Welcome back to the book club. I'm Michael Knowles, and this month we are reading one of my favorite books by an author who had an extraordinarily significant role in my life, in my reversion,

in everything. And I'm joined by Neil Shenvey, a homeschooling theoretical chemist. You are a man of

many talents who does many things. You're an apologist. You are a chemist. You are, you're a scholar,

and you're a Christian. Yes. This book, Abolition of Man, written by one of the most famous

Christians of the 20th century, really is not even particularly Christian. You certainly don't

need to be Christian to appreciate the arguments. It doesn't really

rely on scripture or if it cites scripture maybe incidentally. In one minute or less, can you

explain for those who haven't yet read it what this book is? Sure. So Abolition of Man is Lewis's

treatment of modern education and he sees it as a destructive force.

He thinks that the way we're teaching kids, this is back in 1943, he gave these lectures,

and he thinks that modern education is undermining the doctrine of objective value,

the idea that there is objective beauty, truth, and goodness out there in the world.

And the how we're teaching kids is undermining their belief in that idea.

And that will inevitably erode their ability to be virtuous, to act virtuously.

But it will also lead to what Hefries will be totalitarianism.

It will lead to a state that is trying to engineer a new human nature by undermining what he

calls the Dow, which is this idea of objective moral values and duties existing out there in the

universe. So it's an incredibly prescient book. And even today when we face different problems

education, I think you can still appeal to his understanding of what he calls the Dow, this natural law, as the key to reversing the damage we've done through modern education.

I love this term the Dow because it's very strange.

You're reading this English Christian writer, a medievalist at Oxford. And he refers to the Tao as

the stuff that we know, that we don't really have to prove, that we actually can't prove,

...