Original subtitles

begin well that was all very interesting

ask yourselves what is wrong with

spending eternity in hell well I'm told

it's rather hot there for one dr. Craig

is not offering an alternative view of

morality okay the whole point of

Christianity or so it is imagined is to

safeguard the eternal well-being of

human souls now happily there's

absolutely no evidence that the

Christian hell exists and I think we

should look at the consequences of

believing in this framework this

theistic framework in this world and

what these moral underpinnings actually

would be all right nine million children

die every year before they reach the age

of five a picture picture a Asian

tsunami of the sort we saw in 2004 that

killed a quarter of a million people one

of those every 10 days killing children

only under five okay it's 2024 thousand

children a day a thousand an hour 17 or

so a minute that means before I can get

to the end of this sentence some few

children very likely will have died in

terror and agony think I think of the

parents of these children think of the

fact that that most of these men and

women believe in God and are praying at

this moment for their children to be

spared and their prayers will not be

answered okay but according to dr. Craig

this is all part of God's plan any God

who would allow children by the millions

to suffer and die in this way and their

parents to grieve in this way either can

do nothing to help them or doesn't care

to he is therefore either impotent or

evil

and worse than that on dr. Craig's view

most of these people many of these

people certainly will be going to hell

because they're praying to the wrong God

just think about that okay through no

fault of their own they were born into

the wrong culture where they got the

wrong theology and they missed the

revelation okay they're 1.2 billion

people in India at this moment most of

them are Hindus most of them therefore

polytheists in dr. Craig's universe no

matter how good these people are they

are doomed if you are if you are praying

to the monkey god Hanuman you are doomed

okay you will be tortured in hell for

eternity now is there the slightest

evidence for this no it just says so in

mark 9 and Matthew 13 and revelation 14

perhaps you'll remember from the Lord of

the Rings it says when the Elves die

they go to Valinor but they can be

reborn in middle-earth I say that just

as a point of comparison okay so God

created the cultural isolation of the

Hindus okay he engineered the

circumstance of their deaths in

ignorance of Revelation and then he

created the penalty for this ignorance

which is an eternity of conscious

torment in fire okay on the other hand

on dr. Craig's account your

run-of-the-mill serial killer in America

okay who spent his life raping and

torturing children need only come to God

come to Jesus on death row and after a

final meal of fried chicken he's going

to spend an eternity in heaven after

death okay one thing should be crystal

clear to you this vision of life has

absolutely nothing to do with moral

accountability can please notice the

double standard that people like dr.

Craig used to to exonerate God from all

this evil okay we're told that God is

loving and

and just and intrinsically good but when

someone like myself points out the

obvious and compelling evidence that God

is cruel and unjust because he visits

suffering on innocent people of a scope

and scale that would would embarrass the

most ambitious psychopath

okay we're told that God is mysterious

okay who can understand God's will okay

and yet this is precisely the this

merely human understanding of God's will

is precisely what believers use to

establish his goodness in the first

place if something good happens to a

Christian some he feels some bliss while

praying say where he sees some positive

change in his life and we're told that

God is good okay but when children by

the tens of thousands are torn from

their parents arms and drowned

we're told that God is mysterious this

is how you play tennis without the net

okay and I want to suggest to you that

it is not only tiresome when otherwise

intelligent people speak this way it is

morally reprehensible okay this kind of

faith is it really is the perfection of

narcissism God loves me don't you know

he cured me of my eczema he makes me

feel so good while singing in church and

just when we had given up hope he found

a banker who was willing to reduce my

mother's mortgage okay given all the all

that this god of yours does not

accomplish in the lives of others given

given the the misery that's being

imposed on some helpless child at this

instant this kind of faith is obscene

okay this to think in this way is to

fail to reason honestly or to care

sufficiently about the suffering of

other human beings and if God is good

and loving and just and kind and he

wanted to guide us morally with a book

why give us a book that supports slavery

why give us a book that it monitors us

to kill people for imaginary crimes like

witchcraft

now of course there's a way of not

taking these questions to heart

according to dr. Craig's divine command

theory God is not bound by moral duties

God doesn't have to be good whatever he

commands is good so when he commands

that the Israelites to slaughter the

Amalekites that behavior becomes

intrinsically good because he commanded

it okay well here we're being offered

I'm glad he raised the issue of

psychopathy we're being offered a

psychopathic and psychotic moral

attitude it's psychotic because this is

completely delusional there's no reason

to believe that we live in a universe

ruled by an invisible monster Yahweh but

it is it is psychopathic because this is

a total detachment from from the

well-being of human beings it this so

easily rationalizes the slaughter of

children okay just that just think about

the Muslims at this moment who are

blowing themselves up convinced that

they are agents of God's will there is

absolutely nothing that dr. Craig can

say against their behavior in moral

terms apart from his own faith-based

claim that they're praying to the wrong

God if they had the right God what they

were doing would be good on divine

command theory now I'm obviously not

saying that all the dr. Craig or all

religious people are psychopaths and

psychotics but this to me is that is the

true horror of religion it allows

perfectly decent and sane people to

believe by the billions what only

lunatics could believe on their own if

you wake up tomorrow morning thinking

that's saying a few Latin words over

your pancakes is going to turn them into

the body of Elvis Presley okay you have

lost your mind okay but if you think

more or less the same thing about a

cracker and the body of Jesus you're

just a Catholic

and I'm not the first person to notice

that it's a it's a very strange sort of

loving God who would make salvation

depend on believing in him on bad

evidence okay it's it's I mean if you

live 2,000 years ago there was evidence

galore and he was just performing

miracles but apparently he got tired of

being so helpful and so now we all

inherit this very heavy burden of the

doctrines implausibility and and and and

the effort to square it with what we now

know about the cosmos and we and what we

know about the all-too-human origins of

scripture becomes more and more

difficult and it's not just the generic

God that dr. Craig is recommending it is

God the Father and Jesus the son

okay Christianity on dr. Craig's account

is the true moral wealth of the world

well I hate to break it to you here at

Notre Dame but Christianity is a cult of

human sacrifice Christianity is not a

religion that sell that repute er

repudiates human sacrifice it is a

religion that celebrates a single human

sacrifice as though it were effective

God so loved the world that He gave His

only Son John 3:16

the idea is that Jesus suffered the

crucifixion so that none needs suffer

hell except those those billions in

India and billions like them throughout

history okay this is this is this is

astride this doctrine is astride a

contemptible history of scientific

ignorance and religious barbarism we

come from people who used to bury

children in under the foundations of new

buildings as offerings to their

imaginary gods if we just think about

that they're in vast numbers of

societies people would bury children in

postholes people like ourselves thinking

that this would prevent an invisible

being from knocking down their buildings

these are the sorts of people who wrote

the Bible if there is a a less moral

moral framework than the one dr. Craig

is proposing I haven't heard of it

you