10 Lies of Contemporary Culture: Dr. Peter Kreeft (Full Transcript)

Full text and summary of Dr. Peter Kreeft’s speech titled ‘10 Lies of Contemporary Culture’ which was delivered as commencement address at Franciscan University of Steubenville on May 14, 2022. Dr. Kreeft is a leading Catholic apologist, philosophy professor, and author of over 100 books.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Dr. Peter Kreeft – Catholic apologist, philosophy professor, and author

Before I actually give you my commencement address, I’d like to sell it to you, by telling you that it’s going to be mercifully short.

Since our plethora of technological time-saving devices have robbed us of leisure time nowadays, I will do you the charitable deed of saving you a little time by summarizing in one short speech, what thousands of other commencement speakers have been telling you for the last generation or two.

I want to say 10 uncomfortable things about 10 comfortable ideas that they say you need to cultivate: identity, self esteem, service to the world, creativity, critical thinking, peace, justice, openness, love, and freedom. These are 10 nice, happy faced words.

But unlike most commencement speakers, I will not tell you happy lies about them.

FIRST, A WORD ABOUT LIES.

It’s a well-known platitude, especially in economics departments, that there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics. As they also say, figures don’t lie, but liars figure.