William Lane Craig Had The Balls To Admit it - Alex O'Connor

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]And you keep filibustering me because you know that the Bible is showing a a movement in in a direction and to miss the movement is to miss the Bible. Let's look at God in the Bible.

[00:00:12]>> hold on.

[00:00:13]No no no no there's nothing quick about what you're doing tonight. There's nothing quick about what you're doing. I need to be allowed to respond to what you're saying. You're cross-examining me on the justice of of smiting the Amalekites. Honestly, I don't see any justice in it but I do agree that that was the eye for an eye ethical the Old Testament that is repudiated and transformed and transfigured in the new. I can I can I I get I I've had this conversation so many times most recently with William Lane Craig. At least he had the goal to to to just tell me that yes that is that was a moral thing for God to do. I get sick to death of people hand waving away this genocide by some vague reference to the fact that Jesus came along to do something which somehow kind of undoes the immorality of it. Like this is not an eye for an eye. This is a genocide of combatant men, innocent women, and animals. Saul is punished by God for not killing all of the animals.

[00:01:07]That that is that is that is actually a ludicrous misreading of what's happening.

[00:01:10]>> just Let me just make a Can I you guys Let me just make a quick point. Let me just make a quick point. I'm I I have to make this point. I I've got to read the the text from Joshua as well. Okay and then we'll check in with the audience cuz we're we're probably I think the audience is going to agree that we want this to keep going instead of doing a Q&A but we'll check in just after Alex's point here. I think it's important like read these texts for yourself. There is there is no way that I'm misreading this text. We know that this is what's happening in in the slaughter of Ai Ai that's that's a type of Canaanite. In Joshua we're told that when Israel had finished killing all of the men in Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them and when every one of them had been put to the sword, the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it.

[00:01:49]That is to say that we're told that this is just because the promised land was inhabited and God's God you know he's allowed to do this. So because the Israelites want that land, they have to go and chase out the eye. So, they chase them into the wilderness. They chase after them. They slaughter them in the wilderness. They then turn around, come back into the city, and kill who's left. Who's left if the combatants have run away? The women and the children. This is intolerable, and I I cannot have Well, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I mean, let me just for a second.

[00:02:16]>> with Jesus.

[00:02:17]It can't happen. It can't keep happening.

[00:02:19]It can't happen. It can't keep happening. You're completely You're completely blind to the irony of what you're saying. Dennis, can we pause for just a second? Okay, everyone who wants uh to go to Q&A right now, make a loud noise.

[00:02:34]Everyone who wants the discussion to continue on and eat up the Q&A time, cheer.

[00:02:40]Okay, sorry, guys. We're going to We're going to let them roll through Q&A.

[00:02:43]Let's Let's We should We might have some time.

[00:02:45]>> Christianity invented the just war tradition, according to which the slaughter of women and children is out of bounds.

[00:02:57]Prior to Christianity, no one thought this. Everybody did it, and and everybody today does it everywhere in the world, and we do it, too. The bombing of Dresden, uh the bombing of Hamburg, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the the incineration of women and children is the normal course of war.

[00:03:17]Uh I just watched a World War documentary uh in which they interview an old a bomber, a US uh bomber pilot, and he goes, "I was given a bombing mission to to hit a target. I asked the US authorities, 'Who's in the building?'"

[00:03:34]They said, "20,000 women and children."

[00:03:38]And this guy kind of breaks down. You can watch this on Netflix. And he goes, "I'm like, 'What the hell? You want me to to kill 20,000 women and children?'"

[00:03:45]He goes, "We're supposed to be the good guys."

[00:03:47]And he goes, "But I I couldn't repudiate the order. It was an order, so I did it.

[00:03:53]So, what I'm getting at is is it everybody does it? It is not ethical. It is not what I'm simply saying, Alex, that you are a product of the Christian morality that repudiates it. Now, you're standing on a Christian mountain AND ACTING LIKE, "WHOA, LOOK AT THESE CHRISTIANS."

[00:04:09]They taught you to talk like this.

[00:04:11]>> These people did not teach me to think like that. They did. These people were listening to their God who was telling them to slaughter innocent women and children.

[00:04:18]>> The Amalekite Right, the ancient Israelites were but the ancient Israelites are not what taught you. What taught you is the the What taught you is the thousand-year tradition of the early Christian church, the >> Which came a bit too late for the Amalekites. It came a bit too late for the Amalekites, to be sure.

[00:04:35]>> Israelite armies not instructed by the God that you believe in?

[00:04:38]They were instructed by God.

[00:04:40]>> were instructed to do things which you would now consider to be immoral, yes?

[00:04:43]Absolutely.

[00:04:44]>> has God has God has commanded them to do something which you now consider to be immoral. Whether or not you consider it to be immoral by the latest developments of Christian ethics, God himself has told us that we must abandon our intuition that the that the slaughter of women and children, and by the way, when it's unnecessary in those instances to slaughter them, Well, well, I I don't I don't view it that way. This is how I view it.

[00:05:07]Christian Let's put it this way. Even in the ancient world, divine revelation comes into a primitive, barbaric world which is full of a lot of really bad guys.

[00:05:18]Um And God says, "Keep going." No, God God does not God does not God does not say, "Keep going." But what God does is is And and and again, this is called, you know, trying to get the point of what is happening. There's slavery in this world in the ancient world, and it is true. The Bible doesn't come in and go, "We denounce slavery. We denounce the killing of women and children." It doesn't do that. It actually immerses itself into an existing, admittedly barbaric culture. And what's actually going on there with the Amalekites, the Canaanites, and so on. If you just read the Old Testament, it tells you. It has to do with the displacement of polytheism with monotheism.

[00:06:00]>> And that's Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

[00:06:01]That justifies the murder of children and >> I didn't say it does. I'm saying I'm saying that the way it happens historically is God takes a side. The the single monotheistic God, who by the way in the Old Testament does not act like a monotheistic God. He acts like a tribal God, right? He acts like the God of only the Israelites. And so Israel's enemies Listen to what you just said.

[00:06:27]The God of the Yes, the the the the the God that is depicted in the Old Testament is He's He goes, "I'm picking the Jews. I'm choosing you." To the To the extent that your male >> And your enemies become my enemies, right?

[00:06:38]>> that your male and female slaves may come from the nations around you. From them you may buy and sell slaves. You may also purchase some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clan born in your town. You can bequeath them to your children as inheritable property. This is human beings, by the way. And you must But you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. So, not only do we have, you know, the description of slavery in the Old Testament, we have an an an explicit condoning, instructions on how to do it, and doing it based on race.