The principle of individual rights is attributable to the Christian West, where 'freedom of conscience', 'freedom of association', and so on, were originally established. Of course it is true that many such reforms were fought tooth and nail by religious conservatives, but the reformers themselves were also Christian.
— Wayfarer
Many were also deists, freethinkers, and various other sorts of non-Christian.
— Arkady — Bitter Crank
I always thought that the pre-revolutionary American colonies were characterized by the very active Christianity that would dominate later on. Apparently this was not the case. There is no denying that New England was dominated by the descendants of English Puritans, but the intellectual core of the colonies was, as Arkady noted, free-thinking.
It was especially the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century that brought about the dominance of Evangelical Protestantism--Methodists and Baptists, particularly. Catholicism would become very important through immigration.
The free-thinkers were apparently not much exercised about abortion, sodomy, birth control (such as it was), and obscenity that became critical issues under a movement sponsored by Anthony Comstock beginning in the late 19th into the 20th century. Anthony Comstock, for instance, objected to the profanity used by his fellow Union soldiers in the Civil War. Had his compatriots said things like "Oh dear, my arm's just been shot off" or "Shucks, I missed" our history might have been very different.
So, some of our worst features were brought to us through our much honored religious American traditions, and some of our best features were delivered through the good offices of the Enlightenment. — Bitter Crank
Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.
But I think the historical evidence for the role of Christianity in the formation of the modern liberal state, and the principles I mentioned in the quotation at the top of this thread, are unarguable — Wayfarer
I was entirely unprepared for how bad an argument [Dennett's] latest book advances—so bad, in fact, that the truly fascinating question it raises is how so many otherwise intelligent persons could have mistaken it for a coherent or serious philosophical proposition. David Bentley Hart
The entire passage is a splendid specimen of Carroll’s nonpareil gift for capturing the voice of authority—or, rather, the authoritative tone of voice, which is, as often as not, entirely unrelated to any actual authority on the speaker’s part—in all its special cadences, inflections, and modulations. And what makes these particular verses so delightful is the way in which they mimic a certain style of exhaustive empirical exactitude while producing a conceptual result of utter vacuity. ...
Perhaps that is what makes them seem so exquisitely germane to Daniel Dennett’s most recent book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. This, I hasten to add, is neither a frivolous nor a malicious remark. The Bellman—like almost all of Carroll’s characters—is a rigorously, even remorselessly rational person and is moreover a figure cast in a decidedly heroic mould.
But, if one sets out in pursuit of beasts as fantastic, elusive, and protean as either Snarks or religion, one can proceed from only the vaguest idea of what one is looking for. So it is no great wonder that, in the special precision with which they define their respective quarries, in the quantity of farraginous [hodgepodge] detail they amass, in their insensibility to the incoherence of the portraits they have produced—in fact, in all things but felicity of expression—the Bellman and Dennett sound much alike. David Bentley Hart
Christianity naturally played an important role in West, yet of course those Christian values have naturally a lot to do with the values already existing in Antiquity. A thing like the end of slavery (in a way, at least) is indeed notable... even if, uh, Islam was about equality too.But I think the historical evidence for the role of Christianity in the formation of the modern liberal state, and the principles I mentioned in the quotation at the top of this thread, are unarguable. The book I mentioned previously in this context was David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, which I received as a gift some years back. I confess to not having read all of it, but the general thrust of the book is quite sound. — Wayfarer
So I take the cynical view that a new kind of religious meme was born that involved telling folk they had a soul and a personal relation with God. This disconnected them from their attachment to a traditional communal setting - the local sacred places, customs and spirit figures - and tied them instead to the abstracted institutional notion of a holy church. Even kings were just other humans. Only you and God mattered in the end. Pass the hat around the congregation and funnel the proceeds to Rome. — apokrisis
Christian behaviour does sound like a good way to run a society. It has pragmatic merit. So what would it be in tension with exactly when viewed perhaps from an atheist/enlightenment libertarian camp? — apokrisis
Let's not forget the importance of the Renaissance — ssu
If you look at 20th century and more recent atheism or 'secularist' philosophy - there is some effort to find the basis of a moral creed sans any idea of God ('Good without God', is one, and 'The Good Book' - A Secular Bible' is another.) But all of them seem to me to have a pretty poor understanding of what it is they're rejecting. It reminds me of that exclamation by Chomsky - 'Tell me what it is I'm supposed not to believe in, and I'll tell you if I'm an atheist'. — Wayfarer
...without much of the supernatural enforcement tinge. — Ignignot
Maybe no one goes to a building on Sunday, but they practice their religion on Facebook and maybe at the demonstration. — Ignignot
And of course Christianity itself is as much responsible for handing them this empty shell as secularism. — Noble Dust
In effect one sought fulfilment by overcoming the self, whereas in the absence of that part of the Christian ethos, all that remains is the individual ego as end in itself. — Wayfarer
Let's see others living up to their claims, as well! — Evol Sonic Goo
However the way individualism has developed in the West, post-enlightenment philosophy has increasingly rejected the Christian ethos. — Wayfarer
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