The Life Challenges Podcast

What’s Trending? Newborn Vitamin K Shots, AI Brain Implants, and Religious Illiteracy

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Join us as we weigh the month’s biggest bioethics and culture headlines, from AI hype to IVF lab practices, and ask what responsible limits look like when money and power are involved. We connect technology, medicine, and education to a grounded moral framework that values human life and refuses to outsource wisdom.

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The ministry of Christian Life Resources promotes the sanctity of life and reaches hearts with the Gospel. We invite you to learn more about the work we're doing: https://christianliferesources.com/

Cold Open On IVF “Non-Viable”

On today's episode. And the point of the article is that this term non viable has no real common definition. Yes, it has a definition, but the way it's being applied, there are no standards for it. And mentioned that within the same lab, two different technicians can look at the same embryo and come to completely different conclusions. And that's bad enough, but tie this to the fact that there is a, I mean, the fertility industry, it's an industry. You know, it's there there's lots and lots of money involved here. And it's being taken from people who are very desperate to have children. Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for life challenges. Hi, and

June Current Events Kickoff

welcome back. I'm Krista Potriz, and I'm here today with Pastor Bob Fleischman and Pastor Jeff Samelson. And today we're going to talk about our June current events. And

Bioengineering Humans To Beat AI

we are going to start with one that we have on bioengineering life for protection from AI. I'll admit when I was reading this article, I was just thinking, man, this sounds like a movie. Um just with like some of the stuff that uh that it was talking about. But um yeah, uh I mean, Bob, can you tell us a little bit about what this article was about? Well, the the premise of the article, which I'm not ready to accept, but the premise of the article was that AI is becoming so intelligent that we're going to have to bioengineer human life so that it always stays ahead of AI. Now, uh first of all, I just I personally don't believe AI is that intelligent. And I can tell you all sorts of stories to illustrate that point. But the one thing that is interesting that the article didn't mention, but I think it's an ongoing issue, and that is there's a competitiveness in technology that I think is going to be ultimately its demise. The competitiveness, first of all, is dealt with globally. Like right now, it's America pitted against China or American pitted against Russia. And so if we want to put in all sorts of ethical guardrails to protect us, they don't have those ethical guardrails. So what do you do when the other side is doing that? Well, what what caught me with this article was it actually said the people who created AI become the competitive force. So will that mean that if we biologically re-engineer human beings, that AI is going to feel the need to do some additional engineering on its end to stay ahead of the human beings? I mean, it that's why it sounded like a movie. It kind of has that goofy premise that becomes uh an endless cycle. Yeah, one of the interesting things that the the author anticipated the the seeming contradiction between let's advance humanity through bioengineering, and at the same time, many of these are the same people who are in AI say, you know, how does that work that these are the same people pushing for the same things? And the comment was made that the unifying theme was the rejection of limitations. And I thought that was really apt. Uh that, yeah, yeah, that's, you know, they they don't want to put any limits on what technology can can do, and at the same time, they don't want there to be any limits on what humanity uh can can achieve. In the fall, our uh national conference is going to be in um Saginaw, Michigan, and I've been asked to present on AI, how AI affects our work here at Christian Life Resources. I'm going to talk about the idea that it's gotten to be so sophisticated,

AI Errors And The Need For Guardrails

kind of take over things. And the advantage of of give of being old, if there is an advantage, is we talk this way about the internet, we talk this way about computers. A lot of these scare words were around with computers in particular, that pretty soon the computers are going to replace all of humanity and that kind of stuff. And I just over over the the long weekend, you know, we had a holiday weekend here recently, and over that long weekend I was doing some research and I was using AI. I caught it and I caught it in three errors where I literally had to call it out and said, There is no way that this is true. And it came back and said, Oh, you're right. You know, and so it's uh and then I I I went after it and I just said, Well, you're relied on to be reliable. And then it comes back and says, Well, you've got to remember you can't rely on it. And I it's just so, but what I'll do is when I do that that workshop and that conference, whether I do it remotely or or in person, you know, I preserved the the exchange and I'll share some of that. But it's pretty weird. You know, it's pretty weird. Yeah, I I think the the sci-fi catastrophe, you know, with with AI that many people envision is is the one where AI becomes this knows everything, is capable of everything, all seeing, all doing, or whatever thing, and it's just limitless in its capabilities. And if we're thinking of humans, yeah, we get um characters also in in thrillers, horror movies, and things like that, the super duper intelligent, the mad scientist and things like that who knows everything, and that's really scary. But I think if we actually look at actual human experience, the people that are most dangerous are the people who have a fair amount of intelligence, but that at the same time have lots of blank spots in what they know. They think they know a lot more than they actually do. And when they don't have a strong moral framework underpinning that, that's when they're really dangerous because they figure, well, I had a good idea, this is what I'm gonna do. That's in a way why I get more worried about AI as it is now, precisely because it is not the super intelligent being that many imagine it it becoming, just exactly what you were talking about. Somebody relies on it or it's programmed to make some decision about something, and it's saying, okay, yeah, this is a good decision as far as I can tell, when it doesn't actually have the right information. And of course, it's a machine, it can't have morals. It can't have that. And that's the important thing to remember is that it's going to do that. That in a way, to me, is is scary, and that's why we've got to be more careful, not because of necessarily the limitless possibilities, but because of what we already do actually know about how imperfect things function and malfunction. I think because it's got that mad scientist it's going to be ultimately the wisest thing in the world, that kind of stuff, because it has all of those PR features for promoting it, we imagine these dystopian views of it taking over the world and stuff. But it's like all the other technology. When you use the internet, when you use the toaster, you have to be smarter than it. So you have to use a toaster and say, wow, this is really a good toaster. It really browns the toast on both sides. I wonder what happens if I stick my fork in there and see if it would heat up the edge of the fork, you know. And well, you gotta be smarter than the toaster, you know, and you gotta be smarter than AI. And the problem that I encountered this weekend is there was a paper that came out that was talking about the problem that you have with forgetting things after trauma or drama. You know, like if you're the commencement speaker, uh there's been studies of 121 people. There was a study out that said that actually for like two, three hours afterwards, they had trouble remembering other things that they would normally remember. And so I thought it was an interesting thing because I'm I'm very interested in neurological issues right now. And so I decided to read it and I did a research, and uh, and so I asked AI, I said, uh, are there any other studies like this out there? It says, Well, I don't even need to look at that study, it's been retracted. I said, The study was written three days ago. What do you mean it was retracted? And I said, Oh, my mistake. Well, you know, and but I mean that's the thing. You have to you have to still always be a step ahead. And I don't think you're gonna bioengineer that. No, note to listeners, just to be very careful here. Um, do not stick a fork into a toaster. Yeah, right. This was this was not advice. You know, uh another article that we want to talk about here too is um called Challenging Mortality with Immorality. And

Immortality Dreams And Longevity Money

I mean, Bob, can you tell us a little bit about what this article was about? Well, they had picked up a conversation between the the head of Russia and the head of China. And they were both talking about immortality. And of course, because of the nature of those two governments, it's a it's a frightening thought for Americans that these two people would even be interested in wanting to live forever. But it raises the issue, which is quite honestly, it's well documented that there's an awful lot of money uh towards longevity research. I've been following a little bit of this Peter Thiel. One of his things was that he likes blood transfusions from young people, because that was going to make them younger. And those of us old enough to remember Jack Vorkian remembers that one of his prescription medicine stories in his book, Prescription Medicine, was his experimenting in pathology, that he would go down to the morgue and he would get permission to extract blood from a body of somebody who had just died. And he tells the story in there of a of a teenager who did it, and then he would have a medical student volunteer, and they'd have it, and all of a sudden the medical student's speech was slurring and all that kind of stuff. And then they found out, well, the person that they took the blood from was killed from a trunk driving accident. It's like slapstick sometimes when you read some of this stuff. But that's the kind of thing that goes on. But don't sell any of this short. There is like a really strong, very highly funded industry and longevity and creating immortality. And it's rooted in that thing you've heard me grouse about in the past, and that is trying to create heaven on earth. If you if you begin to give up on the idea that there's an eternal life in heaven, then everyone here is trying to take the great blessings we have and let's hold on to them longer. And that's what they were talking about. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to presume that I know the the faith of the head of Russia and the head of China, but I would assume, you know, probably not Christian. And and so to me, like it's not really surprising, right, that they would want to seemingly live as long as possible and rule as much as they can. Um, I mean, that seems like a very human type of ambition um too. It I guess it's just maybe kind of scares us, like if that could be possible more type of thing. If you've got a such a well-developed ego that you think that you are the one to rule a vast nation and to make all these decisions and that you know best about everything, it's only natural that you're gonna think, well, I'm the only one who can do this, so I've got to stick around as long as possible in order to keep these things happening, which is why it's not surprising that people who are bigwigs in business and science and or politics or whatever also have the same idea as like I I've got to continue on, you know, because I'm I'm special. And you know, there's a certain amount of a healthy kind of sense of, well, yeah, I am a special creation of God. It it's good that I'm alive. It's good that you're alive. It's only when it gets a little kind of pathological there that you start thinking, I'm better than everybody else, and so therefore I need all this stuff that gets a little scarier. Bob and I talk about science fiction here a lot. There's uh I haven't read these books since I was in my teens or twenties, but uh Robert Heinlein was a classic science fiction author. He had a whole series that imagined this future history. And one of the really interesting uh things, I think it was just one book, but there were certain people they identified who did not did not age. Everyone was really curious about what it was, some kind of genetic thing or whatever. Um, but the rest of the world was trying to figure out how they could basically manufacture a way to live forever. And they were really jealous of these people who had it naturally. And it was just a really interesting how, you know, he was writing probably 50 or more years ago, how he just kind of imagined this way that when you've left behind faith, when you've left behind any sense of, well, we've got to achieve these other things because we've achieved so much already, then you start thinking, well, how do we conquer death? As Christians, we know we're we're not gonna conquer death. Our goal is going to be to have the best life while we are still living, which means staying healthy more than it means living forever. Well, and one of my favorite movies is Age of Adeline, which is a Blake Lively film. But what's cute, what's curious about that, I was thinking of that when Jeff was describing, uh, because the movie portrays her as always carrying herself wise beyond her years. She's just very composed, very and and it's and then when of course you meet her daughter, who looks like it's her grandmother, you know, but it's her daughter, and it's a it's an interesting, it's a fun movie to to watch, but it is, you know, fantasy. And and it'll be interesting because I've often wondered with longevity studies. The building still falls on you. I don't I don't care how youthful your organs are, it's probably going to just kind of put an end to it. But there is the the big thing. Now, one one little add some insight on uh Z, I believe, is atheist, um, the head of uh China. Uh Vl Vladimir Putin uh should be Rush Russian Orthodox, I believe. Putately. Right. So so but I don't I don't know. And I but it does raise the question of when Christians who should know better get lost in these issues. So it does happen.

Vitamin K Shots And Vaccine Skepticism

Well, um another article we have here uh is the newborn vitamin K shots, uh, and that they are I I mean, I guess some people don't want them anymore. Um Bob, can you tell us a little bit about what's going on with that? Aaron Ross Powell Well, just a lot of this has transpired since the whole vaccine, COVID, and all that kind of discussion. It's most unfortunate. I tried to do a deeper dive to find out why an infant needs a boost of vitamin K in the first place. Did something go wrong in human biological maturing over time or something like that? And of course, all those sources are evolutionary, but even they can't find a reason why, other than the fact that uh the chance of mortality, the chance of a newborn dying, uh rooted in this vitamin K difference, and then giving the the vitamin K shot to the newborn made a not not just a difference, but a profound difference. It was roughly speaking, and the statistics are are are even wider than this, if you did not get the vaccination, you have about a one in a hundred chance of dying of infant mortality. With the vaccination, it is one in ten thousand plus chance. I mean, it's dramatically increased. But the gist of the article is that it's gotten kind of swept up with the anti-vaccination type movement, which uh got me down a rabbit hole on the way we differ nowadays. I've been reading a lot about that and you know how uh sometimes we we differ in such a way to to win points from our our team, right very caustically. And but what the gist of those articles was that we've lost the ability to debate. I'm a firm believer that I think we should debate every vaccine. We should always talk about it, but you don't throw them all out. I mean, there are some that clearly work, and we're beginning to suffer consequences. I I was really glad you shared this this article because I I'm this is not something I had ever thought about. You know, I was I was trying to remember when our two children were born, did the doctors uh even mention, oh yeah, they're they're now getting the vitamin K shots. It's like, I'm really glad they did. You read the descriptions of what happens to these children when when they don't have them and they need them, it's like, well, it's really glad you did. But this is another one of those things of society being a victim of its own success. It's become so common, so this problem that it fights against has become incredibly uncommon, so people aren't aware of what a problem it really is. Uh, you know, it's the same thing with the measles vaccine and so many other things. People just think, oh, well, I've never seen anybody with that problem, so it must not be anything we need to worry about. Well, the reason you've never seen that is because this has been done. I was thinking, you know, when we're reading this about um if you you go to buy salt at the uh at the grocery store, uh just you know, regular table salt to fill your shakers or to you know use in cooking or something like that. I'd say the vast majority of people never even give any thought to what it means that it says it's iodized. But I don't know what it was, like 70, 80 years ago, something like that. They added iodine to salt because lots of people, particularly children, didn't have enough iodine in their diet. And they figured this was one way we can do it. Nobody knows it notices a difference in taste or flavor or anything like that. But because salt goes into everything, you put a little of the iodine in that and boom, your problem's taken care of. But um, it's the kind of thing people just kind of take it for granted and uh don't really appreciate it. And um, taking things for granted is just it's just never wise. Yeah, well, you know, it did remind me, you know, during COVID, they had some signs because I live out in the country here, and so some of these farms have signs during COVID that said, well, trust God. You know, and I and of course, you know, their their their premise was I don't need a shot, I don't need mass, I don't need to just I'm gonna trust God. Do I stop looking both ways before crossing the street? Do I close my eyes while I'm driving because I trust God? Trusting God is not wrong, but you you begin to cross the line where you tempt God, you test God, you try God. And when when you have such a phenomenal positive effect from vitamin K shots, and then you begin to to swallow hook, line, and seeker that you don't do any of this stuff, then then then to be consistent, you should close your eyes when you cross the street. I d I d I just can't understand, which was always our difficulty when when people because when we wrote our vaccine statement, you know, I I I couldn't get over how many people thought that I was pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine. And it was amazing because I would get two different people on two different sides of the issue read the same thing and both arrive at at the conclusion that that they objected to, which I think was perfect because we are for and against. You know, in other words, you you do test it, but once something is shown to work, why why in the world do you want to mess with it? People gotta realize that you can't just be gullible. If it looks simple to just we all must reject vaccines, there might be something wrong with that idea. It's just not working, especially now in the Congo. Well, Ebola right now, they still aren't quite sure about its treatment. But you gotta watch stuff like that. I mean, we live we live in a very highly developed country. Um, the whole world isn't like America. And you get into those problems from other countries, you've got big problems. Yeah. No, I and I think um just you know what you were saying too, Jeff, like how we don't want to take things for granted. Yeah, I mean, I don't, but I think there's a lot that I do. Just I mean, like you were saying, I mean, we live in a developed country, and I was thinking too, oh, yeah, I mean, I guess all my kids had these vitamin K shots, and I didn't really know about it either. You know, like it I there's just there's so much that I think we we do take for granted because we don't we're not forced to like think about it or we're not forced to face these situations too. Maybe what we need is some kind of nationwide education program that that's more just about these are all the really bad things that used to happen that don't happen anymore because of these things we're taking for granted. So think about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Brain Implants And Transhumanist Drift

Well, um uh another one that we have here too is the AI brain implants. According to this article, Bob, that I think you shared, um, it has passed a certain trial stage in China. Um can you tell us a little bit more about these brain implants? Aaron Powell Well, well, first of all, trial stages are, you know, you've got And you're still a long way off. Yeah, it's a it's a long ways off, but but it's already begun to pass the first human trial stage. And we've been following this, you know, um uh I believe it's Elon Musk who's got Neuralink. And there's others out there where it raises a lot of interesting concerns about what if you've got a paralysis. And these links can actually activate your limbs and so forth, uh, despite the paralysis. And the example in the story was uh dealing with the ability to move a cursor on a screen and so forth. And of course, it opens up all these other concerns about can it read your mind, read your thoughts? Can you does it translate what you got in your head into words and does it invade privacy and so forth? At a board meeting not too long ago, I said, you know, I've been tracking transhumanist progress, which is the idea of merging human consciousness with technology. I've been tracking that. I've been tracking AI, obviously, and tracking just uh longevity work, longevity studies. And I said, those of you who who grew up on Star Trek Next Generation, now some of some of us grew up on the original Star Trek, and um, but those who grew up on Star Trek Next Generation will remember the Android data that they had on there. And I said, I I believe data, that that Android concept will see that probably, maybe even in my lifetime yet. It's progressing that quickly. And these neurological implants are a big step in that direction because right now the robotics are incredibly limber. And when they when they develop the technology and the technology that allows it to read brain waves and brain signals is fascinating. I mean, it's really fascinating to study how that all works. When you see how that's done, I mean on a curative level, or or at least uh well, we'll call it curative for the time being. But if you've got somebody who's paralyzed in an accident, this actually could be hope. If you've had somebody who who's now incommunicative because of a massive stroke, but they still have full thoughts and everything, this is a this is a chance to still communicate. And uh I think it I think that part of it is great, but you know where this is going. That's the problem I have. And this is in China. Again, that raises that question if we put the guardrails on and they don't, what what comes next? How do you fight it? Yeah. Yeah, a lot of ethical implications there for with that for sure. Um,

IVF Embryos And The “Non-Viable” Label

well, uh another article that we have here is one that you um found for us, Jeff, on non-viable, how one world deceives parents and kills thousands of children. Tell us about it. Yeah, this was uh again, something I hadn't really thought about before, but you know, once I read it, it's like, well, yeah, I guess with what we know about the whole fertility industry, this this makes the this sounds right. Not right in a moral sense, right in terms of it accurate. Yeah, it's basically talking about how so many uh parents when they go through IVF and they uh have the uh the embryos that have been made in the the petri dish or whatever there in the in the lab, that they typically go through a process of uh evaluation and the lab will then say, okay, well, out of the six embryos that we have here, two of them are viable and four are non-viable. And the message that they are given is, well, the non-viable ones, those are just garbage, trash, just get rid of them because you know they'll they'll if you implanted them, they would never come to term, or if they did come to term, they would they wouldn't live well. And the point of the article is that this term nonviable has no real common definition. Yes, it has a definition, but the way it's being applied, there are no standards for it. And you mentioned that within the same lab, two different technicians can look at the same embryo and come to completely different conclusions. And that's bad enough, but it tie this to the fact that there is a, I mean, the fertility industry, it's an industry. You know, it's there, there's lots and lots of money involved here. And it's being taken from people who are very desperate to have children. And so there's just uh it's it's kind of heartbreaking, actually. Uh, not not just because of all the embryos who are children who are destroyed as a result of this, but also because of the parents who are being lied to essentially, saying, oh well, you know, those those aren't any good when actually there's no reason to believe that they aren't any good and could have just as much a chance of life as uh as any other. Aaron Powell I think the article too didn't it mention like one embryo that was deemed like non-viable is now a living, breathing, walking boy with nothing you know, seemingly wrong with him. Well, one of the uh things I really appreciated about the article was at the very end, it was basically saying if you are still gonna go through and are considering IVF, which it was mostly trying to advise people against, but it said, here's a set of, I think it was six questions or something like that to ask. And they were all about, you know, how do you define this? What do you do in this sense? If if I choose to get a second opinion, but you know, and just all basically pinning the people in the lab or the fertility clinic or whatever down to say, okay, I I'm asking you to commit now to an actual answer. I am I'm going into this with my eyes wide open, and I'm not going to let you just kind of fudge things and hope I don't ask questions. I thought I thought those were really practical and valuable. Aaron Ross Powell would they be honest with you, though. Well, and people have criticized me because of my relentless speaking against IVF of not appreciating the children that are born and everything. This article actually, I think the fact that we're talking about it demonstrates how much we love the children that are born, even from IVF, because the willingness to have an arbitrary description of non viability on an embryo and disposing it, only to find out that those some of those nonvia embryos are perfectly matured and are doing just fine tells you how much reverence we have for the life and how schnookered you really are by the industry. When Jeff was talking about uh the kinds of dollars, you know, they call the IVF the Wild West of reproductive technology today because it's really grossly unregulated. And I was thinking when you were talking about all the money and everything, uh, I was kind of having a deja vu moment here, thinking uh early in my ministry, this was the kind of discussion that would go on about funeral homes. Now, I'm a big fan of funeral homes. I think funerals are valuable, play a valuable role in having us face the reality of death and so forth. The criticism that was leveled against funeral homes was you meet people at their the heart is hit, you know, where their heart is tugging, their their longings have been frustrated, all that kind of stuff. And if you could take that same terminology and apply it to the people who come to IVF clinics. Their heart is longing, they want something and they can't have it, and it looks unreachable. And then they come in, and then of course what they do is you take non viability. You say, well, that's it's a nonviable pregnancy. Well, nonvable pregnancy is a lot more consistently diagnosed than a nonviable embryo, because a non viable pregnancy would be like uh a growing embryo in the middle of a fallopian tube. It just is not going to survive. There is it doesn't happen, you know. And uh whereas we don't have that kind of track record. These are these are kind of like you know, pre-prescribed non viability, based on a few like they talk about like the the kind of cell division that was expected to take place, take place and so forth. But uh anybody who follows biology knows that sometimes everyone's biology is not identical. The tracks are not always the same. Again, uh it's it's our profound love for children that news like this only reinforces our objection to what's really at work in IVF.

Ivy League Religious Illiteracy

Aaron Ross Powell We're gonna we're gonna do it. We're gonna hit one more article. Okay. Um we're we're gonna talk about the Ivy League students um are suffering from religious illiteracy. Jeff tell us about it. This is uh just an interesting kind of a first-person piece by uh uh associate professor of politics at Princeton University, and he's talking uh you know, he starts off with a story about how one of his colleagues was uh hosting a lecture on religion and free speech, and it just didn't seem to be landing with the students there. And eventually he realized why. Because the speaker had been talking about the Ten Commandments and the students had no idea what they were. I'll read a paragraph here just because I think it it encapsulates things well. It's increasingly common on college campuses to encounter students who are unfamiliar with the most basic features of Christianity, such as the difference between the Old and New Testaments or between Catholics and Protestants. They seldom recognize the allusions to the Bible that appear in Shakespeare's work or in Lincoln's second inaugural address, or in Obama's first for that matter. These students are bright, conscientious, and curious, but they lack religious literacy, and their ignorance of religious ideas means that they struggle to understand a wide array of Western art, literature, and philosophy. And this is a development that even non-believers like myself should find troubling. And as believers, we find it particularly troubling, but I just think the point he's making is a very good one, that even if you have no interest in being a Christian, to be properly educated in our society and civilization, you ought to have a certain base level knowledge of Christianity, of of uh things in the Bible, uh, in order to understand so much of what brought us to where we are today with history and literature and and and so much other stuff. I mean, try to understand the history of the Middle Ages with no knowledge of Christianity. I mean, it's just just not gonna work, or get to the Reformation area and you're just gonna go wild. But I think if you stop and think about you this, you realize, well, oh yeah, that that that's right, because sometimes you'll come across some really just outlandish statements about, well, this is what you Christians are all about, or this is the real meaning of this thing in history. And you're like, what, what, where are you getting that? You have to realize it's because they just don't know what they don't know. They're they're applying a filter to things that is the wrong filter when they try to understand it. As Jeff was talking, I was thinking of the Christmas story because we have talked about that in other podcasts here too, about just how for us as Christians, we just kind of feel like, okay, even non-Christians they know the Christmas story. They would know the basics of it, Mary, Joseph, Jesus. But um, so many people really, really don't know. Yeah. I've on December 18th, 1985, it was an episode, a Christmas episode of St. Elsewhere, and it was filmed at our Wells Church in North Hollywood, California. Uh, they had rented out the church because it's a gothic design church. And but when it when it aired, this is what it did. Uh the preacher went up to the pulpit and said, Parente, you is born this day in the city, David, who is Christ the Lord. And I I remember talking to the pastor and saying, I can't I can't believe you told me it was this church. How did you let this get out? And everything goes, I didn't. He goes, I was in the sacristy with the director. We saw saw it on the monitor. We told him, I told him this is not the way it is. So it took him two hours to re-refilm it. He said, and then when it got to the editing booth, they couldn't remember which was the right version. It's important to remember that because a lot of us think that the world's going to help us in our Christian mission, you know, and but there is incredible, incredible illiteracy, religious illiteracy in the world. And the biggest mistake you can make is presume it's not there. And it really is there. And like Jeff said, it's like talking about the the Middle Ages and not not understanding the strong Christian foundations of a lot, what was going on. Yeah. I I r really love reading historical fiction, and most of the stuff that I like is from people who really do their research. I mean, it it comes alive. But even with some of the best stuff, I I find myself thinking, I'm not sure that this guy really gets Christian ac Christianity. And it I'd say it's even worse on TV shows and movies that are that are set in the past. I remember there was, I think it was called Vikings. This was 10 years ago, maybe 15. And there was a character that, you know, the Vikings had captured this young monk from a British abbey or something like that and taken them back with them. And and just the things that were coming out of this monk's mouth, it's just like, yeah, that wouldn't happen. And well, one particular one, they were showing a baptism, and this would be like 900 AD and in, you know, or maybe maybe earlier, 800, something like that. But still, the church was well established in in England at this time. And uh they're showing somebody getting baptized, and instead of using the church, they go out to the river. Yeah. And it's like, okay, you know, that that would fit within certain contemporary contexts, but not back then. And it's just the kind of thing that's like you you see that and say, okay, if these people who supposedly did research for this are getting it wrong, then well, it's it's a much bigger problem all around. But again, I'm a history guy, so um, you know, these things hit me a lot harder. Other people aren't going to be as bothered by them. But the basic point of the article is that you need to have this kind of certain base level understanding of things to truly be educated. Yeah, I think that stands regardless of how you feel about history. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank

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