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Christian Values Vs. Civilization | Yaron Brook Show · Yaron Brook Show

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Speaker 1: A lot of them, fundamental principles of weedom actually self interest,
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Speaker 1: and the individual lots. This is the show. All right, everybody,
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Speaker 1: welcome to your one book show on this Saturday, December twentieth.
0:28
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me. We are you know I told
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Speaker 1: you that I'll devote my Saturday shows to three general topics,
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Speaker 1: uh kind of Christianity and civilization, uh, the search for
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Speaker 1: meaning and uh and capitalism just just different aspects of capitalism.
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Speaker 1: So today we're back to the topic of civilization and
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Speaker 1: UH and Christianity and uh uh yeah, well we'll keep
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Speaker 1: on this rotation. I do not have any views today,
1:00
Speaker 1: but I do need to catch up on those, so
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Speaker 1: we'll probably devote a midweek show sometime to at least
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Speaker 1: catch up on reviews and get them all done and
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Speaker 1: get them all or most of them done by year end.
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Speaker 1: All right, Let's see, So I thought we talked today
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Speaker 1: about Christian values and what they are, and then how
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Speaker 1: they relate to Western civilization, to civilization, to where we
1:31
Speaker 1: are today, to how we got to where we are today,
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Speaker 1: how civilization came about, and to what extent we can
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Speaker 1: attribute civilization to these, you know, co Christian values, to
1:43
Speaker 1: what extent is Christianity responsible, But we'll look at it
1:47
Speaker 1: through the lens of Christian values, of through the lens
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Speaker 1: of Christian morality. I want to say one thing. I
1:56
Speaker 1: was thinking of calling this judo Christian values versus civilization,
2:04
Speaker 1: but then I thought, God, then I'd have to separate
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Speaker 1: out what is exactly. I'd have to do the whole
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Speaker 1: theology of the separation between Christianity and Judaism, and that
2:14
Speaker 1: seems ridiculous. Also, it just opens it up to the
2:17
Speaker 1: argument of no, there is no judo Christian It's really
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Speaker 1: only Christian values and Jewish values are very different. And
2:24
Speaker 1: to some extent that's true. So I decide dealt with it.
2:28
Speaker 1: I mean, the reality is judo Christian values. The whole
2:32
Speaker 1: idea of judo Christian civilization, judo Christian whatever is probably
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Speaker 1: a mid twentieth century concept. It is a post Holocaust concept.
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Speaker 1: It's a way for Christians to pretend that Christianity had
2:49
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the Holocaust, for Christians to pretend
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Speaker 1: they don't know. You know, we've always been on the
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Speaker 1: Jews side, you know, when faced with the reality of
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Speaker 1: what happened in you juring the World War two. Uh So,
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Speaker 1: so there is no such thing as Judo Christian values.
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Speaker 1: The Jews and the Christians indeed disagree on many of
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Speaker 1: these values. They they they share common as well, see
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Speaker 1: we won't see, but they'll share common irrationality, that the
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Speaker 1: irrationality of religion, the originality of faith, that they share.
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Speaker 1: But they disagree on the particulars. And there's no point
3:25
Speaker 1: in really getting into it. Uh, just to be clear,
3:29
Speaker 1: just so nobody has any doubts, because I know a
3:31
Speaker 1: lot of people are out to get me on this issue.
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Speaker 1: It's Judeo who cares. Judo is a martial art. I'm
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Speaker 1: talking about Judo. You thought I was talking about Jews.
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Speaker 1: Now I'm talking about Judo Christian. It's the it's the
3:46
Speaker 1: there's a Judo Christian thing, Judeo Judeo Christian. Just so
3:56
Speaker 1: we're clear, I don't think Jewish value said anything to
4:00
Speaker 1: do with the civilization either. So everything I say criticizing
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Speaker 1: Christianity with some variations because the values are different, but
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Speaker 1: basically applies to Judaism. But why don't I and this
4:11
Speaker 1: is a question I get all the time, right, why
4:12
Speaker 1: don't I attack the Jewish religion and Judeo values as
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Speaker 1: much as I attack Christian values, primarily because they're just
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Speaker 1: mostly in America, in Western civilization. Arguably even in Israel,
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Speaker 1: they're not that relevant. We live in a world in
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Speaker 1: which the relevant, the relevant values, the relevant, the relevant
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Speaker 1: perception of morality, the relevant religion is Christianity. Judaism is
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Speaker 1: an asterisk. It's barely significant that what I don't know,
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Speaker 1: fifteen million Jews in the world, it doesn't count for anything.
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Speaker 1: And most of those, many of those yewser if not
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Speaker 1: most of those Jews a couple of secular and if
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Speaker 1: they have any values, if they've absorbed any values they've
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Speaker 1: absorted from the Christian culture around them. And indeed, arguably
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Speaker 1: Judaism is being Christianized quite a bit in the last
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Speaker 1: few hundred years. So it's just a waste of time
5:15
Speaker 1: to criticize Judaism. Now, if I lived in Israel, where
5:20
Speaker 1: Judaism is to a large extent a threat qua religion
5:24
Speaker 1: is a threat to I think the existence of the
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Speaker 1: state of Israel, to the success of the State of Israel,
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Speaker 1: to the Western the civilized aspect of Israeli society. Then
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Speaker 1: it's spent a lot of time in Israel criticizing Jewish values,
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Speaker 1: but I'm living in America and my audience is overwhelmingly,
5:47
Speaker 1: well not overwhelmingly not Israeli. It's overwhelmingly American and Canadian,
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Speaker 1: Australian and European. It's Anglo Saxon and European and a
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Speaker 1: small fraction Israeli. So why would I talk Why would
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Speaker 1: I spend time talking about Jewish values when it's not
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Speaker 1: relevant to the challenges and struggles that we are are
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Speaker 1: facing in America, the cultural issues that we face, and
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Speaker 1: indeed to the very evolution of Western civilization. Western civilization
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Speaker 1: evolved in the context of Christianity, you know, that's a reality.
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Speaker 1: It didn't evolve in the context of Judaism. It didn't
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Speaker 1: evolved in the context of this particular version of the
6:39
Speaker 1: context of Islam. Although Islam played a much bigger role Muslims,
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Speaker 1: not Islam. Muslims played a much bigger role, arguably suddenly
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Speaker 1: in the in the in the push of of of
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Speaker 1: civilizing the West than Jews did it because they were
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Speaker 1: the transmitters. They were the people transmitted the knowledge of
7:02
Speaker 1: the Greeks to the West, not Jews. Muslims did did that. So,
7:15
Speaker 1: you know, religion, religion sucks and across the board, and
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Speaker 1: I'm not biased towards Judaism. You know, you could we
7:32
Speaker 1: could have a discussion about the relative virtues and vices
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Speaker 1: of Christianity versus Judaism, and which version of Christianity, which
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Speaker 1: versions of Judaism and so on. We could have that discussion.
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Speaker 1: It could be an interesting discussion which one is worse
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Speaker 1: Christianity of Judaism. But that's not that important. It's not
7:53
Speaker 1: that interesting from the perspective of I reject them both
7:57
Speaker 1: from the perspective of the rejection of religion. All right, Uh,
8:06
Speaker 1: just a few other things. Somebody says, the Golden Age Islam. Yes,
8:09
Speaker 1: I'm you know. I read a book I told you
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Speaker 1: about this. I read a book about Central Asia, Islam
8:13
Speaker 1: in Central Asia and the Golden Age, the Enlightenment in
8:17
Speaker 1: Central Asia in the I don't know, ninth to eleventh century,
8:23
Speaker 1: and it was amazing. It was a really incredible book.
8:26
Speaker 1: And I'm reading a book now about Spain basically during
8:31
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, that is the Islami consequest of Spain
8:34
Speaker 1: and then the erosion of that and and what happened there.
8:38
Speaker 1: Not as good of a book to too engaged in
8:44
Speaker 1: the politics of it. This King did that and rather
8:48
Speaker 1: than in the intellectual it's not. Now, granted, the book
8:51
Speaker 1: is focused differently, it's not focused on enlightenment, it's not focused,
8:55
Speaker 1: but it still emphasizes the extent a where the the
9:02
Speaker 1: the fact that Christians were welcomed into Islamic Spain, into Andalusia,
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Speaker 1: the south of Spain, which was which is which was
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Speaker 1: Muslim for a very long time, and and were allowed
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Speaker 1: into the libraries and therefore copied and translated the writings
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Speaker 1: of of the Greek Greek Greek philosophers, and and also
9:29
Speaker 1: the the Asian Islamic uh Enlightenment was also being translated.
9:36
Speaker 1: And then of course there was everywhere everyone is who
9:41
Speaker 1: is the great Muslim philosopher in Spain, who was as Italian?
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Speaker 1: Who was translated into Latin. That is what's set off
9:52
Speaker 1: the intellectual revolution that made that that that led to
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Speaker 1: the Renaissance, that led to Western civilization. So you cannot
10:04
Speaker 1: you cannot understand Western civilization. You cannot understand the rise
10:09
Speaker 1: of of of a Statilian ideas, the the even the
10:14
Speaker 1: creation of universities and in Europe without an understanding of
10:19
Speaker 1: what they were reading, what was being translated, what was
10:21
Speaker 1: being what, what was being transmitted into Europe from the
10:26
Speaker 1: Muslim world during this period, primarily from Spain Primelli, from
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Speaker 1: the from the libraries and places like Cordoba. Uh and
10:35
Speaker 1: and later uh god, what's the what's the Toledo uh
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Speaker 1: in in for the North Toledo which was occupied by
10:44
Speaker 1: the by the by the Christians pretty early and immediately
10:48
Speaker 1: they started translating everything and moving it out. So yeah,
10:55
Speaker 1: I mean, and Delicia was no paradise. So I gotside
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Speaker 1: recommended the myth of these in paradise one week ago.
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Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if that's the book I'm reading,
11:04
Speaker 1: but I'm reading a book that basically says, yeah, it
11:07
Speaker 1: was no paradise, and it certainly it was no paradise.
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Speaker 1: And I don't even know what you mean by paradise.
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Speaker 1: They were all killing each other constantly, and raping and
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Speaker 1: murdering and fighting and infighting, and and they were all
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Speaker 1: in on it, the Christians, the Muslims, the Jews, they
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Speaker 1: were all scheming and politically it was a complete disaster
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Speaker 1: and there was no stability, and there really was no
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Speaker 1: period of of of paradise. But there were periods of
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Speaker 1: great achievement, you know, not so much in the sciences,
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Speaker 1: but philosophy you get mimonodes and and Avicenna nos in
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Speaker 1: Asia and and mimonodes and and in poetry and and
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Speaker 1: other cultural culturally it thrived what politically it was It
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Speaker 1: was just a complete and out a disaster. And it
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Speaker 1: was never paradise in a sense that everybody was constantly
12:01
Speaker 1: discriminating against everybody. You know, it wasn't everybody again was
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Speaker 1: slaughtering everybody. So very is very is all right? So
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Speaker 1: I want to say that's also relevant because relevant to
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Speaker 1: a discussion of where civilization comes from and how it involves,
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Speaker 1: and relevant to the discussion about Christianity. But but I
12:28
Speaker 1: just want to fill you in kind of on the
12:29
Speaker 1: books that I am that I am reading. God, where's
12:36
Speaker 1: my phone? I didn't bring my phone into the office. Okay,
12:40
Speaker 1: that is fine. Uh, I want to say something else, No,
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Speaker 1: I think that's all I want to say is in
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Speaker 1: a sense a backup. You know, introduction wasn't even really
12:50
Speaker 1: an introduction. But okay, let's jump in. Let's talk about
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Speaker 1: Christian values, and we'll talk about the relations between Christian
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Speaker 1: values and civilization. And let's be clear. Hear what I
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Speaker 1: mean by civilization? What I mean by civilization. Uh is
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Speaker 1: a is a culture of achievements. Uh, it's a it's
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Speaker 1: a society, a civilized society, as a society where you
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Speaker 1: see great achievements in human life, that is in the arts,
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Speaker 1: in architecture, in sciences, in the advancement of human well being.
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Speaker 1: Civilization in a sense as a relative term, because it's
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Speaker 1: contextual to the peuit it was in We talked about
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Speaker 1: this last time we talked about civilization. Right, Egypt was
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Speaker 1: a civilization when it was a civilization. If you took
13:41
Speaker 1: that civilizations and planted in today, it would be barbaric.
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Speaker 1: It would be primitive, barbaric, and and and and you know,
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Speaker 1: completely uncivilized. But in the context of its time, it
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Speaker 1: provided stability, it provided a legal system, It it proved
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Speaker 1: I did some you know, human achievement, pyramids, some dabbling
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Speaker 1: in primitive science, particularly astronomy, and and and some arts
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Speaker 1: in Egyptian sculpture and things like that. Right, So it's
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Speaker 1: relative to the time. Greece is exceptional in a sense
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Speaker 1: that much of that civilization would be civilized in any
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Speaker 1: period except for the fact that Greeks had slaves and
14:32
Speaker 1: viewed slavery positively as a positive feature, you know, with
14:36
Speaker 1: some exceptions or some Greek thinkers who condemned slavery, Greek
14:40
Speaker 1: stated women, you know, awfully, democracy or political participation was very,
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Speaker 1: very limited. So it was civilized in some respects even today.
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Speaker 1: But for its time, it's a civilization. It's a great civilization.
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Speaker 1: It's one of the great civilizations ever because it has
15:01
Speaker 1: features Greece that impacted all civilization following it, and indeed
15:07
Speaker 1: would be considered civilized even today. So you know, civilization
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Speaker 1: is this threat that goes through history. Maybe it starts
15:16
Speaker 1: in with Soopotamia, Egypt, Babylon and Persia, Greece, Rome, Central Asia,
15:25
Speaker 1: you know, to some extent, you know, Andalusia, Baghdad, southern Spain,
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Speaker 1: and then I think comes to Europe as a civilizing force,
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Speaker 1: and Europe becomes civilized at some point, but it's not civilized.
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Speaker 1: There's no Western civilization i'd certainly say before the Renaissance,
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Speaker 1: and really no civilization in the sense of the achievements
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Speaker 1: of the modern world before the Enlightenment. So you know,
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Speaker 1: there's no there is a Mayan civilization, there is a
16:06
Speaker 1: there are you know, American civilizations pre in in pre Europeans,
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Speaker 1: arriving here. Those civilizations are civilized only in the context
16:21
Speaker 1: of the place and the time, but not in time,
16:24
Speaker 1: because there were already much more dramatic achievements in other places. Uh,
16:31
Speaker 1: you know, given the time, but given the place. They
16:34
Speaker 1: were improvements, you know, for for and compared to the
16:38
Speaker 1: culture surrounding them. They were improvements to the mining civilization,
16:42
Speaker 1: the Aztec civilization, and so on. And of course there
16:46
Speaker 1: was Chinese civilization, Indian civilization, who were kind of parallel
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Speaker 1: civilizations that in many respects got stuck and never really
16:55
Speaker 1: never really advanced into the modern world, never really took
16:58
Speaker 1: the next step, you know, beyond uh, an organized society
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Speaker 1: with the rule of law and a government, I mean
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Speaker 1: at least laws and and and a government and a
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Speaker 1: declining violence and UH and some technological and material achievements, right,
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Speaker 1: it got stuck. Those material achievements got stuck. They never
17:20
Speaker 1: made political achievements. The philosophical achievements got stuck. That there's
17:25
Speaker 1: you know, confuse Confucius and I mean there are a
17:28
Speaker 1: few others, but it a philosophical culture doesn't evolve like
17:34
Speaker 1: it does in Greece. And then ultimately UH in UH
17:38
Speaker 1: in Europe, so so what we have is so that's
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Speaker 1: how we consider civilization. That's what I consider civilization. And
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Speaker 1: then the question is is civilization can we see a
17:53
Speaker 1: causal relationship between civilization and the Christian values? And so
18:00
Speaker 1: think about it this way, you know. Can we see
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Speaker 1: a relationship between the political achievements of the funding Fathers
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Speaker 1: and Christian values? Can we see a relationship between the
18:11
Speaker 1: esthetic achievements of the Renaissance and Christian values? Can you
18:16
Speaker 1: see a relationship between the incredible scientific scientific achievements of
18:24
Speaker 1: the Renaissance through the Age of Science and the Age
18:27
Speaker 1: of Reason and into the modern world through Christian values?
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Speaker 1: Can we see the material advancement that happens starting you know,
18:37
Speaker 1: sometimes in the late eighteenth century, through the Industrial Revolution
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Speaker 1: through the twentieth century. Can we find those do those
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Speaker 1: have a root in Christian values? Can we see the
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Speaker 1: relative decline in violence that happens starting in certainly starting
18:53
Speaker 1: in the early nineteenth century today in spite of the
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Speaker 1: Two World Wars? Can we see the decline of violence
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Speaker 1: during a certain period in Western civilization as anchored in
19:05
Speaker 1: Christian values? So, you know, that's that's the that's the project,
19:15
Speaker 1: that's that's what that's what I H. That's what I
19:18
Speaker 1: want to talk about today. We can't cover the whole topic.
19:22
Speaker 1: We'll take on a few a few elements, and you know,
19:25
Speaker 1: maybe we'll talk about this again sometimes in the future.
19:29
Speaker 1: Reminder to feel fee to ask questions about about this
19:33
Speaker 1: or you know, anything else. But you know, it would
19:37
Speaker 1: be particularly interesting if you ask questions about this topic
19:40
Speaker 1: or generally about civilization, about history, the history of civilization,
19:45
Speaker 1: you know, and all of that. That would be the
19:48
Speaker 1: most interesting and I think useful if you could, if
19:51
Speaker 1: you could do that. So we've got one question so far,
19:54
Speaker 1: but it's a fifty dollars one, so that's cool. And
19:57
Speaker 1: of course you could support the show with stickers all right. Now,
20:02
Speaker 1: in order to figure out what what Christian values are,
20:07
Speaker 1: this is important important, I turned to my UH, to
20:11
Speaker 1: my UH basically UH, the companion theologian, the theodre, the
20:18
Speaker 1: in house if you will, my in house theologian UH,
20:21
Speaker 1: to ask about you what are coote Christian values? And
20:25
Speaker 1: in my household the in house theologian is chat Gypt
20:29
Speaker 1: five point two. That that that's uh, that is UH.
20:32
Speaker 1: That is where I get my theological advice from. Now
20:38
Speaker 1: I know for For some this will not be very satisfying.
20:41
Speaker 1: They would rather I had an actual, you know, theologian here,
20:46
Speaker 1: but you know, alas I do not know any and uh,
20:51
Speaker 1: I've discovered that chat Gypt does a really decent job,
20:54
Speaker 1: like if you ask chachipt about iron Man, which I
20:58
Speaker 1: do you know? In view of this, I mean in
21:00
Speaker 1: view that it does a really good job of summarizing
21:04
Speaker 1: a philosophy of addressing it. Now, it's wrong on some things,
21:07
Speaker 1: and there's some nuances that are wrong, and it's a
21:09
Speaker 1: little skeptical of objectivism, but generally it's pretty damn good.
21:16
Speaker 1: Now I don't I don't have groc although I guess
21:19
Speaker 1: I could use it through through Twitter, but I think
21:21
Speaker 1: checchiut seems to be quite good. Again, my measure quite
21:26
Speaker 1: good is is asking about something that I know, and uh,
21:30
Speaker 1: you know, I know objectivism. So I said about objectivism,
21:33
Speaker 1: and and it does it does it? It does it
21:37
Speaker 1: quite well. Jason says Moments will cook you dinner, Yeah,
21:43
Speaker 1: but without want to eat it. I don't know. Momon
21:45
Speaker 1: food does not strike me as advertizing. I apologize to
21:48
Speaker 1: any moments out there who might be great chefs, but
21:51
Speaker 1: but just generic moment food is not my thing. Uh.
21:55
Speaker 1: You know, people are pretty just saying you know, Grock
21:58
Speaker 1: is more straightforward. You know. I wonder if I ask
22:01
Speaker 1: Groac what my core about core Christian values? Where they
22:04
Speaker 1: get a different answer, significantly the same with Gemini. Anyway,
22:08
Speaker 1: here we are. These are the core Christian values. It's
22:11
Speaker 1: got ten. I get the associate with the with the
22:16
Speaker 1: ten Commandments, and it's separating from the Ten Commandments. I
22:19
Speaker 1: give it credit for not just giving me the Tin Commandments. Indeed,
22:22
Speaker 1: none of these are in the Ten Commandments explicitly. Uh so,
22:28
Speaker 1: uh you know Number one? Love charity, Love and charity.
22:34
Speaker 1: So uh you know, love God and love your neighbor.
22:38
Speaker 1: Love your neighbor as yourself. You know. This includes compassion,
22:43
Speaker 1: self sacrifice, and concern for the vulnerable. Okay, so so
22:46
Speaker 1: love love, you know, not so much as an emotion,
22:51
Speaker 1: but as a as a as a kind of a
22:54
Speaker 1: how do how does you know? As as actions as
23:02
Speaker 1: a guide to action, faith, love, faith, trusting God, commitment
23:09
Speaker 1: to his teachings. Not you know this is this is
23:14
Speaker 1: about reliance on God, loyalty to God, and this is
23:17
Speaker 1: where important truths come from. It's faith. The most important
23:23
Speaker 1: truths come from three Humility, recognition of human limitations, and
23:29
Speaker 1: dependence on God. Rejects pride and self exaltation. The last
23:35
Speaker 1: shall be first. The last should be first. Forgiveness, forgiving
23:43
Speaker 1: others as God forgives. Uh, you know, and I find
23:47
Speaker 1: this weird. Forgiving others as God forgives. God is unbelievably unforgiving.
23:52
Speaker 1: Now everybody tells me that that's true of the Old
23:54
Speaker 1: Testament God. But the New Testament God is a very
23:56
Speaker 1: loving God and is very forgiving God if you follow
24:01
Speaker 1: his dictates to the letter. And even then it's not clear, right.
24:05
Speaker 1: I mean, in the day of judgment, I go to Hell,
24:09
Speaker 1: I mean, where's forgiveness? Like, Okay, I've sinned here and there,
24:13
Speaker 1: But you know, where's the forgiveness to me? No, you
24:17
Speaker 1: got to help because why because you were born Jewish
24:20
Speaker 1: and you're an atheist. You got to help Hell. What
24:22
Speaker 1: you actually did in life? Hell is for you. I
24:25
Speaker 1: don't know. Forgiveness, I don't see that turned the other
24:29
Speaker 1: cheek turn out the chief Christians are very good at
24:31
Speaker 1: tuning the other cheek ah justice, which is more righteousness
24:39
Speaker 1: and care for the poor, oppressed and marginalized mercy. It's
24:45
Speaker 1: often paid with mercy. Justice and mercy are related, right,
24:49
Speaker 1: And then another use of most is mostly in compassion.
24:53
Speaker 1: This is a number six, I guess, showing kindness. And
24:57
Speaker 1: again some of these repetitive ultimately because as we'll see,
25:04
Speaker 1: honesty and integrity, truthfulness and would in action and living
25:08
Speaker 1: consistently with one small commitments self sacrifice, willing it to
25:13
Speaker 1: give up personal comfort for others. I like the way
25:15
Speaker 1: Chadgypt puts it personal comfort person that self sacrifice. Jesus
25:20
Speaker 1: gave up personal comfort to be put in a cross
25:23
Speaker 1: and kneel to it and suffer an agonizing slow death.
25:28
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a whitewashing of self sacrifice. How about
25:34
Speaker 1: willingness to give up your life, to give up your values,
25:39
Speaker 1: to give up what makes me happy, to give up
25:42
Speaker 1: what's yours for others. And then it says the second
25:49
Speaker 1: bullet point is modify modeled on Christ's life and crucifixion.
25:53
Speaker 1: But the whole point of the crucifixion is it wasn't
25:55
Speaker 1: just giving up a personal comfort. It was a lot
26:00
Speaker 1: more than that. All Right, Maybe I'll try grock. Maybe
26:09
Speaker 1: maybe groc won't won't sneak in personal comfort kind of
26:11
Speaker 1: stuff in there? Obedience to God. Obedience to God, which
26:15
Speaker 1: I think is part of faith. Alliging one's life with
26:20
Speaker 1: God's will is revealed in the scripture and conscience and conscience,
26:25
Speaker 1: and they finally hope, confidence and salvation although most of
26:30
Speaker 1: you are not going to get salvation. You're not going
26:32
Speaker 1: to get salvation, you know. And if you believe in Augustine,
26:35
Speaker 1: before you were born, God already decided whether you were
26:38
Speaker 1: saved or not, so forget it. Resurrection and eternal life,
26:46
Speaker 1: so hope. All right. So here's the thing I mean, basically,
26:50
Speaker 1: what does this all boil down to. It balls down
26:53
Speaker 1: to faith. It boils down to faith, and under faith
26:57
Speaker 1: you can put in a obedience to God and really hope.
27:02
Speaker 1: If hope is confidence in salvation, resurrection, eternal life, those
27:05
Speaker 1: all based purely on faith. Uh, providing meaning and suffering
27:10
Speaker 1: in adversity. That's all faith, the faith that there is something.
27:14
Speaker 1: So I would say, you know, one is hope, sorry,
27:18
Speaker 1: one is faith. Faith captures much of this, right. A
27:24
Speaker 1: second is self sacrifice. Self sacrifice includes justice and mercy
27:31
Speaker 1: and forgiveness. Uh, they're all captured under self sacrifice, right,
27:38
Speaker 1: self sacrifice, justice, mercy, and forgiveness. So that's that's true.
27:43
Speaker 1: We got faith, which captures hope, obedience to God and faith,
27:48
Speaker 1: and we've got and we've got we've got self sacrifice.
27:56
Speaker 1: And what's the third one. What's the third one? I
28:00
Speaker 1: mean third one would be I think humility or yeah, humility,
28:10
Speaker 1: which is, you know, recognition of your own limitation. And
28:18
Speaker 1: I would say this is also connected with love, although
28:20
Speaker 1: love could be also related to self sacrifice, because that's
28:23
Speaker 1: kind of the conception of love that they have. Their
28:26
Speaker 1: love is self sacrificial. Their love is about compassion, about
28:31
Speaker 1: concern for the vulnerable, about loving your neighbor as yourself.
28:34
Speaker 1: Where they you know, so you know this humility, Yeah,
28:40
Speaker 1: there's kind of they throw in here two things like
28:42
Speaker 1: honesty and and what is honesty and integrity? Integrity, So okay,
28:51
Speaker 1: they have that in there. It's in the same commandments
28:53
Speaker 1: that shall not lie as duties. But you know, it
28:57
Speaker 1: doesn't that that is really so different than all the
29:00
Speaker 1: other ones. And you could add it, but I don't
29:07
Speaker 1: think it's significant. I think the three that I want
29:10
Speaker 1: to focus on really a faith, self sacrifice, and humility. Faith,
29:15
Speaker 1: self sacrifice and humility. And the question is to what
29:19
Speaker 1: extent the faith, self sacrifice, and humility encourage or discourage civilization?
29:28
Speaker 1: To what extent did they play a role? These Christian values,
29:32
Speaker 1: these essential I think Christian values that capture a lot
29:35
Speaker 1: of the other Christians values. To what extent did they
29:38
Speaker 1: really represent the striving towards and achievements of civilization. Think
29:45
Speaker 1: of a civilization that is built on faith, self sacrifice,
29:51
Speaker 1: and humility. I can't think of one. I can't think
29:57
Speaker 1: of them because I don't think that these are compatible
30:02
Speaker 1: with civilization. Indeed, if you think of an error in
30:05
Speaker 1: human history, with faith, self sacrifice, and humility were elevated
30:11
Speaker 1: above all else, we're elevated as the as the values
30:17
Speaker 1: that should dominate human life and should dominate human organization,
30:21
Speaker 1: you know organization. Then if you think about a period
30:27
Speaker 1: like that, then you get the Dark Ages and maybe
30:29
Speaker 1: part of the Middle Ages. Jennifer Sais Jennifer says, you
30:33
Speaker 1: get twelve twenty Europe. Yes, you get you get Europe,
30:37
Speaker 1: or you get you know, the Muslim world since it's
30:43
Speaker 1: Golden Age faith. I mean, civilization depends on what I mean.
30:56
Speaker 1: It depends on great achievements. It depends on hum human
31:00
Speaker 1: flourishing and human success at living at creating the material
31:06
Speaker 1: possibilities for living and and and improving materially and benefiting materially.
31:12
Speaker 1: Human civilization depends on human creativity, things like arts and
31:19
Speaker 1: architecture and uh and and you know, and beyond that
31:23
Speaker 1: science and technology, and and they depend on being able
31:28
Speaker 1: to create political forms that facilitate the betterment of human life. Now,
31:37
Speaker 1: none of that comes from faith. There is no you know,
31:44
Speaker 1: the Renaissance artists did not figure out anatomy from faith. Indeed,
31:53
Speaker 1: the Christian Church made it very, very very difficult for
31:57
Speaker 1: the Michelangelos and the Leonardo's and and the great artists
32:01
Speaker 1: of them, of the of the Renaissance to figure out
32:03
Speaker 1: anatomy because they banned dissection, They made it illegal, they
32:09
Speaker 1: viewed it as a sin. Faith does not give you
32:16
Speaker 1: Michael Angelo's David. It doesn't even give you a even
32:20
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't give you a a a Donald
32:22
Speaker 1: Tello's David. It doesn't give you a school of Athens.
32:26
Speaker 1: It doesn't give you a uh kind of the the
32:32
Speaker 1: amazing I mean, Leonardo da Vinci doesn't give you any
32:35
Speaker 1: of his paintings where you know, where you can see
32:40
Speaker 1: kind of the careful detail of an emphasis on on
32:44
Speaker 1: things like perspective, but then of course on on expression,
32:48
Speaker 1: an expression, on emotion, on individuation, on the idea of individual,
32:53
Speaker 1: individuating the the particular, the particular people these painting. None
33:00
Speaker 1: of that comes from faith that you know. It comes
33:03
Speaker 1: from studying human beings. It comes from It comes from
33:07
Speaker 1: you know, scientific analysis. It comes from experimentation with colors.
33:11
Speaker 1: It comes from a mathematical geomagical analysis of human perception
33:16
Speaker 1: and as a consequence, the discovery of perception. It comes
33:22
Speaker 1: from a study of anatomy, even the anatomy of the
33:25
Speaker 1: human face, the muscles of the face, the musculagy of
33:28
Speaker 1: the face. It comes from reason, from the application of rationality. Now,
33:35
Speaker 1: all these people might have been Christian, but in that
33:40
Speaker 1: they were doing things that led to civilization, In that
33:44
Speaker 1: they were in acting causes that led to the to
33:50
Speaker 1: the effect there was civilization. They were not acting on
33:56
Speaker 1: Christian values. They were acting on rational values, rational values
34:01
Speaker 1: that they recognized, either because of the introduction of rational
34:07
Speaker 1: values through Aristotle into the culture, you know, within Christianity,
34:14
Speaker 1: or implicitly or through their own realization. But they were pursuing,
34:21
Speaker 1: for example, the Renaissance. One of the things the Renaissance
34:23
Speaker 1: is really pursuing as a value, as an important value
34:29
Speaker 1: is beauty, beauty for its own sake as a value. Now,
34:39
Speaker 1: even though the Christian Church in that period is doing
34:42
Speaker 1: the same thing. It is pursuing beauty, but that's not
34:47
Speaker 1: a Christian value. That is a pagan value. That is
34:51
Speaker 1: a value they've taken from the Greeks. The cathedrals are
34:56
Speaker 1: not meant to be beautiful. Indeed, the cathedrals are stark.
35:00
Speaker 1: The cathedrals have gargoyles on them, the cathedrals have sharp edges.
35:05
Speaker 1: That that there's so much about making you look small,
35:09
Speaker 1: making you look insignificant as compared to the majesty and
35:14
Speaker 1: grandeur of God. It is the discovery of Greek and
35:20
Speaker 1: romanants and the introduction of even architecturally, you know, compare
35:29
Speaker 1: compare you know, Renaissance architecture. Two these ugly cathedrals, and
35:42
Speaker 1: you can see a different There's a certain harmony that
35:44
Speaker 1: is being sought in the Renaissance. There's a certain sense
35:48
Speaker 1: of beauty. There's this you know, edges, there's a lot
35:51
Speaker 1: more rounding of things that domes rather than spires. There's
35:56
Speaker 1: a lot more seeking beauty and harmony Beauty is a value,
36:05
Speaker 1: it's a value in human life, but it's a secular value.
36:12
Speaker 1: Then is n used by the church because the church
36:14
Speaker 1: wants to embrace lots of secular values. Just want to
36:17
Speaker 1: make science. Its only wants to make beauty. Its only
36:19
Speaker 1: wants to make audits own for political reasons, for for
36:22
Speaker 1: for power reasons. Right, I mean, why do they Why
36:26
Speaker 1: do the popes make somempeter so amazing and beautiful and
36:30
Speaker 1: grand and the higher the best artists. Anyway, Is this
36:35
Speaker 1: because there following scripture? Or is it because they want
36:38
Speaker 1: to show the world how rich and successful they are.
36:41
Speaker 1: They want to show the world, you know, the power
36:45
Speaker 1: that they have. And they also want to entice people
36:48
Speaker 1: to come to church. So church has beautiful music and
36:51
Speaker 1: has great paintings on the wall and and uh and
36:54
Speaker 1: so on. So you know, it's it's for the church beauty.
37:00
Speaker 1: It's not an end in any kind of sense, and
37:03
Speaker 1: it's not to enhance human life. It's to project power
37:08
Speaker 1: and to entice people in. To entice people in. It's
37:13
Speaker 1: used for the purpose of the church, but it doesn't
37:16
Speaker 1: come from the church. Again, when the church dominates, you
37:19
Speaker 1: get goggo oyles. If you get any attempt at aesthetics.
37:28
Speaker 1: You know, science. We've talked about this, and we'll talk
37:30
Speaker 1: about it many, many times, because I find this so
37:33
Speaker 1: damn condemning and so so stunning, you know, particularly given
37:42
Speaker 1: the historians who want to rewrite history to pretend that
37:46
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages didn't exist. But science science, when faith
37:52
Speaker 1: is at the forefront, then science does not advance, it
37:58
Speaker 1: does not succeed. That's why for thought and years there
38:00
Speaker 1: was just no science. I mean really there was no
38:03
Speaker 1: science in the West about four hundred to about fourteen hundred.
38:09
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a little bit here in there,
38:11
Speaker 1: but nothing of substance, not anything dramatic, and no culture
38:15
Speaker 1: of science, no civilization. So faith, you know, it's anti science.
38:26
Speaker 1: It's the idea. And so this is not an accident.
38:29
Speaker 1: Faith is anti science. It's the idea. The truth comes
38:32
Speaker 1: from God, from revelation, not from observation, not from experimentation,
38:37
Speaker 1: but from revelation or from an ancient book. And they
38:45
Speaker 1: were so it was so, I mean, the Christians were
38:49
Speaker 1: so immersed in faith. Faith was such a dominant value
38:55
Speaker 1: to them that when they discovered Aristotle and they had
39:02
Speaker 1: you know, they they found him interesting and fascinating. They
39:05
Speaker 1: took so much of what he said on faith, so
39:11
Speaker 1: that Aristotle's scientific observations, which for the most part, are wrong,
39:19
Speaker 1: they tried to defend as if it were scripture, because
39:24
Speaker 1: their whole understanding was Aristotle couldn't be wrong. He was
39:27
Speaker 1: inspired by a by a revelation, by by a holy whatever.
39:31
Speaker 1: They didn't understand the methodology that he was using, which
39:34
Speaker 1: was anti faith pro reason, but uh yeah, anyway, it
39:45
Speaker 1: was it was faith is incompatible. It's it's incompatible with
39:53
Speaker 1: the civilization of science and and and and beauty and
39:57
Speaker 1: aesthetics and and and and the creation of those aesthetics.
40:01
Speaker 1: So some other values had to be snuck in, some
40:04
Speaker 1: of the values that enter in order to make the
40:08
Speaker 1: civilization happen. Those values of beauty from the pagan world,
40:14
Speaker 1: the value of reason from Aristotle, the value of logic
40:19
Speaker 1: from Aristotle, and then the actual scientific work that the
40:23
Speaker 1: Greeks had done and the Arabs had done, Asians or
40:27
Speaker 1: whatever the Muslims had done penetrating and people going whoa, oh,
40:32
Speaker 1: you can do this stuff. It's not just the Greeks.
40:36
Speaker 1: Other people can do it. Maybe we can do it.
40:38
Speaker 1: But those ideas, the idea of reason and rationality and
40:42
Speaker 1: observation and the possibility of discovery. That is what makes
40:56
Speaker 1: civilization possible. Faith is the anti civilizing force. And indeed,
41:01
Speaker 1: as those values are entering, the Church is fighting them.
41:04
Speaker 1: They're fighting against Aristotle, they're fighting against science, and to
41:10
Speaker 1: some extent in early Renaissance, they're fighting against the artists.
41:18
Speaker 1: It's controversial what the artists are doing. So faith incompatible
41:37
Speaker 1: with civilization, incompatible with civilization. I'm going to go to humility,
41:40
Speaker 1: will leave self sacrifice dand it's humility compatible with civilization.
41:47
Speaker 1: Humility the recognition of human limitation and dependence of God.
41:51
Speaker 1: I mean, really, where would we be without the arrogance
41:57
Speaker 1: of a Newton or the Galileo. I mean, you have
42:03
Speaker 1: to be pretty arrogant, self confident, self assertive to say
42:10
Speaker 1: to the world you've all been wrong, You've all been
42:14
Speaker 1: damn wrong. I have the truth, I have discovered the truth.
42:25
Speaker 1: This is how the world works, and you guys are wrong.
42:39
Speaker 1: Humility I mean was Michelangelo or I mean Michelangelo was
42:44
Speaker 1: not humble. He could do with marble what he wanted
42:50
Speaker 1: to do with marble, and he knew it, and he
42:53
Speaker 1: knew he was the best and he told people he
42:57
Speaker 1: was the best. And it's reflective in his work. He
43:04
Speaker 1: is pushing himself, he is striving, he's perfecting, he's not
43:09
Speaker 1: depending on God, he's not contemplating his limitations. I mean,
43:20
Speaker 1: and you know you can argue that to the extent
43:24
Speaker 1: that he rejects pride, he suffers for it. The last
43:28
Speaker 1: should be first. What civilization was ever built by the last,
43:33
Speaker 1: by the meek, by the poor. By the way, if
43:46
Speaker 1: you want to ask a question or make a comment
43:48
Speaker 1: or challenge me on something, super chat is open. That's
43:50
Speaker 1: the way to do it. Don't just stick it in
43:53
Speaker 1: the chat if you want me to see it. The
44:00
Speaker 1: comments today are hysterical. Oh my god. All right. You know,
44:17
Speaker 1: these the people who sold a civilization, the people who
44:21
Speaker 1: build civilization, who create civilization, who have made the modern world,
44:26
Speaker 1: which even if you reject you are massive beneficiaries of,
44:32
Speaker 1: are not guided by humility. They guided by a passion
44:36
Speaker 1: to seek out the truth, to change the world, to
44:41
Speaker 1: create something beautiful. Civilization was created by men who reject
44:52
Speaker 1: the value of humility and embrace their own capacity for genius,
45:01
Speaker 1: their own capacity to shape the world, their own capacity
45:04
Speaker 1: to understand the world. Free of faith, free of a
45:07
Speaker 1: reliance on a god, on mysticism. I mean, do humble
45:19
Speaker 1: men create the United States of America? No, These were
45:24
Speaker 1: men were supreme confidence and self esteem. These are not
45:30
Speaker 1: men that were the last. These were the men who
45:34
Speaker 1: were first of immense intelligence, of a men's capabilities, and
45:43
Speaker 1: they knew it. They were actors. In reality. They weren't
45:51
Speaker 1: guided by faith to establish America. They weren't guided by
45:56
Speaker 1: humility to establish America. They were guided by self estas theme,
46:00
Speaker 1: love for this world, love for freedom as individuals. As individuals. Again,
46:15
Speaker 1: they might have had, they might have had, you know,
46:21
Speaker 1: presented Christian ideals because that's the world in which they live,
46:25
Speaker 1: and that's all they thought. I'm saying. They acted against
46:28
Speaker 1: those ideals. Oh, I mean Newton was deeply religious, Locke wise,
46:34
Speaker 1: you know, Michelangelo was. No, No, not so much. But
46:42
Speaker 1: they acted against that. I don't know exactly what Franklin
46:51
Speaker 1: meant by humility, but religious humility, recognition of his limitations
46:56
Speaker 1: and dependence on God and rejecting and self exultation and
47:01
Speaker 1: the last shall be first. That's not Franklin. That's not
47:04
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin. Even if he wrote in His Little Book
47:07
Speaker 1: of Virtues, to be humble. This is not the humility.
47:10
Speaker 1: It's not Christian humility that he's talking about. You know.
47:13
Speaker 1: Don't be boastful. We all can agree, don't be boastful.
47:17
Speaker 1: Don't take credit for things you are not responsible for.
47:21
Speaker 1: Don't you know a lord of other people because of
47:26
Speaker 1: your success. There are lots of things that we can
47:29
Speaker 1: agree that might fall under something related to humility that
47:33
Speaker 1: Franklin might be talking about. But in terms of what
47:36
Speaker 1: it means in Christianity, no, no. And finally, self sacrifice,
47:52
Speaker 1: I mean self sacrifice fundamentally means the giving up of
47:56
Speaker 1: personal values, of your values, of values that you believe in,
48:01
Speaker 1: necessarily for your life, your happiness, for your success, for
48:04
Speaker 1: your flourishing, for the sake of others, giving up a
48:09
Speaker 1: high value for no nothing in return, no something lower
48:12
Speaker 1: in return. Again, that is not That is not civilization,
48:24
Speaker 1: so civilization building. Self sacrifice is what you demand of
48:31
Speaker 1: people who go to war for you. It's what you
48:34
Speaker 1: demand of your serfs, it's what you demand of slaves.
48:48
Speaker 1: But self sacrifice, self sacrifice is not a morality of
48:53
Speaker 1: value seekers. People who are you know, you know, aggressively
49:01
Speaker 1: pursuing passionately pursuing, aggressively and passionately pursuing the values, which
49:07
Speaker 1: is what you need to build a civilization and to
49:10
Speaker 1: sustain a civilization and maintain a civilization. You need the
49:14
Speaker 1: creation of values, human values, values necessary for human life.
49:23
Speaker 1: I mean a sacrifice would be to ask Michael Angel
49:26
Speaker 1: not to sculpt David because I don't know there was
49:33
Speaker 1: some charity work that need to be done. You need,
49:35
Speaker 1: you need to go in and feed people in the
49:37
Speaker 1: soup kitchen. I mean, none of the people who built
49:43
Speaker 1: Western civilization, who created the civilization, Who who who created
49:48
Speaker 1: the achievements right, the science, the art, the architecture, the
49:55
Speaker 1: political freedom, political liberty that that characterizes modern civilization. Those
50:00
Speaker 1: people didn't do it as an act of sacrifice. Even
50:07
Speaker 1: when the funding fathers signed the Declamation independence, knowing that
50:11
Speaker 1: they're likely to be killed because they're likely to lose
50:14
Speaker 1: the war and the British will execute them. They don't
50:16
Speaker 1: view it as a sacrifice in a sense of giving
50:19
Speaker 1: up a high value for low value. They view their
50:23
Speaker 1: freedom as a high value, a value that will interest
50:26
Speaker 1: their life's for same goes for the soldiers who fight
50:30
Speaker 1: to protect civilization, defend civilization, sustain civilization. It's not a
50:38
Speaker 1: self sacrifice. It's not about mercy and compassion and a
50:45
Speaker 1: willingness to give up stuff. And suddenly nobody's ever created
50:50
Speaker 1: civilization by modeling Christ's life. Christ's life is stagnation. It's
50:58
Speaker 1: not elevation. It's stagnation. It's not progress. The idea of
51:05
Speaker 1: human progress, the idea that we can achieve more that
51:13
Speaker 1: is not a humble idea, that is not an idea
51:16
Speaker 1: based on faith. God doesn't promise that anyway. You promise
51:20
Speaker 1: the salvation to some, but salvation has any doo with
51:25
Speaker 1: achieving material prosperity or beauty or anything else in this
51:29
Speaker 1: earth other than sacrifice. And sacrifice denies you the time,
51:35
Speaker 1: the energy, the focus, the ability to make to achieve
51:38
Speaker 1: great things. So there is there's no relationship between these
51:56
Speaker 1: Christian values and the civilized in the civilized world and
52:04
Speaker 1: civilization I mean compassion good thing, But compassion doesn't build civilization.
52:16
Speaker 1: Mercy doesn't justice in a sense of care for the
52:21
Speaker 1: poor and the press, and marginalized I mean finding fathers.
52:26
Speaker 1: The declamation of Pendis doesn't talk about the poor, preston
52:29
Speaker 1: marginalized talks about individual rights. Oh men are equal, equal
52:35
Speaker 1: in their rights, politically free as individuals. Forgiveness. I'm just
52:45
Speaker 1: looking at this, I mean, which of these? And I'm
52:50
Speaker 1: not even gonna get to love because i think the
52:52
Speaker 1: definition of Christian love is absurd and ridiculous because it
52:58
Speaker 1: relies on self sacrifice. We can talk another time about love.
53:06
Speaker 1: Jennifer's compassion for whom, compassion for the last, the last
53:10
Speaker 1: shall be first. It's a compassion for the suffering, compassion
53:13
Speaker 1: for the people who don't have compassion for anybody except you.
53:18
Speaker 1: And of course hope. Hope is you know. Entrepreneurs are
53:26
Speaker 1: not hopeful. They're doers. They go create the world that
53:30
Speaker 1: they want. They don't sit around hoping for it. They're
53:34
Speaker 1: not confident in this salvation. They go create, they go build,
53:38
Speaker 1: they go make again. Entrepreneurs, you don't function on the
53:43
Speaker 1: basis of faith. I mean confidence, belief based on based
53:51
Speaker 1: on evidence in your own ability and in the market
53:53
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, but not faith. And entrepreneurship is
54:01
Speaker 1: not about self sacrifice. It's about working hard, it's about
54:05
Speaker 1: trade offs. It's about giving up stuff. Indeed, faith self
54:18
Speaker 1: sacrifice and humility anti civilization of values and to the
54:22
Speaker 1: extent that they had taken seriously, we know what they
54:25
Speaker 1: lead to in spite of the idea of love and
54:30
Speaker 1: and uh and and forgiveness. I mean, did Charlomage forgive
54:35
Speaker 1: those well they Frankish, well, I'm not even sure what
54:37
Speaker 1: they were. But you know, the four thousand, five hundred
54:40
Speaker 1: soldiers who refused to convert to Christianity who he slaughtered
54:44
Speaker 1: in one day? Was that an act of charity, forgiveness, love?
54:48
Speaker 1: What exactly was it? Certainly an act of faith he
54:52
Speaker 1: believed God had you know, had not commanded, but in
54:59
Speaker 1: trust to him to do the right thing. Maybe viewed
55:02
Speaker 1: as a more active justice when heretics were burnt at
55:07
Speaker 1: the stake for disagreeing about whether there was a trinity
55:14
Speaker 1: or what the relationship in the trinity between God and
55:17
Speaker 1: the Son where there was literally a son, whether they
55:21
Speaker 1: were co equals, or whether they were all the same.
55:26
Speaker 1: Like I mean, Catholic Church post what do you call it?
55:33
Speaker 1: Nicea holds that it's a three that are one, right,
55:38
Speaker 1: So they don't believe in a is a. The Catholic
55:40
Speaker 1: Church does not believe a is a. They don't believe
55:43
Speaker 1: a thing is what it is. They believe something three
55:47
Speaker 1: different things can be one thing. So three different gods
55:52
Speaker 1: can be one god. And if you disagreed about that,
55:58
Speaker 1: or some implications of that, a minor explanation of that,
56:06
Speaker 1: you were burned at a steak. I mean Calvin burnt
56:08
Speaker 1: somebody who was very friendly with and he actually respected,
56:12
Speaker 1: because of a disagreement about the trinity in Culvi's Geneva.
56:16
Speaker 1: But there was no tolerance for people who misinterpreted the Bible.
56:22
Speaker 1: There's only one interpretation, Calvin's in this case, and if
56:25
Speaker 1: you disagreed with it, it was it. You were burned
56:27
Speaker 1: at the steak. So Christianity incompatible with civilization, incompatible with freedom.
56:46
Speaker 1: Now I say incompatible that is to the extent that
56:50
Speaker 1: it is taken seriously, to the extent that it is
56:53
Speaker 1: embraced fully, it leads to the opposite, it leads to uncivilized.
57:00
Speaker 1: To the extent that it's just embraced at the margin.
57:04
Speaker 1: Then yeah, civilization can still exist Christians. You're not adding
57:07
Speaker 1: to it. It's subtracting from it, and it's subtracting from
57:11
Speaker 1: human flourishing. But it can coexist if you will. Reason
57:16
Speaker 1: and faith can coexist even though the opposites and they're
57:22
Speaker 1: driving civilization in different directions right, one uncivilized, one to civilize,
57:28
Speaker 1: and ultimately one has to win and one will lose.
57:32
Speaker 1: But again to the extent that we are Christian, to
57:35
Speaker 1: the extent we take it seriously, to the extent that
57:37
Speaker 1: we're going to be consistent about it, to the extent
57:40
Speaker 1: that we pursue it. To that extent, we are driving
57:43
Speaker 1: ourselves a culture a world away from civilization, towards about barty,
57:49
Speaker 1: towards twelve twenty or nine thirty or six sixty six,
57:56
Speaker 1: there's go they go, six sixty six. That's a good number.
58:03
Speaker 1: So my conclusion not surprising, I think to anybody out
58:06
Speaker 1: there is Christian values is incompatible with civilization. They hold
58:13
Speaker 1: civilization back, They undermine civilization and to fully, to fully
58:24
Speaker 1: embrace the potential that is civilization, the potential that is freedom,
58:28
Speaker 1: the potential that is science, The potential is beauty and
58:31
Speaker 1: aesthetics and art. The potential it is human achievement in
58:35
Speaker 1: any realm, The potential it is love, the potential it
58:39
Speaker 1: is human relationships. One needs to reject the Christian values.
58:49
Speaker 1: Now it's not enough to reject them. You have to
58:53
Speaker 1: replace them. And you have to replace the values inc
58:58
Speaker 1: it in reality discovered through reason. We are rational animal.
59:06
Speaker 1: To live as nature in a sense, to live by
59:10
Speaker 1: our nature requires us to banon faith in the name
59:14
Speaker 1: of reason, to banon self sacrifice in the name of
59:18
Speaker 1: our own thriving, in our own flourishing, and to bannon
59:22
Speaker 1: humility in the name of pride, a commitment to our
59:26
Speaker 1: own success, achievement, perfection. So yes, Christianity civilization, they don't mix.
59:47
Speaker 1: I mean they mix, but the one is polluting the other.
59:51
Speaker 1: Christianity is polluting the element that is civilized. All right,
1:00:04
Speaker 1: thank you guys, thanks for joining me. That was an hour.
1:00:06
Speaker 1: All right, We're good, super chat is good. Thank you.
1:00:10
Speaker 1: I appreciate that we're on a good track. A lot
1:00:13
Speaker 1: of questions, all right, I'll just to get through all
1:00:16
Speaker 1: of them. Let me remind you of a few things again.
1:00:20
Speaker 1: You can keep asking questions, that's great. And if you
1:00:22
Speaker 1: don't want to ask questions, you can you can do
1:00:24
Speaker 1: you can do stickers. December thirty first, we'll be doing
1:00:28
Speaker 1: an extended show review of twenty twenty five and looking
1:00:32
Speaker 1: forward to twenty twenty six from one pm East Coast
1:00:36
Speaker 1: time until who knows four plus hours. We'll also make
1:00:41
Speaker 1: that a big fundraising push fundraising events, So please, if
1:00:47
Speaker 1: you're not a regular live listener, please consider coming live
1:00:52
Speaker 1: just to participate in the fundraising aspect of it. It'll
1:00:54
Speaker 1: also be fun and engaging and we'll have some fun
1:00:58
Speaker 1: banter and back and forth. I might have some guests
1:01:01
Speaker 1: show up to take some of your questions. I'll try
1:01:03
Speaker 1: to let you know in advance once I know who's
1:01:05
Speaker 1: going to come, so that might also be might also
1:01:09
Speaker 1: be installed. But generally we'll try to make it fun
1:01:12
Speaker 1: and interesting, and there'll be the suspense of can we raise?
1:01:18
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1:01:21
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1:01:40
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1:01:45
Speaker 1: All right, let's see if there's anything else I wanted
1:01:49
Speaker 1: to mention before we jump into your questions. You know,
1:01:53
Speaker 1: we've got a bunch of sponsors that're down there. You
1:01:56
Speaker 1: can you can you can find the links down there.
1:01:59
Speaker 1: I'll give them full credit nixt show and yeah, Patreon,
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1:02:48
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1:02:50
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1:02:54
Speaker 1: watch all the shows the members only shows after the
1:02:58
Speaker 1: fact on YouTube, you know, I guess, I guess, No,
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1:03:06
Speaker 1: So you get a podcast version of all the members
1:03:10
Speaker 1: only shows that you can listen to. So that's another
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Speaker 1: poke that exists on Patreon beyond the regular pooks. Those
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Speaker 1: are unique to patreons, So please consider becoming a monthly supporter.
1:03:22
Speaker 1: As we enter into twenty twenty six, it'll be great
1:03:26
Speaker 1: to increase the number of people supporting on a monthly basis.
1:03:30
Speaker 1: And of course, the the the dollar amount. All right,
1:03:37
Speaker 1: let me turn to your questions. Let's doing this, all right,
1:04:01
Speaker 1: let's stull with Andrew. Fifty dollars, Thank you, Andrew. Advice
1:04:06
Speaker 1: for serious believers of Catholicism in their youth who now
1:04:10
Speaker 1: consider themselves subjectivists. To avoid the ranscid premise of suffering
1:04:15
Speaker 1: on the earth as a supernatural value, one must first
1:04:19
Speaker 1: come to know that acknowledging one's pleasure is safe. Yes,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: acknowledging one pleasure is safe, and pleasure is good. Pleasure
1:04:32
Speaker 1: is to be enjoyed. Embrace pleasure. I mean, make sure
1:04:37
Speaker 1: it's not a sacrificial pleasure, that you're not giving up
1:04:40
Speaker 1: a higher value for it. But pleasure, core, pleasure is good.
1:04:44
Speaker 1: It's a sign of life. It's a positive sign. So
1:04:49
Speaker 1: it's the knowledge you know. Pleasure is safe, it's good,
1:04:54
Speaker 1: it's a value. It's pro life, pro you there's no
1:05:00
Speaker 1: sin involved. Also to those of you who were once
1:05:09
Speaker 1: Catholic and a now objectivist or Christian generally, I highly
1:05:15
Speaker 1: recommend Iinman's essay, and you can find it in the internet.
1:05:22
Speaker 1: You can find it for free on Air's website. Duty
1:05:26
Speaker 1: versus causality, because I think that what happens to many
1:05:31
Speaker 1: people who come to objectivism from religion, any religion, but
1:05:39
Speaker 1: primarily Christianity, is they then approach the objective's ethics as duties.
1:05:49
Speaker 1: Iin Ran rejects duty through and through completely. She calls
1:05:54
Speaker 1: it an anti concept. It is a destructive idea that
1:05:59
Speaker 1: un minds morality, undermines ethics. I mean, we'll have to
1:06:04
Speaker 1: do a show on this. So you've got to reject duty.
1:06:09
Speaker 1: And this is the sense of which objectivism is not
1:06:12
Speaker 1: a religion. You do not act out of duty in
1:06:18
Speaker 1: order to live your morality, And she talks about the
1:06:24
Speaker 1: objection's morality is causal. You act out of an understanding
1:06:29
Speaker 1: of causation instead of acting on duty. You act based
1:06:36
Speaker 1: on values that are pro life, and what causes those values,
1:06:42
Speaker 1: the actions that are necessary to achieve those values, those
1:06:45
Speaker 1: become your virtues and values. So morality, you know, religion
1:06:56
Speaker 1: tells you thou shalt, thou shalt that your duty to
1:07:00
Speaker 1: do it. And by the way, the more you suffer
1:07:02
Speaker 1: doing it, the more virtuous it is. Because you know,
1:07:06
Speaker 1: religion fundamental leans anti individual human life. It's not a
1:07:12
Speaker 1: pro life ideology religion, it's an anti life ideology. But
1:07:17
Speaker 1: objectivism says, no, don't do it out of duty. You
1:07:22
Speaker 1: must discover your values. You must figure out what's good
1:07:27
Speaker 1: for you. Here's some philosophical ideas, but you must make
1:07:30
Speaker 1: them your own. And those abstractions don't give you concrete
1:07:36
Speaker 1: guidance in terms of what to do in your life.
1:07:39
Speaker 1: You have to figure that out. So you know, rationality,
1:07:43
Speaker 1: reason is a cordon of value in objectivism. Okay, what
1:07:48
Speaker 1: do I do with that? How do I apply it?
1:07:50
Speaker 1: What does that mean in terms of career, love, a
1:07:53
Speaker 1: pursuit of anything. Well, you have to figure that out,
1:07:59
Speaker 1: not subjectively, not out of emotion, but through a process
1:08:04
Speaker 1: of causation. If reason is a value, what causes my
1:08:09
Speaker 1: must I affect in the world in order to achieve it?
1:08:15
Speaker 1: What must I do in my life in order to
1:08:18
Speaker 1: achieve the value of reason? If you want to be
1:08:26
Speaker 1: successful in your career, If that's a value, what must
1:08:30
Speaker 1: I do? How must I act? What should I cause
1:08:36
Speaker 1: in my life? To achieve successive work. So you act
1:08:44
Speaker 1: on the basis facts, evidence, reality, and on the basis
1:08:49
Speaker 1: of values that are oweent it towards your life. And
1:08:55
Speaker 1: if you have a sense of thus shall be h
1:09:02
Speaker 1: You know, objectivism says that honesty is a virtue, and
1:09:10
Speaker 1: and you you have this thing in your head that
1:09:12
Speaker 1: says that I shall be honest. I need to be
1:09:15
Speaker 1: honest honesty you know, you know, then you haven't. You've
1:09:22
Speaker 1: got to understand how honesty affects your life. How honesty
1:09:27
Speaker 1: is just an application of rationality. How it's a means
1:09:30
Speaker 1: to achieving the value of reason, It's a means to
1:09:36
Speaker 1: achieving the value of self esteem, it's the means to
1:09:41
Speaker 1: achieving the value of happiness. It's not a commandment, it's
1:09:48
Speaker 1: not a duty. And suffering and pain mostly signals, with
1:10:00
Speaker 1: exception of exercise, that something is not right, something is
1:10:08
Speaker 1: not working, whereas on the duty premise, pain is suffering
1:10:12
Speaker 1: is a sign of positive So yeah, I mean, when
1:10:21
Speaker 1: you come to objectives and from religion, there's a lot
1:10:24
Speaker 1: of baggage. There's a lot of baggage, and you've got
1:10:28
Speaker 1: to be aware of that. And I think Andrew's right
1:10:31
Speaker 1: in one of the baggage is one of the ways
1:10:35
Speaker 1: to you know, realize you in a new world now,
1:10:42
Speaker 1: It is to come to terms with the idea of
1:10:44
Speaker 1: the of the goodness, of the value of pleasure molten splendor.
1:10:53
Speaker 1: Why does so many think that a charismatic objectives leader
1:10:57
Speaker 1: will help socialism fuentes to all have large followings, But
1:11:02
Speaker 1: aren't they just reflections of the culture. In my opinion,
1:11:06
Speaker 1: a reflection of an individualist culture, a reflection of individual's culture,
1:11:11
Speaker 1: is more important than a new tribe. Yeah, I mean absolutely,
1:11:15
Speaker 1: I don't think a charismatic objectives leader will help. There's
1:11:19
Speaker 1: no harm. Be great, but it's not going to make
1:11:21
Speaker 1: a big difference. It'll attract a few more people, it'll
1:11:27
Speaker 1: increase maybe leadership of bne Rand. But this is the point.
1:11:31
Speaker 1: To be a follower fuentis. You don't have to do
1:11:33
Speaker 1: a lot of thinking, you don't have to do a
1:11:36
Speaker 1: lot of integrating, you don't have to do a lot
1:11:39
Speaker 1: of work on yourself. It's pure emotion. The same with socialism.
1:11:47
Speaker 1: I mean, you just it's easy to follow a leader
1:11:52
Speaker 1: in that respect because you just follow the leader and
1:11:56
Speaker 1: you follow your emotions, and you get angry when you
1:11:59
Speaker 1: when it's appropriate. Objectivism requires that you think, integrate, understand,
1:12:12
Speaker 1: and the most charismatic leader can do is prompt you
1:12:15
Speaker 1: to do that. But then you have to do the work,
1:12:18
Speaker 1: and there's nothing to indicate the culture. People in the
1:12:21
Speaker 1: culture are ready for that work, ready to actually do
1:12:27
Speaker 1: the thinking, to actually do the integrating. But look, the
1:12:33
Speaker 1: reason they think that is because everybody wants a shortcut.
1:12:39
Speaker 1: Well frustrated by the fact that we don't yet have
1:12:42
Speaker 1: an objectivest world, well frustrated by the fact that evil
1:12:45
Speaker 1: and bad people succeeding politically certainly as much as they
1:12:51
Speaker 1: are and culturally as much as they are. And we
1:12:54
Speaker 1: want a solution, and we want a solution now, and
1:12:56
Speaker 1: we're not willing to wait. And if only a great
1:13:02
Speaker 1: charismatic leader came about, but the only way he would
1:13:07
Speaker 1: gain large audiences is you're right, if those audiences became
1:13:11
Speaker 1: a tribe, and I'm thinking following tribe. What we need
1:13:16
Speaker 1: is cultural change. Cultural change takes a long time. It's
1:13:18
Speaker 1: a lot of work. People have to do the work themselves.
1:13:21
Speaker 1: Nobody can do it for them. No charisma can do
1:13:24
Speaker 1: the work for you. You have to do the work.
1:13:26
Speaker 1: You have to change, and it takes generations. It just does.
1:13:35
Speaker 1: There's no shortcuts, no shortcuts, sadly or not sadly. I
1:13:42
Speaker 1: mean this is it's hard to be saddened by It's
1:13:49
Speaker 1: hard to be sad by the metaphysical, the very nature
1:13:53
Speaker 1: of reality. There's just no shortcuts. People have to do
1:13:56
Speaker 1: the work, and work takes time, and for people to
1:13:59
Speaker 1: realize they have to do the work is going to
1:14:01
Speaker 1: take a long time. Andrews says, I've observed something, and
1:14:06
Speaker 1: wonder if you think it's ominous. Christian aesthetics has improved lately,
1:14:11
Speaker 1: just one example, in a series in a In the series,
1:14:15
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese is directing the Saints much more compelling and
1:14:21
Speaker 1: even beautiful at times. What does this portend, you know,
1:14:29
Speaker 1: a rise in in in Uh, you know, I don't know.
1:14:33
Speaker 1: I'd have to see the show and to see to
1:14:35
Speaker 1: what extent is it really Christian right? To what extent
1:14:39
Speaker 1: is it really uh enforcing Christian values? But look, the
1:14:43
Speaker 1: reality is that we live in a world dominated by
1:14:46
Speaker 1: Christian values in many respects, certainly in the in the
1:14:49
Speaker 1: realm of ideas and in the realm of esthetics. I mean,
1:14:52
Speaker 1: socialism is fundamentally Christian. You know, for interests of course,
1:14:58
Speaker 1: doing it in the name of christiananity. So we are
1:15:02
Speaker 1: surrounded everywhere by Christian values. And did the fact that
1:15:09
Speaker 1: did the fact that, I don't know, Michelangelo sculpt the
1:15:13
Speaker 1: pieta Christian theme. You can even say the theme of
1:15:18
Speaker 1: the sculpture, which might be, you know, resignation, Mary's resignation
1:15:25
Speaker 1: to the fate of her son. You know that that
1:15:34
Speaker 1: make Christianity stronger, maybe at the margin, but it also
1:15:38
Speaker 1: there's also such a strong secular aspect to it that
1:15:46
Speaker 1: I think it also weakens it at the same time.
1:15:49
Speaker 1: So it depends what people responded to, and I think
1:15:52
Speaker 1: they they much more responded to a humanized Jesus, a strong,
1:15:58
Speaker 1: powerful man, a beautiful woman mourning who lover because Mary
1:16:04
Speaker 1: in it is just as young as Jesus is uh
1:16:07
Speaker 1: And and there's a real there's a real secular aspect
1:16:11
Speaker 1: to it, even if ultimately the theme is she's resigning
1:16:17
Speaker 1: to the loss right. So it depends on exactly what
1:16:23
Speaker 1: the art form is actually doing. But look, Christianity in
1:16:30
Speaker 1: some respects is on the rise. More people are taking
1:16:34
Speaker 1: it seriously. It seems to be gaining influence politically generally,
1:16:44
Speaker 1: I think we need to be worried, you know, and
1:16:46
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, Christian music is kind of silly.
1:16:50
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a form of either rock or
1:16:53
Speaker 1: pop or country. Uh. You don't have a bah, you
1:16:57
Speaker 1: don't ever a mot are doing a requiem, you don't
1:17:01
Speaker 1: None of that exists. So even if it's goes directly
1:17:04
Speaker 1: in the Saints, it's one element that, you know, to
1:17:10
Speaker 1: really have pro Christian aesthetics, you got a long way
1:17:15
Speaker 1: to go, particularly if you compare it to the Renaissance.
1:17:18
Speaker 1: And the Renaissance is a period of de Christianization, not
1:17:22
Speaker 1: of intensifying Christianization. So I'm not too worried about any
1:17:25
Speaker 1: particular a TV series, but maybe it's a broader phenomena.
1:17:30
Speaker 1: But all the themes of almost all the movies are
1:17:35
Speaker 1: altruistic and collectivistic, and in that sense anti civilization. And
1:17:40
Speaker 1: your civilization just survives as wider then how long I
1:17:44
Speaker 1: don't know, but it survives. Pick axing pick axing in Europe.
1:17:50
Speaker 1: On Europe, he says, Finnish Bernstein's a splendid exchange recently,
1:17:57
Speaker 1: incredible real heroic gems like ancient wheat being traded by
1:18:03
Speaker 1: up to the euphrates for copper and lapis and lazuli
1:18:08
Speaker 1: all the way to the fallacy of the corn laws.
1:18:11
Speaker 1: I was shuffed. Yeah, I mean it's a really really
1:18:14
Speaker 1: good book. I mean there's some things later on when
1:18:19
Speaker 1: he gets the twentieth century and and current events that
1:18:23
Speaker 1: I think he's compromising. But his history stuff is just amazing.
1:18:29
Speaker 1: And yes, the idea of trade in a very very
1:18:34
Speaker 1: primitive society when you know, when they didn't have even
1:18:39
Speaker 1: have wagons and wheels and they still manage the trade stuff,
1:18:44
Speaker 1: you know, and the amount of trade that was going
1:18:48
Speaker 1: on internationally early early in human existence, early in human civilization,
1:18:56
Speaker 1: because this is kind of is just stunning. It's just amazing.
1:19:03
Speaker 1: And uh and and Bernstein's it's called It's a Splendid
1:19:08
Speaker 1: Exchange is the book by the author's name is Bernstein.
1:19:13
Speaker 1: It's on Amazon and gained audiobook. You get it a
1:19:15
Speaker 1: book form or kindle. It really, really, really is a
1:19:20
Speaker 1: good book, and it gives you a perspective on trade
1:19:23
Speaker 1: and how it's been part of human life pretty much forever.
1:19:27
Speaker 1: That is incredibly valuable. Sea's bad. What would iron Ran
1:19:33
Speaker 1: think of Chernobyl disaster if she lived to see it?
1:19:37
Speaker 1: What would she think of the current regime. Well, I
1:19:41
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, look, let's be very clear, I
1:19:45
Speaker 1: do not channel lining rand. I don't know what she
1:19:48
Speaker 1: would think, really, I mean, I can I can guess,
1:19:53
Speaker 1: or I can give you my my But she was
1:19:55
Speaker 1: an original thinking and always had perspectives and ways of approaching,
1:19:59
Speaker 1: and she was a genius in ways. I'm not. So
1:20:02
Speaker 1: there's just no way for me to tell you what
1:20:04
Speaker 1: Iran would think. You know, But but I think it's
1:20:08
Speaker 1: the obvious, right she she would think Chernobyl was expected
1:20:13
Speaker 1: in a consequence of socialism and communism. I think the
1:20:17
Speaker 1: way was the way it was depicted in the miniseries Chernobyl.
1:20:24
Speaker 1: I think it was an HBO or something like that. Chernobyl.
1:20:27
Speaker 1: I think it's very much aligned with I think the
1:20:30
Speaker 1: way Iran would have imagined it happening. If you read
1:20:33
Speaker 1: Atlas Shrugged. It's almost like some scenes in Atlas Shrugged,
1:20:36
Speaker 1: like the train, like the training and the tunnel and
1:20:39
Speaker 1: other things. So, you know, I think I think what
1:20:43
Speaker 1: happened there is very consistent with what she did, right
1:20:47
Speaker 1: with what she she believed in what she she believed,
1:20:50
Speaker 1: how evil functions, the way evil functions the evasion that
1:20:54
Speaker 1: the not taking push responsibility to anything. I think she
1:20:59
Speaker 1: she saw that, she understood that, she understood that that
1:21:02
Speaker 1: was very much in the nature of communism, and so
1:21:07
Speaker 1: what she would think of the county regime, she would
1:21:10
Speaker 1: she would again, I don't think she'd be surprised. She
1:21:13
Speaker 1: believed that that Russian culture was was very much mystical,
1:21:19
Speaker 1: superstitious and mystical, and and very much relied as a
1:21:24
Speaker 1: consequence on a powerful authoritarian leader. And I don't think
1:21:30
Speaker 1: she'd be surprised that Putin's authoritarianism and that there were
1:21:34
Speaker 1: alti passivity of the Russian people. I mean not all
1:21:37
Speaker 1: of them. Many of them left and many of them objected,
1:21:40
Speaker 1: but most of them there were alter pacivity of the
1:21:42
Speaker 1: Russian people, just like they were passive under Communism, that
1:21:45
Speaker 1: passive under Putin. So I don't think she'd be surprised
1:21:48
Speaker 1: at all that Russia became authoritarian in a different way
1:21:52
Speaker 1: than Communism, but still essentially authoritarian with the fall of Communism.
1:22:01
Speaker 1: Molten's splendid kindness rocks altruism. Guilt, self sacrifice sucks, yes,
1:22:08
Speaker 1: and kindness rocks to people worthy of kindness. I mean,
1:22:13
Speaker 1: there's some people I would not be kind to I'm
1:22:16
Speaker 1: a big believer in you know, some people deserve hate,
1:22:20
Speaker 1: some people deserve to be treated badly. So kindness rocks
1:22:24
Speaker 1: to people you don't know, or to people, to people
1:22:27
Speaker 1: you have, to people of whom you have no reason
1:22:31
Speaker 1: to think ill of, But to people who you think
1:22:35
Speaker 1: ill of, you shouldn't be kind. Yep, thanks Moulten, not
1:22:44
Speaker 1: Chavi Jagorithm. Some days I think the Enlightenment is just
1:22:47
Speaker 1: too vigorous for ideas are silly and primitive as Christianity
1:22:52
Speaker 1: than do it. But when I see what the Republican
1:22:54
Speaker 1: Party is devolved into in such a short time, it's
1:22:58
Speaker 1: hard to say yeah. I mean it is to say
1:23:02
Speaker 1: I have this strong sense that the Enlightenment has been
1:23:05
Speaker 1: weakened dramatically over the last twenty years. And it's it's
1:23:10
Speaker 1: we're living through times right now that are truly scary
1:23:15
Speaker 1: and and I mean I've been watching some of the
1:23:18
Speaker 1: turning points us say stuff. I'll talk about it on Monday,
1:23:22
Speaker 1: God and and and the on Twitter a lot. So
1:23:26
Speaker 1: I see a lot of these stupid heritage Americans, I mean,
1:23:30
Speaker 1: the the barbarity, the primitiveness of this idea of heritage Americans.
1:23:36
Speaker 1: My eleventh grand parents, it's eleven generations earlier, came on
1:23:43
Speaker 1: the main flower, my tenth. This family was a funding
1:23:46
Speaker 1: father and this is you know, like what have you done?
1:23:49
Speaker 1: And and what does that have anything to do with you?
1:23:53
Speaker 1: They and and how many of them were slave owners?
1:23:56
Speaker 1: And how many of them were criminals? And how many
1:23:59
Speaker 1: of them did horrible things? Because if you go back
1:24:03
Speaker 1: eleven generations, that's a lot of grandparents. There a lot
1:24:07
Speaker 1: of grandparents. That's a lot of people. Some of them
1:24:10
Speaker 1: were really bad. So what does it mean? And yet
1:24:17
Speaker 1: they take it so seriously, they're so intent on it,
1:24:19
Speaker 1: they're so committed to it. I mean, I couldn't imagine
1:24:23
Speaker 1: just a few years ago that America would become this collectivistic,
1:24:27
Speaker 1: this tribal, this racist. I mean, I guess should have
1:24:32
Speaker 1: known better because it has a racist past, but I
1:24:34
Speaker 1: did not. I think that was something America powerfully had overcome.
1:24:39
Speaker 1: And to see it revoting back to it, unbelievable. Uh,
1:24:46
Speaker 1: swish up. Excellent show and presentation today. Happy holidays to
1:24:49
Speaker 1: you and yours. Happy holidays to you too, Merry Christmas,
1:24:52
Speaker 1: Happy New Year, and all the rest. Lourie, please talk
1:24:58
Speaker 1: about the process challenges in writing your book and how
1:25:03
Speaker 1: you overcome them. Came them? Oh, the process challenges. I'm
1:25:08
Speaker 1: not sure what process challenges are. By the way, we
1:25:12
Speaker 1: just signed to deal with an agent. I'm excited. I
1:25:17
Speaker 1: don't know. I think most of the challenges intellectual. Most
1:25:21
Speaker 1: of the challenges intellectual, and someday I don't think there's
1:25:24
Speaker 1: really I mean, Don is a good writer, I'm a
1:25:27
Speaker 1: good editor. We both can hash out these things. So
1:25:31
Speaker 1: process is I think pretty down. You'd have to ask
1:25:34
Speaker 1: Don if he feels differently. I think the main thing
1:25:37
Speaker 1: is that the intellectual stuff is hard. So how do
1:25:47
Speaker 1: you how do you conceptualize Christianity? For example? Like there
1:25:52
Speaker 1: are a million different types of Christianity? Right, every little
1:25:54
Speaker 1: Protestant sects has a different interpretation. What's the essence? What
1:25:58
Speaker 1: are the essentials of Christianity? And how do you do
1:26:01
Speaker 1: it in a way that doesn't come off dismissive of
1:26:08
Speaker 1: all the different christian variations? How does it? How do you? Yeah?
1:26:12
Speaker 1: But even Jesus, they're like multiple interpretations of Jesus. Jordan
1:26:16
Speaker 1: Peterson has an interpretation of someone in the amount which
1:26:18
Speaker 1: is different than I think Pope X's and Pope Wis
1:26:22
Speaker 1: and Pope Ce's, they all have different ones. So what
1:26:25
Speaker 1: is the essence? What are you criticizing Christianity? So you
1:26:29
Speaker 1: have to do that again. You have to do it
1:26:31
Speaker 1: unless you're just writing for an objective at audience. You
1:26:33
Speaker 1: have to do it in a credible way that a
1:26:36
Speaker 1: Christian audience or mildly Christian audience, because I don't think
1:26:39
Speaker 1: we'll convince anybody who's thoroughly Christian, but a mildly Christian audience,
1:26:42
Speaker 1: so somebody raised in Christianity would recognize it. And then
1:26:47
Speaker 1: how do you untangle the fact that in the same
1:26:52
Speaker 1: geographic area at the same time you have these opposite
1:26:57
Speaker 1: forces functioning. You have Christianity functioning, and you have call
1:27:06
Speaker 1: it Greek ideas or Ristatilian ideas functioning, and Christianity at
1:27:12
Speaker 1: least nominally seems to embrace some of the Greek ideas.
1:27:16
Speaker 1: So what extent does it embracing Greek ideas because of
1:27:20
Speaker 1: the nature of Christianity? And to what extent is it
1:27:23
Speaker 1: embracing idea Greek ideas in spite of its nature of Christianity?
1:27:26
Speaker 1: And I think it's in spite of Christianity. But how
1:27:29
Speaker 1: do you show that you know, and because a lot
1:27:34
Speaker 1: of Christians will say, see, we embraced Abstotle, we brought
1:27:38
Speaker 1: reason into the West. And it's like you did that
1:27:41
Speaker 1: in spite of being Christian, not because you were Christian.
1:27:44
Speaker 1: Christianity fought against it, or Christianity Quai ideas fought against
1:27:52
Speaker 1: so all of that untangling, that's the most complex. I
1:27:56
Speaker 1: think that the layout of stoical the sequence historically of
1:28:03
Speaker 1: you know, the introduction of Greek Austatilian well, the decline
1:28:08
Speaker 1: of Greek ideas and early Christianity and the going into
1:28:10
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages and the rediscovery of Greek ideas in
1:28:14
Speaker 1: in the Late Middle Ages or the early Middle Ages,
1:28:17
Speaker 1: and then more so in the Late Middle Ages. It
1:28:20
Speaker 1: leads to the Renaissance, leads to the Enlightenment, leads to
1:28:22
Speaker 1: the modern world. That I think we have right that
1:28:25
Speaker 1: that I think is lays it out and I you know,
1:28:28
Speaker 1: I think we've I think we have a deep understanding
1:28:30
Speaker 1: of that. But even there, what is important, what is
1:28:35
Speaker 1: not important, you know, is complicated. But I think it's untangling.
1:28:39
Speaker 1: How do you separate that from the story of Christianity.
1:28:48
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean a lot of people claim that
1:28:59
Speaker 1: Christianity is all answer for a conception of the individual. Uh,
1:29:04
Speaker 1: but but you know, I don't. I don't think that's
1:29:07
Speaker 1: even true. I think there's a that conception of the individual,
1:29:11
Speaker 1: the conception of ie, a conception of a of an
1:29:13
Speaker 1: individual mind already exists in Greece. So I don't think
1:29:17
Speaker 1: that was invented by Christianity, you know, I really So.
1:29:20
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things that people throw at
1:29:21
Speaker 1: you as the different virtues of Christianity, dignity, I don't
1:29:26
Speaker 1: know the equality of man. And yet Christianity abided by
1:29:30
Speaker 1: slavery for a very long time. And and but then
1:29:34
Speaker 1: the many of the leading abolitionists are Christian, So how
1:29:39
Speaker 1: do you how do you do that? I mean, all
1:29:41
Speaker 1: the southern slave owners are Christian and use Christianity justify slavery.
1:29:45
Speaker 1: But then all the abolitionists, or significant number of the
1:29:48
Speaker 1: abolitions were like Quakers, and and and I mean committed Christians,
1:29:51
Speaker 1: not not just moduling Christians. So how do you how
1:29:55
Speaker 1: do you explain that? So it's that's the complication. It's
1:29:57
Speaker 1: an intellectual issue of figuring out what's the saying, show
1:30:00
Speaker 1: what's not, and how to untangle it? All right, all right, Andrew,
1:30:15
Speaker 1: do you agree that this. With this as a general
1:30:18
Speaker 1: point regarding pity, an emotionally connected person allows himself to
1:30:24
Speaker 1: access all emotions, including pity, but Christianity says to maximize it.
1:30:29
Speaker 1: Pity is an intense emotion. Don't play with it. I
1:30:34
Speaker 1: don't know what playing with an emotion is. But you
1:30:38
Speaker 1: know what does pity mean? Right? I mean to feel
1:30:42
Speaker 1: sorry for somebody. I mean, if you're rational, you only
1:30:46
Speaker 1: feel sorry for somebody when they deserve that feeling. That
1:30:49
Speaker 1: is now, because you have baggage, you might feel it
1:30:55
Speaker 1: when it's undeserving, when you shouldn't feel it in a sense,
1:30:58
Speaker 1: but you feel it. So what objectivism teaches you use
1:31:01
Speaker 1: Your emotions are what they are. You feel them, you
1:31:04
Speaker 1: recognize them, and then you evaluate whether they deserve taking
1:31:08
Speaker 1: action or not. Based on Christianity says it's it's pity
1:31:14
Speaker 1: is a essential emotion on which you should always take action.
1:31:17
Speaker 1: It's an essential emotion that should guide you in life.
1:31:21
Speaker 1: You should pity the poor, you should pity the weak.
1:31:26
Speaker 1: But I don't pity the poor. I pity some poor.
1:31:30
Speaker 1: I don't have the emotion of pity towards the poor.
1:31:33
Speaker 1: I have an emotion of pity towards the unjustly poor.
1:31:37
Speaker 1: But if I see about a you know the example
1:31:41
Speaker 1: I always use, if I see a white beating drunk
1:31:43
Speaker 1: who's poor, I don't pity them. I mean, if anything,
1:31:50
Speaker 1: it's a sense of justice the poor because they deserve
1:31:53
Speaker 1: to be poor. So there's a deserving poor and there's
1:31:56
Speaker 1: an undeserving poor. And to the extent that you're going
1:31:58
Speaker 1: to respawn emotionally, it's you should You should be responding
1:32:05
Speaker 1: emotionally in a sense of I guess pity is a
1:32:08
Speaker 1: is you're feeling sorry for them. You feel for them,
1:32:11
Speaker 1: you you, you, you, you, You have empathy for them.
1:32:14
Speaker 1: In some sense, you only want to do that for
1:32:17
Speaker 1: people who don't deserve to be poor. So Christianity doesn't discriminate.
1:32:27
Speaker 1: I don't pity my enemy, you know so, So while
1:32:33
Speaker 1: you take your emotions as they are, you also should
1:32:37
Speaker 1: evaluate them in a sense of do they come from
1:32:42
Speaker 1: from the right place? Do they come from from the
1:32:46
Speaker 1: place of love or from a place to us gin Rooni,
1:32:49
Speaker 1: I guess terminology from the place of fear Andrew the
1:32:56
Speaker 1: impassioned part of Rand's answer on how we can teach
1:32:59
Speaker 1: our children not to be ashamed of success do not
1:33:03
Speaker 1: teach him to be humble? Yes, yeah, take credit for
1:33:07
Speaker 1: your work. Take credit for your success. Again, it doesn't
1:33:11
Speaker 1: mean to be boastful. It doesn't mean to the lord
1:33:14
Speaker 1: of others over your success, because it's not about other
1:33:16
Speaker 1: people's about you. I succeeded, I did it, I built it,
1:33:21
Speaker 1: I created It's exactly the opposite of what's his name, Obama's.
1:33:26
Speaker 1: You didn't build that. You should be humble. You didn't
1:33:28
Speaker 1: build it. No, I didn't build it, and am. If
1:33:40
Speaker 1: a Christian today is being overall good and rational, why
1:33:45
Speaker 1: do I need to pick a fight by telling them?
1:33:47
Speaker 1: Or those oh those aren't? You aren't your Christian values?
1:33:52
Speaker 1: If a Christian to today is being overall good and rational,
1:33:56
Speaker 1: why do I need to tell well? Because they might
1:33:59
Speaker 1: not be tomorrow. That is, tomorrow, they might hear a
1:34:03
Speaker 1: different sermon and it too, put those values differently and
1:34:06
Speaker 1: become more Christian and therefore become worse. And as long
1:34:11
Speaker 1: as you're Christian and you hold faith, there's only so
1:34:15
Speaker 1: much happiness you can attain. There's a cap on your
1:34:18
Speaker 1: ability to be rational, and they're for successful and happy.
1:34:23
Speaker 1: So you're doing them a favor by telling them. Here's
1:34:30
Speaker 1: the real nature of the values you're pursuing, and you
1:34:32
Speaker 1: should be more consistent about it. It's good for their life.
1:34:36
Speaker 1: And secondly, you want to arm them not to be
1:34:41
Speaker 1: captured in the name of Christianity by the values that
1:34:45
Speaker 1: would do you home and all of us home. So
1:34:49
Speaker 1: truth is a good thing. Reality is a good thing.
1:34:54
Speaker 1: Knowing what people really you know, people knowing themselves is
1:34:58
Speaker 1: a good thing. Liam says, will you be on the panel,
1:35:02
Speaker 1: Stephen pikat this SoCon? You know? I don't know. I
1:35:06
Speaker 1: assume not because I haven't heard, But I just don't know.
1:35:09
Speaker 1: I don't know who's going to be on, and I
1:35:11
Speaker 1: have not heard anything one of the others. I assume
1:35:13
Speaker 1: the answer is no, because I assume that they've already
1:35:15
Speaker 1: planned it. But you know, I don't know. I'm not
1:35:20
Speaker 1: involved in the planning of it. Hapacampbell thoughts on retiring
1:35:25
Speaker 1: in Santa Barbara, California versus Orange County. God, I mean,
1:35:31
Speaker 1: I don't know. Santa Barbara strikes is more expensive than
1:35:35
Speaker 1: Omige County. Orange County has a lot more variety in
1:35:39
Speaker 1: terms of housing and places to live. Santa Barbara is
1:35:43
Speaker 1: smaller and probably more expensive. Santa Barbara is more beautiful
1:35:51
Speaker 1: if you can, particularly if you can get something on
1:35:53
Speaker 1: the hills overlooking the ocean. It's gorgeous. It really is amazing.
1:35:58
Speaker 1: Orange County to get a house overlooks the ocean is
1:36:01
Speaker 1: very expensive, but it's probably very expensive in Santa Barbara.
1:36:06
Speaker 1: I get a sense that Orange County has more stuff
1:36:09
Speaker 1: to do, but I'm not sure. I don't know Santa
1:36:13
Speaker 1: Barba that much. There's a symphony, it has upper coming
1:36:16
Speaker 1: there once in a while. La is not that far,
1:36:18
Speaker 1: particularly if you can drive off hours, off rush hours,
1:36:22
Speaker 1: you can get to La and less than an hour
1:36:25
Speaker 1: sometimes and then there's all the benefits of La. Uh.
1:36:29
Speaker 1: There's a lot more, probably a lotmo restaurants in Orange County,
1:36:33
Speaker 1: particularly given that you can get to La. So, but look,
1:36:39
Speaker 1: whether in both places is great. Ocean is right there
1:36:43
Speaker 1: views the great expensive places to live, but yeah, wonderful
1:36:48
Speaker 1: in many regards, many respects. And you have to tolerate California.
1:36:55
Speaker 1: James on hundred years. So now will AOI be bigger
1:36:59
Speaker 1: than the church? You know, my powers of prophecy are
1:37:04
Speaker 1: very limited. Powers of prophecy are very limited. So I
1:37:11
Speaker 1: don't know. I hope so I hope so, and there's
1:37:16
Speaker 1: a chance. I don't know how to put a probability
1:37:19
Speaker 1: on it. One hundred years is a long time, but
1:37:21
Speaker 1: there certainly is a chance we will be Andrew. Materially,
1:37:26
Speaker 1: the year twenty twenty five standard of living in America
1:37:32
Speaker 1: like living in heaven on Earth. The citizens the civilized
1:37:36
Speaker 1: world wasn't built for the sake of teaching heaven, but
1:37:39
Speaker 1: for the betterment of man on Earth. I'm not sure
1:37:43
Speaker 1: what you're getting at, Andrew, but I'll just say, yeah,
1:37:46
Speaker 1: it's nobody satisfied, and nobody should be. The point is more,
1:37:53
Speaker 1: more and more. We're greedy human beings. Rational human beings
1:37:58
Speaker 1: are greedy. Healthy human beings. Put it this way, healthy
1:38:03
Speaker 1: human beings are greedy. If greed beans, you want more,
1:38:08
Speaker 1: and we want more. We want flying cars, for God's sake.
1:38:13
Speaker 1: We want materially more we want spiritually we want more.
1:38:16
Speaker 1: We want more success, we want more prosperity, we want
1:38:19
Speaker 1: more fun, we want more pleasure. We want more. So
1:38:23
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five was like living on was living in
1:38:28
Speaker 1: an amazing world materially, and it could be much much, much,
1:38:31
Speaker 1: much much better, and we should strive for that. Yeah,
1:38:36
Speaker 1: I don't think it's well worded because I didn't quite
1:38:38
Speaker 1: understand it, Robert. Every year, every one of these values
1:38:45
Speaker 1: is reimagined by the better among contemporary American Christians. I know,
1:38:49
Speaker 1: faith is risk tolerance, humility is knowing your limitations and
1:38:52
Speaker 1: avoiding second handedness, and fake pride. Love is benevolent and
1:38:56
Speaker 1: embracing values, which makes discussing the underlying contradiction within these
1:39:02
Speaker 1: issues challenging at best. Yeah, but when you push them,
1:39:08
Speaker 1: when you push them, the altruism comes out. The Yeah.
1:39:15
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, you know, they believe
1:39:19
Speaker 1: in a God, and God has certain things that they
1:39:22
Speaker 1: must do. At the end of the day, it affects
1:39:24
Speaker 1: the epistemology and it certainly affects their ethics and their
1:39:29
Speaker 1: ability to experience pride, their ability to gain self esteem,
1:39:34
Speaker 1: the ability to to be, you know, even more ambitious
1:39:39
Speaker 1: than they are. So yes, I think it's hard, but
1:39:44
Speaker 1: a lot of that is rationalization. And what you need
1:39:47
Speaker 1: to do is ask them questions that help kind of,
1:39:53
Speaker 1: you know, reveal what is being rationalized and and and
1:39:59
Speaker 1: and what is behind it all. And the fact that
1:40:02
Speaker 1: no they accept they accept these definitions. They just have
1:40:08
Speaker 1: they know their anti life at some level, and they
1:40:11
Speaker 1: don't want to live that life. So they've they've redefined them,
1:40:16
Speaker 1: they've they've put them to the side, but they haven't
1:40:19
Speaker 1: completely given up on them, because otherwise they'd have to
1:40:22
Speaker 1: give up on being Christian. God is still there in altruism,
1:40:24
Speaker 1: is still there that undermines them, and that's what you
1:40:28
Speaker 1: need to help them. See Moulten's Splenderism. Sorry I missed
1:40:34
Speaker 1: you're missing link talk, but I did enjoy listening to
1:40:36
Speaker 1: it later. Please do more of these, Yeah, I intend
1:40:39
Speaker 1: to thanks Moulton's Splendi intend to I like numbers. When
1:40:46
Speaker 1: did you have become civilized? I think during the Enlightenment.
1:40:52
Speaker 1: I think in the mid sixteen hundreds. You know, you
1:40:59
Speaker 1: can't certainly the Thirty Year War was not a civilized thing, Sully.
1:41:05
Speaker 1: The Inquisition was not civilized. So I'd say post thirty
1:41:10
Speaker 1: Year War, early seventeen hundreds, laced sixteen hundreds somewhere around that.
1:41:17
Speaker 1: The Enlightenment. Basically, that's when it becomes civilized. It becomes
1:41:20
Speaker 1: a little bit, it becomes more peaceful. Of course, it
1:41:22
Speaker 1: becomes much more peaceful. In the nineteenth century. You know,
1:41:28
Speaker 1: rulers are viewed with a lot more suspicion. In Britain
1:41:37
Speaker 1: you get a much more sort of parliament and a
1:41:40
Speaker 1: significant reduction in the power of the king. And there's
1:41:45
Speaker 1: a certain tendency around Europe for a little bit of that,
1:41:48
Speaker 1: although not in France they have to go through a
1:41:51
Speaker 1: revolution to get that, but it certainly becomes it's becoming
1:41:57
Speaker 1: civilized intellectually, scientifically, peace wise and politically. And of course
1:42:04
Speaker 1: you could say it's civilized in seventeen seventy six. Now
1:42:08
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean bad things don't continue to happen. Slavery,
1:42:11
Speaker 1: for example, that only gets but it's on a path
1:42:15
Speaker 1: starting in the late seventeenth century. It's on a path
1:42:19
Speaker 1: for progress, for progress materially, in progress, spiritually and progress politically.
1:42:24
Speaker 1: So the America is the consequence of that. JJ. Your
1:42:32
Speaker 1: thoughts on the film A Man of All False Seasons.
1:42:35
Speaker 1: I rewatched it recently. I thought it was great. I
1:42:38
Speaker 1: tried to imagine how you would interpret it. Yeah, I mean,
1:42:40
Speaker 1: I love that movie. It's a really great movie. It's
1:42:45
Speaker 1: a movie about integrity, now integrity to false values, but
1:42:49
Speaker 1: still integrity and the evil of kind of an authoritarian king,
1:42:57
Speaker 1: a whim worshiping authoritarian king, and a man standing on principle.
1:43:02
Speaker 1: So it's the story of Tom'smore and can Hang Me
1:43:04
Speaker 1: the eighth and Yeah, and it's really well acted and
1:43:09
Speaker 1: really well directed, and the dialogue is excellent. Yeah, I mean,
1:43:13
Speaker 1: I really like that movie. I haven't seen in a
1:43:14
Speaker 1: long time, but I remember it's it's up there, and
1:43:18
Speaker 1: it's up there in my movie lists Andrew. Does integrity
1:43:23
Speaker 1: to self sacrifice? Suicide? Is that? In that sense? Do
1:43:29
Speaker 1: the monks who set themselves on fire for social cause
1:43:33
Speaker 1: achieve the utmost moral good? Well, I mean by their
1:43:37
Speaker 1: sick morality, Yeah, but that's not morality, so they don't.
1:43:40
Speaker 1: They achieved them all good. But you know, some people
1:43:45
Speaker 1: would argue that by dying it doesn't allow them to
1:43:50
Speaker 1: help more poor people, So probably not right. So the
1:43:53
Speaker 1: ideal is suffering through life well, wanting to commit suicide
1:43:59
Speaker 1: and help helping other people while hating helping them. That's
1:44:03
Speaker 1: the ideal. That's utmost mal good. The outbros male good
1:44:08
Speaker 1: is staying alive in spite of the pain, the suffering
1:44:12
Speaker 1: that you experience in order to help other people and
1:44:16
Speaker 1: to eat and take care of yourself just enough so
1:44:20
Speaker 1: that you can keep staying alive, so you can help
1:44:22
Speaker 1: other people. That's the ultimate good. That's why Mother Teresa
1:44:27
Speaker 1: is a saint. Robert. Oh, this splitting along question with
1:44:34
Speaker 1: multiple super chats like I just did is definitely cheating.
1:44:37
Speaker 1: You're very charitable for not criticizing it. Why would I
1:44:40
Speaker 1: criticize it? It was completely legit. I mean, if you'd
1:44:45
Speaker 1: done it in one question as a twenty dollars question,
1:44:48
Speaker 1: I would have answered it earlier sooner. So, if anything,
1:44:52
Speaker 1: it was it was hurting you. No, it wasn't cheating.
1:44:56
Speaker 1: Who suffered from the cheat? Who did the cheat? There's
1:45:00
Speaker 1: the expense of all right, Jeff. If we support freedom
1:45:07
Speaker 1: of speech and separation of church and state, how do
1:45:09
Speaker 1: we achieve the removal of religion from government and schools
1:45:13
Speaker 1: without silencing them. Well, you don't remove it in the
1:45:21
Speaker 1: sense of that the president is religious. The president can
1:45:29
Speaker 1: be religious. What it means to remove it from government
1:45:33
Speaker 1: is that it affects it should not affect legislation, that
1:45:38
Speaker 1: it should not affect governing. And there's a sense in
1:45:45
Speaker 1: which that's almost impossible. If you know, particularly in a
1:45:50
Speaker 1: democracy where people can vote anything, in the sense that
1:45:56
Speaker 1: people are influenced by their values, and if their value
1:45:59
Speaker 1: is a christian and a vote Christianity. But a court
1:46:03
Speaker 1: could say the prime the reason this, the reasoning for
1:46:08
Speaker 1: this law is fundamentally religious, and therefore we strike it
1:46:14
Speaker 1: as unconstitutional. Now, you can silence people in the context
1:46:21
Speaker 1: of schools and in the context of lots of things, right,
1:46:26
Speaker 1: I can silence you on my here, on my on
1:46:31
Speaker 1: my chat. So if you perceive government schools as at
1:46:36
Speaker 1: least in the functioning pseudo private property, the private property
1:46:40
Speaker 1: of I don't know, the parents or whatever of the
1:46:44
Speaker 1: school board, then the school board gets it in the curriculum.
1:46:48
Speaker 1: They can decide who to platform and who not the platform.
1:46:52
Speaker 1: It's absolutely not the responsibility of a school board to
1:46:56
Speaker 1: maximize speech to allow for all perspectives to be presented. No,
1:47:00
Speaker 1: they have to make a decision about in the name
1:47:03
Speaker 1: of educating the kids, what should be and should be presented. Now,
1:47:07
Speaker 1: ideally there are no public schools, you know, government schools,
1:47:12
Speaker 1: and then private schools get to the side what should
1:47:15
Speaker 1: and shouldn't be in the curriculum. Free speech is not
1:47:22
Speaker 1: a contradiction to deplatforming, as long as the deplatforming happens
1:47:27
Speaker 1: in the context of private interaction like numbers. Was walk
1:47:37
Speaker 1: wrong to pity Keating. Look, there's a sense in which
1:47:43
Speaker 1: the whole relationship with doing keyting and rock doesn't really
1:47:47
Speaker 1: make sense to me, Like what keeps helping keyting to
1:47:52
Speaker 1: what end? You know, he's being benevolent, but it's sometimes
1:47:59
Speaker 1: there's a friendship there that doesn't quite make sense. So
1:48:02
Speaker 1: the only reason I think that work with pity Keating
1:48:06
Speaker 1: is that he sees something in Keating that I don't
1:48:09
Speaker 1: see that is a source of their friendship, that is
1:48:14
Speaker 1: a real value, and he is he pities him because
1:48:19
Speaker 1: he can see his potential if he taken a different route,
1:48:24
Speaker 1: if he had if he had uh not made committed
1:48:33
Speaker 1: the errors or it's not errors, the evasions that he
1:48:35
Speaker 1: did when he was young. But I don't pity Keating.
1:48:43
Speaker 1: I think he gets exactly what he deserves. Jason in
1:48:48
Speaker 1: the two thousands Peacock on his podcast pointed out how
1:48:51
Speaker 1: concerning and un settling the mere notion of motorcycle bikers
1:48:57
Speaker 1: have their own Christian ministries was now it's normal in
1:49:01
Speaker 1: my town and on TV. Yeah, and it's everywhere, and
1:49:04
Speaker 1: then many ministries everywhere. It's these you know, Christianity catering
1:49:11
Speaker 1: to every little group, every little tribe, that comes about
1:49:15
Speaker 1: they develop their own theology for them. All right, we
1:49:19
Speaker 1: are only thirteen dollars short of our goal. Let's try
1:49:23
Speaker 1: to make it. We've got ten minutes. Ten minutes is
1:49:25
Speaker 1: hort stop anyway, So you know there's somebody come in
1:49:28
Speaker 1: with thirteen dollar question and so we can there we go.
1:49:32
Speaker 1: That's ten and we're just the ten. So we just
1:49:35
Speaker 1: need three now. FJ fang. I've just realized I don't
1:49:40
Speaker 1: like my parents or have anything in common with them.
1:49:43
Speaker 1: I'm struggling with this, Yeah, I mean it's normal to
1:49:46
Speaker 1: struggle with it. The question is do you have any
1:49:51
Speaker 1: feelings towards them because they raised you, because they gave
1:49:56
Speaker 1: you life? Is that a value to you? The fact
1:50:02
Speaker 1: that they raised you and gave you life. Did they
1:50:04
Speaker 1: raise you well? And so to what extent is that
1:50:08
Speaker 1: a positive that that you want to recognize and accept
1:50:12
Speaker 1: and and and and therefore, you know, give them a
1:50:17
Speaker 1: certain minimal level of respect and appreciation for that. But
1:50:22
Speaker 1: if you don't like your parents and you don't have
1:50:24
Speaker 1: anything in common with them, then you've got you should
1:50:26
Speaker 1: adjust your relationship accordingly. I mean, you don't hang up
1:50:30
Speaker 1: with him a lot, don't spend a lot of time
1:50:31
Speaker 1: with him. You know, whatever it is your valuation your
1:50:34
Speaker 1: parent is and your emotion and your commitment to them,
1:50:38
Speaker 1: figure out what that is and adjust your interaction with
1:50:42
Speaker 1: them to that. So if you appreciate them because they
1:50:45
Speaker 1: raise you, okay, and you appreciate the fact that they
1:50:48
Speaker 1: gave you life, but you know, it's not that you
1:50:51
Speaker 1: dislike them, it's not that you hate them, it's not
1:50:53
Speaker 1: but you just don't have anything common with me. You
1:50:54
Speaker 1: don't like them that much or not, they're not your
1:50:57
Speaker 1: kind of people, then minimize your interaction with them. Don't
1:51:01
Speaker 1: cut them off completely, because you still have that basic
1:51:05
Speaker 1: appreciation for them. But if you don't, then cut them
1:51:09
Speaker 1: off completely that is I'm not against that. But in
1:51:12
Speaker 1: other words, adjust your relationship with your parents to the
1:51:18
Speaker 1: extent to which they are value to you, and don't
1:51:23
Speaker 1: feel that you have to do more than that, because
1:51:27
Speaker 1: they're your parents and you should honor your father and
1:51:29
Speaker 1: your mother, so says the Bible. Andrew, I think you
1:51:34
Speaker 1: should use this show to organize your material for the book.
1:51:38
Speaker 1: It was really well structured and impactful. Thank you, Lincoln.
1:51:45
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm doing that in a sense because this
1:51:47
Speaker 1: really helps me think through some of these issues, and
1:51:50
Speaker 1: then I go back to the book and verbalizing it
1:51:54
Speaker 1: really makes it. It clarifies it to me. Don listens
1:51:57
Speaker 1: to it. I think it helps clarify to him. At
1:52:00
Speaker 1: least it clarssfis what I'm thinking to him, and then
1:52:02
Speaker 1: we can have a discussion about it. Lincoln, why is
1:52:05
Speaker 1: Christianny more common in America than Europe even though the
1:52:08
Speaker 1: US was founded by large secular Enlightenment thinkers. I think because,
1:52:18
Speaker 1: I think because it wasn't a state religion, it was
1:52:24
Speaker 1: allowed to morph, and it's all kinds of sects and
1:52:31
Speaker 1: all kinds of interpretations and develop in a way that
1:52:35
Speaker 1: made it consistent with America as it emerged in the
1:52:39
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. So the conflict between Modernity and Christianity didn't
1:52:47
Speaker 1: become as evident because it kind of Christianity kind of
1:52:52
Speaker 1: absorbed America or incorporated America into its theology. This is
1:52:57
Speaker 1: the point that Robert was making earlier. Most of Americas
1:53:00
Speaker 1: the theology is American. I tell them often that they
1:53:05
Speaker 1: love Jefferson more than Jesus, and they loved the and
1:53:07
Speaker 1: they love the Constitution more than the Bible, so they
1:53:10
Speaker 1: made it part of it. I think that also there
1:53:15
Speaker 1: were no really leading intellectuals in America were kind of
1:53:22
Speaker 1: really secular and pushed the secular agenda until kind of
1:53:25
Speaker 1: the pragmatists, whereas in Europe, I think there was a
1:53:31
Speaker 1: real secularization among the intellectuals very early on. There was
1:53:36
Speaker 1: kind of a diminishing of religion to some extent, or
1:53:41
Speaker 1: secularization of religion. And of course there was this massive
1:53:46
Speaker 1: secularization of religion that was done by Marx, you know,
1:53:51
Speaker 1: basically secularizing religion into into his view of communism. There
1:53:57
Speaker 1: are other things. I mean, Europe really secularized after the
1:53:59
Speaker 1: First World War. First World War was such a horrific
1:54:02
Speaker 1: event for them. It was so disorienting. The idea that
1:54:07
Speaker 1: it could be a god and the First World War
1:54:09
Speaker 1: happened was just beyond them. It was similar to the
1:54:12
Speaker 1: Thirty Year War, which led to the Enlightenment. I think
1:54:15
Speaker 1: the First World War led to secularism but also to cynicism.
1:54:22
Speaker 1: But it's a good question. I don't have a full
1:54:24
Speaker 1: answer to it. It would require real analysis. Lincas is,
1:54:29
Speaker 1: how can a career in the military be self interested?
1:54:32
Speaker 1: I like the idea of being in the military part
1:54:34
Speaker 1: time by the national guard. But it feels a bit
1:54:38
Speaker 1: and I didn't I don't have the second part of
1:54:40
Speaker 1: the question, but let me just answer that. Look you
1:54:43
Speaker 1: can it feels a bit the military at the current
1:54:46
Speaker 1: administration is against my values. Yes, I mean, I think
1:54:50
Speaker 1: you'd you really have to be questioning about whether to
1:54:54
Speaker 1: join the military under the conditions of this administration or
1:54:57
Speaker 1: any other administration because of all against your values, you know,
1:55:00
Speaker 1: in in this modern world, and what are you fighting for?
1:55:03
Speaker 1: You know, it's not clear, So it's it's I think
1:55:06
Speaker 1: it's a difficult, much more difficult decision today to join
1:55:09
Speaker 1: the military than would have been in the past because
1:55:11
Speaker 1: of the nature of the country, the people, and and
1:55:16
Speaker 1: and and our politicians, our leaders, uh and and and
1:55:20
Speaker 1: including by the way, the generals and what they will
1:55:22
Speaker 1: tell you to do or not do, and which is
1:55:25
Speaker 1: which I think really damaging. But to make a career
1:55:30
Speaker 1: of it in a rational, rational world, I don't see
1:55:34
Speaker 1: a big issue there. I mean, it's it's a challenging position.
1:55:38
Speaker 1: It's it requires a lot of thinking, it requires action.
1:55:41
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it requires you know, uh, strategy, It's it's
1:55:49
Speaker 1: a challenging, interesting profession. You know, how to how to
1:55:52
Speaker 1: defend how to defend military, how to use the military
1:55:56
Speaker 1: to defend values. Andrew, my manager gave me a good
1:56:02
Speaker 1: advice regarding a person who apputs to me, who's objectively
1:56:05
Speaker 1: not doing her work, and I was defending her. She said,
1:56:08
Speaker 1: you said, you're not her savior. Andrew, that is very
1:56:11
Speaker 1: good advice. Yes, yes, you can't save people. It's not
1:56:15
Speaker 1: your job as a manager to save people. Your job
1:56:18
Speaker 1: is to objectively evaluate them and give them that objective
1:56:22
Speaker 1: feedback and treat them with justice, which means you know,
1:56:28
Speaker 1: positively if they're doing good job, and negatively if they're
1:56:30
Speaker 1: doing a bad job. Lincoln says thoughts on LDS moment Church,
1:56:34
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot. I don't know that much
1:56:36
Speaker 1: about them. I mean, it's a crazy story. If you
1:56:39
Speaker 1: listen to the story of how the church came about,
1:56:42
Speaker 1: you know, anybody believes that has to be a little cuckoo.
1:56:45
Speaker 1: But that's true of all religion. They just are modern
1:56:49
Speaker 1: people believing in that is just bizarre. Modern people coming
1:56:52
Speaker 1: up with that theology is bizarre. But generally, if you
1:56:58
Speaker 1: go to if you interact with Moments, they're hard working,
1:57:01
Speaker 1: they're honest, they're quite productive, they're nice, people. You know,
1:57:07
Speaker 1: they seem quite friendly, So yeah, I mean they seem
1:57:15
Speaker 1: pretty normal in spite of the Kooki theology. And the
1:57:19
Speaker 1: question is, my guess is most of them just don't
1:57:22
Speaker 1: take that theology very seriously. You know, they very quickly
1:57:26
Speaker 1: abandoned polygamy when it become when it became politically inconvenient
1:57:31
Speaker 1: for them, so they obviously don't take theology. That's eviously right.
1:57:35
Speaker 1: I mean, polygamy was part of the theology. And then
1:57:38
Speaker 1: they were told if you in order to become a state,
1:57:42
Speaker 1: you would have to embrace monogamy, and they did in
1:57:47
Speaker 1: order to become a state, So they rewrote the rules,
1:57:51
Speaker 1: just like Christians do all the time. The moments I've
1:57:55
Speaker 1: interacted with mostly being positive people. But I also know
1:58:01
Speaker 1: a lot of people who left the church. Actually there's
1:58:04
Speaker 1: a number who become objectivists, and they have a much
1:58:08
Speaker 1: more negative view of the church, right because they've lived it.
1:58:11
Speaker 1: So I'm sure that if you live it, it's not
1:58:13
Speaker 1: pleasant at all, and if your parents take it seriously,
1:58:16
Speaker 1: to an extent that it's taken seriously, it's not pleasant
1:58:19
Speaker 1: at all. The extent that it's taken seriously is bad,
1:58:21
Speaker 1: just like all religion. All right, guys, have a great
1:58:26
Speaker 1: rest of your weekend. I will see you on Monday.
1:58:29
Speaker 1: I schedule got a little screwed up, but anyway, we
1:58:31
Speaker 1: don't have an interview on Monday, so we'll just have
1:58:33
Speaker 1: a show on Monday. The Nicos interview is a week later,
1:58:38
Speaker 1: so yeah, I will see you then. Thanks all the
1:58:42
Speaker 1: super shadows. We made our goal, just squeaked in perfectly.
1:58:46
Speaker 1: Thank you, and yeah, have a great weekend. By