Chris Mallard and cohost Erin (Ms. NonSequitur) read Genesis 2 and 3 and argue that the Garden of Eden story is a setup in which God lies, plants a temptation and punishes the result. The episode also covers the defenses apologists offer and whether Genesis can be called metaphor. A side discussion looks at Psalm 14:1.
Did God lie to Adam and Eve about dying the day they ate the fruit?
Chris reads Genesis 2:17 in the BSB translation, where God says that on the day they eat of the tree they will surely die. He argues this is the first lie in the Bible, because Adam and Eve did not die that day and went on to have children. The serpent’s claim that their eyes would open comes true instead. Chris also answers the claim that death began after eating, noting that God feared they would eat from the tree of life, which suggests they were already mortal with an expiration date built in.
Why did God punish Adam and Eve before they knew good and evil?
The hosts argue that God forbade the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then held Adam and Eve morally responsible for an act committed before they had that knowledge. Ms. NonSequitur asks who let the serpent into the garden and who was in charge of everyone there. The hosts also note that God plays dumb with ‘where are you’ despite seeing everything. They say defenses like a test, spiritual death, or free will requiring the tree only expose more of the con.
Why did Adam blame Eve, and why was she punished most?
Chris points out that Adam was standing right beside Eve during the serpent’s conversation, yet blamed her when God asked what had happened. He argues God then punished Eve most severely. Chris also notes that Eve, speaking to the serpent, adds that they must not touch the tree, and suggests she heard the rule secondhand from Adam since she was not present when God spoke. On nudity, he says God was upset that they covered themselves, yet later made clothes from animal skins.
Is the Garden of Eden story literal or a metaphor?
Chris asks viewers who call Genesis a metaphor how they decide which parts of the Bible are metaphor and which are literal. He points out that the Bible contains some limited historical facts, so it cannot be metaphor all the way through, and that it has no helpful asterisks marking the difference. He adds that someone who rejects evolution because of Genesis must treat it as literal, then explain why it is not literal elsewhere. Chris also says that even read metaphorically, the story is not a good one.
What does Psalm 14:1 say about people who deny God?
The hosts look up Psalm 14:1 together: ‘A fool says in their heart, There is no God. They are corrupt. Their acts are vile. There is no one who does good.’ They point out that Christians usually quote only the first part and leave out the claim that no one does good, which they argue even believers struggle to maintain about atheists. One host says the fool who denies God fits the definition of an atheist, though the word does not appear.
Transcript highlights
Selected passages from the live stream, lightly edited for readability. Click a section time to jump to that part of the video.
Part 1
[Commercial break]
A viewer in chat, Espresso Jack, put the problem bluntly: if you believe in a talking serpent in the Garden of Eden, you need mental health. Chris agreed that even if you read the story metaphorically, it is not a good story. He said that when he was a child he was indoctrinated to believe it was holy, but when you actually stop and look at what happens, it does not hold together.
Miss Nonsequitur said this was a wonderful opportunity, because she had been studying the early chapters of Genesis. She had decided to run a new prompt over on TikTok about the fall, and she had been enjoying talking about how, as the show title says, God cons those poor little babies, who are bent over and absolutely violated. She walked through the sequence. God created Adam on either the third day or the fifth day, and it is not clear which. Then he gave Adam a wife who was also made from him, so kind of his sibling or clone or something.
God told Adam not to eat of the fruit or he would surely die that day. Adam probably told Eve, but then the serpent came along. Miss Nonsequitur asked the obvious question: who could have let the serpent into the garden? Who was in charge of everybody in the garden? She did not know the answer, and she invited Chris to take a stab at it.
Chris said, whimsical as it may be, the answer is not God. He was careful to add that he was employ
Genesis, Eden, and the First Lie
Chris opens by noting the death of Patrick Stewart and recalling how much Star Trek: The Next Generation meant to him and his mother. He describes the emotional toll of the news on the day of a rehearsal, when a director mentioned it while he was getting his hair done. He then moves into the Garden of Eden, noting that Adam was standing right beside Eve during the serpent’s conversation, yet Adam blamed her when God asked what had happened. He argues that God then punished Eve most severely for it.
The discussion turns to nudity. Chris points out that God was upset when Adam and Eve realized they were naked and covered themselves, which seems odd given how modern Christians insist on modesty. He notes that Genesis says God later made clothes of animal skins for them, so God clearly knew how to make clothing. He jokes that God simply liked looking at his naked children.
Chris then turns to the wording of God’s command. In Genesis 2, God told Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but Eve, when speaking to the serpent, adds that they must not touch it either. Chris suggests she must have heard the rule secondhand from Adam, since she was not present when God spoke. He reads the passage from the BSB translation, where God says that on the day they eat of it they will surely die.
Chris argues that this statement was the first lie in the Bible, because Adam and Eve did not die that day and went on to have children. He addresses the apologetic claim that they began to die only after eating the fruit, pointing out that God feared they would eat from the tree of life and gain eternal life. From that, he concludes that they must already have been mortal, with an expiration date built in from the start.
Chris reads a comment from a viewer who said that reading the Bible would make someone an atheist, and he agrees that this is the fastest route. He describes the show as a sort of atheist Bible study, aimed at showing viewers what they may not know about the religion. He also responds to a viewer named Sabula, correcting the wording of the tree passage and explaining that the knowledge clause is what matters for the angel’s guard at the end of the story.
Genesis, Evolution, and Show Logistics
Chris Mallard opens by praising the chat and reflecting on how viewers’ own Bible study has been shaped by the show. He notes that he watches other content creators to prepare for the show, and that he often finds viewers raising points he has already covered on his own broadcasts.
The conversation turns to the unified chat overlay. Chris explains that no other channel he knows of puts its unified chat on screen, and that it takes up a lot of room. He suggests that a mod page on the website could give moderators the same tools as a host, including user history and buttons for moderation actions.
Chris then raises a question for viewers who claim Genesis is a metaphor. He asks how they decide which parts of the Bible are metaphor and which are literal, pointing out that the Bible contains some limited historical facts, so it cannot be metaphor all the way through. He adds that the book does not mark these distinctions for the reader, saying the Bible has no helpful asterisks telling readers what is literal and what is not.
Chris presses a related point about a viewer named Terry. If Terry says that everything after Exodus is literal, Chris asks whether he accepts evolution, arguing that a person who rejects evolution because of Genesis would have to treat Genesis as literal, and then would have to explain why it is not literal elsewhere. He says that he is curious whether Terry will debate the question publicly, and notes that Terry seems to be avoiding it.
Chris then turns to a passage in which Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew, warns against calling someone a fool, and he asks whether any Christian in the chat has done so. He says he does not want to run a generic atheist bingo game for the stream, and the group briefly considers other ideas for a recurring game before settling on nothing firm.
The section closes with Chris wondering aloud about a short bit he would like to film for a Christmas in Hell segment. He imagines a scene in which he, Seth Andrews and Matt Dillahunty approach a figure at a bar, and the figure rebuffs them. He says he could create it with AI but would prefer to use a green screen, as he has done before.
Dashboards, Notes, Bingo and a Dragon Challenge
Here’s just a thought. I could get some new people in it as well, and I could create us a new one, because on the last one I mentioned a few people, but I don’t know if I can get them to join me. Maybe I can get some new people to join me in hell for Christmas. I could reach out to John from, um, Mezo, maybe Messo would possibly be interested. And Joel, I would reach out to Joel and see if he’d be willing to join us down in hell for Christmas.
I’m actually going to send Godless Engineer a dummy dashboard to show him what the show does, because he uses AI. I believe he does. He runs a show and uses all the same tools I do. I could either let him use one of my dashboards or, being John, he could create it himself. I just don’t know if he’s got a big huge server computer sitting there holding LLM models and whatnot, like I’ve got.
One of the things I have that a lot of people aren’t going to have is a Linux box with a Whisper server on it. That’s what translates the transcripts and injects them into these panels for us. Not everybody has that.
[Commercial break]
One of the things I’ve kind of got built now is that all of our streams are going to start taking calls again. If you want to take calls with Miss NonSequitur this morning, pop up. Beard can take a call or two if he’s available and feels like it. Miss NonSequitur could obviously handle calls all by herself. Calls I can handle all by myself. It’s on camera that I have trouble handling things all by myself.
For me right now, the main thing is testing the system to see whether it can bear three people, a host, and a guest. Whenever you have a guest, you start getting a little panel that’s different. It’s built specifically for you, where you can have a panel of guests. I’ll have to show you, because I haven’t got to show you yet. I wonder if you’re free on Wednesday night, because Wednesday night would be the ultimate test of that sort of stuff. You can pop in just for the first little while while we’re fiddling with it, and we’ll talk about it later. That depends on rehearsals. If I don’t have rehearsals, I’m absolutely going to be there Wednesday. Even if I have rehearsals, I can kind of be there.
I’ve got notes on my dashboard too. At the bottom of the onscreen section, I’m going to put a little tab that takes you to a notes area, so you can type in notes and put a list in there if you want to talk about something later. I keep something like that on my phone, and it would be easier to have it right here on the dashboard. The notes on my phone are a mess. I have notes from reading Genesis just recently. The second note is a list of acts attributed to God that are evil. It is long. I can scroll and scroll and scroll, and it’s totally unorganized, but it is a lot of fun.
It would be nice if the hosts had a unified repository of knowledge where you could quickly type something in and look it up. I’m not talking about the internet. I’m talking about something specific to our show. You’ve got the internet. That’s what you’re talking about, the internet. You’re right, I kind of am, but that’s not what I mean, because I have my own notes too, and they’re not very reliable. The program I was using is called Notion. I used Notion for a while. It wasn’t very reliable.
Kelly responded to us about that. He said he’d have to get dressed if he was going to get on the show. I want him to know that’s not necessary at all. Put on a tie. Why not come topless? I can’t, but put on a tie and get over here. One of the things about Kelly is that his studio is at work, but he’s got one at home too. If he gets bored, he’s an addict. He loves being on stream. Once you put on one of the ties, it’ll obscure almost all of your chest. Maybe you need one of those giant 70s ties, and then you’ll be totally covered. It’ll be more like a dickey.
I’ve got the calendar up now for Kelly too. For those who want to be on the calendar, there’s a link to it. Bingo cards is not a bad idea. Atheist bingo is a thing, and everybody’s doing it. Everybody’s doing it because everybody loves it. There’s a reason for that. We will try and think of something else first. Maybe at some point we’ll succumb to the masses and just give in to bingo, but we can at least try to be original. If we do it, nobody’s going to judge us too harshly, because everybody’s doing it.
Let me ask those who play with John and other channels. Do you go to his website and log in there to play the games? That’s what I saw with John. If you want to go to his thing and determine whether a statement is a lie or not, you have to go to his website, sign in, and then you can play his little game. I have that ability. I just haven’t done it yet. So we could have those who want to play hangman, or whatever it is, go to the website. It would be awesome if you all came to a Wednesday night chat and chill, where we could talk about what you’d like to see on this show, what kind of game and audience participation you’d enjoy. The chat and chill is really for our chat denizens. I hope you don’t mind the word denizen. It’s a place to get to know each other
Part 5
That’s an interesting take. I would say most geniuses are batshit [ __ ] crazy. Well, I don’t know. I mean, they could be both, though. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. They love teaching people. Just don’t look under their cellar. There’s bodies down there. Or So, in that case, Colorado Gamer might truly be a genius if we uh use it to to uh No, I shouldn’t make fun of our chat links. Colorado Gamer, thank you for being here. We appreciate the engagement and we enjoy having counter points to talk. Uh count no. You can you can be a jerk to the crazy ones. You’re doing good. You’re doing good. [sighs and gasps] You know me. I like lighting
them up. You like watching me light them up. I do. I love it. I’m not criticizing you. In fact, last night on my stream, oh my gosh, I was so spicy last night, but I was getting I was so spicy. Um, and actually, it was about this Godcon Adam and Eve one. Uh, somebody was coming in and telling me that Adam and Eve truly actually did have the knowledge of good and evil before they ate of the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Even though in the book it actually says just one moment. Let’s see. Okay. Well, well, you got it. Almost. Okay. You’re almost there. Almost there. I have
to type right though. Is there Colorado Gamer says he’ll give us one piece of the puzzle of proving scientifically that God exists. Just one tiny piece. And I’m like, no, I’m okay. Thanks. Okay. Did I do it? Did you? No. Uh, I’ve Okay, now I’ve done it. There you go. All right. And Okay. The problem is I cannot see. Yeah, that’s not gonna I can’t see. I can’t see the screen while I’m um scrolling. Um while I’m going up and down. I Yeah. So, I’m going to have to read it off my phone instead. You you can actually you can unfold screen it. I’m not sure what you’re saying. You can’t see. I’m not sure.
I I’ll try and explain it to you later. Um Okay. Because where where where I where I type in the the verses and and it has the um up and down so I can scroll through the thing. That’s too far down on the left hand of my screen. So, I can’t see the show screen at the same time as I can fiddle with that. And so, that’s been part of the problem because I have to scroll all the way down to Anyway, sorry about that. Okay. I wonder if we made the backstage collapsible so the one on the left side would move up whenever you didn’t need it. Would that move those screens up for
you and be helpful? I’m not sure. We can play with that later. We’ll think of that later. Okay. Carry on. You want to go ahead. Okay. So, um Genesis 3. Let’s see. Where is Okay, I have to find where my place is here. Okay, I was just clearing the screen while you found it. There you go. Um, Joker’s Wild is here. Garrett, good morning, Garrett. I saw your you said something earlier and I I missed it. Um, good morning. And you can also, Miss Aaron, you can grab the bars between the three different columns and you can move them left and right. Didn’t Okay, just making sure. No, I I I I know I Yeah.
Oh, I can do that. Okay, never mind. I I could have done it differently, but that’s okay. Um, anyway, I found it. He uh I’m sorry. I thought I found it. I’m I was doing this better last night. Uh, where does it say? Where does it say? Um, oh, okay. Dang it. I’m curious. I’m sorry. I’m um You’re okay. You’re doing good. I want to know if it’s from my system or if it’s just normal background noise that I don’t I hear through my microphone. Maybe you can help me actually when I tell you what I’m looking for. What I’m looking for is where God was talking about they they ate of the fruit and
AI Ads, a Holy Halo Parody, and Stream Controls
The hosts begin by discussing AI-generated content in commercials, with one host arguing that AI belongs in a funny parody but not in medical ads that imitate real doctors. They note that deepfake voices of real people, such as an impression of Patrick Stewart, are unwelcome. One host compares the fear of AI art to earlier worries about computer art, arguing that tools like Adobe did not destroy artistic careers and that AI will not either.
The show then plays a parody commercial called Barkbank, where a clergyman named Father Flanigan pitches Holy Halos, permeable condoms dipped in holy water that let people have sex without sinning. When a listener asks whether the holy water could harm women’s health, the pitch simply ignores the question. The bidding continues with a dog-voiced investor who eventually offers $50,000 for 20 percent, and Father Flanigan accepts, closing with a joke about the product coming in conservative, medium, and liberal sizes.
After the commercial, the host explains his stream setup. He describes a touch-screen control panel, similar to a Stream Deck, that lets him run commercials, show saved scriptures, and trigger sound effects without hunting for tiny buttons on the monitor. He says he can keep his favorite verses on the panel, such as the verse about calling someone a fool.
That leads to a reading of Psalm 14:1, which the hosts look up together: “A fool says in their heart, ‘There is no God. They are corrupt. Their acts are vile. There is no one who does good.’” The hosts point out that Christians usually quote only the first part and leave out the claim that no one does good, which they argue even believers struggle to maintain about atheists. One host says the verse’s description of a fool who denies God fits the definition of an atheist, even though the word itself does not appear.
The section ends with a quick greeting to a viewer and a reminder that the hosts will be taking calls on Thursday.
Show Calendar, Hosting Plans and Stream Troubleshooting
The host walks viewers through the show calendar on the website, explaining that it lets registered hosts claim time slots and shows who is running each program. He notes that Aaron will host the daily morning show and that Beard and another host are scheduled for Thursday. Kelly Laughlin may be given new hosts to train over the weekends, since he knows so many people and is well suited to teaching newcomers how to take calls.
He also describes plans for a training system and a political talk show for the evenings. He says he has reached out to Andy Hall about hosting it, but he will not be part of it himself because he gets too ranty and angry about politics. He is clear that the show will be left-leaning and that he would not platform right-wing guests as contrarians, though he invites anyone with knowledge of left-wing politics to get in touch.
Much of the rest of the section is spent dealing with connection problems. The audio flickered and dropped several times, and the host blamed his router and Xfinity internet, joking that a prayer circle among Christians may have been praying to tech gremlins instead. He restarted the stream engine and reloaded his browser while the system reported a detected problem, and he said the stream had not dropped once since switching to the new setup. He also remarked that he is building his own streaming platform, which he suspects larger services are trying to undermine.
In the chat, a viewer asked where the first spark of life came from, and the host responded with mock exasperation that the question was silly because God obviously did it. He also commented on DCJL’s arguments, saying they were mostly straw men and an attempt to shift the burden of proof. Near the end, he said he was still checking the logs and would end the stream early if the problems continued.
Technical trouble and stream wrap-up
Most of this section is technical trouble. Chris Mallard says OBS keeps crashing and suspects his Xfinity connection, which he says has been tripping out on itself. He notes that there were no Super Chats today, thanks a viewer who upgraded their membership, and then tests the automatic shutoff before ending the stream.
[Commercial break]
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