Neglected Lectures From the Sixties and Seventies

The Myth of Science – Q&A

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, & Sermons

Lesson: The Myth of Science Q&A

Genre:

Track: 17

Dictation Name: RR257A1

Location/Venue:

Year: 1967

[Introduction] He has two degrees from there, and those are back in the years when I think the image was quite a bit better than it is today. He has from the Pacific School of Religion his degree in Divinity. The areas of special interest for him are in theology, philosophy, history, and economics. He has written for, or writes for American Opinion, The California Farmer, Freedom Press, Christian Economics, News & Views. He also puts out a regular newsletter, and if you aren’t on the mailing list I strongly recommend that you get on the mailing list. There will be a paper in the rear of the room where you can sign up, and believe me, the newsletter is always current. It’s well worth your while. He lectures frequently across the country, and this certainly is to the good fortune of the students who attend the schools where he is asked to speak. I’m sure that there are some schools where he is not asked to speak. He has made many tapes on the books of the Bible. There is a list of these tapes in the rear of the room. These tapes are wonderful for study series. As a matter of fact, we use them in our Bible studies, and they are excellent, so you can get a list of those in the rear of the room. Also, as you look back there, you will see quite a number of books, the books he has written, publications. You’ll see back there also some copies of the Bible Science Newsletter. You can take some of these with you, and you may find that you want to subscribe to this. I think the subscription is $2.00 a year, and these also are worthwhile.

You will also find back there some extra copies of the California Farmer, some of the articles he has written for them, and take some of those with you and might even find you want to subscribe to the California Farmer. Some of the books that he has written, I think that you’ll find just the titles alone will arouse your interest: By What Standard, Intellectual Schizophrenia, The Messianic Character of American Education, This Independent Republic, Freud, The Nature of the American System, United Nations, A Religious Dream, and the most recent book, The Mythology of Science, which also is available and which is the speaker’s topic for this evening, The mythology of science. It is a pleasure and a privilege to present to you the Reverend Rousas Rushdoony.

[Rushdoony] Throughout the world today, we see the tides of revolution rising. On every continent, there is revolutionary ferment. The revolutions that we see in this present day are different from revolutions of the past, to a great degree. A late president, in an important address, used an expression to describe the essence of the modern revolutionary movement. He spoke of the revolution of rising expectations. This phrase is a most apt one. Across the face of the earth, men have come to believe that paradise is within the grasp of man, that science has now the possibility of creating a workless, diseaseless, problem-free, and perhaps death-free world, and all men must do is to overthrow the present obstructing forces, and this brave new world of science will begin its reign.

It is therefore the revolution of rising expectations we face, not the revolt of men against oppressive conditions, but the revolution by men demanding everything imaginable as their right. Asia, Africa, South America, North America, Europe, in every part of this world this revolution is on the march. Its governing principle is this belief in instant paradise, created or to be created by science.

Quite recently, indeed earlier this year, Dr. Glenn Seaborg, atomic scientist, who heads the United States Atomic Energy Commission, made a speech in which he spoke of the possibilities of a work-free world. The headline writers described it as “Workless World Foreseen By Scientist.” Now, Dr. Seaborg was a little more restrained than the headline writers, but nonetheless, he saw great potentialities for the deliverance of man from the problems of a workaday world. Other scientists have been less cautious, and we cannot begin to understand much of the motivating force on the part of student rebellions if we fail to realize that they are governed by this belief, that a work-free world is possible.

Students on the various college campuses and their student manifestos have declared, in fact, that modern education is obsolete. From New York to California, student rebels have said, “Our education today is obsolete because it is geared to training us for vocations for a working world,” and modern science is now able to create a work-free world, and so men should be educated into the art of living. This is seriously believed, and the demand is for the creation of a social order which will abolish the old puritan concept of work, as man’s calling and responsibility, and free man to work in this work-free world. Senator Strom Thurman recently spoke about the fact that this was a governing principle now, not only among so many of the students, but in the civil rights revolution that work is no longer necessary, and should not be expected of man.

Indeed there are men who represent the perspective of the Establishment and of the administration, men who pass as economists, who are actually writing books which state this thesis sometimes in a very extreme form. The world, they say, beginning with the United States, has to be recreated in terms of this concept that it is no longer the duty of every man to grow up and find work, and to fulfill himself in terms of work. There should be a guaranteed income, we are told, without work. Paradise is to be restored by science. There is to be an abolition of disease, of work, of evil, and even of death. Some of the statements we read in the press from time to time by some of these scientists are quite extreme, but the wife of a staff member one of our most distinguished scientific institutions in America, told me that it was a frightening experience to have her husband come home and report some of the coffee break conversation of the experimental scientists in that institution, the dreams they dream about the god-like potentiality of man to do anything.

This is believed, not only by our revolutionists, but by our politicians, and it is the basis of both our foreign and domestic policies.

On this basis we operate, that science, in union with the state, can abolish all these problems from the world, and create a world which will be a problem-free and work-free world, essentially. Because of this revolution of rising expectations, because of the impossible expectations of these people the world over, we face inescapable disaster. This disaster is a product of the ethos created by modern humanistic science, and its mythology. We are therefore, now in a new dark ages, because of this scientific myth.

The term “dark ages” is an interesting one. We apply it to a period in the early centuries but a period that was, while one of chaos politically, of tremendous vitality socially. The Christian frontier thinkers of what is called the Dark Ages laid the foundations for western civilization. It was also an age of tremendous inventiveness not equaled in history until the Industrial Revolution, but with the Enlightenment, the humanists of the Enlightenment felt that the thousand years before the Renaissance represented a dark age because of Christianity, and so they called that era the Dark Ages. However, they gradually forced the term backward to the earlier period because, after all, the cathedrals of the Middle Ages and other things were witness to the fact that man had some ability in that time. They couldn’t disguise that, but the origin of the term “dark ages” is Christian. Originally, the Christians terms everything before Christ, apart from the Hebrew commonwealth, the dark ages of the world, and everything outside of Christian civilization as the dark ages of the world. In other words, where Christ and the word of God did not govern, there you had the dark ages, but the men of the Enlightenment called everything that was Christian the Dark Ages of the world. We are now in the new Dark Ages, one created by an amoral anti-Christian science. The source of this crisis is because science has ceased to be science, knowledge, and has become magic.

Now when we think of magic, we tend unfortunately to think of some medicine man with his bones and feathers, and this is erroneous. Magic, in any and every civilization, is the attempt by man to gain total control over man, nature, and the supernatural. The goal of magic is the total control of his environment, of other men, and of anything that may lie beyond the world of nature. The te4chniques of magic can be primitive, or they can be refined. The Indian medicine man has primitive techniques. The modern scientist, the humanistic scientist has refined techniques, but their goal remains the same, to play God, to seek to gain total control. Science, under Christianity, became the exercise of dominion over the earth under God, a fulfillment of man’s creation mandate. Science has now become pagan, and has returned to the purposes of magic, control. Scientific socialism, sociology, the social sciences, that is, the sciences concerning the control of man, are all aspects of this faith. Their basic purpose is magic, and because they believe in the power of their magic, they have created, in this generation, this explosive revolution of rising expectations, so that man believes that paradise on earth is his right, that it can be created tomorrow, and that anything that stands in the way of its creation tomorrow by an act of state, must be destroyed.

Science today has become prediction, planning, and control, and this is the definition as given by increasingly more and more scientists of science. In other words, science has returned to myth. A myth is any attempt of a culture to overcome history, to negate time, to live beyond good and evil, to end history and historical processes, to create a final order, and after all, what is Marxism but a myth, an attempt to end history, and what are all our dreams of our planners but a dream of ending history, creating this perfect final order through the implementation of science? In other words, they are playing at being God.

Here, for example, what a very prominent biochemist, Philip Secowitz, writing in The Nation, September 3, 1958, and I cite him in my new book, The Mythology of Science, as follows: “The Revolution going on in the biological sciences, mainly in biochemistry, will make a atomic energy look like child’s play. Therefore, and more urgently than ever, we need a revolution in our political and social institutions to cope with these findings. We are even about to learn how to change ourselves. I think that we are approaching the greatest even in human history, even in the history of life on this earth, and that is the deliberate changing by man of many of the biological processes. With all of the knowledge thus gained, we will be able to plan ahead, so that our children will be what we would like them to be, physically and even mentally. At this point, man will be remolding his own being. Theologians will protest, but it is certainty itself that man will play God.” But this biochemist is very, very modest compared to many another.

Consider, for example, what Kenneth Heuer, a specialist in planetary astronomy and a fellow Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society has written, as he discusses the future death of the sun. He writes, “Still another possibility would be to construct our own sun, a source of heat and light which might be suspended in the sky, and hold the hovering demons of cold and darkness at bay. This artificial sun would operate by sub-atomic energy. In the remaining years of grace,” quite an interesting phrase coming from Kenneth Heuer, “in the remaining years of grace, man might learn how to run the carbon cycle. Hydrogen, the fuel, is abundant, and other light atoms such as lithium, are also plentiful sources of energy. With several billions of years of time at his disposal for research, man should be able to develop cheap, abundant, and manageable sub-atomic power.” In other words, man will create his own sun, and will create all things else as he needs them. He will be his own god and creator.

Moreover, it is held that science has placed man beyond good and evil. Dr. Franklin Murphy, distinguished scientist and now chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles, has spoken of the new Renaissance, and the new Renaissance man. This new Renaissance, declares Dr. Murphy, is a product of science, and what is it that it has overthrown to a free man? Basically, he says, it is Calvinism. By this, of course, he means Christianity, which puts man under the sway of good and evil, and mythical thinking in general. Man is now liberated from this, and science enables him to live beyond good and evil as his own ultimate. In other words, as his own god. This he calls the Renaissance created by science.

This term renaissance is also used concerning science by Dr. Carol P. Haskins, and other distinguished scientists, and the usage of it is significant, because the Renaissance revived pagan humanism, and the new science, the new mythology, like the old Renaissance, makes man again his own ultimate and his own god. It’s basic hostility is to the fact of God, and hence, its zealous efforts to prove evolution and to disprove God.

I was very much amused at the time of the Venus and Mars shots, to read the reports which came in the various scientific periodicals. It was found, of course, that neither Venus nor Mars can support life, and in the reports this was spoken as a shocking discovery, a blow, a cruel disappointment, and so on. Now, these men were ostensibly objective scientists. They were supposedly out to find out what the facts are about Venus and Mars, or were they? Instead, they were out to prove a case, that life can exist there, and when the initial reports jarred them so because it dashed their hopes, they expressed their disappointment so bitterly. Now, of course, they are trying to revive their hopes in saying, “Well, we do not know everything and it is quite possible under these circumstances and those, life could exist on Mars.” In other words, “We will not surrender our faith. Our myth must be preserved.” Science is offering itself to man as the new god, the new father substitute.

If this sounds like a rather extravagant statement, let me quote from a rather prominent scientist from England. C.H. Waddington, writing in the Scientific Attitude, “Now a days, mainly through the efforts of psychoanalysis, we know something about the psychological nature about the need to believe. Every human being starts life in complete dependence on its parents, and under their absolute control. The most important process is the movement away from reliance on the power and protection of the parents, and the acquisition of the capacity to deal with circumstances unaided. No one at the present stage of human evolution completes this movement. No one entirely escapes from the loving, commanding parent who becomes built up into the structure of a man’s mind under the disguise of a conscience, or a god, who remains something which one can perhaps disobey, but whose power such as it is, does not derive from this world but is primary and unquestionable standing outside the world and coming before it.” Now, as Waddington goes onto say, God, therefore, Is nothing more nor less than a father substitute concept because men feel helpless in the world. So, he concludes, what are we going to do about it since men, in the very nature of their case, cannot feel totally self-reliant, totally independent. There is gong to be always an element of dependency. This is how he concludes his chapter. “I had suggested that one might have a scientific society, officially based on the practice of empirical reason, but I argued that the other side of man’s nature would have to be satisfied by a belief in some authority, a thrill for some romance. We have now reached the conclusion that science can also provide this thrill and this authority. Science, by itself and so far as I can see, only science by itself, unadulterated by mixture with any contrary ideal, is able to provide mankind with a way of life which is firstly, self-consistent and harmonious, and secondly, free for the exercise of that objective reason on which our material progress depends.” Now, what does Waddington do? He says inescapably needs a god-concept. He needs a source of authority, and why should he dwell on this childish substitute for a father, namely the God idea, when we can provide him with science, scientific leadership, a totally scientific organization of society. In other words, let science be man’s new God, very baldly stated, with becoming modesty, of course.

The concept of evolution is basic to this mythology of science. The theory of evolution is not a new one, of course. You find it in every culture outside of the Hebraic tradition, apart from the Hebrew peoples and the Bible. It prevailed in the ancient world. The Bible and the Bible alone has a doctrine of creationism. In the modern era, the theory of cultural evolution, of social progress, the doctrine of the assent of man by his own efforts came in very early. It entered the church very early also as various doctrines of self-salvation, as Aryanism, and in the modern era, as Armenianism. The doctrine of self-salvation, of man’s cultural, moral, and religious progress by his own efforts was the central thesis of the Renaissance and especially of the Enlightenment. It was last of all applied to biology, and then only in the last century. Its success was due to the prevalence of the concept in every area of scholarship as a result of the prevalence of Enlightenment thinking.

In the textbooks, you hear a great deal of nonsense, a part of the mythology of science that Darwin was attacked and the idea was persecuted, and the church opposed it and so on. The sad fact is that it was welcomed with open arms. When Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published, the world greeted it with joy, because pre-publication announcements made known its contents. The entire first edition was sold out on the day of publication. Only one bishop in England opposed it and there were no other churchmen to stand up to it. It was not until the nineties, a generation or more after the publication of The Origin of Species, that a group of churchmen came together and published a series of essays, The Fundamentals, in opposition to this new faith that was sweeping the entire church and the world before it.

The concept of evolution, a part of the mythology of science, is a religious dogma. Its purpose, first of all, is to dispose of God as Lord and savior. Second, to make man independent, autonomous, and ultimate. Third, to make man his own savior, and fourth, to establish the controlled scientific, socialist state. The essence of the scientific method is experimentation, and total controls are necessary to successful experimentation, and therefore, to a scientifically controlled state and society. Freedom has no place in an experiment. Therefore, freedom has no place in a scientific society, and a scientific society, a scientifically organized state, scientific socialism, scientific planning can only destroy freedom and create, as it is creating today, a slave civilization. This magical science, science as a faith, science as controls, has gained undue credit because, when we speak of scientists, we put together the practical scientist, the inventor, the tool maker, and the theoretical scientist all into one category, and indeed give the theoretician preeminence, so that when we talk about scientists, we generally think of the theoretician, and not of the practical scientist, or of the tool maker, or of the inventor. Most of the theoretists have done nothing to advance true science, but it is they who are termed scientist par excellence, who dominate science and society increasingly.

The result is a deepening crisis, increasing darkness, and looming disaster. The mythology of science has the ring of infallible truth to its age. Scientists are as impressive now as the magicians were in Egypt, the Magi in Babylon, and the achievements of all three have been very real, but their foundations essentially false, and now as we stand in the midst of the revolution of rising expectations, and the crisis and the disaster that it is going to shortly bring upon us, we need to remember however, that these men, like all false gods, are destined to go: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it.” Thank you.

[Narrator] Those of you who follow the Christian calendar probably know that last Thursday we commemorated the day for St. Matthew. You probably also know that next Friday we remember St. Michael. You probably also realize that St. Matthew was in receipt of custom, which has something to do with money. You also remember that Michael drove Satan out of heaven and Satan has something to do with evil. So here we are sandwiched between Matthew and Michael. You also know that the love of money becomes evil. So what I’m saying is if we can separate you from some of your money, you’ll have less to be concerned about evil. Well, it is our custom at this time, speaking of the receipt of custom, to help our speaker defray some of his operating expenses, after which I’m sure he will entertain your questions. Thank you.

[Rushdoony] Before we have our questions, I’d like to read two little items to you from the collected editorials of John W. Campbell, a scientist who, while he definitely doesn’t share my position, is strongly inclined to believe that there is a great deal of nonsense in contemporary science, and a great deal of pretentious thinking. This book is delightful as he pricks a good many of the scientific myths, but there are a couple of little tidbits I’d like share with you which, I think, are quite telling.

This one: One, statistics show that over ninety-eight percent of all individuals born are now dead. Two, therefore, your probably dead now. Well, it’s perfectly logical, isn’t it? And this, he says, is a good example of the statistical method used by many scientists, and then this, for definitions, which he says is a thoroughly valid, scientific definition, foolproof. Oxygen, an intensely habit forming, accumulative, toxic substance, as little as one breath is known to produce a live-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death. In high concentration, it causes death quickly, but even in twenty-percent dilution, few survive more than eight-tenths of a century. Any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Define humanism.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Humanism is a religious faith, that man is his own ultimate, his own end, his own savior, and that therefore, man must basically rely upon himself. The best, perhaps, volume of studies in humanism was a series of humanist sermons published in the 1920’s. I’ve forgotten the name of the editor, but the title is Humanist Sermons, by various scholars in various academic and other communities across the country. Yes?

[Audience] Savior from what?

[Rushdoony] From any and all problems he may have to face.

[Audience] There’s no {?}

[Rushdoony] Basically, savior from God, because one of the premises of the Enlightenment, which you still find governing all humanism is this, and an excellent exposition of this is in Peter Gay, The Enlightenment, the first volume of which is out, and Peter Gay’s perspective is that of humanism and of the Enlightenment, and he says that there are two kinds of thinking. On the one hand, there is the Christian kind of thinking which recognizes an ultimate of authority, a source of standards, of law, of right and wrong, of principles, and so on, and then there is autonomous, critical thought, which recognizes no standards, no law, no principle, in which man is his own ultimate.

So you see, for the humanistic perspective, what man basically needs salvation from is God. Yes?

[Audience] What is the job of the Christian scientist?

[Rushdoony] The Christian who is the scientist, his responsibility is first of all, to know the nature of physical reality, and then to put this knowledge to use, that man may exercise dominion over the earth under God. It is a part of the creation mandate to exercise dominion over the earth and to subdue it, and this is man’s scientific calling under God. Yes?

[Audience] I’ve heard a sermon in which the minister made the statement several times that Christianity is not spiritual, it is material. Do you think this goes along with humanism?

[Rushdoony] Not necessarily. I would have to know all that he had to say. Christianity is concerned with both the material and the spiritual because God is the creator of heaven and earth, and of all things spiritual and material. Therefore, of necessity, our faith must govern the entirety of reality, the material world as well as the spiritual. Yes?

[Audience] I wonder if you could tell us where humanism is being most propagated today?

[Rushdoony] The question, where is humanism being most propagated today, and I think the answer, unhappily, is a very clear one: in the churches. The churches today are the great and major vehicle of humanism, and schools, of course, the public schools, colleges and universities, our law courts, all are moving in terms of humanism, but leading the procession are the churches. Yes?

[Audience] Does that account for atheism?

[Rushdoony] Ultimately, humanism is atheism, because it is a denial of God, and at the best, God becomes a limiting concept, no more than that. Yes?

[Audience] With so many different groups trying to take mastery of the world today, would you say the scientists are farther along in this effort than the other groups?

[Rushdoony] Not that they are further along, but they have created the mythology in terms of which all these people have been able to arouse the world. The revolution of rising expectations has been created by scientists with all their talk about all the possibilities, all that they can do through science to create this paradise on earth. Now, this has been seized by revolutionists, by churchmen, by educators, and it has led to this worldwide revolution. So that science has provided the tool through its mythology. Without this, they would be impotent. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Technocracy, it began to flourish in the thirties, and there, I believe is still an office in San Francisco. Technocracy is a belief in a scientifically planned society. It’s one of any number of such concepts. For Technocracy, the world is to be governed by scientific planning. There will be no need for things like coins, money, because this represents an old relic of a free world. They are going to be beyond this. Yes?

[Audience] Is there anything that parents of school children do in the effort to do something about this humanism, this taking of Freud and Darwin, and atheism, and of teaching social revolution while they’re destroying history?

[Rushdoony] The thing that parents can do in the face of this revolution is to take their children out of the churches and the schools that teach it, to put them into Christian churches and in Christian schools, and to establish a Christian order in the home to further the liberation of their children.

[Audience] But there is a double cost then to the parents.

[Rushdoony] It is, and it’s not easy. I have that double cost, but the alternative is to throw our children away. Yes?

[Audience] I don’t know exactly know to phrase this, but now that the scientists indicate that all they want to do is to create happiness, freedom. There’s nothing you say that’s really wrong, it’s just one great, big, happy world, finally. Now to the person who hasn’t’ finally come to a belief {?} Christian leanings {?} he knows something’s wrong. How do you explain {?} this wrong thinking because they don’t think anything is wrong. It all sounds like {?}

[Rushdoony] A very good question, and this, of course, is the problem. When they go, these revolutionary leaders, to the peoples of China, of India, of Africa, and so many peoples in Europe and America, and say, “Now this is what we can create through science. Do you see what marvels science has created? We have space satellites. We have all kinds of marvels that are possible, and science can create a perfect world, if we only have a scientifically-planned state. Wouldn’t you rather have this than your poverty and your problems, your hard work? Why not throw it away, have a revolution and gain this?” Well, to these people it seems fair exchange. Why not get together and smash the present order and gain this perfect world? And unless they have a Christian faith, they’re going to go for this, and that’s why, of course, the only alternative, the only real way to head off this revolution of rising expectations, or in terms of the disaster it is creating, to create a counter movement that can begin reconstruction is Christian Reconstruction now, building Christian churches, Christian schools, Christian concepts in economics, in political science, in philosophy, in every area, and there are men who are beginning this task right now, a number of them. Yes?

[Audience] Why do you feel that the new society {?} bad or not a thing to go to? Do you want to stagnate at this level that you act now and not go any further, or not be looking to see what good will come, or would you rather just, just curious would you stagnate here?

[Rushdoony] No, whatever gave you the notion I believe in stagnation? Progress is a Christian concept. It never came into civilization apart from Christian thinking. Stagnation is basic to this mythology. They’re going to arrest society in a final order. This is what they’re talking about. For example, Roderick Seidenberg, one of the leading thinkers in this area, whose books were published first by University of North Carolina Press and they are now in paperback form through another publisher, Post-Historic Man, is the title of one. In other words, man, when we have ended history, stopped the clock, by ending everything in this perfect, final order, which he compares to the anthill and the beehive, and Karl Marx used the same figure, comparing the perfect society to an anthill and a beehive. That’s stagnation. Another book by Seidenberg, who expresses all this thinking, is called Beyond History [might be called Beyond Civilization], Post-Historic Man, Beyond History{?}. Now, both books in their titles express this idea of a stagnating society, and this, as a Christian, I reject. Man is not going to have a final order. He needs to recognize there are always problems, always responsibility, always work, always room for the growth and development of society. What the revolutionists are trying to create is this stagnant, final, unchanging order, and this is a return to the society of the Pharaohs, an unchanging society. It’s a return to everything that characterized the ancient Chinese culture, unchanging, because there was no concept of progress. The old China could not change because it didn’t believe there was any difference between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and error. All things were relative. When all things are relative, what need is there to change? All things are the same. So why change from what you are today for something else, when what you are today is as good as anything else that may come tomorrow?

Now, these concepts of the revolutionists are total stagnation. There is only one thing they want to do away with: Christianity and its concept of progress and of development. They want an end of history order. This is the essence of Marxism. This is the essence of Fabian socialism. This is the essence of every one of these ideologies, and the very word “ideology,” if you’ll examine Karl Marx’ definition of it is basically, a false concept which is used to hold society together. That’s a rough definition of it. So, by the very term, he admitted that he didn’t consider any of these things to be truth. Marx also said since there is no truth, there are only two possible things for man as his ultimate, his own god. One is total anarchism: every man his own god, but he said this creates chaos. The alternative to that is total organization, total communism, and this, he said, is more practical, so pragmatically I choose that. This is a stagnant society, and I’m opposed to it. Yes?

[Audience] {?} do you advocate to {?} I mean, you said something about pulling kids out of {?} society, and putting them into a Calvinistic church. I mean, you want to pull them out of the society now and change the whole society over to something different?

[Rushdoony] Of course. I believe in a radical reconstruction of society, and I do believe that the state has no more business in education than it does in economics, or in any other sphere. The purpose of the state is justice. Therefore, I believe education belongs not to the church or to the state, but is a separate sphere. I believe in Christian schools rather than church or state schools. I believe the parents should choose the school in terms of what he believes would be best for his child. I believe in such a system. The schools because they are competitive, are going to be superior schools. Today, twenty-five to thirty percent of all grade school children in the United States are in non-statist schools, ten percent of all high school students. The percent is, as many of you have heard me say before, is growing so rapidly that some Columbia teachers college authorities believe that, by the end of this century, there may be no public schools left, at the present rate of growth. These schools represent a high standard, far higher than the public schools. The comparison is so poor between them that it is impossible for the child in the public schools to compete as over against a Christian school student.

One of my children, when we were still living here, graduated from a grade school and went to one of the high schools in this area, because there was no Christian high school here, she is in one now, she was used to, in the eighth grade, doing a forty and fifty-page term papers that represented a vast amount of research. The first paper she turned in, in the public school, in the ninth grade, was a ten-page paper, excuse me, a twenty-five page paper, and she felt ashamed of it. She got an AA for it, and upset and antagonized the whole class, because all the other papers were from five to ten pages in length, and represented very little research. Now, this is the difference in standards. My children, from the fifth, sixth grade, have done more reading, more homework, than neighbors’ children in the public schools, and four and five grades ahead of them. There is no comparison. A new society is being created in our midst by these pupils. Yes?

[Audience] I don’t know if he was realizing that he was admitting what he was saying is true, but last week, a national survey indicated San Francisco public schools to be lower, near the bottom, in reading and arithmetic, and in official public schools, I don’t remember the exact {?} but San Francisco {?} was inaccurate, as the amount represented all of the school children in San Francisco, there twenty-five percent in parochial and private schools.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience] On this school thing, Rush, don’t you also believe that parents who are not Christian should be allowed to send their children to atheistic schools if this is the way they believe?

[Rushdoony] Very definitely. If people want to start a school in terms of their humanistic, or atheistic presuppositions, they should do it. The interesting thing is, so many of these Christian schools today have a long waiting list, and are prospering and are drawing children of all kinds of religious or irreligious backgrounds precisely because of their excellence. Yes?

[Audience] Two things, questions here {?} continuation of the question that was asked {?} really trying to get an understanding of what you are thinking of {?}. To continue this then, what would be the relationship between people who have {?} into this system, a Christian system. Now what is the relationship {?} groups on the outside or the other groups? {?}

[Rushdoony] In what sense? They’re living in the same world. What do you mean by relationship?

[Audience] Are they going to live in their own group without associating with these other {?} This question would be then, What is your view of the Christian relationship to democracy?

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all, I cannot say what these children who go through a Christian school system and college and so on, and graduate, who they’re going to associate with any more than they can say whom I shall associate with, because this is not a matter of planning. It’s a matter of free association. I associate with all kinds of people, in all kinds of vocations, with all kinds of backgrounds and belief, and opinions, continually. Some may associate with some, some may not. This is not an area where can say “This is what people are going to do.” Second, my belief in democracy, I don’t believe in democracy. Democracy comes from two Greek words which mean mob rule. I do not believe in a democracy, I do not believe in mob rule. I believe in the rule of law.

[Audience] I object a little bit to your paraphrasing of that. Certainly, we all understand {?} argue with democracy, and I don’t want to also get into an argument over the way democracy {?} details of that, but I’m just, what is our, we have a child that has come up in a Christian school, a Christian home, a Christian family, we’ve kept him in a Christian group as long as we can. He is eventually is going to have to find work and eventually he’s going to be faced with leaving this group, and there will be other people to whom he is going to have to work with. He can be protected from this for all his life.

[Rushdoony] You’re misunderstanding the result of this.

[Audience] I’m not understanding this, I’m trying to understand what you’re . . .

[Rushdoony] You’re assuming though, this child is, as it were, in a hot house, that you’ve kept him in a cocoon. . .

[Audience] It sounds like he’s been put into a hot house, and I’m trying to understand . . .

[Rushdoony] No. Actually, he is better prepared to face the world. He does better as he goes out into the world, because he has been given a basic foundation that gives him confidence as a person, a perspective with which to assess things, so that he isn’t carried one way and then another, in terms of mob feelings. So that as he goes out into the world, this child is better prepared to cope with everything, and I have, on numerous occasions, seen what happens to some of these children, for example, who have gone through twelve years of some of our outstanding Christian schools where I make regular trips to speak to some of the students. As they go out, they surpass the associates, they have, say, in a secular campus. When they go out into the business world, they have more adaptability because they have a basic core which gives them stability in the face of things and they go ahead much more rapidly, to the point now that there is a premium put by some corporations on products of such an education. This isn’t very extensively publicized, but I do know they are systematically recruiting these boys for executive positions. Why? They have stability. They are more adaptable to various situations. They are less swayed and thrown off balance by unpredictable events. So there is a premium of these boys. They get ahead.

[Audience] Well, I agree with you up to {?} on the effectiveness of Christian schools. I’m not really trying to argue with you on that. I’m worried about the, I can follow you all the way up through the Christian schools, and now this point where he steps into business, he’s now back {?}

[Rushdoony] He’s always been in the world.

End of tape