Latest / The Salty Pastor / Dehumanization [Ep. 128]
Transcript
- [00:00:00] They're no longer carrying the image of God. And we as Christians, this is an essential point of our faith. And that's why we're talking about it today day. That's why we're going to talk about it on Sunday, because the belief that all humans are made in the image of God is an essential pillar of our faith. There's a reason it's in Genesis chapter one. Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Salty Pastor Podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping you learn, to think for yourself and grow your beliefs. We are here to guide you to challenge you, to create new thoughts for you to work through, but ultimately that process of growing and strengthening your own beliefs and figuring out what you actually think about things is up to you. We can't do it for you nor do we want to do it for you. That is not our job. We are not here to rob you of your, um, ability to do so we're just here to guide you. My name's Jesse Maher. I'll be your host and we have our very special [00:01:00] guest back yet. Again, Zach Peake here on the Salty Pastor Podcast. Welcome Zach. Thank you. Very special might be an overstatement. No, you're very special. I'll do my best. So we are still currently in our series. Um, Jesus Loves Me. We're talking about the essentials of the faith. If you take one of these away, it completely wrecks what Christianity is and, and its foundation of what it standing upon. Right. Um, and on Tuesday, we, we hit some scriptures talking about where we've made it through the first three words of that children's song that the whole series is kind of based on Jesus Loves. And this week we're talking about me, who is me? Why does he love me? Talk about me, me, me. We're we're, we're leaning into our millennial roots for real hard. Right? Let's talk about me and why I'm important. Today's podcast is going to be a little bit different format, Jesse and I are just going to talk all about. Yeah. I mean, and you guys are here for that, right? You subscribed to this, you want this. I'm sure everybody wants, Doug leaves for [00:02:00] one week and all this and all this. Reality podcast podcasting. So we are talking about who we are, who Jesus loves, and that is humans. Um, we kind of, we touched on Tuesday about Jesus, erm, God has a plan for us. We were part of the plan from the beginning. We weren't just some accident that he was like, oh, I can, I could roll with this. We'll figure it out. He had a plan. And we are an essential part of that plan. So where are we going today? Tuesday tends to be a biblical study. Thursday tends to be a real-world application. Where are we? What are we talking about today? We're going to talk about where we're going to have them pick up where we left off on Tuesday. On Tuesday, we left off by saying. W, you know, we are, we are part of this plan that God made or essential. It was his plan. He, it wasn't something that, you know, he improv'd into or just happened that he's like, oh, we're gonna make it work. His plan was to use us. He created us for a reason, but [00:03:00] we kind of ended talking about, well, why is that? And we're going to expound on that. Why and the implications of it to get more of that real world application. The reason why is essentially a Imago day, you know, we were made in the image of the Lord. It says this in Genesis chapter one, verse 26 and 27. The very first chapter of the Bible establishes what we are as humans. We are creatures, physical creatures that were made part, you know, there's a physical element to us. There's a spiritual eternal element to us. And we were made in the image of God. Like that is an amazing, incredible privilege. It's an amazing, you know, piece of us. And it really defines our value in our worth. And so we're going to contrast that belief and that statement, that essential a Christianity today, with what some other philosophies talk about humans, what they say about humans, what they say we are as humans. And then we're going to look, that's the upstream, which we like to focus on. And then the downstream that we're going to look at is going to [00:04:00] be okay. Well, if you know, if, if you believe this about. What are the effects. If you believe a Mago day, what are the effects? And we're gonna contrast those and we'll see where people want to end up after that. Well, let's start at the top. We're going upstream. Let's talk about some of the philosophical ideas of who other religions or other believe, uh, you know, or the secular culture. Believe we are as humans versus what Jesus tells us. We are. Yeah, well, uh, we're, let's touch on to start off, uh, Eastern philosophy a little bit, because we're not going to talk about this as much because we're not in the East. Um, but, uh, it doesn't have quite as much of an effect on our society today. And for the most part, people don't practically in our society live out the implications of Eastern philosophy. And Eastern philosophy, you know, you look at Hinduism and you look at Buddhism predominantly, and the belief is that human beings don't really exist. Um, it's interesting. And it's not that they don't exist in a physical way. [00:05:00] The, uh, the thought that you have personality, the thought that you're even thinking is just an illusion to you. That is what God came away, came away from his enlightenment with, as he called it, his, his enlightenment, but that in quotes, we're going to put that in air quotes because I would not call it an enlightenment, but he would. So we're going to say what he called his enlightenment. Uh, part of it was the essence of Nirvana, which is that you once, when you die, The, the ultimate goal is to become one with the universe and that oneness with the universe, you lose your personality and personality is simply this weird, you know, mutation. That's just an illusion and it's negative towards you. You don't want to have personality. That's what leads to pain and Hinduism is a little bit different than that, but it's still, you know, with karma and everything, it's still kind of, you kind of want to lose yourself. You know, you don't want to really be who you are. And the idea of being [00:06:00] an individual human is, is more of an illusion than anything else. Um, That doesn't have, you know, when we talk about practical effects, we can talk about what's happened in Asia and how the practical effects of that have come through, but we're not in Asia. And we are in America where most of our philosophical underpinnings at this point are secular. So I want to focus more on secularism secularism. What I'm going to be focusing on is kind of the implications of determinism and humanism and modernism. You know, they're, they're scientism, there's all these different isms that come up. I feel like that scene in Ferris Bueller, where he's like, I don't believe in any isms. I think isms in general are bad, but, uh, but yeah, there's all these different isms and basically they all. Are sourced from the idea in philosophy that okay, if God isn't real, you know, there's the whole phrase Nietzsche killed God, you know, Nietzsche was like, okay, God's not real. So we're going to go based on that and have progress. And all these isms have broken [00:07:00] out because once they started from that single premise of there is no God. You get all these different ideas about how does that work? What's the philosophy, what is truth? What are all these things? And right now we're living in the postmodern age. But before that it was modernism, uh, there's humanism, there's scientism, there's, there's all these different ideas. And all of them have slightly different views on what a human being really is, but they all kind of come to one conclusion. And the reason they come to one conclusion is they don't believe in the supernatural, especially scientism like science is, you know, the natural science is all about the natural world, which is great, but it ignores anything that's not really physical. You know. Everything that science deals with electrons, protons, neutrons, all the way up to galaxies and nebulas and the universe is all physical matter. There's a lot of stuff that isn't physical, but they don't address that. And to, to kind of circumvent that they just say, well, there isn't anything physical. And that's what determinism is all about. Is there's nothing beyond [00:08:00] the physical, which means that everything that happens is simply a chemical reaction. Which means everything that you do is simply a result of a chemical reaction that happens in your brain. And that essentially makes human beings just machines, because there's, there's no choice. There's no idea. It's just, okay. Well, I, you know, put these words out. Th the, these vibrations in the air, that's a word, a word is, is just a sound wave. I put it out. It goes into Jesse's ear. There's chemical reactions, his brain processes, and then his body and his mind react in this way. And that it's purely a physical thing. There's no soul, there's no freewill. There's nothing. All of that is, you know, it doesn't exist. And therefore that turns man into a machine, an organic machine, you know, not a machine made of metal, but still just a machine. Yeah. And, and that's what we see from, from sciences or scientism. Uh, mostly, but humanism has, which was more of an early 20th century thing. And that's what a lot of these other isms have [00:09:00] broken off from. That's kind of what all of them come to in the end, whether they be modernism or scientism or determinism or any of the isms you want to talk about, they come to this point where man is essentially a machine. There's no free will. No, there there's nothing else going on. It's just purely physical phenomena, that are happening. And for some odd reason, we think that we have free will. And that's where that's what they've arrived at. Okay. So, so basically it's a lot of, you're just here and whatever happens happens, because it's all just a chemical reaction and you you're just existing here. And that just sort of is the thing. Yeah. And you don't have any choice, you know, you may think you have choice, but even if you think you have choice, that's just another chemical reaction in your brain, your brain just processing things as a machine. It's either some good or bad process and it just has an outcome. True. Well, we believe as Christians in an Imago day, God is creative. God has sovereignty. And though we live in his world and he still has [00:10:00] complete sovereignty over everything. He allows us, you know, I don't want to get too much into freewill versus predestination and all that kind of stuff. But the idea that there is an eternal spiritual component of us, I don't think anybody would argue that, you know, who believes in Christianity, who truly believes in Jesus and Christ, you know, that's kind of the point of eternal life. Right. You know, I don't think anybody's under the idea that yeah, Jesus came, he died for our sins and now no one's ever going to die again, because, people have died since then, at least physically. But you know, there's this world that we are, that we understand both through the Old and New Testament of angels and spiritual beings and God, and that is supernatural. And the supernatural just purely means it's beyond the natural world. And we believe in, you know, the Imago day and that humans have, you know, the ability to make choices, not everything is just determined through physical phenomenon. There is choice. There is, you know, there are things happening and you as a human being are not a machine. Which is much [00:11:00] more, uh, dignifying and just being a machine, you know, it's that you actually have disability, you know, in determinism, there is no account of. How can you hold anybody to account? If everything they do is just predetermined through physical phenomenon, right? There, there is not a no account. And actually we're going to talk about next kind of the downstream of that deterministic belief is that there is no such thing anymore as accountability. But these determinants can't get around the fact that they still need a society and they still don't want people to walk around just murdering for fun. Right. Cause that doesn't make it easy. That's not really going to be a belief system that lasts very long. And so what they've done is if we, so if that's the top level, those philosophies of humanism and determinism. Versus, you know, the beliefs of Christianity of a Imago day of, you know, the fact that we have the ability to make choices. And we have the ability to, you know, we work with God and God's still gonna do his stuff, but we have the ability to navigate our own life within there. You know, those are two very contrasting [00:12:00] ideas and we see as they flow downstream, how they pop up. Um, the, the greatest example to me, uh, as someone who had, I took a lot of economics courses in my undergrad, and then I ended up getting my graduate degree in economics is you see these, these assumptions and the implications of them in social science a lot. Okay, how so? Let's talk About economics for a minute. If you're determinist, then you don't care about free will or accountability because none of that really exists. But you do care about society because you can't just walk out and be like, yeah, I'll just go murder whoever you want, because that won't work out very well. Will it? No. So it's like, so what are you going to believe in? And then we get, you know, that's when we get to science, scientism and things like that, that are like, okay, everything's evolution and everything's economics and everything's purely physical and really, the only two options are either nihilish where nothing matters that we've talked about on this podcast before, or this weird ambiguous idea of like continuing and progress and community. And it leads to your morals are [00:13:00] based on, well, what's best for humanity overall. And what do I, you know, even though humanity doesn't really exist and what do I think we should do going forward? And then you can say, well, murder is wrong because it's bad for humanity. But then you have to get to the point. Well, well, it's not always bad because there's bad people, so maybe we can take them out, you know, and what it does is it leads to this and you see little implications of it, this dehumanization, because people are no longer in Imago day because people are no longer a reflection of the creator and they were no longer created for a purpose. You treat them like you would a machine. Again, you know, the implication of making man and machine is that you treat them like a machine, which isn't surprising. And when you end up treating man like machines, He becomes one, you look at them like a cog in a system. You're like, okay, um, this society isn't working very well. Maybe it's because of this group of people let's get rid of them. There's nothing wrong with that anymore. I'm the only thing wrong with that ideas. You may be incorrect. Right. You know, there's no moral. I, you know, there's no mortality within that idea. It's just whether, well, [00:14:00] will the society be better or worse? And how do you define better and worse? Right. You know, oh, you want a richer society. Okay. Well, let's, you know, Uh, maybe these people are stopping it from being rich. Oh, this society, you know, is poor. Well, maybe the group of bankers is what's holding us back. Let's get rid of them. Oh, they're all Jewish. Great. Oh, now you've arrived at the Holocaust. You know, and I skipped a few steps, a little bit of oversimplification, but that is the implication of this dehumanization. Because what happens is when we turn it into machine upstream. Through humanism, through secularism, that it flows down into social sciences and you get these ideas of, well, we need to worry about quality of life and the society as a whole and progress overall and keeping people safe. You know, and I put safe in air quotes. Again, if you're listening, because how do you define safe? What really is safe, you know? And you get to these areas where you can do things that are economically good, but are they morally good? Are they. Good for your soul. You know, you [00:15:00] think about the fact that I'm sure that every single one of us could go and work 12 hour days and be a lot more productive, you know, and get a lot more stuff done. And I'm pretty sure it would crush every single one of our souls. But if you don't believe you have a soul, why not? I mean, it's better for society, right? For society. Yeah. And so you get to this area where, because you've turned man into a machine, there's no morals and there's no way that you have to treat a man anymore. You don't have to treat a man as he's made in the image of God. And again, I brought up economics because I want to bring up a contrast with an economics. If you believe, man is just a machine. Even if you don't understand that. And it's just implied through, you know, your secularism, then when you get to economics, the, the, you know, what the king and economics is, what everyone always talks about is a efficiency. That's all, any economics person cares about is efficiency. Well, the only way to measure a Finch efficiency is in a physical space. How can we measure the efficiency of your soul? No. Can we measure the efficiency of [00:16:00] how this piece of art affects your soul? No, we can't at all. And because of that, all of that is flushed down the toilet and they get rid of it and it's like, okay, well let's make things more efficient. You know, let's make things better. It's like, okay. And that's, you know, progress is great to strive for, but if you don't really have a defined goal, and if your goal of better is just more things, I mean, where do you think our materialism comes from? Man is a machine, man just consumes things. You know, it's a machine that consumes things, so let's make more stuff. Well, and I think it's important to note too, cause we were talking upstream versus downstream, right? And you're, you're bringing in this economics point of, you know, what's going to be most efficient. We see this even reflected in our schools and which programs get to survive and not survive during budget cuts. Um, I personally grew up in theater, dance, band, and we were always, constantly having these pressures of, oh, well we may, you know, this thing doesn't get any money because you know, it's not as important as the core math, science, whatever. [00:17:00] Right. And it's like these things that feed our soul. Matter. And they tend to be these creative art based things. But those are also the things that if you are focused on, well, humans do not have souls. So therefore art does not matter. Beauty does not matter. These, these creative elements do not match her then obviously yes. If that's your focus, then those are the things that are going to go. It does that's that's superfluous stuff that doesn't need any focus. So you cut the program. So we see this, you know, long before we've started seeing even some of the more drastic, radical effects that are coming in today. Yeah. So economically we're seeing a lot of pressure for people to work longer hours and do be more efficient. Right. You know, if you burn out and you have to abandon your family just to make ends meet or just to make a deadline. I mean, we see this video game industries is in the throws of this right now. They call it crunch where it's like, we have a deadline to hit in order [00:18:00] to make the monies. And if you guys have to sleep in the office in order to make it happen, then you're going to do that. And if you can't do it, then we'll replace you with someone who wants to be here and is willing to make those sacrifices. And so if you are treating people like a machine then it doesn't matter if they have a family. It doesn't matter if they, you know, have people to take care of in their lives. As long as they're not, as long as they are less efficient or more efficient than the next person they can stay. But the moment they stopped and it than out the door with you. Well, then even think about how that affects, you know, our society struggle right now with mental health and think about how mental health is discussed is mental health discusses. Something like this person has experienced something that has, that has affected their mentality and we want to help them so they can live a fulfilling life. Or is it, oh, this person is broken. Do we have drugs? We can give them. So that they can be more efficient. So that they get back to work well, I mean, okay. Is the point of humanity just for us to work well, if we're machines. It is right. But, uh, and this [00:19:00] is, uh, you know, I want to try to bring into it, even though I never experienced this at university, unsurprisingly, but an idea of Christian economics. You know, and, and that's something that, you know, this is a hypothetical right now, but how would a Christian want to look at economics? And I would say as someone who's studied a little bit of both, um, you know, you look at it and say, okay, we can get more productive in this area. Is, is it worth it though? Is that production worker? Oh, worth it. Okay. This will make it so we can grow more crops and feed more people. That's an objectively good thing. What are we going to have to do to get there? Are we going to have to kill the environment? Cause that's not good. Are we going to have to do something that, you know, works? People tell their dead, cause that's not good either. You know it's and it balances it. It's like, okay, the physical production, the efficiency is a good thing. I mean, you know, if we take a step back, a finches efficiency is objectively a debate. Right. You know, cars that get better gas mileage is kinda nice. You know, we don't have to buy as much gas. It's not as bad for the environment. And we can go further and do more, you know, with what we have. That's that's good stewardship. Right. But [00:20:00] we also have to look at the other side of, okay, is this good overall the risk of, yeah. But what are we losing if we gain this efficiency, and sometimes you can gain efficiency and you can do things better and you don't lose much. Other times you're a video game company and people are sleeping in the office because they're working, you know, 24/7. Right. And that's an example of, okay, well maybe that efficiency isn't quite worth it. Right. Maybe that's not something we want to do. And so there's this essence of balance because humans, yes, we are. Part of our life on earth is working and that's not a bad thing. You know, you talk to a lot of people. They can find fulfillment in their job. I saw a guy at the grocery store the other day. Who's part of the church and I was talking with him and he was like, man, I retired, but I'm so tired. I need to get back to work cause he wanted to do something right. And that's awesome. You know, part of being human is wanting to work, but if you think that humanity is machine and it's made for only work, you lose out on everything else, you lose out on human. And that is dehumanization. And what I want to talk [00:21:00] about, you know, with the rest of the time that we have is the ultimate downstream. You know, we we've talked about the philosophy up top, how not believing in Imago day leads to these other ideas of what a human is. And our society is built mostly on the bedrock of, you know, the secular philosophy that man is just a machine and that flows down into social sciences a little bit. But then how does that come into contact with the real world. Cause not everyone's, you know, at university studying social sciences. So how does that affect you, you know, in your everyday life? Well, there's a couple of different ways. There's the dehumanization that flows through from that upstream all the way to downstream has come through in our society in a lot of really nasty, sad and scary ways. Um, the, the Nordic countries that, that are so often championed and not for, you know, not necessarily. A bad reason, you know, those places are beautiful, you know, and, and they've built in a lot of ways, society that do take care of a lot of citizens and, you know, they do have [00:22:00] some good things going for, they have some things, they have figured something. Also, there are no more children born with down syndrome in the Nordic countries. And I'm assuming that's not because they've solved the... It is not because they have solved what causes down syndrome. It's because if, uh, you can find down syndrome through prenatal testing. And so if a woman goes in, who is pregnant and they find through prenatal testing, I believe it's just a blood test. Um, and they find, oh, This fetus has, you know, this child, when it's born, it will have down syndrome. And it's like a 99 and a half percent correct rate, you know, which is pretty, pretty good. They say, so should we just abort this? And almost every single time they do. And there is an example of, you know, when you treat them a human as a machine, oh, you just put stuff in and you get stuff out or you put stuff in and it makes the machine happy. You know, the machine feels good, right? Now it's like, okay, uh, this machine has a defect is how they treat it. Oh, this machine, it won't be [00:23:00] productive. Oh, this machines, quality of life won't be very high. So we're going to get rid of it before it's even born. And that's terrible. It's, it's so sad. And the philosophy behind it is a dehumanization of all people with disabilities. Because it treats them as, oh, well, they're not productive enough for society or, oh, they're not going to have a quality of life that's very high, or this is going to be a really difficult for the parents. It's going to be a lot of extra work for them. It's not worth it. And it's becoming this. It becomes this idea of, oh, is this human being worth it or not? I think the answer should pretty much always be yes, internet. Right. You know, the, our view on that, you know, God's view is this is Imago day. This person is made in the image of Christ. Okay. They're a little different, you know, they have differences. Yes. They have physical differences. Yes. They have intellectual differences, you know, and we're there, there's physical phenomena that have caused that. And we're not a hundred percent sure why that happens physically. We're not a hundred percent sure. You know, what the [00:24:00] spiritual implications are of it. But we do know that they're made in the image of God. We do know that they're God's children, just like we are. So why do we have this ability? Why would we ever put ourselves in a position where we get to judge the worthwhileness of a human being? Agreed. That's terrible. That's awful. And that's what this leads to. That's what the, when man becomes a machine, which it does in secular philosophy, he or she does in secular philosophy. Then at the very end point, you know, we've tracked it through the philosophy who tracked it through the social sciences. And now when we deal with it on the ground, It comes to dehumanization and people judging what they can do to other humans. Well, and I mean, I think that's one of the ways they even, I mean, we see it in this, in this system of, uh, uh, boarding down syndrome, children or children that have disabilities. We see it. A lot of you see it a lot when people are like spooling up. Kind of wars or atrocities where they [00:25:00] start going? Well, these are less than, I mean, the idea of even just slavery in America, we had the three-fifths compromise of while they are less than a full human they're three-fifths of a human. And that's mostly just because we want to be able to count them. Political reasons. Political power of having sessions, but you don't want to recognize them as human beings. Because then they would had to say, I'm enslaving a full human being. And they couldn't do well. I mean, actually they actually wanted to do right. But the north wind, a lot of them were, was like, ah, no, you can't say their property and a human being. That's ridiculous. And they were like, yes, we can. But, I mean, we see what happened 80 years later, there was a civil war. Right. You know, maybe it was 90. But you've seen genocide. So you've seen wars, we've seen atrocities all based on this idea of making someone seem either less than, or a threat to. And I mean, that does happen right. There are people that are not doing good [00:26:00] things that need to be stopped. But it's not the default should not always be well, let's just assassinate them or kill them or wipe out their entire culture because something was chosen. It's like that immediately turns them into something less than right. They are no longer carrying the image of God. They are just this other thing. That's the key phrase right there. You just said they're no longer carrying the image of God. And we as Christians, this is an essential point of our faith. And that's why we're talking about it today. That's why we're going to talk about it on Sunday, because the belief that all humans are made in the image of God is an essential pillar of our faith. There's a reason it's in Genesis chapter one, you know, it establishes who we are. And so when we treat other people, you know, or when we, when we interact with other people and determine how we're going to treat them. That needs to be part of, I mean, used to be one of the main points that, you know, we base our treatment of others off of. Is the fact that they are made in the image of God. And that [00:27:00] leads to true accountability. Right. It's not, it's not, we're not saying, oh, well, because they're human. They should never have to face accountability or ever being punished just because they carry the image of God. They're still responsible, but they're in fact more responsible for the things that they have done because they are. Under secularism. They're just a machine that's a little off or a machine that's broken and needs to be removed and they can't be held accountable therapist. There's no accountability. There is simply efficiency there. You don't go punish a machine if it misprints a t-shirt. You either you either fix or you get rid of it, you know, you don't, you don't go over there and scolded it. Like, what are you doing? I know that a, an iron man he's got the machine that he, you know, he's sarcastic with, but that's, that's a joke for a reason, right? You know, but under, you know, in, in our faith, we look at a human who is doing something that is, I mean, you know, part of it is it allows us to have objective morality, you know, that comes from God. And when a human is violating, that we can say, look, you are a human being. You are created in the image of God. Therefore I know you have the [00:28:00] ability, you know, to choose you have the ability to act and behave. You're not a machine. This is not predetermined. It's here and now what are you going to do? And so it allows for true accountability. Well, I think that is a great place for us to kind of wrap up today. Those are some deep thoughts and we've, we've covered a wide gamut of things. Um, and this will probably be something people can think on over the weekend as we head in towards Sunday. Um, about who you believe humans are in your world and your world beliefs and critically think about really what that means. Because ultimately you have to make that decision for you. We've we've presented a counter argument based on what a lot of the culture is saying, but ultimately you're the one that has to decide. What do you believe about yourself? Cause that's one of the most driving important forces in how you will live your life. So we really appreciate you guys joining us. Um, again, if you're a first-time listener and you're like, man, there's a lot of big, high concept things I got covered today. That's [00:29:00] kind of normal, but we do have a nice refresher course episode 1 0 2, 1 to three or one to two, one to four, one to six, one to eight are kind of broad spectrum. Um, we call them what in the Sam Hill series and they cover some of these philosophical ideas in short, succinct fashion so that you can kind of catch up without having to listen to 127 episodes in order to figure out what in the Sam Hill is going on on this podcast. Um, so we encourage you. Um, we love getting comments and reviews from you guys. So if you're on YouTube, leave us a comment, let us know what you thought about this episode. Um, what you feel like other things that we may have missed in our discussion that we didn't bring up. Um, and just let us share. There's a lot. There's probably a lot. We only got 30 minutes, but we love seeing those things cause that could inspire us to converse about it the next time Zach's on or in a different episode. So we love talking with you guys. We love that you're here and we'll see you Sunday here in beautiful Boise, Idaho at Foothills Christian Church.[00:30:00]