Okay, doubts allowed listeners.

We were back with part two last month.

We were talking on intelligent design and aspects of what we would think of as poor design, things to do with the Fall suffering, and we were going to get onto God lying, which will be in this episode.

So just to sort of give a little breakdown of what we did last month, just so we can carry on with this Part two.

Ed Welcome everyone.

So the Fifty Arguments for faithbook kind of launched us, which is quite heavy on intelligent design, and so they needed the chapter to deal with apparently suboptimal design, and that got us going, and there was a hint in there that the Fall was a out.

So it's saying we must remember that the world we're observing is not the natural, the original creation.

It is a corrupted version.

So this is like suggesting that it is our fault, not not how God originally designed it.

And we spent quite a long time discussed in the Fall as an explanation for natural suffering, and saw, for example, in the Old Testament, especially whenever there is natural suffering like a child's dying of a disease, or harvests failing or floods, it's always God who initiated the or signed off in the case of job the suffering.

So I left a little challenge for anyone who can think of a narrative in the Old Testament which doesn't fit that.

And we've just checked and we think that did anyone's come up with anything yet?

But that's a loud at gmail dot com is where to go.

So meanwhile, we're going to launch off from the understanding that you will agree with us that the Fall does fail as an explanation for natural suffering.

So then we need to sort of dismiss this it's all our fault, excuse and face squarely that God set it up this way, and so we must need to kind of uh see what the alternatives are, and then we're going to go with one of them.

So that that's where we're at now, right.

Good.

Are we going to Are we going to look at some?

Are we going to look at other?

I hope?

So, yes.

I want to do a little bit of background more because this is sort of if anyone kind of sees me in the Unbelievable Facebook group, I will often talk about children suffering, and I see that that is sharpening minds, and I'll explain why.

But Francis, if you I think about what I'm saying, sif as any comeback then in your mind, then I'm quite keen to hear it, so that this is how I personally take it.

Firstly, we've observed that the fate of about half of children until maybe one hundred and fifty years ago, certainly in the West, was that they would dive a disease or of some kind of illness, and more recently in places like Africa, they're kind of catching up.

And so it has been the case in some place in the world that it was still half of children.

But now I think we've we've moved on with aid and medical advances and all the rest health services to get it right down, and we're sort of used to it not being the case.

But it was for you know, ninety nine nine percent of the existence of humanity in the world, that that was the world that God had set up for us.

So I would kind of crank it up a bit almost, And I think it's valid to ask to a grieving mother, no, sorry to ask him an apologist, what explanation would you give to a mother who believes in a good and loving God, who has just lost her child to a disease.

So I think that's a valid question.

But I have heard it claim that that's being emotionally manipulative, and that's where it'd be nice to hear of second second opinion.

Well, I think emotions, the emotions we feel about evil in the world, can't be completely ruled out of the question, because the fact that we hate suffering is what drives us to look for an answer.

And what and why?

The fact that even theodosis theodists are to deal with the problem of suffering.

And I don't think there are that many apologists who are prepared to say it's simply not a problem at all.

I think everyone, as far as I can tell, recognizes that it is a problem, and it is a problem partly because of, you know, because we have emotions about these things.

If we didn't have emotions, then yeah, the whole issue wouldn't arise in the first place.

Yeah.

And God made us with emotions.

He didn't make y.

Yeah he did.

Oh, yes, you know, or didn't make a stones or you know, made of wood, yeah, wooden heart, as the Elvis Presley song has it.

So I don't know, I think that's kind of I think that's actually a cop out, So it's emotionally manipulative, you know, because it is valid to ask the question, and it's fair to say that a lot of Christians do not lose their faith.

A lot of theists of other stripes don't lose their faith their faith.

For instance, Oh, who was the chief Rabbi Jonathan?

I think it was Jonathan Sachs whose son and daughter in law died on their honey moon, you know, they and he did not.

That did not cause him to lose his faith in God, even though he does not believe in an afterlife.

He is an observant Jew who believes in God but does not believe in an afterlife, and yet he still retains his faith in God after this terrible loss, this tragic loss of two young lives that we're just starting out.

So I think it is fair to note that people, some people don't find it, who actually suffer the consequences of pain and evil in the world, don't themselves find it an insuperable problem to believe in God.

But nonetheless, I think the question is relevant.

Yeah, yeah, my mother in law lost lost her faith over the suffering of her child.

Did she Maggie, Maggie young brother, but then she came back again right before.

Yeah, that is.

That is interesting that you know there can be all these different ways of reacting.

Mm hmm.

So I mean I think you you've sort of picked out some very some the odices, do you want.

To Yes, yes, I probably.

I'm not sure you can give a comprehensive list of theodices, but in response to children in particular, I've picked out three the first typical theodices.

So free will the uh, And I don't think in this case it's relevant because we're talking about natural suffering with diseases, and so we're not saying diseases have rights and they should be free to kill children.

And that's that's why.

Well, if you are, I'd like to hear it all talk through.

But that's nothing I've ever heard.

And then another big one is this soul making theodosy, and there's different versions of it, but the idea is that suffering makes you better.

But in the case of children, they don't have the opportunity to benefit from being better from their improved soul if the disease has killed them.

And I think it's highly questionable as to whether suffering does make you better.

And yes, also I.

Mean for people who in a sense don't get the chance to suffer, is that not fair on them that they've slipped through life?

You know?

And I don't mean children, I mean people who just happen to, you know, live a good life.

I mean, is that somehow are they Is that unfair on them that they're going to end up not going to heaven because they they never had the chance to have a decent soul making experience, that they've got these sort of flabby, unformed souls.

And actually suffering often just the complete reverse exactly.

A mother who gets postnatal depression, which isn't a you know, and that's that's a natural thing.

The child will not in many cases not attached properly, and that's a lifelong damage to the soul.

If we're using that term, that will in term make them a poor parent and not good in relationships and all the other stuff.

Yes, abuse children turn into people who abuse their own children.

I don't mean, I don't necessarily mean sexual abuse.

I mean just general, you know, child children of bad parents become bad parents.

On the whole.

Yes, And I'm kind of take it a little step further by saying even when the original problem is due to something natural like expression, that applies as well.

Right, One thing I have to say on this is like like tack as different attack as I usually do.

I think we've covered this before, but have you noticed certain evangelicals and more fundamentalists and it just shows you the whole thing, really what's happening that there will gravitate to actually perhaps going back and redefining, say, what God's love is.

And so you get people and we've had this with slavery, so okay, So maybe slavery of a certain form is okay.

Chris Date says that now, and so there's suddenly so used to the challenge about say slavery as an example, and then there's a move back to, well, maybe we should just redefine and have an acceptable form of slavery.

Then we won't have so much push back on the tech.

And then the same with suffering.

It's like maybe God is okay with suffering, and he's quite sort of like he's a bit distant from it.

He's not the loving God that we think he should be.

And go back to that version of God, which then alleviates the problem of the allowance of suffering, and so have you have you not sensed anybody going those?

Yes?

Yes, I mean I've had quite a long discussion with someone who runs his own Facebook blog who is an apologist.

He used to be a member of the Unbelievable but he's left unbelievable now.

But he says, and I don't think this is particularly out, you know, out of the box approach.

I think quite a few apologists to say this that because God is that moral morality is about owing duties.

God doesn't o a duty to anyone, and therefore he can't be either moral or immoral.

It's entirely up to him if he wants to allow suffering.

He's under no duty to curtail it.

And yeah, you don't have to call him good and loving if you don't want to.

You could say, well, he's got a duty to do what he likes.

He hasn't got a duty to be good and lowing.

But he says he is good.

He says God is good, And I can't remember what they say about Well you would think so, wouldn't you.

But no, you know, I'm told that I'm redefining good that you know, that's the way the argument's gone that.

You know, you've got no definition of good.

The good is what everything tends towards.

Everything tends, you know, everything to fulfill its purpose must tend towards God.

Therefore, rather than.

Being, rather than being good, God is goodness itself.

He is that which defines goodness, in that He is that towards which we all must.

Sort of yes, well, you can't then call God good.

Well again, you say the existence is well is goodness itself.

He is goodness itself.

It's not that he is good in that he has a property of goodness in the same way that a person has, because he doesn't have to fulfill any function.

The thing is good to the extent it fulfills its function.

God is good in and of himself.

He doesn't have to fulfill an external function, whereas humans are good by meeting the function of fulfilling God's will and you know, sort of straining every nerve to be close to God.

I'm probably not representing that.

Well.

If you think God is good, however, he got to being good, either complying with some external standard or somehow within himself.

It's still a description that, if it applies, you'd expect certain behavior us.

To be the But yeah, but that's with it.

My point was, that's the challenge.

That's the challenge, because I've heard people.

So I was talking to one apologist, very intelligent, sort of Oxford kind of apologists, forget his name now, and a meeting I went to, and I've brought up the suffering of animals and sort of like the things like that that even Stephen Fry later went on to talk about, you know, like the worm in the eye coming out, and he says, don't be confused with moral morality and things that are just nasty or that we think are nasty.

So I think the implication was there that that everything that happens within the evolutionary thing is it's almost a redefinition is good.

I don't think it's not good.

It's like a bad process if it's so ultimately it's not what God.

In other words, it's really weird that what could be good is what we might think is not good.

But it's just a changing of the definition.

Getting quite close to skepticalism.

Now, yeah, that's right, So we could move on to that, move on to that.

Yeah, yeah, because this is where we're we've been trying to get to we're trying to kind of clear the road to say, look, God isn't off the hook, it's it's definitely his responsibility or the suffering.

We've seen how difficult it is to come up with natural explanations that sort of work in a simplistic way.

It's certainly uh, and we're left with skeptical theorism, which is to me playing the mystery card.

But I think we should be a little bit more respectful of it.

I certainly if I was a believer, that's where I'd be going.

And right, so do you want to we have this disgusted poor right back in episode?

But I think Francis you'd be a good place to give us a sort of summary of what it's all about, and then maybe after that we could saif it connections with this redefining goodness, there's any connection?

Yes, So skeptical theorism is a slightly unless you're sort of into all this theodicy stuff at first glances, a slightly misleading term because it makes you think these are theists who are actually skeptical, you know, who are coming from a skeptical, non theistic position, you know, the two It sounds a bit like an oxymoron, But in fact, what it means.

Is that.

Theists say that we cannot know what They are skeptical about their own powers, their own abilities to judge what is actually unnecessary suffering because their argument is that God has his reasons for whatever he does, and what may appear to us to be unnecessary suffering may actually be necessary because there is some greater purpose that God can see and we, from our limited human perspective cannot see.

So I have, you know, a lot of issues with this, but first one is what is necessary in the context of an omnipotent being.

What can God?

What is it that God is necessitated in doing?

Given that He's he can do anything he wants apart from something that's actually a logical contradictions, not a logical contradiction.

He could do he can do whatever you know, do, He could do anything, So why would suffering be necessary for God's From God's point of view?

What the usual response to this is from theists is that God wants us to have, wants us to do whatever we do by virtual of free will, and he wants us to I guess, do good by free will, and that can mean that we can do evil by free will as well.

You'll note that this this argument doesn't work quite so well with natural evils like cancer.

I mean, it works somewhat better.

With the moral evils like Auschwitz, you know where you say, well, you know the you know, the k Nots has had free will, and they exercise their free will, and they exercised it.

To do evil.

But that was it was just the price that the world has to pay for people having free will.

It's a bit more.

I thought.

The whole point of skeptical theism is that you don't you say, I don't have an explanation.

It might be free will, it might be anything.

I just don't know.

But there is some logically valid reason God has for this, which is which is beyond me to know to understand.

Perhaps that's a more radical form.

I suppose what I've understood it to mean, or the version I've versions I've come across, or that we don't know what the reason for the suffering is.

But but you know, one of the we don't We can't see how it all pans out, how how the suffering all pans out to create this greater good.

But we just know that it does create the greater good, and perhaps that's that's the same thing.

But certainly I have come across free will as as something that has come up in debates on skeptical theorism.

Right, well, I believe I have, but.

You know, I mean, obviously there can be a more radical basis, which is just to say there is some greater purpose that God is achieving and we don't we don't know what it is.

I mean don't.

Yeah, that's right.

It doesn't really matter.

Which of those you you go for.

I mean, I seem to remember that it's somewhat similar to Chris State's view on what is it on double Election that God creates some people who are going to go to hell for his own good purposes.

He creates and known they're going to go to hell, and we just accept, you know, there's a God's good purposes and there we are.

Yeah, I mean the versions of it, Yeah.

And one version is if we had full knowledge, we would then understand.

So if we could see all the implications of how child's death led on to something else that was then led on something else, and five hundred years later, you could see that the whole thing is so much better than you would be otherwise we would then understand.

So it's like a lack of knowledge version of it.

Yeah, and the other and the other way putting it, which I think is much more sensible, is to say throw in the towel and just say the whole thing is beyond my understanding.

It's it's just beyond our ken.

If the only only used in English I've ever heard kens, not not as a short for kenneth, is something beyond our ken.

Yes, yes, yeah, beyond our knowledge.

Yeah yeah, and it's not just knowledge, it's just so above us, but above our pay grade would be the modern way of saying it.

Yeah, I mean that's very much the approach used by William Lane Craig in his Sliding Doors analogy that you know, there are two that God has to have this complete you know, has this all knowledge so that what appears to be a bad thing turns out to be a good thing, and he compares it to you know, the alternate worlds in Sliding Doors, and unlike him, I'm not I'm not going to include a spoiler, but if you if you know, you know.

Yeah, I haven't seen it.

So I think my version of the completely beyond our ken fits with this, well, we don't understand understand what goodness is, which we were talking about a few minutes ago, whereas your version doesn't.

Yeah, I mean, whether you see it as as free will or just achieving achieving something through through suffering the I think the the sort of wider problem with that is that you are saying God uses a means to achieve an end, whereas an omnipotent being you would expect to be able to will the end without needing to will the means.

Because the means of what we need as limited beings, we need, we need tools to achieve our end, achieve our We con't stimply you know, when I had my new kitchen done, I couldn't simply will the new kitchen into existence.

I had to accept there were certain means which were you know, everything the house was in chaos for months, you know, and we didn't have a kitchen and couldn't you know, didn't have access to water downstairs, you know, I mean, anybody's building work done the house.

Well, it's a nightmare, but it's a means to achieve your end, and there's just no way of going direct to the end.

You have to go via the means.

But that's because you are not omnipotent.

Mm hmmm.

So that makes it even more difficult to grasp, but we we you have to anyway.

Yes, the best analogy, which I've heard a lot, is taking your toddler to the dentist.

Yes, that's a common that's a very common one.

You know, that is a very common one.

Or to have an injection, yes, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well people have all said that.

By the way, about the K Knight slaughters.

I've heard that argument about that using that same analogy.

I don't know if you've.

Heard that, yes, yes, yeah.

And the whole thing, if you step back, is like, yeah, child, once you a mystery card, you can yeah, you can do that.

You can.

You can spread it around quite a lot.

And this actually was mentioned.

We were saying this whole train of thought from the last episode with this person who tried to excuse what's apparently poor design.

He also kind of goes down this route as well, saying we don't know the purposes of the designer or the creator.

So if you don't understand the purpose of the designer, then you can't then say well that's good design or not.

So it's the same kind of idea we just sort of give up on trying to understand and that gets us out out of the bind.

But also with this skeptical theism, I just wanted to mention how odd it might come across to any listener, particularly sort of a theistic one, how that this was quite an alien thought to me.

I never heard of this way back when the church, because so much of the Church was about hearing from God and how God was always speaking to you and it was you that were wrong in not being able to sort of tune in and that you could know God, know his purposes, know his will, all this relationship stuff, only to turn around at the point where it gets tricky to say, well, we can't really know because of so suddenly we go to not knowing God as part of the reality of the Christian faith.

And so the simplistic, childlike question is like, hang away, you've just been telling me we can know and experience God, and no, that's the whole thing.

It's like, the non Christians don't know God.

We're going to show you that you can, and then we'll tell you can't.

Yes, when you get down to the deep, deep levels, we'll tell you actually you can't, but we'll hold that from you.

Yes, yeah, I mean.

The one of the words I saw this argument used was an apologist blog saying at the time of the crucifixion that it must have seemed like a terrible thing to the disciples, but then it turned out.

It was a great thing.

But then can you be skeptical about that?

You could say, oh, it might have seemed to turn out that it was a great thing.

But how do you know, Maybe everybody's being misled.

Maybe this whole Christian thing and the resurrection is a setup to mislead you all, and there's and you're being misled for the bend of it of something else.

You know, maybe you'll be all being misled for the benefit of you know, a future descendants of.

I don't know, of cock croaches.

Maybe they'll maybe they'll you know, in you know, one hundred million years time, maybe the cockroaches will get the benefit for some unforeseeable reason of the fact that people now thought that the resurrection happened and thought that it was a great thing.

Or maybe the inhabitants of the planet Zog are going to be the long term beneficiaries of this, you know, I mean you could just go anywhere with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah.

So when we cover this in episode three, we talked about some of the downsides of the of the approach.

It's like the kind of knock on implications once you and we have started talking about that already.

But what the main Well, the first one that's normally talked about, which we're not going to go into massive detail because it's it's we already discussed it, and that is, if you don't know what the good outcome is, you can't seek to make it happen, so you can't act morally.

And the big example, well, well the example we talked about is say you hear on the news about a toddler who drowns in a paddling pool in.

The park.

And you're absolutely shocked by it.

Then you think, well, God has his great, mysterious reasons to allow that to happen, so maybe it was actually good.

And then the next day you wander in the park and you see a toddler and the mother doesn't seem to be around draining in the paddling pool.

You think, oh, okay, well, normally I think of actually helping the toddler, but it's clear that God might have good purposes for allowing the toddler to drown, So I'm just going to walk past.

Yeah, and that's that's the rational.

It's obviously ridiculous, no one would do that, but that's the rational implication of this, of this philosophy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, And.

I remember Andrew you, I still remember you picking up on this.

I'm giving an alternative view.

Yeah, the film set so.

Yeah, yeah, the film set one just came to me as a sort of a wider context.

And that, funny enough, was came to my mind because I was thinking of an advert which I mentioned on TV about the Telegraph paper many many years ago, about thirty years ago.

But the film set one was like, I'm imagining a context.

It's a context, isn't it, which we're trying to argue with this argument.

So the context would be everything is set up as a film set, and the actors are in there, and this is child drowning, and it's all going.

The cameras are set up and everything.

But somebody just doing a dog walk just happens to walk by, sees the child struggling, and jumps in and rescues a child, only to have everyone saying.

What are you doing?

You sport, they'll set up with the program and it's like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize the wider concept going on here.

So that's and that was drawn from I don't know if you must have seen this years ago, the Telegraph had an ad I think it was Telegraph pretty sure.

It had a close up of a guy on a road and the camera goes to the side and you see this, I don't know, somebody is meant to be a sort of a negative person running towards you.

I think it was like a punk or something, all dressed up and charging this guy and you're thinking, oh my gosh.

And so that is one perspective.

Then it goes to the wide shot and it actually shows something on a crane falling by accident is going to come down and kill the guy, and the punk guy is running to push him out the way, and then then the thing from the crane hits the ground and it goes for the wider You for the objective perspective read the Telegraph.

It was a similar thing and you could see yeah, because you were thinking, oh, this guy's gonna mug him, and it was totally wrong when it went to the wide and that's what made me think of the film set.

So it's another good one to use, and that's what they're arguing.

They're arguing that principle.

Yes, yeah, so you're left in the dark.

You said, well, it feels for me like a good idea to rescue the toddal.

I might be completely messing up the film or God's purposes or whatever, but you do it anyway it makes me feel good or whatever you do.

You don't need to have how many morality left?

No, it just seems to be.

Yes, which is premised on cause and you know, reasonable effect, reasonable expectations about effect.

Anyway, Yes, three might have him on that.

I haven't actually really listened to it, so I couldn't tell.

Sure.

We are now wanting to concentrate on another particular implication of skeptical theism.

So I'm going to have a going through this train of thought.

And so imagine I'm a believer in a good and loving God, and I'm kind of amusing.

So I start by saying, my moral intuition is that a good and loving God is extremely unlikely to make a world where children frequently die diseases and for example, if someone set up a boarding school like that, I'd be morally outraged.

So this boarding school idea, it's not my idea, I've heard someone else talk about it, but it's a bit like God's a person setting up a school where if you turn up as a pupil, you're likely to be exposed to awful diseases.

They have kind of vaps of disease sitting about and if you need just one little scratch and you'll get infected.

And the whole thing is horrendous, and there's kind of knives, DAWs things, so you can really easily have accidents, and so the school board and the schoolhead have sort of set it up to be such a dangerous place and you could easily you know, you have a fifty percent chance of dying during your period at the school.

The person who set that school up would be considered morally just outrageously awful, And so our antition is intuition is strongly that if that's a setup, then it is morally reprehensible.

So that's a sort of simple analogy for Okay, So I look at the world and I see the world that God made, and it's sort of quite like this boarding school.

My moral intuition normally would be to be saying that that is just terrible.

So my musing goes on.

Now Hence I just believe that God does have good, loving reasons which are beyond my ken to understand, and thus my confidence that He is good and loving is not undermined.

So my moral intuition here is faulty.

So we've got to the point where we're thinking, Okay, our moral intuition about what's good and bad with how God set things up, it's just faulty.

That's that's the issue.

Now here's the here's the step.

I've heard it proposed that God may well have good reasons to light at us in his revelation or to be deceptful deceitful.

And that might be something like loving parents giving white lies to young children.

Mm, they're they're good, loving parents, but they're still lying for their children.

It might be Santa as a example.

But I prefer to sort of have something a little bit more substantial.

If the children had heard about some awful, gruesome rape, maybe evolving you know, someone really young, and they asked parents about it and really keen to get to the truth and understand you might well end up the parents forced being forced to lie to their children just to keep them protected from things that they're far too young to bully grasp and taken on board properly.

Or also, how about this example that.

A young child does something accidentally which causes the death of their even smaller sibling, but they didn't mean.

To do it.

But you know that the parents might then try and prevent the truth.

Yeah, going, you know, because it would be so traumatic for them to realize that their sibling had died through something that they did.

So you would, you know if and if necessarily you would lie.

I imagine.

Yeah.

Yeah, So this is just it's not like we know that God lies to us, but that it sounds like something that a good and loving person might well do.

Yeah, and but this this believers musing and say, but I just missed this because my moral intuition is that a good and loving God wouldn't do that.

But now, wouldn't lie, wouldn't I wouldn't lie?

Yes, yes, So I just have this situation.

That's that's the only thing I can think of to dismiss the idea that God might be lying to us, even if he's good.

But then you say, but hang on, lying is a much more mild than causing children to suffer and die.

And if my intuition was wrong on that, on the children dying, it clearly can't be trusted here either.

Yes, that's on the line, on the line.

Yeah, So that's one way of showing the link from the skeptical theorism and saying there's something I really don't understand here.

So well, if I don't understand God in this quite clear way of allowing children to die, I can't possibly understand him such that I could say, well, he mustn't be lying to us.

And what we're talking about here is God lying to us, particularly in revealed scripture.

And this is broad based.

It's not just the Bible.

It could be the Old Testament or the Jewish Bible, I should say, it could be the Book of Mormon, in the Koran, whatever it is.

That where you have a faith that's based on a good God and giving you a scriptural text to based things on, you're in no position to know whether that text contains God telling what he wants you to know or wants to believe, or if it's actually truth.

Yeah.

Yes, because.

As you say, they're looking at the Bible specifically, there are places where God seems to be economical with the truth.

Well, there's certainly that.

Yeah, or not interested in revealing it in the sense that if we even just go to sort of the very edges of say, the presentation in the Bible of the ancient cosmology, God's either not interested in presenting what is what we've discovered to be the case, It's quite happy to go along with the ancient wrong cosmology.

But it's in there even that's you know, interesting to play around with to say what you'd have to say, it's not so much God lying, but certainly not really forthcoming with a representation.

If he wants to represent how the universe kind of is working, he did it in an ancient cosmological way at the time, which would probably be fair for the time, but it still isn't truth.

It is a representation of understanding back in the day, you know.

So yeah, yeah, so you the believer's got a choice.

So basically they can go back and believe this full narrative that Adam and Eve sinned and that's and the world's concern head and a handbasket because of that, and that's why all these children are dying, in which case you can then cling on to the idea that, well, we do know what goodness means, and we know that a good God couldn't possibly lie, and therefore we have secure knowledge in our scriptures.

Or if you start to say, no, it's not the fool, it's this theodosy or that theodosy, then you've got to have a pretty robust theodissey to actually explain why all this is happening, and that has to work when you're talking to a grieving mother, and I've never come across that anything like that that works.

So then you have to go for the mystery.

But now you've got this knock on effect of the mystery that well, you don't understand God enough to dismiss the idea that he is lying in scripture.

Yes, and of course it's the obvious point.

I mean, it's probably needs saying, but it is fairly obvious that it's God claims of scripture he's not lying.

That doesn't really help very.

Much, no, I mean, yeah, I think for saying God can't lie, the apologies saw us rely on the you know, he can't do anything.

That's inherently against his own nature, and it's you know, he is truth.

Therefore he can't lie, which makes him less powerful than me because I can lie.

Well, okay, but so this God, who I mean, how do you know?

He is truth?

The the.

God of the Bibles.

We've talked about a lot, particularly the early part needing to with this open theater them.

He doesn't have all these high, high mighty qualities.

He's much more earthy, like a Greek god.

Yes, yeah, walks in the cool of the evening, and that sort of stuff is much more much more.

Like a physical yes yeah.

When the first comes around, he says, oh, God, I've got that wrong.

Let's try again.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's interesting that so that if you've got this sort of pure God is all truth, that's how he's defined, then I guess you've got a reason why he doesn't lie.

But then you then have to put on a lot of other qualities to say, well, God is actually my god, the God of the Bible, not the God of the Koran.

And so then he's as you start putting that on, he starts to lose some of these kind of ethereal, pure philosophy qualities, and he has to take on some of the actual qualities of the God who ordered the slaughter of the Amalekites and dished out the flood to kill and then everybody and all the rest of it.

Mhm okay.

So from your ether, I call it qual it body language.

From the kind of tone of voice, it feels like you're saying, we've we've said all we can say on this one, and we're going to now go back to the full narrative, having another look at it in a completely different way.

And this has been something Andrew you've been keen on.

Yeah, you mean the first what's what some people have said is the first lie in the Bible, or seemingly so in the Fall of Genesis two and three.

Yeah.

Now, just before that, of course, you've got verses in the Bible that, like in Numbers twenty three says that God is not a human being, that he should lie or immortal, that he should change his mind?

Has he promised and will he not do it?

Has he spoken?

And will he not fulfill it?

Which is interesting because even in the same book, I believe it says that God did change his mind on stuff.

So I think it must be a contextual thing, even this verse, because of literally the same writer seems to be saying he does change his mind.

There's more passages doing that than saying this.

But in the New Testament you've got in the Hope of Eternal Life that God, who never lies, promised before the ages began, and in Hebrews so that through unchangeable things in which is impossible for God would prove it is that God would prove false.

And in other versions it says impossible that God could lie.

So you've got sort of standard stuff there.

So it becomes an oddity when you get passages in the Bible that seem to show that God does use deception and does lie.

And the plane reading of the text without sort of just taking a grammatical sort of language understanding, would imply a contradiction to these verses right here, And so that means people are obviously going to do their best to use the verses I've just read as the grid verses to shoehorning anything else into it.

That would be my way I'm looking at it.

So the passage in question is, and somebody might be listening, what do you mean God lies in Genesis to Well, it's the plane reading basically, if you just gave it to anybody, I feel the plane reading is if you ask them this question when you read Genesis two and three, what who do you think is telling the truth the outcome?

What happened between what the serpent says and what God says, yah weh is happened?

And you'd read it and then ask that question, which of them seems to be telling you what actually happened?

And so you've got this story.

Well, I've had a look at that, yep, and my answer isn't the same as yours.

I don't think slightly different.

Yeah, they're both lying.

Oh right, okay, well that I could go with.

That depends if our mission is lying, and forms of emission can be lying, can't they.

So let's just read.

So most people know the context of this the garden, and so the gardener meeting anything else, And so you've got the serpent who comes along.

You've got the first particular key thing is the Lord God commanded the man you may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat, you shall die.

Very plain words there and then later on in Genesis three, there's a conversation with the serpent.

Now we've got to get past this conversation with a serpent as an idea anyway, But for sake of arguments, you know, a serpent can talk.

And then the serpent said, you shall not Did God say you shall not eat from any tree of the garden.

The woman said, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, or shall you touch it, or you shall die.

The serpent said to the woman, you will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and be like God, knowing good and evil.

Now, for the first part of this scenario, if we jump right to the end of Genesis three to twenty one, and after they've taken from it and they've found naked and everything, says the Lord God made garments of skin for his wife and clothe them Adam and his wife, And the Lord said, the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

Wow, exactly what the serpent said.

And he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take from the Tree of life and eat and live forever.

So there's a lot going on there.

But there's two parts to this, and this is where you can come in it.

Ye.

So the one is that God didn't say at the beginning, you may freely eat of the tree of the garden, but of the tree of good and evil you should not eat, for in the day you eat of it, you will know good and evil.

It doesn't say that they eat of it, you shall die, completely misses that.

The serpent comes up with the other scenario that actually, you won't die when you eat of it implication, but you will become like God, knowing good and evil.

And then the narrator admits that that's what God said, did happen and so wow, So that's the first part of the assumption to ed coming on there.

Okay, well, I know what you said, and I think what all I would add is that they were not going to die ever in the original setup because they had access to the Tree of Life, and at the end of the story they were banised from the garden and they and that made it inevitable that they would die eventually.

And so the lie isn't for in isn't the lies for in the day you eat of it.

Yes, it's like an immediate elocution or poison or something maybe poisons the idea with the tree.

It's not to do with your mortality will be finally, you know, because the whole narrative even later says you till dust, you know your work the earth, and then or dust.

It doesn't seem to be talking about that.

So both what I'm saying is just from this specific point, if we change Genesis to seventeen from for the in the day you eat of it, you shall die too.

But of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evils you shall not eat, for if you eat of it, you shall die.

That God is then telling the truth, and he's omitting maybe about the getting knowledge.

But if it's called if it is called the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil or something, then it's not that dishonest to him to withhold the information that you will get knowledge of good and evil if you eat of it.

Yeah, that doesn't seem to be a major emission.

Well, except for the fact that the serpent is implying the contrary to no, you won't die, you will become unless that's the sort of a lie within himself.

Yeah, you won't.

I'm saying that's a lie as well.

You are saying that he's.

Saying you will die.

So he's lying about not dying, and he's telling something that God didn't tell.

So yeah, you can work it.

You can.

You can think of these particular ways of how you're going to sort of see what is happening.

I tended to take it that it's very clear that in the days you'll not eat, you will die.

Is there's an opposite thing that actually happened.

They didn't, and therefore that because they didn't, serpent isn't sort of lying about that.

He's saying, you won't die, you become like God.

And I think at the end the implication is they didn't die on that day there and then, and this is where apologies come in with all kinds of things.

But the implication to me is that God was kind of hiding the truth from them.

The serpent kind of was revealing.

Well, you know, now, this kind of god talk is not unusual apparently from ancient Near Eastern kind of God talk.

You know, they were like this, They were crafty themselves, they were didn't they didn't want, you know, some of the I think Epic Gilgamesh they didn't want you know, they got people to dig, dig for them and work for them, and they didn't want them to become like them, you know.

So this isn't unusual to that concept of not wanting to become like the gods.

And maybe the Tower of Babel is simple a similar thing as well, throwing it all down because you're getting too close to wanting to be like God.

So this sort of fits that motive far better than trying to get out of it.

But but but what do you think people do with the in the day you shall die then trying to get wrong?

I give this a go on Facebook.

I think Francis saw it.

I did, and basically there were two responses.

One was it's a kind of spiritual death, and so they spiritually died immediately, and that is being worked out in the banishment from the garden, which I think might have happened immediately.

I can't remember.

The Yeah, it is sort of immediate.

Yeah, so in the day they eat of it, they've then out of the garden, don't have access to the Tree of life, and they have died already.

They're saying but in a spiritual way.

Which is something on the text.

Really, I think so, But it's imposing the New Testament on the text, which yes, So if you are a believer that this whole thing is somehow one coherent whole, which obviously bubble squadars don't, but certain inherrantists will think the whole thing is this perfect hole.

You can then get Ephesians out and say you were dead in your sins, for example, and then say well, that's that's what Genesis to and.

That's what's meaning.

But then you'll get the Young Earth creation system.

It's not a uniform belief by any means.

You'll get the Christian fallout between No, that's not what it is and that ken Ham would say, I think it's more like dying.

You shall die eventually.

It's a literal death.

The reason you have to go that way is because they need it to be consistently literal, because they're already arguing for twenty four hour days and all this literal stuff and the literal serpent, and so suddenly to go spiritual wouldn't be for some Young Earth creation This is not the way to go.

Yes, it kind of gives away the cause of literalism in which they're trying to hold to it every point, trying anyway.

And so I've heard that.

So the Christian answer would be split.

Do you know what the first that people noticed this, obviously in the very early Church and later Jewish thought, before the Church came about, for Christianity came about.

What do you think the first response in writing would have been to this problem.

I remember springing this up in Bible College when I brought it up in the class, right, I brought it up because no one brought it up the other one in writing.

One of them is in the Book of Jubilees, and one of them is in the early Church Fathers.

I think it's justin Martin or iron A.

It's one of those two.

Well, just the day doesn't mean day.

No, it's that.

So the writer of Jubilee, so sometime before the first century, I think, in that one said that Adam lived nine hundred and sixty nine years a day.

It was taking the day is that of the Lord is thousand years, thousand years as a day, sort of sort of free language in the New in the Old Testament and the New Testament, bringing that to a idea and going he died within the day of taking the fruit, i e.

The day of one thousand years and son sixty nine nicely.

So very much, very much the trump understanding of a day, you know, like day one war, he's going to end the war in Ukraine.

That's right, that's right, or you just paused the days or whatever.

And so that is the first thing.

And Justin Martin picked up or iron A, it's one of those two, picked up on that and was saying that the days that made an argument that the days of creation were one thousand years each, by the way, and then you had a thousand so within the final day, the sixth day, Adam died before it was completed.

Also all before the the seventh day, one of them.

And so that's how they did it, which is interesting because no one makes that argument today.

It's just like the way that early church fathers and other people sort of wrote the common and the common ways now are the spiritual death idea.

Those that want to try and keep literal and consistent suddenly not go spiritual all on.

You will do the dying, you shall die.

So basically mortality kicks in for certain at the time they ate which is odd with the serpent's response is going you should not surely die, basically implying from the first thing that when you eat, you will die, and the serpents seems to be saying, no, when you eat, you will get the you know, and what happened, they immediately got the knowing good and evil.

So why would you put off the death part for a thousand years.

It's kind of doesn't fit, doesn't work with the natural flow of the text.

I don't think at all.

But that the Hebrew has the word day in it, so you can't say it translates dyeing you will die.

Well, yes, because they'll bring up old Testament ones which talk about a day of judgment or you know that's coming, or the day, the day of salvation.

People use that for the non literal, so they go, when it's a day of salvation, well, it's all the time, you know, until the end, And so they'll do that rather than in the I think in the day basically means when, so it's either on at the moment or it's sort of shortly after.

It's when you eat, a bit like taking poison.

It's like the idea seems to be like if you eat of this, it's kind of going to be poisonous to you and you'll die, And therefore you wouldn't necessarily think that's the sign of your eventual death.

I think Genesis assumes mortality of animals, and this is where Young Earth creations are different.

They assume immortality of animals and humans.

Until this, I think it assumes animal mortality and human mortality, except if you're in the presence of that tree and you take from it, it kicks that can away, and then if you're removed from it, suddenly the mortality kicks back in again eventually, so that's a very different thing.

I think then you will die when you eat the fruit.

I think they're two different things.

One is an immediate penalty and the other is your mortality from ultimately not being of the tree of life.

But some people merge the two and try to get round it that way.

Which there's a reason why it doesn't say if you eat of it you'll die.

It says for in the day that you have to eat of it, you'll die.

So that there is Hebrew words there that.

Yes, why did he just say, and you eat of it you will eventually die?

Yeah, It could have been so much easier.

So they must mean something and it's not, and it can't mean just you'll dimensionally.

It must be even if the day has a slightly fluid me.

Yeah, it would have to be.

You'd have to say kicking within a week or two.

That wouldn't even work, because it would be you could equally say you'll eventually know good and evil down the line somewhere.

I don't.

I think there's a parallelism here.

So I think that it's just that the only real contenders are I mean, yeah, you might want to try the original one.

The nine hundred and sixty seven means it's within the day of a thousand years, but that would mean that the good and evil could be in a thousand years.

It just doesn't work.

So the spiritual death is only the real thing here.

And then you're starting to go out allegoricle straight away, and that's imposing on the actual flow of what you're reading in front of you.

Well, I have got another one, yeah on this passage, Yes on this yeah, yeah, And that is we've got this bloke in the group who loves to AI and give AI answers.

Oh yeah, anyway, so this AI answer came back, And of course what the AI is doing is scrolling through apologies websites and picking out what apologies say.

So, and the AI said, if you read one King's two thirty seven, there's this story where King Solomon tells somebody basically he's got to He's like on our slock house arrest or city arrest.

He has to stay in Jerusalem.

And Solomon tells this person on the day that you leave and a cross the Kidron Valley, you shall surely die.

And later in the narrative, the person has to do some family business and breaks it and then he gets Solomon gets him killed.

And so that is used as an analogy where the the word day can be put in it and it's all fine.

And it can and it can be later than that day that he.

Yes, it was.

It was he broke the rules and maybe they got found out.

So it feels like about a month maybe between when he yeah.

And that's the point I was making.

That's the one that people use if they're not going to go for spiritual death.

But even that it's dishonest.

So the AI is picking up on apologists telling porcupies.

Yes what you mean answer, which shows what the yes.

And I'm now good about to tell you that this this is dishonest answers.

And obviously AI isn't dying, but the materials it can only find material, can't it.

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So what is it dishonest?

Because if you actually look up the passage, it says for you will know for certain that you will assuredly die.

It says you will know for certain that you will surely die.

So so that's what you know on the day that you cross the Kidron Valley.

It's not that you die, that you know for certain.

Yeah, that's what we need in knowledge, Yeah, knowledge, knowledge, And I checked it, checked it, and that that word is there in the Hebrew verse.

It's the word to know is yadah, and it means to know, to perceive, to understand, to acknowledge, and that word is in there in the verse.

So just put that.

So what they're doing is without warrant whatsoever, they are literally going to tell, as an apologist anybody out there.

They're going to basically say, this is what verse seventeen in Genesis two means.

It means, but of the tree of knowledge and good and evils, you'll not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you will know for certain that you will surely die.

Okay, that's what they're trying to make this mean.

From what you've read.

Yeah, the Hebrew is saying no, no, no, no.

The Genesis who doesn't say that, It says, okay, right, no, Genesis, who says, for in the day you eat of it, you should surely die.

But going through the apologist mill and coming out the other side as a sentence, they will tell the flock what it basically means is for in the day that you eat, you shall know certainly that you you know for certain that you will.

They're not saying that they're quietly dropping this whole.

No, it's on the day.

They're saying.

Look, there's other verse in the Bible where on the day of such and such something will happen, and it doesn't happen, and that's not considered weird.

And oh, I thought you were saying reading that passage, reading the Apologist passage, was that on the day that in that particular passage in the Old Testament, on the day that this happens, you will know certainly that you shall die, Which isn't knowing that you would because you just said it doesn't either.

That's what the Hebrew says, but the apologist misreporting it.

Okay, on the day you eat across sorry, on the day you leave and cross the Kidron Valley.

You see.

So you're saying that they're seeing it okay, because I would say that, I would say that that what I would have done as an apologist is take what the Hebrew says and try and push that Hebrew back into this just saying that in Genesis too, they missed out that, but that's what they mean.

Do you see what I'm saying that hidden behind in the day you eat of it is really the knowledge, Yeah, the knowledge that you would Oh no, I've heard I've heard similar things that that that it's not just dying you should I I've heard people say that they you know, kind of knew that they would die later or something, and that's you know.

I just like the idea that that they're trying to protect God from lying from lying.

Yeah, that's what they're doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

But it's very interesting that passage, and I know that I think who's the guy on the apologist inspiring philosophy goes that route?

For this, Oh okay, yeah, rather.

Than spiritual death from my memory, so he uses some verse that you just read.

Yeah, So the King James Bible that translates passage as for it shall be that on the day thou goest out and passest over the book Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou should surely die.

So in that passage it doesn't say on that day you will die.

But they are misrepresenting that passage as saying on that day you will die when it doesn't say that, because they want to make it sound like what is said in Genesis, in the Genesis passages.

But so what they're what they're doing is trying to read into Genesis something that is there in Kings, that is genuinely there in Kings, but they're trying to cut it out in Kings to try and make the two passages read comparably.

When they're not.

They're they're quite different.

One says on that day you'll die, that's the Genesis passage, and the King's passage says something different, says on that day you will know that you will die, which is saying a different thing.

Yes, And all I'm saying is that there are some apologies as you seeing ed, who are trying to cut it out.

All I'm saying is that there are apologists who use that to say this is the real understanding of Genesis too.

It just doesn't make right.

So you've come across this one key I've come across.

I've come across people to say that this it's certain that you will die, yes, and that's what that's what Genesis two is meant to be getting at.

And that passage you just quoted is the more explicit understanding of that.

Then there's the people that obviously that you've read that cut it out and.

Tried to read I read it, oh, I read it.

Okay from the day you eat so I think people.

But basically it's back to normal with everything.

Everyone will try every avenue.

Yes.

So rather than saying it looks like God, you know, it was either rash or didn't bring about it or changed his mind, open theist would have a field day on this one and say, yeah, God changed his mind decided not to you know, so I've heard that before, by the way, that an open theist would would not have a problem with this because God changed his mind about the penalty out of compassion or something you know, and so didn't bring it.

So that's another spin to say that God, and that's a valid one.

If you want to go the open theists route where God can change his mind, not like that passage that says he can't change his mind, then you could say that God suddenly had another plan and didn't execute it, and the story then makes sense because otherwise, if he did die at the beginning, can you imagine there's no story.

But I don't think this is the sort of go to a sage if you were going to say, well, look, there's examples in the Bible of God being deceitful.

Yeah, it's not the first one people think of.

It's more like I've just told people about it there and got them to read it and it's amazing and people go, oh my gosh, it does look like the serpent's telling the truth.

Yeah, it's the way it comes across.

And then you go from there to see what you're going to say.

But at least it's a reading that you start with, and most people haven't read it like that because they've either been taught it or just taught it some other way.

So the other passage you mean the main one being like Macaiah.

Well, the main adjustment one is King Ahab.

Isn't it king?

Yea?

So do you want to do we have time for that?

Yeah?

We do.

Yeah, we don't want to.

Do you want?

Do you want to narrate the essence of that one of you?

Or I can?

I could read it if you want.

Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, or read in particular.

Yeah, this is It comes in the book of King somewhere, and then it comes in chronicles.

Yes, so I'm going to read two chronicles eighteen.

The Lord said, who will entice?

I have the King of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramos Gilead.

One said one thing, and another said another.

Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, I will entice him.

And the Lord said to him, by what means?

And he said, I will go forth and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.

And he said, you are to entice him, you shall succeed.

Go forth and do so.

Now.

Therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these your prophets.

The Lord has spoken evil concerning you.

So that last sentence was the prophet who is in dispute with the sort of mainstream lackey prophets with King Ahab.

And the bigger context is that when the King of Israel and Jostraphat came together against the enemy, as it were, the King of Israel wanted to know, well, actually, Joshavat said, you need to find out an inquirer of the Lord.

So they're inquiring of the Lord, and four hundred prophets say that they will win this war and come out victorious.

But then I think it was Judge Feeders then saying well, a lesson you need to is there anyone else?

And then the King Ahab goes, well, this is the other guy, but he never prophesies anything good, which was a bit of a hint of a giveaway, isn't it.

It's like it's like you can see it from a secular point of view.

You just want these prophets to say what you want to hear, you know, And of course it's explicit I don't like this guy because he always says something I don't want to hear.

And so basically that prophet is then asked, my caia, what's going to happen when we go to battle and he goes, well, I can only tell the truth basically, and he goes, it's not going to fare well for you.

And It's like, oh my gosh, you know, so what about the four hundred prophets?

So the question is what happens to the four hundred prophets?

What they said he was going to succeed.

Well, the interpretation isn't somebody at this particular stage in Israel's history to say, oh, they're just speaking in their imaginations, which ironically is what happens when you get to Jeremiah.

Oh those prophets are just speaking off their heads.

Doesn't happen in this period?

What happens?

And I think Randall Helms is a literary scholar.

He said in the book I've Got on this when he's touching into this, was that at this stage all prophecy had to be from God.

You couldn't have imagination gone wild and then it was God or not.

You had all prophecy came from God.

How do you deal with that when four hundred prophets are going against Macaiah.

Well, the idea is, well, of course it is from God, but God he sent a deceiving spirit to so those prophets were telling the truth those four hundred in the sense that, sorry, those prophets were telling what God wanted, which was a lie.

But that is the prophets themselves thought this, you know, in this story, was what they needed to say, if you know what I mean.

So how do we how do we know in the story that the prophet my High or whatever he called was telling the truth.

Well, there's a hint in it.

Further down in the story.

He was basically saying, I think King Ahab doesn't like what he's saying, so he puts him on rations and food and everything, and he goes and I'll probably alleviate that when I come back all safe.

Of course, he doesn't come back safe.

He actually probably believes it because the King Ahab dresses up and hides as a normal soldier and lets Johofsvacco as the main king.

And so, but somebody's arrow just happens to go shooting up and shoot this sort of normal soldier disguised as King Ahab k emphasis as a soldier and dies, and so therefore Michel was right.

So in one sense, the outcome shows that Michael was right.

But in order to deal with the prophets who were saying it would all succeed.

This is where the lying spirit comes up.

But here's something I didn't know until my recent research was that the lying spirit or the spirit is in fact in Hebrew.

This is a bit like what you said about the other passage in Hebrew.

It's the spirit, it actually is.

I don't know.

I think it's the her her I think it is which is the So the phrase literally is the spirit?

Now the spirit even down further in this very passage.

At the end of this passage, one of the other I think people related to the prophets says what did he say?

He says, oh, yeah, So this other guy slaps Machaya for basically saying that the opposite to the other guy, and he goes, which way did the Spirit of the Law's Lord pass from me to speak to you?

So the idea is that the Spirit of the Lord was speaking through Machaya in this very passage.

So in the actual when it says a spirit or a certain spirit, apparently that's leniency on translation, probably pushed in certain ways to get away from the idea that God is absolutely lying himself, and can probably shift the blame to some sort of wondering spirit in the Council of God and say it wasn't me, It was him, you know, and it wasn't like that song, it wasn't me.

And so you can't do that because any way you couldn't do that.

As you've said, God is saying go and do do as you've said.

Yeah, so it doesn't even work there.

But the fact that it could be referring very clearly to the Spirit, which in the Old Testament is simply the Spirit of God.

Not necessarily in a trinitarian sense, but basically the spirit is doing is God's spirit.

It's not just any old spirit.

So the spirit stands up.

No translations actually say that.

They say us spirit or a certain spirit, which is really fascinating to me.

But evidently it is the Spirit.

So that adds another thing to this that makes it sort of shifts it sort of even harder to deal with as a blatant lie that God is using deception at this form of the story.

So yeah, so that's what I'd have to say about this.

Well, it's clearly an ager and a better using another agents to carry out his own I mean exactly, he's just he's just guilty you know, he's just guilty.

It's like something a soldier speaks to people.

Yeah, a secondary party, yes, is as guilty as the person actually goes and does it.

Yeah, it's just interesting how the actual conversation comes about who will go and who willyone got any ideas?

Basically that was quite and then and then the spirit, and then it does.

Apparently in the Hebrew, the spirit comes forward and says, I know, I'll go and be a line.

Good point.

It's almost as if God is like needing some some ideas in the way in the way it's put goes.

You know, I didn't think about that.

Yes, go ahead and do that.

That's good.

But like the Satan or the whatever in job, I'm going to go and do this.

Okay, go do like go and do as you've said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, God signs it off in both cases.

Yeah, signs himself off even so.

Yeah, So I'd like to quickly mention the New Testament one that that is often referred to, and then talk about it just quickly for getting a bit short time.

Talk about the pushback.

So in two Thessalonians, chapter two, verse eleven, it says, therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion to make them believe what is false.

Right, So again there's a slight kind of not direct it's God sending a delusion and the delusion does the belis as a delusion of spirit or is it just a way of saying it?

And so again, if God can't lie, there's just something about God not lying, then he is clearly breaking that in this case, even in the New Testament, that he is causing signing offer himself people to believe what is false.

And in both cases, and the typical apologist pushback is, well, they were wanting to believe the liar a ready, or they were already resisting God, which is certainly the case in the to Thessnonian's passage as well.

So it's only people God doesn't like that he lies to, but people he likes.

We can now be confident that he tells the truth.

Yeah, I don't know what you make of that.

Well, I mean it's very difficult anyway, depending on which theologies in christianitisy you're going to come from.

I mean, if you're going to classical original Sin and Protestantism and you're kind of why do you even need this?

You know, if you've got original sin and God needs to wake you up, particularly if you're a Calvinist.

You're dead in sins anyway, what of course you would be doing all this stuff by nature?

You are, by nature children of wrath and things like that, you know, And and so if you're going to go that more calvinistic way of sin, you're already there.

So why would you know, you know, why would you need to give a delusion on top of that?

Isn't that a delusion enough?

And and so that's one problem depending on the your theology.

So I don't know if you've thought about that with this.

So it's like, you know, only people that wouldn't be so that they would have potentials to sort of come towards God would he hand out you over to a delusion.

So it's kind of I find that quite problematic.

But yeah, I just think, yeah, for me, if I have a moral problem with lying, i'll have a moral problem with lying, and lying to people I don't like isn't acceptable in the same way that lying people I do like isn't acceptable.

That I don't see.

Once you've broken the barrier that God is capable of lying, then whether it's the people he likes or not doesn't seem to be relevant.

That's my push back.

I mean, it's certainly people can sort of get out of this by saying you're handing you over to the delusion and sort of gets away.

Yes, but he's not.

But he's actively sending a delusion.

So that they believe the lie that they've so called wanted to believe.

That's the that's the more arminion way of looking at it.

But even so that isn't really what the question is is why do you get to that point to do that with the God they've already described in their terms as loving and wanting to know you and repent and repent and repent and repent afterwards, you know what I mean, slide back from black sliding?

Why why suddenly just at one point give up?

Because we taught that God doesn't never give up, you know.

So it's these are all contrary teachings within Christianity, and you'd have to be in a group that goes, Yep, there's a point where God cuts you off and hands you over, and we'll go that route now.

And that's why friends of yours will not be believing because ah, they've obviously not just in original sin, but God's given up on them and given them a delusion, So now you can't blame them, you almost He's God sended them, He's kind of making them do it.

Yeah, well it certainly feels.

Like that to me.

Like this, Yeah, if you don't manage tire little footnote to before finish, and that is for me.

This is a really helpful response to the Plantinger argument of the evolutionary argument against naturalism, right, which is banded about and if I haven't got time to explain it all, but basically the idea is that if you believe in evolution, you, as a naturalist, you are relying on this bit of kit that's only designed for surviving, not for truth telling.

So you your whole foundation of truth is undermined.

That that's where it's going with this argument.

And I'm saying, well, if you believe in God and God is your founder of your truth, which is the alternative, then You've got absolutely no way to say that God's not lying to me, So you're your foundation truth is even more shaky, very large.

Yeah, God can lie much more effectively than you know your own mind can lie.

Yes, he lies in an undetectable way because he's all powerful, yes, whereas we can investigate if we've got the wrong end of the stick with our flawed, limited brains.

And I have heard some people say, for example, like the Christian cults, you know, when I was back in back in the day, they would be under a deception and probably God's handed them over to that.

How how bad is that when when those people think that they are just simply believing the truth, and they're willing to separate and become this different denomination, you know, and so to suddenly put I do know people who do this, they put severe deception on any other group that sees differently from them, and that they're sort of living under that deception and they don't know it.

So they're sort of like innocently deceived.

And I'm thinking, wow, but how would you never know you're not one of them in another little camp, you know, with God God allowing that or giving it or making it happen.

You know, you don't believe in the trinity, right, I'm going to hand them over to arianism.

You know.

Something, you know what I mean, that kind of thing, yes, And so I'll hand them over to that belief and that they they themselves when you talk to them, just passionate about that belief because of the Bible, and they show all the verses and everything.

I'm thinking, Yeah, it looks reasonable in some places, but that's sorry, it's a deception.

Yeah, and I'm not in it.

And so to find yourself not in deception in that view, seems to be the height of arrogance, the height of it, you know, to think that you could be not the deceived.

You know, we're over time, so we are well, thank thank our listeners.

Yeah, fremar with us, Yeah, thank you.

Yes, And so are we going to tell the truth about what we're doing next month or yeah, so in the day that this comes out, yes, yes, yeah, I need to stretch these days sometimes whenever I do put these out, So I'll stretch the day longer for that for this one.

But anyway, yes, so until that.

So, actually it's because we don't quite know what we're going to do, I think next time, So that will be a fair way to put it.

So until next time, I have been and live.

I've been prancess, I've been good