Data Over Dogma Podcast

Currently Playing: Abortion is NOT child sacrifice

Senator Mike Lee has taken to invoking Moloch online, recasting abortion as ancient child sacrifice to a bloodthirsty god. There's just one problem: there's no good evidence Moloch was ever a god at all — the word points to a type of sacrifice, not a deity — and the Hebrew Bible draws a sharp line between a born person and a fetus. This episode, we untangle the Moloch myth, trace how abortion got built into a political wedge issue, and confront the far thornier texts where it is the God of Israel who seems to be asking for child sacrifice. ____________________________________________________________ Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Listen to the podcast on every app: https://pod.link/1681418502 ____________________________________________________________ Follow us on social media: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod ____________________________________________________________ Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ ____________________________________________________________ Credits for photo used in thumbnail: Image Credit: Photo of Mike Lee by Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mike_Lee_(48512263512).jpg License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en Note: This image was modified from the original (e.g., masked and color-adjusted). ____________________________________________________________ Chapters: 0:00 — Intro 1:49 — Twisted Scripture: Mike Lee 3:29 — The Talarico Tweet 5:20 — Moloch on the Altar 6:38 — Abortion as Child Sacrifice 8:46 — Property, Not a Person 11:50 — Inventing a Wedge Issue 14:31 — The Magic Bullet Vote 16:49 — Moloch Was Never a God 17:58 — Reconstructing Lost Vowels 22:25 — The Milcom Corruption 24:03 — The Bible's Child Sacrifice 26:43 — "Give Me Your Firstborn" 30:47 — What Actually Reduces Abortion 32:42 — Outro ____________________________________________________________ #DataOverDogma #BibleScholarship #Moloch #ChildSacrifice #MikeLee