Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Can We Have Human Rights Without God? || Paul Blackham || SLP499

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Can We Have Human Rights Without God? || Paul Blackham || SLP499 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_03: Dude, your metaphysical trousers are down.
0:02
SPEAKER_03: We can see how you're being thick.
0:05
SPEAKER_03: I sort of feel embarrassed for him, really.
0:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the idea that there is an inviolable worth and dignity to every human being simply because they're a human being, not because of anything they achieve.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: No matter race or class or ethnicity, gender.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: Simply by being a human, I have a right to life.
0:21
SPEAKER_02: Liberty and the pursuit of happiness or whatever it is.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: It's absolutely beautiful.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Harari is right about one thing.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: He's right that that has come from Christianity.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: It's come from the Bible.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: And today we are joined by our favourite guest on this channel.
0:37
SPEAKER_02: Paul Blackham has joined us for many different conversations.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: Some have been about bishops, some have been about the multiverse, some have been about COVID and the pandemic.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: But Paul, why don't you uh introduce yourself for those who might not know you?
0:50
SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I'm Paul Blackham, and I would have been minister at All Souls and taught theology and done church planting and written some books and Bible books, Bible study guys, book by book.
1:02
SPEAKER_03: I do a lot of that.
1:04
SPEAKER_03: And I now I kind of do those things, but I also kind of have a podcast and things like that.
1:09
SPEAKER_02: Tell us the name of the podcast.
1:12
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:12
SPEAKER_03: It's called the Christ-centered cosmic civilization.
1:17
SPEAKER_03: All the seas.
1:18
SPEAKER_03: All the seas.
1:19
SPEAKER_03: And it was just, it really happened because I just got all this stuff in my head about like how are we going to make sense of this cosmos and civilization and all these things.
1:28
SPEAKER_03: And Christ is right.
1:30
SPEAKER_03: He's the source of all this.
1:32
SPEAKER_03: Language, physics, music, maths, architecture, everything.
1:38
SPEAKER_03: So I thought I'll just disgorge it and no one will listen to it.
1:41
SPEAKER_03: And then a few people have listened to it.
1:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: No, lots of people are finding it really, really helpful.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: And I do I just love spending time with Paul Blackham in my head and filling my mind with a larger vision for things.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to talk to you about uh three different individuals who've come across my Twitter feed in the last day, and they're all talking about human rights and God.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: And what we're gonna do is we're gonna look in at in fact four people.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna look at Yoval Noah Harari, we're gonna look at Tom Hollands, we're gonna look at Jordan Peterson, and we're gonna look at Emmanuel.
2:16
SPEAKER_02: And we'll figure out what that means as we go.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: But why don't we watch together uh a viral moment from a TED talk that Yoval Noah Harari gave nine years ago as he talks about human rights as a fictional reality.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: Let's have a look.
2:30
SPEAKER_05: Most legal systems are based on this idea, this belief in human rights.
2:36
SPEAKER_05: But human rights are just like heaven and like God.
2:40
SPEAKER_05: It's just a fictional story that we've invented and spread around.
2:44
SPEAKER_05: It may be a very nice story, it may be a very attractive story, we want to believe it, but it's just a story.
2:53
SPEAKER_05: It's not a reality.
2:54
SPEAKER_05: It is not a biological reality.
2:57
SPEAKER_05: Just as jellyfish and woodpeckers and ostriches have no rights, Homo sapiens have no rights also.
3:04
SPEAKER_05: You take a human, you cut him open, look inside, you find their blood and you find the heart and lungs and kidneys, but you don't find there any rights.
3:14
SPEAKER_05: The only place you find rights is in the fictional stories that humans have invented and spread around.
3:24
SPEAKER_05: And the same thing is also true in the political field.
3:28
SPEAKER_05: States and nations are also like human rights and like God and like heaven, they too are just stories.
3:37
SPEAKER_05: A mountain is a reality.
3:39
SPEAKER_05: You can see it, you can touch it, you can even smell it.
3:43
SPEAKER_05: But it's Israel or the United States, they are just stories, very powerful stories, stories we might want to believe very much, but still they are just stories.
3:53
SPEAKER_05: You can't really see the United States.
3:56
SPEAKER_05: You cannot touch it, you cannot smell it.
3:58
SPEAKER_02: So this has gone viral on Twitter.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: Um this was also done as a TED Talk.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: Yvalno Harari, after that, was invited to do the proper TED Talk.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: This is a TEDx.
4:08
SPEAKER_02: Then he did TED Global in London, and it it became uh a popular thing, and he was in the middle of writing Sapiens, which is his you know multi-million best-selling book that he followed up with Homideus, where he tracks the history of humanity as sapiens, and then he, you know, in Homidaeus talks about the future where we're going to arise and ascend into a different kind of species, a different kind of human.
4:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, why do you think this went viral on Twitter?
4:39
SPEAKER_03: I've never seen that clip, and it's extraordinary to me that when he says, Oh, mount like I can see a mountain.
4:45
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, Well, you don't actually, what you see is a conglomeration of rocks and things like that.
4:52
SPEAKER_03: But he like will adopt a standpoint and see these things and go, that's a mountain.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: How do you know it's not a hill?
4:59
SPEAKER_03: That's right, how do you know it's not a hill?
5:01
SPEAKER_03: And why is it?
5:02
SPEAKER_03: When does because if he just sees a few rocks, would he go, it's a mountain?
5:06
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
5:06
SPEAKER_03: No, he wouldn't.
5:07
SPEAKER_03: He has to be, and he arbitrarily selects a certain point at which, or he might say social convention does that and and and and says this is a mountain, and goes, nah, that's a mountain.
5:18
SPEAKER_03: That's fact.
5:19
SPEAKER_03: But then if he sees a conglomeration of human beings, and either, and so there's a point at which people go, Oh no, that's the United States, and he goes, Oh no, you see, I can't buy into that.
5:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm having a conglomeration of rocks, but not a conglomeration of human beings.
5:33
SPEAKER_03: You're like, dude, your metaphysical trousers are down.
5:35
SPEAKER_03: We can see how you're being thick.
5:38
SPEAKER_03: I sort of feel embarrassed for him, really.
5:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I can I can see why people get because it's like he's like, Rights are not real, you know, nations aren't real.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: Yes, rights are real, and I'm like, but it by that same logic, neither are mountains.
5:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like neither is was he kid?
5:53
SPEAKER_03: And then he says, You cut a human being open, and I was looking for this like sphere or viable worth and dignity of something.
6:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and like when I cut human beings open, they're just like blood and sewage, or something like flops out, and it's like far from making me think higher of humans, when I kill them and split them open, I think less of them.
6:15
SPEAKER_03: And we're like, yeah, dude.
6:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean yes, yes, there's no insight there, I'm afraid.
6:20
SPEAKER_03: Like you kill people, cut them open, and it turns out the person, you can't see them.
6:25
SPEAKER_03: No, I get that, but that's you anyway, yeah.
6:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we kill to dissect.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: But what what he's doing is it's kind of the fruit of the Enlightenment project, and that's why I said we'd talk about Emmanuel.
6:35
SPEAKER_02: Emmanuel Kant um makes this whole sort of division between facts and values.
6:41
SPEAKER_02: And um facts are things that we can investigate and critique, but but values are in a different realm.
6:49
SPEAKER_02: And of course, he he's kind of reacting against, and there's some dialogue with Hume, and Hume is like you can't derive any kind of values from facts, never the twain shall meet.
6:58
SPEAKER_02: These are very different kind of spheres of reality.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: And it seems like the Enlightenment Project and post-Enlightenment project has been to kind of lit let's leave aside that which we cannot see, touch, taste, and smell, right?
7:11
SPEAKER_02: And let us let us d dive down into that which we can dissect and cut up.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: And and lo and behold, guess what?
7:20
SPEAKER_02: When I cut things up, I don't find human rights.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: Is that the project?
7:23
SPEAKER_03: Well, the Enlightenment Project does do this fake thing of saying, I'm only going to take like the phenomenology and what my senses tell me that's fact.
7:34
SPEAKER_03: And then and then, you know, there's other things like interpreting those things and like applying meaning to it.
7:42
SPEAKER_03: Well, it could be true, but that's just your opinion, and there's nothing actually.
7:46
SPEAKER_03: But the only problem is, like, we like nobody really we know now, you can't really well we it's always been obvious, it's not like we know now, but it's like um all the things that are described, it's like, no, that's just what my senses are telling me.
8:00
SPEAKER_03: No, it isn't.
8:01
SPEAKER_03: All the attempts to describe that are already interpretive, meaning, like you can't climb into this position where you're like, I'm only having the facts, pure data.
8:13
SPEAKER_03: I'm a neutral observer.
8:14
SPEAKER_03: And it's like, well, you've you've selected what you are going to observe and how you're going to collect it, and at the level at the granularity of it, and say, I will look at the thing at this level and not at this and not at this.
8:26
SPEAKER_03: Why?
8:27
SPEAKER_03: You've already done it.
8:28
SPEAKER_03: There is no uninterpreted like level.
8:31
SPEAKER_03: Whereas Emmanuel Kant's like, no, no, we're just gonna have the pure facts without any so that any, like as if you know, um, a disengaged mind would see things this, but all this other stuff, no, and you're like, no, there isn't that option.
8:46
SPEAKER_03: There's only interpreted reality, there's only that, and then for for them, because what they've done in the Enlightenment, they've gone, oh, we're a bit stressed out because like we've been we've grow that all our civilization, the success of everything of science and everything has grown up within Christian culture, but the Christian, our Christian parents are arguing, and we're friggin' it's super stressful, and they're like they won't agree.
9:13
SPEAKER_03: The war's a religion you're talking about.
9:15
SPEAKER_03: The wars are reaction and all that, yeah, yeah.
9:17
SPEAKER_03: 30 years' war, all that kind of thing, and they're like, oh my mum and dad are arguing and they won't get on.
9:22
SPEAKER_03: So I'm leaving home.
9:23
SPEAKER_03: Right.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm leaving home now.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm after science land.
9:26
SPEAKER_03: And I don't need science land, and I don't even need your stuff anymore, kind of thing.
9:31
SPEAKER_03: And off we go and have and it's like, no, you actually can't, you're actually, and as so often in in the real world, if if children do that sort of thing, they actually still need their mum and dad, and they they're still dependent on them.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: They're sort of like and they sound very much like their mum and dad, as much as they hate that.
9:47
SPEAKER_03: And they can you pay my credit card bill and all that sort of thing, and it's a bit like that, where it's like running up these sort of epistemological debts, and the mum and dad are like, we'll still pay them, sort of thing.
9:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but and he's not realizing that, and he's like going, no, no, no, no, like the the whole um Emmanuel Kant project's totally legit.
10:07
SPEAKER_03: And it's like, dude, it just isn't, it never was.
10:11
SPEAKER_03: It was embarrassing.
10:12
SPEAKER_03: There isn't an uninterpreted view of reality, and behind that, it's like, actually, can I mention Christ now?
10:18
SPEAKER_03: Like, just to say, like, yeah, I know.
10:21
SPEAKER_03: Is that allowed?
10:22
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it's just the fact that were we, were those parents are coming, okay.
10:26
SPEAKER_03: They maybe were slightly arguing a little bit over the Reformation, but no, but were they really would say, no, no, but what we're not arguing about is that the whole of the heavens and the earth, there you can't have a disengaged perception, no, like object, but and then it's like, well, who were we supposed to get a correct where is there a mind that that that has understood it and interpreted it?
10:51
SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh no, well, there is such a one, don't worry.
10:54
SPEAKER_03: The one who is the source of it all and holds it all together.
10:57
SPEAKER_03: We're kind of trust that he designed us in such a way that we could in some way think like him and that he's not maliciously creating us to draw ludicrously false conclusions, but he's created in such a way to make it possible to think his thoughts after him and all this.
11:16
SPEAKER_03: There's something benevolent about the way it's all been made.
11:19
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
11:19
SPEAKER_03: And then Kant was like, no, no, I can't have it.
11:22
SPEAKER_03: I just want the facts.
11:24
SPEAKER_03: Right.
11:24
SPEAKER_03: He can't have those, mate.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: Right, and the scientific revolution came out of Christian presuppositions that there is a law above, and there are minds in here that even Homo sapiens, somehow this three pounds of grey matter is able to understand the mysteries of the cosmos and go out into the world and triangulate the hypotheses with the empiricism, and and it works.
11:42
SPEAKER_02: Well, it works because of the Christian hypotheses, the Christian presuppositions.
11:46
SPEAKER_02: But we've left home and we're off to science land, and we love our scalpels, and so we've we've cut everything up.
11:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:53
SPEAKER_02: Interestingly, um you took issue with the mountains thing, quite rightly.
11:58
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
11:59
SPEAKER_02: But the internet is taking issue with the human rights thing.
12:03
SPEAKER_02: That's why people are losing their minds, because they're think they're saying, no, no, we we we don't mind losing mountains.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: Like are you are you seriously saying that human rights are fictional?
12:15
SPEAKER_02: Are you s are you saying that they are not real?
12:18
SPEAKER_02: Because they feel more real than mountains.
12:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I guess the reason in a way, the reason I suppose that reveals something about me, but is but I can understand it's like obviously, obviously, he's not got and he can't sustain we can't sustain human rights.
12:35
SPEAKER_03: If you're going to go, oh, we're going to try to have a a view of reality in which we've extracted the mind that create you know the one who created it all and made it good and glorious, full of beauty, truth, goodness, and made us the and then we say, okay, we're gonna just take him out of the picture and we're going to try to understand it without him.
12:58
SPEAKER_03: Oh, and we're having we're struggling to value human beings, and we're finding we're starting world wars and killing hundreds of millions of ourselves and murdering babies and uh taking organ parts and we're doing that, and we're like, what's going on?
13:13
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, uh yeah, like that's what's gonna so you are I can understand why a person who hasn't realized that a crisis existence is death campville.
13:24
SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm but we're I'm like, of course that's the case.
13:27
SPEAKER_03: Of course you're going to struggle to grab but you I can see why you're sickened by it.
13:32
SPEAKER_03: You're like, no, but wait, wait.
13:33
SPEAKER_03: That's it's I don't like the idea of a world in which human beings are not loved and taken seriously, even the vulnerable, especially the vulnerable, especially the vulnerable.
13:43
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, no, exactly, but you how are you gonna pay for that good?
13:48
SPEAKER_03: Like, that is an amazing good.
13:50
SPEAKER_03: Yes, and the parents, or the better, the parent, like uh, he's bought that for you, right?
13:57
SPEAKER_03: And you're like, I don't want your stuff, I don't want your stuff, and you're like, no, you you do want that, you do want that, and you're crying out because you're suddenly realizing that's being repossessed by the bailiffs.
14:09
SPEAKER_03: Yes, and we we've smuggled out the candlestick of human rights underneath our coat.
14:13
unknown: That's right.
14:14
SPEAKER_02: And now we recognize we have no right to this thing, and the bailiff is.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: And your vowel is like, chuck that away.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: That's from that's from dad.
14:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
14:22
SPEAKER_02: And we're like, but no, that's like I like that.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: This is this is one I really like.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: And this and this, like with my friends, yeah, the the idea that there is an inviolable worth and dignity to every human being simply because they're a human being, not because of anything they achieve, any any way that they perform.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: No matter race or class or ethnicity, gender, it's it's all simply by being a human, I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or like whatever it is.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: It's absolutely beautiful.
14:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, but Harari is right about one thing.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: He's right that that has come from Christianity.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: He's come from the Bible.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:57
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, it's just a story as far as I'm concerned, but it's not real.
15:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:01
SPEAKER_03: And it's like, dude, it isn't real if.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: If.
15:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:05
SPEAKER_02: Let me show you what happened at the end of the TED Talk Global that he gave, because he was asked some questions about this nine years ago.
15:14
SPEAKER_02: And the answers that he gave to these questions are exactly as dystopian as you might imagine.
15:19
SPEAKER_04: You all, you have a new book out.
15:20
SPEAKER_04: After Sapiens, we brought another one, and uh, it's out in Hebrew, but not yet translated into the I'm working on the translation.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: This is Hamadeus.
15:28
SPEAKER_04: Okay, and you in in the book, if I understand it correctly, you argue that actually the amazing breakthrough that uh we are experiencing right now not only will potentially make our life better, but uh they will create, and I quote you, new classes and new class struggles, just as the industrial revolution did.
15:46
SPEAKER_04: Can you elaborate for us?
15:48
SPEAKER_05: Yes, in the industrial revolution, we saw the uh creation of a new class of the urban proletariat, and much of the political and social history of the last 200 years involved what to do with this class and the new problems and opportunities.
16:03
SPEAKER_05: Now we see the creation of a new massive class of useless people.
16:09
SPEAKER_05: As computers become better and better in more and more fields, there is a distinct possibility that computers will outperform us in most tasks and will make humans redundant.
16:23
SPEAKER_05: And then the big political and economic question of the 21st century will be what do we need humans for?
16:30
SPEAKER_05: Or at least, what do we need so many humans for?
16:35
SPEAKER_05: Um at present, the best guess we have is uh keep them happy with drugs and computer games, but this doesn't sound like a very appealing future.
16:46
SPEAKER_05: No, it doesn't, Yvan.
16:47
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so you're basically saying in the book, and now that for all the discussion about you know the growing evidence of significant uh economic inequality, we are just kind of at the beginning of the process.
16:57
SPEAKER_05: Again, it's not a prophecy, it's seeing all kinds of possibilities before us.
17:03
SPEAKER_05: One possibility is this creation of a new massive class of useless people, another possibility is the division of humankind into different biological castes, with the rich being upgraded into virtual gods and the poor being degraded to this level of of useless, useless people.
17:22
SPEAKER_04: I feel there is another TED Talk coming up in a U.
17:25
SPEAKER_03: Let's let's they all applaud.
17:27
SPEAKER_03: So thank you, Yufel Noah.
17:29
SPEAKER_03: Do you know when you said what is it good?
17:31
SPEAKER_03: And I thought, I wonder if he's going in the direction of transhumanism.
17:35
SPEAKER_03: And of course he was.
17:36
SPEAKER_03: Of course he is.
17:37
SPEAKER_03: Of course he was, yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:38
SPEAKER_03: And like, yeah, like oh the useless people.
17:40
SPEAKER_03: And then for us, of course, we're like gasping because there's just this idea that hum every human being is created to drink in the fountain of life to judge angels straying through the fiery stars.
17:52
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, no, there's actually too many of them.
17:54
SPEAKER_03: Let's and he's he's a step away from death camps.
17:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:57
SPEAKER_03: So when I said death camps before, he's like, oh yeah, let's have them.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, post-Christianity and post-humanism like go hand in hand, like of course.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: And so you'll have this useless people, and we'll just drug them and give them computer games.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: Yush.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: Or eliminate them some way, you know.
18:14
SPEAKER_02: Um or and and there will be this the these casts of the virtual gods and the the useless people.
18:22
SPEAKER_03: But it is funny that like who is useless in here like what you know, like he presumably thinks he is useful.
18:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: What do we do?
18:35
SPEAKER_03: On which on which like side of the line is he placing himself?
18:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
18:38
SPEAKER_03: He's what he's part of the virtual gods.
18:41
SPEAKER_03: Of course I'm that.
18:42
SPEAKER_03: Of course I'm useful, and it's like, are you?
18:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like C.S.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: Lewis in the abolition of man, he said, we thought that technology would uh allow us to have mastery over nature.
18:52
SPEAKER_02: It turns out it it's the mastery of some people over other people with nature as its instruments.
18:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, that's that's what he's talking about.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: Unless there is an inviolable worth and dignity to all people, and there's no such thing as a useless person.
19:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: And if even if you have no economic utility, you are valuable as such, as as a Homo sapien.
19:12
SPEAKER_02: As a human.
19:13
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's the thing, isn't it?
19:14
SPEAKER_03: For him, it's like he he may he well, he makes me chill like I was like laughing a little bit because of the ludicrousness of this vision where econom the economic value is whether you're useless or he's the sort of person who's like, ah, Sweden or whatever.
19:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm just thinking of a country.
19:30
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, now what is Sweden?
19:32
SPEAKER_03: Well, what are its natural resources and what is the GDP of Sweden?
19:37
SPEAKER_03: And he's deducing he would think of it in terms of what is its economic value.
19:41
SPEAKER_03: Utility.
19:43
SPEAKER_03: And you're like, but that's like what a barren and ludicrously unnatural way of actually thinking about the world.
19:51
SPEAKER_03: Like to walk through Sweden and go, how much is this worth?
19:54
SPEAKER_03: Well what a ludicrous, weirdly weird question.
19:58
SPEAKER_02: Is it unnatural though?
20:00
SPEAKER_02: Or have we been so Christianized that we that we refuse to think instrumentally about people or nations in that sort of way?
20:09
SPEAKER_02: Because the Vikings would have oh quite like quite like Sweden actually.
20:12
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, that's gonna take it, you know.
20:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we'll have that and uh we'll export IKEA and Lego and other things, but um but I think is it like that unnatural in the sense that it the the universe hasn't been made for that purpose, but it's become it's become all too natural to think like economically.
20:33
SPEAKER_03: But isn't it a gassy thing?
20:34
SPEAKER_03: Because of course I guess I'm showing my own problem there that uh because I think only in terms of church where we're bound together as these people and we share life together.
20:43
SPEAKER_03: And the thought that I only love this person insofar as there is an economic value to them or something like that, it's like what?
20:53
SPEAKER_03: It literally makes you feel nauseous, doesn't it?
20:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
20:56
SPEAKER_02: And and that feeling is more real than the smell of a mountain, right?
20:59
SPEAKER_02: Right or the smell of the United States, whatever that smell is.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: Like the and and I think that's what people are really keying into about Ivalno Harari.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: I think he's showing us the sinking sand.
21:09
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: And he's doing us a great favor.
21:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:12
SPEAKER_02: He's also, both via photo negative and by doing good history, showing us where our sensibilities have come from.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: And the photo negative is well, okay, if we don't have inviolable worth and dignity, then there are some people who are useless and some people who are virtual gods, and okay, that's the horror that we want to avoid.
21:31
SPEAKER_02: But he is also very clear in Sapiens and and especially in Homidaeus that the the place where we get rights from is from the Bible.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: And the the stories that we have told that give us the idea that there are such things as you know, persons with inviolable worth and dignity that cannot be traded away is from the scriptures.
21:49
SPEAKER_02: So we'll give him at least that.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: He knows where that sensibility has come from historically, and it is Christianity.
21:58
SPEAKER_02: And so I was very interested that.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: On Twitter, as the Juval Noah Harare clip became very popular, a tweeter called Anthony Cox said lots of criticism of this, and I'm no fan of Hararis, but isn't he pointing out from a different perspective Tom Holland's point in Dominion?
22:17
SPEAKER_02: To which Tom Holland tweets, Yes, human rights have no more objective reality than, say, the Trinity.
22:24
SPEAKER_02: Both derive from the workings of Christian theology, and both, if they are to be believed in, require people to make a leap of faith.
22:31
SPEAKER_02: Now, Tom Holland is saying, you can definitely make that leap of faith, and I wish I could, and at times I find myself able to believe.
22:40
SPEAKER_02: Um, but it is a faith position.
22:43
SPEAKER_02: It is not derived from the state of nature.
22:46
SPEAKER_02: It's it's not derived from doing scientific experiments about what humans are like.
22:49
SPEAKER_02: But what do you what do you want to say about that?
22:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I would say no, there's two things there.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: To say it is not derived from the state of nature, let's say from the state of the cosmos, the the reality of heavens and the earth or something.
23:03
SPEAKER_03: And then you said not derivable from the scientific method.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: I certainly think a cogent view of what a human being is as like created to drink in the from the fountain of life is not derived is not something that the current scientific project as it is, maybe as it was done by Bernard of Clairvaux when he's making his machines and the scientific pri uh he probably would say, no, no, I I think we can we we are thinking of humans like that in the scientific project.
23:37
SPEAKER_03: But the scientific project g takes a a seriously difficult detour in particularly when you get to later, where it starts to take on this rationalistic, mechanistic, cold, uh anti-religious character, anti-Jesus character.
23:54
SPEAKER_03: So now, and I think that has slewed the whole idea of scientific understanding, but that's a whole nother thing.
24:01
SPEAKER_03: But so I'd say, no, now you're not gonna think like that, but in terms of from the nature of the heavens and the earth, like, yeah, of course you would.
24:10
SPEAKER_03: Like if you're under, I mean Psalm 19, I know we think about that, but all these things that are in the scriptures, and then you walk out once you it once you gaze at the world as it is, as it is, yeah, then it's like psalm eight.
24:26
SPEAKER_03: Can I just reference the psalm eight thing?
24:28
SPEAKER_03: Like, if you're the Douglas Adams sort of mentality, you walk outside, you look up at the sky, and you go, Aren't I worthless?
24:36
SPEAKER_03: And he begins the hitchhikers with that, doesn't he?
24:40
SPEAKER_03: Though if you are Psalm 8 and you're looking out at the heavens, like in a sense, let me put it this way in the companionship of Christ, the Creator, and it's as if he's standing with you, and you look out, you're going, isn't aren't human beings amazing?
25:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, how incredible they are that all of this has been set out like this for us to see from this perspective.
25:09
SPEAKER_03: See what I mean?
25:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
25:10
SPEAKER_03: So it's like, nah, I think like Tom, I get what like if I can't.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: But let's put it this way apart from Christian spectacles, you're going to look at human beings as one more resource to extract from the world.
25:25
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, at best.
25:27
SPEAKER_03: Like so atomistic of some of the like people now, they don't even think about other people at all.
25:35
SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, but I think like so Tom's right, oh yeah, this is good, like you're getting this from the Bible, from Christianity, but he would say, Oh, the Trinity and this is not real.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: It's so he's agreeing with the other guy in a way, and saying, it's just a story, but it's the it's a Christian story, and you've got you need Christianity.
25:57
SPEAKER_02: It's a faith statement, and so and Tom is more agnostic about whether faith is a good thing or not.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: Harari is like, well, it's a faith statement, so it's not true.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: And Tom's like, it's a faith statement, and it's a vitally important faith statement if you want to hold on to things like human rights, and I wish I could believe myself, and yeah.
26:15
SPEAKER_03: I think though, my I so I like lots of that, yeah, but I it's as if it he's disconnected that because he's post-Enlightenment, he's like saying, Okay, so there's the facts and the meaning.
26:29
SPEAKER_03: He's like, Okay, so this Christian stuff's in the meaning pile, and that's maybe good.
26:34
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, yeah, but that whole mechanism of facts and meaning is fake.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: So that yeah, okay, too.
26:42
SPEAKER_03: It's manual's problem.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: Emmanuel's sort of but he's accepting Emmanuel's like cutting, like cutting, and he's like, okay, but so it's in the meaning pile, yeah, but maybe that's good, and it's there's benefits to that.
26:55
SPEAKER_03: And oh and the Christians in from the meaning pile have given us human rights.
26:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a fact, that's a good thing, and they're given us the Trinity too.
27:02
SPEAKER_03: There's another nice idea that's in the meaning pile, but it's not in the fact pile.
27:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, and I'm like, no, Tom, actually, you you should track back and get to that a bit more.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: I think there's there's a positive way of reading it in which you say, hey, you know how when you look into the face of uh a weak, marginalized person and you see inherent dignity in them, even though they are useless in the eyes of Yuval No Harari, and you know the knot that that ties in your stomach, and the warm fuzzies that you get, and the desire to reorient society, and you say that a society's best that looks after this person the most.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: You know how you really believe in that, and you actually sacrifice for that, and that's that's more real than mountains.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
27:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, you may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: You you may as well believe in angels and the Trinity and the doctrine of the incarnation and and and all that kind of stuff, because that is as theological a truth as the Trinity is, and if you are going to believe in that, which Tom very much does believe in, then you may as well believe in the theology that grounds it all.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean it's the Schleiermacher move, is it?
28:13
SPEAKER_03: Where you go, um and I know and that's Friedrich Schleiermacher, 19th century liberal Protestant German kind of that's right, and like he goes, okay, here's the Kant thing.
28:25
SPEAKER_03: Um not that you're agreeing with the Kant thing, but I'm just saying what Schleiermacher did to try and combat that is he's like saying, Okay, so uh what we what we have is the phenomenology, like we have our experiences of this of the factual real world, and he's like, but some of these experience movies we have are so compelling, and like what there's a kind of a tra there is a sort of transcendent reality impacting us here, this feeling of dependence, and the and and then he's like exegeting these like deep intuitions and sort of but the world is like this.
29:05
SPEAKER_03: I can't help but feel there's a reality here that's part of the data.
29:11
SPEAKER_03: So my data isn't just this like the feeling of the cup, but it's the feeling of like looking into the face of somebody and going, Wow, that is a real, that's a person who's who's who's like has the divine spark within them all within them and things like that.
29:25
SPEAKER_03: So he's like going, see, like what are we gonna do with that?
29:29
SPEAKER_03: And he says to this the culture despisers kind of religion, you know this, you know this.
29:35
SPEAKER_03: So therefore, could there not be like an actual trinity and things behind we can't like directly talk about these transcendent realities, but we can talk about our feelings and experiences that are pointing to that, yes, so he's like, let's reboot the process, but he's still sort of accepting it.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so there'd be a way of doing a Schlamakian thing, which is therefore there is there are stepping stones from your experienced empirical experience of the world to this theological truths, sort of maybe, and they gesture towards it.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: But couldn't there also be a kind of um an appeal to the best explanation for the fact why when you see that video of the cochlear implant of that young girl and she hears for the first time and the hairs go up on the back of your neck, the best explanation for that is and and this is not me trying to like build uh a stepping stone to a theological case, but the best explanation is we do in fact live in Jesus' universe.
30:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
30:40
SPEAKER_02: In which the the same spirit who rose Jesus from the dead is the spirit who is active in this world right now, and you're in touch with something, uh, an echo of that truth when you're encountering that because you are you are in fact in Jesus' You're in fact in his house sort of thing, and it's this house look so it's like that whole thing with the USTAP program, didn't it?
31:00
SPEAKER_03: Whose house does this belong to?
31:02
SPEAKER_03: Through the keyhole or three of the keyhole.
31:03
SPEAKER_03: And it's like I think this is Jesus' house.
31:06
SPEAKER_03: Looking around at the universe.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Hi folks, it's Thomas Thoroughgood here, media producer at Speak Life.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will.
31:28
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31:33
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31:39
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31:44
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31:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay, back to the podcast.
31:54
SPEAKER_03: Then if I like mention Slimecker again, I I know you might say I'm obsessed with him.
31:59
SPEAKER_03: I am a little bit, but um, but what's why I am a little bit is, and this is now agreeing with you.
32:06
SPEAKER_03: What he does, his typical method is he'll because he's wanting always to kind of obey this Kantian thing, and so what we've really got is just our feelings, but I can exegete those and derive something that's vaguely like Christianity out of that.
32:23
SPEAKER_03: But before he does that, on each topic, he'll go, okay, now then, um, you know, Jesus or Christology or salvation or God or whatever is this topic.
32:34
SPEAKER_03: And he goes, now then, this is how it's been understood.
32:40
SPEAKER_03: Right.
32:40
SPEAKER_03: And then he lays it out sometimes so brilliantly that I'm like, oh my goodness, that is the best I've ever heard somebody explain, like the doctrine of scripture or something.
32:51
SPEAKER_03: But then he goes, but we we of course can't have that anymore.
32:54
SPEAKER_03: We have to have this, and he comes up with these we're in science land now.
32:58
SPEAKER_03: We're in science land, we've left the home home, you know.
33:01
SPEAKER_03: So he's like, But sometimes when I've read that, I'm like, no, stop, let's just have all those bits, and then just say, Imagine if the world, just imagine all that that's true, yeah, and now look at your feelings.
33:16
SPEAKER_03: And instead of trying to go from the feelings that way, do it like the other way, and say, now imagine that so this is true.
33:24
SPEAKER_03: Now look at those feelings.
33:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
33:27
SPEAKER_03: Don't they make sense now?
33:28
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
33:29
SPEAKER_03: No, exactly that's the better way.
33:31
SPEAKER_03: I agree with you.
33:31
SPEAKER_03: That's what he should have done.
33:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
33:34
SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
33:34
SPEAKER_02: So Tom Holland makes this point that uh human rights, uh, the way we speak of them, certainly in the West today, and through international law and all the rest of it, has a Christian origin.
33:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh Jordan Peterson, then, um, wanted to respond to Tom Holland, and I'm not sure they've actually interacted that much on Twitter before.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: It's the first time I've been aware of it.
33:58
SPEAKER_02: Um and Jordan P.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: P.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: Peterson says, Not exactly, Tom Holland.
34:03
SPEAKER_02: The doctrine of rights will soon be shown to be an inexorable consequence of the semantic neck network of meaning.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: That is, encoded implicitly into the relationship not only between words and verbal concepts, but stories and also patterns of behavior, built into the structure of human being and perhaps even capital B being itself.
34:23
SPEAKER_02: In other words, rights are the semantic representation of the archetypal reality that characterizes sustainable, upward-oriented, reciprocally altruistic human interactions.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: I almost said it.
34:35
SPEAKER_02: I almost got it.
34:35
SPEAKER_02: You always got it.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: Not arbitrary at all, quite the contrary.
34:39
SPEAKER_02: What do you think about that?
34:42
SPEAKER_03: Well, that is spectacularly bad communication.
34:46
SPEAKER_03: Like when he goes, in other words, and you're like, is this gonna be a simpler version?
34:50
SPEAKER_03: No, it's an even worse version.
34:53
SPEAKER_03: But he seems to be so like wow, wow, Jordan, that's one of your worst in terms of um perspicuous, but I think what he's trying to say is something like this is what I take from that.
35:05
SPEAKER_03: He seems to be saying something like, um, so Tom Holland's saying it's it's an accidental truth, like this stuff, and because of the Christian religion and stories and things.
35:18
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, No, no, it's more substantial than that.
35:22
SPEAKER_03: It's something that is written into what he seems to be saying, it's it's necessary part of language and storytelling, that as soon as you have language and storytelling, you're gonna end up with human rights.
35:33
SPEAKER_03: So I don't know what I mean.
35:35
SPEAKER_03: He he he probably should broaden his reading a bit.
35:37
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of stories that definitely don't do that, but um yeah, but then he's also saying that there's something, and he loves this, doesn't he?
35:44
SPEAKER_03: I know we've talked about he loves this idea that there's this like everything's really about not just tiding your room, but like striving upwards.
35:54
SPEAKER_02: You're setting the world in order, you're you're taking responsibility, shouldering the burden of the world, you're tilting the world away from hell and towards heaven.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: Right.
36:02
SPEAKER_02: And there's that because he talks about the sustainable, upward-oriented, reciprocally altruistic human interactions.
36:09
SPEAKER_03: Now, when he goes, We are he put the beginning bit was the bit the doctrine of rights will soon be shown to be an inexorable thing.
36:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
36:18
SPEAKER_03: So he's a it's about to be apparent to everybody that this um the archetype of uh character uh uh reciprocal altruistic human interactions.
36:32
SPEAKER_03: It will soon realize and it'll be scientifically proven.
36:36
SPEAKER_03: I guess he's looking.
36:37
SPEAKER_03: That's what he usually means, doesn't it?
36:39
SPEAKER_03: The data's been done, the surveys are results are in, and it turns out we're all actually trying to help each other as we as we journey upwards, striving to the divine.
36:51
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, dude, no, yeah, like how can he of all people, when he's on, like he would take himself to task for saying something like that.
37:01
SPEAKER_03: The earlier Jordan Peterson would say, have you do you know the 20th century?
37:05
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, and so I think historically and then psychologically, there are there are some serious questions that he himself has raised against this.
37:13
SPEAKER_02: So psychologically, I think in 12 Rules for Life early on, he has quite a sort of a scientific defense of original sin.
37:19
SPEAKER_02: As this this biological reality, we seem to be selfish so-and-so's, and and if you had the chance to be a Nazi guard and you lived in 1939, um, you probably would be.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: And the chances of you being a heroic kind of person are close to zero.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: And and so he he has actually quite a um quite a negative anthropology in that in that that sense.
37:39
SPEAKER_02: So I I would say that that that doesn't really accord with the things that he said psychologically in the past, nor the things that he said historically, like the history of the 20th century, and like the current culture wars.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: And and it's kind of like you could almost uh imagine this being written in 1992 or something.
37:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
37:56
SPEAKER_02: And the Berlin Wall has come down, and it's the end of history, and we're all that's right.
38:00
SPEAKER_02: Um but writing it in 2024.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and like the and Generation Zed doesn't feel that optimistic about the future, like, oh, we're just on the verge of seeing this, and how oh, isn't it wonderful?
38:15
SPEAKER_03: It's like, nah, there's like an incredible disillusionment and sense of depression, and like so like no, can't go to school, can't cope with society and things, and he's like, no, no, but there's this altruistic, yeah.
38:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm a I'm shocked that and that, but also the idea that's about to be discovered, yeah, tremendous kind of optimism, which is but isn't it what he's doing?
38:39
SPEAKER_03: He's got so what we're saying is there is a transcendent reality that makes sense of everything else like this.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: It is Jesus Christ, it is the Trinity, it is this that that that before the universe, you know, other worlds began, uh, the Father's love begotten other worlds, and suddenly when you know that, that's like story, there's so many things begin to go, oh, so that's why things are as they are.
39:04
SPEAKER_03: Whereas for him, he doesn't have that.
39:06
SPEAKER_03: For him, his kind of transcendent reality that manifests even as Christ, he even sees Jesus Christ as an instantiation of this altruistic yearning for betterness.
39:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so even that that's his transcendent thing that gets instantiated.
39:24
SPEAKER_03: Oh, you see, so for him, his Schleiermacker thing is like, you know, those feelings of like wanting to, I don't know, tidy your room or be better.
39:33
SPEAKER_03: That is this yearning, you know, this like strive to be better.
39:41
SPEAKER_03: Isn't that his transcendent thing that's trying to manifest itself?
39:44
SPEAKER_02: And the Christ story is an echo an echo of that of what is most real for him, which is the altruistic, upwardly oriented, reciprocal human interactions.
39:54
SPEAKER_02: Easy for me to say.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: But like, I mean, but these human interactions okay, some people might say we don't need Christianity to give us human rights because evolution will teach us pro-social behavior.
40:08
SPEAKER_02: And if two chimpanzees are picking nits off each other, it'll help them in the struggle for survival.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: And if they cooperate in the hunt, then they'll get more food, right?
40:18
SPEAKER_02: To which the answer is, well, that cooperation helps.
40:21
SPEAKER_02: It helps them to outcompete the other tribe and slaughter them.
40:25
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
40:25
SPEAKER_02: And really the survival of the fittest is the survival of the most efficaciously violent among us.
40:30
SPEAKER_02: And Yuval Noah Harari, if you read Sapiens, he gives the most brutal sort of from his point of view, this is the evolutionary history of of like why Homo sapiens like survived and other kind of species of homo did not.
40:44
SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's it was not democratic elections.
40:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, right.
40:49
SPEAKER_03: I mean, because evolution, like to the to get to be the apex predator kind of thing, you have to kill everything else.
40:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I'm I'm shocked that he imagines he can discern in that.
41:00
SPEAKER_03: It's almost like a mystical discernment that goes against all the available evidence, but he can discern in it some inner truth of altruism.
41:10
SPEAKER_03: Mammac, Jordan, you can't, mate.
41:12
SPEAKER_03: Like, there is no altruism to be discerned there.
41:15
SPEAKER_02: Because what are we saying about human rights?
41:17
SPEAKER_02: We're not just saying um not localized.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: It's not a localized like the Russians love their children too.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
41:24
SPEAKER_03: Right.
41:25
SPEAKER_03: Whereas it's no, that is definitely not what what what people are upset about.
41:29
SPEAKER_03: Because you said everyone's really upset.
41:31
SPEAKER_03: They're not saying, no, because like I like me and my localized family, extended family net, like we love each other.
41:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
41:38
SPEAKER_03: No, and everyone knows that's not what's at stake here.
41:41
SPEAKER_03: It's the idea that people I never met before, right, and and and sort of superficially, I have no reason to even like them.
41:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
41:49
SPEAKER_03: And that, but I know they have in as some value that transcends all possible like uh horizontal relationships.
41:58
SPEAKER_03: Right.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: So the teacher of the law in Luke chapter 10 says, Who is my neighbor?
42:03
SPEAKER_02: Right.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: And the answer to that question is always naturally in my own heart of hearts, and and the way that people had been even reading the Old Testament um had been, well, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: To the point where Jesus had to come and correct that in in Matthew chapter 5.
42:19
SPEAKER_02: That's not at all what the Old Testament was saying, but certain people were taking Old Testament truths and unpacking them in completely, you know, unbiblical ways.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: And he because that's the natural thing.
42:29
SPEAKER_02: You know, that Romans had a saying, every day you should do something to uh be kind to your friends and to harm your enemies.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: You know, and everybody loves to like we're about to do the cross stitch of, oh yeah, be kind to your friends and harm your enemies, what?
42:44
SPEAKER_02: But of course that makes sense in the struggle for survival, because of course the the survival of the fittest means the sacrifice of the weakest.
42:50
SPEAKER_02: So when Jesus is asked, you know, who is my neighbor?
42:54
SPEAKER_02: Everybody has uh everybody wants him to sort of like circumscribe the circle quite narrowly.
43:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:03
SPEAKER_02: And what does he do with the story of the Good Samaritan?
43:05
SPEAKER_02: Because that's that's the context in which he tells the story, the story of the Good Samaritan.
43:08
SPEAKER_02: Your neighbor is your enemy.
43:09
SPEAKER_02: And and in fact, you're the one who's dead and left, you know, left by the side of the road, and this total stranger from completely outside the system, the Samaritan, the Samaritan with a capital S comes and loves you.
43:20
SPEAKER_02: And and what Jesus is saying there is who is your enemy?
43:23
SPEAKER_02: Could be could even be your neighbor, and the the circle of human dignity is to be extended to the very fringes of human society, but actually not beyond it.
43:35
SPEAKER_02: So there's a there's a kind of there's a human exceptionalism here.
43:39
SPEAKER_02: Um but within the human exceptionalism, the the human has a dignity as such that is not the same as the dignity of the chimpanzee or the jellyfish.
43:49
SPEAKER_02: Um but within the club of club human, we are we are all equal in the eyes of God.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: It's it's that kind of thing, isn't it?
43:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:56
SPEAKER_03: Oh, it is, and there's the that's this extraordinary thing that we We're making 'cause people people do get upset about the idea that in in the biblical v uh vision of reality, the v um description of reality, and the whole Christian fact that humans are privileged.
44:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:16
SPEAKER_03: Human accepted.
44:18
SPEAKER_03: And people get upset about that.
44:19
SPEAKER_03: They say, no, but what about like what about that?
44:21
SPEAKER_03: Species as a man.
44:22
SPEAKER_03: Species of man.
44:23
SPEAKER_03: But the thing is, is like, no, because actually at the very core of this is this extraordinary thing that this eternal living God, Father, Son, and Spirit, kind of in this weird way, we're saying, what is the purpose of the universe?
44:39
SPEAKER_03: And we're like, it is kind of us, really, like for us.
44:43
SPEAKER_03: And that he it's not good that the man is alone, is this sort of like primal Trinitarian speech, and it's as if the father and the and the spirit are like, we need to get married, kind of thing.
44:54
SPEAKER_03: And let's and human beings are that important.
44:57
SPEAKER_03: And then we really do think in that that Psalm 8 is really saying the all the galaxies are laid out in such a way as they are to be viewed from this planet, and any other perspective on them is not allowing you to see them as they're really supposed to be seen.
45:15
SPEAKER_03: And people are like, you can't be that arrogant.
45:17
SPEAKER_03: It's like no, it's not an arrogance thing, it's just the fact of how we've been made, and that he becomes one of us, and he doesn't become a chimpanzee, and he doesn't become a dog or anything like that.
45:29
SPEAKER_03: Or even an angel.
45:30
SPEAKER_03: And you might say, angels, but they're they're greater than us.
45:33
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, we are a little lower than the angels.
45:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:35
SPEAKER_03: And yet he's like, no, but you, I'm gonna be one of you, not even temporarily one of you, but permanently, forever and ever one of you.
45:44
SPEAKER_03: And I want to live your life and share life with you.
45:47
SPEAKER_03: We are saying that, yeah, really and absolutely.
45:50
SPEAKER_03: And and the odd thing is it then it's like I know you talk about if you press into the weirdness, you come out the other side and find it to be welcoming.
45:58
SPEAKER_03: That's one of your great um sayings things, and it's like that with the animals, okay.
46:04
SPEAKER_03: And as Romans 8 and everything, and it's and and Isaiah 11, things like that.
46:08
SPEAKER_03: It turns out like the whole creation is waiting for us to be fixed because they all get fixed too.
46:15
SPEAKER_03: They're like tied in and get pulled along with us, and the animals get to benefit from it all, and all of that.
46:21
SPEAKER_03: So it's like actually the best for them is us.
46:25
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah.
46:26
SPEAKER_02: And and we are to care for the and even forever.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: And then you know this, yeah.
46:33
SPEAKER_02: But you cannot get around Jesus saying, you know, you're worth more than many sparrows, right?
46:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, absolutely, that's true.
46:40
SPEAKER_02: And and it struck the ancient worlds as remarkably humanistic, ridiculously so.
46:46
SPEAKER_02: So, like you know, Kelsis, like a second century, like fierce critic of the church, um, would say it is in no way obvious that humans are of greater value than than than bees or ants, right?
46:58
SPEAKER_02: Um we we we play our part in the cosmos.
47:02
SPEAKER_02: Biosphere.
47:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's what we would say now, is in the evolutionary scheme.
47:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, we are adapted to our environment and a jellyfish is is adapted to its environments, and who is superior?
47:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, you can't really say.
47:13
SPEAKER_02: We're just adapted, we're just we're just kind of evolving.
47:16
SPEAKER_02: And and Christians are saying something radically humanistic at that stage.
47:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
47:21
SPEAKER_02: That the human as such is valuable and in the image of God, and and that's that's why I I think, you know, t Tom Holland is is able to come back to Jordan Peterson um and say, listen, the way we think of human rights has not been derived from evolutionary theory and it has not been derived from an ancient, you know, sort of Roman way of seeing the world.
47:45
SPEAKER_02: It has come through historical developments in Western medieval Christendom.
47:50
SPEAKER_02: He says uh in reply to Jordan Peterson, the notion that a doctrine which emerged in the very specific context of twelfth century Italy, in response to the unprecedented circumstances of the Gregorian Reform, a process of ideological upheaval unique to Latin Christendom, was simultaneously built into the structure of human being and perhaps even being itself, definitely requires a leap of faith.
48:13
SPEAKER_02: What's he saying there?
48:15
SPEAKER_03: Well, I think what he's saying, I mean that I'm surprised he locates like I understand that the specific language of rights he's locating in the 12th century, but I'm immediately wanting to go, no, that's not good.
48:32
SPEAKER_03: That is a specific vocabulary, right, but that vision of human beings, you're gonna have to go back thousands of years before that and look at even just the way in early church times were the like I know it's been often said how that the biggest item in a local church budget for not all over the Roman Empire, but there there's examples of it, is just buying the freedom of slaves and things, and that's they join church.
49:00
SPEAKER_03: So by the why would they do that sort of thing?
49:03
SPEAKER_03: Because that vision of human beings, and in the book of Revelation, you know, first century, it's there at the end of the Bible, and this vision is we've got this the the vision of the heavenly throne room, and there's people from every tribe, language, tongue, people, and it and it gets repeated like every ethnicity, every culture, everything, and it keeps repeating these fourfold descriptions of the vast number, every kind of person, every capacity, every range of person is part of the supreme gathering of the heavenly reality.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: And in that, in that, there's just this kind of obsession with taking humans seriously, irrespective of the any of the accidental markers that human beings do go.
49:49
SPEAKER_03: Oh no, but like Immanuel Kant does it.
49:52
SPEAKER_03: He's like, oh, all the race, I'm gonna grade the races and like categorize them, who's better than others.
49:58
SPEAKER_02: And apparently Prussians are at the top of the pile.
50:00
SPEAKER_03: Who would that's true?
50:05
SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, that was fortunate for him, but um but that kind of thing, that's the in that's the kind of instinct.
50:13
SPEAKER_03: If you ditch Christ, you are going to end up setting up slave trades, yeah, and that's what happened, and that sort of thing happens.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: Christ tells you, no, no, like let's try and ditch that, let's try and buy freedoms and things.
50:26
SPEAKER_03: And even when you go back to the Old Testament, too, there's a like Abraham and Sarah, there's this lovely sort of thing that they set off from Babylon and like and it takes a couple of generations for them to arrive, and then the the Lord they they're sort of running this, like let's call it a like an early church.
50:43
SPEAKER_03: I like to call it a church, and then they have all this stuff, and people go, but then you pay attention, there's like lot guy needs rescuing, and there's hundreds of people in this like extended family, and all the food and they've got animals and things, but it turns out they've got this huge number of people they're providing for, and it's all but and it's this vision.
51:05
SPEAKER_03: Let's look after people and provide for them and train them and include them, and that's so basic to this biblical vision in because it's an overflow of actually the eternal life of the God who designed the universe.
51:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
51:19
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah in the same way that Isaac Newton did not invent gravity, but discovered it.
51:26
SPEAKER_02: And yes, there are all sorts of historical kind of contexts in which, well, of course, he would, and you can explain the historically contingent circumstances by which he would name the thing gravity, and that's interesting, but he has not invented gravity, he has discovered gravity.
51:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
51:44
SPEAKER_02: I think that's what we need to say in this context that okay, maybe maybe that particular language, the language that still survives to today, was invented in 12th century Italy.
51:53
SPEAKER_02: Nevertheless, we would say this is not an invention, and it's very it's very important not to call this an invention, it's very important to call this a discovery.
52:02
SPEAKER_02: Why is that important?
52:03
SPEAKER_03: Oh, that is I love the fact you've framed it like that.
52:07
SPEAKER_03: Because it's as it because as in, the take the like, let's just think that through the gravity thing.
52:12
SPEAKER_03: Because if you go, okay, he calls this thing gravity, but it's intrinsic to the universe itself.
52:18
SPEAKER_03: Right.
52:18
SPEAKER_03: And you can go back to ancient writers and they're trying to they they are encountering the same reality.
52:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
52:24
SPEAKER_03: Something that is part of, and they're coming up with the saying, oh, there's like stones want to go down.
52:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
52:30
SPEAKER_03: That's our attempt at that.
52:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
52:32
SPEAKER_03: Because they're encountering the same reality, but they haven't got the and then he comes up with this vocabulary and gravity, and we keep and exactly that way in the 12th century, these Italians are like, there's like um a rightness about humans, the human rights, and it's much and then because and then like I say, Abraham and Sarah would go, yeah, I get what you're that's right.
52:54
SPEAKER_03: That's what we're trying to deal with when we're trying to incorporate people of all sorts of different nationalities and backgrounds and welcome them and care for them.
53:00
SPEAKER_03: Because they should we should, because that's the nature of human beings, though, to be like that.
53:05
SPEAKER_03: And so that exactly that way, it's something that is intrinsic to the universe, not invented.
53:12
SPEAKER_03: It's not a story to go back to that first dude.
53:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh, it's just a story.
53:16
SPEAKER_03: No, it's a it's as and there's no just about story.
53:20
SPEAKER_03: Oh, sorry, I shouldn't have said that.
53:22
SPEAKER_02: That was terrifying.
53:23
SPEAKER_02: I know that, yeah, yeah.
53:24
SPEAKER_02: I represent I think that's what Jordan Peterson kind of brings along and and says, well, you cannot have a realm of facts without a story that actually frames the way that you're because there's too much world, it's coming at you, there's billions of bits of information coming to you.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: You need a filter.
53:38
SPEAKER_02: What's the filter?
53:39
SPEAKER_02: The filter is a story that actually orients you to the world and gives you the hierarchy of values, and and and therefore the world of facts and the world of value um must integrate at some level.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: And so he's he's trying to he's trying to stitch back together what Immanuel Kant kind of cleaved asunder.
53:57
SPEAKER_02: He's trying to do it in this scientific mode.
54:00
SPEAKER_02: But what I think he gets wrong, and and and where I think Tom Wright is to correct him Tom Holland.
54:06
SPEAKER_02: Tom Holland, sorry.
54:07
SPEAKER_02: Where Tom Holland is is right to correct him is that it is Christ himself, it's Christian theology, let's say, but let's say Christ himself, that actually discovers and and gives you the universe that makes sense of the discovery.
54:22
SPEAKER_02: Um and it cannot be just a simple fact of human nature that we that we derive this thing called human rights.
54:31
SPEAKER_02: It is it is a universal, actually, Tom Holland.
54:36
SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's been discovered, not invented, but it is a universal Jordan Peterson that comes through Christ alone.
54:46
SPEAKER_02: And it's putting together the the universality of of Christ, Tom Holland, and putting together the the scandal of the particularity to Jordan Peterson.
54:57
SPEAKER_02: It's it's Christ who really gives this to us.
54:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I remember years ago you were preaching at a wedding, and you were sort of making this point that the framing of the universe is a story, and it's a wedding story.
55:11
SPEAKER_03: And like right at the from the beginning, the whole thing is about like and that kind of to do that, to have the right story, and then when we're now we're like that, ah, that's the story that the and that the the whole universe is set up to be the stage on which this story is to be told.
55:31
SPEAKER_03: And if you're looking at the stage, the theatre, and you're like, oh, what's the story that's going on in this theatre?
55:38
SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's this story, it's this story, and now the whole now we can make sense of the scenery, what the props and the lighting, and yeah.
55:47
SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah, exactly.
55:48
SPEAKER_02: So we gotta draw this uh to a conclusion.
55:51
SPEAKER_02: Um, what is it about Christ himself that can actually give us that that sense that everyone everyone has had this sense that Yuval Noah Harari is treading on something sacred, and we've gone, you can't do that, you're blaspheming.
56:08
SPEAKER_02: Well, maybe we have more of a sense of the sacred than we thought we had.
56:12
SPEAKER_02: How is it that that Christ alone gives us that sense?
56:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's something like um gigantic about him, and it's um it's that in a way, the more offensive thing to me is when Jordan Peterson says things like Christ is an example of something more than him.
56:33
SPEAKER_03: Actually, so I probably should be more upset about the human rights thing, but actually, because Christ is so precious to me, when he does that and he's dissing he thinks he's complimenting, but he's dissing him because he's saying, Oh, he's own he's less than this other thing, and I'm like, oh it like literally.
56:53
SPEAKER_02: So, what you're saying is that like the altruism thing for Jordan Peterson taking responsibility and shouldering the burdens of the world and marching up the hill is the real thing, and Christ is an echo of that.
57:04
SPEAKER_02: The Christ's story is an echo of the real thing, which is taking responsibility and standing up with his shoulders back.
57:10
SPEAKER_03: That makes me feel ill because I'm like, no, you don't you've not begun to grasp the Lord Jesus Christ.
57:17
SPEAKER_03: And that there's this morning when we were together thinking that Matthew 11 thing, and uh he says, um everything in heaven and earth has been handed over to me.
57:30
SPEAKER_03: And he says it with absolutely no sense of like everything in heaven and earth is mine.
57:37
SPEAKER_02: He goes on to say.
57:38
SPEAKER_03: He does, he's just like no, and he comes across that way.
57:41
SPEAKER_03: There's no sense of self-assertion about the fact he's saying, I run the universe, it all is in my hands, and and then he says, like, um, no one knows the son except the father.
57:53
SPEAKER_03: And then he goes, No one knows the father except the son, and those to whom the son explains him.
57:58
SPEAKER_03: And so just if we appreciate that for a minute, just to get the enormity of this guy, you know what he's saying, and people, the people with him who were living with him and like sleeping under hedges and things like that, went, Yeah, yeah, that I think that's that's that is what he is.
58:14
SPEAKER_03: And he's like saying, so the father is like that's the most high God, that's one of his titles, like this sense of the utterly transcendent person of the Trinity who lives at the highest level of reality on this throne, hundreds of millions of angels around him, and like it's generally you no one gets to see him.
58:30
SPEAKER_03: He's beyond if to see him is the die.
58:33
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, Oh no, I no one knows him, but I know him, and I'll I can I can explain him to people.
58:39
SPEAKER_03: But then before that, the bit I wanted to just notice is he says, No one knows me except the Father, and then he doesn't go, and those to whom get he's like, No, no, just no one ever understands me.
58:52
SPEAKER_03: And it's as if it's like this Jesus who it's like when when we think he walks around and he can walk on water, the weather will obey him, he knows what people are thinking, he can feed the hungry, answer every question, raise dead, command demons, and he does it effortlessly and he doesn't ask for it, he doesn't go, God will you do this.
59:14
SPEAKER_03: He just does it, and he does it with this utter gentleness and and like way in which he doesn't and when people come to him, he just helps them with this love and and and he gets to he doesn't he he like wants to like help them with what's really going on in their lives and all these sorts of things, but we can't there's something about him that's like more always more, always greater, and so we think what can unite all human beings so that the the lowliest person, the highest person is humbled in his presence, the lowliest person is utterly picked up and loved and valued and given joy, and that even if you're in like a solitary confinement in a prison, you can know freedom and joy if you can only know him, and there's so many testimonies of that, and then the greatest like Charlemagne or the these emperors would feel oh, I'm like a servant being I know him, and the there's something about that's so gigantic and beautiful and gentle.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_03: And so when we come to him, we think, no, like if you know him, all these things, the re the reason that human beings are as they are is because we were made to be like him.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_03: We were made to be like him, and so even the the person who's like, I hate religion, I hate Jesus, and things like that, they they get upset because even we, as pale imitations we are of the primal man, Jesus Christ, there's something about that that cries out.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_02: So he is the the the other Emmanuel, the original Emmanuel.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_02: So Emmanuel Kant cleaves asunder.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_03: Whereas this one holds it all together.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_02: He's the word who became flesh.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_02: And you cannot ground a universal humanism.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_02: I can't see how you can ground a universal humanism without God the human, right?
1:01:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_02: Like he he is God because you're basically with your humanism, you're basically saying humanity is top of the tree somehow.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, if we're top of the tree only in the Uvalno Harari sense, guess what will happen?
1:01:16
SPEAKER_02: Some will become virtual gods, others will be useless people.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_02: You cannot have a universalism without God the human.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_02: And then as soon as Christ takes flesh, he takes flesh for all humanity.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_02: He is the man for all men and women, right?
1:01:29
SPEAKER_02: And so a single man redeems women and men, and highborn and lowborn and and all that, so that humanity as such is given that supreme dignity that could not be given to it any other way.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_02: You cannot get you like it's it's just it's just by the nature of the case, you cannot have human rights without Jesus Christ.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_02: But it's not it's not the way of um let's do stepping stones towards Jesus Christ.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_02: It's a way of saying, hey, you know that echo that you hear.
1:01:59
SPEAKER_02: And you hear the echo every time you're going through Facebook, and there's some like video where somebody gives like some money to the homeless guy, and then you know what the homeless guy does with it?
1:02:07
SPEAKER_02: He goes and gives it to another homeless guy.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_02: And oh my goodness, the compassion, the humanity, the dignity, and the but that's that's an echo of of Christ who who you know slept rough for you and and and descended to the bottom for you.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_02: But you're not gonna get it until you open up scriptures and and have a look at Jesus for yourself, and then you're then you're looking at the original.
1:02:29
unknown: Yeah.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_02: As you see him walk on water, you're just like, oh, that that is the original from which everything else is the echo.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_03: No, I love that.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_03: And it's sometimes I remember having an experience because I'm not I'm not very good at musical things, but I remember I would I was listening to all different kinds of music, and I was trying to show somebody this collection.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_03: I was like, I quite like this, and I quite like that, and I quite like that.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_03: And then they went, Oh, that's because and they started to explain to me this much greater reality of music, and they were and then, and it was just mind-blowing to me because and suddenly so they instead of like they were like, You like that, and you like that, and that to me they were just like, Oh, I'm totally eclectic, and they went, no, no, because, and then they started to like sit, I wasn't and and for a moment I was standing next to them in this bigger reality of understanding the thing itself kind of thing.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_03: Yes, and then make and I it's like that.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_03: It's like come, come, don't, don't no, don't just come and stand next to Jesus and like get this vision now.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_03: Do you see?
1:03:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, imagine meeting beauty himself.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, goodness himself, truth himself.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_02: That's who Jesus is.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_02: And uh, we have an opportunity if you want to encounter Jesus, we've got a great course for you to do where you can just meet him and figure out who this Jesus is.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_02: He shows us who God is, what the world is like, and who you are.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_02: It's called 321.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_02: You can go to 321course.com.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_02: Uh go and do the course.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_02: You can binge it all in one go, you can take it over eight sessions, however you like to do it.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_02: Or you can find a church in which you can do it in person.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_02: We'd love you to do 321 and get to know this Jesus.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_02: But uh Paul Blackham, thanks so much for joining us.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_00: Thomas again here, just for some quick final notices.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_00: It was an absolute joy to have the Reverend Dr.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_00: Paul Blackham with us for the Speak Life Intensive last week.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_00: He brought so much wisdom and a relentless Christ focus, which was definitely evident in the conversation you just heard.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you want to get Paul's new podcast, which uh Glenn asked him about, the Christ-centered cosmic civilization, that's available on most of the podcast platforms.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_00: Just type it in, Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization, and it's a brilliant podcast.
1:04:38
SPEAKER_00: I've been working my way through it.
1:04:40
SPEAKER_00: Paul goes into all sorts of areas, the three heavens and mathematics, and how all these things kind of make sense when we truly believe that Jesus is Lord, and as Colossians 1 tells us, he's before all things, and in him all things hold together.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: And if you listen to Christ-centered cosmic civilization, you will also hear from Paul Blackham's son, PJ Blackham.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_00: And PJ also joined us for the intensive.
1:05:09
SPEAKER_00: It was a joy to have him along.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_00: And he has been working on something called Global Church History Project.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_00: So if you go to patreon.com forward slash global church history, you can join for a very reasonable uh monthly sort of donation, and you will get access to all sorts of essays and documents about more of this stuff.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Christ centered cosmic civilization, the three heavens.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_00: So do go and check those out.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_00: I'll put those links in the show notes.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, that's all from me.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening to the Speak Life podcast.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_00: I was in York at the weekend actually, and I had the great joy of meeting some listeners.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_00: If you're listening again, hello, it was it was wonderful to meet you.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_00: So lots of people in the UK are listening, but also around the world.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh we have listeners on every continent apart from Antarctica.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_00: So that's so encouraging because you know we make these resources and we send them out and we kind of pray, and a lot of the time we don't really know where they go or who's listening to them.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_00: So if you found this episode helpful or any of our other episodes helpful, why not give us a little rating and review on your podcast platform?
1:06:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh subscribe and tell your friends as well, and that will really help the podcast to get seen and heard by more people.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, there we go.
1:06:29
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.