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0:49You should have them. I just, do you have the worldview chart? Guys, y'all would just continually, as people come in, somebody hand those out to folks. If they don't have a worldview chart, they need that. And if they don't have a quiz, they need that. And by the way, you can cheat while I'm talking through the thing. You won't go ahead. The quiz is take home, bring it back next week, and we'll run through it. See if you got it right or not. And you'll self-grade, so you don't have to worry about being embarrassed or anything. You self-grade your worldview quiz. All right, so let's see if we're where we need to be. All right, if we could have, who's got the mic? Peyton, would you? I know we had these scriptures last time, but you know, I was thinking this morning, there's all sorts of comparisons of why you need to read your Bible daily. One illustration that's very graphic, but really helps people to remember and need to read scripture. Imagine when you're a teenager and you look in the mirror. If you're a teenager looking in the mirror, where are you looking for usually?

1:57Zits. Zits, yeah. Yeah, and so you need to pop that zit, right? And so, scripturally speaking, as you know, the Bible is a mirror and we have sin and we need cleansing, right? But also, think of that a little bit further and really reading scripture. You know, we get up in the morning, most of us, what do we do? We shower or take a bath. Well, just think of it this way: reading scripture daily is taking your spiritual bath, which we all need because we're dirty. We have sin and we need to be confronted by that. And so, anyway, so we're going to repeat these scriptures, although I don't have them all at once like last time. And Peyton, would you please read this one?

2:43But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. Okay, so we are to be. Ready to make a defense, and that's another reason read daily. You can't make much of a defense if you don't, you know. We talked about last time to know a true counterfeit, you got to know what the real thing is first. You know, they train people to see counterfeit bills by looking at legitimate bills over and over and over again so that they can just be, you know, going through there real fast, and something will leap out with them. You know, something's wrong about this bill. Well, the same way, if you know your scripture, even if you don't know all this other stuff, if you know your scripture, you'll notice when something's just not right about this, right? Okay, so let's go. We're going to just jump into it today, and we're going to start with naturalism. I'm not going across the chart totally, and I really want to focus primarily on naturalism, postmodernism, and of course, Christian theism. And I'm not going to spend that much time about pantheism because, frankly, right now, I do not see pantheism as the big, big problem. I see postmodernism as the really big problem, and that emanates from naturalism, really. Although it's gotten so far from naturalism, those two are actually fighting each other now. Okay, so in naturalism, you know, you got your side chart, you know, ultimate meaning, you know, ethics, all those listing of what these views have to say about those major, what I call the eternal verities, ultimate truths.

4:30Then you go across there. But in terms of ultimate meaning, they would say matter exists. Used to, they would say eternally. They would say matter's always been around, which is kind of what the pantheists would say as well. But, of course, now, since then, the majority of naturalists, I would assume, pretty much from what I can tell, they would say it's the Big Bang. And I guess, you know, Hawking, before he died, you know, the famous astronomer, the guy in the wheelchair, he got so much attention, I think, partly because of that. Polkenhorn, who, by the way, is a Christian, has actually, I think, done more hard science and publications than Hawking did, but he doesn't seem to get as much attention. But anyway, you know, his latest book, well, I'm probably being unfair to him, but a cynic observing his book summed it up in just one little phrase. And anytime you sum up the entire book in one little phrase, it's unfair. But he really, really kind of zinged it. He says, according to Hawking, in the beginning, there was nothing, and nothing exploded. That's pretty much his explanation for, you know, the Big Bang.

5:51But anyway, you have the Big Bang, and there is no God, according to the naturalists, and the cosmos is primary. In other words, the cosmos is all there is. We're just matter. We're basically, we're all a bunch of accidents sitting in here. And of course, this means that values are man-made. They're just constructs. Okay, so what is humanity? Humans are, you know, they're matter. They're living matter. Okay. But they're simply complex biological machines. And they came about, as most naturalists would say, evolution. And that's just, once again, accident. And human personality is only an interrelation of chemical properties. You know, that's, you think you're in love with that person, whether it's just, you know, these neurons and, you know, the chemical reactions bringing that about. Like, you know, I said, if you write a love letter purely from a naturalistic perspective, you're going to come across as kind of a cold fish. All right, you know, if you think that's all love is. Zach would probably be very capable this morning of refuting that. Okay, but anyway, what happens at death? Well, extinction of conscience, extinction of personality, individuality. You're just organized matter, and now you're disorganizing. You go back to dust again. Okay? And Then, how do we know truth? Well, with them, I got to see it, touch it, feel it, taste it for it to be truth. Okay, now you get into the realm of spirituality. Well, they deny there is any spirituality. You know, they deny that you have a soul, they deny that you have a spirit, and so it's got to be, you know, see, touch, feel, taste it. Kind of like, you know, Spock on the original Star Trek. You know, just almost like a stoic reason and that sort of thing. Now, one other little point here I want to make. Usually, when it says we can never grasp reality, what's it talking about there? One thing I think is kind of significant here is naturalists can explain how things happen. You know, scientific method, you observe it, you know, test it, repeat it. They can explain how, but it can never explain why. Now, there's a lot of naturalists out there that they'll tell you that they're explaining why, but they're really explaining how. They never can get to the why. Because, remember, ultimately, there is no ultimate meaning. You know, things just happened, you know. And so they really cannot explain why. Okay, ethics. Now, with what I've told you, this has profound implications for ethics. We mean by ethics, what's wrong, what's right. Okay, all existence is relational, and so human action can be significant, but it's based on some sort of relativistic or utilitarian reasoning. You see, since they don't believe in God, and of course, we as Christian theists know that God is everything in terms of morality and ethics. You know, without God, you don't have the Ten Commandments. If you're an evolutionist, what are you going to base your ethics upon? You know, as I've said to students before, you throw out the Ten Commandments, you replace it with the one commandment, survival of the species, right?

9:43Of course, you know, Herbert Spencer, who is a big pal of Darwin, said survival of the fittest. And of course, Darwin later picked that up, but actually, Herbert Spencer, I always tell students, I'm going to have on the test survival of the fittest, and you're going to put who, you know, the question who came up with that phraseology. And everybody's going to say, Charles Darwin, I'm going to mark it wrong. It's actually Herbert Spencer, who is a sociologist, but he is pals with Darwin. Later, in later books by Darwin, he would pick up that phrase. But it really starts with this, you know, a guy that was sort of the beginner of this whole social Darwinism concept. All right, so if naturalism is your basis of belief, How do you come up with a moral ethic? What is right or what is wrong? And what you're going to find out is a lot of quote-unquote atheists. In fact, I was listening to Christopher Hitchens, who's now dead, you know, he died of cancer in Houston a while back. He once told someone he was a Protestant atheist.

10:54Even the atheists are oftentimes more influenced by Christian theism than they want to admit. And they will pull ethics sort of, you know, cherry-pick, and then try to come up with naturalistic justification for believing that. But usually, it's utilitarianism to say, well, we have to behave, we have to have moral order, and that's the reason we have these moral ethics, but it's just because we don't have chaos, right? And some sort of utilitarian justification. All right, and history, well, history is a stream of events, and most naturalists, but not all, most naturalists will say it's linear. And once again, I think that's just baggage from Christianity, really, or theism. It's linear. And of course, you know, if you believe in Big Bang, you would say it's linear as well. You know, there's a beginning, and we're progressing towards something, right?

11:50But it's without any purpose. In other words, a naturalist historian would say stuff happens. You can keep a linear You know, retelling of what happened, but is is no meaning or purpose behind history. It's just stuff happens. Okay, so let's have another scripture reading here. We've read this one before, but I think we need to refresh ourselves. Who wants to take it? Hurry, Erica, don't waste time. Zach, take it. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

12:41Okay. So we need to, first off, you need to show compassion. If you're having a conversation with these folks, you need to show compassion. You need to really care about them. And you really, really need to pray. Because no matter how good an argument you put forth, you know, we've got another scripture reading coming up. The problem is not that there's enough evidence. What's the problem? They suppress the truth. Right? All right. And so, you know, and remember, to the natural man, the word of God is foolishness to him. Right? And so to be effective, you totally have to rely upon. Christ's Holy Spirit, you know, and put it in his hands. Your responsibility is, you know, stay, show yourself approved. Your responsibility is to show compassion, show love, do the best you can, leave the results up to God. But, you know, we must, you know, make an attempt. And, you know, Tom talks about in everything, scatter that seed, the seed of the gospel, and we don't know who it's going to take root with, but it will. You know, his word will not return void. That's a promise. And boy, I've seen that time after time. So we destroy arguments, every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive, captive to obey Christ. Well, part of that means if you care about a person and they really have this argument, don't you think you should pay a little attention? You know, sometimes I'm guilty of this. My wife tells me all the time, you know, I talk too much. We need to stop and listen to people, okay? And I'll be the first to confess I'm not so good at that sometimes. But listen to what they're saying, then you reflect upon Scripture as you're listening to them, and then you answer to the best of your ability what you know scripture would say about that, you know, and it can have great effect. But you need to understand the argument, you know.

15:00And so, in naturalism, I just want to give you some something to initiate a discussion. And one of the great things about most naturalists, unlike postmoderns, they love to talk. In fact, they're kind of evangelistic in their atheism, if you hadn't noticed. You know, I had a good friend that's always trying to convert me to atheism. And so, one good thing about naturalists, most of them I've found, is they love to argue. You've got to avoid that trap of arguing for argument's sake and trying to see who's going to win the argument. But at the same time, you can engage them. And so, that's good. And I would, there's two subjects I will usually bring up with them. You know, I have discussions with them that seems to be fruitful and sometimes will actually stagger them and make them think about their position. One is point out the effects of naturalism on the past century. And quite often, atheists that I've gotten in discussions with, I don't want to say arguments, but discussions with, one of the first things they'll hit you with is, well, you know, you religious people, y'all just, you've killed so many people, you know. And first number one thing they bring up is crusades. All right. That's the first thing they want to bring up. And you got to remember, our Educational system, as great as it is, nowadays it is deeply flawed. There is so much that they don't want to teach. And so you can do a little education, it's real simple here. Say, oh, is that true? I say, well, hmm. How many people were killed in Crusades? What would y'all say the answer would be?

16:53Thousands, right? Maybe, let's give them, you know, say maybe hundreds of thousands. But I say, okay, well, could you tell me what religious war in the 20th century give me a religious war that's purely about religion, you know, the Baptists killing the Methodists. Give me a religious war that has resulted in over a million people being killed. And suddenly they'll get real quiet. And a lot of them just can't even give you an answer. Now, there is an answer.

17:29Turks killed over a million Armenians. And I didn't realize until recently they also killed over a million Greek Orthodox and also Assyrian Christians. So you got two million right there. That's religion. Most of them don't even know about that one. You know, our government's still too wimpy to really hold the Turks responsible for that. The Turks to this day officially claim that that genocide against the Armenians did. Not happen. And we know it did. It starts during World War I. They saw them as a security risk, but the reason they killed them was they were Christians.

18:12And now you could go back further and say, okay, you got the Thirty Years' War. That's the Catholics killing the Protestants. And that's a good one for them to come at you with. But Voltaire said 8 million were killed. in the 30 years war of course if you know your history you know there's a problem with that guess what the problem with it was guess where voltaire got that eight million number he made it up if you go and look at modern statistical studies which they now have uh i think one of the standard textbooks phil vogel and sphil vogel states uh in this you know uh survey western civ that the number is uh and a more accurate number is right around a million which is horrible which is terrible but it's nowhere near eight million i think that uh and a lot of people like to quote that third eight million number because that's worse than hitler killing six million jews right you see well the difference is one happened one didn't happen okay you know the second one so so anyway you clear the you clear the air there say okay now another thing you know why that almost a million people being killed In the 30 Years' War is really, really bad.

19:37Are we really pleasing Jesus to kill a Catholic for Jesus? Or a Catholic to kill a Protestant for Jesus? We know that's wrong. Why? It goes totally against what Christianity is supposed to be about. But does Stalin have to feel morally guilty for wiping out somewhere from 20 to 40 million of his fellow Russians? Of course, he's actually Georgian, but, huh? Because, according to his ideas, dialectical materialism, communism, they are defective, and therefore it's okay to kill them. See, they're not getting with the program. You see, the two biggest killers of the 20th century are all naturalistic in their ideology. And the two biggest killers has been communism and fascism or Nazism. Okay? And next thing you can ask them, tell me, who's the greatest mass murderer in human history? This is a real basic, easy thing. You only have to know three people to know this. Who's the greatest mass murderer in human history? Now, some of you have had this before, so you should know the answer. Who is it? It's not Hitler. That's the most common, or used to be the most common answer. It's Mausé Tongue. Mousley tongue, right? All right. But you got two different forms of naturalism here. Communism.

21:00Well, Hitler, we all know about survival of the fittest, social Darwinism, why is he killing the Jews? And here's another thing, too. These people that want to say religion is the greatest killer. Does Adolf Hitler kill all these Jews because he's a Catholic German? Remember, he went to Catholic school as a little boy. He sung in the choir. And it's real funny, a lot of atheists. Well, you see, he was a Catholic. Or he was a Christian. All right, you know, I think Dawkins sang in the choir, too. Do you think Dawkins wants to claim to be a Christian? All right, so that's an absurd argument. He carried around Nietzsche's books. You know, the guy who said, God is dead, sort of like a Bible. He presented volumes of Nietzsche both to Stalin and to Benito Mussolini. And so obviously he would use God language sometimes in his speeches, but if you actually read Mein Kampf, the guy was thoroughgoing atheists in his ideology. And so here you got, you can go the route of survival of the fittest, and you, you know, all species that are races that you think are inferior, it's okay to enslave them or to kill them. And, you know, the numbers with Hitler vary according to who you read, but generally, what I've come to the conclusion, most would agree with the number around 18 million that he's responsible for. Now, if you look at the entire casualties of World War II and blame all that on him, you Can expand that much, much larger, but about 18 million directly as a result of his policies. And that's survival of the fittest. But communism, you know, it's a different view on evolution. They're both evolutionarily based.

22:45And communism, no, no, it's not survival of the fittest. It is the species will survive if it cooperates. In other words, this view, it sounds warm and fuzzy at first. It's sort of like we're all brothers and sisters of the same piece of slime. And therefore, we should love one another. But you see, what is the great evil? It's not sin. They don't even have a conception of sin. No, no, it's inequality. That is why we are jealous of one another. That is the source of all evil. And so if we get rid of inequality, we hold all things in common, right? And, well, then we'll have world peace, sort of communist heaven on earth. But if you don't agree with this, well, you know, they got these two groups. You got the proletariat and, oh, somebody help me. Bourgeoisie. Huh?

23:41Bourgeoisie and the proletariat, okay? So, and bourgeoisie are the upper class that owns everything. And so what we got to do with the bourgeoisie? We got to kill them all, right? And then what about people that still don't agree? And maybe they're not part of the bourgeoisie, but ideologically, or maybe they're really infected. They're a horrible, horrible disease. All right. What's a horrible, horrible disease? The opiate of the masses. Religion. So we've got to get rid of all those folks. And so, as a result, communism, which starts off being warm and fuzzy, all brothers and sisters, same piece of slime, therefore we should love one another, they've killed more people than all the other ideologies combined. I mean, Stalin Long starts at 20 million, some say it should be 40 million, and Mousie Tung starts at 40 million, and some thinks it's up all the way up to 80 million, depending upon who you talk to. And folks, you try to count to a million, it's going to be a waste of a long period of time for you to get there. I mean, it boggles the mind, the numbers of people. And so these ideologies are all naturalistically based, atheistic. In fact, to be a member of the Communist Party, you've got to state that you're an atheist. And so that's, you know, if you make a naturalist confront that, an atheist, that really should put them back. You know, make them confront the fact that their belief that it's the religious people that cause all the suffering and the killing and the mayhem. And you show just in the 20th century alone, what naturalism has done, atheism has done, it should really make them think about things. You know, maybe there's something wrong with this idea, you know. All right, so that's one approach I would recommend to you. And then, you know, a number of years ago, our family went to South Padre, and Justin's Hendrix, his dad, Dan Hendricks, and Manda, they went down there with us as well. And can you imagine if we're walking along the beach, let's say it's not too many people, and Justin, who's quite little at the time, he runs ahead of us and then, of course, disappears. And then we come along the beach and we see this in the sand.

26:08What would you assume? Justin Hendrix is in the sand. Yeah. Yeah. I would assume that too. You don't think possibly a sand crab came out and did that? How about if you give a million years of sand crabs, do you think one of them could have come out with this design? Sure. Well, evolutionists would have us believe that. Did you know God's giving you a name that is a lot more significant than writing it in the sand?

26:50All right. Y'all familiar with Crick and Watson? They're the two scientists that discovered DNA. DNA. Y'all know a little bit about DNA? I'm getting into stuff here that I feel I'm qualified. I'll just do the best I can. Some of you that are more scientifically oriented, correct me. But both Crick and Watson are thoroughgoing atheists. And at one point, I believe it was Crick flat out said that he was doing scientific research hoping he could scientifically prove there's no God. But instead, he discovers DNA. And DNA really messed him up. Does anyone know why?

27:39Is a micro-bearing molecule. Information. An information micro-bearing molecule. You can't see it. I think somebody, I was reading somewhere where if you got 700 grams of DNA, it has the ability to store all data on the planet. And the alphabet, you know, you think simple because it's just four letters. But all life on this planet is built out of DNA. This information, now, you see, it's not just the structure DNA that. Incredible, and that's pretty incredible, but it's got all this information on it.

28:37It is a self-replicating, you know, molecule packed with information, and you got 3.5 billion letters in your DNA. Now, ultimately, I would argue only God knows your name, and only God can pronounce it. You want to pronounce a word that's 3.5 billion letters? Do you see why that's a little bit more significant than that signature in the sand? And you know, talking about this, I didn't believe this first time I read it. And so I had to go look it up, and it's all throughout the net, you know. First time I saw on Wikipedia, I know you can't always trust Wikipedia, but again, and again, different sources. They say if you put all the DNA molecules, by the way, the molecules are compressed.

29:44If you pull them in to end, stretch them out, it would reach from the earth to the sun and back 600 times. That's hard to believe, isn't it? That's how complicated your body is. And this is supposed to be an accident. And by the way, they say something like a thousand mistakes in your DNA on a daily basis, and it's got these programs correcting the mistakes. And sometimes the programs don't work. That's when you have things like cancer.

30:17All right? So that should make us real consciously praying to the Lord for good health. All right. All right. So, but, but, I mean, also, you can turn this around. Another one says, well, it was stretched from here to Pluto and back. Pluto's way out there. You know? Now, you know, remember, how can you see this and not believe in God? But remember, oh, isn't evolution wonderful? Okay. And remember, they suppress the truth. Okay, so this, I think, is a nice approach. Just, you know, the argument of, you know, the incredible complexity of life. And another thing that I'm not going to go into is the just-so universe. I mean, there's so many things for life to exist. You know, I love science fiction and get a kick out of watching sci-fi shows, but, you know, you watch that, you think there's aliens all over the place. It's really amazing to me how even people like Dawkins, he can't believe in God, but he believes in aliens. You know, he thinks DNA. Was seated on this planet because even Dawkins is honest enough to admit evolution does not explain DNA. Can't explain it. Information is non-material. So, how's a materialist going to explain non-material? You see? All right. So, Jeremiah 1:5, who's going to read it for me?

31:51Oh, it's there. Now, the word of the Lord came to me saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you. Okay. All right. Now, just some general little things, and this isn't necessarily just for a naturalist, but you'll get these sorts of questions. Perhaps you've been ridiculed if, say, you know, somebody confronts you, say, well, how can Jesus be man, all man, and all God simultaneously? Often, that's kind of hard to explain, isn't it? Okay. And then, how about you believe in virgin birth? And by the way, naturalists, they love to really upset Christians by saying very disparaging things about Mary and why she had Jesus. Okay.

32:45Or explain the Trinity. Well, they're feeling real self-confident while they're doing this. So let's ask them something. They know so much about naturalism. They know, you know, they got to explain. They understand it. So let's ask them a few questions, you know, kind of like do a, you know, God does Job. All right. Ask them, can you tell me why do we have consciences? By the way, what is conscience? Now you might think, well, everybody knows what conscience is, do you?

33:23Where does that come from? How can you have non-conscious matter having consciousness? Ask them that. And they're going to start crawl fishing real quick because they don't know the answer. They just don't. Or how about ask them energy? They'll go flip that switch. We've got lights. But what is it? Well, they can describe how it works. But what is it? They don't know. Or how about, oh, how about this one? Don't you have another? Creativity. Where does that come from? Creativity. You know, you have an artist, this incredible painting.

34:19Where does that come from? Betsy playing that violin just intuitively. Where does that come from? You know, creativity is really amazing when you think about it. And so, when you start asking them these questions about these things that they think they understand, or take water, the properties of water without which we couldn't have life as we know it on this planet. And water doesn't work according to normal rules. You stop and think about it. And so, you know, it's just there's all sorts of things that the naturalists are overlooking and not admitting that they do not even begin to comprehend what's behind it. And I think that's another way to open up discussion. You know. All right. Well, I want to do this short shriff. Nihilism, nihilism, whichever way you want to pronounce it. This is a worldview which takes the implications of naturalism. And what I would say about naturalists, which I do respect, they're more honest.

35:28They recognize that if I'm really going to be a thoroughgoing naturalist, then I have to admit to the fact that there is no meaning, there is no purpose. I mean, if you're a strict thoroughgoing nihilist, you wouldn't get up in the morning because you would doubt your own existence. I mean, they doubt everything, okay? And it denies objective ground of truth, especially moral truths. Now, you have this is a famous thing that Ravi Zacharias brings up in a number of talks he does. He noticed this when he went to Auschwitz concentration camp. Bose Hitler has there on one of the walls. I free Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality. We will train young people before whom the world will tremble. I want young people capable of violence, imperious, dominant, relentless, and cruel.

36:27Okay. All right. That's from now. Yeah. Just real quick. One of the big things that's now being pushed is optimistic nihilism. I don't know if the person is not. You got me on that, James. Optimistic nihilism. Explain. There's some YouTube videos on it that are interesting, but basically, their idea is they understand that nihilism is nihilistic in the sense that it's purposeless, but they want to find a purpose. So they say the optimistic side is, well, go do good. You know.

37:01Well, that sounds like a rebirth of existentialism, really. So there's modern atheists that don't want to just be confined to their best. They come up to another system. Yeah. Well, actually, I'm about to get to the next one, which is very similar to that, which is existentialism. And now, the problem with need to say that view, and of course, Nietzsche, in many ways, here's the thing about Nietzsche. Nietzsche, famous philosopher, Nietzsche is the first one to honestly come out. All these other philosophers who are denying Christianity or they're making fun of it, ridiculing it, but yet they still are pulling out cherry-picking morality from Christianity and pretending that they're getting it from observing nature.

37:48Well, Nietzsche calls them on it. He says, if you're going to deny God, then everything's got to go. You just got to jettison, and you know, we've got to progress to what he called the overman, right? And there is no right, there is no wrong, there's no morality. You know, we go beyond all that. Well, most people can't live that way, right? And so the next big movement, and really, after Hitler, in many ways, personified some of the ideas of the implications of that.

38:21You know, Nietzsche is kind of a hero both to fascist and also to communists. He's often referred to some of his writings, and we don't have time. That'd be an entire philosophy class trying to handle Nietzsche, which I'm not qualified to handle. But because most people just cannot live that way, back in the 50s, which remember right after World War II, they've seen the implications and the results on this type of thinking. They come up with this view of existentialism. And basically, the existentialists, and the two big guys are Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and both French. Both leftists, really in some ways, very Marxian in their thinking. They basically existentialism, and there's actually a theistic form of existentialism. You go Soren Kierkegaard, but the mainstream of the modern era has been thoroughly atheistic, and so that's what we're going to look at. And these guys come up with several interesting ideas. One thing about existentialism that is, you know, even the worst of things, you can find some gems of truth. And one is they will really argue that you can argue about something, you can say you need to do this or do that, but until you actually take action, you know, it's just, you know, you're just sort of full of it. You know, you need to really take action. And so the existentialists, the atheistic ones, they would say, well, we pretty much agree with everything that call them on naturalism. They agree with all that.

40:00But unlike the nihilists, which you'll notice on the chart, you know, is there meaning or purpose? No, and so what? There's no meaning. There's no purpose. They would say, well, what we can do is we can create our own meaning, our own purpose. However, that will be different for different people. That leads to what's out there to this day, still, what we call situational ethics. You probably have had conversations at some point where the person gets around saying, well, that. May be right for you, but it's not right for me. Right. Okay. In other words, there's this denial of absolute truth. And boy, that's where society is today.

40:41They've taken surveys of Christians. And a lot of Christians on these surveys will say they don't believe in absolute truth, which is really sad. And so anyway, they say, well, what you do is you come up with your own morality. You construct it on your own. And you do this through what they call self-authenticating experiences. Self-authenticating experiences. And, you know, I could spend a lot of time talking about that, but the best way to get across to it is a little role play that Dr. Parker, who, by the way, can teach worldviews far better than I can, and we might have to get him down here sometime because he's retired from Southern Seminary and he's up at Mahaya. So he's close at hand. Maybe we can get him down here. But anyway, Parker talks about this actually happened in a philosophy department, and the guy was explaining, you know, the whole idea of existentialism and the self-authenticating experiences. It's kind of funny when they talk about the authenticating experiences, it almost sounds like they're having a religious experience. And remember, these people are supposed to be, you know, they don't believe in religion. They don't believe. But anyway, let's say, some of y'all have heard me do this before. I apologize if you're getting a repeat here. But let's say you got this little lady, and she's approaching this intersection, busy intersection in downtown city somewhere. And she's got her little cane, you know, and she's coming up to the light, and there's, you know, just cars going. She's just looking totally bewildered. How am I going to get across the street? You know, and you're driving along, and you're observing this. You know, you just in an instant, you see, you know, and you're thinking, well, somebody should help that poor old lady. You know? And bam, you know, you realize, hey, talk about somebody else doing it. No, I'm an existentialist. I must take action. And that part of it's kind of positive, you know. And so you say, okay, well, I pull my car over, and you feel the self-authenticating experience coming on here. You're going to do a good deed, but it's good because you decided it's good. All right? And so you get out of your car, you run over there. Little lady, you need to get across the street. Oh, yes, sir. Can you help me? You help her get across the street. And, you know, you go back, get in your car, and you just feel good all over. You've done your good deed for the day, right? That's perfectly valid in existentialism. But let's roll the tape back, and we've got a different person in the car. He's a different existentialist. And he's going to see this totally differently. He looks over, he sees that old lady, and he thinks to himself, look at that old hag. Her biological unit is well past its due date. She is a drain on society. I bet you my money's going to take care of her. It could go to better use. Society should shut her unit down. And you feel the self-authenticating come over you. You aim your car at her, you roll her over, and you feel good. That too is equally valid. Y'all see a little problem with this? Okay, I hope you do. All right. Okay, so anyway, let's see. What am I doing wrong here? All right. So, humanity is central. People make themselves who they are. We create our own truth through self-authenticating experiences. No absolute moral values. They're all situational. And history is uncertain and even unimportant. Okay? So, and there is no supernatural. Okay? So, Eastern pantheism, I'm going to really run through this because I want to get to postmodernism. How much time have we got? Maybe two minutes. Ten minutes.

44:31Ten minutes. I'll tell you what, we're going to skip over this. You can go to YouTube. I covered it there. All right. All right. So, postmodernism. Also, spell postmodernism. And this is a, I wanted to get, you know, an official definition here. This is from Encyclopedia Britannica. Got the link there. You're going to go check me out. Also, spell postmodernism, Western philosophy, a late 20th century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism, a general. General suspicion of reason and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power. All right, scripture. Zach, you got me? Yep, you got the long one.

45:17God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.

45:54Well, I think of the postmodernist movement and the people that are caught up in it, you know, futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. If you want to just get a graphic image of this, take a look at some of these Antifa folks that they've arrested and they got the mask taken off of them. And just look at their faces. Talk about lost, broken people. Just the visage of their faces, you can tell.

46:31And the irony is, you know, Antifa claims it's anti-fascist. Guess what it is? It's a fascist movement. They talk about we're against hate. Guess what motivates those guys? Pure hatred. And they don't want to engage in discussion at all. In fact, in postmodernism, reason is considered to be a tool of the oppressors. All right, so how do you even talk to someone who tells you that? It's all about power. Some have said that postmodernism is an anti-world vision, a world view.

47:15It's so hard to classify. And so, oops, let me go back. And I think James is going to have to, this gentleman here kind of tries to give you a little bit of a taste of the thinking we're about to deal with here. If you just want to use words describing postmodernism, And really, to me, this is like nailing jelly to the wall. Have you already tried that? One of the aspects of postmodernism, the two big guys, Derrida is one of the big philosophers, and then you have Michel Foucault.

48:24Both these guys are pieces of work, let me tell you. French philosophers. Foucault, you know, both of them were Marxists. They're communists. And then they migrate towards postmodernism. If you want to see postmodernism from a secular perspective, I would say the guy that nails it the best of e-bi I've seen is Jordan Peterson. You got to be careful, Jordan Peterson, because he's eat up with evolution. The guy's brilliant, but at least he's Christian-friendly, I'll put it like that. But he's thoroughly secular.

49:03I know Andrew Clavin, maybe some of you have heard of him. He is a former Jewish person who became a Christian, has a talk thing on YouTube, and he's interviewed Jordan Peterson. And I was listening to him talking the other day. He says several times he's tried to nail Peterson, does he even believe in God? And he can't get a straight answer out of him. But on postmodernism, he really nails it. I unfortunately can't use. Of his clips because he'll exploit here and explicitify there, so don't let your small children watch him either. But he points out that a lot of postmodernism really emanates from old-fashioned communism.

49:44But he points out that by the 1960s, even the French intellectuals had to admit that communism was a catastrophe and they could no longer get away with pushing that. And so, what he says the postmodernists have done, but they've gone way beyond communism, is that they've just taken the old terminology, bourgeoisie and proletariat, and he's replaced it with oppressor and the oppressed. And see, you can get away with all kinds of new stuff that way, because all you do, you can always find a group out there and say they're being oppressed, right? And you can also have this other group that's the oppressor, and boy, you can keep that gang going a thousand different directions continually, and of course that leads to utter chaos, right? Which is, I think you see, that's where we're at today. Very, very chaotic. It's a breakdown of reason.

50:45Peterson points out that one of the leading elements that you'll see in postmodernism is a total lack of gratitude. All right? Just a total lack of gratitude. They are all about criticism, criticism, criticism. There's never any positive reinforcement. They're always deconstructing, tearing down, but never building up. It's a very negative, negative worldview, you see. And I think I'm out of time. Did y'all want me to finish this up next time, or do you want me to move on to Christian history?

51:24Finish it up? Yes. Okay. I would like to, because then I want to do Christian theism and just remind y'all some things of why Christian theism is so much the correct way to go. Yes, ma'am. Do people want to look up the talk here? Yeah, and it's just Emmanuel Baptist Church, Brian, put in Brian, and then Brian Texas, and then put Sunday School. I'm talking about the Jordan Peterson one. Look up on YouTube SNC. Oh, you just put Jordan Peterson postmodernism. He's probably got.

51:54SNC 2017 at the Sovereign Nations Conference, he talks about it. Oh, okay. Look up SNC 2017. Peterson will be there now. Yeah. But you just also just type in Jordan Peterson postmodernism. But remario, it's a secular perspective, and I have a few little problems with some of his approaches, but if you want to see it from a secular perspective, he handles it quite well. All right. Can we have someone pray?