The human rights paradox

Naturalism no basis for morality

Say what you will about the University of Winnipeg. Yes, we have cramped classrooms, our library stacks need a serious overhaul (I’ll never forget the 100-year-old secondary source I used for a paper last year) and our student body is about as active in UWSA elections as my grandma is on Facebook. 

But the one thing that cannot be said is that students at the U of W don’t care about human rights issues.

We certainly do.

Yes, we have a reputation for supporting human rights, but why?

Why do so many of U of W students seem to carry the innate assumption that caring about issues of human rights and social justice is inherently good, in the same way that we assume recycling and exercise to be inherently good practices? 

The funny thing is that the more I ponder this question, the more absurd this assumption appears. Let me explain.

The prevailing worldview of our modern secular society dictates that life arose by chance, eons ago, in a primordial chemical soup. Over subsequent generations, our ancestors made the transition from this soup to solid ground. 

The rest, as they say, is history.

According to this worldview, human life (and all other forms of life, for that matter) is simply an accidental side effect of the unpredictable and undirected interactions of lifeless matter. 

As such, it is necessarily devoid of any intrinsic worth or value, as value, by definition, must be ascribed to an object by an outside agent.

Hence the absurdity of the fact that students from this thoroughly secular institution are renowned for their willingness to invest so much time, money and effort in the pursuit of social justice, a cause which is ultimately grounded on the assumption of the intrinsic worth of every human being.

After all, if we really believe that humanity is merely the by-product of muck, then why on earth should we care about the suffering of the disenfranchised, at home or abroad? A naturalistic worldview dictates that their lives, like yours, have no intrinsic value. 

Thus, when measured against the principles of their own belief system, a naturalist’s efforts to uphold the “dignity” and “value” of human existence amount to a contradictory farce.

Please do not misunderstand me. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe very strongly that issues of human rights and social justice are of extreme importance. 

The Bible is bursting with commands and exhortations to uphold the basic value of human life by caring for the oppressed. 

Indeed, in one of many such instances in scripture, Psalm 82 tells us to “Give justice to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Rescue the poor and the helpless; deliver them from the grasp of evil people” (vs. 3-4). 

Elsewhere in the biblical texts, God’s concern for the poor and oppressed is absolutely radical and unprecedented, particularly in the gracious concessions granted to the poor in the otherwise unbending Old Testament sacrificial system. 

The difference, however, between social justice in the biblical, as opposed to the naturalist, worldview, is that biblical social justice actually has a basis: the intrinsic value of human beings, created as we are, “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27).

In the end, the socially conscious naturalist cannot have it both ways. 

If humans were not created and endowed with intrinsic value by this same Creator, then fine.

But don’t go claiming in the next breath that we all should give a rip about the “evils” of injustice and oppression; the naturalist worldview leaves no room for that kind of morality. 

Jon Kornelsen is a fourth-year education student at the University of Winnipeg.

Published in Volume 65, Number 22 of The Uniter (March 10, 2011)

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