Loved this lecture as I always do, but I also wish a re-upload could be done to help match the slides. Thank you so much for all the great work. I’m determined to watch them all because they are just amazing!

Thank you indeed

This is very interesting. I appreciated the tie - in to This American Life.

this is so good, and with meaning!

Great 👍

I do enjoy your lectures. I would like to explain to you how, as an atheist, I don't need a God to tell me what is right, especially the God who legislate slavery. The golden rule.. do and don't do to others what you'd like done or not done to you plus don't do to others what they themselves won't do. So it's really not about what an entity is saying to do, but we as humans came to understand is right and wrong over thousands of years having to live an coexist together in communities!

@jounik8980

2 жыл бұрын

No u dont know, u are taught, without religion u would be living like cavemens or wild west, believing in god affect much more human evolution than just hairless loss

@csfischer007

3 ай бұрын

To reiterate what he’s explaining in the video, God is not the anthropomorphic being that can “tell” or even “command” us, at least not in the human sense of the words. God doesn’t explicitly “tell [us] what is right”. That “understand[ing]”, as you put it, or that higher order that a moral and virtuous human should strive for is what is God. You state that you don’t need God to tell you what is right or wrong, but then you say that you do need that historical, or experiential, understanding… which IS God.

@Exjewatlarge

9 күн бұрын

@@csfischer007 Can you provide more of a basis for that definition of god? Last I read my Tanach, there are a few different deities and they are most definitely all characters with motivations and interests.

@DavidLyle-su2vo

9 күн бұрын

You may not need to believe that there are all powerful/Non understandable infinite powers (we would probably use words like laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and economic) and you may not need whatever personification of those powers the local language used (I suppose "God" is the word you are familiar with) in order to try to do the right things, but Plato hypothesized that for a SOCIETY to be as effective as possible, the masses would need to be told that the "god" of those people handed those laws down directly. 2,000 years of human history has shown that in general that model works better than any others.

David Wright, Inventing God's Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi (Oxford University Press, 2009) is a fantastic book to see how covenant codes including 10 commandments have striking similarities with the Laws of Hammurabi which predates the Bible.

Iconoclasm is a Very interesting subject!!! Why not to have a discussion on this??

Regarding Ira Glasse; yes, he's a continuation of hundreds of generations of belief and rites, but he's also an anthropologic milestone in his family by being the first to make the full transition from god(s)-based explanations to logic, reason and science.

John Hamer always comes across as a thoughtful and tolerant person, who consistently looks for the truth behind the literal in interpreting the Bible. His approach seems to be pluralistic and inclusive. But here he perhaps strays from his usual balanced stance and portrays unbelievers as narrow minded and misguided, without a basis for their morality, or even any notion of right and wrong. Further he seems to assert that unbelievers feel themselves to be intellectually superior to believers, because they imagine God as a sort of childish Santa Claus or Sky Daddy, despite there having been generations of highly intelligent theists in the past. But the fact that God is portrayed as an elderly human, looking for all the world like Zeus, (or Santa), is not the fault of atheists, but those billions who worship him in this form. If he is portrayed at all it is nearly always thus. And if God is nowadays considered by some as an immaterial spirit or cosmic force beyond time and space (despite his obvious depiction in the Bible and elsewhere as a being who spoke, trod and acted with a very human mindset, jealously and pride), his earthly incarnation, Jesus is definitely a human to whom prayers and offerings are now made. Worshippers, it appears, find it easier to pray to a being who is humanly relatable. If we were all to conceptualise God as a cosmic ordering force, as did Spinoza, (and arguably Einstein), there might be more engagement by non believers. But most established religions do not subscribe to that notion and are intolerant of dissent on that front. Indeed they have extremely narrow conceptions, involving very limiting and specific ideas about God’s morality, spoken word and past and present behaviour. They can tell you instantly what God thinks about our current affairs and ethical dilemmas. And to add to this, all religious also say what God WILL do in the future, making the most outrageous claims and predictions without evidence. Is it any wonder that doubters like Ira Glass find it difficult to subscribe to belief in God? And if we are free to conceptualise God in our own way, such as interpreting the Bible non literally, as John Hamer rightly suggests, is that not akin to the notion of subjective morality for which theists often vehemently condemn atheism?

@paulwl3159

3 ай бұрын

I was going to comment on this, lecture, as I felt that John Hamer was speaking completely out of character and stereotyping atheists in a way that I do not recognise. Like you I admire John Hamer’s tolerance and willingness to look beyond the literal or even the historical in seeking truth However you have captured brilliantly everything I was going to say. So there’s nothing to add except possibly: 1. The idea that atheists somehow reject all the wisdom of the past is flat-out wrong. There were multiple gods and goddesses in the past, or conceptions of these beings, and every religious person today rejects most of these. Atheists don’t arrogantly reject history any more than your average theist 2. It is not so much God that atheists don’t accept as religion and religious doctrine. It is difficult to reject god, if the term is so vague and elastic that it could mean anything

So Mount Sinai must be in the region of, or next to the town of, Horeb, who may be a person?

I was in the Middle East in 1972 at a place called Nuweiba, now just across the Red Sea 🌊 this is where the waters opened to let the people cross. In Saudi Arabia is the TRUE PLACE of Mount Sinai.

I started watching your videos as part of my self education journey to understand greco-hebrew culture, and the history of what we call the west. Ive greatly enjoyed your lectures and they've helped me to see different perspectives on religion than the somewhat naive catholicism i was raised on did. I've never felt that 'smartness' in some abstract sense was what creates nonbelievers. What people like ira cant say because of their social position, but which seems obvious once you get out into the world and look around, is that religion is just another way to scam people who want to believe there's some point to life. With more modern creations (science, political philosophy, whatever) you could maybe argue that new developments have broken through previous societal blocks, but the entire selling point of religion is its antiquity. Looking at history its alarming to realize that basically every historical war was fought either on a religious justification or to acconplish a religious goal (until the rise of the bourgeiosie, who realised that if your people hate another country enough you can just say you want to take their shitfrom them). Religious people in positions of power dont seem to be particularly moral, religious people in day to day life dont seem to take it particularly seriously, and there doesnt seem to be anything unique about religious people except that they've successfully deluded themselves into hallucinating an alternative explanation of reality. On the other hand you could begin from first principles: god is all good etc., and rewards those who have faith in him, so therefore his followers are an accurate reflection of the way he wants the world to be. The christian epoch has reconfigured the face of the planet, extending beyond culture or language and extending even to geological and ecological remaking. Blaming humans for being flawed seems to me like a cop-out: the world is the way it is today because christians made it that way. To me then, it seems like the only god that can exist is an evil god, or that the morals people take for granted are precisely backwards. Or of course, if we take the word of god at face value, we can introduce the Canaanite Proposition: some people are just not included in God's plan, and therefore must be eliminated.

This guy used to be in the LDS church but left for "social" reasons? I can't figure him or his followers out.

How can you (Ira Glass) be sure all of your ancestors were believers? The Bible certainly mentions unbelievers, psalm 14 etc. there must have been many throughout the timeline of Judaism. So maybe he is not the first to “go through the motions” on church, prayer, ritual etc. Love these lectures

Does the 10th commandment indicate that we should not eat milk and meat together, or does it say that we must eat raw baby animals uncooked?

So god says there are other gods,

Vid and audio don't match here guys - both good though!!

Do the 'Ten Commandments' apply to non-Jews?

@liepa7768

Ай бұрын

Seemingly whole OT is only for the jews, and only NT includes others. But there Jesus gives new commandments

The sound is off.

You'd think God would have done the commandments on graphene parchment or something lighter than the stone? Stone age God.

@jounik8980

2 жыл бұрын

Moses wrote them in clay tablets or thats older maybe sumeria 6000years ago

When did EINSTEIN believe in God? Missed that one, heard about god the metaphor but that's it. GLORY HALLESTUPID!

@exoplanet11

2 жыл бұрын

It is a little complicated. I think Einstein (who was raised Jewish, of course) said that he resonated with the idea of God put forth by Spinoza. But Einstein clearly thought that God was constrained, so to say, by the laws of nature that humans had discovered. ...even though he realized that human understanding is evolving. At one point, when asked what his reaction would be if relativity was not validated by experiment, he said "I would feel sorry for our dear Lord" I think he realized the profound beauty of this new theory and though it would be sad if the universe did not operate that way. (And presuming God ordains the way the universe operates, he would then also feel sad for God.)

@michaelsintef7337

Жыл бұрын

I once read that Einstein had stated that the only god he could accept is that of Spinoza's. But, that's all I know about that.

@michaelsintef7337

Жыл бұрын

Oops, I posted my reply before seeing Chris's above, who has a much better reply on the topic.

How come Moses had an American accent?

Doing good is believing, not going to church singing and not even giving money to poor

How did Christianity go from loving ur neighbor and eating with them as equals and aiding each other turn into the liberalisms we have today???

The most horrible thing in the first ten commandments is comand for human sacrifice. It's mentioned in several places of the bible, also in some places allowing to replace human children with money offerings.

Your definition of god sounds like deism to me. What if god is literally antropomorphic as Zeus?

@centre-place

4 жыл бұрын

Sounds like a good topic for a future lecture :)

@jeanjulie4851

2 жыл бұрын

I may not understand what you’re saying, but if I do understand the last part about “what if he is like Zeus”, then I would say, that the point is we do not know what God is like. However, to presume God is like a human seems very unlikely and self-centered and restrictive.

@jeanjulie4851

2 жыл бұрын

I must say, though that saying that Talking about God, in the way the presenter does is “deism”, doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, I do not understand this phrase, so I shouldn’t have commented.

@termination9353

2 жыл бұрын

THE CORRECT ENUMERATION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS - (*Re-introducing the commandment that has been deleted from being taught) Deut 5:6 - 22 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 1- Thou shalt have none other gods before me. Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. 2 - Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 3 - Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. 4* - And REMEMBER THAT THOU WAS A SERVANT IN THE LAND OF EGYPT, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. 5 - Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 6 - Thou shalt not kill. 7 - Neither shalt thou commit adultery. 8 - Neither shalt thou steal. 9 - Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. 10 - Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's. 22These words the LORD spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: AND HE ADDED NO MORE. = Compare this listing to the Exodus listing and see the 'commandment' I'm showing that is ADDED to make the ten.

I've heard that the koran has no prohibitions on images, and Islamic art is full of images. The only prohibition is the original, "make no images" from the OT.

THE CORRECT ENUMERATION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS - (*Re-introducing the commandment that has been deleted from being taught) Deut 5:6 - 22 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 1- Thou shalt have none other gods before me. Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. 2 - Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 3 - Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. 4* - And REMEMBER THAT THOU WAS A SERVANT IN THE LAND OF EGYPT, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. 5 - Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 6 - Thou shalt not kill. 7 - Neither shalt thou commit adultery. 8 - Neither shalt thou steal. 9 - Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. 10 - Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's. 22These words the LORD spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: AND HE ADDED NO MORE. = Compare this listing to the Exodus listing and see the 'commandment' I'm showing that is ADDED to make the ten.

When I see the tablets, I think of the sinaitic alphabet. I also think of Enmerkar and the invention of cuneiform.

If people are not supposed to have pictures or idols of God, and Jesus is God, then should we have pictures of Jesus, crucifixes, bumper stickers, etc...Just wondering

@bleirdo_dude

2 жыл бұрын

Jesus fulfilled the Law so the old ways was abolished. To Paul the Law was a curse so the Jews stumble as to bring in Gentiles. I know it's silly, but that's the power of the Holy Dopamine Ghost via Placebo faith.

@exoplanet11

2 жыл бұрын

Bumper stickers, yes. Everything else is blasphemy.

@AJWRAJWR

9 ай бұрын

Christians aren't obliged to follow the Jewish Law of the Old Testament. Christians believe the New Testament replaces the old Jewish Law with Jesus's teachings.

@liepa7768

Ай бұрын

Protestants are scared to have any pictures of Jesus as well. I find it awkward

I am Elohim, your god, who freed you from the land of Egypt, from the slave-house. You shall not have any other gods. You shall not make a carving or any image that is in the heavens above or the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth. You shall not prostrate yourselves before them, and you shall not serve them. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is the man who has Elohim as his god, and who prostrates himself only to him, and who serves him alone. Cursed is the man who does a carving or a casting, the handiwork of a craftsman. Sanctify the seventh day and rest on it. For in six days I made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and I rested on the seventh day. Therefore you too shall rest, along with your livestock and all that you have. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is the man who sanctifies the seventh day and rests on it. Cursed is the man who does work on the seventh day. Honor your father and your mother. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is he who honors his father and his mother. Cursed is he who disgraces his father and mother. You shall not slay the soul of your brother. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is the man who does not avenge or exact retribution for the soul of his brother. Cursed is he who strikes down his fellow in secret. You shall not commit adultery with the woman of your fellow. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is the man who does not defile the woman of his fellow. Cursed is the man who approaches any of his kin, or who commits adultery with the woman of his fellow, or who copulates with any animal. You shall not steal the property of your brother. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is the man who does not cheat his fellow. Cursed is he who moves the boundary marker of his fellow. You shall not swear in my name falsely (or to deceive), for I shall avenge the transgression of the fathers against the sons, grandsons, and great grandsons for those who bear my name falsely. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is the man who does not swear in my name falsely. Cursed is the man who swears falsely in my name. You shall not submit against your fellow a false judgment. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is the man who does not deceive or lie to his fellow. Cursed is he who takes a bribe to give false judgment against his comrade. You shall not desire the woman of your fellow, his male servant, his female servant, or anything that is his. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is he who does not lust after anyone belonging to his fellow. Cursed is the man who desires and lusts after the woman of his fellow, his daughter, his female servant, or anything that is his. You shall not hate your brother in your heart. I am Elohim, your god. Blessed is the man who loves his fellow. Cursed is the man who hates his brother in his heart. It is these ten pronouncements that Elohim uttered to you upon the mountain from amid the fire. Blessed is the man who upholds all the proclamations of this teaching to perform them. Cursed is the man who does not uphold all the proclamations of this teaching to perform them.

The stuff around 29 minutes about non-believers was really lame and so simplistic as to border on the intellectually dishonest. It is a strawman to put it as "they think they are smarter than all those who came before" or such a simplistic "they just disagree with the bearded man image" it implies they are operating on the level of a child. Rather, it comes down to if one perceives reality as personal and benevolent towards us: "God" or perhaps the universe is impersonal and indifferent to us: not-God (or also hostile towards us). This is not rejecting meaning itself and it is ridiculous to say so. As social creatures we are hard-wired to feel empathy and incline toward things like compassion and altruism. That is the basis for moral-ethical thought and development. There is no need for anything supernatural, metaphysical, or god-like. You've basically said there is no definition of this "God" if it is just infinite openness to ever-changing concepts and "transitions". Also, just waaaay off the main topic. Absolutely ridiculous to think agnostics and atheists are only rejecting the child's understanding of God as my big buddy in the sky. Do you think they haven't read beyond that type of simplistic thinking?

Ron Wyatt found the 10 commandments.

@bleirdo_dude

2 жыл бұрын

LOL!

Oh-Oh! God made man in his own image, and then commands that man shall not make any image of god, so having children is forbidden !

Kind of felt disingenuous how many times you appealed to "smart people" who believed something as evidence supporting justified belief in that thing. Many "smart" people often have demonstrably false beliefs. If anything showing that "no images of god" existed in Judaism but not Christianity logically leads to "Christianity is false".

@bleirdo_dude

2 жыл бұрын

It's about marketing to Gentiles.

@friendo6257

2 жыл бұрын

@@bleirdo_dude precisely

@exoplanet11

2 жыл бұрын

Newton predicted the end of the world. (incorrectly it turns out...)

@termination9353

2 жыл бұрын

THE CORRECT ENUMERATION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS - (*Re-introducing the commandment that has been deleted from being taught) Deut 5:6 - 22 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 1- Thou shalt have none other gods before me. Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. 2 - Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 3 - Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. 4* - And REMEMBER THAT THOU WAS A SERVANT IN THE LAND OF EGYPT, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. 5 - Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 6 - Thou shalt not kill. 7 - Neither shalt thou commit adultery. 8 - Neither shalt thou steal. 9 - Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. 10 - Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's. 22These words the LORD spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: AND HE ADDED NO MORE. = Compare this listing to the Exodus listing and see the 'commandment' I'm showing that is ADDED to make the ten.

@bleirdo_dude

2 жыл бұрын

@@termination9353 Don't forget the commandment for not boiling a calf in it's mother's milk.

Judaism altered the Covenant Standards 3000 years ago. Read "The Valediction of Moses" or "The Moses Scroll." We can now know Jesus was restoring what Judaism took away.