The Tao tells us how we ought to live; we then discover that we don’t live up to it. We fail, and fail miserably. It tells us that we ought to value things according to their value, and then we discover that we have not done so. We have not valued what is supremely valuable. That is, we have not valued God, treasured God, loved God with all that we are. What are we to do? 

Culture War and The Abolition of Man

I’d like to begin by apologizing to those who saw the title of this talk and came hoping to hear reflections on China’s influence on American real estate. The confusion is understandable, but as the fellow said, “That topic is above my paygrade.” Instead, I hope to shed some light on what we often call “the culture war.”
So let me simply get right to my major claim: The culture war in the present generation is fundamentally about what C. S. Lewis called the Tao.
Lewis introduced the term in his little book on education called The Abolition of Man. In that book, Lewis sets forth two fundamentally different visions of reality, and the two approaches to education that flow from them.
Defining the Tao
The Tao is C. S. Lewis’s term for the objective rational and moral order embedded in the cosmos and in human nature. Other names for it include Natural Law or Traditional Morality. Lewis borrows the term from Eastern religions for the sake of brevity and in order to stress its universality. Lewis claims that a belief in the objective rational and moral order of the universe is present not only in Christianity, but in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, the Greek and Roman philosophical tradition, even ancient paganism. Whatever differences exist among them (and there are substantial and important differences), the common thread is the belief in the doctrine of objective value.
Lewis claimed that until modern times, almost everyone believed that our thoughts and our emotions should be conformed to objective reality. Objects in the world could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. Certain attitudes and emotions are really true to reality. Others are really false to reality.
When we call children “delightful,” we’re not simply recording a psychological fact about ourselves. We’re recognizing a quality in them that demands a certain response from us, whether we give it or not. And to fail to give it, to feel it is to be wrong. Lewis himself did not enjoy the company of small children, and he regarded that as a defect in himself, like being tone deaf or color blind.
For those within the Tao, when our thoughts correspond to reality, we speak of truth. When our emotions and wills correspond to reality, we speak of goodness. These are objective categories, the source of all value judgments, and universally binding; “Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike.” The Tao binds and restrains all men, from commoners to kings, from citizens to rulers.
The Poison of Subjectivism
In opposition to the Tao stands the modern ideology which Lewis calls the poison of Subjectivism, an existential threat to Western Civilization and humanity that enables tyranny and totalitarianism.
The poison of subjectivism upends the ancient and humane way of viewing the world. Reason itself is debunked (today, we would say deconstructed). Instead of thoughts corresponding to objective reality, human reason is simply a brain secretion, an epiphenomenon that accompanies certain chemical and electrical events in the cortex, which is itself the product of blind evolutionary processes. It has no more significance than a burp. Which makes Logic subjective, and we thus have no reason to believe that it yields truth.
Likewise, moral value judgments are simply projections of irrational emotions onto an indifferent cosmos. Truth and goodness are merely words we apply to our own subjective psychological states, states that we have been socially conditioned to have. Because rational thought is merely a brain secretion, and value judgments are merely irrational projections, the imposition of reason and morality in society is always a dressed-up power play. And the subjectivists want the power.
Thus, for subjectivists, “Traditional values are to be ‘debunked’ and mankind to be cut out into some fresh shape” at the arbitrary will of Conditioners who view people as raw material for experimentation. In other words, nature, including human nature, is just play-dough to be kneaded and reshaped according to the wishes of the Conditioners. Because Lewis knew that “Man’s power over nature” is really the power of some men over other men with nature as the instrument.
The Tao in America
What does all of this have to do with the culture war in America? Put simply, American culture is an expression of the Tao. From our founding documents to our customs and practices, and from sea to shining sea, American culture, for most of our history, has been firmly grounded in an express belief in the objective moral and rational order of the universe.
This doesn’t mean that we’ve lived up to the Tao. At various times in our history, America has grossly failed to abide by basic principles of the Tao (such as the Golden Rule). Think of Jim Crow. But the Civil Rights Movement was built as an appeal to the Tao. MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” appeals to the Scriptures, to the Western theological and philosophical tradition, and America’s own heritage, because he knows that America professes to live within the Tao. So living within the Tao is not the same as living up to the Tao. But both King and Lewis knew that the very possibility of moral progress hinges on a permanent objective standard by which we measure such progress. Imperfect and flawed as it has been, the civilizational embrace of the Tao has historically been a crucial feature of American society.
And, as The National Conservatism Statement of Principles notes, America’s embrace of the Tao has come through the Bible:
For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred.
The Scriptures bear witness to the objective moral order, and thus the Tao, through the Bible, is part of our patrimony, our inheritance. In terms of rational and moral order, the Scriptures and the Tao speak with one voice.
From “It Is Good” to “I Want”
Nevertheless, rebellion against this order is possible, and can be temporarily effective. (But only temporarily: falling feels like flying until you hit the ground). Richard Hooker, the English theologian, wrote that “Perverted and wicked customs—perhaps beginning with a few and spreading to the multitude, and then continuing for a long time—may be so strong that they smother the light of our natural understanding.” (Divine Law and Human Nature, 43).
Lewis notes that “When all that says ‘it is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains” (Abolition, 65). And our society is debunking “it is good” and reordering itself around “I want.” Science and technology are now employed in service of “I want.” Indeed, the major institutions of society—Big Business, Big Education, Big Tech, Big Media, Big Entertainment, Big Pharma and Big Government—are all in service of subjectivism, in service of the Almighty “I want.” Not only that, they are in the business of shaping and conditioning “I want” and then enforcing “I want” on those still clinging to “it is good.”
Thus, we feel the cultural, social, and legal pressure to speak nonsense, to participate in the lie, to conform to the wicked custom. We must affirm that Rachel Levine is a woman, that pronouns are private property, that the mutilation of healthy organs is “gender-affirming care,” and that dismembering a child in utero is about a woman’s reproductive health.
This is the fundamental cultural conflict in our times. The Tao or Chaos. The Tao or Absurdity. “It is good” vs. “I want.”
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Written by R. Scott Clark |
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Our children do not belong to the state or to state-schools. They were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They belong to God and they are entrusted to parents for nurture and admonition and that is an order that may not be subverted without the gravest consequences.

Christina Wyman has published an OpEd on NBCnews.com in which she argues that parents who insist on influencing the education of their children do not understand how education actually works. She observes that the latest crisis, focused on the schools in Loudon County, VA, is nothing new. “Parents,” she writes “have always tried to interfere with curricula…” Please note her choice of verb: “interfere.” It means “take part or intervene in an activity without invitation or necessity” (New Oxford American Dictionary). She argues that parents who think that they have a right to have a say in how their children are educated fail to understand how education works. “It’s sort of like entering a surgical unit thinking you can interfere with an operation simply because the patient is your child.” Education, she claims, is a “science,” something that can be done only by highly trained specialists. The author herself has an earned PhD in curricular studies. She observes that 36 states require teachers to earn a master’s degree. She concludes,
The future of our country and world are sitting in today’s K-12 classrooms, and those children will eventually become adults in a world requiring their empathy, passion, intelligence and engagement. Parental interference in school curricula is poised to accomplish the exact opposite. Shielding students from real-world issues and diverse perspectives will create bubbles that will render their children ill-prepared to navigate society, particularly when they are called upon to contribute and think critically.
That schools ought to be helping students face the real world and to think critically is just the thing but she begs the question by assuming that post-modern schools are doing those things.
Responses
First, we should rather doubt her self-serving analogy between a typical “college of education” within, e.g., a land-grant university and the medical school on the same campus. Teachers College is not medical school and teachers are not surgeons. The comparison is risible but that she had the gall to attempt it tells us much about the inflated sense of the profession that has developed in recent decades. Please do not misunderstand. Teachers do valuable work but teaching children to finger-paint and supervising nap time or the correct way to eat Graham Crackers (such were the rigors of Kindergarten in 1966) was hardly open-heart surgery. Even the most demanding High School physics course is no match for even an average pre-med organic chemistry course let alone a medical school program.
More basically Wyman misunderstands the order of nature here. Teachers and schools work for parents and not the reverse. By law school teachers and administrators are empowered to act in loco parentis (in place of the parent). The original authority, however, belongs to the parents. To review some basic biology, when a man and a woman love each other they marry and, in time, in the providence of God, they produce a child. The school did not produce or nurse the child. Indeed, a school does not even see the child until age 4 or 5. Parents temporarily loan their children to the school each day to the end that the child should learn to read, write, calculate, think well, and express himself well. The school’s authority is derived, secondary, and temporary. Your child’s teacher (master’s degree) is expensive hired help and clearly, judging by Wyman’s OpEd, they need to be reminded of their place.
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Written by Jan F. Dudt |
Monday, May 9, 2022
In essence, what these people were saying is that Francis Collins is such a good scientist because you can hardly tell he is a Christian from his work. As a much younger biology professor at the time, I was aghast at this. A Christian has separated his religious views from his personal life. Why is that a good thing?

There is always a dilemma for Christians in best handling and reacting to the positions and counsel of Christian leaders. Often these are people we have grown to trust and respect as followers of Christ. Their convictions at times are consistent with Christian principles and biblical wisdom. They champion appropriate positions and defend causes from a historically Christian perspective. They gain traction and respect even among cultural, political, and religious opponents because of the internally consistent strength of their arguments and their winsome and gracious demeanor.
And yet, it is impossible for any fallen and sinful person to be right all the time. Similarly, it is quite possible—and regularly demonstrated—that the unregenerate are not always wrong.
As a case in point, contrast Dr. Francis Collins and President Donald Trump.
Trump, not convincingly a born-again Christian, became president in large measure because he promised to represent conservative Christians and their concerns. His appointing of originalist judges to federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as his attendance at events like the annual March for Life while he was in office (this was unprecedented for a president), were encouragements to many Christians. Yet his demeanor was consistently characterized as non-Christian. Such may well have cost him re-election. Christians and conservative political analysts will debate for decades whether he was a net positive or negative influence on America. Clearly, both cases can be made. Different Christian voices have weighed in on the matter. Many Christians, even conservatives, felt that Trump used them for his personal gain and prestige.
In certain notable ways, a case could be made that the Francis Collins’ situation at times echoes the debate over Donald Trump among Christians.
Dr. Francis Collins, the famous geneticist, was and is vocally Christian. He has clearly identified as such, and he has taken heat for it. For example, in the summer of 2009, after his nomination as director of NIH by President Barack Obama, outspoken atheist Sam Harris attacked Collins in the New York Times as unfit for the job because of his religious convictions.
Collins became known to many Americans during his direction of the Human Genome Project through the 1990s. In February 1998, Scientific American profiled Dr. Collins with the headline “Where Science and Religion meet: The U.S. head of the Human Genome Project, Francis S. Collins, stives to keep his Christianity from interfering with his science and politics.” That article quoted Dr. Collins saying he is “intensely uncomfortable with abortion.” He said that he does not advocate changing the law and is “very careful” to ensure his personal feelings on abortion do not affect his political stance. The article went on to say: “researchers and academics familiar with Collins’ work agree that he has separated his private religious views from his professional life. He shows no influence of religious beliefs on his work other than a generalized sensitivity to ethics issues in genetics.”
In essence, what these people were saying is that Francis Collins is such a good scientist because you can hardly tell he is a Christian from his work.
As a much younger biology professor at the time, I was aghast at this. A Christian has separated his religious views from his personal life. Why is that a good thing?
I emailed Dr. Collins at the time, asking him if Scientific American had it right. Maybe the article misunderstood Collins? My email was never answered. Not that I expected that it would be, given my obscurity and his standing and responsibilities. Still, the article troubled me, as I was always left with the lingering question.
Dr. Collins went on to launch the BioLogos Foundation, a Christian/science interface organization that advocates for the reconciliation of modern science and Christianity. The idea is that nature and scripture are both from God and ultimately are not in conflict. This reflects Dr. Collins’ Christian convictions and his love of science, the study of God’s physical world. Give Dr. Collins credit for leveraging his popularity, leadership qualities, and obvious pastoral instincts for the noble cause.
Ultimately, I met Dr. Collins several years ago at a conference and heard him speak. There is no reason he would remember our quick contact in an elevator any more than he would remember my email. However, one cannot help but be impressed by his genuine humility and his concern for the spiritual health of the people around him. He has made it clear that he believes that Jesus Christ is incarnate and divine and that humans are made in the image of God (although he rejects the historic Adam), and that salvation is real.
Yet, inconsistencies remain. Dr. Collins seems to allow his science to inordinately arbitrate over biblical truth, or at least when the two are portrayed as in conflict. As his professional life has unfolded, it has become clear that the Scientific American article had gotten a lot right. It is fair to say that he has remained uncertain about when human life begins. He concedes that the fertilized egg is alive at conception, but believes that maybe it is not quite human. Consequently, in his 2010 book, The Language of Life, he advocated for experimentation using excess human embryos from in vitro fertilization (IVF) that are stuck in cryo-storage with uncertain futures, “so that some good could come from them.” He has never publicly disavowed human embryonic research because he sees its potential fruitfulness. In fact, as late as last summer, experiments involving human embryonic cells and mice was supported by NIH funding at the University of Pittsburgh.
There are ongoing ramifications of Dr. Collins’ acceptance of abortion as the law of the land. The Scientific American article in 1998 mentioned that Dr. Collins was concerned that embryonic genetic testing might lead to abortions of fetuses that have conditions that are less than disastrous. The article did not suggest what he would consider “less than disastrous.” For instance, would my great-nephew’s Downs syndrome condition be considered less than a disaster? Princeton bioethicist and legal scholar, Dr. Robert George, made a clearer case in his 1998 address to the American Political Science Association Convention, stating, “once I was a child, once I was an infant, once I was an embryo, I cannot say I was once an egg or a sperm.” However, it is clear that the viable sperm and egg are quite alive. Also, it is good to remember what we say in the Apostle’s Creed. “He was conceived … born … suffered … died … and … rose again.”
What human is not on that trajectory of life and death? The Bible teaches that we all are.
This leaves many conservative Christians convinced that Dr. Collins would rather come down on the side of a quote from his old boss, President Barack Obama. In March 2009, Obama signed an executive order that lifted President George W. Bush’s 2001 ban on federal funding of human embryonic research. “Today … we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research,” stated Obama. “We will vigorously support scientists who pursue this research. And we will aim for America to lead the world in the discoveries it one day may yield.” Obama continued, “Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and … that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”
Obama insisted that “I’m going to let scientists do science. I’m going to remove politics, religion, and ideology from that.”
Of course, the reality is that such a thing cannot be done. The president’s own politics and ideology were clearly stated and inserted.
One would hope that Dr. Collins would be more comfortable with the principles articulated in President George W. Bush’s 2006 State of the Union Address. “A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life,” stated Bush. “Tonight, I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research—human cloning in all its forms … creating or implanting embryos for experiments … creating human-animal hybrids … and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator—and that gift should never be discarded, devalued, or put up for sale.”
These are all ethical issues that have confronted Dr. Francis Collins as a man of science and of faith. The issues more recently included COVID mask and vaccine mandates. To many in the evangelical community, the prolife appeals he made for the mandates have rung increasingly hollow, and his seeming inconsistencies have been bothersome.
Os Guinness, in his book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, brings out a principle that every intentional Christian should keep in mind: “The notion of arguing on behalf of the true, the right, and the good lies behind the Biblical principle of corrigibility.” Guinness quotes Jewish Hebrew scholar Jonathan Sacks, “We are all open to challenge. No one is above criticism, no one is too junior to administer it, if done with due grace and humility.”
This requires knowing scripture and applying its logical conclusions, consistently. Otherwise, our ability to be salt and light is diminished, and we can be played. Francis Collins needs to add salt and light. Many of us have admired him, and we expect more from him in his Christian witness to science.
Dr. Jan Dudt is a professor of biology at Grove City College and fellow for medical ethics with the Institute for Faith & Freedom. He teaches as part of college’s required core course Studies in Science, Faith and Technology wherein students, among other things, study all the major origins theories and are asked to measure them in the light of biblical authority. Used with permission.

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