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Breakpoint
New Data on American 'Religiosity,' Will AI Be the End of Work?, Digital Necromancy, and the Education Crisis
01:06:54
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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 going to talk about new numbers from Gallup showing religiosity is down. We're also going to talk about the increasing influence of AI on everything from work to grief. We have a lot to get to today. We're so glad you're with us. Stick around. Welcome to breakpoint this week. From the Coulson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet. John, I'm hoping you can help me make sense of another poll this week. This one's coming from Gallup indicating that there has been a precipitous drop in what they're calling religiosity among people in the U.S. now, we've talked over the last couple of weeks about polls showing a rise in, for example, Bible reading or accessing Bible apps, a rise in church attendance among Gen Z and millennials. Now, this poll from Gallup is showing that from 2015 to this year, there has been a precipitous drop in people who say religion is an important part of their daily life. It sounds like that was how the question was worded. The number of people who said yes was 66% in 2015 and now is 49%. So help me make sense of this. What does this mean?
- [01:20]
B
Well, I think the best way to make sense of it is just wait for the next poll so then you can have the one that gives you the results that you you want. I think there's a number of things working here. First of all, the timing of this, it does date back a little bit before some of the events of the fall, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk. As I understand, the timing of this and that certainly, I think, was a catalyst for a lot of things. I'm not sure. It was kind of the central event of a new revival that some people, me included, hoped it would be. Again, we got to wait and see whether we're talking about something long term or we're talking about something that is kind of like the 911 effect, where a lot of people got patriotic, you know, for a short amount of time, and then there was even a little bit of a backlash. I don't know that this is going to be like that completely, but I do think it's just early to tell. I also think religiosity is really hard to measure because you're talking about church attendance. You're taking in cultural factors. Just one example is that I think it was about five years ago. You know, we're watching these polls come in on religiosity and faithful church attendance at that point was defined as going once a month. And I just had a flashback to my childhood when we would be there Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night. So suddenly you went from three times a week to once a month. That's a pretty dramatic drop off. But the fact of the matter is, with particularly, I don't want to put all the blame on travel, sports, but an awful lot of blame can be put on travel, sports or other things. It's just not what it used to be. But that's a relative measure of religiosity, right? I mean, that's not what is religiosity really. And are we going to look to the folks at Gallup to be able to define that for us? I mean, they have to come up with something. If they're going to measure something, they have to come up with some criteria, but I'm not sure that it's the right criteria. And we also know that there's a pretty big drop or a pretty big difference, I guess, between religiosity and worldview. And I think that the post Dobbs era, at least in terms of measuring kind of abortion commitments, I'm not necessarily directly connecting that with religiosity, but there's just a big difference between, you know, thinking, for example, that abortion should, that this particular abortion law should be overturned, Roe v. Wade, and having a particular view of abortion which completely wasn't, you know, aligned. And that just at that point, you're starting to get into people's deeply held beliefs, and those are really hard things to measure. So I think more time is needed.
- [04:08]
A
Yeah, I agree. I am also, like you, just kind of confused. I mean, every one of these surveys just has such specific wording of their questions. I mean, last week we talked about a poll that asked people, and this one's from Barna, whether they believe that The Bible is 100% true. And, you know, we talked a little bit about how maybe confusing the wording of that question is. And of course, the numbers were going down there. This too, like you mentioned, they said, do you. The question was, do you feel religion is an important part of your daily life? And then they measured it also against people indicating how often they went to church. So it's just hard to know what people meant by that. What exactly was meant by the question, what people meant by their answering of it.
- [04:50]
B
Think about it this way, like we were talking about the rise of the nuns, that was not that long ago. And now we're talking about kind of a vibe shift. Both of those things refer to religiosity, but are they in and of themselves enough? We talked about the spiritual, but not religious. Right. And that was coming on the tails of talking about the moralistic, therapeutic deists. So I like the fact that there is such a concern on this, because I feel like there was an era maybe 10 years ago, where researchers were really downplaying the significance of religious conviction and religious belief as you were trying to understand kind of an American society. And that, I thought, just smacked completely of a secular worldview. Right. If you assume, oh, religion, that's not. It's just something people, you know, have like a preference about, you know, ice cream flavors, you know, that's not something you would ever measure to kind of figure out the direction a civilization is going to. It was really a time when the significance of religious belief was really being downplayed. And I. So I like the fact that we're. We're trying to get at it multiple directions. It's just a notoriously hard thing to understand.
- [06:01]
A
It is also kind of an interesting culture study to look at how some of these organizations word their questions. And I think sometimes there's some tells that maybe the folks writing them are not fully familiar with the vernacular or the world of. Like, if somebody walked up to me and said, is religiosity an important part of your daily life? I would have, like. Like four questions before I could answer that. Like, I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Are you asking if I believe Jesus Christ was a real historical figure and that he also was God and he rose from the dead? And does that impact all my decisions? Yes, but what exactly are you talking about? I read a piece yesterday from Matt Taibbi, who was a former Rolling Stone reporter and now writes a very popular substack and is not by any stretch a Christian, but has actually wrote a book about Christianity in Texas and all this kind of stuff. And he. Some throwaway line in this piece he was writing was like, yeah, she mentioned something called the, quote, prosperity Gospel. I don't know what she means by that. And it was just a reminder that, like, there's a lot of people who know a lot about a lot of things and have very little familiarity with Christianity. And that might be coming through in some of these polling results as well. But in the same vein, there was another story that was published this week in the New York Times about a dramatic increase in attendance at Christian Orthodox churches. And this was particularly focused on young men showing up at these Orthodox churches. And this reporter talked to some of the priests within these churches, talking about what's drawing some of these men. And they suggested it's some of the, like the rigidity. It reminded me of some of the discourse around Jordan Peterson when he first kind of rose to cultural significance, because it was like young men are looking to be called into something bigger than them and something that calls them to masculinity and to rigidity and maybe rules are attractive for some reason. And so they're kind of reasoning that that's what's drawing people in. And then of course, talking about the tension of trying to disciple men that come in looking for that kind of thing. Are you seeing that as well? Do you think that this is real, that there's an increase in Orthodox Christianity?
- [08:08]
B
Yeah, and let's be clear. What we mean is Orthodox capital O. So we're talking about Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, things like that, not small O like Orthodox churches. Although I think if you actually looked at those churches that are reporting an increase in attendance, particularly since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, they would be small O Orthodox churches. In other words, they would be those that take doctrine seriously, that take belief seriously. That seems to be anecdotally where the young men who are kind of pursuing this interest in Christianity are going. In other words, they're not going to the ones that downplay doctrinal precision and trumpet emotional well being. There's a difference. We talked a couple weeks ago about that meme. Not a meme, a post on social media which basically said, this is the Christian dating scene. All the young women are at the celebrity pastor churches and all the men are at the traditional or liturgical churches. I don't think there's data to back that up. That was definitely an anecdote. But I do know at my church, which is liturgical, which is traditional, which, you know, we don't have the smells, but we have the bells, you know, several times a year there is a row of young men and they sit there and they are very committed and we have really deep, rich theological conversations. They in and of themselves, some of them are exploring various, you know, looking deeply at different traditions.
- [09:44]
A
And so are they new to the church, you mean?
- [09:47]
B
Some are, some are new to that kind of church. But it's a very small sample size. I would also say that this article on capital O Orthodoxy and young men returning is a small sample size, at least when you're comparing it across the board. Because Orthodoxy does not represent a large population in the American conduct.
- [10:08]
A
Yeah, less than 1%. Yeah.
- [10:10]
B
I was curious. Rod Dreher wrote about it this week. Rod has been writing some really, really interesting things, and he aligns his understanding of Christianity as well as the Western culture and the civilizational moment. Although he doesn't use that language, he's definitely writing about this kind of critical time. And he affirmed that observation from the capital o Orthodox priests that are there. I don't think it's just about rules, though. I think it's about expectations. I think it's. In other words, what are you getting yourself into? And there maybe is a reason that this is aligning at the same time as you see a growth in other things that are more traditionally masculine. If you think about capital O Orthodox services, they're really long. You stand for a long time. You participate. It's not a sit and listen to a performance, which sometimes popular evangelicalism seems to reflect either a performance from the band or a performance from the speaker. I'm not trying to be cruel. I'm just saying that these are the way these liturgies, these competing liturgies have evolved today. It's not a lot of humor in trying to make everyone laugh and feel good. It is a come and participate and be a part of it. The priests typically are bearded men, you know, who look like lumberjacks with, you know, liturgical garb on, with families. So that might be interesting. An interesting dynamic between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is that the priests there actually marry and often not only have families, but large families. So I think there's a lot of dynamics about what's attracting. I think it's a, you know, it is a small trend because we're talking about a small demographic. But I do think it's probably part of a larger trend if young men are indeed returning to church, which, of course, we have to wait for the next Gallup poll to give us again, the result we're hoping to find or not. I think there's. There is a lot of movement. And right now, I remember several years ago in the evangelical college world, there was a big group out of, you know, Wheaton, I believe, if I remember correctly, and maybe InterVarsity Press, and that all became either Anglican or Catholic. And the evangelical, you know, thought leadership was like, you know, what's happening? And, you know, what's explaining this big exodus? Well, there was a big exodus going both directions. You know, there was Catholics leaving the Catholic Church for evangelical churches. In other words, there was just a lot of movement and you know, those who had the headlines told the one story but not the other story. I don't know if that's what's going on here. I really don't. I do think that there is a lot of movement and we're seeing a lot of movement and that reflects, you know, unrest, that reflects a discontent, a frustration, that reflects a willingness to try something new. And I think we're seeing that from people who gravitate towards, you know, worse expressions of what, what might legitimately be called toxic, you know, masculinity, kind of the bro culture. But at the same time, you know, I think there has been. I think there's a lot to this explanation that young men have been told by a certain segment of the population that they're what's wrong with the, with the planet and with the world and everything about it, and they have to stop being themselves. And by and large there's some center, center left evangelical groups that either embrace that same narrative or basically then targeted all their seeker friendly material in a different direction. And I think there's a reaction to that. So that probably explains part of it. But right now, given all these numbers and all these things moving around, it'd be really hard to say definitively this is what's going on. But something's going on. And I wrote this week, in fact, just today, for our breakpoint commentary, just kind of some end of the year, we're doing a series of five end of the year reflections on Fridays. And this was on the Charlie Kirk effect, quote unquote, you know, preceded by the quote unquote vibe shift. And now is there a revival? And so on. And listen, I think there's two ways to miss a work of the Lord. And the most primary way we're seeing it is by those who saying, God will never work that way. Now we know that there's some places that God will never work. He'll never work through lies, he'll never work through. But he will work through fallen people and fallen institutions. And there is a lot of people whose interest is piqued. And I think we should run into that interest and be willing to have those conversations and hopefully be able to be a part of the movement that's happening.
- [15:13]
A
Sorry, is there a second way to.
- [15:15]
B
Yeah, the second way is to say, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so. And that's what's happening on the other side of it. So. But yeah, we talk about both of those things.
- [15:22]
A
Okay, well, John, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week.
- [15:28]
C
Hey, Breakpoint listeners. Bob Dittmer, producer of breakpoint here. Recently, one of our listeners, a mom of college age kids from Colorado Springs, shared how God has used the resources and programs of the Colson center to impact her life. Here's what she said.
- [15:42]
D
I can engage my daughters in discussions that are not fear based or reactive. And then also the daily, the current events that are happening real time that podcasts like Breakpoint and Strong Women are helping to inform me. It gives me that chance to think about it before the conversation happens. I need to think about things before I'm in that moment in the conversation. The Colson center serves a unique role in supporting the church because it's looking at all of the best resources that are available out there. And I trust that the editors and the staff are gleaning the things that are going to help me deal with the current issues that I'm facing as a Christian, as a mother, as a wife, as a friend, as a daughter. And they're bringing these together through podcasts, through the Colson Fellows program, through the conference. And I feel like I have all these resources and regardless of what I'm reading or listening to, everything is working together to shape and form and strengthen my worldview.
- [16:57]
C
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- [17:34]
A
We'Re back on Breakpoint this week. John, there was a clip going around this week of a quote from Elon Musk talking about artificial intelligence and basically making a typically Muskian provocative statement saying that, you know, in 20, 30 years, work, human work will basically be optional because artificial intelligence is going to meaningfully replace human work as we know it right now. Also, in typical Muskian way, it wasn't exactly clear if he was saying this is great or this is bad. I mean, I think he's generally pretty optimistic about this kind of thing. Do you think that that's plausible? And, I mean, I certainly feel like this would be a Bad thing. But do you want to give us your take there?
- [18:18]
B
First of all, I think you've coined the phrase Muskian and I think, you know, a lot of times we can say that and it can kind of be all over the place, but that actually has real meaning. Like Muskian is this.
- [18:27]
A
People would know what it means. Yeah, Provoc.
- [18:29]
B
Provocative kind of. Listen, Elon Musk is one of the most fascinating people on the planet for a reason. There's a reflection of the image of God and his ability to, I was going to joke and say be fruitful and multiply, but I meant it as the creation mandate, not in how he has chosen to reproduce, which is terrible, but his basically looking at the planet and seeing what's not there and seeing what's possible and being his co creative kind of impulse that God actually put in and think to think differently. It's a remarkable thing and it has led to an incredible amount of innovation. There's very few figures that you can look at in recent memory that kind of push the boundary of what Ross Douthit called in his, I think it was a book in 2020 or 2021 on decadence when basically there's just a stagnation as you become more and more kind of spoiled and distracted and filled. It's a way of looking at kind of how civilizations decline and one of the marks of that is no innovation or that you do something relatively small and call it innovation. Musk doesn't do that. So I think that's an interesting thing. But no, this particular observation on work I think is already in the water. You think about it in terms of the fascination that we have with point of work being retirement. Chuck Colson used to react against that. The measure of economic success being people will never be able to retire. And by retire I don't mean just mean like slow down or do things that are absolutely appropriate and basically enjoy family and grandkids. Chuck Colson used to talk about retiring and chasing a white ball around a golf course and as if there's no more purpose to life than that. And I also think though we have the great resignation that happened coming out of COVID we have the worries of AI already replacing work and jobs. He also talked about it would be the end of money. And I guess all that to say it just feels like that's going into that AI could potentially serve up that possibility within an ethos where we already have a wrong understanding of work as it is. I know it's early in the show to Drop a recommendation. But I go back to David Bonson's wonderful book on work and the meaning of work and work as meaning, and it goes back to what we were created for. Every worldview basically answers that question, what are we for? And Christianity fundamentally says we're created for work. Now we think about work in a fallen context, that it's drudgery, that it's toil, that it's. And redeemed work is work, that untoils work. It makes it actually redemptive in what God made us to do, to do something with his world and to do it in his glory. That seems so foreign to how we think about work today. Being separated, for example, from productivity, where it used to be, where you did a day's work and you could see the result. But if you're just widget making, it's really hard to see that kind of connection. And so that said, it's made work all the more efficient, it's made it far more safe. There's a lot of upsides to the technological innovation, but I don't think it's a good thing to aim for not working. And I think there's too many examples of what happens to young men in particular who for whatever reason stop working. It becomes an identity crisis. They become a problem, so to speak. So work can be done wrongly, but the answer is not to say work should be eradicated or eliminated. It's a violation of what we're for.
- [22:28]
A
Yeah, I think, I mean, I'm hopeful at least with my very rudimentary understanding of AI and technology generally. You mentioned the innovation of someone like Elon Musk. And I think with every new technological advancement, at least that we've seen in our lives, which has been not inconsequential, like the incredible amounts of advancement, people tend to find new ways to be useful despite or within that realm. And I think it's completely plausible that even as AI becomes more and more sophisticated and can replace all of these duties that we're doing, that we'll find other ways to bring innovation and creation to it. I certainly hope that that's the case just because I think it's a normal God given human impulse to want to be useful and to contribute. And we tend to be like necessity is the mother of invention. If we need to feel useful, we will find ways to do it. At the same time, it is really hard to continue to do things when standing right in front of you and staring you in the face is a quote unquote easier or more efficient way to do it. It's hard on its face, but it's also hard sometimes, like socially. And I think about this a lot, a lot in my day to day life as a mom. Like when I make a cake from scratch. This is such a weird example, but I love to bake. I'm not very good at it. But when I make a cake from scratch, there will always be one or two people, like if I take it to my Bible study or if I whatever, who are like, did you get this from a box? And when you say no, sometimes there's like a why would you do that? Like, why? Why wouldn't you get it from a box? And this has no morality attached to it whatsoever. But there is a little bit of a social stigma against doing things for the sake of doing them when there is an easier option on the table. And again, I don't think there is a black and white morality attached to this. However, I do think it's gonna be increasingly important as a principle to see goodness in work and doing things for the sake of doing them, even when there's an automated or easier option for it. And I think, because I think that that's part of what it means to, is to be called to work and contribute. That's why we all have a hunger to do that and to feel useful. And so it's just gonna be increasingly harder to make the case to ourselves to still do things. In a little bit, we're gonna talk about falling academic performance among students. And one of the reasons people are giving for the fact that college kids can't do math is that they're losing grip on why it's useful to know it anyway, because you can Google this stuff so quickly and that problem's just gonna get worse and worse. So I think it's a growing importance in our catechism of ourselves and our kids that knowing and doing things for the sake of knowledge itself is good.
- [25:27]
B
Well, I mean, that's true, but that's been in the water for a long time. I mean, Jacques Elul was writing about this 70 years ago. In a book that you and I have talked about a lot, the Way of the Modern World, the theologian Craig Gay from Regent College has talked about the values of modernity. And he wrote this 30 years ago now, I think is convenience, efficiency and choice. So when those become the dominating values, then humans get good at certain things and we get less good at other things. And so it's one thing to have this sort of technological potential when you've got everything, all your Ducks in a row relationally, or all your ducks in a row ethically, or all your ducks in a row anthropologically. In other words, this is a preexisting condition of confusion. In fact, I know we're headed into the other story, I think is of AI Which I saw this floating around X this week, and I thought, this is so much like that woman who started the company about how to more thoroughly vet and test your embryos through IVF and promising this. Remember that, that, that. That commercial, right? And then. And then Ross Douthat did that. Great. I saw this one. I thought, I wonder if Ross is going to interview this dude, because this dude's going around, you know, promoting AI as a technology so that you can always keep in touch with your dead loved ones and promoting it as a good thing. I mean, you saw it up front. You're like, is. Is this the announcement of a new.
- [27:01]
A
Company or creating an avatar based on footage of this person when they were alive so that after they pass away, you can call up little videos of them that are AI generated.
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B
And the video was a grandchild talking to a grandparent. Right. Wasn't that the video?
- [27:15]
A
Yep.
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B
I mean, listen, that's so creepy is not an ethical response, but there's something about.
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A
It's the start of one.
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B
Well, listen, you do remember there was the Bahamian pastor. I can never say his name. Tabita.
- [27:32]
A
Tabiti.
- [27:33]
B
Yeah, there was years ago. He got in so much trouble. He was responding to gay marriage at the time. And he talked about the gag reflex. He talked about the fact that when a culture loses that kind of initial moral revulsion to something, and this is something that you can really imagine, right, that this is something that if you have a moral revulsion to the idea of talking to dead people, well, you know, it's because you're human. It's because you're normal. It's because you've lived as a human in any of the preceding centuries, where death was always understood to be something beyond our control. And a hard, fast line that we're not in control of everything. Technology gives you that illusion that we're in control of everything. Technology gives the illusion that we can kind of go into the grave. Now think about kind of the worst villains in the books. Think about in Prince Caspian when they're having the War Council and they're like, let's summon up the power of the white W. Or think about in SOL going to the witch of Endor, or the promise of going back beyond this line, this hard, fast line that's observably part of humanity of death. To do it technologically might be less mystical, but it should not be less creepy to us. But when we talk about kind of the losing moral revulsion and our inability to think biblically about stuff. Here's the other thing I thought of. The weekend after Charlie Kirk was assassinated in at least two mega churches in the United States, pastors played an AI generated clip of Charlie Kirk in his voice talking about, this is where I am. Don't worry about me, I'm in heaven now and everything, whatever, you know, in other words, this was on the stage at mega churches as if that were a normal thing to do, as if that wasn't. As if that wasn't incredibly creepy and inappropriate. So I worry not only about the ins and outs of it. I think there's legitimate questions about, you know, what is it exactly that we're talking to? Are we talking to just, you know, highly tuned algorithms or are we actually talking to some other forces? I think some people are asking that question. It sounds weird to ask that question. I'm willing to ask it because I think we have, in our kind of techno, modern society, downplayed the spiritual and its involvement. But just that gag reflex, just that creepy factor. To lose it is to lose something really important because it is to show that we think we actually are in control of this line between life and death. And we're already a people that have these a. The fascination with efficiency, control and choice, as was written about 35 years ago. And we're also people who are relationally inept. We don't understand our relationship with other people. We pursue relationships completely for our own terms to feel better. And then when you see that put on the stage by Christians, by Christian leaders, to me, it's just. It's absolutely inexcusable. It's absolutely crossing such a moral line to do something like that. I think, again, we're putting this technology into the hands, to quote Peter Kreft, the ethicist of moral infants. And we show that we're not the kind of people who can handle this kind of thing.
- [31:26]
A
Yeah. I mean, there's biblical precedent. Right. For speaking to the dead. And it's not bad.
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B
Yeah. Not good. There's biblical descriptions, not precedent. Right.
- [31:35]
A
And so, like, I would say that that's another reason to be, like, ruthlessly cautious. Right. Because it is possible. It is possible to do, and it is evil. We're not supposed to do it.
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B
I mean, think about the biblical line. Sorry. Because when you talk about what the Bible does say, there's two sides of this that should immediately make this off limits for us. Number one is that there is a line between life and death. And God holds that key, not us. Right, That's. That's super clear. The other is that humans are made in the image of God and distinct from all other created things, including things that humans create. You know, like algorithms. And this is not like, you know, having a prosthetic for a lost arm. Right. This is not about kind of technologically adding and healing. This is about technological integration. As if that's me. Right. As if that's the person. As if this were really Charlie Kirk speaking after he died. It's a loss of these. Remember what God says. Sorry. Genesis described God created every animal after its own kind, and then he creates humans using completely different language. And the implication is clear. We are after the kind of God. Like, that's. We are in God's kind. We're not an animal's kind. These lines of creation are so clear. Abraham Kuyper talks about. About this. Bovin talks about this as well. So we. Yeah, sorry. These are just. This is the clear lines that the Bible draws.
- [33:11]
A
Yeah. When you first brought up that. I didn't know that about the megachurches using the AI generated. No, I'm glad I didn't. But I was trying to devil's advocate it in my mind and thinking, like, could I make an argument that, you know, famous Renaissance painters who painted images of heaven were helping us imagine what it's like. I was trying to give the best benefit of the doubt I could. But I think what you're describing now is the reason why that's not a good analogy. Because my first reaction when I saw this clip going around the Internet of this. This new AI company that's going to reanimate your loved ones was like, there's not going to be an appetite for that.
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B
Like, who. Who would.
- [33:50]
A
Who wants that? Who. Because we would all know we were fooling ourselves and we would all. It would be so, like, gross and weird and. But, John, there is obviously an appetite for all kinds of things like this. I mean, I'm listening to sort of like a true crime podcast right now about a person who was listening to a podcast and then got really obsessive with the podcast hosts and started kind of stalking them. And it's an interesting show that I'm listening to. Cause they're talking about this sort of parasocial relationships that sometimes result between people and celebrities, whether it's on podcasts or movies or whatever. And people develop, they believe they have a relationship with a person because they've listened. You know, it's completely one sided, no actual human contact. But people can actually believe that they know another person or it is as if they have a relationship with them. And that's been a human phenomenon since we were able to socialize with each other. So that tells me that there is unfortunately an appetite or at least a weakness for. Especially if you're in grief. I mean, I would think it'd only be magnified if you're missing a person. We are willing to lie to ourselves and we're willing to do things, which is all the more reason we should be extremely protective of what is human and what isn't. Even as hard as it is to accept death. Right.
- [35:14]
B
Well, you know, it all goes back to the creation order, right? God created a lot of things. He created one thing to bear his image. He gave that one thing that bears his image, the people, humans, authority, rulership over the rest of the created order. And so our actions, you know, have this cascading effect over the rest of creation. And if we forget these lines, if we forget the hierarchy, you know, I mean, the conversation about environmentalism is whether humans are stewarding the planet or whether we're just the same. You know, we're just the eaters that the animals are. And it's a getting that order, right? Is the creation order is fundamentally essential to be able to handle the sort of technology we throw around.
- [36:07]
C
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- [36:51]
A
So there was a new study that came out from the UC of San Diego and it's not the first time that someone has raised a red flag about this situation. But I'm just going to read this real quick. This is from a story in the Atlantic about it five years ago. About 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego, which, by the way, only admits fewer than 30% of undergraduate applicants. So this is a hard school to get into is the presumption five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high school level. Now, according to this new report, UC San Diego faculty and administrators found that number is more than 900. And most of those students do not fully meet middle school math standards. Many students struggle with fractions and simple algebra problems. One of the course's tutors noted that students faced more issues with logical thinking than even with math facts per se. They didn't know how to begin solving word problems. There's a lot of conjecture about what is causing this. Obviously, a huge factor is the lowering of standards. I mean, during COVID some of these major colleges completely did away with entrance exams for a while. And there's been this, you know, kind of politicized conversation about the SAT and the ACT and do standardized tests, you know, privilege wealthier kids and therefore white kids. And, you know, should we not. We're not gonna teach algebra in this California public school district because the results of the algebra classes are racist or whatever was said during, like, the height of 2020 kind of irrationality on that stuff. And then there is. There are professors in the story at the Atlantic that say there are students who just can't be convinced that it's important to learn these things because they can just look it up. You can plug it into an algorithm and find the answer and move on with your life. And, you know, some of them will make the case. Even if I want to go on to be an aeronautics engineer, when I'm an aeronautics engineer, I can still plug these questions in and get the answer that I need. That feels very, on its face, dystopian to me, but I think some people are really captivated by that worldview. So what do you think's causing this drop in educational standards? And you. Okay, I wanted to ask you about this too, because you interact with college students a lot. Do you? I mean, I know you're not always in the classroom. You're not teaching math. I would hope. But do you see this?
- [39:20]
B
Hey, for you to say, I hope you're not teaching math. I feel that. John, I hope you're not discriminatory. What if I really want to teach?
- [39:26]
A
I wouldn't teach.
- [39:27]
B
Well, what if it means, well, you shouldn't because you just use the word algebra instead of algebra a few weeks, a few days, a few minutes ago, which is really funny. You did algebra? No, I think this is the classic it's not one thing, it's everything. And listen, the trend line goes back beyond 2020. We are talking about a generation entering college who were directly affected by pandemic lockdowns. And we know that learning was dramatically hampered, and it was dramatically hampered by loneliness, by isolation, by unnecessary policies, by teachers unions who did not want to go back to work and therefore didn't. Look, there's so many factors here. This predates Covid. Covid made it worse. And then here we are, we have a changing abilities technologically. So as we were talking about, the workforce has changed. So what people need to know has clearly changed. Right. Like you don't need to read a sextant anymore if you were a ship captain. I mean, maybe you do, I don't know. But I mean, there's, you can imagine there are these technologies.
- [40:41]
A
Wayne might disagree with you about that, but go on.
- [40:43]
B
Right. But you know, there's no question that technology changes what you want to know. If you think that education is the acquisition of useful knowledge and that's all it is, then you've got to make these changes. Then we're measuring the wrong things. But if you think that education is actually helping people think and live well and that there's a connection between living well and thinking well, now you're talking about a different kind of creature that you're educating. And I think that's the fundamental flaw in modern education. It has been. There's a quote in Steve Garber's book of a Duke University student. He says, we got no idea of what it is that we want. By the time somebody graduates. Curriculum is just a set of hoops that somebody says you ought to jump through. We've talked about, for example, and this affects colleges across the board. You get smarter and smarter and less and less. You ask a 19 year old to name a major and then you basically have these incredibly large professional courses of study. And they're not courses of study. You talk about education. I mean, remember, we're talking about students who are being taught by teachers. Education programs are rackets. I mean, listen, you get an education degree, you bow to the demands of the state. And the demands of the state are increasingly pedagogical. Here's how you're supposed to teach, how you're supposed to teach. We talked about social and emotional learning and other sorts of things. Part of it is the entire emphasis of teacher training and certification programs has become social and emotional. It's become self esteem things. It's become kind of, how do Kids making sure kids feel good about themselves. It's about this kind of oppression narrative that gets smuggled in in a million different ways. And then we wonder why kids can't do basic math. I think somebody ought to test the teachers. Math teachers can. But what I'm saying is this is a house of cards. It has proven to be fragile for a long time and now we have this kind of big event and the tail end of this big event of lockdowns and pandemics and so on, that's revealing an awful lot. I'm really hard on teachers, I understand that. And we get emails about it all the time. But at some point we have to stop and go. It is not working. We're not producing citizens. And what I mean by that is in the tradition of C.S. lewis's Men Without Chest, you know, people with a moral understanding and a framework, we're not producing rational creatures. He was complaining that we were producing rational people who could just think, but they couldn't actually make moral decisions. We've taken both of those things out and what we're left with is kind of the emotional emphasis. This, by the way, let me frame it here. This goes back to Aristotle, which is what Lewis is talking about. Lewis and his classic piece Men Without Chest is referring to the fact that of Aristotle's idea that the head is the seat of reason, the belly is the seat of passion. And if you fill the head with knowledge and the belly with passion, the belly still wins. So we need something to help citizens, help kids choose the right thing even when they don't feel like it. And Aristotle thought that the head could govern the belly. Now I think that's a misunderstanding of human nature because the belly always wins. If you ever get into a battle between the belly and the head, the belly wins, right? Michael Matheson Miller at the Acton Institute talks about this. He did years ago in a thing that Chuck Colson worked on called Doing the Right Thing, where he said the belly is like the gorilla down there going, I want, I want, feed me, feed me. And the head is like the bow tied tweed jacket professor going, you know, we ought not do this because. And he's like, you know, who's going to win if there's a fight between the gorilla and the professor? The gorilla beats up the professor. So Louis said, you need a chest, you need a moral will, you need a moral imagination, you need to be able to choose and rationality won't get you fully there. My point is, is that we've kind of tried, oh, let's just do the whole reason thing. We've abandoned both the reason part and the moral will part and basically said, who kids are is the gorilla. Let's just feed the gorilla. Let's let them make. Let's give them everything that they want. Let's tell them that what they want is the definition of morality. And then we're like, oh, hey, this is not work. No, it's not working. And we need to stop soft peddling this. We need to stop coddling this. You know where you'll find kids who can do basic thinking and basic math and basic moral reasoning? Kids coming out of classical traditions, classical Christian traditions. I'm a big fan of Christian education. If it's done well, if Christian education skirts education just to do the Christian part or just to do the Christian trappings part, like chapel and, you know, longer skirts and shorter hair, that's not it either. But there is a way to do it. There is a group of people that are showing us how to do it, and we're seeing the success on the backside of that.
- [46:02]
A
So I think there's a nuance here that I'm trying to tease out because I completely agree, but you made a distinction, and lots of poets have as well, between like, you know, where is the wisdom lost in knowledge? The T.S. eliot line. And you know, that there is knowledge that needs to happen, that's the head knowledge. And then there's moral formation that needs to happen, but that there's a difference between sort of knowledge and then the ability to critically think. So teaching kids how to think versus teaching them what to think, that's a big line that people use as well, what would be your best case for knowledge being good? Also by itself, aside from any utilitarian argument where, like, I think it's easy to look at this kid, you know, in the Atlantic piece or whatever, saying, I could still become an aeronautics engineer without learning this because I could plug it in and it's easy to say back to them, well, what if your computer goes down and you don't have access to it? You should still probably know this, but that is still fundamentally utilitarian as a safety measure. Back up. That's still a utilitarian argument, right? I believe biblically that knowledge itself is good and that my best case for it is that God made the world and therefore it reveals his character and he gave it order, which suggests to us that we have the ability to study it and that by studying it we learn more about him. Which makes me believe that studying it would be an exercise in appreciating beauty and appreciating the beauty of the Lord. But I do struggle. I struggle to follow that all the way down to, like, do I need to know the Pythagorean theorem? Like, do you see what I'm saying?
- [47:43]
B
I don't know that there is a. An argument that everyone needs to know the Pythagorean theorem. Maybe everyone needs to know what it is, and does everyone need to know how to apply it? But let me go to your example. First of all, where you started was exactly the right place to start, right? If there is a God, everything is different. If there is not a God, everything is different. That includes the world we live in, and that includes us. So detaching the world from God is to detach things from their created purpose. If things still have that created purpose, that created purpose still matters, including human beings, in other words, then there's a process of education and a way of thinking about learning that connects us fundamentally to who we are and what we were made for. That's where all Christian education should start. But there's something else that needs to be added to that, which is our place in the created order. We need to be attached to our fundamental purpose. We also need to be attached to the real world. This is where Christian education oftentimes strays into Gnosticism. In other words, we separate behaviorism from learning, right? And then that requires that we imagine somehow all the ethical scenarios that a kid might venture into. You know, Chapel happens over here. This is where the Christian stuff happens. Learning happens over here. And, you know, never the two shall meet. The problem with that is, is that we not only are created in God's image, we're created in God's image, in God's world with a whole bunch of other image bearers. We'll never exist outside of that reality. And so we need to have then our education attached to not only our fundamental purpose, but the context of life itself. And so it can't just retreat just into the theoretical. And that's why the ordering of who we are, where we fit into the created order, what we were for, all this sort of stuff has to inform the kind of creatures that God is creating us has made us to be. And God has created us to be the kind of creatures who continue to learn and grow. And this also, by the way, puts us in a place whether we have an incredible intellectual imagination like Elon Musk, or whether we have some sort of significant disability that prevents us from, quote, unquote, contributing to the common good. If you don't have that fundamental purpose, then there's no reason to not eliminate those who cannot then contribute to the common good. And we've seen that play itself out in societies. So that inherent human dignity, inherent human value, but inherent growability into kind of what we're not. It's the most foundational, brilliant framing of why education matters, that God not only exists, but he created. Not only did he create, he revealed himself in the creation. In other words, he wanted to be knowable. That's no small point. Not only did he want to be knowable, but he created us with an ability to know. And so he then has made Himself knowable and has created us knowers in a context with other knowers who themselves have their own value and so on. And then, you know, again gave us a job of taking care of the rest of the world. That he wants to glorify him. It is the grounding of education. And all those pieces going together is the foundation that you need now. It doesn't mean you can't approximate it. And I think we've seen with brilliance, mathematical brilliance or artistic brilliance, people who do not acknowledge the full realities of creation still approximate it all the time. And that's part of the inherent dignity that we have. But there is a fundamental purpose that is beyond utilitarian, and I think that's where it comes from. Does that justify all the specifics? No, I think the specifics do change from one culture to the another. But if you don't start with that fundamental purpose, then you're just wandering us through the dark.
- [51:56]
A
So let's talk about education. We have gotten a handful of questions recently, John, about Christian colleges, which is an area you know a lot about. And sometimes people write in and ask for specific recommendations to specific colleges. I think it might be helpful if you could give maybe a framework for how to evaluate a school. If you're considering sending your child or your grandkid there, or you're just, you know, looking for a good option. How do you think about what Christian education should be and whether there are good ones? And don't let me stop you if you just want to straight up name the good ones, like name and shame, let's do it.
- [52:32]
B
No, I mean, this is a really, really hard question. And so I've struggled with how to recommend it. I do it differently than I used to do. Usually it's hard to actually, you know, throw out recommendations. We have gone through this process now with two of our kids, and, you know, we've Got two more to come. And let me just give you the things that matter right now. For there's this big thing happening. I say a big thing. It's. It's with. With a group of alums and a group of people who care a lot about a. A particular college, Biola University, which has been known for a long time about apologetics, and a faithful Christian college in California. And there's some real concerns about what's happening, what was revealed about the head of a psychology department and then some other folks in student life and so on. And it was really alarming what was uncovered. And the problem is, hey, kids, this has been the reality, the secret, dark reality of most Christian colleges for a long time. When we were looking for a school for our oldest kid and we were looking at schools, went to one whose reputation is almost unflappable with a scholar who's one of the preeminent scholars in America at a Christian college. And I asked him, I said, if my daughter wanted to come to your college and she wanted to study X, is there any answer that she would give where you would say, well, don't come to my school? And this is one that I think would have, you know, have a reputation of almost, you know, unimpeachable. And he gave me two departments, education and psychology. You know, I would have given that same answer 20 years ago, not psychology. At this college that I was at, I would have given a different, you know, set of departments, but it would have to do with the social sciences, because, listen, the worldview influence of secularism, of postmodernism, LGBTQ things in psychology and so on, this is epidemic across Christian colleges. This is not new, actually. And by the way, increasingly in the student life department, which is another reality, because the student life department has operated independently from academics, has operated independently from vision. It has been influenced by, I think, a lot of secular philosophies. And does that mean that there's no one that's kind of trying to check all the boxes in terms of Christian work? No, there are some wonderful schools that are doing that, and they're doing it top to bottom. A lot of them are denominationally affiliated, so that's a barrier for some kids and so on. And then there's just the reality. We've talked about this before. Most young people should get married, and they should prioritize marriage. There's something about putting your person in a good fishing pond. Can I put it that way? Is that a bad way to say it, so that marriage is possible? That's where it gets hard to add a framework and say, well, here's how I do it. I think the number one thing you need to know is the reality on the ground. And the secret reality on the ground is you're not going to find very many places that have all those, you know, boxes checked. Well, tell you about colleges that would theoretically be able to check most of the worldview boxes but are run authoritarian ish, you know, where the boards have committed incredible dishonest acts and, you know, but that's the inside baseball that won't affect most kids on the ground there. I think that you have to know the reality on the ground and you've got to ask those hard questions. That doesn't mean that if they don't answer all the questions correct, then that the school is not a good school. Because there could be all kinds of reasons. For example, going into nursing or going into engineering or whatever. Ask those hard questions. I think, for example, a lot of Christian colleges suffer. The reality on the ground is that chapel replaces church. They don't actually encourage young people to go to church and to be at church, and they don't encourage churches to be integrated on the campus community. And instead you can't compete with chapel because chapel's bigger than everything in some places. Sometimes chapel's forced and the spiritual life part is forced. So what's the difference between forcing certain beliefs in a fundamentalist way and encouraging spiritual formation? And is the spiritual formation gnostic? Is it all about kind of spiritual self preservation and not integrated with the overall learning? These are hard questions, but you need to know the reality on the ground. Second, but maybe first, just as important, maybe more important, is you have to know your own kid. Some kids are ready for this environment and not ready for that environment. Some kids aren't just ready at all. That's why I'm a big fan of gap year programs. And there's some wonderful gap year programs that can help a child in a different kind of environment mature to a level in their own understanding of learning and their own understanding of relationships and so on. And so I think that there's a reason that even really academically strong colleges oftentimes encourage gap year programs. I think that should be on the table for a lot of students. I struggle because I love athletics, I love sports, I love basketball. I made my college decisions based on basketball. God was kind to me because I ended up at a liberal college where the basketball was so irrelevant to life. But I made my choice on it and it was just foolish of me. It was just foolish, top to bottom. Had I stayed at that school and praise God, I had a psychotic coach who was such a jerk and so just angry all the time, which was hilarious because this was at a college that was Mennonite. It was such a weird combination. You know, this was not a calm Mennonite guy, that it pushed me out. And God used this to put me in a different place and, you know, bring along other theological influences. But it's a weird thing to make decisions based on sports, and a lot of kids do that. I think we need to check that impulse for parents. And I say that as someone who's really, really loving the journey I've had with my kids in this area. But then there's other things like music and so on, and it's like, well, what is the point of college? I think everyone should listen to some Dave Ramsey.
- [59:23]
A
You know, that's what I was thinking.
- [59:24]
B
Too, is like just the debt part.
- [59:26]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, because a lot of parents, and I think out of goodness and good intentions and wisdom are like, what kind of life will you have for the next four years at this place? But for the amount of money you're paying, I think probably it seems like the bigger question is what is the education? Like, what's the return on investment? How relevant is this to how you. And I'm not saying that like, the life and the culture at the place you're going shouldn't be a part of the equation, but if you're going to spend 150 grand based on whether there's enough extracurricular activities, I'm just not sure that that's right side up.
- [60:10]
B
No, you're right. I would just nuance that a little bit by saying this is why the kind of quality of life and the kind of spiritual formation and the kind of relationships and so on that you have matters because the ROI is just not whether you're employable at the end total, of course.
- [60:26]
A
Although it is, of course, yeah.
- [60:27]
B
But it's also like. And this is what a lot of people are saying, I mean, I've heard this from a number of parents who sent their kids to highly respected Christian colleges, is that there was such a virus on the campus of progressivism, of liberalism or whatever, feminism. I remember 25 years ago, a colleague of mine, a good friend, said college is four year brain and heart surgery. And if you were going to go in for brain or heart surgery, you wouldn't just say, how's the food in the cafeteria? And do they have a, you know, A cool playground out back. Right. You want to know who's operating on me? Do they know what they're doing? Do they clean their instruments? You know, you want to know these kinds of things. And I think that's, you know, and I think that's what you're, you know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I just want to be clear that the ROI we've reduced it to is my kid going to get a job in some cases. But that's an important consideration. And a lot of times, by the way, there's been this impulse, well, you should just go to college. I don't know that you should just go to college. Right. I mean, some people shouldn't go at all. They're going to be super employable some other way. I know we've gotten a lot. Some of the emails we've gotten have to do with like trade schools and other opportunities. And, you know, I think all that matters too.
- [61:47]
A
Yeah. My personal experience is I went to the most secular liberal college you could find within a 500 mile radius. I went to the number 5 party school in the nation. And the main reasons I went are that I got a full ride academically and they have an incredible journalism school and that's what I wanted to study. But you know, we've talked before about the, you know, parents saying I'm going to send my, you know, second grader to public school because they need to be exposed to different ideas and you know, that kind of romanticization of that. And I think we've helpfully pushed back on that suggesting like, I don't want my 8 year old to be a missionary in a hostile environment. And unfortunately for a lot of cases, that's what public school is. But it's a different equation when you have an 18 year old. And I'm sure it's obviously true that every family needs to know their own kid and every kid is going to be in a different situation. But in my own experience, going to this school made me closer to the Lord than any other experience I could imagine because I was forced to reckon with what I really believed because it was so socially unpopular at the time. And this was like years ago. I can't even imagine how it is now. So that's a caveat there. But first of all, I joined a Christian group and we were like soldiers in the battlefield together. I mean, I met my husband at this Christian group because it was so hard to be a Christian there and it was so, what's the word? I'M looking for. It was so helpful. It was like iron sharpening iron, kind of. It forced me to know what I believe. And I had crazy professors with crazy worldviews and it helped me develop my own because I was like, this is crazy. I mean, I had a professor in the Spanish department from Chile who spent a lecture telling us why we deserved 9, 11. Like, it was crazy, but it was incredibly formative in a really positive way for me. Like trial by fire. That wouldn't be that way for lots of people.
- [63:47]
B
Well, that's what I'm saying. The moral of your story is that God was really kind to you and led you in this situation because for every one of your stories I've heard from parents five and not just at a crazy party school, but in fact, the studies that have been done, I haven't seen an update on these studies and somebody needs to redo it. But there was a researcher out of UCLA that was doing these studies about how fundamental beliefs are impacted at college. And, you know, it was a crazy, crazy number of kids who identified as Christian coming in, identifying not as Christian coming out. And the most dangerous schools, interestingly enough, were not the state secular schools, although the numbers there were still pretty bad. About 50% of kids left. But if it was a religious school, historically that was running away from that religious tradition, they were the most dangerous places. In other words, secular schools don't talk about Christianity all that much. Right. They may talk about patriotism in America and so, you know, but at least at the time, you know, it was just, you were putting a kid in a fully secular environment and, you know, many of them came out secularist. But if you had a previously Christian college, statistically, who was running away from that tradition, that's all they talked about, Right? That's all they talked about. And so the pressure was incredible. Those numbers were 60 to 70%. And according to that, UCLS, again, this is outdated 15 to 20 years ago, but I think the principles behind what they found was the same. And I want to give a shout out here to iace, the International alliance of Christian Education. These are a group of colleges that are together under wonderful leadership, trying to be really clear about what it means to be a Christian college. But there's a deep, dark secret from many historic Christian colleges that in these very real ways, spiritual life, campus life in certain departments, that there's a running away from Christian orthodoxy, small o. And they talk about it an awful lot. And I hear from parents now whose kids have gone there and they're not sure what they believe anymore about this, that or the other. So you gotta do the homework. You have to know as best of your ability who your kids are. And it's a hard, hard thing.
- [66:18]
A
Well, John, that is gonna be it for the program today. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint this week. In lieu of recommendations this week, since we ran out of time, we always post links to the stories that we talked about in the show notes. So we'll call those our recommendations. Go check out that story in the Atlantic about the falling academic standards and lots of other stories we talked about today in the show notes. Otherwise, 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'll see you all back here next week.