"We Are All Christians Now" - Do You Believe in "Human Rights"? Why Not Slavery?
Tom Holland - How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
“Common Sense Morality”
“Be Kind to Others”
Ah yes, when I was younger and had a sense that modern popular atheists and secularists were full of it (but couldn’t quite articulate why yet), I remember some prominent atheists discussing morality and how some things were just “common sense”.
Those like Richard Dawkins with his inept “The God Delusion”, or “Sam Harris” with his obtuse “The Moral Landscape”, which took way too much for granted and just buried it’s head in the sand.
Or another popular atheist, when asked about why we should do “good”, and he just responded, “for goodness’ sake!”.
Ah… looking back now that such simpletons who were thrown into spotlight as men of genius, which I can now see is a form of gaslighting. I’m quite proud of myself that I never fell into their smug historical blindness… their extremely dangerous hubris and self-satisfied megalomania.
For whatever these people’s strengths (and people like Dawkins may be a fine zoologist as far as that discipline goes), they almost always inadvertently step out of their areas of expertise, and turn into bumbling buffoons worthy of the madhouse.
Listening to Dawkins talk about “God” or history or morality or anything other than his specialty, is like listening to a plumber give you advice on how to fix your computer. I’m sorry, he’s just not trained in that field, and most likely, doesn’t even have a mind for that kind of thing.
Stepping Out of Your Field of Expertise
In the same way that people like Jordan Peterson talk about fields outside of their specialty (and thus do harm to the fields that they don’t specialize in, as I’ve written about here), so also these atheists do extreme harm to other fields of knowledge and research of which they obviously know nothing of consequence.
I always had a sense of this.
And I’m glad that time has borne out my intuition as correct.
Case in Point? AC Grayling.
Historically obtuse philosopher par excellence.
What a treat it was to see his kind finally get a comeuppance, and by someone no more qualified than the celebrated historian and author Tom Holland, who writes with such vigor and honesty as I have yet to see in our modern times.
You see, Tom is an agnostic (and thank God for that!), as it seems he has much less of an axe to grind than say any modern popular atheist (or conversely, a creationist or the like). He is the type of guy who really just enjoys his field (and it shows), and loves to just explore ideas and possibilities. There’s a very good reason his podcast “The Rest is History” is so popular, he is just simply a pleasure to listen to, and he demonstrates his knowledge with such erudite precision.
And so what a beautiful thing for him to take down the smug Grayling right here:
This secular smugness has had it’s day, and I for one am glad to see it humbled.
And why do I delight in such destruction?
Because people who claim to be “secular” but in the end just turn into communists working for the “common good”, have already done enough damage in our world.
And so I cheer on the public humiliation of men like this, and I hope it happens a lot more. For as I’ve written about here, communism is a movement that is unaware of itself as a moral panic that comes to fruition after the decline of 2,000 years of Christendom:
“Human Rights?”
So it seems appropriate then to ask a question… do we believe in “Human Rights”? Would we agree with the founding fathers of the United States that it is “self-evident” that all men are “endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights”?
Does this seem to you an “obvious truth” about men and our world, dear reader? Well, if you believe in this, however you may not be a aware of it, you are a Christian at least in regards to your values.
As Tom Holland properly explains, the very concept of “human rights” is a “one-off” that springs from medieval Christian canon lawyers, and it is only within this very Christian context did even the idea of ending slavery and establishing “human rights” begin.
But, as Tom Holland explains, the roots of this idea of slavery abolition go all the way back to St. Paul, when he said that, in Christ, all men are equal and the same. That there is
“neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
Although of course this spiritual teaching didn’t immediately lead to the emancipation of slaves politically speaking (it would take well over a thousand years), the seeds were planted in Paul’s teaching here. In many videos like the one below, Holland goes into much more depth explaining this:
Essentially, if you are an atheist or secularist or humanist who still believes in “human rights” and the “dignity of man”, you are still, however unconsciously, a Christian.
For let’s be honest.
Even the celebrated Plato believed in slavery as a necessary thing, and he did not at all believe in the “dignity of all men”. To be honest, he might have even laughed at such notions (at the very least he would have seen slavery as absolutely a “necessary evil”).
And if you were to complain to ancient Romans about how your “human rights” were not being respected, they probably would have laughed at you and pitied you and said something like “there there, poor slave”, and may have even used you for sexual pleasure (if you weren’t a citizen at least).
Very Christian Values
Tom Holland is one of the few historians who can see this reality.
And I suppose that is why he often references the only honest atheist who has ever lived… Friedrich Nietzsche.
Both of them were in agreement that if the Christian religion were to fall, you would no longer have a rational support for the idea of “human rights” or “the dignity of man”.
Nietzsche for one was happy to get rid of these notions entirely as superstitions or a relic of bygone Christian age. And that is why Nietzsche would have despised modern secularists like Richard Dawkins, as Holland explains here:
Now Tom Holland would eventually come to that conclusion that he himself is, in his values, a Christian. If he were to credit where his values come from, he would have to admit Christianity as the source.
Nietzsche would agree with him.
And Nietzsche foresaw a time of great calamity coming when men would face the ultimate crisis… what he called the “crisis of values”, which would lead to “grand politics” and the most tumultuous age of man in history.
Which is indeed what we saw.
So what’s my point then?
I think that, if we care to prevent further communist and fascist atrocities in the future, this sort of reckoning with the past is needed.
And whether, after this reckoning, one rejects Christianity (with all it’s values, including “love your neighbor” and “love your enemy”), or one embraces Christianity ANEW with new eyes, are both of them outcomes that I would be happy with.
For doesn’t the Bible say somewhere…
“I wish that you were either hot or cold, but because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!”
Join me on a journey through the fascinating context of the Bible!