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The Death of Humanity | Richard Weikart

Episode
5
With
Michael Medved
Guest
Richard Weikart
Duration
00:21:20
Download
Audio File (18.6 mb)
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The title of our program is Great Minds with Michael Medved, and it really does take a great mind to survey the sweep of Western intellectual history and pick out in all of that a disturbing trend. That’s what historian of modern European history Richard Weikart does in his latest book, The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life.

A Surveying Mind

Dr. Weikart teaches at California State University, Stanislaus, and is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.

Video

Show Notes

  • 01:35 | What does “the death of humanity” mean?
  • 02:40 | The Enlightenment and the decline of the imago dei
  • 03:40 | Materialism and two ideas: “just a machine”, “just an animal”
  • 04:45 | Two kinds of soul in Hebrew
  • 05:50 | Bertrand Russell’s “accidental colocation of atoms”
  • 06:25 | Created from animals
  • 07:20 | “The Descent of Man” and the ascent of man
  • 08:35 | Biological determinism, environmental determinism, and eugenics
  • 09:40 | Lysenkoism and “building a new man”
  • 11:30 | Doesn’t the religious view sanction poverty, asceticism, and self-denial?
  • 12:20 | Moralizing without morality
  • 14:00 | Why does materialism undermine the human project?
  • 15:50 | The one area we’ve failed to reduce death tolls
  • 16:50 | The Enlightenment and the idea of suicide
  • 18:25 | Materialism and the obsession with sexuality

More Resources

Discovery Institute