The Noetic Effect of Sin

The Noetic Effect of Sin

Well, welcome back to our study of the subject of apologetics. Hopefully, you all were given a handout when you came in. If you weren't, we have them for you. And this is week three. And the subject of tonight is the noetic effect of sin.

And in our last lesson, I left you with the question. I said, what is the noetic effect of sin? And I'd like to ask the question, how many of you went and looked for an answer? A few of you, okay. How many of you would like to provide a short definition of what the noetic effect of sin is?

And this is not a test or seeking to embarrass anyone. Hopefully, you know the right answer, and this lesson will help correct if there is any error. But anyone want to give it a shot? Ms. Dottie?

Is it like the effect of sin or the curse on us, the way we think, the way we reason? Like, we can see, I mean, the evidence of God is all around us. But with our mind, if we're not saved, we don't necessarily see it.

It's confused.

Yes, actually, what you said in the very beginning is exactly right. The noetic effect of sin is the effect of the fall on our mind, our intellect, our ability to rightly reason. So, yes, that was correct.

And that's what we're going to be studying in tonight's lesson. And as I wrote, I put out a post earlier inviting people to come tonight or to listen in via the live stream. And I made a point, this is one of the parts of apologetics that is often left out.

In fact, I've been in many apologetics courses. I've listened to several apologetics courses over the years. And this part is often not even mentioned. But it is an important part of apologetics. And I hope that by the end of tonight's lesson, you will understand the reason why.

So far, we have looked at the basic three apologetic methodologies. Just to give you a reminder of what we've talked about so far, there are three basic apologetic methodologies. The first is classical.

The second is what? Do you remember? Evidential. The third is presuppositional. And as I said last week, I tend to take a presuppositional approach to apologetics. But that does not mean that I do not use rational arguments, which is the classical approach.

And that does not mean that I leave out evidences, that is the evidential approach. But the difference between classical, evidential, and presuppositional, as I've tried to make the point, is where we begin.

In the presuppositional approach, we begin presupposing the truth of scripture. And we demonstrate that the person that we're talking to has their own presuppositions about the world. And we seek to demonstrate the fallacies of their presuppositions.

And so that's why I would say that I would consider myself presuppositional. Not to the exclusion of evidence. And not to the exclusion of rationality. But understanding that I presuppose the existence of God, which is why I believe evidence matters.

And why I believe rationality matters. So, that's an important thing. Because a lot of people think, well if you're a presuppositionalist, you don't talk about evidence, it's not true. Or if you're a presuppositionalist, you don't use rational arguments, it's not true.

It's just where do we begin. The title of last week was The Myth of Neutrality. And in that lesson I sought to point out that no man comes to the subject of God in a neutral way. Some may argue that they do.

Some may say, I don't have any presuppositions. I'm absolutely neutral. In fact, I listened this week to a man, Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is a scientist that has received some notoriety because of being on several television shows, programs, and he's sort of the Carl Sagan of our generation.

He's meant to kind of go out and give a scientific reason for the origins of the world, and the origins of the universe. And I heard him argue the fact that he simply doesn't believe in God, or at least hasn't been convinced, but he's neutral, that he doesn't have any predisposition either way.

I disagree with Mr. Tyson, but at least that's what he thinks. And, you know, we at least can concede that that's where he thinks he's coming from. He thinks he's coming from a neutral position. But then he made the argument, because the very next thing he said was, I have a hard time believing in a good God who is all-powerful because there's tornadoes, and there's floods, and there's death by tsunamis, and 100 ,000 people died in India, and he starts going off on all these things.

And I have a hard time believing that God is both good and powerful if all these bad things happen. And so we say, wait a minute, there's a presupposition. What is it? You're presupposing that life has value, and that that matters.

Why does it matter if 100 ,000 people die if we're all stardust? Why does it matter if 100 ,000 people die if life has no intrinsic dignity? I want to quote an evolutionary biologist. This man's name is Dr. Will Provine.

He is a dysthetic evolutionist and biological determinist. I'm not quite sure he didn't make up those titles, but those are the titles he has. And he is the Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor at Cornell University.

So this man is in the Ivy League, and this is what he says, quote, let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biologist tells us loud and clear. And I must say that these are basically Darwin's views.

There are no gods, no purposeful forces of any kind, no life after death. When I die, I'm absolutely certain that I'm going to be completely dead. That's just all. That's going to be the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, no free will for humans either.

Why did he throw that last part in? Well, if we are simply biological machines, there's no such thing as a will. And free will is an imagination, because free will is simply the exercise of the chemical exchange in your brain.

That's not a will, that's just a chemical reaction. You're not willing, you're reacting chemically. So at least he's honest. He's just a sack of stardust. But I mean, he's at least honest. Because there is no dignity, there is no value, there is no intrinsic worth.

We came from nothing and we're going nowhere. And not anything really matters. It is depressing. It is depressing, but that's the full birthed outgrowth of the evolutionary theory. So, anyhow, tonight we are going to continue basically last week, because last week we started the subject of the myth of neutrality.

The Noetic Effect in Romans 1 and the Illusion of Neutrality

Romans 1 tells us that no one is neutral. It says all men know God exists. They suppress that truth in unrighteousness and they exchange the truth for a lie. So they are actively suppressing and actively exchanging the truth.

They're suppressing it and exchanging it at the same time. Yes, sir? You mentioned Neil deGrasse Tyson and what he said about God there, but he's actually also postulated a theory that we're in a parallel universe, kind of like characters acting out in a play.

Yeah, the hologram theory. Essentially that we do not exist except in the mind of someone else. He crushes God, but then he is blinded to this other... Yeah, we're not real. We talked about that a little bit last week about the brain and the vat theory, that we don't actually exist.

We simply exist as a somewhat of a thought. Sort of like the old philosopher who said, what if you were all just the dream of a greater being and all it would take for you to cease to exist is for that being to wake up.

So all of this comes down to the issue, how do we know anything? Well, the noetic effect of the fall deals with that, because we're going to discuss self-deception and where it began, because that's what noetic effect is.

The noetic effect is simply, as we stated, the effect of the fall of man and what it had on the mind. The nous in Greek is the mind, and so the noetic effect is the ability, or the effect, rather, that sin has on our faculty of understanding, reasoning, thinking, and deciding.

And we've already answered this question, but I'll ask it again. Has man's ability to reason been affected by the fall? Yes or no? Yes. Biblically, this is true, but I'm not just going to say that. I'm going to show you.

If you'll turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 2 .14, it is on your sheet. But if you want to see it in its context, the verse of the evening is 1 Corinthians 2 .14. In Paul's letter to the church at Corinth, he speaks to this issue directly, and he says this, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Notice it says there, not able. That is an important biblical idea, because the Bible does limit our abilities, morally and emotionally and willingly, on certain things. I'm going to talk about this in a little while, but Jesus talks about the ability to come to him.

And he says, what about that? He says, no one can come to me, unless the Father in heaven draws him. And so Jesus talks about a moral inability, an inability to do something, an act towards God, an act of faith, an act of receiving Christ, that must be preceded by an act of God.

And so that one verse, even though there are many others, that one verse tells us something about man, and the corruption that has happened as a result of the fall. And this verse in 1 Corinthians 2, says essentially the same thing.

The natural person, that is the person who has not been regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God. Remember this, when Paul talks about people, he talks in two categories. He talks in the category of the natural man and the spiritual man.

The man who is flesh and the man who is spirit. The man who is flesh has been born once. The man who is spirit has been born twice. He's been born of his mother and he's been born of God. And that's the distinction that Paul makes between men.

He said you have the regenerate man and you have the unregenerate man. You have the born man and you have the born again man. And he says here in this passage, that the born man, who has not been born again, will not accept the things of the spirit.

Because they're spiritually discerned and he's dead in that capacity. Spiritually dead, not willing or able to accept the things of God. And because of that, the things of God, the things of the spirit, will be to him, folly.

Foolishness, some of your translations will say to him, it will be foolishness. Have you ever talked to someone and they say, I can't understand why you would believe all that foolishness. I mean really, if you'd spend some time with somebody who doesn't believe and share about God parting the waters, so that the Hebrew people could walk through.

Talk to them about the burning bush. Talk to them about Jesus raising the dead and himself being raised. Talk to them about all of the miracles of scripture and what will they say. Talk to them about Jonah and that first submarine ride.

And they'll say, foolishness. Okay, that is what the scripture says. In fact, the Bible says God uses the things that would be considered foolish to smite the wise, to demonstrate their foolishness. But I want to share an illustration with you that I've been, this came to me a few weeks ago and I mentioned it in my Sunday school class, but it just keeps rolling over in my mind.

Because I used to be somewhat of an artist. I was never super talented, but I did like to draw. I still enjoy making artistic things, but I used to sit for hours at my dinner table, this was before there was such a thing as an internet.

So I would sit for hours at my dinner table with half sheets of paper and pens and I would just draw. And I remember one time I received a charcoal set of pencils. It was a professional artist's set of charcoal pencils.

And I'd never had that before, but I'd always understood charcoal was a very powerful medium for demonstrating things like light. Because you can draw a line with charcoal and then you can take your finger and you can use that finger to sort of smear the line and create a depth that you can't create with ink or even with a pencil.

You can use charcoal to really draw out depth in a picture. And I remember just drawing. But the thing that would always be really rough was I'm right-handed. And right-handed people, they tend to write with their hand on the page.

Left-handed people do this sort of overhand. My mom does this thing where you sort of overhand it because they learn not to let their hand drag along because it smears the ink. But right-handed people don't have to worry about that because when we write, we don't write over where we just were.

So our hand rests on the page. So I would be drawing something and I would have this very intricate drawing and I would lift up my hand and it would be black from the tip of my finger down to about halfway to my elbow.

And the whole bottom half of the picture would just be completely smeared. You know what I'm talking about. You could still see it. But it was all a blur. And the reason why I'm mentioning this is because I think this illustration is good regarding the fall of man.

Because mankind was created in the image of God. Mankind was created as a masterpiece of God's creation. We are the only ones who it is said possess the imago dei. Which is the image of God. The image of God is demonstrated in our intellect, our emotion, and our will.

Which is so much different than the animals. I remember one time growing up, somebody said, well, we're just like the animals. No, we're not. Somebody says, well, the monkey is using a rock. That's demonstrating the use of tools.

I say, yeah, as soon as he builds a rocket ship. Well, you know, because they say, well, there's only 3 difference. And there's always a different argument. 7%, 3%, 2%. Whatever the difference is in DNA, it took us to the moon.

I mean, it was a big difference. Whatever the DNA difference is, it created a symphony. Whatever it is, it created manufacturing. There is no real comparison between us and the animal kingdom in regard to intellect, emotion, and will.

And so when somebody says, well, what's the imago dei? What's the image of God? I say, well, it's God's stamp of himself on us. And that stamp has given us an ability to intellectually, emotionally, and willingly have a relationship with him.

Animals don't do that. You don't see cows out in the field, you know, praying. We're the only animal, if you want to call us an animal, we're the only animal that prays. Yes, dear? Yeah, they don't express that type of emotion and will.

They work on instinct. So I only say this to say that when we were created, we were created in the image of God, as a masterpiece of God, and yet when sin entered the picture, it was like taking a hand on that charcoal drawing and smearing it.

The image is still there. But that image has been affected by sin. The image of God is corrupted by sin. And this is the first blank on your sheet. The marring of the image of God affected every area of man's existence.

I realize that in Genesis 3, there are specific things that the Bible says. Now you will work hard. Now there will be thorns, and there will be difficulty in work. And I know that there were certain things that God said in the statement of the curse.

But we understand that that was not limited. That that curse extended out further. And the curse affected every aspect of our reality. And none so more than our morality. Because as soon as man fell, he was now a sinner who was estranged from his Creator.

And it did not take long for that sinful nature to demonstrate itself in a fully realized corruption. You don't have to turn there, but if you want to write a little note, Genesis chapter 6 and verse 5 says this.

This is right after the fall. The fall happens in chapter 3. We have the story, the narrative of Cain and Abel. And then you get to chapter 6. And in chapter 6 verse 5 it says this. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Isn't that just an amazing thought? That the corruption that only was a few generations before had now affected man so much that the only way that it could be described was only evil continually. And so what did God do?

God destroyed the world with the flood. Saving only Noah and his family. And in a few weeks when we talk about the creation apologetics, that's a part of this course, we're going to talk about creation and we're going to look at the story of the narrative.

I hate calling it a story because it's not a story you think of as being a fiction. It's not a fiction, it's a narrative. And we're going to look at the narrative of the flood. We're going to watch a video on that too in probably a month or two, we'll watch that.

But it's going to be looking at that subject and the reality of it. But the point being in all this is that as a result of the flood there was a moral corruption that overtook man. And people say, well then God sent the flood and everybody was better.

Slow down. Because if you go over to Genesis chapter 8 and verse 21, this is after the flood, this is after they've come off the ark, they have kindled a fire and they've offered a sacrifice to the Lord and this is what he says, And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never curse the ground again because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

It doesn't say it used to be, it doesn't say it was evil, but now we've gotten rid of all those bad people and now we're going to have the line of no and everybody's going to be great. No, it uses the present tense and it says simply, the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

One of the things my wife and I sometimes, I hate to say we get a chuckle out of this, but it is sometimes rather humorous just how obvious the sinful nature of our children is even at a young age. I've said it before, they're small and cute and God made them that way.

He made them small so they wouldn't kill us and cute so we wouldn't kill them. That's Voddie Bauckham said that, but it's a truth. They are little fallen creatures. You take away something from my daughter that she doesn't want you to take away and she will demonstrate her fallen nature and absolute corruption.

And like I said, I hate to say I get a chuckle out of it, but it's just a reminder that yeah, she is a fallen daughter of Adam. And that's a reality. Evil from youth. It's only God who saves the soul.

We are not born neutral and we are not born innocent. We are born as fallen sons and daughters of Adam. That's an important reality. The noetic defect of sin addresses the moral brokenness in man which has not only affected his ability to behave properly, but also affected his ability to think properly.

And where do we see the noetic effect of sin demonstrated in scripture? Well, we've already talked about this some. We've said in John 6, and if you want to write these, John 6, verse 44,. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

That's Jesus talking about the noetic effect of sin because that's an act of the will, an act of the mind. No one can come unless he's drawn. And then in verse 65, he reiterates by saying no one can come unless it is granted to him.

But there's another passage in Romans 8 that talks about a limitation. And this is one I often point out to my Arminian friends. In Romans chapter 8, verse 7, Paul again making a distinction between the flesh and the spirit.

He says in Romans 8, verse 7,. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot. Again, there's that statement of ability. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

You say, Pastor, why do you bring this up with Arminians? Arminians talk about unbelievers having faith. I say they don't have faith unless God gives them that ability. Because if they could have faith without the ability given to them by God, they would be able to please God in their flesh.

And this text tells me that they can't do that. That in the flesh, they cannot please God. So ultimately, there is a limitation on man because of the fall. The above verses that we just mentioned address this issue of the will to obey and believe, which are moral choices.

Because of the fall, man no longer possesses in himself the ability to make those choices without the grace of God. People think grace is just an aid. Grace is not an aid. Grace is an enablement. It enables.

It's not as if you've got a person who's trying to swim and grace is like a life ring. No, you've got a person dead at the bottom of the sea and grace brings them back to life. That's the difference between Arminian grace and amazing...

By the way, John Newton wrote amazing grace. He was a Calvinist in case you didn't know. And he wrote amazing grace that saved what? A wretch like me. A man knows God exists by nature, but his sinfulness binds him to the point that he intellectually will reject the gospel.

As Al Mohler has said, the problem is not that it's not what we do not know, it's what we will not know. Because we know God exists, but we will not accept it. It's not that we don't know it, it's that we will not know it.

Yes, sir? Eventually all will know when every knee shall bow. The second blank on your sheet. Because of the noetic effect of the fall, man does not have a completely free will. Now this is why this would not be a popular lesson in some churches, because free will is the idol of the modern church.

It's held up as the absolute necessity. But I want to give you a definition of free will. Actually, I'm going to give you a definition of freedom from the dictionary. Freedom is this. The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.

The ability or the power or right to speak or think or act as one wants without hindrance or restraint. The problem is this. Nobody is without hindrance or restraint because all men are fallen sons and daughters of Adam and have the restraint of sin.

You know the Bible never says we're free. It always says we're what? Slaves. That's right. In fact, if you want to write the verse down, John 8, 34. Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

And then in Romans 6, Paul reiterates this. He says, for when we were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But now, verse 22, that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end eternal life.

So we were slaves of sin and now we're slaves of righteousness. Yes, sir. Yes, and that is where the apostle tells us that sin entered the world, or death entered the world through sin. And death spread to all men because all men sinned.

And that's the reality. In Romans 5, from 12 on, explains this in a greater context because it talks about the fact that in Adam, we're dead, but in Christ, we're alive. Adam is the federal representative of all men because all men come from him and he represented us in sin.

Christ is the representative of all who believe in Him and he represents us in new life, in redemption. But as I said, all men are under the influence of sin and this affects all men's intellect. As we noted earlier, there's a difference between the regenerate mind and the unregenerate mind.

The unregenerate mind will refuse the things of God as foolishness. And the regenerate mind will believe, obey, and trust the truths of Scripture. Third on your sheet, the sinful nature we inherit from Adam has a profound effect on our epistemology.

Now, I'm not just trying to throw out a big word, but this is an important word. Epistemology. Epistemology. Episteme is the Greek for knowledge. Logos is, you know, the ending. We get logical discourse.

So epistemology is how we understand knowledge. How we understand how we know anything. How do you know anything? What does it mean to know something? This is an entire field of philosophy, by the way.

Epistemology is an entire field of philosophy asking the question, how is knowledge required and what is it? And can it be certain? There are people who believe you can't know anything. These are called hyper-skepticism.

It's called hyper-skepticism. They say we can't know anything. Epistemology is indivisibly connected to your world view. That's maybe the easier word. Epistemology is the big fancy philosophical word, but really it equals your world view.

How do you know you know anything? And how do you know what you know? The way we understand the world will be affected by how and why we believe we can know what is true and what is not true. I want to quote.

I'm going to give you a quote from a text on this subject. Science and deductive reason, by which means one may acquire knowledge, presupposes that the universe be logical and orderly and that it obeys mathematical laws consistent over time and space.

Even though conditions in different regions of space may be radically diverse, there nonetheless exists an underlining uniformity. The Christian who believes in a transcendental causal reality expects there to be order in the universe since the Bible teaches that God upholds all things by His power.

The Christian expects the universe to behave in an orderly and rational fashion. Since God is omnipresent and consistent with Himself, the Christian expects that all regions of the universe will obey the same laws even though the physical conditions of different regions of the universe may be different.

That's a long quote simply saying this. Christians make pretty good scientists because we believe in the uniformity of the cosmos, because we believe in a uniform Creator who is Himself rational and reasonable.

Often times we hear the scientists say, I have no reason to believe in God, I only believe in science. What makes you believe in science? Why do you believe in the uniformity? Why do you presuppose the universe is logical?

Exactly, where did the logic come from? Because men suppress the knowledge of God, their understanding of how they know things often seeks to divorce itself from any reliance upon divine guidance and as a result, what they know becomes subject to their own experience.

They abandon objective knowledge and they rely almost entirely on subjective experience. Last week when I asked about what is the noetic effect, Mike, you looked it up real quick and you said it's relativism.

In reality, that's where it gets. That's the result of the noetic effect because it becomes an issue of knowledge. And the hyper-relativist says we don't know anything. That's the hyper-skepticist. It's the person who says, well I can't really know and the only certain thing that many will admit is that we don't know anything.

In fact, one scientist said it this way, he said the difference between a smart aleck and a scientist is that a smart aleck thinks he knows everything and a scientist knows he knows nothing. That's from a scientist.

So epistemology is the question of how do we know anything and what I'm pointing out to you as far as apologetics is epistemology or worldview is affected by the fall. Because someone suppresses the knowledge of God, they have to come up with another reason why they know things.

They have to come up with another foundation for their knowledge. And they say the only thing we know for certain is that we don't know anything. How do you know that for certain? Or the only certainty is uncertainty.

Are you certain? So the fourth answer on your sheet. When we speak to an unbeliever, the things of God, we are not speaking to a rational and objective observer of facts. We are speaking to a rebellious enemy of Almighty God.

This is really the heart of tonight's lesson. Because all of the noetic effect, all of this lesson is to remind you that when you go out to do apologetics, when you engage with an unbeliever, you are not engaging in a rational discourse with a person who is neutral.

As we said last week, neutrality is a myth. And not only are they not neutral, but they are absolutely committed to the contrary. And here's the thing, they don't all seem that way. Neil deGrasse Tyson, I mentioned him earlier.

He seemed like a pretty good guy. I mean from the out focus of simply just being a nice guy. He was on Sesame Street. They don't let mean people on Sesame Street. I'm just kidding. But what I mean is they are in rebellion.

And as a result of their rebellion, their thinking will be bound in error. But that is not to say, and I want to be clear on this, especially if anybody is listening and is going to send me an email. This is not to say that the unbeliever is incapable of reason.

The unbeliever can reason. And all of us have at some point learned from unbelievers. Especially if you've been in school or higher education, you've all learned something from someone who didn't know Christ.

It doesn't take faith in Christ necessarily to understand the rules of mathematics, the laws of physics, the foundations of logic, much of what we learn in science. But the unregenerate person has no reason to understand why these things are true and continue in uniformity and why it is they can rely on these laws.

They're borrowing from our worldview when they say this must be. Because the answer is according to your worldview it doesn't have to be. Because there is no underlying determiner. Their rebellion will cause them to have a wrong foundation in their thinking regarding areas like science.

And I want to bring up a few illustrations. Maybe this will help. From a purely scientific standpoint, let's pretend we're neutral. We've already said that doesn't exist, but we're going to pretend we're neutral.

From a purely scientific standpoint, abortion should be illegal. You say, well how can you say that? Because a lot of people disagree with you. Well, it is clearly and scientifically the murder of a human life.

And this is so well understood that if a woman were intentionally struck while pregnant to the point where she loses the baby, the person who strikes her will be charged with homicide. No, I'm saying if only the baby dies.

If she dies, it's double homicide. But a man can wear a doctor's coat, use sterile tools, kill a child, and he's considered a hero, not a murderer. By those who support abortion. What's the difference?

Worldview. Epistemology is the difference. Because the worldview of the one who supports abortion on demand is demanding one thing. Absolute autonomy from the consequence of murder. See, the Bible says thou shalt not commit murder.

The person who commits abortion is committing murder. But they want freedom and autonomy from the result of that moral failure. And so they make it not wrong. And they deny that it is wrong. But the problem is that the choice is in rebellion to the Creator who deems it wrong to murder.

And the abortion issue is a good place to recognize how argumentation works with folks who will not be convinced away from their position. In fact, on your sheet it says this. If you overcome an argument with an unbeliever, often they will simply do what?

Retreat to another argument. This is nowhere more true than if you talk about abortion with someone. Because as soon as you begin to overcome an argument, they will retreat to a new argument. Which demonstrates that they are not seeking truth.

They are seeking an avenue of escape. Because they know that what they have done is an offense to God. They know that what they have done is against all morality. And to disconnect themselves from that, they seek every avenue of escape that is possible.

Every time new information has become available on the subject of abortion, those supporting it have simply changed their argument. In fact, at the very foundation it was not called, it was the abortion issue, but it very quickly became what?

Choice. Why? Because no one wants to be anti-choice. No one in America wants to be opposed to choice. So they adopt a word that has universal appeal. At first they said that the baby in the womb is just a clump of cells.

Then the sonogram was invented. The sonogram demonstrated that not only is it not just a clump of cells, but from the first weeks of the baby coming to conception, it's beginning to be a baby in every sense of having a spinal cord, of having a heart that's beating, of having a mind that's functioning, and all these things are happening so rapidly and so quickly, to say it's not a human being is a lie.

And so what do they do? Well, they argue, yes, it's a human, but it's not a person. So they change the argument. The argument changes. And I ask the question, well, how do you differentiate between a human and a person?

And that becomes a philosophical question. It becomes an issue. Yeah, they say, well, it has to pass through the birth canal. What about a C-section? But the argument there is not a person. You know that's how slavery was kept alive for so long in America?

Black people were considered to be not persons. It's philosophical, right? It's the argument. It's the philosophy. So they're not persons. But a new argument has even arisen, and this one is very recent.

And I've only recently heard it through what I would say entertainment media. You realize there's different kinds of media, right? There's social media, there's the news media, and then there's entertainment media, and those things tend to blend now.

Used to, you'd turn on the news, and you would expect to get at least some type of objective person just giving you the facts of what happened. Sort of like Joe Friday, just the facts, ma 'am. But now, news is entertainment, because it's got to go through a 24-hour cycle.