Show Notes:
- I stated that Matthew Perry was being treated for depression according to a report by NPR. Here is a link to the story: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/15/1219761972/what-is-ketamine-friends-matthew-perry
Partial, Edited Transcript
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another edition of SOUL SCIENCE. We’re continuing our conversation, today, about the conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She’s the famous New Atheist. Back in November, she penned an essay in the journal that she writes for, Unherd, in which she announced her conversion to Christianity. And as you can see on the screen here, she mentions two reasons for her conversion. The first being that, you know, many of the things that she values come from Western civilization. And Western civilization now is under attack. And since Western civilization came from Judeo-Christian values, she thinks, quite logically, that we need to, if we have any hope to preserve Western civilization, we need to likewise preserve Christianity. Makes a lot of sense to me. Sounds very reasonable.
Review of the Previous Show
This is a little bit of a review from our previous episodes. And then the other reason that she gave for her conversion is an experience of a personal crisis. An experience of just a sense of hopelessness. And she started seeing therapy—um, getting therapy—for this. And, as I said, I’ve discussed these things in the previous episodes. But, today, we’re going to focus on the personal crisis.
The previous episode was mostly about the role of Christianity in the creation of Western civilization. And I’m going to review that right now. So let’s do that. Let’s do the recap. And then we’ll get into Ayaan’s personal “dark night” of the soul. So, with regard to the creation of Western civilization, and the essential role that Christianity played in that… And that, as Ayaan points out in her essay, it was her reading of Dominion, the book by Tom Holland… I’ve got it right here… It was the reading of this book that persuaded her of the importance of Christianity to Western civilization. But the question that’s left unanswered by the historians … and the historians also include Thomas Woods who is the author of this book right here, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization… a book I also highly recommend.
But… HOW did it [Christianity] go about doing that [building Western civilization]? That was the question that I asked in the previous episode. And the answer I gave was… Science really doesn’t have an answer how the Catholic Church built Western civilization… How Christianity accomplished this… And the New Atheists don’t have an answer. They think that Christianity is good for nothing. They think that “Christianity poisons everything.” So they don’t even acknowledge the role that Christianity played in the formation of Western civilization.
What Does the Bible Say?
So I turned to the Bible. And, as I explained in the last episode, that’s where my first book came from. I tried to answer the HOW question. HOW did Christianity manage to succeed in building something as great and wonderful as Western civilization? And I got my answer from the Bible. And I thought that Ayaan’s essay and the announcement of her conversion in November was just perfect as we were building up to the Christmas season. Because the Bible message of the Christmas season and Advent is
just absolutely perfect for answering the question: “How did Christianity build Western civilization?
And I’m just going to give you a brief recap. I got into more detail in the previous episode. If you’re
interested, you can go back, but, otherwise, you can just take this little “Readers” Digest” version right here. So it’s up on the screen here. Let me explain all the red and the green and so forth. So I’ve got a few Bible passages up here. And if they’re in red or green, those are the Christmas colors. And so what I’m saying is you can find those readings that are in red and green… Those are the readings that you will find in the lectionary for … [See the podcast for more!]
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In