This is a fascinating talk.
In under 15 minutes, it navigates some of the biology of our worse behaviour. It’s also a fascinating demonstration of the materialist worldview’s myopia. Take the following statements from it…
“But there’s a problem, which is I don’t actually believe in souls or evil, and I think wicked belongs in a musical.”
“Now, as a species, we obviously have problems with violence. We use shower heads to deliver poison gas, letters with anthrax, airplanes as weapons, mass rape as a military strategy. We’re a miserably violent species. But there’s a complication, which is we don’t hate violence, we hate the wrong kind. And when it’s the right kind, we cheer it on, we hand out medals, we vote for, we mate with our champions of it. When it’s the right kind of violence, we love it.”
“..this is a man named John Newton, a British theologian who played a central role in the abolition of slavery from the British Empire in the early 1800s. And amazingly, this man spent decades as a younger man as the captain of a slave ship, and then as an investor in slavery, growing rich from this. And then something changed. Something changed in him, something that Newton himself celebrated in the thing that he’s most famous for, a hymn that he wrote: “Amazing Grace.”
What then follows is a barrage of the mechanisms for the act of evil. It’s possible to enjoy this talk for its descriptions, “the how”, the mechanisms of evil acts and clearly, many do. What’s lost under all that is answering the most important question, “the why” of evil. And for that matter, “the why” of the cure for it in John Newton.
In the real world, “why’s” come before “how”.
Therein is the core limitation of a Godless worldview. Believing only the measurable is believable not leads to logical absurdities and tyranny, it leaves one with a totally deficient view of evil and more importantly, the cure for it.
Enjoy it for what it is but always remember, the real questions and answers lie beyond a slick presentation of a limited view. And ours is the privilege to share it.
