An hour with Matthew Stewart - Encore

today's key pierre presents was originally broadcast on july twenty third two thousand seventeen if thomas jackson ran for president he would be defeated and of georgia water ran for president after neil what our founding fathers really about religion and politics i'm kate mcintyre and today on k pr presents a lot for matthew stewart author of nature's god the heretical origins of the american republic stuart spoke february twenty thirty thousand seventeen as part of katie's humanities lecture series sponsored by the hall center for humanity 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 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 of 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 and jefferson explains the plan to his great friend joseph priestley 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 he clarifies that these morsels of morality of a true teachings of jesus are as 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 it's a 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 eighteenth century style it's the speech of ms paula baker before court of judah creature 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 to 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 when the judges promises to marry her the next day and i 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 of franklin 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 our evidence orthodox christian beliefs clearly is the second one the other more important point is that we're talking about a

duty 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 so i summarized that teaching as a theology ali baker god actually through 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 proper for worship this kind of franklin d at which brings a fun fun of that number three so jefferson big reader and five we digress for a moment here if you remember in the parable this is not viable that was the case a lot more meats bible was a random slicer the bible effect was quite diligent when scarlett he was a

humanist you read a lot of very carefully let's offer get to the library of congress' its 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 book about has a from france's 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 and more 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 they face as if we're all cruises history remains the thinking oregon so turns a jefferson was a materialist in the philosophy of mind going part time and as you can see 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 not things 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 jefferson 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 and jerry's right out of the finances positions 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 not only tactically 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 auckland jefferson agrees with him on this fairly practical philosophy of mine actually writes back promptly to jefferson a really great bodies at this point

at all that that's the four and the money that he says the question which inspired a 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 solidity perception memory or memory reason for all these or actually it's so it's an interesting position of watching mind quite radical imam summarize it has a certain kind of teaching at the end of the day i don't think it's actually about the neuro science is or even the philosophy of mind there's eight 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 and actually man as a part of nature that man can be explained we may be different

very different 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 that the wisdom of the pigeon and fun than a second before this is true many of the founders believed in aliens it's a little unfair to have this bug eyed creature here because they didn't think of these aliens as 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 of the same national 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 hawkish tone may come out is that of the joys of the areas we quite nice so david redden houses the philadelphia astronomer he had a good lecture today 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 so you say that 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 as he says astronomers tell us with good reason the only unnumbered world that 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 stage the government plan is now makes a similar point to visit there's a clear a theological challenge but i wonder as a political challenge that they're in 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 a deity could send you directing direct messages about how use your eyes your portable world but if you accept this scale 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

nature or whether priests and kings 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 hawley 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 but plagiarized books that he never actually read series amount right but not the furniture that was better 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 being hideous 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 regional reason arcade won exactly the same as a tie as the title of one of the notorious days books oracle's reason why trump won sixty nine three it's not just the title you'll find many of the same phrases many of 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 in close the american revolution in terms of vietnam had his friend's 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's forcing if you step back and look at the wider network of that so charles wound inspired plot 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 of deism and the citizens lashing attack on india's in on what's on turned out that franklin read that reputation with franklin being franklin he liked the audience that are being feuded better that electrification this so you said

reading back on about mating with real indians so you'll find apartments that apparent loud and 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 announce which means if you look carefully you'll find little bits of spinoza anything on an amendment franklin say see the smooth transition i made to the next topic election years are you need to know about snow's first he was pretty naughty he got it indicated from amsterdam synagogue and 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 but also earned him a reputation as the most subtle atheist that

health reform that on the earth and his posture his works that the ethics are the central text of the radical enlightenment animals influential works of last thing history 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 is no 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 line of reasoning and here at articulate later than a more general form he says the desire to do good which derive my living by the guns the 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 dr herbert 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 way 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've 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 but it will force a god of the american revolution years of their teaching spinoza from the wisdom of the pigeon man is a part of nature and in fact that's what moses as he says the man is a part of nature and was followed its laws and the salon is true worship and here very briefly here to place position that i called to ask that money isn't 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 forty tina's been a visit our entire attention to reason not revelation is the foundation of legitimate self government

and then you reach you won passage from the track paris 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 day is to keep men in the state of deception and with the species title a 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 but he'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 democracy we tend to think of democracy as being pretty unreasonable it's essentially what everybody thinks and what

everything's can be quite idiotic lie 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 wrong 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 her own mind perfectly well it was we'd 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 in the same desires and we found a massive tiny little minds of the event with an agreement what's the nose proposes when america's founders draw on his nightly of the marquee 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 had we had 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 this conception is not a way of reflecting pre existing 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 to how to happen how big his seventeenth century dutch jewish heritage involving american revolution and that there's that there's a week where the case which is a 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 clout 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 they 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 essential eyes 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 it is the president's proposal that is not oriented snows invented the modern world was based and 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 from that historians of lhasa have to face which is why why we care always that oscar's thing i found and fundamentally at my answer is well we shouldn't really we should have 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 had 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 and 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 it 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 giving it a lower 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 militia that they're christian publishing house we withdrew it he suggested interviewed abortion is the ultimate con because of the cause of climate change and i supposed to have 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 have evangelicals and he really impresses people like newt gingrich it's amazing how much he knows 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 up to walk out before turning and if it told us soldiers that he would never nail because they believe they've really religion when asked to kneel 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 one day as i was walking through the woods near valley forge and he saw washington kneeling in a mice or some reason that and 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 forced others 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 he would be in the antebellum south so there you have a clear identification of religion with a book award or you had to present turns for example saying in 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 korean this 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 in their way as was that it didn't have got anywhere in it so the rockefellers a script better than the fact that 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 in 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 ballard 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 of 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 below that doesn't force itself i think that jefferson was giving us some are quite when he wrote to madison that we should rip up the constitution every nineteen years who is strange but his point was that self govern means you govern yourselves

and no 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 they went to the actuarial tables and he feared it was nineteen years he was nineteen and recorders like that sores all over this question and really govern ourselves 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 correction is he going anywhere things different now than they were at the time a revolution and then any task to the it 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 in 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 go 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 of you know trying 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 as to shill for mozart important i mean it's in 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 how it was 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 women 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

get your thoughts on where our needs 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 i'm j mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio around time period here currently rethink 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 is basing 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 dashes 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 our last election in my opinion was the least informed public that we've ever had global and if they had been informed we would not let that the person that was elected what are they safer sharing questions and buy buy the average apple

event or even in a time of the founders of the protests were they are christian thank you so much for the talking i was really struck i think in my mind is going on that time and beyond the need for nietzsche distance shipping religion in the us and he tries to make a distinction to what good service 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 p isn't as 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 or 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 that people understand the 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 the a stick 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 measuring beach into 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 it does it has a nice it's created some sort of civil religion effectively it was in kind of leveling and be emphasizing offer solutions are we crave a substitute that defies institutions of statement is that a problem is that good the bad those raging questions i just believe in my own my own take on it i think that to some degree it's an activism that is it's 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 and some 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 that ring 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 terrible winter what might be called and it still is clearly very strong today was how do you deal with that strain are we talking about earlier versions of what we know as the culture wars particular in kansas or is it something else although de 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 we're finding at the history it does go back goes back all the way it goes back to before the revolution you know the helm were 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 and two if it has at least and that's when you start to find when you find groups of people looking for ways to work together at the same time not able to work through the air their fears are not able to overcome their ignorance and as a consequence developing this and that and tyne what clemens said is it's been there and i think it's the dynamics that produced it found something very fundamental documents idea and mara world war an incentive hi i'm could you please address spinoza stayed on justice i think is a very interesting conception of well 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 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 and just decisions and i'll take my answer off the air banks haven't so the question on spinoza an en justice and now whether it relies too heavily on educated

populace i think you're really long time to spinoza because i don't think he's hugh or jefferson who has the same view is taking for granted that we have an educated population and 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 and i think that that is 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 and he'd speak their minds and we need to hear what they have to say so just 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 you're saying can't can we survive i wanna punch 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 you know 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 ancient watchers

to greatly ancient greek philosophers nowhere 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 turn the thing and an implant makers that on these ideas out there are identified with a certain ratification of last week it doesn't happen this early a home in what we think of as western culture so it's immediately to grow inside in alongside 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 they do work 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 is a repeat itself but sometimes does rhyme and human mind do you think that what's prince other religious revival under current president's 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 religious revival in the trunk i like them are by sputnik now he's a very religious in his views and as is the paul ryan i guess i'm asking would do you think that with their influence more americans be encouraged to follow christian any more thoroughly that's liz collett connect with a discussion of the previous question about an attack was it simple so your religion in identifying the trump administration with religion but i'm sure you'll agree that they're identifying

now really simplifying grossly there are at least two major strands of religion american history i'm so caught rigorously here begging forgiveness religion scholars liberal religion and fundamental religion and there's a long history of the religion making a very important impact on 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 seasons 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 in 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 but yeah 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 and this understood this 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 and i appreciated you are clearly many people were really thinking big man i wish i could think as that day is as you could on this online my my party is a little bit limited when you are but you know in general and when it connects several questions of broccoli and 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 the a loss of confidence in the product of seeking truth and so if you ask me and regional 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 incidentally 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 baum and if climate change is in fact our biggest issue which i suspect her grandchildren will think it is then the time we need to we need to commit ourselves to pursue the truth but i think your bangs matthew stewart author of nature's god for her 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 and j mcintyre kbr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas or is it