Ep. 6: Dr. J. Budziszewski- Truth, Faith and Lunacy

What if the deepest moral truths are already written on the human heart? Natural law, faith and reason, and moral philosophy take center stage in this powerful conversation with Dr. J. Budziszewski on the Just Steward Podcast. Hosts Michael Frigon and Doug Connolly explore how natural law reveals universal moral truths through conscience, human design, natural consequences, and divine revelation.

Dr. Budziszewski explains the danger of self-deception, why society struggles with coherence in a post-logical culture, and how faith and reason together illuminate the path toward truth. From the meaning of marriage to the challenge of teaching truth in modern universities, this episode offers a profound guide for anyone seeking clarity about morality, culture, and the human condition.

#morals #faith #humanity 

At Taylor Frigon Capital Management, we help people build wealth by investing in companies that adhere to the virtues and values inherent in those principles, and that have extraordinary vision for achieving their business goals. 

Connect with us: https://www.taylorfrigon.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The following presentation by Taylor and Capital is intended for general information posting on the portion of the presentation to E of Post personalized investment device from Telefrag Capital or any of the entity options. Welcome once again to the Jet Stewart Podcast. I'm Doug Conley, and I'm here with Michael Frion. And uh our again, we're a podcast that's about uh preparing the next generation materially and physically, intellectually, spiritually most importantly, for all the challenges that uh that lie ahead since previous generations, ours included, haven't always done the best job. And we are here with our guest, Dr. Jay Bujashewski from the University of Texas at Austin, my alma mater. Doctor, did I get your name right? I'm sorry. Yes, Bujashewski, you've got it. We certainly uh I was first made aware of you about when I first moved here by my friend uh who's an author here. Uh she's written more books, but Layla Miller, she mentioned Dr. Bujeshevsky, and and uh and I um I was like, I never heard of him, but I I went to UT, and that's again shows how completely uninformed I am because you've got a great body of work. You've done awesome, awesome work there, and uh you just have you have a new book. We're gonna talk about that. We'll get to that in a moment. But for intros, uh Doctor, what would you like to say as uh as an intro for your for you? Or I can do it for you. Go ahead and do it for me. If I want to add anything, I can, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Well, uh you got your PhD from Yale, is that correct? That is right. In 1981, I've been at this, I've been at the at the post for a long time. And yes, and you've been at UT that all that time, right? All that time, that's right. That's right. There were two there were two jobs in my field that might have been appropriate that year, and I interviewed for both and I didn't get the other, so I came here.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

All right. And then uh you I count about 14, 15 or 16 books that you've written. And the most recent of which is Pandemic of Lunacy that on a that's in a publishing house published by a group that is run by another former guest of ours, Jeremy Beer, who's a mutual friend of ours, and also uh graduate of the University of Texas. And that's your most recent book. We're gonna talk about that today. You've got a website, The Underground Thomist. And I think one question I would I would like to ask to begin with before we get to the book is like a lot of people who are Catholic, I have a little bit of a complex relationship with my alma mater, the University of Texas, I'm very loyal to them. I root for them on Saturdays in the fall, but I've kind of gotten used to sort of winking, nodding, and shrugging at the campus insanity that goes on there and everything else. Yes. But if I take a step back, I have to admit, between the work you're doing, the Civitas Institute with Justin Dyer, who used to be a friend of uh a friend of mine I knew from the days in Austin, Mark Regneris is doing Rob Koons, I think, is another one. There actually is a lot of really solid work being done by people at the University of Texas. What's that like on the inside and what's in the water?

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Well, when I first years and years ago, after when I at the time that I was hired here at the University of Texas, I was really crazy. I talk about lunacies in my book, but I was I was really a lunatic myself. I didn't think that there was a real difference between good and evil. I didn't, I didn't believe in God. I all kinds of things like that. I didn't think that my my decisions were in my control, so that personal responsibility was an illusion. Now, when I came back to faith, or when God brought me back to faith, one of the things that hit me was I'm all alone here. There might have been some other Christians, but they were in hiding, right? They were in the closet. I discovered that there were other other Christians, and uh they weren't all in hiding, and that has been a life raft, that has been a lifesaver. People try to go it alone, and we're social beings. God made us social beings. You can't go it alone. So that has been actually a wonderful thing. The university can often be, even though it's in better shape than most public universities, can often be like a like a secular wasteland. But um but when you have uh when you have friends that you can talk about these things in a sane way and in a faithful way, that makes all the difference.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Another name I've I don't know if he's still teaching there, but Dr. Bonavac, I think, is there as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Yes, yes. I haven't talked to Dan for about a year, but I but I I I haven't heard that he's not here anymore.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

No, I I think he still is because actually I just ran into a seminarian who is who graduated from UT who I think said they had Dr. Bonavac, so I think he's still there.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

He's great. All those guys that you mentioned are my friends, they're all terrific.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

That's great to hear on the inside. Do you have any friends that are on the opposite, like close friends on the opposite end of the political aisle there?

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Close is a difficult is makes it difficult not because I repel them or or refuse to be friends with them, but because people on the other side often refuse to be friends with um with people who are socially conservative or with people of faith. They often get angry about these kinds of things, and uh they will cut you off. So I don't have any close friends, but I but I try to be try to be on friendly terms with my with colleagues and with others. Every now and then there'll be one but there will be a colleague who admits that he actually does believe in God or does believe that there's a real right and wrong or something like this. We'll have lunch together, but he's but he's one who's sort of in the closet and he wants to keep it quiet. So since I'm not really quiet, I can sometimes make even folks like that a little bit uncomfortable, although I try not to I try not to them either. Understood.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

I have one jumping off point I want to I want to start with something we could start large, but there was one insight in your book. I've I just got it 13 days ago, so I'm two-thirds of the way, three-quarters of the way through it. So I'm I'm gonna finish it. For someone with six kids, that's not bad. That's not bad at all. Yeah. But one thing struck out to me that I and uh again, we'll just get right into it. You talk about a ton of things, everything from transhumanism to uh sexuality to belief in God. But one very material, salient point that you made on page this might have been the most provocative thing you said and you qualify it even, but on page 84 regarding cohabitation.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

This this was great because you said that one of the things, reasons cohabitating is so awful for for women is because well, sit it in your own words, you know where I'm going with this. I think it's a great point. And as I've thought a lot about cohabitation, and I've it's an awful arrangement for all involved long term for a variety of reasons, but I've never heard this point made.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah, I don't remember which point I made about cohabitation that you're referring to. Oh, yeah. As men get more status, if they aren't in a committed marriage, if they don't they don't have that commitment to their wives, they may start uh they may start looking for women that it's that give them greater status, which are going to be younger women. You know, you hear of trophy wives and things like that. So here, you're getting older, the guy's getting older, and commonly when people when men get older, they're even sometimes considered more attractive. As women are getting older, they're considered less attractive. So they're at a at a terrific disadvantage in these relationships that are not marital. You can you it's it's cohabitation in many ways, since you don't have a commitment, it's like practicing for divorce. The relationships that began in cohabitation are uh are less stable. The people such people have less stable marriages. I'm not just saying that is some prejudice. This is what the research backs up. So it's especially hard on women. Now, you know, if you if you're married to the woman, you love her, she's your wife. Do you understand what marriage is all about? It's different. You're both getting old together. You look at her face, she looks at yours, you both have some wrinkles in them, but those wrinkles tell you about some memories together. And you know, men's wives are beautiful to them.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

One of the things that I've always thought about cohabitation is that it's I think that you see a fa you see a couple, you know, let's say they're not Goldie Hahn and Kurt Kurt Russell, and they actually break up after, you know, after uh eight years or something like that. And then people might be tempted to think, well, they broke up. See, it wasn't meant to be. A good thing they didn't get married. Well, I view I look at it the exact opposite. Marriage is a supernatural covenant, and it's designed to keep you there when nature would tell you to leave. Anything that is not bound by marriage, nature will take its course. The man accumulates more dating capital as a point as you pointed out, the woman less, and it's gonna break up. Probably what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yeah. I would like to put that just I'd like to tweak that just a little bit. I wouldn't say it's not in the it's not in our nature. I wouldn't say that nature militates against it. The fallenness of our nature militates against it. It's not the way we were designed, which is our nature, it's the fact that some things in our nature are broken, that uh that our appetites, our passions are not under the control of reason, and that in turn and our intellect in in in turn under the control of God. That's what causes the problem. And also, you know, a lot of people, even people who say, Oh, yeah, I I do want to get married, they don't really think clearly about what marriage is. They don't take their f their their oath seriously, for instance. How many people at the altar these days, when they say, till death to us part, really mean till death to us part? How many people what they say in sickness or in health? Well, what many people are thinking is as long as it is still cool for both of us. And so when when things get rough, maybe you're having a spot of trouble in your marriage, you're not getting along, you think that there's a back door open and I can escape. You have to close that back door, and then you have an incentive to work on your problems with each other, and you discover, you know what, they weren't the end of the world. And your marriage is stronger, and that's good. I I don't know any now, not every married couple will speak with you about these things. They're very personal, but among those I know who have spoken personally about them, I don't know anyone who has never had any difficulty in their marriage at all. You know, one one uh woman told me once that uh she and her husband had fallen out of love with each other, but fell in love with each other again. This is the thing. We think, oh, I'm not in love, I don't have that romantic feelings, I don't feel like I'm a teenager, so it's all over. You actually learn deeper and more multidimensional aspects of love if you stick with it, stick in there, hang in there. This is a commitment that you made.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

So, what what is your advice to, I guess, both young people and maybe parents who have people who are becoming you know young adults, maybe either not religious or or at least not Catholic, not Christian. Uh-huh. What do you tell them in terms of, you know, because we we kind of argue from our belief system and we argue based on what we know to be true. Yes. And you're dealing with people of all across the spectrum, I'm sure you're getting questions from people that are not religious. So what do you tell them in terms of how to prepare them to make these kind of decisions or help them to prepare their children to make those sessions?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Well, you know, there are a couple of different aspects to this. Somebody says, Well, gee, I can see from how that might be true from the point of view of your faith. But if I don't believe that, if I don't believe in God, for instance, if I don't believe in his grace, what does this say to me? Well, there's a couple of things that it that it really ought to say to them. One is maybe you should consider whether God does exist and whether his grace is real. Even the sociologists, even the secular sociologists are finding that faith-based marriages are much more are much, much more healthy. Maybe you should think about that. I I know of a case where the great psychologist Paul Witz was speaking about his book, Faith of the Fatherless, about atheism among young men who grow up without their fathers or with a deficient relationship with the father. A man in the audience got up and said, um, said in after the Q ⁇ A began, said, Dr. Witz, I understand what you're talking about. He says, but it you could be talking about me. I had a bad relationship with my father. I don't believe in God. And maybe your analysis helps to explain that. But now I'm a father. How would you advise me? And you know, it might have been one of these come to Jesus moments. It wasn't. And a lot of people were angry at Vitz because he didn't do that. What he said, I think it was wonderful. He said he thought for a moment and he said, Well, I think I would advise you to just be the very best father that you possibly can. And the guy stood there for a moment, as though this had never occurred to him as the right response. And then he said, Thank you. That was very helpful. And he sat down. And I wasn't present, but I'm told that the entire auditorium burst out in cheerful applause. Just as lacking faith in God can make it difficult to be a father, difficult to have a good relationship with your father. So also trying to be a good father can bring you closer to God because you begin to understand God the Father. And I think that that works in both directions. But you know, I tell people, can we be good without God? Can we really be good without God? It isn't just a matter of greater certainty, or I have the religious sanction, oh, you'll go to hell if you don't do this, or something like that. But I need help. And in the life of faith, in the life of grace, you're experiencing that help every day. It doesn't mean you're not gonna fall, it doesn't mean you're not gonna sin, but you're experiencing that help every day. And it's it's very real. And I I think that people should should think about that.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Definitely. I mean, I I think we all see, or or I've noticed, at least I can speak for myself, you know, especially culturally, we're seeing a lot of good trends, you know, with the bad trends as well on on you know, many people who are maybe you know moving towards um supporting family values, what they call family values, um, or a lot of things that were considered socially conservative. Um, I think like, well, first of all, great, yeah, that's awesome that they're doing that. And then the kind of negative part of me thinks it's like, well, they're they're trying to you know be good without God. You know, they they try to argue for these things in a way that takes God out of it and which makes it almost impossible. I mean, not impossible, but very difficult, at least. Very difficult.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Well, look, I'd rather that somebody try to be good without God than not try to be good without God.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

What's your analysis of that situation? Do you think that that's the step to that, or that it's just another excuse to stay away from God?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Well, it can be an excuse. I mean, we have all kinds of excuses for staying away from God. We lie to ourselves in all sorts of ways. When I was a practical atheist, I say a practical atheist, meaning I wasn't a theoretical atheist who believed there was no God, then I can prove it. But I thought, I do think I can prove that if there is a God, he doesn't matter. That's what that was one of my lies. I was lying to myself. I really knew deep down that that wasn't that wasn't true. So people, yes, people do have all kinds of excuses. But on the other hand, we don't know what the state of their heart is. Maybe this isn't about an excuse, but maybe he's struggling. Maybe he was he's somebody who would like to believe it and he thinks, oh, that would be better for me, but wouldn't it all just be a crutch? Or wouldn't I be fooling myself? And you know, you have to you have to walk alongside those people and and uh take them where they are. If somebody is just trying to be the very best that he can, look, he will hit the wall. C.S. Lewis even made that part of his argument for Christian faith in his book Mere Christianity. He said there are these two clues to the meaning of the universe. One is that there is this moral law and that we all that we all recognize it, and the other is that none of us live up to it. And you know, the disciplines of virtue. I try to be a courageous person, I try to be a just person, I try to be a temperate person, I try to do all of those kinds of things, they can get you a certain way, but they can't fix the inner dis disorientation, dislocation of the heart that was brought about by sin and by, in fact, that a long time ago by our first parents' rebellion against against their maker, the divine surgeon has to come in there. And I have and he's as Lewis again put it, he says, the divine surgeon says, This may hurt. And we have to say, I need your surgery anyway, and it's worth it. So, you know, by trying and failing to be good without God, they may discover their need for God.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Now, regarding that, a lot of your work is on is related to Aquinas and natural law. So it was apparent to me, I had never really heard the term natural law until I moved here and I was probably in my late 30s when that happened. I might have heard it. The first time it stuck was when I was listening to Nick Nickis, who runs the bioethics defense center here in Phoenix. And he mentioned natural law and how they were having a lot of a lot of luck with law students teaching these Catholic principles to law students based on natural law principle. It was apparent to me around the time of the Trump election, and when I was on when I was still on Facebook, I'm not anymore, the first Trump election. When you say natural law to people who don't know what you're talking about, which includes a lot of liberals, they think you're talking about the laws of nature.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

For the unwashed, what is natural law?

SPEAKER_00 16:40

I will tell you, but let me let me back up just a little bit. You mentioned having success with your law students. Most of my students right now, when I teach natural law, when I teach when I teach uh when I teach Thomas Aquinas, are actually law students. And only about half of them are uh Christian believers of very of various kinds. The others aren't, and they're they're interested, but they're seriously interested in this, and that's very encouraging. What is the natural law?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

I have a question. Is it taking with those students? Does the natural law take root? Well, yeah, with a lot of them.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Now, you know, there is no there is nothing that any teacher can do. Yep so that it j so that the teaching brings about a chemical change in the brain of the student, and he says, I believe this. But yes, they engage with you. And uh and I don't worry too much about whether whether things aren't don't seem to be taking root at the time. You know what what Paul said? He said he said this one guy maybe maybe planted this one guy plants the seed, the other guy waters it, the other guy's there for the harvest. I may not be there for the harvest, but I have had people who've written to me sometimes a decade or more after I taught them and said it clicked.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

And uh to that point, I think that we can't why someone, you know, someone who's convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. So I understand what we can't supernaturally convince people things they don't want to be convinced of. And we can't bludgeon them. Pardon? And we can't bludgeon them.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Agree with me or you'll get a bad grade.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

But there's something to be said for people coming to college and realizing conservatives and Catholics, and obviously the Catholic being much more important than the conservative, are not are not booger eaters who are just telling you to take it on faith alone. I think it is important that people, even if they're firmly against us, are put against these very these robust intellectual arguments so they know they exist, and we're putting we're being good ambassadors for the intellectual side of our faith.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

It comes as a shock to many people. You know, there's there's sort of two kinds of fundamentalism. There's the kind of fundamentalism that says, faith alone, don't give me any of that reason stuff. That's not the classical Christian view. The the other kind of fundamentalism says, reason alone, don't give me any of that faith stuff. Well, you know, if you say reason alone, how do you even know that reason works? Prove that if if uh if A implies B and B implies C, that A implies C. Prove that to me. You know, I just have to take it as an axiom. I see I see that this that reason works, I perceive it. And um that is a kind of a faith. It isn't religious faith, but it's a kind of a faith. We're using faith all all the time. My my faith in God is not just faith in a philosophical system concerning God, it's faith in a person. It's analogous to my faith in my wife. Can I give you a mathematical proof that uh that she's as as good and virtuous as a person as I as I think she is, and well, she'll never she'll never betray me? Well, no, but I trust her. I have faith in her. This is an everyday reality we all do, and uh the classical Christian view is that faith and reason are, as John Paul II put it, like the two wings of a bird. The bird needs both of them to fly. You actually have more material to work that you're for your reason to work with if you got if you faith calls your attention to things that you might have even perceived if you didn't have faith, but you didn't. It is a it is a curious thing. But back to natural law. You wanted me to. I distracted you, um Let's begin with. I like to speak of the four witnesses, the four ways that we know the natural law. You know, the first witness is deep conscience. It's the law written on the heart. That's what St. Paul called it. He says even the even the Gentiles who don't know the law, he meant they don't know Torah, they don't know Jewish law, they've never heard of it, they sometimes do the right things and their consciences will accuse them, and they'll even have a struggle in their conscience. He says, because the law is written on their hearts. Now that law that is written on the heart, and which is supplemented by other things that are also in the way that we're made in our nature, that's the natural law. Supplemented by other things in our nature. Well, like what? Well, like you can observe the way that you are that, by the way, written in the heart means built into the natural pattern of the moral intellect. But how else is it natural? Well, think of the other aspects of our design. We are beings who are made for social life. Not like cows that just hang together, hang around together in herds or fish that swim in schools. We live together because for us, the good life isn't even good unless we can share it with others. That's what it means to be a social creature. We're made for friendship. We're made with a view to family, we're made, you know, with a view to all kinds of things. We are made with a view to knowing the truth, and there are laws to all of these things. You discover the natural law. I should not betray my friends. I s pretty soon I won't. And how do we uh other than just the intuition of this, how else do we know this? Well, there are natural consequences. If I betray all my friends, I eventually won't have any friends. If I if I lie to others, I won't be believed. If I lie to myself, then I'm gonna have to tell more lies to myself to cover up those lies to myself. Then I'm gonna have to tell more lies to myself to cover up those lies to myself, and pretty soon I won't know if I'm coming or going. So we learn by deep conscience, the law written in the heart. We learn by the by the details of our design. Everything is in us is for something and has its own laws, and we um and we learn from natural consequences. Still, one more thing is we look at our design and you know it does look like a dozen. We aren't just a blooming buzzing confusion. It suggests that we are not merely the meaningless and purposeless result of a process that did not have us in mind, which points us to God, who is the source of the source of all of this and the source of the grace which enables us to live according to it and to whom we owe this is another natural law gratitude.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

May take it take some of what you you've been saying and take it in a little different direction. Can you can you talk a little bit more about self-deception? You know you talked about that in the book and you mentioned it here and I think that is just such a critical thing. I mean everyone does this to some degree and even everyone does this. Everyone does this. C.S. Lewis talks about that in his books about even Christians thinking that they're good, faithful Christians and they're deceiving themselves. So what is your recommendation for people to break free of self-deception, both for those who maybe are not, you know, I mean basically when when people have these belief systems, you know, they they're saying they're secular and they have you know they they say I believe in in reason I don't believe in a God and they don't really think about the consequences of what that thought means. You know that okay that means then you're just a bunch of molecules and you don't have any self you don't have any value. So that type of thing. That's the self-deception. So yeah take it from there.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

What what do you think people think I think one part of this is just thinking trying to think more clearly I think most of the time we deceive ourselves because we're not trying very hard to be honest with ourselves. We we cut ourselves some slack. We allow ourselves certain certain uh certain deceptions. You know I always think of the old um movie Gone with the wind Scarlett O'Hara in there will say I'll think about that tomorrow. It's one of the it's one of the repeated classical lines in the movie and well this is how we are I've done wrong to my friend. I'll think about that tomorrow. Self-deception can take can take several forms one form that it can take is I try to bury my knowledge of the wrong that I did. I just try not to think about it like Scarlett O'Hara. The other form one other form that it can take is I do think about it but I try to convince myself that it wasn't wrong. And conscience takes its revenge. Let's say for instance that I've treated my friend really unjustly, really badly and my my conscience is at me but I do not want to repent. Well one way to placate my conscience which is the voice of God in me is to repent to confess to my friend. That's hard. I did wrong I'm really sorry. I hope we can be reconciled that's very hard. The other though which I I delude myself into thinking this is easier is I try to convince myself he really deserved it. He really deserved it. And if I convince myself that he deserved it so that it was okay that I treated him badly well then what else what follows from that? What follows from that is a person who that bad he deserves a lot of bad treatment so I might start treating him even worse. I I first uh came across that observation we've talked about C.S. Lewis several times he pointed out he said have you ever noticed that when you treat somebody badly you start treating him worse and worse and I thought why yes that's true. Why is that? I think this is why it's the revenge of conscience. You can think of uh you can think of conscience as something like a traffic cop, you know the traffic cop is behind you, you're speeding and uh if your will is in pretty good shape, you know, you're gonna pull over and let them give you a ticket and say, oh gee, I shouldn't have done that. You accept the correction. And so that's that's with a healthy functioning conscience. But you know if you want to uh there's another way of doing it. You may say well he's following me again. I've had so many tickets that they took away my license. If they catch me now they're gonna impound my car and they're gonna put me in jail for a few days and uh so I speed up to get away from the cop instead of letting him pull me over. And uh then maybe he's he accelerates and he's still after me. So I have to turn the wrong way down a one-way street. And then he's still after me and now I'm really in big trouble. So I lean out the uh the window of the car and I start shooting at him. Now we do that with our consciences too and we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into did I well yeah it describes some early episodes in my life too. Think about what you have to do in order to rationalize um abortion for instance this is shooting at the cop you can't not know this is one of the things written on the heart you can't not know that it's wrong to deliberately take innocent human life. So you're gonna either have to try to convince yourself that it wasn't really deliberate I had to do it, you know, or it wasn't really uh or it wasn't really a taking or it wasn't really a life the the uh you know the baby's not really alive it's just sort of a clot of the tissue or something or you have to convince yourself that um that it isn't that the baby isn't human. It is not a dog or a porpoise growing in there or maybe not a human but not really human because not a human person. What do you mean by a human person? Somebody who can communicate well and carry out plans. Well born babies can't do that either neither can toddlers. Teenagers can't do it very well. Most of us are not very good at that until maybe we're maybe twenty-five so uh I are we not persons either or you have to or you have to say that um that um or you even have to say the baby deserves it. There was one book that was written by a feminist who argued this is the this is the killer argument for abortion, she said this is going to end all the arguments between people who say they're pro-choice and people who say they're pro-life will admit that it's wrong to deliberately take human innocent human life and it's a taking and it's a life and it's human but it's not innocent because she says the fetus made the woman pregnant against her will and is an invader in her womb like a burglar who is violently aggressing against her. Now it when if we go to those incredible lengths of lying to ourselves because we all know better than that incredible lengths like that to justify abortion to ourselves, man, maybe we need to look at ourselves more closely but it is very painful and the further we've gone along that path the more painful it is. It with with uh people who are in that you have friends who are in that self-deception I'm thinking about myself when I was very desperately self-deceived most of the time you're not gonna the person isn't gonna listen but you hang in there. You know you try to walk alongside this person and be there because there is going to be a moment of crisis when some of the truth begins to leak through.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

I have one question about the this author you're talking about was she literally saying that the fetus was self-causing was was it that well she didn't say that she didn't say that the she she never said baby.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

She said that that was a a bad metaphor but she said fetus. She never said that the fetus was deliberately making the woman pregnant against her will that the fetus was intending to harm the mother but she said that in fact it is doing this. To use classical language the baby was not formally at fault but the baby was materially at fault it was the baby's fault. And so if oh you you deal with the baby like any other capital murderer you know you uh you it may deserve execution.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

That nature is trying to restrict me or I have to conquer nature in even oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Oh yeah take take for instance go ahead. No no that's it yeah yeah take for instance what what uh the uh the abortion physician Warren heard hearn at e r n said in an in an article that he wrote for one of the planned parenthood journals he was he was taught the article was about reconceiving pregnancy as a disease he said it may be socially constructed to be something um something desirable but he should he said it is a disease and so when you're having an abortion all you're doing is ending the disease all this brings me to the problem is is that we live in a post-logical society.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

What you think the the mere fact that this author thought this was an argument ender first of all we don't have any argument enders for the abortion debate there aren't any i if they were if there were the pro-life cause would have them but anyone can be as obstinate as they want against against facts but how do we handle a post-logical society? For instance lunacy 21 in your book here right here it is hopefully I can see item lunacy it might be in reverse on the uh um but uh no it's front word it's front word good so I never I never know how it's gonna come off the um lunacy twenty one reality doesn't have to be logical or make sense and you begin with the story uh I want to remark to someone I being you do you do you realize that you've just taken an incoherent position you say truth can't be known all by supposing that you that you know it can't I guess I'm being incoherent he replied after thinking a moment longer he said that's all right the universe is incoherent and I don't need to have any meaning in my life well I this is like doing some people say nailing jello to a wall I say trying to do judo in outer space. There's no purchase so how do you deal with not you it's one thing to argue logic against people who at least subscribe to a system of logic but when people who have all but abandoned any pretense of logic, where do you start?

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Well I'll tell you how I used to do it and I'll tell you how I do it now. Okay. Confronted with a guy like that who said well reality doesn't have to make sense and I don't need meaning or truth in my life you know I used to think oh my gosh the poor guy doesn't know that that yeah reality is coherent and he does need meaning and truth in his life and I would try to talk him into that which would only play into his clever game. And I came to realize that a lot of this is a smokescreen. Nobody can really be illogical all the way down. What you can do by telling yourself an ideology that reality doesn't have to make sense is you just cut yourself some slacks so that you don't have to think about the consequences of your actions or the implications of your actions very much. So that you want you aren't honest with yourself, you don't examine yourself, you don't examine these these these matters. You're giving yourself an excuse to be lazy. But no one can can defy logic all the way down and and there isn't anybody who really at the bottom believes that things don't have to make sense. And so what I say now and this is what I said to the young man I as I mentioned in the book is I said he had just said I am incoherent. Yeah you're right but the reality is incoherent nothing has to make sense I said I don't believe you I called him on it you know I called his bluff I said I don't believe you know as well as I do that every created mind wants to know the truth and that you do need coherence and sense. So tell me what is it that you want so much that you're willing to give up meaning and coherency in order to have it? Sex. Well he didn't give me an answer but uh he was floor because nobody had ever called him on his on his clever little evasion. Everybody treats this as oh it is so difficult sophisticated people all really know that it's hard to know whether there's even a real reality at all. Well no that's that's um it's only if you are if you have um motivation for being irrational that you can be that irrational. And um so he was floor and for an for for a couple of minutes or I don't know at least 20 seconds, 40 seconds, he was he was sort of knocked out of it. He didn't know what to say. Now eventually he got back onto the track of his cleverness but I wouldn't engage that. And we don't have to answer everything that people say because if somebody gives an honest question you give an honest answer. If somebody poses an honest objection you try to give an honest solution. But if somebody tries to blow smoke to set up a smoke screen you can't do that. It just plays their game. What you have to do is try to blow away the smoke. And if they're not willing to do that then you say you know I don't know if we can have this conversation yet because conversation is a mutual cooperative enterprise in pursuit of the truth. And if you don't believe in truth then we're just quacking each other at each other like ducks. It isn't even a conversation. So you know when you're when you're ready to have a real conversation we can do that again.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

But I think you and I both agree that being clever is not a compliment in this day and age the way the way you used it because I take it to mean you're you're nihilistic, you're sarcastic, you're using very you know high school level debate d debate tactics. When you say clever uh and you're that's how I mean clever you're detached. How do you view the word clever?

SPEAKER_00 33:50

I'm using it that way when I say when I say clever I know that there's a different sense of the word clever meaning you do something well and dexterously but um but but often we use the word we use the word and that's how I use it in the book to mean mere cleverness. You you can wield the instruments of of of logic but you don't wield them for the purpose that they're designed for which is to actually come up with the thing. But I I think that people are are logical up to a point. They're just logical slowly. Somebody once I once w made the point in an article which I published in a journal maybe it was first things I don't remember and um and I was commenting on the fact that there's there's no surprise that that people are who promote abortion are becoming more and more extreme. Then it the next thing that we will do if we say that you can deliberately take innocent human life is we're going to be having infanticide and abortion. And my editor said no no no no people are not that logical. People will not necessarily start justifying infanticide just because they justified abortion and my reply was and he he he allowed me to keep it in the article my reply was people are logical but they're just logical slowly. Maybe you refused maybe you refuse to draw that implication but your kids will and a generation later people will be drawing that implication and saying yeah yeah infanticide. You know one one bioethics journal article was a which uh made waves a couple of years ago was about what it called afterbirth abortion. That was its term for infanticide. And the author made the perfectly logical point that if we justify all of the arguments that we use to justify abortion and he was pro-abortion all of the arguments that we use to justify abortion justify infanticide too so we should just regard infanticide as post-birth abortion. Is this a prominent philosopher at Princeton? He was a prominent ethicist yeah he's not this was not probably the most the most prominent bioethicist in the world is Peter Singer of Princeton this was not he.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

This wasn't him I've got before our final question which Mike always handles I've got another question but we want to kick it to Michael before I ask my final question.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

He was just a very he was a very smart ed uh editor.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

I liked him he was good. Yeah I don't want to too much but it but he said he said I don't think your readers are going to buy this point because people are not that logical.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

Yeah but I mean the French Revolution you know the Nazi Germany like those are clear examples of the extremes that people go in the you know service of reason and so to speak. Yeah. So perverse reason yeah yeah yeah sure I mean I I feel like that's the whole story of modernity is perverse reason. It's you know realize you know you can use the logical faculties of of the human brain to rationalize anything if you don't have that root of morality to go off of essentially delusions like I think I'm Napoleon are very very logical in arguing. Yeah I mean was that a was that Chesterton or is that Lewis? I know they either I think it was Chesterton that had some idea about that.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

I don't know Chesterton was great. He the problem is you get to the point if you read enough Chesterton that anything that makes sense begins to sound like Chesterton to you whether he said it or not.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

No I know he had something along those lines I'll have to re-reread and see but but that's that's great. So yeah Doug, sorry go ahead and ask your question.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Well my question is just what is it like to be a professor in this day and age? We all have those stories of my crazy professor had had me do this. They we tried to do woke mechanical engineering or something like that. But what's it like on the other on the other with the shoes of the other foot? And you reference some I mean you do reference at least one screeching female in your in in your class screeching's my word but not maybe not yours. But what is it like um how much deference do you get are do most of the crazy self-select them out? What's what's a day in the life like being a sane professor at a university where not everyone is sane.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Well there are crazy there are some screaming men too by the way although they usually show their show their anger in a different way. Yeah well you you you um I suppose there is some self-selection in my classroom I have a higher proportion of students who are willing to listen to these things than probably other professors do in part because sometimes they they take my courses because they're fed up from all the from other stuff from some of their other professors or sometimes they take it because they've heard of natural law you know and they want to know more about that. So this is you know this is is to some extent a self-selected group but there are a lot of people in there who are not amenable to this and who will um and of that group the ones who are not amenable to it some will will discuss their disagreements reasonably they'll say but professor I have an objection what about this how would a natural law thinker answer this objection that's good that's I encourage that and I'll try to give an answer. But others won't and they will scream at you or there was another instance it isn't in the book. I had been teaching Thomas Aquinas and I had been teaching the concept of natural teleology remember before I said we're designed and everything in us is for something all of our powers in us are for something even our desires are for something I have a mind it's for thinking I have uh I have uh eyes they're for seeing I have the power to become aroused to anger it's for the sake of the defense of endangered goods and this is natural teleology our design is there are purposes and meanings are embedded into us. And I had not brought up sex it comes up often you wouldn't be surprised but I hadn't brought up sex and a student asked a question. He says well if that's true then we were talking about Thomas Aquinas. What would Thomas Aquinas say about this? And he mentioned one of the rather bizarre kinds of sexual behaviors which is widely practiced in our society. And I said I uh I I know better now than to try to answer questions about weird sexual practices in the classroom because sometimes people are baiting me and then you know you have online reviews say professor talks about this in class so I said and it was a bit it was pedagogically better anyway I said well I think you've read enough about and Thomas Aquinas to make a stab at answering that question yourself. Class, what do you think? How would he answer this question? And it took them about five minutes and some startling things were said but they more or less worked out a more or less correct answer to what he would have said about that. And I said I think you've done very well that's right a woman in the front row is sniffling. I said are you all right? And she says it's just that this is so mean to these people I said to what people to the people who do those things I say how is it mean? It's judging them. It's judging them it's cruel and I said well nobody has actually judged anything. I haven't heard anybody in the last five minutes of conversation say that even use the word sin or speak of divine judgment or punishment that it's all been about whether this behavior is actually good for beings of our nature. And she said it's just so mean and I said well look suppose that you had a friend who was a dope addict would it be mean for you to say you know you're destroying yourself. I'm speaking to you in love. You have to stop doing that. Well as I've come to understand her it didn't stop her tears. Fortunately it was at the m at the end of the period more or less but the tears were partly maybe self-pity partly performative. They demonstrate see I'm a victim here you're a big mean professor who shouldn't be saying these things and shouldn't be allowing other teachers, other excuse me, other students to say those things these things should not be allowed to be discussed because they hurt my feelings and um how do you deal with these things? You know you just have to you can't ignore them. A student was angry with me in class one day and he uh and the question of God had come up Thomas Guinas talks about God gives arguments for the existence of God and the student was angry and I said you seem to be angry and he said yeah I guess I am I said okay why why do you think you're angry? And he said because I don't agree with you and I said but I don't agree with you and I'm not angry with you so that couldn't be why you're angry. Really then why do you think you're angry? And he said I'm sorry I'm sorry and he said I said I'm not scolding you. I'm just try trying to say why are you angry? And he said I guess it must be that I don't want to hear what you've got to say and I said okay then the real question for for you and I'm not asking you to answer it right here in the classroom but you should answer it yourself. Why don't you want to hear it? And I took the next student. You know he his face changed his anger was gone you know and he was he was uh different I I never learned in the case of that student whether I'd gotten through but I think I may have partly so even anger even crying even screaming can sometimes be put to use not your screaming not not the teacher screaming and crying and but even when uh some student goes goes goes nuts it's helpful it may illustrate something to the other students too yeah I great that I think that's a perfect segue into uh my final question which is what stewardship means to you and I think uh you just gave some great examples of as a professor how to be a great steward of your students um and maybe you can extrapolate that to just teaching in general and how to how to basically how to help people see the truth in a way that uh actually is effective and also what is done with charity and those those examples definitely demonstrate that.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

So first answer that question of what you think stewardship means and um and any other lessons for us who are trying to steward are the next generation and ourselves and how to how to be logical and to avoid the pandemic of lunacy.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Well I'm gonna answer this in in two parts you mentioned doing this in charity and I think that's essential. When I first and I was a very young untenured professor when I first came back to faith in God I began to care about my students more and to care about whether they understood the truth and it crushed me and I just about burned out. You would think that coming back to faith saves you from being burnt out but it was a sort of a faith crisis. I mean I was I was really struggling teaching because so many of them were just not interested in truth at all. And I realized that the problem was me. I wasn't loving them enough. I had to love my students I had to pray for my students how could I how could I be a good steward of uh of what God's given me with them if I didn't really if I was just doing as a technical exercise and presenting arguments or something. I have to love them. But the other aspect what What does stewardship mean to me? It means that I have to put everything that I have at God's disposal because I got it all from him in the first place. Uh I have I when I was a I I have a sharper mind in some respects than a lot of people, but when I was young, I didn't steward that resource as I should have. I let it feed my intellectual pride and I wanted to be God myself and Jay Bujashewski to be God instead of God to be God. That's not putting at God's disposal. I think we have to put everything at his disposal. And you know, that takes different forms. I'm a teacher, I can do this in the classroom. Somebody might do this as a as a as a father or a mother or a housewife, somebody might do this in business. How can I can I treat my employees well and my and my shareholders well and and and provide services and products that actually do people some good instead of doing them some harm. But what it what it means for you in particular is going to depend to well, you're gonna have to pray to God and ask him, how can I use my gifts? But you have to identify those gifts and put them completely at his disposal.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Well that seems like Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Michael. Great answer.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Thanks. And uh just I just want to close with uh a couple of plugs. First, we can you can find us at tail of forgotten.com uh for any of your financial needs in terms of investment advice. We've got a mutual fund. We've also got a family office where you can get everything tax, estate, planning, and investment advice in one place. But uh more importantly, I want to bring some more attention to Dr. Burzashewski's work. Uh you can find him at uh his website is the Underground Thomist. And I if you look through Amazon, you will see that he's got a lot of books and they are very well rated. The one that captures my eyes is uh I just was aware of this today, but the How to Stay Christian in College, 4.6 stars over 212 ratings. But it was written way back in 2014. Think the world probably. It was reissued. New edition. You get do you have a new edition? You've updated it for the post-related.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

It was it was first written way back in the 90s.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Okay. So even older than that. So do you is there that seems like the kind of thing you could refresh that every 10 years, maybe every five years, and it would need it and get value out of it. So um and uh so please uh check out his work and again his latest book right here, The Pandemic of Lunacy. Here it's very, very readable. And I think one thing you wanted to wanted to make sure we made clear is this is not a book for natural law professors. Obviously, you could read that and learn learn something, but this is for the common the common people who are trying to think clear clearly, correct?

SPEAKER_00 46:23

That's right. We're trying to get back to common sense. I don't mean stupid common sense. We have to affirm our common sense, but elevate it. And uh that's the object. If I may, I should mention that your listeners can get a 15% discount on the book if they get it at the publisher's website, Creed and Culture, and use the um and use the discount code Pandemic15.

unknown 46:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

That's quite alright.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

No, we're happy to do. We're happy to support you and support Jeremy. They've got a lot of interesting books coming out, and uh we we love the work that Creed and Culture is doing. It's definitely I know enough to know that the book uh publishing business is a labor of love. So please support support Dr. Burzashewski, support Creed and Culture, and uh buy the books. There's there's there's something for any right-naked person, I think, there. And then again, you can see where you're up to on a regular basis uh at the uh just www. undergroundthomist.org.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Skip the skip the www. undergroundist with a journey.org will will uh will get you there better.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Okay, even better, even quicker.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Okay I see how often do you uh post have new postings there? The blog, most of it is not a blog. I mean, I've got articles and all kinds of things there and links to my books, but the blog itself I usually post uh on Mondays.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

All right. Well, again, thank you very much for joining us, Dr. Brucevski. It's been a great pleasure. It's been great having you, and uh it was nice to meet you, you're a delight, and thank you for all the great work you're doing at a you know, at a place that isn't set up. But also thanks to the University of Texas for giving you a forum and tenure and keeping you. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

I'm grateful. And uh and there are a lot of good things happening there. You mentioned the Cavitas Institute. There's also the new school of civic leadership, and you mentioned a number of my colleagues who are doing great work, and I really want to take off my hat to them.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

It's my my junior in high school's number one choice for school right now, I think, is UT, but uh he lives in Arizona, so the economics might be working against us, so we'll see what happens. All right, so uh thank you very much, Doctor, and uh for having me on. Thank you. Take care. Remember, to work with the city.