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Breakpoint
UN Admits Climate Catastrophe Scenarios Were Overstated, Chatbots Influencing Morality, the Legacy of Bob Woodson, Christian College Funding Concerns and the Colorado Supreme Court Orders the Restart of Minor Transgender Care
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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 Worldview. Today we're going to talk about walking back climate alarmism and engaging with chatbots about moral questions. 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, this week a climate panel from the UN has admitted that they oversold their catastrophic scenarios. It sounds like the world will not be ending in the next 10 years due to CO2 emissions. Your reaction?
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B
I think we're past the 10 years, though, right? I mean, I think we're. Wasn't it 2012? Wasn't that what the movie was all about?
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A
I just remember Rush Limbaugh had like a ticking countdown on his website for a long time that my dad just found endlessly hilarious. But, yeah, it's probably past that time.
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B
I think it is. I think that there, you know, there's been a couple movies with dates and it's kind of like Back to the Future, you know, Back to the Future was what, 2024, I think it was. Is that when it, when it was set, when Marty McFly went to the future, and we don't have kind of hoverboard skateboards or all the cool stuff that we were supposed to have by then? It is, it is an interesting thing to point out because from the very beginning, the idea of what people call climate hysteria and, and I think it's an addict, probably an accurate term for kind of the, the, the form that a lot of this stuff took was that the climate is changing, that that change is human caused, and that it's going to be catastrophic, it's going to be bad. So those three things had to be involved in this. And, and one of the things that emerged this week, there was a terrific. I don't think this was timed. I think it was serendipitous, maybe, maybe sovereignly designed. There was a fantastic interview on the trigonometry podcast, which is Constantin Kisson's podcast. Constantin Kissin was one of the guys that was interviewed in the Truth Rising documentary. And he had a conversation with a young woman who was kind of all in, kind of in a Greta Thunberg way. She actually talked about going and securing an interview with Greta Thunberg years ago. She talked about kind of the blog that she wrote for. And now I think she's over at the Free Press, but has completely changed her mind on this. And one of the things that emerged is that some of that original data. Do you remember the claim that was repeated over and over? We addressed it I think a couple times in breakpoint commentaries maybe on our conversations here, that 96% of the scientific community was in consensus on this or something like that. It was, it was in the high 90s. Remember that claim during this kind of whole hysteria mess certainly sounds plausible.
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A
I'm sure somebody.
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B
It sounds plausible. The stat sounds plausible or the fact that the claim was made sounds plausible?
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A
Honestly, now that you ask it like that, probably both. Because I, I mean, this was a true. Speaking metaphorically here, gun to your head moment. If you wanted to remain a scientist for a good 15 years, you had
- [03:22]
B
to say, you agreed there was an awful lot of the science has settled and get on board or your peer reviewed article will not go forward. But that claim that 96% of the scientific community had consensus on this, it assumed all three of those things, right? That change was happening, that it was human caused and that it was catastrophic. And that included both that it was outside the bounds of normal climate, the changes that happen within the climate, and that it was going to be really bad for everyone. Right? And what ended up happening is that initial stat and it got repeated over and over and over. Kind of like, you know, back 30 years ago that 10% of the population is gay and it just gets repeated over and over and over again as if it's a sound statistic, even though it came from an Alfred Kinsey study, that really where there was consensus is that there was change and that's it. There wasn't consensus, certainly not at that level, that it was human caused and also that it was at a place that was going to cause catastrophic damage. And I think it's especially that last piece, although I think it's somewhat of the middle claim as well. Like, you know, we went from blaming humans to blaming cows, but that's the part of fault of farmers. And then you just kind of look for all kinds of CO2, but then you realize, as this young woman brought up in the trigonometry podcast this week, that when people are growing things, they pump CO2 because plants, you know, like that you. Right. You know, from the whole kind of photosynthesis process and that the carbon levels are way higher within greenhouses in which you have this flourishing of plant life. We have the restoration of plant life around the planet. So it just hasn't turned out to be True. Particularly that it's catastrophic and that, you know, with the level of whether it's human caused and the combination of those last two things. So I just thought that was a fascinating conversation to come out. At the same time, I think it's a remarkable thing because, you know, listen, at least kind of UN committees from certain nations have claimed the same kind of hysteria. I mean, up until this past month. Right. So there have been other voices that have at least the UN moniker on it that have said differently, but this is a pretty big admission that the conclusions weren't justified, that they were overblown, that they haven't come true, as we predicted. And we're coming up this year to the. What is it, the 20th anniversary of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. I think it's 20 years, so we'll probably address some of these things again. But. And, you know, the predictions that he made in that book and certainly in the really bad, badly acted movie that followed it, it just didn't come out, you know, to be the case.
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A
What are the implications for Christians who may have looked at that alarmism and really took it seriously?
- [06:36]
B
Well, I think there was two right, on two sides. I mean, one side, I think sometimes I don't think there's just two sides. It's probably a spectrum. Everything's on a spectrum. So we'll put this on a spectrum. I think that, you know, on one side of the spectrum of those who used it to basically deny any sort of responsibility that we have to make good decisions about the climate, like, we don't have to care about the planet. Like, being put in charge means that we can use it for whatever ends we want. And our job is just to get what we want out of the world and not have to actually care for it. There are certainly situations in which, in kind of local settings, that you could see abuse of the environment, the local environment, and that's not a good thing. Right. We should make the world bigger and better and more beautiful. This is the genesis, kind of one purpose for us existing as image bearers, to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. And the narrative there, I think, is so clear that God wanted the world to look like the garden kind of is one way that theologians have put it. And I think that's exactly right. And that has responsibility for all of us. You know, we should. Our own, you know, environments, whatever they are, our church environments, our home environments are, you know, the land that we own. This is all stewardship. Stewardship is A wonderful word to sum up what it means to be a Christian. And so we should not, and I think we have a lot of examples of this these days. We should not define what we believe by what we don't believe. We need to define it by what we do believe and the place that humans have in creation. In other words, there was a time period when to be a Christian speaking truth in the world means pushing back against industrialized abuses. We just don't want a city like Los Angeles covered in smog, where you can't see, or a place like Beijing where they have air index quality things that can get really bad. There should be responsibility that we have. But framed in all of that is not this inherent assumption that humans are the problem that need to be taken out. And obviously climate change went from the alarmism, even went to kind of the full on kind of population bomb, you know, kind of integrated that whole idea of the population bomb, that the real problem is too many people and we need to get rid of those people because they're breathing out carbon. And so we can mathematically precisely determine the exact amount of, you know, stuff we should breathe out. So I think that's one implication. The other implication though is just what we think about the story of the world. And I, I, you know, this is something we've talked about a few times and I think it really matters in a godless world if it's true, the Neo Darwinian story that the world is an episode between two oblivions. As one atheistic philosopher put it, that the world began with a bang and ended with a bang, and there's no purpose, there's no design, there's no oversight of the story, then we shouldn't really be here. In fact, evolutionary biologists have made that argument that humans actually should never be here to begin with. It's an accident, you know, had one thing gone wrong. I think Stephen Jay Gould has this kind of line in one of his works where he's like, you know, we're just here because an odd group of fishes just happened to have an, a particular anatomy that could transform into legs. And because the earth didn't fully freeze during the ice age and age, and because this small species just happened to, you know, survive, and that, that is the story of the world according to the Neo Darwinian kind of framing of reality, that, that worldview, well, that means like we're one little bad decision away from the whole thing going kablooey, right? I mean, that's really what that means. And so that kind of Hysteria is built in. And so you see as the source of this catastrophic alarmism that pops up periodically, pretty consistently, actually, from the population bomb to the climate change. I mean, the joke during a lot of this was, I remember when the globe was cooling back in the 70s and now it's warming in the 90s. And how do you keep track of all this? Well, what's underneath all of that is this catastrophism, this idea that we're just one little bad decision or set of bad decisions away from the whole thing going kablooey. So the Bible holds together the sovereignty and oversight of God walking through his redemptive plan and guiding his redemptive plan forward, and also like real responsibility that humans have for the world that we're in. So I think that's the combination there.
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A
You just. Anecdotally, I don't know that I've ever encountered on any really, really in anyone personally, but certainly on any sort of real scale, Christians who would say we don't have a response like, we can just do whatever we want to the land and who are just tossing plastic out their car windows and stuff like that. Like, I, I mean, I agree with you that we are to be stewards, but I don't think that that was ever a real risk, at least theologically, in the church. Was that something that was happening before the climate movement took off?
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B
I don't think most of us behave that way. I mean, you do see plenty of examples in certain parts of the country, certainly in parts of the world where there is a big difference and what the streets look like and how the sewers are navigated and where people are expected to live and so on. So I think you see it on a state level, certainly. I think there were examples of kind of Christian reactionism, you know, where, you know, this stuff doesn't even matter. It's not true. So therefore, kind of more in words than indeed, because we all, I mean, I mean, I think most of us want to live in a beautiful place. We don't want things polluted and, and so on. So I think that points to something about who we are, right? Like that we have this kind of innate sense of wanting, you know, to have beautiful stuff and cool pictures on our walls and mowed grass. And I know we're going to get lots of emails from people who say, my neighbor's not like that. My neighbor never mows his grass. But I think that you see it at a state level. And I, I saw, I can't point out any examples, but Tweets here and there and a reaction against this sort of stuff. I'm actually excited.
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A
I share the frustration of, or the impulse to push back in a way that says there is a moral hierarchy. At least if you're going as far as to suggest we should make the planet less hospitable to humans because of danger to a remote animal species or something. I mean, I don't wanna wade into any particular debate in that way, but I get the pushback. That's like there is a moral hierarchy. We're not gonna beautify the earth at the expense of human life. And that would be silly. And there were real scale level claims to that effect. We should be doing these kinds of things or there shouldn't be this many people or whatever. I also find it fascinating in these conversations though, that a lot of our attention when we're talking about the climate is aesthetics. And you brought up smog, which is a huge part of it, but exactly what you're talking about, like polluted rivers, trash in the street, this should concern us. We all have an obligation, I think, again to be stewards, like you're saying. But we tend to apply a different rubric when we're talking about things that are not as aesthetically related. Like a couple of months ago, I remember you and I were talking about the food supply and whether we should, you know, try and change it. Because currently, you know, in the US we have such an abundance of food and we've mastered this technological approach to industrial farming that has led to the eradication of so much hunger. But that came at an expense as well because of the way we changed the way our food is made. Right. And so there's tons of nuances here. But it is fascinating to me that that conversation about food is often less a part of this climate conversation. And I think that's because it's less aesthetic. It's not something you can look out your window and see. And I guess I just take that as a caution to be aware of that impulse, that we are really swayed by pictures. And, you know, a picture of a smoggy city can rile a person up and get us to be worried about something when not everything lends itself to that kind of analysis. Does that make sense?
- [15:48]
B
Oh, I think so. I think that what we're at the end of the day, when we have seen a climate crisis in a particular environment or particular place or particular nation, the reason that it should trouble all of us is that it is the primary reason. I don't think the only Reason, but the most important reason is when it becomes anti human, when it becomes dangerous to people, which is certainly what we have in many places around the world. And also I think you think about Flint, Michigan and the water crisis up there now, I think there's a really good question, what caused that? And I don't have all the ins and outs, and I don't think it was because of climate irresponsibility. You're talking about policy that created that. But we need to not have an antinatalism creep in. And that's what we have absolutely seen, like stop having children. Too many people live here. Some of the Nobel Prize winners were those who were saying we should cut the human population in half or something like that. And that hierarchy, that moral hierarchy, the value hierarchy in creation is an essential aspect of the Christian worldview. And thinking about this. And it's humans who can make a difference in this, you know, and we should be. So anyway, it's a fascinating thing and I'll give an early recommendation. There's some language in Constantine Kissing's podcast, I will tell you, but the conversation that he had with this young climate activist, former climate activist, and where she's at now, very, very knowledgeable, brilliant young woman, very good with words as he is. And it was just a really, really interesting conversation. And there's an aspect of that that I wanted to ask you about just quickly, because they had a disagreement about. He was saying, you know, look, basically one of the things that started to make her back off of her position on this and rethink it was just kind of to call it something kind of the woke revolution, you know, when all of it started to get identified, for example, with Marxism and the need to implement cultural Marxism and to cancel everybody and that sort of stuff. And she really got concerned. And so he said, is there any hope for turning that around of the younger generation? She was also talking about herself as a millennial and how she compared to Gen Zers. And I think there's probably a difference, you know, from here in the United States and across the pond. But he said, is there any hope? And he, and she goes, oh, I think it's getting better. And he reacted like, you got to be kidding me, it's not getting any better, it's getting worse, you know, and, and, and so there was a real disagreement there. And they talked back and forth about it. It was a, it's really interesting. Like, and so I ask you, is that aspect of it getting better? What would you have said?
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A
I don't Think people are relying less on the Internet as their source of worldview.
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B
Okay.
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A
Which is, I think, the biggest source of these issues. But I do think there's a vibe shift. So I guess the energy and attention I'm picturing the Eye of Sauron is, like, shifting a little bit. We're not as obsessed with, I don't know, socialism and climate catastrophism. We are pretty obsessed with the Jews. Right. Like, it's hard to say.
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B
In a bad way.
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A
In a really bad way. Right. Like, there's a dangerous increase of antisemitism. Like, so, Yeah, I guess that would be my cautious. I certainly feel things changing. And I guess if you were a woman who grew up in the milieu, she did, and she was in the AOC Greta Thunberg world for a while, certainly that's losing a little bit of cachet. I suppose I see that as well, and that's a positive sign. But are people turning back to actually reading literature and caring about education and caring for their families and looking at the world more practically and more slowly? And are we getting healthier socially? I'm not ready to say that.
- [20:01]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I thought it was a really interesting disagreement because they're about 10 years apart is my guess. I don't know how old either one of them are specifically, but I'm guessing they're about 10 years apart. And there's, you know, it's a man and a woman and it's a Brit and it's an American. So I think all of those things are kind of bring up different kind of conclusions. And, gosh, the headlines out of the UK over the last six months have been so dramatic in terms of squashing dissent. I mean, I think the Babylon Bee had a headline about a local, you know, one of their satirical headlines about a local government official in the UK encouraging, you know, UK residents to stop getting stabbed by Muslims, you know, or something like that over there. I mean, it was just. When that kind of satire comes up, you're kind of. It's in reaction to some actual storylines of, you know, which are just, you know, really crazy. The reaction to protests, you know, arresting abortion. Abortion protesters who are just praying, you know, on the street, saying, you can't pray. Bad thoughts towards this clinic. I mean, there's just all kinds of those things. And I do think the vibe shift in the US is not mirrored in the UK right now. And I do think also the vibe shift in the US is running out of gas fast. That's my take on it, because I will say there's. It's so reactionary.
- [21:27]
A
There was a piece this week by Rod Dreher in the Free Press about the shooting at the mosque in California, which is just such a dark story from start to finish. The two young men who committed the shooting and then later took their own lives down the street had a manifesto. They were very anti Semitic. They killed at least one of the clerics or a leader at the mosque had posted several violently anti Semitic things on his social media. I mean, just. Again, dark voice.
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B
That whole thing doesn't make any sense to me.
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A
One of the things that the young men wrote in their manifesto, which Rodrier apparently read and then was writing about in the Free Press, was that they were urging people who wanted to imitate them to take up what they called memeing. And then a word I can't say. But posting really ugly stuff online, which, quote, has done more to radicalize the masses than any book or manifesto ever could. This is how we win. I mean, it's deranged, obviously, and incredibly dark. But I don't think that sentiment is without merit. And that's.
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B
No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, later on, I mean, maybe we're jumping, but we're going to, if we have time. Well, let's just do it. I mean, let me just jump here, because there was a study this week out of some Hong Kong researchers and some researchers at a university in China. And the conclusion is, and it's a small study, but brief chatbot interactions produce lasting changes in human moral values. And so this basically just a really brief conversation with AI basically changed a human's moral values. And that's an alarming thing. I read it, though, and thought, you know, brief interactions with memes, you know, to this point, brief interactions with celebrities, brief interactions with all kinds of things online, have changed our moral compass. I mean, the, the things that you wouldn't do in person, especially when those
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A
interactions are not mediated with longer rational endeavors to learn process of thought.
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B
Yeah. And it's. And then if you stack them up one after the other, like how quickly you can head in a long obedience, to borrow the Nietzschean phrase, in. In the same direction, in this case, a terrible direction. And that says a whole lot more about our moral compass than it does about, necessarily chatbots. I mean, if chatbots can do it. But. But also memes, you know, that's a. And I don't think it's as simple as all that, but I do think that there's a crisis here. And you know what? Chuck Colson identified this crisis in 2009 and a whole teaching series called Doing the Right Thing. He was convinced of it. It was part of his kind of speech everywhere he went in his experience of going in the prisons and why was the prison population exploding? And the conclusion that he came to citing, by the way, often to Harvard researchers, secular Jews who looked at this and said, you know, the problem is moral formation. The things that we could take for granted as kind of built into the society, built into the community of moral formation have been corroded away. And so we have a very fragile, influenceable, movable moral compass as a people. And to the question of the podcast, are things getting better? Are we seeing the brakes on this or whatever? I'd feel a lot better if it weren't so schizophrenic, if we weren't so herky jerky in terms of the cultural push going here and the cultural push going there, and people just kind of being tossed. What's the phrase in Scripture being tossed to and fro? I learned it in the King James. I think it's how it goes. Toss it in to and fro.
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A
By the wind.
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B
By the. Yeah, there we go. I mean, that seems to be the most accurate status, that of our kind of moral state is ungrounded and influenceable.
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A
The scariest thing about that small study that you mentioned about chatbot interactions changing people's moral compass, like, when you first brought it up, I was ready to play devil's advocate and say, like, I suppose it's a positive thing that if a person has a judgment formed and then they encounter other information, that they would be open to changing their mind. I would hope that most people would have that disposition. But the craziest, I guess the scariest part of this study to me is one of the things they concluded is that the people who were persuaded to change their opinion, that they had pro. The study authors had programmed the chatbot to try and persuade them to change their mind. And afterwards, once they had been persuaded, the study participants didn't recognize that that was an intent. That's the scarier part, you know, I guess on its face, if you change your mind every once in a while, usually in normal circumstances, that's the sign of a healthy intelligence. But if you're being persuaded by something that's not based in reality and you don't know it or you're not recognizing that that's what's happening to you, that's the scarier part. To me, for sure.
- [26:52]
B
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A
well, John, this week we lost Bob Woodson and he, as you told me, was the recipient of a Wilberforce Award, which is something we award every year at our Colson center national conference coming up next next week. Would you share a little bit about your time with Bob?
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B
Yeah, I had a breakpoint commentary about him. What a remarkable individual, a civil rights leader for years who then became the founder of what's known as the Woodson center, but someone who really kind of rejected one of the dominant narratives. I was digging through kind of old breakpoint commentaries from the time that he was awarded the Wilberforce Award and came across a story of a piece that he had written after having visited at the time I'm guessing was the brand new Museum of African American History and culture in Washington, D.C. it's one of the new Smithsonian's buildings there on the Mall. And talking about the 80s as a time of contrast between wealth and upward mobility for African Americans entering universities and so on, but also these communities that were plagued by drugs and they blamed in this exhibit Ronald Reagan for removing social policies and that's why there was so much contrast. And Woodson wrote against that. He said that if you go back and trace, for example, the marriage rates and employment rates and all of those sorts of things, that the explanation that was offered about the plight of the black community in America just didn't hold water. And he offered a different way. He not only offered it in words, he offered it in deed. The Woodson center came up with all kinds of programs for community reconciliation and renewal, for helping young men in particular stay in school, countering the criminal activity and the drug activity and the gang activity at schools. When he did that, the results were remarkable. Woodson's legacy continues at the Woodson Center. He emphasized personal responsibility. He emphasized faith, he emphasized family. And you know, really the thing that we have talked about, and I think it's one of the reasons one of the last interactions that he had on X. I just saw this. This week was with Robbie George, and I can't remember all the details of it. I want to go back and look at it more closely. But of course, Robbie George, the eminent professor at Princeton University, imagined something called Fidelity Month, that at the heart of the thing that can restore and that even made America great, if we want to use those words, is fidelity. That you're faithful first and foremost to God, to family, and then to nation. And that's really what Woodson believed, and he put it in practice and programs. I will never forget that Wilberforce Award ceremony, because up until this point, I wasn't as familiar with this work as I should have been. I'm sitting there and tributes that came in for Bob Woodson included academic, you know, kind of heavyweights, political figures, and then former leaders of rival gangs. In fact, they were sitting at my table, and when Bob Woodson got up and gave his thank you speech, he had apparently been given, like, who all was going to be there? And there was a lot of people that came to honor him. It was really wonderful. And he read, you know, some names, and he's like, I don't recognize these names. And he actually, like, pointed them out. And he saw, you know, one guy at my table, and he's like, you know, mookie, is that you? Or whatever his nickname was, you know, in that community. And then right across the table was somebody else by another nickname. And he knew him by the nicknames. And these were leaders of rival gangs that his programs had come in and brought reconciliation. And now these two men were lifelong friends raising families. And it was just beautiful. It was beautiful about the ministry of reconciliation kind of lived out in this guy's life. What I always appreciated about Bob Woodson is that he never downplayed the evils of Jim Crow, never downplayed the civil rights stuff. He was accused of that. He was a civil rights activist. And he also realized kind of this narrative that had dominated this whole conversation was misguided and real hope was to be found elsewhere. And he proposed that. And not only did he propose that, he walked it out in the program. So check out the Woodson Center. That's another recommendation. I've given two already, but I just think it's a wonderful story. What an incredible, impactful life this guy lived and worthy of honor.
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A
That's really cool. I wish I'd had a chance to meet him. Well, okay, John, I want to pivot now and talk about a story that was out this week about something in one of the Trump administration's budget bills. I don't know if it was the one big beautiful bill. I believe the big beautiful bill, the big beautiful one, this one is relating to federal student aid. And it is my understanding of it is in an attempt to curb the amount of money that the federal government certainly is spending on student aid, but also probably an attempt to force some changes at the level of higher ed as well about how these programs are run. But there is some concern among Christian universities that this could hurt their ministry programs. Because what this requirement or a group of requirements kind of boils down to is that if you graduate from a program and then the university can't demonstrate that the graduates of said program are making as much or more than peers in that area, that same area of work, then that program will no longer be eligible for financial aid from the federal government. Basically, I guess, trying to force the hand of these universities to make sure that their programs are competitive. This has led to some concern among some, like I mentioned, some ministry oriented programs that say, you know, a job like a missionary or a pastor is not going to pay the same as, you know, a business major or whatever else, you know, and they're concerned that this will affect the bottom line of Christian universities. You're in that world a whole lot. Is this something you think we should be concerned about?
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B
Oh, it is. I mean, you know, listen, I don't see if I can say this carefully. I don't like the reality that's on the ground when it comes to higher Christian education in terms of the financial models, in terms of the vulnerabilities, but it's there. And so at this point, the way this legislation is worded, it's going to be very consequential for Christian universities. And many of them have spoken out and they need to at this point. I mean, it's not exactly, you know, kind of the same thing as the federal government saying, well, you know, Christians need not apply here. That we have seen, I think from some progressive, you know, state level programs like the. But, but, but, but there is a unique burden that this will place on the current financial model of Christian universities. And I say that also saying that something had to be done about higher education. I mean, this wasn't a rule targeting Christian colleges by any means. Right, right. What it's targeting is something that needs to be addressed, that needs to be fixed, which is that right now federal loans are going to students who go through colleges and study areas, which makes them less employable when they graduate than they are when they go in. And I mean, look, you can only have so many, you know, women's studies majors or you know, kind of sociology majors that, that are kind of niche into some certain area of critical the. And then say, well, why are they unemployable when they get out? I mean, this is the reality. And the fact that most students, or so many students go through with such high levels of debt and now that they're unemployable, they're not get. It's not, in other words, it's a racket. It's something that had to be addressed. Studies of alternative sexualities doesn't make someone able to pay back their, you know, six and seven digit, you know, loans that they have acquired from the federal government. So why would the federal government. Something had to be done is what I'm saying. So this, the ministry realities that you're talking about and that Christian college presidents are talking about is, is being caught up in the language of this. Okay. And so something needs to be done about the racket that is higher education. Higher education is vulnerable. It needs to change its product in pretty dramatic waves. And the student loan crisis is incredibly high and a problem that needs to be addressed. So there's a whole lot of things being caught up here together. So that's what's happening and that's what's behind this.
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A
Do you have any concerns with, I mean, your kids are much closer. You have children in college and you have kids approaching college. Are you thinking about this as a dad? Like how you would send your kids in that direction?
- [37:06]
B
Not me. Part of that is God is kind to us and we're able to make different decisions. Also, let me put it this way. There are at least two colleges that I know of that are not concerned about this legislation. That's Hillsdale and Grove City. And the reason that they're not concerned about it is because they don't take federal loans. That cat is too far out of the bag to put back in for most universities. You're not able to go from being reliant on this to non reliant on this without a whole lot of, I don't know, pain, suffering. And you got to get from here to there. And it's a really tough place to get to. So I understand the concern and the reason that Christian colleges are pushing back against this. That said, there's something else here that has to be addressed and that is the comfort level that Christian colleges have had in particular of allowing students for so many years to come. To their schools and graduate knowing they're going into ministry positions at such high levels of debt. This was a. I had. Having worked at a Christian college for years, the Christian college that I attended, I had two kind of conscience. There were two things that bothered my conscience at the end of this. Number one was that sometimes chapel life can get in the way of church engagement. That's a whole nother conversation. Maybe we can pick up another time. It's a niche. I think a lot of colleges have figured that out, so it's a niche problem for a set of groups. But we did not graduate students who were more committed to the church when they left than when they began. They were less committed to the church, and that's because of structural issues and structural things that we had put in place. Okay. The second thing that really bothered me was working with students who were, for example, graduating with a degree in what was called Christian education. Now, this was not a degree that was preparing them to teach at Christian schools. I learned that as a student. That's what I thought it was. And it wasn't. Uh, that was basically. And it wasn't a Bible degree or even a, you know, a seminary prep degree. It was basically kind of how to do church ministry jobs even back then,
- [39:33]
A
like teaching Sunday school and stuff, like a.
- [39:36]
B
How do I want to say this? There were students that graduated, that went on to seminaries, and there were those. Yeah. Who became kind of professional children's ministers or missionaries or, you know, sometimes it was, you know, kind of a lead to being on a church staff or working in a ministry, like, you know, young life or, you know, something like that, working at a camp, you know, things like that. All which I think are legitimate callings. And, you know, if you think about the evangelical world of that time, there was a lot of these opportunities, maybe in a way that there aren't any more. But we would have students, you know, graduate having taken out, say, $15,000 of debt a year. So you multiply that times four. Right. That's $60,000 of debt. And then, of course, you met someone and you married someone who also had $60,000 of debt. Now you're starting your life out with $120,000 of debt, working at a $20,000 a year job. Now, we could say, well, they shouldn't have done that. We could. But you recruited them and you sold them that financial aid package, and you encourage them to get loans, including federal student loans. So I guess I've struggled when I've watched this story for two reasons. Number one is because obviously higher education has a loan problem and we're turning out people less employable than going in. And that's a problem across the board. But there has been a habit within Christian colleges of trying to populate their programs and fill and do this and kind of encourage this from students to graduate with incredibly high levels of debt, knowing they're going into fields that are never going to pay. Now, I don't think, and I think that the problem with this legislation is that there's not a distinction between ministry and non ministry. I think there's another problem which is you should not pursue all fields just for earning capacity. Right. And there's some. And that's of course the idea is that, well, if you're going to take out high loans to become a doctor, okay. If you're going to take out high loans to become a lawyer, that's okay because you're likely going to pay that back and you know that's the risk you're taking. But there was an acceptance of this framework, this high debt framework, this high debt mentality that goes back decades in higher Christian education. And listen, not everyone seems to be bothered by it. I was bothered by it because I think that there are very clear instructions about debt and about the use of money and about your treasure. Right. And I'm not all that convinced too that all these ministry programs at Christian colleges necessarily turned out people that were more employable in the end than they were at the beginning. A lot of them did. How do I say it? Here's how I say it. There's a Christian version of this problem that's endemic. That is the exact problem that the administration was trying to address with this. And we know that they have to address it on this larger scale of, you know, all these crazy majors that completely don't mean anything. And I think these ministry majors do. But there's still this problem that's kind of built in. Does that make any sense?
- [42:55]
A
Yeah, I think it's gonna end up being. It does make sense and it matters to me a lot as a Christian, obviously, and someone with children in the church. But I think this is such a drop in the bucket compared to like the dramatically, very quickly declining economic utility of almost all advanced. I don't think we're ready for what's coming when it regards higher education and artificial intelligence. You just mentioned lawyers and doctors.
- [43:25]
B
Oh, in terms of employability and job
- [43:28]
A
and the economic utility, we haven't even brought that in.
- [43:32]
B
This is the definition of a preexisting condition and a plague is about to come through. Oh, absolutely.
- [43:39]
A
The universities are going to be the last to be honest about the change. Like major law firms in this country in next year are not going to hire as many junior associates as they did this year. And that's going to continue. And it's going to take the law schools 20 years before they're honest about that within their incoming classes, and they're not going to shrink their student bodies and they're certainly not going to shrink what they charge for the education. So I think this is only going to be a bigger and more systemic and endemic problem inside the church. I mean, I think we're insulated in some ways from some of that, depending on how we behave. But AI is just going to change the way we do education anyway, and it's going to dramatically lower the economic utility of almost everything that humans do. And that's going to have to be a part of this equation.
- [44:29]
B
Well, and listen, it's hard. The economic realities are what they are. And so we can't go back and kind of build something new at this point. But we are.
- [44:41]
A
We might have to.
- [44:42]
B
Well, yeah, I mean. Well, there already are, I think, the educational alternatives that are being done in various ways. I mean, listen, the most probably pronounced trend of pastors is not having done a Bible degree. Right. Or youth pastors or, you know, kind of in the especially I think in the evangelical kind of mega church model, it was to get a different kind of leader. And so again, the degree, and I'm not saying it should have been that way. I think that has its own problems. I hate to leave a segment like this is just a big old mess. But there are, I think, real realities on the ground that that should be acknowledged and addressed. And there probably are alternatives that need to be imagined at this point.
- [45:35]
A
All right, John, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week in just a moment.
- [45:43]
B
The 2026 Rooted Educator worldview Summit is right around the corner. And this year's theme is created and called Biblical Anthropology for Christian Education. We will hear John Stonestreet, Sean McDowell, Michael Craven, Megan Allman, Elizabeth Urbanowitz and more. And you can save $30 when you register by May 31st with the code ROOTED30 register@colsoneducators.org Rooted. That's colsoneducators.org RootED.
- [46:13]
A
We're back on Breakpoint this week. Well, John, let's look at Colorado, checking in on Colorado, the supreme, your state supreme Court this week. I Just need to remind everybody, this is your state supreme Court. They have ordered a children's hospital to restart administering puberty blockers and presumably surgeries for kids who come in and whose parents say that they're transgender. So there had been a stay on what they were doing because this hospital, like most children's hospitals, well, maybe that's a pipe dream, but like many children's hospitals in the country, are facing backlash for this so called gender medicine. But the Supreme Court of Colorado has decided that it's too dangerous. And while this litigation is ongoing, they must allow the hospital to continue offering hormones and surgeries. The hospital has come out and I think the line I heard in the news story about it was the hospital is weighing its options, which I know the stakes are incredibly high, and I'm sorry if this is gallows humor, but I did have to laugh because I was like, man, they are really in a tough spot and I'm not. It's hard to feel sympathetic to them because they're gonna get sued if they do, and they're definitely gonna get sued if they don't. So this is a tough spot for them. But kind of shocking from the Supreme Court, if I may say.
- [47:30]
B
Look, Colorado's political class and kind of forcing, trying to force insanity on the state and then getting in trouble for it and then coming back and doing the same thing over and over again is going to be an epic tale of the. Of this last decade. I thought there were two things here that were maybe worth talking about. The first is that at this very same week there was a court order that a Texas hospital open a detransitioner clinic. So in other words, provide medical assistance in a clinical setting for those who have gone down that whole puberty blocker, hormone replacement, maybe even surgical intervention and mutilation. And now having to actually offer care for the many, many, many, they don't
- [48:17]
A
just have to offer it, they have to pay for it. This was part of their settlement with the D transition or lawsuit.
- [48:23]
B
That is, that is wild. But it's of course, something that was said 10 years ago when all this was started, is that there's going to be lawsuits. And if there's One prediction from 10 years ago that seems to be holding water, it's. There are lawsuits on this issue that parents who were kind of threatened with the suicide myth, patients who were told in a very, very quick diagnostic kind of, oh, well, you have all these other problems. Your real problem is. And so therefore you need to. And so on a first or second visit with several kind of mental health comorbidities, being put on testosterone or being put on some sort of hormone treatment, and then being kind of fast tracked down this path of so called gender affirming care. And now we have all of these completely non Trump administration related. And that's what's so huge because the Colorado Supreme Court's decision basically was trying to push back against what the Trump administration is doing. But all these sources that have nothing to do with it going, yeah, the care wasn't what we thought it was going to be and it didn't bring the results, we thought. And you have the closing of all these clinics around, you know, around, and now medical research that is basically saying that transitioning did not help mental health in the long term. And, you know, of course, we already knew that the vast majority of, especially minors, if you let puberty do what puberty does, tend to, at a rate of 80 to 90%, come to reconcile themselves with their bodies and so on. It's just a, a remarkable situation to have in the same country. Both of these things. One court ordering you have to keep doing this treatment even though it puts your hospital at risk, even though we now have serious data that questions the medical efficacy of the treatment. And then on the other hand, you have another state and another court saying, oh, you have to take care of all these people that you harmed with this treatment that this other state is, is now mandating. And I also thought about Justice Jackson, who of course advocated in her dissent not too long ago for the state policing medical care. You have two states policing medical care. Do, do we, do we want that? Do we not want that? You know, it's just an interesting thing. The last thing I'll say is, look, we, I've said this a number of times on, on the abortion issue, but it's also true on the trans issue that we live in a nation that is divided state by state over incredibly significant moral questions, questions about what it means to be human and what counts as human life. And we haven't had that kind of state by state disagreement, you know, since slavery, Jim Crow, that sort of thing. It's one thing for states to have one, to be more liberal, one to be more conservative. It's another thing to have such dramatically differing opinions on what counts as life and what counts as medical care. And that's a huge, huge thing.
- [51:34]
A
I feel like we briefly did during COVID but that was such a blip. And then, you know, it's hard, it's almost hard to remember, but it did Feel I remember traveling to Florida during COVID from Ohio.
- [51:45]
B
Oh, I did too. Who did go?
- [51:47]
A
I was in a different country.
- [51:48]
B
Everybody go to Florida. Yeah, absolutely.
- [51:50]
A
Sending postcards to all my family who felt like they were in prison. It was an interesting experiment, but. Yeah, that was just a blip.
- [51:57]
B
Well, and it was a big disagreement, but we're disagreeing. That was disagreeing on what the best policy is to handle this pandemic. Right. This is a disagreement on what it means to be.
- [52:07]
A
Existential questions though, like what is life worth? Like what do we.
- [52:12]
B
Yeah, there's no question. Yeah, I. It was a bit. Obviously a big disagreement. Yeah. The rift here is so big, it's unbelievable.
- [52:22]
A
And what's interesting is you and I, when we started clocking this vibe shift, if we want to call it that, with regards to so called trans medicine, we've been wondering about whether there will be true believers. We've seen people like in the media, let's say, who've started to say, I never actually said that and I nuanced it and I was always just going on what the study said, whatever. But we always were wondering whether or not there would be people who remained committed to this ideology past all. I mean, in the same way that there are still people committed to climate alarmism.
- [52:57]
B
Oh, sure, sure.
- [52:57]
A
Past all of the social cachet, past every study that suggests otherwise or whatever. And I mean we always knew, I think that probably parents would be, who had shepherded their child through a situation like that would have an especially high hill to climb to come out on the other side of this. But it seems like some hospitals and certainly state officials are continuing to double down on it too. And that'll just be interesting to see where that goes.
- [53:27]
B
Yeah, I mean there, I think a lot of people are going to be true believers because they have to be. I mean, they put so many eggs in this basket and either, I mean, think about it. I mean, if you harmed someone in the name of helping them or if you allowed your own, I mean, it's really hard to walk that back. But what we're seeing in the medical institutions is how much the bottom line, you know, it's like, oh, we're making a lot of money. Let's, let's do it quicker. Oh, we're liable for, for the long term harms done to this, you know, 15, 16 year old. But now we got to put the brakes on. So. And even the children's hospital here, they're, they're not jumping all, as you pointed out, they're not jumping back in. I mean, they have to. They're. They're in it. Like you said, they're in a tough spot. I don't feel bad that they're in a tough spot, but they're in a tough spot because they know if they go down this path, they're going to get sued out of oblivion.
- [54:22]
A
They're going to get sued out of
- [54:23]
B
oblivion or into oblivion. I guess you don't get sued out of oblivion. You get sued into oblivion.
- [54:27]
A
When you started and you were like, man, the one prediction we made was like, there's going to be lawsuits. I was like, man, I feel like every issue in American politics we could just start the conversation with, that's true.
- [54:37]
B
That's a pretty easy prediction. It's not necessarily the gift of prophecy. That's true in America. There's gonna be lawsuits.
- [54:42]
A
There's gonna be lawsuits. All right. Well, John, before we break, I wanna talk about a question from one of our listeners. This was sent to us through the Contact Us button on our website. Please, if you'd like to engage with something we talked about on the show or you have a question, go to breakpoint.org and click contact Us. We would love to hear from you. Let me just read a little bit of this. I hear you all talk about IVF and surrogacy on Breakpoint, and your articulation of the pro life argument has genuinely changed my mind on this topic. From being ambivalent to being anti ivf. However, I struggle to resolve the tension between my head and my heart. When I hold a baby who was conceived via IVF, or I teach students who were conceived via ivf, how do I navigate the tension of disagreeing with the means of their conception and loving them with the love of Christ as an image bearer?
- [55:37]
B
Every single life is made in the image and likeness of God and has inherent, eternal, unlimited dignity from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. That's the most coherent statement of human dignity I know. I think it's absolutely biblically accurate, reflects the biblical truth. And notice there, there's no talk about the means of conception. If a child is conceived in rape, if a child is conceived in incest, if a child is conceived and has some sort of chromosomal disorder, if a child is conceived through ivf, carried through surrogacy, none of that changes the fact that that life is human and therefore bears the image and likeness of God. So I understand the tension and talking about the ethics of it, of how a conception was done, but that does not change at all what a human life is, including a human life that was conceived through ivf. I think of the tension inherent in the life and their own witness of someone like Hannah Streggy. Hannah was the first snowflake adopted baby that I know of. I think, I think their understanding is that she was the very first who was conceived through ivf, kept in a freezer, was adopted out to a loving, a man and woman who gave her life. And she now opposes ivf. So she is the product of conception through IVF and opposes ivf. Now, it's not because she thinks that she was somehow lesser than or that she doesn't have the same dignity. It's because she realizes that there are not enough adoptive couples to give life to all these embryos that are, quote, unquote, called excess. That the number of embryos that are conceived and that are kept in storage, that are eliminated, that are subjected to scientific experimentation, all kinds of ways that their lives are treated with without dignity. That's the norm. That's the norm. And I know that there are couples who, and we got what we heard from one this week, who think that they're doing it in a way that somehow dodges the ethical problems. For example, there are couples who say, we will implant every embryo we create. I think that's way ethically better than just, you know, picking and choosing or whatever that the norm, your behavior doesn't change the norm. The norm has to be regulated in, on an industry level or we continue to have millions of discarded, killed embryos. So in other words, I appreciate your behavior, but it doesn't change that the industry needs to be regulated. The second thing is when you talk about only implanting those embryos that you create or implanting all of them, almost all the processes of IVF include this stage of determining viability. So you're not actually implanting all the embryos that were created, you're implanting all the viable embryos because the others are weeded away. In the case of this questioner we got, she said, well, we're going to donate ours to an adoptive couple. Well, that's great. The problem is, is that there's not an adoptive couple for every embryo that's created through ivf. And we would not justify this. This kind of falls into the trot out the toddler argument line of arguments when it comes to abortion in general. We wouldn't say, well, I want to have a child only to give it up for adoption, because I want to have the experience of pregnancy or carrying a life or giving birth or something like that. No one says that because it would be a moral problem, of course. How was this any different? So I think the ethics of IVF have to be taken seriously. We don't allow the means of conception to go ethically unevaluated just because we get the product. That's the problem right now in the Trump administration's claim that they're just supporting fertility. Fertility, fertility. You're not supporting fertility if the means of it is actually leading to the elimination of so many more. That's the ethical problem at the heart of this. But for this particular person, I appreciate the tension. I felt that tension when I have spoken on the issue of IVF to a group of students and had students come up and say, that's how I was conceived. And what do I do? I look him in the eye and say, you are made in the image and likeness of God. Your value does not come from how you were conceived. It comes that you are made in the image and likeness of God. And the reason we have so many ethics around sexuality in terms of conception is because a child that is made in the image of God deserves to be honored as such. And that's what we're trying to pull in here on a policy level.
- [60:24]
A
All right, well, John, that is all the time we have for our program this week. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint this week. From the Colson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet, and we will see you all hopefully next week at the Coulson Center National Conference in Knoxville. Have a great week. God bless.