The Eric Metaxas Show - Dr. Louis Markos (Encore)

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes with Dr. Louis Markos

Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Metaxus show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noble gold investments.com. Check your bucket list lately? Are you ready to take care of item number seven? Listening to the Eric Metaxe show? Well, welcome.

Tune in and then move on to item number eight, skydiving with Chuck Schumann. and AOC. Here now is Mr. Completed My Bucket List at age 12, Eric Mat, Texas. Folks, welcome back. This is when we get to talk about something fun. For example, gold. You know that on the program, we've had our friend Colin Plum from Noble Gold Investments.

And, you know, gold is one of these things. Everybody's interested in different aspects of gold. but recently in the news there's been something about the Pope's golden ring and I thought Colin Plum you'd be able to tell us about that what do you have to say about this ring that we yeah it's for anyone that knows about it and I know you know about it it's it's the ring of the fisherman and it's what they've always done with when a Pope dies is they and the reason it's the ring of the fisherman is because the first Pope St. Peter was a fisherman and so every pope has worn it, and what they do is after the pope dies, they destroy it and they create a new one.

And that's sort of the ceremonial gesture and the new Pope, Pope Bob, will get his ring of the fisherman that will be different than the other ones. The interesting thing is that it sort of aligns a little bit in the idea of passing down something to the next generation, which we do a lot. We deal with a lot. We deal with a lot of people that they're thinking about their estate. They're thinking about wealth. You know, the idea is they're looking to pass down wealth to the next generation. Sort of this transferring, you know, people buy physical gold and silver and they pass it on to their errors privately. So we see this a lot.

But the Pope does it also, and obviously with his passing, they're going to do that and he'll get a new ring. And so it's sort of interesting. And this article talks about the ring. being worth $520,000, even though it only has a few thousand dollars in actual gold. So really the value, in my opinion, the value of this ring is priceless. I'm sure you would agree with that, right? Eric, I mean, it's a price. Absolutely.

Well, that, yeah, that's, now, are, am I to understand that it's the same gold and it's melted down and they make another ring? Is that what's happening? Yeah, I mean, I think that would make the most sense ceremonially. It would make sense for them to have that gold content in there. you know interestingly enough they're they're putting a lot of other metals in there because gold is typically a soft metal and they you know they don't want so much of a soft metal in there so that you know it's it's strong it can last a test of time so for everyone out

there that's married and it's got a gold ring you know like if you bang that thing the wrong way like that thing will have a scratch or den in it so i'm sure they're doing the same thing for the pope but it's this idea of this legacy right passing on a legacy and at no gold we do this a lot we help uh families and you know people that inherit money putting gold and silver wide and coins and bars and it's just something that hands down i've done i can't even tell you how many transactions of people that have four or five grandkids and they'll buy gold for each grandkid or they'll buy gold and silver and i've done the same thing for my kids i have separate areas of gold and silver for them so it's just the passing of the guard passing a wealth uh and doing it in a in a you know a valuable way

and I think it's pretty fascinating. Well, there's just something undeniably beautiful about gold and silver. It's different than having a piece of paper that's worth X amount of money. There's just something about it. So clearly that is a huge part of why gold has the value that it does. And who doesn't want a gold coin or a silver coin? It's so beautiful. I mean, growing up, I was really into coin collecting.

And I remember, you know, when I was, I don't know, 11 or 12 years old, just drooling over a silver dollar. Just thinking, this is so beautiful. You don't even know at that age, you know, you can't even talk about it. You just know it's beautiful. Yeah, absolutely. It's better than a paper dollar. And why is that? Well, anyway, I want to mention, obviously, since Noble Gold Investments is a sponsor on the program, folks, if you want to get your hands on some gold,

go to Eric Mataxisgold.com. That's the website. It's the way in. Ericmetaxisgold.com. But Colin, so we're just talking about this. And what is it, you know, about gold? So because this goes back thousands and thousands of years. So it really is amazing to me that it still has that kind of value.

People still want it. It's shiny. It's beautiful. Yeah. workable, you can make things. It's just, it's so fascinating to me. Yeah. So a few things have happened. I think that should be mentioned is that first of all, consumer sentiment on owning gold is the highest it's ever been in recorded history. So 25% of Americans feel good about gold. They feel like they want to own it. Yet, less than 8% of Americans actually own physical gold. So even though

the consent of it's, there's still a lot of people that don't actually own the physical gold. a tremendous opportunity there. But I think that the roller coaster of the economy is a big reason. And I think people have felt it this year. I mean, you know, Moody's yesterday downgraded our credit. We've had one day in the stock market where the Dow is down 2,200 points in one day. So, I mean, we've seen this real roller coaster this year of the economy, the stock market. And so gold has been a traditional safe haven for that. So even though we've had this incredible volatility, gold is still up almost 14% this year. It's up about $50 today. So even with all the uncertainty out there, all the things happening in the world, gold has been seen as a safe haven. And that's why you continue to see hedge funds continue to buy it. You see institutions buying it. You know, the retail market's starting to buy it. So I think it's been a real testament to the value of this metal. As you said, it's been around for thousands of years. But I think in today's environment, we're things are so uncertain, the dollar doesn't feel very strong, our economies, it doesn't look

as great as it was, and then our debt, you know, $37 trillion in debt. How do you balance that out as an investor, as an individual? And I think that's the thing that people are saying is like, hey, I want to sock a little bit away and get into something safe to just go through this year. Because I think most people believe the sentiment out there is that it's going to be a rough year in the economy. Things aren't looking as great as they were. I think hopefully a lot of the measures that President Trump would put in place the next 12 to 18 months will be better.

But I think in the short term, people are looking for that safe payment investment. Okay. If people go to Eric McAxasgold.com, what do you recommend? Is it that people buy gold coins? I mean, what do people typically want to do when they say, I like gold, I want to invest in gold, something in gold? What do you recommend? So I think you can, we just present all the options. that are available. We focus, bullion means anything minted in mass supply that is high purity,

so 24-carat. So you want to focus on things that have the highest weight, highest purity, and easily liquid anywhere in the world. That's going to be bullying coins and bars. Coins is like sort of a loaded term because there's coins that have numismatic value that are well above the spot price of gold, and they could cost you a lot. I would say for an investor coming in or someone, you should load up on bullion, get the most very much. value for your dollar. That's what we focus on. That's why we've built such an incredible reputation, thousands of reviews. We sold over two billion dollars in gold and silver because we really focused on the items that get the person the most value for your dollar. That's how you're going to win.

That's how people today that bought for me five years ago have doubled. Some have even closely tripled their portfolios. So I think it's important to focus on bullying coins and bars. But ultimately, we're going to present all the different coins and bar options that are available and the the investor is going to decide what's better for them. A lot of people today are buying mostly bullion bars, but we do sell, we do sell a lot of coins too. And a lot of silver.

And a lot of silver. Yeah, my new book, silver is a new oil. I dive into, there's a few hundred reasons that I lay out in the book that silver, I think,

is going to be the super cycle commodity in the future. But if you just think about where we're going, just all the technology, all the, I mean, the government, The U.S. government last year bought $400 million in silver. They bought $100 million in gold.

This is for industrial use. They're using it for drones, technology, all these things. There's so many uses that I lay out my book. And silver is still sitting at, you know, $32, $33 an ounce. It's a bargain right now. So, yeah, so I think gold and silver are the two that I really, you know, focus on if you're coming in for your first time. Okay. So, folks, if you go to Ericman, Texas, gold.com.

You can also get silver. Correct. Access.gold.com. The website is Ericmetaxusgold.com. Check it out. Colin Plum, thank you. Thank you, Eric. Appreciate it.

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It's Friday, and I'm still in Greece. I don't know how this happened. I'm still in Greece. I'll be back next week, and Chris Himes will join me. As you know, I've been here in Greece on this. this boat, talking about my books. And today, since I cannot interview somebody for today's show, I thought, let's play an interview that I've done, like, what's one of the best, Louis Marcos? I interviewed him for Socrates in the studio about a year ago. He is amazing. I met him, I guess,

in 2005 in England. He's brilliant. He lives in Houston. But he's a profound man of Christian faith and he's somebody that has a knowledge of the classical world and the classical works in antiquity of c s louis he's just brilliant so today we're playing my conversation both hours with lewis marcos don't go away i want to talk to you today you and i were just like bursting with enthusiasm over ideas it's why i love you and love talking to you because it's fun to talk about ideas and truth and goodness and beauty, all of which typically leads us to C.S. Lewis one way or the other. So you wrote a book. Lewis is not in the title, but it immediately makes me think of C.S. Lewis. And the title of the book is The Myth Made Fact. Beautiful title. I'm amazed nobody ever used

it before. The Myth Made Fact. Reading Greek and Roman mythology through Christian eyes. let's start, maybe we could start with the rather famous story of Lewis, who was friends, C.S. Lewis, of course, was friends with J.R.R. Tolkien. Do we want to start with that story? I think it's great. It's one of my favorite stories. Now, a lot of your listeners probably know that Lewis was an atheist for many years before he became a Christian. But a lot of people think that Lewis went directly from atheism to Christianity, but he didn't. That's the story of Josh McDowell. That's the story of Lee Strobel,

the story of your friend Chuck Colson. That's very typical. But Lewis took a two-step process. First, he became a theist. In other words, a believer in God, that there's one good God that's the origin of morality. But it took Louis another about year and a half to move from being a theist to being a Christian.

What was holding him back? A lot of stuff. A lot of things. It's what's holding a lot of people back. It's easy to say, like, I believe in God, I believe in God. Yeah.

But, I mean, actually, I remember in my own life, somebody's saying, like, isn't it okay if I just believe in God? Like, when I had become a Christian, like the Christian thing makes people uncomfortable, the Jesus thing. They're like, I'm good with God. Can I stop there? So Lewis has this famous, when he writes, this is all in his book, surprised by joy. But he says, you know, what does he call himself, the most reluctant convert in all of England? He becomes a believer in God. but that is a long way in his life from what we're now going to discuss.

You know, Josh McDowell began his famous book, More Than a Carpenter. He says, you know, go to New York City, get in any cab. You can talk about God all day. Everything's fine. As soon as you mentioned Jesus, that's the end of the conversation, right? It's like getting too real now. It's getting too into my life to certain his accountability. There's more baggage.

Yeah, there's more baggage. It's like, wow, I may actually have to change the way I think or act or whatever. So Lewis was, you know, happy just being a theist. and Lewis was an English professor, like myself, and like myself, he also loved mythology, Greco, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, everything. And Lewis was a big fan of a book called The Golden Bow by Sir James Fraser, from late Victorian writer. And his name is not as well known today, but a lot of people know the name Joseph Campbell.

He was sort of the Joseph Campbell of his day. He liked to study ancient groups, ancient tribal groups, and look for connections. and one of the things he loved to look for were archetypes. Arch types, again, Joseph Campbell influenced Star Wars. George Lucas, you know, loved reading because the idea is that there are certain images

or events or characters that appear again and again throughout time, throughout culture, these odd things. The best example everybody knows is the image of the wise old man, the archetype of the wise old man. And whether it's Gandalf,

whether it's a Dumbledore, whether it's Obi-1 Canobi, whether it's a sensei and a martial arts movie, everybody recognizes that image. All right. Sir James Fraser, 150 years ago, he identified something that he saw in the ancient world, and we now call it the corn king. Now, first of all, we need to understand, Eric, that when a British person says corn, he doesn't mean corn. He means wheat. right? Really? Yeah, when he wants to say corn, he says maize. I did not know that. If you study the Victorian age and they're talking about the corn laws, those are the laws that are talking about the back and forth the wheat. That's why if you read

the King James, except a corn of wheat, it says, but if you read anything except a greed of wheat. I just realized that etymologically there's a connection between the word kernel and corn. Cornel and corn. I've never, I love anymology. Yeah, but because every word is three. Colonel and corn because every word is Greek. So there you go. So, okay, so you're talking about the Golden Bow classic work. And one of the themes that he sees, this is Frazier, throughout numerous mythologies, is this. The corn king.

And what this is is a story about a god or a demigod coming to earth, often dying of violent death and then returning. Now, it's not a literal resurrection, but basically what these stories are are seasonal myths about the life, death, death, and rebirth. And this is ingrat. And to make it clear, if you are an Egyptian, your corn king is Osiris, the sort of dying, rising God. If you're Greek, you call him Adonis, or you call him Bacchus. If you're Norse, you call him Balder. If you are Babylonian, you call him Tammuz, who's actually mentioned in the Bible. and I think it's Ezekiel. If you are Persian, you call him Mithras. So again and again, this odd story that is across cultures of a sort of dying and rising God. So now, Frazier didn't say this specifically because he was a Victorian, but basically he believed that Jesus was just the Hebrew version of the Korn king, just another myth. And Lewis said, well, what does he got to do with me?

This rabbi that dies 2,000 years ago. What does it got to do with anything? Right. It's just another myth, and that's where he was. and then one day when Lewis was 32 years old he and his good friend Gerr Tolkien author of Lord of the Rings very strong Catholic they were taking a walk around okay that Magdalen College Oxford has this beautiful

tree-lined walk called Addison's Walk around an old dear park you've been listen I've been there many times and my favorite C.S. Lewis poem Oh yes it's right there is called actually I don't remember the title of it but it starts out I heard in Addison's Walk, a bird sing clear. This year, the summer will come true. This year, this year, it's so, I'm getting choked up.

It's one of the most beautiful poems I've ever read. And it really points to a lot of the stuff we'll probably end up talking about right now. So, yeah, Lewis was late one night. He was actually, first he was in his rooms, as they put it, in the new college. which is the building at Maudlin College in Oxford, talking to, was it Hugo Dyson? Yeah, it was Hugo Dyson. And Tolkien.

And both of them were Christian. They're talking about these issues. And then they decide to take a walk like, hey, it's like 1 a.m. Let's take a walk on Addison's walk. These be in trees and as they're walking around and this breeze comes out of nowhere and blows the leaves and all of this. It's just beautiful one. And as they're walking around, they're discussing this very issue.

And Lewis is like, you know, I can't believe this. You know, it's just another myth, right? And then Tolkien said the words that not only changed Lewis's life, changed the life of millions of people, right? He said, Jack, was his nickname for C.S. Lewis. Jack, did you ever wonder, maybe the reason that Jesus sounds like a myth is because he's the myth that came true

or the myth that was made fact? Let me just give you a simple parallel example of this. You and I are about the same age. we go to public school and we take social studies because they haven't taught history in our country in a very long time. So we're taking social studies and we're reading the great epic of Gilgamesh that has this exciting flood story. And then if you had the typical teacher I did, she would say, now children, we now know that every ancient culture has a story of a global myth. And that just shows that the Bible is just a myth.

And I remember even at the precocious age of what is that, 11, thinking, ma'am, there's a number. other way to interpret that data. Okay? If every single... This includes like the Aborigines and then the Native American Indians. I mean, if they all have a global flood myth, that suggests to me that there was a global myth. Right. Where else do they cover?

Of course, anybody who's watched the TV series on Netflix, Ancient Apocalypse. Oh, yeah. He talks about this. And it's at least fascinating when you recognize how many people's around the world have the same story. Yeah. So the flood is one. Right.

And the dying God that is resurrected is another one. So, okay, we have to be clear that Tolkien and Lewis, they were super geniuses experts on the subjects of myth. Myth, legend, or myth. They just loved all that stuff, right? So it's like, so in the same way that, okay, there must have been a flood. Well, maybe in every other culture, it only retained mythic value. but only amongst the Jews where there was direct revelation, did it have historical fact?

Homology, they show you a picture of a man's arm, of a dolphin, you know, thin, of a bat's wing, and all the same. Right, right, right. People like, that proves evolution. It's like, well, I agree with the data, but there's two different ways. You know, you talk about this in your book.

That looks like design to me, that the same designer doesn't keep reinventing the wheel. So what we're getting at is there's a difference between data and the interpretation of data. So if every ancient culture separated from each other, has a story of a dying and rising God, it seems to me that that desire was implanted in them. Why does it pop up everywhere? And so it makes sense to me that when the God who created all of us, who wrote eternity in the

hearts of men, who put this, that when he annexes his salvation, he will do it in a way that we will recognize. Look, okay, if Jesus comes into the world and he fulfills all of the Old Testament law and prophets as Christians believe. But what he did spoke not a word to the pagans. It would seem like a foreign invasion because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, but he's also, we believe, the Savior of the world. And so the way I like to put it is, Jesus not only fulfilled the Old Testament long prophets, he fulfilled the highest yearnings of the pagan people. If he came into the world and it met nothing to the pagans, then it would, it's got nothing to do with us. But no, it turns out,

that he is fulfilled specific Old Testament prophecies, but he is also the true myth, the true Dionysus, the true Hercules, but without the horror of those Greek myths. And, you know, I just want to ask, because this is such a big idea, that moment on Addison's walk in Oxford, England, when Tolkien suggests this to Lewis,

And of course, Lewis writes about this in his memoir, Surprised by Joy. You wonder, Tolkien, obviously, who loved myth like crazy, must have been thinking about this himself for many years. Because he knew the myths, the Norse myths. And there's that line in Surprise by Joy where Lewis is quoting Longfellow's poem about the Norse God, balder the beautiful is dead is dead and it's this haunting why he was asking the question why is this haunting me i'm reading about some fictional norse god but it haunts me like it somehow speaks to some part of me and that's the connection is that he's saying i mean this is what you're saying in your book i i assume is that he recognized that there's something deeper that my my being moved

by that myth, it's not just, oh, it's what I like. There's something deeper. See, my least favorite word today, Eric, is the word trigger. But I'm going to use a good use of the word trigger. That when we come in the presence of something like that, it triggers something deep inside of it. It opens up a yearning. It opens up an old wound. That's what Lewis.

And by the way, anybody that's interest in Tolkien that wants to get Tolkien's understanding of this, read his brilliant essay on fairy stories. Oh. And the last section is partly about this, how that the story of Jesus hollows, H.A., hallows every other myth, because he is the Lord of Men, but also of elves. That's that wonderful ending of on fairy. And if you love Lord of the Rings, that's a great analysis of fairy stories. And what's it means is a re-Belkin's essay called on fairy stories.

It's sort of a long essay that sometimes has published as a book. It's so funny because Tolkien wrote that essay. say, Lewis wrote an essay very similar. Called the myth made fact. Or the myth, yeah, the myth became fact. Is that the myth became fact. That's the name of it. I thought he had an essay that was like on fairy stories.

It was sort of like on, on, yes, yes, it is called, there's one on science fiction. And sometimes fairy stories say what need to be said. He did write a lot about that. Lewis wrote a lot about this. And of course, both of these figures look back to Chesterton. Right. Oh, yeah. who in his classic book, Orthodoxy, has my favorite chapter,

The Ethics of Elf Land. And Elf Land is the world of fairy tales and the world of... All of which, and it's why I love Addison, I love the poem that I was beginning to quote, it's their way of saying that the world of fairy tales, the once upon a time, that's pointing to the kingdom of heaven. It's pointing to this real world.

It's not fake. It's pointing to something real. because there are people who love fairy tales and they they don't know why they do but there's something about it in your memory when you're talking about your dream of the golden fish if god just sent that to you out of the blue it wouldn't have meant anything it's everything in your life built up to that moment so when you have that dream all of the yearnings of your whole life being on the top of the mountain all that stuff they come together and it's a i don't go off in this but my favorite show these days is the chosen i'm leading my international bible study through it and basically basically what they do is they give backstories to all of Jesus' disciples. And some purists are like, oh, don't make that up. Look, folks, we need to do that because when God does a miracle today, he doesn't just do it out of the blue. It is the climax moment of everything God is doing in your life, your community, your

family, whatever. And so it's the same thing. The seeds of the gospel are there in the myth. About 15 years ago, I wrote a book called From Achilles to Christ. I talked about the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Greek tragedies, how they point forward to Christ. Right. But then I said to myself, you know what?

I need to go deeper because behind the Illy, the Odyssey, the Indian, are this great reservoir of myths that nobody actually writes. Okay. They are, I don't remember where I read this, Eric, but I read somewhere that it's you and I, we have a dream and it's a dream. But when an entire community dreams together, that's where you get a myth from. And the myths are the raw material of all this great literature that I love so much. So I said, I've got to go back to the source, right, to the source that gets the folk, the people, what we all yearn for. The brothers Grimm did not write those fairy tales. They collected them, right?

And in the same day, there was a guy in France, different ones that have done that. Except for Hans Christian, he wrote those. He's very different. But most of time, people are collected. And Oscar Wild. That's right, Oscar Wild. Yeah, that's right. He wrote his own stuff, too.

He's wonderful. I wish you could have interviewed him here, too. Maybe I can. Maybe. Well, people should read Joseph Pierce's biography of Oscar Wilde. Amazing. Suggests. It's just a little suggestion. What if the story of Christ is the myth for the one time in history that became a fact?

Did Lewis? It took about a week. Okay. I was just going to say, like how long did it take? And we have some letters he wrote to his friend Arthur Greaves. And about a week later, he was with his brother, Warned, a couple years older. and they were driving, remember the motorcycle with the sidecar, and they were driving to the Whipsname Zoo. And this is one of those famous things.

You know what? I wrote about this in my book, Miracles. Oh, you're ready. Yeah, I wrote about this whole story. I forgot. It's like you want to make it up because it's so delightful. So basically he said, we set out for the zoo. And when we set out, I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God.

But by the time we got there, I believed it. I wasn't really having a theological discussion, just something open. like a window opened and same thing with your with your memoir suddenly it makes sense suddenly it is real and everything changed now louis at his funeral uh one of the people said that louis was the most thoroughly converted man i ever met now that doesn't mean he was a goody two shoes it doesn't mean he did alter calls in his class we didn't usually do that but it meant every aspect of his life was changed by this new worldview that God became in. That changed.

So it's in everything, even when he read. And I try to do that with Lewis. I write specifically Christian books, but I write books that are a little bit more secular, but they're always undergirded by a Christian worldview, by that reality. Man is, you know, in God's image but fallen, right? That's what I learned from Lewis.

I even, just like you, I've written some children's stuff as well, because we love Lewis, so we have to do it, you know? I literally forgot that I had written about this story, in my book Miracles because what I love is the specificity, the weird specifics that, you know, okay, they have this walk, this late night talk on Addison's walk and the idea is planted. And then a week later, like this is kind of percolating and percolating. And then a week later he gets into the side car. This is what I love, into the side car of his brother's motorcycle.

And these two bachelor brothers drive to the zoo. And so C.S. Lewis is converted in a sidecar. Yeah. Right? And he arrives at the zoo. He's like, okay, I'm in. I mean, it's can you, well, you know what you make you make that up? It's like who would make that?

It's funny because of the new, we'll go into the new meeting of the word woke, but waking up to reality. It's like you've been sleeping and all of a sudden you are awake to the nature of truth. God, man and the universe. And it all comes together. And it all has meaning. and it clicks. Lewis uses that

idea. It's like waking up someplace in one of his writings, but he talks about that. It's that feeling of waking up. And people are interested in what we're talking about. The great Max McLean did a one-man show called The Most Reluctant Cumber where he acts

out Jack and tells his story from Surprised by Joy. But a few years ago they made it into a movie. And it's kind of that weird space to be to a movie in a documentary because we're hearing Max present it while it's being dramatized. And it's very good. It's only about an hour and 15 minutes called The Most Reluctant Convert, and it does a wonderful job getting us into the mind. And Max has now made a sequel called Further Up and Further In. That hasn't been made into a movie yet, but I'm sure he comes to New York City in different places.

I saw it in Houston a couple months ago. And it's a, and Eric, here's the wonderful thing for men like you and I. Okay. Now, again, we didn't grow up evangelical, but if you grow up evangelical, the best, bad thing about it is sometimes they're suspicious of the imagination, suspicious of anything that has to do with magic. I want to tell you this, that the young Lewis loved myth and magic and wonder, all of that stuff. Then when he became an atheist, he felt like he had to get rid of it, because I'm a serious guy now. It's like I got to burn all my super tramp record. Exactly. And then when he became a believer, it allowed him to reaccess his love of wonder. Isn't that a wonderful sort of testimony that I was allowed to go back to myth because I was a Christian. That's an important thing for Americans.

There are many people. They'd be more in the fundamentalist camp or the pietistic camp that they're so wary of anything that is not the Bible, for example, and they say that anything magical. So they're deeply uncomfortable with Lewis. And that's one of the reasons I love Lewis so much is that he redeems all of the classical myths. I mean, anybody who's read the Narnia Chronicles, wow. I mean, the way he does that. If you want to stretch a Calvinist, all you have to do is say, C.S. Lewis said, you're going, right?

Yeah. C.S. Lewis never stops talking about free will, but they love him. Okay. Wonderful. It's hard to stop. But Lewis, look, I love the people I mentioned before. Lee Strobel, Francis Schaefer. I mean, I don't ever the French, but Chuck Colson.

But the American Apologist is a very. left brain thinker. Everything said, and I like that. We need that. But Lewis had this way, and Schaefer had it. You and I are trying to change that. Yeah, bring reason and imagination together. We have to appeal to the whole person and not leave the imagination out, right? The imagination is also created by God. It's also fallen, but so it was reason, right? We work together to, and I mean, here's the funny thing. I want to go off on this, but I would argue that evolution, the pure Darwinian evolution, macroevolution, that the power it has is not rational at all. It's completely imaginative because it's just like the transporter in Star Wars, right?

In Star Trek, okay? It's absolute nonsense. And you're going to take a body, turn it into atoms, your brain, and bring it back to you. Complete nonsense. But you can imagine it. You can see those people, and they come back and exactly the same thing. Evolution, macro evolution is as silly as those drawings by Escher, right, where this becomes it. but you can imagine you can see it and therefore, just like the branching tree has completely been disproven by paleontology.

But it's such, you know, we're talking about the branching of the, because it's so powerful, it stays in people's minds, even though it's been completely disproven. Okay, to talk again about the branching tree. I want to make sure that I'm tracking with us. The branching tree is the Darwinian idea of descent by modification. Common descent. Common descent, right, that you keeps going at branches here, branches here, branches here, all the way up to the top. That is absolutely not what the paleontology show. Palliotology shows like a grassy field with individual stalks coming up and then some of them die out.

So the fossil record does not support the model put forth by Darwin and evolutionists have been writhing to solve that problem for many decades. Some of them have been more honest about it like Stephen J. Gould and others who basically saved Darwinism by Dism. destroying it. Because Darwinism, the absolute essence of Darwinism is nature makes no leap, no salationism in Latin. And basically, he said, punctuated equilibrium, X jumps. It's like, so you've just saved Darwin by destroying that. By creating a term in any event. But so we'll take us back to the power of the imagination. How does that, you know, when you say the power of that imagination to explain something? And it was, is that why people fall in love with Darwinism? Because they say, oh, it makes sense.

I can see that. Even though reality may not bear that out, it's a beautiful idea. I picture you in the sun. If you're interested in homeschooling, education in general, quality K-12, Christ-centered education, we always say go to the Hertzog Foundation.com, Herdsock Foundation.com. But Chris DeGal, who is with the Herzoghzog Foundation, and who's a, one of our colleagues in the Salem, Salem Radio Network is on today to talk to us about Herzog and other things. Welcome back. Hey, Eric, it's great to see you again. I saw you in a very, very cold,

frigid, uncomfortably bitter cold Washington, D.C. a couple of weeks ago for inauguration week. That was fun, was it? Well, people don't realize, because it always sounds glamorous if you're not there. Like, ooh, it sounds great. It was like, it was just bad. It was like so cold. It was unbearable. It was unbearable. I can't remember the last time it's been unbearably cold. Were you like, I can't know. Can't do it. And couple that with the security. I don't know how much waiting outside you did. Oh, no, no, no, no.

That wasn't in any privileged class. I had to wait outside for like two and three hours just to get in places. It was nuts. It was horrifying, horrifying. So if you, if you missed it, you hit it. It's like to go there. I mean, my wife and I, we were all excited, like, we got tickets to some ball. Yes.

And we got there. to the to the you know like you walk in the bitter bitter cold because the the the the the uber can't even take you because security's so tight there's like humvees and military stuff and a security and yeah finally we get near the line and i just looked at the line i thought not a chance that i and those poor women i mean you know at least we had tuxes on those poor women were in bald gowns and listen i don't hear what you're wearing nothing was what it was forget it no no anyway may i just say on that that week was so positive that the the the vibe in that town despite all that even people that couldn't get in or see what they were hoping to see didn't you notice that everybody

it was devoid of protesting people seemed happy and a bullion anyway a different vibe there oh it was stunning it was absolutely stunning and listen it's not over it's not over here in the midst of great things are happening. It's frankly hard to believe, but we need to believe it, and we need to do what we can. I mean, let's talk about, I mean, since, you know,

we're talking with the Herzog Foundation, school choice, I mean, what's going on? And I want people to know that there's a website, read Lyon, R-E-A-D-L-I-O-N dot, O-R-G. Yes, we keep you up to date there every day all week long,

constant breaking news and updates on news related to culture, to government, to, yes, certainly school choice and so much more. If you really need a site that you trust that you want to come to depend on for objective, honest journalism, truth, great opinion, great cultural insights. Readline.com is one I'd commend to you. You know, we're going to be at the National Religious Broadcasters Association event at the end of the month in Dallas with you, Eric. We're looking forward to that because both the foundation, broadly, Herzog Foundation.com. I hope you'll look that up, as well as the lion, our media arm and some of our podcast shows. We're going to be doing shows and introducing ourselves to the convention floor with all of our other media colleagues.

So in addition to the show that we'll be doing at Salem, and I know you'll be there too, I'll be there in my capacity with the Herzog Foundation talking about the great work they do and introducing ourselves to other Christian media. We want people to know that we're a source, not just to teach folks how to homeschool or develop their own Christian school or grow their Christian school, but also plug into our network of shows, our great friend Sam Sorbo, and the news and media we provide all week long. Chris DeGall, we're out of time. God bless you. God bless you for your show. Look forward to seeing you in the weeks ahead in person.

And folks, don't forget, herdsogfoundation.com. Hurtsog Foundation.com.