This Week, Scott and Sean Discuss:




Episode Transcript

Sean McDowell: [upbeat music] America, Europe, and beyond have a massive marriage shortage, as young people are not dating as before. An international business news outlet has been quietly publishing AI-generated articles. The NFL decides to remove End Racism end zones ahead of the Super Bowl, and a New Zealand mountain is granted personhood. These are the stories we'll discuss, and we will address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.

Scott Rae: I'm your co-host, Scott Rae.

Sean McDowell: This is the Think Biblically weekly cultural update, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Now, Scott, we have some unique stories this week. Some people might think, "What on earth are you talking about?" But here's the key: From big to small, a biblical worldview should shape the way we think about everything, hence the diversity in topics. Now, this week, this story we both came across and wanted independently to cover. I think it's so important and timely. It was in The Atlantic, and it's called America's Marriage Material Shortage. Now, let me lay out a little bit of the story that's involved here to give people a backdrop, but it starts, and the author says, "Young people aren't dating anymore. We see this business-wise, dating apps getting less engagement, and fascinatingly, the share of 12th graders who say they've dated has fallen from about 85% in the 1980s to less than 50% in the early 2020s." Now, before we go any further, part of this could be that people think about relationships. They go through a phase of talking as opposed to dating, so I'm somewhat suspect about those numbers, but let's keep going. Here's what the author says: "Although I consider the story of declining youth romance important, I don't find it mysterious." In my essay separately on the antisocial century, he shows how young people have retreated from all manner of physical world relationships, whether it's 'cause of smartphones, overparenting, or some other factor. Compared with previous generations of teens, they have fewer friends, spend less time with friends they do have, attend fewer parties, and spend much more time alone, and since romantic relationships imply a certain level of physicality, it's not surprising to see this. And by the way, Scott, this is not new data. Jean Twenge talked about this in her book on iGen over a decade ago.

Scott Rae: Yeah, and Sean-

Sean McDowell: Now-

Scott Rae: ... One thing, let's-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Scott Rae: ... Let's be clear for our listeners, too, that when they talk about physical relationships, they're not talking about sexual ones.

Sean McDowell: Good.

Scott Rae: They're just talking about in-person, sort of face-to-face relationships as opposed to screen-based.

Sean McDowell: Good. That's really helpful. I appreciate that. Now, they say the national marriage rate is hovering near an all-time low, so this is [chuckles] crazy to me. If you are under 35 in America, you're more likely to live with your parents than with a spouse. That's crazy. Now, what's the reason this article gives? They argue that the reason is young men are falling behind economically, and marriage is a kind of insurance, so to speak, for both, but especially for the woman, who tends to favor and look for strong economic resources in a man as one of the criteria. And so according to this article, men's odds of being in a relationship today are still highly correlated with their income, and a lot of young men just don't look like what women have come to think as marriage material. [lips smack] w- now, the other thing they wrote-- this is super interesting, Scott, is they also talk about that contraception technology might play a role. I did not see this coming in this article, and what it does, you know I've talked about this, is contraception helped disentangle sex and marriage. And so with contraception... Now, it used to be in the past, if you get a girl pregnant or wanna have sex with her, you gotta marry her and commit to her for life, and society encouraged that permanent union as a whole. Contraception decouples that. Now, the one thing not mentioned in this article is pornography. So not only can we separate sex from marriage, but now so many men can get their, quote, "sexual needs met from pornography," so why risk and go to the extra effort to try to date and be turned down? I think that's a piece I was surprised this article left out. Now, the other last- d- another point is they said this isn't just in the US, decoupling in Europe, and it's down about everywhere. Now, interestingly, this isn't the case in Israel, by the way, but that's a separate [chuckles] conversation. Of course, they talk about smartphones can be playing a role, which encourages young men just to be on their couches and separate from women. That could be a piece of it. Why does it matter? They give two reasons. Number one, fertility and marriage and fertility are tightly interconnected, so declining fertility around the world is a result of less marriage and less coupling. And finally, this last point I love, Scott, we did a whole show on this, is that marriage is strongly associated with happiness. Your takeaway from this article?

Scott Rae: Well, Sean, I've got several things that stood out to me.

Sean McDowell: Good.

Scott Rae: One is sort of an ironic thing, that has to do with youth dating, that smartphones and screens were supposed to enable us to connect more effectively with each other, but it, but in reality, the law of unintended consequences has come back and bit us in the rear end that because they've actually made us more isolated from real, physical, in-person relationships, and I think smartphones were designed to do just the opposite of that. And I think that's, that's an unfortunate irony in this. But I found a very encouraging note in this, Sean, the notion that fertility is largely still connected to marriage. I fo- I found that very encouraging, or at least not, maybe not connected entirely to marriage, but at least to stable, more long-term relationships. And, you know, not that long ago, we were celebrating the SMC phenomenon, the single mother by choice. ... And I think that's still a thing, but I think what this article points out is that single and childless is still the norm, and much more, much more common than single parenting by choice. Now, obviously, there, we have lots of single parents that are not single parents by choice as a result of divorce or being a widow or a widower. But I think part of the reason that fertility is still connected to marriage is that parenting is hard. And I mean, I think you and I would both agree, that's easily the hardest thing we've done, and the most satisfying thing, that both of us have done in our lives. And I don't, I don't... I think you would agree that for me, getting a PhD was a cakewalk compared to parenting. [laughing]

Sean McDowell: [laughing]

Scott Rae: And, and part of the reason for that is I think is parenting was designed as a team sport. To put it in tennis or pickleball terms, it was designed to be doubles, not singles, and it requires grown-ups. Though I admit, some people who marry young and have kids young find that they step up, they grow up, and they take responsibility and mature in some really encouraging ways. But it req- it requires people who are willing to do that. Now, the other thing that I think is encouraging is that marriage is connected to happiness, which we've talked about before. I think that's, I... That's, I think, by design, by divine design. But I'd also want our listeners to know, Sean, that within a Christian worldview, singleness is also valued.

Sean McDowell: Amen.

Scott Rae: And I think what we need to be careful about is this notion that marriage completes you. You know, it's sort of that... And I think sometimes we misunderstand the scriptures on this, and we think that marriage is what, marriage is what completes us as a, as a person. And sort of coming out of the Genesis account that Adam and Eve were made sort of corresponding to each other, to fit together. But that, Sean, that has to do more with Adam and Eve as the representative heads of their species, that male was created to fit with female generically, not so much one man and one woman were made to fit together ideally. And I think Colossians 2:7, to think biblically about this, reminds us of a very important truth, that we are complete in Christ. That's a full stop at that point. And 1 Corinthians 7 reminds us that singleness is the moral equivalent of marriage and sometimes more expedient. So I think we need to be... I think we need to hold these two things in a l- maybe a little bit of tension, that marriage clearly is connected to happiness. The data show that, I think, very clearly. But singleness is also valued and important. Now, one other, one other thought on this. There was one part of the article that says, [lips smack] "These trends are," quote, "subverting the traditional role of straight marriage, in which men are seen as necessary for the economic insurance of the family." And I wonder what, I wonder what you would say to the high-powered, independent who- woman who says, "That's just a sexist view?" That somehow, you know, somehow women need men in order to provide the, you know, the insurance for the family. What, what would you say? I'm curious what you, what you would say in response to that.

Sean McDowell: How I would respond?

Scott Rae: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: I would probably say that statement is not saying women need men, that men are forcing this, but actually the choices that women are making when they look for a spouse. And I think that's what the data shows, is that women value economic resources as a whole more than men do. Now, are there exceptions to this? Of course, and it doesn't imply that a woman needs a man to be successful, but there's differences between men and women, and this is one of them.

Scott Rae: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: That'd be my response.

Scott Rae: Yeah, I think, I think, I think that's exactly right. I don't, I don't think we should be surprised that women are looking for, you know, something, like, akin to, you know, "What is, what does them- what does this guy bring to this relationship?" And the financial part is part of it. And I think, increasingly, I think guys look, are looking for that, some of that same thing. Because I think the expectation is today that both men and women are gonna be working and raising kids at the same time. Now, I wish, I wish people were in the, in the position where they... Where one person could stay home, at least during those formative years, but I recognize that economically, that's, that's just a, that's a much tougher proposition than it was when, you know, when my wife and I started raising kids 30 years ago. So I understand that. But I just... I would, I wouldn't want women to misread this and sense that they are being represented by the... Like, they're looking for a guy to rescue them and to take care of them.

Sean McDowell: Sure. Sure.

Scott Rae: So I anyway, I think your response to that's a good word on that.

Sean McDowell: You put me on the spot, man. I feel like I'm back in ethics class 20 years ago, Scott. [laughing] I'm just kidding.

Scott Rae: [laughing] I, try to keep you on your toes periodically.

Sean McDowell: You can do it anytime.

Scott Rae: [laughing]

Sean McDowell: I appreciate it. A couple things that jump out to me is there's been a lot of talk about toxic masculinity, and it's been clear that men are falling behind. Women are getting more college degrees. That's a fact. But I think it... Partly this cultural narrative is that we don't need men, has men felt like they're not needed anymore, and had a negative effect on men.

Scott Rae: That's a good insight.

Sean McDowell: So there's a balance between saying a woman can survive if she's single, and she can thrive in some cases, and saying, "Men are useless. We don't need them." And so sadly, many feminists have cried out, "We are just like men. There's no difference. We don't need men," and then men are falling behind, and in turn, women and daughters are being hurt because [chuckles] of this. That's how dangerous and destructive some of these narratives can be.... I think this also points out a lot of the failure of the sexual revolution, which does make marriage secondary and not important, separates contraception from marriage, makes sex just a recreative activity that's not procreative, that downplays the sacredness of sex and marriage. We are seeing more and more articles like this of people saying, "Oh, wait a minute, actually, this has negative economic effects. This has negative relational effects." And so one good thing about this article is it's just another example in the growing list of people saying, "Uh, maybe we got it wrong with the [chuckles] sexual revolution, and actually, a biblical type of approach is what is needed for society and individuals to flourish." I suspect, sadly, because the marriage rate is at an all-time low, and we're gonna continue to see the fallout for this relationally, sociologically, psychologically, economically, more and more people are gonna have a prophetic voice like this, calling us back to a biblical view.

Scott Rae: Yeah. Nice to see the pendulum swinging a little bit in the opposite direction.

Sean McDowell: Exactly. Now, let's take a look at a very different article here. This is [chuckles] one I sent to you, and being an ethics guy, I'm really curious your takeaway. I guess this didn't surprise me, but it's... Quartz is an international business news outlet, and they have been quietly, emphasis on quietly, reporting from other outlets in order to publish AI-generated articles under the byline Quartz Intelligence Newsroom. Now, they started publishing simple AI-generated earnings reports months ago, which feels different than an article, but beginning last week, the outlet moved on to short articles. One of the 18 AI-generated articles published as of Monday afternoon was titled "South Korea Shares Preliminary Findings on Jeju Air Crash Investigation," and it aggregates the reporting done by journalists at CNN, MSN, the Associated Press. So a spokesman for Quart-, Quartz's corporate parent confirmed the existence of a, quote, "purely experimental AI newsroom" without commenting on which AI models or tools they used to generate news articles. It's not clear, according to this article, how the AI newsroom chooses which stories to cover. The spokesperson said that the goal is to free up Quartz editorial staff, of course, they're framing it positively, to work on longer and more deeply reported articles, and yet this article says the quality control seems to be lacking. Of course, this is a way for the groups like Quartz to save money, save time, salary, complaints, human resources. And by the way, this is not the first media organization to dabble with AI-generated content. Months ago, Sports Illustrated was caught not just having AI-generated articles, but AI-generated influencers that were fake people with fake bios they presented [chuckles] as real, and so this is just the latest example of a group using AI to save money and time and pass on news from other journalists. Your take, Scott?

Scott Rae: Yeah, Sean, I think, first of all, it looks like that Quartz has learned a few things from Sports Illustrated about what not to do if you're gonna do this. For one, they disclosed it, though the experiment had been going on for months before they actually did disclose it, and I'm not particularly surprised at this development. I know when we talked a couple of weeks ago on biotechnology and some bioethics things, you made the comment that you're not surprised by anything new that comes down the pike on this. [laughing]

Sean McDowell: [laughing]

Scott Rae: Well, when it comes to artificial intelligence, I'm not surprised by anything that we hear- ... A new application. This is just the next step, I think, in the use of AI to write news stories, but I think what they've admitted is that they can't create these stories out of thin air.

Sean McDowell: That's right.

Scott Rae: They have to rely on real news sources, which they admit that it did, but without crediting the sources in the same way that journalists directly do so, and that's the part that troubles me. This, I think, reflects one of the general criticisms of AI, that it takes materials from thousands of thousands of sources, you know, your books and mine included, without attribution or without compensation. And I think with they're doing this more directly now. They do say at the beginning of the article, the sources that they relied on in general, but they don't give the byline. They don't give the author. They don't give the specif- they don't quote any articles directly, like news sources and j- and good journalists generally do. And I think they don't get everything right, as you would expect. Now, the rationale for this was that they wanted to free up their staff in order to focus more of their energy on the stories that require really deep dives for them. But I wondered, how long will it be before Quartz uses AI for those deeper dive stories, too? And I wonder... I just I wonder, you know, what's gonna be the next step after this? So for example, I think in the fear of AI in education is it will preempt critical thinking and thereby eventually undermine education, and my- I wonder if it's gonna do the same thing similar, similarly to journalism.

Scott Rae: I think, I think this could easily increase the public's already significant mistrust in journalism. And that, I think that's not a good thing when I think there are other threats to the freedom of the press going on at present. But that's, I think, the ethical part of this, Sean, is that it's- it is not directly attributing the sources that it's using for its material. I'd say it's-... I'd call it semi-plagiaristic- -because they do recognize the sources, but that'd be like a student who writes a paper and do- and just say, you know, takes a bunch of things from another source, tells you at the beginning of the paper, "I've used these sources," but they don't use quote marks, and they don't use footnotes to tell you where that information came from. And I think that's where the AI, in this particular journalistic use, comes up short, and I think that's a- that's an ethical issue, I think, because if you're gonna use somebody's, somebody else's material, you better give them credit for it, at the least. And increasingly, in journalistic and media circles, you also have to pay them for it. If it, if it comes to video footage, you compensate for them, you know, as well.

Sean McDowell: That point is really interesting, 'cause they started basically with, earnings reports, which may or may not be wrong. That's fine, that's numbers. Then they moved to 400-word articles. It's like they're testing to see what they could get away with, and the question is: What is next? And it just reminds me biblically about how sin just grows. It starts with a small compromise, something... Well, earnings reports, okay, a little bit gray. 400-word articles? Now we've crossed a line. But if you have success, and you raise money, and you don't get caught on this, then it pushes the boundaries forward. Now, if this organization doesn't, some other one will, which to me is a reminder as Christians, AI brings unique temptations with it that were present generally in the past but are harder and harder to avoid today, and I think the root of the temptation is tied to the Eighth Commandment: "Thou shalt not steal." Now, in the past, you could steal ideas, but it's like steal a pencil, steal a car. It's something physical. It's somewhat more black and white. Now it's like, where is this line crossed? Plus, when you add to it economic gain, and maybe online you can do something by AI and pass it off as it's yourself, it looks good. I would encourage, and I'm preaching to myself and to all of us here, that we've gotta be on the alert just in terms of our integrity, in terms of our character before the Lord, that we don't take our cues about what the Eighth Commandment [chuckles] is from the culture, but we have integrity and transparency on where we get ideas from, and that's what's lacking in this article, and that's in part what bothers me. There's no transparency in terms of the tools that are used to generate this. There's no transparency on who's even choosing which stories to cover. They're not citing the sources, like you said. They're passing this off, to most people who read it... If this magazine, this journalist we're reading right now, hadn't done the deep dive and made this aware, made us aware of it, everybody reading this would've thought that they actually created this by a legit journalist, which is deception, and it's stealing ideas from somebody else. So we need to have real honest conversations just in terms of our integrity and our life biblically. When do we use AI tools? Is it okay to use AI tools? How do we have integrity before the Lord when we quite literally have the power in our hands to create things with a question we never did in the past? I think AI is kind of a God-type quality, where I can just punch in a thought and create it seemingly fresh. How does that affect, you know, our temptation to sin? And so let's... I just, it bothers me, and I want Christians to lean in and be more thoughtful about this maybe than we ever have been before.

Scott Rae: Sean, one other point to add on this. You, you know, you mentioned there's fuzziness about when the line gets crossed. I think the line got crossed when the AI was initially created- ... By scraping, you know, thousands and thousands of books and articles where they have copyrights- ... That were violated, without, again, without attribution or compensation. Now, I did a, I did a couple of searches just for ideas using AI, not too long ago, and what they pointed out, well, they made it clear that what they had been- where the, where their material came from were s- were scanning the, scanning internet websites, which I think is much, that's much more akin to public domain- ... Than books and articles that have copyrights to either the author or the publisher. So that may be a, that may be one of the places that we would draw a line. But I think at the least, what I would suggest is to... If you're gonna err on the side of disclosure- ... And attribution, and to be as specific as possible on the attribution. And I w- I'd like for AI to be as clear about attribution as authors have to be in their, in our published works. Now, I think, I think that, you know, the AI creators are gonna say, "Well, we just, you know, we just sort of..." It was like taking a Hoover to the ocean floor, with all this information that they scraped up, but I think that isolates the, a really big ethical issue that you've raised in the very creation of these artificial intelligence, software designs.

Sean McDowell: Honestly, I have to give this some more thought, because, books are public domain, so it's... I could go with my own eyes to a library-... And look at all these books, or I could use a tool to scan these books. I don't know that I see why AI itself being used as a tool, if it's in the public domain, is necessarily sinful within itself, unless I'm pawning it off on my own in a way that it's not. Now, you can answer that or not. My point [chuckles] is, I don't know that you and I, and everybody else has even given this some significant thought. We can't just take it for granted. We gotta go a little bit deeper on this. Do you agree with that, or do you wanna push back and clarify a little bit?

Scott Rae: Well, maybe just a little bit.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Scott Rae: I think, you know, most- I think most books, unless they are, you know, ancient works or, you know, things that are clearly designated as public domain, are not. I mean- ... Most books that are published have a copyright that belongs to the author, and most articles that are published in journals have a copyright that belongs to the journal. And so when- ... When you use it, and you, I think you can, you can, you can use it for ideas, for information, for whatever, but once you represent it in your own work, you have, you have to be clear about the fact that it's not your own material. Or, or else we, or else I think we rightly call it plagiarism. You know, how, you know... And, and until you represent it as your own, I don't think it's fair to say that you've stolen it. But once you represent that as your own material and your own sort of independent thought, you've not only, you've not only stolen the material, but you've deceived your readers about what's, what's yours and what's not. So, you know, one, I'd be- one thing I'm sort of tempted to do is to submit an editorial to some of these news services that's completely AI-authored-

Sean McDowell: [laughing]

Scott Rae: ... And see if they'll publish it. [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: And don't tell them until afterwards.

Scott Rae: Of course, of course not.

Sean McDowell: And then see how upset they are, which part of this article points out, the mere fact that they say, "Wait a minute, this is AI-generated," in our so-called post-truth culture, we're all somewhat bothered by this because we want to know the truth.

Scott Rae: That's a great observation.

Sean McDowell: Truth still matters, and we can't escape it, 'cause it's written in the world, and it's written on our DNA. I don't think that's going anywhere. But it's harder than ever to discover and know truth, because there's so many tools are accessible. All right, I feel like you and I should have a full discussion/ [chuckles] debate or exploration about even the ethics behind AI and when you can use it and when you can't, but we'll, we'll come back to that. All right-

Scott Rae: I think we need to do that about every three months as the technology-

Sean McDowell: Oh, my goodness

Scott Rae: ... Changes so frequently.

Sean McDowell: Yeah, fair enough. That's, that's a good one. Now, this one, when I sent it to you, some people might be thinking, "Why are we talking about this story?" But I think it's a smaller story but illustrative of certain larger cultural changes that are happening. And the story was the title, first reported in NBC News, is that the NFL will end, quote, "end racism," statements from the end zone ahead of the Super Bowl. Instead, the field will have stencils of the phrase, "Choose Love," which I thought was interesting. Sunday's game will be the first Super Bowl since February 2021, which "end racism" will not be an end zone stencil. Here's a quote, in the article that says, "The Super Bowl is often a snapshot in time, and the NFL is in a unique position to capture and lift the imagination of the country." now, they mention Trump. I'm not trying to make a political point here, but I guess he's the first president going to a Super Bowl, according to this article. He's taken a stance against DEI initiatives, clearly since he took office, signed an executive order on his first day in office to end DEI programs in federal agencies, and employ- put employees on those programs on leave. Now, in this article, it says, quote, someone representing the NFL, "We got into diversity efforts 'cause we felt it was the right thing for the NFL, and we're going to continue these efforts because we've not only convinced ourselves, I think we've proven ourselves that it does make the NFL better," and that was Goodell, who is the commissioner. I'm just curious, your thoughts and reflections on this. What do you think, Scott?

Scott Rae: Well, my f- I admit, Sean, my first thought is that putting "choose love" in, at, in the end, in the end zone of the s- the stadium is sort of ironic when the [chuckles] when the Chiefs players will not be choosing love over the Eagles opponents that they're blocking and tackling.

Sean McDowell: Exactly.

Scott Rae: And they're gonna try, they're gonna try to hit them as hard as they can. Now, I, the sentiment, I think, is fine, and I think we still need to... There's still work to do to end racism. So I don't, I don't particularly have a problem with the, to sign "end racism" in the end zone. Players, some of the players may have that on their helmets. And I think this gives rise to lots of speculation as to why this is being done, and I found it sort of ironic, there's nothing in this story about how Black players feel about this.

Sean McDowell: I wondered that, too.

Scott Rae: I'd be really, I'd be really interested to get their opinion on that. And as you've pointed out, the NFL d- is defending its diversity efforts, and I think justifiably so. Perhaps, and this is... I'm trying, yeah, trying to stay away from speculation, but perhaps they're anticipating the criticism that they're bending the knee to Trump and his anti-DEI efforts in light of his upcoming attendance to the Super Bowl. I don't know that. I think, I think the NFL just probably, I think, is defending its diversity efforts, as being a good thing. But I don't... There's, this makes, there's just room for a lot of speculation here that we just don't have a lot of facts about. So why... You know, and it may, it may be, I suspect Roger Goodell would say-... You know, the taking that's, that, phrase out of the end zone had nothing to do with who's gonna be attending the Super Bowl.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Scott Rae: They just wanted to- they just wanted to have a me- a different message for this- ... Particular game. So, I, that, I don't have a, I don't have a l- a lot else to add to that. Until we get, until we get more facts out, there's, there's, there's less to respond to there. And I'd like to- I've done enough speculating already. It's probably enough.

Sean McDowell: That's fair enough. I've got, I've got a few thoughts about this, is doing a little research online, the NFL is 53% Black, 25% white, mixed race was around 10%, and then smaller Hispanic, Pacific Islander. Now, if you go back 50, 75 years, Blacks were not represented the same in the NFL. It was a majority white. Now, there's obviously a fascinating story behind how this happened. There's examples, I'm sure, of people who were bigoted and didn't like this change that happened. There's examples of heroes who were Black, who took criticism and hatred, to stand up to this. But what I don't think the larger narrative is why Blacks are now 53% was because of DEI policies. [chuckles] I think these individual athletes worked harder, got more skilled, earned all of their playing time, and even are- should maybe be considered more heroic than other players because they had more odds to face historically to get there. Now, I'd love to hear that story in some more depth. Now, what's interesting, though, is it would be an insult to a player to say, "Well, you get playing time [chuckles] because you're Black or because of some other race." I can't, I can't imagine somebody be like, "Yeah, that gave me an advantage." They'd be like, "No, I worked for this. Don't take that away from me." I think that would be an insult to them and to anybody who's earned their position rightly. So I look at the NFL, and clearly they're not going to embrace DEI policies when it comes to the field and who plays, and they shouldn't, so then why embrace DI- DEI policies elsewhere? It seems that they should have DEI policies elsewhere and the field or not on the field and not elsewhere. I wanna know why there's an inconsistency here. I think that's a story that needs to be told, and that is underlying this. The other thing, I also thought it, too, I'm like, of all sports that is gonna say, [chuckles] "Choose love"-

Scott Rae: I know. [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: ... Like, maybe dancing, you know, maybe, like, ballet, I don't know. But football, it's like, "No, I hate the other fans," but it's a good kind of, like, hatred that brings animosity, and you wanna win, and you wanna compete. If there's any sport where it's like, "I wanna hit you as hard as I can," it's in NFL. So there's just, there's, like, a... Their marketing, there's a [chuckles] disconnect here that made me chuckle. But I also think, like, I don't know anybody who saw that sign and was like, "End racism? No, I think we should have racism." Like, nobody looks at that and says they're against it.

Scott Rae: Right.

Sean McDowell: I don't even know how effective that was at all in convincing people. But what this tells us is terms matter. Choose love. In DEI policies, love often means something very different, just like racism means something different. It's tied to power and equity, and love often means affirming. So I don't know how much these short slogans help anything at all when there's so much debate underneath the surface. A part of me, maybe I'll get criticism for this, is like, there's something about sports itself that actually brings people together. [chuckles] You don't have to tell us. You don't have to preach at us. In fact, Derwin Gray, a good friend of mine, a pastor who played in the NFL, he actually talked about how when he was playing in the NFL, there were so many people, if you had a common goal, it didn't matter what your race was. [chuckles] It brought people together. When he went to the church, he experienced more racism, and, than he actually did in sports, which brings people together. So there's just something about sports that has become politicized with slogans that, in some ways, I think has the reverse effect of saying, "Let's just compete, let's have non-political space, and let's enjoy this competition together." Last point I would say is, yes, w- I think the reason Trump was mentioned in here is because there's a lot of talk about DEI right now, and we're seeing a lot of backpedaling from some groups leaning away from it and some groups leaning into it. So we're kind of at a tipping point in culture where we're moving away from it seems like. And so I think that's why he was brought into this. He represents an anti-DEI position, so to speak. But, one point is there's a lot of people who say we're moving away from DEI on the surface, but underneath, they're not really moving away from it. They're moving away from it in the title but not in the substance. So there was an article out of a university I won't mention that said, "We're moving away from DEI policies." And then I looked into it was like, "Wait a minute. It's the same professors. [chuckles] It's the same message. We're just titling it something different." So I at least appreciate that the NFL is clear, saying, "Look, we're not moving away from DEI." I'm like, "Okay, now I know at least where you stand," as opposed to when we hear other people saying, "We're moving away from it." I wanna go, "Okay, what does that mean? What exactly is being different?" And that's just how we have to be discerning. Any other thoughts before we move to another fascinating story of a mountain being considered [chuckles] a person in New Zealand?

Scott Rae: No, I think our listeners would probably like us to get to that one.

Sean McDowell: [chuckles] Fair, fair enough. All right, so this one you sent to me, I thought this was so interesting.... A New Zealand mountain is granted personhood, recognizing it as sacred for the Maori. Now, it's con- a mountain in New Zealand considered an ancestor by indigenous people was recognized as a legal person on Thursday after a new law, this is last week, granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being. I won't mention the name of this mountain, 'cause I'll butcher it, but it's the latest natural feature to be granted personhood in New Zealand, which previously had a river that was considered a person. The legal recognition acknowledges the mountain's theft from the Maori of this region in New Zealand. One other quick things here... Oh, it says, "The law passed will give the mountain all the rights, powers, and duties, responsibilities, and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name," is what it says. Now, there's more in this about the backstory we don't need to go into, but, Oh, by the way, the bill recognizing the mountain's personhood was affirmed unanimously by the parliament's 123 lawmakers in New Zealand. Your take on this one, Scott?

Scott Rae: Well, this is- I've actually got a lot to say about this one- ... Because this really, it struck a bit- it struck a bit of a nerve. Now, we've already seen, I think in the last month or so, we highlighted a story about a Brazilian rainforest that had been grant- that was... There's a lawsuit pending to grant creative rights, and probably, I don't know how they'll do royalties, to the rainforest-

Sean McDowell: [chuckles]

Scott Rae: ... That was a part of a musical production, that has been selling, apparently selling like crazy in some parts of the world. This is a further, Sean, really important, a further separation of persons from human beings that we already see at both the beginning and ending edges of life. So it's not, it's n- you know, and the environment has a long history of being given certain human traits, okay? The Mother Earth movement, for example, that was a good example of that. And this, I think if I could help frame this f- a bit for our listeners, this is an outgrowth of what is known as a biocentric view of the environment. What that means is that it's a view that gives the natural world intrinsic value. It means value in and of itself, and it gives rights to the natural world, including animals and even non-sentient beings, non-conscious beings, like trees and rivers. This reminds me, Sean, of a case a couple decades ago that I used to tell students about, that it's something that was way out there in terms of environmental ethics, when environmental groups sued Los Angeles County over a beachfront development in Santa Monica on the grounds that the rights of the sand were being violated.

Sean McDowell: Wow!

Scott Rae: Not making that up. [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: [chuckles]

Scott Rae: Okay? Now, thankfully, that was tossed out of court rather quickly.

Sean McDowell: Wow!

Scott Rae: But this is, I think, in continuity with that earlier view. Now, contrast this to what's called an anthropocentric view- ... Which you can sort of see where that's going. It's entirely instrumental, and our view of the environment, it has value solely based on its benefit to human beings. Okay, now that view actually can produce, in my view, a fairly robust environmental stewardship out of concern for succeeding generations. You know, I want, I want my kids and grandkids to enjoy an environment that's gonna work for them. But biblically, I think we're best to hold to what I would call a theocentric view, where the Earth is the Lord's, as the psalmist described, and it has intrinsic value because it is His, but that He has given human beings the role of trustees over it, using it for our benefit, but also responsible for its health. That's, I think, the mandate that was given to human beings in Genesis 1:27, the mandate to be fruitful with the environment. Which, by the way, being fruitful there has nothing to do with procreation, but with productivity, and has economic overtones to it. Right, now, this view of the Brazilian... Sorry, of the New Zealand, mountain being granted personhood is actually a return to w- a very primitive form of what's called animism or almost to pantheism, which sees the natural world as a living being. And the Gen- the Genesis account, I think, was written in part to distinguish very clearly the Creator from the creation, and to affirm that they are not the same thing, and that the Creator, not the creation, is to be worshipped. And the Earth is the Lord's. That apostrophe S is really important, because the Earth is not the Lord. It's the Lord's, but not the Lord. It belongs to Him, but is not to be worshipped as the Lord. Now, it's one thing... Just one final comment. It's one thing to recognize the importance of this site. I think you might even- it might even be one thing to call it sacred. It's another thing to give it the status of a person, and what makes someone a person ultimately is their status as being made in the image of God, not other capacities, or else personhood in the image of God become what we call degreed property that you can have more or less of. And for the Scriptures, human beings and persons are one and the same, and I would be very careful for our listeners about any attempt to separate those two things. That's, I think, the bigger story in this, is that it, as it, as it comes to human beings, we g- we gotta be very careful about saying that someone can be a human being but not a person. That, that ought to be a red flag for our listeners, that something is amiss-... Philosophically and theologically.

Sean McDowell: That's a really helpful take. I, You know, it's ironic that right now, in many countries, you have unborn not being considered the status of human beings, but then rivers and mountains being given the status of persons and human beings. Somehow, we've lost our way. Now, if I was gonna read this story charitably, I would clearly say that here's a group, the Maori, who are indigenous to New Zealand, and this mountain is important to them, and their worldview, and their history, and they feel it's been taken from them. So the government's role is to step in, protect the environment, and not have the rights taken from them. I think that is a kind of role the government should have. Up in Sequoia National Park, near, Hume Lake, I forget the name of it, but there's this Sequoia tree-like graveyard where there is a dozen or two Sequoia that were all chopped down, and it's kinda eerie to see these massive stumps. A good role of government is to protect the environment so generations in the future can get joy from it, but do we have to consider the mountain persons to do so? That's the mistake, and I think the thinking is we wanna raise the value of the mountain in people's minds, but what happens is it ends up with this worldview lowering the value of real persons and human beings. There was a display years ago, Scott, [chuckles] at a, at a zoo, and they had human beings who were in cages, and the title was Humans in Their Natural Habitat. And humans had, like, fig leaves on and went around, like, just acting like primates, pulling, like, you know, fake parasites out of one another's hair. And the idea is to show that humans are not better than anything else. We share the same environment. We all have the same evolutionary story, but what happens is it lowers the value of human beings down, rather than elevating and caring for nature appropriately, and I think that's, a sense, what this does. So how do we protect that mountain, and how [chuckles] do we protect that river without actually calling it a person? That's the question, and I think as soon as mountains and as soon as rivers start asking for human rights, that's when we give it to them, and I'm not holding my breath [chuckles] that that's ever going to happen. All right.

Scott Rae: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Go ahead.

Scott Rae: Let's, Let's answer some questions.

Sean McDowell: All right, let's do it. So we got some great questions. Again, here's three. One says, "I am a current MA Apologetics student at Talbot, and I have a question. If something is in God's will, does that mean that God causes that thing? At first thought, I want to say the answer is no, 'cause there does seem to be a different- a difference between God allowing something to happen and making something happen, but on second thought, I'm less sure. What would you say is the correct understanding of God's will when it comes to what He allows and what He causes?" First off- awesome to have you in the MA Apologetics program-

Scott Rae: Yeah, yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Here at Talbot. So if... I would invite you to look up every time the Bible talks about God's will or the will of God, and I think you'll find this comes... Greg Koukl is the one who really drew my attention to this. You'll find that the Bible talks about God's will in two ways. One, God's moral will. He desires that we honor our parents, that we tell the truth, that we avoid sexual immorality, 1 Thessalonians 4:3. The other way is God's sovereign will, His direction of history towards His ends. Now, what does that mean? When it says, "If something is God's will," does that mean God causes the thing? Well, no, God doesn't cause me to honor my parents. He gives me the freedom to do so, and His desire is that we would live out that moral will correctly. That's why there's the Holy Spirit. That's why there's the law written on our hearts. That's why we have governments, to encourage us to do so. When it comes to God's sovereign will, we don't always know what God's sovereign will is. Even Jesus was like, "The time of my return, only the Father knows," which raises theological issues we won't go into right now. But in that sense, yes, the sovereign will is according to God, but we have to be careful to make a distinction between what is God's sovereign will, what He's causing, and what God is allowing human beings to do that may or may not line up with His moral will, that ultimately He will use towards His sovereign end. If you want more on this, 'cause this deserves a ton more, either get the book Decision Making and the Will of God, one I highly recommend, or Greg Koukl has some teaching on this at Stand to Reason that would clarify further. You wanna add anything to that, or go to the second question?

Scott Rae: No, let's go to the next one. You've covered that pretty nicely.

Sean McDowell: This is from a Biola graduate in 1976. He's now 70 and practicing ophthalmology. He says, "I have a question about violence we see in the animal kingdom. How are we to view the incredible violence wild animals inflict on one another? Video of such things is difficult to watch," and please, in a sense, don't just give me the answer, these are my words, that it's because we live in a fallen world. What perspective can you offer?

Scott Rae: Well, I think w- it is, it is because we live in a fallen world, but we can spell that out a little bit further. I say animals have neither a conscience nor a moral sense, nor the capacity to have concerns for the common good. Animals have no internal-... Mechanism to restrain their self-interest, like human beings do. You know, take, for example, you know, a dog, say that a dog sees a male dog sees a beautiful female dog. The dog thinks to himself, "Wow, she's really beautiful, but I think I'll wait until marriage on that." [laughing]

Sean McDowell: [laughing]

Scott Rae: Dogs don't say that.

Sean McDowell: [laughing]

Scott Rae: Dogs, dogs don't have a moral sense. I mean, they have... I think they have s- they have some evidence of emotions.

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Scott Rae: And I think some, you know, some-

Sean McDowell: Personality a little bit, maybe?

Scott Rae: Yeah, some ability to experience things like, fear or, some af- some affection, but most of the time, when my dogs show affection, it's to get something they want, not because they have a, this huge concern for me. So I- without a conscience or a moral sense, I mean, those are the things that God has instituted to help us curb our instincts, particularly our worst instincts. And I think the fact that our consciences function like they do keeps us from inflicting these kinds- this kind of violence on each other, for the most part, now, not entirely. But animals don't have that, and I think it's unrealistic to expect that animals would treat each other like human beings treat each other. And so yeah, it... We do live in a fallen world. One of the consequences of that is that animals have neither a conscience nor a moral, a moral sense, but that's the way they were designed. [lips smack] And, you know, whether that's a function of a fallen world, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm not so sure about that.

Sean McDowell: That last point I would draw out a little bit, and I might differ a little bit, and maybe you, maybe you ultimately agree with me on this, is what the Fall can do is corrupt and break things, but it can't positively build things. And we look at both environments and individual animals, and clearly there's built in a kind of hunting in the claws of a lion, the teeth of a shark, the gut of carnivores, I don't think resulted from the Fall, but is the way that God built the world. Now, how much has sin affected the kind of pain and suffering? I think it's exacerbated. We see in the Fall that there was pain the woman had in childbirth, because we need pain to survive in our environments, but it was exacerbated, it was increased. So maybe the Fall has made it worse. In what ways, we can only speculate, but I think the Fall has contributed to this in some way. I just would ask a couple other questions. I'm not pretending this fixes it, but is a world with things like alligators, and sharks, and Tyrannosaurus rexes, given the way they're built, more interesting and fascinating than a world without it? And I think the vast... When I was listening to a podcast about this, I looked over at a Jeep driving down the freeway with a T-rex on the back of the tire. [laughing]

Scott Rae: [laughing]

Sean McDowell: And if I asked my son that question, he'd be like: "A world with T-rexes is way better. It's so interesting." Now, you can't have that world without the kind of suffering we see with animals. That's just something to think about. Second, what does God ultimately want? He wants to be in relationship with us. Is a world in which we see things like animal suffering more or less likely to draw us to God and realize, wow, suffering and pain is built into the world, life is precarious? And I think that kind of suffering that we see actually affects us to think about spiritual things and the limitations of life differently. A last point I'll make, Michael Murray has developed this. You can search his stuff online, and there's debate about it, but he makes a distinction between the kind of pain humans experience and animals experience. Animals have, like, first-order pain, but they don't reflect upon why they are suffering, what causes it, and what it means. A lot of human suffering is so much greater because we think about it, and reflect upon it, and despair amidst it. So is there a different kind of suffering for animals we project upon them? That's a question worth considering. My favorite book on natural suffering and evil is just called Broken Planet by Sharon Dirks, would be one to check out to explore this further. One la- oh, go ahead.

Scott Rae: One last comment from me on this. I think it's pretty clear in... Before the Fall, God designed human beings to be vegetarians. They... Nobody ate meat before the Fall, and I wonder, and we don't have any evidence on this, so it's just speculation, but I wonder if animals were designed the same way, to be vegetarians before the Fall and not predators. Um- ... Now, after the Fall, it is clear, the Psalm, the Psalmist is clear, for example, that God uses the predatory, predator prayer, prey relationship in order to feed, parts of the animal kingdom. But I wonder if that was the original design- -because for human beings, it was not.

Sean McDowell: That's a fair question, and I, you know, I think for me, we know humans can choose not to kill animals and survive with protein elsewhere, but I think there might be a design built into animals that would suggest otherwise. But then again, we're at the point of speculation. We will leave it with our [laughing] ...

Scott Rae: Hear, hear.

Sean McDowell: Our audience to wrestle further with that one. That's a great pushback. All right, last question is, someone says, "I understand the secular humanist argument about our moral code has developed as humans have evolved."... I know this evolution argument breaks down, but my question is: how do you go about breaking it down and refuting it in a gentle and respectful way?

Scott Rae: Well, Sean, as you know, this is, this is a much longer conversation than we can have in answer to this question. It's a really good question. And there are whole- I mean, there are book-length studies on this, but I think the short answer would be that many things, in fact, I would say most things in our moral code, are against our self-interest and our survival. Because they require that we do things that, at the end of the day, do not, contribute to our adaptive value, because most of our moral values involve giving up advantage for the sake of others. Now, take- just take, for example, many of the heroic actions that we require. You know, the soldier that falls on a grenade to save his friend- ... They give their lives for another. In an evolutionary way of thinking about this, those people are fools and losers in the evolutionary game to transmit their genes, and altruism doesn't have much adaptive value either. But our intuitions tell us that people who are willing to do that kind of self-sacrifice are not fools or losers, but they're heroes, and we have... Throughout history, we have admired people who sacrifice themselves in that way. That is highly contrary, it seems to me, to an evolutionary development of morality.

Sean McDowell: One of the best responses, I think, comes from C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man. He says, "At best, evolution could explain our instincts to tell the truth, our instincts to be kind and to honor our parents, but it can't tell us those instincts are morally right or morally wrong. They might help us survive, but survival is different than rightness morally and wrongness morally." He said, "By the way, I have instincts, maybe wired by evolution, to help. Other times, I have instincts to hurt. Unless there is a standard outside of instincts by which we judge them, we cannot determine that one is morally right and morally wrong, because again, survival is not the same as rightness and wrongness." I don't- wouldn't claim that I refuted him, but I had a two-hour conversation with Michael Shermer about three months ago. It's on YouTube, and he's one of the leading skeptics of today, and he wants objective right and wrong through evolution, and we went round and round about this. So if you wanna just search Sean McDowell and Michael Shermer on YouTube, it'll come up, and you can listen to that and see what you think. But we tried to flesh out, flesh out some of the differences between an evolutionary naturalistic view and a Christian view, and of course, I think the Christian view, [chuckles] when it's all said and done, wins, whether I adequately defended it or not. You can check it out. That might be a helpful resource. Scott, as always, a lot of fun.

Scott Rae: Great.

Sean McDowell: Already looking forward to next week.

Scott Rae: Yeah. Me, too. In fact, I've already got a couple stories collected for next week. [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: I know. You, like, send them to me when this is done. I'm like, "Slow down! I just finished for this week." [laughs]

Scott Rae: [laughs]

Sean McDowell: I love it, though. Very, very fun. Good, the stories keep coming, and we'll keep trying to help folks think biblically. This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. We have master's programs, theology, apologetics, marriage and family, spiritual formation, Old Testament, exegesis, Christian ministry, and more, fully online and in person. Please keep your comments and questions coming. You can email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. We would deeply appreciate, if this podcast is helpful, just giving us a rating on your podcast app, an honest rating. Every single one helps with the analytics to get the word out, and consider sharing this with a friend. Thanks for listening. We'll see you Tuesday when our regular podcast episode airs, in which we talk with Dr. Stephen Willing about what neuroscience reveals in terms of gender dysphoria and the transgender conversation and debate. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything. [upbeat music]