NT Wright: Why Steven Pinker is wrong about the foundation of human rights

 
Justin Brierley is joined by leading New Testament scholar NT (Tom) Wright and popular historical writer Tom Holland to discuss how Paul the apostle changed the world as described in Wright’s recent book Paul: A Biography.

 
As an agnostic in terms of his religious commitments, in this excerpt Tom Holland nevertheless describes the way that the birth of Christianity has shaped much of what we value in Western society in terms of human rights, culture and rule of law.
 

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[stephendianda]

I have great respect for Tom Holland because of his honesty and lack of emotional bubble like other Christian "free thinkers". I wish they could listen to more

[SummumBonum.]

"We get the rights we fight for." - Christopher Hitchens

[iain]

Most current judeochristian cultural norms from which enlightenment arose was based on British ideals that was always ahead of the rest of Europe since the magna carta and the belief that an should be judged by his peers (an Anglo-Saxon legal system). The advancements throughout the centuries based on the rights of parliament over monarchy, the rights of individuals within the law of the land, the freedom of speech, the belief in science, the belief in rationality, the abolition movement, education, etc. all fundamentally came from Christianity. These all existed and were acknowledged by the rest of the west as key to Britain being the engine of the world (military might, industrialisation, production, the greatest promoter of free trade, etc.). Then the enlightenment took off and pushed forward ideas that already existed in Britain. To say it had nothing to do with religion shows remarkable ignorance or wilful dismissal of history.

[SummumBonum.]

The penalty of eternal torment in a lake of fire for not believing in a bullshit story seems like a credible foundation for human rights to me.

[judahmu]

Please direct me to Bible verse spelling out Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom to Assemble.

[missionalapologetics]

Universal Humanity is nice to the ear but it's insufficient to justify human rights. Universality is essentially synonymous with equality. L Pojman, I believe, explained that equality without content is never sufficient grounds for human rights. You need equal (universal) worth-fulness (content) and to simply assert equality opens the door for equally worthless. Equality alone is insufficient. You need content. The question is why are human beings equally deserving of human rights? And that is a question only answerable outside of the human individual or collective species.

[rodneyblackwell]

Whatever rights we may have at law have been gained by struggling against authority... this includes struggling against the power of the church.

There is no such thing as human rights... rather we have rights which vary from country to country that have been reluctantly conceded by the principalities and powers that be.

These rights have not been won through victimhood but by struggle.. a struggle that never ends... govts and religions always want to claw back these hard fought for freedoms.

[crazyprayingmantis]

George Carlin said we don't have rights, we have privileges, rights aren't rights if someone can take them away.

[StreetsOfVancouverChannel]

It certainly wasn't 'coincidental' that Paul of Tarsus was a Hellenistic Jew in the early-to-mid 1st Century of the Common Era (C.E.). I'm convinced that Paul's exposure/training in Greek philosophy was critically imperative to his subsequent literary contributions to the New Testament canon.

For decades 'the Church' was a subset of the broader Jewish community. The split between the Jewish and (what came to be identified as) Christian communities became obvious by the end of the 1st century. This broader infusion of these believers in 'Yeshua the Christ' into Roman society at large no doubt eventually influenced the philosophical/ideological constitutive aspects of that society.

[AlohaMichaelDaly]

Morals and human rights ARE NOT rooted in Christianity or religion - empathy is human instinct way before language let alone Moses. Also! PLEASE READ THE BIBLE! It’s teachings are more often than not antithetical to empathy, human rights and morals.

[kal-el]

It's the bias behind both atheist and theist that make it hard for me to move away from agnosticism. Its like watching political partisans explain to you why they're correct.

[mr.miystry]

Actually I don't like the stigma of progress because there are some Bible verses that are too contrary to parish morality, and the cruelty in them has to be partially compromised with the interpretation of love verses. Equality is not the real cause of moral problems, but rather awareness of the interests of the common good and not faith in heaven; The problem we face today is the persistence of Christian flattery, which emphasizes insignificant accomplishments; It is useless on intellectual grounds but on sentimental grounds perhaps but the priority is that progress should be based on education, not on theological ambiguity; The vain activity of worship is not the cause of the realization that the progress of happiness for prosperity is baseless silliness.

[mr.c]

I Alone am the author and creator of rights. Without me, no one comes to any truth.
I am GOD.... Mr. Condemnation

[DayneAW]

Ugh...the amount of dishonesty is astounding.

[zegermanscientist]

The Vatican has yet to recognize the UN Charta of Human Rights.

[elfootman]

Human rights emerged in spite of religion.

[brianmurray]

‘They has to be THOUGHT how to love god’ 😂 that’s a nice way of putting what happened

[alexanderhutton]

The church does not nor has it ever stood for a globalized humanity. It is divisive even unto itself with its sectarianism and it's nationalism. "As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free" is the perfect bastardization of the so called Christian hypothesis of humanity in all. And to say that human rights, and dignity and respect for another sojurner's humanity is rooted in Judeo Christian theology and without the "spiritual root" all you are left with is everyone claiming victimhood is utter nonsense. Love is a choice, and there are those who make the choice to love and promote love among all mankind, but it doesn't start with the worship of anyone else's idols: Moses and Jesus and Mohammad and Buddah for examples. It is a choice made independently of religious ideologies that have always had a history of "conquering and dividing". The great cause of true communism will ultimately triumph, but none of us will live to see it. There are still too many Bishop Wright's in the world in love with their idols: in this case some resurrected phantom living up in the sky who will come to judge the living and the dead, the wheat and the weeds, the just and the unjust and so the division continues.

[thespiritofhegel]

Universalisation of human rights, the Judeo-Christian view, unless you're an Amalekite.