Even Socrates believed that sin was simply a matter of ignorance, of wrong knowledge.

It used to be thought by many people, even into the 19th century, which was perhaps the

most optimistic age in Western civilization, that man's real problem was a lack of education

and with the radical change and the knowledge explosion that came with the Industrial Revolution

and the breakthrough into the modern world, there were scholars upon scholars in the 19th

century who really believed that evil could be banished from this world as man evolved

to a higher plane, a virtue by means of education, that all we need to do for man to end

wars, to end suffering, to end evil is to educate him, even Socrates believed that sin

in the final analysis was simply a matter of ignorance, of wrong knowledge, and hence

this spirit of unbrowed optimism, even when World War I came, it was called what?

The war to end all wars, but now man is coming of age and is learning how to deal with

his environment, so that he won't destroy himself, that spirit of optimism has crashed

to the ground, because what we've discovered is that the more we educate people, all we're

doing is producing more sophisticated sinners.

Thanks for listening to Ultimately with R.C. Sproul.

This is a podcast from Ligonier Ministries.

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