Apostasy Update # 3 - Is God God…Or...Are We God?

Tom: In this Apostasy Update, we’re addressing the teaching of “Godhood for Humanity,” that God is in everything, and everything is God. We’re comparing that widespread belief with the teachings of the Bible, which is God’s direct communication to mankind. We’re also considering the different reasonings behind the belief that man is God, which is the ultimate rebellion. The rebellion began “Mankind’s Grand Delusion,” that it could live its life and solve its problems without God. The Bible identifies that self-deception as The Lie, which humanity has conjured into giving itself all the attributes of an infinite God. 

In this series of programs we hope to underscore the critical importance for the body of Christ in understanding how increasingly widespread the lie is in the world and has become of late in the church. Being oblivious to this blasphemy of mankind being God makes one ripe for deception, seduction, unfruitfulness, and, in many cases has caused believers to unwittingly contribute to the delusion. 

Our goal also is to simplify and make very clear the demonic deception that the Bible declares is taking place regarding the development of the religion and kingdom of the Antichrist. For those of you wanting more detailed information, there are four books we will be continually referring to: Christianity and Anti-christianity in Their Final Conflict; America: The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice; Game of Gods, and God’s Word, the Bible.

My discussion partner in this series is Carl Teichrib. He’s the author of Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-enchantment.

So, Carl, are you ready to go after this important subject?

Carl: Yes! Let’s begin!

Tom: Okay! First of all, Carl, I’d like to get some background about you and this important subject.

Carl: Okay! I’m coming at this, Tom—and it’s important for people to realize—I’m coming at this from a layman’s perspective, although I’ve entered into waters that most laymen don’t enter into. I grew up on a farm; I still live in rural Manitoba, Canada. I don’t have degrees behind my name. In a sense, what I do is I poke into how the world works. And I’ve been doing this fulltime since 1997. 

Back in the early 1990s, I was approached by a group of senior citizens. I was working at the time for a senior citizens’ support organization out of my home town. A little town, okay? Eight-hundred people. And it was a community-run organization—a community-run healthcare program for seniors. 

All of my Board of Directors were either members of the Masonic Lodge, the Eastern Star, or one of the other affiliated lodges. And it was back in the very early 1990s that a couple of my board members took me out for a supper meeting and were grilling me on why I wasn’t joining the Lodge.

And, Tom, I had no interest. More meetings? Who wants to go to more meetings? I was already “meetinged out!” And I would ask them, I said, “Are you about politics”

“No, we’re not about politics.” 

Now, keep in mind, we’ve already through this a couple of times with some of my board members. We’re not involved in politics. “Are you about religion?”

“No, we’re not about religion.”

“What are you about?”

“We’re about making good men better.”

“Whoop-di-doo!”  You know, I thought to myself, So what! That makes the assumption I’m a good man to begin with.” And it was an interesting experience. 

And then, one of my Board of Directors said this (and this is where everything switched). He says, “Carl, we’re not Satanists.”

I went, Where did that come from? The thought had never entered my mind. Keep in mind, again, this is the early 1990s, there was no internet. I didn’t know there were Christian books on the subject. Even then, I don’t think there were many. We had a clause in our church constitution that said I couldn’t be a member of my church and a member of a secret society. 

I talked to our pastor. They didn’t even remember why that was there, but it was there. And so, frankly, I wasn’t interested, but when they said that, Tom, warning bells were going off. Why would you say this? What have you been accused of? 

And that’s what set me on my path. If they hadn’t of said those words, I don’t know. I don’t know where I would be. But they said those words, and for the next number of years, I searched out and read Masonic literature, Masonic material, to try to understand their worldview. What they had been accused of (because that doesn’t just come out of the blue!) and along the way, I ended up diving into a lot of different interlocking subjects. 

And so, like I said, I’ve been doing this fulltime since 1997 now. I was a research director for Gary Kah—his ministry—from ’97 to 2001, and then I had been doing a lot of freelance research, a lot of freelance journalism, and then, in 2015 began writing the book Game of Gods, and got it finished in late 2018. And so here we are.

Tom: When I got your book—I think it was Lighthouse Trails that sent us a copy of it, and it was a little intimidating. It’s a very thick book! (Laughter) But you are such a terrific writer. But here’s what got to me…. Now, Carl, I’m not trying to puff you up here, but in terms of your research, there’s only one guy that I know that you compare to, and that’s Dave Hunt—whether it be A Woman Rides the Beast; whether it be…whatever Dave wrote: What Love Is This?—documented. Everything’s documented. Everything’s documented. And I saw that in you. 

But the other thing that really impressed me was this book—your book—was so much like a book that was written 32 years ago called America: The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice, which, by God’s grace, my name’s on it along with Dave—I thought, wait a minute. This was 32 years ago. Your book’s today. And, folks, as I mentioned, there are a couple of other books. One is Christianity and Anti-christianity in Their Final Conflict, which was written 120 years ago! So between that book—America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice, and your book, and, of course, the Word of God. That’s our basis, that’s our authority, that’s what we look to for a reference. But, I thought, this is really important—not only did Samuel Andrews, who wrote Christianity and Anti-christianity Today in Their Final Conflict, he took what the Word of God says, the Book of Revelation, and he just backtracked from that to his own day.

Wait a minute! Some of the things that I’m reading here, are they happening in my day, and my time? And, folks, if you read his book, you’d say, “No way he wrote this 120 years ago! This is like today!” And then, America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice—you could say the same thing. But then you bring us right up to today, which is what’s going on. So, I’m excited about that.

Carl: Well, from your perspective, I mean, I haven’t read Christianity and Antichristianity—I received it (you sent it to me) a few weeks ago. And so I’ve just started to poke into it. And you’re right! We would say he was ahead of his time, but he wasn’t. He was right on! And he was nailing the religious cultural trend that he could see already back then! And this is, I think, so important for people to recognize, what we’re talking about is it is simple in its essence, but it becomes complex as people live it out in different ways, but it’s always been with us—this desire for us to be our own gods, to form our own meaning and purpose, to try to build heaven on earth, whether it’s through the Tower of Babel or through the babble of the United Nations, or whatever the new fad is, this has been beating in man’s hearts ever since we took the fruit. 

And from your perspective, Tom, because I know you have read all three of the books that we are referencing, and using scripture as our foundation, and I haven’t read Christianity and Antichristianity— is there anything that catches you off-guard, or is there anything that surprised you as you were comparing all three of those books?

Tom: Well, there are so many things that he does…  As I said, he looks at the Book of Revelation, and he sees what’s going on there, and he sees the Antichrist setting himself up in the temple of God to be worshiped as God. Whoa! Where is that coming from? And then he backtracks, but he extrapolates from the things that he’d read. And who were the philosophers of his day? They weren’t theists, okay?

Carl: No! 

Tom:  They were pantheists, okay? I took Philosophy in college and hardly ever my best subject, but I didn’t understand where these men were coming from. Spinoza—I mean, go down the list. But, you know, some of that is so “elitist”—at least from my perspective; I call myself a C+ student, and somebody threw in the plus, okay? 

But, basically, from that level, then it goes down to the news media, and then it goes down to the people. So you see a—call it a “digression” into the common folk. That’s not happening today? Has it ever happened in any other culture? It always happens that way, it seems.

Carl: Right.

Tom: So that really impressed me. 

Carl: And the other thing to keep in mind—and I’ve had this thrown at me as well, Tom, where critics have approached the subject and have said, “Oh, look,” you know, “There’s only X amount of people involved at the UN,” or “ There’s only X amount of people attending the Parliament of World Religions,” or whatever the movement of the day is, and I have to stop and I have to say, “Look, it’s not about how many people, or the numbers that movements like that have, but the influence that they exert, the influence that they can filter right back down, and specifically into things like education, curriculum, news media, entertainment. The list goes on. 

So, we’re soaking in it! We’re soaking in…and you’re right! Most people would look at that as saying, “Hey, that’s the worldview of these elitists.” Well, that worldview, that actually pours into the cracks and crevices of civilization.

Tom: Folks, I’m going to warn you right up front, there will be certain phrases that we use, and you go, “Oh, no, here he goes again, here he goes again.” So the phrase that I’m thinking about is “hidden in plain sight.”

It has moved from the elitist down to the media. And the interesting thing is, you don’t need many to promote an idea. It just depends on what their position is. Okay? Maybe a lot of us are concerned about the news media today—which side do they line up? Especially here in the United States. Are they pushing their own agenda? Absolutely! 

So, we need to be aware of that, and the influence that they can have—you mentioned education. Folks, the stuff that we’re going to be talking about starts in kindergarten, right?

Carl: Absolutely it does! 

Tom: And moves up. So even though these children don’t know exactly what’s they’re being thrown, this is what’s being taught, and whether you call it osmosis or some way, it affects the way they think and the decisions that they make. And it’s continually reinforced, right?

Carl: Absolutely! And this is one side that people need to recognize in terms of my research. I do boots on the ground. I go to places. And so, whether it’s the Parliament of World Religions, or whether it’s to a transformational event like Burning Man—I’ve been to various wiccan and witchcraft conferences to sit and listen to what they’re saying. But the very first one, Tom, that I attended, and for me it really struck a chord—in fact, I talk about it in chapter one. It was a youth-based education conference entitled, “The Global Citizenship 2000 Youth Congress.” And so the whole purpose of that event in 1997, it was the spring of 1997, was to instill within my country, Canada, our curriculum system, a worldview. And that worldview was the worldview of Robert Mueller, who was at that point a retired official with the United Nations, and the worldview was pantheistic, it is “We are all divine,” “we are serving Mother Earth,” “we’re serving Gaia,” “our allegiance and loyalty is…” to what we would say as Christians, a Romans 1 perspective, it’s to the creationists, to the world—not to the Creator! 

And for three days, we had about 300 students, right from elementary all the way up to university, being given this worldview that they are all deity, they are all divine individuals. They all “have the spark of the Divine within them.” And that they are “awakening the cosmos,” and it’s through their work that they are going to engage in the evolution of the planet. And on and on and on—blah, blah, blah.

But the point was, Tom, that they were being set up. It was all suggested to them, and they believed it, and then it becomes written into the…at the very least, the philosophy behind the curriculum that gets put in the classroom for other young people to now absorb. 

I can take a look at what we did back then—1997—and I see touchstones, hallmarks, along the way, in terms of my own country’s education system, your country’s education system, as those worldviews become infused in the generation that now has moved into young adulthood. 

So, no wonder the Gretas of the world, when it comes to, let’s say, climate change, she is now a hero! She is Wonder Woman! We have children leading us, because they have a different worldview, and that worldview is an antibiblical worldview. It says that everything is one. It’s all oneness. We’re all divine. Creation is no different than the creator, except they don’t even acknowledge a creator.

Tom: Carl, I’m sure some folks out there are thinking, Why would he ever go to a place like that? Now, you have given us the background for it, but what is your motivation? I mean, because some would say, “I’m not gonna hang out with those folks. I’m not gonna go there. I’m not gonna do this. I’m not gonna do that.” Why do you do it?

Carl: Well, first of all, I’ll tell you why I did it. I will couch it with saying something else. You already hang out with those folks. They’re in your family. They’re in your community. They’re your schoolteachers. In some cases, they’re even your pastors! The people who hold the worldview that we’ve just discussed. 

I go, specifically, because the world is always changing. There’s always new concepts coming to the forefront. I’m going as a researcher, to try to understand that cutting edge of where these influencers are taking the world. More than that, when I have the opportunity—and it has come up on different occasions—we’ll have a chance to sit down and compare and contrast the biblical worldview with their worldview. I’ve done that. I’ve done that at the Parliament of World Religions, I’ve done that at a Wiccan event, where I had a gentleman, a pagan, come up to me, and in that world, things can get kind of weird, and he made some very powerful overtures, and I diffused his come-ons to me and then he said, “Hey, now that we’re talking, let’s have coffee!” And he asked what I was, because he assumed I was just like him, another pagan, and I’m like, “No, no, no! I’m not!” And I explained my biblical position. We had a two-hour conversation, Tom. A two-hour conversation comparing and contrasting the biblical worldview with his worldview! 

And so, to me, I’m going, first of all, for the research side, but I also recognize that there are sometimes opportunities to talk to these people. For the most part, I find them to be hungry—hungry for some truth that they don’t have.

Probably the best example is when I have attended Burning Man. We set up a sign at our camp, and it’s called Camp of the Unknown God—going to Acts 17, modeling that idea that Paul leveraged when he went to Athens, and he saw all these monuments, all these idols, including the one that says “To the Unknown God.” And so, we’re doing the same thing. And it becomes a lightning rod. People walk by our camp and literally—sometimes they blurt it out: “Who is this unknown God?” 

We’re like, “Pull up a chair. Have some water. We’re gonna have a good talk.” And we do!

To me, Tom, it has demonstrated something really important, because not many people are doing this. It demonstrates the fact that you can still bring the gospel into the heart of the world, and people are wanting to hear it. 

Tom: Carl, I don’t know, but it sounds to me like it’s witnessing. Sounds to me… [Carl laughs]…sounds to me like an evangelist. And the key word that you use is “conversation.” Now, conversation doesn’t tell somebody, doesn’t push on them what you believe. It’s wanting to know what they believe, and therefore you can ask questions about their belief and see where that goes. That is so critcially important.

But in order to have a reasonable conversation, you kind of have to know some of the things about them. Two of my buddies, Carl Kerby and Jay Seegert, we did just a small series on Creations vs. Evolution, and so on. If you don’t have any idea about that—well, first of all you need to have the biblical perspective, but if you don’t understand where they’re coming from, where’s the conversation going to go? You can’t even ask intelligent questions to something like that.

I think it was Tozer that said, “What we need to do is we need to cut down the tree that people are hiding behind.” Okay? And you just explained that at Burning Man, and we’re going to talk about what Burning Man is later in our series, but the point being is that once the tree has been cut down, and they can’t hide behind it, they’re opened up to good reason. God says, “Come, let us reason together.” And you can have a conversation along that line. It’s huge. 

And, folks, again, why we’re doing this series is because many people are not doing what we’re talking about. I mentioned Christianity and Anti-christianity Today—120 years ago. Well, now we’ve caught up to that, hopefully. 

And then, America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice—32 years ago. Now, why didn’t that have a major impact on the New Age movement. Not that it didn’t influence people and wasn’t used of the Lord, but nevertheless, it hardly made an impact—especially for the church. Why do I say that? Because the church, in different ways and different forms is into it up to their eyebrows, and they don’t even recognize it. 

Your book, again, brings us right up to date with what’s going on, and our prayer, our hope, our prayer is that God will open some eyes here, so they can do… They don’t have to go to Burning Man. They don’t have to go to that. They could maybe go down the street in their neighborhood because somebody’s into it, and have a conservation with that person and ask them some questions.

Look, folks, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but if you love people, you’re concerned about their destiny. You’re concerned about what they’re thinking and how they’re living their lives. Because, Carl, the next thing I want to get to is “Do we have problems?” “Are there problems in the world?” Okay. Well, how are those problems solved? The Bible points out that humanity has serious problems of living, and our varied experiences in life confirms the abundance of our problems. 

Hey, who wants deny that we don’t have problems? Well, what’s the source of our problems. Well, we’re going to talk about two sources—two views. The Bible, which God has revealed, okay? That’s His revelation to us. And then, against what man has concluded in disagreement with the Bible. 

Well, let’s start out with the Bible, okay? You can jump on this just as we go through it. So, the biblical revelation is supernaturalism, okay? God, who exists outside of His creation, made everything out of nothing, and all creation was perfect in its original design, in its original demonstration of what He’s done.

So, the humans He created sinned against Him. And their sin corrupted them and all of creation. Hence all of mankind’s problems begin with his sin, right?

Carl: Yes, yes! And the thing, Tom, that I think is, for me, as a younger person I wrestled with this, was the question of “Why death?” Why that as the consequence for our disobedience? I mean, isn’t that harsh? Isn’t that tough? And that bothered me as a younger person. The realization, however, is that when you walk away from the Author of Life (because God is the Author of Life), when you walk away from the Author of Life, death becomes a natural consequence. You are literally choosing death. And so, we are a world, we are a species, cursed with this problem of death, and it’s a direct result of our sin, and that sin being disobedience against the very One who gave us life.

Some people say, “Well, this is kind of simplistic to always go back to Genesis 3.” But, Tom, isn’t this the heartbeat of the whole problem—it’s Genesis 3? “You can be as God”? “You now will know good and evil” (and we do; we know both), and you will never die”—so the lie went. And we bought the lie. We bought the lie, and essentially worshiped ourselves. And we put ourselves on the pedestal. 

Tom: It’s an interesting thing about death. We were talking about that, you know—each morning at The Berean Call we have a Bible study. So we were talking about death. Folks, in the Bible there are a lot of different definitions. There is physical death, okay? There’s a spiritual death—but in every case, no matter what verse you’re looking at, it talks about separation. So, Adam and Eve sinned. They died. They didn’t die physically, right at the time, but death began its work in creation and in them. So, that death had to do with a separation from God. What happened after they sinned? They hid themselves.

Carl: Right,

Tom: Okay? Separation there, relationship. So, a lot of times it has to do with relationship, but even physically—and we were talking about this, but in the medical profession, they don’t even know when somebody dies. I mean, they’ve got all their instruments, and so on, but we know what the scripture says: “You’re dead when your spirit leaves your body.”

Carl: Bingo! Exactly!

Tom: Even when Jesus healed, I think of the young girl, and He healed her, her spirit came back into her. So, God’s in control of that, okay? He allows things to happen. I think of proverbs: “There’s a way that seems right unto a man....”—Here’s another definition—“but the end thereof are the ways of death. 

Carl: Right!

Tom: Physical death? Possibly, in some cases. But mostly it has to do with separation from truth. “A way that seems right unto a man…” We’re going get into some of that. 

So, have you got anything else to add about the problem of sin?

Carl: Well, the thing that struck me is when you’re talking about the separation, and just looking today at our church culture, and I’m not seeing much difference between the church and the world. And how we’re continually at war with God because we’re a people seeking after our way. And there is a way unto death. And you’re right! I’m so glad, Tom, you brought up that scripture, because that is the problem. That really represents the problem. 

Tom: Yeah. And again, looking to scripture: “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.” Sounds like a separation from truth there, doesn’t it? If you would pick one verse, and there are many verses that identify the time that we’re in…  “But you say, well what do you mean, endure sound doctrine?” 

Well, I can give you another…a couple of reasons: number 1, if you’re not reading the Word of God, you don’t even know what sound doctrine is, okay? So how can endure something that you don’t even know or understand?

But again, we’re laughing that this, but we’re crying on the inside, right, Carl? Because if somebody has not taken to heart God’s Word—and that’s one thing I preach over and over again: “Oh, you’re reading God’s Word? How often? You’re just getting it once a week, maybe for a half hour, and then you come home and live your life and so on?” No! You’ve got to be in God’s Word every day! We talked about young people being brainwashed, okay? Well, what’s the antidote to that? It’s God’s Word, God’s truth. 

Carl: Right.

Tom: So, parents, if you have to subject your kids to public school, hang in there with them. Go with them. Get into all the teachers’ meetings that you can with other kids and find out what they’re being fed because they probably won’t articulate it at home, okay? Maybe some will. Or ask the question. “Well, could you get in trouble that way?” Yes, you could, but there’s a better trouble than the trouble that’s being pushed on your children, and so on.

Carl: And the thing is, Tom, some of the children will not even recognize that they’re being preached to. And this is also important for why you and I are sitting down and doing this is to help equip the church. Help equip Christians to understand when the world is preaching to them, what that sounds like, what that looks like, and then to be able to give the gospel as that antidote, as that pushback against what the world is saying.

And so, there’s nothing worse than ignorance and then when we enter into a situation where there are wolves everywhere—and that’s what it seems the world has become—the ignorance isn’t acceptable. We need to step it up. We to step it up with a better understanding of God’s Word, a constant understanding of God’s Word, and then understand what’s happening in the culture around us, so that we can apply that properly. 

I look at Paul as that model for how the church was to operate in, essentially, a pagan culture, because that’s what it was—far more raw in its paganism than now. Far more raw. And I’m thinking to myself, We have a pagan world today. That’s the one thing that Christianity and Anti-christianity, from what I’ve read, brings up, it demonstrates that. America, the Sorcerer’s New Apprentice brings that up. Game of Gods demonstrates as well that we are in essentially a pagan worldview. I think we have to start realizing that. I think it’s important for us to grab that, and then go, “Okay, what’s the models we use to begin to present in that pagan culture?” And that’s part of the reason, I think, why we’re having this conversation, and I’m hoping it will point people back to what Paul was doing.

And, indeed, all through the scriptures, you see examples of how to bring salt and light, grace and truth, into a culture that’s hostile to the faith. 

Tom: The scripture talks about tribulation. For believers, we’re going to go through tribulation. In our country, here in the United States, and to a great degree in Canada, the tribulation is not like what you’d see from our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Sudan, or in parts of especially Islamic-controlled countries, and so on. But I think we’ve got something a little worse here, okay? It’s called “seduction.”

You see, it says, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Where tribulation comes, it strengthens the church.”  Carl, tell me something that comes good out of a seduction. Nada.

Carl: Not much. I can’t think of anything.

Tom: No, no. No. My point is that that can blindside us, because as tribulation then comes, if we don’t know what we believe and why we believe it, we don’t have the strength and the content to deal with it. But this is, again, folks, this is why we’re doing these series of programs, because what we want to do is encourage believers to strengthen their faith—to have confidence in their faith. Okay?

And it’s not a matter of being an expert on this false teaching, or that false teaching, and so on. But, folks, you need to know what you believe and why you believe it, and then when you’re reaching out, as Carl has articulated, when you’re reaching out to minister to others, to witness to others, to have conversation with others, having a sense of what they believe—you can get that from them. And then you compare it with what you believe, okay?

And, look, I don’t want to sound arrogant in all of this, but folks, you’re going to hear what they believe makes no sense. Absolutely no sense. And it doesn’t work. And Carl and I are going to give you the information to that end. And you’ll see it for yourself. 

Now, looking to the other side, Carl, as we said, the problem from God’s perspective, we’ll take His perspective, is sin. That’s why we have problems. And we’re going to get into how He has resolved those problems, or made an offering for those problems to be resolved.

But I want to talk about the world’s view. The view of those who are opposed to even listening to God, rejecting God for His view, and so on. So, two of the things, and I’m going to talk about at least three things, and you can jump on this with me, Carl: materialism and naturalism. 

By “materialism,” I’m not talking about all the goodies, you know. We have signs here, “Whoever has the most toys at the end wins.” No. They can’t take ’em with ’em. But nevertheless, I’m not talking about that kind of materialism. I’m talking about materialist philosophy that says “The only thing that there is is physical.”

Carl: Right. 

Tom: You can’t throw spirituality in it, you can’t throw anything nonphysical—they don’t buy it, they don’t believe it, it’s not there.

And another part of that is naturalism. Anything that’s made—well, they wouldn’t say “made”—everything that’s evolved, okay, all has to do with what there is, and there aint nothin’ else. Okay? That’s the materialist philosophy. So they would say everything was formed by chance through an evolutionary process taking place over 4.2 billion years to date. All that exists, again, is made up of physical reality. There is no nonphysical reality. 

So, what’s the problem with that? How are they going to solve the problems? Because that’s partly the worldview. I’ll get to another aspect, but that’s part of the problem. So, evolution and materialism really have no answers for the various and obvious problems of life. It’s all built into the system. Okay?

Carl: Right.

Tom: Everything started from slime pond, okay? And worked its way up to us. It hasn’t solved any problems, and you can’t solve the problems because that’s the makeup, that’s the fabric of life.

Carl: I would suggest one thing even further: not only does it not solve the problems—it creates more problems. What you just described was the heartbeat of what we would call “modernity,” or modernism. That’s something I bring out in my book; I’ve got a section devoted to that, and what modernity did at the end of it, at the end of its intellectual life cycle—we still are living in the consequences of modernity—it gave us the atomic bomb, it gave us Auschwitz, it gave us the killing fields of Cambodia, it gave us the trenches and the mud and the blood of World War I, it demonstrated that when we see that all there is is a material world, when we hold to a naturalistic perspective, then what is the life of a man? What is the value of a man? What is the value of life?

Well, nothing—nothing at all.  And if a life stands between you and your ultimate goal, whatever that goal may be, whether it’s the Utopian Marxist Society, or its Lenin or Stalin’s control of the Russian people during the Soviet era, well, then, you’re nothing. You can be crushed with impunity because there is no higher value. There is no greater judgment. 

To me, it’s not just simply that materialism and naturalism can’t solve the problems. I see at doing something much more grievous even. It creates more problems, and it just exacerbates the problems that are there. Instead of alleviating suffering, it causes more suffering. But I mean, of course it would, because it’s taking away what is fundamentally true. 

And that’s one of the things that I mention in Game of Gods is that modernism, materialism, naturalism, tended to hollow out the soul. There was no soul left in man when you took it to lens of materialism.

Tom: Sure.

Carl: We became hollow individuals. We became a hollow culture. What are you but a number, at this point? 

Tom: So, Carl, it’s amazing. It’s not that those who you’ve had conversations with that they don’t recognize these things. But recognizing it doesn’t mean that they’re looking for options outside of what they’ve promoted. So, it has no answers, and what they come up with is, guess what, Carl? “Well, Carl, there are no problems.”

Carl: Right.

Tom: I call this the [laughing, (I’m sorry, guys)] I call this the Egyptian disease. You know the Egyptian disease? They’re “in denial,” right? In some ways, that’s the only way that they can face that, because there’s no hope within the system that they’re promoting. So, everything is working out according to evolutionary process, okay? So, it’s the end of humanity. It’s the end of this…whatever.  So it’s the process of evolution working its way out. But some would say, “Oh, no, no, no. We’ve got a positive side, and that is mutations.”

Now, come on, Carl`

Carl: Right. I know. I know. Real quick, Tom, back to the issue of hope—what you just mentioned spurs a thought. I have a good friend who was taking his education degree at a university here in Manitoba. Okay? It’s a secular setting. One of his professors is a naturalist, and my friend had a number of good conversations, because my friend’s a Christian. He wanted to understand the professor’s point of view a little bit better. And the professor came right out and said to my friend that “we have to treat our own illusions to bring about happiness and hope, because we have nothing else except the materialist naturalist world. Quit deluding yourself with your religion! That’s all we have. At the end of the day, you die and are turned to dust. There is nothing else.”

And my friend is like, “You’re telling me you ultimately have no hope.” And the professor conceded that. “Absolutely. We have no hope.” It’s a terrible dilemma! I feel actually bad for them! And my friend felt really bad for his professor, because he’s like, “Dude! You’ve got nothing at the end of the day! You literally have nothing. So then, why are you even concerned about the problems of the world? Why are you concerned about [I’m just going to throw this out there because it’s a problem—it’s a politicalized problem of our age] climate change and now coronavirus? Who cares? Who cares? Just let it all go! Right? If you hold to a naturalist perspective.”

Tom: Sure!

Carl: Because at the end of the day, there is no hope. So, if you’re a true naturalist, quit borrowing from the Judeo-Christian worldview that life has value. Live your worldview. You don’t. None of us do. You can’t, because man requires hope. But when you look at naturalism, Tom, you’re absolutely right. There is. no. real. hope. You have to literally delude yourself.

Tom: Carl, we’re going to talk about that more—we’ve just got a few more minutes here for this segment. But based on everything that you said, and the materialist philosophy is losing ground; it has been losing ground, because of the hopelessness that you point out. But it’s irrational.

Carl: Right.

Tom: They have no idea—if there’s nothing out there nonphysical—I mean, there’s so many things that we could say about that. “Wait a minute! What about love? What about concept. How physical are those things? What about truth?” You know. So, we could put all those things out. But many are turning to (and we’ll talk about this next time) mysticism. Fine. If it’s physicality, okay, is the only thing there is, and it’s not working, and it can’t work, “Well, let’s get mystical about this. Let’s talk about…ooohh! Didn’t we talk about being gods and turning to godhood for solutions to our problems?” 

Well, folks, the Lord willing, we’ll pick up on that next week. And we’ll also talk about God’s solution. So what’s the solution to all of these things? What does God say? How are the problems that we’re dealing with—how are they going to be solved? Well, there’s a biblical solution, but the world also has some ideas, which we’ll deal with.

So, Carl, again—Carl Teichrib, the author of Game of Gods, is going to be with me, the Lord willing, next week, and we’ll keep on with this, and folks, I hope you’ll join us. God bless you, brother. 

Carl: Bless you, too, and it was good talking with you, Tom.