[HN Gopher] We are desensitized to Christianity's influence on W...
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We are desensitized to Christianity's influence on Western thought
Author : _Microft
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-04-30 19:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (perell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (perell.com)
| Anointmous wrote:
| Another article I see where a bunch of non-Americans are going to
| comment on an article which was obviously written for an American
| perspective (and afterwards a western one), all the while
| pretending to be Americans.
|
| I don't mind disagreement. However, I have come to loath the
| anonymous nature of most of the internet, while the in thing is
| to comment on someone elses life anonymously while claiming to be
| in it. Most of the people commenting aren't you neighbors, or
| even your countrymen. It's 100 fake responses, with zero trust or
| authentication.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Has the title been changed?
| mgh2 wrote:
| Referenced author in the article:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDA7YMKVJZo
| markemer wrote:
| Yeah, this is a load of nonsense. The worst part is this essays
| ahistorical line of thinking. Like highlighting the Romans bad
| behavior without examining things like the crusades and chattel
| slavery which used Christianity as a defense. And it's Christian
| supremacist since he leaves out the Jews, Muslims, Hindus,
| Buddhists, and any other religion that believes in human rights.
| [deleted]
| jkereako wrote:
| To flatly reject the author's argument just proves his point.
| Specifically that folks don't consider the origin of American
| values and law (he used the Constitution as an example if you
| recall) as being Christian. This is also why he didn't mention
| the other belief systems you stated because they weren't
| considered when America was created.
|
| Secondly, just because someone claims to be a Christian doesn't
| mean they are. A true believer in any faith would hold fast and
| true to all of that belief system's values. He made note of
| this by pointing out "Cafeteria Christians". It's the same as
| blaming the law when it's really the application of the law
| that's the problem. Socrates and his willingness to drink the
| hemlock is an example of this.
| jwhitlark wrote:
| Except the origins of American values and law went back
| farther than Christianity. An easy way to see that is to look
| at how many pamphlets of the time had (Pre-Christian) Roman
| pseudonyms.
|
| The author is claiming otherwise and failing to back it up.
| mgh2 wrote:
| > Without the word of God, all we have are opinions.
|
| Hopefully, data can slowly dispel this human flaw:
| https://m-g-h.medium.com/in-data-we-trust-2978dacc8c22
|
| > we should ask ourselves: "Is Christianity true?" And if you
| think it's bogus, then: "Why do I let these ideas influence my
| worldview so strongly?"
| nobodyCloak wrote:
| I think you may be missing the point of the essay. I don't
| think it meant to say that Christianity is perfect nor that
| Christianity is the supreme religion. Of course Christianity
| has been used to justify hateful conduct (just like most other
| religions at some point) but regardless it more than anything
| else is responsible for how "Western Civilization" developed,
| and by extension our understanding of human rights. Yes
| Christianity was used to defend slavery, but it was also used
| to condemn it. Regardless, the point was that Christianity is a
| driving force behind Western thought/morality and ignoring that
| is dangerous.
|
| Are there other religions that teach the same values of human
| rights? Of course! But how many of them directly influenced
| Western life and the Western definition of those same rights,
| specifically in the founding of the US (which became the
| blueprint for so many other countries after it)?
|
| Also, I feel like Judaism is implicitly included to some degree
| in this because Jesus was a Jew and the author specifically
| mentions he (the author) was Jewish.
| jwhitlark wrote:
| Greece and Rome's civic and philosophical development was the
| source of how Western Civilization developed. Christianity
| was then transplanted on top of Western Civilization; it
| wasn't the source. The author is either mistaken or arguing
| in bad faith, and makes numerous factually incorrect
| statements. He argues the Locke "assumed" God given rights,
| and states that there are no other legitimate sources,
| despite there being a large body of work in the 3rd century
| BCE that made logical arguments for treating all of humanity
| equally. Similarly, in his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
| argues that gods or atoms, your first responsibility is to
| the human race.
|
| The author would have us forget that much of the
| Enlightenment came from the rediscovery of Greek and Roman
| knowledge.
|
| The whole article reads as an attempt to convince atheists
| that they're not really atheist, that all their ideas came
| from religion and are worthless without religion, completely
| ignoring the role philosophy had in creating those ideas,
| long before Christianity was on the scene.
| gggggggaaa wrote:
| >And it's Christian supremacist since he leaves out the Jews,
| Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and any other religion that
| believes in human rights.
|
| What does it mean for a religion to believe in "human rights"
| and why is the belief in "human rights" a hallmark of
| superiority in your view?
| pkphilip wrote:
| Hinduism most certainly does not believe in a common set of
| rights for everyone. Each person is assigned a clear position
| in the social hierarchy based on the caste of the parents and
| then the person is obligated to carry out the "dharma" as per
| that caste - anything outside of that is considered "adharmic"
| or wrong.
| minimal1 wrote:
| In contrast, Christians believe in being born again, and the
| capability of anyone becoming children of God. That God wants
| that for us, and that there is no favoritism of where you
| were born, status or race etc, Hes loves everyone.
|
| That actual seems more important and deeper then what the
| article is talking about, but it would certainly seem an
| outgrowth to it.
|
| I do not know what Judaism exactly thinks on it, although the
| concept of God is our father couldn't have been alien - Jesus
| sermon on the mount was to a Jewish audience. But being born
| again seems unique to Christianity, a new nature. I suspect
| that much Judaism - I know at least there is different sects,
| probably has a tendency to fall into legalism or following
| the law properly, as Christians one can to. If you reject
| being born again and a new nature and changed person, going
| to following the law more perfectly would be what someone
| might turn to.
| truth_ wrote:
| But Buddhism does recognize human rights.
|
| I was just reading some days ago how Buddhist emperor Ashoka
| the Great abolished discriminating policy of a Brahmin never
| being punished to death irrespective of the nature and
| severity of the crime while it was allowed for other castes.
|
| Buddhism is one of the rare religion that does not recognize
| divine rights of kings. In Buddhist mythology a king is like
| everyone else who merely gets 1/6th of the harvest and
| maintains peace and protects from external threats. He is
| jist another man. Christinaity and Islam, on the other hand,
| do vastly believe in divine rights of kings.
|
| The aspect of Hinduism that you mention was actually
| practiced, but the inner core of Philosophy tells the
| division among men emanate from their quality and practice.
| Birth does not matter. But, in mythology, when a low caste
| man named Shambuka tried to study the Vedas, the Ramayana
| epic king and Vishnu incarnation Rama murders him.
| minimal1 wrote:
| Most of the Reformation was about not believing in the
| divine rights of kings, and the entire concept (not rightly
| understood here, but not going into it) was not universal
| anyway. In example, angle saxon kings (where english,
| "anglo-is" comes from, were elected.
| scotty79 wrote:
| We are desensitized to all the simplistic silly intuitions that
| are reinforced by Christianity.
|
| Like the idea that good and evil are one dimensional opposite
| things that you can sort of add up to decide if your life is ok.
|
| Or the idea that there's a point where you can stop looking for
| evidence and faith without sufficient evidence is a virtue.
|
| Or that there's some ideal of bodily health since we are made in
| Gods image and deviations from that ideal are evil.
|
| Or the idea that you can do evil without doing harm, or you can
| do good by doing plenty of harm.
|
| Or a huge number of other false reasoning patterns that we are
| almost slaved to because we allow millenia old myths to pollute
| our thinking.
| [deleted]
| nottorp wrote:
| > But at the same time, they believe in human rights, which can
| be justified only by the very God they don't believe in.
|
| Why?
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| I don't believe in God, but this is historically correct.
|
| The Universal Declaration on Human Rights as conceived by the
| United Nations traces its roots to the 1789 Declaration of the
| Rights of Man and of the Citizen that was a product of the
| French revolution.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of...
|
| The preamble of this document directly references God:
|
| > In consequence, the National Assembly recognizes and
| declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme
| Being, the following rights of man and citizen
|
| https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/ilp-pji/rev5/ind...
| litoorachure wrote:
| The "Supreme Being" in the French Revolution was not
| necessarily the Abrahamic God. One major cause of the
| revolution was the Church's corruption and overreach during
| the ancien regime, and they got pretty radical with religious
| experimentation during that time.
|
| They even tried to set up a state-sponsored "cult of reason"
| to replace religions like Christianity. That was followed by
| the "cult of the supreme being", because not many people felt
| comfortable worshipping an abstract reification of
| "rationality".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being
| nottorp wrote:
| That's a declaration. Which apart from mentioning a supreme
| being (not the Christian god) has its roots in other
| concepts.
|
| However, the article is typical Christian propaganda
| insinuating that atheists are amoral and you need the
| benevolent guidance of a supernatural being (and its church)
| to behave like a decent human being.
| Amezarak wrote:
| The stronger form of this argument is made by Nietzsche,
| not by Christian propagandists.
|
| Without God, there is no objective moral foundation.
| Obviously, people remain 'moral' regardless of their
| religious orientation, because morality is a social
| phenomenon, it's the 'herd instinct in the individual'. But
| _this_ morality shifts and changes with times and cultures.
| You have no perch from which to stand and declare yourself
| objectively morally correct relative to some other time or
| culture, aside from "well, I said so." You think human
| sacrifice, torture of children, throwing gay people off
| buildings is wrong - great, sure, but here's Society X that
| doesn't think that, that has a whole different moral
| framework, and in that context those actions may be
| entirely moral. Phrases like "decent human being" simply
| mean "conforms to societal expectations."
|
| That's why Nietzsche's famous death of God speech is
| directed to the _atheists_ , not to believers.
|
| > _The meaning of our cheerfulness.-- The greatest recent
| event--that "God is dead," that the belief in the Christian
| God has become unbelievable--is already beginning to cast
| its first shadows over Europe. For the few at least, whose
| eyes, the suspicion in whose eyes is strong and subtle
| enough for this spectacle, some suns seem to have set and
| some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt:
| to them our old world must appear daily more like evening,
| more mistrustful, stranger, "older." But in the main one
| may say: the event itself is far too great, too distant,
| too remote from the multitude's capacity for comprehension
| even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having
| arrived as yet; much less may one suppose that many people
| know as yet what this event really means--and how much must
| collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it
| was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it:
| for example, the whole of our European morality. This long
| plenitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and
| cataclysm that is now impending: who could guess enough of
| it today to be compelled to play the teacher and advance
| proclaimer of this monstrous logic of terror, the prophet
| of a gloom and an eclipse of the sun whose like has
| probably never yet occurred on earth?_
|
| On a historical note, viewing the outcomes and events of
| the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Soviet-
| era, and the like, I think it may be worth considering even
| for a non-believer that the "objective" moral foundation
| provided by Christianity serves as a useful brake on the
| worse excesses that arise during societal upheavals.
| krapp wrote:
| Except Christian morality also shifts and changes with
| time and culture, because religious practice is a social
| phenomenon.
|
| There has never been a universal, objective Christian
| morality. The Bible says slaves should obey their
| masters, that women are as far beneath men as men are
| beneath God, and that homosexuality is an abomination
| worthy of death. Christian morality used to allow killing
| pagans, Jews and Protestants as heretics. Christians from
| a century ago would see modern Christians as weak-willed
| apostates (you don't even read the Bible in Latin, but
| gutteral English you swine!) and Christians from a
| thousand years ago might not even recognize the religion
| as theirs.
|
| Atheists reject the premise that morality presupposes God
| not because they reject morality but because they
| recognize that _all_ moral systems are relative, and yet
| still have value. And yes, being a "decent human being"
| does simply mean "conforming to societal expectations,"
| even when that society's expectations are based on the
| current generation's fashion in interpreting Biblical
| teaching. But it's enough for me to believe in the value
| of human life because I believe it, not because my
| society tells me a man in the sky will send me to hell if
| I don't.
|
| And from an atheist point of view it's obviously possible
| to accept a moral framework in a morally relative
| universe because that is what everyone, including
| religious people, are actually doing. Accepting the truth
| of the matter isn't going to cause society to collapse
| into barbarism and hedonism.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural
| being... to behave like a decent human being.
|
| which is precisely why an atheist's morals are superior:
| they thought it through and convinced themselves that human
| rights is the better path.
|
| Religious people by definition only do it [their words]
| because their deity says so.
|
| Which is precisely why its so simple for the same
| benevolent guidance of a supernatural being to equally
| justify - inter alia - crusades, jihads, fatwas and honour
| killings.
| alphachloride wrote:
| In the context of the human rights record of several
| atheist societies like the USSR, where religious
| expression was forcibly curtailed, I find it hard to
| believe that an atheist's morals are inherently superior.
| nickkell wrote:
| Five years hard labour in Siberia should cure you of your
| disbelief comrade
| Anointmous wrote:
| Atheists are immoral, because it's an illogical premise,
| proving a negative, and in the face of lots of evidence at
| that. That's why athiests always turn to insults, they have
| no argument - much like the message this is in response to.
|
| Agnostics, deists, and free thinkers are another matter.
| But from the outset, an atheist proclaims himself as
| someone irrational with nothing to say.
| thisCtx wrote:
| Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the
| story going forward?
|
| Can we not set the idea of "human rights" on its own pedestal
| and decide what those are and carry them forward in tradition
| and song?
|
| Why do we have a literal obligation to the asinine part of a
| dead philosophers opinions on their origin, along with an
| actual useful concept?
|
| Let's dispense with the all-father bits and see it as we
| claim to; within the legislative and judicial process we in
| practice are all afforded the same privileges and
| obligations.
|
| Let's discuss how in practice that's not true and stop giving
| a shit what dead guy first conjured the idea. Caretaking the
| literal lineage is nothing more than banal taxonomy
| fetishism.
| dadjoker wrote:
| So nice to see someone explain what is obvious to anyone who has
| studied the history of the West, especially science and
| economics.
| throwawaw wrote:
| > The same people who tout the virtues of being well-read skip
| right past the Bible, the most popular book in human history.
|
| Who's doing that? You wouldn't be able to understand half of what
| you read. Did the author just make up someone to score points on?
| [deleted]
| permo-w wrote:
| > "The West" is any place to the West of where Christ was
| crucified.
|
| This ... isn't true? Maybe a few hundred years ago that was the
| case, but since World War 2, The West means west of the Iron
| Curtain
| Udik wrote:
| The Middle East (where Jesus was born and crucified) doesn't
| have anything to do with the Iron Curtain and is, quite
| obviously, not the center either.
| permo-w wrote:
| I didn't say anything about the East. I commented on what is
| regarded as The West
| Anointmous wrote:
| east and west were fighting and differentiated since at least
| before Alexander the great.
| hitekker wrote:
| This passage from the "Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts sheds
| more light on the concept of "surrendering knowledge" as a way to
| realize truth:
|
| > The discovery of this reality is hindered rather than helped by
| belief, whether one believes in God or believes in atheism. We
| must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith,
| because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of
| mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the
| word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would
| "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the
| truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas
| and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of
| the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has
| no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief
| clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is
| the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion
| that is not self-deception.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism covers a similar topic.
| mrkeen wrote:
| > Appealing to human rights just because we say so is as baseless
| as appealing to astrology or the will of Zeus.
|
| You are _this close_ to a realisation.
| Anointmous wrote:
| Well, maybe first they will appeal to "the we", "the
| collective", "the identity", or the will of the emperor. Then
| it will descend into the superstition after the dictatorship.
|
| I much prefer the Christian religion to that, even if I weren't
| a believer. Mob rule and government rule - dictator rule is
| just an extension of "we" rule - and who is we and who gets to
| say? And that is, after all, what this article is about.
| Udik wrote:
| I was reading this essay nodding, until the revelation: the
| author isn't Christian at all. He's raised in Judaism. My
| knowledge of religion (despite being born and raised in a
| Catholic country) is entirely intuitive, but Judaism and
| Christianity seem pretty different religions, and the Old and New
| Testament contain different teachings and a different worldview.
| At the very least it could be lexical sloppiness (Christianity as
| a catch-all term for the three Abrahamic religions, since he
| mentions mosques too at some point). Curious.
|
| I guess this confusion between Christianity and Judaism is pretty
| typical of American culture. For example, this is an interesting
| article from the Jerusalem Post about the progressive Judaization
| of US's Pentecostals:
|
| https://m.jpost.com/magazine/the-new-judaizers-540415
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The original Constitution says that our "unalienable rights"
| are a result not of secular rationalism, but rather an omnipotent
| God who endows us with those rights.
|
| No, it doesn't. The author confuses apropaganda document (the
| Declaration of Independence, which still doesn't make this
| specific claim--it does reference rights being endowed by a
| Creator, but does not specifically attribute omnipotence to that
| Creator) with a governing document (which comes nowhere close,
| making only a vague reference to the "blessings of liberty" in
| its preamble.)
|
| > To that end, the pillars of American law rest as much on the
| Bible as on the writings of Enlightenment thinkers.
|
| Even aside from the content supporting this not being in the
| document in question at all, "As much as" is trivially false; the
| authors of the Constitution _were_ Enlightenment thinkers
| themselves, so if it had any Biblical influence at all, it could
| only be subordinate to and by way of Enlightenment thinkers.
|
| > When it comes to space, "The West" is any place to the West of
| where Christ was crucified.
|
| No, while it _was_ a Christian geographic reference before being
| replaced with a Cold War one, the reference was to the geography
| where the dominant religion after the East-West Schism was Roman
| Catholic.
| Anointmous wrote:
| "An Appeal to the "Supreme Judge of the World"
|
| Like I said, most of the commentators aren't even from America.
| But they sure are commenting like they were.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > An Appeal to the "Supreme Judge of the World"
|
| That's also in the Declaration, not the Constitution, and
| also does not include the author's description of
| omnipotence.
|
| > Like I said, most of the commentators aren't even from
| America.
|
| That's...both unsupported _and_ a particularly bizarre ad
| hominem, but _I_ am an American (and, probably more relevant,
| have a degree in political science with a course of study
| focussed on the American system), but its not like the main
| problem claims about the US system here require particular
| expertise beyond, you know, reading the readily-available
| text of foundational documents.
|
| > But they sure are commenting like they were.
|
| I'm not sure what "commenting like they were [Americans]"
| means in this context.
| [deleted]
| minimal1 wrote:
| "(the Declaration of Independence, which still doesn't make
| this specific claim--it does reference rights being endowed
| by a Creator, but does not specifically attribute
| omnipotence to that Creator)".
|
| I'm sure the reference was to Supreme Judge of the World,
| and no omnipotence. You need to write more carefully.
| netfortius wrote:
| Delusion is delusion, however one wants to call it in religious
| terms, e.g. christianity, islamism, etc. Attempt to apply some
| rationality to such, regardless of the topic, is simply
| ridiculous. But - hey! - let's just have another blog, just in
| case...
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