Aristotle versus Religion

Today, we had a lengthy, articulate discussion with Andrew Bernstein about his latest book, Aristotle vs Religion and Other Essays. We covered the title essay, and several others, focusing on the philosophical aspects.

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Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:

• Andrew Bernstein's post, Aristotle Versus Religion (1 of 7), March 1, 2016
• Aristotle Versus Religion and Other Essays by Andrew Bernstein (Kindle edition)

Episode 101 (63 minutes) was recorded at 2200 Central European Time, on August 17, 2025, with Alitu's recording feature. Martin did the editing and post-production with the podcast maker, Alitu. The transcript is generated by Alitu.

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This

Episode Transcript

Andrew (00:00):
Foreign.

Blair (00:08):
Here we are again, the Secular Foxhole podcast today.
Our guest is Andrew Bernstein, philosopher andwriter and author.
And we're here to discuss his latest nonfiction work,
a series of essays.
The title essay is Aristotle versus Religion,which is also on the COVID of his wonderful

(00:31):
book.
How are you, Andrew?

Andrew (00:34):
I'm good, Blair and Martin, and thanks for having me back on.
It's always great to be in the foxhole withyou guys.

Blair (00:40):
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you for that.

Martin (00:43):
I did a screenshot of when you're showing your book there, also the COVID art.
And that was interesting how you picked theone and which one you liked and got responses
from potential buyers and readers.
So I like that.
Could you, could you tell a little about that
before Blair is continue with your question?

Blair (01:02):
Yeah.

Andrew (01:03):
Cover image.
Yeah, sure.
I'll put it, put it back up here.

Blair (01:07):
Yeah, please.

Andrew (01:08):
Yeah, I went to.
This is.
There's this design company guys called 100
covers.
Yeah.
And I like them a lot.
They,
they did a good job on volume one of the TonyJust saga.
And I went back to them and told them what Iwanted and they sent me three possibilities.
There's three, three possible covers, all ofwhich I like.

(01:30):
I thought they were all really good and so Iput them up on Facebook and asked,
you know, my, my got some, I got some marketfeedback from my, you know, my friends,
potential customers and they, they basicallyagreed with me that all three covers were,
were really good.
I think the majority of them liked what of theother coffers, but, but I, but I preferred

(01:54):
this one.
So I went with, I went with my own,
my own taste and a number, a number of myfriends, like, you know, like this one the
best also.
But they were, they were all really good and
I, I think I could, could not have gone wrongwith any of them.
But, but I like the eyes,
you know, Aristotle's eye.

Blair (02:11):
Yeah.

Andrew (02:11):
He was the great empirical philosopher, in contrast to Plato, who was,
you know, was,
who was concerned more with the ideal worldtranscended to this one.
Aristotle was the great biologist, he was thegreat empiricist.
And so his eyes looking out at the world,observing whatever errors Aristotle made.

(02:31):
Nevertheless, he was observing.
He was trying to tie principles to observable
facts.
And so the eyes of Aristotle observing the
world, that's what I really loved about thiscode.
Plus, I like the gold.
I like the gold and the black, you know, know,background.

Blair (02:46):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great cover with a great.
For a great book.

Andrew (02:50):
Thank you.

Blair (02:50):
Great book.
Speaking for myself, I I love the Greeks.
I, I,
I just constantly,
I pay homage to them for all the, the giftsthey gave the west and, well, to the world,
not just the west,
whoever decides to pick them up.
But I'd say maybe you agree that philosophy isthe Greek's greatest gift to the West.

(03:15):
What do you think?

Andrew (03:17):
Well, philosophy certainly originates in Greece.
Thales is the first great philosopher we knowof.
And one of the essays in here is Heroes andVillains in Western Philosophy.
And I go through the whole history ofphilosophy showing it as an attempt to
establish an objective method of gainingknowledge.

(03:39):
And Thales is the first hero because he's notgiving mythical explanations of natural
phenomena.
He's trying to give empirical based claims,
even though his specific claims were wrong,like all things are water, but he's trying to
give observation based claims.
So I think he was the first great hero of
philosophy.

(03:59):
So philosophy is a great gift to the humanrace.
From the Greeks.
Was it the greatest?
Perhaps.
They did so many great things.
I, I mean, their contributions to literatureand the arts and, and,
you know, and to science and mathematics.
But rational philosophy or, you know,

(04:19):
philosophy.
Well, there's faith based, that's the wholequestion.
Is, is are these faith based beliefs reallyphilosophy?
I mean, they attempt to answer the questionsof philosophy, but by faith rather than
reason.
So if we just say philosophy is a rationalattempt to answer these fundamental questions
that it definitely comes from the Greeks.
And then.

(04:39):
Yeah, yeah, I think we have to agree with you,Blair.
Although all these other contributions, likein the arts, are also magnificent.
Yeah,
true philosophy,
I think, is the most fundamental.

Blair (04:51):
Now you again, you, you just mentioned the contribution of observable facts.
I know that science, the scientific method andscience in general today is under attack
probably because it's racist.

Andrew (05:06):
Didn't you know that?

Blair (05:07):
No, tell me.

Andrew (05:10):
Scientific method is racist.
Oh,
yo, grammar is racist.
This is the critical race theorists andcritical whiteness studies people like Robin
d' Angelo and their real.
I'm sorry, it's very irrational.
I just, I brought it in as a, as a joke.

Blair (05:30):
That's quite all right.
That's quite, it's true though.
I mean, it's, they're, they're out there.

Andrew (05:34):
Oh yeah.
And they control the universities,
unfortunately.

Blair (05:41):
So, I mean.

Andrew (05:42):
But you were talking about the scientific method.

Blair (05:46):
Yes,
Yeah, I want to.
Is there a certain.
Maybe you know more about this than I do.
But, but what is a scientific method?
It's observable facts.
You, you test something and then you observe
the results and then you go,
is it cause and effect?
What, what what?Is it all part of the same thing or do you

(06:09):
know more than I do probably?

Andrew (06:12):
Well, I, I'm not an expert on that.
I'm not a scientist.
I'm just a writer and a philosopher.
But, but I could take an educated guess,
you know at this that a scientific methodneeds to be oriented in, in observational
facts that you know and, and, and, and, and,and and you know I think it's very similar to

(06:36):
philosophy in that both,
both of them are rational fields meaningmythology or faith based beliefs as, as a
starting point of cognition in the, in and,and I think a scientific method and rational
philosophy or just, just philosophy begins youknow, you know where religion starts with the

(07:00):
revealed text.
It starts the Jew, the Jews and the Christianswith different parts of the Bible,
the Muslims with the Quran and you know, andso on.
Religion starts with a revealed text that washeld to be used know, written by men.
Divinely inspired.
Science and philosophy don't start with atext.
They, I'm looking out the window here in my,my apartment.
They start with observation of nature.

(07:22):
Nature is the text.
And look,
yes, I'm looking at the grass.
I mean it's August while we're doing this,
right.
So it's high summer.

Blair (07:31):
Sure.

Andrew (07:31):
And I'm looking at the grass and the bushes and the trees and everything's in
bloom, everything's green.
And there's the downside.
There's all kinds of insects flying around,
you know, yo and stuff.
But, but you know the scientific method starts
that's, I think this is critical.
You start with the observation of facts.
You don't bring some preconceived notion toit.

(07:53):
God created it or, or, or whatever.
You don't bring any preconceived notions to
it.
You just wouldn't.
You know what was Newton's famous line whowas, who was a devout Christian said I make no
hypotheses.
I think he, you know, he said when, when, whenI'm dealing with scientific questions, I start
with the facts.
I, you know, I, I start with observation.
And then you need a theory that explains youknow, some principle that, that, that explains

(08:18):
the facts.
And I think what little I know about thehistory of science,
you know the development of an experimentalmethod is, is a renaissance development, right
with people like Francis Bacon,
you know, Francis Bacon, Galileo, people likethat where you, you, you form a hypothesis,

(08:39):
you know,
a set of rational principles that explains theobserved facts.
And then you test,
you, you know, you test hypothesis in the, inthe laboratory.
And I think and, and the results areobservable So I think what a scientific method
does is it kind of shuttles back and forthfrom observed facts to hypothesis which is

(09:03):
tested, you know, and then, and then the, thehypothesis is validated or,
or, or undermined by the observed facts of,you know, of, of the experiment.
So it's like a shuttling back and forthbetween observation, observation to theory and
then, and then back to, back to the facts, tothe facts that are the result of the

(09:25):
experiment.
So I think it's always linked to observation,you know, to the facts of observation and
always attempt to develop a rational theoryrather than, you know, faith based or
mythological one that, that, that explains,
that explains the facts.
So I think that's, that's a scientific method
at least as I, that's great.

Blair (09:47):
No, I appreciate that.
I clearly understood that and I appreciate
that.
Thank you.

Andrew (09:51):
Let me, let me, let me give you an example.
I always, I always use in class because Ithink one of the, I think Aristotle's greatest
achievements.
Now he made many errors we know in physics,
for example,
understandable in the fourth century B.C.
but he made a lot of tremendous strides in thefield of biology.

(10:12):
That's really where he shines as a scientistis in the field of biology.
But you know, a great philosopher, nobody everdoubted what a great philosopher was.
And I think Aristotle's greatest achievementis, is that he,
and I'm not an Aristotle scholar, you know, Idon't read ancient Greek or anything.
I just read Aristotle in English translations.
So I'm not a scholar.
You know, my good friend Professor CarrionBiondi is an Aristotle scholar.

(10:36):
She, you know, she's fluent in ancient Greekand you know, and everything and she knows
much more on Aristotle than I do.
But just as a generalist in the field of
philosophy,
I think Aristotle's greatest contribution tohumanity and I think I would argue the
greatest contribution anybody ever made tohumanity in history is that he more than
anybody taught the human race how to think.

(10:58):
Because one,
he formulated the laws of logic, you know, he,you know, he developed the, the, you
formulated the rules of proper reasoning,identified the main errors or the fallacies,
you know, of reasoning.
And two,
he linked that, he married it to hisobservation based method to his empirical,

(11:21):
his empirical method.
And so that knowledge is gained for Aristotle
by logical,
non contradictory thinking about observedfacts.
And that not, not by faith, not by mythology,not by going by our feelings,
but knowledge is gained by logical, noncontradictory thinking about observed facts.

(11:44):
This is a tremendous advance.
And one example of this is,
I mean Aristotle was well aware of Greekmythology.
You remember in the myths palace, Athenasprings fully developed from Zeus's head.
Now I hate it when that happens.
That hurts.

(12:06):
But I mean,
so yeah, I have.

Blair (12:09):
Several holes in my head.

Andrew (12:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm glad my daughter didn't come into theworld that way, you know.
But according to the mythology, that's the wayAthena came into, you know, she was, she was
born.
Now notice what follows from that.
Zeus,
who was running around with many differentfemales,

(12:31):
goddesses, women, you know, human females,
had God knows how many children.
You know, they call him the father of thehuman race.
In his case it was literal.
He had all of these children,
but in all the other cases he had to sharethem with their mother.
But Athena was his.
Athena doesn't have a mother, she was his,

(12:53):
100% his.
And he doted on her.
And so it makes sense that if a child has oneparent but a loving one,
that that child will love that parent andtheir bond will be very close.
And so according to the mythology,
Athena was the only one Zeus trusted to hold,you know, the most powerful weapon in the

(13:17):
universe, Zeus's thunderbolt.
If it wasn't in his hands, it was in Athena's
hands because he could trust her.
Now all of that's very logical.
There's nothing contradictory about that.
You have a child has one parent, but a loving
one.
So their bond is very, is very close.
She's loyal to her father, he could trust her.
So she's, you know, it's all very logical,

(13:38):
there's no contradictions there.
But the starting point is anything butobservational fact.
The starting point is bizarre mythology.
You know, somebody developed out of, comeright out of our father's head.
Nairistal was one, a father and two, abiologist.
And he knows that's not the way, you know,offspring come into the world.

(14:03):
And so that's mythology.
Even though, even though what follows from the
starting point is very logical, it's not goodenough just to be, that's rationalistic, you
know, to be very logical but based on a nonempirical starting point.
That's not knowledge.
You know,
knowledge is gained by logical, noncontradictory thinking about observed facts,

(14:24):
not about myths or faith based beliefs oremotions.
That's Aristotle's tremendous contribution tothe human race.
I think.

Blair (14:34):
It'S all been forgotten sadly.
I think also.
But I wanna, I'm gonna jump around a littlebit because I, I just,
I've been, while I'm listening to you, I'vebeen formulating the next question because I
have several nieces and nephews and they'reall.

Andrew (14:50):
They didn't come from the right.
Out of their father's head, I'm guessing.
Well, mom probably had to bring them into theworld.
Right?

Blair (14:58):
That's right.
That's right.

Andrew (15:00):
Go through.
Go through the pain, the pains of childbirth.

Blair (15:04):
Yes.

Andrew (15:05):
Women are tough, man.
I don't know how they go through that, but.
But they do.

Blair (15:10):
Yeah. Yeah, they.
They certainly do.
And that's certainly a great contribution tothe human race.

Andrew (15:17):
It's a superpower.
You know, the leftists don't want it.
The leftist feminists don't want to hear this,but this is really a superpower that.
That women have.
A woman's body has the power to create human
life.
I mean, they need a little help from theirfriends, obviously.

Blair (15:34):
Yes.

Andrew (15:35):
To initiate the process.
But once.
Once. Once she conceives her body, I mean,just creates human life.
That is a superpower.
And I'm not saying women shouldn't get aneducation to have careers, too, if they want.
But.
But nevertheless, it is a. It is a superpower,
the capacity to create human life.
It's amazing.

Blair (15:54):
I will agree.

Andrew (15:55):
I will agree.

Blair (15:57):
But what I'm afraid of for them, and I've seen this come to fruition with some of
them, not all of them to their credit,
but some of them,
from preschool to graduate school, they'vebeen plastered.
They've been bombarded with environmentalism,

(16:18):
climate change,
catastrophe,
doom.
The world will end in 12 years.

Andrew (16:25):
You know, the Ice Age is coming, by Ben Thunberg.

Blair (16:29):
Yeah, the ice age is coming by 1970.
There'll be an Oreo shortage by 1983.
You know, things.

Andrew (16:37):
An oreo shortage, Is that what you said?

Blair (16:40):
No, an oil shorty.

Andrew (16:43):
I said, God, we don't want to run out of Oreos.
You don't want to run out of Oreos, that's forsure.

Blair (16:48):
Now, that would be a trash.

Andrew (16:49):
Yeah, absolutely.

Blair (16:52):
Now contrast this to.
Again, I want to bring it back to Aristotle.
Is it Eudaimonia?Flourishing?

Andrew (17:00):
Oh, I do, yeah.

Blair (17:03):
Daimonia.
Thank you.
Yeah. Contrast, you know, this doom and gloomwith Daimonia to human flourishing, human
progress, human.
So that's.
Again, that's.
That there's this war of ideas right in thatarea.

Andrew (17:23):
Yeah,
yeah.
Now, you know, it's.
It's when I was in graduate school, this goes
way back.
This.
This is 50, 50 years ago, 1970s,
roughly.
But eudaimonia back then, you know, Aristotle
was famous for advocating Eudaimonia,
and that was generally translated into Englishas happiness back then.

Blair (17:46):
Right. Yeah, I thought.
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew (17:50):
But Aristotle scholarship has come, you know, a long way since then.
I mean Aristotle.
Here we can.
What little I know about the history of thisAristotle scholarship really took off in the
19th century.
I think.
You know, the mod, the modern analysis ofAristotle and amongst the German philosophers

(18:12):
you got to give you, you know, I'm alwaysharanguing against German philosophy, against
Kant, Hagel and Marx,
the, the unholy triumvirate as I call them.
And you know, and you know, and for good
reason but, but you know, people like WernerJaeger and there, and there were German
Aristotle scholars who really kicked off themodern, you know, the realisation of how
important Aristotle is.

(18:32):
And, and English scholar, English speakingscholars in, you know, both sides of the pond
in Great Britain and in the United Statespicked it up in the, in the 20th century.
So Aristotle scholarship has become, you know,huge in the, in the modern academy, in
philosophy departments, which is, which is oneof the real good signs.
And Aristotle scholars today assure us thateudaimonia really means flourishing.

(18:55):
Like you said Blair, flourishing life,
which really makes sense because it integrateswith Aristotle's biology, you know, and what a
great biologist he was.
And you know, the flourishing life.
I mean the, the, the imagery that comes to my
mind is, you know, you see,
you see the forest looks like on a beautifulday in June,

(19:18):
70 degrees Fahrenheit.
It's not too hot, it's not cold.
There's a breeze blowing the evergreens andall the trees, other trees in bloom and the
grass is green and there's a lake down belowand the sun is shining and the birds, birds
are chirping the trees and of course theinsects are buzzing around,
you know,
all those annoying,
annoying living creatures.

(19:39):
But flourishing like you see the flourishing.
And of course Aristotle's talking about humanlife, flourishing as a human being, which
means life.
And as he puts it, I think it's in the
Niconachean ethics, life in accordance with arational principle.
This is where, this is where the famous claimmade that Aristotle, Aristotle says man is the
rational being.

(20:00):
That you know, that to achieve a fully humanlife means life in accordance with a, with a
rational principle.
Which I think you know, close enough that you
know, man is the rational animal and as arational.
So we achieve today in the modern world.
I, I think Aristotle couldn't have conceivedof this in the 4th century BC but I think you

(20:23):
logically argued that this is in congruentwith Aristotle.
Because human flourishing, you could provelogically I think requires,
you know, that we grow crops and we cureDiseases, which Aristotle certainly would
approve of as a biologist.
But you build homes and cities, you know,
where culture flourishes in the, in the citiesand industry.

(20:44):
This is all part of human flourishing.
You know, we, we can't flourish as cave
dwellers.
Here's where human flourishing comes into
conflict with environmentalism because,
you know, they want a pristine nature.
You know, nature has intrinsic value in and ofitself, right,
Regardless of any utilitarian value for man.

(21:06):
But human flourishing requires that we, weremake nature.
We cut down trees to, you know, for farms andgo to grow crops and build towns and cities
and, and everything.
So,
so the, the environmentalists are certainlyopposed to human flourishing as there's,
there's, there's one conflict, but anotherpoint I wanted to make an answer to your

(21:28):
question, Blair,
regards knowledge.
That knowledge consists of logical,
non contradictory thinking about observedfacts.
So you mentioned climate change and variousother environmentalist scares in the 1970s
that you're, you're right, you mentioned it.
There was the Ice Age, the Great Ice Age,

(21:50):
because,
you know, the Earth had cooled roughly from1940 to 1975.
It was in a cooling period.
And the scientists were talking and all the
news magazines were talking about the comingIce Age and everything because they blame man,
because they blame human beings for it.
But,

(22:10):
but here's where Aristotle's method is soimportant is are human beings impacting the
climate?
Let's eliminate the hysteria and look at thedata.
And I've written an essay,
a booklet on this issue,

(22:30):
the Truth About Climate Change.
And I would just point out there's a lot offacts that need to be adduced here.
But the one that gets overlooked by all thealarmists and even, and very often even by the
sceptics of agw, you know, anthropogenicglobal warming or man made woman,

(22:51):
is to point out the undeniable fact of anatural.
There's a natural climate process.
We're in the modern war period.
Now.
Prior to that was what they called the LittleIce Age,
you know, when it was colder,
1300-1800, roughly.
Prior to that was the mediaeval warm period,900 A.D. to 1300 A.D. roughly when, when the

(23:14):
Vikings were able to settle Greenland, growcrops there.
He even thought to name it Greenland becausethey could grow crops.
It was warmer.
Prior to that was the, was the, was what they
call the Dark Age cold period.
And prior to that was the Roman one period.
And prior to that was an unnamed cold period.
You know, I Forget the date, 600 B.C. to 200B.C. something like that.

(23:35):
I named it I took it upon myself to dub it theBiblical Cold period.
And I said in the booklet, if scientists don'tlike the reference to religion, let them give
it a name.
I was outraged by the period not having a
name.
But guys, prior to that was the Minoan WarmPeriod, you know, roughly 1500 BC to a

(23:56):
thousand BC, which was significantly warmer byseveral degrees warmer than it is today.
All the proxy data indicates that many years,many centuries before industrialization, which
is a late 18th century British development.
So when you plug the Maya one period into thisongoing natural climate cycle, never mind

(24:19):
going back millions and millions and millionyears, the ice ages and the end of ice ages,
long before man's earliest ancestors evenappear in the fossil record.
When you plug in, you know, Wein Rand taughtus to see the big picture,
integrate, go as wide as far as you can.
When you plug the modern Warm period into this
vast climate history, the earth has 4.6billion years of climate history, constant

(24:43):
climate cycling.
The modern Warm Period.
The modern Warm period is just a relatively
minor blip, you know, it's a relatively minorwarming, which is good anyway.
When you do that, you see the big picture.
You use Aristotle's method and you reasonlogically about all the facts, not just some
of the facts.

(25:04):
You realise this is hysteria, guys,
this, this is unwanted hysteria.
Not to mention the fact that, well, no, here's
another fact I'll throw in.
Warming is beneficial.
You know, the extends, the growing seasons,
we, we grow more crops.
It's the colder periods that are harmful,always have been.
The growing seasons are shorter, it's harderto grow crops.

(25:27):
Northern Europe suffered horribly during theLittle Ice Age.
The famine in Finland wiped out like a thirdof the population.
1690s,
lean years in Scotland, the 1690s, thousandsof people died of starvation.
In the colder periods, it's harder to growcrops.
The further north you go, the harder it gets.

(25:48):
So the warm periods are beneficial, not to
mention natural.
So Aristotle's method here is critical.
So advocate human flourishing as opposed to
doom and gloom like you said,
but also base it in reason.
Examine the data.
Is there a looming ice age?
Is warming man made?Is warming harmful to life?

(26:11):
The Aristotle's method is ideal for that.
And I think the IPCC,
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change andtheir shills in the leftist media,
they don't employ it, they're engaged inhysteria, they don't employ reason on this.
So it's your thumbs down, thumbs down forthose guys.

Blair (26:30):
Very good, sir, very good.
Now I want to jump around some of the essays
in your book, if we could.
But we'll keep with the philosophic theme, ifyou don't mind.

Andrew (26:40):
Well, that is my field.

Blair (26:44):
Yes.

Andrew (26:44):
By the way, let me point something out here.
Going back.
Can I go back to climate change for one
minute?

Blair (26:49):
Yeah, go for it.

Andrew (26:50):
I'm not a scientist, but I have buddies with scientists and I'm a bookworm.
And fortunately, scientists write books.
I've read a tonne of books on climate
scientists and geologists, you know, and, andyou know, and so on.
Astrophysicists who study the, the sun,climate connection.
And I think two things I could add to thisonce I have all the data from the scientists
because I, you know, as a philosopher, I don'tknow the data, but I read the scientists their

(27:14):
books.
I get the data.
But as a philosopher, one thing I could add is
one, what I learned from my rant.
See the big picture.
Don't just focus on the last 150 years, guys.
The IPC focuses on the last 150 years, youknow, of, of a warming trend.
See the big picture.
Plug it into the ongoing natural process of
climate change.

(27:34):
It goes on for millions of years.
And then two,
my knowledge of logic.
I've taught logic for four, 40 years.
I know how to present evidence in support of aconclusion.
What counts as evidence, what doesn't.
And I spoke with the friends of mine who were
scientists and objectivists and they, theyalways tell me scientists too often don't know
enough logic.
They don't.
That's part of philosophy.

(27:56):
It's Aristotle's contribution, by the way.
Logic teaches us how to establish the truth ofa conclusion.
What counts as evidence, what doesn't count asevidence?
How much evidence is necessary?How do we avoid fallacies, you know, you know,
in the presenting of evidence.
I know logic better than they do.
And that's why I think they're often guilty ofthis half truth fallacy.

(28:18):
They'll show us the facts from the last 150years,
but it's only part of the truth.
They're overlooking thousands and thousands
and thousands, even millions of years of, ofevidence here.
So as a philosopher, I think one leftist womansaid to noise well, why should I listen to
what a philosopher has to say about climatechange?
This is a fair enough question.

(28:39):
And I said, well, I know as much about climatechange as Greta Thunberg does,
you know,
or Al Gore,
but, but the real answer is, you know, I didthe research and what the scientists have to
say.
And as a philosopher, I have something to
contribute that they don't have.

Blair (28:58):
Yeah. Now my.
Let me throw this out.

Andrew (29:00):
Then. The last.

Blair (29:01):
They use the last 150 years because they want to attack the industrial revolution,
I think,
and blame man again, that's their Blameprogress and blame man.
So.
But you have a great chapter in here calledGreat Islamic Thinkers versus Islam.
You want to touch on that for a minute inkeeping with the philosophic theme.

Andrew (29:24):
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's.
There's.
I think that's an important essay that I'm
very proud of because it's about the GoldenAge of Islam, you know, roughly 800 A.D.
to 1200 A.D.
and a lot of people in the west,
you know,
in the modern world,

(29:45):
when they discuss the Golden Age of Islam,
either they also often take one of twoalternatives.
They either poo poo or they minimise it.
Oriana Falachi, who I admired in many waysbecause she spoke out,
you know, against the dangers of Islam.
In fact, I think she was.
Well, she was going to be incarcerated inItaly, wasn't she?

(30:07):
For, for speaking out against.
Against.

Blair (30:10):
I know, I know the name, but I haven't seen her name lately, you know.

Andrew (30:14):
Well, she died of, she died of cancer, I think.
She died.
That's right.
In the United States.
She couldn't go back to her native Italy
because they were going to imprison her for,
for what she said, not for any crime shecommitted, but, but because her criticism of
Islam.
And, you know, I had a lot of respect for hercourage in that way.
But one of her books, I don't remember thename of it offhand, it was shortly after 9 11,

(30:34):
and it was written in a white heat,
written by a righteously angry woman.
She said, oh, the Golden Age visa wasn'treally that great.
And, and I think there's a lot of, you know,people in, in the west who, you know,
they'll minim.
They'll try to minimise it or the other
alternative is they'll say, see,
Islam is compatible with advanced culture, youknow, you know, that the olden age was real

(30:58):
and it's compatible with, you know, with highculture.
And the truth is both of those interpretationsare false.
The golden eggs of Islam was real,
that's for sure.
But it was Islam that destroyed it.
And, and, and I think the history shows thatvery clearly.
So the Muslim, Muslim warriors conquered theMiddle east, you know, after,

(31:19):
during and after Muhammad's lifetime.
When he died.
Muhammad was what, 570 to 632 AD, 7th centuryAD that, you know, they conquered parts of the
Byzantine Empire.
Which was Greek and Christian had kept alive alot of the Greek writings.
And Muslim scholars were fascinated by whatthe Greeks had said.
And this, this was Islam is fundamentalistIslam or just Islam All Islam is false.

(31:44):
Fundamentalist Islam didn't strangle theculture yet at that time like it, like it does
today or for the last 800 years.
And these scholars were free to read theGreeks especially Aristotle who they
enormously admired.
11 Caliph in Baghdad, you know Aristotleappeared to him in a dream and you know one of

(32:07):
them, one of the, you know one of themestablished a house of wisdom in Baghdad where
they trained intellectuals and you know and,
and you know in, in high intellectual studiesand there was a,
a very active translation movement thattranslated the Greeks and especially Aristotle

(32:27):
from Greek into Arabic.
And for, for centuries the, the,
the Islamic world whether Arab or Persian andwhether in the Middle east or in Spain because
remember the Arab warriors conquered Spain inthe, in 711 A.D. and and held it for
centuries.

(32:49):
But but in both Spain and in the Middle eastboth Arab and Persian in present day Iran
Persian scholars,
all of whom were Muslim at least nominallynot, not all of them were were practising
Islam but some of some of them were based ontheir study of Al Farabi I think it was was
called the second teacher,

(33:09):
Aristotle being the first.
Avicenna was a great Aristotle scholar as wellas a great physician.
Averroes was a great Aristotle scholar.
Thomas Aquinas considered him the greatest of
the Aristotle scholars as well as a greatphysician.
And Arab intellectuals,
Arab and Persian but Muslim intellectuals madegreat great advances in mathematics, in

(33:33):
astronomy, in, in medicine.
Some magnet much magnificent poetry, you knowwritten by Muslim writers back to like I said,
they were all nominal Muslim at least some ofthem practising some, some not.
But for 400 years roughly from 800 to 1200A.D.
the Middle east and Spain the, the, the ArabIslamic world led the world in intellectual

(33:59):
development.
And that's that is true what happened?
Islam, I mean Islam was was always there andthere was always some tension between these
great intellectuals and you know, and the, thefaith based mentality.
But Al Ghazali who's considered was the 11thcentury,

(34:20):
who's considered today and for centuries inthe past second in importance in the history
of Islam, second only to Muhammad Al Ghazaliharangued against what was his famous work the
incoherence of the philosophers, theincoherence of philosophy argued that
philosophy could not explain the world,

(34:42):
that it led to these inevitablecontradictions, that only faith in the Quran,
faith Based beliefs in the, in the Quran.
You have to give up philosophy and give up
reason,
you know, and just have, have faith in the,
you know, fundamental fundamentalism, faith inthe literal truth of the Quran.
Al Ghazali was enormously influential.

(35:04):
Other theologians as well.
They, you know, they, they built on theIslamic foundation, foundation of the, of, of
the culture.
And their influence unfortunately wastremendous.
And you start to see the caliphs and thepolitical authority started to burn the books
of the philosophers, including of Averroes.

(35:26):
And here's the one great historical point.
Thomas aquinas in the 13th century,
1225-1274, his dates.
Averroes book survives enough that ThomasAquinas was able to,

(35:48):
you know, to procure copies.
He considered Averroes the greatest
commentator on Aristotle and Cat.
You know,
Catholic Spaniards had fought against theMuslims for centuries,
you know, and they, they eventually theyreconquered Spain, right?
La reconquista.
And by 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella, two
Catholic fanatics marry and they want anentirely Catholic Spain.

(36:12):
So they expel all Muslims, some of whosefamilies had lived there for like 700 years.
They expelled the Muslim and let's kick out,let's kick out the Jews while we're at it.
Expel the Jews also and get specialdispensation from the Pope to establish, you
know, an inquisition in Spain, the infamousSpanish Inquisition, to make sure nobody was

(36:32):
secretly practising Islam or Judaism.
Catholic scholars, I mean, Catholic warriorsretake Spain over, over the centuries, 12th,
13th century, they, the Islamic world,Andalusia, Islamic Spain was vastly advanced.
You know, the, the, remember in Lawrence ofArabia, Alex,
as, as Faisal says, I. I dream was.

(36:54):
I dream about the lighted streets of Cordoba,
you know, or something.
They had street lights, they had street lights
In Cordova, like 1200, you know, they hadsewers and universities and libraries.
It was much more advanced.
And the Catholic scholars got access to allthe works of the Greeks which had been lost in
the West.

(37:14):
And what's his name, Archbishop Raymond thefirst of Toledo initiated a second great
translation movement, whether the Catholic,Jewish or Muslim scholars to translate the
great works of the Greeks, includingAristotle, especially Aristotle, from Arabic
into Latin,
the language of European scholars.
And then you start to see Aristotle being
studied again and other Greeks being studiedagain.

(37:36):
University of Paris, for example, became ahotbed with Albertus Magnus.
Thomas Aquinas a hotbed of Aristotelians.
The Church opposed it,
but some people got burned at stake.
But this time Aristotle,
Aristotle survived, the Greek approachsurvived.
And the Church wasn't able to squash it.
So the Golden Age of Islam was real.

(37:58):
In summary, it was destroyed by Islam,
but it helped revive Aristotle and Greekscholarship in the west in what became known
as the Mediaeval Renaissance in the, the 13thcentury with people like Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas and the revival ofAristotelianism, which leads directly into the
Italian Renaissance.
So the, the golden age of Islam had a positiveimpact in Europe as it in fact brought Europe

(38:22):
back its, its Greek legacy back to the west.
Even though in the Arab Islamic world For the
last 800 years it's been squashed.
And, and the Arab Islamic world's been in adark age for the hundred years because of
Islam.
So yeah, the golden age was real, but it's notcompatible with Islam.
Islam was its death.

Blair (38:42):
Sure, sure, all right, sir, I know.

Andrew (38:46):
And by the way, some of, some of those great thinkers from the golden age of Islam
were openly sceptical of religion.
Al Razi, one of the great medical men duringthat period,
who's a, an Arab I believe, but also, what'shis name, Omar Khayyam, who's,
who's mostly known in the west for his poetry.

(39:07):
Oma Kam was, was a, was a great mathematician,a brilliant mathematician and was openly
sceptical of, I don't know how he didn't get,
you know, beheaded or you have his booksburned because he was, he was openly sceptical
of religious.
So some of those,
some of those Muslim thinkers, you know, who,who were so were great geniuses were nominally

(39:30):
Muslim but they weren't religious.
Some of them were openly critical of religion.

Blair (39:34):
Okay, very good, very good.
Well, let's jump forward to anotherphilosophical essay and in your literature
section you, you have a chapter on objectivismversus Kantianism in the Fountainhead.
Now do you want to jump, do you want to do alittle contrast there real quick?

(39:56):
Yeah,
the first handedness, second handedness, Iguess or.

Andrew (40:00):
Yeah,
you know, now we're talking about my, youknow, my, my favourite all time favourite
book,
fiction, non fiction novel, drama, whatever.
I mean I think Atlas Shrugs the, is
objectively by the, the principles ofliterature, the greatest novel ever written.
But the Fountain is my per, my Fountainhead'smy personal favourite because you know, in

(40:22):
the, put it simply because Howard Rockdominates the action and he's seen in Atlas
Shrugged,
John Galt dominates the action, but you don'tsee him for the first 2/3 of the novel, which
is a tour de force of plot development by AynRand.

Blair (40:36):
Yes, exactly, yes.

Andrew (40:37):
You know, you have a character Dominates the story.
You don't even see him for two thirds of thestory.
That's extraordinary.

Blair (40:43):
That's right.
I, again, the Fountainhead was what introduced
me to Ms. Rand.
So I, I do have a special place in my heart
for it too.
Yes.

Martin (40:55):
Amen.

Andrew (40:56):
I'm a hero worshipper.
And you know,
Atlas Shrugged is sui generis.
You know, I think we'll leave that aside for.
Because the plot structure is soextraordinary.
There's nothing like it in, in worldliterature that I know.
But the Fountainhead is more conventional inthe sense that the hero's right there from
page one.
And you still, he's, he's, he's, he'sobservable, you know, he's,

(41:21):
you know, the facts are right there.
Observable for the readers.
Howard Rook dominates the story from,
from start to finish.
And so as a hero worshipper, I think HowardRourke in that regard, in, in these more
conventional stories where you, you, you, you,where the hero is observationally apparent
right from the, right from the start.
Howard Rock to me is the greatest hero inworld literature.
And I think I'll write an essay on that oneday.

(41:44):
But the Kantianism, that's a good question,right?
It's like, what do you, what do you mean?
You know, Dr. Bernstein,
where's Kantianism in the, in theFountainhead?
Well,
you know, as I, as, as I pointed out, youknow, in the modern world and now, and
nowadays there's an awful lot of secondhanders.
I mean, Peter Keating,

(42:04):
the, the conformist.
There's a lot of people who recognise Peter.
You know, I taught, I taught the Fountainhead,you know, to my business ethics, you know,
classes at Marymount College for many years.
It was a woman's school and it was, it wasweekend college.
So adults and, you know, so the, so one ofthe, one of the women comes running into class
one day, you know, I don't, she's maybe in her30s, you know,

(42:26):
working in corporate America, swinging a copyof the fountain and she sings out, my boss is
Peter Keating.
You know,
there's a lot of, that's a very, he's a veryrecognisable type of, you know, conformist and
a kiss up.
So why are there so many people in the modern
world?

(42:47):
I raised the question,
was it, was it always this way in, you know,in the,
in the history, in the history of theRepublic, going back to the American
Revolution, there were a lot of Americans, notall, but a lot of Americans who said no to the
British crown.
They didn't, they didn't kiss up to authority.
They didn't, they didn't just go along with
what the king or parliament said.

(43:09):
You know, a lot of them were pioneers, were
rugged individualists, went out, you know,went out into the wilderness in a virgin
wilderness trying to build a farm,
having to fight off hostile, hostile Indiantribes at, at times and so on.
You know, they seem to be a lot moreindividualistic types who willing to go by
their own judgement and didn't want a powerfulgovernment.

(43:31):
Right.
There's a lot of opposition ratifying the US
Constitution because they said we just foughta war to fight off a powerful government.
We don't want to establish a powerful federalgovernment now where we have to listen to
whatever the government says.
You know, they wanted to go by, you know, liveby their own judgement.
So I, I don't know if there was as many, youknow, second handers in the, in the American,

(43:51):
you know, back then, in America back then asyou would say.
Well if so what happened?
Well, I think you know, Kantian,
Hegelian, Marxist philosophy is,
is what happened.
And I, you know, I traced that in the story
that Kant's philosophy is basically,
you know, truth is, is, is decided by humanbeings.

(44:16):
I mean I, you know, it's not based on ourideas don't have to conform to outer facts.
Right?That, that truth is, is basically the
collective subjective.
It's the, it's the will of the, you know, voxpopuli, vox day, right?
The will, the voice of the people is, is thevoice of God that you know.
And if you trace it through German philosophy,

(44:42):
Hegel, you know, inherits that from Kant and,and argues that well,
truth varies from society to society.
Truth is what the people say,
but it varies from era to era and from societyto society and so on.
And Marx adds that even within society there'swarring subgroups which he defines in economic

(45:04):
terms the rich versus the poor, the owningclass versus the working class.
And truth is a group oriented concept.
You know, the working class has a different
truth than the owning class does.
You know,
in Hegel, you know, the German people have adifferent truth than the non German, you know,
people, you know, and, and so on.

(45:25):
So truth is, truth is social.
It's, it's established,
it's established by the, by the group.
And so then what's an individual to do in theface of this?
Well, you, there's three possibilities, right?You could conform,
you can rebel or you can seek to rule.
You conform against the, you can conform to
the group, you could rebel against the groupor you can seek to rule the group.

(45:50):
And in the Fountainhead, Ayn Rand shows allthree of these brilliantly.
Peter Keating,
you know, he just, he,
the power of the group.
He wants adulation, he wants admiration, hewants respect, he wants people to look up to
it.
He doesn't want to be a great architect, he
wants people to think he's a great architect.
You know, the power of the group is dominantin his life.

(46:12):
He'll kiss up, you know, to, to gain,
to gain the adulation,
you know, from the group that, that, that hecreates.
He's like a drug addict.
Lois Cook, on the other hand,
you know, you know, the non conform, she poo,she's spicy,
she spends her life defying and she's really acolourful character.

(46:34):
I like Lois Cook, you know, foam dome in themouth.
Yo, she's writing word salad,
you know, telling the, telling the,
the, the establishment to kiss off, that you,yo, you admire, you know, Dostoyevsky or
Tolstoy or Shakespeare or all these brilliantwriters.

(46:54):
Well, I'm gonna spit in their face and I'mjust gonna throw you word salad.
You know, like James Joyce in real life doesin the Infinity Wake, where he just throws
letters together.
You know,
they're not words in any, any language.
You know, she's spitting in the face of theliterary establishment and of all, and of all
of literary history that admires these great,these great writers who use words to,

(47:18):
brilliantly to, you know, convey meaning andeverything.
And she tells Keating, we're going to build onthe Bowery, she said,
which is New York City.
Skid row.
It's where all the alcoholics end up, youknow, the drunken bums.
And we're going to build.
She had, she's made money.
She could build a house in the most exclusiveneighbourhoods of New York City, but she

(47:39):
chooses skid row, you know, the Bowery.
And she says, Keating, I want the ugliest
house.
And we're going to build the ugliest house andno electricity.
Who the hell is Thomas Edison anyway?You know, she says,
you know, Keating goes the ugliest house.
You know, Keating can't, can't quite gethimself to do that because he wants
admiration.

(47:59):
But Lois Cook wants to, in fact, he wants tospit.
She says, in so many words.
They all strive for beauty and for elegance
and for good looks.
Let's spit in all their faces.
Let's be gods, let's be ugly.
And she wants to, you know, stick it to thebourgeoisie.
She wants to, she, you know, the conformistfinds out what other People want or think in

(48:25):
order to go along with them.
The non conformist finds out what other peoplewant or think in order to spit in their face.
But both of their lives are dominated by thegroup.
You know,
want to obey one, to rebel.
Unlike Howard Rourke,
who doesn't care what the group thinks.

(48:45):
He's looking at nature.
He's not looking at society for truth or whatpeople believe.
He's looking at nature for facts.
He's on an Aristotelian method.
And then there's Tui.
Well, if the group has all his power,
you know, then the idea will be get control ofthe group,

(49:06):
rule the group,
gain power over the group.
And there's Tui, the power lustre.
And he says to Keating, remember thisconfession speech at the end?
He says, peter, he says,
he says, I'm more, I'm, I'm less independentthan you or I'm more dependent, you know, than
you are.
Because in ruling the group I have.

(49:28):
What, what do I need to do?
Well, to get your obedience, I have to, youknow,
tell.
I have to, you know, tell you.
Oh, Peter, you're such a great architect.
I gotta, you know,
roll over, Peter, I'll scratch your belly, youknow.
I have to.
You'll have to.
I have to keep you satisfied.
To get control of your girlfriend Katie

(49:48):
Halsey.
I have to constantly give her altruistic pep
talks.
I have to constantly, you know, cajole the
group and tell, you know, build them up intheir own minds and tell them, organise, let
us organise.
Let us organise.
I have to, I have to, you know,
I have to build them up.
I have to give them strokes.
I have to constantly,
you know,

(50:09):
trying.
I have to keep them satisfied in order to gain
their obedience.
I'm more of a kiss up to the group than youare.
And he's right.
And, and iron Ran Ayn Rand shows the, the onlythree logical possibilities once the Kantian,
Hegelian,
Marxist philosophy is, is dominant.

(50:30):
If that's, if you hold that philosophy, that,
that the group is all powerful, the group isGod.
On her society has gone on earth.
Society sets the term.
And most people believe that.
I ask my students,
where do moral laws come from?Few of them say God.
Few of them are religious.
Most of them are secular.
They'll say from society,
you know, they'll never say.
Nobody says from nature, you know, and, andthe requirements of human nature and human

(50:53):
life.
They, most of them say from the state, fromsociety.
And that's what the modern world, thatKantian, Hegelian,
Marxist philosophy is very Prevalent.
And if you hold that philosophy, then there'sonly three possibilities for what an
individual can.
Can do.
Confronted by the power of the people, thepower of society.
You can obey, you can rebel, or you can seekto rule.

(51:16):
And iron man.
There's Kant.
There's the Kantianism in the found.
Howard Rook.
Howard Rook.
Howard Rook is the Aristotelian Objectivism.
Just push aside that whole construct.
Society doesn't have that kind of power.
Truth comes from nature.
Looking at 1, 1 exam, 1 example of many.
He walks out of the.

(51:37):
That meeting with the dean and he's thinking
about the.
You know, he's 21.
He's thinking about the principal behind thedean.
He knows it's important.
He's got to figure it out.
And then he gets outside and he sees thesunlight striking the stones,
you know,
outside the.
On the outside of the building.

(51:57):
And he forgets about the dean and society and
all the irrationality of many members ofsociety.
And he just thinks of how beautiful thesunlight is on the stone and what he could
build with that.
9 Man showing us the mind of an Aristotelian,the mind of an Objectivist.
He's not primarily concerned with society.
He knows he's got to figure this out because

(52:18):
he's got to live with people.
But his fundamental orientation is not towardssociety, it's toward nature.
That's the source of truth, the.
The observations of nature.
And that's the way Rock's mind works.
There's the.
He's.
He's the.
That's.
That's the source of his firsthand in this.
It's his mind and nature,
not his mind.
Looking at society and trying to, you know,and granting to society this kind of power and

(52:41):
figure.
Well, what do I do when the society has this
kind of power?
There's the,
There's. What I think makes that essayfascinating is the Kantianism versus the
Aristotelian Objectivism in the conflict ofthe story.

Blair (52:55):
Very good, sir.
Very good.
I do have to wrap this up here very shortly,but I want to go back to one more.
I want to make a comment.
Speaking for myself,
for me, and it's been this way for a longtime.
I would call Plato, Kant, Hegel, Marx.
I've called them the four horsemen of theApocalypse,

(53:18):
if you will.
I see them in black hoods,
skeletal hands on the reins of this,
you know,
horrible beast, writing,
you know, writing roughshod over civilizationand that.
Yeah. I'm going to go back to our.
One of your earlier essays, and then I'll have

(53:40):
to wrap it up, sadly.
But,
well, we can always have a.

Andrew (53:44):
Follow up show if you guys want.

Martin (53:45):
Yes, we have to do it.

Blair (53:47):
Several more I want to talk about.
Believe me, there's several more.
But for this episode I want to go back toReligion versus Morality.
And for me, I'll say this again, speaking formyself,
I've come to the conclusion that religion isdeath worship.
Now, I'm sorry if that offends people, butthat's the way it is.

(54:10):
Can you extrapolate on that essay for us,Addie?
And then, then we'll have to wrap it up.

Andrew (54:16):
Religion versus Morality.
Yeah, that was a talk I gave for many years
when I was working for the Ayn Rand Institute.
And yeah, and then I, you know, I, I converted
it into an essay for the objective standardand then,
and, and then for this book.
And what it shows is that every, every

(54:38):
religion opposes every major moral principlethat, that human life,
human life depends on.
You look at the, the rational principles thatAyn Rand established.
That human life is the standard, is the, isthe standard of moral value for one,

(54:59):
two,
that egoism.
Every, every living being, and including every
human being must seek to fulfil its, fulfilitself,
to seek flourishing life in, you know, in, inAristotelian terms, you know, seek to gain the
values that its life depends.
Every individual organism,
especially, you know, human beings who must doit deliciously, you know, by choice, must,

(55:24):
must seek to gain the values that their lifedepends on.
And then that rationality is man's fundamentalmeans of survival.
These are the three key moral principles thathuman life depends on.
And religion opposes every one of them.
So if followed religiously,
you know, it makes human life impossible.

(55:45):
So take them one at a time.
Man's life has the standard of value.
No,
God's will is the standard of value.
Whatever God says goes.
Now this is most, you know, how this opposeshuman life is most clear in Islam.
Islam is the most, you know, Christianity.
We can, we'll leave Judaism aside, you know,

(56:06):
because it's a tiny little religion and, and agreat deal of its influence has been on, on
the development of Christianity, whichChristianity is, you know, gigantically
important.
The Christianity has been,
you know, like I told Dinesh d' Souza when wedebated this topic years ago,
Christianity has been emasculated.

(56:28):
You know, it's been defanged.

Blair (56:29):
I think it was right.

Andrew (56:30):
Yes, yeah, it was defanged by the rational principles of the alignment.
But real Christianity, which you see in theMiddle Ages and the, and the, and the Dark
Ages,
and you know, Christianity has been defect.
Islam is not defect.
Islam is un unreconstituted religion.
It makes the claim the clearest example of how
religion is anti life.

(56:51):
But a thousand years ago, Christianity would
have been a very good example of, of this too.
Maybe not as virulent as Islam, but you know,that's damning it with faint praise.
So God, God very often didn't care about, youknow, innocent human, innocent human life.

Blair (57:08):
You know, I mean it's more dangerous today because of the nuclear weapons, frankly.
Yeah.

Andrew (57:14):
And that's why I know applauded President Trump and taking out the, hopefully
took out the Iranian nuclear facilities or setit back by, by years of development because
that regime can't be trusted, you know, in anyway, shape or form.
But anyhow,
look at some of the biblical stories that thereligionists,
you know, salute Moses.

(57:35):
Moses descends from Sinai with the ten
Commandments.
He's been gone for a while.
So the Hebrews, God's chosen people,
a worshipping, a golden molten calf.
And if I remember the story correctly, Mosesand the children of Levi slay like 3000 of
God's own people for, for flouting acommandment that they haven't yet received.

(58:00):
Right.
The first,
the first commandment states that, you know, Iam the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other
gods before me.
They haven't even received it yet,
but they're over.
They're killed.
Thousands of them are killed, you know, forviolating a commandment they haven't received,
you know, and so on.
God requires Abraham.
Why is Abraham's submission to murder his sonIsaac?

(58:20):
Now God backs off on this and he spares Isaac,but only after Abraham shows he'll do it.
Abraham will do it.
He will.
God's will comes first before the life of his
son.
Once, once Abraham is willing to do it, God
relents.
But he did require Abraham's willingness to
kill his son.
So we can go on and on with these kinds ofbiblical stories.

(58:43):
God's will is the basis of morality, not therequirements of human life.
So there's one major opposition, egoism.
Well, I mean that's easy to show that religion
opposes that.
You know,
it's over and over again we're enjoying to Godcomes first and other people come second.

(59:08):
You're not, you're not supposed to beconcerned with yourself.
You sacrifice you for one for God,
you know,
and two for other people.
And it's easier, it's easier for camel, youknow, to pass through the eye of a needle and
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus says he doesn't, he doesn't distinguishhow the rich man became rich.

(59:31):
The rich man might have been very hard work,very productive and earned as well.
Doesn't matter.
He's rich.
He's not going to enter the kingdom of God.
Right.
The last shall be first,
Jesus says.
So we're constantly enjoying to, to sacrifice
ourselves,
whether to serve God or, Or serve, but withMother.
Mother Teresa said very famously,

(59:52):
and I don't think she coined this term, Ithink the Christians said it before,
but she said, you know, you have to give tillit hurts.
He said, give till it hurts.
You know, how about, you know, we give toother human beings because we want to give to
them, because it makes us joyous, it makes ushappy to give to my child, to give to my wife

(01:00:13):
or my husband or my closest friends or even tostrangers who I assume are good people because
I don't have any knowledge that they aren't.
You know, it's joyous to, to give to goodpeople.
No,
that's not,
that's not what Mother Teresa said.
You got to give till it hurts.
Well,
that speaks for itself.
You know, what's the old legal expression?

(01:00:37):
The thing speaks for itself.
You don't have to say anything else about that
except kiss off.
I'm not giving till it hurts.
I'm giving the people because it makes mehappy.
Like to teach my students.
It makes me happy to do it.
Doesn't hurt.
Right,
but the last point, of course, is reason asman's instrument of survival, which Iron man

(01:01:00):
shows brilliantly.
And that was shrugged.
No, religion enjoins us to have go by faith,not by reason,
and has burnt many rational people at thestake for rationally criticising the faith.
So all three major moral principles that humanlife the.
Depends on or opposed by religion.

Blair (01:01:17):
All right, so this.
My battery just went dead on my laptop or it's
fading very, very fast.
So,
yeah, I have to, I have to end this.
Martin, do you want to wrap up real quick?

Martin (01:01:28):
Yes, I will, I will do that.
And we have to have a backup plan, but for
next time and, and we'll talk more about yourwork with your book.
And also you could end with saying where couldthey.
The listener could find it.

Andrew (01:01:44):
Oh, thank you.
Thank you, Martin.
This is the book Amazon.
Maybe you guys could put, put the Amazon link
to the Amazon page.

Blair (01:01:53):
Absolutely, yeah.

Andrew (01:01:55):
You can certainly find it on, on Amazon.
Title Aristotle vs Religion and other Essays.
And as for me, you know, my, my website is
andrewbernstein.net.
you could andrewbernstein.net you can find my
books on on Amazon if you're interested inwhere is it my hard boiled detective series

(01:02:16):
Tony the Tony just series his Red Beat Villageagain you can find that on Amazon and The
website is tonyjust.net again.

Blair (01:02:26):
All right.
All right.

Andrew (01:02:27):
So I'm not you can find me on the, you know, Facebook and Twitter and everything.
So I'm not hard to find.

Martin (01:02:33):
Great.

Blair (01:02:34):
Very good.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, we've had the the
great pleasure of handy of having AndrewBernstein on is our guest today.
Andy, as always, thanks for manning the.

Andrew (01:02:44):
Foxhole with us,
Martin and Blair.
It's always great to be in the foxhole with
you guys.
So thanks again for having me on.
I look forward to being on with you guysagain.

Martin (01:02:54):
Yes, thanks.

Blair (01:02:56):
All right.

Martin (01:02:56):
Talk soon.
Bye for now.

Blair (01:02:58):
All right, bye.

Andrew (01:03:00):
Bye guys.
Sam, sa.