they love the Bible and it's the greatest book and they swear on it but it has these things that are like comically stupid I don't know how I missed this podcast until now it's Jordan Peterson on Bill marah's Club random podcast I have to say I've actually met Bill Mah and he's actually a nice guy in person but he's obviously also one of the most infamous mockers of Christianity I like the direction that this conversation goes and the reason I'm featuring it here is because I think that there's something inside of Jordan Peterson's tone approach
and continue earnestness in the face of someone mocking you that is noteworthy also the actual implications and things that he unpacks within the text I think is cool as well it's Jordan Peterson it's Bill Maher on CL random podcast let's do it they love the Bible and it's the greatest book and they swear on it but it has these things that are like comically stupid and and corrupt I mean God is so corrupt in the Bible I mean you can bargain you can bargain humans you know he does things that are so cacious and cruel
and you know Petty I mean he's very trumpian well I've been I've been walking I released a series on started to release it yesterday on YouTube on on the story of Exodus and it's a 16 part series 32 hours on of Exodus yeah I had nine people come down and I've been I've been walking through the biblical Corpus that was actually something I wanted to talk to you today about I love it yeah well I love it that you're a real Professor like a personality and a TV guy and like a great voice but you're
the real deal you're an academic so there is a there there there's a very interesting idea that lurks behind the notion that you can establish a covenant with God and the and you can tell me what you make of this it's like the it's a reflection of the fact that human beings bargain with fate all the time we bargain with the future all the time so so and here's how we do it so this is what you teach your kids you teach your kids that if you forgo immediate gratification so you give it up sacrifice
it because that's a sacrifice that the future will be better as a consequence well that's okay it's a contractual Rel well that's what try right that's the thing that's so interesting is that it actually will if you don't have that piece of cake tonight yeah you'll be healthier tomorrow right right and if you if you if you if you don't go off and play with your friends immediately after school but you know play the piano for 20 minutes then in in 10 years when you're actually a musician all sorts of okay so so but but
it's see this is something that's very uniquely human because human beings have learned that if we give up there are certain forms of immediate gratification if we give them up which means we offer them up it's a sacrificial offering then we can make a covenant a bargain with the future right that's what's being reflected in those stories where the notion is that you can bargain with god well I mean the Bible is so well known even by people who haven't read it and by the way a lot of the people who put their hand on
it and love it so much have never read it certainly not all the way through it's a big long book yes it it is it's and it's you know full of most mostly nonsense once in a while it stumbles upon wisdom you know I mean it's uh but come on you you got to give these people their due that I mean it was written as first of all it's an anthology cor I'm going to tell you a story okay a Bible St what you think about Bible story this is this is Jordan love Bible St
okay this Bible story so um I've been looking at the story of Jonah yeah this is a story that you'll appreciate so here's what happens to Jonah he's just mining his own business and then he the voice of God comes to him and it's and the the voice says you have to go to this city Nineveh because everybody in Nineveh is like they've strayed off the path and I'm thinking about wiping them out but you could maybe go there and tell them like how foolish they are and they'll straighten up and then I won't have
to destroy the city and Jo and and thinks there's no godamn way I'm going to do that first of all Nineveh is a city of his enemies Babylonia it's it's it's it's a city that he's not he's not allied with and so he thinks well you guys can go to hell in a hand basket and if God wipes you out that's perfectly fine with me and then he also thinks like any wise man would it's like I see this is the task you have for me it's like there's 150,000 people there I'm a foreigner I'm
going to go there and tell them how they're misbehaving and that's going to work out well for me so he thinks to hell with that like any sensible person would and he doesn't say what he has to say right so then he hops on a boat and he gets the hell out of there well it turns out that God's not very happy if you're informed that you have something to say and then you don't say it so the storms come and the waves rise and now the ship's in danger okay so what does that me
got in the whale yes that's right it means that if you don't say what you have to say when you're called upon to say it you'll put the whole damn ship at risk now the soldiers figure this out or the sailors they figure out there must be someone on the boat that like isn't right with God and that's why we're in danger of being swamped so they would go and ask everybody and Jonah to his credit says yeah it's me you know I I had the voice of conscience made itself manifest to me I had
a task to do I refused it I'm screwing things up and the sailors actually triy to save him but it doesn't work so they throw him overboard now you think okay Jonah's got what he deserves cuz he shut the hell up when he had something to say and now he's going to die and you think that's pretty damn rough and partly what that means is if you hold your tongue when you have something to say then you're going to put the ship at risk and you'll be lucky if you don't die all right but that's
not enough that's not nearly enough because that isn't all that happens if you don't say what you're called upon to say so the next thing that happens is Jonah's drowning away that's about as bad as it gets and then this Creature From Hell itself comes up from the bottom of the abyss and takes him down and so now he's in hell for 3 days and so that's the next part of the story which is that if you're called upon to say what you have to say and you refuse it like you'll end up in a
place where you wish you were the whale it's the whale but it's the same thing like that in the story The Whale is described as hell exactly the same idea in religionist the guy who was arguing with me and he said uh he was very this point was very important him he said the Bible does not say whale it says Big Fish okay well now it makes perfect sense yeah well it's it's the thing what it is it's a it's a representation of the thing that dwells in the dark it's so interesting that you see
the lessons in these and I just always read these things as like super stupid from the Bronze Age you know and obviously they were telling people something I mean whoever wrote this was had a message in mind well they were trying to look they were trying to figure out by telling stories how the state itself got corrupted and this is one of those stories so the story is here's how the state gets corrupted you're called upon to tell your fellow man enemy or not when they're not behaving properly when your conscience tells you to do
that you're called upon to do that if you don't do that the whole ship will start to rock but do you think the Ancients who were reading this at the time and they read the story about the he get swallowed by the big fish or the wh you think they got this message they were like yeah but what this really means is when you're called upon excuse me I'm talking when you're called upon then you step up and do it no I would say it's a step and it's a it's a it's a dream like
step in the developing of understanding so before you fully understand something you can represent it in a story right it's kind of halfway K start to understand something by acting it out they may I mean they may have gotten it or they may have gotten it on conscious level right they got it at an implicit level yeah well that's what you get when you watch a story is you get it at an implicit level and it's actually very powerful right I mean when people go to movies most of the time most people when they go
to movies don't sit around afterwards and discuss what the movie meant they just enjoy the they just enjoy the story but that doesn't mean they didn't learn anything it just means they don't reflect on what they learned now these the people who came up with these stories they were telling the stories cuz the stories were really interesting but the question there's a deeper question is well why why the hell was that story interesting and why was it remembered and so what happens to Jonah is that he's in the whale for three days and then he
thinks I now I'm in hell okay I'm going to I'm going to repent of my inadequacy I'm willing to say what I have to say so the whale spits him up on the beach then he goes to Nineveh and he tells everybody what the hell they're doing wrong and God decides to spare the city and so so for me this story it's it's well it's a little hard on Jonah you know the whole hell thing he does he he live that's right did he Rel did he relocate to Nineveh no it's just a pilgrimage to
ninev okay so he did go okay but he goes there and then then the city is in fact saved but but it's perfect bill because what it shows and and I know you know this because you wouldn't speak the way you speak and this is true of comedians in general you know that you have a moral obligation like a deep and profound moral obligation I to say what you have to say I do really respect Jordan Peterson's staying Earnest in the midst of someone mocking you and the thing that you're trying to communicate to them
to your face he he never takes the bait and engages in sort of this let's you know mock each other back and forth he keeps it classy where billah does not but really this idea that bill Mah is clearly uh consumed with is basically what CS Lewis calls chronological snobbery it's the idea that if something is ancient it must be foolish that if something was you know a Bronze Age uh you know if it came out of the Bronze Age then it must be as stupid as the technology that came out of the Bronze Age
obviously this approach is fallacious at a number of different levels but I want to kind of pivot now in this video to a snippet of a conversation that I recently had with Peter J Williams of Tindale house and he also you know you might recognize him from the unbelievable podcast he had a debate a few years back with Bart Airman he answered a question that I asked him about people just like Bill Mar with this type of tone around the Bible and how we should respond to people who want to just dismiss the entire Bible
with with the wave of a hand I thought that his response here was actually sort of helpful so this full podcast is going to be coming out in the near future but here is a small snippet that I hope will help us lay on the plane of this video enjoy on the internet there's you know different conspiracy theories and myths and things that emerge that people basically buy into and live out of and so for someone who would kind of say yeah that's essentially what the Bible is on mass is it's like this sort of
supernaturally supercharged history that you know is appealing because it gives some you know broad uh explanations of Life on this planet and it has these like sort of you know marveles elements to it that appeal to people and so that explains everything what why or how how would you respond to that type of a yeah so I want to know um what sort of person is saying this so um you can get a very lazy thinker version of that so the person doesn't even bother picking up the Bible I mean the Bible takes about 70
hours to read it's not that long um so and they just sort of like folding their arms and say well you go and do some work and with that person I just say oh no I'm too busy I'm not going to talk to you you know I mean as in uh if you want to stay in your ignorance just just do um you know I mean there might be consequences for that like if you find out you're wrong um but I think the sort of lazy version well it all could have just made up I
haven't read any of it that is um yeah I I I wouldn't uh engage too far I mean I do think that again Jesus set an example in terms of uh uh telling people not to engage if people are are not um uh sh showing any interest even talked about disciples um shaking dust off their feet when they leave particular places so I I would say you know no I I want someone to be serious I am really happy to put in time into a serious conversation I expect someone else to put in time as
well that's how humans should work together and be transformed now um if someone's uh more serious and they're looking the great thing is we can talk detail um and so I mean I don't know which details we talk about it depends which they want to take that [Music]
