Secular Humanism vs Christianity with Bart Campolo & Eric Huffman (Round 2!)
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- Secular Humanist Bart Campolo, son of famous evangelist Tony Campolo, was the very first guest on Maybe God five years ago, but the conversation didn’t quite go as the Maybe God team had hoped. This time around, guest host Justin Brierley moderates a conversation between Bart and Maybe God host and Christian pastor Eric Huffman. Bart and Eric explore why they BOTH completely changed their worldviews about a decade ago, and what challenges them most about the other’s worldview.
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I appreciate this podcast very much. I've been here from the beginning, so, watching this feels like a full circle moment with Bart. I'm not a PK, but I still feel like I'm a kindred spirit with Bart. I was raised in evangelical Christianity, I led worship in high school, closed my eyes through every prayer, and enjoyed being one of those "nice kids" that Bart talks about with his youth group.
I came out as gay at 20, and my life was pretty much flipped upside down. Nearly all my friends left me. Then, I got a duo diagnosis of severe Ulcerative Colitis and Chron's disease. I would not be here today if it wasn't for the support of my folks.
My God journey has been a pretty frustrating one. I do my best to believe that God is the "friend that sticks closer than a brother" particularly with the experience of having all of my friends abandon me. But then, I wonder if I believe that because I hate the alternative that this is all there is; that I feel like my mind is a universe of questions with no ultimate answers. I personally haven't seen any miraculous healings, and am pretty skeptical when I hear stories... but, I'm also not willing to call them all liars either. Full disclosure, I resent the idea that this is all there is, and that my deep longings for ultimate answers are a cruel accidental illusion fabricated by a cold and meaningless universe.
I am thankful for conversations like this, and I feel like they will become increasingly more important as we are rocketing toward a world that, due to AI, will make what is real and what is not indistinguishable. I'm pretty concerned about the ramifications of the AI genie coming out of the bottle. What kind of world will the next generation inherit? How will we navigate the chaotic growing pains of this new world we are entering?
Thanks for this podcast. The past decade has been extremely difficult and disorienting. I'm thankful for the internet to give me a window into the rest of the world, enabling me to see how others are processing. It makes me feel less alone.
To Bart... I hope He's as good as they say He is too.
Wow, Kenny - thanks for sticking around with us all these years! And thanks for tuning into this round two conversation. Know that we're praying for your healing, and thankful for your questions and support.
Awesome discussion, I appreciate your objectivity and love/care/respect for each other, in light of different views.
I am a former student from Eastern & sat in many of Tony’s classes. Interestingly, I now am on Bart’s path. I love this dialogue and it makes me so happy to know that we can have these different beliefs, but bridge together on the same core beliefs that Bart alluded to. Great conversation! ❤
Perhaps this is more of tge emergent Church movement. Which predated deconstructionism and its present popularity.
I enjoyed the exchange of ideas and first met Bart when he was about 11 years old . Tony would bring hime to practice with the Eastern College Basketball Team and I was the team captian back inthe early 1970's. Since that time we reconnected when he was the Humanist Chaplain at USC. The one point that I can't seem to get out of my mind, is the statement , World view Humility". It seems that Eric has hijacked LOVE. By that I mean he comes across as saying how could anyone express the emotion of love without his world view. Eric has created a story about a being that he considers the source of everything Good and loving in the world and if you can't wrap your head around premise than you really have no foundation for your feelings. That seems to me to be playing tennis without a net. I would love to know how Eric can make a statement like this!
LOVE the TM Luhrmann reference by Bart
"Love can be replaced with..." Eric, really? I appreciated Bart's response to your illogical and unreasonable assertion. Love just works for us as a species. I gave up church attendance with Covid and I have taken the lid off my God box. Now I am able to be more of my authentic self rather than choosing silence to be acceptable in the church box. It was good to see a generally respectful dialogue but abortion - Eric? Did you really need to go there? Please quit trying to control what women do with their bodies. It's harmful.
Eric, I'm sorry, but it seemed you ended with a non sequitor. Bart mentioned that the non-answering of prayers was a cause of stress and sorrow for many current and ex believers. You finished by repeatedly saying that Bart's Ministry was an answer to prayer for many people as if to try and counter Bart's proposition. If you were just trying to say that his care and compassion blessed many people we could all agree, but the manner in which you said it was as if it were a counter argument. The problem is, how can one accurately conclude that 'x' is the answer to prayer 'y'? The only way you can conclude it with any certainly is to assume that God is micromanaging everything, and that he is in minute control of everything that happens. I'm afraid that leads to even worse conclusions.
Just remember the loving words of Jesus in Luke 19 verse 27.." But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them-bring them here and kill them in front of me.’” That's not a loving statement. Or Matthew 10:34, I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law
At ~ 33:35 Bart says, (in bold),
*"Absolute is a big word for any truth claim. Like you know. Even the most rigid scientific mindset would sort of go, like this is the best narrative we have."*
One might easily call all things we firmly believe "provisional truths." Or the very best sense I can make of things given all of the available data and the best thinking by the best minds on any particular issue.
*"This is the best explanation we have of why there's lightning. Or of, you know, how moss grows. Or of where the stars come from. You know for a long time, Galileo's vision of the universe was the top of the line science and then Newton came along and said actually ahh … And you go like well what if you believed in Galileo and you're like, oh then you just change your mind just like oh that's a better explanation that explains the facts more clearly. I'm switching over to that one."*
That lines up exactly with what I said above. Galileo had the best explanation of the available data for a time. When better ideas of the same data or even better data came along, we switched without hesitation.
*And so what I would say is, like the evidence I've seen so far is that human beings evolved as a tribal species and that we're literally hardwired in our brains to thrive in Cooperative relationships, that we don't do well as a species in isolation. That we don't do well alone. That we're …*
But that is not really the case. Or at least it depends on what you mean by it. Eric still has a good point, that you avoid living as your worldview rightly dictates. You use the phrase "that we're literally hardwired in our brains" (never mind that there aren't any LITERAL hardwires in my brain 🙂) but that doesn't get you what you wish to get, did it? To use the word used by Douglas Wilson in a debate with Christopher Hitchens, "thing fizz." ua-cam.com/video/uoNxbSPKMag/v-deo.htmlsi=KWUSBh4EGRkrNEoO&t=1620 Search for a UA-cam video "Sugar and Sulfuric Acid" That is how those chemicals "fizz." I put my hand on a hot stove and the chemicals that make up my body fizz in such a way as to have me remove my hand from the stove. There isn't much of a mystery there. It is just chemistry doing its thing. Remove the ability for me to obtain food or water or oxygen, and different chemistry takes place within this sack of chemicals.
I think that the thing that Eric was getting at before the 33;35 point was that the humanist materialist (as opposed to the nihilist materialist) can't help but object to some of the "human chemistry" that takes place. The problem is that it is not following the lead of the guy who accepted Newton after Galileo's explanation seemed deficient. To follow such a lead (contra Bart) would have us affirm Richard Dawkins's denial of "good" and "evil" as he did here,
"In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
or Ruse here,
"The position of the modern evolutionist is that morality is a biological adaptation, no less than our hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when someone says, 'love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is illusory."
or Nielsen here,
"We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me…. Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of fact, will not take you to morality."
But as atheist/agnostic Douglas Murray points out (again before Justin Brierley), "Why it's almost impossible to live as a nihilist: Douglas Murray & NT Wright"
Bart, why can't you live as a nihilist?
I’m currently an ordained Baptist minister with two theology degrees who works as a chaplain. I started considering myself a Humanist about five years ago. For me, my journey out of the faith was primarily as a result of the hiddenness of God. I suppose that was true in part for Bart as well.
In my opinion, “Secular Humanism” is achieved by going through “Christian Morality”. Given the reversal of civil society we are seeing I personally find it hard to see that SH can stand alone without the grand narrative as it doesn’t connect deep enough with people since it is missing a transcendent story. Simply being a google person is not defined and could mean anything you want it to mean. Can SH create a narrative that can stand alone (outside Christian mortality)? Please discuss.
What I'm curious about is why Bart or anyone needs to be Christian to be a loving compassionate human being. Would it be so hard to just let Bart be Bart in his world view without wishing he was Christian again... because of who he is as a human being? Sounds like a Eric is a scout for Team Christianity and he needs all the players he can get on his team. He sees someone playing better on the opposing team and needs to recruit that player instead of maybe letting him shine in his own team. There doesn't seem to be room in the Christian World View to see others shine in their own story and in their own narrative. That really bothers me. But I don't think it's possible... anymore than it was for members of the Borg Collective in Star Trek to think Humans were okay to exist as mere organic beings.
Because the core of the belief system they adhere to tells them the other person is not getting into the kingdom of heaven without the beliefs they have.
I don't think it's because of selfish reasons, I think they sincerely believe the other person is in danger of hellfire so they are trying to pull them from the fire, so to speak.
@RubyNeumann says, *"What I'm curious about is why Bart or anyone needs to be Christian to be a loving compassionate human being."*
Who says that they do? That seems like a strawman on his part. (RubyNeumann's part) If Bart is loving and compassionate and a human being and not a Christian that seems to prove the ridiculousness of what he is curious about.
47:57 Holy batman! Hearing a Christian ask "how can we help those who aren't having babies (anti-natal) without a spiritual definition of love" hurts so hard.
Maybe try solving the issues causing it, like housing affordability, wealth inequality, gun violence, global warming instead of aligning christianity with political parties that actively make these things worse.
The sheer ignorance is flabbergasting! Try talking to someone instead of pontificating about how secularism might be borrowing a concept that Christianity "owns".