An hour with Matthew Stewart

from the leed center at the university of kansas he pierre presents what our founding fathers really thought about religion and politics i'm j mcintyre and today on k pr presents philosopher matthew stewart author of nature's god the heretical origins of the american republic stuart spoke february twenty third two thousand seventeen as part of katie's humanities lecture series sponsored by the hall center for the humanities so we live in interesting times and that must mean that somewhere sometime at long last a historian will be happy happy is historically those who work on americans pounding because it's our national pastime wright we had an interesting times we look back who we are and where we're going by interviewing our pastor revolution a passenger ticket

anything's going to revise interpretation of towners it tells us something about ourselves we didn't quite know what now understanding the case i think that's what abraham lincoln and frederick douglass of the point that we're going to thomas jefferson and rescue him ms jackson and democrats turned him into a certain idea of america at the same time it's hard not to approach this topic with a certain degree of ambivalence mean after all we know that these were imperfect human beings may also have been mainly white human beings mainly slaveholding human beings so it's not that they will have all the answers for us it seems especially now imagine that they were revolutionaries were very good question authority so why should we then turn around and make that into authorities but alder says the least for the duration of this lecture is i think there is a certain side of america's founders that needs to be recovered or at least re emphasized the part that matters to me is the part that

makes them revolutionaries as the revolutionary party revolution that interest me i would issue and i don't just mean that in a political sense i mean that in a philosophical and in a religious sense of someone show you some ways in which our founders were at odds with received opinions in their own time and maybe also at odds with some of our own opinions about things the key words in division i present to you or they were as a reason the humanities now and heresy and all these will lead by a chain of inevitable our deliverance is to the word self government so to make this magical winter it can constrain my stream of consciousness here and review for facts about america's founders hope we'll find some of them a little bit weird and unusual and then when you talk about the dutch jews share tick seventeenth century philosopher spinoza

and african into these devices are connected and i'll come back to the issue about the other founders and what they could mean for us today aren't so i have four fund founder facts about what happens when you put thomas jefferson in a room with a pair of scissors in the bible it knows what i think are fights for addition to the bible greek latin french and english and the room is in the white house so what you get is a cut and paste edition of the bible was an actual photo from marcelo that and jefferson explains the plan to his great friend joseph crea easley yeah he says that he was a design to cut out the morsels of morality and paste them on the leaves of a book and then the john adams she clarifies that these morsels of rowdy the true teachings of jesus are easily distinguished as diamonds in a jungle so cue the lightning bolt the dung is everything

that's supernatural in the gospels incarnations the resurrection is the lows turning into fishes and so on diamonds are clearly the moral code so the basics are is that the essence of true religion is just this moral code and everything else is irrelevant now jefferson goes on savings or sublime and benevolent moral code but he also does indicate that this a moral code is available to us to reason and it's also available more of certain age of washers and in other religions so that's teaching number one fund founder fact number two so nature's god is something like the presiding deity of town of the american revolution it appears in the first sentence of decoration independence and i wrote a book on the topic and as part of the research for the book i went out looking for the first references to nature's god in colonial literature

and this is the first or one of the first it appears in the maryland does that it's an article comes at a very nice long title in the eighteen century style it's the speech of ms paula baker before according to judith pitcher at connecticut new england where she was prosecuted for the fist time for having a bastard child this is serious stuff and she's up for a panel of puritan judges and if she's found guilty she will be whipped and fined but she has a heart wrenching story of the five men who promised marry her ballet ran off they're always bachelors running free visits too expensive to get married and meanwhile the country needs be populated so she says that i was not committing us and i was doing my duty and that's where it becomes it is the duty of the first and great command of nature and of nature's god increased and multiply was working very well with a puritan judges he's

acquitted and one the judges promises to marry her the next day and i okay so besides franklin's jokes a violinist job was repeated during the course the french revolution they dug it up and add them up in this bizarre goes i was also in the london newspapers so frank and really had made quite a lot of this now but there's something very serious going on here because franklin didn't actually think that we should probably a common north american he was counting on nature's god to have to make it happen so there's a lot more that we can say about nature's god but i'll take a couple points one is that clearly this is not the kind of job that you find in sunday school or in a typical church announcer anyone who says the references to date has gotten declaration independence for example are evidence of orthodox christian beliefs clearly he's take a second look the other more important point is that we're talking about a deity here

who actually threw laws of nature said the commandments of his duty or not moral imperative areas not directly moral imperatives they're just last major sort of summarize that teaching theology point ali baker god actually necessary laws of nature and by the way across from that is that the proper way to worship this kind of duty is not to sacrifice small animals or to study only looks rather to study nature science is a paper for worshippers kind of deity which rings fun fun of that number three so jefferson big reader in fact we digress for a moment here jerome and in the parable this is in the bible that was the case a lot more meats bible was a random slicer the bible effect was quite diligent quite startling he was a humanist you read a lot of very carefully let's offer get a third of the library

of congress's first big stash of books was in fact jefferson's private lives way when women responded between presidents read books write it and here was his book of the year in eighteen twenty four you're writing to john adams is says i have lately been reading the most extraordinary of all books and so what's this passing but not as a full offenses experiments on the properties and functions of the nervous system there's no cure for alls he was a pioneer in neuroscience is any performance that some live animals he would cut open their brains and their hidden his first experiments he removed the servo on the lower part of the brain that we now noses into more motor control and he observed that the animals would lose their moderate voices they want my tribes and in other cases he would cut out the cerebral the large flush upon the top and use it which we now know his associate is a cognitive abilities are thinking and he said well they lost their cognitive abilities a devoted in

some food and it would know what to do with the food so how to jackson responded this was in the town of triumphalism this i wish to see what this very forceful say to this or they face as that for all cruises history remains the thinking oregon so turns out that jefferson was a materialist in the philosophy of mind they're in court yeah i'm an ad agency from the town's letter to john adams quite an assertive materialistic it's really mattered it was quite important that and here is another learned at times which makes this point where he says the talk in eternal existence is is the talk of nothing's to say that the human soul angels daughter immaterial is to say that they are nothing and this kind of unc has some religious implications and raise a lot of question about what you mean when you talk about a soul or an afterlife and justin was not all shy to drop a two dollars out i think if you look more closely at jefferson's writings on this topic you

find a somewhat more subtle position he doesn't quite say that mind reduces to matter such as we understand matter barry's position is more that mind in matters such as we understand the reduced to some other substance that we don't quite understand why i'm here is brent angie and hence this position is as i should've mr lark the first following one in cochran's ability rather than to so in the philosophy of mind this has mainly technical name i wanted to to foreign to you cause i'm michael aspect monessen its bases and there's one substance in the world and can express itself as matter where is my mind and interestingly john adams who is generally more conservative in every sense political religious impulse archuleta jefferson agrees with him on this fairly practical philosophy of mine actually writes back promptly to jefferson a really great bodies at this point and all that bad stuff

behind the money that he says the question between spirit matter appears to mean at the torrey because all that we certainly know is that some substance exists which must be the cause of all the attributes extension so the perception memory or memory reason for all these or actually it's so it's an interesting position of washington i'm quite radical imam summarize it has a certain kind of teaching a piano that they don't think it's actually about the narrow sciences or even the philosophy of mine and there's a deeper idea or teaching here and it has to do with what is it that makes human being special adding the jefferson adams to some degree associate the idea in materialism with a clan that what makes him being special is that we are an affinity with nature that we're completely different reading else nature and had some king them outside of nature but that's not jefferson's view his views it actually man as a part of nature that man can

be explained but we may be different very different in degree from other things in nature but that we can be understood weaken the study we can improve our knowledge of ourselves so i call at the wisdom of the pigeon and fun than a second before this is true many of the founders believed in aliens with lawn fair to have this bug eyed creature here because they didn't think of these aliens as fun and ominously american way of life for anonymous claim of making contact or having had contact with aliens their position was really philosophical it was that the universe as far as we know those on indefinitely everywhere operates a corner the same natural laws there's no reason to think that our earth and our world is unique it's a product of these laws therefore it's extremely likely that almost certain that there'll be other worlds with other intelligent creatures and finally

additional qualification i'd make on that is that the general thought the areas we quite nice so david redden houses the philadelphia astronomer he harry get lectured through to congress and sending seventy five that and he argued that the aliens would be very unlikely to enslave fellow members of their species just because the skin of those other airlines reflect to some other signs differently than their own status at the space aliens were early abolitionists so what's the alien challenge me at one level it's clearly a religious challenge and increasingly again john adams gates at this time in his diary from twenty fifty six series i think twenty one years old and he's wrestling with diseases astronomers tell us with good reason the only unnumbered world to revolve around the fix stars are inhabited if so i asked a calvinist whether god must assume this hugely respected shapes and always difference feces or else always beings must be assigned

everlasting perdition i mean at times pay much more eloquent writer summarizes this is what diseases can the station the plan is now makes a similar point so there's a there's a clarity a larger challenge but i wonder as a political challenge that american this alien concept if you imagine that the earth is the only meaningful place in the universe and it's impossible to imagine that revelation can be a source of the court order that is to say that you're deity could send you directly and direct messages about how use your eyes your portable world but if you accept his daily invasion you are naturally drawn to a very different view which is that when it comes to design for the border we're on our own and john adams makes this point in a letter to jefferson very clearly he says the question for the human race is whether the god of nature and nature's god shall govern the world by his own laws of the laws of nature or whether

priest and king still ruled by fictitious miracles or in other words whether authorities originally in the people or whether has descended for a few hundred years in a succession of popes and bishops are brought down from heaven by the holy ghost in the form of a dove filed holy well so i'll summarize this alien times as a teaching and as the simple point that it's fundamentally american revolution reason not revelation is the foundation of legitimate self government says even so welcoming i have a bonus founder fact which is the ethan allen all the plagiarized books that he never actually read series amount right but not the furniture guy i always have to tell people that he was a rough character completely self taught played an important part of the revolution and he also wrote a book a book that clearly identified him as a deist or in the words of the neighboring thirty one a most wicked and phil's never walked is guilty globe

so even was not the kind of man who like to share credit and he wrote in the preface to his book but the bible and a dictionary are the only books which i've made you serve as to be india's i know not strictly speaking with diane one or not for i've never read their writings and it's probably true on the other hand if you look at the tidal that he used for his book informal title work of the region are reasonably won exactly the same as a tie as the title of one of the notorious days books or groceries much trump won sixty nine three it's not just the title you'll find many of the same phrases many the same arguments ms cook but if i'm in that book and unfortunately he wasn't just the case when will happen with dozens of books have explained this what's actually not that hard to explain but it reveals something very interesting about the process through which

ideas came into the american revolution in terms of vietnam had this friends great friend thomas young and the forgotten founder i like to say another subject and thomas young americans was very well read and he read flounce work among many other works and so the priest before he passed along the ideas the words the arguments over bottles of was feeling now but it gets worse and if you step back and look at the wider network of that so charles wound inspired lot of reputations as the ability as one of them for example was by richard dudley who is a classic scholar and minister it were a sermon called the folly of atheism or what is now called deism those that identifies because i'm a diva and the citizens lashing attack on india's in on one ounce on turns out that franklin read that reputation with franklin being franklin he like the audience or being

feuded better than the implications so you said reading back on a book mating with real indians to say you'll find apartments that appear in his fellow riders in franklin but it gets more interesting still he says it turns out the blouse was the first translator spinoza and english and fact in some cases he inserted texas knows his work in his own work unannounced which means if you look carefully you'll find little bits of spinoza anything on an amendment frank so you see the smooth transition i made to the next topic of lectures and here's what you need to know about snow's at first he was pretty naughty he got excommunicated from amsterdam synagogue in sixteen fifty six at the age of twenty four or is abominable opinions and deeds in sixty seven he published the track as theological clippers which have a very wide influence also earned him a reputation as the most subtle of atheists that health reform that on the

earth and his posture his works that the ethics are the central text of the radical enlightenment and among the most influential works of philosophy history and so now i have a bit of this predicament that fifty minutes a family like to summarize the works of great philosopher when wristwatches estimates actually pretty easy because in fact of oregon that here's one teaching espinosa that i think is simple it's from the parable that while the scissors that morality is the essence of your true religion so here says that would affect christianity says the whole christ doctrine has essentially moral teachings that can be readily grass but everyone by the light of reason and here at articulate later than a more general form he says the desire to to do good which derives my living by the gangs or reason i call it now this seems kind of antitrust today as well suggests you argue that it's more radical than it

seems would require significant rethinking of what religion means and also what that means i'll move on because i was a first city espinosa the second teaching espinosa again guarded hannah smith theology politic or the eternal and infinite being we call god or nature acts by the same necessity whereby it exists there are some subtleties here about what we mean by ideas and heavy isn't atheism scientists point to assert that you can interpret than it is in any number of ways some people call him the god intoxicated philosopher series or the super fears some of these heavy as he identifies not in nature others in eighteenth century england was a he was the first of the us ah and falling most of his inform contemporaries who were in the clergy would have said that he was an atheist and they say there is no will probably just nature and what i will say and this

is on the table is it doesn't matter because frankly speaking it all comes out the same thing that all has the same laudable role to play in the creation of that book of lost the god of the american revolution years of their teaching spinoza from the wisdom of the pigeon man as a part of nature and in fact that's what moses as he says man as a part of nature and was followed its laws and the salon is true worship and here very briefly here to place position and i called to ask like monessen but i associate it with jefferson and adams he says mental decision on the one hand and the physical state of the body on the other hand are one in the same thing which went considered an afterthought court decision and when considered in the average extension we call a physical state says connor high complex form of materialism and finally there is

the fourth teaching us bananas that our entire attention to reason not revelation is the foundation of legitimate self government and when you read you won passage from the tract house which i think is important is it's kind of that is what's the matter with kansas argument that mit's the supreme mystery of despotism its problems they use to keep men in the state of deception and with the species title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check so that they will fight for their certitude as if for salvation they say if you are oppressed people religion is your best friend it's not just a hater he's got positive id of democracy on tuna tasted it he says that the commonwealth has laws are based on sound reason is the most free the democratic state is the most novel forms of state approaching most closely to that freedom which nature dressed every man there's something interesting going on here about can actually draws between reason and moxie we tend to think of democracy as

being pretty and reasonable it's essentially what everybody thinks and what everything's can be quite idiotic right but in fact he's getting at a certain concept of democracy and i'd like to draw your attention to certain distinction between a certain very common but i think the misguided way we think that democracy and a richer it a democracy the spinners articulates and i think america's founders strong so the common view is that the market is just the tabulation opinions and the thinking behind this common attending the summit this will know our own minds perfectly well i was way we live in our heads we know exactly what we think freedom just means getting what everyone acted on impulse is the only thing that brings the others we hadn't have the same thoughts the same desires and we found a massive attack the legal minds of the event with an agreement what's the nose proposes what america's founders draw on is ninety of them up to

the contest for truth this starts with the idea we often don't know ourselves very well and in some ways this is the lesson of the wisdom of the pigeon would just on ourselves but we can get to know ourselves freedom is not acting on your impulses it's knowing yourself understand your impulses well enough to master them how do we get this knowledge it makes us free well actually is a collaborative process you have to do it through conversation drew criticism for engagement it's a collaborative and it's contested so that democracy in its conception is not a way of reflecting previously opinions it's actually a way of changing people's minds it's a process for discovering troops are i suppose the teachings espinosa and you you may want at umass or how to happen how big his seventeenth century dutch jewish heritage involving american revolution and that there's that there's we are the

case which is the nose was not really widely read american track on the record all practical purposes but i have an answer and i represented here as a philosopher clap or a tree of knowledge and thursday four of the americans on right here mostly red to green people those ones who had most of their mostly english i also read some of the blue people who are french and by the way there's a lot of mixing and i don't i think it's kind of wrong to a centralized and my nationality here but we're going to stick with that but if you want to give some examples of franklin for example mention is called jasper at his autobiography and jefferson was very vague on pulling broke as a young man and also alexander pope read most of them but if you read those green phosphorus carefully what you'll find is that they are repackaging is a

nicer for your packaging ideas that are present and spinoza know this is not our units knows invented the modern world in his basement because in fact the snow's was also working with a long o brasil tradition and i think the thing is that matter most of the ancient world they may come from a materialist side of greek philosophy lucrecia centers but also the early modern world figures like bruno and homs in particular so like basically says i should step back there is a kind of existential comic historians of lhasa have to face which is why why we care would always dead last or staying right now i'm and fundamentally at my answer is well we shouldn't really we just about the ideas ms portman no these ideas are interconnected among themselves and we don't always understand very well so i want to make these dead philosophers as some the best resource we have for

understanding these ideas that and when you understand those waters in their inner connection to get a better grip of the ideas so to make a more concrete jefferson had something like the spinners is to philosophy of mind at something like espinosa stick theory of ethics and something like this can as a stick theology but he didn't always articulate the connections among those topics he made out of understood them completely different sense of a nosy you can see why they are in fact that is some i think he says in terms of history philosophy is that if you won understand the deep architecture of the american revolution reid spinoza everyone understand the language within which was articulated you should go with law secular and sommelier greene characters all right so there's the teachings of spinoza and those are awesome the founders strange ideas and how does have a few words to say about where we stand with founders now so it would not become pure money a wiser that not many people have this view that i'm

sharing an whereas in fact so many believe that the moscow false or that america was founded as a christian nation by christian founders get any of what we're up against here oh in addition to david barton is a former math teacher adam he's a professor glenn beck's online university he wrote it he's written many books and federal was it masha reports of foreign are all equally bad but one in particular recently stands out because it's the jefferson lies and their theory is that jefferson scissors in the bible was a bible believing christians and it was identified by one group as the least credible history book in print and it was withdrawn by its own knowledge that they're christian posing how they withdrew it he suggested interviewed abortion is the ultimate con because of the cause of climate change and i supposed to demonstrate that no debris of ignorance american on rewarded

he advises the texas state where education on curriculum and it was named as one of the times when farmers in fraudulent evangelicals and he really impresses people like newt gingrich it's amazing how much he knows cyclists for this character out there so you realize what religion know coronation year with them away but i did want to tell the story still you know we don't know precisely what washington believe the best guess is the sort of a fellow traveler the ideas was an imposter he did go to church but his ministers tend to say he's a deist one thing we do know is that he refused to kneel and he over and build a dozen turkeys you only a walkout forced and if it told soldiers that he would never nail because they believe they've really religion would ask emil but if they're at forty years after the war there was a nice reverend name snowden learned for a man named john river and then isaak but one day as i was walking through the woods near valley forge

and he saw washington kneeling minimize for some reason that when the cherry tree were accepted as absolute truth so in nineteen eighteen there was an effort to build a monument on the spot the kneeling some people probably knew exactly where it was they did some research and then they discovered that wealth was horse feathers writer isaak was not actually invalid for good so you think about in the story but no in time for the bicentennial he's kneeling all over again so that the point is very straightforward there's something in american culture that just keep bringing this back and it's highly immune highly resistant to factual correction so the fletcher bought will not change the overall picture i wanted to do real bravado of drought another interesting factoid if you look for a place in a time in american history where christian nationalism really

did take hold it was very affective by the name the one place would be in the antebellum south so there you have a clear identification of religion with a book award or you had the presenter and for example sign cochran's that it is the peculiar mission of a southern church to conserve the institution of slavery harriet book by frederick ross in alabama minister koreans a resort in god one of many such groups of the time that and one thing that the confederate states rather than might recognize this constitution in fact vincent allow them to continue their way as was that it didn't have got anywhere in it so the fact that there is a script that are they in fact put god in the preamble for sore throat out is up provocation also mention that by leafy look for strongholds of christian nationals and they're going to be predominantly and in former slaveholding state all right another point

here that i think there's a correlation between climate denial of academic climate change and christian nationalism i will move on from that in a way this is a question for all of all of you to ask what is an army in and offer up a few speculations and invited to join the discussion so he returned briefly to on the existential question that his stories of loss we must face which is why should we care about all these old timers the arguments against founders are well understood american their ballot have considered one from his of the founders become like the bible on everybody psyched right i mean you're infallible and they always tend to agree with programs have the microphone so that's an issue of appealing to founders your obvious thing is that they were grossly imperfect but as human beings and what they set up they said a hospital conditions for genocide slavery civil war

jim crow of song maybe the deepest from raise the one i want to get at here is one that they understood to some degree which is that appealing to founders as authorities can give us the illusion that the promise of government has an insult for us but it hasn't number i'm reminded of one of the stories about franklin after a cost issue convention the story goes a lady approached him and said well then what can a government to give us and he said a republic if you can keep it so on paper it all works on paper you have a separation of powers right you have a congress that can investigator impeach a president if it turns out that the president is possibly corrupt or maybe it is and in terms of a foreign power or whatever but it depends on the people right you know it doesn't force itself i think that jefferson was

giving us some are quite when he wrote in madison that we should rip up the constitution every nineteen years who it streamed but his point was that self government means you govern yourselves and a generation has a rider in the ability to impose itself on such when generations and jefferson injection of course he didn't want to sleep but that he had a measurement of generations that went to the actuarial tables and he feared it was nineteen years he was nineteen and recorders like that sores all over this question then with governor cells were good founders to us how can we apply says is to them and the big question so artist and about her knuckle bigger questions you have to ask yourself does history have a direction is he going anywhere things different now than they were at the time a revolution and then you need to ask did the id is the american revolution had anything to do with it

and my own just even my own take on this i know that someday will die at history as movies there's any direction to it i think there is some the union spent some time the seventeenth region centuries to appreciate that you don't want the back they're really on the second question is more grass without perhaps the american revolution didn't drill out much or maybe things would turn up in the same how about it but my ninth my own inclinations your the better in developing the nature to say now that the creation the world's first secular liberal democratic governor was something remarkable that was revolutionary and if you know try to understand what it is that makes it special remark or think it has have something to do with his capacity for self correction our errors have been great but the ability to fix them was just a bit better and if you can understand where that comes from i dont even say as a specific is too short for mozart important

and they've seen a specific set of doctrines and signs of all people are created equal all of those are very important it comes down to more fundamental idea and that idea is that we human beings like all things in nature have the ability to make ourselves more reasonable than we are so we can govern ourselves in such ways this country is about ourselves about the world and i'm going to do this is history a certain limited rationality but address out is always a guarantee an assertive future success now system that's dedicated to this proposition that democracy is a collective process of so the discovery of truth is always going to be to some degree how radical it automated distance from the trees and he inherited tradition salsa me at odds with the prejudices of the majority of people to some degree so i think this is a general idea what we can do with the founders how we can separate the diamonds from the dung and say is that the dung is anything that

ties into a particular nationality or a particular culture for and the diamonds are really they're heresy is which is why i called was top of revelation that bind you to hear your thoughts you're listening to matthew stewart author of nature's god the heretical origins of the american republic stuart spoke at the university of kansas leed center on february twenty third two thousand seventeen as part of katie's humanities lecture series sponsored by the hall center for the humanities coming up matthew stewart takes questions from the audience support for k pr present son kansas public radio comes from layered know our hyundai in lawrence with a wide selection of new hyundai is including the all new hyundai sonata so layered naylor hyundai next to dick's sporting goods on iowa's street or online at hyundai of lawrence dot com

and from stone backup lions in lawrence locally owned for over fifty years featuring new and used appliances from a tank whirlpool and kitchenaid more ed stone back appliance dot com j mcintyre you're listening to kate pierre presents on kansas public radio we're in a time period here currently where you think knowledge and reason it failed us it said earlier that the reason we have it's mostly to inform our own self knowledge also tim noll what's happening outside of the us house right i think it's effective government of our selves news and ourselves collectively is based on understanding the world entire world that they see nothing outside and so if we are going to be effective individually and collectively we have to understand the world's best we can brain science is clearly part of it was also our are the humanities also was understanding and what

those people around the world so it very much then and thats what our founders were values are not self involved people these are judges out they're studying the stunning the the moose he's studying the shellfish of those shall fossils and he's and he's also studying the history of europe last election in my opinion was the least informed public that we've ever had global and if they had been informed we were not like that that person was elected what are they safer sharing his men and by buying the average amount of leverage or even in a time of the founders of the protests were they are a christian thank you so much for the talking i was really struck as the key in my mind is going on that time and beyond the need for me each

distance shipping religion in the us and he tries to make a distinction to what could sense that nobody trust that suggestion saying that religion like culture and as a chain of traditions they go back very poor village and graduates that change like nature and the ism is a specific belief in you know a god and so on but that you could that you could separate chooses idea it seems like to me that there's a a colonel of that at least in what you're talking about instituting a morality that is not based upon authority associate with a god but that is public end in some sense related to how nature works how reason is a push to nature do you think that though there is a sense in which in the attempt to get rid of the boat the a stick background that these american founders have

attempts of distance a new political moral ethical view of how really should be against that is that back on the biggest also though a danger which that manifests itself as a new religion as it were so that people still associate things like the president or like well i'm you know their leaders as being or having the power to say what is right and what is wrong does make sense yes but thanks thanks for that things are bringing the tune to it i wish i could say more about that and you remember that beach as saying that god is a last whisper that evaporating reality and now the auto business but then at the end of your mom you're getting to something that's important and that people are sort of that i think are interested in and that is that does it has announced it's created some sort of civil religion effectively it was in income level and

deemphasizing offer solutions are we crave a substitute that defies institutions that statement is that a problem is that good the bad those raging questions i believe in my own my own a coin and i think that to some degree it's an activism that is it what's its it's what's left over from this earlier religious instinct that need a place to go and that latches on to the americans to the religion mom and i i'm just pessimistic about i think that it is it's close what i identified with the common view of democracy which i also by the way identified as some degree with majority herring isn't nor even perhaps light forms of fascism is it's a way of saying well

we do have this common belief it's gotten country and you know and anybody that serves the same fervor is the same views purpose that religions have served in the past which is to divide us against them to create some kind of test that's my own take on it but over those here to go to a religion class and most of the year for extra credit can you give me to send some worry about what is considered safe ah oh that's i didn't i can do them were intended to thomas jackson ran for president he would be defeated and of georgia water ran for president after new problem you

take a look at the flip side i think of what you've been talking about namely the anti intellectual traditions and work in history richard haass in his famous book still troubles it was you were you were starting today was intellectual traditions are of the founders are but there were even then very strong anti intellectual for a moment to what might be called and it still is clearly very strong today are how do you deal with that strain are we talking about earlier versions of what we know as the culture wars predict later in kansas or is it something else all that they stressing so i agree with you to be anti intellectual tradition is absolutely central to understanding american history and i chew find very troubling their findings in a pastor and does keep one up at night when you see the effects of anti intellectual so we will see

the last few months the teacher force years of history it does go back goes back all the way it goes back to before the revolution you know the helm we're supposed to think of the great awakenings the first really great awakening as a positive terms a spiritual revival the truth is that they often came of it huge amount of anti intellectual fervor and many of these founders the ones that i'm drawn to their intellectual interests had to struggle against that they're just wrote incessantly mighty way so it's been with us for a long time after us why is it so mom i'm a journalist it's an american condition a thing as the human condition having asked do with the modern world i think that now and then i think mondavi in two of these and that's when you start to find when you find groups of people looking for ways to work together but at the same time not able

to work there their fears are not able to overcome their ignorance and as a consequence developing this and that and tyne what lemons says it is it's been there and i think it's the dynamics that produced it found something very fundamental documents idea mr world war an incentive hi i'm could you please address spinoza stayed on justice i think is a very interesting conception of all let me say what i think an excessively positive conception of what justice looks like under democracy and given that we find ourselves you know two hundred and change years into the american experiment we continue to have problems dealing with social justice when we when we allow larger to dictate or

or at least address these issues i'm wondering if some of the problem comes from the grounding that we have in spinoza because i think he personally think he he pricked it's the idea that you're going to have an educated populist and that this educated populace is going to be able to handle justice unjust decisions and i'll take my answer off the air banks haven't so the question on spinoza an end justice and down whether it relies too heavily on an educated populace i think you're really long time to spinoza because i don't think he's your jefferson who has the same view is taking for granted that we have an educated population and that that makes them upset possible i think they're available in both of them is that you have to

invest in education and that is part of a democratic process so jefferson in particular was a really strong message to public education and he said famously about a society that wants to be both free and ignorant once what is actually impossible he says were wrestling matches around and i think that that is just the noses position as well that i guess we're that what i'd add to that is the theory if you understand the thinking of spinner's injection on these questions of justice it will probably help you re frame some ways than you understand just how it really shouldn't work so when they're when they argue for the freedom of speech and press freedoms poses first react to the freedom of speech and his point is not that you know we should respect he was released because it's nice that giving mice them he sang that people want to speak their minds interviewed speak their minds and we need to hear what they have to say so just as

something that works for everybody and it's not just a matter of granting you know a privilege to individuals syria question because of that your question is i think they're saying can't can we survive i kind of on a punt on that one because of the they were amateur and i have not but as far as other ports world i make an important point about all the streets sometime when you characterize it as western but in fact when you go through this history of loss and i'm talking about a lot of it fits in the category we call western but many va draws on other sources much more global than we imagined i was is making use of age of watchers to greatly ancient greek philosophers now where did where did they get their ideas and unfortunately we don't have good records on this but there's every reason to think that they borrowed a lot from the near eastern cultures and a repackaging ideas that he writes or the world how to make those ideas gets us one many cases they pass through the islamic world which was at the time the only place that was

actually reading and writing a text that would then come down to it's so it's actually a more global tradition that's behind us and then we tend to think a minute what i make is that a lot of these ideas out there are identified with a certain ratification of last week that doesn't happen this early a home and what we think of as western culture so it's immediately to grow inside in a long time but it isn't identify the whole culture yes i'm a one world are in the sense that i think that the values that were talking about in that really matter are ones that can work for him and everywhere and that it worked for him and it pretty much everywhere i'm a high school student and women here says he's in december barring the religion and the trump presidency so like as mark twain said history does repeat itself but sometimes does rhyme and human mind do you think that what's prince other religious revival under current president administration so what would that mean

regarding the main argument of your book yes we're going to have this great orange the funeral so it's a question of survival and the tramp and a number of them are vice president now he's a very religious in his views and as is what paul ryan does i'm asking would do think that with their influence more americans and be encouraged to follow christian any more thoroughly that's the stone it connects with what the discussion of the previous question about an attack was it simple so your time of religion at halftime trump administration with religion but i'm sure you'll agree that they're identified gifted kind of imagine now really simplifying grossly europe these two major strands of religion american history i'm so called rigorously here begging forgiveness religion scholars little religion and fundamental religion down and there's a

long history of the religion making a very important that american politics the unitarians to work in the abolitionist movement for example reported that many of them connected up with the civil rights movement much of that liberal tradition has been a little bit lost history because as it became more liberal in secularized in some sense of the lost a lot of its formal affiliations and kind of dissolving the culture but it's really really important and that's not a part of religion and i would identify with the administration and i think it's the other your standards it's there which i don't think is representative of all american religion survey asking how will play out i was chairman of prognosticators i think they didn't pick this outcome baum that bad and these kinds of thing is traditionally don't help religion when religion is identified with power

people and people understand that when they start to question that religion and in some ways these political religion in america the leaders of the religious right have misunderstood his fundamental dynamic american history because it their success and success of a religion to largely was a result of deregulation and is involved and tried clam global power in the short term will deliver results but in the long term i would say this is going to be bad for the program and he said well i'd like to ask how do you think can our understanding of science and religion as you described help our nation combat climate change that's another great question i'm happy shade of you are clearly many people were really thinking big and i wish i could think as

that day is as you could on this timeline and mai mai perusal of the limited so i would ever snl climate change probably get that when you what happened or now but you know in general and when it connects several questions of problem one point we have this anti intellectual tradition in american history it's connected with a rejection of basic principles of the enlightenment it connects with a loss of confidence in the product of seeking truth and so if you ask me in very general colfer author of what we can do now we need to continue to build better than we have in the respect for this enlightened project of invested in the world seeking the truth and subjecting all of our use to public scrutiny and criticism which is what in some ways you know if you you know you you all done

tonight when we have a lot of questions and challenges and and that's really the only way that certain a collective human beings can confront the issues are out there in the world and if climate change is in fact our biggest issue which i suspect our grandchildren will think it is then the time we need to we need to commit ourselves to pursue the truth about think your bangs you've just heard matthew stewart author of nature's god the heretical origins of the american republic stewart spoke at the university of kansas leed center on february twenty third two thousand seventeen as part of qaeda's humanities lecture series sponsored by the hall center for the humanities i'm kay mabie entire kbr presents is a production of kansas public radio university of kansas