Part 1: The Dark Age of the Mind
We live in a Dark Age of the Mind. This is something we can empirically measure. A Dark Age of the Mind is not like dark ages that are categorized by widespread physical suffering from war, famine, and plague. Our Dark Age occurs in arguably the most opulent age of man thus far. It is an age characterized by easy access to life’s necessities, comforts, and indulgences. That ease makes the darkness all the more palpable. We don’t use our only recently invented free time, which has been made possible by modernity and its inventions, to pursue wisdom. We use it to degrade ourselves. Others, like Neil Postman, have already made this case. What I want to do here is shine a light on the failure of our secular intellectuals to know even the first thing about wisdom.
We might expect our intellects to help point the way out of this, but their profession is now defined by hysteria and neurosis. They focus on invented problems like “whiteness” and “heteronormativity,” and then try to pass on their anxieties and maladaptations to their students. Here’s the turn of the knife: we pay them to do it.
Defining and Measuring a Dark Age of the Mind
A Dark Age of the Mind is characterized by widespread ignorance about the most important questions humans ask when pursuing a meaningful life. These include, “What is my chief end?” “What is wisdom and how can I pursue it?” “What has existed from eternity, and how can I relate to the eternal?” “How can I know the correct answers?” We can measure this ignorance among secular humanities professors. They can tell us many different answers to these questions, but they cannot tell us the true answer or how to know it is the true answer. They have replaced knowing wisdom with, at best, knowing about different perspectives. Professors who do not know how to answer these questions are not wise; they are blind guides.
This is most obvious among our intellectuals. Here, I am thinking of the class of people who have a PhD from a secular university, teach at a secular university, and are characterized by hysteria and neurosis. Hysteria is observed in their uncontrolled emotions and use of shock and extremes to characterize their intellectual and political opponents. For instance, two colleagues of mine at ASU told a group of students that if Trump is elected, they will be imprisoned and forced to breed. Neurosis is observed in their obsession with sex, their anxiety about life, and their hypochondria about the state of society.
It is important that we can measure this. It is not merely my opinion. We can look to existing research, or an especially adventurous social scientist among us can conduct a new survey. The secular intellectuals are not wise, and they cannot teach a student how to pursue wisdom. Instead, they teach about the problems of “whiteness,” “heteronormativity,” and the threat to women’s health if elective abortion is ended. They throw temper tantrums if universities do not install tampon machines next to urinals in the men’s bathroom. They purposely misread data about the wages of men and women, where crime occurs and why, and the effects of having irreversible sex change operations.
How did we get here? My description might reinforce an increasing anti-intellectualism or at least anti-intellectual sentiment in America. We should not give in to anti-intellectualism, but we should be anti-intellectual where that means the group of people who are tasked with teaching us about wisdom have utterly failed. Their failure is colossal. It is hard to overestimate it.
The Loss of Wisdom at the American University
We got here because we did not value wisdom ourselves. We allowed the American University to be governed by Pragmatists. It became a place for job training. I have nothing against job training. But here I am, especially thinking of the Humanities Departments that claim to know about the human condition. We stuffed full such departments with intellectuals who can pass a DEI test but cannot define wisdom. We allowed this to happen because we were first manipulated into thinking that the only solution to past discrimination is current discrimination against white people. But that manipulation only worked because we had already disconnected wisdom and a good life from the Gospel.
It surprises my students to learn that little over a century ago, American intellectuals believed that through the use of Reason, we can show the being and attributes of God as well as the truth of Christianity. They relied on philosophers like John Locke, Samuel Clarke, and Jonathan Edwards. We can critique those philosophers and say their arguments needed work. That is a different critique than saying their project was a failure from the start. The truth is, it is a project that affirms our human dignity as made in the image of God with a rational soul, and it is a project that is supported by scripture.
American Universities often had a required Natural Theology course. In many cases, this was taught by the university president. This changed for a number of reasons, including the desire to imitate German research universities and replacing classical education with pragmatism. I am not suggesting we become sentimental about the past. We can use the methods of the German research university and pragmatism to measure the devastating effects of removing the knowledge of God and Christ from human life.
You can try an informal survey. Ask a secular humanities professor if they know, or if they only think they know. Ask them to define “wisdom.” Ask them how to pursue wisdom. Ask if they know their chief end and if they can explain it to you. Ask them if they know what has existed from eternity and how we can relate to what is eternal. And ask them if they have a solution for moral evils committed not just against other humans but moral evil against God. The first step is merely to identify their answers or non-answers. The second step is to see if their answers are true and supported by a sound argument. What do you anticipate the outcome will be?
The very kinds of issues that the hysterical, neurotic secular humanities’ professor tries to impress on her students are only solved by the Gospel. Only the Gospel restores us from our alienation from God. Only the Gospel deals with individual and social guilt. Only the Gospel gives us the correct view of human sexuality. Only the Gospel gives us the correct view of the unity and diversity within humanity. To take the knowledge of God and Christ out of education is to guarantee that such an education will not produce wise students. It will produce more hysterical and neurotic students who are hypochondriacs about life but have no solutions. They just want to feel safe, and if a government can promise them the appearance of safety, they will submit to it as they should have submitted to God.
We were warned in Romans 1
The Apostle Paul told us all about the Dark Age of the Mind in Romans 1:18-32. “Thinking they were wise, they became fools.” What did they do? God’s work of creation clearly reveals him to all humans, and they rejected this for idolatry. Their unbelief is without excuse. They cannot say, “We didn’t know,” or “it was too hard to know,” or “God hid himself from us.” They can and should have pursued the knowledge of God. The secular humanities professor in our day is in the same exact position.
Paul continues from culpable unbelief to describe the kinds of behaviors such foolish persons engage in. They no longer seek God and find their joy in knowing him. Instead, they are inflamed with lust and look for ways to fulfill their grossest desires. They are given over to demeaning sexual behavior. They do it themselves, and they approve of others who do it. This is the current condition of America’s secular humanities’ professor. They spend their days reflecting on the infinite genders, while rejecting the infinite God. They bear the consequences in their own lives. Do not let them pass these on to you or your child.
The inherent consequence of a Dark Age of the Mind is spiritual death. Each person enters this world in need of restoration, and the Gospel offers the only solution—reconciling us to God and restoring us to truth. When education excludes the knowledge of God, it can only cultivate confusion and despair. The brightest places—our universities—become the darkest when they reject the light of wisdom and truth. They may launch rockets to Mars and equip students with smartphones, but they cannot teach them how to live meaningful lives.
The Humanities Institute at ASU spent this Fall semester teaching about QueerX and the problem of cultural appropriation. It sounds like a joke, but it is not. These are state employees, using their public employee position, to promote ignorance and put their lack of wisdom on display for all to see. The ASU News heralds these projects as the best ASU’s humanities can offer. Let that be a warning: All who enter here must abandon wisdom.
The way forward: Restoring Natural Theology
Can anything be done? Absolutely. The recovery of wisdom begins with each of us. We must recognize the need to pursue not just knowledge, but the kind of knowledge that leads to flourishing. Parents and students can refuse to engage with courses that offer ideological indoctrination rather than insight into the human condition. States should also reconsider how public universities are funded, ensuring that resources are directed toward education that promotes genuine wisdom.
We must call on universities to rediscover the importance of Natural Theology—a field well within the purview of a secular university. Natural Theology addresses the foundational questions: What is my chief end? What has existed from eternity? What is it to be wise? A rigorous engagement with such questions is not only intellectually necessary; it is essential for human flourishing. Courses in Natural Theology can exist very comfortably in a pluralistic university. What they cannot co-exist with is Academic Skepticism, which says there are no answers, or at least none that we can know.
The first step toward restoring education is to assess the answers—or non-answers—our professors give to life’s ultimate questions. Do they know the chief end of man? Do they offer wisdom, or do they merely think they know? The answers we receive will make the path forward clear.
In the end, the solution to the Dark Age of the Mind is not simply more information but restored wisdom. And that wisdom can only be found in the knowledge of God through Christ. A meaningful life requires more than technological advancement; it requires a heart and mind oriented toward truth. If our universities cannot teach students how to live well, they will leave them as restless as ever—seeking safety from the very things only God can heal.
Image Credit: Unsplash
Professor Anderson is quick to note the implicit warning in Romans 1 but neglects to acknowledge the explicit warning in Romans 2. How does Romans 2 start? It tells us religious people not to judge unbelievers because we are guilty, often of the same sins, too. Instead, Anderson seem in intent on earning a callback for the role of the Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying.
What does Paul mean when he tells us not to judge the heathen? He means not to look down on them and believe that, or even act like, we are above them and better than they are. So as Anderson takes one statement to totally characterize some colleagues and portray others as blind men who are locked in a room with moving furniture, he forgets the errors, or atrocities, of Christendom and in Church History. If we Christians are so wise and we created America to be a Christian nation, how in the world did we allow race-based slavery and ethnic cleansing to have even a foothold during the founding of America? Was doing so wise? Did that reflect well on the God whom we claimed that our forefathers knew?
We are a divided nation now because of this black-white authoritarian thinking that one’s own group is superior to its outsiders. To believe that one is superior to because of conveniently hand-picked criteria is arrogant. And we Christians should note that arrogance and faith are in a cotoxic relationship with each other.
Let us fast and pray in this dark time that God would keep the Democrats’ satanic candidate out of the White House.
PDQ Bach,
How is she more satanic than Trump?
Amen to that!
Maybe if we all took the call of Romans 1 seriously, we’d not have to be in such troubling dark times.
And glory to God for answering that prayer.
Professor Anderson,
I have some concerns about promoting natural theology in secular public education. Theoretically, you are correct that teaching natural theology would have the benefits you described. Natural theology is a legitimate area of philosophic study. However, due to the noetic effects of sin, it is dangerous for natural theology loses contact with special revelation. This historically occurred when natural theology was siloed off as a separate discipline, rather than happening in the context of systematic theology. This loss of contact is almost guaranteed in the context of a secular university.