This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Most people who have heard of the fine-tuning argument think they know what it says: the universe is wildly improbable, so God must have designed it.
The basic idea is simple. The laws of physics contain fixed numbers, called the constants of nature, that determine things like the strength of gravity, the mass of the electron, and the expansion of the universe. If some of these numbers were even slightly different, the universe would not have formed atoms, planets, stars, galaxies, or life. That surprising discovery is called fine tuning.
From there, the argument is usually presented in one of two familiar ways. One version tries to eliminate every alternative to design. The other compares the probability of fine tuning with and without an intelligent cause.
These two familiar versions are important. But they can also get bogged down in technical debates about probability and alternate universes and even drift into the problem of evil.
There is a third version of the <a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/fine-tuning-argument-for-god" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.physicstogod.com/fine-tuning-argument-for-god&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779393446910000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0i2RUtUSf5zF4Wzq2mcUaM">fine-tuning argument</a> that is simpler, clearer, and stronger. Most people have never heard it.
Before we get to that, we need to look briefly at the two familiar versions.
The first, associated with philosopher William Lane Craig, is the argument by elimination. Fine-tuning must be due to necessity, chance, or design. The constants either had to be what they are, happened by chance to be what they are, or were set that way by an intelligent cause. Since necessity and chance fail as satisfactory explanations, design is what remains.
It is a clean formulation. But it has a vulnerability: an argument by elimination depends on the list being complete and the alternatives being truly eliminated. A critic can always ask whether some unknown explanation has been left out, or whether necessity and chance have really been ruled out.
The second version is the probability argument, featured in Stephen Meyer’s recent documentary film, &#8220;The Story of Everything.&#8221; Fine-tuning is far more likely if there is an intelligent cause than if there isn’t one. If a purposeful creator wanted a universe with stars, planets, chemistry, and life, then it is no surprise that the constants would have values that allow for exactly that. Without intelligence behind the universe, those constants landing in precisely the right range look extraordinarily improbable.
This version is powerful, but it can get complicated quickly. Critics challenge the probability assumptions. What does “improbable” mean when we have only observed one universe? The argument can also drift into theological debates about the problem of evil and what God would or would not choose to create.
Both versions are valuable. Neither should be dismissed. But there is a third version that avoids many of these complications and cuts closer to the heart of the matter.
It begins with a mystery that physicists already had.
Physicists can measure the constants of nature with extraordinary precision. What they cannot do is explain them. Their values are measured, not derived. No deeper theory tells us why they have the values they do.
Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, pointed directly at this puzzle. Discussing a number related to the strength of electromagnetism, roughly 1/137, Feynman noted that physicists knew its value with remarkable precision but had no idea where it came from. He called it one of the greatest mysteries of physics.
That is where the strongest version of the fine-tuning argument begins, not with probability or eliminating alternatives. It begins with a mystery already sitting at the heart of physics.
Only then does fine-tuning enter the picture.
Fine-tuning reveals something remarkable. The constants that first looked like arbitrary values sitting unexplained at the foundation of physics are not arbitrary in their effects. Their values are suited to a specific result: the emergence of a rich, ordered universe with atoms, stars, planets, galaxies, and life.
That is the crucial shift: fine-tuning is not the problem. Fine-tuning is the clue.
It tells us how to think about the mystery of the constants. They are not merely unexplained numbers. Their effects line up with the emergence of a rich, ordered universe. And that points to intelligence.
Intelligence, at its most basic level, is the ability to select one possibility from among many for the sake of achieving a goal. An author chooses precise words to express an idea. An engineer chooses the right materials and dimensions to build a structure. Intelligence selects the right means for an intended end.
The constants show that same pattern. From among the many values they could have had, they have the values needed for structure, order, and complexity to emerge. That indicates purposeful selection.
This is why the argument is not a “God of the gaps” claim. It is not based on what science has failed to explain. It is based on what science has discovered. Fine-tuning is positive knowledge about the constants. Their values appear to be coordinated toward the emergence of a structured universe.
The mystery of the constants was already sitting at the heart of physics. Fine-tuning did not create a new puzzle. It illuminated the one physicists already had.
The constants of nature appear to be set for a purpose. A cause that selects the right means to achieve a purpose is, by definition, intelligent. That is why the fine-tuning argument, properly understood, remains one of the strongest <a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/does-god-exist" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.physicstogod.com/does-god-exist&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1779393446910000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2fzoHkXcdcCy3ZFFeVq8vI">science-based arguments for God</a>.
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Rabbi Elie Feder, Ph.D., and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer host the “Physics to God” podcast.

GettyImages-1829418787

The Mystery Physicists Can’t Explain Keeps Pointing To God

Faith

Science

Upstream

MSNOW host Katy Tur, in a stunning display of historical illiteracy, questioned the foundational bedrock of the American republic, targeting House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had dared to repeat the very premise that birthed the United States: that our rights come from God, not the government.
During a segment on her show, Tur referred to Johnson’s speech at the &#8220;Rededicate 250&#8221; rally on Sunday, in which Johnson stated:
<blockquote>
And You gave our fathers the wisdom and faith to establish this new nation, premised on the Biblical and foundational principle that all men are created equal and free before you. Through Your divine providence, our Founders acknowledged and boldly proclaimed this self-evident truth: That every single person is created in your image and that we are endowed by you, our Creator, with our unalienable rights to life and liberty. The pursuit of happiness.  
</blockquote>
To any student of basic American history, Johnson&#8217;s words were a standard recitation of the Declaration of Independence. But to Tur, it was a scandalous theological overreach. A bewildered Tur asked, “What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government, they come from You, our Creator and heavenly Father. Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
God talk is SO foreign to MS NOW. Katy Tur: What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government? They come from you, our creator and heavenly father. Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence? McKay Coppins: I… <a href="https://t.co/sfpykN5bYc">pic.twitter.com/sfpykN5bYc</a>
&mdash; Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) <a href="https://twitter.com/TimJGraham/status/2056471098057744725?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The irony, of course, is that by asserting our rights come from God, Johnson wasn&#8217;t putting God over the Declaration of Independence — he was literally quoting it.
The Left&#8217;s modern discomfort with this concept betrays a dangerous desire to elevate the State to the position of the Almighty. The American Founders, heavily influenced by John Locke and the concept of &#8220;Natural Law,&#8221; synthesized a radical political philosophy: there is a divine law that supersedes any earthly king, parliament, or congress.
Thomas Jefferson famously encapsulated this in 1776, writing that all men are &#8220;endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.&#8221; By definition, &#8220;unalienable&#8221; means these rights are inherent to human nature. Because the government did not grant them, the government has no authority to revoke them. In the Founders’ view, the state is not the source of rights; it is merely a trustee — a security guard hired to protect them. If the security guard begins to violate those rights, the citizens retain the moral authority to fire the government.
Whether looking through an orthodox Christian lens or a Deist Enlightenment lens, the Founders united under a singular banner: No human politician has the authority to override divine design.
This distinction is not a matter of semantics; it is the ultimate shield against tyranny. If rights are granted by the state — via a constitution, a dictator, or a shifting democratic majority — then they can be amended, restricted, or entirely voted away by the state. But if they are a gift from God, they remain absolute and permanent.
Katy Tur’s inability to grasp this fundamental truth exposes the Left&#8217;s ultimate goal: a society where the government is the supreme arbiter of human freedom.

InStyle 30th Birthday Celebration

Leftist Host Gives Away The Game: Let Government Replace God

Declaration of Independence

Katy Tur

Mike Johnson

MSNOW

The problem of evil is the greatest emotional obstacle to belief in God. It simply doesn’t feel right that God should allow people to suffer, or at least to suffer as much as they do. 
The late atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie, a fellow Aussie, maintained that belief in God was irrational, for if God were all-knowing, He would know that there was evil in the world; if He were all-powerful, He could prevent it; and if He were all-good, He would wish to prevent it. The fact that there is evil in the world proves that God doesn’t exist, or if he does, that He is “impotent, ignorant, or wicked.”
I’ll be honest: when I think about the kinds of evil some people endure, and are enduring even as I speak, I find myself feeling as though an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God may not exist after all.
But feelings, however powerful, are not arguments. And since we are engaged in philosophy here, we ought to be more concerned with right thinking than with how we are feeling. In fact, when I step back and consider the problem of evil from a rational point of view, rather than simply reacting to it emotionally, I do not think it succeeds as an argument against God’s existence.
Mackie was wrong. The existence of God and the existence of evil aren’t mutually exclusive. And to see why, let’s look at the three attributes of God that Mackie named.
Omnipotence
Omnipotence does not mean the ability to do what is logically impossible because what is logically impossible is nothing at all. God cannot make a square circle, for instance, or a married bachelor, not because his power is limited, but because there is nothing there to be made. Logical contradictions are not difficult tasks awaiting divine power; they are empty descriptions.
As St. Thomas Aquinas put it, &#8220;Whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility. Hence it is better to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them.” It follows then that while God can create beings with free will, capable of choosing between good and evil, He cannot both grant that freedom and simultaneously override it by forcing creatures always to choose the good. A forced choice is not a free one.
C.S. Lewis captured the point succinctly: “If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God.” 
Omniscience
If God has infinite knowledge, then he knows many things we don’t. This means that He may, in fact, have good reasons for permitting evil and suffering that seem inexplicable to us. Human beings have a very limited vantage point, and we often lack knowledge of things of true significance. What appears to us to be a tragedy may have effects that bring about great good, and conversely, what appears to us as a good thing may, in the long run, prove harmful.
Consider the analogy of a small child being taken to the doctor for his immunization shots. He knows the needle hurts, and he can’t understand why his own parents are allowing the doctor to cause him such pain. The child is unable to grasp that the inoculations will help prevent the much greater suffering of disease. He’s unable to perceive the greater good. Likewise, we should recognize that a being with more knowledge than us, like God, may have good reasons for things, even pain and suffering, of which we are unaware. He allows evils to exist because of His omniscience, not despite it.
Omnibenevolence
As we think about the goodness of God, we must be careful not to impose on Him our inadequate understanding of what goodness is. In his book “The Problem of Pain,” C. S. Lewis writes:
<blockquote>By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness. . . . What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, “What does it matter so long as they are contented?” We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven, a senile benevolence who, as they say, “liked to see young people enjoying themselves” and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, “a good time was had by all.” 
Furthermore, most theists do not believe that God created us merely for happiness in this life. He created us most importantly for eternal happiness with Him in the next. So, His omnibenevolence should be judged neither by our limited human standards of goodness nor by what happens in this world alone.</blockquote>
Putting all this together, we can recognize that an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator might have good reasons for tolerating abuses of human free will that lead to evil and suffering. We may not know what all His reasons are, but we sense the value of freedom, including the value of being able to choose good freely rather than by compulsion. We can see how God&#8217;s power and knowledge can bring good out of evil in ways that our limited minds aren’t able to comprehend. In faith, we can say along with St. Paul, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him” (Rom. 8:28).
Evil: An Argument for God
Evil, rather than disproving God’s existence, can actually point toward it, at least indirectly. To call something evil is not merely to register a feeling of dislike or pain, but to make a moral judgment. And moral judgments presuppose the reality of moral norms that are not reducible to individual preference or social convention. If such objective moral norms exist, then they must have an origin that transcends human opinion.
The theist would say that this origin is God. Moral laws point beyond themselves to a moral lawgiver. Only within such a conceptual framework does it make sense to say that suffering is not merely unfortunate, but unjust, that it cries out for explanation, and that it ought, somehow, to be answered. This does not dissolve the mystery of why an all-good God permits suffering and evil. It doesn’t tell us the meaning, but it does tell us that it’s not meaningless. On this view, God can bring good out of evil, ensure that injustice does not have the final word, and ultimately bring about justice in a way that the bare facts of suffering alone never could.
This is essentially St. Thomas Aquinas’ response to the problem of evil. Citing St. Augustine, he writes: “&#8217;Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.&#8217; This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.”

Silhouette of Man Praying Outside

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

Christianity

Matt Fradd

Religion

Theology

Twenty-five centuries ago, Thucydides wrote of heroic men that their story, after death, “abides everywhere without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives.” We know them when they are gone by their enduring effect upon us, and upon those who knew them — and upon those whom they never knew, but who live and flourish in the shade of their works. The hero lives beyond his own.
That was the late great Coach Lou Holtz in full. After 89 years on the field, he has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/beloved-notre-dame-football-coach-lou-holtz-dies-at-89">gone on</a> to his reward — and he also lives on, among us, in the lives he transformed, and in the country he served.
He was the greatest of men — a college football hall of famer, a devoted father, and a faithful Christian.
He was also one of my best friends. I had the opportunity to reflect upon his friendship, and his example, at his visitation and memorial in South Bend, Indiana this week. Seeing the men and women gathered there — the friends and family, and just as importantly the Americans who he never knew but knew him — it was impossible to miss the simple truth. Lou Holtz was a heroic man. It was a quiet heroism, a modest heroism, and a heroism he would have denied with all sincerity. But his life was one of heroism all the same.
Selfless service and a solid personal example, you see, can be heroic in their way. He possessed both in full.
<div id="attachment_1060871" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1060871" class="size-large wp-image-1060871" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-108124301-864x576.jpg" alt="GLENDALE, AZ - JANUARY 10: ESPN reporter Lou Holtz looks on during the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game between the Oregon Ducks and the Auburn Tigers at University of Phoenix Stadium on January 10, 2011 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-108124301-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-108124301-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-108124301-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-108124301.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images</div>
Coach Holtz was a source of inspiration to me ever since we first met 33 years ago at the 1993 Cotton Bowl game, where Texas A&amp;M played Notre Dame, and I was the Cotton Bowl Queen. It was a cold, cold day out, but it turned out to be the beginning of a warm, lifelong friendship.
Coach Holtz famously said, “God did not put us on this earth to be ordinary.” And his extraordinary life proves that he lived up to those words better than most.
We could point to his many victories on the field, as the only college football coach in history to lead six different programs to bowl games and four different programs to final top 15 rankings.
But those victories are just part of the story — the fruits of a lifelong commitment to servant leadership.
In addition to serving as an officer in the United States Army Reserve, Coach Holtz was active in national politics for many years. Decades after we first met, we reunited when I was at the helm of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As the years went on, we developed a bond over a shared vision for America that solidified under President Trump. Coach Holtz was an early supporter of the president, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020 — an honor that was well deserved.
Coach Holtz was a great American, a great coach, a great man. But most important in the eyes of God: he was a good man. He was never content with merely speaking about the Gospel — he was intent on putting it into practice. His decades of charitable work, most recently through the Holtz’s Heroes Foundation, served communities in need and provided scholarships to former student-athletes facing financial, physical, or mental hardships.
In 2021, he helped me launch the America First Policy Institute, which he later told me was the most important team he would ever be a part of. Instead of kicking his feet up, he spent his final years coaching America back to greatness and inspired countless Americans along the way — including me. The last time I saw him, he was still working, still laboring, still leading for the causes he held dear — God and America.
Whether on the football field, on the civic field, or on the field of faith, Coach Holtz carried the ball and kept the flame of greatness alive. Although he’s no longer with us, his dedication to truth and goodness lives on in the lives of those he impacted. There are so many who will walk in the paths he set forth without knowing it was him who gave them the opening drive. But we who know, we who loved him, we will always remember.
Thank you, Coach, for your life, for your example, and for your faith. We won’t let you down.
* * *
Brooke L. Rollins is the 33rd U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.
Disclaimer: Brooke Rollins is writing in her personal capacity as a private citizen and the views expressed herein are solely her own.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Remembering Lou Holtz, The Coach America Needed

Bible

Charity

Coach

Football

NCAA football

Notre Dame University

Opinion

Secretary of Agriculture

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1913-are-aliens-real-the-truth-about-obama-s-interview-explained?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
Liberal podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen just interviewed Barack Obama, and the former president decided to make a little news. 
Obama declared that aliens are real.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I asked <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BarackObama</a> if aliens are real. <a href="https://t.co/ZPw5zT9PfD">pic.twitter.com/ZPw5zT9PfD</a>
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) <a href="https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/2022808515082096843?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @briantylercohen/X.com
<blockquote>Cohen: &#8220;Are aliens real?&#8221;
Obama: “They&#8217;re real, but I haven&#8217;t seen them, and they&#8217;re not being kept in — what is it?&#8221;
Cohen: &#8220;Area 51.&#8221;
Obama: &#8220;&#8230; Area 51. There&#8217;s no underground facility. Unless there&#8217;s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.” 
Cohen: “What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?” 
Obama: “Where are the aliens?” </blockquote>
That’s a funny answer. But Cohen just moves on. 
Brian Tyler Cohen has set the new gold standard for incompetence at interviewing. There&#8217;s no follow-up. 
A president of the United States declares that aliens are real, and Cohen decides to not follow up on it. Oh, how do you know that? How do you know aliens are real?
Obama has now come out <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/barack-obama-clarifies-seen-no-evidence-aliens-saying-real-rcna259232">to clarify</a> his statement, offering a whole lot of liberal nonsense about the distance between solar systems:
<blockquote>I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!</blockquote>
Liberals always say things like this — the solar system is so large, statistically there has to be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
But they never explain why that is. Because in order to ascertain the probability of something, you have to know how that thing came about in the first place. You have to know something, anything, about that thing. And at the level of pure nature, we don&#8217;t.
Now from a theological and anthropological level, I think we do know. But from the point of view of nature, we do not know how life came about. We don&#8217;t know, for instance, how one goes from inorganic to organic matter. There have been a zillion theories over the years, and none of them have been proven, but some of them have been disproven. 
So the argument that the universe is really, really big actually does not imply that there is intelligent life — or life of any kind anywhere else.
But the reason that the libs love aliens is because the existence of aliens diminishes the distinction of human beings. It makes us less special. That&#8217;s usually their explicit argument.
They say things like, What, you think you&#8217;re so special? A universe that&#8217;s eight gazillion bajillion miles wide and expanding, with countless worlds — you think you&#8217;re so special?
And my answer — and I believe the Christian answer — is yes, I think we’re pretty special.
The deeper reason the libs always promote aliens is because it diminishes the Incarnation. Because Christ is a man, because God becomes a man. He doesn&#8217;t become E.T., he doesn&#8217;t become a gazelle. He becomes a man, and he raises our very humanity to inestimable dignity.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1913-are-aliens-real-the-truth-about-obama-s-interview-explained?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show on DailyWire+</a></h3>
And the libs (and demons) want to diminish that. Satan falls from heaven because he can&#8217;t bow down to a man. Basically that&#8217;s what&#8217;s at the heart of this. I&#8217;m not saying that all the libs who promote the alien stuff are actively working with demons. I&#8217;m not. I really am not. I don&#8217;t see demons under every rock. But it is curious that so much of liberalism comes down to a prideful attempt to exalt man above his station and ends by degrading man below his station.
It begins by this notion that we&#8217;ll have no kings or priests. Man will only be free when the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. We&#8217;re just humanists now. We&#8217;re going to raise humanity up. We&#8217;re going to maximize individual autonomy.
And then what&#8217;s the end of it? The end of it is we degrade ourselves. We pretend that we&#8217;re just sacks of meat that exist only for pleasure. We promote things like abortion, slaughtering babies, and degrading humanity. We promote things like suicide, slaughtering ourselves, again degrading humanity.
We reduce ourselves below the station to which we&#8217;ve been raised. No surprise there. So when Obama says, look, I&#8217;m clarifying, I don&#8217;t see any evidence of aliens — I think he&#8217;s probably being honest here. I think his knee-jerk reaction of, well, of course aliens exist, the certainty in that just comes from his liberalism: we have to be — humans aren&#8217;t special. You think you&#8217;re so special?
But we are. We are actually.
It&#8217;s actually a harder truth. It is a more realistic view, but it&#8217;s more difficult, and it entails more responsibility to say yes, we are special. It&#8217;s kind of weird, right, that we, among all of the created things, have rational wills. Isn&#8217;t that kind of weird that we can conceive of abstract things? Unlike every animal and plant and all organic matter on Earth? We are finite and mortal, we die — but we have this immortal, eternal aspect to ourselves because we can reason.
Isn&#8217;t that kind of weird that nothing else that we&#8217;ve ever encountered or really even can conceive of has that combination of flesh and reason and will?
That makes us kind of special.
You are special, believe it or not.

Untitled design (18)

Obama Tells Liberal Podcaster Aliens Are Real

Aliens

Barack Obama

Conspiracy Theory

Liberals

Michael Knowles

New Mexico

Podcast

The following is an edited transcript from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1895-president-trump-s-trip-to-the-world-economic-forum-explained-in-5-minutes?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
What is the broader, deeper vision of the World Economic Forum? Bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari actually sums it up quite well. Harari is close to Klaus Schwab who, of course, was the longtime head of the World Economic Forum. Harari has effectively become the &#8220;court intellectual&#8221; of the WEF, and he has been unusually candid about what he thinks the future holds.
Harari has said openly that as we look into the future, the world is going to be run by artificial intelligence. Anything involving language — up to and including the Bible and religion itself — is going to be taken over by AI.
In his own words, Harari explains it this way:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Yuval Noah Harari speaking at the World Economic Forum just said that AI will soon take control of the Bible, and all the words written in it. The Bible absolutely accepts that challenge. Game on.
&#8220;The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth,… <a href="https://t.co/rA8S6YpQcT">pic.twitter.com/rA8S6YpQcT</a>
— Now The End Begins (@NowTheEndBegins) <a href="https://twitter.com/NowTheEndBegins/status/2013645014937604424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @NowTheEndBegins/X.com
I’ve thought about Yuval Harari for a while now, and he could not make himself seem more villainous if he tried. He leans into it. He’s auditioning to be the Bond villain. He presents himself as the herald of the end times.
Now, to be fair, he’s not totally wrong about the influence of AI. AI has crept into all of our lives in one way or another. And we even cooperate with it constantly. In that sense, he’s right. But he gets the fundamental things wrong.
First of all, he says Jews refer to themselves as “the people of the book.” That’s a half-truth. Some people say it today, but Jews did not originate that phrase. Do you know where “people of the book” actually comes from? It comes from Islam. It’s a phrase from the Qur’an, used to refer to Jews and Christians in an attempt to present Islam as part of that same tradition.
“People of the book” is a Muslim term that Jews — and some Protestants — later appropriated. But when you really get down to it, setting Islam aside entirely, Judaism and Christianity are not fundamentally religions of the book.
They are religions of sacrifice.
It is true that since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., Jews gather and conduct religious services in synagogues. But before that, Judaism was a religion of Temple sacrifice. Christianity, crucially, is also a religion of sacrifice. The centerpiece of Christian worship is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: the Blessed Sacrament, Christ in the Holy Eucharist — body, blood, soul, and divinity.
None of this diminishes the importance of Scripture. But Pope John Paul II corrected this misunderstanding beautifully when he said that Christianity is not the religion of a book. It is the religion of the Word of God. We are the people of the Word. Yes, we have Holy Scripture — inerrant and authored by God — but the center point is the Word Himself: the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us.
<div id="attachment_1031405" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1031405" class="size-large wp-image-1031405" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2256691657-864x576.jpg" alt="Yuval Noah Harari, historian and philosopher, during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. The annual Davos gathering of political leaders, top executives and celebrities runs from Jan. 19-23. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2256691657-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2256691657-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2256691657-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/01/GettyImages-2256691657.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
Once you understand that, Harari’s statement becomes even more jarring. He says that anything involving language, anything involving words, will be taken over and conquered by AI. But if the religion that animates our civilization is the religion of the Word — “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” — then what Harari is really saying is that AI is going to conquer God.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1895-president-trump-s-trip-to-the-world-economic-forum-explained-in-5-minutes?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show</a></h3>
Harari is a smart guy, so he may be aware that this is exactly what he’s saying, even if he doesn’t state it explicitly. And if he’s not aware of it, that somehow makes it even worse.
The belief that AI will conquer God is what a lot of liberal, humanist, materialist, and atheist globalists actually believe. This isn’t the product of a few years or even a few decades. It’s the culmination of centuries of liberal thought. They intend to make their own god, and AI will be that god. They will worship it.
It’s no different from the Old Testament, where pagans worshipped dumb idols that God repeatedly warned them not to worship, lest they become dumb themselves. And that’s exactly what’s happened.
That’s why all these fancy elites, who went to elite schools, who have lots of money and impressive jobs, seem so dumb. That’s why someone like Yuval Harari, who probably has a very high IQ and has read an enormous number of books, ends up saying things that sound so profoundly foolish.
And that’s why you end up needing a guy like Trump to barge in and tell them.

Opening Day Of World Economic Forum (WEF) 2026

World Economic Forum Speaker Says, ‘AI Will Take Over Religion’

World Economic Forum Speaker Says, 'AI Will Take Over Religion'

Artificial Intelligence

Islam

Klaus Schwab

Koran

Scripture

Switzerland

World Economic Forum

It&#8217;s Christmas break, so it seems like an appropriate time <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-251222-member-exclusive?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">to discuss</a> one of my favorite books: “The Screwtape Letters,” by C.S. Lewis.
The book is all at once a deep rumination on religion, a high comedy rooted in the hilarity of both humanity&#8217;s flaws and Satan&#8217;s foibles, a tragedy about the nature of death, and a tale of redemption and everlasting life.
It is a spectacularly good book.
When you read “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Screwtape-Letters-Deluxe-C-Lewis/dp/0063487764/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=hmHqX&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738%3Aamzn1.symc.050ea944-f1cf-4610-b462-3b604f2f4082&amp;pf_rd_p=048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738&amp;pf_rd_r=KNCVRDB5MGRR1B4K95QR&amp;pd_rd_wg=iizDa&amp;pd_rd_r=4e52d04f-0a0b-4d38-95e4-749c6da85b95&amp;ref_=pd_hp_d_btf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_id_hp_d">The Screwtape Letters</a>,” there are a lot of truly funny moments. Lewis himself said, though, “Of all my books there was only one I did not take pleasure in writing,” calling it ‘dry and gritty going.’ &#8220;At the time, I was thinking of objections to the Christian life and decided to put them in the form ‘That’s what the devil would say.’ But making goods ‘bad’ and bads ‘good’ gets to be fatiguing.”
The book is wildly entertaining because he is obviously writing in the voice of one of Satan&#8217;s minions. In Christian theology, Satan has a will of his own, and he&#8217;s rebelling against God, which makes him a really fascinating character.
Lewis opens the book with a couple of epigraphs, one by Martin Luther: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield the texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn,” and one by Sir Thomas More: “The devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.”
The book is written from the perspective of Screwtape as letters to his nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood has been given the on-the-ground task of convincing a young man away from his incipient Christianity and Screwtape’s job to advise Wormwood on the best way to procure the young man&#8217;s soul.
This gives Lewis extraordinary leeway to stick and move with Satan, to make fun, to mock, to play with the entire idea. And what emerges is a great work of literature.
There are a bunch of large-scale arguments that Lewis makes in “The Screwtape Letters.” The first one is that Satan&#8217;s best weapon is the “real world.”
That is correct.
If you talk to secular people, they&#8217;ll always say that the spiritual world and God are unreal. The real world is the material world. But then, when you ask them about what&#8217;s important to them, they&#8217;ll talk about their feelings, which, of course, are inherently unreal in the same way the spiritual world is unreal.
This is a point that Lewis makes: the definition of “real” is capacious and changing on a regular basis among secularists. Lewis believes that man&#8217;s draw to the divine can be rooted in reason, and that reason actually guides you toward something beyond yourself. It guides you toward the transcendent.
That&#8217;s an idea that I heartily agree with. I believe that the notion of free will and free choice in the universe guides you toward the idea that there must be something beyond us, that there&#8217;s a logic to the universe that guides you to the question of questions: Who is the Chief Logician, who made the rules?
<div id="attachment_1018735" style="width: 391px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Screwtape-Letters-Deluxe-C-Lewis/dp/0063487764/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=hmHqX&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738%3Aamzn1.symc.050ea944-f1cf-4610-b462-3b604f2f4082&amp;pf_rd_p=048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738&amp;pf_rd_r=KNCVRDB5MGRR1B4K95QR&amp;pd_rd_wg=iizDa&amp;pd_rd_r=4e52d04f-0a0b-4d38-95e4-749c6da85b95&amp;ref_=pd_hp_d_btf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_id_hp_d"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1018735" class="size-large wp-image-1018735" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-381x576.jpg" alt="Credit: HarperOne" width="381" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-381x576.jpg 381w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-199x300.jpg 199w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-768x1160.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_.jpg 993w" sizes=" (max-width: 381px) 100vw, 381px" /></a>Credit: HarperOne</div>
Lewis makes the same point, and then he says that the job of the secular materialist is to get you to focus on the thing-in-itself.
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it real life. Don&#8217;t let him ask what he means by real.</blockquote>
Thus, keep the person focused on the immediate and the now. There&#8217;s nothing that&#8217;s done this more than the internet age, where our attention spans have been reduced to the next 15 seconds. Sitting and ruminating on life leads you to higher ideas, and if you can prevent people from doing that sort of stuff, you end up with a very materialistic society.
So what exactly does reality mean? According to Screwtape,
<blockquote>People ought to be taught that in all experiences which can make them happier or better, only the physical facts are real, while the spiritual elements are subjective and in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them, the spiritual elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be an escapist.</blockquote>
The idea is that when you&#8217;re thinking about death, the only thing that is real is the death itself. You&#8217;re not supposed to look at the spiritual element of death. Or, if you do look at something that makes you very happy, you&#8217;re not supposed to look at the spiritual element of what makes you very happy. Instead, focus on the pure materialism of the thing. The goal is to enmesh mankind in the world.
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>How disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death with which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless in wartime. Not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.</blockquote>
The material world, then, is the chief ally of Screwtape because people desire not to think of God. God is a distraction. God has obligations. God has duties. 
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>Human beings hate every idea that suggests Him just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of a passbook. (meaning a checkbook.)</blockquote>
The idea is that if you&#8217;re not thinking about duty, and then you&#8217;re forced to think about duty, you don&#8217;t like it very much.
The other thing that Screwtape tries to get you to focus on is the future — at all times. If you can focus on the future at all times, then people will be very neglectful of the present.
So says Screwtape,
<blockquote>It&#8217;s far better to make them live in the Future. &#8230; The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time — for the Past is frozen and no longer flows and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought like Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism or Communism, which fix men&#8217;s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence, nearly all vices are rooted in the future.</blockquote>
The idea is, if you&#8217;re thinking about the future, then you&#8217;re not thinking about the spiritual consequences of the things you do in the here and now. You&#8217;re thinking about the material consequences of the things that you do in the here and now, and that allows you to do bad things in the name of a “better future.”
Screwtape says the best thing you can do is convince people that their utopian thoughts are the things that are mandated by God. So on the one hand, you try to get people sunk in reality, and this drives them away from God.
On the other hand, Screwtape advises Wormwood that people should be led to examine their own emotions constantly; if you can be narcissistic, checking yourself all the time, you&#8217;re going to end up without God.
Lewis teaches that very often in life, we engage at the beginning of a task with great enthusiasm, and then the enthusiasm wears away. This happens all the time with a variety of tasks, and once that happens, that is when you encourage people to look into being morose, look into being depressed, to reject the spiritual aspect of their duty, to stop trying to take joy in the spiritual aspect of what they&#8217;re doing, and instead focus on the fact that it&#8217;s just sheer drudgery.
Screwtape says that the rule of thumb for seducing mankind away from God is to encourage people to be unselfconscious when considering sin — to be unabashed, unashamed, blasé about your sin, but to be self-conscious and awkward when you consider acts of faith.
This is modern society in a nutshell. The more you sin, the prouder you should be. You should engage in festivals celebrating your sin. When it comes to going to church, you should be shy: “I don&#8217;t want to be judgmental; I&#8217;ll make you feel ashamed. But when it comes to my sin, man, I will tell you about my sins all day long because we can all be comfortable; we can be the boys when we&#8217;re talking about our sins.”
Screwtape also points out that one easy way to hell is to get people to disregard the individual human beings in front of them in the name of Mankind, writ large. This, obviously, is the project of the Left, which is willing to completely run over its neighbors in order to pursue a &#8220;better world&#8221; for everybody else.
The book has wonderful pieces of advice, even for people who are not totally religious, about how to act better in your inner world, how to treat other people better, and how to have better relations with your spouse.
It&#8217;s a beautifully written book.
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CS Lewis writing

One Of My Favorite Books: ‘The Screwtape Letters’

One Of My Favorite Books: 'The Screwtape Letters'

Ben Shapiro

Books

C.S. Lewis

Great Britain

Judeo-Christian Values

Literature

World War II

It was quite possibly the most remarkable literary friendship of the 20th century. 
As young men, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien both endured the utter devastation of trench warfare during World War I. Then, as unrivaled evil once again ravaged the European continent during the 1930s and ‘40s, these two Oxford professors produced epic works of fiction, masterpieces imbued with moral purpose and beauty.
Like many lovers of the classics, Joseph Loconte shares a lifelong fascination with Lewis and Tolkien. As a professor and scholar, Loconte marvels at how the writers produced their most beloved works in the dark crucible of World War II. So, why are their novels — and the films they inspired — still considered among the greatest of all time?
Glad you asked. This excerpt from Loconte’s new book, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Middle-earth-Confront-Gathering-1933-1945/dp/1400247934/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.XOB86YWCWn1uj4Zfk3oqTB9WG9MQQbLwBASgkqr15NWkKfOSXC-5RpcIzhcqguAh6u2mAEA__rlmNbTJXc-q7fuDoUvDpYw_bftz3i-JMZz-OT115AAqgAplDhdZqNRi4ew80IZaX6eRtLnMMl14zg.GtxJWFQj59jzOCdkAcMWFPD19R7M4lvbo1EeMK8gFDA&amp;qid=1763159058&amp;sr=1-3">The War for Middle-Earth</a>,” may help light the way. — Joel Kneedler
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<h3>Minds Lit by Fire</h3>
Halfway through the Great War, on November 30, 1916, a small group of European leaders managed to attend the funeral of Franz Joseph, ruler over the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In a ceremony scripted by the emperor before his death, the Grand Cortege carrying his coffin halted outside the Capuchin Monastery in Vienna, where all the Hapsburg emperors were laid to rest.
What transpired was a whisper from an earlier era, a nod to the transcendence of God and the frailty of men. The herald, on behalf of the emperor, knocked on the monastery door.
“Who is knocking?” shouted the abbot inside.
“I am Franz Joseph, emperor of Austria, king of Hungary.”
“I don’t know you.”
Again the herald shouted: “I am Franz Joseph, emperor of Austria, king of Hungary, Bohemia, Galicia, Dalmatia, Grand Duke of Transylvania, Duke of—”
“We still don’t know who you are,” interrupted the abbot.
At this moment the herald fell on his knees and in front of all assembled declared, “I am Franz Joseph, a poor sinner, humbly begging God’s mercy.”
“Enter then,” the abbot said. And the gates opened.
The funeral of the Austro-Hungarian emperor symbolized an outlook already in an advanced stage of decay. Settled beliefs about the religious dimension to human life were becoming unsettled. Assumptions about the moral life, about the existence of good and evil, seemed to have vanished into the killing fields of the 1914–18 war. By the end of the war, the emotional and spiritual lives of millions of ordinary Europeans were caught up in a no-man’s-land of doubt and disillusionment.
Two of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, were soldiers in the Great War. They fought in the trenches in France, what one contemporary called “the long grave already dug.” They emerged from the mechanized slaughter of that conflict physically intact—just barely.
No man could pass through the fires of the Somme and Arras and remain unchanged. For Tolkien, his war experience created an enduring sense of sadness. Yet he found that his imaginative cast of mind, his early taste for fantasy, was “quickened to full life by war.” For Lewis, the conflict deepened his youthful atheism: the growing conviction that if God existed, he was a sadist. Paradoxically, the war years launched Lewis on a spiritual quest, a desire for “Joy,” which ultimately led him on a remarkable journey of faith.
<div id="attachment_1000277" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Middle-earth-Confront-Gathering-1933-1945/dp/1400247934/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.XOB86YWCWn1uj4Zfk3oqTB9WG9MQQbLwBASgkqr15NWkKfOSXC-5RpcIzhcqguAh6u2mAEA__rlmNbTJXc-q7fuDoUvDpYw_bftz3i-JMZz-OT115AAqgAplDhdZqNRi4ew80IZaX6eRtLnMMl14zg.GtxJWFQj59jzOCdkAcMWFPD19R7M4lvbo1EeMK8gFDA&amp;qid=1763159058&amp;sr=1-3"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1000277" class="size-large wp-image-1000277" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Book-cover-Loconte-384x576.jpg" alt="Cover Design: Thomas Nelson" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Book-cover-Loconte-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Book-cover-Loconte-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Book-cover-Loconte-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Book-cover-Loconte-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Book-cover-Loconte-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Book-cover-Loconte.jpg 1365w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Cover Design: Thomas Nelson</div>
The lives of these two men intersected after the war as they were launching their academic careers at Oxford University. They soon formed a bond of friendship that, given the reach and influence of their novels, must rank as one of the most consequential friendships of modern times.
There was nothing inevitable about it. Tolkien was a devout Catholic; Lewis an Ulster Protestant and lapsed Anglican. At their first English faculty meeting, they circled each other like tigers in the wild. Yet they soon discovered that they loved many of the same things: ancient myths, epic poetry, medieval stories of honor, chivalry, sacrifice, and war.
The theme of war would become a defining feature of their professional and literary lives. Their personal lives would be upended by two global conflicts. Barely twenty years after surviving what was the most devastating conflict in history, Tolkien and Lewis would watch in anguish as new forces of aggression gathered and dominated the geopolitical landscape of Europe.
In 1938, a year before the outbreak of the Second World War, author H. G. Wells terrified millions with a radio broadcast based on his novel The War of the Worlds, in which an imaginary Martian invasion devastates the earth. Art would imitate life. As British historian Niall Ferguson observes, “men proved that it was quite possible to wreak comparable havoc without the need for alien intervention. All they had to do was to identify this or that group of their fellow men as the aliens, and then kill them.” This was the terrible pattern in the aftermath of the First World War. Communism, fascism, Nazism: all produced political systems that drew their strength from their hatreds.
The totalitarian states of Europe and Asia, despite their differences, shared another unifying characteristic: a contempt for the democratic and religious ideals of the West. Their ambitions made another global conflict almost inevitable.
“If the first great war was the seminal catastrophe,” argues historian Sir Ian Kershaw, “the second was the culmination of this catastrophe—the complete collapse of European civilization.” Living and working in Oxford, England, Tolkien and Lewis found themselves at the storm front of this tragedy. Like no other conflict in Britain’s long history, the Second World War created an existential crisis. For many months the political survival of their island nation was an open question.
It was in the crucible of this experience that Tolkien and Lewis sought each other out. The horror of the First World War instigated a cultural backlash, setting loose forces that tore at the moral and spiritual foundations of Western civilization. Both men were determined to fight back. They formed the nucleus of a group of like-minded writers, all resolved to establish a beachhead of resistance in the war of ideas that was raging around them.
The onset of the Second World War created a profound sense of urgency. Tolkien and Lewis came to believe that the soul of their neighbor, as well as the soul of their civilization, hung in the balance. In ways not fully appreciated, the 1939–45 war utterly transformed their lives and literary imaginations. Their most beloved works — including The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, and The Chronicles of Narnia — were conceived in the shadow of this conflict.
“Talent alone cannot make a writer,” observed Ralph Waldo Emerson. “There must be a man behind the book.” Behind the extraordinary works of Tolkien and Lewis stood a cloud of witnesses: individuals whose contributions to the literary canon of Western civilization provided the inspiration for their epic novels. Both authors instinctively looked to this inheritance and were nourished by it in wartime.
As a result, they acquired something that our modern era has mostly abandoned: perspective. By being rooted in the great books of the Western tradition, they knew where to look for wisdom, virtue, courage, and faith. Intimate knowledge of the past braced them for the crisis years of 1933–45. In this, they reinforced each other’s best instincts. “My entire philosophy of history,” Lewis once told Tolkien, “hangs upon a single sentence of your own.”
Could an entire philosophy of history be summed up in a single sentence? What sentence? It is from a passage in The Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf the Wizard explains to Frodo Baggins something of the ancient struggle for Middle-earth. “There was sorrow then, too, and gathering dark, but great valor, and great deeds that were not wholly vain.” Here is an approach to history — to the terrible history of the twentieth century — that invites reflection.
The lives of Tolkien and Lewis, after all, were embedded in this story when another disastrous war unleashed upon the earth a storm of human misery unsurpassed in the catalogue of world catastrophes. “Middle-earth, I suspect, looks so engagingly familiar to us, and speaks to us so eloquently,” writes biographer John Garth, “because it was born with the modern world and marked by the same terrible birth pangs.” We cannot fully appreciate the achievement of these two remarkable authors until we try to see the world as they experienced it. They possessed a deep awareness of life’s sorrows.
Yet this is only part of their story. Their experience of suffering was held in check by something stronger: gratitude. The Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero called this quality “not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” Like no other authors of their age, they used their imagination to reclaim—for their generation and ours—those deeds of valor and sacrifice and love that have always kept a lamp burning even in the deepest darkness.
* * *
Adapted from &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Middle-earth-Confront-Gathering-1933-1945/dp/1400247934">THE WAR FOR MIDDLE-EARTH: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945</a>,&#8221; by Joseph Loconte. Copyright 2025 by Joseph Loconte. Published by Thomas Nelson. Available wherever books are sold on November 18, 2025.
* * *
Joseph Loconte, PhD, is an author, historian, and filmmaker. He serves as Director of The Rivendell Center in New York City. He is a Presidential Scholar at New College of Florida and a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute. Mr. Loconte’s commentary appears in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Affairs, The New Criterion, National Geographic, Law and Liberty, The National Interest, and National Review. For ten years Mr. Loconte served as a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he divides his time between Washington, DC, and New York City.
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Tolkien Lewis II

Tolkien, Lewis, And The Battle To Save Western Civilization

J.R.R. Tolkien

Oxford University

World War I

This evening, Members of Congress will come together publicly, not to debate or campaign, but to pray for America in a National Prayer Call.
In a first, the House Freedom Caucus and the Family Research Council will host a national call to prayer titled, “Congress Prays for America.” It will unite Members of Congress, Christian leaders, and Americans across the country to do what is desperately needed in this moment: humble ourselves before God and seek His guidance for our nation.
This couldn’t come at a more urgent time. In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a young Christian leader who devoted his life to calling this generation back to truth and faith, our country is being forced to confront its spiritual crisis. Political violence, moral confusion, and hatred have filled the void where faith and grace once stood. It’s not just a political problem — it’s a spiritual one.
The answer to the kind of darkness America is facing won’t come from another government program or campaign speech. It will come from personal and corporate repentance, humility, and a national return to God.
That’s what this prayer call is about.
For decades, Washington has treated faith as something to be kept private — to be tolerated but never proclaimed. Lawmakers have been told that prayer belongs in the pews, not the halls of Congress. But America’s founders knew better. They opened every session of Congress with prayer because they knew the affairs of men could not prosper without the wisdom of Heaven.
When Congress prays, Members are reminded that we are not the ultimate authority — God is.
On Thursday night, Members will pray for an end to political violence. They will pray for our President, for Congress, for the people impacted by the ongoing shutdown, and for peace and protection in Israel.
The same faith that once guided the founding of this nation can still renew it today. We need a revival of courage, conviction, and compassion in our government. We need leaders who remember that the Constitution protects freedom of religion, not freedom from it.
That’s why this call matters.
When Members of Congress bow their heads together, they acknowledge that the power to restore this nation doesn’t lie in the levers of politics, but in the hands of Providence. God can bring revival to the very place where division has taken root: the United States Capitol.
This isn’t just a national prayer call from Congress. It’s a step toward something our country desperately needs — a spiritual revival and awakening. 
America’s hope doesn’t rest in Washington, but it can start there.
* * *
Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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* * *
Correction: The previous title indicated a prayer meeting at the Capitol tonight. The prayer call is in fact a teleconference phone call, not an in-person meeting. The revised title reflects that change.

Aerial Shot of Colorful Evening Sky Behind Capitol Building and Washington Monument

Why We’re Hosting A National Prayer Call Tonight: ‘Congress Prays For America’

Why We’re Hosting A National Prayer Call Tonight: 'Congress Prays For America'

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Christians

Congress

Family Research Council

Freedom Caucus

Prayer

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington D.C.

This week, NFL fans launched a petition to have an alternate Super Bowl halftime show featuring country singer George Strait. 66,000 signatures so far. Roger Goodell, however, is not moved. It&#8217;s all in response to the NFL tapping Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny for America’s largest stage, giving a platform to a man who openly hates America. 
But not all Puerto Ricans share Bad Bunny&#8217;s sentiment. Samuel Rodriguez is a pastor of Puerto Rican descent who has advised three U.S. Presidents, been a prolific author and movie producer, and has a much different outlook on the United States. In fact, he says the rapper doesn&#8217;t come close to representing traditional Hispanic values. It&#8217;s certainly worth your time. —The Daily Wire
* * *
As an American of Puerto Rican descent, I live in tension. I admire Bad Bunny. He is a generational talent, creative, charismatic, and relentless. He rose from the barrios of Vega Baja to the summit of global culture. He did not inherit wealth or privilege. He succeeded through determination, resilience, and hard work. Even those who do not understand his lyrics recognize his artistry and marketing brilliance. He has become a global symbol of Latino influence.
My admiration, however, stops there. As the world prepares to watch his Super Bowl halftime show next February, my heart aches. For all his brilliance, Bad Bunny misunderstands both Puerto Rico and America. His refusal to stand for “God Bless America” during the Major League Baseball playoffs at Yankee Stadium was not an act of protest, it was a moment of detachment. Millions of us who cherish both the island and the mainland felt that sting. We love America; We appreciate its Christian foundation, promise, and opportunity. Simply stated, we believe God has blessed this nation.
Unfortunately, much of what Bad Bunny stands for and espouses in his music not only fails to resonate with many Hispanics in America, but it also fails to honor and understand the community’s deep love for this country.
<div id="attachment_990159" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-990159" class="size-large wp-image-990159" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2198989165-864x576.jpg" alt="SNL50: THE HOMECOMING CONCERT -- Pictured: Bad Bunny performs on Friday, February 14, 2025 -- (Photo by: Kevin Mazur/Peacock via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2198989165-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2198989165-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2198989165-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2198989165.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Kevin Mazur/Peacock via Getty Images</div>
I will be the first to acknowledge that America is not perfect. But despite that, it remains blessed. This nation is not anti-immigrant. It supports legal immigration.
Hispanics know this better than anyone. Many of us lived that journey or watched our parents walk it. We support borders and order not out of cruelty but out of conviction. We believe in compassion expressed through law. <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/26/trump-harris-latino-voters-2024-election-pew" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.axios.com/2025/06/26/trump-harris-latino-voters-2024-election-pew&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1761311002633000&amp;usg=AOvVaw197pP1ngxt9G7_phoNF8Bb">Nearly half of Hispanic voters supported President Trump in 2024</a>. More than half of Hispanic men did the same. That was not betrayal. It reflected deeply held values.
These traditional Hispanic values — faith, family, and freedom — stand in contrast to much of what Bad Bunny promotes. His embrace of transgender ideology and sexually explicit performances does not represent the Latino family gathered around the table after Sunday church. We love God. We honor family. We understand freedom as responsibility, not rebellion. The Latino vote has not drifted to the Right, it has returned home to convictions that have always defined us.
Hispanics also see dissonance in Bad Bunny’s condemnation of capitalism, given that he lives from its blessings. He has praised socialist regimes such as Venezuela, yet his success story could not exist without the free market. He thrives in a system that rewards risk, creativity, and persistence. One cannot criticize capitalism while enjoying everything it provides.
The Hispanic future in America is not secular, cynical, or socialist. It is spiritual, hopeful, and devoted to freedom. We pray. We protect our families. We work hard. We still believe that God blesses nations that honor Him.
But before all of this, Bad Bunny must recognize one fundamental truth: He is an American. Every Puerto Rican is. We are born citizens of the United States. We do not need a passport to enter this nation, but we do need humility to understand what a privilege that is.
Bad Bunny may not need a passport, but he needs perspective. He needs humility. He needs clarity about what America truly represents for Puerto Ricans and for every dreamer who still believes this country offers the chance to rise.
America is not flawless. Yet it remains the most transformative and opportunity-rich nation in human history. My prayer is that when Bad Bunny steps onto that stage, gratitude will replace defiance — gratitude for a nation that gave a kid from Puerto Rico the chance to conquer the world.
 * * *
Samuel Rodriguez is the lead pastor of New Season and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC). Rodriguez has advised three U.S. Presidents and is the first Latino to participate in multiple presidential inauguration ceremonies. He is also a best-selling author of 12 books and serves as producer of 7 faith-based films including &#8220;Breakthrough,&#8221; &#8220;Flamin Hot,&#8221; and &#8220;Dream King.&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to <a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/">DailyWire.com/Subscribe</a> to join now.

Division Series – Toronto Blue Jays v New York Yankees – Game Three

Bad Bunny May Not Need A Passport, But He Does Need Perspective

Donald Trump

Hispanics

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So, now what?
In the days since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, flags have been lowered, a suspect apprehended, and a grieving widow has bravely addressed the nation.
But again I ask, now what?
We have proven that as a people, we can kill one another. But how long must we wait until it’s proven we can heal each other&#8217;s hearts?
As enticing as it may be to fight fire with fire, taking up arms in rage would prove just as meaningless and ineffective as sitting back and doing nothing. Neither action matches the high moral standards of the man who was murdered.
I did not know Charlie personally, nor are my beliefs necessarily influenced by his own. Nevertheless, this week, I wept. Wept in a way I likely would not have had his death been the result of an illness or accident, because these tears were more than the reaction to a loss of life — they were the recognition that, for a moment, evil had triumphed over good.
Though malevolence is the price we pay for free will, fortunately, evil of this nature never wins. The gunman’s rifle did not backfire, but his nefarious plan, whatever it was, certainly will. The number of Charlie Kirks this action created is beyond measure.
Words seem so hollow now, but we must not underestimate their effect when compounded. The desired change begins in the heart, expands to the family, and then spreads to the community. Only after these three pillars are fortified will our nation persevere.
While we continue to grieve, and ask more questions than we have answers to, one thought draws comfort: knowing that God’s wisdom and His ways are infinitely higher than our own.
As painful as it is to think of a widowed wife and two fatherless children, as revolting as it is to see so many celebrate this heinous act of wickedness, we must remember, death for a Christian simply means a change of address, and Charlie’s new address is a permanent home the likes of which we can barely comprehend.
May God bless Charlie Kirk, his legacy, and the family he leaves with us here on Earth.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP-INAUGURATION

Charlie Kirk Is Gone. Where Do We Go From Here?

America

Charlie Kirk

Murder

Five days after I left my short stint heading news partnerships at X, a friend texted me with the details of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Assuming I was cooling off after a long period of eating, breathing and sleeping Elon Musk&#8217;s social platform, this note was intended as a simple ICYMI to someone who didn’t miss much – one that I am grateful to have received.
I didn’t know Charlie Kirk, but every aspect of my recent job was influenced by his work. X is the home of countless communicators aiming to follow Kirk&#8217;s pattern of boldness, eloquence, and clarity. I haven’t done the math, but my guess is for every 100 aspiring Charlies, none manage to fill the mold.
Opening X on my phone Wednesday afternoon ushered me into a world I feared was becoming extinct. Post upon post was an appeal to pray. Pray for Charlie. Pray for Erika. Pray for the children. Pray for the hearts, the minds of young people. Pray for a nation divided. Yes, there was a lot of other noise on X – there always is – but the call for prayers was overwhelming.
This was a different call to action than the one I remember witnessing when my Twitter use was beginning to take flight. In 2012, with a 6-year-old, 2-year-old, and 2-day-old at home, I scrolled through post after post after the December 14 shooting at Sandy Hook, encouraging us to shelve the thoughts and prayers and focus on solutions instead of platitudes. As an editor in the Wall Street Journal’s newsroom at the time, I tended to agree the thoughts and prayers line was getting a little old.
I relived that nine years later when a 15-year-old shot up Oxford High School, a short drive from my house. Ethan Crumbley&#8217;s bullets killed and injured classmates, including one who had sat in the backseat of my car on road trips to gymnastics meets. Prayers seemed like a slice of the equation, but damn we needed to do something about guns.
In our world, there is an urgent need for prayerful petitions and also a need for action. But, there is a pecking order.
Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith explained that pecking order Friday during a press conference. After running through the predictable lists of shoutouts to law enforcement and public officials, he paused before saying, “Most of all, I would like to thank the public and specifically I would like to thank the public who turned to prayers and who turned to positiveness for us … we needed those prayers. That’s what we needed to get through this.”
If social media is, as Utah Governor Spencer Cox deemed it during the same event, “a cancer,” its rot lies in its stubborn insistence on trying to replace real life. These platforms can be a tool for good, enabling free speech and breaking down geographic, generational and socioeconomic barriers that limit or prevent physical relationships. However, these platforms – like most media – have little appetite for nuance and too often trick us into thinking that words only have meaning if they are shouted in a digital town hall.
This is delusional. And it is in delusion where evil most comfortably resides, camouflaging itself as anything it can to make its work feel less evil. Anyone who has been introduced to the advice C.S. Lewis’s senior devil Screwtape passes along to his nephew Wormwood, knows that evil is most content when it is considered banal and impotent.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination, specifically its aftermath, reminds us of two important things. One, even the best of us can’t always stand in the way of evil. And, the most effective way to confront evil is by doing the thing that feels most powerless in the fog of war: prayer.
While evil doesn’t walk around wearing a nametag saying “Hello, My Name is ____,” its influence and presence leaves an unmistakable mark in its wake. Cunning and relentless, evil tends to be as persistent as it is crafty. Evil will strike again and that strike will catch us by surprise like it did on 9/11 and nearly 24 years later on 9/10.
In this instance, we are wise to take advice ladled out on X in the wake of a martyr’s death. “Pray, fool, pray.” For our fight is not against flesh and blood but powers and principalities working to tear our union apart.
Imagine a world where social media, for all its ills, drives us to the increasingly unfamiliar spot of being on our knees in a relatively powerless position. That world gives us hope when we realize that being on our knees is actually the most powerful posture there is.
* * *
John D. Stoll is a writer based in Rochester, Mich. He worked for 13 years at Wall Street Journal as a reporter, editor and columnist, leaving in 2020. He most recently ran news partnerships at X.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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