Atheism is a Christian Heresy

Atheism is a Christian Heresy: Tom Holland Weighs In

Some time ago I published a video, “Atheism’s Biggest Problem.” It got more comments than any video I have ever posted. Recently in a British journal, the eminent historian Tom Holland wrote an essay entitled, “Humanism as a Christian Heresy.” Since humanism is officially atheistic I changed the title a bit and now I want to give some of Holland’s arguments that atheism is a Christian heresy.

According to Holland, for the past several centuries western intellectuals have argued that there is nothing special about human beings. We are simply one more creature evolved from primitive life. Add astronomy to evolutionary theory and man is diminished even more. Holland says, “Set against the icy immensities of space, what is humanity, then, but the merest speck of a speck of dust? What scope is left us as a species to claim any dignity at all?”

Virtually every intellectual in the western world believes in naturalistic evolution and man’s tiny place in the universe, and yet, and yet, contradicting all this, “in an age that has seen the theory of evolution almost universally accepted…and the limits of our knowledge of the universe pushed to ever more incredible extremes, there seems to have been no diminution in the value that we, as a culture, ascribe to human life.” 

On the contrary, that human rights are universal, that all men and women have value and dignity, that the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and everyone else are deserving of human compassion is something believed in passionately and with emotion by virtually every intellectual in the western world. Holland goes on to say, “That we are all of us possessed of certain fundamental rights, simply by virtue of being human, and of a dignity that embraces our entire species, are doctrines so widely accepted … that many of us barely recognise them as doctrines at all.”

In 2002, the World Humanist Association issued the defining statement of world humanism. It proclaimed, “the worth, dignity and autonomy of the individual and the right of every human being to the greatest possible freedom compatible with the rights of others”.

The humanists argued that they had arrived at this statement by a process of reason and observation but that’s ridiculous. It is a religious dogma that requires faith. Virtually all humanists live in Western culture and are products of that very Christian culture. So even though they claim to believe in naturalistic evolution they hold passionately to a value that is clearly contradictory. How can they ascribe so much worth to people when philosophically they believe there is nothing special about human beings. People accidentally arose from the primordial soup. From soup they arose and to soup they shall return. And why should they be more valuable than soup?

Still, humanists and atheists believe in the uniqueness of human beings. Why? Because their values are produced whole cloth from their Christian heritage. Today’s atheists try to argue that their view of the worth of humanity can be found in ancient cultures, particularly Greece and Rome. But it can’t. It is exclusively the result of Christianity. Today’s atheists speak with utmost contempt of the book of Genesis, particularly the creation account. But that’s where their view of humanity originates. Gen. 1:27 says that man was made in God’s image, and therefore has infinite worth and value. And that’s what today’s atheists believe. And that’s why they believe it. And no one has ever believed it unless they were at some point exposed to this doctrine.

Holland finishes by saying, “To live in a Western country is to live in a society that for centuries — and in many cases millennia — has been utterly transformed by Christian concepts and assumptions. So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilisation that it has come to be hidden from view.”

Modern atheists do not derive their views from careful reasoning and the application of science. They derive them from medieval theology based on the Bible. The founding document of the United Nations has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But they are not universal at all. They are Western and they are specifically Christian. And every member of the Western elite believes they should be applied to every culture on earth. In other words, our atheistic elite believe in spreading a specifically Christian doctrine to every member of the human race. My what aggressive missionaries they are.

Holland concludes by asking where all this is heading.  “It is hardly surprising, of course, in a society that has increasingly abandoned the institutional practice of Christianity, yet still clings to its assumptions, its values, its myths, that we should shrink from staring the implications of our current predicament fully in the face.”

Then Holland speculates, was Nietzsche right when he said: “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet.” I hope Nietszche was wrong but I fear he may be right. In my next video I want to take up that question: Will the decline in Christian belief lead to the end of Christian morality?

Holland’s essay is found here: https://unherd.com/?p=452353?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=ea664946a5&mc_eid=5b400e1632

My video, Atheism’s Biggest Problem, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa8JM8OQ_OQ&t=123s

The United Nations declaration of Universal Human Rights: https://www.humanrights.com/what-are-human-rights/universal-declaration-of-human-rights/preamble.html