From the “Response to AronRa” series.

I'm at once interested and disinterested in this video (and quickly becoming, this series). What was the first point? We don't know. This was fixed in the second video where the point (theme) is announced clearly: “Man's word vs. God's word”. The idea AronRa wants to convey is that the Bible is the work of men, not of God. His proof amounts to stating that people lie, cheat and steal. Actually his point is that Christians lie, cheat and steal – more or less – but the problem with this is it's an argument appealing to an unqualified authority. Let's be real for a moment here – you can say you are a Christian all you want, but if it says in the bible, do not murder, and do not steal, or that abduction into slavery is punishable by death; then one can hardly state that Christians who do these things are acting in accord with the bible. It is one thing to have a set of moral rules to live by, quite another to actually live by those rules. We must therefore reject AronRa's argument that simply because men can be evil, that the bible was written by man.

In fact, we would rather conclude that the moral nature of the bible in contrast with the actions of men (as so clearly stated by AronRa himself) points out the divine origin of the bible. If Men wrote it, then it would surely be written as a self-serving manual of hedonism and not an admonishment against immoral behaviour.

I would say overall the video is better than the first one. It does a better job of presenting a title or theme and then sticking to it. Yet the potatoes of his argument feels chaotic and there simply is no proof for any of the conclusions he reaches; he merely offers argument by repetition or by dismissal and then uses those conclusions to prove other parts of his argument. He assumes any convenient conclusion which may explain the talking points he brings up. Honestly this is already getting tiring, I think I will take a break from this series and do one of his more recent videos next.

Tier 4 argument; The conclusion doesn't make sense for the argument, there's not much substance to the argument, the specific examples contain many mistakes (St. Stephen's Syndrome) and there are a number of outright falsehoods or opinions stated as facts. Yes, this is #2 in a series of videos produced 12 years ago so we are cutting AronRa some slack for these; perhaps we will get to some of his more recent videos soon.

This section is usually written during a final watch after I've seen the video through once or twice. Then I go back and write the summary (above).

Something of a straw-man; I completely agree with the premise that the words of men are subject to human imperfection; The story/statement however is that the bible tanach) was dictated to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai. That's as close as you can get; further AronRa sort of contradicts himself a moment later by saying that dictation is merely the word of man (with the visual image of a puppet on strings not being acceptable). No, really!

“And it was men who wrote all of the scriptures pretending to be from God.” This is a frivolous and baseless conclusion, unsupported by any evidence. Talking points are not evidence. A disagreement is not evidence. Controversy existing, is not evidence; and neither was anything in the first minute of this video. Somewhat disappointing.

“If God wrote it, we could expect no less.” According to whom? We may not necessarily allow the re-creation of God in accordance with someone's subjective assumption of what a God should be (that's Jesus to a tee, but that's another story).

The big issue here is that AronRa then turns around and states that because his fantasy version of a bible or God does not exist, that therefore any possible (real) version of a bible or God does not exist.

Further, there are some false statements; such as tha none of the holy books agree with each other. The Quran, Old Testament, New Testament, and Book of Mormon all agree that the Torah is the word of God.

AronRa is developing a style; in between talking points he peppers his videos with falsehoods about what Creationists believe, and he states his own opinion as fact dozens of times; such as the multiple authors of Genesis theory. There's not much content here other than the explanation that if (the bible) was written by human hands it would be subject to human imperfections. A valid point, but a large “if” – we're still waiting for an example to support his “if” but that won't happen for another two minutes yet.

While we wait, we are treated to AronRa claiming that many of these (creationists – we may only assume at this point), perform “heinous atrocities in place of morality”.

Like what?

At 5:42 AronRa concludes the bible has been “deliberately and deceptively edited” because the ancient Hebrews wrote Baal's name as 'Baal-Zebub' vs. 'Baal-Zebul'. This is of course a patently false conclusion, made without any supporting evidence. As a matter of fact the Jews were forbidden from speaking or writing down the actual name of any idols, and this is well-known enough that AronRa should have been aware of it. Further he makes the mistake of stating the New Testament authors did this (they did not) they merely copied the same name as how it was referred to in the old testament and likely in the lingua franca of the day (Aramaic).

Finally and perhaps strikingly, he assumes the major conflict with Baal worship was dealt with by Moses. Baal worship was not nearly as serious an issue to the Hebrews in Moses' time as it was in Elijah's time, 500 or more years later.

I'm in agreement, the council at Nicea was a mistake. You cannot “vote” on God's word; no one single event has undermined Christianity's ecumenical authority so neatly and completely as the council at Nicea.

In particular the discussion of books which were not included (around 6:50) is valuable stuff; but it extends only to the new testament. Therefore the conclusion at 7:15 is without evidence or merit.

Image: Chinese medical five element diagram production and destruction cycle (i.e. nothing to do with Witchcraft or occultism of any kind). Caption: “As illustrated in Leviticus 14”.

Had to go “wow” at this one. I shed a tear – AronRa sure has balls to put something like this in his video. I don't even know what to say, maybe I am seizing up from the sheer weirdness of it. Just go read Leviticus 14. You won't see anything about the five elements of anything there.