The Sean McDowell Show - Scott Rae Debunks 10 Common Moral Slogans

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Can you legislate morality? Is secular ethics neutral? Did Jesus really say "never judge"? Dr. Scott Rae, one of the world's leading Christian ethicists and Sean's Think Biblically co-host, is here to work through ten of the most common moral slogans in circulation, and why each one falls apart under scrutiny. Scott addresses all ten in the newly released fifth edition of Moral Choices, updated with new material on the ethics of technology and AI, criminal justice, gender, race, immigration, and gene editing. CHECK OUT: Logos Bible 60 Day Free Trial (https://logos.com/mcdowell) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org 0:00 — The slogans, and why they don't hold up 0:55 — Introducing Dr. Scott Rae 1:57 — #1 "You can't legislate morality" 4:31 — #2 "Secular ethics is neutral, religious ethics is biased" 8:41 — #3 "You shouldn't force your morals on others" 12:05 — #4 "Right and wrong are products of evolution" 16:50 — #5 "Religion is private and has no place in public ethics" 18:55 — A word from Logos 19:49 — What counts as a religion? 23:11 — #6 "Morality is subjective taste, not objective truth" 27:38 — #7 "Science can tell us what is right and wrong" 31:19 — #8 "Cultural disagreement proves there's no moral truth" 33:51 — #9 "Jesus said never judge, so don't" 36:37 — #10 "Religious views don't belong in politics" 40:32 — What's new in the fifth edition of Moral Choices 43:25 — Send us your ethics questions Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Life Audio When it comes to marriage, it's one or it's the other. It's not like you're expanding marriage to include same-sex marriage, but that if we shift towards adopting same-sex marriage, we're not neutral, we're not expanding it. We are taking a biased or worldview-laden approach to what marriage is and the role of the state. Science can tell us what is right and wrong. Absolutely not. Science can tell us how things work.

It can't tell us how things ought to work. Religious views don't belong in politics. That's a violation of the First Amendment, violation of religious freedom, because you are forcing religious views to be kept private. Religious views don't belong in politics. Jesus said never judge. So don't. You can't legislate morality. These are some of the most common moral slogans you have heard and maybe even spoken at times.

but they are, as you will see today, deeply misguided. Today I get to interview my friend, colleague, and co-host, Dr. Scott Ray, who, by the way, is arguably one of the leading Christian ethicists in the world today, given your publications, your conversations, your conversations, your consulting that you've done, your professional work. We're going to talk about the top 10 misguided moral claims that need to be debunked. Now, you deal with all of these in the fifth edition of your book, moral choices, which we'll get to, kind of framing deeper conversations on reproductive technology, end of life, war, et cetera. But I thought this would be a helpful and interesting way to kind of

get into the conversation. I'd love your take on these. So I'm just going to state it the way I often heard it said, and then you can give your response. How does that sound? That sounds great. But we've been dealing with these since the first edition of moral choices. Fair enough. And they've been refined over the years. Okay, okay, good. Bring that out at times. If this is shifted and become more pressing or less would be great. All right. So number one, you can't legislate morality. Categorically false. Because the lawmakers in most countries do it on an almost daily basis. Every law is the imposition of somebody's morality. Even things as seemingly morally neutral is driving on the correct side. of the road presumes respect for life and property because if we see somebody driving down the freeway at 80 miles an hour in the wrong direction, we assume that they have respect for neither of those things.

And in most cases, I think justifiably so. Martin Luther King was well known for saying, you know, the law can't prevent people from hating me, but it can't stop them from lynching me. And so if you were talking about a moral intent, that's true. You can't legislate a moral intent, but we legislate moral behavior in virtually every law that's passed today. Because almost every – now there are some exceptions, but almost every law presumes a some sort of moral foundation on which it's based. And if that's the case, then we legislate moral behavior on a regular basis. Okay, so is it fair to say that some moral laws like don't steal and don't murder?

It's not like we could have done it differently or we should have done it differently as opposed to like the street that you drive on, the side of the road. It doesn't really matter if it's the right or the left, but that you just legislate some consistent side that people drive on. And that's why I said driving on the correct side of the road. Okay. regardless, you know, because if, you know, if you're in the U.K., it's going to be different. But if you don't drive on the correct side of the road in the U.K., maybe you don't presume a lack of respect for life and property, but you're going to engage in behavior that will soon get you arrested. Okay. So even some of these smaller rules or laws like the side of the road you drive on,

which doesn't really matter in itself. are, they can vary according to culture, but beneath them are moral values and commitments. We can't escape, and that's the point. It's the application of that that can change with context. Gotcha. Okay. Excellent. Good response. All right, second one. Secular ethics is neutral, but religious ethics is biased. I'd say partially true. I say both are biased.

Both have built-in biases, which is not necessarily a negative thing, but they have perspectives. And just because something is secular doesn't mean that it's unbiased. Because secular and neutral are not the same thing. Because secularism is just as much a worldview, it's just as much a set of religious views as any religion is. And so to be secular, I think, is to, I think that's to sort of live under the illusion of neutrality when in reality, nothing of the sort is the case. The illusion of neutrality.

I appreciate we said that both religious and secular individuals and belief systems have a bias. It's not like one is neutral and the other is biased, whichever you pick. And what I mean by that, they have their own. distinct way of framing moral questions. That is dramatically different. They're dramatically different from each other. So they have a perspective. And I mean, if you want to call that a bias, I think that that's fine.

And I would say not every bias is problematic. Sure. Okay. So I had a debate maybe seven, eight years ago, with an atheist. And one thing he argued was that secularism is neutral. And they're not trying to make the state secular. but just secular one option aside Christian options. And the example I brought up, I said, well, when it comes to marriage, it's one or it's the other.

It's not like you're expanding marriage to include same-sex marriage. We are changing the nature of marriage and saying that being our sex bodies are irrelevant to what marriage is. So my point was not to argue that a biblical view of marriage is right, but that if we shift towards adopting same-sex marriage, we're not neutral, we're not expanding it, we are taking a biased or worldview-laden approach to what marriage is and the role of the state. That was my point. Do you agree with that example? I do.

And I think what secularism does to religion is it forces it to be private. secularism takes religion out of the public theology and the public morality business and it does so intentionally and by design I remember this was years ago when human cloning was first being debated and the commission this was I think this was president Clinton's National Bioethics Commission that they created this big set of hearings invited experts from all over the world to come in. And they had a section of the final report called ethics and, I don't think they said religious, but maybe the ethics and religious views of human cloning. And it was this really well-done section, lots of insight on it. But in their final recommendations, they completely marginalized it and said that when it

comes to public policy, religious claims can't be the basis for any kind of public policy in a pluralistic culture. And so what they were essentially doing is they were secularizing the discussion by forcing the religious contribution to that back into the private sphere where it's out of reach of public policy. And in my view, as a perfect example of how secularism forces religious views and religious morality into the private sphere where it will basically leave the culture alone. That sets us up. We have another slogan that matches that.

But first one is our third misguided slogan is you shouldn't force your morals on others. That works only until you're the victim of injustice or until somebody clearly wrong. wrongs you. Then we become, in my view, we become passionate absolutists who are forcing our view of justice on the person who we believe has done us in injustice. So that sounds nice in theory, but nobody can live with that consistently. I remember, Sean, I was to Biss was years ago when the stem cell debate was first getting rolling. I was invited to by one of our students, who was the pastor of a church in the area and was invited to a debate in a health care system

on the ethics of using embryonic stem cells for research and treatment. Interesting. I remember about halfway through the debate, some crusty old physician in the audience raised his hand and said, I am so sick of you religious people forcing your views on the rest of us. And he had come at me with a little horseradish on that comment,

so I felt the freedom to come back at him with a similar dose. And I said, first, we should get rid of the silly notion that it's only religious people who are forcing the morality on everybody else. And that's why back to the first question. That's why every law is the imposition of somebody's morality on somebody else. And I said, you are forcing a view of a human person on me by saying that embryos, who I consider to be full human persons, should be subject to destruction or to experimentation. that will lead to their destruction eventually. I said that you, I said, basically I called him a hypocrite.

I didn't use those terms, but I said you should stop doing what you were accusing me of doing. I'm really thankful that Martin Luther King Jr. didn't get the memo. You shouldn't force your morals on others. Now, obviously, he was trying to persuade that, which is one of the strengths of our political system today. It's the same thing you were trying to do, is, we all can persuade. But of course, I think the vast majority of people today are going to say, thankfully, then what came to the civil rights movement, we had laws put into protect African Americans

and other minorities that were shaped deeply by Jeremiah and Amos and the teachings of Jesus. But you're right, it's contradictory. I heard Greg Cookely tell a story about how somebody said to him, you shouldn't force your morals on others. And he just asked him a question back. is that your morality? Exactly. Yes. Well, if you shouldn't force your morals on others, and this is your morality, then why are you trying

to force it on me? And the words force, on one sense, we shouldn't force our morals on others unless somebody's getting attacked, then I'm going to force my morality and protect that person. But the primary means that Christians are called to do are to persuade people with argument and reasons, and people confuse. giving an argument for something with forcing somebody. Yeah, I'm glad the women who were at the forefront of the Me Too movement also didn't get that memo.

Yep, good, good stuff. All right. Fourth misguided slogan that we often hear about morality, is it right and wrong, are products of evolution nothing more? I think if morality arose out of evolution, then we have some really odd. moral values that have almost universal acceptance today. We have the moral value of self-sacrifice. We view people who sacrifice for the benefit of others to be heroes.

You know, the soldier who falls on a grenade is an idiot in the evolutionary scheme of things, but we routinely hold them up as heroic. That tells me that there's something about morality that's deeper and intrinsic in a part of how we are wired. We have a moral sense that Romans 2.14 tells us that God has implanted his law in us, and though it's been skewed as a result of the fall, that hasn't erased the moral sense that God's deeply implanted in all of us. And I think, you know, there's – the survival mode of evolution can actually lead to – it doesn't

really, this is what our friend Alvin Plantica has pointed out. It doesn't necessarily lead to an appreciation for truth because adaptive measures can be demonstrably false and still be adaptive. That's right. Right? You know, I can believe

that the wild animal who's staring at me across the canyon will not attack me if I sing sweetly to this animal from a distance. Now that's categorically false, but as long as I do, that from a distance, that adaptive value will still work.

And so there's nothing necessarily intrinsic about an evolutionary process that is based on adaptive value that leads us to the truth of an assertion. And I think that stands from reality as well. Now, I think some of the things, you know, you can explain adaptively, like the value of community, that we're better off. We survive better in community than we do individually. But I think there are others that I think are really tough to explain on an evolutionary scheme. Hey, listeners, it's Kelly from Life Audio. We know life gets busy, and sometimes it's easy for your faith to get pushed to the side. That's why we created the Good Word, a free weekly newsletter designed to give you a moment to slow down, be encouraged, and reconnect with what matters most, God's Word.

Inside, you'll find devotionals, guided prayers, podcast recommendations, and other faith-filled content we think you'll love. No ads, no clutter. Just good content to help you stay rooted in God's Word throughout your week. Sign up for the good word today at life audio.com forward slash the good word. That's life audio.com forward slash the good word. That's well said. I've got a couple objections. Number one, I can understand how an evolutionary process could generate better bone density or elongation and strength of muscles. But right and wrong and moral values, which aren't physical.

How does a physical process even develop? or generate them. And you say, well, it's just a belief in them. And then I say, well, that's a belief. That's not physical. Where are these coming from? It's almost an example getting something from nothing. That's a philosophical problem.

The other objection, I think that's fair to say, and this is to expand on your second one, is that if right and wrong are products of evolution, nothing more, then there really is no right and wrong. There really is no human value. There really is no equality. And evolution has tricked us to follow these things to survive. And we could eventually evolve out of those things. We could evolve out of those things.

True, it's contingent. But I also raise a question. I have this feeling of obligation. But that's just a product of evolution. I don't actually have that obligation. You don't have human value. Men and women and other races don't have equality. So I'm under no obligation to actually live that way, at least moral obligation.

which undermines the entire moral project. And I don't see people going, okay, that's true. It's all illusion. Well, then live out that nihilism, as Nietzsche said. That's what nobody's actually doing. My final critique is C.S. Lewis talked about how, at best, instinct, if morality is just instinct, the problem is we have competing instincts.

And so how do we decide between the two of them? It can't be a third instinct. It has to be something outside of the instinct which evolution can't explain. Now, in fairness, there are other ethical theories. You go through them in moral choices, very thoroughly, very fairly, offer critique. This is just one. Let's move on to what – Which I do have a fairly lengthy section in the book on this very point, because it's so prominent.

Good. Okay. Fifth, misguided slogan, religion is just a private matter and has no place in public ethics. false. Okay. And the scripture, I think, is very, is very good. At least Christianity was never intended to be simply a private matter. Even in the early church, even the statement, Jesus is Lord, in the early church, was a profoundly

political statement because it was saying that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. And that could have disastrous consequences if you said that in the world. the wrong company. And, you know, when the scripture talks about the kingdom of God coming in its fullness, it's true. There is an individual component to that where individuals are rightly related to God, and every knee bows at the name of Christ. But there's also a social component to that in that justice will rule. In Isaiah 42, for example, when the servant of Yahweh is coming to bring his kingdom. He comes to bring justice to the nations and the islands and the coastlands hope in his justice that will be coming. It's a proper ordering of society. And I admit,

I'm not exactly sure what that's going to look like, but it will mean at the least that culture will be free from sin and corruption in ways that I think will be revolutionary. So I say Christianity is an intrinsically public faith. And to say that it's a private matter is actually a violation of a Christian's religious freedom. So to say that it has no place in public ethics is essentially to say that the First Amendment that guarantees freedom of religion only applies to what you do in private, not in public. And so it's a truncated view of Christian faith and a truncated view of what religious freedom is about. Now, when I hear religion is just a private matter, part of me wants to go, what do we mean by

religion? It's not just those who have a Christian or Jewish or Muslim faith. And I say the Muslim faith is much more public than Christian faith is. By its very nature it is to be public top down. For both, I mean, for both, that's intrinsic to them. It looks like in Islam is entirely different. Yes, I agree. Fair enough. But it raises the question.

And Frank Beckwith had a book probably 20, 25 years ago on kind of law and related to Darwinism. And you see the same kind of debate, like keep intelligent design and religion out of the classroom. And it has a section saying, well, what is religion? You don't have to believe in a God to be a religion because Buddhism is religious. There's no God. It doesn't have to be an afterlife. I mean, the Sadducees were religious, but they don't believe it. And at least a resurrection in the way that you and I do and the Pharisees did.

And he actually makes a case that secularism could be a kind of religion because there's metaphysical commitments, beliefs about what it means to be human, our place in society. So I don't think this is often taken selectively to disqualify certain religious beliefs, not applied consistently. That's one area we could discuss further. But I also know you're not saying Christians should just say and make their case, well, you should be in favor of the death. penalty because Genesis 96 says this, connect the fact that religion is not private to how we as Christians argue publicly in a pluralistic society. Yeah, that's a great point. And I would say there's nothing necessarily follows from Christian morality to the law without further argument. So why should certain things be a matter of law as opposed to just a matter of morality?

At the least, that requires an additional argument. Now, for example, we believe suicide is morally wrong. But why that should be legally restricted doesn't follow automatically from the fact that we believe it's immoral. It requires an additional argument, which I've made at length in every addition of moral. choices on that. And I think there are good reasons to think that that ought not be legalized, but it's not because that it's a religious view. It's consistent with Christian ethics, but not derivative from Christian ethics. Fair enough. And this is where natural law comes into play. And what Jesus taught about something is a piece of an argument, but it needs to be much

broader than that. And usually, when people say religion is just a private matter, what they mean by religion is worship. And for example, when the Obama administration tried to restrict religious freedom back during his administration, he specifically defined or limited the freedom of religion to what takes place in the houses of worship in churches, synagogues, mosques, mosques, and things like that. It specifically eliminated the public dimension of that. Christians should not accept that.

and also historically in our country, we have not accepted that. Okay, let's shift to misguided moral slogan number six. Morality is a matter of subjective taste, not objective truth. This is one of my favorite ones to deal with. Now, I'll give you an example of this. I was speaking at a public high school years ago on the subject of relativism and morality. And there was a young woman who was sitting right in the front. row. And she was making this passionate point that I think we ought to be able to make up our own

moral rules for ourselves. And that basically my moral rules are mine and yours are yours. And she had a brand new iPhone on her desk. You can see where this is going. I can. And as I was sort of casually making my way through the presentation, I just walked over to her desk and picked up her iPhone and put it in my pocket. And put it in my pocket. And she was too polite. She was. She was She had some semblance of morality, I think. She was too polite to object right on the spot. But it went on for another, like 20 minutes. I had her iPhone right in my pocket.

And so she said, came up to me afterwards and said, well, can I have my phone back? I said, no, sorry, you can't. And she said, well, why not? And I said, well, you said that we ought to be able to make up our own moral rules for ourselves. And my moral rules are that the people who are older, wiser, and more experienced are entitled to the stuff. of people who are younger, dumber, and less experience. I don't think I said it quite that bluntly.

Sure, sure. And so, but she could tell it, she was sort of flung up, and she finally just blurted it out, but she said, but that's wrong. And I said, well, tell me why that's wrong. Good question. And, you know, then I gave her a phone back. Of course. We left on good terms.

But, you know, I think we, Sean, we commonly think of morality, the same way we do religious belief. And philosophical positions that we hold as being matters of belief instead of matters of fact. But I think we can actually know that racial discrimination is wrong and that sexual assault is wrong. I love what our colleague Bill Craig says about that. He said, if you think sexual assault is okay, you need a therapist, not an argument. I think he's absolutely right about that. Now, there are some things that we disagree about, but disagreement does not make them subjective.

Good. Disagreement just means that we have a disagreement about what the objective truth is in morality. And so I think our culture, I think, sometimes doesn't really understand the difference between objective and subjective statements, where an objective statement is something that is true regardless of how you feel about it. That's right. Subjective statement is true determined by what you feel about it. Like my preference for ice cream. Sure.

Or thinking my kid is just the cutest kid in the neighborhood. Obviously, those are subjective things. And there are some objective things that we can disagree about. Some objective things that we're not sure about. Like I believe the Los Angeles Dodgers will win the World Series this year. But we won't know about that. Yeah. And some things that are objective that are false.

Like the statement that I can bench press 300 pounds is clearly false. And I've never been able to do that and never will. So I think we just have to, you know, we have to be careful how we look at the notion of objectivity because it's those things that are, that the truth of which is determined, independent of my own feelings about them. It's a great answer. And I want to point out what your example of taking the iPhone implies. is that she was spouting off that morality is subjective, but deeply knew that it's actually objective.

And so your exercise was to illustrate what she really knew and show the inconsistency. And so we know it. And we also don't live like it's really true. So morality is not something that you prove like math or history or science. It's something like our Declaration of Independence. We know these things because they are self-evident. That's how morality works. And your illustration brought that out.

All right. Seventh misguided claim, science can tell us what is right and wrong. Absolutely not. Science, I think science can tell us how things work. It can't tell us how things ought to work. Good distinction. It can tell us how things function, but it can't tell us the ends for which they were designed to function. And I think the notion that science, that this sort of morality is a science, I think what people mean by that is they want it to be more than just a gut intuition.

I think that's a plea for good reasons. and we can have disagreements in science, but that doesn't render science null and void for what it's designed to do. And just because we have moral disagreements doesn't mean that the whole exercise of morality is useless. We just have we have disagreements about what the moral thing is, which we should expect, since the lenses through which we see morality in a fallen world are not, not a not 100% clear. And I think this is why we can have people who say that abortion is justifiable for nine months

of pregnancy. And we can disagree profoundly on that. And because of our fallen nature, people can have all sorts of different motives for holding the moral beliefs that they do. I think people can hold beliefs about abortion perhaps because I'm experienced in their life with, you know, with abortion, has, you know, has tempered, has tempered some of their, what they would otherwise say about it if it were just a purely objective moral analysis. So I think science, science ill-equipped to tell us about morality.

I remember that same stem cell debate. I remember when I was sitting, one of the panelists was a biology prophet, the local university. And I remember him saying that, you know, when I said that science can't tell us what kind of a thing an embryo actually is. It can tell us how it functions, but it can't tell us if it's a person or not. And he conceded that I was right about that. I nearly fell out of my chair. I thought, I can't believe a scientist is actually conceding that science has limits when it comes to metaphysics and morality. That's great.

Your distinction, I think, is helpful between science and morality. The way I would phrase it is science is a descriptive discipline. It describes cell division. It describes geological formation. It describes processes in physics where there's an action and a reaction. Morality is not descriptive. It's prescriptive. It says you ought to do this.

It's a normative. Normative. You ought to do this. You should not do that. And so it's a category fallacy to apply science to morality. Now, Sam Harris, I think his book is called The Moral Landscape, where he argues that science can help understand right and wrong. Now, science could help adjudicate between what beliefs and behaviors help us better flourish. Like, we could objectively study that.

You can only get that off the ground, and Sam Harris concedes this point, if we kind of muzzle in this commitment to the objective flourishing of others and society, which is the very thing, science and atheism, cannot provide. All right, we got three more misguided notions, and this one relates to something you said earlier. Cultural disagreement proves there's no moral truth. No, cultural disagreement just proves that we disagree on what the moral truth of a specific issue actually is. Okay. Nothing more.

And if that were true, then science goes out the window, too. because scientists disagree on all sorts of things all the time. But yet nobody dismisses science as being this inherently subjective thing just because there's disagreement about, you know, what certain axioms of science are to be believed. So I'm not willing to throw science out, and neither should the scientists be willing to throw morality out for the same reason. That's great.

the same thing when I talk to my students about objective beauty. I'll say a rose is beautiful. If you don't think it's beautiful, you're just as wrong as if you don't think two plus two equals four. And the most common objection is, well, what about people differ over what is beautiful? And I make the same point. I say, if people differ over a scientific claim, it doesn't mean there's no truth. If people differ over a historical theory to explain the origin of World War I doesn't mean there's no, truth. So the same applies to beauty, the same applies to morality. All disagreement shows is that people differ. It doesn't follow that therefore there's no truth. The only way it would is if we assume from the get-go that we're talking about subjective claims, which needs to be demonstrated,

not assumed. Right. And people don't usually get super passionate about subjective claims. Usually is important. Usually. Yes, I agree. I, you know, I don't, I don't go to the for my view that chocolate ice creams tastier than vanilla. Chocolate peanut butter. The steak, I agree, though. For certain. And I think the passion with which people disagree about things reflects how much they believe that a truth is at stake.

And that's Lewis's argument that he makes at the beginning of mere Christianity. If anybody watching this has not read the first five books or short sections of mere Christianity, like, hit pause on this, read it, and then come back. because he makes that very point, and I think it's compelling. Okay, two more misguided moral notions. All right, Scott, number nine, Jesus said never judge, so don't. He didn't, and you should. I like these short quits.

Jesus never said, don't judge. Read the rest of the passage. He says, judge not, and you will not be judged. But he goes on to say five verses later, Be careful. When you take the speck out of your brother's eye, which is a figure of speech for judgment, don't mistake the fact that you might have a log in your own eye. When he says don't judge, he's saying don't judge hypocritically. Don't judge without looking in the mirror yourself. And the reality is shown, we make moral assessments all the time. You know, every time we say that somebody is acting out of character. we've just made a moral assessment. Anytime you write a letter of recommendation for someone, you're making a moral assessment of their character.

Anytime you decide not to do business with someone you don't trust, you're making a moral assessment of their character. I mean, go on and on with examples of that. That's great. By the way, not only did Jesus not say to never judge, he will judge all of us at the end of time. And he made moral judgments about hypocrisy, moral. judgments about the Pharisees. He made moral judgments and gave us an example to do so, which I think

you're right. In Matthew 5 through 7 in the sermon of the Mount, chapter 7, it's about don't judge hypocritically. John chapter 724 says stop judging by appearances. Make a righteous judgment. So if we're not supposed to judge hypocritically, we are supposed to judge according to a righteous judgment. first judge ourselves. That's the point of the Matthew 7, is that if we don't judge ourselves first, we won't be able to see clearly, and we also will not have the right spirit and attitude

in approaching others, which of course is Matthew Chapter 18. Which presumes you're making a moral assessment. That's exactly right. And Paul says that in Galatian 6. If you see a brother caught in sin, you go to him and confront him, paraphrasing that.

Sure. But you offer correction. You know, the scripture is there to offer correction. Agreed. And Paul also says, 1st Corinthians 5, about judging outsiders would be different than your example. Correct. Of judging a fellow brother. But the claim that Jesus said never judged, so don't, he didn't say that. We're supposed to, according to, according to scriptures, in a righteous way, not hypocritically. Good. All right. Last one. We kind of dealt with this one before, but it's so important. and we live in such a politicized age that I think we need to get this right. So misguided slogan number 10, Scott, religious views don't belong in politics.

That's a violation of the First Amendment. The violation of religious freedom to say that. Because you are forcing religious views to be kept private and saying that the public dimension of someone's religious faith has no place. Reality is that religion has always infused politics. It's always infused public policy. And the founders did not see any problem with that. In fact, the founder's view was that the democracy couldn't survive without a regular infusion of religion and morality. And Jefferson and Madison and others, they were clear that the laws,

need to be infused with the moral beliefs that religion both in nurtures and inspires. So I think even the debate over abolition of slavery was fundamentally a moral debate. I mean, Lincoln and Douglas debated for hours on this. The civil rights movement, as you pointed out early, was fundamentally a moral debate about the worth of African Americans. Vietnam War, the New Deal around the time of the Great Depression, the New Deal legislated, all of that was morally based. What we've started hearing more recently is with the rise of the religious right back in the 70s and 80s

when the pro-life movement became public, there were people who didn't like that particular iteration of religion-infusing public policy. but they were part of a very rich and long tradition in American history. What I found is when people say religious views don't belong in politics, they mean your religious views don't belong in politics. And I see it from the right to the left. I see it from the left to the right, which is a reminder if we're going to bring our religious views into politics, we need to do so consistently and faithfully to the text. and I can think of our governor here. Newsom had, I believe it traced back to him, but there was some statements and billboards around our state,

citing certain passages to justify moral beliefs that you and I would differ strongly with. I was like, wait a minute, if he takes that to its logical conclusion, it's going to actually be the opposite of what he's arguing for, so it was selective. And I've seen people do it on the right. I've seen people do it on the left.

So we shouldn't keep our religion out of politics. Number one, it violates the First Amendment. Jesus didn't model doing this. By the way, he was killed for political and religious reasons. In that day, they couldn't separate. There were political issues taking place. They were completely intertwined. And there were religious reasons, and they intertwined, and we couldn't untangle him that way.

And that's often true today. Let's just do it consistently. All right. Good job. through all 10 of those. There were others that came up. I'd love to know from folks if this kind of like slogan and response is helpful, kind of doing what you might call popular apologetics and ethics. But in your book, this is really just kind of some of the preliminary material. And then you get into some of the big issues of the day. This is covered the first two

chapters. It's like this is, I mean, we can we can actually do a show on every single one of your chapters. Maybe at some point we will. But tell us what's unique about the fifth edition of moral choices. Well, everything's been brought up to date. Okay. Most of the cases have been changed. I've added new material on a theology of technology. Great. With underpinnings, the theological underpinnings for how we treat things like AI robotics and screens and social media, things like that. There's an expanded section on criminal justice, ethics in the criminal justice system, not just the death penalty, which is a part of that, but it's a broad expansion. So at all levels of the criminal justice system, what are the different ethical issues that have to be addressed?

That's a big addition. I said a lot more about gender, transgender than I did. The fourth edition was in 2018 before transgender was, it was just beginning to become a thing. It was. And there's an expanded section on race. that take up the topics of intersectionality, white privilege, critical race theory, have expanded section on all of those things. There's expanded a section on immigration.

What else? And bringing things technologically up to date on the debate on euthanasia. It's suicide, reproductive technologies. Got new cases that reflect the new technology. Gene editing wasn't a thing when the fourth edition came out. So the ethical issues have to do with genetics and genetic and biotechnology. That's all new stuff. And there are probably 100 or so sidebars, which are examples from popular media, how ethical issues are being framed and being discussed.

I've replaced over 100 of those. Oh, wow. So those are all from the last two years. Good. Well, we're going to have – it's weird to say we're going to have you back. But I just thought of that when I was saying it. We will have a follow-up conversation because I have so many questions that the first version of moral choices, first edition, was the white cover, right? Mid-90s or so. Black cover. That was a second. Oh, that was the second edition. Okay. So that's when I took your class in the 90s. It's been my go-to text since years and the text by Ken Magnuson are my two go-to ethics test.

But this is updated now. So much has changed in that past seven to eight years that it's a must-get. We're going to come back and talk about. You've been doing this for a while. So how have the ethical questions changed in the church, outside of the church? How is technology changed? What have you learned through this? Have you shifted on any?

issues. We don't have to answer that now. We're going to come back to that. I'll just say that's why there's five editions. Okay. Well, good. Fair enough. Fair enough. But if you have questions specifically for Scott Ray, and I'm going to say one of the world's leading ethists, certainly leading Christian ethicist, send them in to think biblically at biola.edu, or you can send them to questions at Sean McDowder.org, we will gather those, and then we will bring you back. That would be a lot of fun. So on any of those topics that you just mentioned, your ethical questions, even some of the toughest dilemmas. Like, if we could think of some of these impossibly difficult dilemmas would be fun.

Maybe we'll take the top 10 thorny difficult ones. That would be really fun. But send those questions in. And before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe to Think People's a podcast and follow us on YouTube. This is a lot of fun, Scott. We'll do it again. Nice, thanks. Hey, friends.

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