SPEAKER_06

The Speak Life Podcast, sharing Jesus in everyday life.

unknown

Ah.

SPEAKER_03

We cannot be seen. Maybe we can't be seen, but there's a lot of things. Hello. Can you hear us but not see us? That's probably best, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. Now we're in HD. Paul and Glenn should be For those of you on the podcast, you've got blessed the blessed ones.

SPEAKER_03

So this is going out.

SPEAKER_02

And uh Well presumably. Maybe one of these six people who's watching could say something and let us know. But uh seven. Seven people.

SPEAKER_03

Hello everybody.

SPEAKER_02

Can hear but can't see, says PsyHollets. So there we are. Look. Hello Side. Well don't look, you know. Hello, side. Oh, look, we've had three comments now. What's this? We're somewhat invisible. Yep. Somewhat invisible. Everyone say, oh look, look, we're on the screen. We're on the screen. Oh we now. Yeah, we're all good. We're all good. We're in now. Okay. Good. Well, this has been our usual smooth beginning to the live cast, which is great.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks for sticking with guys. We value, we value you guys. But we're talking about how do we value people. Yes. There's a segue. Um not saying it's a good one, but there's there's No, but we're in. We're in. That's fine. Dawkins back on it. Dawkins, Richard Dawkins has tweeted. I mean, if if that's not newsworthy, then nothing is. And and his tweets over the weekend, they've had the quality that many of his tweets have had. It sounds as though you're coming in halfway on a conversation in which he's very agitated about something, but it's not exactly clear what.

SPEAKER_02

No, there's definitely a case of you feel he's responding to something, but you're not sure where it's come from. Right. You've missed half the conversation.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_02

So yes.

SPEAKER_03

So and we've done a bit of digging because he he tweeted out about eugenics. Um eugenics is good genes, okay? It's it's the the idea, that's what the Greek word means. It's it's about wanting to shape the the evolution of your species. Right. If Darwin has said that the fittest do survive, then a eugenicist says, yeah, and the fittest should survive. Okay. And so they want to do some social engineering, some social Darwinism, and make sure that the fittest kinds of people pass on their genes to the rest. And so that's what um Dawkins was tweeting about. Why he was tweeting about it, we weren't quite clear until Paul did a little bit of research about eugenics in the news. What did you discover?

SPEAKER_02

Well, yeah, and it just happened to come up, and I assume this is where this is what Dawkins is stepping off from about the appointment of this guy called Andrew Sabisky, who he's been appointed as an aide to Dominic Cummings, who I believe is an aide to Boris Johnson, so he's an aide of an aide. An aide to an aide. Aide to an aide. Um, who has appointed this guy as uh apparently Dominic Cummings put out a job description for more misfits and weirdos to join them in number 10, which I thought was perfect. Not more if we needed any more. And which this guy, Andrew Sabisky, has been appointed there for. And he's controversial because of some of the things he said in the past.

SPEAKER_03

Wait a minute, wait a minute, Paul. Are you saying that somebody has been appointed to a public office and journalists have gone through their social media posts? I know, would you believe it?

SPEAKER_02

Could you believe that such a thing would happen?

SPEAKER_03

They've discovered some controversial material. No way.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, they've definitely discovered some controversial material. Okay. Um so um back in 2014, he talked about in order to kind of get around unplanned pregnancies, there should be a kind of legal enforcement of long-term contraception from puberty. Um he was basically to avoid creating a permanent underclass.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

He said there.

SPEAKER_03

Which surely that is sterilizing the poor. Isn't that what he's saying?

SPEAKER_02

And that's exactly what a number of the articles pointed out. Yes. So he said that. Okay. He'd also commented about how in in the States he said um black people have a lower IQ than white people and are more likely to be um intellectually disabled. He said um an exact quote on Twitter I'm straight up in saying that women's sport is more comparable to the Paralympics than it is to men's. Oh man! Yep. And um and then, you know, again, and this is where the kind of eugenics things came from. Um he said eugenics are about selecting four good things. Intelligence is largely inherited and correlates with better outcomes, physical health, income, lower mental illness, and stuff like that. So he's he's obviously up for a bit of eugenics. He's wanted to get eugenics into the public discourse.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, let's start a conversation.

SPEAKER_02

It's not dysgenics, it's eugenic you means good. The good genetics the good types of genetics, right? That's the ones we want. And I mean so there was also this thing about he said about this narcolepsy drug. So there's also this thing about this narcolepsy drug, which potentially could help brain function, but also there was the potential of a life-threatening illness from it. And he said from a societal perspective, the benefits of giving everyone this drug once a week are probably worth a dead kid once a year. Wow. So He's done the maths.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, welcome to the Welcome to number ten, you know, come join us. Wow. Welcome to Brave New World, which also happens to be number ten. So he's done he's done the math. On the one hand, we'd all have slightly higher IQs. Is that is that the idea? Seemingly. But that would be worth a dead kid. Worth one dead kid. One dead kid. One kid, not two. He's not a monster. He's not gonna he's not gonna man. So uh So as of today, he still has a job. Well, who's I think so. We'll see. We'll see. So what was interesting is that yeah, so a lot of pieces have been made about this brave new world that Andrew Sabiski is kind of advocating for. But Richard Dawkins wants wants to jump in to the public discussion.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And instead, um he he says this, and I think he tweeted this out yesterday, February the 16th. Uh he said, it's one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It's quite another to conclude that it wouldn't work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs, and roses. Why on earth wouldn't it work for humans?

SPEAKER_02

Well, good, as long as we clear that up.

SPEAKER_03

Facts. Ignore ideology was the way he he finished that. Um isn't isn't that something? Isn't that something? Absolutely. Yes. So, yes, so he he he just wants everybody, you know. Well, we're all piling on to eugenics. And he's like, come on, guys, look, I know that we've got ideological, political, and moral objections to it. But it would work. It has that in its favor. We might actually pull this thing off. We've done it with cows. I'm just saying, I'm just saying. Everyone likes roses, right? That's eugenics. Just saying. I'm just saying. Don't don't bring your ideology at mirror, just the facts, just the facts, man. Um and then, um so obviously that tweet stirred up a little bit of controversy. And then Richard Dawkins is brilliant at this. He'll tweet these ridiculous tweets and then go, what?

unknown

What?

SPEAKER_03

I'm just saying what everyone else was thinking. So his follow-up tweet was, for those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. No, you don't, Richard. And we'll see why in a second. But Richard Dawkins continues, I simply said deploring it doesn't mean it wouldn't work. I just want you to be really clear. This thing could happen. It could totally fly. We have we have the technology. Um he goes on, just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed. I'm not saying we should. I'm just saying we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher or have higher IQ, which is yeah, which is the more content much more contentious um attribute that always gets uh hooked onto.

SPEAKER_02

And the real clincher at the end there.

SPEAKER_03

The clincher is, but heaven forbid that we should do it. Now you want heaven, Richard?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. That noise in the background was the irony meter exploding.

SPEAKER_03

Heaven forbid that we should. And we're gonna see that only does uh only heaven does forbid uh eugenics. I I don't think anything else can properly exclude that possibility. Um And then he he um did another follow-up tweet because for some reason that didn't clarify everything in people's minds. Wasn't able to s to stem the bleeding with that. And then he said, a eugenic pol policy would be bad. Uh no, it wouldn't. It's in the name. Good genics. Good genetics. We've already got it. We've we've established it's good genetics. It would be bad. I'm combating the illogic illogical step from X would be bad to so X is impossible. It would work. I just want you all to know, guys. It would work in the same sense as it works for cows. Let's fight it on moral grounds. Deny obvious scientific facts and we lose, or at best, derail the argument. So it just seems odd when all the flurry around Andrew Sabisky was about, oh gosh, this is a bit disturbing. The one thing that Richard Dawkins wants wants us all to be very aware of in these three tweets is it would work. It could work, people. I'm just saying I'm just saying it would work.

SPEAKER_02

Sure, it's bad, but it would work. I'm just yeah. And and as you said, you know, he says, I'm not saying we should do it, you know, I'm saying it's deplorable. But kind of well, Richard, your previous statements don't seem to back that up very much. No. So back in 2014, uh he was involved in a little tweet kind of conversation, which you can still find on his Twitter feed if you go and search for it. He has not taken down these tweets. No, so someone called at in your face NYR, presumably New Yorker, who's very in your face. I'm from New York! Forget about it. I said, I honestly don't know what I would do if I were pregnant with a kid with Down syndrome, real ethical dilemma, to which Richard Dawkins replied, abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice. So he said, I'm not saying you should do eugenics, that'd be bad, but I mean obviously I'm not talking not talking about the Down syndrome kids, let's get rid of them because they're obviously bad.

SPEAKER_03

But crazy. Like abort it and try again. That phrase has been echoing around my head for the six years since he tweeted that. Or bought it and try again. And then I forgot I forgot how horrendous the next sentence is. I bought it and try again, he says, it would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have a choice. Immoral, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Not just kind of like it would be hard, it would be difficult for you. It would be immoral. You are a moral monster for bringing a child with Down syndrome into the world. It's so be one of the good people.

SPEAKER_03

Abort it. Yeah. Be one of the good people. That's that's that's morality, that's good genetics, right? You know, it's yeah, it's not even, hey, well done you for loving your disabled child. Well done you for embracing your disability. You are immoral for allowing a disabled child into the human race. This is absolutely horrendous. I bought it and try again. So so when he tries to say he's against eugenics, in what sense, Richard, are you against eugenics? People might say that aborting on the basis of disability is not eugenics, but I think they must be m a far subtler philosopher than I am if they can figure out what the difference is between aborting on the basis of you know, which is why when I had my debate with Matt Delahunty, I I raised the issue of aborting people with Down syndrome. And this is happening. You know, there is there is no single uh human being in Iceland at the moment under the age of five with Down syndrome. You know why? Because they abort 100% of them. There's a non-invasive prenatal test, every mother gets it, and every mother aborts on the basis of disability. What do you call that if you've eliminated a subgroup of the human species? What do you call that if it's not eugenics? You know. And and Dawkins is uh on board with that. In fact, he thinks it would be immoral for those women to discover down's in the womb and to have the child. He thinks it would be immoral. Like, what do you call but he's not he's not for eugenics. Oh, heaven forbid. Heaven forbid.

SPEAKER_02

I think it's Richard Dawkins to pontificate on uh morality as well, you know, given given that his expertise lies merely in biological matters. Yes. Um to feel he's got any weight weighing in on these issues seems to be.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, he's he's pronouncing way uh outside of his domain. Um interestingly, ro Roger Marshall on uh TopChat has just said uh given the eugenic policies implicitly endorsed in The Descent of Man uh by Darwin, um, who is Dawkin's intellectual hero, uh Dawkins' disapproval on moral grounds sounds very weak. Um and yeah, and that's that's the issue. I mean, Darwin, um obviously Darwin didn't come up with the phrase survival of the fittest. I think that was Huxley who popularized that, but um he very much taught the survival of the fittest. The f the fittest do survive. Sure. But then it's a hop, skip, and a jump from saying the fittest do survive to saying the fittest should survive. Yeah. And if all we're dealing with is biological reality, then surely that's going to give us our mor our morality. You know, we don't believe in God, we don't actually believe in heaven, we don't actually believe in any platonic forms or ideals of morality. So all we're dealing with is the is the biological realm. So surely the only place we derive our shoulds is the biological realm. In which case, the fittest should survive. How do you stop Darwinism becoming social Darwinism? How do you actually do that unless you have a f a heaven to forbid it? And Darwin doesn't have a a heaven to forbid it. But he doesn't even seem to um be aware of the limits of his own framework, um, because he's a biologist who thinks that because he's a very clever scientist, and he is, that he can therefore pronounce on matters political, moral, and religious.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think you know, it's because he believes there is nothing more than the biological reality, he has to pronounce on those things from a biological standpoint. Right. Because he yes that's all he's got. Right. He doesn't believe there's anything else to rely on. So it's by constantly making noise from that end, you know, that perspective, he's just trying to bolster his position.

SPEAKER_03

Everything is biology. Um, exactly. And and it's so obvious that everything is not just biology. Um because of the paucity of his arguments when he gets out of his biological domain. Um something pointed out by Terry Eagleton uh when he reviewed uh Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. It's it's the most delicious little book review you've ever read in your life. Um back in 2006 when The God Delusion came out. Um the first the first line of it is imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British birds. And you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Um thank you, Terry Eagleton. He then goes on to say that the The God Delusion is all about banging at open doors and shooting at straw targets. And beautifully done. Beautifully done. But one one area in which Dawkins he looks at his biological knowledge and he then tries to apply it to other realms is he says, okay, um, in the biological realm, we don't have these um sharp differences between species. We might we might talk about different species. There's a species of of of dogs and a species of cats, but actually we're all on this this grand this grand continuum. Um and therefore we shouldn't have kind of on and off switches when we think about life. We should have a dimmer switch when we think about life. You know, it's a it's a continuous thing. Everything's on a continuum. And he takes that truth from biology, or what he would claim to be a truth from biology, and he then applies it to everything else, including morality. And so um he talks about the tyranny of the discontinuous mind. He doesn't see why anyone thinks in on and off terms. Why would anyone think in dimmer switch terms when they're thinking about the value of a human being? Surely the value of a human being is on a dimmer switch, right? It's it's it's not discontinuous, is it? And so he he wrote this in The Guardian in 2015. He said, Moral controversies, such as those over abortion and euthanasia, are riddled with the same infection, this idea of essentialism, this tyranny of the discontinuous mind. At what point is a brain dead accident victim defined as dead? At what moment during development does an embryo become a person? Only a mind infected with essentialism would ask such questions. An embryo develops gradually from single celled zygote to newborn baby, and there's no one instant when personhood should be deemed to have arrived. The world is divided into those who get this truth and those who wail, but there has to be some moment when the fetus becomes human. I just think that's hilarious. The world is divided into two camps. Any more than there has to be a day when a middle-aged person becomes old. It would be better, though still not ideal, to say the embryo goes through stages of being a quarter human, half human, three quarters human. The essentialist mind will recoil from such language, yes, and accuse me of all manners of horrors for denying the essence of humanness.

SPEAKER_02

So he he subtly switches there, doesn't he, between person and human. Yes. So he talks about when personhood arrives, and then he says, you know, but there has to people well, there has to be a moment when it becomes human, and you can say, No, you be a quarter human or not. I mean, but scientifically, right from conception, the the the embryo is human, you know, it's it's it's regardless of any any ideology, yeah, you know, just from a scientific standpoint, that you can't take that tissue and go, oh, this is going to become a dog, like or a cow. Like it's human. If it's a quarter human, is it three-quarters badger?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but what is going on in the rest? Like so, but I mean there is a distinction to be made. May maybe. Maybe. People might want to make a distinction between humans and persons. Actually, a humanist won't want to, and a Christian humanist won't want to, because they they just want to say all human beings are worthy of all provision and protection. They are persons. Legally speaking, they're to be treated as persons. Um but yeah, there is there is that distinction, perhaps, to be made between um your biological reality as a human and your legal reality as a person who has inviolable dignity. Um but uh Richard Dawkins wants to put it on a dimmer switch. And he uses fractions, a quarter, half, three-quarters. And I I wonder if he's not getting the historical connection because he's picked those uh particular fractions. I wonder if he chose the fraction three-fifths, whether that would jog his mind uh uh uh about this historical reality of we have valued people at less than 100%. Yeah. And you know, in in the history of the US, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a human being, you know, from 1787 right up until slavery was ended in in 1868, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a human being, right? And quite rightly we look back at that and say, ah, that's no good. That that that that that that is not ideal. No. Reprehensible. Yes, that would be another word for it. Abhorrence. Yes, evil. Any of those. Um But but Dawkins is like, oh no, but within the womb, one quarter, half, three quarters.

SPEAKER_02

I don't understand is why he feels it ends like at birth. Right. Like there's that switch.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Why is so why is such an on and off thing?

SPEAKER_03

Well, it's the magical birth canal, Paul. The magical birth canal conveys all your human rights on you.

SPEAKER_02

It's so dangerous, isn't it, to to talk of, you know, like particularly if you're saying, well, in in terms of to to these things are human, but actually maybe they're only half human or caught human, but where does that what defines when are you fully human? Right. You know? Is it when you're born? Right. So when you're two, when you're three, you know, is it can you decline back again? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

Like when I when I debated Matt Dillahunty, um I I you know he he said, I don't believe that humans have intrinsic moral value. I think they have incredible value, I don't think they have uh inherent intrinsic moral value. But I value them. And I said, You value them all? And he says, Yeah, well. And then and then he says, the humans who are able to conceive whether they have value or not, those are the ones that I value. Um which, you know, I d I've got a two-year-old, I'm not I'm not quite sure he's quite grasped his own human value right now. You know? No, and and neither would a a newborn or a bit younger than that. And Peter Singer, the the atheist ethicist, um, says that actually, you know, if why why do we draw the line at birth? You know, surely you could you could talk talk about post-borth uh post-birth abortions, couldn't you? Um and this is why atheists like Peter Singer would never sign a humanist manifesto, because they're not humanists. Yeah. They think humanism is speciism. For precisely the reasons that Dawkins gives here that we're all on a continuum. And therefore, why should why should we value um uh a sort of a non-cognizant six-month-old baby when like a pig might have more, you know, more conscious activity going on. You know, that's a baboon definitely does than a six month old baby. Um you need to have a discontinuous mind. You need to have the on or off switch. You can't have the dimmer switch and human rights. Um yet one more reason why it is heaven that forbids you to think.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I think that's something that we we miss, don't we? So so people do kind of think, well, you know, this these things are an obvious thing. That we it's obvious that actually everyone should have their human rights and stuff, but actually that's not the case at all when you boil it back with and I think, you know, we I can't remember if it came up in your discussion with Tom Holland, but y certainly the that notion of being that we s we swim in the water of Christianity, um but we're so unaware of how infused we are with the Christian worldview that we just assume that human rights are there. Right. Um the idea that people shouldn't have human rights or don't have human rights i we can't even conceive of that almost without being pulled out of it.

SPEAKER_03

Um that was my experience last week. So I went to Dundee University last week to to speak uh to the students there, and one of my talks was on where do human rights come from. And you could just hear the cogs whirring within students' minds. They they'd never really considered, was it? Well, you just have human rights. Yeah. Of course you have human rights. Yeah. And it was like, and I'm so glad in one sense that this is this bedrock kind of morality that people have. Yeah. Oh, but that that would violate equality. Well, I'm glad you believe in equality, but why do you believe in equality? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You need to and like say you need well, we've said before, you need to have the foundation, don't you, for it? Because if you don't have the foundation, there's no reason you can't just start to pick it apart. Yes. You know, and actually that is the the benefit is that of course, even if people haven't thought about it, people still do want those human rights. Yes. People do generally kind of go, oh well, of course people should have these things, but they're not necessarily inherent. No. Like they're they exist. And I think you know, we've got a clip from uh Yuval Noah Harari where he talks about human rights and you know whether they're obvious or not, really.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, let's have a look at that. Most legal systems today in the world are based on a belief in human rights. But what are human rights? Human rights, just like God and heaven, are just a story that we've invented. They are not an objective reality. They are not some biological fact about Homo sapiens. Take a human being, cut him open, look inside, you will find the heart, the kidneys, neurons, hormones, DNA, but you won't find any rights. The only place you find rights is in the stories that we have invented and spread around over the last few centuries. They may be very positive stories, very good stories, but they are still just fictional stories that we've invented.

SPEAKER_02

The thing I like about is i what he says is you can fact you say, well, you Yeah. Like and I like because people don't necessarily think about it, they just assume they're there. But he he helpfully points out, you know, but they don't have to be there.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. He said, if I cut you open, I'll find heart, lung, liver, neurons. Yeah. Where where exactly are your human rights? Yeah. Where are you gonna find them?

SPEAKER_02

Nothing there to weigh, you can't put it under the microscope and discover it.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Yeah. But he says that yeah, it exists in stories that are just like the stories of God, right? Which also he would say is a total fiction, no objective reality to it. Um, but uh it has helped us to cooperate as a society, to believe these stories, to tell these stories. And and so, you know, let's let's keep on telling these stories, but I don't know, until another storyteller comes along and says, I've I've got a dream of a master race. Who's with me? Yeah, you know, absolutely. And at that stage, you know, there's the master race vision and there's your human equality vision. Like what what is it up here that says that's wrong and that's right?

SPEAKER_02

Sure, absolutely. And again, it just comes back down to that. It's the foundation, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

If you've got no foundation, you know, nothing or nothing higher to appeal to, yeah. It comes down to well, who's gonna win in this battle, or it's whoever, whoever's the strongest comes out on top. Right. We can bully you through this and and win it.

SPEAKER_03

So unless there's objective moral value, everything just becomes about force. Yeah. And I I've got more power than you to impose my my will. Um Christoph Keating has made uh uh the good point that uh often the three-fifths of a human um point is misunderstood. It was actually the slavers who wanted their slaves to be valued at fully one slave because the more slaves were in the state, the more representatives they could send to Congress. Um that's that's true. That's true. Um it's it's it's come to it's come to represent something um different perhaps to to to what it has what it did mean historically. But still that that idea of somebody being worth 60% of a human being is out there. Um and and it's a it's precisely what allows you to say, hey, let's everybody take this drug. It will increase IQ and it will mean that one kid dies every year. It what it means is that that kid is not infinitely valuable, that that kid can be traded off against all these other goods. Um or like Richard Dawkins talking about Down syndrome in the womb, um, those people are definitely worth less. A quarter, you know, but perhaps perhaps they're even an eighth, according to Richard Dawkins.

SPEAKER_02

And the problem is it's just there's no it's uh they just become arbitrary lines like as to where you decide, you know, is it one kid? Is it about the numbers of people? Yeah. Or is it about people's physical ability? Yeah. Is it blonde hair and blue eyes? You know, what is it? You know, and there's nothing to stop you going in any direction with it if there's nothing there to underpin it.

SPEAKER_03

And while we're on the subject of slavery, the the only way you can end slavery is if you get rid of this consequentialist mindset. The consequentialist mindset is a moral action is moral if it adds to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. And so you can trade off even the death of people if it will somehow, you know, through the calculus, raise the well-being of the rest of society in general. And the thing was, the slavers being in charge of these measures of well-being, they would always say, Well, it's great for the economy. I mean, our numbers are through the roof because we've got these slaves. Um, the only people who are ever going to be able to end slavery are not going to be consequentialists. They're going to be people who believe in moral absolutes, who have their Bibles open, who go to the first page and see that we're all created in God's image. As we'll see. Um Justin Haak has said, it's good to have quiet time just to reflect. Um, so I think he's commenting on our uh uh on our technological failures there. Right. Will we have other quiet time? Do you reckon we could give a go of the second clip, which um no, probably not. Okay. There is there's another clip we're gonna play you, which is um uh from the Jordan Peterson ding versus Sam Harris uh debates. Oh, you got it?

SPEAKER_01

It's an ordinary glass. I know it looks just like that one, but this is the glass that uh Elton John drank from his last concert here. Yeah, right? Right, right. Um what do you want to pay me for it, right? Right. It it could be that you know you're just the biggest Elton John fan ever, and you it's worth quite a lot to you. Now that is it's a kind of evanette, it's not value intrinsic to the glass, but it is it is it is a where's the value located? Well, it's a it's a measure in in the change this provokes in your experience. So this is the the reason why Israel and uh the Israelis and the Palestinians can't negotiate pure as though their problems could be solved by a real estate transaction is because they have irrational and irreconcilable claims upon land and building. Do you think they're any more irrational than the claim that that glass is worth something which is a very important thing to do? No, no, no. It's like that. The the true analogy here, the complete analogy, is rather like we're about to fight over Elton John's glass, and Elton John was never here.

SPEAKER_03

He was basically picking up a glass of water, and he said, This glass of water in itself is worthless, but if I told you that Elton John, who's just you know played the the stadium that they were in, um, it was the glass that he drank from, it suddenly becomes worth a heck of a lot more than the contents of that glass of water. And then Sam Harris uses that as an analogy for Palestine, and he says, look, we've got this strip of land at the end of the end of the Mediterranean, and its market value is being like inflated massively by these religious stories about the significance of the land. And there's a Christian story, and there's a Jewish story, and there's a Muslim story, and they are massively inflating the value of that piece of land to the point where people are ready to die for a strip of land, and they can't handle it like it's a real estate transaction. Why can't we get rid of these mythological stories and just deal with the land of Palestine like just the land that it is? Let's value it at what the market will bear. Sure. Now, at that stage, hooray, I'm I'm on board. No problem. No problem. But when it comes to the human person, what what if the glass is not an analogy of the land of Palestine? What if the glass is an analogy for the human person? Well, at that stage, um, I'm very glad that there is a story of someone from outside humanity who values the human person and values the human person far above the material contents that lie within my skin. Yeah. Because the material contents that lie within my skin, I'm worth about the same as a Big Mac. Like, if you boil if you boil down the minerals within me. Yeah. Or or how else are you gonna measure me? Maybe if I sold my kidney, I get I get more than I get more than a fibre for for my kidney.

SPEAKER_02

But and isn't another danger in in in in that as well, is saying the value of you know, you've got the value of the glass, you know, which is is the thing, and but then the contents of the glass as well, potentially you could be talking about about the like qualities as well. Right. So a glass of you know, you might look at one person and say, well, they're a glass of water, and water's not very exciting, is it? I'm Perrier, baby. Exactly, you know. Um how do you start judging?

SPEAKER_03

Which is which is nice.

SPEAKER_02

It's not bad. But you know, and you begin to see how how dangerous it is to start saying, well, we can value this this person based on what they're actually worth. But what they're worth is is basically what we decide is valuable and some people are a Big Mac.

SPEAKER_03

Some people are a Big Mac meal. Yeah. Some people are a mini McFlurry, you know. That's all you are. You're a mini McFlurry. Um yeah, so it's a very good thing. Like if you want that glass to be worth something, you need there to be an Elton John. And if you want the human person right to be worth something, you need an Elton John on the sky.

SPEAKER_02

Human value is entirely dependent on the existence of Elton John. That's what we're saying.

SPEAKER_03

A grand Elton John, some kind of transcendence in the sky, Reg Dwight. Um singing the circle of life. Yeah. Um, but I I I find that useful. That if you want value to the human, you need something beyond the human that gives it value. Or you just value humans by their intrinsic qualities, right? They're their demonstrable economic value. Um at that stage, that's a pretty dystopian vision.

SPEAKER_02

Yep. Well, you know, and that's where you end up with your your your Dawkins, where you can start saying, well, you know, these people, you know, these people with Down syndrome, they're not gonna add as much value as maybe this person, so you know, we'll get rid of them. Right.

SPEAKER_03

You know, and it's not even maybe, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Dawkins says, do it, and we are doing it. This is this is what gets me. Like, it would be immoral not to. It would be immoral not to.

SPEAKER_02

As he says.

SPEAKER_03

Like, we have these conversations as though eugenics is either hypothetical or historical. It's not hypothetical.

SPEAKER_04

It's not historical.

SPEAKER_03

It's happening. Yeah. It's actually happening. But where where have human rights actually come from, then, Paul? Let's let's let's give let's give some answers here now.

SPEAKER_02

Well, yeah, I mean we and and it comes again like we we keep using the uh the phrase, don't we, of something above or a foundation. And it and it the reason we all believe in human rights, or we cling to it so dearly, is because it's grown out of this Christian culture. Um it's grown out of the Bible. You know, effectively I say Christian culture, which is grown out of the Bible. Um we're so infused by Christianity in the West. Um, like it like we said, it's the water we swim in, you know, the air we breathe, that we don't even really realise it has that Christian foundation to it. We just assume it's it's obvious in the world. But you know, it goes back to, doesn't it, the kind of emargo day back in Genesis 1, you know, 27, God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. You know, right there on kind of page one of the Bible, you have this thing that says, Well, God made all of man and in his image, male and female, and and that's where we kind of that have this basis for all people being made in the image of God and being made equal and having an equal value, whereas you know, and that is a that comes out of the the Judeo-Christian Bible, you know, biblical view, because that's not the view of a uh a Greek or a Roman, you know. I remember didn't we we had a conversation once you and I s where it was something like you know, if you said to a Roman soldier, you know, here's this man down here who is born lame and you are equal with him, the Roman soldier would be like, What are you even talking about? We're clearly not equal. Look at me, look at him. Yeah, what does equality even the word equality loses all meaning if you're saying that we are equal. Right. Um but of course, you know, that's viewing things by different uh metric there, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_03

Um totally. And and you know, the image of God was in in the ancient nearies maybe something you'd uh uh attribute to the king. Um and then beneath the king there's this vertiginously steep hierarchy of value and right down at the bottom of the surf some uh slaves, right? Um but this is like from page one, all all people are in the image of God. Yeah, just this level Yeah, amazingly amazingly flat. Um but then you don't want to leave it at Genesis 1, because I I think that the the story develops and continues as it goes through the Old Testament into the New Testament. And so maybe the next jumping off spot would be uh Mark chapter 1 and the baptism of Jesus, um, because here comes Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God, um, and he wants to reveal to us what God really is like. So if if we are in God's image, what is God really like? Well, just as Jesus was coming up out of the baptismal waters, he saw heaven being torn open, and the spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven. You are my son, whom I love with you, I am well pleased. And actually the doctrine of the Trinity is really at the heart of our understanding of persons. Um persons are things that we had to grapple with really, really seriously in the first few centuries AD, as people tried to put together their Trinitarian theology. And they started to figure out well, if God is one being in three persons, and three persons in one being, then what is a person? And and how do we d define these persons? Because here we've got father, son, and spirit who are distinct, who are non-interchangeable. They're they're in this asymmetric relationship. You can't just swap them around. Um the father is always the one who sends the son, the son never sends the father.

SPEAKER_05

Right.

SPEAKER_03

Um the father, the father is pouring love into the son, the son is pouring um himself into the spirit, the spirit out to the world. There is there is uh theologians call it a taxis, there is a way of their being that means you cannot dissolve the persons into one another, you cannot swap the persons between one another, there is an inviolability to these persons. And so you got you got persons and you've got equality, because even though the son never sends the father, the son is ontologically equal to the father. They take different roles, but they have an absolute equality of these persons, and they live a life of love. The father loves the son, says, uh, you know, you're my son who I love with you, I'm well pleased. The spirit is poured out onto him. So there is a moral realm that is God's life, and that life is love. So from the doctrine of the Trinity, you get this concept of persons that are inviolable, and you can't trade persons off against anything else. The most fundamental reality in all existence is persons. Which is brilliant because it it means that you can't just trade off persons against some greater good. You know, persons are inviolable, there is equality between them, and the good life is the life of love. So that's another thing to add into the biblical story of of uh of human worth.

SPEAKER_02

And then I mean you can follow it through into kind of Mark 10, uh verse 42, where it says Jesus called them together and said, You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them, not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all, for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. And there you've got that kind of what feels in many ways like that upside down system, doesn't it? The one who is the powerful one, the one who is the strong one comes down seemingly to this position of weakness to serve. Um and you know, and and and it's through that it's that kind of thing, isn't it, that w where we have our there's a nobility to the the the weakness, isn't there? You know, that we have because of what Jesus has done. Yeah through the way he steps down and serves, you know, and and so what you see there is not simply I'm the strong one, therefore I go on and bow to me. Yeah. There's the the powerful steps down in order to serve you know those who are weak as well, as becoming weak. Um and that's a huge thing in our society. You know, we again we we do think it's good to give to charity and care for the vulnerable and the poor and the weak and the oppressed and all those kind of things. And again, we just assume that those, of course, are the things that you believe because they're good things. But where do they come from? Well, they come out of this biblical worldview.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. It doesn't come from the Romans, that's for sure. You know, the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. Yeah, obviously. What else is there? You know? Like it was it was just obvious to the Roman mind that you would you would love your friend and you would hate your enemy, and you would you would not only try to do your friend good, but you would try to do your enemy down. And that that's a moral thing to do. And where do we get this idea that a society is judged by the way that it handles the the marginalized, the weak and the poor? You know, from from this stuff, from the Jesus stuff. Um and then we could um trace it through to Galatians chapter three. So the Apostle Paul um he he says in uh one of his earliest letters, so in Christ Jesus, this is Galatians 3 verse 26, in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who are baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So suddenly there is a community of utter equality, where slaves and their masters are in the same church, and maybe, maybe even the slave is an elder in the church and the master isn't. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And and they greet each other with a holy kiss. I was only hearing about this quite recently. It's such a common command in the New Testament. It's like five times in the New Testament. It's it's the most disobeyed command in all the Bible. I think that means a handshake though, right? You know, we've got to contextualize, don't we? Um but why was a holy kiss? Because you would never kiss slaves in your household. It's a family thing. A holy kiss is a family thing. You you kiss one another who are family and you don't kiss your inferiors. And the interesting thing is, yeah, to greet one another with a holy kiss is is to treat everybody in the congregation as family. Right. No matter what their station is. Out outside the church, they might have many different stations, but within the church, there's this incredible, you know.

SPEAKER_02

I'm uncomfortable when people go for a hug during communion. Right. That's because you're lording it over them. Yes, yes, that's exactly it.

SPEAKER_03

It's the slippery slope to eugenics. I normally just hold out my ringed finger and kneel before me.

SPEAKER_02

Oh dear.

SPEAKER_03

And uh and tracing those things through, d will we be able to watch Tom Holland? Yeah. Um Tom Holland, secular historian, I I was able to um interview him last year, and uh he's sort of traced through this whole issue that human rights and equality they are not these magical things that hang in the ether. Um, they have developed out of Christian views. Let's have a look. Some of the things that are often kind of um said to me, especially by by humanist friends, they will they will say um um obviously Christianity has played a part in Western liberal values, um, but uh even without Jesus Christ, we we wouldn't have gotten to where we've gotten to.

SPEAKER_06

No, I mean I mean and and it's so odd that it tends to be people who who valorize science and Darwin and the theory of evolution. But I mean I'm entirely with Stephen J. Guild on this, who says, who famously said that um if you rewound the clock of a History, you would not get humans. There's nothing inevitable about the way that evolution has gone. If you know a creature in the Precambrian gets squashed, then potentially the entire course of life has changed. We would have eight fingers. There's nothing inevitable at all about the emergence of the qualities or the value, the values, or um the teachings of Christianity at all.

SPEAKER_03

But you can't.

SPEAKER_06

And they were disappointed from other sources. Well, you know, I mean, if if you want a sense of what the world might have looked like without Christianity, you could look at India where you have very rich philosophical traditions, you have very rich traditions of worshiping gods. You don't have something that emerges and essentially wipes that out. So there's a kind of churn of conversion, but because the difficulty of becoming Jewish is such, it would never rise, you know, it would never become universalist on the scale that Christianity does. But you could imagine that there are you know people continue to worship the traditional gods, and that there are kind of philosophical traditions that go back many, many thousands of years. Um, and you know, there's no place there for Christianity in that that that kind of alternative world.

SPEAKER_03

And could we though have generated some kind of universal human rights and that that sort of stuff?

SPEAKER_06

And materials. Why would you? I mean, the the idea of human rights I mean the idea that human rights kind of hangs in the ether waiting to be discovered is is as theological as believing that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead and sits at the hand of God the Father. Yes. I mean it's it's it's it's it requires a leap of faith. Yes. The difference is that Christians recognise that belief in the divinity of Christ requires belief. Whereas lots of people just assume that human rights are something that exists but they're not. They're the the result of specifically legal developments in medieval Christendom. The emergence of of um this theory by the canon rights lawyers, like by the canon lawyers in from the 12th century onwards. It doesn't just spontaneously emerge.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. But you hold dear to your heart those liberal values. You personally hold dear to your heart that the weak should not be cast off and that there's there's an equality of all the things.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, but I recognise now that they're not, you know, that they're Christian values. Yes, yes. And of course, the what it opens up is the is the recognition that that actually without Christian faith, then ultimately what is the underpinning for that? Yes. And the the the kind of idea of that that humanists propagate that somehow science proves this, I mean, it seems to me grotesque. Right. You know, science science is a mirror in which you see what you want to see reflected back. So the Nazis use science to justify racial genocide, and liberals use it to justify uh, you know, let's you know hug the world. Yes. But both of them reflect the cultural prejudices of the people who are looking in that mirror of science.

SPEAKER_03

There it is. Yeah, we should have displayed that, shouldn't we?

SPEAKER_02

Well, he's Tom just says it very succinctly and straight to the point, doesn't he? Yeah, everything we've been saying really is exactly what he's just said. So I love the laugh though when I asked him could could we have gotten human rights for that Christiano?

SPEAKER_03

No, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02

Completely dismissive. No, no, of course not. Of course not. Don't be silly. Don't be ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so there is just that yeah. And and and he says there is one thing I disagree with when he said that um to believe that human rights sort of hangs there in the ether waiting to be discovered is as theological as believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father. In a sense, I think um belief in human rights is less open to scientific inquiry, it's less less open to testing, um, precisely because what you said earlier, um, I'm not gonna test whether I treat you equally according to you know in any kind of attributes that you have. You know, I'm not actually gonna do an empirical test on you to figure out whether I should treat you equally. I'm just gonna take it on faith. Sure. Whereas I think there is actually evidence for the resurrection. Right. I don't think there is evidence for human rights. No. No, that's fair. It's a faith position. You know. And it's on the resurrection.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes people st I just wonder whether you know, people say, Oh, but is there any evidence for God? You know, and all that kind of big thing. Yeah. I've I've never said back, you know, right, I've never asked anyone, well, you know, do you believe in human rights? What's the evidence for that?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Which is the moral argument for God's existence. You know, what what what what can you point me to at all that is any kind of empirical fact that will get you human rights that you believe in. Whereas I could at least give you some about why I believe the resurrection.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Totally. That is the moral argument for God's existence. You know, if there are objective moral values, then they are not going to be derived from the biological realm, because the biological realm is just red in tooth and claw, right? It's just the fittest do survive. Yeah, yeah. And you know, any morality you get out of that is just that the fittest should survive, which is not moral, right? So if there is such a thing as objective moral values, then it's not going to have a material cause. So so there is this material, moral reality, and because it's moral, it's personal, right? And we've just spoken about the the doctrine of the Trinity there, in which you've got persons, equality, and love sort of united together. That seems to be the best explanation for a moral realm.

SPEAKER_05

Sure.

SPEAKER_03

And without such a God, um then it's a free-for-all, isn't it? Yeah, whatever you want to do. So literally, heaven forbids eugenics, nothing else does. So Richard Dawkins, thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you. Um and if you want more, yeah, do check out the Delahunty versus Scrivener debate. Um because he he was constantly kind of saying, Oh, it'd be great if God could actually show himself and show that he existed. And I was like, well, that's not really the topic. We're gonna talk about objective moral values. But the more you press into objective moral values, uh the more the more I think you see that God is the grounding for these things. Um so yeah, check that out. Good. Speaking of that debate, um, we actually had a uh a letter um recently by by someone who um watched the debate. They were a Christian, but they weren't really sure about the value of debates and apologetics and evangelism and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean the thing was that sometimes these debates just they can be a bit abstract intellectual kind of exercises. And you know, I can I can understand that, you know, like certainly I I know a lot of people who don't watch these kind of things because they go they just say, Oh, well, you're not really interested in that, you know, they never they don't really think through these questions, you know, it's not their thing. But the thing he was struck by, interestingly, was the when the issue of abortion came up, right, um, and the you know, particularly the elective abortion of babies with Down syndrome, and he said how his eyes were open to the implications of what happens to the weak the weak over time in a society post-GORD. And actually the conversation between you and Matt kind of opened his eyes to that so that he was able to kind of say, actually, you know, this isn't an abstract thing where these two people are just having a bit of a ding-dong about you know who's on the right side of this here, but it actually makes a difference to whether babies are being killed. And he said, you know, actually he was at the gym, you know, with his personal trainer and he saw another he saw someone else training as it with a personal trainer when the other person had Down syndrome. Um and you know, he said, you know, I'll just read what he said. Um and I saw a person, a child of God, my brother, living just as I live with the same desires and motivations to grow and improve and become more than what he is. And I saw that as a society we might decide that his life does not have value, then he might be undeserving of life because he's weak, and I'm strong, so I get to keep going to the gym and working to become stronger.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, isn't it? Yeah. And then, you know, the aid to the Prime Minister's aide is brought on board and he's trying to, you know, bring back eugenics, and Richard Dawkins wants us to know it would work. To which we say, no, it is working. Yeah, you're you're doing it. Yeah, it's happening. At your behest, um, there are whole people groups being eliminated. And to the degree that we walk away from Jesus, we will walk into this pit. And what's been so interesting is you know, it sounds it sounds so fundamentalist to say it's either Jesus or the pit, right? It's either Christ and him crucified or it's the abyss. You know, it's it sounds like you know, it sounds like the heaven or hell, you know, binary of of the kind of fundamentalists we don't like. But historically and ethically, historically and ethically, it's it's like if you don't like that truth theologically, look at the history. Look at what's happening. And to the degree that we walk away from Christ, we walk into a pit. Um The only thing forbidding eugenics is heaven. And in particular, the heaven from which Christ descended to be with us, to be for us, to die for us, to be our slave, and to rise again, to invite us all into that same family. That is the only foundation for equality.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So that'll do. That'll do. That'll do. That'll do, Peg. Richard? Honestly, repent. Repent. This is this has gone on long enough. Um and lives are at stake. So let's return to Jesus. Um, thank you very much, guys, for joining us. Lots of great chat on um Top Chat. Roger Marshall um says, I've heard Christians argue that being in the image of God inherently implies being in conscious relationship, and that the image of God is only real when the possibility of such relationship exists. Um conscious relationship, they they seem to be reading back into the Hebrew, something that's that's really not there. Um certainly because I'm in God's image, because I reflect Him, it enables me to go on to have a relationship with God, but not everyone in the image of God has a relationship with God. Um so quite clearly, the image might um uh make possible a relationship, a conscious relationship with God, but it's not the same thing as a conscious relationship with God. Obviously, the person who's making that argument wants to say that um the unborn are not in God's image until they are conscious. Is that is that the argument? That's that's not what's inherent to the image of God. It makes possible a conscious relationship, and obviously the feet the fetus is possibly going to going to attain consciousness. Um but that unborn person is already in the image of God, I think I would say. Anyway, um keep the comments going on the YouTube videos and uh do be sharing our stuff around there. Uh share us on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on YouTube. Uh, all your subscriptions on YouTube will really help us to get seen. So please do subscribe and click that bell uh so that you'll receive all our videos. Yeah. Brilliant. Thanks so much for joining us, and thank you, Paul. Yeah, pleasure as always. And we'll see you next week. God bless. Bye bye. Take care.