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Calvin Smith: The Destruction Of Christian Values & Fall Of Western Society · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:02
  Welcome to Worldview Matters. Discussing controversial issues. Discerning current events. Defending biblical Christianity. No topic. Off limits. And now, here's your host, David Fiorazzo.
• 0:20
  Hello, brothers and sisters. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode. We're going up north and we're going to get some wisdom from what's going on in Canada. Because we know, I hope we know or understand what happens in Canada doesn't stay in Canada. Or what happens in the UK or Europe doesn't stay over there. Yeah.
• 0:41
  Here, what happens in California doesn't stay in California. So we've got a lot to pay attention to. But I want to bring in Calvin Smith. He's the executive director and speaker for Answers in Genesis Canada. We've had him on several times before. I love this brother. And you can check him out on YouTube. Answers Canada is on YouTube. Check out their channel, their videos. He does great work. Such important topics. Brother, good to see you again. Thanks for your time. Good to see you, brother.
• 1:09
  So let's jump right into this topic today. I just, we were talking before I got on the podcast, figuring out how to word this, and I think we're going to title it The Destruction of Christian Values and Fall of Western Society. Now, it hasn't happened yet, but it's happening. We're declining, and it's just a matter of time if we, Christians, the body of Christ, don't
• 1:33
  understand how we got here, and then try to right the ship. Can you give us an overview before we dive into some specifics, Cal?
• 1:42
  Yeah, I think a lot of Christians are lamenting what they see in society, but they don't really understand the underlying ethos that's pushing this. You've got this wide variety of views, but collectively, you know, you've got the progressives and then you've got the conservatives, right? But what's at the root, what's at the foundation of these, you know, kind of main viewpoints? And, you know, when you think of culture itself, Daniel Dennett years ago said that, you know,
• 2:12
  that culture was kind of like a way that communities try to answer the big quandaries of life, so to speak. And so when you think that through, there's three big questions in life every thinking person will want to answer. Where do we come from? What's the meaning of life? What happens when you die? And
• 2:29
  You know, that's kind of like the framework of how you understand all of life. And if you go back 100, 200 years ago in Western society, even further than that, people are going to answer the same way. Where do we come from? Well, God created everything, right? He's the creator. What's the meaning of life? Well, love God and love your neighbor, et cetera. And what's going to happen when you die? Well, if you want to represent yourself in front of God's courtroom.
• 2:52
  You're not going to have a great time because you are a sinner. But if you accept Christ as Savior, you are going to have eternal life. So that was embedded into our culture. You think of Western society, Christmas, Easter. Christianity was the mainstay of the entire worldview in the West. Whether people were Christians or not, that was just what was out there in culture, so to speak. But that has been transformed over the last couple hundred years.
• 3:18
  all across the West. And, you know, many people just don't understand that, that the core worldview that's been taught for many, many generations now is the story of evolution, Darwinian evolution. So take the three big questions in life and apply it to that worldview. Well, what's, you know, where do we come from? Evolution, pawns gone, billions of years, no creator, no mind, etc. What's the meaning of life? There is no meaning to life.
• 3:42
  How can there be meaningful life if everything's the result of a giant explosion, uncaused explosion billions of years ago? And what happens when you die? Absolutely nothing. You just go back into the ground and you're not judged based on what you've done, which is the key point.
• 3:58
  There is no judgment in this worldview. And that concept is very attractive to sinners. That worldview, they eat it up and it's being codified and taught as science and fact in our school systems, you know, from kindergarten all the way up to our universities. That's embedded in society now. That's the number one worldview that is in the West.
• 4:18
  So it's very important for people to realize we didn't just arrive here by chance. And we've actually got a new series that we just released recently that really digs into the historicity of these things and has helped people understand really how we got here. And that's important in being able to then turn it around and get us out of this mess.
• 4:38
  Yeah, if we don't understand history, we're doomed to repeat it or continue it, I guess. So recently, July 1 was Canada Day. Ken Ham put up a little post, what's behind the fall of the Western world, and it led to your video. But he said it's rather sad that many—
• 4:58
  Christians, when we hear Canada, they think of spiritual darkness, restricted Christian freedoms, very progressive euthanasia laws, which you and I were talking about this before we got on the podcast. But, and we can mention some of these, Cal, if you'd like, and I want to talk about C9. But also, Ken Ham says, there are some very exciting things. You guys are doing some great work at Answers in Genesis Canada, and especially on social media. So maybe we want to share more,
• 5:27
  where people can access your videos. I know there's a page our friends at Harbinger's Daily put up for you, Calvin Smith. So that's a blessing. We can get it there. Also on your YouTube channel, Answers Canada, where else can people get access to this great work that you guys are doing?
• 5:45
  Yeah. So any of the social media platforms, it's just at Answers Canada. And that'll get you to, you know, all of the various platforms, because I know different people have different preferences to what they access. Since COVID, you know, when we got locked down pretty hard here and I couldn't get out to travel to speak at churches or do conferences or anything like that.
• 6:04
  we really turned to video production and that was kind of like the silver lining for us so that's how we maintained outreach during those times and since then it's been going very well also so over 25 and a half million views now on our youtube channel in years and then that's just on our channel you know answers in genesis the ark encounter channel we've got several many views there
• 6:26
  and their main channel, and of course, Answers TV. And what I'm really seeing now is other Christian ministries sharing those videos and doing commentary, you know, like a lot of YouTubers will do, they'll play a video and make comments on that and stuff. So it's been great to see the influence of that shooting out there for sure.
• 6:42
  So I encourage people to look that one up because that's in part what we're talking about today. There's one specifically exposing the mysterious figures behind the fall of Western society. And you mentioned, how did you word it before we got on the recording here? You said something about Canada being a testing ground to bad progressive policies. Did I paraphrase that right?
• 7:05
  I would say that's a very accurate statement. I think there's a lot of progressives out there that use Canada as kind of like a little Petri dish. You know, we've had a lot of liberal government for a long time and even many of our conservatives, they would call themselves, are not conservative. So, yeah, it's a bit of a test ground. I always joke around when I speak in the United States as a Canadian. I say, hey, I'm a time traveler. I'm coming from your future.
• 7:29
  unless you guys start turning things around here. Of course, I could go to my brethren in the UK and we could say that they're a little further down the pike than we are here in Canada. You know, we were at about 10%, you know, church attendance rate now. The UK is down to about four. So I can't, I don't know where Australia is. But yeah, I mean, there's just different levels. I mean, yeah.
• 7:54
  The UK accepted evolution, especially in the churches, wholeheartedly many, many years ago. And so that's now creeping into the evangelical world, of course. And that worldview is promoting the chaos that we see out there, for sure.
• 8:10
  Let's talk about one of the, to me, glaring consequences of that worldview, and that would be the culture of death. And now we're not just talking abortion. Most people think culture of death, abortion. Let's talk about euthanasia and MAID, medical assistance in dying, because there's some disturbing things that are going on in Canada. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this because I want to get to C9 now,
• 8:36
  and hate speech and what was just passed recently. But when I looked up what was going on in America, Cal, I was really surprised. I guess I shouldn't have been because there are, I think, around 14 states that have some sort of wording or language that would allow and laws that would allow someone to be, you know, euthanized when they're elderly or sick. But in Canada, there are young people that have mental health issues that have been
• 9:06
  Euthanized. And what do they call it? Compassionate care. This is part of the worldview of there is no God. We are in control. Go ahead and share.
• 9:16
  Yeah, well, I'll give you a quote from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Years ago they had a four-part series called Testing God. Actually, it was a three-part series. And here's an exact quote from one of the narrators, which just, in my mind, just really captures this whole, we used to believe in God, now we believe in evolution, is, you know, answer to question number one.
• 9:37
  And the narrator says, once we believed we were unique, blessed with a soul and lovingly created by God and his image. Today, evolution says we're just a product of natural selection, the descendants of primitive bacteria, not the children of God. So, you know, I just say to people, look, I don't know what you, but I know what I do when I get excess bacteria in my kitchen.
• 9:57
  I wipe it out systematically, a couple of little shots of spray and I wipe it up and it's done. And if you look at the world leaders that adopted social Darwinism in the last 200 years, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mao, you know, Hitler. I mean, this is the whole concept. It's you get rid of the weak, you know, that aren't kicking around in society well, that you deem are unworthy of life and you take them out.
• 10:24
  If you've read Mein Kampf, I've read large portions of it. That was the whole concept that Hitler operated on, right? We've got the more evolved Aryan race, the less evolved Jewish race. And if you've got more melanin in your skin than us, then you're lesser and all that kind of stuff. And so it's just the dehumanization of the human being. We're not created in the image of God. We're not special. You get rid of spare cats. You get rid of spare kids. We had a situation recently here in Canada.
• 10:53
  where a doctor who was at a Tim Hortons starts talking to this young person. They're not doing well. They've got some mental issues. That doctor drove that young person to a hospital and they ended that person's life. So, you know,
• 11:14
  Here, if you're not doing well, if some rando doctor shows up at a coffee shop and you start spilling your guts and you're not having a good day and et cetera, et cetera. And that's, that's horrific.
• 11:27
  Like, just think that through, right? How many young people are having mental challenges, especially since COVID? I mean, most people were having some problems during COVID. But just being a young person, you got hormones flying around, all these types of things. You haven't made decisions yet. I'm sure many of your audience out there can think back, you know, in your earlier years where you thought and had so many different opinions than you have today. You're just not mature. And so...
• 11:55
  Applying life altering decisions to young people and in a sense, coercing them to do these things. It's absolutely horrific. It's it's it's incredible that it's happening, but it is. And it's because of the worldview that's been instituted.
• 12:10
  Wow. So we're seeing this played out, these consequences, deadly consequences. And so let me just ask you this. So this doctor, that's legal. I mean, he didn't do anything wrong, according to laws in Canada. Now, did it was this a quick thing or did this? Go ahead. Well, when this, you know, it's started to become known, I believe like the person's under investigation now and stuff like that. But the fact is someone's still gone. Yeah.
• 12:39
  Right. So and why did the person feel like they could just do that? Well, obviously, in a sense, the law is on their side. It's just like the abortion issue. Right. You know, people want to argue about, well, abortion at six months or nine months or three months or whatever like that. It's when you actually break the the the unified, you know, people talk about common sense. There's only common sense in a in a conversation.
• 13:06
  you know, in a community, if there's commonality amongst the people in that culture, right? And so
• 13:15
  You know, once they decided that killing a human being in the womb was okay at, you know, up to three months, well, now you've just broken the line. It's no longer murder. So now we're going to push that line up to six months and then nine months. And then now you've got many people arguing for infanticide. Maybe up to two years you should be able to decide whether you get rid of them. Well, there is no line after the first step anyway. It's just more and more consistency. And that's what we're seeing in culture.
• 13:44
  The slippery slope. I also think of Satan comes to kill, steal, and destroy, or steal, kill, and destroy. He's having a heyday. He's celebrating. He said the more deaths of human beings that he can cause, it's just so sad to see this collateral damage, and it's all based on, like you said, a faulty worldview. Before we take a brief pause here, Cal,
• 14:11
  Uh, I, my wife's from Toronto. I do want to shout out to Tim Hortons. Uh, that's kind of like America's Dunkin' Donuts, I guess. Uh, no shade on, no shade on Tim's. We're just talking about where it happened. Right, right, right, right. Right. And by the way, I love their dark, dark roast. I get the, uh, Keurig pods. Good stuff.
• 14:31
  Anyway, got to take a brief pause here right now. Freedom Project Academy is enrolling students for the fall. They've been doing this for 16 years. FPA has delivered a fully accredited classical online education rooted firmly in Judeo-Christian values for kids in pre-kindergarten through high school.
• 14:52
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• 15:06
  David, again, 10%. You can save on all courses by using the code David at Freedom Project Academy. Visit Freedom4School, that's F-O-R, school.com, and get started. Back to our brother, Cal Smith, Calvin Smith. So let's talk now before we run out of time of the legislation that recently passed there that's coming to America. It's been threatened in many different forms or ways, depending on who's in charge in the White House and who has the majority in the Senate.
• 15:35
  I think of just within the last 10 years, but C9 in Canada. Can you explain that? Because it seems to be—the title sounds good. They're kind of like trying to defend or support religious freedoms, but it's really not going to end well in some cases, depending on how they define certain terms, for the Bible-believing Christian. Go ahead, Cal. Cal.
• 15:58
  Yeah, big picture. It's just they've taken away protection. So, you know, you used to be able to say, well, this is my faith. This is, you know, the Bible or whatever your faith background is and, you know, the codified version of your faith. And you were able to, you know, make these declarations. This is what the scripture says. And basically, this is taking away the freedom for you to say certain things, because if a person hearing what you're saying declares that to be offensive,
• 16:28
  then that could be considered to be hate speech. And of course, people tried under hate speech laws can face some very serious consequences. So,
• 16:38
  Simply speaking your mind about what you truly believe could be taken by someone to be considered, you know, offensive. And then they say, you know, so if I say the word of God says, you know, God created male and female. I can quote Jesus from the New Testament saying, you know, have you not read that in the beginning God created male and female?
• 16:59
  you know, and why they become one flesh, you know, the marriage passage. And somebody could say, well, wait a sec, I think there's 72 genders. So you saying that, you know, the Bible says this is offensive. And so that's really a challenge because I believe the Western world always had hate speech laws. Hate speech was defined as me myself.
• 17:22
  is enticing or coercing someone to commit violence against someone. But see, now everything's gone up into the progressives' brains, right? I mean, think of even in terms of, like, biological male, biological female. Okay, so we're talking about biology, right? Reality, like fallopian tubes and, you know, whatever like that. We're talking about actual biology. That's right. But then he comes along and says, no, I feel...
• 17:51
  that I may fill in the blank. Well, that's all up here. That's not here. That's why you actually have to have surgery to alter your body to try to mimic what the biology is of the other sex.
• 18:09
  Right. That's why you cut things off and try to add things and all that kind of stuff, because biologically you are this and biologically you are that. And then up here you want to make changes. And so so it's the same type of thing. I can say something and someone says that's hateful. Well, how do I know that's hateful to you?
• 18:30
  Right. So these are very, very dangerous things. But that concept has already been established through concepts just mentioned. And if you can take that, you know, anywhere, well. All of a sudden, you just can't speak anymore because anything you say could, you know, and these are the protections.
• 18:49
  we used to have because we used to be able to say, well, that's what the Word of God says. Well, if you take away that protection, you know. Of course, that's going to come back to bite all sorts of people. The Christian faith isn't the only faith around.
• 19:03
  Anyway. So it depends on how you define offensive, what offends another person, and maybe defining hate, what is hateful. They've got to kind of define that. And does that depend on the victim, the person who's offended? Yeah.
• 19:25
  That's why you have terminology like microaggressions. Like it's just it's just nonsense. It's just a way to control the speech of of people. Right. Which is what Jordan Peterson is famous here in Canada for for standing up about. But, you know, you guys have seen changes, obviously, in the last two years in your country because your your government. But hey, midterms are coming down there. So we'll see what happens.
• 19:53
  You know what they say in Canada, you know, the U.S. gets a sniffle and Canada catches a cold. That's funny. So there's a couple of different videos. Let's talk about the one that Ken pointed to. The other one I was looking at was –
• 20:10
  They planned the destruction of our Christian values hundreds of years ago. That's one. And then the other one is exposing the mysterious figures behind the fall of Western society. We've only got seven minutes already, Cal, going by fast. So whichever one you want to give us a few bullet points on these, because they both seem very interesting and fascinating. Yeah.
• 20:34
  Well, just to put it in context, those are two videos in a sequence of videos. So we created a 12-part series called The Shadow League. So you're referencing like part one and part two. Part three has already come out now as well. And so what I do is I just kind of pull way, way back. You know, many people today, they just have this idea that Charles Darwin, you know, he was a neat kind of guy. He went on this trip on a boat.
• 20:57
  Went out there, discovered all the evidence for evolution, natural selection, hallelujah. You know, everybody just decided to follow science, so to speak, and here we are. It's a lot more complicated than that. And there were a lot of people working in behind. You know, most people are totally unaware. One of the things I point out, that there was a Darwin before Charles Darwin, and it was his great-grandfather, Erasmus.
• 21:19
  And his great-grandfather was part of a lunar, what they called a lunar society. And these were the progressives of the day. And they would meet on the first, you know, on the full moon, you know, when they get together, because they wanted to have lots of light when they were walking home. It wasn't, I don't think, some culty thing. It was just, they wanted, you know, be able to see when they were walking home at night. But anyway, Erasmus Darwin, if you look into it, he wrote a book called Zoonomia, and it reads like Origin of Species.
• 21:46
  It starts off with a big explosion and there's little filaments in the ocean. And then they get little, you know, limbs and stuff like that. And they grow and they get more sophisticated and blah, blah, blah. And here we are. Like Darwinian evolution was around before Darwinian evolution. But even before Darwinian evolution, before Erasmus, there have been evolutionists throughout history. Because all humans only have two options to explain how they got here.
• 22:12
  There's either a Creator or everything created itself. Either God is eternal and creates, or matter is somehow eternal and somehow just propagates and creates. So, I wanted to just reveal that these things just didn't happen. There were people that were planning, people like Charles Lyell.
• 22:31
  If you look into it, you know, he supposedly is the father of modern geology. And he, you know, coined the phrase, the present is the key to the past. Look into his writings. He actually said, I want to free science from Moses.
• 22:45
  What? What does science have to do with Moses? Well, Moses wrote about the great flood. See, the great flood is the explanation for the fossil record, all the dead things in there, which makes sense because that happened 1650 years after the fall. But what he wanted to do is rework the origin and get rid of Genesis. So he said, no, no, no, no, no. The earth's been around for millions and millions of years.
• 23:08
  And many of the Christians didn't really understand it. And so they said, okay, well, we can accept millions of years. It doesn't attack the authority of Christ. Well, wait a sec. The only place to put millions of years is in the six days of creation. And if you're saying the rock layers represent millions of years, then you're saying the six days weren't really days. They were millions and millions of years. Well, okay. At the end of the creation, God said everything was very good. Then there was a day of rest. And then Adam fell.
• 23:35
  and sin and death entered into the world because the wages of sin is death. But wait a sec. If the days aren't really days and the rock layers represent millions of years, what's in the rock layers? It's a record of death and suffering and disease like cancer. So think this through for your Christian audience out there. Did Jesus, the creator, as we see in the book of Colossians, use billions of years of death, suffering, pain, disease, cancer to create
• 24:03
  Call it all very good, all before Adam's sin and the fall occurred? Wow. What do you do with the gospel then? And see, many of these people understood this. And the undermining effect, Charles Lyell would say, if you don't offend the clergy and approach the more liberal-minded ones, we'll attain all.
• 24:24
  And it's incredible to see these things. And of course, my colleague and good friend, Dr. Terry Mortensen, I pulled from a lot of his research because he's got a PhD in the history of geology. But I touch on all sorts of things that I think people will find very fascinating if they really haven't done the research and really thought it through. So yeah, it's a big, big perspective. That's why it's 12 videos long, probably our most ambitious series. But yeah.
• 24:52
  There you go. Very important, though. So someone that's on that side that's either believing that or teaching that, even in the church, how do they make that leap that there was death and cancer and suffering before that?
• 25:12
  The fall, how do they explain that or don't they? They can't make the leap. And that's the challenge. You know, they just, well, you know, blah, blah, blah. I've heard all sorts of things. And people start to say, well, it was only the death of men that occurred, you know, before the fall. They try to weasel around it like that because Romans 5, 12, through one man sin into the world and death through sin. And so, you know, death spread to all men. But the challenge is now that the evolutionists, which is the timeline they're, you know, bowing down to,
• 25:40
  says that fully human people died 300,000 years ago.
• 25:45
  Where do you stick 300,000 years in the chronogenologies? And you have to put it before Adam sinned. So there is no weaseling around this gap theory, day, age theory, progressive creation. You know, it doesn't matter how you try to stick the long ages in the six days of creation. You always end up with Jesus using billions of years of death to create. And so for those, you know, Christians out there like, you know, William Lane Craig, for example, very popular apologists.
• 26:13
  saying that biblical creationists were an embarrassment to the community because we don't accept science, so to speak. Well, we can explain the science, no problem. But the thing is, like, I'd rather be embarrassed when I stand in front of Jesus and just say, well, I just took your words as plainly written, Lord, than accusing him of using billions of years of death and suffering. And by the way, it's not like this hasn't been tried before. The mainstream churches adopted the story of evolution years and years ago. Where are they now?
• 26:41
  in absolute freefall, and that's now what the evangelicals are trying to do. Oh my goodness. We've got to wake up and understand that this is going on in the church. We're not talking about outside the church here. Cal, thank you. I just really want to direct people to Answers Canada, Facebook, YouTube. Make sure to check out also Harbingers.tv.
• 27:04
  And there's a page there for Cal and some of his videos. There it is. And we just appreciate that great conversation, helping us understand that how, in part, how we got here. A lot more details in your videos, I'm sure. Continued good success with that series, brother. Ambitious but needed. So thanks for your time today.
• 27:23
  Awesome. Okay, we'll see you again. We'll do. We will do, Lord willing. Thank you, God, for such great people I get to talk to. I'm just so blessed. I learn every episode I learn from men and women of God that can always encourage me, and hopefully it does the same for you. Thank you for sharing the episodes, friends. God bless you, and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.