The Eric Metaxas Show - Mary Eberstadt

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Mary Eberstadt follows up on her hard-hitting research surrounding the destructive nature of the sexual revolution with "Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited." ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, and a mushy banana. For your mind? Drink it all down. It's nummy. I wub, vanilla. I wop. Banana. Here comes Eric Metaxus. Hey there, folks. As you know, on this program periodically, I'm privileged to have a very important conversation with a particularly distinguished guest.
Starting point is 00:00:56 But today we're just going to goof around and tell showbiz anecdotes. No, I'm kidding. Today is one of those days where I get to have an important conversation with a particularly distinguished guest. Some of you know her, Mary Eberstadt. She wrote a groundbreaking book, Adam and Eve After the Pill, which talks about the results of the sexual revolution. Of course, the pill comes into the world around 1961, changes everything. And Mary Eberstadt really brilliantly dealt with that in her book, Adam and Eve after the pill. But now, 11 years later, she's written a sequel to that.
Starting point is 00:01:41 Adam and Eve after the pill revisited brand new book published by Ignatius Press. It's my privilege now to have Mary Eberstadt as my guest. Mary, welcome. Thrill to have you. Thank you, Eric. It's great to be back. I have to ask you, why did you feel compelled to write a whole new book 11 years after the first one? because the first one was it was a seminal work very widely read.
Starting point is 00:02:10 What is it that led you to say, I want to write a whole new book that really is dealing with more of the same issue? So the first book looked at what I called the microscopic fallout of the birth control pill and the sexual revolution. I was looking at the effects on men, women, children, romance, down on the ground, using all empirical evidence. There's no theology in either of these books. But 10 years later, there was enough new evidence to widen the aperture and to say, look, what has the sexual revolution done in the broadest possible way? How has it transformed our politics, our society, and Christianity itself? And so the second book is looking at those three large areas to see how we've managed to change ourselves since the sexual revolution took hold. Well, it is an amazing thing because, as we both know, you much more than I, the sexual revolution was a genuine revolution.
Starting point is 00:03:19 It changed everything so fundamentally that most people, including devoted Christians, are unaware of the ramifications. What happens when you divorce the sexual act from procreation, from the possibility of procreation? Most people don't think that through what that does. It really doesn't just cheapen the sexual act and marriage. it cheapens life itself. The ramifications are so dramatic and so dark. So let's get into it. What do you say in this book that is new and that we need to talk about?
Starting point is 00:04:02 Well, so if you go back to the beginning, Eric, back to the 1960s, people had rosy forecasts for what would happen thanks to the sexual revolution. Some people argue that it would strengthen marriage, for example. some people argued that the widespread adoption of contraception would reduce abortion. This was actually Margaret Sanger's argument. And so there were reasons back then to feel hopeful about what would happen. But 60 years later, we realized that things turned out exactly the opposite of what had been anticipated. So, for example, instead of strengthening marriage, the sexual revolution, increased divorce, increased fatherless homes, increased abortion. And in this second book, I get into some of the evidence.
Starting point is 00:04:51 This is such a startling conclusion that economists have looked at it to try and understand why these things all increased after the sexual revolution instead of decreasing, as had been forecast. And so what we see big picture is that the sexual revolution ushered in numerous acts of what I call human subtraction, acts that take people out of other people's lives, whether it's by abortion or broken homes or fatherlessness or smaller families. In other words, people today have far fewer people who have their backs. They have far fewer people in their families on whom they can depend. And this is not to point fingers. This is to say that this is the world we're living in where many people no longer have
Starting point is 00:05:45 say a model of what masculinity looks like because there's not a father in the home, or they no longer have siblings or extended family in number. These things have changed us, and we have a lot of empirical evidence about it, and I wanted to put that evidence forward because very soon, Eric, we will be living in a world where no one remembers life before these revolutionary changes. So I think it's important to have a conversation about them. Some of this stuff is of course extremely basic. The idea that really was inescapable before the sexual revolution was that you get married to have a family. Some people get married and they can't have a family, but by and large people get married to have a family.
Starting point is 00:06:32 That is a life goal. It's a blessing. Even if you don't think through the ramifications, the details, you know this is part of why we're. here, and so people would get married and they would have families, and those families tended to be dramatically larger than they are now. But then something came in where people got this idea that I can choose, it's kind of like the a la carte thing. I don't need to take the whole thing. I can, what do I like? Maybe, you know, I want to have 1.8 children. That's manageable. I will raise them better than if I have seven children. And these ideas are always presented. as you say, as laudable, this is going to be good for everybody. It kind of reminds me of when people said, no, divorce is a good thing because the children
Starting point is 00:07:22 won't have the acrimony of the arguing parents. Divorce is a good thing because they'll get quality time with daddy on the weekends. It's always promoted that way, but you are detailing the dramatic, overwhelming downside. And a part of that, just to go back to the same. size of a family, you know, if you're dealing with end-of-life issues with parents, if you have four kids in the mix or five, it really makes it a lot easier on everybody. If you just have one or two or none, what happens to the old people? This has happened dramatically in Europe, as you know, where they've been, they've always been a little bit ahead of us on this,
Starting point is 00:08:05 and their population has declined. Talk a little bit about that, because you talked about this subtraction. Yes, of course. So if you look at modern sociology, you will find that there's been an explosion of what is called loneliness studies. All you have to do is Google, loneliness, Portugal, loneliness, West Germany, loneliness, United States. And part of what I'm trying to do is connect those dots. Why is there an explosion of loneliness across the Western world? We see it at the beginning of life. We see it among teenagers. We see it among 20-somethings, and we see it very clearly at the end of life. This is the effect of these acts of human subtraction. This is the effect of, as you say, the 1.8 ideal. And it's not doing anyone any favors. But loneliness is only one indicator that we can look at.
Starting point is 00:09:03 We can also talk about the decline in life expectancy that has been ushered in for the first time in recorded American history. partly by drug addiction, alcohol addiction. Why do we have such high rates of addictiveness and not only in the United States, but elsewhere in the West? Again, what I'm trying to do is locate the real roots of this manifold but related set of crises that we seem to be experiencing. And I think that it's a good time to have this conversation, Eric, because there's more and more a sense out there that we have done. something to ourselves. When we open the newspaper and we see that there are skyrocketing rates of psychiatric trouble among kids, for example, which people have been talking about for years, but especially since the pandemic, we have to ask ourselves, what is it that we're doing,
Starting point is 00:09:59 that we're having these kind of problems? We're going to hit pause. I have the privilege of speaking to Mary Eberstadt. The book is Adam and Eve after the pill revisited. Stick around. Legacy precious metals has a revolutionary new online platform that allows you to invest in real gold and silver online. In a few easy steps, you can open an account online, select your medals of choice, and choose to have them stored in a vault or ship to your door. You have access to a dashboard where you can track your portfolio growth in real time anytime. You'll see transparent pricing on each coin and bar. This puts you in complete control of your money. The platform is free to sign up for.
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Starting point is 00:12:05 slash Eric, we need to stand together and support companies that share our values. Get free activation today with the offer code, Eric. Folks, welcome back. I have the privilege of speaking to Mary Eberstadt, who wrote Adam and Eve After the Pill, 2012, a dramatically important book at the time, now revisiting it in a new book called Adam and Eve After the Pill Revisited. So, Mary, you were just talking about the effects, dramatic negative effects. but that only now, thanks to you and a few others, are being traced back to the sexual revolution,
Starting point is 00:12:52 that all of these promises that were given out, and I think often very disingenuously, there were people that they wanted a rosy vision of a sexually free future. And what they promised, we now have enough data. enough decades have passed that we, in this case you, can look at what actually has happened. And you're telling us that it has been dramatically negative. And you're giving us a chapter and verse. So keep going. You were talking about loneliness.
Starting point is 00:13:31 You were talking about teen suicides and depression, about addiction. How are those things related? Because you can hear a skeptic say, well, look, that's nonsense. There's no correlation between the sexual revolution and these others. other things, what do they have to do with each other? Well, rather obviously, when you shrink the family, you shrink the number of people you can depend upon, as we were talking about with the example of who takes care of grandma and grandpa.
Starting point is 00:13:59 And this has happened on a scale that has never been seen before in human history. But it's not only that you take people out of other people's lives, you take social learning out with them. And what I mean by that is that those with a robust family. network have people they can ask for advice, for example, or people who can help them, say, start a business or whatever. There are a lot of social resources in a family. And so we have diminished those. Now, I don't want to say this is all bad news, Eric, because the message of both these books is that we can see something very positive here. You know, Christianity has been
Starting point is 00:14:40 taking a beating for a long time now in the modern West. And Christians in general seem to feel on the defensive. But what these books show is that there is vindication for Christian teaching in the kind of data that we're seeing. There is a negative kind of vindication because throwing out the rule book that tells us to be fruitful and multiply, for example, or to marry, or that we are brothers and sisters in Jesus, throwing out all of those rules. has not resulted in a happier place. And again, we can look at these negative indices one by one, but what we are seeing here is a kind of proof of the wisdom of Christian teaching that we have not seen elsewhere in history,
Starting point is 00:15:32 that we have not seen until we started living in this post-revolutionary way. And I find that fascinating and also something that, I hope, gives heart to religious believers out there because they are seeing a kind of proof that was never anticipated. Well, I was going to say enough time has passed that we've lived with the nonsense and we can see it now, and that's what you write about in this book, Adam and Eve after the pill revisited. Part of it I often think of, you know, Burke's little platoons. The idea of the family as a force for good in society, you and I both know that the idea of family,
Starting point is 00:16:11 the idea of motherhood and fatherhood. These things have been denigrated since the advent of the sexual revolution, and of course by certain people before that. But we are beginning to understand God's wisdom in the idea that children are a blessing from the Lord. That is a fact. It is written in the Bible. It is incontrovertibly true. But now we can see that when you start saying,
Starting point is 00:16:40 well, I don't really like children. I'd rather have a cat. I'd rather, I don't want to bear the cat in my womb, but I can buy a cat. I can adopt a cat. And it's going to be easier on me. And what we're seeing, in fact, is no, in many ways it's not. We're learning, these are hard lessons to learn, but it is because of what you've been saying, a repudiation of the biblical ideas, these Christian ideas, the sanctity of family, the sanctity of marriage. We're now essentially seeing if, I guess it was C.S. Lewis who said, you know, you can say to God, thy will be done. But at some point, if you don't, he will say to you, thy will be done.
Starting point is 00:17:27 And he will allow us, in a sense, to have our way. And that's what it looks like to me when we're talking about the sexual revolution. We've had things our way, and the results have just been dramatically disastrous. I think that's true, and one of the things that I talk about in the book, Eric, is the difference between this sort of secular, postmodern view of human beings and the Christian view of human beings. It makes a big difference whether you believe that we are simply random collections of molecules created for fleeting temporary pleasure, or whether you think that you are made in the image of God and that you have a destiny in the cosmos. and that you have brothers and sisters in fellowship, etc. It's sad to see what a flattened view of humanity the secular world puts forward. And I believe that the churches could be reinvigorated if from every pulpit we were to hear this ennobled vision of what men and women are for,
Starting point is 00:18:33 because the secular world is not giving it to people, especially young people. Well, of course, I mean, the secular world is just pumping out this nonsense increasingly, these bad, bad, bad ideas. But it seems to me that also the problem is that a lot of folks in the church have internalized a lot of this garbage. They are themselves not thinking through that they have. I mean, I know so many people have said, well, we've decided we're going to wait to have kids or we're just going to have, you know, two kids. Or we're going to, in a sense, it's this idea of autonomy, which looks like at the end of the day, a kind of selfishness, which ultimately harms people. But they've been told you can choose, you know best. And in the end, what you're saying in your book is we really don't know best.
Starting point is 00:19:27 When we go our own way, we hurt ourselves. We thought we were helping ourselves, but we're hurting ourselves. Yes, very much so, Eric. And I'd like to get back to that idea of the churches and what the sexual revolution is doing to the churches, because that comprises about a third of the new book. I think it's very important to understand that the churches that have tried to compromise with the sexual revolution are the churches that are in trouble. There's an old saying, strong churches, I'm sorry, I can't recall it right now. But the idea that the stronger your dogma, the stronger your church is something that sociology has shown over and over. And it's sad to see Christian churches deciding to throw in the towel on the sexual revolution.
Starting point is 00:20:19 Because, again, it's not doing them any favors either. Those are the churches with the decline in membership. Those are the churches where people have stopped getting married. Because it turns out that if you don't give people a rule book to live by, if you just tell them that being Christian is about being nice and that's all there is to it, very soon they will conclude that they don't have to be nice in church. They can just stay home on Sunday. And this is what has happened with the churches that have capitulated to the sexual revolution.
Starting point is 00:20:50 Yeah, I've talked about this quite a bit myself. I'm invited to speak in churches around the country. And those churches that are thriving are the ones that are crystal clear. There's a hunger for this clarity, and all the churches that are trying to have it both ways are withering. They've been cursed like the fig tree. They're withering because they're trying to have it both ways. They've opened the door to what the culture has to say, and people are wisely deciding to skip church, because what are they getting there that they couldn't get from, you know, reading the paper or turning on the TV,
Starting point is 00:21:27 which is, of course, very, very sad. You talk in the book about so many things. I want to make sure that we cover them. You do talk about the recent overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision. Can you touch on that for a moment? Yes, absolutely. That's at the end of the book. And I think it's very important because until now, for the last 60-plus years,
Starting point is 00:21:55 we have been hearing that the sexual revolution is inevitable. and all of this autonomy that we now claim is inevitable, that there's no turning back the clock, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the decision in Dobbs overturns inevitability. In other words, it is the first example of major institutional rollback of the sexual revolution. Essentially, the Dobbs decision says that this claim to absolute autonomy
Starting point is 00:22:27 does not in fact exist in the Constitution. What I'm doing is in this book is extending that claim and saying, well, actually, it's not just about abortion. Maybe we've taken autonomy too far in other directions as well. But I think Dobbs is very important because around the world, there are other countries grounded in the Western tradition that seem to have the idea that legalizing abortion was good for them, too. Okay, we're going to be right back to continue this.
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Starting point is 00:25:04 quantities last again use code eric and save my pillow.com. I'm talking to Mary Eberstadt. The new book is Adam and Eve after the pill revisited. Mary, you were just talking about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Dobbs decision, how that, and it really is almost miraculous, that 50 years nearly after this horrific, really, what's the word I'm looking for, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, tortured legalistic argument, not grounded in the Constitution. The idea that that would be overturned is an amazing moment in American history. And it says, as you said, it sends a message that this very modern idea of pure autonomy has dramatic limits. And according to our Constitution,
Starting point is 00:26:09 one of those limits is this idea that everybody has some right in the Constitution. to an abortion. It's simply not there. You may want to have an abortion. You may have an abortion. But stop pretending that the founders in the Constitution said, yes, you have that right. Yes. And this is not only an American issue, Eric, it's also an issue for the whole Western world. And that's why I think Dobbs is such an invigorating decision, because there's that old saying, the law is a teacher. And Roe taught wrongly. And it's a thing. And it's a very important. And it's is not only the United States Supreme Court that now recognizes that, this decision will have an effect on the rest of the world, the rest of the world that has followed our lead. And to me,
Starting point is 00:26:56 that is just one example of what will be other forms of rollback to come, rollback of the sexual revolution and its works, as people realize that whether it's constitutional or moral or just about the way we live now, that something has really run amok since the 1960s. Well, obviously, the most preposterous thing of all is the transgender madness. Most Americans, whether they will say it or not, see madness unfolding. In other words, I think most Americans are very nice, and they want to kind of go along and say, well, we'll accept this, we'll accept that. We don't want to get in people's ways of doing whatever they like, whether I agree or don't
Starting point is 00:27:40 agree. But somehow we are now seeing, in a way, really the fascist flavor of the LGBT movement, that they are insisting on things that most people know are simply preposterous. And so in a funny way, when you see the fruit finally of all of these things, this to me is the horrible fruit, the ugly fruit of the sexual revolution, in a way it's a moment for us the process, how far have we drifted? Where have we come from? Where are we now? Yes, well, getting back to those acts of human subtraction that we were talking about earlier, we have to understand the confusion out there, especially among young people. The transgender phenomenon is one example. My point is, given how we have reduced the number of people in
Starting point is 00:28:36 our lives that we can learn from, who can be role models for us. The wonder would be if there weren't mass confusion, Eric. The wonder would be if people knew who they were. They don't, and it's partly because the revolution has stripped them of the human resources to use that phrase in the sense that it should be used for them to have fruitful, happy lives. Well, I want to go back also to the idea of the basics, family. We have seen the denigration. It's really since the 60s, roughly, but the Hollywood elites, the cultural elites, they've denigrated family, they've denigrated marriage.
Starting point is 00:29:20 Marriage is always seen as a trap for the woman. In other words, it's the narrative. There are terrible stories of women trapped in terrible marriages. There are terrible stories of back alley abortions. There are all those kinds of stories. But in a weird way, they have taken the forefront. And the other stories, which are innumerable, are never told. The beauty of marriage, the sanctity of marriage, of family, of children.
Starting point is 00:29:52 Those kinds of stories have gone out of the narrative. And we've been force-fed that's the narrative of the sexual revolution. And as you're saying, it seems like there's a reckoning because now enough of us can sort of see what it looks like. You know, at some point, it's kind of like with, you know, socialism or eventually you run out of other people's money. Eventually, you get to see where this takes you. And in your book, Adam and even after the pill revisited, you're talking about that. We now have had enough time to see what happens when you denigrate families and fathers and fatherhood. What do those generations end up looking like?
Starting point is 00:30:35 Yes, very much so. You know, Eric, people often say that we live in a time when our politics is so divisive and our rhetoric is so coarse and there's all of this ad hominem attack. And all of that is true. But if you ask why we are as coarse and divided as we seem to be, I think one reason is simple. babies. We've stripped babies out of our lives. Babies humanize men and women. Babies teach you to self-sacrifice and teach you to take care of something. And in a very real way, a lot of people in our society no longer have that experience. It's possible now to get to middle age without ever having held a baby, for example, more and more adults do. And so in this subtle way that I think is
Starting point is 00:31:27 nonetheless profound, we have coarsened ourselves again by embracing the sexual revolution. Well, this is extraordinary stuff. We'll be right back. Final segment with Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve after the pill revisited. Teach
Starting point is 00:31:43 your children well. Their father's help did slowly go by and feed their children. on your dreams, the one they fix, the one you know by. Folks, welcome back talking to Mary Eberstadt.
Starting point is 00:32:30 Adam and Eve after the pill revisited out by Ignatius Press, brand new book, forward by Cardinal Pell. Mary, one of the things that comes out of what you were saying is all of this, the sexual revolution, just like the French Revolution. it's a rage against God. Ultimately, it is a rage and a revolution against God and God's order. And part of that comes with the hubris involved in technology. We say, aha, we have discovered a pill, a magic pill. Women can take the pill, and then sex is suddenly divorced from the burden of having a pill. to think about children and so on and so forth, and everyone will be free.
Starting point is 00:33:21 And ironically, as you were just saying, having, anybody who's married understands marriage is work. Having families, that's tough. Raising kids is tough. But God's order says that these things will bless you, just like exercise will bless you. It's easier not to exercise, but if you exercise, you will be strengthened. And so if you can have your own way, if you can design your own life via technology and having all these choices so that you never have to suffer or struggle, ironically, you become weaker and weaker. And in the end, you're in a much worse place. So what you were talking about with regard to family, when the norm is, you know, to be a man, I need to find a wife, I need to have, I need to be a family man, need to raise a family.
Starting point is 00:34:13 When that's the norm, it forces men. to do the right thing on all kinds of levels, self-sacrifice, whatever it is. When kids are in the story, it forces us, forces us in the most loving way, but it still compels us somehow to learn how to grow up, to learn how to take care of others, husbands caring for their wives, wives caring for their husbands. And there's just something beautiful that God has designed. And when you say, well, I don't want any of that suffering or struggling, I just want to live for myself.
Starting point is 00:34:48 This is the great irony is when you push away from God, you suffer. You don't bless yourself. You don't become, you know, wonderfully autonomous. And it's built into the warp and woof of reality. So I just, I find it fascinating that God gives us something, but then we in our arrogance have pushed away from it. That's really, I mean, you know, the signature moment was. 1961 and the advent of the pill. And when we think of the havoc reeked on lives, especially on women as a result of what was
Starting point is 00:35:23 promised to them, it really seems like a dark fable. Yes, I think so. I think we are learning the hard way some of the truths that you were just talking about, Eric. We are learning, for example, what it's like to live in a society where fewer and fewer people are experienced in self-sacrifice, the kind of self-sacrifice that goes into marriage and family, as you say. And I think this is also a part of the coarsening of our discourse, is that people are out of that habit of sacrificing for others, letting others go first. And so we see this transformation,
Starting point is 00:36:04 again, across the West. And the saddest photo that we can imagine is that one at the end of life, where people unexperienced in self-sacrifice who have lived without family now face the consequence of that, this loneliness explosion. So, yes, again, we're learning the hard way, things that people before us didn't have to wonder about because they took it for granted that you would live in families and robust family networks. Yes, and when you take all those things out, Mirabale, Dick, too, what do you get? big state. The state steps in. The state will take care of the old people. The state will do this. The state will do that. It's really a horror movie. It's a dystopian world into which we're increasingly moving because the state will never love you and care for you the way family will love you and care for you. And I just think this is, as you're saying, it's epidemic all to the
Starting point is 00:37:07 West, not just in the United States at this point. Yes, and I think it's forcing a reaction in a good way to give people some more good news, or what I think is good news, is that it used to be, Eric, say, 10 years ago when the first Adam and Eve after the pill book came out, this was a kind of conversation that only religious people would have. This was not something that was being discussed in the secular realm, that it was. as any questioning of the sexual revolution. But this is different. Within the last couple of years alone, books have come out in France, in Great Britain, in the United States, by secular writers,
Starting point is 00:37:51 all of them female, saying, wait a minute, did we take a wrong turn somewhere? Why is romance so hard? Why is it so difficult to find a husband and start a family? So, again, in the face of the kind of evidence that is collected in these books, I think finally people are starting to wonder outside religious orbits whether we have inflicted a wound on ourselves. I think the answer is yes. I think the evidence shows that. And the hope is that this starts a wider conversation outside of Christian circles that are used to having it and including people who need to face the consequences of what we've been doing. Well, yeah, it's beautiful because reality always points back to God, and that's kind of
Starting point is 00:38:39 what's happening, is that secular people bumping up against reality are kind of suddenly asking questions that they wouldn't have asked, because reality always points back to the God of reality, to the author of reality. And so you're right, people who ordinarily wouldn't have asked these questions are maybe for the first time asking these questions. I wonder maybe family is a good thing. Maybe marriage is a good thing. Maybe having children would be a good thing. Maybe every technology that makes everything convenient is not a good thing. I do think you're right that this is a hopeful development. I'm just grateful for you, Mary Eberstadt, for this book, Adam and Eve
Starting point is 00:39:27 After the Pill revisited. And of course, for the original book, Adam and Eve, after the pill. I hope many people will get these books and read them. And I hope you can come to New York and come in the studio and continue the conversation with me at some point right here. In any event, thank you so much for this time and for this book. God bless you. Thank you, Eric. See you in New York. I want to remind everyone of two things. Holyland.israel.com, holyland.israel.com. Why do I mention that? Because the Israeli Ministry of Tourism is a sponsor of this program. And everybody who's a sponsor on this program, we're thrilled to have them, right? This is not about the money. This is about we want to promote what we believe in.
Starting point is 00:40:37 And by the way, it's holyland. dot Israel.orgia. Oh, yeah. Keep that mind. Holyland. It sounds wrong, but it's right. Holyland. That israel.
Starting point is 00:40:46 Travel. Holyland. Israel. Travel. But I keep saying that because we're living in crazy times, which we talk about every day, we need each of us to deepen our faith. If you do not have faith, let me encourage you. The Bible is true.
Starting point is 00:41:05 The God of the Bible is real. And if you're interested in the truth and injustice, that's a good place to look. I've written many books on this subject in case you need a kind of a leg up. My book is atheism dead. It is designed to at least prove to you that there is a God. There is no doubt. In other words, if you want to be intellectually honest, when I wrote that book, I said, you know what? This is game over.
Starting point is 00:41:32 In other words, I'm convincing myself, this is not like I prove there's no God. But I said, just from what I put in this book, if you're intellectually honest, it's game over. You know there's a God. And the more you want to find out about that God, the more you find out who that God is. So in that book, I talk about many things in Israel, which is why I keep saying, I can't wait to get back to Israel, because we want to film a documentary series around is atheism dead. So the first part is science. The second part is archaeology.
Starting point is 00:42:00 The archaeology part. we're going to be in Israel filming at the sites that I mention in my book. And so I would just recommend to you. You can use my book, you can do whatever you want, but you can use my book as a template. Like, let's go visit these places. Hezekia's Tunnel. Let's go to Nazareth to see the site of Jesus'... I mean, it's really crazy stuff.
Starting point is 00:42:21 So I want to recommend holyland.israel.com. Also, we should recommend Albin. The film, Nefarious is coming out. April 14th. Yeah. We've both seen it. Yeah. We both recommend it. You know, a lot of times we recommend films because friends have been involved, and we know it's worth seeing, but we haven't had the chance to see it or I haven't had the chance to see it.
Starting point is 00:42:45 I had the chance to watch this so I can say. Yeah, and Kevin Sorbo is not in this one, but we still love it to death. But we still love it. Yeah. Even though Kevin Sorbo is nowhere to be seen. And let me tell you something, we looked. Man, we looked at every first. frame, no Kevin Sorbo anywhere.
Starting point is 00:43:04 Didn't do background work or extra work. And that's how you know that it's not officially a Christian film. Because if Kevin Sorbo is not in it, it doesn't get the little TM. Like, ding, Christian film. No. So, but it's really profoundly Christian. It's called nefarious. Not for the kids, though.
Starting point is 00:43:19 It's not for the kids. No, it's hard in some ways to see. Okay. So before we go to our break, our news. By the way, I never get to listen to the bumper music on this program. I hope you're enjoying it. I pick every song, as you know, but I never get to listen to it because the way we film this now. And I never get to listen to the news with Greg Kluxton or anything. But we're on the Salem Radio Network. We're on podcast everywhere. And I should say this more often. You can get an app. The Eric Mataxis show, app. There is an app on your phone. And you can listen to the show anytime you feel like it. Forget about your radio. We recommend you do that so that when you have spare time, you can listen to the Earth with Access show on your app, on your phone. We'll be right back. Legacy precious metals has a revolutionary new online platform that allows you to invest in real gold and silver online.
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