Exactly what has public education been trying to accomplish? Before the 1830s and Horace Mann, no schools in the US were state-supported or state-controlled. They were local, parent-teacher enterprises, supported without taxes, and taking care of all children. They were remarkably high in standard and were Christian. From Mann to the present, the state has used education to socialize the child. Public education became the means of creating a social order of the educators' design. Such men saw themselves and the school in messianic terms. 

The purpose of this book (first published in 1967) is to define the nature of the opposing religious systems of thought, Christian creationism and darwinism (in its various forms). It is a call to urge Christians to stand firm for Biblical six-day creationism as a fundamental aspect of their faith in the creator. 

Dr. Rushdoony had predicted that the humanist system, based on anti-Christian premises of the enlightenment, could only get worse. Rushdoony was indeed a prophet. He knew that education divorced from God and from all transcendental standards would produce the educational disaster and moral barbarism we have today. The title of this audiobook is particularly significant in that Dr. Rushdoony was able to identify the basic contradiction that pervades a secular society that rejects Gods sovereignty, but still needs law and order, justice, science, and meaning to life. 

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries that was a self-conscious move away from the Reformation's emphasis on faith and revelation. It was the mind of man that became the new standard. "My own mind is my own church," wrote Thomas Paine in his Age of Reason (Part First, 1794), which was an attack on all religion that claimed to be authoritative and Christianity in particular.

This monumental work is a series of essays on the influential thinkers and ideas in modern times. Listening to this audiobook will help you understand the need to avoid the syncretistic blending of humanistic philosophy with the Christian faith.