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Speaker 1: Life Audio.

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Speaker 2: You are listening to The Beckett Cook Show with your

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Speaker 2: host Beckett Cook. For more information about Beckett and his ministry,

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Speaker 2: visit his website at Beckettcook dot com. To help support

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Speaker 2: the podcast, visit Patreon dot com slash the Beckett Cook Show.

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Speaker 2: Please consider subscribing to the podcast and leaving a five

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Speaker 2: star rating.

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Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to the show today. My guest is

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Speaker 1: Larry Alex Taunton. He's been on the show at least once,

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Speaker 1: maybe twice, and he has recently written a piece in

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Speaker 1: The Federalist called The title of the article is called

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Speaker 1: outrage over Texas teaching the Bible is anti intellectual, very

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Speaker 1: very interesting read, and we're going to get into all

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Speaker 1: the details. And if you don't know Larry Alex Taunton,

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Speaker 1: he is a freelance columnist who's written for USA Today,

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Speaker 1: Daily Wire, First Things, The Atlantic, CNN, The American Spectator,

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Speaker 1: and so on, et cetera, et cetera. He's written several

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Speaker 1: books and he is also the host of the podcast

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Speaker 1: Ideas Have Consequences, which is great but first award from

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Speaker 1: our sponsor. Please welcome Larry Alex Taunton.

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Speaker 3: Pleasure to be with you. Beckett Cook.

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Speaker 1: So this is this was a fascinating article that you wrote.

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Speaker 1: This column outrage over Texas teaching the Bible is anti intellectual,

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Speaker 1: And this is in the Federalist, as I mentioned in

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Speaker 1: the intro, and you say in the first paragraph, you say,

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Speaker 1: outrage over the Texas State Board of Education's requirement that

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Speaker 1: Bible be included in the K through twelve curriculum isn't

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Speaker 1: just anti God. It speaks to a lack of understanding

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Speaker 1: of what made the West great. So that's kind of

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Speaker 1: the premise of it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, very much so.

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Speaker 1: And talk about before we get into the details of that,

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Speaker 1: talk about who is Forest McDonald and tell us that story.

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Speaker 3: Ah well, Forest McDonald, Uh, he was a character. Forest

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Speaker 3: McDonald was a famous historian within you know, his history circles.

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Speaker 3: He was a professor of mine, guided my graduate thesis.

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Speaker 3: In a sense, he wasn't he wasn't the guy who

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Speaker 3: who oversaw the subject per much per se. But the uh,

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Speaker 3: the writing of it. And I was fascinated by McDonald

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Speaker 3: because I was very fortunate, first of all, that he

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Speaker 3: chose me to be one of his students. He was

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Speaker 3: the kind of guy he testified before Congress during the

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Speaker 3: impeachment hearings of Bill Clinton to explain what high crimes

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Speaker 3: and mister meanors mean in the Constitution. He was a

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Speaker 3: constitutional historian, early American history historian. He was a guy

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Speaker 3: who had incredible attention to detail. I learned so much

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Speaker 3: from him about writing. And I will never forget Beckett.

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Speaker 3: In a class, there was just just three of us,

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Speaker 3: four including him, and five including his wife who served

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Speaker 3: as his editor. And he holds up a copy of

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Speaker 3: Barbara Tuckman, also a famous historian. She'd written a book

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Speaker 3: called A Distant Mirror, and A Distant Mirror is a

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Speaker 3: history of the fourteenth century. And then he takes it

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Speaker 3: very demonstratively, and he flips to her preface, her forward,

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Speaker 3: and he reads from it a quotation, and I think

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Speaker 3: you have that quotation right in front of you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. The quotation is, while I this is from Barbara Tuckman,

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Speaker 1: while I recognize Christianity's presence in the Middle Ages, it

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Speaker 1: requires a more religious bent than mine to identify with it.

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Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, it's an incredible statement. And by the way,

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Speaker 3: I've read quite a lot of Barbara Tuckman's many here

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Speaker 3: may recognize that name. She wrote a mega bestseller called

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Speaker 3: The Guns of August that was published in nineteen sixty

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Speaker 3: four but still in print, and it, you know, it

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Speaker 3: continues to sell and it's a terrific read. But it

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Speaker 3: to me, a statement like that is kind of like saying,

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Speaker 3: I'm writing a history of the Yankees, but I need

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Speaker 3: to make it clear that I don't really understand baseball,

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Speaker 3: though I know it's fairly important to this subject. To me,

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Speaker 3: it's just an astonishing admission. And anyway, he took it.

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Speaker 3: He read that. He clearly had sat down to read

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Speaker 3: her book, and you know, as an author, he took

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Speaker 3: very seriously the forward preface, and then he took it

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Speaker 3: and he threw it on the table and he said,

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Speaker 3: read no further, because she's admitting to you that she

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Speaker 3: has no authority to write a book like that. She

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Speaker 3: has assumed that because she's not a Christian, she's not

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Speaker 3: particularly religious, she assumes it's unimportant to her subject, and

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Speaker 3: therefore she's telling you she doesn't understand the mindset of

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Speaker 3: the Middle Ages of the fourteenth century in particular. And

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Speaker 3: I always remembered the lesson from that with McDonald because

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Speaker 3: McDonald was a very exacting scholar. He demanded excellence, and

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Speaker 3: that meant more than just in the writing. He had

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Speaker 3: an expectation that you take very seriously the past, the

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Speaker 3: figures in the past, they deserve a certain integrity that

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Speaker 3: you apply to them when you were studying them, when

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Speaker 3: you're writing about them, and you make some serious effort

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Speaker 3: to try to understand them. And so for me, that

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Speaker 3: had real, real events. When we're talking about the Texas

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Speaker 3: State School Board. What's going on here?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and when, by the way, when does that go

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Speaker 1: into effect?

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Speaker 3: You know, I don't know, that's a very good question.

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Speaker 3: I would assume that since they just approved it, that

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Speaker 3: that would mean that it would go into effect this

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Speaker 3: coming autumn.

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Speaker 1: And who is Tiffany Clark.

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Speaker 3: Tiffany Clark. Tiffany Clark is a Democrat member of the

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Speaker 3: Texas State School Board. The school board voted overwhelmingly in

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Speaker 3: favor of this curriculum. And again, it wasn't just the Bible.

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Speaker 3: They didn't just meet and say, hey, let's get the

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Speaker 3: Bible into schools. They were approving a very broad curriculum

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Speaker 3: and the Bible sections of the Bible, not the entire Bible,

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Speaker 3: but sections of it were required. And the board overwhelmingly

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Speaker 3: approved this proposed reading list, and Tiffany Clark, along with

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Speaker 3: a few others were vote call and opposing it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, you say, you say that what is

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Speaker 1: this quote? If you have oh you talk about drag

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Speaker 1: Queen story Hour has no place in the curriculum. What

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Speaker 1: you say one might reasonably say that drag Queen story

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Speaker 1: Hour has no place in the school curriculum. And then

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Speaker 1: you say that if you you know, if you have

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Speaker 1: one meaning the Bible in the classroom, but you're very

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Speaker 1: unlikely to have the other.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, what I'm kidding at And there is that here's

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Speaker 3: Tiffany Clark. Solly, do you remember Dana Carvey's iconic church lady? Yeah,

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Speaker 3: in that fish?

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Speaker 1: Isn't that special fish?

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Speaker 3: Tiffany Clark? Listen. I couldn't find any video of Tiffany Clark,

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Speaker 3: but I would be disappointed if she doesn't sound like

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Speaker 3: the you know, the church lady. But a woman who

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Speaker 3: doesn't go to church. I mean, this is this is

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Speaker 3: a woman. She's a democrat. Uh, clearly has an agenda.

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Speaker 3: And what's obvious to me. I mean, listen, if if

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Speaker 3: morality or you know, some kind of unity or whatever

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Speaker 3: it is that seems to be on her mind really

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Speaker 3: mattered to her. Where I find no record of Tiffany

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Speaker 3: Clark complaining about Drag Queen Story Hour, which took place

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Speaker 3: in multiple, uh several Texas public schools. I don't see

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Speaker 3: her complaining about any of that. But now that the

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Speaker 3: Bible has been mentioned, she's like, oh, egads, I mean,

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Speaker 3: we can't have the Bible twerking trannies. That's okay. The

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Speaker 3: Bible is banned literature. And there's where you see what

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Speaker 3: their real motives actually are Backett and the point that

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Speaker 3: I'm trying to make here and saying, you don't have

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Speaker 3: one or the other. If you have the Bible, if

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Speaker 3: it is, if it plays a real role in your schools,

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Speaker 3: it's highly unlikely that you're going to have Drag Queen

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Speaker 3: Story Hour. And the left, sometimes I think, understands these

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Speaker 3: things much better the people on the right, dude. Hence

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Speaker 3: the reason they target the Bible again and again and again.

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Speaker 3: And I should say that the Quran has been passed

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Speaker 3: out in loads of Texas public schools. I don't see

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Speaker 3: Tiffany Clark complaining about that either, even though it plays

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Speaker 3: zero role in the development of Western civilization. None but

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Speaker 3: here she is, you know, complaining about this. And so

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Speaker 3: if a school is going to host drag queen story,

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Speaker 3: how are you better bet they don't want the Bible

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Speaker 3: to play any kind of role in that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, by the way, did you have when you were

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Speaker 1: growing up? Did you have Bible in your classes? You know?

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Speaker 3: As I recall, I was thinking about this, as I

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Speaker 3: was was preparing for this discussion, as I recall, you're

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Speaker 3: from the Midwest, Am i am? I right about that?

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Speaker 1: Yeh, I'm from Dallas, Texas.

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Speaker 3: Okay, excuse me, Okay, so you're from a red state.

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Speaker 3: That really is more of what I meant. You're from

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Speaker 3: a red state. And I think you're a little young

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Speaker 3: than I am. Beckett. When I was a kid, Yes,

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Speaker 3: we we had the Bible. I went to public schools

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Speaker 3: and I learned the Lord's Prayer in public school. We

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Speaker 3: we we were taught to say, you know, one nation

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Speaker 3: under God. We did the Pledge of Allegiance every morning

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Speaker 3: in what was called home room, you know in those days.

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Speaker 3: And I wouldn't say that all my teachers were necessarily Christian.

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Speaker 3: In fact, I know some of them weren't. I had

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Speaker 3: some Jewish teachers, probably some who were were were not

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Speaker 3: believers at all, but they were all deeply influenced by

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Speaker 3: Christian ethos. That is to say, they had inhaled deeply

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Speaker 3: of that. And if you behaved in a way that

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Speaker 3: wasn't really in line with that, you could expect there

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Speaker 3: to be some, you know, some consequences from that from

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Speaker 3: teachers and such. You, if it didn't involve discipline, might

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Speaker 3: involve them expressing their disap appointment, you know, in your behavior.

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this short break. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean I went to uh Jesuit Catholic schools from k

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Speaker 1: K through twelve and uh, well.

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Speaker 3: It's hard to know.

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Speaker 1: Not so much. It was more like Thomas aquinas you know,

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Speaker 1: and that kind of the Bible. Yeah, there wasn't a

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Speaker 1: lot of Bible, but we did, I mean we and

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Speaker 1: we said the Lord's Prayer in Latin every day, and

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Speaker 1: we said the Pledge of Allegiance in elementary school and

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Speaker 1: as you said, in homeroom. And what's interesting about my experience,

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Speaker 1: especially in high school at Jesuit was an all boys school.

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Speaker 1: And I always thought, I always, you know, think about this,

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Speaker 1: and I think Jesuit, whether or not it made my classmates,

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Speaker 1: uh citizens of heaven or not. It made them really

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Speaker 1: good citizens of this earth.

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Speaker 3: That's a good way to put it.

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Speaker 1: I like that all of my classmates, I mean, I'm

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Speaker 1: telling you all of my classmates from Jesuit. I think

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Speaker 1: the graduating class was ninety people. But they're all super

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Speaker 1: productive citizens, very responsible conservative. You know. It's like, that's

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Speaker 1: what it does. I mean, that's you know, that's that's

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Speaker 1: kind of one of the outcomes of having having a

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Speaker 1: Bible training in school.

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Speaker 3: No, it's it's it's a restraint, isn't it. And yeah,

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Speaker 3: my arguments of my first book, The Grace Effect, A

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Speaker 3: central argument that I'm making in that book is this

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Speaker 3: Beckett that every intelligent person I know believes that human

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Speaker 3: nature is the same the world over. So having settled

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Speaker 3: on that, the question becomes what ideas serve to restrain our,

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Speaker 3: you know, evil impulses, and which one serve as a

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Speaker 3: kind of gasoline on the fire of human nature. And

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Speaker 3: I've always argued that secular ideologies like say, communism, Marxism, socialism, fascism,

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Speaker 3: and things like so let's say Islam, they these these

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Speaker 3: are like fire on the the excuse me, They're like

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Speaker 3: gasoline on the fire of human nature because they give

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Speaker 3: justification to evil conduct. Whereas the Christian faith, the Bible specifically,

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Speaker 3: you may not become a Christian, but if you were,

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Speaker 3: if you were steeped in the traditions contained in scripture,

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Speaker 3: they do serve to restrain you because it serves as

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Speaker 3: a reminder of what's right and wrong. And when I

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Speaker 3: was debating, you know, back when we were doing loads

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Speaker 3: of debates, and I was debating guys like Christopher Hitchens

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Speaker 3: and UH and Daniel Dennett and UH, Michael Shermer on

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Speaker 3: television or before large you know audiences, studio audiences, I

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Speaker 3: often argued that it was so interesting that these guys

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Speaker 3: in many ways shared my moral outlook, but they had

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Speaker 3: no basis for it. So they would talk about the

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Speaker 3: importance of human dignity and freedom right, and you know,

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Speaker 3: Christopher Hitchins was opposed to abortion and UH. But you'd

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Speaker 3: always want to ask the question, and that's based on

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Speaker 3: what exactly you see, So they had they had absorbed

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Speaker 3: a certain measure of the Christian faith, not not not

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Speaker 3: to the point that they became Christians, but a point

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Speaker 3: that it did shape their view of the world.

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Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there they were just running on the fumes

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Speaker 1: of of of the Christian culture. And it seems like

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Speaker 1: isn't Dawkins now coming around a little bit and appreciating

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Speaker 1: Christian culture now that Islam is taking over his country.

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Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting you say that. Richard just occasionally

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Speaker 3: I still have contact with him. I would never say

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Speaker 3: that we're friends, but we have moments where we're friendly.

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Speaker 3: And that is because I've known him now for gosh,

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Speaker 3: almost twenty years. And Richard Richard is reasonably you know,

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Speaker 3: he's honest. He has a certain integrity about his his atheism.

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Speaker 3: He's very reluctant to admit he's wrong. But I think

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Speaker 3: he's slowly starting to recognize because of Islam's advance in

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Speaker 3: his own country. He's recognizing that the Christian faith has

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Speaker 3: served as a bulwark against barbarism. And as the Christian

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Speaker 3: faith kind of declines in not kind of, but but

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Speaker 3: accelerates in his decline in Britain, he's seeing, you know,

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Speaker 3: a rising you know, kind of totalitaryismarianism, of violence. He's seeing.

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Speaker 3: Of course, he's right, gangs that just recently reported on

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Speaker 3: by a Member of Parliament, Rupert Lowe in the UH

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Speaker 3: in the the infamous low report, and I think Richard

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Speaker 3: is starting to think, you know what, I preferred it

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Speaker 3: when the people on the wall had a Christian worldview

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Speaker 3: and I could misbehave within that. Now he's not quite

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Speaker 3: sure what to do. I remember doing an interview with him,

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Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe ten years ago. We're on camera

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Speaker 3: where at Oxford University, and I said, do you ever

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Speaker 3: receive any death threats from Muslims? I have? And he goes, stop, stop,

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Speaker 3: stop the cameras. You can't ask me that. And I said,

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Speaker 3: why can't I ask you that? He said to somebody's

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Speaker 3: going to see this and they're gonna, you know, then

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Speaker 3: they'll then they'll they'll actually do that. He recognizes that,

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Speaker 3: you know, he used to paint all religions with the

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Speaker 3: same broad brush. Right now he knows better. But I'm

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Speaker 3: afraid it may be too late for his country.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember he was on I think it was

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Speaker 1: Piers Morgan or a few years years ago. Someone put

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Speaker 1: this question to him as well about Islam and he

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Speaker 1: and he said, he just said, I can't answer that question.

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Speaker 1: Yeah he does now, but now he does. Now he's

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Speaker 1: actually willing to talk about it, and he's he's he's

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Speaker 1: been more a little more vocal about it lately. So

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Speaker 1: that's interesting.

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Speaker 3: It's an interesting I wish somewhere, somewhere deep inside me,

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Speaker 3: there's a part of me that wishes, you know, because

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Speaker 3: I've I've been combatant with him on so many occasions.

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Speaker 3: You know, he from time to time will will watch

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Speaker 3: maybe a podcast, or he read an article that I

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Speaker 3: wrote about John Lennon's song Imagine, in which I had

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Speaker 3: said that that song is the contrary of a great song.

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Speaker 3: It's terrible song.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the most commy song ever written.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely, and he read it and offered me a very thoughtful,

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Speaker 3: reasonable reply to that. And hence there's a there's a

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Speaker 3: reason there's a part of me that wishes that that,

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Speaker 3: at least on the issue of Islam, you could align

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Speaker 3: with him and fight against the enemy, because it's very

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Speaker 3: definitely a common enemy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And so back to this article, you say that

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Speaker 1: you say one suspects that Miss Clark, miss I love you,

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Speaker 1: but Miss Clark really means it really means is the

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Speaker 1: Bible is the only religious text on the list that

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Speaker 1: anyone takes seriously, and therein lies the critical real objection

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Speaker 1: to its inclusion. After all, the curriculum contains several religious

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Speaker 1: texts of Greek and Roman mythology, Like's fable Fables, Pericles's

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Speaker 1: funeral Oration, Beowulf, Hawthorne, et cetera, and so so talk

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Speaker 1: about that, I mean, because because I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of people don't even understand that there there are these

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Speaker 1: other techs that are already in the curriculum. Yeah, because

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Speaker 1: Christianity is true, it's the one that's threatening.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. That's a very good way to put it

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Speaker 3: back in the The fact is, I mean, I spent

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Speaker 3: a fair amount of time reviewing this list. It's online,

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Speaker 3: it's available, you can look at it several pages long

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Speaker 3: in a PDF. And bear in mind, I taught for

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Speaker 3: many years, so I'm I'm kind of familiar with what

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Speaker 3: a list ought to look like, you know, for this

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Speaker 3: this age group, what the what the lit list should be.

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Speaker 3: And as always, looking through it, I thought, okay, so

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Speaker 3: you've got you know, at least one of the Transcendentalists.

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Speaker 3: I here, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and transcendentalists weren't Christians, you know,

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Speaker 3: Hawthorne Emerson are the most prominent of them. There's was

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Speaker 3: kind of a syncretic blend. Their religion was kind of

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Speaker 3: a syncretic blend of Buddhism and hint Doism. And they're

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Speaker 3: on the list. There they are. And then you have

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Speaker 3: an addition to that, you know Beowulf, which is full

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Speaker 3: of paganism. And by the way, I think these readings

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Speaker 3: should be there. That they're not Christian, but I think

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Speaker 3: they should be there. I would have students read Hawthorne,

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Speaker 3: I would have them read Emerson, I would definitely have

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Speaker 3: them read Beowulf. I'd have them read Greek and Roman mythology.

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Speaker 3: So these belong there. But she doesn't say anything about those.

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Speaker 3: Her criticism is aimed at the Bible. And that is

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Speaker 3: because the Bible is the one religion that's represented on

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Speaker 3: the reading list that people take very very seriously. And

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Speaker 3: that's what it is that bothers her. But you see,

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Speaker 3: that's the very reason it should be on the list.

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Speaker 3: And the example I give is, you know, you know

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Speaker 3: a kid in Texas, to use an old Southern phrase,

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Speaker 3: you can sling in a dead cat in Texas without

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Speaker 3: hitting a church. I mean, they're they're all over the place,

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Speaker 3: right and if a there, they dot the lone star

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Speaker 3: state like oil rigs and if you're to understand anything

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Speaker 3: about them, why they're there, their influence on your country,

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Speaker 3: upon Western civilization, it all starts with the reading of

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Speaker 3: the Bible. You need to you don't have to believe it,

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Speaker 3: but it's important. I mean, Mark Twain, for instance, is

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Speaker 3: on the list. Twain was very hostile to the Christian faith,

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Speaker 3: and yet it was Twain who said that the Bible

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Speaker 3: is the book of books. He said, is the most

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Speaker 3: loved and the most hated book in the world, but

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Speaker 3: it is the book of books. Twain himself recognized the

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Speaker 3: importance of it. I think Twain would be horrified by

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Speaker 3: an attempt to remove the Bible. Christopher Hitches we just

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Speaker 3: mentioned before. Hitches wrote a fascinating article upon this on

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Speaker 3: the supremacy of the King James version of the Bible

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Speaker 3: and its importance and shaping language and the English language.

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Speaker 3: You know, so it isn't just we're not just talking

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Speaker 3: about you know, a bunch of pastors and churchgoers who

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Speaker 3: see the significance of the Bible in all of this. Ms.

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Speaker 3: Clark kind of backhandedly suggests that this is all, you know.

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Speaker 3: The reason they want the Bible included is so it'll

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Speaker 3: be taught, She implies, like a sermon on Sunday or

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Speaker 3: you know, vacation Bible school lesson. That's a lie, and

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Speaker 3: she knows it's a lie. We're talking about the Bible

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Speaker 3: being taught as literature.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you talk about you talk about you say

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Speaker 1: only a Christian culture could have produced the likes of

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Speaker 1: Hume Rousseau, given Marx, Nietzsche, Russell Sartre and so this.

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Speaker 1: And also you say that Augustine antelm Aquinas Chaucer, Shakespeare,

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Speaker 1: Milton John, Don, John Dunn, Dickens, Dosaevsky told story people

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Speaker 1: without having some knowledge of the Bible. You won't even

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Speaker 1: understand some of these texts.

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Speaker 3: You can't hope to understand the Western literary canon without

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Speaker 3: some working knowledge of the Bible. An example I give

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Speaker 3: there is, you know, Faulkner's Absolute Absolute. I mean, you

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Speaker 3: can't even understand that title. You can't even understand what

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Speaker 3: that title is talking about. A Christian who's familiar with

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Speaker 3: that story, King David and his rebellious son who eventually

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Speaker 3: was killed. A Christian could could reasonably guess what the

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Speaker 3: broad outlines of a novel like that are about. I mean,

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Speaker 3: matcha trying to understand. You know, Shakespeare, which has numerous

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Speaker 3: biblical illusions, Dostoyevsky, there's a there's a funny line you

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Speaker 3: know in uh and by the way, this is just one,

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Speaker 3: but it's one and just just immediately comes to mind.

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Speaker 3: And The Brothers Karamazov, where one of the characters mocking

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Speaker 3: another character just spoke up, says ah Balem's ass finally speaks. Yes,

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Speaker 3: that's a reference. That's a reference to the Book of Numbers.

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Speaker 3: You won't you won't get that. You won't understand that.

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Speaker 3: And my point about the skeptics that I mentioned there

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Speaker 3: is that they're all like Richard Dawkins, like Christopher Hitchens.

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Speaker 3: They were shaped by the ethos of a Christian culture

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Speaker 3: that they eventually rebelled against. And that's why when we're

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Speaker 3: talking about dawkins bestseller two thousand and six best seller,

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Speaker 3: The God Delusion, his targets the Christian Faith. It's not Islam,

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Speaker 3: it's the Christian Faith. It's not Himduism or Buddhism. Those

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Speaker 3: are very much, you know, in the periphery of that book.

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Speaker 3: His focus is the Christian faith. And it's because he's

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Speaker 3: aware that in I mean, this is changing, but in

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Speaker 3: Western civilization. It's the one that's taken most seriously and

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Speaker 3: hence the one that he wanted to attack. But you know,

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Speaker 3: we're we're talking about guys who you cannot understand them,

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Speaker 3: be they Christian or otherwise, you cannot really understand them

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Speaker 3: unless you know something of the Bible.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and you you talk about a conversation you had,

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Speaker 1: if you can recount this, this conversation you had with

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Speaker 1: Vishal mago Walde. It's hard to say his name.

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Speaker 3: Talk about that, Vishal Mongolwati, Yes, just a Vishal. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: Vishal Mongolwadi is an interesting guy. He is an Indian scholar.

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Speaker 3: That is India the country, and he was an interesting guy.

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Speaker 3: I met him on one occasion while we were speaking

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Speaker 3: a conference together in Saint Louis, And you know how

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Speaker 3: there are these breaks in these conferences, and so we

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Speaker 3: were we were having dinner or drinks or something, and

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Speaker 3: I was very interested in what he'd had to say.

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Speaker 3: I'd heard his talk and he had written a book.

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Speaker 3: Can you give the title right there, the full title

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Speaker 3: that's right there in the article.

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Speaker 1: It is the book that made your world, How the

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Speaker 1: Bible created the soul of Western civilization.

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Speaker 3: Great book, great book, and Mangalwadi brings to the table

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Speaker 3: an outsider's perspective of Western culture. And he was making

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Speaker 3: a point that I thought was quite profound. I said

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Speaker 3: this in an interview with John Stossel on Fox News,

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Speaker 3: and it seemed to give him some pause to think

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Speaker 3: about it too. But he made the point that the

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Speaker 3: line we hold these truths so else be self evident,

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Speaker 3: that all men are endowed by their creator were certain

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Speaker 3: unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty in the

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Speaker 3: pursuit of happiness.

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Speaker 1: And all men are created equal by the way, all

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Speaker 1: men are created equal. Oh did I say that, Yeah.

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Speaker 3: That all men are created equal and are dowed by

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Speaker 3: their creator with certain unalienable rights. Anyway, Mongolwati said that

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Speaker 3: that statement is a laughable statement outside of a Christian

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Speaker 3: culture self evident, it's self evident that men are created equal.

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Speaker 3: He says, our culture in India is based on the

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Speaker 3: idea that's exactly the opposite, that there's nothing self evidential

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Speaker 3: about the equality of man. We look around and say, well,

427
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 3: there's massive intellectual, physical, material, social differences inequalities among men,

428
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:38,880
Speaker 3: and so when we look at a statement like that

429
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:42,680
Speaker 3: that says is self evident. We go that's insane. It's

430
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:47,959
Speaker 3: not self evident, unless, says Mongolwadi, you are you are

431
00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 3: appealing to. In this case, he was a broader You

432
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 3: know that the family fathers were appealing to a broader

433
00:27:56,200 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 3: Christian culture, both in the United States and in Britain,

434
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:04,919
Speaker 3: to say, essentially, we know the law says we can't rebel.

435
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 3: We get that, but there are are laws that supersede

436
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:13,679
Speaker 3: those of men, and those laws say, the laws that

437
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:18,159
Speaker 3: we can be taxed without representation, that British soldiers can

438
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:22,639
Speaker 3: be billeted in our homes without our approval, that we

439
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:27,439
Speaker 3: can be abused. Those laws say that the existing laws

440
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 3: of Britain that are enforced on this land are damnable

441
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 3: because we were created equal in the eyes of God,

442
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 3: and that God that he's appealing to, of course, was

443
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,840
Speaker 3: the biblical God. And so mango Wadi says, that statement

444
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 3: only makes any sense if the other people that you're

445
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 3: appealing to share those assumptions, which are essentially Christian assumptions.

446
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 3: And that was kind of my earlier point about Dawkins

447
00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 3: and Hitchens, because they would agree with that statement, they

448
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 3: would quibble with you know, based in God and created

449
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 3: and all those kinds of things. But they believe they

450
00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:11,840
Speaker 3: agree with the sentiment, but they have no basis for

451
00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 3: agreeing with the sentiment because they only believe it because

452
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:20,960
Speaker 3: they've inhaled deeply of a Christian culture and so they've

453
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 3: adopted a lot of those assumptions. And I thought Mongo

454
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 3: Wattie's point was profound because you remove that, you remove

455
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 3: the Christian basis, the Bible as it were, from the culture.

456
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 3: He says, what you end up with is mass inequality, and.

457
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: That's what you end up with. The cast system in

458
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:42,280
Speaker 1: India is what you end.

459
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:45,160
Speaker 3: Up with, precisely. And by the way, that's where the left,

460
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 3: that's where they're taking us. I mean, we're moving increasingly

461
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 3: into uh into a place where we're really talking about

462
00:29:55,440 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 3: a kind of electronic, a driven u last system, and

463
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 3: that's that's kind of what they want. But it's you know,

464
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 3: I find it really amusing Beckett that even when we're

465
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 3: talking about the left with things like Black Lives Matter,

466
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 3: for example, and the whole trans movement and all that,

467
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 3: they're arguments, they're not Christian arguments in the sense that

468
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 3: what they're pushing for is Christian, but their arguments are

469
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 3: based on certain kind of Christian assumptions because they're appealing

470
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 3: to fairness. And it used to kind of make these

471
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 3: kind of points to I occasionally have students, you know,

472
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:44,160
Speaker 3: who declare themselves atheists and so on, and just to

473
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 3: illustrate the point, to try to get them thinking, I

474
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 3: can recall a couple of times I didn't do this frequently,

475
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 3: but a couple of times taking a student's paper somewhat

476
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 3: playfully but they didn't know the joke initially, and writing

477
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 3: like D minus on it and giving it back to

478
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:04,200
Speaker 3: them and when it actually makes not fair, yes, when

479
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 3: it actually was maybe deserves to be or an a.

480
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 3: And I wait for the for the protests, and the

481
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 3: student comes up to me and says, this isn't fair.

482
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 3: You know I did. I really did a good, really

483
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 3: good job on this, And I said, you know you did,

484
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 3: and you I could put an A on it because

485
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 3: it's a work, but on what is your appeal to fairness?

486
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 3: Based on what? And it's It was always an effective

487
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:36,800
Speaker 3: way to get a student to begin thinking about ah,

488
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 3: you know, I see the point you're making here. And

489
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:41,240
Speaker 3: then of course i'd changed the grade and you know,

490
00:31:41,280 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 3: give them the grade that they had actually earned. But

491
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 3: just simply making the point that there have to be

492
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 3: absolutes upon which our morality is based. It can't just

493
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 3: be based on your own vague inner promptings, because other

494
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 3: people have vague inner promptings. What's to make mine more

495
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 3: important than yours? It has to be something external to

496
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 3: us that we go there's the law that says you

497
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 3: can't do that, or I can't do that, or we

498
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 3: you know, deserve this. By the way, it's interesting to

499
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 3: note Force McDonald, who I never knew to be a

500
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:19,440
Speaker 3: religious man at all, though some have told me that

501
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 3: at the very end of his life perhaps he did

502
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:27,480
Speaker 3: become somewhat religious. But it's worth mentioning him again here

503
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:30,239
Speaker 3: because McDonald in talking about the very thing that we're

504
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:33,640
Speaker 3: talking about here, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

505
00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 3: and so forth. One of McDonald's central arguments is that

506
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:44,600
Speaker 3: government does not bestow rights. It can only recognize existing rights.

507
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 3: And he would really drive that point home that do

508
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 3: not look to government as you know, some sort of

509
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 3: benevolent a ruler, some benevolent entity that gives you rights.

510
00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 3: When the founding fathers of this country rebelled and went

511
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 3: to war with Britain. They were going to war because

512
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 3: they believe they had inalienable rights you see, that were

513
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:18,720
Speaker 3: bestowed from above, They're given by God. And that's you know,

514
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 3: a very very important, you know part of this. They

515
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:24,239
Speaker 3: weren't arguing, you have to recognize give us rights. No, no, no,

516
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 3: we're going to force you to recognize the rights you

517
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 3: already have.

518
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, when you have a materialist worldview, a Darwinian

519
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: materialist worldview, there's nothing to base your rights on. There's

520
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:39,960
Speaker 1: literally your zero zero, there's no basis whatsoever. So the

521
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 1: strong eats of the weak. So it doesn't make it

522
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:47,560
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to me how the left defines rights

523
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: or on what basis they defined rights, Like, how how

524
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:54,720
Speaker 1: would you explain that phenomenon.

525
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 3: I think it comes back to, you know, something we're

526
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 3: touching on here, and that is that so many of

527
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:09,360
Speaker 3: the you know, the major figures on the left, not

528
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 3: all of them, but are products of a Christian, a

529
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 3: Judeo Christian worldview. They don't recognize it, they don't honor it,

530
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:23,160
Speaker 3: they don't give any kind of acknowledgment to God for it.

531
00:34:23,680 --> 00:34:27,800
Speaker 3: But they are and this is this is a a

532
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:33,280
Speaker 3: a theological concept known as common grace and common grace

533
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 3: that that term is never used in scripture, but the

534
00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 3: concept is there and it's it's it's there. For instance,

535
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 3: when Jesus says in the Sermon on Them Out that

536
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 3: the that the sun shines, you know, on the crops

537
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 3: of the believer and the unbeliever alike. The rain falls

538
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:53,880
Speaker 3: on the crops of the believer and the unbeliever alike.

539
00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:57,160
Speaker 3: We can both enjoy, you know, after going for a

540
00:34:57,200 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 3: long bike ride or more mowing the grass, whether you're

541
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:03,319
Speaker 3: believer not, you can enjoy the refreshment as you just did,

542
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:08,120
Speaker 3: you know, of a cool drink. We can all enjoy friendship.

543
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 3: It's not just believers who get to enjoy that, meaning

544
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 3: that God's grace is such that he bestows it on

545
00:35:15,120 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 3: believers and unbelievers alike. And one of those things comes

546
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 3: in the form of conscience. That's Romans two fifteen, which

547
00:35:21,520 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 3: tells us everybody's been given a conscience, you know, So

548
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 3: God's law has written upon the hearts of men. That's

549
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 3: what Paul is talking about there. And it's also given

550
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 3: in things like a kind of morality that might be bestowed

551
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 3: upon us through religious instruction or or perhaps through your

552
00:35:40,800 --> 00:35:44,920
Speaker 3: educational system as you were in as I was, doesn't

553
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 3: make you a Christian, but it serves to restrain you

554
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 3: somewhat from what you might otherwise be. And I love

555
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 3: the remark that Evil and Law the great novelist, you know,

556
00:35:56,160 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 3: Brideshead revisitors.

557
00:35:57,239 --> 00:35:59,280
Speaker 1: I love Brides It's one of my favorite levels.

558
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:03,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I he you know, he he became very

559
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:09,399
Speaker 3: serious about his faith, converted to Catholicism, and he someone

560
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:11,840
Speaker 3: told him on one occasion what a horrible man he was,

561
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 3: and he had a reputation for being a very unpleasant character.

562
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:19,680
Speaker 3: And I loved his reply. And his reply was, yes

563
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,400
Speaker 3: I am. And imagine how much worse I would be

564
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 3: if I were not a Christian. Meaning our Christian faith

565
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 3: doesn't make me good, it doesn't make you good. It

566
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:32,239
Speaker 3: makes me less wicked than I might otherwise be. And

567
00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 3: when you remove that, you're removing a restraint. It's like,

568
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 3: you know, just just you're you're you're on a wild

569
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 3: horse and you just let go of the reins, and

570
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:48,759
Speaker 3: that's not going to play out particularly well. And so

571
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 3: we want the Bible in school for kids because guys

572
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 3: like you and I we recognize that it's significance, it's

573
00:36:56,200 --> 00:37:00,640
Speaker 3: important intellectually in the development of your people, but we

574
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:04,279
Speaker 3: also recognize that it's that it is as sharp as

575
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 3: a two edged sword, and they can't engage it and

576
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 3: come away unchanged by it. It doesn't mean that they'll become believers.

577
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:16,319
Speaker 3: They may even become very hostile to it is, say

578
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 3: Christopher Hitchett said he did in his own education where

579
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:25,359
Speaker 3: he was taught elements of the Bible. But I think

580
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:27,280
Speaker 3: it's I think it's incredibly important.

581
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we need to we need to have

582
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 1: it in all public schools. It's it's so I don't know,

583
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:40,719
Speaker 1: it's just it's so vital for all the reasons we've

584
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 1: been discussing, but also as as you just mentioned, just

585
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: that kind of restraint that and we can see I

586
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:51,240
Speaker 1: think in nineteen sixty three, was it the Supreme Court

587
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:56,759
Speaker 1: struck down or made it struck down that Bibles could

588
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:00,879
Speaker 1: be taught in school, that the Bible could be taught

589
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 1: in school. And you can kind of see from that

590
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 1: from that year the decline of the culture, the decline

591
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:12,320
Speaker 1: of education, the decline of every everything in the culture.

592
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:16,880
Speaker 1: So we've got to get the Bible back in school,

593
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: not just in Texas but at every state. Tell the

594
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:24,279
Speaker 1: story about when you were teaching as a graduate. You

595
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: were teaching Western civilization as a graduate student, and you

596
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:32,680
Speaker 1: you had some you ran into some issues, and the

597
00:38:32,719 --> 00:38:34,799
Speaker 1: blue Hair mafia, as you call it, came back for you.

598
00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will. I taught when I was when I

599
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:40,759
Speaker 3: was in graduate school, and I'm sure that this is

600
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 3: still the program these days. But as a graduate student,

601
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 3: they assign you, you know, loads of classes that you

602
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:51,439
Speaker 3: teach while you know, some professor goes off to write

603
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:55,239
Speaker 3: a book and in exchange for a little bit of money,

604
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:57,359
Speaker 3: and you know, they waive your tuition. And so I

605
00:38:57,400 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 3: was teaching, you know, two hundred and forty students in

606
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 3: Western civilization major research you know institution, and then later

607
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:10,759
Speaker 3: in a prestigious though decidedly leftist preparatory school. So I

608
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 3: was teaching European history and some Russian literature and things

609
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 3: of this nature. And I would require my students as

610
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:26,440
Speaker 3: by the way, my one of my Jewish professors, who

611
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:29,320
Speaker 3: I as far as I know, is agnostic, maybe even

612
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 3: maybe even an atheist, but he would require of Western

613
00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:39,479
Speaker 3: civilization students. So I working for him because he set

614
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 3: the curriculum, not me would require it. You know of

615
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 3: students as well, and that's a few key passages you know,

616
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:48,440
Speaker 3: in scripture. And so when I was when I was

617
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:51,760
Speaker 3: teaching at the preparatory school level, I would have students

618
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 3: not all, not not every year all of this, but

619
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:59,319
Speaker 3: various selections, things like the Sermon on the Mound, and uh,

620
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 3: the creation story in Genesis one and two and Actodus twenty,

621
00:40:04,600 --> 00:40:09,120
Speaker 3: the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue. I would have them read

622
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:15,040
Speaker 3: the Crucifixion, a story as contained to John chapters nineteen

623
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 3: through twenty one. Meaning if you're to understand why there's

624
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:23,080
Speaker 3: a church over there that ten thousand people attend every Sunday,

625
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:27,120
Speaker 3: this is the South, this happens. It starts with this.

626
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:31,880
Speaker 3: If you're to understand that crucifix that you're wearing around

627
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:35,320
Speaker 3: your neck very decoratively. I've often asked dudes, you know,

628
00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 3: what do you think of that?

629
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 1: What is that?

630
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 3: Why do you wear that? And frequently they don't know,

631
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:44,239
Speaker 3: they're just wearing it because they like it, And I say, well,

632
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,960
Speaker 3: that actually has quite a lot of significance. You do well,

633
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:51,719
Speaker 3: you know, to understand what it means. It's not just

634
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 3: simply a decorative things.

635
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 1: They've probably thought Madonna, the pop singer Madonna came up

636
00:40:57,600 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 1: with a crucifix or something.

637
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yes, And in fact, I think I think

638
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 3: you're exactly right. You know, I thought it was very

639
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 3: important that students were to have some understanding of this.

640
00:41:07,719 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 3: And I'll never forget one of my students who was

641
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 3: I think he was born in this country, but his

642
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:17,120
Speaker 3: family was from China. He was he was the very

643
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:19,920
Speaker 3: first generation to be born in this country. And he was,

644
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 3: by the way, an exceptionally bright kid. I think he went.

645
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 3: I think he eventually went to Harvard and nice kid.

646
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:33,359
Speaker 3: And I had assigned John chapters nineteen through twenty one,

647
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:39,840
Speaker 3: the story of the arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, you know,

648
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 3: of Jesus and this. He was very conscientious student. He's

649
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 3: going to read what has been assigned. And I'll never

650
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:50,560
Speaker 3: forget him coming in to class and saying to a

651
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 3: student was from the Middle East, and he said, did

652
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 3: you read this? Did you read this? It says this

653
00:41:59,080 --> 00:42:02,000
Speaker 3: guy came back from the dead. This is a this

654
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,440
Speaker 3: is a wild So and as I heard that story,

655
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:07,759
Speaker 3: and this is Alabama, by the way, so as I

656
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 3: hear the story, I was going, oh, my gosh, his

657
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:18,160
Speaker 3: education has been so hyper secular that he's this biblically illiterate.

658
00:42:18,200 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 3: And again, I want to emphasize a very bright kid,

659
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 3: but he had had no Biblical knowledge whatsoever. And I

660
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 3: realized if these students, and he was an exception, by

661
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 3: the way, the others I'm sure had, you know, various

662
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 3: levels of Biblical knowledge. There were, you know, some Christians

663
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:42,719
Speaker 3: in my class, but not very many. And I just thought,

664
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:45,920
Speaker 3: if they're to understand the fall of the Roman Empire,

665
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:49,719
Speaker 3: if they're to understand the Middle Ages, if they are

666
00:42:49,719 --> 00:42:57,839
Speaker 3: to understand the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, if

667
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 3: they're to understand Martin Luther King Junior's appeals in the

668
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 3: Civil Rights movement, if they understand the abolitionists, if they're

669
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:11,799
Speaker 3: understand the Gettysburg Address, if they're to understand Eisenhower's you know,

670
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:18,879
Speaker 3: famous Crusade speech which was which was issued to all

671
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 3: soldiers prior to D Day, you have to know something

672
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 3: of the Bible. And I mean to me, to me,

673
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:29,920
Speaker 3: if you probably think of a better example than this

674
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:32,480
Speaker 3: back but to me it would be like I remember,

675
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:36,359
Speaker 3: my kids were all into Tolkien. I wasn't. I didn't

676
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 3: grow up reading Tolkien, but my kids loved Tolkien, and

677
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 3: then when the movies came out, they wanted to go

678
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:45,359
Speaker 3: see them, and of course I did, and I love them.

679
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:49,720
Speaker 3: I'm trying to imagine being dropped into, say the third

680
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 3: installment of that trilogy, and trying to understand anything that's happening.

681
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would.

682
00:43:57,239 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 3: I would come away going, well, they're good guys. Are

683
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,759
Speaker 3: the bad guys? I think I can identify them. This

684
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 3: ring is very significant and the only place it has

685
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 3: to be destroyed, and it can only be destroyed on

686
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:11,719
Speaker 3: this mountain, so I would get something from it. But

687
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 3: there would be a lot of other background material that

688
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 3: they would understand, having read the books and watch the

689
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,840
Speaker 3: first two movies, that I would be utterly clueless about.

690
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,280
Speaker 3: And that's what it's like, approaching the Western literary canon

691
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 3: without the Bible. And you mentioned the blue hairs. I

692
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:34,040
Speaker 3: was waiting for them to protest. I think only one

693
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:36,800
Speaker 3: of them actually had blue hair, but I was waiting

694
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 3: for them to protest my use of the Bible, which

695
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 3: they did. They went to the head master and complained

696
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 3: that I was using the Bible, and I actually was

697
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 3: kind of like, yes, yes, this is a fight I want.

698
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:51,960
Speaker 3: I want this fight. I will with relish take on

699
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:54,799
Speaker 3: the lot of them, and anyway, I just went. He

700
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 3: was an interesting guy. He was a kind of a

701
00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:01,399
Speaker 3: Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi kind of Atholic. I own

702
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 3: private conversations with him. He didn't believe in having or

703
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:08,839
Speaker 3: l He wasn't best and agnostic, so he wasn't really

704
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:12,279
Speaker 3: a serious, you know, Catholic, but he did, you know,

705
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 3: observe a certain measure of ceremony and liturgy. And when

706
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 3: I went in and spoke to him regarding this, I

707
00:45:18,600 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 3: wasn't sure what his reaction would be, if he would

708
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:25,400
Speaker 3: just be hostile towards me that I was using the

709
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:28,840
Speaker 3: Bible and class and I laid out for him that

710
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 3: the Bible was more important than the whole rest of

711
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 3: the entire Western literary canon combined. And he was a

712
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:40,960
Speaker 3: superbly educated, classically educated man. And his response to that

713
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 3: was to say, true, absolutely true, are you carrying Are

714
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 3: you teaching it in there as a like a Sunday

715
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 3: school class. I said, no, I'm teaching it. And then

716
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 3: I would lay out because in order to understand this,

717
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:56,200
Speaker 3: that and the other I'm teaching it as literature. His

718
00:45:56,320 --> 00:46:01,000
Speaker 3: response was, carry on debate over and I was, you know,

719
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 3: I was permitted to carry on in any teachers or

720
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 3: for that matter of fact, excuse me parents. And there

721
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:11,080
Speaker 3: were a few who complained about it. He would shut

722
00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 3: them down right away. And so you can't. Mister Thom's

723
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:19,280
Speaker 3: absolutely correct. You can't possibly hope to understand later historical

724
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 3: events in the United States and in Western literature unless

725
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,239
Speaker 3: you know this. It doesn't mean you have to believe it,

726
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:27,000
Speaker 3: but you have to believe they believed it.

727
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:30,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. I love that you pushed back.

728
00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 1: Now you quote Neil Ferguson, and just to kind of

729
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 1: to explain what this quote means, he says from his

730
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 1: book The West, and I think it's of civilization, the

731
00:46:41,280 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: West and the rest. The heart the quote is the

732
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 1: heart of your culture is your religion, Christianity. That is

733
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:52,799
Speaker 1: why the West has been so dynamic. Christianity is the

734
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:57,120
Speaker 1: reason for your success. What is it getting at there?

735
00:46:57,800 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 1: You know?

736
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 3: It's this is actually really really fascinating because you remind

737
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 3: me of yet another Western classic of sociology, and that's

738
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,800
Speaker 3: Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic in the Spirit of Capitalism,

739
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 3: which I was required to read in graduate school, state

740
00:47:16,719 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 3: institution hostile to the Christian faith. And yet here I

741
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:26,960
Speaker 3: was assigned another reading, the context of which you can't

742
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:30,200
Speaker 3: possibly understand unless you know something of the Christian faith

743
00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:33,799
Speaker 3: in the Bible. And Ferguson, who's I think he's at

744
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 3: the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Now, he was educated

745
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:42,680
Speaker 3: at Oxford and taught for many years at Harvard, but

746
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 3: he's a historian. And I don't know if he you know,

747
00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 3: who he's married to, or at least was is I

748
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 3: in Hersi Ali He at one time was an atheist.

749
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 3: I don't know if that remains the case. She has

750
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:59,400
Speaker 3: since become a Christian, I know, and so I'm curious

751
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:01,479
Speaker 3: to know about his his own spiritual journey, if there's

752
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 3: been anything like that. But at the time of his

753
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:08,280
Speaker 3: writing this book, to my knowledge, he was a best

754
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:11,239
Speaker 3: an agnostic. I might be mistaken on that, but I

755
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 3: think that is correct. And Ferguson was arguing, he argues

756
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:22,360
Speaker 3: in that book Weber's thesis. He's arguing that the West

757
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:25,560
Speaker 3: has been defined by the Christian faith. And you see

758
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 3: that maybe this feels a little too academic, but it

759
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:36,439
Speaker 3: fascinates me. Max Weber was a German sociologist. He also

760
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 3: was an agnostic, so not a Christian, and in nineteen

761
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 3: oh four he published his very famous thesis at Least

762
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 3: in Academic Circles that defined American academic outlook on history

763
00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 3: for at least half a century. And that's the Protestant

764
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:56,960
Speaker 3: ethic in the Spirit of Capitalism, and the the thesis

765
00:48:57,000 --> 00:49:01,399
Speaker 3: of that book is essentially this that the rise of

766
00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 3: capitalism is due to the Christian faith, specifically Protestant even

767
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:13,400
Speaker 3: more specifically to Calvinist theology. And that is because, says

768
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:20,160
Speaker 3: said Weber, that's because a Protestantism and Calvinist theology saw

769
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:25,239
Speaker 3: work as honorable, any work that was honest as being honorable,

770
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:29,440
Speaker 3: and the accumulation of wealth might very well be a

771
00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:32,800
Speaker 3: sign of God's blessing. And so you see that echoed

772
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 3: in statements from people like Benjamin Franklin, again a Deist

773
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:40,600
Speaker 3: but heavily influenced by the Christian faith. A penny saved

774
00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:43,960
Speaker 3: is a penny earned. It's this kind of philosophy, and

775
00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 3: so this is what Weber argued. Weber was then looking

776
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:50,840
Speaker 3: at the world and going, how do we explain the

777
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 3: decline again nineteen oh four, How do we explain the

778
00:49:54,640 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 3: decline of all these European Catholic powers, Spain, in France

779
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:06,000
Speaker 3: and Italy that once dominated the world, And now we

780
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 3: see this little island in the North Atlantic that dominates

781
00:50:11,600 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 3: twenty five percent of the Earth's service. Now we have

782
00:50:14,800 --> 00:50:18,760
Speaker 3: a country on the rise that may become the most

783
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:23,120
Speaker 3: powerful of them all, that just fought its last Indian

784
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 3: War only twelve years before eighteen ninety two, has now

785
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:31,799
Speaker 3: gone to war and in a quick six weeks war

786
00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:36,440
Speaker 3: with Spain amputated some of her colonies. How do we

787
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 3: explain that the low countries, the banking countries, and the

788
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 3: dominance of Protestantism. Well, he said, it's because of the

789
00:50:44,239 --> 00:50:47,760
Speaker 3: ethic of Protestantism. This is what this is what brought

790
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 3: this about. And so Ferguson's book is kind of a

791
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 3: restatement of that. And Ferguson's himself was saying, this is

792
00:50:55,960 --> 00:50:59,000
Speaker 3: what put the West ahead of everybody. That during the

793
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:02,400
Speaker 3: Age of Discovery, the West took a giant leap forward

794
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:05,800
Speaker 3: of other civilizations. And this is what we mean, Beckett,

795
00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:09,919
Speaker 3: when we say that all civilizations are not equal. All

796
00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:13,920
Speaker 3: cultures are not equal, and it's the Christian faith that

797
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 3: set the West apart. It said, study science. What is

798
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 3: it the Kepler said, is to think God's thoughts after him.

799
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:24,080
Speaker 3: You should study the world, you should explore the world.

800
00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:29,279
Speaker 3: You should have dominion over nature. This is very much

801
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:33,800
Speaker 3: a strong biblical argument, and I think it's David Starkey,

802
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 3: excuse me, Rodney Stark. David Stark, he is an atheist

803
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 3: historian who wrote a biography of Elizabeth. But David Stark,

804
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:47,840
Speaker 3: Rodney Stark rather just said it again. He is a

805
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:50,799
Speaker 3: Baylor and he's now dead, and I think, boy, I'm

806
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:52,879
Speaker 3: talking about a lot of agnostics. He may have become

807
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:56,440
Speaker 3: a Christian before he died, but Rodney Stark was an agnostic,

808
00:51:56,560 --> 00:52:00,399
Speaker 3: and he wrote a very important book of that sort

809
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 3: of echeves the same sentiment that when we study the West,

810
00:52:04,200 --> 00:52:07,520
Speaker 3: what we see is that the that the Christian faith

811
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 3: when it was kind of absorbed into the culture, not perfectly.

812
00:52:11,160 --> 00:52:13,800
Speaker 3: I mean, he still had, you know, many evil things

813
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:18,560
Speaker 3: that happened. But his argument was what did the West do?

814
00:52:19,200 --> 00:52:25,279
Speaker 3: The West learned as a result of a mindset that

815
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 3: was given to them from the Bible that said that

816
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:35,239
Speaker 3: the universe, that all of creation was intelligible because it

817
00:52:35,320 --> 00:52:39,319
Speaker 3: had been created by an intelligence, and thus there was

818
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:44,640
Speaker 3: a logical a framework to the world itself. And Stark

819
00:52:44,680 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 3: points out that this is not true of Islam, which

820
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:52,600
Speaker 3: point that their their God is is arbitrary. It's not

821
00:52:52,640 --> 00:52:57,799
Speaker 3: true in Eastern mysticism, where everything is unknown and unknowable,

822
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:00,760
Speaker 3: and so he gives examples where he's says the West

823
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:05,360
Speaker 3: didn't didn't invent the compass in the sense that the

824
00:53:05,520 --> 00:53:07,920
Speaker 3: Chinese had been using it to find mystic north. But

825
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:11,200
Speaker 3: he said it was it was Westerners who saw its

826
00:53:11,239 --> 00:53:15,320
Speaker 3: application that went well beyond the way it was being used.

827
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:19,320
Speaker 3: They realized, you can you find true north, you navigate

828
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:24,120
Speaker 3: using this, and it was the West that did that. Gunpowder,

829
00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:28,799
Speaker 3: for example, was being used merely again for you know,

830
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 3: sort of entertainment purposes. It was Westerners who looked at

831
00:53:32,520 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 3: and its application can go way beyond that. And he

832
00:53:37,160 --> 00:53:40,359
Speaker 3: gives he gives instances of this to just keep going

833
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 3: and going and going. But all this is just by

834
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 3: way of saying that how can you hope to understand

835
00:53:48,560 --> 00:53:52,600
Speaker 3: the West without understanding the Bible? And it's Ferguson. Ferguson

836
00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:55,920
Speaker 3: is arguing in this book that you can't. And even

837
00:53:56,040 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 3: others like vish aal Mongowati and the Chinese scholar, the

838
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:03,759
Speaker 3: young named Chinese scholar that you just quoted, they see it,

839
00:54:04,920 --> 00:54:07,600
Speaker 3: they see it, and they recognized it. For the West

840
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 3: to be destroyed, you have to destroy its moral and

841
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:16,760
Speaker 3: intellectual institutional foundations, which you're founded on the Bible.

842
00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:20,960
Speaker 1: Yes, And not to bring up Dawkins again, but I'm

843
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:24,560
Speaker 1: going to you moderated a debate between John Lennox, who's

844
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:26,200
Speaker 1: going to be on the show in a couple of months.

845
00:54:26,200 --> 00:54:30,920
Speaker 1: But John Lennox and Richard Dawkins. I was just how

846
00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:31,319
Speaker 1: you were.

847
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:33,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love good guy.

848
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 1: My apologies you you might The debate was at the

849
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:43,400
Speaker 1: Oxford Museum of Natural History and basically, uh, Dawkins was

850
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 1: asserting that Christianity played no role in the rise of

851
00:54:45,960 --> 00:54:51,120
Speaker 1: science and Lenox I think Lenox pointed out that the

852
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:55,239
Speaker 1: building that they that you were debating and UH was

853
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 1: funded by a biblical society, Right, is that correct?

854
00:54:58,719 --> 00:55:02,400
Speaker 3: That that's that's absolutely correct. That debate which took place

855
00:55:02,440 --> 00:55:05,960
Speaker 3: I think in two thousand and eight. I'd organized that

856
00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 3: and I chose the Oxford Museum of Natural History is

857
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:12,319
Speaker 3: the place for it to take place, because that's where

858
00:55:12,360 --> 00:55:16,960
Speaker 3: Wilberforce and Huxley debated in eighteen sixty, a very very

859
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 3: famous debate that took place there in one of the

860
00:55:21,000 --> 00:55:23,920
Speaker 3: rooms upstairs. In this case, I rented the entire.

861
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:26,360
Speaker 1: Museum for I saw that to date, I remember that debate.

862
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:30,319
Speaker 3: Oh did you okay? Very very interesting. And I placed them,

863
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:34,280
Speaker 3: you see the photographs taken by National Geographic. I placed

864
00:55:34,360 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 3: them under the t rex. There's a just big t

865
00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:42,560
Speaker 3: rex and I put them both right underneath it, and

866
00:55:42,600 --> 00:55:45,080
Speaker 3: then we underlt it, you know, which gave it this

867
00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:46,920
Speaker 3: kind of awesome you know, it's kind of and the

868
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:49,239
Speaker 3: museum really doesn't have hardly any place to sit, so

869
00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:51,759
Speaker 3: there's just you know, some of the ticket holders are

870
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:54,120
Speaker 3: sitting there, but we let students get into the gallery

871
00:55:54,640 --> 00:55:58,880
Speaker 3: above and watch, and I'm asking them questions and taking

872
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:02,080
Speaker 3: questions from the crowd in it. This one particular point,

873
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:07,239
Speaker 3: Dawkins seemed to score a point because the crowd accepted

874
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:09,520
Speaker 3: that what he said was true because he the meaning

875
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,319
Speaker 3: he carried it in the moment. If you watch it,

876
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 3: you'll come away thinking Lennox must be wrong because Dawkins

877
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:21,560
Speaker 3: said it was such confidence, such self assurance that you know,

878
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:26,000
Speaker 3: the museum had nothing to do with the Christian faith,

879
00:56:26,040 --> 00:56:30,040
Speaker 3: and John wasn't prepared for this to come up at all.

880
00:56:30,120 --> 00:56:33,040
Speaker 3: That you know, this this a free ranging discussion, and

881
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 3: John's just drawing from his memory and he says, I'm

882
00:56:35,160 --> 00:56:39,840
Speaker 3: pretty sure it was built with funds from the Bible Society.

883
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:42,879
Speaker 3: And Dawkins just scoffs and you know, waves it off

884
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:46,840
Speaker 3: of the next the next day the papers, there's a

885
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:51,400
Speaker 3: funny article that was published called is Richard Dawkins still Evolving?

886
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:57,560
Speaker 3: And uh? And that particular Alder article laid out here's

887
00:56:57,600 --> 00:57:01,239
Speaker 3: what Dawkins said, here's Lennox's buddle and by the way,

888
00:57:01,600 --> 00:57:04,000
Speaker 3: Dawkins was one hundred percent wrong. And then it lays

889
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:07,360
Speaker 3: out the history of the museum and that that article

890
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:09,640
Speaker 3: was written by Melanie Phillips, who, by.

891
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 1: The way, I love them, I love melody develops Mellie

892
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:16,959
Speaker 1: Phelps's She's says one of my favorite quotes. She said

893
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:22,200
Speaker 1: that Rousseau is the greatest villain in history of all time.

894
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:26,040
Speaker 1: John Jack Rousseau is the greatest villain of all time.

895
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:29,760
Speaker 3: Well, she's got a point there. Paul Johnson, the late

896
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 3: British historian Paul Johnson, in his book called Intellectuals more

897
00:57:33,400 --> 00:57:38,480
Speaker 3: or less argues the same thing, and certainly, certainly his

898
00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:43,760
Speaker 3: ideas had serious negative consequences for Western society. But Melanie

899
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:47,200
Speaker 3: went in actually did the research on that and realized

900
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:50,280
Speaker 3: Dawkins is one hundred percent wrong on this. And it

901
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:53,040
Speaker 3: was embarrassing, you know, for Dawkins, because he'd stated it

902
00:57:53,120 --> 00:57:56,480
Speaker 3: with absolute, you know, assurance that this was the case.

903
00:57:56,760 --> 00:58:00,920
Speaker 3: But the museum had been built by one of the

904
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 3: regius professors there of medicine, and he wanted students, he says,

905
00:58:10,680 --> 00:58:16,600
Speaker 3: to essentially study God's creation that they might better understand it,

906
00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:19,680
Speaker 3: and that they might better understand him. Meaning the Christian

907
00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:25,360
Speaker 3: faith is anti intellectual. Any Christian who thinks that doesn't

908
00:58:25,440 --> 00:58:29,200
Speaker 3: understand the Christian faith at least on that level. That's

909
00:58:29,600 --> 00:58:31,840
Speaker 3: that's not part of what the Christian faith is. God

910
00:58:31,880 --> 00:58:36,880
Speaker 3: invites us to reason with him. God invites us to

911
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:40,160
Speaker 3: explore his creation. What did God say to Adam? You

912
00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:43,320
Speaker 3: name him? You gelem that when you want to call

913
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:45,120
Speaker 3: that over there? What do you want to call this

914
00:58:45,200 --> 00:58:48,880
Speaker 3: over here? It's a wonderful aspect of what it is

915
00:58:48,920 --> 00:58:53,000
Speaker 3: to be a Christian because a Christian faith isn't anti intellectual,

916
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,480
Speaker 3: and that's the reason that it was the West that

917
00:58:55,600 --> 00:59:03,640
Speaker 3: produced both capitalism, science, and the development of government's English

918
00:59:03,640 --> 00:59:09,760
Speaker 3: common law, for instance, where you're innocent, you're presumed innocent

919
00:59:09,920 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 3: until proven guilty. The burden of proof is on the state,

920
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:17,240
Speaker 3: not on the accused. Again, these are all things they

921
00:59:17,320 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 3: want to kick out and destroy and get rid of.

922
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:26,280
Speaker 3: But all that is predicated on a biblical worldview. And

923
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:28,200
Speaker 3: one of the things that I think is so important

924
00:59:28,200 --> 00:59:30,240
Speaker 3: about this, Beckett, and I just want to make sure

925
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:32,680
Speaker 3: I get this in is if you're listening to us

926
00:59:32,720 --> 00:59:35,240
Speaker 3: have this conversation and you think, well, this is just

927
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:43,000
Speaker 3: much too you know, erudite for me, know this that

928
00:59:43,680 --> 00:59:48,640
Speaker 3: the Christian worldview is a worldview that says that I'm

929
00:59:48,680 --> 00:59:53,240
Speaker 3: obligated to treat you, whether you're a Christian or not,

930
00:59:53,440 --> 00:59:56,960
Speaker 3: whether you share my assumptions about life and the world

931
00:59:57,280 --> 01:00:01,760
Speaker 3: or not, that I'm obliged to view you as an

932
01:00:01,800 --> 01:00:06,840
Speaker 3: object of God's special creation who was made in His image,

933
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:09,640
Speaker 3: And that makes a difference in the way that I

934
01:00:09,720 --> 01:00:12,960
Speaker 3: treat you. It means that I am to render to

935
01:00:13,000 --> 01:00:16,640
Speaker 3: you a certain measure of respect until something should happen

936
01:00:16,720 --> 01:00:20,520
Speaker 3: to to to change that, and that I'm not to

937
01:00:20,600 --> 01:00:27,040
Speaker 3: equate you with animals, you're not and you just mentioned Darwinism. Uh.

938
01:00:27,160 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 3: Then again, this has always been my argument with so

939
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:33,840
Speaker 3: many of these atheists who like Dawkins. Of course they

940
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:42,440
Speaker 3: worship Darwin, and Darwinism is void of morality. There's no morality.

941
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:46,120
Speaker 3: And I'll never forget a debate I had with a

942
01:00:46,200 --> 01:00:50,400
Speaker 3: Harvard philosopher some years ago who was he was an

943
01:00:50,400 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 3: expert on Friedrich Nietzsche, and I'd read a lot of

944
01:00:54,040 --> 01:00:56,439
Speaker 3: Friedrich Nietzsche and he was enjoying, you know, are back

945
01:00:56,480 --> 01:00:59,320
Speaker 3: and forth. This was taking place via email, and I

946
01:00:59,360 --> 01:01:01,440
Speaker 3: was saying, you know, but I was going somewhere, but

947
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:04,080
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't. I was kind of keeping my

948
01:01:04,160 --> 01:01:06,560
Speaker 3: powder dry, as it were. It's a very Southern trick

949
01:01:06,920 --> 01:01:10,040
Speaker 3: to pretend you don't know anything and then you know,

950
01:01:10,240 --> 01:01:14,040
Speaker 3: ambush somebody. And so here I am in this conversation

951
01:01:14,160 --> 01:01:16,120
Speaker 3: with this guy. We're talking about Nietzsche, and I'm saying,

952
01:01:16,240 --> 01:01:19,640
Speaker 3: you know, and Nietzsche, there's a definite connection between Darwin

953
01:01:19,680 --> 01:01:22,400
Speaker 3: and Nietzsche. And he's like, oh yeah, yeah, very very definitely.

954
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:25,560
Speaker 3: And I said, and then there's a connection with Wagner,

955
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:28,000
Speaker 3: and he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a connection there,

956
01:01:28,000 --> 01:01:32,360
Speaker 3: and there's a connection with probably some influence on Karl Marx.

957
01:01:32,400 --> 01:01:34,160
Speaker 3: He goes, yeah, yeah yeah, And I said, and then

958
01:01:34,280 --> 01:01:38,560
Speaker 3: later with the Nazis, and of course he went apoplectic.

959
01:01:38,680 --> 01:01:40,800
Speaker 3: You know at that point, it's like he wanted to

960
01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 3: say that that flow of thought had just abruptly stopped

961
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:47,400
Speaker 3: when it reached the twentieth century. And I was just

962
01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:51,160
Speaker 3: simply pointing out. You can argue that Hitler didn't properly

963
01:01:51,240 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 3: understand Nietzsche. I would argue he did, But why did

964
01:01:55,280 --> 01:02:00,200
Speaker 3: the Nazis honor his sister, who was still alive. Why

965
01:02:00,200 --> 01:02:02,520
Speaker 3: did they? Why did they why did they revere her?

966
01:02:02,640 --> 01:02:05,080
Speaker 3: Why did they make a point of honoring her? And

967
01:02:05,120 --> 01:02:08,000
Speaker 3: it was because they understood this much about Nietzsche. You

968
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:10,680
Speaker 3: can argue that they didn't understand some other things. They

969
01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:15,680
Speaker 3: did understand this that there is no governing morality in

970
01:02:15,720 --> 01:02:18,960
Speaker 3: this world. If there is no god, to quote dos Zoevsky,

971
01:02:19,040 --> 01:02:21,280
Speaker 3: if there is no immortality, there could be no virtue,

972
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:24,080
Speaker 3: and all things are permissible, meaning if there is no God,

973
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:26,200
Speaker 3: there's no ultimate right wrong, and I can do anything,

974
01:02:26,360 --> 01:02:29,480
Speaker 3: I can get away with the Nazis got that, and

975
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:32,680
Speaker 3: they also understood from him his argument about the Oberman

976
01:02:33,800 --> 01:02:37,080
Speaker 3: or Uberman that there are that there are, at least

977
01:02:37,120 --> 01:02:39,120
Speaker 3: a Nietzs' view, there are some people are sort of

978
01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:42,200
Speaker 3: above others, and then there's kind of a subspecies. And

979
01:02:42,960 --> 01:02:46,320
Speaker 3: they go, Aha, it's the Slavs, it's the Gypsies, it's

980
01:02:46,360 --> 01:02:51,120
Speaker 3: the Jews. Yeah, we're we're the superior race. So you see,

981
01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:54,560
Speaker 3: when you remove the Bible, when you remove the Christian

982
01:02:54,560 --> 01:02:57,440
Speaker 3: faith from society, whether you believe in it or not,

983
01:02:58,520 --> 01:03:04,640
Speaker 3: you are setting yourself on a course for absolute barbarism.

984
01:03:05,360 --> 01:03:07,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look at the twentieth century is Stalin

985
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:11,880
Speaker 1: and Paul pod and Chairman Mao, all of them. I mean,

986
01:03:11,920 --> 01:03:17,520
Speaker 1: it's just it's a it's it's undeniable. When you remove

987
01:03:17,600 --> 01:03:20,360
Speaker 1: God from the equation, this is what happens. It's like,

988
01:03:20,440 --> 01:03:24,959
Speaker 1: it's obvious. So and you uh will end here because

989
01:03:25,000 --> 01:03:28,480
Speaker 1: you you in this piece with this this statement the

990
01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:31,600
Speaker 1: Bible is the prequel to everything.

991
01:03:33,280 --> 01:03:35,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm kind of proud of that. I came up

992
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:37,640
Speaker 3: with that on my own that I like that.

993
01:03:37,720 --> 01:03:39,000
Speaker 1: I like that, it's very good.

994
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:41,440
Speaker 3: But you know, as I was thinking about as it

995
01:03:41,480 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 3: relates to all of this. I was thinking about, you

996
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:49,160
Speaker 3: know that it's a precursor to other things. Yeah, it's

997
01:03:49,240 --> 01:03:51,160
Speaker 3: it's a it's a prior reading. And then I thought, no,

998
01:03:51,280 --> 01:03:55,080
Speaker 3: it really is the prequel to everything, certainly everything Western.

999
01:03:55,360 --> 01:03:59,600
Speaker 3: I mean, our own Supreme Court, our own Supreme Court

1000
01:03:59,760 --> 01:04:04,600
Speaker 3: has you know, carved into its walls, you know, the

1001
01:04:04,600 --> 01:04:09,160
Speaker 3: the you know the Ten Commandments, the the wall itself.

1002
01:04:09,280 --> 01:04:11,640
Speaker 3: You know, how are you to understand that imagery? How

1003
01:04:11,680 --> 01:04:15,160
Speaker 3: do you understand any of that? Uh? It all comes

1004
01:04:15,200 --> 01:04:17,280
Speaker 3: from a reading of the Bible. Now, you don't have

1005
01:04:17,320 --> 01:04:21,520
Speaker 3: to believe it any more that I believe BeO Wolf, uh,

1006
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:26,439
Speaker 3: any more that I believe in Athena or Zeus or

1007
01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:31,320
Speaker 3: Wotan or or any of those. But it's worth reading.

1008
01:04:31,360 --> 01:04:33,800
Speaker 3: And that's because those things had an impact on the

1009
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:38,680
Speaker 3: development of Western civilization and the Bible most of all

1010
01:04:38,800 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 3: because it is it is the prequel to understanding everything Western.

1011
01:04:44,920 --> 01:04:48,040
Speaker 3: You just you just can't possibly hope to navigate it

1012
01:04:48,560 --> 01:04:51,280
Speaker 3: without it. And it's it's fascinates me back at that.

1013
01:04:51,280 --> 01:04:56,720
Speaker 3: I increasingly meet people who are have you know, been

1014
01:04:56,720 --> 01:05:00,200
Speaker 3: to Ivy League institutions, and they don't have any idea

1015
01:05:00,520 --> 01:05:03,440
Speaker 3: of the Bible, and I will share this little story

1016
01:05:03,480 --> 01:05:08,680
Speaker 3: with you. I was speaking at a university. I won't

1017
01:05:08,760 --> 01:05:13,560
Speaker 3: name it, but I was speaking at university as to

1018
01:05:13,640 --> 01:05:20,320
Speaker 3: students who are supposed to be in the ministry track.

1019
01:05:20,520 --> 01:05:23,280
Speaker 3: That is, these are people are eventually going on to

1020
01:05:25,360 --> 01:05:30,240
Speaker 3: serve in some kind of ministry. And I had chosen

1021
01:05:30,600 --> 01:05:35,760
Speaker 3: to talk about Acts Chapter ten as well as the

1022
01:05:35,840 --> 01:05:39,200
Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence. I was making a point between the

1023
01:05:39,200 --> 01:05:41,040
Speaker 3: two of them. And the point I was simply making

1024
01:05:41,160 --> 01:05:47,160
Speaker 3: is that when the authors of the Declaration of Independence

1025
01:05:47,160 --> 01:05:49,560
Speaker 3: said that we hold these truths to be self evident,

1026
01:05:49,640 --> 01:05:52,920
Speaker 3: that all men are created equal and are endowed by

1027
01:05:52,960 --> 01:05:55,960
Speaker 3: their careator all men, I said, you know, they didn't

1028
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:59,080
Speaker 3: fully understand the import of even what they were saying.

1029
01:05:59,120 --> 01:06:02,960
Speaker 3: I said, because, and I said to the suits, because

1030
01:06:03,040 --> 01:06:07,600
Speaker 3: what group of people class? What group of people were

1031
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:11,280
Speaker 3: not included in that? And of course immediately they said, well, slaves,

1032
01:06:11,480 --> 01:06:14,480
Speaker 3: And I said, yes, a civil war had to be

1033
01:06:14,520 --> 01:06:18,200
Speaker 3: fought where roughly six hundred and twenty thousand Americans had

1034
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:21,680
Speaker 3: to die to bring about the thirteenth and fourteenth Amendments.

1035
01:06:24,120 --> 01:06:27,160
Speaker 3: And then you go to Acts chapter ten, and there

1036
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:29,600
Speaker 3: you see Peter sitting on the rooftop, and he has

1037
01:06:29,640 --> 01:06:32,880
Speaker 3: this weird dream about a tablecloth coming down and these

1038
01:06:32,920 --> 01:06:35,400
Speaker 3: animals on it and so on, and then somebody tells

1039
01:06:35,480 --> 01:06:41,400
Speaker 3: him that he's to come with him, and this guy

1040
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:44,080
Speaker 3: takes Peter. Peter goes along with him, and then he

1041
01:06:44,160 --> 01:06:47,360
Speaker 3: goes and he comes to this Roman soldier, so a gentile,

1042
01:06:48,640 --> 01:06:51,640
Speaker 3: and Peter's like, and again I'm very much paraphrasing this,

1043
01:06:51,760 --> 01:06:54,240
Speaker 3: but Peter is kind of like, what do you want.

1044
01:06:54,280 --> 01:06:56,240
Speaker 3: I'm not even supposed to be here. You're a gentile.

1045
01:06:56,600 --> 01:07:00,640
Speaker 3: And the guy says, I don't know. You tell me, brave, brave,

1046
01:07:00,440 --> 01:07:07,120
Speaker 3: you showed up. And then Peter realizes. He goes, oh wow,

1047
01:07:08,120 --> 01:07:14,400
Speaker 3: I realized that God shows no partiality. And he shares

1048
01:07:14,400 --> 01:07:16,600
Speaker 3: the Gospel with this man. He and his whole household

1049
01:07:16,640 --> 01:07:18,960
Speaker 3: are saved. And then Peter realized the boy, I'm going

1050
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:20,800
Speaker 3: to be in trouble when I get back to Jerusalem

1051
01:07:20,840 --> 01:07:26,120
Speaker 3: to have to explain to everybody why a gentile is

1052
01:07:26,200 --> 01:07:31,960
Speaker 3: now a Christian because their previous understand meaning that when

1053
01:07:32,280 --> 01:07:38,200
Speaker 3: at Pentecost Peter, the Holy Spirit speaking through Peter, speaks

1054
01:07:38,240 --> 01:07:40,800
Speaker 3: of how God has poured out his spirit on all flesh.

1055
01:07:40,880 --> 01:07:45,480
Speaker 3: Peter himself didn't seem to understand the import of that

1056
01:07:45,640 --> 01:07:50,280
Speaker 3: anymore than the framers of the Declaration of Independence all

1057
01:07:50,320 --> 01:07:52,600
Speaker 3: flesh he did. He seemed to think it meant all

1058
01:07:52,680 --> 01:07:56,080
Speaker 3: Jewish flash, and clearly what the Holy Spirit meant was

1059
01:07:56,920 --> 01:08:01,880
Speaker 3: all flashps Jews. So here I am here, I am

1060
01:08:01,960 --> 01:08:05,640
Speaker 3: saying this, and then I, uh, so I'm making this

1061
01:08:05,680 --> 01:08:08,440
Speaker 3: biblical reference. And then I go back to to the

1062
01:08:08,440 --> 01:08:11,160
Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence, and I said, so as you can see,

1063
01:08:11,400 --> 01:08:14,080
Speaker 3: I said, old war had to be fought to include

1064
01:08:14,240 --> 01:08:18,639
Speaker 3: you know, black people, you know, into those rights. I said,

1065
01:08:18,640 --> 01:08:24,280
Speaker 3: what other group of people is still alienated from those rights? Well,

1066
01:08:24,320 --> 01:08:27,600
Speaker 3: now they were really thinking, and go on, you know

1067
01:08:27,680 --> 01:08:31,400
Speaker 3: legal aliens. I said, no, no, not illegal aliens, but

1068
01:08:31,439 --> 01:08:35,280
Speaker 3: what other group of people? And they couldn't answer, And

1069
01:08:35,280 --> 01:08:38,439
Speaker 3: I said, well the unborn. Now I thought that I

1070
01:08:38,560 --> 01:08:43,280
Speaker 3: was speaking to biblically literate people. When I referenced tax ten,

1071
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:46,160
Speaker 3: it was clear they had no idea what I was

1072
01:08:46,160 --> 01:08:51,320
Speaker 3: talking about. Zero. But now when I'm mentioned now, when

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01:08:51,320 --> 01:08:54,879
Speaker 3: I mentioned the unborn, I said, you know, now, the unborn,

1074
01:08:55,000 --> 01:08:59,120
Speaker 3: those rights have to be extended to them. The professor

1075
01:08:59,160 --> 01:09:03,519
Speaker 3: of that class went bonkers and stood up and said

1076
01:09:03,560 --> 01:09:08,720
Speaker 3: this lecture is over. This lecture is over, and and.

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01:09:07,520 --> 01:09:09,959
Speaker 1: And I'm a Christian university, right.

1078
01:09:10,120 --> 01:09:12,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're at it. You're at You're at a university

1079
01:09:12,640 --> 01:09:16,280
Speaker 3: with students who are themselves future ministers of the Gospel,

1080
01:09:16,600 --> 01:09:23,080
Speaker 3: who are quite clearly biblically illiterate and are being coached

1081
01:09:25,360 --> 01:09:28,200
Speaker 3: in a very woke way. And I said to this

1082
01:09:28,320 --> 01:09:30,559
Speaker 3: professor as I was leaving, I said, you are not

1083
01:09:30,960 --> 01:09:36,040
Speaker 3: making future ministers of the Gospel. You're making social justice warriors,

1084
01:09:36,479 --> 01:09:39,800
Speaker 3: which are not the same thing. Because these students don't

1085
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:42,559
Speaker 3: know the Bible. They don't know the Bible, and they've

1086
01:09:42,600 --> 01:09:46,519
Speaker 3: all been coached clearly to believe that abortion is a

1087
01:09:46,600 --> 01:09:52,200
Speaker 3: quote unquote right. And that the larger point that I'm

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01:09:52,240 --> 01:09:55,000
Speaker 3: simply making here, Becket, is just simply to point out

1089
01:09:55,040 --> 01:09:58,760
Speaker 3: the fact that that even among our ministers these days,

1090
01:09:58,760 --> 01:10:02,440
Speaker 3: so it's not just a Texas public schools, we increasingly

1091
01:10:02,479 --> 01:10:05,000
Speaker 3: find that even among many of our ministers and people

1092
01:10:05,000 --> 01:10:09,320
Speaker 3: who call themselves Christians, that there's a high level of

1093
01:10:09,360 --> 01:10:14,920
Speaker 3: biblical literacy. And that's because the Christian faith has been redefined,

1094
01:10:14,920 --> 01:10:19,920
Speaker 3: not in not literally, but among those who would think

1095
01:10:19,960 --> 01:10:23,600
Speaker 3: that they're Christians, it's been redefined is some kind of

1096
01:10:23,760 --> 01:10:33,840
Speaker 3: vague adherence to ideas like tolerance and diversity and love

1097
01:10:34,200 --> 01:10:42,759
Speaker 3: and so on, absolutely severed from their biblical meaning rather

1098
01:10:42,800 --> 01:10:48,160
Speaker 3: than actual belief in Jesus Christ in obedience to him.

1099
01:10:48,280 --> 01:10:52,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's a I love that you made that

1100
01:10:52,400 --> 01:10:55,040
Speaker 1: point in that class, and I hope it's that it

1101
01:10:55,120 --> 01:10:57,160
Speaker 1: sticks with the students who are there that day.

1102
01:10:57,680 --> 01:10:58,360
Speaker 3: We can hope.

1103
01:10:58,400 --> 01:11:02,880
Speaker 1: But it is professor who went bonkers when you said that.

1104
01:11:03,560 --> 01:11:06,759
Speaker 1: But we're going to leave it there, Larry, Alex Tunton,

1105
01:11:06,840 --> 01:11:09,640
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on and talking about all these things.

1106
01:11:09,760 --> 01:11:11,240
Speaker 1: Very fascinating, Becky.

1107
01:11:11,360 --> 01:11:13,560
Speaker 3: It's always a pleasure to be with you, and we

1108
01:11:13,640 --> 01:11:16,360
Speaker 3: got to get you on ideas have consequences sometime soon.

1109
01:11:16,880 --> 01:11:19,200
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mentioned that in the so how can

1110
01:11:19,240 --> 01:11:21,240
Speaker 1: people find ideas have consequences?

1111
01:11:21,560 --> 01:11:25,960
Speaker 3: It's on YouTube my channel, and it's posted also on

1112
01:11:26,400 --> 01:11:30,719
Speaker 3: X every Tuesday morning at I think it's eight am

1113
01:11:30,880 --> 01:11:34,519
Speaker 3: Central time. Is posted there and you can check us

1114
01:11:34,520 --> 01:11:37,840
Speaker 3: out over there. And where your helmet, Becket? Where are

1115
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:40,679
Speaker 3: your helmet when you're cycling? You don't?

1116
01:11:42,080 --> 01:11:45,719
Speaker 1: You will, I'll try. I'll try to do it all right.

1117
01:11:45,760 --> 01:11:47,320
Speaker 1: Thank you, Larry, appreciate it.

1118
01:11:47,479 --> 01:11:48,160
Speaker 3: Take care of brother.

1119
01:11:48,280 --> 01:11:51,400
Speaker 1: Wait, don't touch that dial. Please like and subscribe, and

1120
01:11:51,479 --> 01:11:55,479
Speaker 1: also please consider becoming a patron on Patreon. For as

1121
01:11:55,479 --> 01:11:57,400
Speaker 1: little as five dollars a month, you can really help

1122
01:11:57,479 --> 01:12:00,439
Speaker 1: us out on the show. The link is below and

1123
01:12:00,600 --> 01:12:02,680
Speaker 1: we so so appreciate it. Thank you.

1124
01:12:05,920 --> 01:12:08,320
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Beckett

1125
01:12:08,320 --> 01:12:13,600
Speaker 2: Cook Show. Your support makes this content possible. All episodes

1126
01:12:13,640 --> 01:12:16,720
Speaker 2: of The Beckett Cook Show are also available on YouTube.

1127
01:12:17,640 --> 01:12:20,800
Speaker 2: For more information about Beckett and his ministry, visit his

1128
01:12:20,880 --> 01:12:24,080
Speaker 2: website at Becketcook dot com.

1129
01:12:24,240 --> 01:12:26,160
Speaker 1: Thank you to the team at life Audio for their

1130
01:12:26,200 --> 01:12:29,160
Speaker 1: partnership with us. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,

1131
01:12:29,200 --> 01:12:33,280
Speaker 1: you will find more faith centered podcasts about prayer, Bible study, parenting,

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Speaker 1: and more.