Ep 1254 | Phil Robertson Wept at Auschwitz Concentration Camp & Why Moral Truth Matters

I am unashamed. What about you? Well, welcome back to the Unashamed podcast. This is our Hillsdale episode on Friday, as we have finished David. We're now complete experts on the story of David. Does everybody feel accomplished now that we've... I feel like it's one of those things where the more you know about something, the more you realize you don't know anything about it. That's what I'm right now. I learned so much, but I'm like, wow, there's so much more I could discover. Well, I know, and I think Al would maybe agree with me on this. I'm a lot more confident in David than CS Lewis. Yeah, we're in the... This is new territory. This is new territory. We're unsure of ourselves, but we have full trust in Zach and John Luke because you guys are CS Lewis aficionados. Y'all are more philosophers. Me and Al are more just kind of don't take the hard things and make it simpler. Don't take the simple things and make it harder. Yeah, exactly. So we're the opposite of you. Well, you're sitting in Jayce's chair. You got the hunting gear on. Did you go hunting today? Is that what this is? Yes, we did. Me and John Luke and... They came here straight from the blind. Straight from the blind. Straight from the blind. Which was very unashamed like. I'm super impressed with both these young men. Which I asked John Luke, how often does Jayce come in with all of his face paint still on? I have a one. Every once in a while. Every once in a while. And dad used to do it quite quickly. Yeah, did he? Yeah, he did it. I was going to leave it on to pay homage to that, but I cleaned my face. Well, I don't think Phil ever washed his face to your ducts or anything. Well, that's true. He just kept it on. He just kept it on. Because he never bathed either, but that's another story. Christian, you look too nice to leave that on. I'm glad you did that. I was looking at the old videos. We got to Phil. I found some old videos from when we first started doing all this and he's sitting in his chair pontificating. And I mean, the shirt, it's a white shirt, but it looks like they dipped it in your coffee, John Luke, and I'm about to dry it. It looks just like the whole thing was like stained. You had like a hole, like a rip in it. Oh, it's like holes in it. And that was his outfit because he had that and some khaki pants. And he always wore the synooks. Yeah, the synooks were the only thing he wore. And everything there was just dirty always. And even if it was clean, because this was not like they didn't wash it, but it never looked clean. Yeah. What was with the synooks? It was his uniform. I don't know. It's his uniform. Yeah, they were comfort. He had these huge bunions on the side. I don't know if you ever saw them. They're quite grotesque. Now, he claims that they were a blessing because when he was young, he could go up a muddy bank without with his feet like he was climbing like a monkey going up the bank because of those knobs because they would hold into the mud. So he claimed when he was young, it was a benefit. When I was a kid, I thought it was like another toe. I thought he had like an extra big toe. Like a six toe. Well, he got it from my grandmother. Granny. Do you remember Granny? So Granny had him too. She had the bunions. She had the bunions. So it passed on. I'm glad it didn't go to me because they were very unattractive. Yeah. They can fix it. But what's interesting is this bunions actually comes up in our talk because we talk about John's. John's progress. So we're going to get into bunions. And we're in CS Lewis today. We did a duck hunt this morning with me, John Luke, Jacob and John Reed. We shot two teal. Oh, the fourth, the next year. The next year. Yeah, it was the old brother-in-law duck hunt. Yeah. And John Reed, to be fair, is a seasoned hunter. Is that not true? He's done it his whole life. He'll tell you he's done it his whole life. Exactly. I mean, he won't tell you that, but I can say that for you. That we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we That's what Zach asked, a Jace on the podcast, uh, the last day or two. I'm very much running together podcast here about, uh, hunting when he came down and Jace, he, I don't know. He, he, what would you say, Zach? He went, he went with it, but he didn't seem real happy about it. I don't know. He was just, I feel like it's like part of the, like the thing. Yes. Okay. As long as you don't shoot over my head, I mean, you're going to get the speech and I'm like, I've never shot over your head. No, I'm not like two weeks ago, I texted Jay and I said, uh, I texted him and said, Hey, is any chance I can come duck kind of with you all this weekend? And all he takes me back was Jace will tell me who he wants to bring. I was like, is that a yes or no? I was like, all you could have said was let me ask Jace, but it had to be Jace will tell me who he wants. And I'm getting to go. I've got a few backup plans and bears coming with me. He's been working the Jacob angle. So whatever, wherever Jacob's going, I think he's going to take bear for a couple of days. So that's, that's the move. Yeah. Jacob's going every day and he's killing them. Yeah. I might go and I'm going with Jacob instead, but in the meantime, we are in the, we have a guy, I really have enjoyed this. I want to give a little bit of, um, you know, maybe like a little, what's the, like a note, a note here that this is different than anything we've ever done. We've, we've mainly focused on only on the scriptures we've got in every, not just in the Hillsdale episodes, but even, um, unashamed as a whole, we go through the Bible. So they were very comfortable kind of in the Bible, in the stories of the Bible. We did the story of Genesis. We did Exodus. We did, um, the story of David. This is different for us because now we've moved into probably one of the most influential, I think Dr. Arn said, said this in his first opening episode that, uh, CS Lewis was perhaps the most influential Christian apologist, um, in our lifetime or in the last hundred years, I forgot the framework that he said, but, um, I'm going to have to agree with that. I don't know about you guys. So if y'all, have you had interaction with his work before you took this course? For me, for sure. I've read every, I've read every one of his books, including the Narnia books, including the sci-fi books. So yeah, like I've gotten all 30 or something or whatever. All 30 something. Is that how many of these totals? Is it more than that? Yeah, it's probably about 30. Yeah. Yeah. You've read all 30 of his books. Yeah. That looks like it. Well, they're not super long. I mean, these are kind of like, look at that. That's like nothing. I've only read The Great Divorce, which was good. Which is one of my favorites. It's really good. Maybe my favorite. Yeah. His, I'm just not a, um, I like to consider myself a deep thinker, but I'm not, uh, philosophical. Yeah. There, there, he kind of turns it up and part of it just, when you start talking about moral objective and which is what we're going to get into, some of that language just kind of flies right over my head. So. Well, you're sitting in the right chair for that because Jase makes fun of Zach all the time. But I do want to add to what you said, Zach, because, you know, like even on the regular, on the shame, we've only done books of the Bible. Um, we kind of did an overview of the Old Testament way back in the early days of the podcast, but I do think it's important because a lot of people say, and dad used to say this in fairness, he would say, well, you don't need any other books. We got the Bible. Why do we need another book? But people have ideas. And of course dad said that and then wrote several books. So, you know, there you go and sold a lot of them. So it is important that we still as, as houses of the Holy spirit, uh, have inspirational thoughts that come from him. I mean, every sermon I've ever preached, if it wasn't coming from the Holy spirit, it wasn't any good. And I think it's the same for books. And so I think that through time, people write things, see us live as obviously, and this is one of the things that was said in the opening by Dr. Arne, uh, when you guys, and we want you to watch it with us, by the way, at Hillsdale and when you see the opening one, you can sign up to take the course with us for free at unashamedforhillsdale.com. And you'll, that first lesson, Dr. Arne is talking about him. And I love it because he said the thing you know that a person was a generational blessing is because he's selling more books now than when he was alive. And so that shows you that his work carries on me. You don't do that. Like we're all, we're in the book business. We've also done a ton of books as a family, but when they sell after you're gone, that means you said something worth, you know, passing on to the next generation. And so I do think it's important because a lot of people say, well, why do I need to read anything else? I was going to read the Bible, but other people have great ideas that can point you back to the Bible. So in CSOs, obviously does that in a unique way. I just have not read a lot of his material either. I've read some of his works, but I've all obviously known so much about his influence and what he is. And, and he's still speaking into our generation because, you know, he was doing this back during between the war war. So I mean, dad's era, you know, so it does make a difference, but, uh, I've, I've been challenged, but as in any challenge, it's been a good challenge. So it, but it's not my natural thing either. I'm Christian together. Oh man. I call Zach. I was like, well, I don't get it. I'm having a hard time. I'm understanding what he was talking about. Well, I loved it. I mean, Dr. Michael Ward is the professor. He gets the course and does, he did such a great job. I mean, we're, well, for, I'm, I'm not through the entire course yet. So I've taken the first three episodes. We'll do one and two today and then we'll move into the third one after that for the next episode. But, um, you know, for me, uh, just a little bit about my story, cause I think it'll set this up well of why this is important. So when Dr. Arnd says he is one of the greatest Christian apologists in history, you hear that word of apologists and it was just funny because I had this conversation the other night with some folks at our house for dinner. And me and Jill were the only two believers in the room, but everybody was, um, you know, I would say they were, it was kind of an intellectual crowd. Um, one of the gentlemen wrote for the economist. Another one, um, was a, actually a clerk for, for judge, uh, um, well, one of the Supreme court just can't remember which one. Um, and there was a really interesting conversation that we were having. And I was talking about Lewis's work and another guy and I was talking about Christian apologetics and they all kind of laughed. They said, what a funny word, right? Apologists like what, what, what, what are you apologizing for? And when you hear this word, apologists, which is what CS Lewis was, it's not an apology. He wasn't apologizing for Christianity or the claims of Christianity. What that means is it comes from a Greek word called apologia, which means to defend. And so when we say that someone is a Christian, apologists, what we mean is that they are someone who gives a defense for the claims of the Christian faith. And so if you read in the, as CS Lewis's work, uh, what you're going to find in there, there's a lot of just a lot of the objections or maybe the questions you've had over the years. I've had a ton of them. How do I know the Bible is true? You know, what about these other world religions? How do we know that they're not true? And how do you know these are, these are questions that will pop up. And there are intellectual answers to those questions. The answer is not just, well, close your eyes and cross your fingers and jump off the building and just have faith and hope that somebody catches you within. That's not the answer. There are actually well thought out answers to the most important questions of life. And so CS Lewis spent the bulk of his career in asking and answering those questions. And so I've read most of what he's written. John, look, I, I tried to get into the, like the space stuff and that I had a hard time. But so I haven't read everything that he's written. Some of his stuff is a little, little, uh, over my head. So, um, to be honest with you on, on, on the, um, on more of the, um, science fiction, the sci-fi stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But how he can break down, and we kind of get into this more in lecture three, talking about how he loved viewing the Bible more of more as a drama, which is kind of what his friends encouraged him to do. But yet the way he can take the Bible and create a narrative in a fantasy land and make it biblical and have biblical principles and the different out, out, out of the agrees, is that the right word? Allegorical. He's very allegorical. Yeah. See here, I am getting outside of my, my, my language comfort zone. Keep digging. Yeah. Keep digging. He has, he has a lot of cool allegories. Um, but just the way that he can articulate the Bible in a way that causes people, maybe that one, that would not read the Bible, but can view it more as a drama and just the way he can do storytelling, it actually is incredible. And the, the, the, the Narnia movies, the line in which the wardrobe is just one of the most fascinating ways of storytelling, um, the Bible. Yeah. All of his children are so good. I found it interesting and, and I know we'll start the next podcast with his actual conversion, cause that's what the follows the lesson before we get to this one, but I did find it interesting cause I didn't, I didn't know the personal story of CS Lewis until I started taking this course. So I have no idea. I didn't know where he grew up in the church and he sort of grew up with a Christian. The first part of his, what was telling these nine years old, he gets sent off to boarding school and basically has a terrible experience there, which shaped him and then he winds up leaving what he believed that like 13 years old. And so then until later in life, which we'll pick up on the next episode, he's not even a Christian. And so I didn't know that. I didn't know he was an atheist that went to a theist that went to a believer. And so it really was fascinating to me and Zach, I've told you this before. I've always thought, cause I agree with everything you said in the setup of, of that there are so many people out there of varying degrees of intellect and academics, but the gospel is for everyone. And so it's not like you say it's a simple story and it is a simple story, but it doesn't mean that it's just for simple people. It means it's for everybody. And so whether you're a simple person or you're a super intelligent academic, you still have the same problems. And so what I love about men like CS Lewis and I think about Lee Strowbull and our modern era and a lot of other guys is these were atheists that sort of either set out to disprove God and especially Christianity or just didn't believe in it and thought it was nonsense, but they're so smart. Once they got to breaking it down and looking at it, it actually proved itself to them the other way, which is exactly what happened to CS Lewis. So I do think that background makes him unique. And, uh, but, but I agrees that we have to be able to reason always because we have to reach everybody or else, or else what will happen is they'll say, Oh, yeah, well, that's just myth for the masses. And that doesn't matter for everybody else. And that's just not true. Yeah. One way to read Lewis too, I think is that's helpful and it has been for me over the years, um, even at our church, we have this phrase that we use. I don't know if it came from Lewis, but it's certainly adjacent to that world. We call it generous orthodoxy, meaning that like we're going to hold to the tenants, the core tenants of the Christian faith, right? But we're going to be generous in that. So there's going to be a diversity of belief, even inside our own body of different theological distinctives. And so, uh, uh, Lewis talked a whole lot about like maybe like the great hall of Christianity. It was, it wasn't like so, it wasn't very sectarian. If you know what I mean, it wasn't like anchored in like a particular tradition. And so I loved when, um, Dr. Arn was talking about when they built the chapel on campus. And I think he said the professor ward had come in and asked, well, what, you know, what this is a little Catholic is a little Anglican's little Baptist. What, what are you guys in here? Uh, what, what was the, what was the organizing principle around why, how you built this chapel? Cause I see a lot of influences here. And Dr. Arn said the organizing principle of the camp, uh, chapel on campus was mere Christianity, which was CS Lewis is one of his probably most famous books. And so, um, when you're getting into this study, when you read Lewis, I think it's good to read him and he really writes very broad for the Christian church, just very broad strokes of just big, massive questions of how do I know this to be true? And for Lewis, you know, he's coming out of an atheistic background or maybe a agnostic background. I never went there, but, um, I certainly went through a season of serious doubt. And I remember I was a young man, probably in my early twenties at whites very right, the church, uh, Al, you, you're an elder at, and I remember having serious doubts about the claims of Christianity. And, and, and for me, what that looked like was I was like, you ever, you guys ever heard of Pascal or Pascal's wager place? Pascal was like, uh, you guys ever heard him? He had a thing called Pascal's wager, which was, if it's even possible that God exists, then you should put your faith in him because it's like playing pot odds, you have eternal reward or eternal punishment to, you know, at stakes, even if it's possible, the smart thing to do was just to go all in. And so that was kind of the basis of my faith. But if I'm being honest with you, I was very intellectually dissatisfied. And a lot of the same questions that Lewis had and the questions that he was thinking about, I had those same questions. And it wasn't until I began to dive in and ask those questions in the honest way and really search for an answer that I find really true intellectual fulfillment in my faith. So I could identify with his story quite a bit. I don't know about you guys, if you ever kind of went through those doubts yourself. Yeah. I mean, I have three thoughts, um, just on CS Lewis in general, and the first, I kind of piggyback off what you said is the, one of the reasons I think he was so influential is cause he wrote from that perspective of like me or Christianity of like what's like, or I think that's probably his most popular, call it apology, apology book, me or Christianity, writing from that like baseline. And it was such so influential to me, whenever I started writing the summer camp, uh, Camp Shioca, that was one of the first things I did was write out, like what is our core beliefs and all the counselors have to sign like this is our core belief state before they come in. And I modeled a lot of it and took the me or Christian approach of like, what is just the baseline? Like what is everyone? Do you say you're a father of Jesus? Like what do we believe? And that has the counselors have to read that and sign it. And I tell them, you don't have to teach or even believe everything in this, or you don't have to believe everything in this. You just can't teach anything out of it. And outside of this, which is allowed us to have counselors from church of Christ, Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, like the whole more cash, Mac church is the whole range and spectrum of followers of Jesus because we like stick to like, what is the things that bind us? Where are the things that the Holy spirit is working in this that unite us and not focusing on the other, you know, non salvation essential questions. You know? Um, and kind of going into that too, I think that whenever I was having a lot of doubt, just like usac and I was reading a lot of CS Lewis, that kind of like getting back to the foundation was so influential with me of like, okay, what's just like the basic Christianity? Like let's get out of the dogma. Let's get out of all the arguments, all the stuff and just say like, what is this? How does Jesus impact my life? Like, what is the story saying in its most basic form? What is God trying to teach right now? And how does this affect me? You know, which is literally, which led me to him, even through doubts from other scientific perspectives or other like challenges to my faith. I was able to just go back to say like, okay, this is a meaningful story. What is God doing in this world? And what does this mean on a basic level? Yeah. And this has been, I mean, this whole, this first argument that he kind of lands on in lesson two, which was the anchor for Lewis, by the way, you can sign up and take this course with us for free at UnashamedForHillsDale.com. We're in the CS Lewis course. And, and yeah, so the way that, that Dr. Ward kind of anchors this at the beginning, which I thought was really brilliant. He first shows, okay, it makes this point of what was it that led CS Lewis away from his belief in Christ? Because he went to the school you mentioned now where the headmaster was apparently horrible, who ended up dying, I think in a insane. That was crazy. Well, he got sent there like a couple of weeks after his mom had passed away. So that was crazy. At nine years old. Yeah. Nine years old. Yeah. And then somehow that experience made him want to read the Bible and pray more. But then yeah, that headmaster was just a lunatic and ended up dying and and then was very abusive to students and all this. Yeah. So it was a bad, it was a bad. By that wasn't what you would you think that would be the thing that led him away from Christ and his faith, but it wasn't. Do you guys remember the thing that they really made him question? It was a bright prayer, wasn't it? No, it was like other. It was like other. Oh, yeah. Other. He started to read the pagan religions. Yeah. You know, the Greek mythologies. And they were saying there was no truth in any of those. Only Christianity, which that was nothing you could gain out of anything other than Christianity, which is so interesting that what led him away from Christianity was not the claims of Christianity. Right. It was the claims of Christians about other world religions that and other mythologies that, well, we know that's not true. And but this is true. And man, I can identify with that too, because if you grew up in like more fundamentalist Christianity than like what I heard growing up, but I'm not saying that this was said by everybody, I'm just telling you, this is what I interpreted it when I was in my own doubt, I would have doubts. Like, how do we know that this is true? And the answer would always be, well, that's where faith comes in. And faith was almost put against like rational faculties and reason. And so it was like, well, that's the thing. Faith is that it is the it is the leap of faith, the blind faith where you don't know where you're going. So it's almost like you're on top of that building and it's on fire. And faith is you just got to jump. You just got to leap. And but when you're looking down there and you're like, but there's nobody there to catch me and they're like, no, no, someone will show up. So the greater the leap, the greater the leap into the unknown, then the greater display of faith. And and so Lewis, I think, is pushing back against this for sure. And a lot of other Christian apologists that I've read like Francis Schaefer, and that's not faith. The jump off of a building when you have no reason to believe someone's going to catch you is not faith. That's stupidity. Faith would be more trusting in these true claims. And it's it is based in, in something that's knowable that God has revealed himself in such a way that it's knowable. So I think what Lewis was hitting on is he's hearing and reading these other religions and they're like, this count that, but except this will lie. Well, that's faith. That's just faith. And I think that that really led him to think, well, this isn't true. Well, how do I know this is true? And actually, actually looking at those other groups, I think, helped him get there. The three major points that are used in the lesson are moral value is objective. Moral value is universally realized as an objective. And that's where he got into the stuff with the Chinese philosophers and the Hindus and, you know, every other group, every other people. And then moral value is to be practiced and participated in. That was kind of the three points that, what's our guys name? I want to say Dr. Jackson, but Dr. Ward, Dr. Ward, Dr. Ward pointed out, but I want to give our audience just a little thing that helped me because I listened to the lecture first and I was, that's when Christian we're talking, I said, whoa. But then I also picked up this little abolition of man, which was the book that this lecture is sort of based on. And I thought that that really helped me a lot. Yeah. I, when you said that earlier, I was thinking about that and about the lectures. Cause I said, see, this was really focused on the basics and the fundamentals, but it is complex. And I actually think that the video series is so good because it, it condenses all the information, which in gives it to you in 30 minutes, which is really good. But it also makes it more dense, like very dense. Where it was when you read the book in a longer form, it actually makes it a little more simpler cause he has more time to explain. You know, well, he also, it's like a movie, right? Cause you, you watch a movie about something and you know, it's good because it, it puts it in that block for you. But when you read the book, you get all the details. So he, he, uh, I thought the thing that spoke to me the most in this whole argument about morality being objective rather than subjective is, is he framed it. And this makes perfect sense because he, he's a professor. I mean, he's, he's a teacher and he frames it in a classroom. Cause you remember, he has this child children's book that he reads and then the whole, that becomes kind of the straw man of the whole story. As it goes out to what these people are saying about subjective morality. And I just ran my own mind out. I thought CS Lewis, my, his mind would be blown. If the things he described here 80 years ago, if he could see today, what has happened in college campuses and in classrooms, he was so right about what happens when subjective morality becomes your standard. You have no standard. And now we've lost complete campuses, complete universities. And in some cases we could lose a complete nation, uh, because of subjective morality. And so I just thought he was so right about where this leads to, you know, and he, and he talked about it through the case. He, you know, this, this runs itself out. I just thought about it. You could, you could go back in time because he's right there at the beginning of where these thoughts are beginning to really plumb themselves out. You know, he was right at the beginning of the, my truth, your truth. Yeah. But he was saying all that without really saying that, but he was implying that. And yeah, that's kind of what we're at now. And our generation, even more than mine. Yeah, it's probably a helpful tool to just think about the word objective versus the word subjective. And the difference between the two is an objective truth. What we mean and what Lewis meant when he said objective morality or objective truth is it's morality or truth that is binding independent of your perception of it or independent of what you want it to be. And then subject to the uninfluenced by emotion and prejudice. I mean, it is what it is. It is a reality that's outside yourself. And then for it to be subjective, that just means it's subject to your own preference or opinion or desire or interpretation. So one way I've heard this described is super helpful for me was a, I heard an apologist and I can't remember who said this, but it was a lecture I went to. And I remember, I don't remember the name of the apologist, but I do remember their analogy. He had a jar full of starburst. You guys like starburst, by the way? Yeah. Are you all like starburst people say? I'm not a candy person. I mean, I like. Starbursts are my favorite. Yeah. But I like it. Yeah. Do you have like a favorite flavor of starbursts? Cause it has like different, they have different colors. I like the orange one. Yeah. Do you think that's the best flavor? I don't know. What do you? The orange or the red one? I don't know. You like the purple one. Is there a purple one? I don't like the red one. They don't have a purple one. So. I don't like starburst. I may have to go with the pink one. I basically quit candy with sweet tarts when I was a kid. I still like a good starburst, but my, like if you said, Zach, what's the, what's the best flavor? I would say that's the red flavor for me. I think it's cherry. But if you asked, you know, somebody else, they may say, what's, it's the lemonade flavor, which is yellow. And so he had that jar and he said, okay, what's the best flavor? And then everybody screams out like different flavors and like, okay, what's well, okay, for me, yeah, my truth in that moment, it's a subjective truth. The best flavor is red, but that's dependent on my own personal preference or taste or flavor. This is, this is me. Now you, so we have different truths about the best flavor in that jar. But then the next question he says, well, how many starbursts are in this jar? Now, if I feel like there's 120 and you feel like there's 72 and there's actually 81, then it doesn't matter what we perceive or what we want or what we think, what matters is that's whatever that number is, it's objectively true. It's true, independent of our perception of it. I don't care what it looks like to you or what you want it to be or what you feel like it is. No, no, it is true, independent of that. So when we talk about morality in this way, what Lewis is saying is that there is a moral value, there's moral values and duties that are objectively true and they are binding on all people and it doesn't really matter what your religion is or who you are. You know these things to be true. And so that's one of the reasons why he would go into other cultures and other worldviews and he would see this, this binding objective morality throughout all of them. And also Zach, so even if I said I hate Starbursts and in fact, I don't even think that is Starbursts, there's still an objective number in that jar. Still an objective number. Whether I don't like it or I love it. My problem with Starbursts is that the flavors are too subjective. Is it cherry? Is it apple? What kind of, yeah. See that's why I don't like the flavor of the art. He's taking it away. Wherever you land on that, there is a number in there that's in the regardless of what you think about that, John. Like here's an interesting thought. I just watched the movie Nuremberg. Have you all seen this on? I forgot. I'm not, but I want to watch it. Yes. No, I haven't. Very, it's very, very good. And there's a scene in the movie where the second in command of all of the Nazi command because Hitler's killed himself. He's dead. So they're going after the second in command guy, but they're also at the same facility they were holding a guy named Rudolf Haas, who was the commandeer of Auschwitz, which we went there. We were there. I mean, when you're there, what did that feel like? Palpable, palpable evil. Like it's just evil. You feel it. Like it's a, it's a Paul. It's, I've never felt anything like it. One other time when I was in Haiti and they took us by this place that practiced voodoo and there were voodoo priests in there. And I felt that same thing. It's the only other time, two times in my life where I felt palpable, like something was, you know, on me evil. That's what it felt like at Auschwitz. It was intense. It was very intense and very disturbing to be honest. That broke down. He just couldn't even feel was weeping. I mean, that's like, you know, we, we got this off. We were probably some of the only two people to get, they got to see Phil cry quite a bit, but it was the last years of his life. But that was one of them when we filmed that scene in Auschwitz. And, and it was super powerful because we were, you're just sitting there thinking, man, they murdered. Two million human beings in this facility. And not only did they murder these human beings, they engineered this concentration camp to be a factory of death, to how can we burn and expose? We, we, we have to dispose of these bodies that we can't, we can't dispose of the bodies faster than we can kill them. And so they bring in literally an engineer and Rudolph Haas basically builds out like just like you would any manufacturing facility. He's looking at this and how do we manufacture death and how do we stream? I mean, it's just blatant evil. So in the movie that I watched about the Nuremberg trials, which is when they held all the Nazis accountable and they had this international court. That's the story of how that happened. There's a psychiatrist that is analyzing these characters that were high up in the Nazi regime. And the way that the story unfolds is you can kind of see that he's kind of compromised because he sees their humanity as dark as they are. And he said, well, you can see he's kind of morally complex. Well, maybe they just didn't know. And, but then when they started showing those images and they were real images, by the way, of found footage of these Holocaust, of the Holocaust. And you see this on screen, like you there's just like no defense left. You know what I mean? This is just objectively evil. It doesn't matter who you are. When you look at the stories and you look at the photographs and you look at the found footage, you look at the film strips of what happened in these camps. Nobody says, man, that is that's good. Everybody is just objectively horrified by that moral evil. That's what he's talking about when he says that moral value is universally held to be objective. And what happens, Zach, if you don't have, if they, if you don't see it that way, the way you just described it, which is the only way to see it. And there, by the way, there are millions of people that don't. They just ignore it and say it didn't happen. The only one, the only thing you can do is deny that it's the truth. And there's a lot of people out there. So that's the Holocaust is all made up. You know, it's like the one you have to because if you look at it, would that be objective and subjective? There's no doubt that there's no doubt that's a good example. In fact, Zach, he used a line in the lecture about might being right that you use when you wrote Torchbearer, which, which was that exact line. What happens with subjective morality is this is why you can't have it. Because if it gets loose in governments and he mentions Nazis, but he also talked about communism, but even then talked about democracy. Remember when he talked about Great Britain, because he was seeing that begin to happen there, when you have subjective morality, then whoever is the strongest will they implement that morality on everybody else. And so people always suffer under this idea. Can y'all explain a little bit? Sorry, John, like, so because Lewis talks about when there's a moral law and he kind of goes into this idea of, if there was a moral law, if there's objective, objective morality, there has to be a moral law giver. There has to be something outside of that that puts that inside of us. And then he kind of talks about the straight line and the crooked line and how you only know that it's a crooked line because you know what a straight line is. And then he talks about the Dow or the towel. Me and John Luke, John Luke thought he was pronouncing it incorrectly. Okay, I'm not just making a call. I'm just always in my head said towel. I always did too. He was calling it the dow. He says it's the dow. But Zach, can you in or our or John Lee, whoever wants to kind of try to articulate that idea of the moral law? Kind of in Lewis's point was that implies that there has to be a moral law giver for us to claim that there is a moral law and kind of his analogy with the crooked line and straight line, which I think kind of ties into the objective truth and or objective reasoning and subjective reasoning. The first thing that pops in my mind is there's another gentleman from Great Britain whose name was GK Chesterton, who said he wrote an essay or asked the question. He said something that in order to know what's wrong with the world, you must first know what's right with it. And so the way this would be like prescribed to maybe a modern apologetic would be like William Lane Craig has written on this. He calls it the moral argument for God's existence. And this is he didn't come up with this means Lewis is obviously writing about it as well. But the way that he sets up the argument, I think it's very helpful. He basically says objective moral values and duties cannot exist unless God exists. So there's your premise. Second premise is objective moral values and duties do exist. Conclusion, therefore, God must exist. So that's a very logical sequence of how the world works, right? Or that's a logical argument. The question is, is it true? Is it true that objective moral values and duties can't exist unless God exists? And so the exercise would be this. If can you can you think of a scenario where you remove God from the equation and then you're going to have a binding objective value moral or moral value on somebody? So the Holocaust is a great example. The transatlantic slave operation is a great example. And the question is in the absence of God, who determines what's right or wrong? You just take God out of the equation. Well, then who determines what is right or wrong? And the only answer that you can come up with is you determine it for yourself. And it is the impact subjective. And so one of the argument that Lewis is making is that nobody can actually live like that's true. Even the people who say that they don't actually live like it's true. A perfect example of that would be the commandeer of Auschwitz. Rudolf Haas, who clearly did not believe in objective moral values and duties because he committed one of the worst crimes in human history. He literally engineered the death of two million people. But you know, whenever they held him on that he was on trial in the Nuremberg trials, this wasn't in the movie, but I read this in a book one time. And they sentenced him to death for his crimes before he died. They gave him an opportunity to share any last regrets. So you know what he said? This like blows my mind. This man killed two million people and he lived like right across the fence from where this was happening at with his family. And when he when they put him to death, he said, my one regret is that I wish I had spent more time with my children. So even someone who had given themselves over to such a depravity, he still held on to some kind of objective good that that's time spent with family time spent with kids. That's a morally good thing. So the idea is that the reason why objective moral values and duties can't exist without God is that in the absence of God and Dr. What's his name again? Ward. And Dr. Ward makes this point is in the absence of God, man becomes the determiner of all things, but it's not just any man who gets to determine that. It's the one who's got the biggest stick. And as he said, might then becomes right. And so that's been the thrust of human history. You take God out of the equation, whether it's communism, Nazism, fascism, democracy, doesn't really matter. You take God out of the equation, you let man become the determiner of all things. And then guess what happens? Tyranny, anarchy, death, I mean, in murder, that that's the end result. Might becomes right. Well, and I even like the word he kept using with self-evident about morality. And as soon as he said it, my mind immediately went to the Declaration of Independence. Yeah, my mind. Yeah, I say, there you go. We're tracking. And I wrote down the first couple of lines. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, which is there's one of your tenants, you know, right off the bat, but that they are endowed by the creator. There's another one with certain unable noble rights like life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And then he goes on with the rest of the things. So I love us the same idea. That's how we founded a country. Our founders understood exactly what he was saying. And there has to be objectivity because without it, you get just what Zach was describing. And we've seen many and still see to this day. I mean, you go to the continent of Africa right now and there is subjective morality happening and people are being murdered and slaughtered as a result of that. And so I do think he framed the whole argument in such a good way by putting it in education. And there were a couple of lines I just had to read you out. They were, they were worthy of writing me writing down. And this was from abolition of men, of man. And one of them, when he said, he's talking about what's produced by this emotional propaganda, and he says, whether you get a trousered ape or an urban blockhead. And I thought to myself, I thought, if that's when I turn on my television, I see a group of people that are gathered together to have some beef. It's usually people that look like a trousered ape or an urban blockhead that has, so I was like, here he is again, being a. I'm going to add that to my arsenal. That's good. And then he says this, listen to this line. He says, the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. I mean, that is really good. So if you want to take the course with us, it's so much better. If you get the lecture and then come in here, I was talking about sign up, take the course for free at UnashamedforHillsdale.com. Go ahead. Yeah. A couple of things to just going back to your question, Christian, is that I think what you have to remember is he talks about something that's self-evident in philosophy, sometimes to use a term called a priori knowledge or, or in apologetics, they might use a term called properly basic belief. And what that means is there are some things that we hold to be true that need no justification for why we hold them to be true. So if you ask me, hey, where can I get a bag of ice from? I'm going to tell you, go down to the gas station, two blocks over, and they sell, they sell ice there. And you may ask me, well, how do you know that to be true? And then I would say, well, because I was just down there today and I saw an ice thing and I looked inside of it and they had about 50 bags left. So I justified my belief by telling you why I believe it to be true. But there's some things that we don't have to justify why we believe them to be true. They just are true because they're self-evident. And so what happens is, is objective morality and closely associated with that is objective truth. Those are things that you can hold to be true and you do not have to justify why, why you believe, why you hold that belief. And, and one of the reasons, one of the primary reasons why is because is when you, when you say something like objective reality or objective truth, doesn't exist or, or there are no objective truths. When you make a statement like that, you are actually presenting an objective truth, that there are no objective truth. So the, so what, what you're actually doing is you're, it's like, I've heard it say like this, you're, you're sawing off the branch that you're sitting on. By stating the very premise of what you're saying, you're actually undercutting what you're saying. You can't say like my friend, Matt, one time he said, he said, Zach, here's your problem. You don't understand that there are no guarantees. And I said, can you guarantee that? And he said, absolutely. And then I was like, well, that's one, right? It's a, it's, it's an exercise of a self-defeating argument. And so that's one of the things that Lewis, whenever at the very beginning of the, of the lecture, Dr. Arn said that CS Lewis said, I can't believe a thing unless it makes sense. And so everything that he was putting forth was what, what actually makes sense. And if it's nonsensical, then we just reject it. So to say that objective morality or objective truth doesn't exist, you end up establishing the very thing that you say doesn't exist. That's nonsensical. So we throw it out. And that's the premise of his whole entire methodology. Yeah. Well, and that's the problem too, is because you can't reason with someone who says that this objective moral morality is not objective morality or it's not objective. So it's like, like you can reason with people that maybe they have different subjective reasonings for things, but it's like, if it's this, if the sun is shining and then someone's like, that's the moon, you're like, no, that's the sun. And then if they want to argue about why there's the sun of the moon, it's like, you can't actually reason with that person because it's objectively true no matter what you say. But he asked this, he asked this question to me and John that we're talking about this, because one thing that I love about these courses is that there's these little quizzes after, I don't know if y'all take the quizzes, but I think it's fun. Of course I do. I can't get my certificate unless I take the quiz. Well, I think the questions are fun because it actually, you know, helps you to, to, to pay, to pay more attention. And I feel like it's kind of creates a good baseline for, for what you learn. But he asked, he, question 10 on the lecture two quiz, I got it correct, but it was spoiler warning. Is this cheating? No, no, they've already listened. Well, okay. Well, I'm going to ask the questions that because I don't know if you took the quiz. C.S. Lewis concludes the abolition of man by stating that the reality of objective moral value necessarily denies any role for subjectivity. And the correct answer was false. I put false, but I have no idea what he was saying or asking, which is why I love this because it's making me reach because I don't know. And you had a 50-50 start. Well, it's a starburst. It's a starburst analogy. Well, yeah, help, help me with that. And for those listening who would more than likely maybe err on the side of me and Al, I'd be confused by the, the wording of this question. Well, the starburst analogy is that is the emergence or the, the reality of objective truth, how many starbursts are in the jar? 81, objectively true. What's your favorite? What's the best flavor read? That's subjectively true. So one doesn't negate the other. There are truths that are subjective that are dependent on our perception of it. When you ask me about what, what is the best on something, that's a preference that I hold. And so that doesn't, that isn't eradicated with, with the establishment of, of objective truth. It doesn't kill subjectivity. All it does is, but it does anchor reality in something that's noble and real that transcends us and morality is one of those things that we don't determine. So he's not saying that subjective truths don't exist. He's just saying that when it comes to morality, that's, that is objectively true. And, and that, and that's the anchor, which by the way, I love how, you know, we, you know, the number one, probably the number one objection to people putting their faith in Christ, what do you, what would you think it is? The number one objection that people would have for believing in the God of the Bible. Probably that there was things they couldn't do then, like they're, in other words, they would have to be bound to, you know, some life they didn't want. I guess. Yeah. I would say suffering or God suffering. Evia suffering. Yeah. That, I mean, all the studies show that the number one objection to belief in God, particularly the God of the Bible is what's called the problem of evil. Why? What's suffering exists? Why is there, which by the way, that was CS Lewis's. Yeah. Which, which we'll do that on the next podcast, that that was his thing. Remember, that was the one thing he said. But there's so much cruel. And it's what, but, but what he did was brilliantly, like, if you think about that, he had to back right back up into the moral argument. Because, because when he says, I don't believe in God because, because of the Holocaust, that was so evil, it was objectively evil. And I can't believe that God would allow that to happen. Well, then you ask the question, well, who says it's objectively evil? Who said that? Well, it, well, it just is. But why? Well, because society says it's wrong. Well, their society, that was actually their argument during the Nuremberg trials. Their whole argument was that the Nazis, they were like, wait, you can't hold us accountable for something that our society deemed as good. We were just following orders. We were just living out our societal worldview. And the end of the argument on the other side of the Allied soldier or the Allied armies were, well, there's a law above your law to which all men are behold. And that's the law that C.S. Lewis is talking about. So you end up, no, it's objectively evil. So you, and pick your poison, maybe you're a Holocaust denier. Well, what about the transatlantic slave operation? Was that objectively evil? Or was that just evil because we've evolved in our society to believe it's evil? No, no, it was objectively evil. Well, you said, well, even that, OK, what about like, like rape and murder and abuse of children, just go as dark as you want to go? Is there anything that you would say, I don't care who you are. I don't care where you're from. I don't care what time period you've lived in. That, my friend, is objectively evil. And if you say that, then what you're essentially saying is there is someone else outside of us who said it's evil. And then you want to ask, well, who is that guy? I want to make a quick point here. And we're about to run out of time. Because you said that earlier of the kind of atheists argument or being there is no higher power. So that's why you know, morality is objective. But I just heard this the other day. So I want to make the make the case for the atheist materialistic argument. And I didn't just because I heard this last week. And the the what they were saying was that morality is the concept of morality is objective and to be clear, this is not me saying this. I'm staying the other side's argument here. The concept of morality is objective because it's developed through evolution in order to keep us humans alive. So the specifics of morality are subjective, but only in the sense of what the majority of people on earth over a given period of time believe. And that can change over a long period of time. So truth, moral truth, isn't subjective to any one individual person, but humanity as a whole at any given time. Yeah, they're trying to tie it. They're trying to tie morality to a Darwinian perspective of survival of the fittest and that that that groups of people who actually hold to said objective moral standards, values, duties, whatever you want to say it, they they tend to propagate their DNA better. And so then they're going to pass that on. And then that that will become a trait in a gene somewhere. But the problem with that is two fold one. It may account for what's called altruism, which is we do we do the right thing. But it doesn't call it doesn't account for what we would call high altruism. And an example of that would be what? What evolutionary benefit would someone get from helping an old lady across the street? Like that doesn't increase one's one's survival mechanism whatsoever. It doesn't propagate my DNA. I have no vested interest. There are a lot of moral goods that we would hold to that don't actually that you can't find any way that they would they would enhance my ability to survive. I'm the last she sets you back that would actually be damaging to you for things you to give your life for someone else, you know, things like that. So, yeah, you're exactly right. Yeah, that's the first problem with it. And then the second problem is you even have behaviors that they would never say are morally wrong that clearly don't propagate DNA, such as even the sexual liberation movement has not propagated DNA. A lot of times it's the death, the sex in the end and the death of DNA. And and so I think that's the what we're actually saying, though, is morality transcends that. And even those who would hold that position that you just said, here's where it all falls apart is if if if they were telling you that and then you punched them in the face, they would they would cry moral foul. And they would they would say that's wrong. It's like the gentleman I read one time, he read a paper for his professor that objective morality doesn't exist. And he turns his paper in and the professor gives him an F. It was an incredible paper, but he gives him an F. And guess what the guy said when the student when he read it, when he saw the ad, you know, he says, not fair. The guy said, well, you talking about not fair. This is a thing that's fair, my friend. I'm just going by what your paper said. There's no objective, good or bad. So no one can actually live in that space. And I think that's probably, to me, the greatest testimony. And it's where CS Lewis in the next episode will get to this. It's where he actually lands on Christianity is when he starts to assess the truths of Christianity in the same framework that he developed this apologetic on on on human morality, which I found to be one of the greatest. I hadn't even I'd never really seen this in his work before. So it was really profound for me to read to hear that lecture. But yeah, I think we're out of time, but we're going to be taking this every Friday. We're in the CS Lewis series right now. Super excited about this. I know this is different for, you know, what we've been doing, but I want to encourage you to press in. I know sometimes our brains are hurting in some of this discussion, but let's lean in and we'll do it together next week. We'll get on the conversion and the new life with CS Lewis. Join us every Friday for Unashamed Academy Powered by Hillsdale College. Make sure to go to UnashamedforHillsdale.com and sign up. It's no cost to you. 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