Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 559 ｜ An Atheist's Take on Christianity & The Power of Truth ｜ Guest： James Lindsay

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends

00:00:14.500 at Good Ranchers. Better than organic chicken and Kraft beef. Shipped right to your front door. Go

00:00:20.780 to goodranchers.com slash Allie and check it out. All right. Today is part two of my conversation

00:00:28.280 with James Lindsay. Part one came out last Tuesday. If you have not listened to that,

00:00:33.560 definitely go listen to it. We talk about the cultural moment that we're in and the long

00:00:39.040 lineage, philosophical lineage that has led us to where we are, especially when it comes to race

00:00:46.860 politics. It was a fascinating conversation as it always is with James Lindsay. But today I wanted

00:00:53.620 to talk to him specifically about theology and our disagreements there. He identifies,

00:00:59.040 I believe, as an agnostic slash atheist. You guys know I'm a Christian. And I really wanted to know

00:01:06.020 why isn't James a Christian? I mean, he references Christianity and the Bible a lot. He seems to

00:01:11.140 really understand Christian theology on a very profound level. And so I wanted to talk to him

00:01:18.280 about why he's not a Christian and our differences there. And I think that you're really going to,

00:01:23.140 enjoy this conversation. So without further ado, here is our friend once again, James Lindsay.

00:01:32.820 Nobody's really read Marx. And the people who have, according to the Marxists that I've read in

00:01:37.600 the past, or who've written in the past, say, 20 years, I don't think a lot of people understood Marx.

00:01:43.240 So Marx had this very simple kind of construction of the world. You have this thing called the base,

00:01:48.120 later in the structural framing, it got called the infrastructure. That's your productive

00:01:51.800 workers. It's also where nature is. It's where all the stuff's happening. But all of your productive

00:01:56.360 working class is the base. That's what actually builds society. Society's made out of that. And 0.94

00:02:02.320 then you have all these people who do things like what we're doing. We're talking. We don't do real

00:02:06.240 work. We talk. We write books. You know, we're lawyers. We mediate people's problems. We're priests

00:02:11.920 or pastors, and we just shepherd people through spirituality that's their opiate of their masses or

00:02:16.660 whatever. These aren't real jobs. They don't produce any real tangible stuff. So in a sense,

00:02:21.640 Marxists see that as a grift. But what Marx called all of that is the superstructure of society. And

00:02:26.820 that's where the real organization of society kind of gets its kind of basis. And everybody who's

00:02:31.840 involved in the superstructure is also known as an ideologist. An ideology is this bunch of excuses

00:02:37.640 the people who get to work in the superstructure give for why they get to be in the superstructure.

00:02:42.480 Why they get to do this fake work that doesn't have to produce anything while somebody else has

00:02:47.560 to toil with a hammer or a sickle to produce the base of society. And so they have these things

00:02:54.500 called ideologies. And they convince themselves that their ideology is the real explanation for

00:03:00.300 how the world works. And so they therefore are trapped into thinking, well, this is how it's

00:03:06.540 supposed to be. I've earned my way here. I went to school longer. You know, I'm meritocracy. I did the

00:03:13.480 right stuff. I sacrificed. I've worked my way up. And you could too if you wanted to. But what you

00:03:20.040 have is that those two things are held in this relationship and tension with one another. And

00:03:24.140 they're creating the structure of society that organizes how society works. And it therefore

00:03:28.920 conditions how everybody thinks, depending on where you are positionally, as they would say in

00:03:33.560 intersectionality, against that structure of power. Where are you relationally to being part of the

00:03:40.580 either cultural or material production base? Where are you in terms of the ideology? And one of the

00:03:46.680 features of the ideology is that you think that you don't have an ideology. That's the magic sauce of

00:03:51.940 the ideology. You can't see it. But you are being conditioned by these structural forces that are

00:03:56.780 ultimately what Marx called the social relations produced by the relationship between the infrastructure

00:04:01.860 and superstructure. And this is a dialectical relationship. So that's what dialectical materialism

00:04:07.900 is all about. So you are conditioned by that. That determines who you are. It determines your

00:04:12.960 character. So with critical race theory, whiteness becomes the property. White supremacy becomes the

00:04:19.140 structure that justifies the ideology, I should say, that justifies why some people get access to

00:04:24.760 whiteness and why other people don't. And then systemic racism becomes the structure that shapes all of

00:04:30.300 society, conditions everything. And so any answer or excuse that you give...

00:04:34.380 It's truly a conspiracy theory.

00:04:35.960 It's a huge conspiracy theory.

00:04:37.400 You know, it reminds me not to interrupt you, but as you're talking, I'm thinking, I'm like,

00:04:40.900 this sounds exactly like what people say when they talk about chemtrails.

00:04:45.400 Seriously, like when they're talking about chemtrails and they're like, well, see, the chemtrails are like

00:04:50.460 convincing people of different things. They're like playing with your mind. But I,

00:04:54.720 I am the one person who has escaped the power of the chemtrails. And I am here to tell you about

00:05:00.440 that. And if you deny that chemtrails have had an effect on your thinking, it's just because

00:05:04.900 the chemtrails are working.

00:05:06.120 It's working. That's right. And I use the special soap or whatever that got them out of my hair.

00:05:10.020 It's like, no, seriously though, it's, um, it is a huge conspiracy theory. Even in the book, I

00:05:14.460 have to call it a conspiracy theory. Um, the whole thing is a giant conspiracy theory

00:05:19.420 and that everybody's participating in. And the only people who are aware that this is even how

00:05:25.640 it works, just like with the chemtrails are the people who have the awakened consciousness. In

00:05:30.520 other words, the Marxists. And so they therefore get to appoint themselves the arbiter of how

00:05:35.280 everything's going to go, how everybody's going to have to respond. And they're the only, if you

00:05:40.040 disagree with them, you must not have understood correctly. So you don't have epistemic authority

00:05:44.340 to challenge them, or you must be secretly a racist or it's because you're, it's because you're 0.99

00:05:48.880 white and it goes back to almost like, almost like pathologizing whiteness that your white brain 0.99

00:05:53.980 just can't understand. Because it's been conditioned by the structural reality of systemic racism 0.94

00:05:59.600 so that it's just not possible. Even though, you know, we've had comedians, you know, breaking down

00:06:06.040 the racial barrier by talking about white culture and doing, you know, Eddie Murphy or whatever,

00:06:10.620 Bernie Mac, all these guys coming out doing their white person voice and making fun of white people

00:06:14.480 culture. Like everybody's been making fun of this for a long time. It's what they're saying

00:06:18.780 doesn't even make any sense. But they think they're the only ones who can actually see

00:06:23.660 that this is how this really works in society. But they don't realize that they're actually

00:06:28.180 in a cult.

00:06:29.340 It really is a cult. And culture is always downstream from cult. That's one thing that I think a lot

00:06:34.020 of people don't understand. And I was actually reading about a critique of John Locke last night

00:06:40.880 that, and a lot of what we're talking about reminds me of that, that Locke's legacy, I would

00:06:47.020 say is even more pervasive than like the outright Marxist, this idea that you, that everyone,

00:06:52.940 you know, starts equally. And it's all these systems, it's all these external things that

00:07:00.460 are, you know, like tearing people down. And really, he extracts the human experience from

00:07:05.300 human nature and all of these institutions that have created good societies. That's where

00:07:11.080 we get Atlas shrugged and all of these things that I just don't necessarily agree with. But

00:07:14.500 even conservatives kind of latch on to. And it's reminding me, it's reminding me of,

00:07:19.840 of, of all of that, that Locke seemed to not understand that culture is downstream from cult.

00:07:27.500 It's downstream from what you believe about God, what you believe about where people came

00:07:32.140 from, what you believe about human nature, why humans do the things that we do, and the

00:07:36.700 things that human beings actually naturally need not just to survive, but to thrive. In my

00:07:41.920 opinion, leftism always gets that wrong. There are even some people, I would say on the libertarian

00:07:46.760 right that tend to get that wrong. They just get human nature wrong. The left tends to think that

00:07:52.860 when it comes to nature versus nurture, that we're all nurture, that we are all just completely

00:07:58.380 malleable. And if the social engineers at the World Economic Forum, if they want people to live a

00:08:04.280 certain way, we'll learn to adapt. And we'll just be happy, you know, owning nothing, eating bugs and

00:08:10.040 things like that. But the fact of the matter is, is that we do have a human nature. Everyone belongs

00:08:14.620 to a, I don't want to say a cult, but some kind of worldview, belief system, theology, and

00:08:21.400 understanding these things and how our nature flows from that is actually really important in order to

00:08:26.640 create a society in which people can function together.

00:08:28.820 Yeah. Locke was really good on life, liberty, and property. Like, he really nailed it with those.

00:08:33.440 Yeah.

00:08:33.620 And his explanations for why are just really sharp.

00:08:35.680 Really good.

00:08:36.680 Blank slate, however, really wrong. Really, really wrong. We are not blank slates.

00:08:42.180 Consequentially wrong.

00:08:43.640 It's more like, and this is an image I've always wanted to have, like, to build so I could have it.

00:08:48.320 But it's like, imagine, you know, a canvas that's like a blank slate. You can paint whatever you want

00:08:51.900 on it, right? But imagine that the canvas is contoured to look, say, like a human face,

00:08:56.580 right? So, you just have this canvas. It's got wood under it. So, it looks, it's shaped like

00:09:01.580 a face, like a person. And if you paint that, you can only go, like, you can paint it however you

00:09:08.700 want. But it still looks like a human face. And if you paint it just right so that, you know,

00:09:15.360 you contoured makeup like I have on right now and look so good. If you contour it all out,

00:09:20.600 you can create some illusions. But then you change angle and it's like you just have a weird brown 0.98

00:09:24.540 lion on the side of your nose, right? And so, there's limits to how far the nurture argument

00:09:33.060 goes. Now, with Marxism, they actually believe, they, of course, Marx deposes God. He replaces

00:09:39.760 God with man, like, literally with man and himself. And he says that man is creating himself

00:09:45.700 through the process of history. So, man becomes, as subject, also his own object. And so, for them,

00:09:53.120 they actually believe that by creating the social relations, that the social relations

00:09:58.000 then condition man back and create man. And so, anything that's a limit from that kind of

00:10:04.380 super blank slate mentality, total nurture, is actually a social condition limiting the range

00:10:11.160 of your subjectivity, which they believe is, yes, that is Marx. Like, if you read the economic

00:10:16.220 and philosophic manuscript of 1844, he goes into that. He's very clear about it. Man is creating

00:10:21.720 himself, and it's the limits on man's subjectivity are created by the social relations that are

00:10:26.920 created in dominance and oppression. And dominance and oppression arise from property ownership. And

00:10:32.580 that's, in fact, property ownership is characterized as the original sin that kicked us out of the

00:10:36.660 Garden of Eden. I mean, it's very religious, but that's why they think that way, is so everybody

00:10:42.580 is responsible to shape the social relations in a way that will, as Michel Foucault put it,

00:10:47.560 expand the potentialities of being by expanding one's subjectivity. You always hear them talk

00:10:52.380 about subjectivity, because they think if they expand the subjectivity, then you can create some

00:10:56.900 broader sense of the object in the world, including yourself, and come to know yourself as creator,

00:11:03.140 independent of God. And it's, why does it march hundreds of millions of people to death

00:11:08.140 everywhere it's tried? That's why. Because it's a fundamentally anti-human mentality posing as

00:11:15.140 humanism, to use Marx's word for it. You know, I didn't realize this when I was writing my book. It's

00:11:21.760 a little pink book, and it doesn't look like it would, you know, contain an analysis of Marx, and

00:11:26.640 that's because it doesn't. But I critique the, you know, the legacy, or not the legacy, but the product

00:11:33.020 of that legacy, which is this idea that you see a lot in new age circles, that you see a lot in

00:11:40.780 self-help, especially female self-help. So coming from places like Glennon Doyle, coming from places

00:11:46.020 like Brene Brown, or Rachel Hollis, I don't expect you necessarily to be familiar with them, who

00:11:51.460 certainly wouldn't consider themselves Marxist, but they are on the left and don't realize that their

00:11:56.320 ideas are kind of rooted in that. And the idea that I articulate and critique in my book is,

00:12:01.780 this concept that inside all of us is this beautiful, like perfect princess, or diva, or

00:12:12.700 whatever it is. And it's really, it's society, it's the patriarchy, it's capitalism, it's advertising,

00:12:20.400 it's unfair expectations, it's fat phobia, it's whatever it is, your kids, your marriage, all these

00:12:26.160 things are holding back that inner perfect princess inside of you. And what you need to do is to

00:12:33.340 liberate yourself from those things. And so you need to commit yourself to radical self-care, to

00:12:39.620 radical self-love. And that's going, they use all these euphemisms, once again, drawing boundaries,

00:12:44.960 cutting toxic people out of your life, which of course sounds good. I'm not saying that there's

00:12:48.460 anything wrong with boundaries or cutting actually toxic people. But what they really mean by that

00:12:52.820 is a form of glorified narcissism. And they tell you that you owe that to yourself because you're

00:12:59.120 never going to fully find who you really are, your true authentic self, your autonomous self,

00:13:05.900 until you throw off all of these things that are holding you back. And that is in direct

00:13:12.020 contradiction, as is this whole blank slate thing, which I'm realizing are very similar, if not the

00:13:16.920 same, it's in direct contradiction to what Christianity says, that we are actually totally

00:13:23.420 depraved. I mean, the Bible talks about in sin, my mother and father conceived me. And so we actually

00:13:31.840 believe that we are depraved and that we need to be not just made better, new and improved, but we

00:13:39.860 actually need to be made a new person, that we actually need to be born again because the old self is

00:13:45.780 wasting away because of sin. We need to put on the new self made after the likeness of Christ in

00:13:50.740 holiness. And the only way that we can do that is through regeneration of the Holy Spirit by grace

00:13:54.440 through faith in Christ. And so it is actually in direct contradiction to the gospel, this whole

00:13:59.720 thing, this whole blank slate, this whole inside you is this perfect self and all of these structures,

00:14:04.860 which is all really a form of Marxism, which I didn't really realize before. And that's just

00:14:10.720 another, and I would say probably the most fundamental reason why the Christian worldview and the

00:14:15.120 Marxist worldview, they just cannot, they cannot align because their view of where we come from

00:14:21.380 and who the moral authority is and what human nature is, they're totally opposite.

00:14:27.560 Completely opposite. Like you could be the only Christian on the planet and your relationship 1.00

00:14:33.140 with Christ and that renewal doesn't depend on anybody else. And it literally doesn't matter.

00:14:39.420 But with Marx, they're actually seeking spiritual renewal as well. And that you actually have to,

00:14:46.460 in a sense, be born again as social man, or depends on how it gets translated from the German,

00:14:51.220 socialist man, social man, one or the other. And so what that means is it's a man who's,

00:14:56.100 according to the dialectical process of their thought, who has been made to live in a society.

00:15:00.680 In other words, to fully integrate into society where there's no longer any tension between the

00:15:04.680 fact that you're an individual who lives with other people, right? And so the way that you

00:15:09.080 achieve your awakening is by making everybody else think the same way you do. And that's,

00:15:14.760 man and society are renewed at the same time in the Marxist theology. Whereas with the Christian 1.00

00:15:23.020 theology, your renewal begins the moment you accept Christ, period. It's a totally individual

00:15:29.740 decision. It's totally up to you. You were given free will by God to make this decision or not

00:15:33.900 on your own. Well, you're sitting with a Calvinist. And so I have a little bit of a different take,

00:15:39.540 but I understand what you're saying. So, yeah. I understand that Calvinism has a slightly different

00:15:45.800 perspective on this and the elect and all of this and the, yes, irresistible grace. That said,

00:15:51.780 within Marxism, but see, now that's just been that God has ordained in advance, which things are

00:15:57.360 going to happen. And that's what's going to happen. Over here within Marxism, again, man and society

00:16:03.040 either don't renew at all or renew together as one thing. So until you have the perfect socialist

00:16:12.040 society or communism, you don't have the renewed man either. They are in dialectical relationship

00:16:19.360 with one another. They are opposites. They can't pull apart from one another. They are defined in

00:16:23.660 terms of one another. And their resolution is when those things become co-continuous. Man and society

00:16:28.620 become co-continuous. So your renewal in Marxism as a spiritual thing has nothing to do with your

00:16:35.280 beliefs about Christ or any other such thing. It has to do with if you can make the new society

00:16:41.740 come about and get other people, all other people to be on board with it. And it is so much like

00:16:48.340 Christian eschatology in that it says, you know, this is what the end time is going to look like.

00:16:53.320 And it really does remind me of the promise of the World Economic Forum that you'll owe nothing and

00:16:57.560 be happy. Obviously, in Christian theology, we believe that Christ will rule in perfect peace and

00:17:04.260 that we will be fully joyful and at peace and that we will have no sorrow or sickness. But that's

00:17:13.040 because we believe in Christ's rule, whereas the Marxists believe that that can happen here on earth.

00:17:18.040 We can achieve that kind of liberation. But basically, everyone has to comply and become their own

00:17:23.060 gods in a sense, right? Yes. In fact, the goal, they say this explicitly in their literature,

00:17:28.640 I don't know how metaphorical they're being, is to get back into the Garden of Eden and to kick

00:17:33.120 out the jailer that was there from the beginning. Our birthright is the garden. And I say that they

00:17:39.140 say this literally. Herbert Marcuse, for example, in Eros and Civilization, which he wrote in 1955,

00:17:43.980 said that the goal is to get back into the garden. And the way that you do it is by taking a second bite

00:17:48.360 of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. That's in there. He says that. And, you know,

00:17:53.680 the being in the garden, this kind of perfect utopian kingdom of God. It's so much sense with

00:17:58.740 what they think. It's exactly what they think. But we're all in it together because the garden

00:18:03.600 only works when we're all there as one perfect, no domination, united society.

00:18:10.200 But also like within the Garden of Eden, because they tend to, it seems like Marxists tend to think

00:18:16.200 that all like hierarchies are inherently oppressive. But there was a hierarchy in the garden, not just

00:18:23.960 between God and man, but also between man and the rest of creation. And so, again, this goes back to

00:18:29.880 their just erroneous view of human nature. We were created in hierarchy from the very beginning. So it's

00:18:36.280 a little bit confusing to me why they think going back to the Garden of Eden is going to get rid of

00:18:40.600 all hierarchy. Oh, well, because God won't be there. See, that's absolutely key. God.

00:18:46.260 So it's not getting rid of Satan when you say the jailer. It's getting rid of God.

00:18:49.800 Yeah. God's the jailer. Marxism is ultimately a Gnostic religion, which means that it holds that

00:18:55.100 God is a demon, not actually the deity. And he's so what he is is somebody that went through this

00:19:00.540 process already, reached a level of power and ability or whatever, and then came into the garden

00:19:07.680 and ruled over people falsely as a demon and then, you know, used his power to kick people out and all

00:19:14.740 of this. But this is all fake and evil. And so it's our birthright. And we just have to we have to get

00:19:20.320 God out of the way and realize that he's a demon. And then we become like him. In fact, the point of the

00:19:25.600 Marxist project is the dialectical relationship between the subject and object. I am a human

00:19:30.300 subject. I visualize in my mind that which I want to see in the world and I create it.

00:19:35.060 And I know myself through my creation, which is I know myself as a creator. But because there's

00:19:41.540 intersubjectivity, in other words, you have a subjectivity, I have a subjectivity, all the people

00:19:45.280 have subjectivities and they have to work together somehow. They all have to synthesize into kind of

00:19:49.220 the same program or it's not going to work because one of us is dominating the other. There's a hierarchy

00:19:53.980 unless we're all thinking the same thing, working the same way, like the Star Trek Borg or whatever.

00:19:59.860 And we all therefore know ourselves as creators, as the authors of history. And history is, in fact,

00:20:08.580 the authorship of man realizing himself as creative or as the creator. It's totally, to think that you

00:20:17.740 could take anything that's derived from Marxism and kind of cobble it into Christianity is absolutely

00:20:23.780 insane.

00:20:24.360 And I know very smart people who try to do that, who try to say, well, I agree with 20 to 30% of

00:20:29.280 critical race theory or whatever.

00:20:30.600 Okay, we only have a few minutes. And this kind of leads into what I at least want to briefly talk

00:20:40.280 to you about. It seems to me, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to mischaracterize

00:20:44.360 you, that you kind of understand. Well, okay, I won't even put that on you. What it seems to me

00:20:50.300 is that it's not just that Marxism and all of its subsidiaries are a direct contradiction to

00:20:55.920 Christianity, but also that Christianity and Christian theology alone is actually the antidote

00:21:01.380 to Marxism. It's the only thing that can really replace it. And it's, well, I'm curious to know

00:21:08.780 if you agree with that, or if you think that there is something else that we can replace Marxism with

00:21:16.420 here in the West, as far as a guiding philosophy goes as the foundation of Western society and the

00:21:23.120 making of laws that is not Christian in nature, you're not a Christian. And so what do you think

00:21:29.460 is a good basis of, for society? What do you think is a good moral foundation?

00:21:34.300 Well, I mean, I'm not opposed to using Christianity, obviously, but what ultimately boils down to is a 0.95

00:21:40.840 disposition of either humility or arrogance. So the Marxist view, if you see yourself as the creator,

00:21:47.920 then that's obviously crazy arrogance. And you think that anything becomes possible,

00:21:52.460 and you start blaming other people for why your subjectivity is limited, and therefore you can't

00:21:57.240 create and have whatever you want. That's a very arrogance-based problem. Now, within Christianity, 0.83

00:22:02.440 obviously, the whole idea is that you can do nothing but be humble before God. It'd be ridiculous not

00:22:07.800 to. But if you don't take a theological perspective in the traditional sense of believing in a God,

00:22:15.800 there's still the fact of there is the world. We are human beings within it. We have a nature that,

00:22:21.360 and it turns out, maybe we could mold through something horrific like eugenics, but we shouldn't

00:22:26.820 be so arrogant as to screw with things like that. It's a bad idea. And so being humble before the fact

00:22:32.820 that human beings and the world are as they are, and therefore that there are right and wrong ways

00:22:39.140 to engage with one another that clearly manipulation and forcing people to believe all in the same way

00:22:48.560 about the same things, that's somehow very inimical to whatever the human spirit really is, whether you

00:22:54.640 see that as being a unique child of God made in Mago Dei or otherwise. It's still, I think our spirit is

00:23:03.620 fundamentally based in freedom, wanting to be free, not arbitrarily from so-called systems or structures,

00:23:11.880 but rather that we get to do to the degree that's possible our own self-determination

00:23:17.220 in life. And so I generally think that any broad philosophy that's rooted deeply in an epistemology

00:23:29.880 geared toward truth, an ontology that accepts being as something that is outside of us, that we are not

00:23:37.800 the creators in our heads of that which is. Therefore, we have very limited faculty over

00:23:44.680 it. Maybe we're incredibly skilled people and we can drive a great big, you know, machine and move

00:23:49.420 the earth. It's still so small, right? Anywhere where we start to have kind of a epistemological and

00:23:55.580 ontological and then axiological, which is values-based orientation toward humility and that there's

00:24:03.460 something core to what it means to actually be human that's rooted in being able to be free to

00:24:09.020 the point of self-determination, I think is extraordinarily key. Now, as somebody who has

00:24:16.780 obviously benefited tremendously from the kind of Judeo-Christian backbone that's been in this

00:24:23.140 country and having, you know, read scripture and thought about the message that it's providing,

00:24:30.060 I think that it is actually an excellent anchor regardless of, you know, if some people decide

00:24:35.520 to believe it in various degrees of literality or not, and other people decide that they don't want

00:24:40.180 to believe it at all. But I still think that it's an excellent backbone of, you know, values and what

00:24:47.440 meaning in life is and what the role of faith actually should be, whether it's faith in God or faith

00:24:55.720 kind of in this, you know, generally in the best of humanity or whatever else. I think that that's,

00:25:02.780 I really do think it's a good anchor that we should be encouraging as a cultural backbone throughout

00:25:12.020 society. And of course, it falls heavily to believers to be the stewards of that and to bring that light,

00:25:21.900 you know, to, as I said, you know, spread the gospel to people so that they can hear these messages,

00:25:27.960 the values contained in their work. They're extremely effective. They're effective for very

00:25:34.580 good reasons. If you believe they're divinely inspired, that's the reasons. If you see that

00:25:39.800 they've stood the test of time for 2,000 years and produced flourishing societies everywhere they've

00:25:43.900 gone, that's other reasons that are a little bit more practical in the world without invoking theology.

00:25:49.720 But generally speaking, I think that that's what it comes down to, and a disposition toward

00:25:53.720 humility rather than arrogance, toward taking responsibility and seeing people as individuals.

00:26:00.600 I invoke the imago dei all the time, despite not being a believer, like to think that because you are

00:26:08.460 an individual who is formed for a purpose, according to the theology, and that, you know,

00:26:15.520 you need to live that purpose. That's a very powerful and important message. So, you know,

00:26:22.140 and again, just stop thinking you're the creator and that everything is possible. Like, you're not

00:26:28.580 going to change your gender. You're not going to. Like, some things just aren't possible, 0.99

00:26:33.540 and you don't have to make it. It's not oppression that some things are not possible. It's not oppression

00:26:41.380 that, and I'm all about people experimenting with things in life, but you also have to be willing to

00:26:46.100 admit that didn't work. And that's like the whole Old Testament, right? Israelites experimented with

00:26:51.820 life, and God got mad at them, and bad things happened, and then they bring back up. He brings up a

00:26:56.600 prophet. The prophet brings them back to God, and they get their life right. And that's,

00:27:00.540 metaphorically speaking, you know, a lesson. Yeah. Try things in life, but be humble. Come back.

00:27:08.720 Yeah. I would say, and I'll end on this, is that Christianity is the why behind anyone should have

00:27:21.520 humility underneath those things. Because there is a transcendent moral lawgiver who says what is and

00:27:29.740 what isn't, who isn't just answering those ontological questions, the philosophical questions

00:27:36.300 that we're talking about, but also the teleological questions. You mentioned purpose. There is

00:27:42.060 only a creator of something can tell you what something is actually made for, and that's what

00:27:50.920 we get in God. That doesn't just tell us, okay, you are made male and female biology because you only 1.00

00:27:56.360 have one tell us, just like anything else, just like a bird, you know, can't be a turtle and vice

00:28:01.460 versa. Man can't be a woman. Obviously, Christian theology tells us that, but it also answers that 0.96

00:28:06.740 question of, well, why are we humble? Why are we not our own gods? If we are the greatest power in this

00:28:12.580 universe, why can't we? Why can't we create man or society in our image? And of course, the Christian 0.99

00:28:18.660 answer is to that is because God made us in his image. We actually don't have the power and the

00:28:23.100 authority to do that. And the only authority that we do have over creation, which of course,

00:28:27.400 from Genesis 1, we believe that we have, is endowed to us by God, just like our rights were endowed to

00:28:34.100 us by God. And of course, as I'm sure that you would agree, without the, not just Christianity, 0.97

00:28:38.780 but the Protestant Reformation, this idea that, okay, we're not just handed down truth from some

00:28:44.060 person on high, but that we actually have the ability, that self-determination feature,

00:28:49.900 that individualism feature that comes from Protestants. And that's why America exists. 0.99

00:28:55.420 That's why the West exists. I don't see us getting back, if it's even possible, getting back to,

00:29:04.120 you know, where we used to be as Western civilization without realizing the values in the biblical worldview,

00:29:13.540 in particular in the Protestant worldview, whether or not you're a Protestant or a Christian.

00:29:17.540 And I just don't think that we can push back against Marxism without Christian theology.

00:29:26.460 And of course, the bigger reason why I believe in all of that is not just pragmatic or political,

00:29:31.720 but of course, because I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that there is no salvation

00:29:35.340 apart from him. I just take him at his word in John 14, 6. But just in talking to you,

00:29:41.360 I just see how Christianity answers all of these intricate, complex questions. And I mean, I'm

00:29:49.080 hopeful. I'm hopeful that you will believe that Jesus is the Son of God, because that's the piece 0.58

00:29:53.860 that's missing. You understand it cognitively. You just don't believe in your heart that it's true.

00:29:58.880 That's correct.

00:30:00.660 Yep. Well, I think that my audience will be praying about that. I'm going to be praying about that.

00:30:05.600 And there's nothing you can do about it, especially from us Calvinists. Especially from us Calvinists.

00:30:11.980 Yeah, we don't believe that you're going to be able to resist that grace when it comes to you. So

00:30:17.160 we'll see. We'll be praying. Thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time. And everyone can buy

00:30:21.560 your book anywhere.

00:30:23.160 On Amazon, actually. We're publishing it, self-publishing through the company. So it's

00:30:27.560 only available on Amazon. It's called Race Marxism. And it should be out very soon, if not already,

00:30:32.800 depending on when this goes. This will be out today.

00:30:35.560 Okay. It goes out on the 15th then. Okay. 15th of February. Pre-order the e-book now if you want.

00:30:40.340 Awesome. Well, thank you so much, James.

00:30:41.820 Yep.

00:30:46.520 Okay, guys. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with James Lindsay. There was even more that we

00:30:51.720 could have talked about, but we were running low on time. Obviously, this was a really long

00:30:55.680 conversation. And so we'll have to have him back and exclusively talk about theology and Christianity

00:31:02.180 and why. Why doesn't he believe that Jesus is Lord? I'm sure that he has his reasons for that.

00:31:06.720 And we didn't even have time to get into all of it, but we will in the future. But I hope that that

00:31:12.100 was an edifying conversation, an interesting conversation for you guys. I know I touched

00:31:16.640 on predestination and Calvinism a little bit there. And for those of you who haven't been listening for

00:31:21.280 very long, you might be wondering, hang on, what is she talking about? What is Calvinism? How could

00:31:26.680 she be Calvin? Whatever it is that you were thinking there and hoping that I would expound upon

00:31:31.160 I will link some previous episodes that I've done talking about this. And I'll talk about

00:31:38.060 predestination again in a future episode because I really like that topic. It's a fun topic for me

00:31:44.160 to talk about. And so we will make sure to dive into that again at a future time. Maybe we'll have

00:31:50.140 a discussion. Actually, I did. Seth Dillon, the CEO of Babylon Bee, we did kind of have a disagreement

00:31:56.300 in our conversation about that. And we'll put a link to that conversation in the description of

00:32:01.960 this episode as well. Thank you guys, as always, for listening and for subscribing on YouTube. If

00:32:06.080 you love the podcast, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That means so much. All right,

00:32:11.560 I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 07, 2022

Ep 559 ｜ An Atheist's Take on Christianity & The Power of Truth ｜ Guest： James Lindsay

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