise... which said that there her life "could and would be filled with rape, beatings and torture..." So if you're the being with enough foresight to know that AND you can take away any life, then take the life of the perpetrators not the victim. It's just absolutely crazy when you can sit there and try to justify "reasoning" which would punish the victim!

I don’t think the god of the Old Testament was viewed by people of the time as good or loving but rather as powerful. They worshipped their god out of fear of his perceived power The bigger the punishments, the more powerful their god was. The animal sacrifices they made were all about appeasement. Modern Christianity has turned this vengeful god into a merciful and loving deity to reflect modern values and to justify worship. Christians tell themselves all the time that everything happens for a reason and it’s part of the perfect plan that we are too stupid to understand. That’s how they justify starving children and horrible deaths caused by disease. Atheists are not buying into this nonsense because it doesn’t make any logical sense.

Well you sir, have earned my subscription.

"Is there an objective standard of morality?" Yes. Mine.

NO. If I no longer exist, I can neither bask in glory of my accomplishments nor drowned in the sorrow of my failures. I will not be. Therefore if there is no life after death then all is moot.

I am an atheist and I take offense to the implication that a circumstantial morality system is a bad thing. Many moral decisions depend on circumstance, on possible consequences of a given action, on what a person may have previously done to deserve harsher treatment, etc. The problem with the biblical god's "absolute moral law" is not that it is circumstantial, but that it is barbaric, nonsensical, and irrational. It punishes harmless acts that should be completely acceptable, and ignores harmful acts that need punishment, and even rewards them. It should be noted that I personally do not believe in absolute morality at all, and adhere to a personal, reason-based morality system that relies on personal rights and an abstract interpretation of the "Golden Rule". This morality system can in turn be used to base my judgements on which laws should or should not exist on.

I've watched this 10 times and I still love it! What a great video!

Brilliant! Absolutely engaging!

The main arguments I see for these is: 1. If God didn't order these things, worse would have happened. 2. If God didn't show how horrific the consequences of sin are, we wouldn't avoid it. 3.We neither know men's hearts, the future, or the truest consequences of any wrongful act we do, but God does. He gives us morality that applies to a finite existence, meanwhile God has His own morality that applies to an infinite existence. God can do it as the manager, you can't do it as the employee.

Without religion or some kind of Belief there is no rational reason to believe that something is good or bad. Without belief there is no good and bad because it turns out that you can't find Morel Judy's under a microscope. there are no objective moral duties. You are what you hate, a believer

A very well made video.

Sometimes killing a person is murder, and sometimes it's self defense. The _only way_ to draw that distinction is by examining the context around the event. Any sensible standard of morality must distinguish between murder and self-defense, including the objective ones, so _objective standards of morality must take context into account_ (at least the sensible ones). I don't think NSC's whole argument stands or falls apart on this one point, but he seems to say that once you consider context you've thrown out the whole notion of objectivity, repeating it several times. He's mistaken. The more salient point he makes is that if we can use "God's objective standard" to justify actions in the Bible as good when we we would regard those actions as horrific in any context besides the Bible, then that "standard" is worse than useless. By this standard, actions that would be considered atrocities in one circumstance become righteous merely because God says so. I don't see how this standard is necessarily subjective (except perhaps from God's perspective), but apparently you can justify anything with it, and that makes it a real danger to society.

The simplest answer to the "moral basis" question is that we know morality is a human standard, not a God-based standard, otherwise morality wouldn't matter or be a concern for us in the first place. Why? Because morality is simply based on happiness vs suffering. And the second you admit that, then you concede that God is not the basis for moral standards. Or if you say that morality is not based on happiness and suffering, then why does it matter?

I did not say I was "angry." But the nonexistence of a fictional character doesn't impact my ability to judge it. We can judge that Voldemort was evil without him needing to be real. You are defining God to be good because you have no evidence of his goodness. When we look at the evidence, we find that this does not seem to be so. You are effectively saying "might makes right," because we cannot question who is greater than us. The last lines of Ecclesiastes were added centuries after the fact