https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=xe2p6GtOotY
there’s a moment I think also there’s a strange, some of it I don’t think anybody controls, which feels like the materialism that was ruling just maybe 12 years ago or maybe 15 years ago, the really harsh kind of new atheist materialism has been broken. And now people are scrambling to figure out and it’s as if there’s a space in their mind now to understand ideas that would have seemed completely ridiculous to them, such as the idea of agency above humans, the notion of these patterns and the fact that these patterns are have a kind of agency on phenomena. Like all of these types of thinking is something that for most people, I know, because I can see it, people are surprised at themselves and they’re like, I never thought I would be able to believe this, but it’s also because they did understand it. And so I don’t know if you noticed that as well. Yeah, I mean, I have and it was kind of inevitable because that hard materialist view has a real contradiction at its core that eventually was going to break it. Because, for example, the new atheist would be all about materialism, but then when they gave an account of history, and particularly the history of religion, they have religion with agency. Religion caused people to do this, religion caused people to do all these atrocious things, religion caused, and it’s like, well, wait a minute, hold on. Religion is ideas, it’s not a thing that exists. And so if there is this agent called religion in history, right, I mean, you could call that God, right? Like that it’s not just humans, it’s causing humans to do things. And so that basic contradiction meant you had to accept the antithesis of their presupposition in order to accept their presupposition. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s so many blind spots in the new atheist thinking, you know, just in terms of the way in which they get to their value system or the way they pretend like they don’t have hierarchies, but then as soon as they blink, they’re back into these hierarchies, their own hierarchies. It’s actually astounding to watch. And it’s difficult for people that are still in that mode to point it out because it’s a blind spot. They can’t see it as you point to it, but it’s as if they don’t know what you’re pointing at. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, you really have to push like that contradiction I pointed out, you have to push on their own terms. A lot of times we’ve opposed people with those ideas by just loudly applying the other idea, right? Or arguing for the other idea as opposed to showing, okay, let’s take your idea seriously and what you’re telling me and follow through on it. And does that actually work? Right? Like, where does that end up? Is it end up someplace self-contradictory? Right? And then it’s sort of, you know, St. Boniface chopping down the tree, right? It’s like, you may not believe my religion, but yours clearly has just fallen apart. Allow me to offer you an alternative, right? Yeah, definitely. There’s also something else. There’s something else interesting, because as people are studying now the question of consciousness and of agency, and all of these issues are becoming, coming to the fore in terms of, of trying to figure out, you know, how, what’s the relationship between science and human perception, all of these questions. People end up in a strange position as well, where all of a sudden now it’s the materialist or the naturalist that is reducing agency and conscious and self-consciousness at least, and so humans become this extremely particular thing in the entire universe that they can perceive. It’s like wonderfully completely anomalous thing and also happened to be the strange, anomalous thing out of which all meaning is, is coalescing towards. And so it’s almost, it’s, without knowing it, it’s very religious, although it’s a humanistic religion. Whereas the way we try to posit it is to say, no, these, there’s a scale and there are consciousnesses and agencies that exist at different levels. That seems even in a naturalist, even in a naturalistic point of view, it seems more reasonable that that would be the case. Yeah, they’re having to revert to a much earlier version of the philosophy of mind, right? They’re having to go back to like Hegel saying that animals are basically just little machines, right? Process inputs and like they don’t have any kind of awareness. They don’t have any kind of, you know, and philosophy of mind has gotten way past that. I mean, I reference Nagel’s paper all the time on Lord of Spirits. What is it like to be a bat? Right. But we kind of take it, it’s like something to be a bat, right? Yeah. And that means there’s some kind of consciousness there, right? And if you’re willing to accept, as pretty much anybody in the field of philosophy of mind does, that there are levels of consciousness below human consciousness, then it’s just an assertion without evidence that there can’t be anything above. No, you’re right. It’s also because you notice agency on yourself. Like, it’s like, you can notice that there are things acting on you and that are constraining you and that are directing your movement and your attention. So it’s like, well, why wouldn’t I use the same structure I’ve been using all the way down to now explain what’s above, let’s say, I don’t know. Right, right. And and, yeah, part of it, I think, is a devotion to a particular understanding of freedom and free will. And that’s deeply tied into Western theological notions of guilt and choice and accountability, right? And the whole Western view of sin as being purely transgression. And so if the more you say a person’s choices are affected by things greater than them, forces sort of above them, then that, if you have those presuppositions means, well, that makes them less accountable for their actions. And we’re not going to be able to then ascribe guilt to the person for action. And so those constructs start falling apart, but you don’t necessarily need those other constructs, right? Especially in a Christian context. Yeah. Right. In a Christian context where we’re not about assessing who is a good guy and who is a bad guy, as much as that’s ingrained in our culture. And every Marvel movie is the good guy the bad guy, right? And the good guy wins. Yeah. Right. But we’re about trying to help redeem people from those forces. Right. Christianity has always taught this. There are these forces abroad in the world. They enslave people. Right. They get the people get locked into and controlled by these passions. And we’re trying to free them from that, not hold them accountable for their actions. Right. Like in this guilt and punishment sense. Yeah.