Abdu Murray and the Descent of Humanity

Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Coulson Center on Johnstone Street. Culture is downstream from anthropology. What we think about human beings, who they are, their value, their nature, their purpose forms how we think about society, including our definition of a healthy, flourishing society. In his talk at the Colson Center National Conference, speaker, apologist, and author Abdu Muri described how our shifting view of human nature has affected so many things in our culture. Here's Abdu Murray.

We had this thick, beautiful, robust idea of what it meant to be human. But over the course of some centuries, we began to under-spiritualize and over-psychologize what it meant to be human, and so we shaved some layers off. of this idea of the soul. And we had this semi-robust idea of the self. And so the South is still somewhat communal.

And it's somewhat transcendent in one way, but it's more about how does the outside world affect my psyche? And then how does what happens to my psyche affect how I affect other people? And so the idea of the soul became less communal horizontally and vertically, and became more inwardly driven and more skull-centered. And then, over the course of the decades of recent vintage, We began to take this idea of the self and shave off layers of that. And so we got thinner and thinner and thinner.

And now we have this unbiblical idea of identity. And our identities are no thicker than the bumper stickers we slap on the back of our subarus to tell everyone our political opinions. But because of the fragility of that idea of the identity, any criticism, any challenge to our opinions becomes an existential threat. Because we can be blown about just like leaves are blown by the wind. And with that fragility, we are now encountering what I'm calling a cultural schizophrenia.

We are being told two competing claims. We're told that these two competing claims are actually both true at the same time, even though they contradict each other. But we're required to believe both. and therefore leave the reconciliation of the contradiction As a mystery to us, the first claim is this: you are a machine. That's what you are.

You're just a machine. You have the illusion of consciousness. You have the illusion of free will. You have the illusion of morality. But really what's going on is just neurons firing and synapses and neurotransmitters and electrical impulses in your brain.

You just are a machine that reacts to external stimuli just like every other machine does. That's all you are. Richard Dawkins was famous for saying, we are machines for propagating DNA. It is every living object's sole reason for living. The competing claim with that Is the exact polar opposite.

You are God. You are the god of your own skull-sized world. We're in a post-truth culture now where feelings and preferences are elevated above facts and truths. And so you can determine and design your own reality and determine even what you are based on your feelings and your preferences. And so everything becomes skull-centered once again.

And so no matter what your body happens to be or reality happens to be, it must adapt accordingly according to your preferences. And so you're a dod and you're a machine. The problem is you can't be both. In fact, the reality is you're neither. But you can't be both, but you're required to believe both things at the same time.

Both things are being foisted upon us at the exact same time in the exact same ferocity. And so it's no wonder then that young people, and we've seen already the data on this, as we're trying to bounce back between these two things and technology inserts itself, no wonder it is that young people are now the most anxious generation because the human mind craves coherence. And when it receives this contradictory message and its inability to reconcile those two things, at some point, young people, and all people really, but young people especially, simply have a learned helplessness that sets in and they give up, and then they are defined by whatever happens to be popular. And that's how you get social contagions. That was Abdu Murray.

You can hear his entire talk and get access to every talk from this year's Colson Center National Conference with a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month. Just visit ColsonCenter.org/slash August. That's ColsonCenter.org/slash August. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.