Welcome to the Timistic Institute podcast.

Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.

Well, good evening, everybody, and welcome to this talk tonight.

Let me say before I get into the substance of this that I'm delighted and honored to be here.

Every time I've given a talk for the Timistic Institute, it's been an absolute treat. I love going

around the country, finding different universities and seeing what the Catholic and Catholic

adjacent communities are like there.

I have to apologize to begin with.

I had intended to write some kind of opening joke about the Texas-Alabama football game,

but I have been unable to figure out whether the people in this room would

have rooted for the University of Alabama last week. So I don't know in what direction to make the

joke, so I'm just scrapping it. But it is a fact worth noting that a mere week and a half ago,

the University of Texas Longhorns defeated the mighty Alabama Crimson Tide in the most important football game they've had since I've been at the university.

Obviously, that's not what I'm here to talk about.

My name is Eric Dempsey.

I teach, as I said, at the University of Texas at Austin.

And I'm here tonight to speak about the topic.

And I've changed the topic slightly from what was advertised. The talk is now entitled,

Our Lukewarm Age, Relativism and God in the modern world. So not a total violation of my promise, I think,

and the topic will be largely the same, but I think this is more descriptive.

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