Deeper Waters Podcast 1/31/2015: Dave Sterrett.

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In reality, I have actually already recorded this show. Normally, I do it on Saturday afternoons, but I had to make an exception this week. A friend of the family is getting married and while I am not officiating, I am taking a part in some matters with getting everything formalized as an ordained minister, so since that required my attention, I decided to go ahead and record the show in advance. (And it can sometimes take awhile because I am really inept with the technology and have to have a good friend help me out with that.)

Yesterday, I wrote about Dave Sterrett’s book. Really, I had read this book over Christmas, but there were other things that got my attention and I still even have a lot of Christ-myth nonsense to write about, and that’s going to be even harder because when you read one of those books, it is so filled with error that you just have to spend so much time dealing with all the constant mistakes in there.

Dave’s book is a short one you can read quickly and is packed with information. When I interviewed him, one thing we heard about briefly was the need to not be a coward. Dave talked about a time in the past where he backed down from his pro-life convictions and sadly, he did this at the recommendation of a pastor who just did not want to talk about the issue. (And shame on a pastor like that. These are human lives we’re talking about.) Now, he is silent no more.

We talked about the Aristotelian doctrine of substance and what role it plays in the debate. What does it really mean to be a human and could we in our modern age really learn something from those strange ideas of metaphysics that were in the past? We discussed that actually, philosophy is unavoidable. Everyone is going to do philosophy somehow. The question is, are we going to do it well or not. I have sadly found that those with a scientism mindset who want to speak against philosophy and put science on the top inevitably end up doing bad philosophy and often very little science.

We also spoke about why it is that our culture pays so much attention to science on every other issue, but when it comes to the science of humanity, we ignore it. It is quite odd that it is precisely at that point that we jump back to philosophy and metaphysics and try to use those to deny the humanity of what is in the womb, but it is the contention of Dave Sterrett that this will not work.

We’re working on getting these shows up soon and I hope you’ll be watching for them. The interview with Dave was only able to be an hour long, but I think it will be one that is worth your listening to. So please be watching your ITunes feed and thank you for supporting the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Aborting Aristotle

Dave Sterrett has a new book coming out from St. Augustine Press called Aborting Aristotle and do you want to know my thoughts of it? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Aborting Aristotle

Abortion is always a controversial issue in this country and one aspect of it I find interesting is that the science has often been neglected. We know much more about the science of life than the ancients did back then. Oh they knew the basics fully well. They knew exactly what it took to make a baby, but what exactly was going on in the whole process and when it was that life began was not a question they could answer definitively. For this, we can be grateful to modern science showing us that life does begin at conception.

What the ancients did have an advantage in is metaphysics. The ancients knew less than we do today, but in all honesty, they thought more. Did that mean they were right about everything? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. But it meant they looked at the world around them and looked a lot deeper than just the surface level. Unfortunately, our scientific age has often become so fascinated with the science that we haven’t looked past it to deeper truths.

One such thinker that looked deep in the past was Aristotle and he was a tremendous influence on our civilization and still is. I’d agree with thinkers like Feser that where we went off the bend was when we started moving away from Aristotle. To go to Aristotle also does not mean we jettison modern science. We can still have the metaphysics of Aristotle and still keep modern science, and that metaphysics could help with the abortion debate.

In fact, that’s what Dave Sterrett argues. He argues that our aborting of the thought of Aristotle is causing us to not think properly on the abortion debate and we have to return to metaphysics. Pro-Life organizations have realized this as well, hence a question that you’d get from someone like Greg Koukl or Scott Klusendorf. That would be the question of “What is it?” That is the first question to ask in the abortion debate. What is it we are aborting?

Sterrett argues that a return to the metaphysics of Aristotle can answer that question and throughout the book, there is no doubt that he has done his homework as he profusely quotes the other side throughout. Sterrett will guide you through Aristotelian thought on this issue and help you see how it works out and also expose the fallacies that go on the other side where metaphysics is often ignored. (Indeed, too many in our society think that anything that has to do with metaphysics is automatically bunk.)

Also, this book is fairly short. I read it over Christmas break visiting my in-laws. If you want to get a good book on metaphysical issues that will help you out in the abortion debate, then Sterrett’s book is an excellent one to get, and hopefully you will be one to help us stop the abortion of Aristotle in today’s society. Who knows how much could be improved if the metaphysics of Aristotle were allowed to be reborn today?

In Christ,
Nick Peters