The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses a new Pew Research Study that shows LGBT Americans are more likely to identify as ‘spiritual but not religious,’ how our culture has made an idol out of secular science, and the scandal of a fraudulent honesty professor at Harvard.Part I (00:14 – 14:20)LGBT Americans are ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’: New Pew Research Study Reveals LGBTQ Americans are Unlikely to Choose Scriptural ReligionsReligion and spirituality among LGBT Americans by Pew Research Center (Becka A. Alper and Asta Kallo)Part II (14:20 – 17:40)Secular Science is Out of Bounds: Our Culture Has Made an Idolatry of Secular ScienceThe Doctors Who Cry ‘Science’ by The Wall Street Journal (Allysia Finley)Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings by The New York Times (Noam Scheiber)Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings by The New York Times (Noam Scheiber)Part III (17:40 – 25:44)Organized Crime in Organized Science: The Scandal of a Fraudulent Honesty Professor at Harvard Reveals Bigger Problem in Scientific CommunityHarvard revokes tenure from professor famous for ethics studies, first time in 80 years by NBC News (Viola Flowers)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Tuesday, August 26, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Sometimes you get some interesting numbers that come in a research report, in a poll or a survey, and the numbers basically tell you what you already knew. But that doesn't mean the numbers aren't in themselves interesting. So I want to turn to a report that was just released by the Pew Research Center. The headline is religion and spirituality among LGBT. Americans. So we're talking about lesbian, bisexual, transgender, gay Americans. And the thing here is that it tells us that the vast majority of these LGBT-identified people in the poll consider themselves spiritual, but as compared to the general American population, much less religious, much less likely to have some kind of traditional religious identity. And I said you already know this because I think you already do. I think we all do.

And I think we can understand the reason. We can even understand causality here. But let's just look at the result of the study. As Pew reports, quote, Americans who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender tend to be less religious than those who are not LGBT. In addition, adults who are lesbian, gay, are bisexual, have more negative views than other U.S. adults do about religion, though many say religion plays some positive roles in society. When it comes to questions about spirituality, such as whether human beings have a soul or a spirit, the gaps between lesbian, gay, or bisexual adults, and other people tend to be smaller. Okay, so numbers. Forty-eight, roughly half of U.S. adults who are LGBT say they will identify with a religion. That's just under 50%. And they describe themselves as Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or an adherent of another religion. By comparison, 73% of non-LGBT Americans identify with a religion, according to a center, that's the Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2024. you put these two numbers together, 73% general American population, and then 48% self-identified LGBT. Well, what do we think about that? Well, the first thing we should think is this makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense for one most fundamental reason. If you take the three religions

mentioned here, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, every single one of them condemns homosexuality in every form, period. Every single one of them is what is defined across the religious spectrum as a scriptural religion. Every single one of them has an authoritative text. Now, of course, for Judaism, it is primarily the Torah, along with other writings. It is the Old Testament, as Christians refer to it. And for Christians, it is the Old Testament and the New Testament. And there is condemnation in both Testaments, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, just outright, non-conditional condemnations of same-sex activity and same-sex identification. and by the way, the identification is connected in biblical theology to the activity.

These are not different kinds of human beings. They're human beings who do things that are declared to be sinful. And of course, for Islam, it's the Quran, and let's just say it's really clear. And so you can understand why, if you're going to identify, and I think this is the new thing in human history, frankly. It's a new thing in terms of the history of the West, the sexual revolution that produced the LGBT revolution. that produced a revolution in sexual morality, a revolution in the larger moral structure,

and a revolution in society, that, by the way, isn't just different in that it endorses and indeed celebrates LGBT activities, and identities. It did create the identities. And there are scholars even within the LGBT community who will document how the emergence of the homosexual emerged. It's not just to say men who have sexual relations with other men, but men who identify have taken it on in some language as an orientation. And so you look at this and it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. We should expect that those who identify themselves with activities and even to the point

of identifying themselves as an identity that is at odds with the textual revelation with biblical authority when it comes to Christians, they're far less likely. to identify with traditional religions. And I think we understand that the causality is just easily seen. And I think it just reminds us also of the challenge that we face as Christians when we got nowhere to go from biblical authority. We stand upon biblical authority in obedience to Scripture and the total truthfulness of Scripture. And so liberal theology tried to respond to this by saying, well, we'll just adjust the theology. And of course, that's at the expense of abandoning Scripture. And that means abandoning the gospel, and it means abandoning Christ.

The same report from Pew also tells us, no surprise here, that the number of LGBT adults in America who identified as non-religious or unaffiliated, that it's far larger than the general population. According to this, it's about double the share of non-LGBT Americans who say the same. Okay, but here's an even more interesting part of the report. I'm just going to read you the statement from Pew, quote, 46% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans say that religion does more harm than good in American society. Another 17% say religion does more good than harm, and 37% says it does equal amounts of good and harm.

By contrast, only 17% of Americans who aren't lesbian, gay, or bisexual, say religion does more harm than good. Okay, this is now the default position on the anti-Christian left. The default position is not just to say Christianity is untrue, but given the scale of what's at stake, they have to go so far as to say that Christianity is dangerous. It's harmful. These moral teachings aren't just now to be discredited and discarded. They have to be recognized as being incompatible with human happiness and human fulfillment, human autonomy, and human good. And again, this just underlies the fact that theology matters. And Christians have to know that all the time, but it's interesting now you have a secular reference making very clear that theology matters

because when these people are rejecting religion saying that it does more harm than good, they're particularly in this context rejecting Christianity and its moral teachings. So, you know, here's the thing we agree on. It's all at stake. It's all on the line. If you're not restrained by scripture, frankly, you can go in any direction you want. You can affirm anything you want and do, well, just almost anything you want. The only moral condition of the contemporary revolutionaries is consent.

On the other hand, if you are constrained by scripture, guess what? It's a matter of obedience or disobedience. And we as Christians understand that it's obedience or disobedience, not just in such a way, just merely that our duty is to keep the law. But we understand that the law is good, that the law points to, and creation order points to what is good for us. And so, yes, the scriptural worldview tells us, and of course as Christians we would say,

that God tells us through scripture that these things are not good for us, that they are the way of death rather than the way of life. And so I don't think we should be surprised by this, but it is interesting. It's interesting that the Pew Research Center even conducted the study. That tells us something. It was an interesting question to Pew

as to what would be the religious similarities and differences when it comes to the LGBT community. I think you can count on the fact that these numbers will become even more lopsided as time goes on, because the options just get removed. I think it also becomes more clear that liberal theology not only is untrue. It's not only a repudiation of scripture in the gospel. It also just, by the way, doesn't work, which is to say that liberal Protestantism has been hemorrhaging members for decades, because there's really no reason to go. If you deny God's authority on these issues, then why do you need the church at all?

If you deny that we are to live our lives in accordance with Scripture, why in the world would you attend a sermon? You've got better things to do with your time. And so it turns out that this is something verified by experience over time. And that is the abandonment of scriptural truth leads to not just nothing. it leads to something. And that something, by the way, could take the form of new age spirituality because this report tells us that LGBT Americans are more likely to look positively at new age

spirituality and other postmodern forms of religion. And that's because there's no revelation in them. There's no text. There's no scripture. There's no binding authority. It comes down to the central doctrine, UBU. And the LGBT community is not by any means, the only community that loves to hear that message. Fallen human beings love to hear that message. U-B-U. That's just profoundly not the message of

scripture. All right, I'm going to shift a little bit, and this is a very interesting issue in worldview significance. I think Christians should pay a lot of attention to what is said in the name of science. And that has to do even with some of the things we've just been talking about. I think in particular issues over, say, the treatment of children who identify as transgender, where you have a war in which you have major medical society saying the science demonstrates that we should intervene with hormones. The science indicates that we should seek surgical means to supposedly align gender identity with even a physical body. And there's such obvious problems with that. But what I want to point to is the authority of science. I just want to suggest to you that this is a very modern development.

When you think about citing science, survey says, science says, the scientist in the lab coat speaks with authority. That's something that really emerged, particularly in the 20th century, in the age of science and technology. And, you know, to science, we owe a very great deal to science and to scientists, to science as a method of knowledge in terms of the scientific method. That's exactly what it calls itself. And when it comes to scientists, we owe them a very great deal. I mean, I'm very thankful for x-rays. I'm thankful for catscans. I'm thankful for energy. And, I'm thankful for, for energy and power. I'm thankful for modern forms of transportation. I'm thankful, especially for modern medicine. All these things have been made possible by advances in science. But I think we also

have to recognize that in the 20th century, science as a as a claim of authority began to encroach upon Christianity as a form of authority. And quite frankly, in a secularizing age, one of the temptations was for people in society to say, I'm going with the scientific epistemology. I'm going with the scientific authority, and if necessary, I'll just leave all that old religious stuff behind. But the assumption and all of that, and it's what I was taught when I was

in grade school and in high school, in particular. The assumption at all of that is that science produces authoritative knowledge, and it produces it by a dispassionate, secular methodology, where, of course, you have a hypothesis and you have experimentation, and on the other side of that, you have peer review,

and thus you have authority, science. And you know, there is something to the idea of authoritative science. There is. And I think, for instance, it's pretty well known by science how to answer certain questions. The problem is even when you think that's absolutely settled, in some sense, it's not. One of the things we will talk about in coming days is the fact that when it comes to even the origin of the universe in terms of just the scientific theories, and when it it comes to even the issues of the fundamental forces at operation in the universe, you've got different schools and they're incompatible. You have different arguments. But still, in the main, let's just say we know much more about the human body than we did 100 years ago. I mean, just even in terms of the reproduction cycle, human reproduction. In my lifetime, we've gone

from having a pretty good idea to be able to even see it in terms of a camera and an electron microscope, seeing even the moment that the sperm enters the egg. It's an amazing thing. But at the same time, the authority of science has been really abused. And, you know, I think a lot of Americans were awakened to that during the COVID pandemic. When all of a sudden you had the science, the science, scientists say, scientists say, scientists say. And pretty soon, scientists are telling us, you know, exactly what mask to wear. Only rarely were they scientists who identified themselves. They didn't show up by name. Rather, it was science. It was, you know, in the media and politicians said, science says this. Well, you know, first of all, science doesn't say anything.

Science doesn't speak. Science never walks up to a microphone. It's someone claiming the authority of science. And, you know, for instance, we saw in the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease control. We saw the science claim authority and then, you know, change their minds. You know, mass don't matter. Okay, now mass now matters so much that you can't have one medical personnel get them. Now, everybody's got to wear them. No, don't wear one, wear two. And, and then even at the end of that, let's face it, most Americans are not exactly persuaded exactly what they did and didn't do. But my point is, it's all in the name of science. Now you have a big crisis in science over what is and isn't science. And scientific fraud is now a huge issue, so huge that it is really

rocking the entire scientific establishment. I also want to point to an article that appeared just this week at the Wall Street Journal by Alicia Finley. And she points out that the use of just sciences or consensus shows that this has become a political thing rather than a truly scientific kind of claim. She writes, quote, while the pandemic ended long ago, the medical establishment has continued to erode its credibility by asserting that flimsy and flawed science supports its liberal views. And liberal views, she documents on questions like abortion, even concerning racial preferences in admission to medical schools.

That's now claimed to be a matter of science by the American Medical Association. And then what about the transgender issue and children? Think of this Kermedi decision handed down by the Supreme Court, going back to the law in Tennessee, whereby Tennessee said that transgender hormonal and surgical treatments should not be applied to children and teenagers, to minors. The American Medical Association and others came out saying that those kind of hormonal and surgical treatments were, quote, grounded in science and endorsed by the medical community, end quote. Now, let me just point out that in Great Britain, that was true, but now it's not. So evidently, they did endorse them. No, they don't.

So in which case were they right? I think we know, but it's not because of the science. Elisi Finley recognizes that when she says, quote, the UK, the United Kingdom last year, permanently banned the use of puberty blocking hormones for most minors after a comprehensive review found thin evidence that they improved the mental well-being of kids and that they carried safety risk, including permanent bodily damage. By the way, just figure that out. You know, the fact you have to say that tells you something. Infertility, again, who would have thought that radical surgery to reassign supposed judges? gender identity could affect fertility, but also blood clots and bone loss. And then she goes on to say

the American Medical Association's legal brief just basically skims over all that. All right, well, that's just interesting where you have this claim of science as an authoritative force in society that trumps everything else. And, you know, I don't often want to go back to the Biden administration, but I will in this sense say, one of the most interesting things was how often administrative people came out and they just kept saying the science, the science, the science, the science, as if Americans are supposed to say, okay, well, then we're with that gung-ho. After all, they're the scientists. I've also pointed to the fact that in the mainstream media, one of the most frustrating things to me is when you have journalists say, experts say,

well, who's an expert? Who decides who's an expert? The fact is that in journalism, they have basically sold their souls on all of this because expert means they like it. And that's the bottom line. And by the way, if you're a, looking to make a point, you can crown anyone, you can commission anyone as your expert and you can find some expert. And one of the other little tricks, I've seen this so often recently, is where the press says this person is an expert on the issue. And guess what? They just wrote a very ideologically charged book on the subject. And writing the book on the subject, they now are an expert on the subject. And everyone else is supposed to say, well, we defer to the

experts. I think the Bible is pretty clear about not deferring secular experts. But then there are also these widespread reports of fraud. So the New York Times headline in the Science Times section, fake papers found to be churned out at fast pace. The subhead scientists say the growth of published fraudulent articles threatens research integrity. So we talk about a few. No, we're talking about, get this, thousands of supposedly peer-reviewed scientific reports that turn out to be fraud. And This is a widespread problem. It's showing up all over the place.

One of the big issues here, by the way, has to do with a specific case. And it is the case of Francesca Gino at the Harvard Business School. And this is another form of academic fraud. And the thing that gets me is it turns out that she has now lost tenure at Harvard. And the accusation is that she presented dishonest research. On what topic, you say? On the topic of honesty. Now there's a parable for you.

Dishonest research on the issue of honesty. NBC News reported back in May that Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Harvard Business School professor Francesco Gino, quote, widely known for researching honesty and ethical behavior. The university spokesperson confirmed Monday. Yeah, it's just perfect. In this case, you have the accusation of academic fraud. By the way, not at a peripheral institution, this is Harvard. And Harvard has now taken action to remove tenure based upon these charges.

And it just makes it perfect that the fraud was about honesty. But I want to point to something else, and that is that what we have here is a research machine. And if you want to make your name in science, if you want to get a teaching position, if you want to earn tenure, you have to have a good number of peer-reviewed published works. And the fact is that these are now being churned out in such numbers that no. one can keep track of them and no one can really referee them. And I'll tell you that's a problem. It is a big problem. But it's a bigger problem than you might think.

Because some of these reports are from, say, the fields that are related to medicine. Well, you know, fraud when it comes to, you know, some areas might not be so immediately threatening to you. Threatening to the culture, yes. But what's immediately threatening to you is that when you have, say, research on a pill or a pharmaceutical or a medical treatment or a medical device. And it turns out that the research behind that was fraudulent. In that case, you can understand immediately there's an awful lot on the line, like life and death.

And this really has shaken the scientific community. I had before me a report from the proceedings of the National Association of Science. Here's the headline, the entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly. And this has to do with the fact that so many of the... of these supposedly, well, peer-reviewed scientific studies, technological studies, especially academic studies, they're now appearing in such numbers. And by the way, the Internet has made this just even a proliferation, both in terms of the breadth of what's being published and the speed with which they are disseminated. This turns out to be really, really deadly. As the article

is summarized, quote, numerous recent scientific and journalistic investigations demonstrate that systemic scientific fraud is a growing threat to the scientific enterprise. In large measure, this has been attributed to organizations known as research paper mills. And the writers say we uncover footprints of activities connected to scientific fraud that extend beyond the production of fake papers to brokerage roles in a widespread network of editors and authors who cooperate to achieve the publication of scientific papers that escape traditional peer review standards. Our analysis reveals insights into how such organizations are structured and how they operate. Okay, this is the equivalent of something like organized crime in organized science.

Now, as Christians, we do not disbelieve in science. We believe that science is a method of knowledge, which properly carried out, is something that is a gift to humanity. We also believe it becomes a threat when it takes on an authority that frankly becomes idolatrous in a culture, and that's what's happened in our culture, and then takes on an autonomy where, like, the American Medical Association and so many others, you can't tell us how to do this. Well, when it comes to, say, you know, the sexual mutilation of children, I'm thankful a state like Tennessee said, no, we can actually tell you what you can and can't do. And I'm very thankful

the Supreme Court of the United States, just a matter of months ago, came back and said that Tennessee had the right to intervene and say to the supposed scientific community. No, we will tell you what you can and can't do when it comes to the bodies of children and teenagers. So much is at stake. And for Christians, you know, if nothing else, this comes back to underline the fact that we do believe that truth exists, and we believe that truth is knowable. But we believe that because we believe there is one true and living God who has made the entire cosmos and has established the rule of its operation and is in his providential rule sovereignly over all things. And we also believe he made human beings in his image and gave us the ability, which he did not give to other creatures, not made in his image, to even think about the world and abstract about the world and theorize about the world and to experiment about the world.

You don't have laboratories among deer in the forest. That's a human endeavor. But like every other human endeavor, it's also tainted by sin, and it's always running the risk of human, arrogant, overreach. That's just, again, Genesis, if you need the theory verified. My point here again, I want to be very careful, is not to say that science is not a valid way of knowing. The scientific method can give us rightly applied much knowledge for our good. Again, if I'm in trouble, give me that cat scan. But it can also claim an authority outside its bounds. And like any other realm of human endeavor is susceptible to corruption, to lies, and to deceit. And that can be deadly. It can also

just turn into an idol on its own. And that's true of so many different aspects of human life. We can turn celebrity into an idol. We can turn entertainment into an idol. We can turn sports into an idol. We can turn science into an idol. The difference is that when there's a contested issue in the society, such as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, the people who are going to misuse this information, don't come out claiming the authority of the picture of the Cincinnati Reds. Instead, they claim the authority of science as if that was to end the discussion. You've got to keep your idols straight. We started out today with this Pew Research Center study on the LGBT identified Americans and religion. And by the way, that too was presented as a scientific study.

And I think the numbers are very important, but it's also important for us to recognize that as Christians, we're concerned not so much with numbers, but with people, individuals made in the image of God. At least a part of the Christian worldview, we always need to keep in mind, is that we can't reduce reality ever just to numbers. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me at X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on voicecollege,

just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.