Thread by @eriktorenberg

Just read @holland_tom's "Dominion", which goes into detail on how liberal humanism & secularism stems from christianity.

The basic thesis is that humanism is basically a godless protestantism, or "Christianity without Christ."

amazon.com/dp/B07NCY9RG9/…

Summary below:

If humans are goldfish swimming in water, Christianity is the fishbowl

To ask whether Christianity is good or bad, as many do, is to not realize that our notions of good & bad stem from Christianity itself, so w/o Christianity we might not have standards by which to judge the Q

Where does it come from that humans are somehow special or that humanity has a universal dignity?

Doesn’t come from the greeks. Doesn’t come from the Romans.

It effectively comes from genesis. ”God creates man in his own image”.

Christianity introduces the personhood revolution.

1/ All humans are morally equal
2/ Powerful have duty to powerless

Humans became sacred. Human rights are a myth, ie they don’t exist as natural laws and can't be convincingly derived from logic.

Christianity legitimized them.

But wouldn’t science have discovered them on its own?

It isn't self-evident that people are equal--people aren't equal! What Christianity said is people are *morally* equal.

Why would it have been inevitable?

Steven Gould famously said if you turn back the clock, there’s nothing inevitable about humans

Same w historical contingency. Nothing inevitable at all about human rights or universal humanism that would have emerged separate from Christianity

The idea that human rights were waiting to be discovered is just as theological as Jesus Christ rising from the dead in the sense that it requires leaps of faith

The difference is that christians recognize that a belief in divinity requires leap of faith, whereas humanists don’t

Human rights are the result of legal developments in medieval christendom--they don't just emerge

Science doesn’t disprove Christianity--science comes from it!

We didn't stop burning witches bc of the scientific method, we got the scientific method bc we stopped burning witches

Even secularism is a Christian idea. We wouldn’t have it w/o Augustin & Gregory the 7th

It gave us Reformatia - the idea that reform is an ongoing process, that law & society should be progressive

In 19th century out of those same traditions we get what we call enlightenment

Christianity today is cathedral in which the bits have collapsed bits, but the asbestos remains — you can’t help but stand there and a breathe it in meanwhile you don’t even know you’re breathing it in

The way you know this is true is so many people are hesitant to admit it

Classic Christian paradox:

Christianity has become global hegemonic belief system.

Often explicitly rejected b/c imperialist ties.

But the the very rejection of Christianity expresses how deeply Christianity has saturated and influences how people think

And science?

Science is doppelgängers of religion - constructed to be what religion is not...like most doppelgängers bears stamp of what it is rejecting

Those who live and propagate this perspective are betraying their origins in protestant assumptions about catholicism

The whole narrative in 19th century that there has been a war between religion and science, this is an expression of traditional protestant animus against catholicism except it’s now including protestantism itself within its targets

Richard Dawkins is a Christian figure — he’s just now including Christianity in what he's condemning, and he’s replaced it with something called science

At its core, humanists, marxists, all they’re doing is finding a way to justify Christian morality w/o Christian belief

What led to secularism?

Few things: Darwin killed God. Nietzche realized this (more on this in another thread)

We didn't notice b/c we emerged from WW2 w a recalibration of what evil is

We didn’t need devil anymore, we had Hitler

We didn’t need hell anymore, we had Auschwitz

The question is will that last

Without theological roots for humanism — what justification do you have?

If we lose that enormous heritage of Christian belief & practice & rituals that have sustained those beliefs for 2,000 years, can they be sustained?

Can you pick a la carte?

The fear is what happens when someone says "I don't share these humanist values and your insults don't harm me."

What happens then?

Perhaps this explains why social justice folks (Calvinists) are seeking institutionalization

"God is dead, & we have killed him"

When God is dead, how do we defend the values he used to justify?

That’s what Nietzsche asked - and that’s what we don’t yet know.

Much of intellectual culture in west over past 150 yrs has tried & failed to answer this too. We don't know.

What we do know is that we're more Christian than ever, and if you're a liberal humanist, the Q isn't whether we should change--the Q is how do we remain as such?

1/ Can we have the bloom (universal humanism) without the roots (Christianity)?

2/ Can we invent new roots?

P.S. @BretWeinstein on how science requires (at least some) faith: