"Neither of these men has the first clue what they are talking about when it comes to justice in the Bible." This video was particularly hard hitting and cathartic to see these two put back in their place.
To be fair Prager hasn't the first clue what they're talking about when it comes to any topic they ever talk about. He's just a bloviating idiot who thinks he has it all figured out and ignores any scholarship or expertise that disagrees with his very narrow understanding of the bible and how it relates to modern culture
"Justice was not about the right punishment , Justice was about producing the right social outcome, because social order and balance was seen as the foundation to cosmic order" Boom! Nailed it!
I have a degree from the hyper-conservative Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In my first few courses, the professors belabored over and over that America was not historically founded as a Christian nation and warned us to not repeat this myth.
My tentative rule is that Dennis Prager is always wrong. It's a tentative rule because not everything he says is wrong. But if I listen to him for more than five minutes, he will eventually come to a point where he makes a claim that is grossly false.
I’m staggered by the conceit of people who would want to remove justice from the poor and needy, but it’s very interesting to hear about the idea of cosmic balance paralleled in lawmaking and notions of justice. I’d love to know more about that.
Just looked down the list and found the references. I particularly like Proverbs 29:7 explains, “A righteous person knows the legal claim of the poor; a wicked person does not understand such knowledge.”
Thankyou for this. I means so much to have you taking the time to shed light on the lies and misconceptions that are packaged as truth, fact, and reason.
it's also important to note that their idea of Christianity was vastly different in 1787 when the constitution was written. Churches actively located themselves beside bars for example to encourage attendance and even had a break during the sermon to drink at the bar next door.
It's a cruel irony that still this day the poor receive a very different justice system to that of the rich and wealthy experience, one that has them serving far longer sentences and it is even worse for those of colour.
"Profoundly Biblically illiterate" yes indeed. Of course one could say that Rubin is profoundly ignorant about a great many things. As for Prager, he's just a flat-out conman.
I always enjoy your videos Dan. As a Religious Studies student I can only imagine how busy you are as I’m just scratching the surface but I do hope we hear more from you.
It's also wrong to say that America is "the freest country ever made". It is currently 23rd in the Caro Institutes' Human Freedom Index, and 61st in the Freedom in the World index produced by Freedom House. It is also 30th in the EIA's Democracy Index, which is enough to earn the rating of a "Flawed Democracy".
As I recall, Moses' instruction to the judges was to also not favor the rich over the poor. But those instructions were specifically to the judges for trying cases, not to the Israelites as a whole.
Anyone who claims that the founding fathers were influenced by religion in the creation of the country, I simply direct them to The Treaty of Tripoli: Article 11.
The idea of the founding fathers were less religious is interesting. There were the first and second great awakenings and the religious movements that came out of that. However there were a lot of times in the past when people just weren't as religious.
The First Great Awakening happened in the first half of the 18th Century, and had died away before the last few decades of that century. The Second Great Awakening happened in the early 19th Century, and was partly due to religious people reacting to the lower religiosity of the late 18th Century.
Well, there's Matthew 25:32-46, which is a mandate by Christ to care for the poor, the sick, and the marginalized...but there are a number of scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments that call for justice for the poor and needy. Contrary to popular belief, the "sin of Sodom" was not homosexuality but was, in fact, the wealthy ignoring the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49). As for Prager's beloved rich, Christ had this to say...."Woe to the rich, for they already have their reward" and "It is easier for a camel to travel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God".
Psalm 82 represents a condemnation of the gods for their failure to uphold cosmic order, resulting in the rocking of the foundations of the earth & ultimately Israel’s exile. The collapse of cosmic order is founded on their failure to render justice for the poor and the oppressed and the widow. I published a paper discussing the psalm in 2018 that’s available here: hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:30469/. I also published a more devotionally oriented paper on justice, mercy & the law in the Bible entitled “Go Ye and Learn What That Meaneth.” That’s available here: hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:49261/
This is much needed lucid and serious teaching, I like Prager but your deep digging deserves a serious response. Thanks for making us all think more deeply about all this, your exposition is calm and authoritative.
So often with these aspiring theocrats, you have to ask "are they ignorant or dishonest", with Denny-P the answer is a resounding "both". The Bible is anti social justice? By my estimation, social justice is possibly the strongest and most consistent themes in the Bible. Prager is fond of taking about how unique the ideas in the Hebrew Bible are, how immoral all the contemporary nations were. Most of this is nonsense but the emphasis on social justice is one place that there is a case for distinctive moral teaching. All of which is my impression as an interested non-expert, open to correction.
James 1:27 - Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
Isn’t the idea that equity =/= justice also wrong under simple etymology? Equity is fairness, right? Isn’t justice also meant to achieve fairness? How can they be opposed? What kind of dictionary is he reading from?
The Hebrew bible also has things to say about the treatment of aliens. Just two examples are; Ex 22:21 that says” do not wrong or oppress a resident alien” and Lev 19:34 that says “you shall love the alien as yourself”.
I think social justice is a misnomer for what it’s come to describe. Justice really boils down to: you get what you deserve. What we call social justice is actually often times social mercy, or social generosity. I’m not advocating against mercy and providing opportunities for people btw, I’m very poor myself.
In biblical studies it's always been called distributive justice. And it has been recognized in the Bible for as long as people have been actually reading it.
I think the biblical authors were onto something about social breakdown having cosmic importance. Methinks that disembodied spirits do not have as much agency as embodied spirits do, so the greatest effects come from human actions during life -- anything after is more or less an echo that fades away.
@@penguinman9837Oops! This is a joke about LeftTube which refers to a kind of amorphous blob of left-leaning RU-vid creators. The premise is that making video essays debunking right-wing creators, especially guys like Prager is sometimes seen as a cornerstone of LeftTube content, so I was saying this video was an involuntary initiation into that crowd. It was a very silly thing for me to say, since many in the actual community are ambivalent to the term and Dan McClellan's content is pretty apolitical...well outside of the fact that he's an educator and deep leaning and analysis of the world (and the Bible especially) is kind of just inherently amti-conservative... 😉
@@BrassicaRappa oh I saw the silliness and replied light-heartedly. However just for your information you basically just said that intellectualism is anti-conservative. Such a position is so far from reality that it needs to be pointed out
@@penguinman9837 Have to disagree. Anti-intellectualism is a pillar of modern day conservativism. You see the seed of it when religious parents are taught to homeschool or keep their kids from going to "liberal" colleges to ideas like YEC. Today it's conservatives ignoring empirical data that subverts & counters their political narratives.
Dan. At this point can you make a vid about what IS true in the bible? Your debunking vids are fun, but what HAS the bible influenced? And What IS true about the bible?
It's kind of embarrassing that Dan knows more about the Hebrew scriptures than Dennis Prager, who is Jewish. It's also embarrassing that Dan seems to know more about the formation of the United States than a guy who's very conservative, who's part of a group of people who espouse "the truth" about the USA as if it's a kind of gospel truth. Prager engages in the act of myth construction (or we could call it "myth-information"), utilizing what's useful for his rhetoric.
"Americans...." including the autoctonous inhabitants? Thomas L Thompson "The Myth of the Messiah" finds these ideas of social justice throughout the ancient Near East, btw.
"They quoted someone who quoted deuteronomy"? Are you saying you understood me to be saying that the founders were quoting the sermons and that's how they got published? if so, that's not accurate.
“ Square that with what you said between 1:00 and 2:00. “Did Deuteronomy have a significant impact on the founding of this country? Not really.“ I think you’re reframing the other person’s claim and then debunking it based on the extra caveats you added. He simply claimed the founders quoted Deuteronomy more than any other source.
@@jasonanderson_PA And I'm pointing out that that's false. The study demonstrated that politically oriented publications in America from 1760 to 1805 quoted Deuteronomy more than any other source, but all politically oriented publications do not constitute "the founders," and when you remove the clergy who published their own sermons as pamphlets (these are not the founders), Deuteronomy comes nowhere close to being the most quoted source. The Bible itself drops to 4th place. Prager was explicitly misrepresenting the data to try to make it sound like it was exclusively the actual founders by claiming in his Fox News article he referenced that the study looked only at publications by the 55 signers of the US Constitution, and that is 100% false. I have no idea if he intentionally lied about the study or just wildly misunderstood it, but his claim is indisputably false.
@dan do you are willing to state that sermons had no effect on the nation’s state? It seems you have a bias and you are cherry-picking facts to support it…aren’t you against this type of understanding?
Reuben just eats that nonsense up. The man hasn't read the Bible a day in his life and is suddenly excited that Dennis is using it to justify their politics.
This is my problem with the Bible. It is so easy for evil, racist, hateful men to cherry pick verses to say “MA GAWD SAYS I CAN DO THIS!”; And feel justified in committing the most heinous crimes against humanity. But a good man doesn’t need the Bible to tell him/her so be kind to the poor or the foreigner in their lands, they will do that anyway because they are kind and don’t need to justify themselves by appealing to a higher power. So it only seems that evil men use the Bible to advance their hate BECAUSE there are so many EVIL passages in the Bible that say they can commit atrocities. That’s why I believe the Bible is a net evil.
“Nature herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse, the more powerful than the weaker; and in many ways she shows, among men as well as among animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior.” - Plato
Perhaps Denis is misquoting the Talmud: When two litigants come before you for judgment, one poor and one rich, do not say to yourself: How can I make sure to exonerate the poor one and charge the rich one? Or how (can I exonerate the rich one and charge the poor one? For if I charge the poor one, then he will become my enemy, but if I exonerate the poor one, then the rich one will become my enemy. And do not say to yourself: How) can I take this one’s money and give it to that one? For the Torah says (Deuteronomy 1:17), “Do not be partial in judgment.” Avot D'Rabbi Natan 10:2. It is not a stretch at all to see that קָטָןwould include the poor. Are you saying that Priests, Scribes, Levites, "regular" people and slaves enjoyed equity? or that the law pushed for equity? Life was different than today, and so the extremes of poverty and wealth were not as large, but they were there, as far as I can tell they were designed to be there. Without any shadow of a doubt the whole idea is heavily influenced towards taking care of the poor, but not legislating the poor out of existence. Deuteronomy doesn't say "give the sheaf, olives, or grapes to the priests so they can dole them out to the poor as they see fit after taking their cut." It says leave your sheaf, olives and grapes for those who need it because that is what a decent human being would do. (I am of course paraphrasing.) We are supposed to be generous and care for the poor, not rely on the state. I do not see the link between equity and justice that you are advocating for. The social systems were designed to maintain status, literally making any concept of equity (which I would appreciate a scriptural reference for) not feasible.
if we had a law telling you to leave some of your income out on your lawn for homeless people, you wouldn't cry about it any less than tax-funded welfare.
@joshridinger3407 if I understand you correctly, you are incorrect. I advocate for just such a law in most conversations. The solution to the problem, any problem, is keeping the state from being involved.
@joshridinger3407 you are correct. Which is why I would advocate for the law. If the law says leave 5 dollars on your lawn for the homeless, the homeless would get 5 of my dollars to perpetuate their homelessness. If the law says give the state 5 dollars for the homeless, the homeless might get a penny to perpetuate their homelessness, and someone in the state would get a new yacht.
He's also an extreme hypocrite. He's not an observant Jew, not even Reform. He literally cherry-picks the bits he can twist to support his fascist ideas and ignores all the rest.
This guy is a classic sophist. He’ll pick apart technicalities in the fragments of what’s being said, throw in some massaged definitions of terms, parade his general biblical knowledge with references he knows you won’t look up and pretends to be able to speak authoritatively for the founders. The mutual exclusivity of equity and justice is reasonable and logical. Discuss the point without the sophistry.
The problem here is that Prager is talking about Justice and the in the video above the speaker does not actually define social justice, instead he says social justice is about creating a more just society. Would not in fact the Biblical meaning of Justice give a more just society? Of course it would. So the video continues that social justice is about making it so ones income does not affect how much access they have to resources and to Justice. You see that social justice is in fact socialism where the state gives to all the same things. Of course that has and can never happen but no one ever said social justice was practical. It is simply a euphemism for whatever good things one wants and they call it social justice. That is why Prager is right social justice is the opposite of justice. Even in the video after the socialism expressed he says after the resources "and to justice". minute 4:13 Then he goes on to talk about charity, which a lot of people mean when they say social justice, only we already had the word charity and we really did not need it to be redefined as social justice. Any modifier on the word Justice devalues the meaning of Justice!
you say social justice is merely a euphemism for what one considers good. that's only true in the sense that that is what justice is. to aristocrats, justice is the maximization of their wealth and power over the lowly. to the lowly, justice is the opposite.
@@joshridinger3407 No I said social justice is socialism. I would really like to see your source for saying: "to aristocrats, justice is the maximization of their wealth and power over the lowly." Pretty sure none would say that because even aristocrats use the justice of the legal system. Nor do I see any evidence that the "lowly" think the opposite meaning the minimization of the wealth and power of the wealthy.
@Zipd100 if you just define justice as whatever the legal system says, then it's not inherently contradicted by 'social justice' or 'socialism'. and yes, that's how the wealthy and powerful define justice. that's the only way you get a definition of justice that is an antonym of 'equity'.
@@joshridinger3407 "Would not in fact the Biblical meaning of Justice give a more just society? Of course, it would." A society in which slavery was condoned? In which women were treated as second class human beings?
@mendez704 i don't understand why you're attributing that quote to me, but i think most people sympathetic to biblical morality would consider slavery and patriarchy to be features, not bugs.
Your understanding of social justice is poor. It sounds like you believe the rhetoric over the actions of the social justice warriors. But I would agree with you that no one is to be denied justice and we should care for the poor.
This is a problem Dan has, he pushes this "social justice/wokism" crap without due critique. That's why much of the comments from his social media followers come from that perspective. Maybe some day he'll agree, that's also a load of bull's and start trimming that side as well.
@Nicholas Time so saying you agree with someone that has a different political viewpoint than you like is fascist? That is how the Gulags were filled. Unfortunately, that ideology ended up eating its own, and I don’t think it will play out different in this case.
@@leadersofleaders Well said, friend Both Dan and Dennis/ Dave are seekers and deserve attention. Dan reveals his errors at the very end, but his scholarship and efforts to be truthful are well argued and decent. Unlike the angry zealots that can only hurl insults and abuse at others, whilst ( usually) being unable to spell. Dan deserves better.
Well, there's always Matthew 25:32-46, which is a mandate by Christ that we care for the poor, the sick, and the marginalized, but there are a number of scriptures throughout both the Old and New Testaments that call for justice for the poor and needy. Contrary to popular belief, the *sin of Sodom" was not homosexuality, but was, in fact, the wealthy ignoring the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49). There are numerous other examples. As for Prager's beloved rich, Christ had two things to say...."Woe to the rich, for they already have their reward"....and "It is easier for a camel to travel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God".
@@granvillesimmons6033 two things can be true at the same time. Genesis 13:13, Genesis 19 is a reality, even if their opulence led them to ignore the poor and needy, their homosexual behavior was also wicked, and they were great sinners.
