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Unknown A
The logic applied by the founding fathers was if you have a society where the citizen believes even if they are innocent, they will be punished. There is no incentive for the citizenry to be virtuous. In fact, the inverse, they will lie, cheat and steal to avoid detection ca because it doesn't matter if you're good or not. And they'll have to lie to prot themselves as this country becomes less and less Christian. And that seems to be the trend, though some say may be reversing. Will we survive as a country without this?
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Unknown B
Well, I mean first we need to find what we mean by Western civilization. And generally it's a civilization not like Islamic civilization or Far Eastern civilization. It's a civilization that is generally defined by adherence to ideas like democratic values, human rights, found strong belief in modern science and promoting of education. And if you read historians on this, like for example, there's a great book called Christianity and Human Rights and introduction, every chapter has its own author. They've argued that a lot of these values come out of the Christian tradition. And you're getting opinions of multiple scholars. You can also chec out Samuel Moyn's book Christian Human Rights, Tom Hollands'book he's an atheist Dominion, that's his book. I've argued that a lot of these ideas about Western civilization that we have come out of the Christian tradition for a reason. So can the west survive without Christianity?
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Unknown B
I mean like the west is built on Christian foundations. It'd be very hard to move beyond that and it not be the west at that point. So the question would be would it even be the west if we moved away from Christian foundations and ideas?
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Unknown A
I'm not a Christian, I guess I would d be called a lapsed Catholic. But I do largely agree. I'm curious, I think you probably disagree.
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Unknown C
Well, I think my question is not what do we mean by the west, but what do we mean by Christianity? Are we talking about the type that produces doomday cults? The type that abuses children in mass? You know, the types that tried to change the Indians culture by killing the Indian but saving the man. Are we talking about the type that like want to relegate women to the kitchen? There's no like homogeneous view of Christianity. And for every good thing that you can pull from Christianity, I can probably pull five horrific things from Christianity and the data points and I can root it back to the Bible.
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Unknown A
I would probably say when you look at the Constitution and the founding father's ideals largely built upon, not necessarily directly overlapping with, but built from and overlapping with Christianl traditions. So obviously we can look at any person anywhere, at anyime and find bad things about them. I can sit here and tell you why the police are evil and I can show you every single evil thing the police and the feds have done. Ruby Ridge. Does that mean we should have no police? No. Can we survive without law enforcement? I honestly don't think we can. So the issue then becomes the Christian world tradition. And the example I like to give is the easiest. The easiest is the right to a speed trial innocent until proven guilty, which is if you actually trace back the history of the Constitution and where the founding father got their ideas.
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Unknown A
That's the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. So Blackstone's formulation was the inspiration for the right to a speedy trial, which was by Benjamin Franklin, built upon Blackstone's formulation, which is Blackstone said it is better that 10 guilty persons escaped than one innocent person suffer. Benjamin Franklin said is better than 100 guilty persons escape than one innocent person suffer. The Founding fathers took it from a Christian perspective gave and brought it to the logical position of how can we actually prove that the story of Sodom, Gmorrah and Blackstone's formulation are the right thing. And of course again for those that don't know the story sign of Gomorrah, if there's but one righteous person, I will not destroy this town. Of course then they got the righteous person out and then nuked that place. So the logic applied by the Founding Fathers was if you have a society where the citizen believes even if they are innocent, they will be punished.
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Unknown A
There is no incentive for the citizenry to be virtuous. In fact, the inverse, they will lie, cheat and steal to avoid detection because it doesn't matter if you're good or not. And they'll have to lie to protect themselves. But if society tells the citizenry, even if you are guilty, we will try in every way imaginable to give you the appropriate chance to defend yourself. And if you are innocent, we would rather free 10 guilty people than see you suffer. The incentive of course then is to be virtuous because we're here to protect you. So that is just one element. But if you actually go through the Constitution as a whole, largely influenced by a Christian moral tradition. So that's my view. Yeah, Christianity'bent and altered so many times kind of to your point, it's changed. Like obviously you've had Reformations, you have the Methodist Reformation, you had at one point with the, the Spanish Inquisition where they would go, I Don't know if they would kick people's doors in, but they would execute people for not worshipping their cult.
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Unknown A
And there, I think there are excellent methodologies and messages from that book, the Christian Bible. Except. But there, there's a lot of horrible cult worship adherence expectation, groupthink that's very, very dangerous just in general across all religion and what do you want to call it? Mass formation of any kind. So that's kind of where I'm at. I'm very much a cherry picker in that sense, I guess think. Let me ask real quick. He mentioned the Spanish Inquisition. I don't know if you were familiar with it.
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Unknown B
Oh yeah. So there's a lot of propaganda about the Spanish Inquisition. A lot of it actually comes from a lot of Protestants later on. But if you read a book by an atheist named N. Nathan Johnstone called the New Atheism, I he makes the point like we just can't say Christianity, therefore Inquisition, because it comes about in the Middle Ages after a recent resurgence of rationalism and the need to place justice in the hands of humans more than anything. And then of course the propaganda aspect comes in. If Spanish inquisitor would consider themselves a failure if they actually had to execute someone, they didn't want to do that. The goal was to actually convert someone. And oftentimes they were far more rational than a lot of the secular governments of the time, like the kings and the nobility, like Nathan Johnstone talks about in his book, like the inquisitors were reminding people, like we're not just going toa blame crop failures on witchcraft.
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Unknown B
There's probably a naturalistic explanation far more likely. So it's been blown way out proportion, he points out it's often used to sort of attack Christianity. And we also have to remember there are multiple variables going into this idea. It wasn't just Christianity, therefore Inquisition. You know, we have to remember variables throughout the Middle Ages, political, secular, economic, various aspects are going in people's thinking and it's going to affect the outcomes.
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Unknown C
Sure. And as someone who's actually studied the history and brought some of it with me, that's all wrong. So here's a book called the Bloody Theater. It's been renamed the Martyrs Mirror. It's a volume that's kept just by the Anabaptist. And there are thousands upon thousands of firsthan accounts of people that were murdered by Protestants, murdered by Catholics, murdered by Zuinglius, murdered in Geneva for simply baptizing people as adults. Whole families tied up, thrown into the river and drowned, children drowned because Their parents got baptized as adults. That's it. There are thousands of first handd accounts.
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Unknown A
So just clarify. A person got baptized and they killed their children or they killed them or.
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Unknown C
Who family who killed them, Typically the church leaders. So what you found was there was a plague, they called it in Europe of Antabaptism. It also went by the Waldens plague. And the idea that you needed to stamp out heresy started with Constantine. In this book I have decrees, edicts given all the way from the time of Constantine until the 15th century, saying we need to stamp out these heretics. And then they did it. They went out and did it. And there's good support in the Bible for it. God himself stamps out innocent alongside the guilty all the time, he says so he brags about it. Exodus 34:7 says he visits the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children into the third and the fourth generation. In 2 Samuel chapter 24, God kills 70,000 Israelites for the sin of David. In 2 Samuel, chapter 12, God has 10 of David's wives raped for David's sin.
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Unknown A
I have a question. Do you think American constitutional Republicanism is a good thing?
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Unknown C
I think the American idea is a good thing. Whether or not we can root that in the Bible, I think it is questionable.
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Unknown A
No, I'm not asking that. I think, do you think this country will survive if the Constitution were to be like, abolished or destroyed?
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Unknown C
I guess it means, like, what do you mean by survive?
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Unknown A
Will there be a cohesive structure? Will there be stable family, growth, safety, security, prosperity in the sense that we typically know it in the United States. If our form of government, which is constitutional republicanism, were to shatter overnight, like, let's say we root out the rules and regulations, the teachings of the Founding Fathers, and just said gone, like, what would this country become?
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Unknown C
Well, it's hard to know because like, you've created vacuum, right? So for example, when we found vacuums in the near east, what filled it? You know, the caliphate? Violent extremist groups? If we found a political vacuum here in the States, it's hard to know what would actually fill it. But I think Americans by and large appreciate democracy. I would only assume that if our current form of government collapsed, it would reform as another democracy.
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Unknown A
You think, do you think, would you consider that we should intentionally get rid of our current structure of government? Or do you think it's a good thing?
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Unknown C
I have no problem with our structure of government.
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Unknown A
Many children have been slaughtered and murdered in the name of our constitutional republic.
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Unknown C
Oh, I don't know. But I know there are millions of children that have been brutally raped by the church, certainly.
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Unknown A
And I don't disagree with that. I'm asking you how many people, how many children have been murdered in the name of American constitutional Republicanism? It's quite a bit. It's a hey number. I mean, it's probably in the millions. And so my issue there is looking at the worst vices and failures are.
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Unknown C
Talking about American children.
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Unknown A
I'm talking about children all around the.
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Unknown C
World from drone str wars, you mean?
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Unknown A
I don't think a drone strike in Yemen that kills an American citizen who's 16 years old by Barack Obama was a war. We didn't declare war on that place. We had no business bombing that. But this was done in the name of American, the American government, the system that we believe is this moral and virtuous system.
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Unknown C
And George Bush, I don't know biblical justification for it. George Bush thought Ezekiel was. But that's playing out and he needed to invade the.
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Unknown A
Barack Obama is the guy who blew up a bunch of kids.
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Unknown C
I agree.
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Unknown A
And my point is, I don't look at the United States, the Constitution, the founding Fathers, and say, oh, a bunch of evil people over a long period of time murdered millions of children. I say, wow, there's evil people. We need to stop. And so my point here is I bring this up because we're asking a question about moral traditions on how they should be enacted, not did you know that in 1428 a bunch of evil people tortured people? It's like, certainly they did and every culture everywhere did it. I mean, let's go to Japan and talk about how they raped and enslaved the Koreans. Does that mean that the honor of the samurai or whatever or the Bushio is should be completely thrown out? Or is it a good structure for people to abide by? Thanks for watching this clip from the Culture War podcast.
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Unknown A
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