Online Apologetics, Study & Debate with (Michael Jones) of Inspiring Philosophy

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today I have another special guest with me, Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy. He's got a really great YouTube channel with videos that cover a wide range of apologetical issues.

Why Online Apologetics Matters

And so let's just jump right into this. Mike, why don't you say hi to those who are listening in or who will be listening in eventually once we get things rolling. Hi. There we go. Thank you. Very brief introduction.

You didn't say to say anything else. You said say hi. Why don't you tell a little bit about yourself, man? So yeah, my name is Michael Jones. I run Inspiring Philosophy and I create a lot of various types of videos in an animation type setting.

So I'm never on camera. It's all graphic driven.

Are you camera shy? This is a big deal for you right now.

Well, when I started my channel, I was very camera shy. In fact, I thought about not even using my voice on my videos because I didn't want to be there at all. And over time, I've come more out of my shell.

But I started the channel doing the animation videos and I thought, just keep it going.

People like that more. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, very good. Well, I have you on to discuss a specific topic that I think will be useful for people listening. I just want to get this out of the way.

I do tell people this all the time. Every time I have a guest on, I get messages from people telling me about this, that and the other thing about the persons that I have on. We'll just get this out of the way.

Michael and I disagree on some issues and that's OK. He is a theistic evolutionist. I'm not. It's not the end of the world. I'm a presuppositionalist. He's not. It's not the end of the world in that regard either.

So I just think that after listening to a lot of what Mike has put out on his YouTube channel, especially with regards to his debates, you know, apart from the points that we may disagree, I think he's an excellent debater.

I think he makes really great points that people who are into apologetics can very much benefit from. And so that's why I have him on here today to discuss the importance of online apologetics. We'll ask him a little bit about how he got his channel going and talk a little bit about strategies with regards to personal study, prepping for debates and things like that.

And I hope folks who are listening in today will find this useful. OK, if you have not already, please subscribe to the Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel as well as the podcast. All of the videos here will get converted, the audio files there and be available for folks on iTunes.

So without further ado, my first question for Michael. Michael, I feel like your uncle. Michael, how would you like to be addressed? Mike, I know you don't care.

You can refer to me as Supreme Overlord Commander of the Apologetics.

Overlord? Supreme Underlord. We'll give you Underlord.

I don't care. Mike or Michael's fine. You can call me I .P. too. It doesn't matter.

All right. So first question is so you do online apologetics. I mean, your channel focuses on producing material that helps people grapple with common objections to Christianity. What got you started on in online apologetics?

And why do you think it's such an important area to be involved in?

Well, what kind of got me going in online apologetics was is basically I saw that there was a big atheist community on YouTube. And I was debating people on Facebook at the time. I used to do MySpace back in the day.

You know, that tells you how old I am. But I was debating people at the time. I was debating people on Facebook and they sent me these videos. But like, here's a video by Dark Matter or Thunderfoot. Ha ha.

You're refuted. And I'd be like, this is so bad. Why is no one like offering like a better Christian perspective on this? And so I thought, here's what I'll do. I'll do a couple videos on topics that I'm interested in at the current time.

My goal was to do 13 or 14 videos. And that way, when I get these debates online, I can just refer people to a video I already made. So I did those and then people started commenting on the videos. And then I thought, well, they're raising different objections.

Let me do other videos to address that. And then I did a couple more. And then I did a couple more. And just sort of started snowballing there. You just never stopped. Still going because people were raising different objections and I'm trying to get videos for it.

That's right. Yeah. I'm going to go for it.

Oh, yeah. I was just going to say that, you know, I just realized that maybe I could build this apologetic video library where people could use my videos in that kind of situation.

Yeah. What I very much appreciate about your videos is that they're detailed. You're not just you're covering issues that can be covered broadly, but you go into details on the issues from your perspective and the particular defense that you give.

It's very detailed. A lot of your information, especially with regards to the debates. You come very prepared, not with simply generalities, but specific facts and references and things like that. And I think a lot of people can learn from from that approach.

You know, I'm asking how many videos do you have on your channel? How many in total, you know, a lot, a lot, a lot.

I think it's around 150 or so. I don't remember exactly. Yeah. Now I'm doing three videos a month. All right. Very good.

How Michael Jones Prepares Videos and Research

So what, in your opinion or in your experience, has been the most challenging aspect of having a YouTube channel, producing the material? I mean, I know there's a lot of background information that has to go into making videos, editing and things like that.

How did you approach that back end aspect of getting your YouTube channel started?

Well, I mean, my goal was never to get like the channel like big or get going. My goal was just to do a couple of videos on the research that I just sort of took off. I mean, I would spend some time researching the topic.

I take notes. I make much of highlights in my books. Once I do that, I sometimes I'll do an outline. Sometimes I'll just make a script. I'll read the script and I'll put video over that. And then I go back and sometimes I'll do re-edits, re-video changes, re-write rates.

It's a different process, I feel like, for every video because all the research will be different or what it's focused on.

What's your favorite video? What have you done that you're kind of really proud of?

That's a good question. Maybe my recent videos I did on monotheism. Maybe either my video, The Case for Ancient Monotheism or Israel's Revolutionary Monotheism. Or maybe my video, The Emerging Universe.

The reason why I like those ones is because they're unique. You're not going to find those types of videos on any other channel. The research, I think, is pretty solid. And so I was really proud about getting those ones out.

I feel like they're, especially the recent monotheism ones, I was quite proud of those.

Right, right. Now, you're very well known for your video content, but I think you're also very well known for your debates. I know you've done a bunch of debates. I've listened to a lot of them. And what I appreciate about them is you don't cover simply just kind of the generic debate topics.

I think you did a debate about Christmas, the pagan origins of Christmas, and you don't really hear a lot of debates on that specific topic going around. And so I very much appreciate the uniqueness of the topics that you take on.

What is your process like when you're preparing, not just for debates in general, but specifically these areas that are more focused? Instead of just, does God exist? I mean, obviously you're going to have to know your own arguments, the objections that are out there.

But what is your process of prep when you're debating some specific topic, like the pagan origins of Christmas or the pagan origins of Easter or something like that?

Well, despite the way it seems, I don't memorize everything. Sometimes I like to say that my computer is my third half of my brain. OK. Just a little pun there. But so I have notes in front of me. I have like detailed notes about possible objections they could bring up.

When I do the pagan origins of Christmas, I have all the sources with the quotes listed there. So I can easily just cite them. I'm not going to pretend that I memorized everything. I'd be impossible. The more I do it, the more I do commit it to memory, which I kind of like.

But so what I do in debate prep is I go through and I make meticulous notes. I prepare it all on my computer so it's right there and available for me to look at. I will also study the person I'm going to debate, figure out what makes them tick, figure out where I think they're deficient in terms of arguments or presentation, and I will use that.

So I don't feel like they're good at answering back and forth questions. I'll try to give them back and forth questions. If I don't feel like they can retain the information that well, I will try to give them a lot of information that they will have to deal with.

Now, some people might think that might be, you know, rude or whatnot. But I mean, like, I'm not attacking them personally. I'm just trying to show their arguments are insufficient and point out the weaknesses in their arguments.

So I'm not trying to attack them personally. I'm not trying to make them look bad. I'm just trying to make their arguments look bad. So you have to understand how they present their arguments, where their arguments are coming from, and what they use to support it.

So that's what I try to go after in these debates. So I always say debate is knowing your information and knowing your opponent. Know who you're going to debate, know what's going to make them tick, and then try to figure out where their weaknesses are in terms of the arguments they present.

Sure. What I appreciate what you just said is you don't memorize your stuff, obviously, right? But when you're looking at the camera, it just looks like you're just debating back and forth. It's like, man, this guy's got his stuff.

You're right. We very much rely on technology and just the note-taking process. Why don't you go into that a little bit? I mean, when you make outlines, what sort of outlines do you make? Are they bullet points?

Are they just kind of like subheadings and like subpoints underneath that? I mean, how does that process look like for you?

Some of it is bullet points. Some of it is not. It's really what I feel like I could look at the best and recall it quickly. If I feel like a paragraph is what I need there, I'll do it. The mind is—every mind is very artistic.

So sometimes I'll try to create patterns there that I can work with. Sometimes I'll try to bold certain things that I feel like I really need to stand out. You know, I just try to let what I feel like I can memorize flow.

I don't try to stick to certain roles or whatnot because your mind is changing and you've got to flow with the artistic way your mind is going to read things. So patterns are good. Rhymes are good. Things are organized in certain structures that are helping them remember certain things.

But, you know, it's different every time.

Confidence, Nervousness, and Spiritual Formation in Apologetics

Yeah. Very good. Now, I think preparation is so important. And there's another element there that I think that preparation can help remedy. Maybe you could speak to this. When we're doing apologetics, it's very easy for people to get very nervous, especially people who might be interested in getting into apologetics, but they kind of have a lot of anxiety going into it.

When you first got into apologetics, did you have kind of that anxious kind of like, oh my goodness, I'm going to be putting myself out there. People are going to be saying this, that, or the other thing.

That's one. And number two, how has your study, your in-depth study of the topics you cover, given you confidence when you're engaging in apologetics?

Yeah. So when I first started, I was very nervous. I remember being extremely nervous when I first started on apologetics, and that's why I didn't want to be on camera. So what I tell people is the more you get your feet wet, the more you'll be able to dive in.

So start out by debating people on text format things like on message boards and whatnot because that's a good way. You don't have to answer right away. You can just sit back. Sometimes you can think about the argument and come up with a good reply.

And sometimes that's actually convinced me of certain things that have changed my views on things. So start out with that and study the information, engage in those kind of debates because that's going to help you prepare for more live in-person debates.

So that was how I started to build more confidence is doing a lot of that. As people notice, earlier in my channel, I engaged in a lot more replying to comments on my channel than I do now. My channel has gotten bigger.

I can't do it as much. I want to focus more research, but I did that a lot early on because it really helped strengthen my debate skills, I feel like.

Now, when you are prepping, when you're producing videos and things like that, do you find yourself a perfectionist? Does that kind of mentality, if you have that mentality, really affect the speed with which you put things out?

Do you find yourself editing things all the time or making sure your manuscript, for example, is just right? Is that something you struggle with or is it you just get your thoughts out and you kind of do what you got to do?

No, I very much am like that. I have three people spellcheck my videos. Okay. And even sometimes spelling errors get by, but I always know because the people that have no lives have to call it out, like it's going to change everything because I misspelled there at one point.

I mean, it happens. But yeah, I have people spellcheck videos. I go back and I'll redo things. So, as I said, I did a video back in March called The Case for Ancient Monotheism, where I recorded the whole video.

It was 55 minutes long. And then I decided I didn't like the way my voice sounded in it. So, I re-recorded it all in February, which took a while because it was 55 minutes, because I just decided I didn't like the way I sounded in it.

I thought my voice cracked too much. So, yeah, I can be kind of a perfectionist when it comes to videos. Okay, very good. The voice cracking.

I did notice that sometimes. You're speaking a lot too. So, it's easy to kind of your voice gets hoarse and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I'm still going through puberty apparently.

Okay. Just real quick for those who are listening in, you can send in your questions. Michael is happy to take questions towards the back end. We'll put some of the questions on the screen there for him to take.

And I'm pretty sure you're comfortable with any old questions someone wants to ask. You could address it at your own leisure. Also, I'm super excited. Not that long ago, we reached over 1 ,000 subscribers.

So, we're still pretty small, but we're growing. And we have the super chat capability. So, if you have a super chat, greatly appreciated. If you are finding the information on this channel useful, your support would be greatly appreciated.

Okay, my next question for you here is, I think this is an important aspect of doing Christian apologetics. I think so much we can focus on that intellectual aspect. And I'm not saying this to separate the intellect from what I'm about to say.

But how do you balance your study of the academic material with your own spiritual formation? I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind. Because a lot of people who watch apologetics tend to be very cranium driven.

And sometimes they do this to the exclusion of their spiritual development. How do you balance that in your own personal life?

Well, for one thing, I don't think that's necessarily bad. I don't think you're implying that. But if someone is getting that idea, I want to point out, I don't think that's bad. Some people are just more analytical in how they approach and think.

And that's not bad. That's just the way some people are. So, I embrace that side of myself. I don't think it's bad. I feel like that's the way God made me. And I'm not going to pretend I'm some charismatic Pentecostal that needs to, you know, get super emotional all the time.

I'm just not. To be fair, I have had a very emotional week. So, this is a little different for me. Some personal issues came up.

No, I don't see you smile a lot in your videos. You do look very stoic many times. Yeah. I mean, it's just not me.

That's more Mike Winger. I'm just more straightforward. Let's do it. So, my spiritual life is very personal and private. I don't really talk about it because it's sensitive to me. It's not going to really convince anyone.

It might if I knew someone personally and they wanted to hear about it, I'd bring it up. But I tend to just feel like that's between God and myself. You do see some of it in my videos occasionally. Like, you'll probably see some of it in a video I have planned for December.

I'm going to do a video called the—probably it'll be titled, like, The Lost Message of the Bible. And so, I will go over some interesting things I've been looking at in the Old Testament that correlate in the New Testament with regards to Christ and whatnot.

So, there are some of those things that come out. With regards to my spiritual life, it's hard to say. I'm not really much a planner in terms of that. It's more private prayer life, quiet time, that kind of stuff, talking with people that I'm close to, things like that.

I don't know if there's any formula I have for that. Sure, sure.

Yeah, same for me. I don't have, like, a prayer schedule or something like that or, you know, I'm going to study my Bible at this specific time. But, I mean, Bible study is a big part of it. Now, with regards to your own personal Bible study, what is that process like?

I think people would be interested in not just—you know, there's that kind of studying where we're preparing for something. And then there's that kind of study that's just part of our spiritual formation.

We love the Lord. We want to get to know Him more. And so, we're digging into the Scriptures. How is your Bible study—what does your Bible study look like? When you're approaching the Bible, are you going to start somewhere?

You know, how do you decide all that stuff?

I go through books of the Bible. I'll go through John, Romans. I've gone through Romans probably 15 or 16 times at this point. I don't even know. So that, I've gone through—I like going through some of the Old Testament prophets like Amos and Hosea.

I feel like they're underappreciated. Malachi is also a very interesting book. So, it's going through specific books. I don't like flipping through my Bible and going, I'm going to read this verse today because that's—God is guiding me through pages.

I think it's more of a study process kind of thing. Okay, very good.

Okay. Now, I know that when we study, there's a difference. Well, sometimes, I suppose. There's a difference between studying for research purposes and studying for debate prep. Is there a big difference with how you approach those topics?

I mean, do you approach with a different frame of mind when prepping for a debate as opposed to, say, I'm going to tackle this particular topic? It depends.

I mean, it depends on the debate. It depends on the topic. I don't think there's one formula for either of those. Like, if I'm going to debate something theological, I'd probably have to do more of like an intricate Bible study.

If I'm going to debate something like if Jesus was buried in the tomb, that's going to be more strict. What do these verses say? What do the outside sources say? I'm not really sure I can put either into formulas, honestly.

I feel like if you're going to get into debates, you have to have some sort of intuition about it. You have to trust your instincts that sometimes you have to learn to develop them, and you cannot just pretend everything is going to be clear-cut because humans are complex.

There's going to be chaos in any way you approach that.

Classical Apologetics and the Digital Physics Argument

All right, very good. Now, I want to move on to this issue of arguments. I mean, with regards to apologetic methodology, I mean, people who watch my show, they know I'm a presuppositionalist. You are obviously not.

What camp would you put yourself in? And when you answer that question, I want to go into some of your favorite arguments that you use when you're engaging unbelievers, both on the online format and when you're face-to-face with people.

So what methodology do you resonate most with? I mean, classical, evidential. What does it look like for you?

Yeah, I'm a classical, and so the difference between a classical and an evidential is an evidential will say that you can use the resurrection argument with an atheist. I can see some merit in that, but I prefer to—so I'm not hardcore classical.

I could lean evidential, but I tend to say, if you're not going to accept the evidence for a specific creator, or if you're not going to accept the argument for a general creator, you're not going to accept the arguments for a specific creator.

So a classical apologist would like to convince someone that a god exists before they argue Christianity is true. For me, that tends to be the most comfortable approach. That's where I've seen the most success in converting people, bringing them to Christ.

So that's the approach I go. And when people say, you know, you debate this atheist on the resurrection, most of the time I'm going to say no, because I feel like we're just speaking totally different languages, and we need to get on the same page before we can even have that conversation.

Sure, sure.

So you would identify yourself as a classical apologist, and classical apologetics includes a whole host of certain arguments that are usually associated with that method. You have the traditional proofs, cosmological arguments, theological arguments, moral arguments, things like that.

What do you find is your favorite argument, and what argument do you feel most comfortable presenting and defending?

Probably an argument I've helped develop called the digital physics argument, because it's just arguing for a general creator. And when I bring this up to atheists, they get a little— notice the ones at least I've presented to get a little squirmish, because it takes the contingency argument or a cosmological argument, it takes it one step further.

Matt Dilanti is always like, yeah, we know the universe had a beginning, but we don't know what caused it. Well, with the digital physics argument, I can argue that what caused the universe is mind-like, or it is a mind, and if it's mind-like, it most likely is a mind.

So I found a lot of success with that, and I feel like it takes the traditional theist arguments one step further. Sure, sure.

Now again, just to get back to methodology, again, I don't share your methodology, but I watched your debate with Matt Dilanti. I thought you did excellent. My favorite part of the entire debate was I think when Matt said that, I'm not convinced, and you just said, I don't care.

That was my favorite part.

Who cares? You're not the judge. You're not the arbiter of truth. I don't have to convince you. I just have to make your arguments look bad.

There we go. And I think you did a very good job in doing that. Now, when you said, I don't care, obviously, you don't care. I mean, you're right. He's not the arbiter of truth. However, I do think, and I believe when I was watching, and I thought you were using a tactic so as to avoid common pitfalls that people fall into when debating Matt Dilanti, the kind of skeptic he is.

Why don't you unpack that? I mean, how did you approach that debate with regards to anticipating his kind of skeptical sit back and just reject everything you bring at him? What was your frame of thinking going into that debate?

Well, my frame of thinking of going into the debate is to point out he is also a human. He has emotions, and he has baggage, as he even admitted at the end of the debate. He doesn't want to call it God because it creates baggage for people.

Gee, Matt, you just admitted far more than you realize there. So you got to go in with that approach that he is not the arbiter of truth. It's not my job to convince him. It's my job to show this is the best explanation of the evidence.

Unless he presents a better explanation, then his arguments are insufficient, and he doesn't win the debate, so to speak. I don't like using that term, but there I go. But the basic approach is to show that I'm not there to convince him.

I'm going to show what is the most probable. If he doesn't like it, well, he doesn't have to agree with me. He can believe whatever he wants, but he's got to offer a better explanation. If he can't do that, the evidence is clearly on my side, and God most likely does exist.

What else can I say there? I'm not going to try to convince him because I understand that he says a lot, I'm not convinced, and then declares victory sometimes. And that's just nonsense. You can't do that.

I mean, imagine if young-earth creations were debating with atheists, and they presented all this evidence for evolution, and then the young-earth creationist says, well, I'm just not convinced. The atheists are going to have a field day with that, and so I'm going to use that same tactic they would do on a young-earth creationist.

What do you think, I mean, I don't know if you'd want to do this, but if we can jump into his mind, what do you think his tactic is when debating theists? I mean, I'm sure a lot of the ways that he rejects theist arguments are following a particular strategy to come across a certain way.

What do you think his tactic is? And my second piggyback question, why is it important to anticipate the strategy of the opponent?

So I can explain it, and then I'll give kind of an analogy that will help put it in. His debate tactic, his mindset is summed up in one thing he always says. I don't think you can be too skeptical. He has said that in his debates in the past.

Oh, I disagree. I think you can be too skeptical because you can be skeptical of your own skepticism. Therefore, you don't need to defeat your own skepticism. Therefore, you can be too skeptical. So it's a silly thing he says.

But that basically sums up his debate tactics. He just doubts everything as long as he doesn't have to take the conclusion that his opponent has. So he'll just throw doubts. He'll throw out random possibilities.

He'll throw out little things that make you think it's not solidified, and the response to that is going, yeah, it's not perfect, but I'm still offering the best explanation. You've not offered that. Matt Dillahunty and skeptics in general like him.

I can think like others. I'll just stick with him right now. So skeptics like him in general are different than how Christians will argue. We look at skepticism like a hammer. Like, they look at skepticism like a hammer, if I'm going to use this as an analogy.

But we look at our hammer skepticism as like we're chiseling a statue. We're going to make it better. We're going to refine the edges, chip off some of the bad things. I'm skeptical of that. That'll help make my worldview better.

To them, their hammer is a self-skepticism. They go around beating everyone else's statues, but never chiseling their own because they don't have a statue. They just want to tear down everyone else's statues.

So we present our worldview, this chiseled, nice statue, and they just want to beat it down with their hammer. And our reply is to the reply should be is like, well, you're not presenting a better statue here, so mine clearly wins.

If you're entering a statue contest and you don't bring a statue, I win by default, even if it has holes in it or has cracks on it. And so you got to point that out. So think of the way the skepticism looks at skepticism versus how the Christian looks at skepticism.

We look at it as a tool to refine our worldview. They don't want to present a worldview. Matt doesn't like presenting worldviews. He just wants to be skeptical of any worldview that his opponent is bringing.

So they're going to look at their skepticism like it's a hammer. As long as they can beat down your worldview enough, they assume theirs is default for some weird reason, and therefore they win. You got to point out their worldview is just not as good, and they're not even presenting one to challenge yours.

Sure. Now, would you say that again, it's psychologizing. Do you think that the reason why many of these atheist sorts, like online folks like Dillahunty, they do not posit a positive perspective or they do, but they don't want to outwardly do it because it gives them a burden of proof?

Are you trying to avoid the burden of proof? Right. That's exactly what they're trying to do. They want to avoid the burden of proof.

And to some degree, they are right. We do have a burden. We have to show evidence or at least present arguments that God exists. We just can't say, well, I think God exists, therefore I'm right. You know, we got to present a case.

The problem is they don't present a case. They just look at our case and go, well, I'm not convinced, and there's a problem with that, and there's not enough evidence to convince me. Who cares? If I have a boat, and I say, this boat is going to get us across the river, and the skeptic comes and says, well, I don't think that boat's going to float.

There's a tiny hole in the side there that might water get in. And I'm like, yeah, the boat's not perfect, but it will get us there before it sinks. We're not going to spend hours on the river. You don't even have a boat.

Like, I'm saying let's go across the river, and you're just doubting my boat. Okay, that does not show me that the boat is untrustworthy. You should, and if they came, they had, look, I got a steam-powered boat, a steam-powered engine over here.

We can get across much faster. That would be a different story, but they never do that. They never present a challenging worldview. This is why when you debate the resurrection with Matt Delonte in specific, he doesn't present an alternative case.

He doesn't want to go there. He just wants to say that your case is insufficient.

Right, and he said some remarkable things that I think the average person would probably reject. I think it was in a debate with Michael Icona, where I said something about if his head, he severed off his head, and his head kind of came back on.

He's like, would you believe? And he's like, no, I wouldn't. It's like, oh, okay. I mean, that's pretty extraordinary. I mean, like, why are you even here debating? You obviously have set up a structure where no one could penetrate, and you'll never be convinced of anything.

And then you'll go off to the side saying, we want to follow the evidence, or we want to believe as many true things as we possibly can. I think that's critical.

And that's why you can't fall into his trap of setting it that he sets up that you have to convince him. Sure. Or you have to sort of, he sets this arbitrary line of like, what is enough evidence? But never really defines you, defines what that means.

But, you know, it's there, and you got to meet it somehow. But he's not going to really tell you the specifics of how to meet there. He says, on his experience sometimes, he's like, I don't know what will convince me, but I'll know it when I see it.

Yeah. What does that even mean? Like, you're setting up these weird standards that cannot just be met. So I'm not going to try to convince you in the debate. I'm just going to show your worldview is insufficient.

Right, and these standards can't be met. And I think he sets up a standard in such a way where it always gives him wiggle room to reject what you present. Because you don't know what you're aiming for.

There's no standard that's established. Would you say then, and maybe this is an intentional thing, a lot of atheists who argue along those lines very much remind me of the Greek sophists, you know, these people who are just very, you know, they're good on the rhetoric, they're good at doubting everything, but they never try to defend a specific perspective.

Do you think that this is something intentional? Or do you think this is something that it's just the way people are wired sometimes, is how they approach these debates, and they don't understand that they have a burden of proof also in this discussion?

I think sometimes it can be intentional. I, for the most part of the time, I don't think it's intentional. I'm trying to be fair and charitable. I just think it's something they do. Like recently, I've been talking about the double standard that's always applied to the Bible.

They would not apply to other ancient works. Some people said, well, you're, some people have been saying, well, you're accusing them of being evil and disingenuous. No, I don't think they're doing it on purpose.

I just think they've done it for so long and they've read so many works. They just assume this is how you do the New Testament or biblical studies in general, but you don't do it to other ancient works.