Sep 27, 2026 · 17 min · 8 segments
Official podcast Channel of Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP - The Ninth Archbishop of Sydney. Here you will find his Sunday Homilies, and regular addresses delivered on a wide range of religious, ethics…
Anthony FisherHost
Last month, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and New York Times columnist Ross Dufford came together for a debate on Do We Need God? It was a fascinating exchange between two serious thinkers.
Hinker argued that we don't need God since science has delivered so much progress in medicine, welfare, law and more.
Morality, in his estimation, can stand perfectly well on our common humanity and good reasoning.
As Western nations have become more secular, he argued, they've also become more polarised, angry, despairing.
Atheistic ideologies like Marxism and fascism have been catastrophic in their bloodletting.
And however philosophically defensible human dignity and rights might be in the academy, they are far from self-evident to ordinary people and not amenable to Pinker's microscopic investigation.
In fact, Duthard argued, the best secular moralities rest upon often unrecognised but ultimately religious foundations, such as belief in a creator God who endows the human person with dignity and commands respect for others.
In his magisterial study, Dominion, the British writer, Tom Holland, set out to detail the ways in which Christianity had harmed the world.
Yet the more he studied its influence, the more convinced he was that in fact, Christianity taught the world about the dignity of every person.
The revolutionary idea only became thinkable with the teachings and crucifixion of a man whose disciples insisted he was also God.
a man-god whose self-sacrifice restored falling humanity to its proper dignitas.
This idea, Holland argues, remade the world and gave us a basis for judging right and wrong, even the rights and wrongs of religion.
But our civilization's deepest moral convictions, that every person matters, that the vulnerable deserve protection, that truth and goodness, love and virtue are real, and not just social constructs or survival strategies, These beliefs emerge from the soil of faith.
Last month, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and New York Times columnist Ross Dufford came together for a debate on Do We Need God? It was a fascinating exchange between two serious thinkers.
Hinker argued that we don't need God since science has delivered so much progress in medicine, welfare, law and more.
Morality, in his estimation, can stand perfectly well on our common humanity and good reasoning.
As Western nations have become more secular, he argued, they've also become more polarised, angry, despairing.
Atheistic ideologies like Marxism and fascism have been catastrophic in their bloodletting.
And however philosophically defensible human dignity and rights might be in the academy, they are far from self-evident to ordinary people and not amenable to Pinker's microscopic investigation.
In fact, Duthard argued, the best secular moralities rest upon often unrecognised but ultimately religious foundations, such as belief in a creator God who endows the human person with dignity and commands respect for others.
In his magisterial study, Dominion, the British writer, Tom Holland, set out to detail the ways in which Christianity had harmed the world.
Yet the more he studied its influence, the more convinced he was that in fact, Christianity taught the world about the dignity of every person.
The revolutionary idea only became thinkable with the teachings and crucifixion of a man whose disciples insisted he was also God.
a man-god whose self-sacrifice restored falling humanity to its proper dignitas.
This idea, Holland argues, remade the world and gave us a basis for judging right and wrong, even the rights and wrongs of religion.
But our civilization's deepest moral convictions, that every person matters, that the vulnerable deserve protection, that truth and goodness, love and virtue are real, and not just social constructs or survival strategies, These beliefs emerge from the soil of faith.
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