Twisted Fruit without the Root Pt 1

Twisted Fruit without the Root Pt 1

In the previous episode we introduced and challenged “The Myth of Enlightenment Humanism”, the view that the fruit of important moral values like ‘all human beings intrinsically have equal value, worth and dignity’, even though rooted in the Judeo-Christian idea of the imago dei (all humans are created in the image of God), can flourish without belief in this doctrinal root.    

This Fruit without the Root myth seemed to produce initial benefits because it was living off of the accumulated cultural resources of the Christian root. But since Enlightenment thinkers have, for 250 years, continued to insist that the root is unnecessary, and even harmful, the Christian roots have been consistently marginalized and even banished from the public square as well as the culture as a whole.

This episode will show, in broad strokes, how this has happened, and will survey specific examples of how changes in cultural beliefs about the Christian roots have led to detrimental changes in the fruit.