Hello and thank you for downloading the Speak Life podcast. My name is Thomas Thurgood, media producer at Speak Life. And today we are talking about rationality rules. Do you know Rationality Rules? It's a YouTube channel with over 360,000 subscribers at the time of recording. And it is presented by the atheist Stephen Woodford, and he's appeared in quite a few debates, debating Christians. So he's quite a well-known atheist online. Now, the content of this episode, I was almost hesitant to put it out via the Speak Life podcast because it's very much a YouTube-based conversation. So it's it's an exchange that kind of happened between Stephen Woodford and Glenn via a series of YouTube videos. So you can of course get the YouTube videos if you go to youtube.com forward slash speaklife media. That's where we've uploaded all of them. But I figured actually the content here is really important and a significant part of what Speak Life has been talking about and speaking into over the past week. And so for those of you who primarily listen to the Speak Life podcast, it would be good for you to be in the loop on what's what's happened. So hopefully all of this will make sense even if you're just listening uh to audio. But obviously, to get the full visual experience of watching the clips that we reference, you can go to YouTube. Okay, so what happened? Here's where the story has got to. Back in 2019, the historian Tom Holland wrote his book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, exploring the global impact of Christianity, but focusing specifically on its impacts in shaping the Western mind. And many of the things that we now assume to be obvious and natural and universal are actually specifically bred of Christian influence. That's the argument of Dominion. And of course, if you've been following Speak Life for even a short amount of time, you'll know that we've talked about Dominion and Tom Holland extensively. And Glenn Scrivener in 2022 wrote a book called The Air We Breathe, which he calls Dominion for Dummies, and he's the dummy, that's how he often describes it. But The Air We Breathe is a shorter and perhaps more accessible telling of the Dominion thesis. And of course, from an explicitly professing Christian perspective, because Glenn wrote it. So fast forward to the 30th of April 2025, the atheist Stephen Woodford puts out a video on his channel, Rationality Rules, titled How a Non-Believer Became Christianity's Favourite Historian. It's essentially an attempt to debunk Tom Holland's argument. And his video was met with controversy, to say the least, even from among the atheist community. So Tim O'Neill, who runs the blog History for Atheists, he wrote an article about two weeks after the Rationality Rules video came out saying Rationality Rules bungles Tom Holland. And we'll be getting into that article in this episode. So 30th of April 2025, that's when the Rationality Rules video came out. And then we put out on Speak Life on the 30th of May, so exactly a month later, a video debunking the debunking, essentially. So it was Glenn's response to Rationality Rules and why Stephen Woodford's debunking of Tom Holland doesn't really work and there are big problems with it. Now, shortly after we posted our video, Stephen Woodford made his video unlisted on YouTube. Essentially, he made it private. You can still get to it via the link, but it won't appear kind of in the YouTube search results anymore. It's very likely that our video caused Stephen to take down his own video. And Stephen wrote a couple of comments on his original video saying essentially why he decided to unlist it, and we'll be getting into that. So sorry, lots of kind of things to lay out there. I just thought it'd be helpful for you guys to have the context going into this. This episode of the podcast is essentially going to have two parts. The first part, you're going to hear Glenn's first video, essentially, so where he actually just responds to the rationality rules video and why there are so many issues with it. And then in the second part of this episode, you are going to hear Glenn's reflections from yesterday, where he was reflecting on Stephen Woodford making the video unlisted, why he took it down, things that Stephen Woodford still hasn't addressed, issues that that still need to be addressed. And then in the final part, Glenn is going to be opening up about some things that actually we as a ministry need to be challenged on and have been challenged on in the YouTube environment, things that we have learnt from and are thinking through. So I hope you find this episode helpful. And I hope if you're not plugged into the YouTube space, it kind of gets you up to speed on everything. And even if you're not especially interested in kind of getting into the nature of YouTube back and forths, uh just considering some of the issues here and how we interact with people of different perspectives. Hopefully that will be helpful for all of us to consider. So I will hand straight over to Glenn with his first response to rationality rules.
SPEAKER_10I've come to the conclusion that essentially I am Christian. I think that you are, even though you might deny that. I think the whole of the society, Western society that we've grown up in.
SPEAKER_03Oh, all of us are Christian now. Even those of us who are not. Truth be told, when you remove the fluff and see the frame of Holland's argument, it's comically false.
SPEAKER_11But here's why I'm almost certain that Stephen Woodford has not read the book that he is critiquing. What he presents as a quote of Dominion is not in Dominion. You know where it is? Have a look at the Wikipedia entry and look down at the bottom of this supposed quote, Dominion, Tom Holland. None of those words are in the book Dominion. Does rationality rule? Well, rationality rules is the name of an atheist YouTube channel run by Stephen Woodford. As a channel, it's an enjoyable watch. As a slogan, it is very demonstrably false, and we're going to see why rationality does not rule. It does not rule Stephen Woodford, it doesn't rule me, it doesn't rule you. Rationality is not that kind of a thing, and we are not those kinds of creatures, actually. And exhibit A in Why Rationality Does Not Rule is Stephen's recent video, uh, in which he critiques Tom Holland, the historian, and completely mischaracterizes Tom Holland completely mischaracterizes his argument, and he ends up proving Tom Holland's point and disproving the slogan of his channel.
SPEAKER_03Holland delivers a perfect narrative for Christian apologists, a sweeping historical account that positions Christianity as the heroic source of everything good in Western civilization. Consequently, it's become the go-to reference for apologists seeking intellectual validation from a seemingly neutral historian, a book that they can triumphantly point to when claiming their religion's essential role in shaping modern values.
SPEAKER_11In this video, we're going to look at how Stephen shoots at Tom Holland, how he misses Tom Holland, why he misses Tom Holland, what actually rules Stephen Woodford and hint it is not rationality. We'll then think about Infanticide, which is the killing of unwanted babies, and why it's in fact bad. And to round all things off, we'll think about what Stephen should do about this video, what Tom Holland is doing about his argument, and what you and I can do in response. But to begin with, let's dive down into Stephen's video, how a non-believer became Christianity's favorite historian, Tom Holland. And to begin with, Stephen gives a very helpful analysis of where Tom Holland is coming from, and you'll see instantly why it irks Stephen so much.
SPEAKER_10I've come to the conclusion that essentially I am Christian. I think that you are, even though you might deny that. I think the whole of the society, Western society that we've grown up is.
SPEAKER_03Oh, all of us are Christian now. Even those of us who are not. If you say so. That's quite a claim from Tom Holland, a man who, despite not being a Christian himself, and despite not being an academically trained historian himself, has somehow become the go-to historian of Christian apologetics worldwide.
SPEAKER_11Hey, wait, there was my shoulder. Did you see that? Uh yeah. One of uh the videos that Stephen uh is clipping from is a video, probably the second video interview that I did with Tom Holland. We've got three on our channel. If you're interested in uh having a look at Tom Holland interacting with a Christian, me. So why have Christians had Tom Holland on their channel so often? Um, well, here is what Stephen says.
SPEAKER_03It's because he's selling exactly what they're buying. The comforting narrative, the Western civilization owes everything good to Christianity.
SPEAKER_11Notice comforting narrative, we might return to that phrase comforting narrative at the end, but also notice that right out of the gate, uh Stephen completely mischaracterizes Tom Holland. Tom Holland, uh, in his best-selling book, Dominion, um, the the winner of the Times History Book of the Year, um, he's not saying that everything good has come from Christianity. He's saying that we have come from twenty centuries of Christianization, all the good and all the bad of it, and that the very criteria that we use by which to judge what's good and bad has also come from 20 centuries of Christianization. That's his thesis, and it is thoroughly unremarkable and non-controversial. If you don't believe me, here is Tim O'Neill, an atheist who runs the website History for Atheists. He says, I reviewed Dominion when it came out and found it interesting, provocative, and overall convincing, as did most reviewers. Holland's central premise is actually unremarkable and wholly uncontroversial, that Western culture, morality, and worldview has been profoundly influenced by the religious tradition that dominated it for the last 1700 years. It's actually unremarkable, it's wholly uncontroversial. The fact that Stephen Woodford finds it to be so controversial shows A, he doesn't know his history, and B, some very basic facts about history are disturbing him. Which raises the question with me, who is believing the comforting narrative and who is being challenged by facts here? Now Stephen does a good job of clipping together a video of Tom on various podcasts describing the Dominion thesis. And uh I think this is a pretty good summary of where he gets to what some of the implications of his book Dominion are, which is different from actually reading the book. But here is a good summary of what Tom says when he is asked to explain the Dominion thesis.
SPEAKER_10It's so clear that the anti-slavery movement is is an evangelical one. Concepts of human rights, all these kind of things. Ultimately, they don't go back to Greek philosophers, they don't go back to Roman imperialism, they uh re they go back to Paul. If we want to know what uh what what what an un-Christian world looks like, we can for starters look at the Third Reich. Christianity uh is the seedbed of everything that makes the West what it is, and without it, uh I kind of worry where we may end up.
SPEAKER_03Today we'll be diving into the curious case of Tom Holland.
SPEAKER_11It's not really a curious case, and we will see lots of people who say exactly what Tom Holland says. Be they atheist, be they anti-theist, be they agnostic, be they secular, be they people who pull on the threads of this thesis and find themselves believing. The thesis itself is unremarkable and uncontroversial, but Stephen finds it to be quite irksome. And he certainly finds it irksome when certain apologists keep on mentioning Tom Holland. He does this uh funny supercut of Mike Jones when Mike Jones went on to Tim Pool.
SPEAKER_04Tom Holland's book, he's an atheist Dominion. Okay, so there was something moving within Christianity that Tom Holland talks about that did eventually lead to this new change in our ethics and our understanding of slavery. Christians did horrible things, but if we're going on what Tom Holland does in his his book Dominion, and that's why Tom Holland says Christianity was like a depth charge. It took a while for that charge to go off and start spreading. This is what I was talking about earlier with Tom Holland talks about these Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland.
SPEAKER_03Holland makes an audacious claim.
SPEAKER_11Well done to the editor. Um yeah, that that's that's hilarious. And uh yeah, there has been a little bit of bandwagoning uh onto the Tom Holland train. Um guilty as charged. But that's not because Tom Holland is saying anything that's strange. Um it's just that there is a popularity, there is a spotlight being shone onto something Tom Holland has said that Christians have been saying, and that secular historians have been saying for centuries, that 1700 years of Christianization, as Tim O'Neill has put it, um, has actually shaped us. And the alternative to that thesis, that is the shocking thing, that is the controversial thing. I'll put a link to Tim O'Neill's article in the show notes. It's really worth checking out. But let's continue and we'll see not only the ways in which Stephen Woodford aims at Tom Holland, the ways in which he misses Tom Holland. Let's try and figure out why he is missing and why he is missing so egregiously.
SPEAKER_03Think about that as we watch. Western morality, values, and social norms are fundamentally products of Christianity. More controversially, he argues that concepts now considered secular or universal secularism, liberalism, science, socialism, and Marxism, revolution, feminism, and even homosexuality are actually deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed.
SPEAKER_11Here is one of the more concerning things about Stephen Woodford's video, and there are a lot of concerning things in it. He clearly has not read this book. Very clearly. I've challenged him on it in the comments, other people have challenged him on it in the comments, Tim O'Neill has challenged him on it uh several times. He has had plenty of opportunities to say, of course I've read the book. I wouldn't critique him if I hadn't read the book. But here's why I'm almost certain that Stephen Woodford has not read the book that he is critiquing. He quotes from Wikipedia. What he presents as a quote of Dominion is not in Dominion. You know where it is? Have a look at the Wikipedia entry. Secularism, liberalism, science, socialism, and Marxism, revolution, feminism, and even homosexuality are actually deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. And look down at the bottom of this supposed quote, Dominion, Tom Holland. No, it's actually from a review of Dominion that's found its way into the Wikipedia entry, which I'm assuming is where you found it, Stephen, and put it up on a slide as though it's a quote from Dominion. None of those words are in the book Dominion by Tom Holland. This is why I'm pretty certain that Stephen has not read the book, and if he has, this is his opportunity to tell me in the comments. Please do tell me, Stephen, if you've read the book. But it's also his opportunity to say he has misrepresented the book by claiming that a quote that is nowhere found in the book is actually from Dominion. And I've got to ask the question, is rationality ruling? Is rationality ruling Stephen Woodford? Well no, but that's not simply a dig on him. I don't think that's how human beings tick, actually, as we'll see.
SPEAKER_03But let's keep going with the video. According to Holland, Christianity's influence on Western civilization has been so comprehensive that it has come to be hidden from view. He argues that the religion's impact continues even when the religion itself is rejected, stating that to live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions.
SPEAKER_11So this quote from Dominion actually has the virtue of being a quote from Dominion, which is what the previous quote had claimed for itself as well. It's in the introduction to the book, which is available online, and this particular sentence has been quoted very widely online. I'm absolutely certain that that's where Stephen Woodford picked it up from. But it's a good summary of Tom's thesis. To live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions. Notice to live in a Western country. Um, the the subtitle of this book is The Making of the Western Mind. Uh that will be important as we proceed in the video.
SPEAKER_03But what concepts exactly? Well, human dignity, moral equality, compassion for the vulnerable, and the very idea of progress itself.
SPEAKER_10That in essence is what is revolutionary about Christianity, is that it shrines at the heart of the civilization of what becomes the West, the idea that there can be progress and that there should be change.
SPEAKER_03In Holland's telling, these values were revolutionary innovations of Christianity, not natural developments of human social evolution.
SPEAKER_11Yes, that is Tom Holland's thesis, but it's also the thesis of other atheists like uh Joseph Henrik, for instance, that that the one who invented the acronym weird, we in the West are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. We are weirdos in the West. And most of the world today, and certainly most of history going back, has not privileged the individual, does not conceive of a society as based on democratic principles in the same way that Westerners do, us weirdos. And really all you need to do to kind of demonstrate Tom Howen's thesis is to do a bit of comparative anthropology, and you recognize that around the world and down through history, the things that we take to be natural and obvious and universal simply aren't. The fact that we think that they are goes to show that there's been Christianization that's that's happened, that's made us think of weird Western values as somehow self-evident. And Joseph Henrik's book, The Weirdest People in the World, is a great study in how it has been Christianity, and in particular the Christian sexual ethic, the marriage and family program, as he calls it, that has led to the weird values that we nevertheless want to pass off as obvious and natural and universal. This thesis is shared by historians and philosophers and evolutionary biologists and psychologists, by Christians and Jews and secular people, and like it's just it's not controversial. I don't know why Stephen is treating it like it's controversial.
SPEAKER_03So I presume it's not too hard to see why Christian apologists have embraced Holland so enthusiastically. We quite like the truth, I guess. Here's a seemingly respected historian with no obvious religious agenda confirming their deeply held belief.
SPEAKER_11Where's the seemingly from? I mean, he is a genuinely respected historian. We probably won't have time to get to it, but later on in Stephen's video, the only other historian that he mentions is Richard Carrier, who is his historian of choice, and he judges Tom Holland by Richard Carrier, who is a real outlier when it comes to matters of faith. He he is a mythicist. He doesn't think that Jesus historically actually existed, which makes him an incredibly fringe historian. But Stephen goes to Richard Carrier to critique Tom Holland for only being a seeming historian. This is strange. This is this is backwards, if you ask me. But we continue.
SPEAKER_03Here's a seemingly respected historian with no obvious religious agenda confirming their deeply held belief.
SPEAKER_11Once again, that's a mischaracterization of Tom Holland's thesis. It's not that Christianity has brought about all that's good. Western civilization has been thoroughly Christianized and for better and for worse, and there's plenty of worse in Tom Holland's writing. We are the heirs of 20 centuries of Christianization. And this is a very Watson-all telling of Christian history, and you can only say that Tom Holland's thesis is that Christianity has given us everything good by not actually reading the book. This book would give you a year's worth of material, Stephen, if you wanted to make videos about how appalling Christians have behaved down through the centuries. This book is not about Christianity having given us all things good. It's given us everything is the thesis. Good and bad, but it's also given us the moral criteria by which we judge good and bad as well. That's the thesis. But the idea that the West has been distinctively Christianized should not be a controversial idea. Here Stephen does a good job of cutting together Tom Holland talking about some of the distinctive contributions of Christianity into what we think of as modern Western values.
SPEAKER_10I think the concept of science as it emerges in the 19th century, I think, is entirely exclusive to uh to Christian civilization. I think the idea that um human beings are created in the image of God, that is obviously something that Christians sh share with uh with Jews. But that is a uh um it it uh gives a degree of dignity to human beings that no other cultural tradition that I'm aware of even remotely approximates to.
SPEAKER_03And for many Christians who feel their faith is increasingly marginalized in secular society, Holland's thesis is a powerful vindication. See, they can say, even non-believers acknowledge that our most cherished values come from Christianity. Hence, Holland has been featured on countless Christian podcasts.
SPEAKER_11There we am.
SPEAKER_03That's my elbow. I've made it onto rationality rules. His ideas are taught in Christian schools and colleges and used to buttress apologetic arguments about Christianity's cultural importance. And why wouldn't they embrace him? In a world where academic historians often challenge religious narratives, Holland offers Christians something precious, intellectual validation from a seemingly neutral source.
SPEAKER_11Now in this video, Stephen Woodford cites zero historians on any errors that Tom Holland makes in his history. He only goes to Richard Carrier, who complains that Tom Holland never studied history at university. Literally, that is it. The one critique from any academic historian of any stripe whatsoever is from Richard Carrier, who takes some fairly fringe views. On matters relating to Christianity, and the only critique that Richard Carrier makes is that Tom Holland did not get his degrees in history.
SPEAKER_03As Richard Carrier, who actually does have a PhD in ancient history from Columbia University, put it with characteristic bluntness. Tom Holland never studied history at a tertiary level. Never. He has no formal studies in history to his credit. Now, this isn't about gatekeeping or claiming that only those with specific credentials can contribute to historical understanding. Definitely not. Many brilliant historians have emerged from outside traditional academic pathways. The issue is the profound disconnect between how Holland is presented as an elite historian delivering scholarly consensus and the reality. He's a gifted literary storyteller whose historical interpretations frequently diverge dramatically from mainstream scholarship.
SPEAKER_11Now maybe Stephen has a whole file of academic historians and all their critiques that they've brought against Dominion. That's not in this video. So I'm only going to go by this video, and there are literally zero academic critiques of Tom Holland in this video. There's just Stephen talking about what he doesn't like. And once again I ask, does rationality rule?
SPEAKER_03Now there's a lot more to say about Holland's background, and I will later. But for now, let's take a look at one of his most resonating arguments. An argument that can be effectively titled Everything Good is Christian.
SPEAKER_11That's not his argument. His argument is in the West, everyone has been shaped by Christianity more than they know, for better and for worse. That's a quite different thesis, and that will be important because I think Stephen mischaracterizing Tom on this will mean that he's going to aim at this straw man over here and completely miss what Tom Holland is actually saying.
SPEAKER_10What happened? What what what explains the the kind of evolution of thought that means that now, rather than praising the Spartans for chucking babies who may not measure up to their standards of citizenship down a ravine? We're now appalled by that. Why now do we go to such efforts to keep um young children when they're born maybe on life support? You know, what what what explains this vast process of change? I mean, that's just one example. I've come to the conclusion that essentially I am Christian. I am not classically Greek or Roman. I I am essentially Christian, and I think that you are, even though you might deny that. I think the whole of the society, Western society that we've grown up is. And I think essentially we are all goldfish, and the water in which we are swimming is Christian.
SPEAKER_03Let's pause and appreciate what's happening here. Holland is claiming that our moral revulsion to infanticide is specifically Christian. Not human, not evolutionary, not a product of increasing prosperity or social development. No, it's specifically Christian.
SPEAKER_11Well, yes, I don't think Tom Holland would object to the fact that economic conditions and social conditions make the practice of infanticide uh more and less likely among families and in certain circumstances. But the whole-scale society-wide revulsion at the idea of killing babies, that's what infanticide is, it's killing of unwanted babies, that society-wide censure on a practice that is pretty universal in the anthropological record, that censure, that society-wide censure together with legislation against it, that is a profoundly Christian thing. And if Stephen objects to that, he really just needs to do his history better. He, you know, he could he could read Dominion, he could read any history and see where was it that infanticide was first outlawed? Where was it that in law you were required to raise your offspring and not to expose infants, which is the ancient term for what you would do, taking unwanted children and either drowning them in rivers or leaving them on rubbish dumps where perhaps slave traders will pick them up or brothels will pick them up, or they will just die of exposure. That is a very, very common practice in the anthropological record. In the Stone Age, the estimate is that between 15 and 50% of infants were exposed in that kind of way. In the Roman world, a historian like Tacitus notes that there were a couple of Germanic tribes that don't actually practice exposure. It was remarkable to Tacitus that any tribes didn't do this thing that was incredibly common and usually targeted at girls and the disabled. And it is a matter of historical record that it's Christians who outlawed it. Constantine in 313, and then Valentinian I in 374 AD builds on Constantine's legislation to say that every parent is required to raise their own offspring and that the exposure of infants was made punishable by law. It is simply a matter of historical record that even Richard Carrier, your guy, credits to the Christians. He says that exposure was legal until Christians got sterner about it. That's how Richard Carrier describes it. Richard Carrier's article about exposure in the ancient world reads at times like an apology for it. He said that infanticide in those days was for non-viable children, the monstrously deformed who had no prospect of survival anyway, and it was morally expected. But Carrier says that is more like ethical euthanasia than brute infanticide. I don't know what the difference is between ethical euthanasia and brute infanticide. It seems like it's just the terminology. One person's brute infanticide might be another person's ethical euthanasia. But here's the point for now. Richard Carrier is the only historian that Stephen Woodford cites approvingly as an academic historian, and he himself says, before Christianity, there was infanticide, which Richard Carrier might like to call some kind of ethical euthanasia, and it was Christians who got sterner about it, and they are the ones who outlawed it. If Stephen is surprised by the claim that it was Christians that outlawed infanticide, that's not because the claim is surprising. That's because Stephen doesn't know the history. And once again we ask, does rationality rule?
SPEAKER_03Let's keep going. The implication is clear. Without Christianity, we'd still be tossing imperfect babies off cliffs. It's a bold claim, and one that requires extraordinary evidence.
SPEAKER_11I know that Michael Jones and Stephen Woodford have been going back and forth about this saying that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Um here's another example of where extraordinary needs to be defined. In what sense is it extraordinary to say that it's Christianity that outlawed infanticide? It might be extraordinary if your prior beliefs about Christianity is that Christianity is just the source of evil in this world. But for those shaped by the evidence, it's not an extraordinary claim at all. And you calling that claim extraordinary says nothing about the claim itself. It says something about what you're expecting from history and what you're expecting from Christianity. And again, I don't think rationality is ruling you here, Stephen.
SPEAKER_03So how does he back up this claim of Christianity, uniquely introducing empathy and human dignity?
SPEAKER_10Paul, he places at the heart of his message the idea that the Messiah has come, he was nailed to a cross and suffered death as as a slave, and yet this humiliating death has been experienced by Paul and by others like him as in a blinding flash of revelation that this is the beginning of a new covenant. There is no Greek or Jew, Paul says. There is no man or woman, there is no slave or free. And he founds this sense of this sublime sense of human dignity on the notion that all human beings are created in the image of God. So these are radical ideas. Um that the weak have a peculiar dignity, that all human beings are created equally in the image of God.
SPEAKER_03The implication here is startling. Holland is conveying that before Christianity, no one valued empathy or recognized human dignity.
SPEAKER_11He's really not saying that at all. Um and Stephen, you don't need to feel threatened by Tom Holland's thesis here. He's just given you a perfectly natural explanation for Christianity. Notice that he's saying that Saul of Tarsus was converted to Paul when he had an experience of the risen Jesus, and he doesn't say that Jesus rose again from the dead, but he is saying that Paul clearly went through some kind of transformation, and he came to see that the one who was crucified in weakness was now alive by the power of the Spirit, and that he was commanded to preach the weak Lord Jesus, who has now been vindicated as Lord of the world, and out goes Christianity from that proclamation. It's an explanation of Christianity that requires nothing supernatural. It's the kind of explanation for Christianity that Tim O'Neill is very happy to own as an atheist himself. You could own this explanation for Christianity too, Stephen. You don't need to feel threatened by the fact that it's this proclamation of Christ crucified and risen that's actually transformed the way we think about empathy. And Tom Holland is not saying there's no such thing as empathy in the pre-Christian world or in the non-Christian world, but he is saying that the making of the Western mind has been a profound experience of focusing on this particular story, the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. That has grounded the way that Christians have considered empathy and dignity and moral worth and the image of God and all those sorts of things. He's not denying that pre-Christian cultures have had ideas about empathy and compassion. He's not denying that non-Christian cultures can have such ideas, but he is saying that our appreciation for weakness, for human dignity and equality, they have come from a very specific story. Other stories are available. Other foundations for virtues in other cultures are very much available. But the making of the Western mind has been this story. And I don't see why that's threatening to an atheist. It's not threatening to the Tim O'Neills of this world. Why is it threatening to Stephen? But anyway, he so he mischaracterizes Tom Holland to be saying that only Christ crucified and risen gives you any reason to be compassionate. Which is such a straw man, it's unbelievable that he would think that Tom Holland is saying that. But nevertheless, Stephen continues.
SPEAKER_03In fact, he has to be saying this for this argument to land. But is it true?
SPEAKER_11Why does he say he has to be saying this? Like it's it that is not obvious to me at all. That he has to be saying that only Christ crucified and risen gives you any reason to be compassionate. I mean, it's true that the historical records says that it's Christianity that first outlawed infanticide, and that there's a uniqueness to the Christian story there. But neither Tom Holland nor Christians like me think that's the only grounds for being compassionate to anybody is the Christian story. We we we don't think that. But we do think that it is remarkable that this particular story has birthed such extraordinary leaps forward in terms of compassion and human inequality and human dignity and that that sort of thing. That it it might wake you up to the remarkable and enduring roots of compassion and equality and dignity that are found in the Christian story, but we we don't think that it's only found in the Christian story. And certainly Tom Holland doesn't think that it's only found in the Christian story. But anyway, um Stephen goes on.
SPEAKER_03Well, consider these inconvenient facts for Holland's thesis. The concept of universal compassion existed in Buddhism over 500 years before Christianity.
SPEAKER_11Can I introduce Stephen to um the subtitle of the book? I mean, he should he should at least read the cover of the book, okay? It's the making of the Western Mind. And and how much of the Western Mind has been made by Buddhism? Like as a percentage? Um as near 0% as makes no odds, I would say.
SPEAKER_03The Buddhist metabhana, loving, kindness meditation, explicitly cultivates universal compassion for all beings.
SPEAKER_11That's great, but you know, can I can I be a little bit cheeky at this point and just point out that looking to other cultures and other religions as exemplars of compassion is a profoundly Christian thing to do. Okay, so Stephen might be proving Tom Owen's thesis more than he knows. The great exemplar of compassion in the whole of the scriptures is what? Well, it's the Good Samaritan, isn't it? Jesus tells this story in Luke chapter 10 about the one who is compassion himself and he does not pass on by when he sees the need. And even though he's from a different religion, even though he's from a different nationality, he's not with the Bible people. And yet he is this paradigmatic case of compassion, and he and he expends himself in the service of this poor, unfortunate and lifts him up, and Jesus says, Go and do likewise. Go and go and do like this member of another religion. It's a profoundly Christian thing to do, to point to other religions and say, there are some great examples of compassion, aren't they? Go and do likewise. Okay, it's a profoundly Christian thing, actually, what Stephen has just done there. But then he mentions Seneca.
SPEAKER_03This is interesting. Stoic philosophers like Seneca advocate universal human dignity and compassion. Seneca wrote, Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.
SPEAKER_11Tom Holland writes um all about Seneca. Um he writes about Athens, he writes about Jerusalem before he ever gets to Galatia and starts talking about the preaching of the Apostle Paul and how it gets going. In fact, you know, he begins his book Five Centuries BC. He's very interested in the Zoroastrians, he's very interested in the Stoics. Uh he has no problem whatsoever with Seneca's quote there. But I would just add about Seneca, I mean, whatever he says about universal compassion, he still also believed in infanticide, which is interesting. Mad dogs we knock on the head, the fierce and savage ox we slay, unnatural progeny we destroy. We drown even children who at birth are weakly and abnormal, yet it is not anger but reason that separates the harmful from the sound. Whatever Seneca meant by universal compassion, included within that definition was infanticide, which is interesting. Remember, we're going to ask the question, is infanticide bad, actually, in a moment. But let's keep going with Stephen for a little bit.
SPEAKER_03The concept of reciprocity, treating others as you wish to be treated, appears in virtually every major ethical tradition, from Confucianism to ancient Egyptian ethics, long before Christianity. Tom doesn't deny that. Truth be told, when you remove the fluff and see the frame of Holland's argument, it's comically false.
SPEAKER_11If you think of a celebrated public intellectual like Tom Holland as as bringing a comically false uh argument to bear on the world, it it might be that this man who's won the Sunday Times History Book of the Year um has done so with a comically false thesis. That uh honestly, I mean, those things happen all the time. Sure. Another hypothesis is that Stephen Woodford really is mischaracterizing Tom Holland quite profoundly and gleefully taking his flamethrower to a straw man, all the while leaving untouched Tom Holland, who is not saying anything that remarkable and nothing very controversial. Who am I to believe? And do I think that rationality is ruling Stephen Woodford? Um, I I really don't.
SPEAKER_03Now, when confronted with these facts, his response is rather, shall we say, dismissive.
SPEAKER_01Do you have to look at Japan, South Asia, Central American civilizations to or do you not need to sort of look at it in terms of a kind of a laboratory testing of these ideas?
SPEAKER_11So Dan Snow on the History Hit Podcast uh asks Tom Holland that question after Tom has laid out his thesis a lot more fully than Stephen Woodford has allowed for here. For instance, Tom Holland on Dan Snow's podcast gets into secularism as another gift of medieval Christendom to the world, that secularism is one more thing, like compassion and universal human dignity. So too, secularism is one more thing that has come to us dressed in some very Christian garb. And the ways that we think of compassion as well as universal human dignity, as well as the secular, they all seem natural and obvious and universal to us, but that that's only because they've come to us in Christian garb. And the way we think of these concepts is very particularly Western because it's particularly Christian. Tom Holland has said all this before Dan Snow asks him that question. Hence, Tom Holland answers like this.
SPEAKER_10I think you have to um you have to test, for instance, the proposition that um a notion of the ciculum, a notion of what will become the secular, is distinctive to uh to Western Christendom. And that clearly seems to me the the case.
SPEAKER_03Notice what happened here. When confronted directly about non-Western moral traditions, examples that clearly challenge his claim of empathy and dignity being uniquely Christian, Holland swiftly retreated from his bold assertion to a much safer ground of secularism.
SPEAKER_11Stephen, that's just because of how you've edited the video. You've edited out the fact that he'd already spoken about secularism, and so of course returns to secularism as a test of the thesis that perhaps other non-Western nations might have developed parallel concepts to our concepts. And so, of course, Tom Holland is going to mention the secular because he had just mentioned the secular. This is not Tom Holland being slippery with his answers. This is you being slippery with the way that you've edited them. Tom Holland talks about the secular because he had been talking about the secular, he's not dodging.
SPEAKER_03But then you say this, Stephen. This is a classic Mott and Bailey fallacy, initially making a grand provocative claim. All empathy and dignity are Christian inventions to impress his audience, the Bailey. But the moment he's challenged, immediately falling back to a far less controversial position. Secularism emerged within the Western world, which he can defend more easily, the Mott. Right.
SPEAKER_11So Mott and Bailey is uh well, in in terms of castles, I always get this the wrong way around, but but but the Mott is sort of further in in the defensive lines of the castle, and the Bailey is out there. And the the Mott and Bailey fallacy is that you sort of you you kind of make this speculative comment out here that's much harder to defend, and then when that position is attacked, you just withdraw to the Mott. And the Mott and Bailey fallacy is to say, I was always saying this very defensible thing. I was never saying that weird, you know, controversial thing out there. So Stephen Woodford thinks that Tom Holland has been saying these outrageous things out there, and then when challenged, he just comes back to some more easily defensible positions. Whereas anybody watching that video in context would see that Tom Holland is answering the questions as asked, and he's not switching. So if Stephen Woodford thinks that Tom Holland is out here saying things that Tom Holland is not in fact saying, what is Stephen Woodford doing? He is strawmanning. He is taking his flamethrower to a straw man, and he seems to be enjoying it. But you've got to ask the question, is rationality ruling here? I don't think rationality is ruling at all. And really, that's that's not at the end of the day simply a dig at Stephen Woodford. I don't think rationality rules you or me. We'll see what rules us in just a moment, but let's keep going just for now. We're not gonna go through the whole video, we're just gonna go through this this little five-minute portion of it.
SPEAKER_03Fortunately, his host appears to sense the rhetorical sleight of hand, and so attempts once again to pull him back onto the original question. He's gonna go to something quite a bit later in the video, just so you know. But Holland definitely sidesteps it.
SPEAKER_01But don't we we take we borrow ideas of democracy from ancient Athens, we borrow ideas of our morality from a uh various source Christian and other sources in the w in the East and things.
SPEAKER_10Well, like what? I mean, what what what are the influences in the East that have have powerfully informed Western reality?
SPEAKER_01No, sorry, not Western morality, but Confucian, right? So in China. I don't think that Confucianism has had any influence on our.
SPEAKER_11It's really not a controversial statement to make. And fellow atheists can make it. In fact, fellow atheists make it all the time. Stephen, why can't you follow the evidence where the evidence leads? Well, because rationality does not rule you. But let's let's keep going.
SPEAKER_03Again, notice that Holland deflects the question entirely. The issue isn't whether Eastern philosophies introduced Western morality, though they did, particularly through trade and cultural exchange. No footnotes to this, just an intriguing painting. Interesting. The issue is whether empathy and human dignity are uniquely Christian concepts.
SPEAKER_11That's what you invented. That's what you invented. You you invented a Bailey, and you imagine that Tom Holland was camped out in the Bailey, and now you think you've caught him in a Mott and Bailey fallacy, whereas actually we've caught you strawmanning him. Okay?
SPEAKER_03That's that's all that's gone on here. Which they demonstrably are not. Now, perhaps the most revealing and problematic aspect of Holland's argument is the blatant double standards he applies to Christianity versus other cultural traditions. When Holland sees moral advancements occurring in the Spartan world, such as the end of practices like infanticide, he quickly and conveniently attributes these developments to Christianity.
SPEAKER_11No, he simply says that it is the Christian story that has shaped our understanding of how to treat the weak and the poor and the marginalized. It's the figure on the cross that has shaped the Western mind. And secondarily, it is interesting that it is people shaped by that story that were the ones who in fact ended infanticide, and in fact outlawed it as a practice. But anyway, let's keep going.
SPEAKER_03But when moral advancements like the abolition of slavery emerge in societies that have already been deeply Christian for over a millennium, he conveniently ignores the explicit secular values and philosophies that drove such radical change. And instead insists that these two must be credited to Christianity.
SPEAKER_11He conveniently ignores he could Stephen, you have conveniently ignored this book. There are lots of people who have embarked on Dominion and have thought that perhaps Tom Holland could have ignored a few more things. But actually he's pretty thorough in his telling of history. You are the one conveniently ignoring what he says about it all throughout, and he's well aware of different philosophical traditions in the abolitionist movements. But he does say, yes, it was a profoundly Christian movement. It was a profoundly Christian movement, and that's not just a Tom Hollandism. David Bryan Davis says in Slavery and Human Progress, religion was the central concern of all the British abolitionists. If you go across the Atlantic, you can ask Robert William Fogle, who in the rise and fall of American slavery said the new abolitionist movement was a crusade in several senses. It was a militant and uncompromising war against slavery. It was a holy war inspired by the deep religious convictions of its leaders, and although it did not seek recovery of holy land, it sought the immediate and complete recovery of the holy souls of the enslaved. You might not like how very Christian the abolitionists were, we'll disagree about that. You might dislike how long Christians took to abolish slavery, we could find agreement on that. But as a matter of historical records, those who ended slavery did so for Christian reasons. It's true that they won out against other Christians who were slaveholders. That is absolutely true. But it's a truth that is not conveniently ignored by this book, and I hope it's not conveniently ignored by the Christians that you're talking to. Nevertheless, can we just agree on the history that the history is that Christianity had that particular effect at that particular time? Because if we can't even acknowledge the historical facts, well, does rationality rule?
SPEAKER_10The conviction that slavery is wrong emerges from a very particular climate of radical Protestantism. It's first it's Quakers, then it's it's it's self-proclaimed evangelicals. And it's this very, very distinctive form of Protestantism that kind of just catches flame and ends up obliging Lord Castlere, against his better judgment, to go to the Congress of Vienna and to argue that slavery should be abolished.
SPEAKER_03Yet this conveniently ignores the fact that for over 1,800 years, Christian theologians like Augustine and Aquinas explicitly defended slavery and that the practice flourished unchallenged across Christendom.
SPEAKER_11I promise you that Tom Holland does not conveniently ignore anything in his book. And if you want a Wartson-all history of Christianity that will do your channel much good, there's much fodder for some anti-theism in the pages of this book. So don't conveniently ignore this because Tom Holland does not conveniently ignore the history of Christendom and slavery. But can we have a rational conversation in which historical facts are brought to bear? Because it is simply not true what you just said. You just said this, Stephen. That the practice flourished unchallenged across Christendom. Tell me you don't know about Christianity and slavery without telling me you don't know about Christianity and slavery. I'm not saying that Christians covered themselves in glory in any way, shape, or form, but it is simply not true to say that the practice continued unchallenged within Christendom. I highly recommend some further reading on this. When Christianity had dominion, slavery was just fine.
SPEAKER_03They only gave it up when the Enlightenment was on its way.
SPEAKER_11What? I mean, let's put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine that I said, uh, whatever developments within the ancient world about infanticide, they only happened because the coming of the Messiah was on its way. Does that work as an argument? And if if it doesn't work for me, I I don't think it works for you. Enlightenment. If we were waiting for the Enlightenment to end slavery, we would still be waiting. It was a Christian movement, okay? And it was endorsed by, and there were all sorts of other co-belligerents on the Enlightenment side of things that were using very Christianized post-Christian virtues like equality and liberty and human rights. But where did such things come from? That's a big question I've got for Stephen. Where where where did the idea of equality and liberty and human rights come from? Like where did the enlightenment come from? And I do get the idea with Stephen that he kind of thinks that there were dark ages and we were all kept shackled by religion until Immanuel Kant said, Let there be enlightenment, and there was enlightenment. It's a darkness to light kind of narrative. It's quite a creationist telling of history, isn't it? Tom Holland's telling of history is an entirely evolutionary telling of history from simple beginnings, and there's just been this very gradual process of Christianization, and here we are, and we're utterly continuous with what has come before. Stephen Woodford's telling of history is creationist. It's darkness, and then 300 years ago, some Europeans got it right, you know? Some old white guys in Europe decided that we have liberty and equality and fraternity, and bang, here comes the Enlightenment, and apparently the force of that creationist movement led to abolition. It's one telling of history. I just find it quite improbable. Um now what Stephen does next um is gonna blow your mind. Like, have a look. I mean, Jesus himself demands that slaves obey their masters. Have a look at that verse on the screen. Luke chapter 12, 47 to 48. Do you know where that's from? I'm gonna do a little bit of source criticism and guess that Stephen or somebody in his team Googled servant and had a look in the New Testament to try and find anything in the Gospels that mentions servant. And they discovered, you guessed it, a parable in which Jesus is is is told this is a story. He is narrating a story. And then did you hear what Stephen said over the top of it that Jesus is commanding slaves to obey their masters? Which is obviously what Paul does say in the New Testament. Like, here is this Greco-Roman reality of slavery, and here's what I'm going to tell to some slaves who happen to be a part of the church. And in the church, they have discovered freedom, they have discovered equality, they have discovered fraternity. And sorority, they have discovered liberation in the family of God. And in the family of God, there is no Lord except Christ, and we are all brothers and sisters. But as you return to the working world, you are in this very fallen state. You are in this very fallen world. And when Christians had absolutely no hope for overturning this universal called slavery, Paul says, make the best of it. But here, Stephen is putting onto Jesus the words of Paul and then trying to associate this parable where he's telling it, like, Jesus tells all sorts of parables about all sorts of injustices. And like, what is he trying to prove with this? It does rationality rule, or is there a comforting narrative that he's trying to tell?
SPEAKER_03It's all over the Bible. Just look at Leviticus. When the abolition movement finally emerged, it was profoundly shaped by secular enlightenment ideals. Tell me, tell me, give me some sources. Even if it's Richard Carrier, give me some sources.
SPEAKER_11Emphasizing individual liberty, equality, and human rights. Yeah, but where do those things come from? This book will tell you, it'll give you an evolutionary history, a very naturalistic interpretation of how these concepts came to be in the Western mind. You're giving us a creationist narrative of From Darkness to Light. Tom Holland is giving us the evolution of this idea. And liberty, equality, and human rights have come from from some profoundly Christian sources. And if you don't see that, well we'll first perhaps do some reading around it. But secondly, just think what is the more plausible story? Is it that some Europeans got it right about 300 years ago? Or did these ideas about liberty and equality and human rights come from somewhere? Tom Holland is telling the far more likely story, and he happens to, I think, be telling the far more historically accurate story.
SPEAKER_03Liberty, equality, and human rights, ideals that frequently stood in direct opposition to established Christian authorities and traditions. To put it plainly, Holland is playing tennis without the net.
SPEAKER_11Stephen Stephen is doing a reaction video without having read the book.
SPEAKER_03If Christianity receives automatic credit for moral advancements that happened 1,800 years after its founding, then why doesn't he credit similar advancements in non-Christian cultures? He does. He's just not interested in non-Christian cultures. He's interested in the making of the Western mind. Or acknowledge secular forces when they clearly drive progress within Christian contexts.
SPEAKER_11Now there's clearly been, in the last 300 years in particular, Christian and post-Christian influences that are still having their say in the West. But none of those post-Christian influences have erupted out of nothing, ex nihilo. And even if you want to remain an atheist all your days, surely it's worth figuring out where those ideas have come from and the intellectual genealogy that has spawned them. I don't think Tom Holland's thesis needs to be a threat to you, Stephen, and yet you're you're reacting to it like it is a threat. Why? Maybe that's because rationality does not rule us. Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_03I mean, put it this way: under this rubric, Christianity itself is merely a product of Judaism, and Judaism is merely a product of polytheistic Canaanite religion.
SPEAKER_11Polytheistic Canaanite religion. What's what's in this image of polytheistic Canaanite religion? It's it's child sacrifice, isn't it? We might return to Infanticide before we're done in this video. But yeah, it is a good point to make. Like if you are a thoroughgoing evolutionary thinker, then actually everything is kind of continuous with everything else. What would Tom Holland say to that? Well, I I think probably the way he begins and ends Dominion is by looking at the cross. And I think he sees um a level of discontinuity there with this profoundly strange doctrine of the God who is crucified as a slave to raise us up into his family. That that that is a profound kind of discontinuity, I think, um, that brings with it the Hebrew notions of humanity and God's image and all that sort of stuff. Um so I think he he tends to do it through the cross. I would tend to do it as a Christian in in different kinds of ways. It's a good question to ask, though, Stephen. It's a good question to ask. There is discontinuity. You can't simply be continuous in your thinking about these different cultures precisely because, well, look at that image on the screen. Child sacrifice is something that we think is ungodly now. Something happened to make us think that that is utterly ungodly. Tom Holland's thesis is that it's the cross, and myself, for Christian reasons, would say, uh, yeah, that's that's probably right. But let's keep going.
SPEAKER_03Do we now have to say that everything is in the light of Canaanite religion? Are you sure about that? Holland also consistently fails to address an obvious question. If Christianity inherently opposes practices like misogyny and slavery, then why did explicitly Christian societies not only practice but also defend these actions for millennia? Why did the teachings of Jesus and Paul not prevent Christians from one engaging in centuries of witch burning, two, conducting brutal inquisitions, three, persecuting Jews through pogroms and expulsions, four, launching violent crusades, five, maintaining strict patriarchal hierarchies. Oh and then six, practicing and rigorously defending chattel slavery. And the list goes on and on.
SPEAKER_11You're not wrong, Stephen. The list really does go on and on, and by the time you get to page 575 of this paperback edition of uh Dominion, you'll get to the index. And honestly, I mean just just the A's in the index would give you enough fodder for your anti-theistic videos. Um, I mean, just go for the Albergensian Crusade, for instance, or Apocalypse and the ways that apocalyptic teachers have kind of stirred up uh violence in the name of Jesus, or just go to anti-Semitism. Um, I learned so much about the egregious uh Christian history of anti-Semitism down through the years. Um, first through this book and then chasing up some of the uh bibliography in this book. It's a what's in all telling, Stephen, and I commend it to you, and uh I apologize if Christians are just wanting to do a whitewash of those sorts of things. I don't want to do a whitewash of those sorts of things. But none of those things disprove the thesis of Tom Holland.
SPEAKER_03Holland's typical responses to these criticisms, of course, is the same as every apologist. He insists that the things that he doesn't like are distortions or failures to embody true Christian values. Fo footnote that.
SPEAKER_11Where does Tom Holland ever just say that, oh, that's not true Christianity? Where does Tom Holland ever do that? Like, you've you've given us some really good clips to go by, and you're usually quite good with sources of stuff. So where does Tom Holland wave this stuff away as not truly Christian? Honestly, I can't think of anywhere that Tom remotely does anything at approximating that.
SPEAKER_03True Christianity, wouldn't you know, is the one we have right now. Not the Christianity of Aquinas. No, that was totally corrupt. Not the Christianity of the future, wherein future Hollands insists that veganism is somehow a product of Judeo-Christian values. No, it's Tom's Christianity. Right now. But this reasoning is transparently circular. Positive moral developments in Christian societies are always credited directly to Christianity, while negative actions, no matter how widespread or entrenched, are dismissed as unfortunate aberrations.
SPEAKER_11I can't think of any way that Tom Holland does that. Seriously. Um he clearly has some misgivings about the Christian impulse to bring everybody who is in darkness into the light of Christ and that sense of universalism that says to the Jews, you know, you gotta become Christians. And like he he sees some of the places that that leads and some of the anti-Semitism down through the ages. He sees what happens with the Albergensian Crusades and all sorts of other crusades that have happened in the name of bringing others into the light of this universal thing. Tom Holland clearly thinks that Christianity is a contingent fact of history. What he struggles to believe in is that this is the way that God wants for the entire world. And he has real misgivings about that universalizing trend within Christianity. And some of what he dislikes about humanists is that they've jettisoned the Christianity, but they're still universalizing, and they still think that other people need to be brought into the light of their own humanistic values. Tom points to lots of things uh within Christianity uh that might have had negative impacts on this world. I don't know who Stephen is critiquing here. Well, I can guess. He's probably critiquing Mike Jones, right?
SPEAKER_03He probably is. Anyway. It is tennis without the net. It's not scholarship, it's nonsense.
SPEAKER_11What he has just described as nonsense is his own caricature of some Tom Holland who's over there, and he's just flamethrowered this utter straw man over there and said that that's not scholarship. You're right. And your critiques are not scholarship either. Is rationality ruling here?
SPEAKER_03This selective attribution is not just misleading, it's intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty.
SPEAKER_11Says the guy who puts up a Wikipedia quote of the book trying to pretend that he's read. And nowhere do those words appear in the book that he's critiquing.
SPEAKER_03Now, there is, of course, for those that are interested, a much simpler explanation for the development of empathy and moral progress that doesn't require attributing everything to a specific religious tradition. Okay, what is it? Human evolution and social development. As Darwin himself noted in The Descent of Man, empathy and cooperation are naturally selected traits in social species.
SPEAKER_11So prosocial behavior is incentivized on a Darwinian frame, absolutely. But that in-group amity, you could call a compassion if you wanted to. But what's going to give you kind of an out-group amity rather than an out-group enmity? Darwin's not going to help you be the good Samaritan. He's going to help you be compassionate within your kin group. And I don't know whether Stephen believes in group selection or not, but but you know, perhaps as wide as your kin, perhaps as wide as your group, but he's not going to help you to be the good Samaritan. Where do we get that idea of compassion from?
SPEAKER_03Maybe he'll tell us. Humans evolved as deeply social creatures whose survival depended on group cooperation. Empathy isn't a Christian innovation. It's a human universal that evolved because it enhances our collective survival. Who's us though in that?
SPEAKER_11Is it is it just my kin? Is it just my group? Who's who's us? The Jesus thing says you are to love your neighbor even if your neighbor is an enemy, and therefore the extension of that in-group amity is meant to be to the very fringes of the human family. Darwin won't get you there. What will get you there? I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Let's let's have a look. The expansion of empathy beyond immediate kin and tribe, what moral philosopher Peter Singer calls the expanding circle, correlates strongly with material conditions and information access, not Christianity. As society becomes more prosperous, secure, and interconnected, moral concerns typically expand to include those previously excluded. This explains why moral progress often happens in parallel across different cultures facing similar material conditions, regardless of the dominant religious traditions.
SPEAKER_11So we can get the values that Christianity somewhat prizes through Darwin and through the expanding circle of compassion as taught by Peter Singer. Now Peter Singer actually disagrees with Stephen on a couple of really important points. First of all, Peter Singer notes what should be obvious to everybody, which is that Christianity has profoundly shaped our moral sensibilities in some very particular and distinctive ways. So here he is saying it's the religious view that says if you're human, you're special. That really is a relic of the idea that you're made in the image of God, or perhaps you have an immortal soul, or maybe the animals don't count so much because we read in Genesis that God gave us dominion over the animals. Our belief in human worth and value and the fact that you have that equal moral value because you're a human is a profoundly and distinctively Christian thing, derived from the Bible and going all the way back to Genesis. He goes on, rejecting religion ought to make us think more deeply about some of these questions, about the questions of what we owe to non-human animals who have been so degraded by the religious tradition. So it's very clear that the religious tradition has shaped us, it's shaped us in negative ways for Peter Singer. But because we are jettisoning Christianity, so we must jettison Christian morality, and we must prize non-human animals kind of the same way that we prize human animals. And some non-human animals have a heck of a lot of uh rational capacity, let's say, and they can have more rational capacity than many humans. So what does that mean for human value in a post-Christian frame? Peter Singer says this. On the other hand, we have this idea that we must keep human beings alive no matter what their condition. That's a hangover from Christianity. Once you get rid of Christianity, we should not have that hangover any longer. What does that mean? Just watch what Peter Singer says.
SPEAKER_00Because I don't think that humans are special just in virtue of being a member of the species Homo sapiens. I think that if you have humans who are, for example, uh severely damaged at birth, um, that it's not wrong to end their lives. So I think that in some cases uh human beings don't have a right to life uh because they're they don't have the possibility of having a worthwhile and meaningful life. And so of course I get flack from uh the conservative uh moralists and uh conservative Christians uh from that perspective.
SPEAKER_11Being human does not grant you an inherent human dignity. You don't have an inherent human dignity for Peter Singer. Those ideas are hangovers from Christianity. Once we jettison Christianity, then of course you can have ethical euthanasia or you might just call it brutal infanticide. And here is Peter Singer defending it on a talk show.
SPEAKER_02Let's come to what is easily the most controversial position you have defended: infanticide, the legitimacy of infanticide, the killing of recently born infants under certain circumstances. What are those circumstances?
SPEAKER_00Well, firstly, um what I'm saying is that I think that in some cases where infants are born with serious disabilities, the parents and doctors together should be able to choose that the child should not live. And having made that choice, they should be able to make sure that the child then dies swiftly and humanely. Um and I I put it that way for two reasons. Firstly, I'm not here to say, you know, this child should live and this child shouldn't. You might have two children with exactly the same disability, one with a family who wants to love and care for that child and do everything possible for it. Another with a family who says, look, we think this life is, you know, starting under such poor prospects that we really think it's better that the baby not live.
SPEAKER_11So the worth of the human is in the hands of the strong, the strong to determine whether they want such a child or not. And if they don't want such a child, then that child does not have value. There's no inherent worth and dignity to the human as such. It's only if they are wanted. That's Peter Singer's uh ethical position, and it might strike you as quite similar to Seneca's ancient position.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell And then maybe we'll have another child with better prospects. Um so I think it's in you know both of those families should be able to make their choices and should be supported by the community and the government with resources to assist the child if they decide that the child should live, or permitted to end the child's life humanely if they think it's better the child should not.
SPEAKER_02Up to a certain point in time.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think it's actually hard to draw a cutoff line. That is something where on which I've changed. Um uh twenty years or so ago I wrote a book in which my co author and I suggested a twenty-eight day cutoff, uh, which was based on uh an ancient Greek uh ritual that you performed twenty-eight days after birth, when you carried the baby around the the half of the home and you accepted the baby into Community, and after that, you could no longer expose the baby on the hillside as used to be done with disabled babies. Um so you know, we thought, well, maybe that's a suitable cutoff, and that is around the time I think when it's starting to get a bit late because there's usually more bonding between family and child. But um but I wouldn't say that you could have a rigid cutoff, really, I think.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, you don't want to catch feels from your child um that might lead you to keeping them. So Peter Singer, viewed from one point of view, is saying what Tom Holland says, in that our moral sensibilities about infantile size have been shaped by Christianity. It's just that Tom Holland, like most of us, think that's probably a good thing. Peter Singer thinks it's a bad thing, but they both agree that it's Christianity that has given us the sense of the inviolable worth and dignity of every single human being, no matter their capacities. And Singer says, outside of a Christian frame, that no longer makes sense. Let's just do what the Greeks did. Let's just do what the Romans, like Seneca, did. And Richard Carrier and Peter Singer might want to call it ethical euthanasia rather than straight infanticide, but we're just arguing over terms at that point. What seems obvious is that it's the Christian lenses that enable us to see infanticide as the obviously evil thing that it is. And that just leads me to ask, you, dear viewer, or you, Stephen, if you're watching, is infanticide evil or not? And I genuinely don't know how people will answer that question. Richard Carrier seems to be an apologist for um ethical euthanasia. I think it is a consistent post-Christian, anti-Christian position to take. But if there's any revulsion in any viewer of this video to what Peter Singer has just laid out, I think you can pull at that thread. Because I think it's Christianity that has given you that revulsion. And I think we can start to answer the question, what is it that rules? It's not rationality. It's actually, well, it's two things. There is a mythos and there is a morality that rules us far more than rationality does. Mythos and morality. The mythos is the story in which life makes sense, the frame that we put around all things in which to see things are right. The mythos, I'm not at that point saying whether the mythos is true or false. I think there's such a thing as true myth, but there is a grand narrative that frames our view of the world and which makes certain things good or bad in our appreciation, and that's where the mythos leads to the morality. And what I see in Stephen Woodford is his mythos is this creationist account of history in which for long ages the church kept us shackled and in the dark, and then somehow the enlightenment was on the way, and out of nothing, let there be enlightenment, and there was enlightenment. And all of a sudden, no thanks to Christianity. In fact, contra to Christianity, we sort of embarked on this entirely different morality and this entirely different view of the world. I think that's the mythos that Stephen Woodford roughly shares, and it leads to certain views of morality. Peter Singer is really helpful to us because Peter Singer says, okay, if you think we really have left Christianity behind, then the morality must follow, and it mustn't be a Christian morality, and we need to rid ourselves of the vestiges of this kind of Christian overhang. And Peter Singer urging us towards infanticide can be helpful in one way. My friend Sarah Irving Stonebreaker, she went to a Peter Singer lecture at Oxford many years ago. She heard him say these sorts of things, and she said she left those lectures with a profound sense of intellectual and moral vertigo. Because Peter Singer was saying, you know what's obvious when you get rid of Christianity, it's things like infanticide. And she was like, oh my goodness, I think he might be right. I think mythos and morality kind of go together. And if I'm going to reject that mythos, then I'm I might find myself in Peter Singer's world, and I don't think I want to be in Peter Singer's world. And she pulled at that thread, she pulled at the moral thread, and she found that actually the sensibilities that she had about equality and compassion and human value and the inherent worth of each child, that those were profoundly Christian things. She pulled on those things and she found her way to Christian faith. Tom Holland has been on a similar journey, which he said to me in that video that Stephen clipped from.
SPEAKER_10Well, I've said that that I've realized that all my um the the kind of the liberal assumptions I had uh uh r float on faith. That without faith they have no func you know, they they have no validity. So essentially I've I have lost my faith as uh you know as a as a liberal. I've lost my faith because I don't really believe in it. Um but in my gut I still do. I I I have no objective reason for thinking that anything that I thought is liberal is true. I d I d I d you know, I I don't believe that human rights objectively exist or or anything like that. I d I don't objectively think that there's anything in the arc of history that suggests that um the strong won't crush the the weak. Um that that powerful states won't enslave parts of the population that they want to enslave. I mean all of these things. I I you know just and so does that open up a kind of existential abyss? Kind of, but what it also does is I and I'm speaking uh entirely for myself here um is that because I now understand where my beliefs and values came from, that that rather than just drown completely beneath a kind of despair, um I can I can cling to stories. And I think that ultimately um the the the power of Christianity is expressed uh most potently through its stories, and those stories are not just in the New Testament, but but in what Christians call the Old Testament as well. And those stories don't have to be literally true. So the Exodus doesn't have to be literally true for the story itself, in my opinion, to be true. So I think that stories have such a power that you can surrender to them. And so essentially that's that's what I feel that I'm doing is that I have surrendered to the truth of of the stories and therefore of the the kind of the poetry and the mythology that they express, and I'm happy to identify myself with the truth of those stories and to see them as true in in a kind of a moral, a poetic, uh mythical sense. Um and I realize that the whole issue of of whether I think they know is are they literally true? Did Moses literally part of the Red Sea? I've just decided that I'm I'm not worrying about that. Um because I think I think the power of those stories is sufficiently great that I can say, well I'm gonna believe in them and and and and what what what what I've what I've kind of felt uh after four years of of fairly intensive immersion in Christian writings and studying Christian lives is that um essentially the beliefs that that that that I hold as a liberal are are when I try to to think well what the roots are, those the they seem anemic and uninteresting compared to the interest and the kind of the potency of of the Christian mythography that gave birth to them. Um and I'd really rather have the poetry and the power and the myth than the kind of the the the the the the pallid simulacrum, which is basically what I think I previously had.
SPEAKER_11And Tom Holland's not true whether the mythos is indeed fact or not. He says at Christmas and Easter he can kind of make himself believe, and at other times he doesn't so much believe, but that's the journey that he's on. I wonder where you are in all this. I wonder, Stephen Woodford, where are you in all this? Do you go with Peter Singer and say, let's get rid of the Christian mythos and the Christian morality? Do you want to cling on to the morality but without the mythos? Do you believe a different kind of mythos, a kind of a creationist narrative of history? And what about you if you're watching this video? Where do you think our morals have come from? And what do you think about the the Christian story about what it's all about? There's a way that you can discover the Christian story for yourself by going to 321course.com and you can investigate life according to Jesus. It's in eight sessions, you can binge it all in a couple of hours, or you can take your time over it. Go to 321cour.com, it's entirely free. This has been a longer video, but I hope you found it fruitful. And if you have, why don't you give the video a like and share it around the place? Do subscribe to us, tap that bell so we can see you on the next one. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_06So there we go. That was the first video we put out. And as I said, Stephen Woodford then unlisted, took down his original video within about 24 hours of us uh posting what you just heard. That was perhaps a very honourable thing to do in many ways. However, there are still many issues and challenges that have been made to what he said in that video that he has not responded to. He may do a kind of follow-up video. He has talked about that. Um, but Glenn goes into in this next part things he still needs to address. And then Glenn will open up about three things that we regret doing on our YouTube channel, or three things that we've been challenged on, and we're like, oh, actually, yeah, that's a really good point. We need to be careful about that. So it gets quite personal here, and it's just helpful to consider that if we do content which challenges what other people are saying, we do need to check ourselves. So, yeah, lots to consider in this next part. It's shorter than the first part, and uh, I will hand back to Glenn.
SPEAKER_11I have exposed an atheist YouTuber, but I have gotten things wrong, and I want to come clean. We have never had this kind of impact on YouTube before, and I'm rethinking everything. Are we being led ever more into sensationalism and away from integrity and measured arguments and sensible, humane discourse? But this question from God Logic and Alex.
SPEAKER_09Great, great source, Glenn. I'm well done.
SPEAKER_11Recently, Speak Life has had a couple of videos that have had well over half a million views, which for some channels is no big deal, but for us it's a massive deal. Uh, our subs have shot up. And last week we had a very surprising impact. I debunked somebody's debunking video, and that YouTuber then unlisted the video. Stephen Woodford attempted a takedown of Tom Holland, and now he has taken down his takedown. And in the comment section he said this: I need to address a significant error in this video. At 7 minutes 9 seconds, I present a quote that I incorrectly attribute to Holland's book Dominion. This quote is actually from the Wikipedia entry about the book, not from Dominion itself. While I provided my editing team with correct quotes from my research document, this Wikipedia quote was mistakenly used instead. I take full responsibility for this error. Proper fact-checking is ultimately my responsibility, regardless of who does the editing, I apologize for this mistake. Regarding the scope of this video, critics have pointed out that I give the impression I'm critiquing Holland's entire book, Dominion, comprehensively, and I acknowledge that the way I reference Holland's thesis and Holland's arguments throughout could reasonably lead viewers to believe I'm engaging with the book itself. To clarify, my video primarily draws from Holland's public interviews, podcast appearances, and how his arguments function in apologetics contexts. I focused on how he's become Christianity's favorite historian and how his public statements are used by apologists. While I believe these public statements reflect his core arguments, I acknowledge that I should have been clearer. My critique is specifically of the Holland phenomenon as it exists in public discourse and apologetic circles, not a comprehensive academic review of Dominion. I want to emphasize that Holland, like many apologists, presents his arguments very differently in his books and academic works compared to when addressing general audiences. Of course, Stephen cannot know that that is the case because he has not read the book. He cannot know that his book is different to his podcast performance because he has not read the book, although he never actually admits that he has not read the book here. Everybody knows he hasn't read the book, so I don't know why he doesn't just come out and say he hasn't read the book, but he goes on. The reason I focused on clips from his public conversations is because this is where he makes his bolder statements, his more controversial claims, the statements that warrant critical examination. And again, someone who's read the book can then assess that his public statements are different to what's in the book, but only somebody who's read the book can make that statement. This is a form of Mott and Bailey argumentation, and it's something I will emphasize more clearly in future videos. I appreciate those who have pointed out these issues and will be more careful about clearly defining the scope of my critiques in future videos. Thanks. So it sounds like Stephen Woodford might make another video on the subject of Tom Holland, and if that's the case, I just want to make two points here. Point number one, let me raise some things that actually need addressing in the video, and it goes way beyond having a Wikipedia quote show up as a Dominion quote. It goes way beyond that. But then the second thing I want to do is I want to come clean about our own channel and some mistakes that we've made on our channel, and at least three gaffes come to mind just in the last month, and I want to be open and honest about the kinds of mistakes that I think I make on YouTube so that this is not just a finger-pointing exercise. I have exposed an atheist YouTuber, um, but I have gotten things wrong and I want to come clean. Now, before I do that, uh are you subscribed to the channel? Uh it's been amazing in the last month. We've just seen so many floods of positive comments come into this channel, and probably 95% of them are from people who are not subscribed to the channel. And that's a little disappointing because there are so many people saying, I love your channel. He's like, Well, how about tapping that little button there? Um, have you done it yourself? Have you tapped the little button, maybe even tapped the bell? Uh, that would really help you to see our stuff and it will really help us uh to get seen in the algorithm. So please do subscribe. But what I want to do in the rest of this video is I want to point out some things that Stephen really still needs to address, and it goes way beyond the Wikipedia gaff. And then I want to talk about some gaffes that I have made and that I've made quite recently, and just be open and honest about those things. So, in my opinion, the first thing that Stephen needs to rethink is where his embarrassment is coming from. Because if his embarrassment is only coming from the fact that the mask slipped and the Wikipedia entry was revealed to be the true source of his research, that is embarrassment at the wrong thing. He might be kicking himself that he should have masked his Wikipedia research better than he had done. Um, but that would be to be uh embarrassed of the wrong thing. I can totally understand how a Wikipedia quote can end up in your notes. You're doing some research, you can copy and paste a paragraph that's interesting from Wikipedia, it goes into your Google Doc, and at some point in the editing process, it might end up in your final script, it might make its way onto a slide, and oops, out it goes into the world, you've hit publish, and all of a sudden you're misattributing Wikipedia as the book dominion. The whoopsie is a whoopsie, and whoopsies happen. It happens to us. We'll see that at the end of this video. But those kind of whoopsies are embarrassing, sure, but there are so many more concerning issues about Stephen's video. Top of the list is Stephen's unearned sense of superiority throughout. His sneering derision, his scoffticism. It's not skepticism, it's scoffticism. This whole video is a snark attack. And unfortunately, on his channel, so many of his videos are snark attacks. And I just want to play for you a selection of the ways in which Stephen Woodford, who has no credentials in history, who hasn't even read Dominion, here are his critiques of a public intellectual, a respected historian, an award-winning author. Here is how Stephen presents Tom Hollands.
SPEAKER_03Let's just have a look. He's a seemingly respected historian. When you remove the fluff and see the frame of Holland's argument, it's comically false. To put it plainly, Holland is playing tennis without the net. It's not scholarship, it's nonsense. Tom Holland has no formal training in historical methodology whatsoever. He's a gifted literary storyteller whose historical interpretations frequently diverge dramatically from mainstream scholarship. And then here are the tactics that Stephen accuses Tom Holland of. Get a load of this. When academic historians evaluate Holland's work, they consistently identify the same methodological approaches that we've already witnessed. First, cherry-picking evidence. Second, source critical weakness. Third, oversimplification. And fourth, neglecting parallel developments.
SPEAKER_11I tell you, these accusations of Tom Holland are really confessions of Stephen Woodford. Every single thing he accuses Tom Holland of is utterly in evidence in this video. It's really a case of tell me your accusations, I'll tell you your sins. That's what's going on here. And the thing is, Stephen provides not a single scholarly citation in any of this critique of Tom Holland's so-called scholarship. He does not provide any academic critique of Tom Holland. Perhaps he's got a whole file of it. None of it makes its way into the video. The only historian that Stephen Woodford cites is Richard Carrier, who is a Jesus mythicist who takes an incredibly fringe view on the question of Jesus and history. That is the only historian that Stephen Woodford cites, and the only thing that he cites Richard Carrier saying about Tom Holland is to complain about his credentials. Nothing about Tom Holland's thesis, nothing about Tom Holland's methods. In Stephen's whole video, there is no scholarly critique of Tom Holland's thesis. There is no scholarly critique of Tom Holland's methods. None. Zero. Nada. Maybe the Google doc that Stephen is working off doesn't just have Wikipedia. Maybe it has all sorts of scholarly articles that's pushback on Tom Holland. And there is pushback on Tom Holland. There is critical scholarship about Tom Holland and some of the things that he says. But none of it has made it into the video. So when Stephen says, it's not scholarship, it's nonsense. Stephen is going out on a limb here. He has no scholarly backup in saying that whatsoever. This is Stephen's opinion. This is to me far more concerning than the fact that a Wikipedia quote makes its way into his notes, makes its way into a slide, makes its way out into the video, and out it goes. This is far more concerning. There is an unearned superiority, there is a sneering division, there is scoffticism, this is just a snark attack. Something else that is more concerning than the Wikipedia quote is the way that Stephen has edited things at times. Like the comedy supercut of Mike Jones saying Tom Holland repeatedly when he goes on to Tim Pool.
SPEAKER_04Tom Holland's book, he's an atheist Dominion. Okay, so there was something moving within Christianity that Tom Holland talks about that did eventually lead to this new change in our ethics and our understanding of slavery. Christians did horrible things, but if we're going on what Tom Holland does in his his book Dominion, and that's why Tom Holland says Christianity was like a depth charge. It took a while for that charge to go off and start spreading. This is what I was talking about earlier with Tom Holland talks about these Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland.
SPEAKER_11Now, having watched that, how many times do you think that Mike Jones said the name Tom Holland when he went on to Tim Poole's podcast? If you just had Stevens edit to go by, how many times do you think he said it? In a two-hour podcast, Mike Jones mentioned the name Tom Holland five times. So where did all the other Tom Hollands come in? Well, he just repeated them. He cycled them around again. Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland. Now that's funny in a comedy video, I guess, but if your whole point is to set yourself up as a critic of a scholar, and you're playing tricks with the editing, I doesn't sit right with me. And by the way, when Mike Jones mentions Tom Holland on the Tim Poole podcast, it's it's not because Tom Holland is the only historian he knows. It's it's things like this.
SPEAKER_04And if you read historians on this, like, for example, there's a great book called Christianity and Human Rights in Introduction. Every chapter has its own author. They've uh argued that a lot of these values come out of the Christian tradition. Uh and you're getting the opinions of multiple scholars. You can also check out Samuel Moyne's book, Christian Human Rights, Tom Holland's book, He's an Atheist Dominion. That's his book, have argued that a lot of these ideas about Western civilization that we have come out of the Christian tradition for a reason.
SPEAKER_11So look, there are more books to put onto the to read pile, not just Tom Holland's Dominion, but but other books as well. And so I do think it was misleading. Um it might have been a joke, but I think it was misleading to uh put that super cut in in the way that it was. But you might just think, oh, that was just a bit of banter between him and Mike Jones, and there's a bit of comedy. But okay, let's go to the one substantive video that actually Stephen interacts with during his entire half hour critique. More than anything else, this is what Stephen Woodford is interacting with when he is critiquing. Peaking the Tom Holland thesis. And his editing here is, I think, the most misleading thing about the entire video.
SPEAKER_03Notice how Stephen presents things. When you remove the fluff and see the frame of Holland's argument, it's comically false. Now, when confronted with these facts, his response is rather, shall we say, dismissive.
SPEAKER_01Do you have to look at Japan, South Asia, Central American civilizations to or do you not need to sort of look at it in terms of a kind of a laboratory testing of of these of these ideas?
SPEAKER_10Well, I think I think you have to um you have to test, for instance, the proposition that um a notion of the circulum, a notion of what will become the secular is distinctive to uh to Western Christendom. And and that clearly seems to me that the case.
SPEAKER_03Notice what happened here. When confronted directly about non-Western moral traditions, examples that clearly challenge his claim of empathy and dignity being uniquely Christian, Holland swiftly retreated from his bold assertion to a much safer ground of secularism.
SPEAKER_11This is so slippery. This is so slippery. Stephen has jumped over a whole ten minutes in the interview in which Tom Holland has talked about secularism, about the ways in which medieval Christendom gifted this idea of the secular out to the world as one more distinctive contribution of Christianity in the way that it has shaped the West. Alongside empathy and compassion, the secular is something else that Christianity has brought to the West. Here is Tom saying it.
SPEAKER_10So that when in 410 uh Rome is sacked, and people who um lament the passing of the old ways say that because we have abandoned the old gods, therefore the gods have abandoned Rome. Probably the most influential of the Latin fathers, Augustine, um, says, no, uh, we have the city of man, and that is ephemeral. It's bubbles on the flow of time. And he gives a word to this cyculum, and the Latin word cyculum means the limit of living memory. So the flux. Everything comes and it goes and it changes, and all of Roman power is is is are merely winking bubbles on the flow of the ciculum. And he opposes to that the city of God, which is eternal and unchanging. And in the 11th century, this is weaponized by radicals who in an earlier generation would have been described as heretics. And so, through a convulsive process, they separate the church from the fabric of the state as the various kingdoms and and imperial entities that exist throughout the Latin West. That's an inordinately long answer to your question. So that in essence is what is revolutionary about Christianity is that it shrines at the heart of the civilization of what becomes the West, the idea that there can be progress and that there should be change.
SPEAKER_01Well, I guess my my obviously that's incredibly compelling. I guess my only thought is how much how much comparative history do you have to do you have to look at Japan, South Asia, Central American civilizations to or do you not need to sort of look at it in terms of a kind of a laboratory testing of of these of these ideas?
SPEAKER_10Well, I think I think you have to um you have to test, for instance, the proposition that um a notion of the circulum, a notion of what will become the secular is distinctive to uh to Western Christendom. And and that clearly seems to me the the case.
SPEAKER_11And on he goes, you get the idea Tom Holland has been talking about the secular prominently as one more gift that Christendom has given to the world. When asked whether Western values are also in parallel traditions in the East, Tom Holland accepts that challenge and he thinks to himself, right, well, has the secular developed in parallel ways in other cultures? And I'm not sure that it has. Whatever you think of that answer, Tom Holland is not dodging. He's not being slippery with his answer. Stephen Woodford is being very slippery with his editing. He is accusing Tom Holland of switching his answers when actually it's Stephen Woodford who's been switching his answers in the edit. I think that's much more concerning than the fact that a Wikipedia quote got passed off as a dominion quote. I think that's much more concerning. And it makes me ask again, does rationality rule? And obviously not. Rationalization rules. The thesis that the church is bad and we must oppose it, that is the the mythos by which Stephen Woodford lives. It shapes his morality and it explains the uncomfortability he feels when facts that are contra to that mythos actually challenge him. If Stephen Woodford makes a correction video, then sure he can correct the gaff about the Wikipedia quote, but I hope he also corrects the Mike Jones issue. I hope he definitely corrects this issue about the Dan Snow podcast and how he has edited that. I really hope he can just admit, no, I didn't read the book, and I kind of tried to make it look like I did. And even when I was challenged, have you read the book like a hundred different times and still haven't answered, I should have just admitted that I haven't read it. And I'm sorry, because the sneering condescension is entirely inappropriate when I haven't done my homework. I hope there's that kind of thing in Steven's follow-up video. But I promised you that I would come clean about the things that I've gotten wrong. And look, just in this last month, you can probably bring up some other stuff in the history of the channel. You might want to bring up more stuff. Maybe even in my critique of Steven's video, you can bring up stuff. That's what comments are for. Let me know. But uh some things have been weighing on me as things that I have gotten wrong in YouTube. And there's no point in just pointing the finger at Stephen. Look, here are three things that I'm embarrassed about, and I'm just gonna come clean because I don't want to fake competence. Okay. So here is correction number one. Kip Davis is a scholar who did a critique video about my video about the angel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_09Glenn Scribner, if you ever watch this. When it comes to reading the Hebrew Bible, we need to do it really carefully. And we can't just pretend that the right answers are in the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_11And he unearthed this really embarrassing moment for me. And I just want to like get it out there and just say, yep, Kip, it's a fair cop. You got me. In some senses, it's a little bit like the Wikipedia gaffe that Stephen made. In other senses, it's the photo negative of it. In this video, I'm speaking about the character of the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament and some of the ways that other Jewish scholars understood this character called the Angel of the Lord. And so I went to some of the Targums, which are these translations of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic, which also offer a little bit of commentary at the time and reveal some ways that later Hebrew believers understand about the text that they're speaking about. And so I start talking about the Jerusalem Targum, okay? And this'll get embarrassing. But never mind, I'm just gonna come clean. Here's what I say. The Targums do similar things like that throughout their translations of the Old Testament. And when they're translating from Hebrew into Aramaic, sometimes they just add the word word, the memra in Aramaic, the memrah of God, when they are clear that whoever this God is that the text is speaking.
SPEAKER_08Oh my goodness. Hang on. One in Messiah congregation. Are these messianics? Are they messiantics?
SPEAKER_09Do you think so? Nothing wrong with messianic beliefs.
SPEAKER_08I love the website that looks like it was made with GeoCities because people who are not qualified academically to discuss these texts have the worst website design. Random highlights, random changes of color. There's oh man. Woo! It's it's Geo Cities Angel Fire.
SPEAKER_09It really is. Listen, no, no shade, my guy. I know, I know we're just we're just all out here uh doing the best we can and and and trying to to to to find the best sources we can, but my god, uh you could do so much better. There's so much more available, credible resources out there than uh the one messiah one in messiah congregation.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, no, it's a fair cup, it's a fair cup. And this is why it's a little bit like um Steven's uh mistake, and in some ways it's the photonegative of it. Okay, so I I just before recording this video, I didn't need to go to the Targums. It's just something that I remembered from literally 15 years ago um in in Bible college, um, and literally like within within an hour I think of recording this, I go to I I just like Google don't don't the Targums talk about the memories of the Lord? And I remember because I wrote an essay about it back in in my college days, and and so I go and and you know, I kind of follow this one link to a one-in-messiah congregation thing. And that that was just in my notes um about the memorable of the Lord. Now, this is all true, like this is from um the Targum, although because this website misattributes it to the Targum, the Jerusalem Targums, it's actually the the the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan. Um in a sense, I copy their mistake about the attribution, but it's it's still true, and Dr. Kip Davis admits this this is a tagum, and it is interesting in terms of uh how different Hebrew believers uh understood the Old Testament, and yet it's embarrassing. But you know what's embarrassing about this is like that that slide was never meant to go up, it was just in my notes and it it made its way into the edit and out onto the screen. Um and it's it's obviously embarrassing because the source of what I'm saying is has is laid bare in that sense. And I misname it as the Jerusalem Targum when I should have said the the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan, and I call it BC when we can't be sure about that at all. It might be in the second or third century AD, but it is definitely from outside the Christian community. I think my point still stands that those who stand outside the Christian community can still read the Hebrew Bible and consider the angel of the Lord to be the word of the Lord, and that biblical believers outside the Christian community can simply read the Hebrew Bible and come to the conclusion that the word of the Lord is the angel of the Lord and the Angel of the Lord is the word of the Lord. These targums still help my case, but it's embarrassing that my research is just so obvious and out there on the screen. I think that's quite a bit different to doing some very basic research and then being very polished in terms of passing it off as the work of Dominion when it was actually Wikipedia, but it's embarrassing and it's a gaff and it's a fair cop. Thank you, Dr. Kip Davis, uh, for pointing this out. So that's that's one thing that's been embarrassing in the last month. There are two other things that have been really fascinating and embarrassing in the last month. Remember that I said there are two videos we've done recently that have gotten over half a million views. Both of them include things that I'm uneasy about. And I just want to lay them bare because I don't want you to think that we have done things on this channel and we're not aware of the ways in which the algorithm might be shaping us. One of them is a YouTube short that's on well over 600,000 views right now, and it's all about how God Logic asked Alex O'Connor a question when he was debating David Wood. And here's how I framed it, and I can't believe I said this, but I did. Alex O'Connor debated David Wood for two hours, but this question from God Logic skewered Alex. And you're saying, where was Jesus back then? Skewered. I really regret saying skewered. Um so you can imagine here I am in this studio, and you know, we're we're wanting to frame that video, and I can remember trying out a number of different intro lines to that video. You know, God Logic asked Alex O'Connor a question and he had him on the ropes or something. It was, you know. And we just tried a few different ones, and I I and I used skewered, and I think I used, you know, he skewered his argument or something, but but then one of the versions was, and he skewered Alex. And then that's the version that we used. And then it gets 600,000 views, and you're like, I really hope it didn't get so many views because of that word. Because I I don't know. I mean, maybe you think I'm being like overly prissy. Maybe you're just like, oh yeah, that's it's fine, you know. We wouldn't mind roasted or we wouldn't mind, you know, we talk about destroying and owning and all that kind of stuff. But I don't know, maybe maybe it's because I've got a very uh visual imagination that the idea of skewing, Alex is particularly unpleasant. Um but I I really wish I hadn't said that. And I really, really wish that it hadn't been so successful, leaving me with the question in my mind, was it successful because I used such a spicy word? And are we being trained by the algorithm to use ever more spicy language when we should be more measured and humane? So that's embarrassing thing number two, the word skewed. And then number three, the most viewed video we've ever had on this channel that's not a short, is John Lennox went on to Alex O'Connor and gave, I thought, this masterclass in how to answer the problem of evil if you've only got a few minutes. Now I'm subscribed to Alex on Substack, and so I had already seen the video. I knew exactly this clip that we were going to use as soon as he made it available on YouTube, and then he dropped it on YouTube quicker than I thought he was gonna drop it, and I came in late at night and we made the video and we sent it out very early, which I I hope that's one of the reasons why the video did well. But I also gave it the title Atheist YouTuber Wowed by Christian Professor on the Problem of Evil. And we did the YouTube thing of caps lock, and I'm not against putting caps lock on. I don't I don't mind that. That's the that's the language, but wowed was Alex really wowed.
SPEAKER_05You get problems that people have attacked for centuries and have got nowhere. And the way mathematicians react to that is that they say perhaps we're asking the wrong question.
SPEAKER_11And of course we've got thousands of comments on that video now, many of which are saying, you know, was Alex really wowed? Was he wowed? Is that exactly the right way of framing it? Is that clickbait? And are we being led ever more into sensationalism and and away from just integrity and measured arguments and sensible, humane discourse? Um, and that's a question that we've got. And I don't know what you think about this, but that's why I've come clean. So that we can start a dialogue about these kinds of things. As our channel is growing in impact and in influence, I want what we do to serve an audience rather than to be captured by an algorithm and by chasing after all the wrong things. So if you see us do that, then call us out. We're still gonna put words in caps lock, and we're still gonna make our thumbnails as good as we can possibly make them, and we're gonna make our YouTube videos look like YouTube videos. And one of the reasons why I want to raise this now is that we're going to do a little bit of a refresh of the branding of this channel. We're gonna put my name and my image into the channel artwork, let us know what you feel about that that channel artwork, but we feel it's important to humanize us as a channel because so often I'll show up in comments somewhere, and there's just this dirty great logo next to like my comment, and then I've got to say brackets, Glenn. As opposed to, you know, here's here's a face, um, here's a person with a name. Our channel is going to have my name on it. That does seem to be the trend in all YouTube. You know, modern wisdom is Chris Williamson and Cosmic Skeptic is Alex O'Connor. We are humans interacting with humans, and I think that's a good thing. Now we are absolutely not calling Speak Life Glenn Scrivener or anything of the sort. I would rather shred my eyelids in industrial machinery than to call Speak Life Glenn Scrivener Ministries or anything of the sort. Uh, but on YouTube, I think it's probably more personal to have my face and image. Let us know what you think. But it does raise the stakes for is pride going to be at play in this? Is ego and envy and jealousy and vainglory and image is that going to captivate us? Well, one way of fighting against that is to name where things might have gone wrong, to name where we feel uneasy about things, and just to negotiate this together. And that's why we love having a community with us. Um, please do let us know in the comments how you think we're doing in all these different ways. Please do like the video. Please do subscribe to us. We want a community together with us as we see all things through the lens of Jesus. That'll do for this video. We'll see you on the next one.
SPEAKER_06Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening to the Speak Life Podcast. Do subscribe on your podcast catcher of choice if you haven't done so already, and you'll be the first to know whenever we drop a new episode. But yeah, thanks for listening. We'll be back soon. God bless.