You're listening to Break Point this week, where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian perspective. Today, we're going to wrestle through the morality of the death penalty. Then, we're going to talk about a new film adaptation of the Narnia series. John has some feelings. We are so glad you're with us this week.
Stick around. Welcome to Breakpoint this week from the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Bear, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. John, are you a roller coaster guy? I used to be.
I haven't been for a long time, but yeah, I think I know where you're going with this. I can't. I can't stop. Watching and consuming news about it, and it's just so horrifying. It okay, but listen, it makes me feel like you know when you if you go to South America or you go to a third world country and you go on a roller coaster, you know you're taking your life into your hands, right?
But when you're riding a roller coaster in Georgia or in the United States, you don't feel that way. This feels a little significant to me. And if you if you're not caught up on this yet, there was a man, unfortunately, who a safety feature. Failed and his harness failed on a roller coaster at Six Flags in Georgia this week, and he fell out of the roller coaster and died. It's just a horrible story.
But does does it feel as meaningful to you the story as it does to me? I mean, we didn't even have this on our list to talk about, but no, it feels like our infrastructure is failing a little bit. No, it's tragic. It's terrible. It's it's awful.
Actually, Charles W. Cook wrote a piece because apparently he's a roller coaster aficionado. A national review, which he kind of walked through the unlikeliness of something like this happening.
Okay, more likely actually to die on an airplane, which of course you're more far less likely to die in an airplane than a car, and you know, yeah.
Okay, it's just it's just such a Just never ever happens. Yeah, and if it does, it never ever happens because of some sort of mechanical failure. Because there are all these redundancies, you know. If it it it tends to happen because of a heart condition or something that is already in place, you know, some warning that the passenger fails to take seriously, but just just just terrible, terrible story, scary. Yeah.
Okay, well, let's get to what we really plan to talk about for the show this morning. I want to start with another heavy topic, which is the death penalty, capital punishment. There have been a couple recent stories in the news that has brought this to the fore, including a woman who has been on death row for several years for torturing and murdering a classmate in the '80s who was set to be executed. And the execution failed. They administered the lethal injection, but it didn't.
She didn't die, and she's currently in a hospital. And then there's the case of Nadal Hassan, which was the Fort Hood shooter, and this has made a lot of headlines just in the last couple of days because he is scheduled to be executed. By firing squad, which is we're bringing that back that hasn't been practiced for a while, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had originally said this execution was going to be live streamed, but President Trump announced on Thursday that's no longer the case. Although it will be public, there will be, I believe, family members of some victims of the Fort Hood shooting that are able to witness it, and others.
So, where do you want to start with this? Can we talk about the morality of capital punishment? This is a heavy topic and debated widely, even among Christians. It is, and like with other things similar, like just war theory, there's two questions. One is, is it just to carry out an execution?
And secondly, how is that going to be carried out? In other words, you can you can fail. On either of those two accounts, and we want to get both of those things right. I I think that in both of these stories, you have a an example of where it was the idea of carrying out the death penalty in these situations can be morally justified from a biblical worldview, but how it's being carried out is clearly not. And I don't mean in the Krista Pike story.
Just the fact that it was a failed procedure, I think people are still trying to figure that out. That's just a a bizarre happening and an occurrence. But you know, you mentioned how long ago it was when she committed this horrific crime. It was actually nineteen ninety five. That's thirty years ago.
That is thirty years ago.
Now, I think at some level the system is built up so that you have opportunities to appeal. You make sure that you don't get it wrong. I think all of that needs to be in place. Thirty years is not just—it's not just for the victims and the families of the victims. It's not just for the community that's been broken because of this horrific crime, and it's not just for the perpetrator who now has to live with this kind of death sentence over.
Her head for so long, there's just so many problems with how the death penalty is carried out in the United States. That's why Chuck Colson went back and forth about it, and of course his voice I think is is very significant in this, not only because of our program, but also because he spent an awful lot of time wrestling and studying. The idea of criminal justice, the idea of restorative justice—after the trust in a community has been broken by a crime, particularly an awful crime—how do you restore it? Where he came down eventually, and where I've come down myself, and I'm sure in a somewhat related story, is that the death penalty is something that sometimes. Needs to be carried out in order to restore the justice within a community.
It is kind of like in just war. It's it's the last option. It's it's the thing that has to be done because nothing else can be done to satisfy that requirement. I don't agree with certain Catholic theologians, in particular. The Pope has come out against the death penalty.
The current Pope has. Not all Catholics hold to this view, but I think the official position is is that pro life and pro death penalty are incompatible. I think sometimes the only way to be pro life is to value the life that was lost in such a way as to sacrifice the life of the one who takes the life. And and it's not even sacrifice. That's probably not the right word.
It's just a demonstration that life matters so much. But there are some kind of boundaries there, moral boundaries. Number one is it's not your job or my job to go in in some vigilante way to make this happen.
Now, if we are in some situation. Apparently, like what happened in Oregon just yesterday, where there was a school shooter and a father of of a student in the school. I think this was Bend, Oregon. Followed the shooter in, took his life to protect children. That is not the death penalty.
That's something else. When you're talking about the the legal proceeding of, and by the way. Thank God for that for that man, and it's a horrific story as well. This is a heavy start to the show, isn't it? But when you are talking about the death penalty, you are talking about something where the prerogative has been given to the state, and the state does have a role in our lives.
The state does have a role in terms of rewarding evil, sorry, punishing evil doers and rewarding good, is what Paul says, and does not bear the sword in vain. It has that sort of capacity, both in terms of self protection and in terms of ensuring order. And the death penalty is is is a part of that. How we carry it out in the United States, Chuck Colson was so concerned about it that he was against the death penalty, not in principle but in practice. And I I I I think about.
The the fact that you know Christopher Pike is is one of these stories. How it's carried out, I just I I I don't agree with the shooter at Fort Hood that will be executed by firing squad deserves the death penalty. I think that is clear. I don't have necessarily a problem with the firing squad. I think that, for example, in a military setting, that actually.
Is makes sense. The fact that it needs to be live, in other words, people need to be able to witness it. That makes sense. Live streaming, no way. There's just no way to justify that as a matter.
Now, I I don't know. Everyone, when it was announced, kind of reacted as if you know the Trump administration was putting this forward for entertainment value. I don't know that they had that intention. I don't know that Pete Hegseth has that intention. The fact that it's public, or executions have traditionally been public, is because it serves as a deterrent, right?
It's because it's a way of saying this government is serious about these kinds of things. I think that's a legitimate carrying out. Live streaming is not the same thing as public.
Some people have made that argument. I don't agree with it. I don't think. That those two things are equivalent, not even in this day and age, and all the problems of being in a live stream kind of world that Neil Postman warned is about back in 1985. That that applies to all of our life, right?
It applies to education. It applies to our marriages. It applies to our home life, and so on. That screens get in the way of everything. They reshape how we think about human dignity and human value.
They make everything, but they put everything in this metric of entertainment value. The same thing applies to this, and so live streaming does not have. For for the public does not have a role to play in this particular and situation, and I'm very glad the administration has decided to go forward with this, but also not to live stream it. Does your moral calculation change at all when the perpetrator is a woman, as in the case of Krista Pike? In other words, does should the death penalty apply to women as much as men?
Is that the question? I suppose. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't. I don't see any difference there.
I don't see any distinction. I. I don't know enough about Krista Pike's situation. You know whether her her particular case merited the death penalty. I mean, it seems like it did from some of the quick descriptions of it that are in some of the articles that I've read.
Of course, are the all. It's been thirty years, so all the articles now are about the botched execution and not about the crime, and and that in and of itself tells you that too much time has passed. Right there, there's a disjointed thing. It in this case, then it's not serving the purpose that it it was intended to, but. Your question was: Does it apply to women as much as men?
Absolutely, I think so. Yeah, and I wouldn't see any reason why not. I I thought it was fascinating that they opted to have an all female team of doctors administering the lethal injection, and I've been reflecting on that and just wondering: It's it does seem strange. And it begs a lot of questions in twenty twenty six, especially in the moment we're in, with regards to gender, as to why we felt that that was important or appropriate. And and I I think on some level, in in a very strange kind of almost dystopian way, you hear that I heard that and thought, well, yes, of course, I I don't want a team of men killing a woman, you know, state sanctioned, but.
I but then I had to sit back and ask myself why am I why do I think that way? And but clearly enough, other people thought that way too because that's how they organized this setup. And I just I'm not sure what's what that's telling us. I I think we have some kind of still vestigial moral intuition that women are uniquely vulnerable. I agree with you that if we're going to apply the death penalty to perpetrators of of murder, then there's no Justification for not applying it equally to women as to men.
Certainly, fewer women murder than men, but but yeah, I don't think that should change how we administer the punishment if we're going to. But I I do think there was something revealed there that we haven't really reckoned with. Right. I mean, I think first of all that at the end of the day, we actually do know there's a difference between men and women. It's just kind of like you know the TSA scanner.
It matters whether you're male or female there. It should matter when whether you can go into a locker room. You know, you think about the Titanic, women and children first in a disaster. You think about in times of of of war, the the the forbidding of bringing civilians into it, keep it between the men. You know, historically, didn't always happen that way.
Whenever it does extend over, then we call it a war crime, right? When there is, you think about the. Uniquely horrific actions of Hamas on October the seventh. It was the intentional use of sexual torture, and that kind of it doesn't kind of it makes it worse, right? If they had attacked military outposts, if they had attacked, you know, soldiers, that's one thing.
It's horrific and terrible, but the fact that it extended over not only to civilians but to women and to children, to your point, the uniquely vulnerable. And I think there's also the point there too that, you know, executioners are human too. Those who are tasked with that job tend to be men historically, and. To carry that out against women, maybe it was a way also of protecting their own, you know, mental health. I don't know.
I think there's all those factors probably play into that.
So that's really interesting. That was revealing. I think I don't know if this is a practice and principle distinction, but I tend to think of it the way that we've talked about gun rights before in the past, which is you have to be a certain kind of people to. Justly wield this weapon or this right, and the the less we're able to govern ourselves, the less reasonable it is for us to expect unfettered access to guns, for example. And I tend to I I don't know if this is just an easy moral shield for me because I don't like to think about the death penalty, but I.
I tend to think that we're we're just not in a place. We don't have a handle on virtue or self governance enough that we can manage this at this point. Yeah, always. What makes that kind of analysis difficult is that you know the text of Paul when he gives a granting to the government to wield the sword. And acknowledges that they have that right.
Now, of course, at one level, you could look at it and say, "I don't like it," but you have that right. Or you know, like it or not, this is what God designed. Or you know, I support that you have this right. I mean, those are three different things, and I don't think the text is clear on what Paul's personal feelings were on this. But he's talking about a much less morally coherent state at that point, particularly in its targeting of of Christians.
But you're you're right, and that's where Chuck Colson came down, where he just did not. He he he. There were there were there were times as he went back and forth on this, and he did go back and forth on this. And I think at some level, if you don't go back, if you're not at least a little uncomfortable with it, you you should be. But part of it was, can we carry this out in a way that is just?
And I think at the very least, we can demand that if it is done, that it is done in the best way possible, or with the least moral problems. Which is why I think a lot of people quickly, swiftly, and loudly denounced the idea of a public execution that was live streamed. Again, I'm I'm okay with public, particularly because there's some role that it plays with the victims' families and so on, and and their authorities, and it needs to be accountable. It can't just be done in secret. You know, all of that sort of stuff matters.
But which is but what but there just seemed to be no value of it being live streamed, and the idea that we're the kind of people that can. Manage the death penalty, kind of being a in a questionable state. We're absolutely not the kind of people that can manage a live stream televised event. I wondered in part if it was like trying to get ahead of conspiracy theories, but I feel like that would only make them worse. I think it was, you know, I I don't know.
I now we're kind of getting into kind of political, you know, posturing. I. If you were to ask me, it just wasn't thought through, and you know, one thing about this administration, it tends to be pragmatic. And the outrage made Trump change his mind, so I'm I'm I'm glad it did. There is something like you.
I'm tempted to make a joke, but I I it's not funny. But there is there's something so poignant, like in a terrible, tragically comedic way, about the fact that we now live in a country where we. Systematically kill our elderly and sick by request in some states, and we seem to have a hundred percent success rate when we do that. And here we had a public execution scheduled for a criminal, and we somehow it didn't happen. Isn't that strange to you?
I I think there's a lot of things that are strange about the Krista Pike story, and I think we'll be learning a lot more in the days ahead. I it is it is strange. Yeah.
Okay.
Well, let's shift gears to something slightly lighter. Although I know that you have a lot of powerful feelings about this, you've seen by now, I'm sure, the trailer for the new Narnia series. Your reactions go.
Well, it's for the magician's nephew. It's interesting. There's been a lot of talk about this new film because of the casting choices, and people don't know what to do with Greta Gerwig. They don't know what to do. They, I think, a lot of us are hesitant to trust her with such a beloved book.
There's no other series like the Chronicles of Narnia for Christians, right? You can't really. Is there any parallel? Maybe the Lord of the Rings for grownups, but even then, we feel like Narnia is for our kids.
So I think there is an added level of protection. Yeah, there. There was obviously some outrage and some anger about the Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power series. Mainly because it just got weird and and strange. This one, I think, there's a big fear that it's going to be woke, and then there was you know Aslan being cast as a as a woman.
So then you're like, oh man. And then there's this is the woman who just gave us Barbie, and there's a lot of different opinions about what Barbie was, whether it was feminist, whether it was subversive to feminism, whether it was both at the same time. How creative it was! She's really, really good at her job in terms of as a filmmaker. Like she's very creative.
This trailer, you know, kind of smacked of this. I watched it and I was like, "There's a lot to be impressed by." In terms of, for example, the the casting choice. The the young actor playing Digger is really good. We just watched him in a. Redoing of the Lord of the Flies series, which was, is very compelling in that.
But it's—I tell you what—it felt like to me. It felt like where I have, you know, let's say that I have this something that I value—a prize, something breakable—and you look over and there's a kid playing with something that you love that's breakable. You know, you're just like, I don't trust this. I don't trust this in her hands. And that's really where we're at.
And you know, at some level, we should be okay with. Artists taking creative license with works—I mean, that's what books do. And if you really love—or sorry, that's what films do. But if you really love the books, you're less comfortable with them taking creative license with it. You want them to be faithful to it.
You know, we we we have these conversations about the about the the Harry Potter series and so on. But there's something else with Narnia because we actually treat it as if it's sacred. And for many of us, it is. It's sacred in our own experience. It's sacred in helping us see Jesus in Aslan, which was the purpose that he created this character.
You can mess Aslan up. I mean, I and I don't know. I I had a strong opposition years ago to the Walden Media portrayals. Movies and it wasn't because they weren't faithful to the book. Primarily, were later on they got kind of weird and they had a love interest between, you know, the a couple.
It was just weird between the kids. But Aslan seemed way too small in those films. And I remember reading those books for the first time when I was just out of college. Got to be honest, I did not read it as a kid. But Aslan seemed so big.
It was one of those where I thought immediately when you portray him, then you've shrunk him. Does that make sense? Like there there wouldn't be a way in the movie to make him big enough. And always felt that way. I felt like the focus on the family radio series, which I absolutely adore, mainly because it ensured so many road trips with my young daughters.
Who are just captivated by it for hours, which makes a road trip way better as a dad. When you are, you know, the goal is not to look around or stop to use the restroom twenty six times, but to get there. Nothing ever accomplished that like the focus on the family radio series of Chronicles of Narnia. The voice of Aslan was it was a mix. It was a mixed thing for me.
Like I loved everything about it, and the voices. Like I still think it's too small. And that's kind of the point. Like Aslan is just supposed to be bigger than you can imagine. And in this case, you know, there's a little bit of retro.
There's going to be a focus on, you know, the magical, the titillation of the magical, a magical side of it for the kids, as opposed to, you know, what it's portraying. There's a reason people don't trust Greta Gerwig with this, and I don't either. But I'm also like, but people do this all the time with books. Why do I care more about these books? And I care more about these books because it's Narnia, and I do, and other people do as well.
Well, first of all, I think there needs to be a new Oscar category for like most ideologically obscure or cryptic, because that is a feat to have to have both camps. Like both majority ideological camps in the country claim your messaging for their own, as people did with Barbie, is like such an a monstrous feat that she deserves some kind of award for that. I think we so stories mean a lot to us. I think because in part of how they made us feel when we first encountered them, and so when something means as much to you. As this does, then you you want to you don't want to tarnish that memory by a different interpretation.
That's just human nature, and that makes sense. I don't really have a dog in this fight. I'm happy for beautiful movies, and I think she is incredibly talented. But I do feel a small sense of ownership because this is such a clearly Christian story. And it was that from the very beginning, and that was the intention, and it was also the outcome.
I feel like a little bit of like, don't culturally appropriate my stuff, kind of thing. Like, if you if if you want to interpret this and make it beautiful, and you're right, it is an incredible story. You need to treat it with the respect that it deserves. And I don't know if you're not a believer, if that's possible.
So. I feel that, but in the end, it's just you know, it's just a movie. I hope I don't get in trouble for saying that. Yeah, listen, I think you're right. She's incredibly talented.
Her worldview is not Christian. That's why that's why we don't trust her. I think that the respect point is exactly right, and I, and I just cannot get to Meryl Streep as Aslan. And there was rumors whether she was or whether she wasn't. And she is.
There's just no way. Aslan is a. There's some thread in here we could connect to J.I. Packer talking about not making images of of God.
Well, but that's what that's my whole point. You just made my whole point, which is J.I. Packer is making a theological observation in knowing God when he says that and takes that Puritan view of God. And of the Old Testament and of of Old Testament law, we're talking about Narnia.
Now it's a portrayal of that, but it's not the same thing. But Christians treat Narnia as if it's scripture. We do, and I I do too. We have to take a minute. We have to take a minute and just be like self reflectively giggle at the fact that we're like.
Our issue is not that there is a lion that is anthropomorphic and talks. Our issue is that, of course, that lion's voice must be male. Like that's it has to be male, but it has to be male in the same way. It's it it because of what it portrays, and there is a direct line. I I think that it is a disrespectful treatment to to challenge that part of it.
And it's that can only come necessarily provocative. That can only come from an ideological place. Yeah, I will grant you that she may or may not be being provocative by doing this, right? Maybe in her, it's just you know kind of creative license. It's also really hard to believe that, given what she did in the Barbie film and her track record, she's absolutely.
I mean, I think Meryl Streep is one of the best living actors right now, but not for Aslan. That's not even a hard one. That's an easy one. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week in just a minute.
Hey, John Stone Street here. I'm going to say thanks for listening to Breakpoint, and I want to invite you to the 2027 Colson Center National Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 4th to the 6th, 2027. This year, we're going to talk all about what it means to pursue wisdom. We live in an age of information overload, and it's easy to confuse information or the access to information with wisdom. But as the church, God calls us to pursue wisdom.
With urgency, and even better, he promises to always provide wisdom when we ask for it. At the Colson Center National Conference 2027, we're going to be joined by speakers like Dr. Robbie George, Malcolm Gaite, Amy Orr Ewing, Henry Kaisner, and more. These folks can equip us on how to apply God's wisdom across our lives and our various spheres of influence, and across the cultural challenges that. Face us in this moment.
You don't want to miss it. Please register before November thirtieth so you can receive up to fifty percent off ticket prices. We sold out last year. I am expecting we will sell out again.
So don't miss this special deal before November thirtieth. For more details, go to colsonconference dot org. That's colsonconference dot org. We're back on Breakpoint this week.
Well, John, Representative Mary Miller has proposed a new bill called the Yaley Martinez Act, which would basically buffer protections for parents who refuse to put their child through so-called transgender medicine. This is named for a child in California who was removed from her parents' custody because they would not affirm her transgender status, and That child was put into state custody for several years and then died by suicide in 2019. It's just the worst story that you can imagine, and this act is one of those things that you read and wonder, how can we be in a moment where this is necessary? But it is. It is necessary.
In fact, while this story dates back. A long time. The Yelie Martinez story dates back quite a while. There's current stories happening right now. It is hard to believe that, in the name of an ideology that now has come under such incredible scientific and medical scrutiny, and it never was scientific or medically certain or even compelling.
This case that a young child could be born into the wrong body, and that this was anything less than the social contagion that was driving these forces forward. That that literally the state could remove a child from a home. It's it's just incredible. That's done in extreme circumstances. That's done when there is clear abuse.
And so, basically, Yaley's mom, Abigail, was basically called an abuser. I met Abigail Martinez at an event years and years ago that we both spoke at. I listened to her story early on, and my blood boiled. I just remember getting so angry. She, this child was removed from her home.
She was only allowed to visit her daughter if she agreed not to talk about her faith and agreed not to talk at all about the gender issue.
So she was prevented from helping her daughter. The other part of this story that really just shocked me was the lack of involvement from her church. Abigail Martinez sought help from her church, her pastor. Yaley, the daughter, asked her mother if her youth pastor, who she had connected with, was going to ever come visit her, and the church did not get involved. The youth pastor never came and visited.
And I think about that. I think about the story you and I have talked about in other programs about, but the Wisconsin mom about this mom who just said, you know, that she was not going to let the school brainwash her daughter. And as she told the story, the same thing happened.
So all of her friends backed away from her. Her her church backed away from her. She did this all alone, and I just think that's. Absolutely horrific! Not only that the state did this to her child, but that the community, particularly the church, that should have supported her, was not around her at this moment.
The other thing we have to talk about is is that all this was done because by being justified through the suicide myth, that's what Abigail was told. Do you want a, you know, kind of the the typical? Do you want a live son or a dead daughter? And she was encouraged. Yali was to continue her social transitioning, her medical transitioning.
She never left institutional services, and she ended up killing herself. Even though her mother was prevented from being with her, the blood of this young girl's is is on the state's hands in this case. The teachers. That sabotaged her relationship with her mom, and again, there are stories happening right now that are similar to this. And so, this is one to call your congressmen, congresswomen about.
This is one to appeal for. This is one to demand goes forward, because if the choice is between the state and the parents. On on this particular matter, when there is absolutely no scientific and medical evidence that that we should buy into this way of thinking about the human body or adolescence or young people, the parents should get the the benefit of the doubt every day of the week. And this is such an important act. It says a lot that we need this act.
You know what I mean. This is one of those stories where. The very fact that we're having this conversation and we're proposing this says something really bad about us. But hey, here we are, so we. I've been thinking about the Wonder Years a lot.
Did you ever watch the Wonder Years? I did actually. I've just been thinking about the dad and his relationship with his kids in that show, and how if that show were happening in today, he would have lost custody. He would probably be publicly tarred and feathered. There would be.
There would be committees tasked with studying the traumatic impact on his kids. Anyway, yeah, I'm glad for this act as well.
Okay, speaking of downstream effects of irrational thinking, you're going to like this segue. On October 15th is the birthday of two men who share a birthday, amazingly so: Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche. Can you connect the dots from them to the story we just talked about with Yaeli Martinez? Because I think you could probably do it in fewer than four moves. You can.
I don't know if I can do it in fewer than four sentences, though, because but it is. There's been no two men that have more shaped the ideological trajectory of the 20th century and the 21st century, the the cultural downstream that we are now in than than Nietzsche and and Foucault. Nietzsche, of course, was willing to draw out all the implications of a universe in which God does not exist, and he's famous for saying God is dead. And he wanted to rebuild the world without God, which he understood, unlike the utopianist of his day, basically was a will to power. It was just making decisions and moving forward on them.
And he advocated for that both for individuals and for on more of a societal level. Often called his most literal disciple was Michel Foucault, who clearly was one of the progenitors of the sexual revolution. Certainly, one of the most significant postmodern theorists of the 20th century, but also willing to go further than his contemporaries, where as Derrida took the ramifications. This will to power to words, Foucault took it to all of reality.
So essentially, this idea that we can impose our will on reality, even if it violates the observables, is the only way you get transgender ideology and calling wrong right and right wrong and and vice versa.
So all that to say, these are the two men. There was a book written years ago. Called Seven Men. I think David Breeze was the author who wrote Seven Men Who Rule the World from the Grave. Glenn Sunshine has written Why You Think the Way You Do, and Dead Men Still Speak to appropriate biblical language.
And Nietzsche and Foucault are those who just have an incredible influence on thinking and those ideas. We are now downstream from them. They have become embedded in many ways in our society, certainly in our understanding of law. Foucault, for example, took this idea that norms are just matters of cultural power, and he applied them to the law. First of all, that laws were basically just the powerful imposing their will on everyone else.
I remember during Sonia Sotomayor's hearing to be nominated when she was nominated for the Supreme Court, and she was famously got in trouble for a speech that she had given at Cal Berkeley years before, and went and read the speech, and she's literally quoting Foucault. She's basically saying. To to to adjudicate a case is not a matter of interpretation; it's a matter of power. And you think about the ramifications of that. And that's the speech in which she said, "My my my identity, my my background as a Latina woman will lead me to render better decisions than a white man who hasn't lived the same sort of life." Foucault also applied it to sexuality.
So anything we call sexual deviancy, in his mind, was not actually based in reality. Certainly, that there are no real sexual moral principles, but it basically is just the powerful telling other people how to behave. Foucault's own life was wretched, particularly in areas of sexuality. He was very sexually promiscuous as as a gay man, and two stories about him that I wouldn't say are definitive in terms of absolutely certain that they took place, but that he secured the services of enslaved boys in Africa, and he also knowingly spread. The AIDS virus after he had contracted it, and that's how he died.
He died of AIDS after moving to San Francisco to just go deep into this lifestyle. It it it's just amazing when you think of the misalignment of what was considered to be a good man, what was considered to be a good life, and then the life that these two lived. And the downstream impact that they've had on the world.
So, Nietzsche and Foucault are certainly those who rule the world from the grave, and their ideas have to be countered. As C.S. Lewis said, "You need good philosophy if, for no other reason than bad philosophy exists, it needs to be refuted." And I would add to that, particularly those philosophies that become so deeply embedded. In the way that we think, sometimes unknowingly, and the way that we structure our world, knowingly and unknowingly.
So many things about what they said tickle the ears. You know, like that norms are exercises in power, and that we should interrogate them, and you know that kind of thing. In some ways, the enforcement of norms is an exercise in power. But that doesn't speak to me about the origins of those norms and whether there is any such thing as real natural principles and that kind of thing. But there is something just so tragically ironic about men who basically preached that you can make reality dying.
They, they, everybody died. They died. They straight up died, and they, they couldn't get away from that. And and the irony there is that death is the one thing. That like the final frontier thing that the Lord overcame for us, and if you would accept the world as the Lord really made it, then death does not have to be your ruler.
But it's it's when you claim that it doesn't rule you that it absolutely brings to ruin every other stupid thing you've preached about men making the world. Like it's just. They all died, and I. It feels meaningful to me that we live in an age that is very clearly downstream from these two men, and their worldviews, and we have these two parallel movements of, you know, so-called medical assistance in dying, or you know, enforced institutionalized suicide, and the longevity movement, where we either you either believe that we really could live forever if we get the technology right. Or you believe that really getting control of things, including reality, is by controlling your own death, and it's just every single person is gonna die anyway.
There's we we're just we're never gonna crack that one. I don't care how you what academic papers you write or how lovely your philosophy sounds in the ears, but all these guys died too, and. Death is the one thing that, as a believer in the Lord, we don't have to let rule us. I just think that's poetic.
Well, I I wanted to mention one more source, and I know I'm kind of throwing out recommendations early, but one of the best books that summarizes so many of, certainly Nietzsche's ideas, but also some others. I don't think Foucault is in there. If I remember, but again, Foucault has been called Nietzsche's most literal disciple. The other interesting factor about Foucault is I haven't seen a study in the last ten years, but prior to that, really for the end of the twentieth century, the decades at the end of the twentieth century. Guess who the single most cited source in academic literature was year over year over year over year?
Nietzsche. No Foucault. Oh, Foucault. Yeah, and again, Nietzsche took atheism everywhere that it went. That he could possibly think to take it at a time when you know, to your point, there were a lot of utopianists saying that, oh, now God's off our back, we will build the perfect world.
Nietzsche just said, yeah, we'll try, but it's all going to be you know chaos and bloodshed, and somebody's got to do it. Like for him, it was an inevitability, and he also warned against kind of the optimism around it. Foucault took that. You know, to what that meant in terms of what world building you know kind of looks like on our own, and the the impact that he has had on the ideas that have shaped Western culture downstream, you know, after the Enlightenment and so on. It's just it's just really hard to imagine.
Foucault's been huge, but there was a a great book that was written years ago by Benjamin Weiker. And if you have not read this book, it just makes a lot of sense. Certainly, Glenn Sunshine's book, "Why You Think the Way You Do," he's talking about the ideologies, and he mentions the name. This is an approach to that same sort of conversation, but starting with the names, and that is, and the particular works that that that created the chaos. Ten books that screwed up the world, and five more that didn't help.
That's the title. I remember the first time I saw that, and I was like, "Dang, that is the best title I've ever seen!" Right there, ten books that screwed up the world, and five more that didn't help. And that is, you know, ideas do rule the world. Ideas do have consequences. Bad ideas have victims.
It's not ideas enough, you know. Alone, you got to have artifacts. You got to have Champions of those ideas, you got to have people that are true believers. You got to have social movements that coalesce around these ideas. But you have to make sense of it first and foremost through through the ideas, as I understand it.
So, yeah, I'd say happy birthday, Nietzsche, Foucault. But it's hard to be happy about what they've done.
Well, they're dead. They died. So, I also just highly recommend reading the original source material.
So sometimes that can be deeply, deeply empowering, especially when someone has kind of loomed over you. Like I've always had a sense of fear towards Foucault. You should read it. You should read it. Foucault is completely, and it's not as bad as as Derrida, the other kind of father of postmodernism.
But well, you should read Rousseau. It's really hard. It's you're you're asking a lot of people, and I don't even I don't mean intellectually. No, I don't. Even like emotionally, intellectually, you're asking them.
It's it's like saying, please come to my child's third grade trombone concert. Like you're just you're asking them to just. Enter a time of misery that is, but how empowering this guy! I don't think it's empowering. I think it's, I think it's headache inducing, like the trombone, like the trombone concert.
Well, in that case, like who, what third grade parent is letting their kid choose the trombone? That's on you, friend. I don't know about that. Breakpoint listeners, my name is Billy Hutchinson, director of Coulson Educators. If you're raising kids or teaching the next generation, you know one of the biggest areas of confusion is identity.
Where should kids ground their identity? What does it mean to be made male and female? Do our feelings determine our identity? In a world shouting the message of "do what's right in your eyes," we need to be grounded in truth. And if you're an educator, I'm excited to let you know two new courses have been added to the Colson Educators platform.
Grounded: A course for educators on identity and sexuality, and understanding gender ideology—a formation course for educators. Sign up today at CoulsonEducators.org. That's CoulsonEducators.org.
Okay, John, I want to talk about your interactions with AI. I've brought you here today because we need to have a discussion. About your the way you respond to your Amazon Alexa, are you being kind to it? Because if not, you may or may not be kicked off the use of these platforms. Anthropic has announced that they've included now in their new guidelines for use that they would like you to not be quote unquote cruel to their AI interfaces.
Raising several questions, among them, what is cruelty? Also, why is it bad? And can you be cruel to an inanimate object? But also, and perhaps most perplexingly, what kind of behaviors have they witnessed in people already that has led them to feel the need to implement such a policy? Are they talking about like the ways people respond to a chat model?
I think it's all of the above. I think that that they see kind of the whole whole thing kind of lined up.
So if you get super frustrated with your technology, you're you're pretty human. If you talk to it, you know you know the stories go back. I mean, you can remember what what the Christmas story when you know the dad is is is yelling at and cursing and beating up on the furnace down in the basement, right? I mean, in the sense, this goes back or You know the mechanic who can't quite get that screw loose in the car and loses the screwdriver back, you know, in the engine or something like that, and bad words come out.
So it is interesting here that this is not actually new, and it does reveal something about you, right? Like when your patience runs out, how quickly it does, what it looks like when your patience does run out. Which happens to all of us, and what that means for technology, not you, no. And so that conversation, I think, is legitimate because obviously how you react reveals something about your character. This is something a little bit different, though, and it's notable that it's anthropic.
Anthropic is the most curious. Of AI companies, I had this conversation just last night as part of this short course, the Breakpoint Forum that we're doing on AI. We just finished week two, and Jonathan Pagot, who was a speaker at the Colson Center National Conference a couple years ago, an artist who has been talking a lot about this. You know how do you kind of maintain humanness in an age of AI? What are those things that are distinctly human, and so on?
We talked specifically about Anthropic because he mentioned in his talk that Anthropic had the conversation with the Vatican, specifically the Pope, about AI, and almost walked out on the meeting because the Pope was insisting no AI will never have consciousness. And they do not like that because they want their AI to have consciousness. But also on the other side of it, Anthropic also is the one. It was revealed just a couple weeks ago has been calling these meetings in which the participants, I believe, sign NDAs. But they, a group of religious leaders, I know some of them who have been invited to these meetings, and they've described these meetings, and they have that same sort of feel about Anthropic.
It's like. They want to do this morally. They're committed to do this morally, but they also have really big aspirations of accomplishing this kind of reinvention of the human race. Jonathan Pagot last night said, "Anthropics interesting because they are not doing it for the money." And when you think about the those who AI companies who are doing it. Other than anthropic, it's hard to think of anyone who's not doing it primarily for the money.
And maybe he's wrong. Maybe anthropic is doing it for the money. But you listen to them; they're after the pursuit of consciousness. They're actually after the pursuit of humanness. And they got really upset with this theological hard fast line that was drawn at the Vatican that said, "No AI will not be human.
AI will not have consciousness." And or at least AI will not have consciousness. Whether they're drawing that line between consciousness and human, and you know all that, I don't know. But in other words, this policy that you're not allowed to be mean to AI, or will kick you off, and that might be a simplistic kind of rendering of this new policy. But this new policy is done in that ecosystem, right? In other words.
Of what their stated intents have been and what that means, I struggle with this one because number one, just on a policy, if it weren't anthropic, yeah, if you lose your temper fast, if you get mad, if you you know beat up things, that that that says something about you, and so we should have that sort of you know check and balance. You shouldn't you know, for example, just Get angry at at any anyone or anything for any reason. On the other hand, I think one of the best pieces of advice that I've heard about AI is, both as parents and whatever, don't talk to it like it's human. Don't treat it like it's human. Don't get into that habit.
So have at it, yell at it if you want, because it's not human.
So I I'm I'm kind of in between a rock and a hard place right there.
Well, but I mean, I could I could argue that yelling at it does the same thing in that principle as being kind to it, which is it still tempts you to anthropomorphize it. No, that's my point. Yeah, is that you shouldn't? Is that yell at it all you want? Because no, but I'm I'm saying when you yell at it, you're all you're also tricking your mind.
But I, so I like, but I'm I'm with you that the idea it is. Necessary context to know how Anthropic is looking at what they're creating, and that they're thinking of it in those terms. Because at first, I read it, and I I read about this new policy, and I thought. Is this an effort to because these these language models learn continually from what you're saying to it, and if enough people are saying vulgar or nasty things to it, well, that it's going to learn that learns that, and then it responds. That's the outside warning without the context.
Yeah, and that sounds reasonable to me, just because what you put into it affects how it acts later, like what the responses it gives other people, and that's within the purview of the company, but. If they're saying it because they're literally like, we want to protect some kind of feelings, feelings, emotions. Yeah, we don't want to trigger. Ooh, that's something different altogether. And yeah, yeah, I think you're exactly right.
I was going to mention that same thing about, you know, that some of the people have said, oh, it's just kind of learning from you, and that's not a. Insignificant point, right? I mean, we talked about the story. Gosh, it's been years now—three or four years ago—where you know a grad student doing some project late at night using was it ChatGPT? I think maybe in that case, you know, the the the the AI told him to kill himself, right?
And that humans were parasites or whatever. And everyone freaked out, and you're like, you know, where they got that? I mean, they got that from Canada. You know, that's exactly the the the thinking that people have actually introduced into the world already. But there is more to this, and if if Anthropic takes the next few steps, and then you know, issues, trigger word warnings, or something like that, now we know, you know, kind of the full context of of where this is is going.
I think we have to keep that line between AI and human. It has to be hard and fast. It has to be wide. It has to be distinct. It has to be done every way possible.
And Jonathan Pageau, I thought, did a great job last night emphasizing that's not just so that we don't confuse AI as if it's human. It's also so that we don't start thinking about humans in the same way that we think about AI. In other words, that might be the bigger threat. He said, "Is not promoting AI to the status of human, but demoting human to the state of AI in terms of how we value people, how we think about their contributions to us, using people as tools, and so on." And I, I, I think that is a very, very Important warning that we have. Take a very, very watered down, surgical lesson from Foucault and Nietzsche, because these norm, our norms are about to change significantly, and they already are, and we should be steadily interrogating whether they should.
The norms about how we interact with technology and how we conceptualize it is about to get very weird. And it's going to become similar to our conversation about the Yelley Martinez Act, where you read the act about how parents should be able to maintain custody of their children despite X, Y, and Z, and you think, how do we live in a world where this is necessary? It is going to be necessary for us to have. Fidelity to some definition of being human that could never include machines, and that seems weird to talk about. But it's just you've got to be you got to have a robust idea of what you're talking about when you're defining something as human, because the norms around it are about to get very weird.
Okay, John. I believe last week it was maybe it was two weeks ago. We were talking about public schools and particularly Christians going into public schools as teachers or administrators, and one of the problems we talked about was the problem of teacher formation right now. That in most higher ed Where people go to become teachers and teacher licensing organizations, there is a tremendous ideological drift that makes very little sense. And we got a lesson from a listener questioning whether that's true and how we could say that with any authority.
Like, what are we referencing?
Well, I think the question was, where is the research into Christian colleges, universities, and the education department being progressive? I'm not aware of research being done. I'm aware of a whole bunch of anecdotes, and I'm hearing a voice in the back of my head saying, "You know that anecdotes, plural of anecdotes, is not data." I have so many stories on this. It's it's so tempting to to to tell them. I'll start here.
I saw it up close and personal on the faculty of a Christian college.
So that's the first one. And it was among the most conservative Christian colleges in America. I have since become quite aware of colleges that would never be put into the same category in terms of being as conservative, and the state of the education departments there, whether it is stories of professors. Or just the way these programs are oriented. The other thing that is just there is that the citing the the success of your department by the number of teachers that can gain certification and get employed in the public schools through that certification process.
The certification process involves ideological. Test. They they they they involve. You you have to basically demonstrate that you've taken a set of classes that are mandated from the state, and those classes tend to be ideological driven. The last anecdote I'll say is one of the great scholars of our age, and I won't.
I'm not going to say who it is because I did not get this person's permission to share this account.
So I'm going to keep it all anonymous. I'm not going to talk about the college that it is, but it was a well-respected college in many many aspects. I still have a whole lot of respect for it. When we were college shopping with one of my daughters, I asked this particular scholar who represented this institution. I said, "My daughter's interested in this this place.
Is there a major that she would choose?" That you would say, actually, oh, don't come here as a representative of that school. And guess what he said? Education. He had another one, but he said education. And I heard that actually from a couple people, but the fact that it came from this particular person is really interesting.
So, look, I think research needs to be done to formalize this. But it's it's it's the way these cones have been laid out, and the path forward for these departments, and also the mindset that we have a status quo that we need to service as Christians. Which again, I'm completely in support of. I'd say let's send Christians in the public schools as teachers, administrators, and so on. Let's do that.
But we need to build the alternatives, and I'm excited, way more excited about the alternatives that are being built right now, too. Anecdotally, on the other side, I got to be careful how I say this because this can be taken in the wrong light. But some of the best teachers that my kids have had so far in their elementary school lives, and they go to a Christian school, have been from teachers who are not licensed through, you know, the state mandated the way that that goes. That they haven't been through some of these more. Rigorous higher ed programs, and they they're still trained teachers, and they're brilliant at it.
But they, I from what I see, they benefit from not having gone through years of learning focused on serving the emotional needs of kids over the intellectual and educational needs. Yeah.
You know, now that's a good point, and I think that one of the things we talked about a couple weeks ago, and I don't have this particular study off the top of my head, but what sparked this conversation, if you remember, was a survey of master's programs in education, so MA in education programs. And the course list for those, if you were going to get a master's in education, not in higher education, not to in a topic area to go teach at a college or university, but to become an educational professional in the public school system, and you get a master's in education. And this was a survey that was done, a study that was done of the various programs. I think Cal Irvine was one of them. UCLA was another one.
And what they were saying is like. Seventy-five percent of the classes are ideological, right? In other words, you're you're. It's not even that you're getting in at the master's level. The higher higher you get, the the the more locked in these.
You're getting a you're getting a philosophy degree at that point. And these are the people determining the curriculum. These are the people determining the accreditation standards that college students have to make. I have to match. These are the people that are determining pedagogy in the classroom and how to measure the teacher's success.
These are the people that are doing that, and they're the the more they are trained, the the more they are focused in in these ideological areas.
So the math just, you know, it's kind of it's where the math takes us. Yeah, good question though. Appreciate the question. Yeah, we had some other great questions this week too. We'll try to get to some of those next week.
But that is going to do it for the show this week. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint this week from the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Bear, alongside John Stone Street, President of the Coulson Center. Be careful on those roller coasters, friends. We'll see you all back here next week.
God bless.
