Great interview, thoroughly enjoyed reading it and shall have to return several times to really digest it.
What I choose to comment on is how we have failed Gen Z and immigrants:
One of the biggest factors in my opinion – and probably the most self-defeating one in terms of the liberal society – is a failure to push back on the culture of victimhood which has proliferated and taken root to such an extent that I think it can fairly be called “culturally ingrained”.
Too many young people want to be protected from everything – be it words or misfortune or even the consequences of their own actions. This undermines the very basis of the liberal society, which is the understanding of the individual as robust, willing to take risks and also suffer pain and suffering as the price for freedom.
I tend to see the widespread support for Palestine among this younger generation as a direct result of this culture of victimhood.
Another failure on our part with respect to the culture of victimhood is having allowed a mentality – particularly among the political Left – to continue whereby immigrants are thought of as permanent victims and oppressed, people to be pitied – even if they are in the 2nd or 3rd generation.
This is insulting to the immigrants who don’t think of themselves as victims but do integrate and get on, contribute meaningfully to the host society and achieve great things.
But it also allows the ones who don’t have any intention of accepting the basic rules of play of the host society to do so with impunity. By allowing the narrative of immigrants being “poor, poor, people being excluded by the mean natives”, we have failed to (or been prevented from) demanding anything from them in return for the privilege of being able to live with us. And now – surprise! – we’re being presented with the consequences of decades of laissez-faire, kid-glove handling.
Finally, we have failed ourselves and all the people coming after us, or into our societies, by allowing our individual self-worth to be determined by how much we own, how much we consume, how much money we have. When things like this become the primary meaning-makers of a society rather than any greater guiding principle, be it religious or no, then that society is one massive sitting duck ready to be bulldozered by a more powerful belief system.
Jonathan Haidt’s research shows an absence of independence (children allowed out on their own/with friends late and later), topped off by SM which is making young women depressed and neurotic. Women are now 58% of UG intake in the UK, and 25% of Gen Z have seen a therapist before age 20. We have wrapped them up in cotton wool and then given them the most powerful sociological technology we have ever invenre before we ran the trials. We are greatly to blame.
Last edited 6 months ago by Susan Grabston
JW P
6 months ago
What an interesting time we live in when one loses the respect of friends for identifying yourself as a Christian, a follower of the most significant and influential person in all of human history. I loved Ayaan’s article and appreciate her giving this interview with Freddie…he’s the best. Ayaan seems to be walking through the Christian door through its ethics, values, and personal lifestyle. Well and good. I hope sometime she discovers, perhaps she already has, the unique Christian doctrine of the Universality of Sin, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and not just the non-believers out there who “need to come to Jesus or they’re going to Hell” (a horrible version of Christianity) or “need to have their heads chopped off” (a horrible version of Islam). Welcome to this fascinating roller coaster ride of Christianity, Ayaan, with its heights of faith and depths of doubts and those occasional and delightful moments of enjoying a peace that the world cannot give.
“All have sinned”, or Original Sin is an iniquitous concept that needs to be rooted out of human thought. None of us are born tainted, and to burden young people with that concept is without any justification whatsoever. It’s very much part of the reason why “faith” continues to fail in Western societies. Human values of community, mutual trust, working together and allowing all to follow their own path providing they do no harm requires not one jot of “faith” or belief in a deity.
Thank you Steve for providing us with a perfect example of original sin – the fallenness, the imperfection, the brokenness, the arrogance, the lack of humility, the lack of self reflection, and the totally self-centeredness of human nature.
Thankyou for your display of utter arrogance in making several highly inaccurate assumptions. Launching a personal attack rather than addressing the point also tells us something, and no amount of up- or down-voting will change that.
No personal attack. I don’t know you from Adam. Simply a response to what you wrote. I’m happy for you to make the point you thought you were making. Look. Original Sin is a Christian theological concept for “none of us are perfect,” “none of us are completely put together,” “all of us are a work in progress.” It is a doctrine that brings humility. Not arrogance. Simple as that. Original Sin says it’s helpful to own a mirror into which we can regularly and honestly look to realize that “none of us has yet arrived.” “No one is perfect, no not one.” Not sure why someone would take offense at that doctrine let alone call it “an iniquitous concept.” As for “none of us are born tainted” — we’re all born tainted by the very definition of the term. Tainted = “Affected with bad or undesirable qualities.” I’m certainly tainted.. You’re not?
So do you believe new borns are tainted in some way ?
If “yes” in what way ?
If “no”, when does the new born turn into a tainted individual and how does this process occur ?
They’re cute as can be but, yes. They are by nature and necessity totally self-absorbed creatures whose self-absorption takes on more and more tainted – undesirable – characteristics as they grow. I’ve yet to meet the human for whom that isn’t true. BTW – This is why the most orthodox Christian denominations practice infant baptism instead of adult “believers baptism.” They want the infant, its parents, and everyone else to know that the infant’s tainted nature does not stand in the way of the love of the Christian God. Christians see infant baptism as a pure form of the grace of God.
You are mistaken. Original Sin is a (Western) Christian notion that holds all human beings bear the guilt of Adam’s transgression, and are thus in need of salvation even if they personally commit no sins.
Your description is of a notion more similar to the Orthodox Christian concept of Ancestral Sin (see my other post to this thread).
Let’s not forget Eve she also sinned temptress though it’s a weird idea since they were a couple.lol I believe Christianity has done more Good in the world than bad except for the Spanish inquisition & so called witches burned by church leaders in the 1500 s approx. Horrid times.
Your comment is bereft of intellectual contribution and unnecessarily insulting. May I suggest you “do unto others as you would have done unto yourself”
Your comment is bereft of intellectual contribution and unnecessarily insulting. May I suggest you “do unto others as you would have done unto yourself”
I think Original Sin is the capacity within all of us to choose evil. We are all born with it, and the seductiveness takes place right in our hearts. The Sufis, the mystical Muslim branch, call up for Jihad within ourselves. Wonder what Ayaan thinks about the Sufi Muslims, who are actually persecuted by many of their fellow Muslims.
But with Freddie Ayaan was mostly talking about the cultural consequence of the Judeo-Christian philosophy, influencing our political and moral structures in the West. I wonder how far she will travel in her “adventure” discovering Christian faith as in the end it is an inner experience and can’t be explained intellectually. I have the feeling that she isn‘t quite there yet.
“All have sinned” and Original Sin are not coextensive concepts. I am an Orthodox Christian, and the East never accepted Blessed Augustine’s notion of Original Sin — the idea that all human beings bear the guilt of Adam and Eve’s original transgression (an idea which he justified by his theory of the origin of souls, “traductionism”, that every human soul is a fragment of Adam’s soul, a theory which no major Christian confession believes, not even those like the Latin church and the Calvinists who have really embraced “Original Sin” ). The Orthodox concept is “Ancestral Sin”, which gave us no guilt, but disordered our passions and left a world prone to sin with lots of example of sin to emulate. We too say with the Scriptures, “all have sinned”, though this is in the form of an observation about human beings, not a dogma defining human beings. It is also a standard Orthodox belief that neither the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary nor the Forerunner and Baptist John ever voluntarily sinned (some go further and say “ever sinned”, but that is hard to square with the plain meaning of the passage of Scripture under discussion). (And yes, we Orthodox Christians have a notion of involuntary sin — you can miss the mark without trying to miss the mark.)
I think the concept of Original Sin needs to be replaced by Human Duty. Being born a human must be held up as a responsibility towards the whole world and all its creatures.
Well said! It’s beautiful how the Lord draws different people to the same gospel in different ways.
Richard Abbot
6 months ago
The matter of Islam is still being skirted around it seems.
I know many ‘little-toe’ Muslims and have encountered many other so-called ‘good’ Muslims. But the last few weeks has revealed that when push comes to shove they will line up with the hardline Islamists, against Western society and its values.
I don’t think there is any way to square the circle: Islam is no good, simple as that.
Eric Mader
6 months ago
Hirsi Ali’s bravery and intellectual honesty win the day. And not just vis a vis the public, but vis a vis herself. She can’t avoid recognizing that what is most precious in the western liberal tradition has arisen from that Judeo-Christian ground, and so the question faces her: “What is there in that ground?”
This is why those who criticize her conversion as being “instrumental” are missing the point. They’re partly getting it backward. She’s not instrumentalizing Christianity as a tool to wield in defense of some community, but recognizing it as key to the mystery of why that community is so worth defending to begin with. She’s undertaking an encounter with that mystery, as both an intellectual and spiritual quest.
Anyone with eyes to see can see our present left sawing off the branch it sits on. If that is true, and it is, the question is Why. What are the elements that make up the picture: 1) the branch, 2) the sawing, and 3) the evident void into which our left risks plunging, bringing the West down with them?
Hirsi Ali sees the picture and is going to follow the hunches she has in pusuit of an answer.
All Judeo-Christian countries are equally in need of immigration at the moment, because they’re not producing enough children. So it’s not as if you can have immigrants come here from America or even from Israel. It’s the developing world that’s producing immigrants. And unfortunately, yes, it’s Muslim-majority countries that are producing immigrants.
What’s striking about this, and about many other interviews I’ve read in the past, say, ten years is the implicit assumption that Western (and by Western I mean European) cultures are in a state of permanent decline and the best we can do is manage said decline and hopefully pass on some of our values to our successors, who are presumed to be (primarily Muslim) immigrants from the developing world. The further assumption is that this is a natural state of affairs, about which nothing can be done, rather than the result of policy, whether deliberate or accidental, which can be changed.
If those assumptions are both true, then the vision floated by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others is a pipe dream. A culture that cannot reproduce itself, that cannot sustain itself, is a failed culture. Why on earth would Muslim immigrants want to assimilate into a culture which has so expressly and obviously failed? Immigration and colonialism are two sides of the same coin: a superabundance of human capital which can be exported abroad. And the greater that superabundance, the less need newcomers have to assimilate, since when they arrive they find plenty of bearers of their existing culture already waiting for them.
What is needed is not wan smiles and sad remarks about how Europe has had its day and maybe if we ask really nicely all those nice young Muslim men will keep Nelson’s Column up, but rather an assertive and confident expression of European cultural primacy and the dismantling of those policies–political, economic, social, and cultural–which are causing Europeans to fail to reproduce themselves. Now, whether that is even possible is an open question. Personally, I think it is too late. The damage has been done, and the will is lacking to enact even the most picayune of reforms, as demonstrated by the constant stream of utterly pathetic news out of the UK which I see practically every day, a stream which never fails to depress me, since I fell in love with Britain at a very young age and never fell out of love, although I admit it’s been extraordinarily painful these last two decades. But the Britain I fell in love with has died, or is near death. My hope is that it is the latter. Perhaps the patient can still be saved. Perhaps.
I think it’s important for people on the Right not to fall into the Left’s ideological trap, IE the overreaction to their provocation.The fundamental nature of Leftism is Internationalism and abhorrence to the Nation State as an oppressive institution that affixes certain cultural values at the top of the Hierarchy. They then use something resembling Empiricism to highlight how Demographic disparities arise from these cultural values and seek to remediate them through ideological revolution that leads to redistribution.
Whenever the Right talks about the need to increase native birth rates to maintain cultural values it is playing directly into the Left’s hands. The Right should not fall into that trap. It should simply refuse to play the Left’s rhetorical game of conflating Culture with Ethnicity. Ayaan and her husband, Niall Ferguson talk extensively about integration and assimilation.
The justification for limiting immigration to only those who plan to assimilate is a winning argument. No functioning culture favors those who refuse to participate in the existing culture over those that do. It’s a self-evident argument and the only one that’s needed.
AC Harper
6 months ago
I suspect that many people who grow up in a theocratic society integrate the social lessons into their nature. If they reject their god then it leaves a god-shaped hole which calls out to be filled. Now some of the god shaped holes have sharper edges and deeper roots than others, so turning towards a more copacetic god may be an effective response.
Of course if you live in a society that does not privilege the concept of an ubiquitous god then any god shaped hole is going to be shallow and easily smoothed over. Smoothed over with New Age beliefs or hankering after ‘spirituality’, atheism or humanism, or other ‘Enlightenment’ values.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has found her own way forward. Good for her.
I was thinking along similar lines; those who didn’t grow up with such a pervasive religious influence probably don’t feel quite the same sense of something missing, without it – and are more likely to be satisfied looking inward, or at least elsewhere than religion for answers to life’s questions. To me, that’s all religion is – someone else’s answers to life’s questions. I personally don’t tend to find someone else’s conclusions quite so satisfying to my existentialism as someone more conditioned towards religious beliefs might. I am happy for whatever brings someone contentment to be available to them – but I don’t really appreciate the inclination to assume others need such pervasive influence to be similarly fulfilled.
Ok so what you did here is a common theme that I see from “Rational Materialists.” What you’re effectively saying is that a Christian only believes in the rational probability of biblical truth because he/she is relying on “someone else’s answers.” Do you not believe your worldview was shaped by the answers of others?
In Genesis, the Serpent says to Eve that “Ye Shall be as Gods” and eat out of the tree of knowledge. This is a call to “look inward” and be your own God because by doing so you can know all (Gnosis). This is the basis for Gnosticism and every other Esoteric religion.
You talk of Existentialism which is just a fancy word for pondering one’s own existence. Is there not a massive volume of Existentialist literature especially from Nietzsche onwards? Existentialism is effectively seen as a remedy for Nihilism. Existentialism like Gnosticism and its offspring Marxism, Critical Social Justice and Climate Justice believes in “building heaven of earth” through “looking inward at humanity.”
I find Christianity compelling not because I can’t think for myself but because it comports to objective reality. It perfectly explains Human Nature mostly through Narrative form which is mind-blowing to me.
Some might say, well Science disproves it but I see no evidence of this. Nowhere does the Bible claim to be 100% literal or “inerrant.” Nowhere does it claim to be a Science Book either. Science is perfectly compatible with the Old and New Testaments. In fact, there’s an overwhelming argument that the development of Empiricism couldn’t exist without a belief that the universe is rational and understandable and governed by laws of nature not random chance. Likewise, the Theory of random chance in life is a construct in itself. Nothing is random whether good fortune or bad fortune. Everything occurs because of some material process underpinned by clearly defined laws of nature. So why do laws of nature exist at all? Is the Universe governed by chaos or is there underlying objective truth. The existence of objective reality points to a designed world and the scientific evidence is quite clear that the Universe had a starting point.
I often wander into Watkins Books off Charing Cross Road, a bookshop full of esoteric literature, tarot cards, astrology paraphernalia, Zen Buddhism and works on the occult. Whenever I go there I see the place frequented almost exclusively by women of a certain age. I am minded to believe, even if only due to such circumstantial evidence, that young women in particular feel the gaping void of a lack of meaning in their lives. Where they once were fervent believers in faiths or radical ideologies, many of them now fill the spiritual emptiness with fortune telling and books on self-help. It is interesting that these fill the first floor’s shelves, while works about gnosticism, Traditionalism, perennial religious texts and history are consigned to the basement. Just a thought I had.
If you’re older and male and got into the occult via a social or a hands-on standpoint, ie, initiations from Masonry, to ‘fringe masonry’, to the more full-on occultism of the likes of your Gurdjieffs or the OTO, and you go into Watkins, it’s certainly a generational and a cultural gap when you see these browsing women.
Whether these verbose but windy volumes fill their needs, I don’t know, but I’m going to guess it’ll be a ‘No’ in the long term.
Last edited 6 months ago by Dumetrius
Carol Calhoun
6 months ago
This woman speaks to me. She is still searching, and she sees the problems with all cultures. Her ability to see clearly is powerful. we need so many more like her in our society today. Keep talking AHA. you are a hero.
Saul D
6 months ago
Great interview. As an atheist, it is clear we are creatures of belief, not the faux philosophical rational man or woman.
But where we are now has ascended well above the raw belief. We discard beliefs that don’t work (the divine right of kings for instance, or an-eye-for-an-eye) and move our view of humanity and morality on, which then allows us to select from the religious books with a more enlightened outlook. Even within the Bible morality shifts.
Then, in day-to-day living, moment-by-moment, we rely on what we believe and the principles we have learnt – the heuristics of history and custom. Freedom of speech, equality, fraternity, tolerance, the right to disagree, a shared humanity. Unprovable heuristics can still help us do the right thing, but become evil when they become an unquestionable ideology. Truth rests on doubt.
An eye for an eye is measure for measure. It prevents the blood feud.
Revenge knows no limits. It can last from generation to generation. Attila’s view was that there was nothing so satisfying to a strong man as pursuing a vendetta.
In AHA’s experience, the right to disagree doesn’t exist everywhere. A shared humanity is something shared with Caligula and Hindley as much as it is with Gladstone and Millicent Fawcett. Faith in human nature? I can’t have such a faith as I have such a nature.
But an eye for an eye is different from turn the other cheek, and the message of forgiveness and redemption.
The counterpoint to religion is not about faith in human nature – it’s obvious how fallible that is with dark histories of warmongers and tyrants. However, over time and with much struggle and pain, we have developed principles that allows people to prosper and live in peace – even when people believe different things, and independently of religion. The principals are rooted in experience and are easily lost if we don’t defend them. Faith is something else.
“Truth rests on Doubt.”
So does Christianity. There is no Faith without Doubt.
Morality doesn’t “shift” in the Bible. That’s a misconception created by German subjectivists imposing their feelings onto the actual texts. The character of God is consistent across the Old and New Testament despite the evolving behavior of Humanity.
Not really. In the Old Testament God is a vengeful lunatic killing thousands. In the New Testament his PR team obviously decided he needed a new image so he changed into a caring benevolent father figure
I didn’t downvote fyi but I’ll quote Exodus 34 6-7.
“And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
If Christ then came and died to bear those sins…Where’s the inconstency?
Isn’t God’s kill count over 2 million people in the Old Testament?
Also I think Kim Jong Un also punishes 3 generations for the crimes of their parents so that’s probably not a good comparison to make if you’re trying to portray The Lord as loving
I don’t know the numbers, I’m not a secular biblical fundamentalist like you are. I don’t believe large biblical numbers were meant to be inerrant. They’re probably intentionally inflated because the author is trying to present a more profound truth. Keep in mind the authors didn’t have statistical data verified by 24/7 fact checkers at the Washington Post.
Where are you going with the kill count anyways. Do you consider the Allied Powers to be morally reprehensible because they killed proportionately more Axis soldiers?
How much better could I possibly explain without you distorting my point? I’m saying that not every word of the Bible was meant to be taken literally. Are you unfamiliar with the history of written communication? Nobody was concerned about being precise with large numbers. Empiricism is a modern development.
For example, when reading about warfare or dictators the data will list casualties normally with a range of estimates. The range is only possible because multiple sources claim different things. For ex Mao killed between 20 million and 100 million. We run into the same thing with Covid statistics. If you’re not writing an Empirical book than you don’t care if it’s 20 million or 100 million. All you care about relaying is that ALOT of people were directly and or indirectly killed for X reason.
Again, Empiricism is a modern development. If I’m not speaking to an Academic, I can convey to a Layperson that Mao killed ALOT of people without being precise in details. Why? Because
the layperson doesn’t care about the finite details and because those allegedly finite, objective details actially get subjective at a certain point. How exactly do you get an 80 million range in estimates anyways? Somebody is fudging numbers somewhere. So I guess what I need you to explain to me is why Statistics are so variable if the secular world is so concerned with “Scientific Truth.”
But if the bible isn’t to be taken literally, then it’s simply reduced to a collection of fables with good morals is it not? If Jesus didn’t really feed the five thousand, Moses didn’t part the sea or Noah didn’t lead two of every animal onto an ark then why are we to believe the other bits being true such as God creating the Earth or Jesus being his son and being born of a virgin?
This reduces Christianity to being little more than a collection of well meaning rules
The Bible is written both literally and metaphorically in different parts. Its quite clearly littered with parables and metaphors. When Jesus says “I am the Bread of Life” do you take that to mean he is claiming to be a Loaf of Bread?
Does it matter if Jesus fed 5000 or 3000? What if it was actually 6500? Can we safely assume nobody documented a head count or thinks anyone should care. Again, he fed ALOT of people.
As for other examples like Moses parting the Red Sea. That is meant to be literal as far as I can tell. Whether it’s a “miracle” or a weather anamoly, Exodus 14:21-29 is written with detailed accounts. Now whether the detailed accounts are all “empirically rock solid” is a fair critique if you’re “deconstructing” it but you can’t read the Bible as one giant metaphor or a pure documentary of events.
Listen, I get it. If you’ve already made up your mind that it’s a subversive fable written to manipulate behavior than no amount of rationalization will sway you. Before the last 3-4 years I might have shared your unflinching skepticism.
T Bone.
It is deeply refreshing to find someone who articulates what you have been thinking as well as you have. Thank you.
It is sometimes also helpful for people to recognise that the Bible is a collection of books. And that Christians use the terms inspired by God. Which means that there is human interplay in the writings. Further, while there are instances of ‘vengeance’ (which I will continue to wrestle with). Many of the destructive acts that people have a problem with are noted, but are not meant to have been seen as being endorsed by God. I believe that the power of the bible, is that it requires wrestling, and does not give answers easily to difficult moral questions.
Why not explore earth based philosophy like maybe native American Toltec wisdom or other beliefs that predate western religions .They have alot to say & are interesting.I find these concepts of the biblical God a bit too farfetched ! ” Maybe we create god in our own image ” our own level of consciousness “?…
Don’t think you’re getting his point, probably because you’re choosing not to.
That’s fine, but the downside is that it is in itself aligning to an unconscious dogma, which as GKC said ‘is the very definition of a prejudice.’
Ralph Hanke
6 months ago
To me, her position is summed up by her last sentence: “And I think if you tell people they have no more value than mould, then what’s the point?”
Well there is no point. That’s the point. Just because I say I have no more value than mould is not a problem, unless I make the error of thinking mould is inherently bad or has no value.
Yes, mould on my bread sucks. And yet mould has benefits to the ecosystem in other ways.
I think AHA makes this mistake and so confounds lack of intrinsic value with lack of contextual value.
And please do not mistake me for a relativist. All I am saying things do not have intrinsic value.
And therein lies the challenge for the atheist. If nothing has intrinsic value imbued by a god, what shall we value and why? And no, not “anything goes.”
I’m up for the challenge. So let’s talk.
Ian Barton
6 months ago
A good read as expected, but I fail to understand why cultivating a liking for the outputs/influences of Christianity leads to the development of a belief in a higher power.
(with no intention of being disrespectful) maybe the inclusion of the word “therapists” in the article goes some way to explaining this outcome.
I have two children now adults, one a Christian and one not, both raised by my husband, an agnostic and me, an Anglican priest. They have similar moral and ethical values though one is socially conservative, open minded, environmentally concerned and works as an occupational
therapist, the other fairly liberal and
left wing who works as a journalist in mainstream media, very keen on extreme forms of social change, social justice and protest.
As a politics graduate myself my major interest is social enhancement for everyone, building open , accessible and inclusive institutions that meet the needs of all of us. We do not argue about faith, it’s a given for two of us, but about how to build a better society .
Amazing. I think she had an excellent and concise explanation as to how she crossed the divide from outputs of Christianity to belief. An individual therapist cannot imbue faith in a person, especially by such a vanilla comment. It can only be done by the person involved – in this case a highly intelligent and knowledgeable person.
And btw, your comment is disrespectful. You are being condescending.
I respect your point. However, I’ll defend myself against your accusation of being disrespectful by saying that many people who seek some form of counselling/therapy do so because they are suffering from some form of internal “incongruity” that they feel the need to resolve. It is entirely plausible that this may be the case.
I agree with many of your comments generally, but on this occasion I feel you are incorrect in judging me as “condescending”.
It is a good question, and I don’t think it is disrespectful. I think the explanation lies in what she says about “tear[ing] the branches from the roots”; that those Christian outputs/influences/values that many of us like will not in the long-term survive if cut off from the beliefs that gave rise to them. In the way that a tree cut off from its roots may appear alive for a time, green leaves, etc., but will inevitably die.
This is what I think, anyway, and also why I think it would be a good thing for those who hold to what we might call Christian values to present themselves at church on Sundays, to stand up and be counted, whether or not they personally feel able to believe very much of it at present.
For some, it may be that faith will come in time. But at the level of a society, it might be the case that the practice matters more than the belief (even if there is a paradox where at the individual level it is the other way round).
I know many will disagree, and perhaps I am wrong, but there is my best attempt at an answer.
That’s a thoughtful and insightful comment, and i agree that IB isn’t being disrespectful.
However, i can’t agree that “faith will come” because i consider the fundamental problem with a post-faith society is that it’s precisely the “loss of faith” ennui that’s being felt; in other words, belief systems were the problem in the first place and so a return to them is just not a viable “answer”. Of course, the belief-system that is Islam presents us with a problem that those of us in a post-faith society will have to deal with.
Our values, although seen through a Christian lens, are essentially human values – the values that saw societies begin to flourish following the agrarian revolution which pre-dated both Christianity and Islam. Your analogy of a dying tree that still has green leaves is lovely, but i’d add that the tree will have produced off-shoots that will take time to grow.
I think we will have to disagree respectfully about the importance of faith and the institutional Church, though I absolutely agree that what I called “Christian values” are very ancient in origin; they did not suddenly spring into being at the birth of Christ or of the church. There is possibly some parallel with the “natural law” as developed by Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas (maybe to be understood now through the additional perspective of evolution). However, I am no philosopher/theologian and would soon get out of my depth trying to expound this in any coherent detail.
For now we see through a glass, darkly, of course, and none of us knows exactly how all this will play out in the long term. But your image of the off-shoots that will grow in time is a powerful and hopeful one. So thank you.
I do agree and would only change your wording to say that “practice prepares the ground for belief”, or at the very least, gives society a framework for deciding what should be valued. People who grow up in a society where Christian worship is the norm may never be true believers, but their values will still very likely derive from Christian beliefs. By throwing out this shared framework in civic life the West has thrown out the basis for the principles that AHA lists–the right to life and liberty, the rule of law, etc. And when both the principles and the framework supporting them are gone, nothing remains beyond a struggle for raw power over others.
Was also reminded of Pascal’s comment – “Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.”
It’s working backwards to an extent, but that can be a valid form of reasoning. She’s looking at one set of values and outcomes she thinks are bankrupt, and in fact false, and they come from a certain set of premises. Then there is another set which she believes are good, but also true, and they come from a second set of premises.
If the second set of values really have some kind of objective truth, including in terms of giving meaning to life, and that often is an experiential determination, that does seem to point to the conclusion that the basis for those ideas has some kind of reality.
On the other hand if the first set of values seem to lead to depression, alienation from communal life, unreason, and an inability to depend a moral life, and those are things that are untruths about reality, that tends to suggest the ideas that lead to those outcomes may be in some way compromised.
If the western tradition has lead to all of these valuable insights and institutions, and that is based on how it conceptualizes the nature of the human person and our relation to God and nature, doesn’t it suggest that there must be something to what produces that kind of conceptualization?
It only goes so far, but it’s something people like Hitchens and Dawkins really seemed to be unable to address in any meaningful way.
I agree about Hitchens, but I think Dawkins concept of successful “memes” is a good theory in respect to this discussion.
Elizabeth Hamilton
6 months ago
In his question towards the end of the video, Matt Goodwin claims that PEW Research claims that 6% of Britains are Muslim. Here in France, that figure is more like 13%.
Mustard Clementine
6 months ago
I find the seemingly contagious idea that universal human values aren’t enough misguided, when really the issue is we are no longer standing up for those values. I really don’t see how religiosity is going to help with that; it can even tend to make it worse by prioritizing doctrine over core principles.
Isn’t the issue, what is the basis for those values? They aren’t self evident, historically most societies have not had them. If there is no basis in society for people to believe in those values, they will disappear.
Gordon Arta
6 months ago
This is a thought-provoking interview, but is rooted in the here and now, skating over far more fundamental tides and issues. Western democracy and its institutions and principles are exhausted, and lack any long term aims or purpose needed to re-invigorate them. Democracy serves the electoral cycles, and those empowered by them. The law serves lawyers, and is increasingly divorced from any real sense of ‘justice’. Universities are businesses serving their customers. The financial systems exist to serve the wealthy. Organisations such as the NHS and churches exist to serve the organisation. And so on.
We are not products of ‘Judaeo-Christianity’, that’s a conceit believers have awarded themselves. We are the currently front-line products of 6000 years of the hothouse of human civilisations which is the Euro-Asian temperate landmass. We do not need a higher birth rate because we risk being outbred by ‘lesser’ peoples; we need, as do they, a lower birthrate for the future of the planet on which we depend. Ideology, whether it’s religious, political, racial, whatever, is no basis for ‘purpose’; all are, in time, destroyed by reality. They can, as Islam is doing, put off their demise by increasing repression and violence, but belief is built on fiction.
What makes humans special is not that we are ‘sacred’, or ‘human’, but that we are capable of intelligence and reason, and have a thirst for information, evidence, knowledge and understanding. Our ‘purpose’ should be to serve that thirst. And if the next iteration of an intelligent being is a bio-digital hybrid we should recognise that we humans are reaching the culmination point of our purpose.
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
I was amazed when I saw Ayaan’s article earlier this week. I have had a very very similar journey to hers, in terms of being atheist and coming to Christianity, though I was raised atheist and practiced Buddhist meditation for 20 years. Reading Tom Holland’s “Dominion” was a turning point for me. I had never realized that actually all of the values I was raised to hold most dear were Christian. And I had never realized what a “depth charge”, as Holland puts it, the story of God dying as a humiliated slave in order to wake up and save humanity ignited in the world. A depth charge that gradually transformed the West and is at the root of the Enlightenment and our freedoms and deepest values to this day. It’s the water we swim in, so we don’t even see it.
Paul Monahan
6 months ago
No need to embrace Christianity or another anthropomorphic concept. We are the light and the way; just look inward and be as you are. Develop awareness and non attachment – Ayaan has just grasped onto another external crutch to calm her tumultuous mind
j watson
6 months ago
Superb. Thanks Unherd and thanks Ayaan.
The one gripe would be Ayaan suggesting all 300k marchers were haters. I suspect she didn’t quite mean that. Some were undoubtedly, but many were there for good reasons even if a little naive and misguided. I’m not sure suggesting all were Haters in the Christian-Judeo tradition.
Bruce Levitt
5 months ago
Appeasement of radicals and fanatics doesn’t usually end well. But we’ve been too busy shopping and eating and watching TV. It’s made us fat, dumb and stupid.
Ayaan’s journey is genuinely fascinating, and her take on the threat to Judeo-Christian values is well said. But how many people are paying any attention? Who is actually going to do something about it? It’s not someone else’s job. It’s the job of each of us to consciously reinforce those values in our daily lives and in our own way. We don’t have to be zealots, but we can’t be enlightened bystanders.
The video is at the top, I missed it on first reading too.
Michael Bond
5 months ago
This assertion reflects a still naive set of assumptions: “The next stage now is to preserve it for the next generation, and to transmit it to the immigrants who have chosen with their feet to come here.” We are lead to believe the Muslims who come to the West have voted with their feet, seeking freedom they don’t have where they came from.
I am no longer so certain that is why they come. Instead, it seems more likely they come in order to impose sharia on the West and we are foolishly led to believe something else.
David Wardlaw
5 months ago
A very brave and intellectually stimulating interview by AHA . Whilst I agree that Judeo-Christian has brought us to an increasingly cilvilised Western Society that we value the road has not been been without its problems. The stance of the Christian church with respect the violence of, say, slavery and the conquistadors were dreadful but at least the Christian ethos won through and these acts were overcome and repented and the ethos of “love thy neighbour” generally persists. Is it possible that Islam is just going through a violent phase that will be corrected and pass – if so somewhere out there there must be moderate voices of Islam calling for an end to all this bloodshed?
Alan Osband
6 months ago
The problem with expecting a return to Christianity to be a bulwark against Islam ( or Islamism ) is that there seems to be a vein of masochism within the Christian tradition , especially apparent in the attitudes of Justin Welby . He seems most himself when hurling himself into the dust of Amritsar , apologising for the British Empire , the racism inherent in white people , whatever . Aren’t books like White Fragility just as much engendered by the Christian tradition as the more positive aspects of secular liberalism she likes so much .
In the Middle Ages if a Christian town were threatened by the plague the residents would march round the walls whipping themselves and begging God to forgive them . Muslims would be more likely to wage Jihad against infidels if they wished to please Allah . This notwithstanding the crusades which had the limited aim of restoring the holy land to the control of the church .
So it seems to me wokeness itself can be seen as a product of an excessive self tormenting strain within Christianity , and one which seems extremely attractive to the leadership of the Church of England . Welby and co aren’t going to stand up to Islamic aggression within the UK . All their instincts will be to submit to this ‘Abrahamic’ religion sent to punish our sins and hope to influence and soften Islam by example , just as they believe Christian slaves did in the time of the Roman Empire .
Dumetrius
6 months ago
Is it really ‘conversion’ to come up with a list of qualities one wants, to tick them depending on whether this or that ethos delivers them, then to count the ticks and because Christianity has 11, Buddhism has 7, and Islam has 2 , and you just read a Tom Holland book, say to oneself “Well, i’m a Christian then.”
I don’t think conversion to Christianity works that way.
Conversion to Christianity works any way the Holy Spirit chooses for each individual. For some, it may well be a matter of ticking off desirable quantities — at least at first. For others it’s a “Road to Damascus” moment. For others it’s a gradual sneaking suspicion that Christianity, or some aspect of Christianity, is true. For yet others, it’s a matter of personal connection with a particular Christian, or reading one book of the New Testament that somehow makes more sense than one’s previous way of thinking.
I’m not attacking her sincerity, mind, I just worry that an epiphany like she’s being going through – and she may well be sincere – could fade away.
Billy Bob
6 months ago
After the interview, I’m still of the impression that she merely follows the views of her peers. As a child she was nominally Muslim like her parents and friends, then joined the Muslim Brotherhood when others did likewise. When she moved to a western nation and started mingling in circles where religion would be a minority interest she became atheist, now because of the culture wars she’s found her more conservative views have placed her alongside more of those who believe in Christianity she has now joined their flock. We’re all products of our environment, some just feel the need to be part of the in group more than others
Hanne Herrman
6 months ago
Dear Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I heard your conversation with Freddy Sayers this morning.
I think you delivered a strong advocacy for the role Juedo-Christianity has played in the development of Western Europe’s civilization, and equally the importance of standing up for it.
Of course immigrants are using the Western democratic tools to promote their cause, and of course they are right to do so.
But is there a limit to this tolerance? Could the tolerance of the Occident turn into its opposite, i.e. into intolerance? I would like to hear your opinion on this subject.
Hanne Herrman
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
The question surely is do you have true belief in a God or Gods?
Religions have been developed, from various, probably historic, events, by humans using similar sets of obvious rules for living [basically do no harm!] by which to guide their adherents.
In those times of relative scientific ignorance and in the face of natural phenomena it was such humans that could introduce the idea of Gods and their, beyond life, carrot and stick outcomes to manipulate people to follow those guidelines and such became defined as religions. In Islam such religious teaching is an integral part of the political administration of the population. In most Christian countries political administrations are usually secular and though apart from religion has a similar ethos as such [i.e. do no harm].
It seems inconceivable that anyone can flip-flop between true belief and non-belief [atheism].
Janine Econ
5 months ago
I very much agree with Ayaan that we need to confront the reality of what is going on, and I thank her for her needed perspective and framework for starting to consider how to do so.
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
After a considerable time ,I’ve gone from being a fan of Hirshi Ali – to the opposite.The above formalism exudes the overtolerance that drove her out of NL in the first place.I was totally sympathetic to HA – excoriating the knee jerk way Verdonk revoked HA ‘s passport- ( having lived (t)here several decades – as a foreigner!)
But the veneer wears thin when dependant on milking a facade of an idea or program as intrinsically and ontologically able to change ‘anyone’.
No change of heart is on the table ,for GenZ or the second group referred to.
Because ideas dont change anyone.Programs -HA are so ‘neerbuigend’ – (dutch for patronising).
Holding a form of christianity while denying ‘its’ power is an oxymoron these days- with a recently reported & highly putative national socialism of poland and Slovakia pretending to be able ,on their own power, to ‘make ‘ Christ -‘anything’ ( ie constitutional king) -let alone the chief political power structure.
‘He saved us ,not in virtue of our own works ,but in His power
By the washing of regeneration of the Holy Spirit.’ Titus 3 vs 5.
This is not a program,or merest ‘idea’.
Even slightly.
The sickness of believing in some etherial ‘underlying essence’ – as if THAT changes people , is even worse.
You would not be far from the mark ,HA – if you were to argue the structures surrounding the Romanisation of the reference points of the habitually denigrated ” God is no other than the celebration of the real ,personal ,praxis of mutal realationship within communion between Father Son ,and Holy Spirit.There is NO deeper underlying essence.”(Gunton)
The ‘Homousia’ (dispersed subcultural impersonalistic ventriloquism of the Creator) is – in Rome ,and its various reformative equal and opposite reactions around Rome ( ie since the reformation)
NOT limited to being ‘generated from the hierarchy of the ‘Father’ ‘alone’. Western cultic thought ( ie all of the protestant mutations)
Merely apes the verticality of a God uninvolved in his creations or their sufferings.
There begins the subculture of ‘interpassivity’ (Zizek)
The sheer bloody patronisation (literally) of conformative thinking.
Last edited 5 months ago by UnHerd Reader
Mark Griffin
5 months ago
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater was a saying of my Grandmother. One of the strands of my past that I hold onto! I have been bringing my family to weekly service and our boys to Sunday school for the past while.
Adrian Smith
6 months ago
Many of the same values she talks about can be found in Islam, if you look. The problem is extreme Islam (what she was brought up with), which emphasises all the negative interpretations. If Jihad is seen to be an individual’s internal struggle to become a better Muslim what is wrong with that? There is lots wrong with the form of Jihad we were exposed to on Oct 7th and many many times over the last few decades. What we really need it the moderate voices within Islam to stand up against extreme Islam, but most are scared to do so for fear of being murdered! The same was true in Christianity a few centuries ago, but Christianity evolved. We are deluding ourselves if we think we can just separate ourselves from Islam or even get rid of Islam. Islam needs to evolve and we can’t wait a few centuries for it to do so.
What should happen is very much as she says, identify what it is we are / aspire to be and where those values come from and the stories that support and explain them from ALL the major religions. People can then accept the values and have the religion if they want to. But regardless of which religion they choose (atheism is a religion), they can clearly see they all share the same values.
It is the perversion of values in woke, which are all double standards and not values at all, that has left us so vulnerable now. Woke has sought to replace the spiritual void (the need to believe in something greater) that turning our backs on traditional religion has created. Woke is the false god of so called Social Justice, so maybe turning back to the traditional concepts of god – there is plenty in there about genuinely caring for others, is a suitable antidote for some.
When selecting who can come to the country it is those that share our values that we want, regardless of race, creed or colour. We cannot do that selection if they just turn up on our shores on a boat. Ok so Rwanda is not the right place to send them, find somewhere that is acceptable and send them there and do it soon.
The problem with Islam (from a this-worldly perspective) is that what you call ‘extreme’ Islam is normative Islam. Islamic hermeneutics is based on the principle of “naskh” or abrogation. The “later revealed” passages of the Qu’ran are held to abrogate the “earlier revealed” passages when there is a conflict in meaning. Unfortunately for comity with the rest of the world, the “later revealed” passages are the ones that include things like “strike at the necks of unbelievers,” screeds of Jew-hatred, and the command to execute apostates. The passages about killing one man being like killing all of mankind get quoted to non-Muslims a lot, but do not influence any fiqh of sharia, having been abrogated by the ones I just pointed out.
Had Islam developed a hermeneutic like the Christian hermeneutic beautifully expressed by the Anglicans in Article 20 of the Articles of Religion, forbidding “so expound[ing] one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another,” it would be a very different religion.
Micah Dembo
6 months ago
Great stuff. I have never bothered with her when she was just a garden variety atheist airhead. Now however, I impressed. She is really not a Christian however, but a scientist and philosopher. The error of dogmatic religion is to pretend that proof is a necessity for truth. O the contrary there are many true statements, even in mathematics and pure logic, that are not provably true.
Last edited 6 months ago by Micah Dembo
Fionnuala O'Conor
6 months ago
AHA has a personal story that’s moving, but when she extrapolates beyond that, she’s a muddled and evidence-free thinker and a dangerously impractical policy-maker, as her responses to the as-ever thoughtful audience questions reveal. Perhaps in hommage, the UnHerd copy editor misspelled “Christianity” as “Cristianity” in the final section header.
Christianity was never meant to be extrapolated beyond the personal. The original homage was, ‘Ecce homo’.
Oddly, no longer in any sense ‘Crosstianity’, the Christianity of the Church of England has become almost solely the liberal values of the 21st century. The Church has imitated the world; the world it originally fashioned at many removes.
Atheism may be the safest place for many people to be, if adopting a religion would become for them the worst form of it. It would apparently be a uniform position. It would prevent conversion. Though AHA’s experience that all religions are not the same is of inestimable value.
Robbie K
6 months ago
you’re going to see that most people, even though they say they’re not Christian, in fact are. This is a Christian society still.
Only a Christian would make such a claim.
One thing that unites Christians is their righteous attitude, I note therefore how this has been propagated along with her new found conversion.
That’d be the effect of asking a dud question and deploying a dud answer.
It’s a mistake in particular to assert that it’s ‘a Christian society still’ is a claim only Christians make. They don’t.
It’s more often made now from outside Christianity, by commentators who are not themselves Christian.
ie, recently in a discussion involving Tom Holland, Douglas Murray and another bloke on YouTube.
But in Holland’s case it comes from looking at the ancient world and assessing his own reaction to the impossibility of understanding the Greek/Roman worldview and pointing out that it’s very hard to shake the past 2000 years off.
Others have said it will take 500 years for that to die.
Certainly the format, assumptions, and ways of acting of most occultists and new agers ,and most hilariously in ‘Western Buddhism’ show that it’s no easy thing to shake off.
The righteousness you describe could be a bulwark against the madness of our times. I used to be very much ‘live and let live’, and I still am to a point, but something changed when everything became political, so much so that the political has become almost religious in that we are unable to criticize or challenge policies such as the teaching of LGBQT pedagogy in schools or the importation of old hatreds by those emigrating to the West. Social media doesn’t help either as instead of disseminating truth, it spreads and enforces the views of the loudest and the most powerful. Even children are coopted into political beliefs and used to promote causes that have the potential to damage them now and in the future (transgenderism and Net Zero).
We now find ourselves thrown into an arena where one group still believes in reasonable discourse and settling differences peaceably and another much large group that believes their version of good must be achieved at all costs even if others are hurt or killed in the process. The West is being devoured from within and without. With the stigmatization of Christianity we have become mere talking heads discussing how to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic while we crash headlong into a giant iceberg. As we see with Muslims and Woke cultists they possess an energy that stems from their belief system. Intelligence, liberalism, free speech – without the energy of Christianity behind them these will simply be overridden by those who believe that their ends justify the means. Unfortunately, the message of Christianity has become distorted to simply mean ‘love all no matter what’. This works well on a personal level, but not on a societal/civilizational level. The G*d of the New Testament is the same G*d as in the Old Testament. When put together they strike a balance between knowing when to punish and knowing when to forgive.
Finally, much of the righteousness we’re experiencing right now actually comes from the twin anti-cultures of globalism and woke ideology. It is ubiquitous to the point that it pervades school curricula, political discourse, and even our entertainment. This form of righteousness is harsh, unforgiving, and mean-spirited. We see this in little acts of cruelty such as taking offense when none was meant, demanding employers fire people with whom we don’t agree, and the tearing down of posters of those kidnapped by terrorists. Ultimately, Christianity acts as a bulwark against totalitarian ideologies which is why tyrants and dictators the world over have always tried to stamp it out.
I’m uncertain how this can be the case when The Church has been completely captured by the woke ideology that you refer to – there is a regular author on here who observes on that very subject and is repelled by the notion of the hiring of Diversity and Inclusion Specialists whilst local vicars are all but forgotten.
AHA made it absolutely clear that she understands Western civilisation as having primarily developed within a Judeo-Christian framework. I think that is what she meant by ‘a Christian society still’.
What are we to make of all this? If anything.
Sinead O’Connor made what appears to be a similar ‘journey’ to AHA. Though without the atheist interlude. One can find Catholics who have become Anglicans. To them, it seems like a great change. A choice they made over the one that was made for them by their parents. But in reality, it isn’t.
O’Connor, once disturbed as a child by the God thing, just couldn’t give it up. She eventually became very righteous to the point of not wanting to be among non-Muslims (though she recanted this later). She arrived at her starting point and failed to understand it for the first time. She should be pitied.
AHA is almost as unique as Saul of Tarsus. After a zealous religious upbringing, as Paul, Saul went among a different people. The churches he, as Paul, created were organisationally part of Roman civic society and thus an intrinsic part of Roman civilisation; a civilisation whose people were very different from us, as Tom Holland has described.
It was never the intention of Paul, or the Twelve who only preached ‘among the circumcision’, to create a Christian civilisation. Paul’s converts were to live differently from outsiders. Even so, within the Christian communities, Paul was the Church’s first diversity and inclusion manager. Saul’s preaching only produced riots in the synagogues.
Paul insisted that his converts not be conformed to the environment of the world they found themselves in. What can a jelly do but conform to its mould? Subsequently, over many centuries, Christianity has affected custom, habit and law, like water permeating the earth. Distilled through many filters, this is the Christianised environment that has moulded us like jellies. Or, in a game of let’s pretend, as when a parent talks to their new-born as if he or she understands speech, what is pretended has become the reality.
If Christians make the claim that most people are Christian, it is because they see all the light that the others cannot see.
Christ declared that His kingdom is ‘not of this world’. That is, not made up of political parties, economies, armies or bureaucracies. If a Christianised society had come into being as part of a plan, it could be preserved by such things as plans, political policies and conversations. As it hasn’t, it’s preservation that way may not be possible. At the same time, even if it avoids becoming a cut flower, a Christianised civilisation is a flower that is not found in the natural world.
The Gallo-Roman populations of western Europe in the late Roman twilight had to live among many new peoples with different religions, customs and laws. They could not have foreseen, nor affected, the outcomes of all these things. Nor can we in our own time. We will not see what those ultimate forms will be.
AHA may be concerned to avoid being involuntarily swept back to the sort of things that characterised her early life by such developments in society as she discusses here. Paul foresaw that there would arise times – formidable seasons – in which the good, the reasonable and the moderate would be despised. There would be those who wanted novelty. There would be others who were always learning but who never reached a knowledge of the truth. His advice to those who would guide the Christians was this: from such people, turn away.
A Christianised person, one who is not religious or a God-believer but who holds to the liberal values extruded from Christianity, is indeed a pleasant thing to live next to. Agreeing to disagree is a form of Christian mercy derived from Paul that people unfailingly undervalue. Paul himself had learned this from others. AHA is almost as unique as Paul.
Very interesting comparison with Saul / St Paul. Go Ayaan!
Those who consider themselves Christian of whatever stripe, or indeed any inheritor of Christendom, should be grateful to St Paul, to put it mildly, for winning the argument with “those of the circumcision”, that you could be a Jesus follower without being circumcised (of course he was himself circumcised). See Acts 15, or google on the Circumcision Controversy in early Christianity.
Many bits of St Paul’s letters are a difficult read today. Only the biblical fundamentalists would feel obliged to claim that he was always right. But like Ayaan he was a thinker and clearly a highly persuasive one. If she could do a similar job in the 21st century as he did in the 1st, and I don’t see why not, what a life achievement that would be.
And what an answer to the devilish fatwah. Her stamina and resolve under it should be remembered every moment.
Great interview, thoroughly enjoyed reading it and shall have to return several times to really digest it.
What I choose to comment on is how we have failed Gen Z and immigrants:
One of the biggest factors in my opinion – and probably the most self-defeating one in terms of the liberal society – is a failure to push back on the culture of victimhood which has proliferated and taken root to such an extent that I think it can fairly be called “culturally ingrained”.
Too many young people want to be protected from everything – be it words or misfortune or even the consequences of their own actions. This undermines the very basis of the liberal society, which is the understanding of the individual as robust, willing to take risks and also suffer pain and suffering as the price for freedom.
I tend to see the widespread support for Palestine among this younger generation as a direct result of this culture of victimhood.
Another failure on our part with respect to the culture of victimhood is having allowed a mentality – particularly among the political Left – to continue whereby immigrants are thought of as permanent victims and oppressed, people to be pitied – even if they are in the 2nd or 3rd generation.
This is insulting to the immigrants who don’t think of themselves as victims but do integrate and get on, contribute meaningfully to the host society and achieve great things.
But it also allows the ones who don’t have any intention of accepting the basic rules of play of the host society to do so with impunity. By allowing the narrative of immigrants being “poor, poor, people being excluded by the mean natives”, we have failed to (or been prevented from) demanding anything from them in return for the privilege of being able to live with us. And now – surprise! – we’re being presented with the consequences of decades of laissez-faire, kid-glove handling.
Finally, we have failed ourselves and all the people coming after us, or into our societies, by allowing our individual self-worth to be determined by how much we own, how much we consume, how much money we have. When things like this become the primary meaning-makers of a society rather than any greater guiding principle, be it religious or no, then that society is one massive sitting duck ready to be bulldozered by a more powerful belief system.
Quite so. I was struck recently how socially unacceptable it has become to tell someone to ‘man up’ (woman up, person up) to their minor tribulations.
Jonathan Haidt’s research shows an absence of independence (children allowed out on their own/with friends late and later), topped off by SM which is making young women depressed and neurotic. Women are now 58% of UG intake in the UK, and 25% of Gen Z have seen a therapist before age 20. We have wrapped them up in cotton wool and then given them the most powerful sociological technology we have ever invenre before we ran the trials. We are greatly to blame.
What an interesting time we live in when one loses the respect of friends for identifying yourself as a Christian, a follower of the most significant and influential person in all of human history. I loved Ayaan’s article and appreciate her giving this interview with Freddie…he’s the best. Ayaan seems to be walking through the Christian door through its ethics, values, and personal lifestyle. Well and good. I hope sometime she discovers, perhaps she already has, the unique Christian doctrine of the Universality of Sin, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and not just the non-believers out there who “need to come to Jesus or they’re going to Hell” (a horrible version of Christianity) or “need to have their heads chopped off” (a horrible version of Islam). Welcome to this fascinating roller coaster ride of Christianity, Ayaan, with its heights of faith and depths of doubts and those occasional and delightful moments of enjoying a peace that the world cannot give.
“All have sinned”, or Original Sin is an iniquitous concept that needs to be rooted out of human thought. None of us are born tainted, and to burden young people with that concept is without any justification whatsoever. It’s very much part of the reason why “faith” continues to fail in Western societies. Human values of community, mutual trust, working together and allowing all to follow their own path providing they do no harm requires not one jot of “faith” or belief in a deity.
Thank you Steve for providing us with a perfect example of original sin – the fallenness, the imperfection, the brokenness, the arrogance, the lack of humility, the lack of self reflection, and the totally self-centeredness of human nature.
Thankyou for your display of utter arrogance in making several highly inaccurate assumptions. Launching a personal attack rather than addressing the point also tells us something, and no amount of up- or down-voting will change that.
No personal attack. I don’t know you from Adam. Simply a response to what you wrote. I’m happy for you to make the point you thought you were making. Look. Original Sin is a Christian theological concept for “none of us are perfect,” “none of us are completely put together,” “all of us are a work in progress.” It is a doctrine that brings humility. Not arrogance. Simple as that. Original Sin says it’s helpful to own a mirror into which we can regularly and honestly look to realize that “none of us has yet arrived.” “No one is perfect, no not one.” Not sure why someone would take offense at that doctrine let alone call it “an iniquitous concept.” As for “none of us are born tainted” — we’re all born tainted by the very definition of the term. Tainted = “Affected with bad or undesirable qualities.” I’m certainly tainted.. You’re not?
So do you believe new borns are tainted in some way ?
If “yes” in what way ?
If “no”, when does the new born turn into a tainted individual and how does this process occur ?
They’re cute as can be but, yes. They are by nature and necessity totally self-absorbed creatures whose self-absorption takes on more and more tainted – undesirable – characteristics as they grow. I’ve yet to meet the human for whom that isn’t true. BTW – This is why the most orthodox Christian denominations practice infant baptism instead of adult “believers baptism.” They want the infant, its parents, and everyone else to know that the infant’s tainted nature does not stand in the way of the love of the Christian God. Christians see infant baptism as a pure form of the grace of God.
You are mistaken. Original Sin is a (Western) Christian notion that holds all human beings bear the guilt of Adam’s transgression, and are thus in need of salvation even if they personally commit no sins.
Your description is of a notion more similar to the Orthodox Christian concept of Ancestral Sin (see my other post to this thread).
Let’s not forget Eve she also sinned temptress though it’s a weird idea since they were a couple.lol I believe Christianity has done more Good in the world than bad except for the Spanish inquisition & so called witches burned by church leaders in the 1500 s approx. Horrid times.
Your comment is bereft of intellectual contribution and unnecessarily insulting. May I suggest you “do unto others as you would have done unto yourself”
Your comment is bereft of intellectual contribution and unnecessarily insulting. May I suggest you “do unto others as you would have done unto yourself”
I misplaced my comment above (which I can’t now edit) It was meant to be aimed at the comment insulting SM.
Without any justification? Have you seen the world?
I’m seeing a beautiful universe out there, and our Earth is a mere speck on which consciousness happens to arisen, entirely by chance.
I don’t think Steve watches the news.
I’ll take the French Revolution Atheistic Cult of Reason for 800 please, Alex.
I think Original Sin is the capacity within all of us to choose evil. We are all born with it, and the seductiveness takes place right in our hearts. The Sufis, the mystical Muslim branch, call up for Jihad within ourselves. Wonder what Ayaan thinks about the Sufi Muslims, who are actually persecuted by many of their fellow Muslims.
But with Freddie Ayaan was mostly talking about the cultural consequence of the Judeo-Christian philosophy, influencing our political and moral structures in the West. I wonder how far she will travel in her “adventure” discovering Christian faith as in the end it is an inner experience and can’t be explained intellectually. I have the feeling that she isn‘t quite there yet.
To be fair, none of us are ever truly “there”, it’s an infinite journey with no end.
“All have sinned” and Original Sin are not coextensive concepts. I am an Orthodox Christian, and the East never accepted Blessed Augustine’s notion of Original Sin — the idea that all human beings bear the guilt of Adam and Eve’s original transgression (an idea which he justified by his theory of the origin of souls, “traductionism”, that every human soul is a fragment of Adam’s soul, a theory which no major Christian confession believes, not even those like the Latin church and the Calvinists who have really embraced “Original Sin” ). The Orthodox concept is “Ancestral Sin”, which gave us no guilt, but disordered our passions and left a world prone to sin with lots of example of sin to emulate. We too say with the Scriptures, “all have sinned”, though this is in the form of an observation about human beings, not a dogma defining human beings. It is also a standard Orthodox belief that neither the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary nor the Forerunner and Baptist John ever voluntarily sinned (some go further and say “ever sinned”, but that is hard to square with the plain meaning of the passage of Scripture under discussion). (And yes, we Orthodox Christians have a notion of involuntary sin — you can miss the mark without trying to miss the mark.)
I think the concept of Original Sin needs to be replaced by Human Duty. Being born a human must be held up as a responsibility towards the whole world and all its creatures.
Well said! It’s beautiful how the Lord draws different people to the same gospel in different ways.
The matter of Islam is still being skirted around it seems.
I know many ‘little-toe’ Muslims and have encountered many other so-called ‘good’ Muslims. But the last few weeks has revealed that when push comes to shove they will line up with the hardline Islamists, against Western society and its values.
I don’t think there is any way to square the circle: Islam is no good, simple as that.
Hirsi Ali’s bravery and intellectual honesty win the day. And not just vis a vis the public, but vis a vis herself. She can’t avoid recognizing that what is most precious in the western liberal tradition has arisen from that Judeo-Christian ground, and so the question faces her: “What is there in that ground?”
This is why those who criticize her conversion as being “instrumental” are missing the point. They’re partly getting it backward. She’s not instrumentalizing Christianity as a tool to wield in defense of some community, but recognizing it as key to the mystery of why that community is so worth defending to begin with. She’s undertaking an encounter with that mystery, as both an intellectual and spiritual quest.
Anyone with eyes to see can see our present left sawing off the branch it sits on. If that is true, and it is, the question is Why. What are the elements that make up the picture: 1) the branch, 2) the sawing, and 3) the evident void into which our left risks plunging, bringing the West down with them?
Hirsi Ali sees the picture and is going to follow the hunches she has in pusuit of an answer.
Well said, sir. 100% agree.
This is one heroic and decent human being!
Yes, indeed she is.
All Judeo-Christian countries are equally in need of immigration at the moment, because they’re not producing enough children. So it’s not as if you can have immigrants come here from America or even from Israel. It’s the developing world that’s producing immigrants. And unfortunately, yes, it’s Muslim-majority countries that are producing immigrants.
What’s striking about this, and about many other interviews I’ve read in the past, say, ten years is the implicit assumption that Western (and by Western I mean European) cultures are in a state of permanent decline and the best we can do is manage said decline and hopefully pass on some of our values to our successors, who are presumed to be (primarily Muslim) immigrants from the developing world. The further assumption is that this is a natural state of affairs, about which nothing can be done, rather than the result of policy, whether deliberate or accidental, which can be changed.
If those assumptions are both true, then the vision floated by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others is a pipe dream. A culture that cannot reproduce itself, that cannot sustain itself, is a failed culture. Why on earth would Muslim immigrants want to assimilate into a culture which has so expressly and obviously failed? Immigration and colonialism are two sides of the same coin: a superabundance of human capital which can be exported abroad. And the greater that superabundance, the less need newcomers have to assimilate, since when they arrive they find plenty of bearers of their existing culture already waiting for them.
What is needed is not wan smiles and sad remarks about how Europe has had its day and maybe if we ask really nicely all those nice young Muslim men will keep Nelson’s Column up, but rather an assertive and confident expression of European cultural primacy and the dismantling of those policies–political, economic, social, and cultural–which are causing Europeans to fail to reproduce themselves. Now, whether that is even possible is an open question. Personally, I think it is too late. The damage has been done, and the will is lacking to enact even the most picayune of reforms, as demonstrated by the constant stream of utterly pathetic news out of the UK which I see practically every day, a stream which never fails to depress me, since I fell in love with Britain at a very young age and never fell out of love, although I admit it’s been extraordinarily painful these last two decades. But the Britain I fell in love with has died, or is near death. My hope is that it is the latter. Perhaps the patient can still be saved. Perhaps.
I think it’s important for people on the Right not to fall into the Left’s ideological trap, IE the overreaction to their provocation.The fundamental nature of Leftism is Internationalism and abhorrence to the Nation State as an oppressive institution that affixes certain cultural values at the top of the Hierarchy. They then use something resembling Empiricism to highlight how Demographic disparities arise from these cultural values and seek to remediate them through ideological revolution that leads to redistribution.
Whenever the Right talks about the need to increase native birth rates to maintain cultural values it is playing directly into the Left’s hands. The Right should not fall into that trap. It should simply refuse to play the Left’s rhetorical game of conflating Culture with Ethnicity. Ayaan and her husband, Niall Ferguson talk extensively about integration and assimilation.
The justification for limiting immigration to only those who plan to assimilate is a winning argument. No functioning culture favors those who refuse to participate in the existing culture over those that do. It’s a self-evident argument and the only one that’s needed.
I suspect that many people who grow up in a theocratic society integrate the social lessons into their nature. If they reject their god then it leaves a god-shaped hole which calls out to be filled. Now some of the god shaped holes have sharper edges and deeper roots than others, so turning towards a more copacetic god may be an effective response.
Of course if you live in a society that does not privilege the concept of an ubiquitous god then any god shaped hole is going to be shallow and easily smoothed over. Smoothed over with New Age beliefs or hankering after ‘spirituality’, atheism or humanism, or other ‘Enlightenment’ values.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has found her own way forward. Good for her.
I was thinking along similar lines; those who didn’t grow up with such a pervasive religious influence probably don’t feel quite the same sense of something missing, without it – and are more likely to be satisfied looking inward, or at least elsewhere than religion for answers to life’s questions. To me, that’s all religion is – someone else’s answers to life’s questions. I personally don’t tend to find someone else’s conclusions quite so satisfying to my existentialism as someone more conditioned towards religious beliefs might. I am happy for whatever brings someone contentment to be available to them – but I don’t really appreciate the inclination to assume others need such pervasive influence to be similarly fulfilled.
Ok so what you did here is a common theme that I see from “Rational Materialists.” What you’re effectively saying is that a Christian only believes in the rational probability of biblical truth because he/she is relying on “someone else’s answers.” Do you not believe your worldview was shaped by the answers of others?
In Genesis, the Serpent says to Eve that “Ye Shall be as Gods” and eat out of the tree of knowledge. This is a call to “look inward” and be your own God because by doing so you can know all (Gnosis). This is the basis for Gnosticism and every other Esoteric religion.
You talk of Existentialism which is just a fancy word for pondering one’s own existence. Is there not a massive volume of Existentialist literature especially from Nietzsche onwards? Existentialism is effectively seen as a remedy for Nihilism. Existentialism like Gnosticism and its offspring Marxism, Critical Social Justice and Climate Justice believes in “building heaven of earth” through “looking inward at humanity.”
I find Christianity compelling not because I can’t think for myself but because it comports to objective reality. It perfectly explains Human Nature mostly through Narrative form which is mind-blowing to me.
Some might say, well Science disproves it but I see no evidence of this. Nowhere does the Bible claim to be 100% literal or “inerrant.” Nowhere does it claim to be a Science Book either. Science is perfectly compatible with the Old and New Testaments. In fact, there’s an overwhelming argument that the development of Empiricism couldn’t exist without a belief that the universe is rational and understandable and governed by laws of nature not random chance. Likewise, the Theory of random chance in life is a construct in itself. Nothing is random whether good fortune or bad fortune. Everything occurs because of some material process underpinned by clearly defined laws of nature. So why do laws of nature exist at all? Is the Universe governed by chaos or is there underlying objective truth. The existence of objective reality points to a designed world and the scientific evidence is quite clear that the Universe had a starting point.
I often wander into Watkins Books off Charing Cross Road, a bookshop full of esoteric literature, tarot cards, astrology paraphernalia, Zen Buddhism and works on the occult. Whenever I go there I see the place frequented almost exclusively by women of a certain age. I am minded to believe, even if only due to such circumstantial evidence, that young women in particular feel the gaping void of a lack of meaning in their lives. Where they once were fervent believers in faiths or radical ideologies, many of them now fill the spiritual emptiness with fortune telling and books on self-help. It is interesting that these fill the first floor’s shelves, while works about gnosticism, Traditionalism, perennial religious texts and history are consigned to the basement. Just a thought I had.
If you’re older and male and got into the occult via a social or a hands-on standpoint, ie, initiations from Masonry, to ‘fringe masonry’, to the more full-on occultism of the likes of your Gurdjieffs or the OTO, and you go into Watkins, it’s certainly a generational and a cultural gap when you see these browsing women.
Whether these verbose but windy volumes fill their needs, I don’t know, but I’m going to guess it’ll be a ‘No’ in the long term.
This woman speaks to me. She is still searching, and she sees the problems with all cultures. Her ability to see clearly is powerful. we need so many more like her in our society today. Keep talking AHA. you are a hero.
Great interview. As an atheist, it is clear we are creatures of belief, not the faux philosophical rational man or woman.
But where we are now has ascended well above the raw belief. We discard beliefs that don’t work (the divine right of kings for instance, or an-eye-for-an-eye) and move our view of humanity and morality on, which then allows us to select from the religious books with a more enlightened outlook. Even within the Bible morality shifts.
Then, in day-to-day living, moment-by-moment, we rely on what we believe and the principles we have learnt – the heuristics of history and custom. Freedom of speech, equality, fraternity, tolerance, the right to disagree, a shared humanity. Unprovable heuristics can still help us do the right thing, but become evil when they become an unquestionable ideology. Truth rests on doubt.
An eye for an eye is measure for measure. It prevents the blood feud.
Revenge knows no limits. It can last from generation to generation. Attila’s view was that there was nothing so satisfying to a strong man as pursuing a vendetta.
In AHA’s experience, the right to disagree doesn’t exist everywhere. A shared humanity is something shared with Caligula and Hindley as much as it is with Gladstone and Millicent Fawcett. Faith in human nature? I can’t have such a faith as I have such a nature.
But an eye for an eye is different from turn the other cheek, and the message of forgiveness and redemption.
The counterpoint to religion is not about faith in human nature – it’s obvious how fallible that is with dark histories of warmongers and tyrants. However, over time and with much struggle and pain, we have developed principles that allows people to prosper and live in peace – even when people believe different things, and independently of religion. The principals are rooted in experience and are easily lost if we don’t defend them. Faith is something else.
“Truth rests on Doubt.”
So does Christianity. There is no Faith without Doubt.
Morality doesn’t “shift” in the Bible. That’s a misconception created by German subjectivists imposing their feelings onto the actual texts. The character of God is consistent across the Old and New Testament despite the evolving behavior of Humanity.
Not really. In the Old Testament God is a vengeful lunatic killing thousands. In the New Testament his PR team obviously decided he needed a new image so he changed into a caring benevolent father figure
I didn’t downvote fyi but I’ll quote Exodus 34 6-7.
“And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
If Christ then came and died to bear those sins…Where’s the inconstency?
Isn’t God’s kill count over 2 million people in the Old Testament?
Also I think Kim Jong Un also punishes 3 generations for the crimes of their parents so that’s probably not a good comparison to make if you’re trying to portray The Lord as loving
I don’t know the numbers, I’m not a secular biblical fundamentalist like you are. I don’t believe large biblical numbers were meant to be inerrant. They’re probably intentionally inflated because the author is trying to present a more profound truth. Keep in mind the authors didn’t have statistical data verified by 24/7 fact checkers at the Washington Post.
Where are you going with the kill count anyways. Do you consider the Allied Powers to be morally reprehensible because they killed proportionately more Axis soldiers?
So you only believe the bits of the bible that are convenient?
How much better could I possibly explain without you distorting my point? I’m saying that not every word of the Bible was meant to be taken literally. Are you unfamiliar with the history of written communication? Nobody was concerned about being precise with large numbers. Empiricism is a modern development.
For example, when reading about warfare or dictators the data will list casualties normally with a range of estimates. The range is only possible because multiple sources claim different things. For ex Mao killed between 20 million and 100 million. We run into the same thing with Covid statistics. If you’re not writing an Empirical book than you don’t care if it’s 20 million or 100 million. All you care about relaying is that ALOT of people were directly and or indirectly killed for X reason.
Again, Empiricism is a modern development. If I’m not speaking to an Academic, I can convey to a Layperson that Mao killed ALOT of people without being precise in details. Why? Because
the layperson doesn’t care about the finite details and because those allegedly finite, objective details actially get subjective at a certain point. How exactly do you get an 80 million range in estimates anyways? Somebody is fudging numbers somewhere. So I guess what I need you to explain to me is why Statistics are so variable if the secular world is so concerned with “Scientific Truth.”
But if the bible isn’t to be taken literally, then it’s simply reduced to a collection of fables with good morals is it not? If Jesus didn’t really feed the five thousand, Moses didn’t part the sea or Noah didn’t lead two of every animal onto an ark then why are we to believe the other bits being true such as God creating the Earth or Jesus being his son and being born of a virgin?
This reduces Christianity to being little more than a collection of well meaning rules
The Bible is written both literally and metaphorically in different parts. Its quite clearly littered with parables and metaphors. When Jesus says “I am the Bread of Life” do you take that to mean he is claiming to be a Loaf of Bread?
Does it matter if Jesus fed 5000 or 3000? What if it was actually 6500? Can we safely assume nobody documented a head count or thinks anyone should care. Again, he fed ALOT of people.
As for other examples like Moses parting the Red Sea. That is meant to be literal as far as I can tell. Whether it’s a “miracle” or a weather anamoly, Exodus 14:21-29 is written with detailed accounts. Now whether the detailed accounts are all “empirically rock solid” is a fair critique if you’re “deconstructing” it but you can’t read the Bible as one giant metaphor or a pure documentary of events.
Listen, I get it. If you’ve already made up your mind that it’s a subversive fable written to manipulate behavior than no amount of rationalization will sway you. Before the last 3-4 years I might have shared your unflinching skepticism.
Unherd apparently didn’t allow my post. To be continued Billy Bob haha.
T Bone.
It is deeply refreshing to find someone who articulates what you have been thinking as well as you have. Thank you.
It is sometimes also helpful for people to recognise that the Bible is a collection of books. And that Christians use the terms inspired by God. Which means that there is human interplay in the writings. Further, while there are instances of ‘vengeance’ (which I will continue to wrestle with). Many of the destructive acts that people have a problem with are noted, but are not meant to have been seen as being endorsed by God. I believe that the power of the bible, is that it requires wrestling, and does not give answers easily to difficult moral questions.
Why not explore earth based philosophy like maybe native American Toltec wisdom or other beliefs that predate western religions .They have alot to say & are interesting.I find these concepts of the biblical God a bit too farfetched ! ” Maybe we create god in our own image ” our own level of consciousness “?…
Don’t think you’re getting his point, probably because you’re choosing not to.
That’s fine, but the downside is that it is in itself aligning to an unconscious dogma, which as GKC said ‘is the very definition of a prejudice.’
To me, her position is summed up by her last sentence: “And I think if you tell people they have no more value than mould, then what’s the point?”
Well there is no point. That’s the point. Just because I say I have no more value than mould is not a problem, unless I make the error of thinking mould is inherently bad or has no value.
Yes, mould on my bread sucks. And yet mould has benefits to the ecosystem in other ways.
I think AHA makes this mistake and so confounds lack of intrinsic value with lack of contextual value.
And please do not mistake me for a relativist. All I am saying things do not have intrinsic value.
And therein lies the challenge for the atheist. If nothing has intrinsic value imbued by a god, what shall we value and why? And no, not “anything goes.”
I’m up for the challenge. So let’s talk.
A good read as expected, but I fail to understand why cultivating a liking for the outputs/influences of Christianity leads to the development of a belief in a higher power.
(with no intention of being disrespectful) maybe the inclusion of the word “therapists” in the article goes some way to explaining this outcome.
I am reminded of George Herbert’s poem The Pulley.
Thanks – I read it and (eventually) got your drift.
I have two children now adults, one a Christian and one not, both raised by my husband, an agnostic and me, an Anglican priest. They have similar moral and ethical values though one is socially conservative, open minded, environmentally concerned and works as an occupational
therapist, the other fairly liberal and
left wing who works as a journalist in mainstream media, very keen on extreme forms of social change, social justice and protest.
As a politics graduate myself my major interest is social enhancement for everyone, building open , accessible and inclusive institutions that meet the needs of all of us. We do not argue about faith, it’s a given for two of us, but about how to build a better society .
Amazing. I think she had an excellent and concise explanation as to how she crossed the divide from outputs of Christianity to belief. An individual therapist cannot imbue faith in a person, especially by such a vanilla comment. It can only be done by the person involved – in this case a highly intelligent and knowledgeable person.
And btw, your comment is disrespectful. You are being condescending.
I respect your point. However, I’ll defend myself against your accusation of being disrespectful by saying that many people who seek some form of counselling/therapy do so because they are suffering from some form of internal “incongruity” that they feel the need to resolve. It is entirely plausible that this may be the case.
I agree with many of your comments generally, but on this occasion I feel you are incorrect in judging me as “condescending”.
It is a good question, and I don’t think it is disrespectful. I think the explanation lies in what she says about “tear[ing] the branches from the roots”; that those Christian outputs/influences/values that many of us like will not in the long-term survive if cut off from the beliefs that gave rise to them. In the way that a tree cut off from its roots may appear alive for a time, green leaves, etc., but will inevitably die.
This is what I think, anyway, and also why I think it would be a good thing for those who hold to what we might call Christian values to present themselves at church on Sundays, to stand up and be counted, whether or not they personally feel able to believe very much of it at present.
For some, it may be that faith will come in time. But at the level of a society, it might be the case that the practice matters more than the belief (even if there is a paradox where at the individual level it is the other way round).
I know many will disagree, and perhaps I am wrong, but there is my best attempt at an answer.
That’s a thoughtful and insightful comment, and i agree that IB isn’t being disrespectful.
However, i can’t agree that “faith will come” because i consider the fundamental problem with a post-faith society is that it’s precisely the “loss of faith” ennui that’s being felt; in other words, belief systems were the problem in the first place and so a return to them is just not a viable “answer”. Of course, the belief-system that is Islam presents us with a problem that those of us in a post-faith society will have to deal with.
Our values, although seen through a Christian lens, are essentially human values – the values that saw societies begin to flourish following the agrarian revolution which pre-dated both Christianity and Islam. Your analogy of a dying tree that still has green leaves is lovely, but i’d add that the tree will have produced off-shoots that will take time to grow.
I think we will have to disagree respectfully about the importance of faith and the institutional Church, though I absolutely agree that what I called “Christian values” are very ancient in origin; they did not suddenly spring into being at the birth of Christ or of the church. There is possibly some parallel with the “natural law” as developed by Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas (maybe to be understood now through the additional perspective of evolution). However, I am no philosopher/theologian and would soon get out of my depth trying to expound this in any coherent detail.
For now we see through a glass, darkly, of course, and none of us knows exactly how all this will play out in the long term. But your image of the off-shoots that will grow in time is a powerful and hopeful one. So thank you.
I do agree and would only change your wording to say that “practice prepares the ground for belief”, or at the very least, gives society a framework for deciding what should be valued. People who grow up in a society where Christian worship is the norm may never be true believers, but their values will still very likely derive from Christian beliefs. By throwing out this shared framework in civic life the West has thrown out the basis for the principles that AHA lists–the right to life and liberty, the rule of law, etc. And when both the principles and the framework supporting them are gone, nothing remains beyond a struggle for raw power over others.
Thanks Briony – an insightful response.
Was also reminded of Pascal’s comment – “Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.”
It’s working backwards to an extent, but that can be a valid form of reasoning. She’s looking at one set of values and outcomes she thinks are bankrupt, and in fact false, and they come from a certain set of premises. Then there is another set which she believes are good, but also true, and they come from a second set of premises.
If the second set of values really have some kind of objective truth, including in terms of giving meaning to life, and that often is an experiential determination, that does seem to point to the conclusion that the basis for those ideas has some kind of reality.
On the other hand if the first set of values seem to lead to depression, alienation from communal life, unreason, and an inability to depend a moral life, and those are things that are untruths about reality, that tends to suggest the ideas that lead to those outcomes may be in some way compromised.
If the western tradition has lead to all of these valuable insights and institutions, and that is based on how it conceptualizes the nature of the human person and our relation to God and nature, doesn’t it suggest that there must be something to what produces that kind of conceptualization?
It only goes so far, but it’s something people like Hitchens and Dawkins really seemed to be unable to address in any meaningful way.
I agree about Hitchens, but I think Dawkins concept of successful “memes” is a good theory in respect to this discussion.
In his question towards the end of the video, Matt Goodwin claims that PEW Research claims that 6% of Britains are Muslim. Here in France, that figure is more like 13%.
I find the seemingly contagious idea that universal human values aren’t enough misguided, when really the issue is we are no longer standing up for those values. I really don’t see how religiosity is going to help with that; it can even tend to make it worse by prioritizing doctrine over core principles.
Isn’t the issue, what is the basis for those values? They aren’t self evident, historically most societies have not had them. If there is no basis in society for people to believe in those values, they will disappear.
This is a thought-provoking interview, but is rooted in the here and now, skating over far more fundamental tides and issues. Western democracy and its institutions and principles are exhausted, and lack any long term aims or purpose needed to re-invigorate them. Democracy serves the electoral cycles, and those empowered by them. The law serves lawyers, and is increasingly divorced from any real sense of ‘justice’. Universities are businesses serving their customers. The financial systems exist to serve the wealthy. Organisations such as the NHS and churches exist to serve the organisation. And so on.
We are not products of ‘Judaeo-Christianity’, that’s a conceit believers have awarded themselves. We are the currently front-line products of 6000 years of the hothouse of human civilisations which is the Euro-Asian temperate landmass. We do not need a higher birth rate because we risk being outbred by ‘lesser’ peoples; we need, as do they, a lower birthrate for the future of the planet on which we depend. Ideology, whether it’s religious, political, racial, whatever, is no basis for ‘purpose’; all are, in time, destroyed by reality. They can, as Islam is doing, put off their demise by increasing repression and violence, but belief is built on fiction.
What makes humans special is not that we are ‘sacred’, or ‘human’, but that we are capable of intelligence and reason, and have a thirst for information, evidence, knowledge and understanding. Our ‘purpose’ should be to serve that thirst. And if the next iteration of an intelligent being is a bio-digital hybrid we should recognise that we humans are reaching the culmination point of our purpose.
I was amazed when I saw Ayaan’s article earlier this week. I have had a very very similar journey to hers, in terms of being atheist and coming to Christianity, though I was raised atheist and practiced Buddhist meditation for 20 years. Reading Tom Holland’s “Dominion” was a turning point for me. I had never realized that actually all of the values I was raised to hold most dear were Christian. And I had never realized what a “depth charge”, as Holland puts it, the story of God dying as a humiliated slave in order to wake up and save humanity ignited in the world. A depth charge that gradually transformed the West and is at the root of the Enlightenment and our freedoms and deepest values to this day. It’s the water we swim in, so we don’t even see it.
No need to embrace Christianity or another anthropomorphic concept. We are the light and the way; just look inward and be as you are. Develop awareness and non attachment – Ayaan has just grasped onto another external crutch to calm her tumultuous mind
Superb. Thanks Unherd and thanks Ayaan.
The one gripe would be Ayaan suggesting all 300k marchers were haters. I suspect she didn’t quite mean that. Some were undoubtedly, but many were there for good reasons even if a little naive and misguided. I’m not sure suggesting all were Haters in the Christian-Judeo tradition.
Appeasement of radicals and fanatics doesn’t usually end well. But we’ve been too busy shopping and eating and watching TV. It’s made us fat, dumb and stupid.
Ayaan’s journey is genuinely fascinating, and her take on the threat to Judeo-Christian values is well said. But how many people are paying any attention? Who is actually going to do something about it? It’s not someone else’s job. It’s the job of each of us to consciously reinforce those values in our daily lives and in our own way. We don’t have to be zealots, but we can’t be enlightened bystanders.
Will this interview be made available as a video?
The video is at the top, I missed it on first reading too.
This assertion reflects a still naive set of assumptions: “The next stage now is to preserve it for the next generation, and to transmit it to the immigrants who have chosen with their feet to come here.” We are lead to believe the Muslims who come to the West have voted with their feet, seeking freedom they don’t have where they came from.
I am no longer so certain that is why they come. Instead, it seems more likely they come in order to impose sharia on the West and we are foolishly led to believe something else.
A very brave and intellectually stimulating interview by AHA . Whilst I agree that Judeo-Christian has brought us to an increasingly cilvilised Western Society that we value the road has not been been without its problems. The stance of the Christian church with respect the violence of, say, slavery and the conquistadors were dreadful but at least the Christian ethos won through and these acts were overcome and repented and the ethos of “love thy neighbour” generally persists. Is it possible that Islam is just going through a violent phase that will be corrected and pass – if so somewhere out there there must be moderate voices of Islam calling for an end to all this bloodshed?
The problem with expecting a return to Christianity to be a bulwark against Islam ( or Islamism ) is that there seems to be a vein of masochism within the Christian tradition , especially apparent in the attitudes of Justin Welby . He seems most himself when hurling himself into the dust of Amritsar , apologising for the British Empire , the racism inherent in white people , whatever . Aren’t books like White Fragility just as much engendered by the Christian tradition as the more positive aspects of secular liberalism she likes so much .
In the Middle Ages if a Christian town were threatened by the plague the residents would march round the walls whipping themselves and begging God to forgive them . Muslims would be more likely to wage Jihad against infidels if they wished to please Allah . This notwithstanding the crusades which had the limited aim of restoring the holy land to the control of the church .
So it seems to me wokeness itself can be seen as a product of an excessive self tormenting strain within Christianity , and one which seems extremely attractive to the leadership of the Church of England . Welby and co aren’t going to stand up to Islamic aggression within the UK . All their instincts will be to submit to this ‘Abrahamic’ religion sent to punish our sins and hope to influence and soften Islam by example , just as they believe Christian slaves did in the time of the Roman Empire .
Is it really ‘conversion’ to come up with a list of qualities one wants, to tick them depending on whether this or that ethos delivers them, then to count the ticks and because Christianity has 11, Buddhism has 7, and Islam has 2 , and you just read a Tom Holland book, say to oneself “Well, i’m a Christian then.”
I don’t think conversion to Christianity works that way.
Conversion to Christianity works any way the Holy Spirit chooses for each individual. For some, it may well be a matter of ticking off desirable quantities — at least at first. For others it’s a “Road to Damascus” moment. For others it’s a gradual sneaking suspicion that Christianity, or some aspect of Christianity, is true. For yet others, it’s a matter of personal connection with a particular Christian, or reading one book of the New Testament that somehow makes more sense than one’s previous way of thinking.
That’s fair enough.
I’m not attacking her sincerity, mind, I just worry that an epiphany like she’s being going through – and she may well be sincere – could fade away.
After the interview, I’m still of the impression that she merely follows the views of her peers. As a child she was nominally Muslim like her parents and friends, then joined the Muslim Brotherhood when others did likewise. When she moved to a western nation and started mingling in circles where religion would be a minority interest she became atheist, now because of the culture wars she’s found her more conservative views have placed her alongside more of those who believe in Christianity she has now joined their flock. We’re all products of our environment, some just feel the need to be part of the in group more than others
Dear Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I heard your conversation with Freddy Sayers this morning.
I think you delivered a strong advocacy for the role Juedo-Christianity has played in the development of Western Europe’s civilization, and equally the importance of standing up for it.
Of course immigrants are using the Western democratic tools to promote their cause, and of course they are right to do so.
But is there a limit to this tolerance? Could the tolerance of the Occident turn into its opposite, i.e. into intolerance? I would like to hear your opinion on this subject.
Hanne Herrman
The question surely is do you have true belief in a God or Gods?
Religions have been developed, from various, probably historic, events, by humans using similar sets of obvious rules for living [basically do no harm!] by which to guide their adherents.
In those times of relative scientific ignorance and in the face of natural phenomena it was such humans that could introduce the idea of Gods and their, beyond life, carrot and stick outcomes to manipulate people to follow those guidelines and such became defined as religions. In Islam such religious teaching is an integral part of the political administration of the population. In most Christian countries political administrations are usually secular and though apart from religion has a similar ethos as such [i.e. do no harm].
It seems inconceivable that anyone can flip-flop between true belief and non-belief [atheism].
I very much agree with Ayaan that we need to confront the reality of what is going on, and I thank her for her needed perspective and framework for starting to consider how to do so.
After a considerable time ,I’ve gone from being a fan of Hirshi Ali – to the opposite.The above formalism exudes the overtolerance that drove her out of NL in the first place.I was totally sympathetic to HA – excoriating the knee jerk way Verdonk revoked HA ‘s passport- ( having lived (t)here several decades – as a foreigner!)
But the veneer wears thin when dependant on milking a facade of an idea or program as intrinsically and ontologically able to change ‘anyone’.
No change of heart is on the table ,for GenZ or the second group referred to.
Because ideas dont change anyone.Programs -HA are so ‘neerbuigend’ – (dutch for patronising).
Holding a form of christianity while denying ‘its’ power is an oxymoron these days- with a recently reported & highly putative national socialism of poland and Slovakia pretending to be able ,on their own power, to ‘make ‘ Christ -‘anything’ ( ie constitutional king) -let alone the chief political power structure.
‘He saved us ,not in virtue of our own works ,but in His power
By the washing of regeneration of the Holy Spirit.’ Titus 3 vs 5.
This is not a program,or merest ‘idea’.
Even slightly.
The sickness of believing in some etherial ‘underlying essence’ – as if THAT changes people , is even worse.
You would not be far from the mark ,HA – if you were to argue the structures surrounding the Romanisation of the reference points of the habitually denigrated ” God is no other than the celebration of the real ,personal ,praxis of mutal realationship within communion between Father Son ,and Holy Spirit.There is NO deeper underlying essence.”(Gunton)
The ‘Homousia’ (dispersed subcultural impersonalistic ventriloquism of the Creator) is – in Rome ,and its various reformative equal and opposite reactions around Rome ( ie since the reformation)
NOT limited to being ‘generated from the hierarchy of the ‘Father’ ‘alone’. Western cultic thought ( ie all of the protestant mutations)
Merely apes the verticality of a God uninvolved in his creations or their sufferings.
There begins the subculture of ‘interpassivity’ (Zizek)
The sheer bloody patronisation (literally) of conformative thinking.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater was a saying of my Grandmother. One of the strands of my past that I hold onto! I have been bringing my family to weekly service and our boys to Sunday school for the past while.
Many of the same values she talks about can be found in Islam, if you look. The problem is extreme Islam (what she was brought up with), which emphasises all the negative interpretations. If Jihad is seen to be an individual’s internal struggle to become a better Muslim what is wrong with that? There is lots wrong with the form of Jihad we were exposed to on Oct 7th and many many times over the last few decades. What we really need it the moderate voices within Islam to stand up against extreme Islam, but most are scared to do so for fear of being murdered! The same was true in Christianity a few centuries ago, but Christianity evolved. We are deluding ourselves if we think we can just separate ourselves from Islam or even get rid of Islam. Islam needs to evolve and we can’t wait a few centuries for it to do so.
What should happen is very much as she says, identify what it is we are / aspire to be and where those values come from and the stories that support and explain them from ALL the major religions. People can then accept the values and have the religion if they want to. But regardless of which religion they choose (atheism is a religion), they can clearly see they all share the same values.
It is the perversion of values in woke, which are all double standards and not values at all, that has left us so vulnerable now. Woke has sought to replace the spiritual void (the need to believe in something greater) that turning our backs on traditional religion has created. Woke is the false god of so called Social Justice, so maybe turning back to the traditional concepts of god – there is plenty in there about genuinely caring for others, is a suitable antidote for some.
When selecting who can come to the country it is those that share our values that we want, regardless of race, creed or colour. We cannot do that selection if they just turn up on our shores on a boat. Ok so Rwanda is not the right place to send them, find somewhere that is acceptable and send them there and do it soon.
The problem with Islam (from a this-worldly perspective) is that what you call ‘extreme’ Islam is normative Islam. Islamic hermeneutics is based on the principle of “naskh” or abrogation. The “later revealed” passages of the Qu’ran are held to abrogate the “earlier revealed” passages when there is a conflict in meaning. Unfortunately for comity with the rest of the world, the “later revealed” passages are the ones that include things like “strike at the necks of unbelievers,” screeds of Jew-hatred, and the command to execute apostates. The passages about killing one man being like killing all of mankind get quoted to non-Muslims a lot, but do not influence any fiqh of sharia, having been abrogated by the ones I just pointed out.
Had Islam developed a hermeneutic like the Christian hermeneutic beautifully expressed by the Anglicans in Article 20 of the Articles of Religion, forbidding “so expound[ing] one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another,” it would be a very different religion.
Great stuff. I have never bothered with her when she was just a garden variety atheist airhead. Now however, I impressed. She is really not a Christian however, but a scientist and philosopher. The error of dogmatic religion is to pretend that proof is a necessity for truth. O the contrary there are many true statements, even in mathematics and pure logic, that are not provably true.
AHA has a personal story that’s moving, but when she extrapolates beyond that, she’s a muddled and evidence-free thinker and a dangerously impractical policy-maker, as her responses to the as-ever thoughtful audience questions reveal. Perhaps in hommage, the UnHerd copy editor misspelled “Christianity” as “Cristianity” in the final section header.
That would be ‘homage’. Oops. Trying to be too clever methinks. Not as clever as AHA though.
Christianity was never meant to be extrapolated beyond the personal. The original homage was, ‘Ecce homo’.
Oddly, no longer in any sense ‘Crosstianity’, the Christianity of the Church of England has become almost solely the liberal values of the 21st century. The Church has imitated the world; the world it originally fashioned at many removes.
Atheism may be the safest place for many people to be, if adopting a religion would become for them the worst form of it. It would apparently be a uniform position. It would prevent conversion. Though AHA’s experience that all religions are not the same is of inestimable value.
Only a Christian would make such a claim.
One thing that unites Christians is their righteous attitude, I note therefore how this has been propagated along with her new found conversion.
One thing that unites
ChristiansMuslims is their righteous attitude.Fixed it.
You’ve fixed precisely nothing.
That’d be the effect of asking a dud question and deploying a dud answer.
It’s a mistake in particular to assert that it’s ‘a Christian society still’ is a claim only Christians make. They don’t.
It’s more often made now from outside Christianity, by commentators who are not themselves Christian.
ie, recently in a discussion involving Tom Holland, Douglas Murray and another bloke on YouTube.
But in Holland’s case it comes from looking at the ancient world and assessing his own reaction to the impossibility of understanding the Greek/Roman worldview and pointing out that it’s very hard to shake the past 2000 years off.
Others have said it will take 500 years for that to die.
Certainly the format, assumptions, and ways of acting of most occultists and new agers ,and most hilariously in ‘Western Buddhism’ show that it’s no easy thing to shake off.
The righteousness you describe could be a bulwark against the madness of our times. I used to be very much ‘live and let live’, and I still am to a point, but something changed when everything became political, so much so that the political has become almost religious in that we are unable to criticize or challenge policies such as the teaching of LGBQT pedagogy in schools or the importation of old hatreds by those emigrating to the West. Social media doesn’t help either as instead of disseminating truth, it spreads and enforces the views of the loudest and the most powerful. Even children are coopted into political beliefs and used to promote causes that have the potential to damage them now and in the future (transgenderism and Net Zero).
We now find ourselves thrown into an arena where one group still believes in reasonable discourse and settling differences peaceably and another much large group that believes their version of good must be achieved at all costs even if others are hurt or killed in the process. The West is being devoured from within and without. With the stigmatization of Christianity we have become mere talking heads discussing how to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic while we crash headlong into a giant iceberg. As we see with Muslims and Woke cultists they possess an energy that stems from their belief system. Intelligence, liberalism, free speech – without the energy of Christianity behind them these will simply be overridden by those who believe that their ends justify the means. Unfortunately, the message of Christianity has become distorted to simply mean ‘love all no matter what’. This works well on a personal level, but not on a societal/civilizational level. The G*d of the New Testament is the same G*d as in the Old Testament. When put together they strike a balance between knowing when to punish and knowing when to forgive.
Finally, much of the righteousness we’re experiencing right now actually comes from the twin anti-cultures of globalism and woke ideology. It is ubiquitous to the point that it pervades school curricula, political discourse, and even our entertainment. This form of righteousness is harsh, unforgiving, and mean-spirited. We see this in little acts of cruelty such as taking offense when none was meant, demanding employers fire people with whom we don’t agree, and the tearing down of posters of those kidnapped by terrorists. Ultimately, Christianity acts as a bulwark against totalitarian ideologies which is why tyrants and dictators the world over have always tried to stamp it out.
I’m uncertain how this can be the case when The Church has been completely captured by the woke ideology that you refer to – there is a regular author on here who observes on that very subject and is repelled by the notion of the hiring of Diversity and Inclusion Specialists whilst local vicars are all but forgotten.
Yes, the Church of England seems to have become secular in its doctrine. The Catholic Church threatens to go the same way with this current Pope.
AHA made it absolutely clear that she understands Western civilisation as having primarily developed within a Judeo-Christian framework. I think that is what she meant by ‘a Christian society still’.
And what of the other comment? even though they say they’re not Christian, in fact are.
Seems flippant to the point of arrogance.
What are we to make of all this? If anything.
Sinead O’Connor made what appears to be a similar ‘journey’ to AHA. Though without the atheist interlude. One can find Catholics who have become Anglicans. To them, it seems like a great change. A choice they made over the one that was made for them by their parents. But in reality, it isn’t.
O’Connor, once disturbed as a child by the God thing, just couldn’t give it up. She eventually became very righteous to the point of not wanting to be among non-Muslims (though she recanted this later). She arrived at her starting point and failed to understand it for the first time. She should be pitied.
AHA is almost as unique as Saul of Tarsus. After a zealous religious upbringing, as Paul, Saul went among a different people. The churches he, as Paul, created were organisationally part of Roman civic society and thus an intrinsic part of Roman civilisation; a civilisation whose people were very different from us, as Tom Holland has described.
It was never the intention of Paul, or the Twelve who only preached ‘among the circumcision’, to create a Christian civilisation. Paul’s converts were to live differently from outsiders. Even so, within the Christian communities, Paul was the Church’s first diversity and inclusion manager. Saul’s preaching only produced riots in the synagogues.
Paul insisted that his converts not be conformed to the environment of the world they found themselves in. What can a jelly do but conform to its mould? Subsequently, over many centuries, Christianity has affected custom, habit and law, like water permeating the earth. Distilled through many filters, this is the Christianised environment that has moulded us like jellies. Or, in a game of let’s pretend, as when a parent talks to their new-born as if he or she understands speech, what is pretended has become the reality.
If Christians make the claim that most people are Christian, it is because they see all the light that the others cannot see.
Christ declared that His kingdom is ‘not of this world’. That is, not made up of political parties, economies, armies or bureaucracies. If a Christianised society had come into being as part of a plan, it could be preserved by such things as plans, political policies and conversations. As it hasn’t, it’s preservation that way may not be possible. At the same time, even if it avoids becoming a cut flower, a Christianised civilisation is a flower that is not found in the natural world.
The Gallo-Roman populations of western Europe in the late Roman twilight had to live among many new peoples with different religions, customs and laws. They could not have foreseen, nor affected, the outcomes of all these things. Nor can we in our own time. We will not see what those ultimate forms will be.
AHA may be concerned to avoid being involuntarily swept back to the sort of things that characterised her early life by such developments in society as she discusses here. Paul foresaw that there would arise times – formidable seasons – in which the good, the reasonable and the moderate would be despised. There would be those who wanted novelty. There would be others who were always learning but who never reached a knowledge of the truth. His advice to those who would guide the Christians was this: from such people, turn away.
A Christianised person, one who is not religious or a God-believer but who holds to the liberal values extruded from Christianity, is indeed a pleasant thing to live next to. Agreeing to disagree is a form of Christian mercy derived from Paul that people unfailingly undervalue. Paul himself had learned this from others. AHA is almost as unique as Paul.
Very interesting comparison with Saul / St Paul. Go Ayaan!
Those who consider themselves Christian of whatever stripe, or indeed any inheritor of Christendom, should be grateful to St Paul, to put it mildly, for winning the argument with “those of the circumcision”, that you could be a Jesus follower without being circumcised (of course he was himself circumcised). See Acts 15, or google on the Circumcision Controversy in early Christianity.
Many bits of St Paul’s letters are a difficult read today. Only the biblical fundamentalists would feel obliged to claim that he was always right. But like Ayaan he was a thinker and clearly a highly persuasive one. If she could do a similar job in the 21st century as he did in the 1st, and I don’t see why not, what a life achievement that would be.
And what an answer to the devilish fatwah. Her stamina and resolve under it should be remembered every moment.