Tuesday, November 14, John Brown University’s Center for Faith and Flourishing hosted lecturer Jay W. Richards, PhD, and his presentation on Anti-Human Ideologies. His lecture not only covered certain Anti-Human ideologies such as Deep Ecology, Transhumanism, and Gender Ideology, but also how Christians should respond to them in a world that is rapidly adopting these ideologies.
Dr. Richards’ lecture was based on the premise that Christians can “assume that the truth about the human person is something like what is described in Genesis 1.” This premise not only allows the assumptions to be made that all humans are either male or female, but that they are also fully material and fully spiritual. It also assumes that everyone has some knowledge about the truth about who and what they are.
Upon this premise, Dr. Richards built his argument against these anti-human ideologies. Richards’ claims that those who pertain to these ideologies develop what he identifies as “Metaphysical Schizophrenia.” This “Metaphysical Schizophrenia” is a developing worldview that he claims is out of keeping with reality itself. With this “Metaphysical Schizophrenia” individuals supposedly quickly develop and buy into the anti-human ideologies that Dr. Richards argued against.
With the basic premise for his argument set, Dr. Richards moved on to explaining the three ideologies that he believes to be most Anti-Human. The first was that of Deep Ecology and Radical Environmentalism. According to Dr. Richards, This ideology “raises the intrinsic value of the environment to the level of intrinsic value that the human has.”
Believers in this ideology assume that Christians believe the earth was solely made to serve man. This however is a very anti-biblical view of the earth, which Dr. Richards quickly debunked. His argument against this view was to remind students that God spent 6 days creating all other living things before he created humans. If you do not correctly understand the biblical view of the world “you end up debasing your understanding of human beings.” explained Dr. Richards.
The second ideology that Dr. Richards touched on was transhumanism. Transhumanism is “the view that the human being is a transition in cosmic evolution.” Dr. Richards explained that because of this, many who believe in transhumanism uplift computer technology to the level of humans and debase humans to the level of computers. This is because many hope that one day our technology progresses so much that they are able to simply upload their consciousness into more reliable technological systems.
This ideology quickly becomes very anti-human. It assumes that humans are merely physical, without any sort of spiritual aspect. Dr. Richards explained that the problem with transhumanism is that it assumes computers work at the level of meaning, just like humans do. However, we must remember that computers “only work at the level of symbols and syntax.”
The third and final ideology that Dr. Richards discussed was that of Gender Ideology. Dr. Richards explained that the exact definition and starting point of Gender Ideology is recent, and begins with the changing of the words “sex” and “gender.”
These words were previously used almost synonymously, however that is not the case anymore. Now we use the terms “gender identity” and “sex assigned at birth.” This ideology assumes that an individual can be born in the wrong body. Almost completely opposite to transhumanism, gender ideology bases its reasonings against the physical human, and puts it on that of the spiritual. Dr. Richards was quick to remind students that if we take away the value of the physical body, individuals can claim that their bodies were a mistake.
Dr. Richards closed his lecture with some advice on how Christians should respond to these ideologies. He argues that as believers we need to respond to these ideologies with “a combination of faith and reason.” He claims that at this point in time believers and the church are tasked with the responsibility to defend the biological truths of the value of the human body and should walk in step with science in order to do so.