Okay, welcome back, we're gonna continue in the discussion of biblical principles that disciple nations. We've been talking about the first principle and in some ways the most profound principle, this biblical idea that all human life has dignity and worth, because were created by God in His image, with God given rights to life and to liberty, as well as obviously dignity and worth. But we're going to focus now on the counterfeits, the ideas that are counter to this principle that are shaping at a societal level. Our society, we talked about how all nations are ruled by policies and laws and curriculum and all of these institutional kind of aspects of any given nation, and how those arise from worldviews. They arise from these principles and these worldviews. So for Christians, we need to be focused on what are those principles that ought to be shaping society, that lead to human flourishing, and to God's purposes for the society? And what are the counterfeits, what are the demonic counterfeits that really are demonic? I mean, Satan's behind them, and he's using them to destroy, literally to destroy societies, to destroy nations. Guys, there's a couple that I want us to look at. And I want to draw your attention at this point to a to an article that I just read in the Atlantic. In fact, it's the current issue of the Atlantic, the January-February 2023 issue of The Atlantic magazine, and the articles title is the people cheering for humanity's end, and a disparate group of thinkers say that we should welcome our demise. And the author of the article is a gentleman named Adam Kirsch, and he is the author of a book called, quote The Revolt Against Humanity; Imagining a Future Without Us. I want to talk, I gave you guys the assignment of reading the article, because I thought it did such a terrific job of kind of describing the what I would call the view amongst kind of really powerful elites now in the West. That's counter to the biblical view of human life that we were discussing in our last episode. So yeah, I will say that both views that he's going to describe, and we'll talk about this in a second, both views are rooted in the worldview of atheism, of secularism. I mean, it's a worldview where there is no God. It's a strictly materialistic worldview, there is no spiritual reality, all there is is matter in motion. And when you start from that beginning point in your worldview, then you answer the question, what does it mean to be a human being, you end up with a Darwinian idea, that to be a human being is to be a material being, a machine, a material machine. It's to have no purpose, in the sense that we're evolved through a random process that didn't have us in mind, it just worked its way out randomly. We're no different than animals, because we're just simply highly evolved animals, we're certainly not made by God, we're not made in His image. We don't have purpose, we don't have dignity, we don't have worth, at least we don't have those things inherently, meaning inherent to ourselves in the way that God gives us those things in the biblical view. So they're both rooted in this post-Christian secular materialistic view. But what the article does is it shows kind of how that basic idea has manifest itself in one of a couple of directions in our contemporary time, and I want to describe that, and then I want to get your thoughts on that. How did how did you react to the article and these two views? Let's start with the first one. He describes the first view as the phrase that he gives for it. It's kind of a long phrase, but it's Anthropocene anti-humanism. And he describes this view basically, the author of this article describes this view as a view that's inspired by a revulsion. I'm quoting from the article, a revulsion at humanity's destruction of the natural environment. This word Anthro-, excuse me, Anthropocene. I looked it up. I was like, what does that word mean? It's a word that describes a historical period that we're in right now, where human beings are kind of playing a central role in history and in world events, that mankind plays a central role. The people that hold this view want us to move beyond that, they want to move to a new period of history, where man is dethroned, and man doesn't play a central role in human affairs, in fact, would be better for man not to exist. What drives this view is this kind of concern for the destruction of the natural environment. So people that are very concerned about the environment about global warming, the tendency is to view human beings as a blight on the world on the environment. So it welcomes kind of an end to humanity. Here's a couple of other quotes from the article, it believes first of all, it believes that our self-destruction is now inevitable. In other words, we've so destroyed the environment through global warming that it's just a matter of time now until we won't be able to live here any longer, we'll be killed off because of the excess greenhouse gases or whatever it may be. But the view goes on and says, that's an end that we should welcome. This is the article, we should welcome that end. Because in this view, the environment itself becomes kind of godlike. It's the thing that people worship and if human beings are a blight on the environment, in a sense human beings are the cause of evil in the world in this worldview. So, for redemption to happen, redemption in this view would be the preservation of the environment, you have to destroy human beings. So, guys, before we get to the second view, just your thoughts on this view? It? For me when I read this, I thought yep, yep, I definitely hear that view. I think that view is is significant. You hear it, particularly amongst people that say, hey, it's selfish, for example, this whole kind of idea of procreation. That's a very selfish act, you shouldn't have kids because the kids that you have are just destroyers of the environment. So if you really want to do good for the world, don't have kids, and that's not an uncommon thought now. Okay, enough for me, what are, as you read through this Anthropocene anti humanism, what what were your thoughts or reactions to this view? That's now on tap and quite dominant in our culture?