The Verse That Made This Caller Question EVERYTHING | Matt Dillahunty & Austin Archer

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Tommy's calling from Washington. Tommy with the pronouns are hem. Uh has a question about Hebrews 11.

[00:00:08]>> Hey. Hello.

[00:00:10]>> Hi. Hi, Tommy.

[00:00:12]>> Hey. Hi. Thanks. Um the I had a quick question about Hebrews. I guess the screener said um I'm in a deconstruction phase. I'm kind of just figuring things out. Um, in Hebrews, I think I gave the wrong verse, but 11 basically says that Abraham was called to land and he never received the land that he was promised because he knew it was a heavenly land and um therefore God's not put to shame.

[00:00:36]But I specifically know in Genesis that he's specifically called to go to the land, not any mention of heaven or anything like that. I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that. Um, if I'm misinterpreting something, cuz to me that seems like a huge contradiction, it pretty much means like why all the killing, why all the fighting for this land, you know?

[00:01:00]>> Don't know, don't care.

[00:01:05]>> Hey, I mean, I I'm happy to talk about it, but it's just a story book. Um, and it is so easy for believers to rationalize anything that appears to even remotely be contradictory. So, first of all, God makes promises that are also conditional. And if Abraham disobey, it's like Moses doesn't get to see the promised land because Moses disobeyed. Abraham doesn't get his thing either because he disobeyed or because you know Hebrews 11 the the 39 and 40 um which you referenced in your thing that's about basically God gave a new covenant which is better than what he was going to give um and so you know it it there are there are massive problems in the Bible um This could be one of them, but I don't care. Uh I have no way of demonstrating it. I have no way of uh people. They can come up with whatever kind of post hawk rationalization they want. Well, this is what God did and it's okay because God did it. Cool. Until God comes down and explains why there's not a problem, um I'll go with it's a problem, but I also don't care.

[00:02:27]>> Yeah. I I feel like Hebrews chapter 11 is like you were saying a post talk rationalization. It's like Abraham never got this but he didn't actually mean to give him this. He meant to give him heaven and that's why God's actually still okay. And that just seems like moving the goalpost I guess is the word I have for it.

[00:02:45]>> Yeah. No, I mean grats to you going through scripture and comparing these things. There's a number of problems though and that is one we have no reason to think any of these things happened.

[00:02:59]Uh number two that God's not coming forward and offering any explanations.

[00:03:03]Three is there's nothing new here. And so you're you're up against thousands of years uh in in this case of oh not quite as as many since Hebrews is is New Testament stuff. Um, but it's you have Old Testament claims and then New Testament stuff. And I'll tell you straight up, for example, I my mom knows nothing about the Old Testament. And I'm like, how can that be? The Old Testament is where creation is. The Old Testament is where sin originates. The Old Testament is where prophecies and the law are supposedly originate. um nothing in the New Testament can make any sense or have any value without the Old Testament as a foundation. And yet the overwhelming majority of Christians >> uh don't know anything about the Old Testament, don't care about the Old Testament. That's the Jewish Bible. And it's it's weird.

[00:04:02]>> Um >> and if you find something where there's a contradiction or an apparent contradiction between Old and New Testament, And and this is this is going to sound strange. I play a lot of board games. I have hundreds of them downstairs. And I'm a stickler for uh good games and how to better make good games. And so when you're making rules, new rules override old rules and specific rules override general rules. And given that very rational basis, it's kind of trivial to say, "Oh, we can mostly if there's some problem between the Old Testament and the New Testament, the New Testament is the one that gets it." Um, and then you the bigger questions are why doesn't God show up in the New Testament and actually correct the things that were laying around for hundreds or thousands of years that were wrong in the Old Testament? you know, why doesn't he come in and say, "Hey, you know, back when we said, "You shall buy your slaves from the heathen that surround you. Don't buy slaves. Don't own people." Um, >> when he, you know, why why why we have to wait for >> for Hebrews to get some sort of treatment of this? Why don't we have a message from Jesus saying, >> um, here's what actually happened, you know, with Abraham and here's what happened with Moses. And I was there, by the way, uh, you know, before Abraham was, I am. Oh, cool. If you am before Abraham was, >> why don't you [ __ ] explain this because it looks really weird. The problem is that when Jesus >> if Jesus existed >> and if Jesus said anything, >> Hebrews didn't exist, the the book didn't exist at that time. So, he can't correct it. So, now there's things that even if Jesus existed are newer than Jesus that create more problems. Why hasn't God shown up and given yet another update? You know, we got Bible 20 or 2.0. Maybe he has maybe Islam's the one true religion.

[00:06:08]>> Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I I just think it's a it it I don't know. To me, it just kind of blows a hole in it for me cuz you have somebody coming along saying, "Oh, yeah. Well, God didn't actually do what he said he was going to do. It's okay because we've made heaven now. And oh, by the way, we did all those terrible things, but uh not the only time that wasn't the point of it.

[00:06:30]It makes no sense.

[00:06:32]>> So, I'm gl I'm glad you found something that that blew a hole in it or that that was like, you know, you're lying in the sand. But I mean, right from the beginning, you've got God saying in the day you eat of that fruit, you shall surely die. That's not true. That didn't happen. Oh, well, it's a spiritual death, not a physical death. Okay, so there's a post hawk rationalization. Um, and uh, God claimed that tier would be destroyed and never rebuilt and it's still here to this day. So, when's that gonna happen?

[00:06:58]>> Um, you know, if by your fruits you'll know them. I did a talk in Australia >> called Why Won't Why Won't You Love Me?

[00:07:07]I think it is. There's a video up up somewhere probably on my channel that Seth Andrew edited. And I'm standing there in a bathrobe playing the role of God. And I do a walk through the entire Old Testament to show many, not all. There's too many to do in an evening show. Many of the times when the Old Testament is a comedy of errors where God tries to do something and humans [ __ ] it up. And yet God knows they're going to [ __ ] it up. And so he keeps trying to correct it. You know, it's like, "Oh, I'm going to make this beautiful place for two people." And it goes wrong. And then I'm going to expand from that and it goes wrong and then it goes wrong and it goes wrong. And now I'm once it's gotten to the point where I'm going to have to confuse all their languages and set them all, you know, at odds with each other. Um I I'm clearly not going to be able to fix the world.

[00:08:00]Let me pick this one family. Let me pick this one tribe. Um and then that goes wrong, too.

[00:08:06]>> And then then it switches back to, well, let me try and save the whole world. Or maybe just the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It it is uh it is God sitting there saying, "Why won't you do what I tell you? Why won't you love me?" And I I I'm not too fond of a lot of the things that I I write or say, but I think that one's a a pretty good take because it's it's me.

[00:08:34]This is this is my I've read the Bible multiple times >> and this is me going in and saying, "Okay, let me put myself in the mind of this character and this character. What was what could Adam have been thinking?

[00:08:47]What was Noah thinking? What was uh Nebuchadnezzar thinking? What, you know, try and do that." And then you finally get to what was God thinking? And people are like, "Oh, no. That's that's blasphemy. How dare you, you know, play God."

[00:09:00]Uh if God made me and gave me a brain and gave me the ability to empathize and to investigate and find reason, he must have anticipated this. As a matter of fact, it's the only thing he gave me that would allow me to try and engage in this intentional stance to find out what another mind, in this case the mind of God, might think. And if the mind of God um can't spot the obvious fallacies that a horribly inferior being like me can spot and do something about them, >> then he's either an idiot or immoral.

[00:09:38]>> Yeah. And that's Yeah, I agree. I think that it's, you know, one of those things you said earlier where like people keep screwing up, but I think it's like not us. Like if you create something and it doesn't go well, that's on you. Like I don't think that you know what I mean.

[00:09:56]>> Yeah.

[00:09:56]>> Like I don't >> Yeah. Anyway, all right. Thanks, Matt. I appreciate your insights. I just wanted to make sure I was interpreting that correctly and not like missing something, but it seems like traditional, you know, everything that I've ever been told when things don't work the way they were supposed to, it's because, oh, there was a spiritual aspect. So, it's this area, this thing we can't touch, we can't see. So, of course, it's right because you can't prove that it's not right. And so, um, yeah, I just wanted to see >> what your I appreciate it.

[00:10:26]>> Two things, Tommy, before I let you go.

[00:10:28]One is I want to make sure Austin doesn't have something to add on this.

[00:10:32]>> Yeah. I I mean I I just wanted to say really quick, Tommy, that uh like to to echo Matt and say congratulations on finding a discrepancy or a thing that shows, you know, some some level of uh um hypocrisy or or inconsistency in God's character on or on God's part in the Bible, I would just say the Bible is mostly that. So the fact that you're like, I found this one thing, it's like good. It is it's mostly that. It's mostly stuff that doesn't make sense.

[00:11:02]It's mostly from book to book, from chapter to chapter. Things that uh portray a schizophrenic all over the place um mind of an of an unknowable being that is constantly doing things that make no sense. And what's interesting is like the the people who try to profess the the truth of the Bible, I talked earlier about pattern recognition. And you can go through and you can look for patterns across the Old and New Testament that show, no, no, no, no. He's been the he's been consistent, the same yesterday, today, and forever. You know, look at this. You know, this verse right here lines up with this verse right here. And you can pick and choose and do all kind of apologetics and mental gymnastics to make those pieces fit. But in order to do that, you have to ignore all of the other stuff. All of the other stuff that disagrees with all of the pieces you're picking and choosing. And I, you know, it's just it's like it's like my I have a brain that does this to I think we all do. It's like every time I'm running late for something, every time I don't leave myself adequate time to get somewhere, I'm convinced that the universe rearranges itself to make me more late than I already am. That like I hit more red lights, there's cars are driving weirdly and people aren't going when the light turns green. And it's like the entire universe is rearranging itself specifically around making me more late. And that's the pattern that my brain latches on to is this way that the universe is specifically designed for me, but specifically to torture me.

[00:12:35]But I don't notice those kinds of things when I leave myself ample time to get where I'm going. when I know I'm going to arrive somewhere early, it doesn't bother me that I hit a red light or that somebody is doesn't go right away at the, you know, like I I'm less uh annoyed by that stuff and I'm not clocking those same patterns. And it's like, well, if the pattern is that the universe rearranges itself to [ __ ] me over every time I don't leave myself enough time, then that would mean that every time I do leave myself enough time, everything flows like I would I should notice that pattern as well. But what I'm doing is I'm just ignoring all of the pieces of evidence that don't fit the pattern that I am trying to create.

[00:13:13]And I'm only grabbing the pieces of people do this, content creators do this with the algorithm all the time, too.

[00:13:19]They grab the pieces of evidence that support their theory of how the algorithm on the internet works and they leave out all the stuff that blatantly contradicts the way that they think it works. And I I just think that like I'm I'm happy you found this discrepancy. I would just say it's mostly that like the book is a mess.

[00:13:41]>> The other thing, the last thing I wanted to say, I think >> Yeah.

[00:13:45]>> Oh, sorry. The last thing I want to say, Tom, is I owe you an apology and you would never know this, but I value uh trying to do the right thing. So when you called in, I noticed it popped up in the call screener thing and you had tried to call in on the web line and then you switched over to to telephone and that is often a red flag. Uh people calling in, you know, are often on the web thing are more likely to be trolls and then, you know, you kind of force them to get to the the calling thing. But you also suggested that the contradiction was in Ruth 11 and I was like Ruth only has four chapters. this Tommy's a fraud and I'm gonna cook him. And then it turned out you already spotted your mistake and so uh I owe you an apology for judging you based on bad information.

[00:14:32]>> No, it's okay. No, it's all right. Yeah, that's my bad. I I don't know what happened when I was typing it in. My ever since Apple did this update, things been weird. But um yeah, I agree. I think that's the the thing that I've noticed with the Bible that's really been the struggle for me during this deconstruction is that, you know, it's like the fickleness. I guess that's maybe not the right word, but you have someone who sometimes they'll reward you if you're obedient. Sometimes doesn't matter. Your life still will suck if you're obedient. Sometimes they'll punish you if you're disobedient, but sometimes you get away with it. Like there's no consistency. There's no um and and these are huge things like >> if you were to read the Bible and actually live by the Bible, you would have a really hard life or you would be called to live a hard life and like it's very restrictive and um yeah, so I think that it's super important to, you know, at least understand fully what this book is trying to say. And for me, there's a lot of things that just seem like explanations that are like senseless or things that don't make sense or contradict. And I think growing up in the faith, you're taught really well how to do the mental gymnastics.

[00:15:53]But I think that's like part of my problem with it now is why do I have to do mental gymnastics for something that is infallible and inspired by God.

[00:16:03]>> You know, >> it should be pretty easy. I mean, one of the things that I reached out for early on when I was struggling with all this, I didn't set out to become an atheist. I set out to become the Christian minister that I thought God wanted me to be. And when I was finding problems, not necessarily this problem. I don't know that I I ever saw this specific problem.

[00:16:22]Um, when I found problems like this, the first thing I would do is pray because >> I'm a s I'm at the time I'm a sincere believer and I'm trying to do what I think God wants me to do. And God should definitely be answering me at that point. And when I got no answer, it was >> hang on. Is this even the path that you want me on? You know, I'm just trying to do what you want, God. Give me a sign here. Give me a message. Answer me. You know, uh, can you resolve this discrepancy? Can you confirm that I'm even on the right path? And I I hear nothing and I feel nothing. And so the next thing I do is I reach out >> um to ministers, to uh clergy, to you know I I had um a member of my family was a medical missionary and you know knew and understands still knows and understands Christianity really well and was sort of a spiritual leader in the family and I would go to him with you know questions and on occasion and what I would get back was Sorry, not sorry. Embarrassingly bad.

[00:17:33]And it was very clear. It was like, you know, oh, ask your atheist friend how they can have morals if how can they they can't have objective morals without God. And it was like somebody who had taken the the first day of the intro to morality course and then thought they had the answers and never went back for day two.

[00:17:56]And I'm like, "Yeah, I've already spent way more time on this and >> and all this." So, yeah, keep doing what you're doing. Keep asking questions. Um, and, you know, >> just keep giving a [ __ ] about what's true.

[00:18:11]>> Mhm. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. All right.

[00:18:14]Well, thanks. I appreciate uh Matt and Austin. Correct. I got that right.

[00:18:18]>> That is correct.

[00:18:19]>> Um, all right. Well, thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Won't take anymore.

[00:18:23]>> Thanks, Tommy. have a good day.

[00:18:27]Well, there you go. Um, it I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and say something and um you know what? It's probably going to piss some people off, but I've done this for 20 years.

[00:18:41]And recently, I've tried to spend a little less time on social media, but I got sucked into a couple of atheist versus Christian you uh Facebook groups and um I I left them before I could be banned because the people in those groups are embarrassingly stupid. And I mean I mean that in a way where I don't it's not just a matter of being unintelligent or ignorant. I mean you you have no control over what you don't know or what you're capable of learning.

[00:19:14]Stupidity when I use the word is a sort of willful voluntary celebration of ignorance. It's like it would take you 10 seconds to Google this basic thing and get a second opinion and get sources. but instead you're just going to keep, you know, if men evolve where monkeys are, they're still monkeys type of thing. Um, but worse than that is what I was dealing with. And then, you know, for 20 years, I've been hosting these call-in shows. We used to get a lot of great calls from honest, sincere Christians and Jews and Muslims to defend their religious beliefs. And now I'd say 95% of the honest, sincere believers that call in, they're decon they're they're deconstructing.

[00:20:09]Um they're saying, "Wow, I found these issues." And and they're not they're not getting help from God. They're not getting help from their pastor. They're not getting help from the people in their church. They're coming to us. And so the nature of this program and programs like it um is changing because the need we're meeting is no longer the introductory epistemology 101. I mean it's still there. It's not hey here's why we don't believe. Um it's not no atheist is spelled at h e i s t and not i. you know, we're we're past some of that and instead we're dealing with people who are like, "Okay, I committed my life to this and stuff's not making sense and the world doesn't feel right and I'm finding problems and I think it's going to continue that way because I think there are virtually no honest, sincere defenders of any religion who have any desire to engage engage in an honest discussion on this.

[00:21:17]And so instead, they will go off and try to convert the already partially converted and and then they will send their bots to, you know, my channel and everything else to to talk [ __ ] Okay, that that whole that old uh saying of talk [ __ ] lose the kingdom. Um, you you zealots keep talking [ __ ] and I will keep demolishing the kingdom that you think is real and I will keep helping the people who are deconverting and you will be standing out there alone with a sandwich board saying, "Behold, the end is nigh and thinking everybody else is a clueless buffoon." when you could have been enjoying alongside the rest of us the one and only life we we know we're going to get instead of making it worse for yourself and everybody else. And so I just wonder what what the psychology is. Do you know that you have an irrational belief that you cannot defend or do you not care?

[00:22:30]Is that the defense mechanism? I don't know because I can't hang on to irrational beliefs uh once I'm aware of them. Once somebody shows me that my reasons for believing something is busted, I no longer believe it. I might lean that direction and and kind of wish it was true or maybe I need to look at this, but I can't keep spewing out the same bad arguments, which is why most of the people that are running around attacking, they make it about me personally and not the actual arguments.

[00:22:59]They they don't have a response to good epistemology. They don't have a good response to hey, there isn't a good reason to believe this. Yes, there is.

[00:23:08]What is it? Um is in the Bible. Um a bunch of people have believed it. I mean, it's like, oh, we know all these things are facious and that's why we're not seeing them call, but who knows?

[00:23:21]>> Thanks for watching that clip. Hey, uh we're trying to do some data research about whether or not our callers successfully prove that God existed. If they didn't, don't forget to like and subscribe. That's how we know they failed. But if you don't like and subscribe, you're saying that they succeeded. So, you're saying that the by liking and subscribing, you will be affirming that you are an atheist. Hey, what else should they do?

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