Did NEW ATHEISTS Turn America WOKE? Atheist Professor Says, "Yes!" | Pastor Reacts

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The whole premise of it is that the system is inherently racist. To people who are woke, you can never be woke enough.

00:06

One minute series of videos where I explain. The same things that Peter Boghossian is concerned about in terms of infiltrating the universities are infiltrating many churches today, and this is how it's done.

00:19

Christians, I'm talking to you. Where do we think we sit now in the history of wokeism?

00:24

We've peaked. I think we've peaked. But the damage that it's done to the institutions is nowhere near over. Now, mind you,

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I was getting my graduate degree in curriculum and instruction, so I was being trained to be a teacher, and this ideology was sprinkled everywhere in my studies at the university.

00:38

So for wokeness to work, it needs one thing. Specifically, I'm talking about transitioning children before they're 18.

00:50

What does Boghossian, who, by the way, is an atheist himself, okay? What does he have to offer us in terms of a solution?

00:56

And why does he say later in the video, and we're going to get there, that new atheists are to blame for woke ideology?

01:09

Welcome back to Wise Disciple and to a brand new video for your consideration. My name is Nate Sala.

01:15

I'm a speaker, pastor, and former debate teacher, and I make videos to help you become the effective Christian that you are meant to be.

01:22

Well, today I have something a little different, but very valuable for us to walk through together, I think. For some of you, this might throw you a bit, you know, why is this a

01:31

Pastor Reacts? What is Peter Boghossian talking about woke ideology have to do with the church today? I'm going to show you.

01:37

So I need you to stick with me on this one, especially to the end. I'm going to watch this video with you, and I'm going to identify some key elements, some key nuggets of wisdom that I think, when we put these components together, will provide us a way forward with regard to woke ideology, particularly in our churches.

01:56

And hopefully we'll discover a way to respond and a way to solve the problem of woke ideology.

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So let's go through this together. We'll pull out the component pieces. And then at the end of the video, let's put them all together and form

02:09

Voltron. You know what I'm saying? Here we go. It is not possible. It is not possible to have both

02:18

DEI and free speech. You either... So DEI stands for, and in a previous video, a woke transtheologian defined it for us, right?

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So take a look at the Calvin Robinson debate that I reacted to where this happened. But DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

02:36

So Boghossian says diversity, equity, and inclusion and free speech cannot coexist together.

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It's impossible. You get DEI or you get free speech. Anything else, you have a simple choice.

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So anybody making a Chicago statement or this declaration, it's just not true. Harvard put something up about that recently.

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It's never going to work. It's literally impossible because the whole mission of DEI is to limit what people say so they won't...

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So certain minorities won't be... Won't, quote unquote, feel excluded. The whole premise of it is that the system is inherently racist.

03:17

Everything from who gets into the institutions and universities, SAT scores, the whole...

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It's just not possible. So you have the... Now, I encourage you to watch the full discussion and I'm going to give a link to that below.

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But why is this the case? What Boghossian is saying. Why cannot

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DEI and free speech exist together? Because of power. Woke ideology trades on the idea that everything is a power grab.

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So either the ones in power will keep power or a new group will come along and take the power away from the ones who have it.

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In this dynamic, it's win -lose. So if folks have power, they win. And that also means the folks who don't have power lose.

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So when it comes to talking about these things and trying to have critical discussions about what kind of worldview underlies woke ideology and or woke narratives, you'll very often find people who want to take away our ability to speak against woke narratives.

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Why is that the case? Because they're taking away our power. That's the idea behind it.

04:20

Chris Rufo idea. Now, here's the interesting thing. So in 1945,

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Karl Parper, also from your island, Austrian -English, the philosopher of science, has a wonderful thing on the paradox of tolerance.

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And the paradox of tolerance is the idea that to what extent should the tolerant tolerate the intolerant?

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So when I'm taking it out of the academy, so for example, the Netherlands right now, or actually

04:48

London too, to an extent. But Sweden, to what extent should broadly liberal societies tolerate pockets of Islamic radicalism?

05:00

People who are in those views about homosexuality, those views about covering of women, et cetera.

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And so what we have, so this is how I view the system. You have a group of people who participate in ideology.

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That ideology has metastasized throughout the educational system. Not only do they control bureaucracies, but they have a direct path to the president.

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Usually there's a kind of hierarchical organization in which one files a complaint or what have you.

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But the DEI goes right to the top. They are offices searching for tasks with the assumption that sexism and racism already exist, and bigotry and homophobia rank bias of some sort.

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And we just need to figure out how it manifests. That's an underlying principle of critical race theory.

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So to what extent do we tolerate the intolerant? And so Rufo is going after, and he's being very effective.

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He's working with Ron DeSantis right now, and I hope he's successful. And the criticism of Rufo, I don't think, holds.

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The criticism is you're trying to do things that woke people are doing on the opposite end.

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So woke people are limiting speech. So Rufo is going in and eliminating DEI bureaucracy so we can have more of a classically liberal education.

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Why is that important? Why is it important that we eliminate bureaucracy? Which it sounds really bad to some people.

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It sounds like folks on the side of free speech are trying to fire people and harm other people's ability to make a living, right?

06:43

Well, actually, no. The reason why that's so important is because if we cannot talk to each other and learn how to clash against someone else's ideas...

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By the way, clash is the basis of debate. So if you're a fan of my Debate Teacher React series, you better be watching this video right now.

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If we cannot learn to clash against opposing ideas and do that well, to do so in a civil and respectful manner, then moral evil and detestable and wicked acts will be given license to run rampant in our society.

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Why is that the case? Because no one will have the ability to identify it and call it out. If you can control a nation's language, you can control that nation.

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It's as simple as that. And by the way, I didn't say that. Saul Alinsky said that. If you don't know Saul Alinsky, check out his book,

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Rules for Radicals. It's an eye -opener. It explains a lot of what we're seeing today. What does this have to do with our response as Christians, Nate?

07:35

Well, stick with me. I'm going to explain it a bit. To what extent should we tolerate the intolerant when the very people, once they get kicked out from the

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DEI bureaucracy, they're screaming about free speech? The very people who are taking away everybody else's free speech. So I hope

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Rufo is successful. I don't know if he'll be, but I'm not going to wait and find out. I'm going to build new things.

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I'm going to make an institution. I'm going to help contribute to an institution that's based upon free speech and open inquiry and genuine curiosity where people who have questions can ask without fear of cancellation or being just a priori repudiated to something someone says.

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That's an interesting debate that we're having in Britain as well and CRT in schools, not just in universities.

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But for those of us who believe in free speech, how do we deal with CRT and the banning of it altogether?

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How do we get rid of it? Or how can we say we're pro -free speech if we don't somehow tolerate it?

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Maybe that's not sure. The tolerance paradox. But how does one deal with that?

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So when I was in grad school, and this was a while ago now, I was already seeing

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CRT and social justice come to the fore. It wasn't being called CRT at that point.

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Social justice and multiculturalism were the terms being thrown around more frequently at the time.

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But the fully formed worldview of CRT and social justice was definitely being articulated at the university that I attended.

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I say worldview because that's essentially what it is. CRT and social justice begins with certain presuppositions about the world and then operates from those presuppositions.

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It is a worldview in the same way that one's worldview begins with certain foundational beliefs and then operates based on those beliefs.

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Some of those presuppositions are systemic racism, white supremacy, white privilege, patriarchy, imperialism.

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You know what I mean? These are just taken for granted. And then the data that we have of the world that we experience is interpreted through this worldview based on these unique ideas.

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Now, mind you, I was getting my graduate degree in curriculum and instruction. So I was being trained to be a teacher and this ideology was sprinkled everywhere in my studies at the university.

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One semester, I had to attend a multiculturalism class where the students were trained to redefine terms like racism as well as unlearned scientific studies that did not comport with the social justice worldview.

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This is where I heard for the first time that there are other ways of knowing that reason and evidence -based knowledge is unfairly given advantage over traditions, folklore, and the lived experiences of non -white people.

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Does that sound familiar to you at all? That we should understand the world around us through our lived experience?

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Do you remember that Calvin Robinson debate that I reacted to? That's exactly what Dr. Espinoza said.

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If you're not seeing it, I'll say it directly. The same things that Peter Boghossian is concerned about in terms of infiltrating the universities are infiltrating many churches today, and this is how it's done.

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I'm actually a free speech absolutist. Okay, so let's take a look at this because I think that's an excellent question.

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So let's linger on this and drill down it. So I'm going to give you some examples of ideologies.

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And so, you know, phrenology, the bumps on the skull, the Nazis were big into that, and they believe it was predictive of intelligence and race and all this other silliness, which it's simply not.

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Let's say that you had a group of people in a school system who wanted to institutionalize phrenology. And so they would give scholarships based upon people who had certain protuberances in their head.

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You had these people who had classes in phrenology. They taught phrenology. It was throughout the curricula.

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Should we allow phrenology in the schools? And if you say, no, we don't want to allow phrenology in the schools, does that make you someone who's against free speech?

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You don't have to answer. I know I'm putting you on the spot, but let me give you another one. So bracket that.

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We can come back to that later. Let's say that we have... So phrenology is an idiotic ideology.

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Is it harmful? I don't know. Maybe a little bit, but... Okay. Now let's... That's another way of taking it, right?

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Is that Nazism is an evil ideology. Yeah. That's where I was going next. Yeah. So one needs to teach children about what happened.

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And maybe it comes in a history class, rather than a philosophy class. We don't teach Nazi philosophy, but we touch what this is.

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And maybe that's another way of dealing it. I guess the bigger problem with CRT is it's not really so much...

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It's certainly not a history, although there's a history of the philosophy, but it's a way of seeing the world. And actually everything else is seen through those prisms.

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So it's kind of like a whole other problem. Right. Okay. Now we're getting to why

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I wanted to watch this with you. Okay. CRT is a way of seeing the world.

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In other words, it's a worldview. It's not a singular proposition. It's an entire worldview.

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This is a component piece that we need to pull out and we need to set to the side for later. Because we're going to talk about this at the end of the video.

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If you've been trying to figure out what to do with woke ideology, what the proper response is, specifically as it connects to church,

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Christians, I'm talking to you. Then we need to start figuring out how to engage opposing worldviews, right?

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Particularly a worldview that will not allow for critique, at least not in the way that a realist or a

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Christian would allow for critique from non -believers. Remember a moment ago, Boghossian pointed out, and rightly so, that DEI is against free speech.

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Diversity, equity, and inclusion is against free speech. So what's the strategy when it comes to challenging this kind of cultural juggernaut?

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That's what you should be thinking through. That, plus, what does Boghossian, who, by the way, is an atheist himself, okay?

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What does he have to offer us in terms of a solution? And why does he say, later in the video, and we're going to get there, that new atheists start to blame for woke ideology?

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We're going to get to all of that in a bit, just stick with me. – You've used the word woke. – Yeah. –

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Which I think is a pejorative term. – Yeah. – But very basic question, because there seems to be some debate about this, or stumbling on this definition of woke.

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What, when you use the term woke, simple question, but what do you mean? – I mean, it's actually very easy to understand.

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It's not even remotely complicated at all. It's that there are systemic injustices, people who are woke.

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To people who are woke, you can never be woke enough. I did a one -minute series of videos where I explain words that woke people use in one minute.

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It means that you have an awareness of systemic injustice.

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It means that that injustice is somehow rooted in the system.

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And usually that almost always, but not always, that revolves around some kind of, something with an identity level salience, race, gender, sexual orientation, trans status, et cetera.

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– What's important to point out here is that these aspects of the worldview, systemic racism, systemic injustice, patriarchy, et cetera, these things are just presupposed.

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They're just adopted whole cloth. That's where the woke person begins in terms of a starting point.

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We begin with systemic injustice and then we set about trying to solve it. But wait a second, what do you mean by systemic injustice and how did you come to the conclusion that it exists in the first place?

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You see, these are the same questions we would ask of a false religion, right?

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Okay, so if you're tracking this, there's another component piece. Let's pull it out. We'll set it to the side and we'll talk about it later.

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– That seems like quite a complex because I've just seen it as really just excessive progressivism.

15:45

– Yeah, I mean, so look - – Is that too simple? – Yeah, I mean, look, people have called it, Wesleyan calls it the successor ideology.

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Majid Nawaz calls it regressive leftism. Helen Pluckrose calls it critical social justice.

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I usually use social justice, uppercase S, and it goes by different names and they basically mean the same thing.

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– Do you think in America, are we yet to have peak woke? Are we in the woke clash?

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Where do we think we sit now in the history of wokeism? Where do you think we are?

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– We've peaked. I think we've peaked, but the damage that it's done to the institutions is nowhere near over. – Okay, let that sink in for a moment.

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And by the way, I think I agree with this, okay? We have hit peak wokeness in America.

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So I take that to mean that people are already starting to rise up against this false worldview. Okay, so be encouraged by that.

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You know, if you're feeling overwhelmed right now about everything that you're seeing around you, maybe even, again, at your church, take heart.

16:44

We've hit the peak. I think he's right. But the damage is far from over.

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Why? Because those who have adopted this false worldview are pulling some major strings across various facets of our society right now.

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They're in positions of power right now, and they're calling shots. They're making decisions, whether in big business, big tech, the media, the

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White House. And for us Christians at seminaries and in some churches in positions of leadership, it's all over the place.

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And it's going to take some time to replace these folks with better thinkers.

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But that's exactly what we need to do. By the way, if you're finding this video valuable to you so far, please make sure to like and subscribe to the channel so we can get

17:29

Wise Disciple out to more and more people. Thank you. What do you foresee? Well, I mean, the police force,

17:35

I see the American cities, the more wolksies, you know, the mayor of Portland, for example, is a public disgrace.

17:43

Ted Wheeler, he, him. That's just a kind of signaling, right?

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So he's more concerned about, I mean, he really should be concerned almost exclusively with rampant crime, 300 % increase in murders, homelessness, drug addiction, helping the people who need help, who are on the streets.

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But instead he has a, and it's not just Wheeler, it's just this disdain of, and DAs aren't prosecuting crimes.

18:14

And pastors aren't preaching the gospel. It's a systemic breakdown. But I think that we are past peak woke, and I'll give you some pieces of evidence for that.

18:24

Well, I'll tell you one of the things, a few of the things that's changed. I think that the, our brains are wired for testimony.

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And so the testimonies of detransitioners, I think it's some pretty ghastly stuff. And most, but not all those people are,

18:37

Abigail Schreier writes about this in Irreversible Damage. These are basically young gay kids told that they're born in the wrong body and then they need to transition.

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I heard Katie Herzog say in an event once that she's gay. And she said that there are no, her,

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I think she termed it fem friends, said that there are no butch lesbians anymore.

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They've all transitioned. Wow. Actually, there's a, Hannah Barnes is in a book called Time to Think about what's happening in Britain.

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And she shows it's something like, of the female trans, it's over 80 % are gay.

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And I think if the male trans is over 90%, it's highly gay and then very high autism. I was just gonna say autism, yeah.

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And it's also, it's changed over time. I think in the last 15 years, it was a majority a male phenomenon and now it's become a majority female phenomenon.

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But that's sort of, it's changing and continues to change. And it's by age.

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So this is probably a different video for another time, but Jordan Peterson has some great insight into what explains this identity crisis as a phenomenon in our society, because that's what it is.

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It's an identity crisis. Many people, particularly teenagers, who are already due to their age and stage of their journey are questioning their identity.

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They're seeking answers to these deep seated questions inside themselves. And they're finding the answers in a false worldview.

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Are you feeling out of place? Are you feeling unhappy with the way your life is going? Do you wonder where you fit in with regard to people groups in society?

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Well, then you must be part of the T community. You see that? A lot of us

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Christians see what's going on in our society only on the surface level. What we need to understand is that underneath what we're seeing is a search for identity and meaning and purpose in life.

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That's what's driving folks to identify as the letter T right now. And that's the deepest and oldest longing in the book.

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So we have the tools to respond as Christians, friends, but we need to understand and diagnose the moment that we're in.

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...group as well, which is actually Debra So and Colin Wright write about this. It's by certain age groups, younger people who are more susceptible to this in certain counties, up to 15, 20 % in California.

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I can't remember the name of the county. So you have, so Jason D. Hill puts the figure at 0 .06 % of the people are trans.

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And so anything other than that, you have to ask why. Is it that we're more lax and society doesn't care anymore?

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So people who are hiding it. But again, I just want to be crystal clear as I have to be in every one of these interviews.

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Anybody can lead any type of life they want. And if you want to be trans, you should absolutely knock yourself off and you should live a free life.

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Nobody should, that's absolutely inexcusable to harass someone or grief someone, et cetera. People should live any lives they want.

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I'm talking about something. So this is where Boghossian secularism is showing. You would not say this to the bulimic or the anorexic or the heroin addict or anyone who is self -harming.

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You would not say, oh, just go ahead and knock yourself out. You would say, let me help you.

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Very different. I'm talking about a few things. Specifically, I'm talking about transitioning children before they're 18, right?

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And specifically hiding that from parents. My son wanted to dye his hair when he was 17. He needed a note from his parents.

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You know, there's a looper in the hormone. There's chest binding. There's, so I'm talking about a very specific thing.

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And then I'm also talking about trans women in sports.

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And I'm talking about trans women in prisons or women's only spaces more broadly.

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But specifically, I'm talking about the detransitioners of young kids. And I think that's one of the things.

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It's not gonna be the cancellations. It's not gonna be, people realize fundamentally there's something ghastly about mutilating the genitals of children.

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Absolutely. And if you see the photographs, I don't know how anyone could possibly look at that and think otherwise.

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And I just wanna linger on that for a second. But that's why my prediction to you is that once the ideology falls into ill repute or disrepute, what you'll see is epic gaslighting.

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And you're starting to see it now, which is also why I see it. I never believe that. This is not, nobody wants to defund the police.

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There's an article in the New York Times. Yes, we really do mean abolish the police. And the same people are saying, so I think that there's gonna be -

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What I did maybe disagree with you on this is that in Britain, I think we're past peak trans ideology and the madness of it.

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And again, I have agreed with everything you said. I would never identify as anti -trans.

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I'd say I'm pro -woman and also pro -protecting children. But at the ballot box, for example, and we had this in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon had to leave the leadership of the

23:33

Scottish National Party because she was unable to answer the question, what is a woman? People see that and they go, are you insane?

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Even the leader of the opposition in England, in Britain, sorry, Keir Starmer, says that 99 .9 % of women don't have a penis, as in one in a thousand do.

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And people see that and you go insane and it's unpopular at the ballot box. But here in this country, I see someone like Dylan Mulvaney and I don't see the same backlash.

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For here, I don't see people, I see certainly conservatives and I see women's rights activists digging in their heels and upset about it, but I don't see ideas being changed.

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It just seems that people are just doubling down in their own little silos. That's right. Yeah, it's difficult. Why is that the case?

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You gotta ask the question. Why is that the case that this is happening? My answer is for the same reason that keeps a lot of people from repenting and following Jesus Christ.

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The current paradigm of communication in our society provides a buffer from hearing the gospel and from considering the

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Christian faith. What I mean is, there is this implicit rule in our society that we should never discuss politics, religion, and, man,

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I always forget the last one. What's the other one? Politics, religion, whatever. But that's what I'm trying to say. The reason why we're stuck in silos is because of the way that we communicate to each other furthers silos.

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It perpetuates tribalism and it keeps us apart from each other, which is weird because we appear to be talking to each other more and more than ever before.

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If you just approach societal conversations from like a volume perspective, right, we just won't shut up as a society.

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Everyone has a voice now, thanks to social media. But then wait, think about that. If we're talking more and more to each other and the silos and the tribalism is at an all -time high, then what's the problem?

25:21

It has to be the way we're talking to each other, right? All right, let's pull that component piece out and we'll set it to the side.

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Remember, Wokediology, CRT, all of that is a worldview. What do we do with worldviews?

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We ask certain kinds of questions. Why? Because the way folks are communicating right now is furthering the silos.

25:42

See, we're almost there in terms of a solution, I think. Let's look a little bit more. So for wokeness to work, it needs one thing.

25:54

It needs a double meaning of a word. It means, that means that one woke word has to have two meanings.

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It has to have the meaning in common parlance and it has to have the woke meaning. So this is referred to as the

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Mott, we spoke about this briefly, the Mott and the Bailey. So it sounds like Begosian is referring to the

26:15

Mott and the Bailey fallacy, okay? Essentially how this works is a person will conflate two meanings or two positions, one that is more easily defended and the other one which is much harder and more controversial to defend and then they'll end up like conflating these two things.

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So in a normal conversation, you hear like a woke word or a phrase, you know, like social justice, right?

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And you'll hear it being used in the way that we normally would. Justice is basically the idea that people are to be treated fairly, right?

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The Black Lives Matter movement did the same thing. Well, don't you think Black Lives Matter? Well, of course, but that's not what these phrases really mean within woke circles.

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That's not how it is really understood according to, you know, the ideologues like Kimberly Crenshaw or Derrick Bell or somebody.

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So again, here is another component piece to consider. The meaning of words, the meaning of phrases is extremely important to understand woke ideology.

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I suspect one of the reasons why folks get away with the Mott and Bailey fallacy is simply because we will not ask the question, what do you mean by that?

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No, instead we will slip into the typical paradigm of communication and then we'll just start talking back to a person.

27:27

Assuming that we understand the phrase that we just heard them say and that allows for the

27:32

Mott and Bailey fallacy. You see that? Bailey is the way that woke people use the words.

27:40

The Mott is the way that normal people use the words like equity. Inclusion is a good one.

27:46

Of course you want people to be included. And so what happens is in, like when

27:53

I was in Hungary or Austria basically any place outside the

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Anglosphere and that includes India as well. When you translate a woke word into another language, the only thing that translates is the

28:12

Mott is the primary meaning of the word. The secondary meaning of the word doesn't, it can't translate, it doesn't translate.

28:19

So the consequence of that is that in order for woke to infect a system and spread throughout the system, it has to be an

28:28

English word. That's so interesting. So which words are then heading the continent?

28:36

The same words that we use in English. Diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, the whole list, the whole thing.

28:41

So they use English words? They use English words. Now woke can work in any language but English is the language of woke.

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And so you can't like, if you did that in German or Hungarian or what have you, it just wouldn't, it wouldn't make any sense.

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And then when it made it into public policy documents, people would say, well, look, we know the definition of the word. What are you talking about?

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But when it makes it into a public policy definition in the Anglosphere, then the woke people go to the

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Bailey. They go to the woke definition of the word and it's too late at that point because it's already in public policy.

29:14

I'm gonna let that sit for a moment. This is a fascinating discussion. I didn't even know that.

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But this is why, again, it is extremely important that we stop talking to each other the way that we typically do in society.

29:31

The solution here rests in changing the way that we communicate. Doesn't it? Interesting.

29:39

Perhaps zooming out a little bit, but back to the idea of woke. Before we started recording, you talked about, you gave me the impression you've sort of given up and engaging in conversation with the woke, which is striking given that you've written a whole book about how to engage and dig into the epistemology of woke thought and how to have positive conversations.

30:03

Indeed, the book is called How to Have Constructive Conversations. And yet you seem to have given up.

30:10

Have you given up? Okay, no, no. So let me clarify. This is really important. So we're talking about, by and large, a group of people who believe that dialogue and discourse are inherently, not only racist in and of themselves, but it's called privilege -preserving epistemic pushback.

30:29

The person who is engaged in the dialogue, it is just a way, they're only engaged in the dialogue as a way to maintain power.

30:35

And if you're a woke person, I don't want to give that platforming, a non -consensual co -platforming.

30:40

I don't want to engage that person to amplify their voice, to hurt marginalized people. So it is a choice they themselves have made to not engage their people with whom they have some ideological disagreement.

30:51

But the consequence of that, ultimately, is that it's a memetic device to prevent the ideology from any kind of penetration from anything that could dislodge the ideology or could decrease.

31:05

That's right. It insulates the worldview from any form of skeptical investigation or critique.

31:12

What happens when a woke ideologue is challenged to justify their views logically? Well, you'll often hear, well, you must not understand the terms and definitions that we're using, which, again, brings us right back to the

31:23

Mott and Bailey. Or, you know, oh, you just don't understand what's clearly going on around us in our culture, which, again, is an assumption, not a justification.

31:32

Or, if you're incredibly lucky, right, and you're challenging an ideologue, they just end up saying, well, you're racist.

31:39

All of this provides insulation from critical investigation. The confidence that any of the propositions in the suite of beliefs that the ideology holds is true.

31:49

So it's not that I won't engage, it's that any time that those, there are any, and they're not even engagements, they're just kind of ad hominem attacks.

31:58

That's so interesting because one of the things I found having read your book, I read it a few years ago, is actually, unless both parties read the book, only one of them, one of you read the book, it's very hard to, you need to get both people to approach the conversation in that way.

32:14

So are you leaving, are you sort of, is there a follow -up where it's like, the conversation's over? Yeah, so that's the thing about an impossible conversation.

32:22

In a conversation, an impossible conversation, you can have a conversation with someone who has a radically different metaphysical belief about angels and all this, or whatever, a radically different political belief.

32:35

It doesn't matter what it is. When I taught in prisons, the concern was never that people would disagree with me or say, screw you with the middle finger.

32:44

The concern was always that they wouldn't say anything because if they don't say anything, there's nothing to hook on to.

32:50

There's no conversation. So, you know, if someone doesn't want to have a conversation with you, you can't kidnap them, put them in your trunk and beat them until they want to talk to you.

32:58

That's a literally impossible conversation. So the conversation is impossible if no one wants to have a conversation with you.

33:05

Okay, let's see. Also zooming out again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as a prominent

33:11

New Atheist thinker, writer and speaker, I wondered if you might see a link between...

33:19

Did the New Atheists clear the... We've talked about trans, we've talked about woke. I would throw in...

33:24

It's fascinating. Again, who is Peter Boghossian? He's an atheist philosopher and a professor who apparently has spent his time seeking to undercut the

33:32

Christian faith with his own version of tactics. He has a book out called A Handbook for Atheists or something like that, which probably is a conversation for another time, right?

33:41

But here, as an atheist, he's going to blame atheists for the rise of woke culture.

33:47

Watch this. Environmentalism and that's one of these new quasi -pseudo -religions. Michael Schoenberg, Bjorn Lundberg, talk about that.

33:54

Absolutely. Do you think I would... It would be unfair for me to say that the New Atheists perhaps cleared a path by killing

34:02

God again for these new religions to...

34:08

These new quasi -religions, pseudo -religions to flourish. 100%. Is there a link? Absolutely true.

34:14

And I think there was a Pollyann attitude that many New Atheists had that somehow will bury

34:22

God, borrow a turn of phrase from Nietzsche, and everybody's going to be living in some rational paradise.

34:30

Little did anybody know at that point, although the canaries in the coal mine were in the New Atheist movement, the skeptical movement, we started to see this in the very beginning, that what would replace it would be horrific.

34:42

I mean, it would just be... I mean, look at the kind of things that we're dealing with now.

34:48

And so it's called the Substitution Hypothesis. I can never remember if I came up with this or Peterson or my partner.

34:53

I don't really remember where this comes from. But the idea is that it's a substitution hypothesis. So it's like Game of Thrones.

35:00

You ever watch Game of Thrones? No. You're kidding me. If this is a recommendation,

35:07

I'll... Yeah. Wow, that's just amazing. You should begin immediately. But anyway, the only reason that you have new gods is because people don't believe in the old gods anymore, right?

35:16

So the Substitution Hypothesis is when you get rid of the Abrahamic traditions or whatever is traditional religion in a country, something else will come in.

35:25

Some other form of irrationality will come in and substitute for what was lost because the default is you just have to believe in something.

35:33

Rationality? A Christian would say that our creator made us to be worshipers. And if it's not going to be our creator, then we're going to worship something else.

35:42

Nietzsche was right to point out in his own writings that if you kill God in your own mind, you end up following another god.

35:49

He said, is not the greatness of this deed of killing God too great for us?

35:56

Must we ourselves not become God simply to appear worthy of it? This is idolatry, ladies and gentlemen.

36:02

And the Bible has a lot to say to warn us of idolatry and not understanding where our predilection to worship should be properly aligned.

36:12

Or religion doesn't have to be irrational, does it? Or another...

36:17

No, it would have to be a worldview that wasn't substantiated by the evidence because that's what substitutes it.

36:26

Okay, so if you're fighting now, not just as you were fighting in universities, you're fighting across the world to defeat these new pseudo religions, what are you going to replace them with?

36:38

Oh, that's a great question. The first thing you have to do is you have to replace them with the institutions that have been corrupted, right?

36:47

So you have to replace them with the University of Austin, for example. Right, so now we're starting to shift the discussion towards a solution, which means we're coming to the end of this video.

36:59

And again, just stick with me and I'll talk about putting these component pieces that we've been discovering together, right?

37:05

But now we're talking about the discussion of how to solve woke ideology. Before we do that though, let me say this.

37:12

I think we very often view Christianity as a belief system, okay? Whether you're in the church, out of the church,

37:20

Christianity is a worldview. By the way, that's true. But what I think that a lot of us are really starting to appreciate with this woke issue in our culture is that Christianity is also a safeguard.

37:32

When you root your beliefs in an objective set of moral values and duties, in an objective sense of meaning and purpose and beauty, rooted in the creator who made us, and you live by that worldview, which by the way has been the standard of living for thousands of years, you safeguard yourself from making up utter garbage nonsense like woke ideology.

37:54

You safeguard yourself from folks who themselves are horrible critical thinkers. You safeguard them from folks like those taking the reins of control of society and just doing whatever they want, because that's exactly what's happening right now.

38:08

Pigosian is right. The decline of Christianity in this country, along with the rise of those who would propose the death of religion, paves the way for this kind of hot

38:18

Cajun garbage fire to infect our culture. So now we're going to start talking about solutions. So here we go.

38:24

Rick and Morta, so to speak. What about the ideas themselves? Okay, so let's take a hierarchical look at this.

38:30

There's theory, institutions. Downstream of that is belief, right? So there's the theory.

38:36

I'm talking about the beliefs. I want to understand that. Right. So the way that people get the belief is from the theory through the institutions, then they start believing it.

38:46

So if you change the institutional structures, if you change the way that the academies are function and running downstream of that, that's why there's a woke contagion.

38:57

The woke contagion started in... Well, it actually starts in K -12, but the way that you teach in K -12 is you go through a college of education.

39:07

Colleges of education are predicated not upon seeking truth, but alleviating oppression. And that's exactly what

39:14

I was meant to be indoctrinated with when I was in the college of education. Thank God I was older when

39:19

I went to grad school, but I saw this with my own eyes. A lot of these teachers are going in super young and they are not questioning the worldview they are being taught.

39:28

They're just regurgitating it. ... ubiquitous phenomenon at every ed school in the country. Okay, so the way that you change the beliefs at the bottom, there are two ways.

39:39

One is street epistemology. There are actually three or four ways, but one is street epistemology, what we do in our video and our...

39:47

Can you quickly explain what that is? Because I've seen the videos, but... Yeah. So street epistemology is a way to...

39:53

It's a non -confrontational, non -adversarial way to have better conversations, to help people and yourself reflect upon the confidence in your beliefs and whether that confidence is warranted by the reason and evidence you have for believing it.

40:09

Okay, let's start putting these component parts together. Remember, we know that woke ideology is a worldview.

40:16

A worldview that begins with certain key presuppositions. It is precisely those presuppositions that must be challenged.

40:23

A lot of times I'll see folks engage woke culture, woke ideology, but do it in a way that ignores the underlying presuppositions at play, which leads to talking around each other.

40:34

So again, it's a worldview built on presuppositions and we challenge those by seeking definitions of terms, by seeking justification for the presuppositions.

40:44

And that is guided by leading questions to expose these things. I call this first state evangelism.

40:51

Boghossian calls this street epistemology. Some of you are already familiar with like Tactics by Greg Koukl, but here we go.

40:57

This is how we deal with woke culture. Even in a church, Nate? Yes, even in a church.

41:03

Street. Yeah, all over the world. Random strangers together. Never, no actors, 100 % random people, strangers everywhere.

41:11

We just got back from, Reid and I just got back from Australia. We just got back from Florida. We just got back from Puerto Rico.

41:16

We're going to go to your island next. And what we do is we just put tape on the ground from strongly disagree, disagree, slightly disagree, neutral to the strongly agree.

41:29

We ask people what they want to talk about and we take epistemology, what it is, how you know, what you know, out of the universities and we bring it to the streets.

41:38

And we give people tools that they can use to not only have civil conversations, but to figure out if they're warranted or justified in the confidence of their beliefs.

41:47

We just did a really interesting one the other day with a young girl. We don't usually, we never do people under 18 because you need parental permission to view, but her mom was there and the claim was

41:59

Miley Cyrus was the best singer ever. I never really, I mean, I heard Miley Cyrus, I couldn't tell you,

42:05

I listened to Tool and Heavy Metal. I couldn't tell you one song Miley Cyrus, you know who Miley Cyrus is?

42:11

I'm a great admirer of her music. Yeah. And she's a great talent in many departments.

42:17

I know nothing about her. Wrecking Ball, you know Wrecking Ball. It's a great song. I listen to Heavy Metal. I don't know any of this stuff.

42:23

We'll have a little Wrecking Ball session later, Miley session. Well, I don't know if that, I don't know if I know you well enough to want that, but did

42:30

I do something wrong? I don't know. No, no, no, just on my side. So she, you know, her claim was

42:36

Miley Cyrus is the best and she stood on the strongly agree. But after only a few questions in a few minutes, you know, she went to the agree, just targeted

42:45

Socratic questions to help her think, to help her give her a tool. And I told her mom, it's like, you can do this.

42:50

What does this look like at the woke level, right? That's probably what you're wondering. And maybe Boghossian will say something about that in a moment.

42:57

But let's look at the woke assumption. America is systemically racist.

43:03

Okay. Two initial questions to bring to this conversation. What do you mean by that? And how did you come to that conclusion?

43:09

Right. These are diagnostic questions that seek clarification and they seek justification for the claims that people make.

43:16

Okay. America is systemically racist. What do you mean by systemic? And what do you mean by racist?

43:22

Well, by racist, I mean that racism is prejudice plus power. Right. Have you heard this?

43:28

So then the response is really, what does power have to do with it? Why is the traditional definition of racism insufficient?

43:35

In other words, why introduce power and a power dynamic to racism? Seems like some ethnicities would then be off the hook in terms of prejudice, or at least the way that prejudice invades on racism.

43:47

You see how this works? If we get used to asking the right kinds of questions to clarify and justify claims from the woke side, we will discover there is no good justification for the ideology.

43:59

And once people realize that for themselves, like it starts to sink in, it's game over.

44:05

With anybody, does it work? So anyway, so one of the ways downstream, what replaces it is you give people tools so that they can lead a better life.

44:16

And this is a way that the word community is actually applicable. They can help their communities. Sorry. That's wonderful.

44:22

And actually, it's particularly effective seeing as you're filming it so people can watch it. And it's free.

44:27

Yeah, and it's free. But I think my question sort of without being sort of too rude, because I think it's a great thing to do, but...

44:35

Don't worry, say anything you want to me. Believe me. We're getting rid of a pseudo religion. Yeah. And I don't quite see street epistemology great as it is.

44:47

I can't see how that's going to be a new... And it's not. It's not. No, no, no, it's not. Okay, so the older I get here, if I can tell you one conclusion

44:55

I've come up with in the 56 years of my life. Okay, so I think what the host is trying to ask there is if our goal is to take down woke ideology, which is itself a worldview, now he uses the word religion.

45:08

I say worldview. Is street epistemology going to replace woke ideology as the new religion?

45:14

And the answer is no, because street epistemology is just an assessment tool. It's not a set of beliefs.

45:21

Although the assessment tool is set by certain fundamental beliefs, but nevertheless, what replaces woke ideology from a

45:29

Christian perspective is objective moral values and duties and an objective sense of meaning and purpose, which is rooted in the creator who made us.

45:36

That's what replaces woke ideology. Going on 57. It's that the best way to make a positive change.

45:48

So, of course, the obvious question is what is right, right? What are the right things?

45:54

Which I take it has some kind of objective moral flavor to it, right? If there is no God, what are the right things?

46:02

I mean, objectivity points to a creator. There is an immediate and clear thread that connects objectivity to the grounding of what is objective, which is

46:10

God. So we have a better answer as Christians than does the one who rejects a

46:17

God and then tries to live as if there are objective moral values and duties, but cannot ground them in anything because there is nothing to ground them in.

46:24

All right, let's go ahead and wrap up here. I think we've gotten what we need from this discussion. The bottom line is we need to make our homes, our neighborhoods and churches

46:34

THE place to wrestle critically with ideas. We need to create a culture in our homes, neighborhoods and churches where we invite clash over big ideas.

46:45

This has famously been something that Christians avoid like the plague, right? Inviting difficult conversations and investigating them in order to clash over them.

46:54

The church, on balance, has done a horrible job in the last several decades of creating a culture and a space for difficult conversations.

47:03

But that's exactly what must be done in order to combat woke ideology. Because let's face it, woke ideology is the problem today, but there will be another problem tomorrow.

47:14

The problem's already brewing out there. Maybe it's already on the horizon for us and we just don't see it yet, okay?

47:20

So we need to be ready with an effective strategy now in order to stand firm and build our house on solid rock.

47:27

Amen? And I don't know, I mean, maybe a lot of us in the church are not ready to hear this right now. This might be too radical, too ahead of its time for the average everyday churchgoer.

47:38

Because you know what? What I'm saying requires time and effort. And boy, I get it.

47:44

We're just out there. We're trying to do our jobs. We're coming home. We're handling the thousand other things going on in our lives.

47:50

And then we're trying to get a little bit of sleep before waking up and doing it all over again. I understand all of that.

47:56

All I would say is, well, most of the stuff that we find ourselves doing is ultimately meaningless and therefore a waste of time.

48:03

So maybe that's another video for another time, right? Could we all cut out pointless activities and replace them with preparation so that we can stand against false ideologies that destroy cultures over time?

48:15

Yes, we can. So let's get into the habit. And it starts with you at the individual level.

48:22

Let's get into the habit of being a person who asks way more questions than we make speeches.

48:28

Let's not take for granted the things that we hear people say. But let's ask clarification questions and justification questions for the claims that folks make around us.

48:38

And let's start asking leading questions to evaluate and expose the flaws that we see in others' worldviews.

48:45

I can hear the objections. Ah, but Nate, it's too late. You know, Bogosian said that the damage is already done.

48:51

Well, the ideologues are in positions of power. That's true. But we need to play the long game.

48:58

How will these ideologues who hold these positions of influence in culture be replaced unless we spend time on the ground creating a culture where their replacements will learn to be better thinkers?

49:10

And they'll learn to challenge bad ideas. And they'll learn to seek to justify the claims that they hear.

49:16

It is very difficult to change a radical's mind, particularly when they hold to positions of influence based on their radical beliefs.

49:22

It is a lot easier to train up and shape the minds of the folks that replace them.

49:28

Don't think about how to solve this in the next 5 to 10 months. Think about how we can solve this issue in the next 5 to 10 years.

49:35

Create a culture of clash and raising the level of discourse, of challenging bad ideas by asking the right kinds of questions to clarify and justify claims and beliefs.

49:46

And I can promise you, we will see this woke garbage disappear. What do you think?

49:51

How can we solve the issue of woke ideology in this country? Do you agree with me? Do you agree with Boghossian?

49:57

Do you have your own ideas on this? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to interact with them. And as always,

50:03

I hope something in this video got you thinking, and that it blessed you. Look, I've got more gas in the tank, which means more videos are coming soon.