Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 1254 | Phil Robertson Wept at Auschwitz Concentration Camp & Why Moral Truth Matters

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Al, Zach, John Luke, and Christian reflect on a moment when Phil, a man who rarely got emotional, was moved to tears after witnessing the reality of unimaginable evil. The guys launch into a sobering conversation about why atrocities like the Holocaust can never be reduced to opinion or explained away, and why denying such evil ultimately erodes the very idea of right and wrong. Drawing on the works of C.S. Lewis, they wrestle with where moral truth comes from, why it exists beyond personal preference, and how abandoning it opens the door to history’s darkest chapters. Today’s conversation is about Lesson 1 of C.S. Lewis on Christianity taught by visiting Hillsdale professor Michael Ward. Take the course with us at no cost to you! Sign up at http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/. More about C.S. Lewis on Christianity: Encounter the faith & wisdom of C.S. Lewis C.S. Lewis’s writings bring the great questions of the Christian faith to life. Through his imaginative and invigorating style, Lewis answers these questions in ways that are compelling to those outside Christianity and energizing to those within the Christian faith. In this free, seven-lecture course, Professor Michael Ward—a leading scholar of C.S. Lewis—will explore Lewis’s: argument for objective moral value in response to the rise of modern subjectivism; bittersweet path to conversion and the role of enjoyment in the Christian life; advice regarding the proper way to pray and read the Bible; teachings concerning the purpose of pain and how to confront suffering and loss; insights about the nature of heaven and hell. This course examines these fundamental topics not only through his classic works—including Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Abolition of Man—but also through Lewis’s personal experiences with doubt, conversion, suffering, grief, and joy. Through this course, students will discover Lewis’s core lessons regarding the truth and goodness of the Christian faith and how to apply those lessons to one’s life.  Join us today in discovering C.S. Lewis’s enduring lessons about the meaning and practice of Christianity. Sign up at ⁠http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/ Check out At Home with Phil Robertson, nearly 800 episodes of Phil's unfiltered wisdom, humor, and biblical truth, available for free for the first time! Get it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere you listen to podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/at-home-with-phil-robertson/id1835224621 Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. Chapters: 00:00 — Straight from the duck blind to the podcast table 05:18 — Why studying C.S. Lewis is different from studying Scripture 10:02 — What a Christian “apologist” actually is (and isn’t) 15:44 — How C.S. Lewis moved from atheism to belief 21:31 — Objective vs. subjective morality explained 28:47 — Auschwitz, evil, and why some truths are self-evident 35:12 — What happens when “might makes right” 41:26 — Can morality exist without God? 48:39 — Why C.S. Lewis still matters today — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? Well, welcome back to the Unashamed podcast. This is our Hillsdale episode on Fridays that we have finished David. We're now complete experts on the story of David. Has everybody felt accomplished now that we've... I feel like it's one of those things where the more you know about something, the more you realize you don't know anything about it, that's what I'm right now. I learned so much, but I'm like, wow, there's so much more I could discover. Well, I know, and I think Al would maybe agree with me on this, I'm a lot more confident in David than C.S. Lewis. Yeah, we're in this. This is new territory. We're not, we're unsure of ourselves, but we have full trust in Zach and John Lute because you guys are C.S. Lewis officiados. Y'all are more philosophers. Me and Al are more just kind of don't, you know, take the, take the, uh, take the, take the, uh, take the, hard things and make it simpler. Don't take the simple things and make it harder.

Exactly. So we're the opposite of you. Well, you're sitting in Jace's chair. You got the hunting gear on some of it. Did you go hunting today? Is that what this is? Yes, we did. Me and John Luke. They came here straight from the blind. Straight from the blind. Straight from the blind. Which was very unashamed like. I'm super impressed with both these young men, which I asked John Luke, how often does Jace come in with all of his face paint still on? Every once in a while. Every once in a while. And dad used to do it quite. Yeah. Yeah. Did he? Yeah. He did it. I was going to leave it on to pay homage to that, but I, uh, I cleaned my face. Well, I don't think Phil ever, ever washed his face here in ducks was in. Well, that's true.

He could have. He just kept, he just kept that. Because he never bathed either, but that's another story. I was thinking. Christian, you look too nice to leave that on. I'm glad you did. I was looking at the old videos. We got to feel. I found some old, like, old videos from like when we first started doing all this, and he's sitting in his chair pontificating. And I mean, the shirt, it's a, it's a white shirt, but it looks like they dipped it in your collar. coffee John Luke and hung it out to dry. It looks just like the whole thing was like stained. You had like a hole, like a rip in it.

Oh, it's like holes in it. And that was his outfit because he had that and some khaki pants. And he always wore the Sunnooks. Yeah, and the Sunnook shoes were the only thing he wore. And everything there was just dirty always. And even if it was clean because it's not like they didn't wash it. Yeah. But it never looked clean.

What was with the Sanukes? It was his uniform. I don't know. That's his uniform. They were comfortable. He had these huge. He had these huge. huge bunions on the side. I don't know if you ever saw them. They're quite grotesque. Now, he claims

that they were a blessing because when he was young, he could go up a muddy bank, you know, without, without, with his feet, like he was climbing like, you know, a monkey going up the bank because of those knobs because they would hold into the mud. So he claimed when he was young, it was a benefit. When I was a kid, I thought it was like another toe. I thought he had like an extra big toe, like a six-toe. Well, he got it from my girlfriend. grandmother, Granny, do you remember a granny?

Uh-huh. So Granny had them, too. She had the bunions? She had the bunions, so it passed on. I'm glad it didn't go to me because they were very unattracted. Yeah.

They can fix it, but, what's interesting is this bunyens actually comes up in our talk because we talk about John Bunyan. We do. We're going to get into bunions here. And we're in C.S. Lewis today.

But we did, me and Joe, we did a good duck hunting this morning, me, John Luke, Jacob, and John Reed. We shot two teal.

Oh, the next year. Goose. Yeah, it was the old brother-in-law duck hunt. Yeah. And John Reed, to be fair, is a seasoned hunter. Is that not true? That is true.

I mean, he's done it his whole life. He'll tell you he's done it as a whole life. Exactly. I mean, he won't tell you that, but I can say that for you. That'll tell you. When you got that episode of the New Duck Dynasty where they're, in the first season, where they're coming out to do that, like to learn how to hunt or whatever.

And he shows up, you could tell he was like, he was proud of it. He came. with a full shot out. We were on his land and his blind today. So he did the whole son of today. Oh, yeah. He was rare for him today. It was awesome.

Yeah. I'm coming in town in a few weeks to do a little duck hunting. Yeah. A little film and that's what Zach asked Jace on the podcast, the last day or two. I'm very much running together podcast here about hunting when he came down. And Jace, he, I don't know. he, what would you say,

Zach? He went with it, but he didn't seem real happy about it. I don't know. He was just, I feel like it's like part of, like the thing. He asked,

okay, long as you don't shoot over my head. I mean, you're going to get the speech. And I'm like, I've never shot over your head. No, like two weeks ago,

I texted Jay and I said, I texted him and said, hey, is any chance I can come duck hunting with you all this weekend. And all he texts me back was, Jace will tell me who he wants to bring. I was like,

is that a yes? No. All you could have said was, let me ask Jace. But it had to be, Jace will tell me who he wants. I've got a few backup plans. Bear's coming with me. He's been working the Jacob angle.

So whatever Jacob's going, I think he's going to take Bear for a couple days. That's the move. Because Jacob's going every day and he's killing them. Yeah, I might end up going with Jacob instead. But in the meantime, we are in the, we have got, I really have enjoyed. this. I want to give a little bit of, you know, maybe like a little, what's the, like a note,

a note here that this is different than anything we've ever done. We've, we've mainly focused on, only on the scriptures. We've got in every, not just in the Hillsdale episodes, but even Unashamed as a whole, we go through the Bible. So they were very comfortable kind of in the Bible, in the stories of the Bible. We did the story of Genesis. We did Exodus. We did the story of David, this is different for us because now we've moved in to probably one of the most influential. I think Dr. Arns said this in his first opening episode that C.S. Lewis was perhaps the most influential Christian apologist in our lifetime or in the last hundred years. I forgot the framework that he said. But I might have to agree with that. I don't know about you guys.

Have you had interaction with his work before you took this course? For me, for sure. I've read every, I've read. I've read. every one of his books, including the Noria books, including the sci-fi books. So, like, I've gotten... All 30 or something or whatever. Is it 30-something?

Is that how many of it is, total? Is it more than that? Yeah, it's probably about 30. Yeah. You've read all 30 of his books? Yeah. Well, they're not super long.

I mean, these are kind of, like... Look at that. I've only read the Great Divorce. It was really good. Which is one of my favorites. It's really good. It's really good. Maybe my favorite.

Yeah, his... I'm just not a... I like, to consider myself a deep thinker, but I'm not philosophical. He kind of turns it up, and part of it just, when you start talking about moral objective and which is what we're going to get into, some of that language just kind of flies right over my head. Well, you're sitting in the right chair for that because Jay's makes fun of Zach all the time. But I do want to add to what you said, Zat, because, you know, like even on the regular,

unashamed. We've only done books of the Bible. We kind of did an overview of the Old Testament way back in the early days of the podcast. But I do think it's important because a lot of people say, and dad used to say this, in fairness, he would say, you don't need any other books. We've got the Bible. Why do we need another book? But people have ideas. And of course, dad said that and then wrote several books. So, you know, there you go. And sold a lot of them. So it is important that we still as as houses of the Holy Spirit have inspirational thoughts that come from him. I mean, every sermon I've ever preached, it wasn't coming from the Holy Spirit. It wasn't any good. And I think it's the same for books. And so I think that through time, people write things,

CS Lewis, obviously, and this is one of the things that was said in the opening by Dr. Arne, when you guys, and we want you to watch it with us, by the way, at Hillsdale. And when you see the opening one, you can sign up to take the course with us for free at unashamed for hillsdale.com. And that first lesson, Dr. Arna, is talking about him. And I love it because he said the thing you know that a person was a generational blessing is because he's selling more books now than when he was alive. And so that shows you that his work carries home. You don't do that.

Like we're all, we're in the book business. We've all sold a ton of books as a family. But when they sell after you're gone, that means you said something. something worth, you know, passing on to the next generation. So I do think it's important because a lot of people say, well, why do I need to read anything else? I was going to read the Bible. But other people have great ideas that can point you back to the Bible.

So in CS Lewis obviously does that in a unique way. I just have not read a lot of his material either. I've read some of his works, but I've obviously known so much about his influence and what he isn't. And he's still speaking in our generation because, you know, he was doing this back during between the World War. So, I mean, dad's era, you know, so it does make a difference. But I've been challenged, but as in any challenge, it's been a good challenge.

But it's not my natural thing either. Chris and I are together on my head. I call Zach. I was like, well, I don't get it. I'm having a hard time to understand what he was talking. Well, I loved it. I mean, Dr. Michael Ward is the professor. He gets the course, and he did such a great job.

I mean, well, I'm not through the entire course yet. So I've taken the first three episodes. We'll do one and two today, and then we'll move into the third one after that for the next episode. But, you know, for me, just a little bit about my story, because I think it will set this up well of why this is important. So when Dr. Arndt says he is one of the greatest Christian apologist in history, you hear that word, apologist, and it was just funny because I had this conversation the other night with some folks at our house for dinner. And me and Jill were the only two believers in the room, but everybody was, you know, I would say it was kind of an intellectual crowd. One of the gentleman wrote for the economist. Another one was actually a clerk for Judge Tom.

Well, one of the Supreme Court just, I can't remember which one. And it was a really interesting conversation that we were having. And I was talking about Lewis's work and another guy. And I was talking about Christian apologetics. And they all kind of laughed. They said, what a funny word, right? Apologists. Like, what are you apologizing for?

And when you hear this word, apologist, which is what C.S. Lewis was, it's not an apology. He wasn't apologizing for Christianity or the claims of Christianity. What that means is it comes from a Greek word called Apologia, which means to defend. And so when we say that someone is a Christian apologist, what we mean is that they are someone who gives a defense for the claims of the Christian faith. And so if you read any of C.S. Lewis's work, what you're going to find in there, there's a lot of just a lot of the objections. or maybe the questions you've had over the years. I've had a ton of them. How do I know the Bible's true?

You know, what about these other world religions? How do we know that they're not true? And how do, you know, these are questions that will pop up. And there are intellectual answers to those questions. The answer is not just, will, close your eyes and cross your fingers and jump off the building and just have faith and hope that somebody catches you within. That's not the answer. There are actually well-thought-out answers to the most important questions of

life. And so C.S. Lewis spent the bulk of his career in asking and answering those questions. And so I've read most of what he's written. John Luke, I tried to get into the like the space stuff and that I had a hard time. So I haven't read everything that he's written. Some of this stuff is a little, little over my head. So to be honestly, on the on the on more of the science fiction. The sci-fi stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but how he can break down biblical, and we kind of get into this more in lecture three, talking about how he ended up viewing the Bible more as a drama, which is kind of what his friends encouraged him to do. But the way he can take the Bible and create a narrative in a fantasy land and make it biblical and have biblical principles and the different algarees, is that the right word? Allegories. He's very allegorical. He's very allegorical.

see here I am getting outside of my my language my language comfort zone keep digging he has he has a lot of cool allegories um but just the way that he can articulate the Bible in a way that causes people maybe that one that wouldn't not read the Bible but can view it more as a drama and just the way he can do storytelling it actually is incredible and the the the Narnia movies the line which in the wardrobe is just one of the most, yeah, fascinating ways of storytelling the Bible. Yeah, all of his children's stuff is so good. I found it interesting, and I know we'll start the next podcast with his actual conversion, because that's what follows the lesson before we get to this one.

But I did find it interesting because I didn't know the personal story of CSLU until I started taking this course, so I have no idea. I didn't know where he grew up in the church, and he sort of grew up with the Christian, the first part of his, what is telling me, he's nine years old. He gets sent off to boarding school and basically has a terrible experience there, which shaped him. And then he winds up leaving what he believed at like 13 years old. And so then until later in life, which we'll pick up on the next episode, he's not even a Christian. And so I didn't know that.

I didn't know he was an atheist that went to a atheist that went to a believer. And so it really was fascinated to me. And Zach, I've told you this before. I've always thought, because I agree with everything you said in the setup of that there are so many people out there of varying degrees of intellect and academics, but the gospel is for everyone. And so it's not like you say it's a simple story, and it is a simple story, but it doesn't mean it's just for simple people. It means it's for everybody. And so whether you're a simple person or you're a super intelligent academic, you still have the same problems. And so what I love about men like C.S. Lewis and I think about Lee Strobel and our modern era and a lot of other guys is these were atheists that sort of either set out to disprove God and especially Christianity or just didn't believe in it and thought it was nonsense.

But they're so smart once they got to breaking it down and looking at it, it actually proved itself to them the other way, which is exactly what happened to C.S. Louis. So I do think that background makes him unique. And, but I agree that we have to be able to reason always because we have to reach everybody. Or else what will happen is they'll say, oh, yeah, well, that's just myth for the masses. And that doesn't matter for everybody else. And that's just not true. Yeah, one way to read Lewis, too, I think that's helpful. And it has been for me over the years, even at our church, we have this phrase that we use.

I don't know if it came from Lewis, but it's certainly adjacent to that world. We call it generous orthodoxy, meaning that, like, we're going to hold to the tend to the core tenets of the Christian faith, right? But we're going to be generous in that. So there's going to be a diversity of belief, even inside our own body, of different theological distinctives. And so Lewis talked a whole lot about,

like, maybe like the Great Hall of Christianity. It wasn't like so, it wasn't very sectarian, if you know what I mean. It wasn't, like, anchored in, like, a particular tradition. And so I loved when Dr. Arne was talking about when they built a chapel on campus. And I think he said the professor Ward had come in and asked well, this is a little Catholic, it's a little Anglicans, a little Baptist, like, what are you guys in here? What was the organizing principle around how you built this chapel? Because I see a lot of influences here.

And Dr. Arndt said the organizing principle of the chapel on campus was mere Christianity, which is C.S. Lewis is one of his probably most famous books. And so when you're getting into this study, when you read Lewis, I think it's good to read him. And he really writes very broad for the Christian church, just very broad strokes of just big, massive questions of how do I know this to be true. And for Lewis, you know, he's coming out of an atheistic background or maybe an agnostic background. I never went there, but I certainly went through a season of serious doubt. And I remember I was a young man probably in my early 20s at White's Ferry Road, the church that, Al, you're an elder at. And I remember having serious doubts about the claims of Christianity.

And for me, what that looked like was, I was like, you guys ever heard of Pascal or Pascal's Wager? Blaise, Pascal was like, you guys ever heard of him? He had a thing called Pascal's Wager, which was, if it's even possible that God exists, that you should put your faith at him because it's like playing pot odds. You have eternal reward or eternal punishment to, you know, at the, So even if it's possible, the smart thing to do was just to go all in. And so that was kind of the basis of my faith. But if I'm being honest with you, I was very intellectually dissatisfied.

And a lot of the same questions that Lewis had and the questions that he was thinking about, I had those same questions. And it wasn't until I began to dive in and ask those questions in the honest way and really search for an answer that I find really true intellectual fulfillment in my faith. So I could identify with his story quite a bit. I don't know about you guys if you've ever kind of went through those doubts yourself. Yeah. I mean, I have three thoughts just on CS Lewis in general.

And the first I kind of piggyback off what you said is one of the reasons I think he was so influential is because he wrote from that perspective of like mere Christianity of like what's like, or I think that's probably his most popular, call it apology book, mere Christianity, writing from that baseline. And it was so influential to me. Whenever I started writing the summer camp, Campioka, that was one of the first things I did was right out like, what is our core beliefs?

And all the counselors have to sign, like, this is our core belief state before they come in. And I modeled a lot of it and took the mere Christian approach of like, what is just the baseline? Like, what is everyone, do you say you're a father of Jesus? Like, what do we believe?

and that has the counselors have to read that and sign it and I tell them you don't have to teach or even believe everything in this or you don't have to believe everything in this you just can't teach anything out of it and outside of this which has allowed us to have counselors from Church of Christ Baptist Methodist Catholic like the whole more Keshmanic Church is the whole range and spectrum of followers of Jesus because we like stick to like what is the things that bind us. What are the things that the Holy Spirit is working in us that unite us and not focusing on the other

you know non-salvation essential questions? Right. You know. And kind of going into that too, I think that whenever I was having a lot of doubt, just like Youzak and I was reading a lot of

CS Lewis, that kind of like getting back to the foundation, was so influential of me of like, okay, what's just like the basic Christianity? Like, let's get out of the dogma. Let's get out of all the arguments, all the stuff and just say like, what is this, how does Jesus impact my life? Like, what is the story saying in its most basic form? What is God trying to teach right now? And how does this affect me? You know, which is literally, which led me to him, even through doubts from other, scientific perspectives or other like challenges to my faith, I was able to just go back to say like, okay, this is a meaningful story. What is God doing in this world? And what does this mean on a basic

level? Yeah. And this has been, I mean, this whole, this first argument that he kind of lands on in lesson two, which was the anchor for Lewis. By the way, you can sign up and take this course with us for free at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. We're in the CS Lewis course. And yeah, so the way that Dr. Ward kind of anchors this at the beginning, which I thought was really brilliant. He first shows, okay, it makes this point of what was it that led C.S. Lewis away from his belief in Christ? Because he went to the school, you mentioned now, where the headmaster was apparently horrible, who ended up dying, I think, in a insane. Insane. That was crazy. Well, he got sent there like a couple weeks after his mom had passed away, so that was crazy. And nine years old. Yeah, nine years old. Yeah. And then

somehow that experience made him want to read the Bible and pray more, but then, yeah, that headmaster was just a lunatic and ended up dying and then... Was it very abusive to the students and all this. It was crazy. Yeah, so it was a bad, it was a bad situation. By that wasn't what you would think that would be the thing that led him away from Christ in his faith, but it wasn't. Do you guys remember the thing that really made him question?

It was about prayer, wouldn't it? No, it was like other... Oh, yeah. He started to read the pagan religions and the Greek mythologies. And they were saying there was no truth in any of those, only Christianity, which it was nothing you could gain out of anything other than Christianity. Which is so interesting that what led him away from Christianity was not the claims of Christianity. It was the claims of Christians about other world religions and other mythologies.

Well, we know that's not true, but this is true. And, man, I can identify with that too, because if you, grew up in like more fundamentalist Christianity than like what I heard growing up. I'm not saying that this was said by everybody. I'm just telling you this is what I interpreted it. When I was in my own doubt, I would have doubts. Like how do we know that this is true? And the answer would always be, well, that's where faith comes in.

And faith was almost put against like rational faculties and reason. And so it was like, well, that's the thing. Faith is that it is the leap of faith. the blind faith where you don't know where you're going. So it's almost like you're on top of that building and it's on fire. And faith is you just got to jump. You just got to leap. And you're looking down there and you're like, but there's nobody there to catch me. And they're like, no, no, someone will show up. So the greater the leap, the leap into the unknown, than the greater display of faith. And so Lewis, I think, is pushing back against this for sure. And a lot of other

Christian apologist that I've read like Francis Schaefer. And that's not faith. To jump off of a building when you have no reason to believe someone's going to catch you is not faith. That's stupidity. Faith would be more trusting in these true claims. And it is based in something that's knowable, that God has revealed himself in such a way that it's knowable.

So I think what Lewis was hitting on is he's hearing and reading these other religions and they're like, discount that, but accept this. Well, why? Well, that's faith. That's just faith. And I think that that really led him to think, well, if this isn't true, well, how do I know this is true? And actually, actually looking at those other groups, I think, helped him get there. The three major points that are used in the lesson are moral value as objective. Moral value is universally realized as objective. And that's where he got into the stuff with the Chinese philosophers and the Hindus and, you know, every other group, every other people. And then moral value is to be practiced in. participated in. That was kind of the three points that, what's our guy's name? I wanted to say Dr. Jackson, but Dr. Ward? Dr. Ward pointed out, but I want to give our audience just a little

thing that helped me because I listened to the lecture first, and I was, that's when Chris and I were talking, I was like, whoa. But then I also picked up this little abolition of man, which was the book that this lecture is sort of based on, and I thought that that really helped me a lot. Yeah, When you said that earlier, I was thinking about that and about the lectures. Because I said CSOS really focuses on the basics and the fundamentals, but it is complex. And I actually think that the video series is so good because it condenses all the information, which gives it to you in 30 minutes, which is really good. But it also makes it more dense.

Very dense. Like very dense. Where it was when you read the book, in a longer form, it actually makes it a little more simpler because he has more time to explain. Right. You know. Well, it's like a movie, right? Because you watch a movie about something and, you know, it's good because it puts it in that

block for you. But when you read the book, you get all the details. Yeah. So he, he, uh, I thought the thing that spoke to me the most in this whole argument about morality being objective rather than, rather than subjective, is, is he framed it. And this makes perfect sense because he, he's a professor. I mean, he's a teacher. And he frames it in a classroom.

Because you remember he has this children's book that he reads. And then that becomes kind of the straw man of the whole story as it goes out to what these people are saying about subjective morality. And I just ran my own mind out. I thought, C.S. Lewis, his mind would be blown. If the things he described here 80 years ago, if he could see today, what has happened on college campuses and in classrooms. He was so right about what happens when subjective morality becomes your state. standard. You have no standard. And now we've lost complete campuses, complete universities, and in some cases, we could lose a complete nation because of subjective morality. And so I just

thought he was so right about where this leads to, you know, and he talked about it through the case. You know, if this runs itself out, I just thought about you could go back in time because he's right there at the beginning of where these thoughts are beginning to really plumb themselves out, you know. Yeah, he was right at the beginning of the My Truth. your truth. Yeah. But he was saying all that without really saying that, but he was implying that. And yeah, that's kind of where we're at now.

Now and our generation, even more than mine. Yeah, it's a probably be helpful tool to just think about the word objective versus the word subjective. And the difference between the two is an objective truth. What we mean and what Lewis meant when he said objective morality or objective truth is it's morality or truth. is it's morality or truth that is binding independent of your perception of it or independent of what you want it to be.

And then subject. Uninfluenced by emotion and prejudice. It is what it is. It's a reality that's outside yourself. And then for it to be subjected, that just means it's subject to your own preference or opinion or desire or interpretation. So one way I've heard this described that's super helpful for me was a

heard of an apologist and I can't remember who said this but it was a lecture I went to and I remember the name of the

apologist but I do remember their analogy he had a jar full of Starburst do you guys like Starbursts by the way

are y'all like starburst people say I'm not a candy person do you have like it's not my go to favorite but I like it yeah

do you have like a favorite flavor of Starburst because it has like different they have different colors I like the orange one yeah do you think that's the best best flavor? What do you agree?

I don't know the purple one. Is there a purple? I don't think they don't have a purple one. So they don't like Sarvah. I don't like Sarvah. I basically quick candy when sweet tarts went out. I mean, I still like a good starburst, but my, like if you said, Zach, what's the, what's the best flavor? I would say that's the red flavor for me.

I think it's cherry. But if you ask, you know, somebody else, they may say, it's the lemonade flavor, which is yellow. And so he had that jar and he said, okay, what's the best flavor? and then everybody screams out like different flavors and like, okay, what's, well, okay, for me, yeah, my truth in that moment, it's a subjective truth, the best flavor is red, but that's dependent on my own personal preference or taste or flavor. This is me. Now, you, so we have different truths about the best flavor in that jar, but then the next question, he says, well, how many starburst are in this jar? Now, if I feel like there's 120 and you feel like there's 72,

and there's actually 81, it doesn't matter what we perceive or what we want or what we think. What matters is, whatever that number is, it's objectively true. It's true independent of our perception of it. I don't care what it looks like to you or what you want it to be or what you feel like it is. No, no, it is true independent of that. So when we talk about morality in this way, what Lewis is saying is that there is a moral value, there's moral values and duties that are objectively true and they are binding on all people and it doesn't really matter what your religion is or who you are, you know these things to be true. And so that's one of the reasons why he would go into other cultures and other worldviews and he would see this binding

objective morality throughout all of them. And also, Zach, so even if I said, I hate Starburst, and in fact, I don't even think that is Starburst, there's still an objective number. in that jar. Still an objective. Whether I don't like it or I love it. My problem with Starbo's is that the flavors are too subjective. Is it cherry? Is it apple?

What kind of, yeah. See, that's why John Lowe's a big thing. He's taking a one. But wherever you land on that, there's a, there is a number in there that's in the, regardless of what you think about that, John Luke. Here's an interesting thought. I just watched the movie Nurenberg.

Have y'all seen this on, I forgot. I'm not, but I want to watch it. Yes. No, I haven't. It's very, very good. And there's a scene in the movie where the second in command of all of the Nazi command because Hitler's killed himself. He's dead. So they're going after the second in command guy. But they're also at the same facility. They were holding a guy named Rudolph Haas, who was the commandeer of Auschwitz, which, ow, we went there. We were there. I mean, when you're there, what did that fit? like palpable, palpable evil. It's just evil. You feel it like it's a, it's a pall. I've never felt anything like it. One other time when I was in Haiti, and they took us by this place that practiced voodoo,

and there were voodoo priests in there, and I felt that same feels. It's the only other time, two times in my life, where I felt palpable, like something was, you know, on me, evil. That's what it felt like at outwards. It was very intense. It was very intense and very disturbing.

to be honest. Dad broke down. He just couldn't even. Phil was weeping. I mean, that's like, you know, we got to solve, we were probably some of the only two people to get, they got to see Phil cry quite a bit, but it was the last few years of his life,

but that was one of them when we filmed that scene in Auschwitz. And it was super powerful because we were, you're just sitting there thinking, man, they murdered two million human beings in this facility. And not only did they murder these human beings, they engineered this concentration camp to be a, factory of death to how can we burn and expose we we have to dispose of these bodies that we can't we can't dispose of the bodies faster that we can kill them and so they bring in literally an engineer

and rudolph hoss basically builds out like just like you would any manufacturing facility he's looking at this how do we manufacture death and how do we stream i mean it's just blatant evil so in the movie that i watched about the nuremberg trials um which is when they held all the nazis accountable and they had this international court. It's the story of how that happened. There's a psychiatrist that is analyzing these characters that were high up in the Nazi regime. And the way that the story unfolds is you can kind of see that he's kind of compromised because he sees their humanity as dark as they are.

And you can see he's kind of morally compromised. Well, maybe they just didn't know. But then when they started showing those images, and they were real images, by the way, found footage of the Holocaust. And you see this on screen, there's just like no defense left. You know what I mean? This is just objectively evil. It doesn't matter who you are. When you look at the stories and you look at the photographs and you look at the found footage, you look at the film strips of what happened in these camps, nobody says, man, that is, that's good. Everybody is just objectively horrified by that moral evil. That's what he's talking about when he says that

moral value is universally held to be objective. And what happens, Zach, if you don't have, if you don't see it that way, the way you just described it, which is the only way to see it, and by the way, there are millions of people that don't, they just ignore it and say it didn't happen. The only thing you can do is deny that it's the truth. And there's a lot of people out there say all that's the Holocaust is all made up, you know, something. Well, you have to because if you look at it. Would that be objective and subjective? There's no doubt.

There's no doubt that's a good example. In fact, Zach, he used a line in the lecture about might being right that you use when you wrote Torchbearer, which was that exact line. What happens with subjective morality is this is why he can't have it, because if it gets loose in governments, and he mentions Nazis, but he also talked about communism, but he even then talked about democracy. Remember when he talked about Great Britain? Because he was seeing that begin to happen there. When you have subjective morality, then whoever is the strongest, will they implement that morality on everybody else? And so people always suffer under this idea.

Can y'all explain a little bit? Sorry, John Luke. So because Lewis talks about when there's a moral law, and he kind of goes into this idea of if there was a moral law, if there's objective, objective morality, there has to be a moral law giver. There has to be something outside of that that puts that inside of us. And then he kind of talks about the straight line and the crooked line and how you only know that it's a crooked line because you know what a straight line is.

And then he talks about the Tao or the Tao, me and John Luke thought he was pronouncing it incorrectly. Okay, I'm not just making a call. I've just always in my head said Tao. I always did too. He was calling it the Tao. He says it's the Tao. But Zach, can you or Al or John Lee,

whoever wants to kind of try to articulate that idea of the moral law, kind of in Lewis's point was that implies that there has to be a moral law giver for us to claim that there is a moral law and kind of his analogy with the crooked line and straight line, which I think kind of ties into the objective truth and, or objective reasoning and subjective reasoning. The first thing that pops in my mind is there's another gentleman from Great Britain whose name was G.K. Chesterton, who said, he wrote an essay or asked the question. He said something in the fact, in order to know what's wrong with the world, you must first know what's right with it.

And so the way this would be prescribed that maybe a modern apologetic would be, like, William Lane Craig is written on this. He calls it the moral argument for God's existence, and this is, I mean, he didn't come up with this. I mean, Lewis was obviously writing about it as well. But the way that he sets up the argument, I think it's very helpful. He basically says, objective moral values and duties cannot exist unless God exists. So there's your premise. Second premise is objective moral values and duties do exist. Conclusion, therefore, God must exist.

So that's a very logical sequence of how the world works, right? That's a logical argument. The question is, is it true? Is it true that objective moral values and duties can't exist? unless God exists. And so the exercise would be this. Can you think of a scenario where you remove God from the equation, and then you're going to have a binding objective value, moral or moral value on somebody. So the Holocaust is a great example. The Transatlantic Slave Operation is a great example. And the question is, in the absence of God, who determines what's right or wrong?

Just take God out of the equation. Well, then who determines what is right or wrong. And the only answer that you can come up with is you determine it for yourself. And it is, in fact, subjective. And so one of the, the argument that Lewis is making is that nobody can actually live like that's true. Even the people who say that, they don't actually live like it's true. A perfect example of that would be the Commodeer of Alshuette's, Rudolph Haas, who clearly did not believe in objective moral values and duties because he had committed one of the worst crimes in human history. He literally engineered the death of two million people. But you know whenever they held him on, he was on trial in the Nuremberg trials, this wasn't in the movie,

but I read this in a book one time. And they sentenced him to death for his crimes. Before he died, they gave him an opportunity to share any last regrets. And you know what he said? This thing blows my mind. This man killed two million people. And he lived like right across the fence. from where this was happening at with his family. And when they put him to death, he said, my one regret is that I wish I had spent more time with my children. So even someone who had given themselves over to such a depravity, he still held on to some kind of objective good that time spent with family, time spent with kids, that's a morally good thing. So the idea is that the reason why objective moral values and duties can't exist without God is that in the

absence of God, and Dr. what's his name again? Ward. And Dr. Ward makes this point, is in the absence of God, man becomes the determiner of all things. But it's not just any man who gets to determine that. It's the one who's got the biggest stick. And as he said, might then becomes right. And so that's been the thrust of human history.

You take God out of the equation, whether it's communism, Nazism, fascism, democracy, doesn't really matter. You take God out of the equation. You let man become the determiner of all things. And then guess what happens? Tyranny, anarchy, death, I mean, and murder. That's the end result. Mike becomes right.

Well, and I even like the word he kept using was self-evident about morality. And as soon as he said it, my mind immediately went to the Declaration of Independence. Yeah, mine did too. Yeah, see, there you go. We're tracking on. And I wrote down the first couple of lines. we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, which is, there's one of your tenants, you know, right off the bat, but that they are endowed by their creator. There's another one with certain unalienable rights, like life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And then he goes on with the rest of the same idea. So I love it's the same idea. That's how we founded a country. Our founders understood exactly what he was saying. And there has to be objectivity, because without it, you get just what Zach was describing. And we've seen many, and And still see, to this day, I mean, you go to the continent of Africa right now,

and there is subjective morality happening, and people are being murdered and slaughtered as a result of that. And so I do think he framed the whole argument in such a good way by putting it in education. And there were a couple of lines I just had to read, you know, they were worthy of me writing down. And this was from abolition of men, of man. And one of them, when he said, he's talking about what's produced by this emotional propaganda. and he says whether you get a trousered ape or an urban blockhead. And I just thought to myself, I thought, when I turn on my television, I see a group of people that are gathered together, that have some beef. It's usually people that look like a trousered ape or an urban blockhead.

So I was like, here he is again, being a private. I'm going to add that to my arsenal. That's good. And then he says this, listen to this line. He says, the task of the modern education. is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. I mean, that is really good. So if you want to take the course with us, it's so much better.

If you get the lecture and then come in here, I was talking about. Sign up, take the course for free at unashamed for Hillsdale.com. Go ahead. Yeah, a couple of things, too, just going back to your question, Christian, is that I think what you have to remember is he talks about something that's self-evident. In philosophy, sometimes they use a term called a priori knowledge or in apologetics, they might use a term called properly basic belief. And what that means is there are some things that we hold to be true that need no justification

for why we hold them to be true. So if you ask me, hey, where can I get a bag of ice from? I'm going to tell you, go down to the gas station two blocks over and they sell ice there. And you may ask me, well, how do you know that to be true? And then I would say, well, because I was just down there today and I saw an ice thing and I looked inside of it and they had about 50 bags left. So I justified my belief by telling you why I believe it to be true. But there's some things that we don't have to justify why we believe them to be true. They just are true because they're self-evident. And so what happens is is objective morality and closely associated with that is objective truth. Those are things that you can hold to be true. And you you do not have to justify why you hold that belief. And one of the reasons, one of the primary reasons why is because when you say something like objective reality or objective truth doesn't exist or there are no objective truths, when you make a statement like that, you are actually presenting an objective truth,

that there are no objective truth. So what you're actually doing is you're, it's like, I've heard of it say like this, you're sawing off the branch that you're sitting on. By stating the very premise of what you're saying, you're actually undercutting what you're saying. You can't say, like my friend Matt one time, he said, he said, Zach, here's your problem. You don't understand that there are no guarantees.

And I said, can you guarantee that? And he said, absolutely. And then I was like, well, that's one, right? It's an exercise of a self-defeating argument. And so that's one of the things that Lewis would never, at the very beginning of the of the lecture, Dr. Arne said that C.S. Lewis said, I can't believe a thing unless it makes sense. And so everything that he was putting forth was what actually makes sense. And if it's nonsensical, then we just reject it. So to say that objective morality or objective truth doesn't exist,

you end up establishing the very thing that you say doesn't exist. That's nonsensical, so we throw it out. And that's the premise of his whole entire. methodology. Yeah, well, and that's the problem too, is because you can't reason with someone who says that this objective moral morality is not objective morality or it's not objective. So it's like you can reason with people that maybe they have different subjective reasonings for things, but it's like, if it's, if the sun is shining and then someone's like, that's the moon, you're like, no, that's the sun. And then if they want to argue about whether it's the sun in the minute. It's like, well, you can't actually reason with that person because it's objectively true no matter what you say. But he asked this question. Me and John Luke were talking about this because one thing that I love about these courses is that there's these little quizzes after. I don't know if y'all take the quizzes, but I think it's fun. I can't get my certificate unless I take the quiz. Well, I think the questions are fun because it actually, you know, helps you to pay more attention. And I feel like it kind of creates a good baseline for what you learn. But,

He asked, he, question 10 on the lecture two quiz, I got it correct, but it was. Spoiler warning. Spoiler warning. Wait a minute. Is this cheating? No, no, they've already listened. No, no, they've already listened. Well, okay, well, I'm going to ask the question, Zach, because I don't know if you took the quiz.

C.S. Lewis concludes the abolition of man by stating that the reality of objective, moral value necessarily denies any role for subjectivity. And the correct answer was false. I put false, but I have no idea. he was saying or asking, which is why I love this, because it's making me reach, because I don't, and you had a 50-50 time. Well, it's the Starburst. It's a Starburst analogy.

Help me with that one. And for those listening, who would more than likely maybe err on the side of me and Al, I'd be confused by the wording of this question. Well, the starburst analogy is that is the emergence or the reality of objective truth, how many starbursts are in the jar? 81, objectively true. What's your favorite? What's the best flavor? Red. That's subjectively true. So one doesn't negate the other. There are truths that are subjective that are dependent on our perception of it when you ask me about what is the best on something. That's a preference that I hold.

And so that doesn't eradicated with the establishment of objective truth. It doesn't kill subjectivity. All it does is it, but it does anchor reality in something that's noble and real that transcends us. and morality is one of those things that we don't determine. So he's not saying that subjective truths don't exist. He's just saying that when it comes to morality, that is objectively true. And that's the anchor, which, by the way, I love how, you know, the number one, probably the number one objection to people putting their faith in Christ, what would you think it is? The number one objection that people would have for believing in the God of the Bible.

Probably that there were things they couldn't do then. In other words, they would have to be bound to some life they didn't want, I guess. I would say suffering or guy with suffering. Suffering. Yeah. I mean, all the studies showed that the number one objection to belief in God, particularly the God of the Bible, is what's called the problem of evil. Why does suffering exist?

Which, by the way, that was CS Lewis's, which would do that on the next podcast. That was his thing. Remember, that was the one. one thing, he said, how could they're seeing so much cruel? And it's what, but by what he did was brilliantly, like, if you think about that, he had to back right back up into the moral argument. That's right. Because when he says, I don't believe in God because of the Holocaust, and that was so

evil. It was objectively evil. And I can't believe in God that would allow that to happen. Well, then you ask the question, well, who says it's objectively evil? Who said that? Well, it just is. But why? Well, because society says it's right.

Well, their society, that was actually their argument during the Nürmberg trials. Their whole argument was that the Nazis, they were like, wait, you can't hold us accountable for something that our society deemed as good. We were just following orders. We were just living out our societal worldview. And the end of the argument on the other side of the Allied soldiers or the Allied armies were, well, there's a law above your law to which all men are beholden. That's the law that C.S. Lewis is talking about.

So you end up, no, it's objectively evil. And pick your poison. Maybe you're a Holocaust denier. What about the transatlantic slave operation? Was that objectively evil or was that just evil because we've evolved in our society to believe it's evil? No, it was objectively evil. Well, you said, well, even that.

Okay, what about like rape and murder and abuse of children? Just go as dark as you want to go. Is there anything that you would say, I don't care who you are, I don't care where you're from, I don't care what time period you've lived in. that, my friend, is objectively evil. And if you say that, then what you are essentially saying is there is someone else outside of us who said it's evil. And then you want to ask, well, who is that guy? I want to make a quick point here, and we're about to run out of time.

Because you said that earlier of the atheist argument or being there is no higher power. So that's why morality is objective. But I just heard this the other day. So I want to make the case for the atheist. materialistic argument, and again, just because I heard this last week. And what they were saying was that morality is, the concept of morality is objective. And to be clear, this is not me saying this. I'm staying the other side's argument here.

The concept of morality is objective because it's developed through evolution in order to keep us as humans alive. so the specifics of morality are subjective, but only in the sense of what the majority of people on earth over a given period of time believe, and that can change over a long period of time. So truth, moral truth isn't subjective to any one individual person,

but humanity as a whole at any given time. Yeah, they're trying to, tie it. They're trying to tie morality to a Darwinian perspective of survival of the fittest and that that groups of people who actually hold

said objective moral standards, values, duties, however you want to say it, they tend to propagate their DNA better and so then they're going to pass that on and then that will become a trait in a gene somewhere. But the problem with that is twofold one,

it may account for what's called altrual, which is we do we do the right thing but it doesn't call it doesn't account for what we would call high altruism and an example of that would be what what evolutionary benefit would someone get from helping an old lady across the street like that doesn't increase one's one's survival mechanism whatsoever it doesn't propagate my DNA i have no vested interest there are a lot of moral goods that we would hold to that don't actually, that you can't find any way that they would enhance my ability to survive. And I can think of a bunch of them that actually set you back that would actually be damaging

to you for things you, to give your life for someone else, you know, things like that. So, yeah, you're exactly right. Yeah, that's the first problem with it. And then the second problem is you even have behaviors that they would never say are, are morally wrong that clearly don't propagate DNA, such. as even the sexual liberation movement has not propagated DNA. A lot of times it's the death the sex in the end and the death of DNA. And so I think that's the, what we're actually saying, though, is morality transcends that. And even those who would hold that position that you just said,

here's where it all falls apart, is if if they were telling you that and then you punched them in the face, they would cry moral foul. And they would say that's wrong. It's like the gentleman I read one time he wrote a paper for his professor that objective morality doesn't exist. And he turns his paper in and the professor gives him an F. It was an incredible paper, but he gives him an F. And guess what the guy said when the student when he saw the F? You know what he said? Not fair.

The guy said, what are you talking about? Not fair. This is fair, my friend. I'm just going about what your paper said. There's no objective, good or bad. So no one can actually live in that space. And I think that's probably, to me, the greatest testimony. And it's where C.S. Lewis in the next episode will get to this.

It's where he actually lands on Christianity is when he starts to assess the truths of Christianity in the same framework that he developed this apologetic on human morality, which I found to be one of the greatest. I hadn't even, I'd never really seen this in his work before. So it was really profound for me to read, to hear that lecture. Yeah, I think we're out of time, but we're going to be taking this every Friday. We're in the CS Lewis series right now. Super excited about this. I know this is different for what we've been doing, but I want to encourage you to press in. I know sometimes our brains are hurting in some of this discussion, but let's lean in and we'll do it together.

Next week we'll get on the conversion and the new life with CS Lewis. Join us every Friday for Unashamed Academy powered by Hillsdale College. Make sure to go to Unashamed for Hillsdale.com and sign up. It's no calls to you. That's Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. And don't miss an episode of the Unashamed podcast by subscribing on YouTube. And be sure to click the little bell and choose all notifications to watch every episode.