The King's Hall - Darwin's Green Groves & High Places

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.

00:00:03.860 Possibly our most important book yet is now available for pre-order.

00:00:08.300 It's called The Longhouse, How Feminism Conquered the West and Made Us All Miserable.

00:00:13.400 And in it, Eric and I take you through the dark history of feminism,

00:00:17.240 what it's done to everything from politics to church life to the economy,

00:00:21.220 and what to do about it.

00:00:23.040 Pre-order it today at newchristendompress.com slash longhouse.

00:00:26.600 And as a thank you for pre-ordering, you'll get 10% off automatically.

00:00:30.920 We'll also be signing the first 1,000 copies, so pick yours up today.

00:00:36.020 Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull, and undoubtedly was a hermaphrodite.

00:00:46.960 Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.

00:00:50.020 Charles Darwin.

00:00:51.040 In the ancient city of Uruk, there was a king named Gilgamesh. Though this king was no normal

00:00:59.420 man, he was more god than man. King Gilgamesh was volatile and untamed. He would steal brides

00:01:06.580 on their wedding night before the groom could consummate the wedding. He was a terror to his

00:01:11.200 people. The gods were displeased with this king. He needed to be tamed. He needed a helper. So the

00:01:17.680 gods made another man, a man fit to balance the god-man-king. This man would be more beast than

00:01:23.680 man. He would live outside the city with the wild gazelles. His name was Enkidu. He was also a

00:01:29.580 terror to the people. Men would set traps for game to feed the people of the city, and this beast

00:01:34.940 man would free the animals, frustrating their hunting. A woman from the temple was sent to

00:01:40.620 Enkidu with the goal to seduce him. She was successful in her attempts. Afterward, the wild

00:01:46.700 beasts rejected Enkidu. He could no longer dwell beyond the walls of Europe. Enkidu entered the

00:01:52.880 city and found King Gilgamesh up to his normal activities of causing general mayhem amongst the

00:01:58.440 people. Enkidu stepped in to stop Gilgamesh. The mighty god-man and the strong beast-man clashed

00:02:05.020 in a wall-shaking wrestling match. This fight of man, god, and beast struck fear into the Europe

00:02:10.360 people. Eventually, King Gilgamesh won the fight against the beast man Enkidu. In typical male

00:02:16.340 fashion, they became inseparable friends. With this friendship, King Gilgamesh turned his eyes

00:02:21.820 from the brides of Uruk to slaying giants and challenging the gods. The King's Hall podcast

00:02:27.940 exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world. The question, what is man,

00:02:34.940 has had many answers throughout history. We can see this from the stories that they tell,

00:02:39.380 what their leaders embodied, and what their great thinkers said. This ideal man is often made in the

00:02:44.960 image of the gods. The ancient Babylonians had Marduk, whose name meant bull calf of the sun.

00:02:50.820 He was a violent god who created men and earth by destroying the sea goddess Tiamat. Her shredded

00:02:56.780 body became the earth and the bones of her armies became man. Men were created as slaves for the

00:03:02.820 gods. Violence was a virtue because it was by which they were created. In one famous story,

00:03:08.360 plato was said to have been asked this question what is man the philosopher said that man is a

00:03:14.740 featherless biped diogenes an opponent of plato who though not a good man did have some pretty

00:03:20.260 awesome king energy at one time told alexander the great to move out of the way for you are

00:03:25.560 blocking my sunlight anyway diogenes heard plato's definition of man as a featherless biped so he

00:03:30.940 plucked a chicken brought it to plato's school and said here is plato's man the greeks had homer's

00:03:36.520 example of the ideal man in Odysseus. In the Odyssey, this man was crafty and had courage

00:03:41.760 and strength. The Romans had the Romanitas, a philosophy containing the religious, political

00:03:46.840 customs, values, and way of life for the ideal Roman citizen. Fathers would raise their sons

00:03:51.960 in the paideia of this Romanitas. In ages past, men have given many answers to this question.

00:03:57.460 What is man? Is he part God, part animal, all animal? Can he form himself? Is he good or evil?

00:04:05.720 Our age is no different.

00:04:07.160 We, too, have offered many answers to this fundamental question.

00:04:11.740 Today in the King's Hall, we ask the same question, what is man?

00:04:15.360 We need to ask this question and give an answer that dovetails both the scriptures and reality

00:04:20.280 if we were to put even one stone on top of another in the cathedral of the New Christendom.

00:04:25.320 The correct answer to this question is so vital that if one part is wrong,

00:04:29.620 like a small imperfection in the footings of a wall, it will lead to utter collapse.

00:04:34.980 In fact, we've seen exactly this over the last two episodes as we crafted a statement of faith

00:04:39.440 that encapsulates much of what our current apostate pagan culture confesses to be true

00:04:44.540 about God and man, about truth, goodness, and beauty.

00:04:47.960 Much of that pagan creed focused on precisely this question, what is man?

00:04:52.460 If we are to tear down the green groves and high places of worship of these false gods,

00:04:56.620 we need not only reveal their lies and their answer to this question, but also give the true answer.

00:05:01.900 We need to clearly see the wrongness of the plastic man that they have propped up as the ideal, as the true man,

00:05:07.140 and bring the axe of St. Boniface to bear at the root of the idols that man has erected in the ruins of Christendom.

00:05:14.780 Their true man is no man at all, but a beast.

00:05:17.280 And speaking of some wild half-man, half-beast, I am joined by my esteemed co-hosts Eric Kahn and Brian Sauvé.

00:05:23.620 Say hello to the listeners, you featherless bipeds.

00:05:26.540 Who are you calling a featherless biped, Dan?

00:05:29.620 Oh, it's specifically you, Eric.

00:05:31.680 So did you know when Diogenes presented the chicken,

00:05:35.520 Plato amended his definition to say a featherless biped with flat nails.

00:05:40.460 That was his big, like, this gets it now.

00:05:43.280 Galaxy brain moment.

00:05:44.420 Wow.

00:05:45.040 Flat nails.

00:05:45.940 For as funny as that is, it's better than the Supreme Court justice in America.

00:05:49.640 Good point.

00:05:50.380 Good point.

00:05:51.040 Hey, Diogenes, not a bad.

00:05:53.140 What was the other king energy moment in Diogenes' life?

00:05:57.120 So Diogenes, this guy, he was a Stoic philosopher.

00:06:00.680 Eric probably knows a lot about him being a philosophy major.

00:06:03.140 I mean, come on.

00:06:04.660 Diogenes, so he's got this meeting with Alexander the Great.

00:06:07.720 Before he was great, he was still king.

00:06:10.180 He wanted to meet Diogenes, who was like, he had this philosophy that man was dog, essentially.

00:06:15.980 And so he would parade around in the nude or barely clothed, lived in a barrel.

00:06:20.000 He would defecate and urinate and do other things in public.

00:06:23.020 Half man, half beast.

00:06:24.740 Half man, half beast.

00:06:25.860 He was.

00:06:26.160 he was and so alexander wanted to meet this guy so this is where like he wakes him up from his nap

00:06:30.860 and diogenes is like could you please move you're blocking my sunlight and afterwards alexander's

00:06:36.140 like i think if i was not alexander i would like to be diogenes and diogenes says if i was not me

00:06:42.340 i would also want to be diogenes terrible person but wow i mean serious king energy i mean yeah

00:06:50.320 yeah so this first question guys though we often think of ourselves as highly intelligent and

00:06:55.300 scientific people like Diogenes living in barrels and such. And we've evolved past the absurdity of

00:07:01.180 the old creation myths. Our age has its own creation myths, no different really than Marduk

00:07:05.580 of Babylon. What is our creation myth? What story do the pagans and high priests of science tell us

00:07:12.280 today? That's a great question, Dan. And I think that it's important to start by recognizing,

00:07:19.040 you know, you just said that scientists are priests in our culture. And we were talking

00:07:24.620 about this earlier before Eric rolled in to record this episode, but hundreds or even a

00:07:32.100 thousand years ago, 2,000 years ago, it would be commonplace for people to think of the issue of

00:07:36.720 authority and truth, like who decides and tells us what's true to be the priests. You'd go to

00:07:42.420 the priests at the temple and they would say, this is what God says, and you would lend a

00:07:48.380 tremendous weight of authority to those voices. And it's funny that in our age, we do think we've

00:07:54.560 evolved past this. But scientists certainly function like this in our culture. They tend

00:08:01.220 to speak with far greater certainty than the science itself would really lend. And even science

00:08:07.220 itself is a continually, if you do it right, is a continually self-correcting process of observation,

00:08:13.500 testing, thesis, antithesis, all of that. And yet we appoint scientists as high priests. So I think

00:08:19.420 that's interesting. Yeah. Because what is a priest fundamentally? And I'm not even talking

00:08:23.020 within Christianity. What is a priest? It's like somebody that is an intermediary for God.

00:08:29.320 Yeah, exactly.

00:08:30.220 And so scientists seem to like to fill this role. I mean, there are other priests other

00:08:36.060 than scientists though too, right?

00:08:37.560 Yeah.

00:08:37.960 I mean, you don't have to look far in our university system to see this.

00:08:41.260 Celebrities, professors.

00:08:42.340 Yeah, celebrities, professors. Exactly. Yeah.

00:08:44.160 Yeah, I would say ultimately it's anybody in the culture who is saying essentially thus

00:08:48.320 sayeth the Lord. So we've seen this with people who may have headed up,

00:08:53.020 things like the CDC, people looked at them and said, trust the experts. And it was pretty much,

00:08:57.520 that was the thus saith the Lord. So I think culturally, the thing is, we don't escape these

00:09:01.860 things. But the question is, what story, Dan, you ask, what story do we see ourselves in?

00:09:07.160 Yeah. And I think this was something I was reading recently in Future Man,

00:09:10.760 Doug Wilson. But he says this about mythology. You can think of C.S. Lewis and what's a true

00:09:15.440 myth. His true myth, yeah. What's a true myth. But Doug Wilson quotes Ambrose Bierce,

00:09:19.520 who said this mythology was the body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origins early

00:09:25.840 history heroes deities and so forth as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later

00:09:31.840 so i think his his point there was doug is saying hey look our sons are dragon slayers and somebody

00:09:38.680 ought to tell them yeah and we're part of this grand story but we've post enlightenment we've

00:09:43.700 reduced everything to man is a thinking man he just needs facts yeah um he needs a widget

00:09:49.300 yeah he needs a spreadsheet and that's it yeah but we haven't actually escaped mythology no and

00:09:56.540 and all of human society today is is basically i think secular western society is founded on

00:10:02.840 this three-part myth that that basically is aimed at making man into his own god like these

00:10:10.860 components are not actually the result of following the evidence scientifically wherever

00:10:14.720 it leads. That's what they pretend that it is. But what's really happening is that sinful man

00:10:19.960 started with this predetermined conclusion. And the conclusion was we're in charge. We are gods,

00:10:26.280 that there is no God who can tell me this is who you are. This is what you're for. This is the

00:10:30.420 moral ought in the universe. And then we reverse engineered a creation story, a myth to result in

00:10:36.140 that conclusion and justify that conclusion. You mean like creating self-creation in a way?

00:10:41.140 Yes, self-creation, where we said, here's the conclusion we want to end with. Here's the

00:10:45.680 anthropology we want to land on. Man is a self-determining natural God. He determines

00:10:49.860 himself. He defines himself. He owns his entry in the dictionary. His desires are fiat, divine fiat.

00:10:57.360 And so they came up with this myth that really undergirds an astonishing amount of current

00:11:03.320 Western culture, secularist culture. And it's this myth that number one, all things came from

00:11:10.060 nothing by a merely natural process. So evolution. Yeah. This is like, this is even a prior, this is

00:11:16.100 like big bang, big bang. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. So matter itself

00:11:21.780 doesn't need an explanation. Second life came from non-life. So you had this non-living world

00:11:28.840 of things. And then from that, again, through merely natural processes, life comes from non-life.

00:11:35.120 And then third, all living things descended with modification and differentiation through

00:11:40.920 entirely natural processes. This is Darwinism, resulting in all of the various forms of life

00:11:46.260 we see today. And crucially, that includes man. For the project of this season to be successful,

00:11:53.280 the project of seeing a new Christendom built, there will need to be thousands and thousands

00:11:57.580 of Christian men and women who are equipped to stand for the truth of Scripture against the

00:12:02.020 errors of both the liberal church and the pagan culture. This is one reason we're so glad to be

00:12:07.900 partnering with our sponsor for this season, Reformation Heritage Books. Reformation Heritage

00:12:12.660 Books offers a large selection of helpful and theologically rigorous resources on everything

00:12:18.380 from biblical theology to history to blue-collar family discipleship, the type of library and

00:12:24.500 resources that could make the kind of men and women I just described grounded in the rich

00:12:29.420 heritage of the Reformed faith. We'd like to highlight one resource in particular,

00:12:34.080 their Family Worship Bible Guide, that presents rich devotional thoughts on all 1,189 chapters

00:12:40.480 of the Bible, including searching questions to promote conversation and to help you in leading

00:12:45.380 your family in such a way as to say with Joshua, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

00:12:51.160 Tap the link in the description of this episode to pick one up today.

00:12:54.500 So everything came from nothing, that nothing gave birth to life through natural processes,

00:12:59.320 and then that life differentiated and ended up with us.

00:13:02.200 So can I ask you a question?

00:13:03.560 If that's your view, it's like an anti-creation view, can you really have a morality?

00:13:09.420 No, I mean, it renders it, morality, I think, and later even we're going to talk about this

00:13:14.660 in more depth, but it's like you get, if you tell that story, then at the bottom, you're

00:13:20.560 saying, well, everything's malleable and plastic and changeable because life is continually

00:13:25.580 changing. Matters continually changing. There's no governing principle or God. So ultimately,

00:13:33.200 whatever's at the top of that food chain, it gets to be God. And you see how we started with

00:13:38.120 that conclusion. We're gods and we reverse engineered the answer, the myth. So I'm

00:13:46.340 genuinely curious. I don't know this answer I'm asking. What is the solution in this evolutionary

00:13:55.280 mindset for the problem of matter existing in the first place? How do they explain that?

00:14:02.900 You have a guy a few years back named Dr. Lawrence Krauss, for example. He was big in the world of

00:14:09.840 pop culture. He was doing a lot of late night talk shows. He was on Stephen Colbert and other stuff.

00:14:14.520 And he's kind of like this smash mouth physicist kind of guy where he's like an egg headed math guy who then wants to be a celebrity.

00:14:24.100 You know, he wants to be a Richard Dawkins.

00:14:25.740 So he's super brash atheist.

00:14:28.520 He wrote a book called I think it was called The Universe from Nothing.

00:14:33.020 What was it?

00:14:33.840 I think I wrote it down.

00:14:34.600 Yeah, it's called A Universe from Nothing.

00:14:36.180 Why there is something rather than nothing.

00:14:39.440 And then he wrote this honestly completely absurd.

00:14:43.180 Let me read some quotes from him.

00:14:44.520 Let me read some quotes from him.

00:14:45.600 You actually had stuff on this.

00:14:46.900 I have some quotes, yeah.

00:14:48.500 He said this.

00:14:49.740 Speaking of myth, I want you to hear the mythology language here.

00:14:52.380 He said, the amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded.

00:14:58.100 And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand.

00:15:01.720 It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics.

00:15:04.200 You are all stardust.

00:15:06.140 You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron,

00:15:10.560 And all things, all the things that matter for evolution weren't created at the beginning of time.

00:15:15.420 They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars.

00:15:18.360 And the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode.

00:15:23.000 So forget Jesus.

00:15:26.620 The stars died so that you could be.

00:15:29.280 Okay.

00:15:29.520 But kind stars.

00:15:31.040 Very kind.

00:15:31.340 So I just gave a small account of the Babylonian creation account of Marduk.

00:15:36.760 Yeah.

00:15:37.400 That sounds exactly like that.

00:15:39.260 Same.

00:15:39.460 There was like Tiamat, which was the goddess of the salt water.

00:15:44.120 And then there was another god who was the god of the fresh water.

00:15:46.740 And the world was uncreated.

00:15:48.300 It was just a world of water.

00:15:50.040 Chaos and...

00:15:50.680 Yeah, and chaos and turmoil.

00:15:52.060 Well, they made other gods.

00:15:54.260 And then those gods made other gods, which created chaos.

00:15:58.440 And so they went to war and created Marduk, who was the sun god, and then the bodies of these gods.

00:16:03.780 And everything made people.

00:16:05.460 It's the same myth.

00:16:07.180 Well, what's weird to me is we look back at the ancients, post-enlightenment, we look back at the ancients and we think, oh, that's absurd.

00:16:13.240 Come on, Gilgamesh myth.

00:16:14.760 Come on, man.

00:16:15.400 They look at Noah, the flood account, stuff like that, and they say, oh, that's ridiculous.

00:16:18.620 But I tell you what isn't ridiculous is kind stars.

00:16:22.560 He even says they can't help but ascribe, like they can't help but make nature a god with a purpose.

00:16:28.620 So he even says, quote, nature is more imaginative than we are, right?

00:16:33.420 Which is, let me just read this last quote.

00:16:35.720 This is actually the height of absurdity. This demonstrates the absurdity of Krauss' worldview. And actually, it also demonstrates the embarrassing level of discourse and state of metaphysics amongst these pop culture scientists, like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, these new atheists.

00:16:53.140 there's a reason that they're they're dustbin kind of guys because they're just not serious

00:16:56.660 thinkers he said nothing he's arguing because people would say well lawrence krauss you said

00:17:02.320 the universe came from nothing but then when you when you actually look at what he means by nothing

00:17:07.000 he means something he means this quantum foam state that existed before the formation of matter

00:17:12.140 and some different really highly technical you know models within theoretical physics but oh

00:17:16.100 it's all very big brain you wouldn't understand so he says and kind stars he's like yeah nothing

00:17:20.900 they insist is not any of the things i discuss nothing they say is non-being in some vague and

00:17:27.740 ill-defined sense so like this is our whole reaction to his worldview is like you've all

00:17:33.140 you've done is moved it back one more domino so he continues some philosophers and many theologians

00:17:39.140 define and redefine nothing as not being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently

00:17:44.940 describe think about describing nothing nothing has no potentialities no properties it is non-being

00:17:50.340 There's a lot of nothing going on in Lawrence Krauss' mind.

00:17:53.260 He says, but therein, in my opinion, lies the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some of modern philosophy.

00:18:01.040 For surely nothing is every bit as physical as something, especially if it is to be defined as the absence of something.

00:18:10.940 Lawrence Krauss sounds like he is doing shrooms.

00:18:14.160 This is literally like sophomore year metaphysics class with Tom T. Logan.

00:18:18.980 I literally wrote a paper one time that was just like this, and I was like, I'm going to be as absurd as possible.

00:18:25.200 It was the best grade I got that semester.

00:18:27.600 You're a deep thinker, Eric.

00:18:29.260 And I was like, I literally don't know what I said.

00:18:31.280 I literally said nothing is something.

00:18:33.340 It's like Bob Dylan writing a song right here.

00:18:35.560 When Proverbs 14.1 says that the fool says in his heart there is no God, they are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good.

00:18:44.400 You just, you might think like, that's kind of harsh.

00:18:48.080 and then you meet some of these guys and you're like, no, accurate, accurate. Solomon nailed it.

00:18:54.160 100% true. They are wise fools. Like, like when Gandalf calls Saruman a wise fool,

00:19:00.300 because he's like trying to figure out how to win instead of just doing the right thing,

00:19:04.680 like obeying God, Aru, you know, Iluvatar, whatever. Instead, Saruman's like, I'm going to,

00:19:10.100 I'm going to win. I'm going to get power. I'm going to join with Sauron. And Gandalf's like,

00:19:13.300 You wise fool.

00:19:15.140 For all of your subtlety, you have not wisdom.

00:19:18.320 Wow, that's really interesting.

00:19:19.300 I'm glad you brought Lord of the Rings into this.

00:19:20.800 You're welcome.

00:19:21.060 Actually, that was also a Denethor quote.

00:19:22.820 And also in Future Man, what I was referencing,

00:19:25.700 Doug Wilson says, actually, our science academy

00:19:28.400 and post-enlightenment thinkers and Senate

00:19:31.540 has actually voted Saruman into office, was his quote.

00:19:36.100 Wow.

00:19:36.700 Yeah.

00:19:37.760 That's actually fantastic.

00:19:39.320 That's better.

00:19:40.240 That's a better one.

00:19:40.940 It's from Doug.

00:19:41.340 Thank you.

00:19:41.740 Thank you.

00:19:42.460 Dan is here actually, not to contribute to the discussion, but to rate both Eric and

00:19:47.200 Mai's contributions and decide whose was better.

00:19:50.080 And I just lost.

00:19:51.380 And you know what?

00:19:52.040 I deserve the L.

00:19:53.660 He just quoted Doug.

00:19:54.460 I deserve the L.

00:19:55.540 Yeah.

00:19:56.140 Okay.

00:19:56.540 So obviously, you had something-

00:19:58.420 I was just going to say, to wrap it up, we laughed at this idea, but this idea that

00:20:03.000 everything came from nothing.

00:20:04.320 The problem is, because the other horn of the dilemma, you either have to account for

00:20:08.760 the universe for something existing, or you have to say that everything is eternal, that matter is

00:20:13.920 eternal. Some models of physics, they'll say there's an infinite regress of multiverses and

00:20:19.860 all this stuff. Honestly, it's wise tomfoolery. It's like jargony tomfoolery because the more

00:20:26.520 that we learn, the more that we plumb the depths of the mysteries and glories that God has hidden

00:20:31.500 in his creation, the more we cry out, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above

00:20:37.860 proclaims his handiwork day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge

00:20:41.880 the more we learn about the cosmos the intricate mathematical precision with which god wove together

00:20:49.280 the fabric of matter and reality and the knife's edge that he balanced existence itself upon in

00:20:56.440 our universe like the math to let matter form at all at all is astonishingly precise you just go

00:21:04.420 only an idiot could come up with the idea that this popped into existence from nothing yeah it's

00:21:09.040 crazy i mean the human body alone and we're sitting here and you're like you have a organic

00:21:14.280 matter heart that is running on electrical current yeah and if any of that is wrong by like any degree

00:21:20.260 you die you die the end is always you die you die or or in math in physics the math is always

00:21:27.340 and there are no stars like we can describe universes that that have slightly different

00:21:32.160 parameters for like the strong and weak nuclear force.

00:21:35.480 It's called the fine tuning argument and an astonishing number of the

00:21:39.920 universes that are possible.

00:21:41.320 Don't create stars or matter or like you just couldn't eat.

00:21:44.700 Not only could you not have life,

00:21:46.220 but you wouldn't have anything matter.

00:21:49.420 You wouldn't have matter.

00:21:50.600 Well,

00:21:51.020 you'd have nothing,

00:21:51.780 which is something you would just have a chaos of stuff.

00:21:54.480 Nothing,

00:21:54.920 something of quantum foam.

00:21:56.700 You know,

00:21:56.880 it would just be like,

00:21:57.680 so what,

00:21:58.920 what I think people need to understand is that these high priests of

00:22:02.140 science, they stand up and they, with utter confidence, declaim things like Lawrence Krauss

00:22:06.140 does. And when you actually poke at it for like half a second with the intellectual capability

00:22:11.060 of a second grader, like a second grader could question Lawrence Krauss and reveal the utter

00:22:15.420 absurdity of his worldview. Any second grader at St. Brandon's guarantee you, that's how absurd you

00:22:20.280 end up becoming the moment you deny a creator. But you see how we're not following the evidence.

00:22:25.160 We're reverse engineering a creation myth to result in man being God.

00:22:29.120 Well, and really it reveals that there is no such thing as a neutral party.

00:22:32.200 Like we're just going to do science and then whatever the outcome that then we'll just follow the results.

00:22:37.280 But you start with presuppositions like materialism, you know, we're naturalists or materialistic, you know, so there is no metaphysical other than benevolent stars.

00:22:47.620 in 2023 indigo sundries became one of our sponsors at the time their business was little

00:22:59.080 more than a side hobby generating a couple hundred dollars a month but because of their

00:23:02.880 partnership with us and because all of you chose to support them they've grown enough to make it

00:23:06.740 their full-time livelihood this is what happens when christians support christians our communities

00:23:10.840 are strengthened and faithful businesses thrive so if you're a christian business owner who wants

00:23:15.000 to reach thousands of like-minded people and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you.

00:23:19.580 Email us at advertising at newchristendompress.com.

00:23:27.540 Yeah. And the reality is what they're denying is that humans, as we said in past episodes,

00:23:33.160 humans are, you know, homo liturgicus or Adirans, I think Brian said.

00:23:38.140 Stolen from Doug again.

00:23:39.100 Yeah, again. And James K.A. Smith. But, you know, the fact that we're inherently in our

00:23:44.600 core religious we're worshiping creatures and so even when they're trying to lean back on this

00:23:49.720 historical materialism they end up worshiping and turning you know scientists into priests

00:23:54.560 as we were saying before so it's an inescapable reality that you're a worshiping creature

00:23:59.600 yeah and that you're going to become like what you worship so you look at i would even apply

00:24:03.680 it to the culture today what what what does that historical materialism lead to well the

00:24:08.780 deification of the human body yeah i mean we're in you know salt lake we're in you know plastic

00:24:13.580 surgery capital of the world. Why? Because we've deified bodies. And then you look at the Christian

00:24:18.920 response to this, I think, so often, which is, okay, well, then we're going to be Gnostic.

00:24:23.260 Right.

00:24:23.760 And all of it is tied back to, it's fundamentally a bad understanding of creation

00:24:29.800 for the Christian and for the pagan.

00:24:32.980 Yeah.

00:24:33.320 Yeah. So this materialistic, you know, the invention of matter, something from nothing,

00:24:38.580 apparently, even though nothing is something. I'm actually really confused about that.

00:24:42.360 So part of this creation myth, it just doesn't depend on the origins of matter and space, but also like Eric was saying, like people, like humans, creatures.

00:24:52.820 Life.

00:24:53.140 Life.

00:24:53.600 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:54.840 And so we just looked at Lawrence Krauss.

00:24:57.840 Lawrence Krauss, yep.

00:24:58.740 And the creation of matter.

00:25:01.340 So who would be the kingpin of the mythos of creatures being made?

00:25:07.780 Yeah.

00:25:08.500 And would he be wrong?

00:25:10.060 Yeah, because I mean, obviously the next step in that three-part creed, we have the creation of everything from nothing. Then we have the creation of life from non-life through physical processes, which again, we didn't touch on that, but everything we said about the universe from nothing, you can say about abiogenesis, this idea of the first cell forming.

00:25:28.360 I mean, if you go to a biology class in college, they'll tell you, they'll give you like, oh, we have the RNA world hypothesis.

00:25:37.680 And they'll throw a bunch of terms at you and hypotheses at you as if that should tell you, we've got this under control.

00:25:45.040 Like, you know, we've got a few T's to cross and I's to dot, but we've pretty much figured out.

00:25:51.300 I mean, the Stanley Miller experiment, right?

00:25:53.100 and there was like RNA floating around in there

00:25:55.140 and electricity, static, something.

00:25:58.240 And they, I mean.

00:25:59.680 Yeah, they've got, there are multiple theories

00:26:01.460 and all of them at the bottom,

00:26:03.520 you actually don't need to understand the theories.

00:26:05.720 You just need to understand that even the scientists

00:26:07.960 in the field studying this,

00:26:10.020 they all know that they don't know

00:26:11.600 how this could possibly happen.

00:26:13.460 They're certain that it did happen

00:26:15.080 because again, there's no God.

00:26:17.220 On a Tuesday, 12 billion years ago.

00:26:19.020 Right, we're certain it happened.

00:26:21.180 And now let's figure out how.

00:26:22.720 You know, so Darwin is the next step, though, that, OK, let's give him life.

00:26:27.940 Then how do you get man from the first cell?

00:26:31.300 Well, Darwinism.

00:26:32.660 Darwin is obviously this one of the horsemen, one of the four horsemen of this apocalyptic

00:26:38.060 secularist worldview.

00:26:39.640 And the problem with Darwin is that he's wrong.

00:26:43.280 Darwinism doesn't work.

00:26:44.720 And again, at every step, that deeply matters because their entire creation story is not

00:26:52.040 a true myth but a false myth so you just assert he's wrong why is he wrong he's wrong why why is

00:26:56.940 why is he wrong um i said so no i mean he said that we're we have odd shaped skulls and swim

00:27:02.820 bladders and tails right that's our ancestor are undoubtedly which is a really hard word for me to

00:27:08.160 say undoubtedly is it indubitably or undoubtedly undoubtedly was a hermaphrodite oh yeah so i know

00:27:15.720 i'm talking a lot in this in this episode so far guys it's because i'm the token nerd you didn't

00:27:19.840 have to say that everybody knows everybody knows who reads about the rna world hypothesis

00:27:28.460 and remembers it and it's fascinating to me and said when i read it i'm just like static

00:27:32.860 uh it doesn't make which by the way is the idea that rna formed before dna but i was just laughing

00:27:37.260 when you kept saying inky do because it's enky do i i always yeah i always read that as inkaidu

00:27:44.100 And so Inky-Doo sounds like toddler speak.

00:27:47.780 Or like a squid.

00:27:49.200 Like a nickname for a squid.

00:27:50.420 Come here, Inky-Doo.

00:27:51.220 So I was thinking of like Spongebob, and you guys were on like Galaxy Brain.

00:27:54.760 We were Galaxy Brain.

00:27:55.600 Yeah, big time.

00:27:56.540 I had just heard it from somebody else, so I will blame this random person I had heard.

00:28:02.440 I actually like, I always said Yurok.

00:28:06.600 Yurok.

00:28:07.200 But when you said Yurok, I was like, that sounds way more right.

00:28:11.040 Oh, I bet both are wrong because I don't speak ancient Mesopotamian.

00:28:14.320 It made me wonder if Tolkien got the Uruk-hai.

00:28:17.740 Oh, the Uruk-hai.

00:28:18.380 If he developed some of that from the orc language, which would be a total Tolkien move.

00:28:24.700 You know what's really interesting about that story?

00:28:26.140 I just said like god-man and beast-man.

00:28:28.600 But he was actually, Gilgamesh was two-thirds god and one-third man.

00:28:32.920 And Enkidu was the other way around.

00:28:34.700 He was two-thirds beast and one-third man.

00:28:37.040 I want to talk about it a lot, but it has nothing really to do with what we were talking about.

00:28:40.460 A lot of these answers that people have been, we think, again, that we've answered this question

00:28:43.620 in a totally different way. What is man? Well, look, I mean, they were saying that man was some

00:28:48.840 mix of God and beast. He was some kind of animal all the way. This is not new. And the way that

00:28:53.840 the scriptures answer this, as I was thinking about this preparing for this show, just kind

00:28:58.440 of astonished me again. And it was something that Gregory of Nyssa wrote in Church Father,

00:29:06.140 early in the history of the church, he was explaining and kind of worshiping God in light

00:29:12.320 of the fact that one of the things that separates man from the animals, that man is not just

00:29:17.520 spiritual, not just physical, he's an embodied soul made in God's image, is that because he's

00:29:23.840 God's image bearer, with this body and soul, man is uniquely capable of participating in communion

00:29:29.940 with the divine nature, right? And like, this sounds wrong. It's one of those verses that I

00:29:34.880 remember the first time that I really wrestled with it? I don't know if I was a young man or

00:29:38.380 teenager or what it was, but in 2 Peter 1, 3, and 4, Peter writes, his divine power has granted to us,

00:29:44.380 he's talking about Christians, has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness

00:29:49.060 through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. And this is the key part,

00:29:54.000 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them,

00:30:00.600 through these promises of God, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped

00:30:06.980 from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. So you have this like, you have

00:30:11.420 Buddhist conceptions where everything is God or these Eastern mysticism, everything is God. I'm

00:30:15.700 part of God. I need to transcend back into the one, be reabsorbed into God. You have these atheistic

00:30:21.380 secularism where there is no God. It's all, you know, nothing. It's just matter. Well, Christians

00:30:26.600 say, no, there's a creator and a creation. We're a part of the creation. We are not like sparks of

00:30:32.880 the divine. And yet we were made to be partakers of the divine nature. That's, I mean, that's a

00:30:41.460 radical, that blows my mind when I think about it. What do you guys think? Yeah, it really does.

00:30:46.440 I mean, it sounds such a heady thing where you get into sort of the mystery side of things.

00:30:51.880 and I think the tricky part is

00:30:53.540 we're in Utah

00:30:54.700 and so you have to compare and contrast that

00:30:57.400 continually with guys who are like

00:30:59.080 no we are going to be gods owning planets

00:31:01.480 multiple lives

00:31:03.240 Mormonism is a trip

00:31:05.100 it's like a sci-fi

00:31:07.960 it is

00:31:08.360 we're not talking about Mormonism

00:31:12.200 but our next question

00:31:13.800 was supposed to be

00:31:14.360 it might be a mistake to say

00:31:16.280 that man is good

00:31:18.620 and what do we mean what do we don't mean

00:31:20.400 that was going to be our next question

00:31:21.500 But that begs the question, we're going to be partakers of, what did this say, partakers?

00:31:26.720 Partakers of the divine nature.

00:31:27.940 Of the divine nature.

00:31:29.380 And the reason it feels wrong to me to say that is because of this question of man being good.

00:31:37.400 Why would a created being that we assume to be just dirt and dust and miserable be allowed to be partakers in the divine glory?

00:31:48.100 I think the first distinguishing thing that is often lost, you know, sometimes in reform camps, especially like we want to fixate so much on depravity, which is true, but there is a Genesis before chapter 3.

00:32:00.660 And so that's good.

00:32:01.820 God creates man and woman.

00:32:02.980 He said, this is very good.

00:32:04.960 So man and woman are the height of creation.

00:32:08.120 And so what we see happening in the gospel even is redemption to that.

00:32:12.180 That's right.

00:32:12.640 While we obviously would admit to indwelling sin, a remnant of sin in believers even, we're not advocating perfectionism, we are back on that path to the garden and to that glorified state, glorification.

00:32:27.220 That's right.

00:32:28.080 Grace, it restores, perfects, and glorifies nature.

00:32:32.240 So we have man who has fallen in his spirit and his body.

00:32:37.020 There's physical corruption and spiritual corruption.

00:32:38.900 he wants to do bad things or he does bad things because he wants to do bad things because his

00:32:44.540 heart is corrupt so what we need is a bridge that will return us to a state of communion with god

00:32:51.260 and so that bridge ends up being the only possible bridge which is a true human who is also true god

00:32:58.320 who can bridge therefore be the high priest to bridge true man to true god so he comes christ

00:33:04.900 comes to be that bridge, and that's the gospel. But then as you continue to follow this arc of

00:33:10.900 redemption, like 1 Corinthians 13 says that there will be a time when we know as we're fully known.

00:33:16.320 He says in 2 Corinthians 3, 18, that we all behold with unveiled faces, unlike Moses when

00:33:23.240 he beheld God, we all with unveiled faces beholding the glory of God are being transformed

00:33:29.000 from one degree to another into the same image, into the image of the God-man.

00:33:34.260 So the whole arc of the Christian anthropology isn't just to say that man is this creation of

00:33:41.080 God who is made in the image of God. It's to say, and he's fallen, but yet God is through

00:33:46.400 the God-man Christ, not just restoring him to perfection or to innocence, but to glory,

00:33:51.780 beyond innocence to glory, to be partakers of the divine nature, to actually commune with God.

00:33:59.340 And so this is why it is so horrific to reduce man to animal. Because what you have just done

00:34:07.820 is you've removed from him the very source of his being and his purpose. You have made him a beast.

00:34:14.380 You've guaranteed his misery. You've removed the organ and demanded the function, to use C.S.

00:34:20.160 Lewis's language, you're basically telling him, this is the secular Western creed. It says,

00:34:25.100 be yourself. That's the highest end. And yet you've removed the foundation for him to actually

00:34:30.580 be his truest self, which is the image of God. So it's the most depressing possible worldview

00:34:37.380 when you remove the image of God and then you tell people, yeah, find the answer in yourself.

00:34:42.300 And here's what you are. You're an animal. You've given them a lie to find themselves in.

00:34:46.600 and so they can't and so and so the secular world is saying actually aim at being a beast aim at

00:34:54.100 beastliness beastliness whereas christianity is not saying like the gnostics would say or like

00:34:59.320 all those other examples of buddhists transcend your humanity escape from your humanity but

00:35:04.920 instead through death burial and resurrection become the fullest human possible and see this

00:35:11.280 to your question. So when they say like Rousseauian natural man is good, man is good. The problem with

00:35:18.380 that is that what I just described is what you're doing. You're saying man is good. And what we mean

00:35:22.940 is that that beast is good. And so be the beast. You're just a creature. You're not the image of

00:35:29.300 God. Throw off that outdated mythology of Christ. Throw that off and become your true self. But what

00:35:36.880 is that true self? It ends up being a beast. And so everything else we're going to talk about in

00:35:41.400 the next episode is the sexual sin, the depravity that comes from the psychologizing and Freudian

00:35:48.160 sexuality, and all of this utter absurdity that's happening in the fruit of our current

00:35:55.520 anthropology, which is sexual mayhem right now. That is exactly what you get when you tell people,

00:36:01.460 be yourself after telling them that what their self is is a beast okay so in closing why is right

00:36:09.500 anthropology central to the project of new christendom why is this so essential to this

00:36:16.480 next project because it seems like from your tweet the 20th century yeah has been pretty horrific

00:36:22.700 and people look at the middle ages and they're like yeah that's the dark ages they were dark

00:36:27.120 they were terrible people were eating mud we're enlightened now yeah you had literally hundreds

00:36:33.380 of millions of people being murdered and starved in the 20th century and you've transcended so why

00:36:39.400 is this important going forward well i think the reality is so man is the crown of creation as i

00:36:45.080 said before he's the very good at the very end of everything that god makes but i think because of

00:36:51.100 that he's also the depths of where creation can go when man falls oh that's good so then i think

00:36:56.960 you look at the work of Christ, and what does Christ do? Does he come first and say, I have

00:37:00.940 come to redeem or to build the cities? No, I came to redeem men first and foremost. That's right.

00:37:06.400 Because he understands Christ is returning us, in fact, even in elevated glory, but he's bringing

00:37:12.820 us back into that garden function as men. So when you look at what Christ is doing, it's restoring

00:37:20.240 man to the creational purpose, and then saying, I'm going to unleash you on an even greater mission

00:37:25.500 than you could have understood in Genesis 1 and 2.

00:37:27.720 Yeah.

00:37:28.140 And it's going to be through the power of the Spirit.

00:37:29.880 So when you look at Brian, especially like John's gospel,

00:37:33.760 it's all new creation language, like recreation again.

00:37:37.760 So Christ has come to do that.

00:37:39.020 We see it in Romans 8 as well.

00:37:41.140 Even the creation is groaning.

00:37:43.680 And so man is put as this central pivotal thing.

00:37:45.980 Christ says, I'm going to redeem that.

00:37:47.860 I'm going to redeem him to his former glory

00:37:50.020 through my death, burial, and resurrection.

00:37:52.620 And now we're going to build Christendom.

00:37:54.260 So men is central to—anthropology is central to all of this.

00:37:58.500 Yeah, because the anthropology that we have right now, if men are beasts, it's kind of like in the conservation world, in the hunting world.

00:38:05.300 You have to manage the population.

00:38:07.340 And so you see man as almost being this pest that is really doing damage to the whole ecosystem of this naturalistic world, this god, essentially, that they've made of science.

00:38:17.360 I don't know.

00:38:17.920 You know, scare quote science.

00:38:19.300 He's this nasty consumer, not a producer.

00:38:22.140 He's a virus.

00:38:22.820 Correct.

00:38:23.520 Yeah.

00:38:24.160 He's a non-native species.

00:38:26.400 What Christianity says is, no, men are valuable.

00:38:29.900 Women are valuable, which is radical in history.

00:38:32.500 Children are valuable.

00:38:34.320 Radical.

00:38:34.800 Unbelievably radical.

00:38:36.500 And actually, the point of human existence is for flourishing, to make this into a garden

00:38:42.020 world where people are actually blessings to this place and are to fill every corner

00:38:48.280 of the earth.

00:38:48.880 The Christian story, to Eric's original point, you know, reading Doug and the story, understanding the story, the Christian story is the only story that will give you consistently a creation, an orderly creation, a cosmos, and not a chaos.

00:39:06.560 Because all of these other stories, they tell the story of man as beast, and so he ends up just being an invasive thing to be managed.

00:39:13.820 But all of this biblical anthropology is aimed at man ruling.

00:39:18.240 It's aimed at creation, not properly flourishing unless man is ruling it,

00:39:23.000 which is why even the verse you cited in Romans 8, that creation is groaning.

00:39:27.180 It specifically even says creation is longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

00:39:31.460 Because they are the order bringers in chaos.

00:39:34.500 That's right.

00:39:35.140 The creation is not going to come to its flowering until the church,

00:39:40.640 until the people of God, renovated in the image of the God-man,

00:39:43.620 take up their sword and trowel and go out and cultivate it.

00:39:46.660 Creation is not this God that we're supposed to leave in perfect balance by itself. Creation needs tending by the hand of man. That's radical because what that does is, and this is the culmination of this Christian anthropology is that it gives man his purpose of ruling in the name of God, bringing the image and glory of God to everywhere that he goes.

00:40:10.280 And so I think, you know, as we're going to discuss in the next episodes and continue to refute this creed of the secularist Western man, we're going to talk about how much damage has been done and how much carnage has flowed out of this demonic anthropology of our modern day, where man doesn't stop taking dominion just when he believes a lie about himself, but he actually takes demonic, demonic dominion.

00:40:33.500 And so what we're going to continue to see is that really the whole project of this season

00:40:37.740 is the right focus of the human life, which is to build the city of God.

00:40:42.900 It's to build Christendom.

00:40:44.440 It's to build creation tended by the hand of the revealed sons of God,

00:40:48.760 the glorified hand of glorified man in the name of Christ with his wisdom.

00:40:54.280 Because the reality is so much of what we're going to discuss of the craziness and sexual perversions,

00:41:01.380 they actually came about because of Christian apostasy in the West. They came out because

00:41:07.640 we, the people of God, capitulated. We gave up our inheritance. We demurred on the actual nature

00:41:14.340 of man. We're the ones who fell asleep on the wall, and we let the demons creep in and tell

00:41:19.480 a more compelling story than the true story. And so the solution just has to be, it has to come

00:41:25.700 out of and flow over the threshold of the temple, right? The solution has to be that we come and we

00:41:30.840 tell the true story more compellingly and more powerfully than the false demonic story that

00:41:37.860 they're telling because the right view of men and women and children and family and the mission of

00:41:41.040 God is going to produce blessing for the nation where their story is just producing death and

00:41:46.440 carnage. Brothers, let us not waver in the face of this false God of Darwinism. Man is no mere

00:41:51.800 animal. You bear the image of the one true and living God. Let us sharpen our axes to a razor

00:41:58.780 edge, and like our spiritual forefather, St. Boniface, let loose a mighty hail of blows

00:42:03.740 against the tree of Darwinism, proclaiming the rule and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ,

00:42:08.460 the God-man who rules over all things in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

00:42:13.460 Thanks for listening to this episode of The King's Hall.

00:42:16.000 We'd invite you to head to kingshall.org to find out more about our mission and aim with

00:42:20.320 this project, as well as some ways to support the show.

00:42:22.760 our monthly supporters at patreon.com

00:42:25.380 slash the king's hall

00:42:26.680 gain access to special bonus

00:42:29.300 show with every main episode

00:42:31.300 so if you want to hear more of us

00:42:33.380 tune in to after hours

00:42:34.980 and who wouldn't

00:42:36.800 you actually get to hear a little special toast

00:42:39.360 every time that's right

00:42:40.320 anyway we'll be back next week to put

00:42:42.920 a few more stones in the foundation of this new

00:42:45.180 christendom cathedral and remember

00:42:47.000 he conquers who conquers

00:42:49.100 himself

00:42:52.760 Well, in case you didn't know, we have another King's Hall show called The After Hours,

00:43:01.400 and it's available only to our patrons.

00:43:04.060 We have a great time in The After Hours.

00:43:05.620 I play hype songs, which Brian loves.

00:43:07.620 Sometimes we even talk about Brian's cut.

00:43:09.340 We talk about recent news on X and answer listener questions.

00:43:12.540 Overall, it's a great time, so I'd encourage you to head over to patreon.com slash thekingshall

00:43:18.520 if you'd like to support the show and get some extra content.

The King's Hall - May 27, 2022

Darwin's Green Groves & High Places

Episode Stats

Transcript