Michael Ramsden: calling the humanist bluff

well it's a delight to be with you as I was listening to Philip Jenkins or maybe I should call you Harry I was a reminded and I can't remember I may even be NAS Guinness so I heard this from it may have been someone else but GK Chesterton once said that the church has gone to the dogs five times in history but each time it's been the dog that has died and you realize and because of my calling that suppose primarily as an evangelist that we are so locked into in Europe into having a view that the Christian faith must be perpetually in retreat that we are losing the confidence that you need in order to be able to share the conviction that comes from knowing Christ with other people now what Jeff fountain has asked me to do was several years ago I was talking to him and we got talking about a man called Professor John Gray and I was urging him to read him and he did and as a result of me making a book recommendation now I end up here speaking to you so I have been given this very ambitious title on calling the humanist bluff now let me just put it a few caveats straight away because to do justice to this subject would require me to address various different forms of humanism and look at various different forms of critique and that would therefore give a well-balanced informed and thoughtful analysis however as an evangelist what I would like to do instead is maybe go for a slightly more provocative approach and immediately caveat my remarks by saying that I'm aware that this critique of humanism which I'm about to offer to you which actually comes from the pen of an atheist is itself remarkably controversial but I think raises some very important questions and maybe most importantly questions for the church herself which I think we ourselves need to answer and I will be ending on a challenge which I hope will be a note of hope but I also hope will be something that will send us from this place asking ourselves some very very serious questions now defining humanism of course is going to be difficult let me just take a few quotes from the humanist society as I've had a look at what they have had the words they abused and to describe themselves so let me just offer this um in a definition humanism is the view that we can make sense of the world using Reason experience and shared human values please notice that were they're human values and that we can live good lives without religious or superstitious belief humanist seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves we choose to take responsibility for our actions and work with others for the common good and then as you go through this they say we think that other people for example our moral concerns not because they are made in the image of something else but because of who they are in themselves humanism is a naturalistic worldview encompassing atheism we believe that people can and will continue to find solution to the world's problems so that the quality of life can be improved for everyone now what I find interesting as it comes when we look at what it is that humanism may have to offer Europe as I said I find it is the sum of the atheists who I am reading you have the most penetrating critique and in particular I will be quoting from Professor John Gray now those of you who may have had the misfortune of hearing me speak before will know that I do not often read reasonably long quotes the reason why I'm going to do that this evening is so that to avoid any chance I may have of misrepresenting the forcefulness of what he wants to say but Professor John Gray up until recently was the professor of the history of European thought at the London School for economics and his works the reason I have chosen them have not only sold in their millions indeed now tens of millions but have been translated into so many different languages now around the world and to simply read the endorsements that his books have our eye opening now what he says and what he argues is that human is is the new religion the new faith of a post-christian Europe it is the dominant worldview that informs everything else however he says a truly secular view of the world is one that does not permit belief in all the hopes of humanism a truly naturalistic worldview he says and this is the quote is one that does not leaves no room for secular hope now the reason he makes this argument is not that he feels that somehow humanism has gone um is not is insufficiently strong in some forms of his atheism but it is insufficiently connected in sufficiently strong to follow through the conclusions of the truths we know that flow from science and philosophy as atheists so what he says is that and his central argument is that humanism is simply the Christian faith expressed and delivered in secular terms in which we have replaced the idea of God's providence with a conviction about the nature of progress this is how he puts it Christians understood history as a story of sin and redemption humanism is the transformation of this Christian doctrine of salvation into a project of universal emancipation the idea of progress rests on the belief that the growth of knowledge and the advance of the species go together if not now then in the long run however he says the biblical myth of the fall of man contains the forbidden truth knowledge does not make us free it leaves us as we have always been prey to every kind of folly and so he's trying to argue do you see that the conviction that somehow progress an increasing amount of sophistication will make us better people is simply false again he puts it here out in mortems and please forgive me for reading this at such lengths to believe in progress he says is to believe that by using the new powers given to us by growing scientific knowledge can free themselves from the limits that frame the lives of other animals however he said Darwin shows us that humans are like other animals humanists claim they are not humanists insists that by using our knowledge we can control our environment and flourish as never before in affirming this they renew one of Christianity's most dubious promises that salvation is open to all the humanists belief in progress is a secular version of this Christian faith in the world shown to us by Darwin there is nothing that can be called progress the idea that humanity takes charge of its destiny makes sense only if we ascribe consciousness and purpose and meaning to the human race but Darwin's discovery was that species are only currents in the drift of genes the idea that humanity can shape its future assumes that it is exempt from this truth so do you see what he is trying to argue here this well-known famous atheist he is saying that humanism rests on the foundation that there is something special about what it means to be human this professor gray says is the Cardinal error of the Christian faith the Cardinal error of the Christian faith is that Christians believe that we were created in God's image that there is something special about human beings and therefore exactly as Professor Jenkins has said that we can talk about human rights freedom responsibility and so on however great argues all of these things must be myths if we are true to a scientific form of rigorous atheism none of these things can be true now I don't have time to give you all of this everything that he has to say here but the phrase he uses and I I find it a captivating one as he says humanism consistently repeats Christianity's Cardinal error that there is something special about human beings now at one point very interestingly he says Christians can be forgiven for believing in the myth of personhood that there are such things as persons human rights because they believe in the myth he says that they were created in the image of God and therefore we can excuse Christians for believing in human rights human purpose human dignity and so on because they have this conviction but he says we know this isn't true and as I've been reading through some of the essays in the booklet in preparation for this conference I think some of your other contributors have also made the point that no in no other form of ancient religion or indeed in ancient classical writing do you find this affirmation of human dignity you cannot find it outside of the Bible this is what Professor John Gray the atheist argues and I agree with him entirely however he says and he is now talking to atheists he says that we are soft atheists he accuses professor Richard Dawkins has been a soft atheist and various others why are they soft atheists because he says you will not go to the logical conclusion of your own scientific argument and he says there are four things that we immediately conclude if we know that a strict form of scientific atheism is true number one there is no such thing as meaning here's how he says it if we leave Christianity behind us we must give up the idea that human history has meaning neither the ancient pagan world nor any other culture has Hume in human history has ever thought to have overarching significance in terms of human him and beings secondly he says there are no such things as persons or personal and the idea of personhood must be rejected thirdly since we are not persons he says in what sense can we be held responsible for our actions there is no responsibility contrary to what it says on most humanist websites again this is how he puts it we cannot choose what to be what we are born in that case we cannot be responsible for what we do the upshot he argues of neuro soft neurosyphilis that we cannot be the authors of our own acts in other words we are not morally responsible for what we do that is the third blindingly obvious conclusion he argues as an atheist and lastly he says we must completely and the idea of morality which is what he calls an ugly superstition here's how he illustrates the point here is a true story John Gray writes a 16 year old prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp was raped by a guard knowing that any prisoner who appeared without a cap on the morning parade would be instantly shot the guard who raped the prisoner stole his cap the prisoner knew that his only chance of life was to find a cap so he stole the cap of another inmate asleep in bed and lived to tell the tale the other prisoner was shot Robert Forrester the prisoner who stole the cap describes the death of his fellow inmate as follows and now he quotes from Robert foresters book the officer and the capo walked down the lines I counted the seconds as they counted the prisoners I wanted it to be over they were up to row for the capless man didn't beg for his life we all knew the rules of the game the killers and the killed alike there was no need for words the shot rang out without warning there was a short dry Achilles thud one bullet to the brain they always shot you in the back of the skull there was a war on ammunition had to be used sparingly I didn't know who the man was I was delighted to be alive and now professor gray picks up the narrative and he says this ok what does morality say the young prisoner ought to have done it says that human life has no price very well should he therefore have consented to lose his life or does the priceless nosov life mean that he was justified in doing anything to save his own morality is supposed to be universal and categorical but the lesson of Roman priesthood story is that it is a convenience to be relied upon in normal times and so he argues we must get rid of this ugly superstition of morality we need to embrace the scientific truth that only the fittest survive and he therefore argues that we need a political theory in which we do precisely that only the fittest survive now I agree with everything that Professor John Gray says if there is no God so unlike some other people who were extract extrapolating political conclusions from a form hard form of atheism I agree with every conclusion he has to make assuming that he is correct in what he says assuming that there is no God if there is then the chain of events he says therefore should follow I think are correct now the difficulty is is in finding ways to communicate this now I was privileged when a few years ago I was invited to address the rather large group of people from the European Parliament and the subject was without God where is Europe heading and the people organizing the meeting said while we are hoping we make it a hundred or so people MEP s and senior members of the council and Commission we had 350 people come the end of the presentation the whole afternoon the whole thing was meant to take about an hour and a half we were there for three and a half hours because there were so many questions a group of people came up and said the material that has been presented this is so important if you're prepared to travel we would like to arrange for you to speak to one hundred Parliament's around the world on this issue there are some pressing issues that we learn have to learn how to speak into as Christians now what is difficult for me in this context is I spend most of my life either talking to Muslim audiences or secular audiences I'm not very good at about talking about how to talk about to them that make sense I just do it so it's harder to provide the analysis than it is to actually do it for me but there is one criticism that gray makes and it's the one I've ended with that I think that the church in Europe as a church in Europe we have to sit up and take full responsibility for and it's this when he says that morality is a convenience only to be relied upon in normal times if that is true if it is true that morality is simply a convenience it was Leslie Newberg and I think who said that all Christians want to teach their children you know right and wrong because it makes life as a parent easier if it is only a matter of convenience to make our life easy we have missed it we have completely missed it Jesus Christ told the parable of the Good Samaritan like most parables which have shaped European thought to such a large extent and even shaped our vocabulary we fade lose the impact of the story the parable of the Good Samaritan is that the man is traveling on a dangerous road when he is attacked now the first two people pass by we think they are callous they are not callous they are acting in the interest of self-interest because you have to put the story in the setting it was given if I were to say to you I was walking through the streets of this city today and I saw a man beaten up by the side of the road and I passed by you would think that I was callous that I didn't care if however I said I was in Baghdad the other day and as I was driving past I saw some blown-up bodies by the side of the road and I just went trade on by without stopping you wouldn't think I was callous you wouldn't think I didn't care you would assume that I was acting in the interest of self-preservation it's a dangerous city there are many road traps there are many bombs it is dangerous to stop and go and see you may well die a man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho Jesus said and he fell among thieves it is an uninhabited road the first building built on that road that we know of was built in the 1500s by the Crusaders because they had a military machine to supply it with food and water that road runs through completely enero an Arab uh narrable in arable is that even a word non-arable land there is no water there is no food that is why it was right for robbers it was a dangerous road the priests and the Levites who pass on by on the other side are simply making a calculated moral decision that it is more dangerous just to keep that it is safer to keep on going than it is to stop the third man stops he is a Samaritan as we all know the Samaritans hate the Jews and he takes the man to an inn but there are no inns on that road however off that road if you're prepared to travel for a while you will find many Jewish towns and settlements professor Ken Bailey he puts it in these terms and this may work best if you are an American but I'm sure many of us will get it imagine he says that a red Indian is on a horse riding through the desert and he sees a naked body lying on the road with arrows sticking out of the back now we can safely assume most probably that the man that as Jesus told this story who was being robbed was a Jew the reason being that it is highly likely that if it was obvious that he was a Jew that the priest and the Levite would have stopped but they have no means of finding out is he Jewish or not now we know they took his clothes so he's naked therefore we can also conclude that he's probably lying face down in the dirt without going into too much biology if you're a Jewish man and you're laying face-up in the dirt there are some simple observational things that can be done to ascertain your religious convictions the guy gets down he rolls the body over and it's not one of his it's not a Samaritan it's a Jew so he takes him to one of the settlements to an inn off the road so let's go back to our red Indian he's riding through the desert he sees a bun naked body with Adam arrows in the back he spins it over it's a cowboy he puts him on the back of his horse he takes the horse into Dodge City he ties up the horse outside of the saloon and he carries the body in to the bar and places it in front of everybody he then turns to the bar keeper and says look here is some money this guy's one of yours I'll pay for him and I'll come back in two weeks and I'll settle up the bill now as Jesus tells the story he stops there the Samaritan takes the wounded man into the inn and then he says which one acted as a neighbor but the story isn't finished what do you want to know happens at the end of this story what do you want to know happens to the red Indian and the answer is does he get out alive does he leave the saloon bar alive or did the other Cowboys come around form a mob put a noose around the tree and hang him the Samaritan walks into the midst of his enemies where he is most likely to be held accountable for the very body he is presenting and he pays for it all this is not a matter of convenience Christian obedience Christian morality the Christian life has never been a matter of convenience Jesus Christ said if anyone wants to follow me he must pick up his cross deny himself and come otherwise you cannot be my disciple it is impossible as the Western Church are we living this gospel if we were to stand before our fiercest critics of atheists agnostics whatever they may be would they look at us and conclude that we have domesticated our Christian faith to make us feel better about ourselves or would they conclude that we are prepared to lay down our lives for a truth that we could not possibly deny and that we will not renounce is the evidence there we need to call the humanist bluff about the ideology that lies behind humanism at the same time we need to listen to the criticism they are making of us can it be seen I was in a country just a few days ago and I just I can't name it for obvious reasons I was talking with a man where but planning a series of 20 you want to be careful what words I use 20 groups to go out in this country once a month so that's gonna be 240 over the course of a year to hand out Bibles to people who are asking for them and there are two things that hit me about as we were planning this number one these people cannot find people to give them money to hand out Bibles it's going to cost $2,000 a month to fund 240 evangelistic missions and as we were working through the second thing then hit me we got to the end he says do you mind if we build into our budget $1,000 to pay for medical treatment for when people are beaten when their arms are broken their legs are broken and so on so that we can get them some basic medical treatment these people are willing to lay down their lives for the gospel in Europe we now have a forum of the Christian faith that seems to ask for nothing demands nothing and costs nothing and would like to suggest it is not a form of discipleship that Jesus Christ ever endorsed we must be prepared to lay down our lives I was talking with another dear brother of just a few days ago and he was telling me about one of his trips to Afghanistan and as he was going through Afghanistan with a big satchel on his soldier filled shoulder filled with Bibles he was stopped by by two Afghani police actually the way he was stopped as they have dogs which apparently are trained and they bite onto your clothing and they drag you towards the policeman so the policeman can keep their guns trained on you so he was walking his dogs came as if from nowhere grabbed his clothing started dragging him towards his pickup truck and when he was about halfway there they said drop your bag drop your bag so he dropped his bag and when he finally got to the vehicle they said what are you doing here and they searched him and on his body they found six Bibles and they said who gave you permission to give these away do you have a license he said yes I do they said where is his license from is it from the Afghani government he said laughed he said no then because he's Pakistani they said Pakistan he laughed he said no now they look very confused so they looked at each other they said UN he said no they said where is this license from he said my license is in my bag can I go and get it so he went to his bag he pulled out another Bible came back and opened it up to Matthew 28 and read to them go unto all the nations and make disciples and he said this is my license now at this point a guy leaned forward from the back of the pickup truck he was an American major in the army he started laughing he said eh you were pasta he said I am he said I'm not a Christian like you but there's a captain in my unit who's a Christian like you and he called over this young woman who was a Pentecostal they start talking for about 30 seconds she breaks up to a big smile and gives him a huge hug and then the major says let him go let him go he's not hurting anybody I think there are many philosophical moral even sociological and maybe even now we might even say psychological which I haven't even touched on basis basis to challenge the humanist proposition I think we need to find ways in which we can gently lovingly kindly and hopefully in a way that allows us both to present the gospel and get invited back although I grant that's not always possible and at the same time let us listen to what they have to say are we willing and prepared to lay down our lives for the gospel if we're not doesn't matter what words we use they will never be impressed let them see the truth of this in our lives may God bless

Channel: schumancentre

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Keywords: HOPEtalks, HOPE.II, christianity, humanism, atheism

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Length: 26min 20sec (1580 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2011