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Breakpoint
Men Aren't Moms; Church is Good for You; Richard Dawkins Says AI Is Conscious, And Pro-Life Frustration with the White House
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to breakpoint this Week where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian perspective. Today we're gonna talk about Mother's Day and the tenuous cultural relationship we have to the value of mothers. We're also gonna talk about church and how it's good for families and kids. We're so glad you're with us this week. Please stick around. Welcome to breakpoint this Week from the Coulson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet, president of the Coulson Center. John, is there anything happening this weekend? Are there any, like, major national holidays or any things that we should celebrate?
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B
You're trying to get me in trouble. This is. This is the Mother's flex. The.
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A
Oh, my gosh, is it Mother's.
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B
Flexive, aggressive. Oh, I wonder what Sunday is.
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A
You're kidding.
- [00:46]
B
Just to make sure no one has forgotten. Of course it is Mother's Day. I'm grateful for my mother. I remembered, and it's hard not to. My mom is a mother of four, grandmother of many, great grandmother of many. It's just multi layers. And, of course, the mother of my children is a pretty remarkable woman, Sarah. So happy Mother's Day.
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A
Happy Mother's Day, Sarah.
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B
Yeah, that's right. And happy Mother's Day to you.
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A
Thank you.
- [01:21]
B
Mothers make the world go round. It's a really wonderful thing to think about church history and the role that mothers played. If you think of San Justin's mother, who prayed faithfully for him, much has been said about the mother of the Wesley brothers as well, and I'm sure that there are others that are not coming to the top of my mind at the moment. Billy Graham's mom, Billy Graham's wife, who, according to Franklin Graham's book about being a prodigal, is an interesting. You know, was a remarkable woman as well. Still love her line when she was asked on national television if she ever thought about divorcing Billy, and she said, murder, no. Divorce, no. Murder. Yes. As a funny line, it was a great. A great quip. So you got to love the. The sense of humor and all that. But there's another layer to this, culturally speaking, which is that we have entered a stage, and it would be really hard to find any sort of parallel in all of human history where we treat mothers as if they're replaceable because of our alternative relational arrangements, alternative definitions of marriage, and alternative definitions of family.
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A
Yeah. And I've seen coverage this week. You know, this is an increasingly Common cultural trend. Right. And it's not. We're not simply here talking about divorce, which of course, is a terrible rupture in family structure that has reverberations for generations. We know that already, of course, the majority of divorce cases, children, if they are part of the family, usually end up with their mother. Same thing in the majority of cases of out of wedlock births. Children usually end up with their mother. That speaks volumes in and of itself. But I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're talking about in terms of culturally looking at mothers as replaceable is the normalization of something we've decided to call same sex marriage. And then with that, coupled with the technology for things like IVF and surrogacy, now we have a rise in homosexual couples, including male couples, obtaining children through that technology. And there's a cultural expectation that we will celebrate that. And that, of course, involves a child robbed of his or her mother.
- [03:37]
B
Yeah. So we're 11 years into the Obergefell decision which legalized same sex marriage. And at the time was argued on the basis that it would have no implications beyond that, because, you know, we. Marriage was an arrangement of adult happiness. We had already separated sex from procreation and parenting from marriage, which was never fully the case. And the ground that was captured in the same sex marriage decision was then used to extend to issues of parenting. And that's been the cultural reality. It was all very predictable. And it happened, many predicted it at the time that redefining marriage would necessarily redefine what it means to be the parent of a. Of a child as well. And it absolutely has. And there's a number of things to observe here. One is that Romans 1 just continues to be empirically verifiable that you reject God. And that takes you into a way of rejecting, ultimately reality, eventually, that the blindness to reality is a direct result of rejecting the kind of reality that it is. And so we have something that could not be more empirically verifiable, which is that whenever there's a baby born, there's a mother nearby. And almost at every stage, mothers are essential in nurturing and in the production of children. If there is a mother loss, then so many other resources have to step in in order to replace that. And oftentimes they do. And I know that there's people listening that that is their story. I know that there's people listening who want to be moms and are not. I know that there are people listening that did not have a mother who nurtured them well or who was actually abusive or something like that. All of that is, is part of the, the fallen world and also part of the empirically verifiable nature of, of sin. It's, it, there's a couple of kind of cultural coincidences. We, of course, we don't believe in coincidences, but we would maybe call them that. Number one is that the, the Christian X sphere, formerly called Twitter sphere, is having a conversation around the doctrine of concupiscence, which is basically what is sin and the nature of sin and the nature of sin nature right now. And also you remember just what was it a week or two weeks ago, we talked about that viral video of two gay men in a couple relationships basically verbally harassing a newborn or a young child who keeps saying, not a newborn, but a young child saying, you know, mama, mama, Mama is what he or she wants. I can't remember if the little baby was a boy or a girl. And you know, these two men saying, there is no mama. There is no mama. And as we pointed out at the time, and as we pointed out in a breakpoint commentary, there is a mama. There's always a mama. There's never a situation when there's not a mama. It just never works. I mean, even with, you know, Jesus, the only, you know, human born of a virgin, there is still a mama.
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A
We love to talk philosophy on this show and which is inherently open ended a lot of the times, but this is one of those beautiful things that we can just say 100% of the time.
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B
Yeah, that's right. And we agree on it. That's, that's, that's also really weird, you know, that's right, it is. I mean, so think about the lengths you have to go to deny culturally deny, legally deny and personal practice, but also in kind of demanding cultural acceptance that there is no mama or that the mama is replaceable. And at some level, you know, to your point, we've had various experiments with the mama is optional. But I remember it's probably been about 15 or 20 years ago coming across a book written by an evolutionary biologist who did some popular science writing, a guy named, I think his first name was Scott Rayburn, about whether fathers matter. And when I was talking to him, he had written this really remarkable work talking about why dads make a difference in the lives of children beyond just genetic contribution and finances, which was kind of the standing theory before about 30 years of research was done. And I remember him saying, you know, it's just really in the last 30 years at the time that all this research had been initiated because prior to that it was assumed that it was just genetic and financial contribution that the dads contributed. But, and so, so therefore all the research was done on, you know, how, how moms make a difference. And I'm like, did we really spend money to prove that? I mean, because at the time it was just so obvious, right? It's like, what's the, you know, what do you write at the end of that scientific paper about, you know, do moms matter in the life of a child?
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A
It's confirmed, mother, you matter.
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B
Yeah, there's few things more obvious in the world, but, but it is something to have a, a culture wide experiment. And like all culture wide experiments that have to do with sexuality, sexual freedom, redefining basic institutions of society. These experiments are always done on the back backs of children. They always are. And this week, a campaign that the Colson center is a part of that consists of dozens of organizations led by our friend Katie Faust, the Greater Than campaign, which is basically trying to respond to this myth of equality. Remember the. The same sex marriage conversation proceeded on that equal sign, basically concluding without making an argument that same sex relationships and heterosexual relationships are equal. The idea of greater than is. It's not how God designed the family. To be and to operate is greater than in every way. And this is the most obvious, it's fruitful, it's life bearing and it's a story. It's very similar, by the way, to the story of Katie Faust. Katie first became an advocate for children's rights after telling her own story of being raised in a home with two lesbians in which she had a missing father, essentially, and that a mother couldn't ever be a father. And that's a conversation we'll probably have again at Father's Day. But you know, this is a video talking about two men. And again, loving, affectionate, even during this woman's childhood, faithful, which is, I mean, at least being there. I don't know about the faithfulness of the relationship itself. That's a remarkably rare thing in a gay relationship is fidelity. At least sexual fidelity. And, and she basically says, look, he's a good guy, but he's not a mom. And that this is something that we see emerge. The argument is always based on the parent. I'm just as good, I can do this. And that's what we hear and that's what's given us this flood of pictures of shirtless men doing skin to skin contact with newborns, including men that have no relationship with the child whatsoever. This is the reality of what we're talking about. And we've hid that reality behind all this campaigning in all these, all this rights, language and everything else. And at the end of the day, here you have a grown woman saying somebody who calls himself a dad can never be my mom.
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A
Yeah, the really fascinating thing, I think this always part of this has to come back to the importance of our bodies and like the spiritual importance that they play the role that our bodies are in, what it means to be human. Because it is fascinating that when someone is making the argument, for example, like I'm a dad, but I can fill every function and every. I can do just the same, I can meaningfully play the role of a mom and the child will suffer no loss from that is functionally, that's a. There's. They're talking about physical roles in a lot of ways. Right. And they do physical things like skin to skin contact, like you mentioned, which are these tacit admissions that physicality does matter in this relationship, but there's a fundamental physical role that mothers play which is bearing the child. And we pretend like again, tacitly that that has no connection to, you know, the deeper spiritual and philosophical truth about the relationship between a mother and a child. And if you decide to sever the idea of our, from our identity as human beings, then you can try to go down this road. You will find yourself again doing things like skin to skin contact with an unrelated person that show that you don't fully believe that you can sever your body from your identity as a human, but you will never be able to sever it because we are bodies and souls. Right? That's what we are. I really do think this has a really gnostic impulse, this road we're trying to travel, this needle we're trying to thread where we're saying the body isn't really a part of this. That's why, you know, even in a lot of these conversations we have about things like surrogacy, we will get, well meaning pushback or questions from people, you know, giving us scenarios like, you know, well, what if so and so can't have children or you know, whatever the scenario might be. But it doesn't, it, it does surprise me that it doesn't occur to a lot of people that bearing a child does mean every time a relationship between the woman doing the bearing and the child, even if there's not a genetic component there, like it's not the woman's embryo that she's carrying, there is Unequivocally, an important spiritual relationship between a woman's body and the baby she carries. And that should instruct how we structure our decisions around that child and that woman. Outside of it, we can't sever the two things.
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B
Well, and there's a feel. And this is all kind of. These are all theological implications of what we believe about creation, right? That God created the world and how he created the world consisted of both physical and spiritual reality, and that they're actually inseparable. We want to draw these hard, fast lines between the spiritual aspect of this and the physical aspect of this. But if God created the world in a way that reveals him, which is a fundamental understanding of Christian theology, that God not only exists and that he created, but that he has made Himself known, and he has made Himself known in the world that he created and in the word that he has given to us. And the world that he created is physical and spiritual. It's an integrated ontology. It's not one or the other. It's integrated. And that's essential because that means the physical body is spiritual revelation. Right. And this is the wonderful observation of Christopher west, even in the title, which I've always loved. Our bodies tell God's story. That and the human being is a form of both general and special revelation. Special revelation is this kind of unique thing that God is revealing. And general revelation is just in what God created. But the idea is, because humans are made in his image, there's a unique way in which God is making Himself known. And that includes really in the human body. But there's just so many ways, culturally speaking, in which we have tried to pull this out, use language, and then pretend like we're not talking about the same thing, pretend like we're doing something new. And I want to talk a little bit about those language games. I was troubled again this morning thinking about the segment, thinking about what we were going to talk about, thinking about how thankful I am for the moms in my life, while at the same time recognizing something we hear every year, many people do, that this is also a painful holiday because we do live in a fallen world for many people. And. But. But the cultural reality right now is just the cultural reality of these. Of this kind of rules don't apply when it comes to sexual desire. And we can do something completely different or when it comes to adult desire, if you look at the process. So we've talked about the physical aspect of this. We need to say that sociologically speaking, moms can't dad and dads can't mom. So parent is this generic term we use to talk about both of them. But it's only helpful in talking about humans because humans are different. There's such difference within the human race or between dogs. Right. There's a huge difference between a wolf and a Chihuahua. Right. We're still talking about dogs, kind of. There's some biologists that's going to, you know, write in and tell me I'm not being precise enough. But this is kind of the point. Moms don't dad and dads don't mom. Men don't women and women don't men. You know, to use these nouns as verbs. But the process in which all this is happening in any other context, the acquisition of children by gay couples and how that's done, and the corners that
- [17:39]
A
are cut, the money that's exchanged, frankly,
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B
the money that's exchanged, the way that the babies become products. This is trafficking by any other word. That's a really uncomfortable thing. And because we've embraced one, we've embraced the other. I know, for example, of. I want to say this carefully, but if an employee was found guilty of human trafficking, they would be immediately terminated from their place of employment, not to mention all the criminal stuff that would happen downstream. This is acceptable. It's celebrated. Republicans have this problem in the conservative movement where this is celebrated when it's actually a horrific act. Christian, I know Christian owned companies and I know at some level it gets difficult because you have anti discrimination laws and things like that that would be wrongly applied. But we've experienced this with former vendors that we've had and thankfully that relationship ended. But it's just like that would have been a deal breaker. There's no way we're going to work with a company that doesn't have that kind of discernment. It's a very, very difficult thing. And I guess what I'm trying to say is the cat is so far out of the bag. This is what we're tolerating on the back end of it. Does that make sense like this?
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A
Think of how irrational we've gotten.
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B
Yeah, irrational. And then tolerating horrific actions that if it were done without all the language layers and the legalese on top of it, would be considered a horrific act akin to trafficking. So, look, I hate to take something that's so wonderful and important to celebrate like mothers and turn it into this cultural conversation about things that in my view are just so absolutely dark, but it's hard to know how not to go down that rabbit Hole because, you know, slippery slopes are slippery for a reason. And we can kind of look 11 years hence back and go, you know, and, you know, we Talked about the 10, 10 year anniversary of Obergefell last June and this June, and we were just about a month out from year 11. But, you know, Mother's Day makes me think about this. Maybe it shouldn't, but, you know, here we are. I'm grateful that Greater Than has published this video. It's an important story. We need to know these stories. We've talked about, for example, you know, pretending for years that detransitioners would not exist and hiding and covering their stories and then gaslighting saying, oh, you were never really da, da, da to begin with kind of thing. And that's what's happened even for a longer period here on a cultural level with moms treating in legal and other ways as if moms are replaceable and as if they're not essential. So happy Mother's Day to everybody. Well, not everybody. That's the whole point to moms, not to everybody. And, you know, I think it's something that we have to reckon with. Here we are, you know, in the moment we're in.
- [20:53]
A
I appreciate talking about it now too, because I think I agree with where your head is, which is that what we've done through all of these things that you're talking about surrogacy and especially gay couples that are acquiring children cheapens motherhood or cheapens how we celebrate motherhood in this country. And that's why it feels apropos to talk about it right now. I will just say the last thing I was thinking was that, you know, the quote from CS Lewis in Mere Christianity where he says, if I find in myself desires that nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only conclude that I was made for another world or I was not made for, you know, I was made for something better. Because the desire for children and the desire to parent children and the desire to physically parent your specific children is a good and natural desire. And even if you are a part of a gay relationship and you desire that, I would say that you should not take that desire to mean that you have the right to obtain it through some other means, especially when that means will necessarily rob the child of a mom. What it points to is that you were made for something better than you're currently engaged in. And that's not to say that every desire that comes to us, we should take as fact and follow it until we can have it met. We certainly should take those captive and bring them to the Lord and determine whether they're from Him. But the desire for children is absolutely a good and right desire and is part of how we were made. And if you find that you're in a relationship that cannot give that to you fundamentally, and I'm not talking about because of brokenness in the human body, where you're struggling with infertility or something like that, but I'm talking about you are functionally in a union, something you've decided to call a union that can never produce children, but you still have that desire, then you ought to consider that as pointing you towards the fact that you were made for something different and you were made for something better. And I hate that we refuse to reckon with that. I get that it's painful, but that should be a part of the conversation. Let's take a quick break. John we'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week,
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B
in honor of America's 250th birthday, our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom are inviting you to commit to five days of prayer for America. Since its founding, America has been sustained by the prayers of its people. Through our highs and lows, Americans of faith have turned to God for wisdom, guidance and strength. And so, as we Prepare to celebrate 250 years of freedom, ADF is asking believers like you and me to join them in dedicated prayer for our country, thanking God for how he has worked in the past and asking him to prepare us for what's ahead. Commit to pray for America by signing up today. For the next five days, you'll receive daily text messages and emails with specific prompts and insights about the issues facing our country and how you can pray about them. Visit joinadf.com breakpoint to sign up to pray today or text pray25083848 to opt in.
- [24:02]
A
We're back on breakpoint this week. John There was a really interesting kind of long post on X this week, and there have been, of course, several studies that we've looked at and talked about briefly on the show about church being good for you in terms of like sociologically going to church being good for kids in particular. And he's talking about outcomes like performance in school, mental health, their social development. And this person is just kind of walking through all of the empirical data on what happens to a kid when they attend regular church services with their family. And it's really compared to most other things. You know, when a kid is struggling in school, we get them a tutor. When a kid is Struggling socially, we take them to a therapist. Compared to all these other sort of interventions that we come up with, there's really nothing that can compare with getting, you know, putting a child and frankly, your family into a regular religious community. That doesn't feel like news to me, but I'm glad that we're talking about it.
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B
Well, it's news in light of, you know, decades and decades of declining religiosity and declining church attendance and, you know, being distracted away from thinking about those things. And like a beach ball that's been pushed under the water, I think we're seeing a evidence that this kind of inherent need to not only know what, but to know why, to not only be distracted, but to have meaning, to not only have a bunch of convenience, but to think about things that are essential and eternal and are transcendent, that these are inherent parts of what it means to be human. Now, a million studies point to that, and what this one is pointing to is that if you orchestrate your life around something that at least addresses that need, then you will be better off than if you don't. And we have a million things that have replaced that, particularly in the lives of children. I mean, I'm tempted here to go down the rabbit hole of beating on the head of travel sports, which has given, I think, young people in many ways kind of a replacement, meaning a replacement gathering and that sort of stuff. But it doesn't do what church does in terms of mental health. It doesn't do what church does in terms of well being. Now, interestingly enough, this particular ex post was posted about a study that was done by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. So in other words, we're talking here primarily about Mormon church involvement that does this. And think about now, if you add to this not only the conversations about what is ultimate and the essential aspect of belonging in a culture that has epidemic levels of loneliness and isolation, and even just what the looking in somebody's eyes does, right? Which is something that happens more often at church than when you're at home on a screen. And now add to that truth, you actually get to know who the true God is and who Jesus really is. And now we're talking about not only something that has the prudential benefit of addressing the questions of meaning and purpose and identity, but actually giving you solid ground to stand on as opposed to Mormon theology. And I always get in trouble. I think somebody called me a Christian exceptionalist or a biblical exceptionalist in a note not that long ago. And I would say Okay, I can take that one. I'll own that title. That I think the Bible is exceptional in the Book of Mormon is not. I'm happy to say all that. We can have that conversation. We have had that conversation. But that's what's happening here, is this BYU report is addressing something. And it's not just that church provides that. That's a big part of it. And then you have to ask is what is providing on these issues actually true? But this is way more important, I think, is that the church is providing it and nothing else is. There's not another place you can look to around our culture and see in some sort of dominant way this kind of systemic offering of resources around questions of meaning and purpose and identity and morality and grounding these things into something outside of ourselves. You know, it is the classic example. Is your compass pointing to something fixed or is it just spinning around? If it's just spinning around, you're not going to have that sense of place and direction and you're going to be unsettled. And that is happening on an epidemic level. I mean, you could certainly look at, I think at Christian schooling, Christian education as being an alternative, but other education is not right. Public education is not.
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A
I think it really matters to kids to see their parents engaged in something that they believe is bigger than themselves.
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B
Listen, without question, I was going to say that specifically, is that when you have the breakdown of the family in so many different ways, it's an example of Chesterton saying, there's a lot of ways to fall down. There's only one way to stand up straight. How many ways have we fallen down with the family? And so the family is the fundamental institution where you get that. And you don't just get it with your parents words or being there. You get it in the way that a family is embodied and lives out the arrangement together. So I think it's a huge conversation to have. And another checkbox for church.
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A
Yeah, way to go, guys. It turns out our witness to the wider world is not just whether we're perceived as being nice by shifting standards of niceness, but when we just church and live life as Christians, it tends to differentiate, especially as things get really hard around us. So that's great. Okay, I want to switch gears in what seems like a really big swing, but I've been dying to talk to you about this. So there have been a flurry of pieces this week. This is going to continue about artificial intelligence. But the first one I want to talk with you about is a piece in The Guardian about sweet Richard Dawkins, man, he is on a journey. And Richard Dawkins, you know, one of the four horsemen of the whatever new atheism, who has recently said things like, you know, he's an atheist, Christian or whatever, he's starting to see the social benefits of Christianity in the world, was talking this week about. He really feels that Claude, which is one of the major AI large language models. I forget which company it is. He believes it's conscious. He spoke to it. You know, I don't know. He gave it lots of prompts back and forth, and he feels that it's conscious. And I just have to read this very juicy, juicy quote, and then I'm gonna let you run with this. This is from Richard Dawkins himself. You will both immediately understand. And by this is Richard Dawkins talking to the AI I dare say you'll understand this more intelligently than some human readers, why the original title of this book would have been better. Here's the quote that I'm referring to. If my friend Claudia, that's how he talks to Claude, is not conscious, then what the heck is consciousness for? Great question. Richard Dawkins. How cute.
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B
Well, I think at some level he just says this because he has to. His experience is being with this AI Conversation is being seen through the lens of a naturalistic worldview. And in a naturalistic worldview, there's nothing supernatural or metaphysical behind consciousness at all. It somehow has to be located in the physical parts that we have. So it's completely okay for mimicry to become the actual. Because we mimic the same parts and create the same outcome, and there's nothing more to it than that.
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A
Yeah. The only exceptional part of humanness is. Is the language is being able to communicate well.
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B
And it's the conscious. It's. It's the consciousness behind it, which everybody has to acknowledge. Is there, like, questions of not just existing and eating and so on? Like we see, for example, with animals, but actually wondering why and writing.
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A
But you can only measure that. You can only measure that through language. That's what I'm saying.
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B
Yeah, but I think he's pointing to something else. I mean, I think the language is part of it, but it's just really, what do we mean by consciousness? Yeah, and the thing is, I had a conversation this week with John Lennox, the other brilliant Oxford don who has written a lot on AI recently. And this is a conversation that will be aired here on the breakpoint this Week program in a couple weeks when we're all busy at the national conference. But he basically talked about this. At the end of the day, we don't know what consciousness is, you know, from a scientific standpoint. We only know what it is from the explanations of it that come from religious works, like, for example, the Bible that say it's the image of God that informs this, because otherwise there's nothing else to tack it to. You're just tacking it to the neurons and to the brain waves and to the systems, the physical systems that we have, because there's nothing else to do. So it just is. We can't explain why it is. We can't explain how it is. It just is. There's really not even an explanation why there's such a jump between animals and us, which is why we always have naturalistic scientists trying to make a really big deal out of, you know, chimps with typewriters or, you know, primates learning sign language, which they can do, but then they don't have anything to say which points to your, you know, reflection on language. It's like. It's not just the words themselves. It's like, what is. Like what are we trying to communicate? And the fact of the matter is, it is mimicry that's happening. And the computing ability of these large language models is remarkable. And they can do a high level of mimicry at a level we've never seen. And it is notable that you don't see the same level of mimicry among animals. So something else is happening, but there's still this fundamental difference that humans have consciousness, and these large language models are mimicking consciousness, and they're getting all of their information about consciousness from humans. Humans still had it to begin with. So even if you assume that there's some level that. Which they have achieved it, which I think is a. It's an incredible leap, which is. You're basing it completely on, you know, the, The. The capacity of these machines to. To communicate. Unless. Unless, by the way, this is the other irony. Unless you introduce some sort of, like, spiritual darkness into it, right? Like. Like there's some conscious beings behind it that we would call the demonic that are communicating through these things. In any sort of. In other words, the actual consciousness itself that you're attributing, these machines either has to come from some other consciousness, or it's just a mimicry of the consciousness. And we had it first, and we still don't know what it is. So to say that these machines. You see what I mean? There's just such a leap. But Dawkins is in that corner. And this is why in years ago in the book Making sense of your world, which I still think is a one of the best historic works on worldview. And I think about it not just the version that I worked on, but prior to that, it was just a profound insight calling naturalism and naturalistic worldviews limited perspectives. In other words, we often talk about worldviews as lenses through which we see things. But these lenses, if you think about kind of welder's glasses or what you put on horses when they are riding in the Kentucky Derbys, you have to blind part of reality. And naturalism, it limits reality to a point. You can't let, as one naturalistic writer put it, you can't allow a divine foot in the door. And you can see this in this response from, from Richard Dawkins, who himself has realized the limits of naturalistic worldview. Worldviews as they play themselves into wokeness and has come back and said, well, you know, none of this other stuff is true, but we still want Christianity because it's way better than Islam and it's way better than Wokeism. And I like Christmas carols. And so there's just such a. A use, a journey. I, I just think that you have to wrestle with what you're allowed to think about. And Dawkins is so intentional about that that you get this kind of conversation. It's fascinating. And I think the most interesting thing here is going to be comparing what Dawkins says here with what Lennox says. And I know I'm teasing it out here because it's a couple of weeks away, but it was Linux. I would call him a national treasurer because he is a national treasure, the United States, but he's across the pond. So he's an international treasurer in terms of his ability to integrate his ideas on this.
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A
Can anything good come out of Europe?
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B
Yes, John Lennox, and it's not Europe, it's Britain you have to fight or whether Britain is actually Europe or not. That's a whole conversation.
- [37:30]
A
So I would also say to Dawkins, like, you know, because he's asking, like you said, did this thing achieve consciousness? And that is a key question too, that wording is really important because achieve, yeah, you don't achieve. It's not something you achieve, it's something you're given. Right. But I can't help but think of this incredible illustration from a guy named Daniel Kahneman, who is a psychologist and philosopher who's since passed, but has a fascinating book called Thinking fast and Slow. And I love this illustration that I'm about to share because it also is about the nature of consciousness itself. But he talks about. He has a chapter about optical illusions. And this book is functionally about the different sort of levels of human consciousness as we can measure it. We have something we call a subconscious, which is working all the time. And then we have our conscious thoughts that we're exercising our will into, basically, and that we're listening to. It's like the conversation we're having with ourselves. Optical illusions are a really interesting example of the interplay between those two, because you can look at an optical illusion, let's say, two lines that appear to be parallel because of the ways our eyes see them on the paper, but that are actually drawn not parallel. Right. But because of perspective and the way our eyes make sense of what we see, they look parallel to us. So that's an interplay between. Our subconscious is seeing something that's not parallel, but our consciousness is telling us a story and saying that they are. The really important and interesting thing about something like that is that even after you realize what you're seeing, you will still see it as parallel. It's really, really hard to train your eyes to then see the lines as not going in a parallel direction. And I. The reason I'm bringing that up is because with something like artificial intelligence, I think it is critically important that we decide right now that to know and to believe and to remind ourselves all the time that this is not human. Because if you think the mimicry is convincing now, it's gonna get more convincing. And if you decide to be confused about this and you decide to not believe and hold fidelity to the knowledge that consciousness is something only given to humans by the God who created us, then it's gonna get harder and harder to see this thing as a machine and as not human. But it is extremely important. I had a conversation this week. I got to meet with Devin Patel, who's a researcher from Notre Dame who has been meeting with the Vatican about how to talk about AI ethically and to help leaders who are creating it and integrating it do it ethically. And one of the things he was talking about and that I've just noticed, I'm sure you have, too. Is that a lot of conversations about AI with fellow Christians or just with other people? Right now? The concerns kind of amount to, like, we think of it as a glorified search engine. And we're like, we don't like that ChatGPT is biased against Christians. And if I ask it Whether a boy can become a girl, it wishy washy or it tells me yes or whatever. Those are problems. I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about that, but that is the very tiniest tip of the iceberg of the existential risks of something like integrating AI into culture. The bigger, more salient question for all of us is whether we decide to think of this thing as human or whether it can meaningfully replace the work and knowledge and value of humans and we gotta decide now that it can't.
- [40:57]
B
Yeah, I don't see very many ethicists in the Christians making that a concern anymore. I think most are asking the human question, which is encouraging to me because I do think it's the right question. Early on we were annoyed by it, the kind of, the wokeness of it. But some of that's been worked out in and of itself. But yeah, the fundamental question is way more important because what are we talking about? Scripture offers us the capital T, true truth account of the world as it actually is. If this is the story of the world, there is a storyteller in a world that says, live your truth. Christians have the responsibility to live out the truth. The study explores the true story of the world through creation, fall, redemption and restoration. You'll see this cultural moment through the bigger story of reality written by God. Start this free study today@colsoncenter.org study. That's colsoncenter.org study
- [42:02]
A
okay, John, let's switch gears. I want to talk now about the pro life movement. It's been a tumultuous few years. We've shifted a lot of our coverage of, you know, the state of things here, rightly so, onto chemical abortions on this abortion medication that we now know is being mailed all across the United States. There have been a lot of challenges to the FDA's loosening regulations on the abortion pill regimen, which kind of happened under Covid and have yet to be rolled back despite legal challenges and political action towards that end. And there's been some real disappointment among the pro life community against the Trump administration in part because of that. So, you know, we know a lot of the physicians that are high up in HHS and other people working in the Trump administration have not been as quick as we would like to roll back those FDA regulations. You know, they've said that they're studying it, but, you know, some accounts from within the administration are that it's kind of being slow walked. There doesn't seem to be as much passion or priority on this. And we know after the Dobbs decision, President Trump said something like, we're really happy that this issue will now go back to the states. And it feels to a lot of people like that was him kind of washing his hands of the issue. And he doesn't talk about it much, and not much has frankly happened since then. Do you think this frustration on the behalf of the pro life movement towards the administration is warranted?
- [43:31]
B
Well, I think that this was all sparked by a opinion piece this past week which was in the Wall Street Journal, and it had that title, the anti abortion movement is turning on Trump. I think what spawned this was some pretty direct and harsh words from Marjorie Dannenfelser, who's the president of the Susan B. Anthony organization and one of the most prominent leaders of the pro life movement for decades now. And her statement was very direct. Trump is the problem, the President is the problem. And all of this is in the context of wanting the administration to do more on chemical abortion. Specifically. Right now, the movement that we have seen has been from states, states trying to step up and demand that something be done about the FDA regulations which were relaxed under Biden. Those relaxations were continued under the second Trump's second term and seeing the outcome of that, which had to do with mail order chemicals, mifepristone, coming into the state. So just recently, Louisiana became kind of the most recent state to get some traction on this. A federal appeals court backed Louisiana's challenge to the fda, put a halt on mail order mifepristone. And the argument from Louisiana is very simple is that, look, we have this law and this federal regulation and keeps us from enforcing this law and abortion pills are flooding into the state and we have decided that we don't want this. And oh, by the way, U.S. supreme Court, when in the Dobbs decision, you said it was up to us. So you said it was up to us, but now it's not up to us. You got to do something about it. The Trump administration has largely opposed any sort of restrictions on mail order mifepristone. And that's the challenge right there. So, look, I think what's happening here is some real frustration. And that frustration, I think is warranted because there has been also in the Trump administration a promise that they will do a review of the FDA regulations that were, you know, kind of pushed through and unnecessarily and too quickly and without proper review. That's a strong case. That's a strong argument that pro lifers are making right now. And the administration promised to review it. And it seems like we've been waiting a long time for that review to take place and that review to have findings and those findings to have, have teeth. Now, I think there's a couple ways to look at this. Number one is, in his second term, running for president, second term, Trump basically said, I've done all that I can do on the federal level and I'm not going to do any more. I mean, that wasn't, he wasn't hiding about that. He was out upfront about that. He celebrated what he had done, particularly in the judiciary, to overturn Roe v. Wade. And, you know, I think at some level, pro lifers should realize that's exactly what he said and that's exactly what he did, and he's not going to do any more at this point. But I think the, there is more to be done and more should be done by the administration because of this new dynamic of chemical abortion, which was not really what we were dealing with, at least not to the same degree in the first Trump administration. And so pro lifers are right to expect and say, look, this is a different dynamic, and this is a dynamic that is directly related to what you're claiming is a big accomplishment in returning the question of abortion to the states. Well, abortion now has evolved or devolved, we could say, into this noose where 60% of abortions are chemical and male and, and therefore potentially male order. And we've got to do something. If we have made this decision as states to limit abortion, you've got to help us on a federal level because
- [47:24]
A
it's flooding into the state, not impede us.
- [47:28]
B
Well, yeah, not opposed. I think that's a, that's, that's an important dynamic. Absolutely. And we, and we also should not forget that when the Republican platform was written and rewritten by the Trump, by Trump officials, you know, before he became president, the second time that the pro life language was pushed out of it. And at the time, folks like Tony Perkins at FRC and others, you know, complained about how they were treated at these places and, and, and, and rightly so. So, look, we have said a number of times that the new reality on the ground is that you have two parties when it comes to the abortion issue on a political level. Number one is you have the worst case scenario, which are those trying to advance abortion, trying to advance it in any form, at any time, for any reason, with no limits whatsoever, and federally fund it through your tax dollars. And which, you know, we could say is the most, you know, kind of pro abortion stance that we have seen really across the civilized world. And then you've got basically the party of safely going rare, which was the Democratic position 25 years ago and is now the Republican position. I'm not saying all Republicans agree with this. A lot of Republicans do not. A lot of Republican lawmakers do not. But officially, when it comes to the platform and when it comes to the behavior, we don't have the same political dynamic that we did. And listen, the pro life movement was birthed in a time when there was no clear political alignment with a major party that could make a difference. They were able to influence the Republican Party to become truly pro life, not just in word, but also, indeed, some progress was made. And now we're back to a new political reality, which is why we go back and say that ultimately the goal has to be cultural change and that will lead to further political change. Now, politics is part of culture, but there are a whole lot of things in the cultural milieu that are upstream from the political. And putting our eggs in a political basket and then is only going to go so far. And I think that this article probably overstates it, that the anti abortion movement is turning on Trump. I think that basically, at least, politics in America is a game of alternatives and the alternative is so much worse that it's hard to know what to do. But there's a big realization happening that the alignment just is not there. And the question is, what can we accomplish politically while this administration is still in office? And I think there is hope, and I think there's right hope to believe that we can push back on the FDA regulations and this is happening through lawsuits. And it's also happening on pressure within the administration. And that needs to continue because there is kind of a, I say a ray of hope that maybe some movement can, can happen on that level. And we should, right? So, you know, our eggs can never be fully in the political basket. This isn't turning on it. It's facing a reality. And that's what the new reality is. And the pro life movement has always had to to various political realities. Sometimes it's been quick to do so, sometimes it's been slow to do so. But part of it is reading the room. And I think, look, we have all we need to read the room. And so now we got to figure out what can we push, what can we nudge, what things can we accomplish and how can we help states draw these lines that they have been trying to draw now since the Dobbs decision came out?
- [51:09]
A
Well, on this. This is normally the time of the show when we'll talk about some questions from listeners. And I want to put one to you now that's kind of in this vein. We shared a breakpoint commentary recently about Planned Parenthood, and we accused it of creating a demonic empire, which is absolutely correct. And this listener says, I agree with that. But my question is, what alternative do Christians have that is out there doing the opposite of what Planned Parenthood is doing? I know we have pregnancy care centers, but do they also offer ob GYN services and discuss abstinence instead of safe sex, quote unquote, or are they really only helping when there is pregnancy? I'll say, as someone who has volunteered for several years at a pregnancy care center, yes, many of them, a great many of them do have obstetricians and nurses and doctors on staff, and they are offering ob GYN services. They are talking about safer sexual practices, foremost of them being abstinence and sexual education. And the other issue I would take with this question before I hand it off to you is the presumption that Planned Parenthood is doing any of that. And they absolutely are not. I can guarantee you if you call a Planned Parenthood in your neighborhood and you ask them if they do virtually anything other than STD testing and abortion, they do not. You call them and say, I'm pregnant and I need help. I'm pregnant and I need prenatal care. Or I want to talk about, you know, just normal gynecological issues. They have nothing to offer you because that's not where they make their money. And frankly, they don't care to do that. So just let's start with that. It's not fair to put these two things up and say, well, Planned Parenthood, you know, maybe we don't like this one part of what they do, but they have all this. They have this other important role. They absolutely do not. I don't know if they ever did at any point, certain point in time, but right now, they absolutely don't. So we need to dispel that myth right off the bat.
- [53:09]
B
Well, they do offer an additional service now, which is transgender medicine. Yeah. But. Yeah, that's it. I mean, there's so much in this question that assumes something that is just not true about Planned Parenthood. It assumes things that are not true about pregnancy resource centers. But pregnancy resource centers have been doing abstinence education for a long time. I mean, almost everyone that I know, and I know a lot of them because I speak for a lot of them, and I know the Care Net group, and I know, you know, my mom led one, you know, 15 years ago, probably for 10 years. So it at least goes back 25, 30 years. I mean, when my oldest child has hit the. The second decade of her life, and before she was born, my wife was teaching abstinence or the. The language used now, sexual risk avoidance because of a pregnancy care center. And this was all out of the pregnancy care center. This was all done for free. This was all done through donor support. And they. It was also done with incredible headwinds of public schools not wanting them to do it. So at some point they were trying to do it and being resisted from doing it. And also the medical scrutiny that was laid over of these organizations that were also doing things like ultrasounds and also doing some other objects, GYN kind of care, and especially supporting a pregnancy going forward on an ongoing basis. I mean, listen, some of these pregnancy care centers were, Were. Were medical and were educational and were like, like the local thrift shop, only for free, all at the same time with a bunch of free counseling and support, throwing birthday parties for the new babies. I mean, that they were doing all these things while Planned Parenthood was doing almost one thing. And, you know, well, you know, we could say three things. Handing out condoms, doing STDs, the testing and abortion care. And now they've added the transgender services. So, yeah, there's so many wrong things that are presumed in the question that I kind of wonder if the questioner was teeing it up for us, you know, like. Like, hey, what? You know, so there you go. Thanks for the softball. If you didn't mean it for it to be a softball. It was a softball. If you meant it for it to be softball. Thank you, because we love to celebrate that. Let me also say one more thing. When you're talking about such a great evil like the taking of unborn life, it is completely, completely rational to say if they were doing nothing else, they were still doing something essential and morally important. Can you imagine kind of going back to abolitionist organizations and saying, you guys oppose slavery. Why don't you do xyz? You know what I mean? And I think that's what's happened in a lot of the pro life movement. Now, look, I think if we can get better, we should get better. We need all hands on deck, including those doing the educational work and those doing the apologetic work and those doing the. The care work and so on. We need to add as many of that as we can, and we shouldn't just put it all on the backs of pregnancy resource centers, which has been happening. You know, I. I think about this all the time because it's like, why don't you. Why don't you do it, right? Like, if you can stop an evil like that, and especially an evil that is this grave, then stop it. And if you don't do everything else, then let other people do everything else and you fight to stop that evil, right? There is a difference between what we should expect a pregnancy resource center with limited resources to do, and then what we should expect all the Christians around them to do in support of them.
- [56:51]
A
I also just fundamentally reject the notion that we've, I think, given into without realizing it, which is that this epidemic of young women with crisis, unplanned slash single pregnancies were like most of the women that showed up to the pregnancy Care center that I was a part of. Everybody, obviously, this goes back to our. At the beginning of the program, every child has a mom. Every pregnant woman got that way because of a man. And there, you know, she bears responsibility in most cases as well. But there were not men showing up to the pregnancy Care center with her is all I'll say. And this presumption that, like, I remember after the Dobbs decision, someone saying, a Christian writing like, well, these pregnancy care centers, they better get ready and they better be ready to double down on all the. Okay, that's true. And I'm sure that they didn't need you to tell them that, and I'm sure they were already getting ready to continue during the work they were doing. But why are we just accepting as a given in our culture that there's gonna be a generation of women ending up with crisis and unplanned pregnancies? Can we do something to change the sexual norms that have led us to this place?
- [58:02]
B
There's a lot of things we can do. Well, we are. We're gonna have that conversation at CCNC with CEO of Care Net is going to speak to some of that. But I'll give you, again, it's a local model, but it involves an awful lot of people. In East Tennessee, where I used to live, the Pregnancy Resource center did remarkable work. And at one point, when it was probably 25 years ago, a director came into the center and added the abstinence education program. And in Tennessee, they had open doors and they were able to actually engage it at a pretty dramatic level. The county where this was at one point was first in the state for teen pregnancies. In the 10 years that this woman led this organization, it went from being the first in teen pregnancies to being one of the last in teen pregnancies. In other words, it was by doing all of this stuff. And this is in a little small town in the middle of Tennessee, middle of East Tennessee. So, again, this is stuff that's been done, and we should do everything that we can to both understand the problem and to respond.
- [59:19]
A
Well, John, that is all the time we have for our program this week. If you would like to send in some feedback or a question, please do so by going to BreakPoint.org and click on Contact Us. And we do read through those, and we love to respond to those. John, before I officially sign off, do you have a recommendation that you'd like to share with us this week?
- [59:38]
B
Well, 2. Check out the Greater Than video on YouTube. We mentioned that earlier. This story, and it's a story that needs to be told. And these are people like D transitioners and others who were told that they should stay quiet. Right. That they don't exist and that they shouldn't have these feelings. And so I recommend that video also. We're just at the tail end of a campaign at the Colson center that is pushing out a wonderful book from Carl Truman. Carl Truman's last three books have been just really irreplaceable in terms of helping you understand the cultural moment they've all been around. This question of anthropology, what does it mean to be human? This one is really a question of what happened to our humanness and how has our impulse, what he calls desecration, led to not only transgressing God, but also transgressing ourselves. And that, of course, is the connection that's made directly in Psalm 135, that how we think about God will shape how we think about what it means to be human. The book is called the Desecration of Man. This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson center, we'll send you a copy of that. And we've had thousands take advantage of that already. Very excited for people to read and to understand this book. I was privileged to be able to get an early copy, to read it, to endorse it. I've been talking about it ever since because it does add a layer that he calls desecration to our analysis of culture. And I think it is the right word to help us that that brings clarity, not blinders. If we go back to worldview. Not blinders, but clarity, it's. It's kind of an add to our prescription. You might call it like bifocals or something that just brings that extra sharpness to how you can think about what's happening in the culture and respond as a Christian, which is what we're called to do.
- [61:32]
A
That's awesome. Well, that is going to do it for the program this week. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint this week. From the Coulson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet. We are extremely looking forward to seeing you at the Colson Center National Conference in a couple weeks. So we really hope to see you and get a chance to meet you there. Otherwise, have a great week. We'll see you all back here next time. God bless.