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
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
This is in line with the Augustinian 'doctrine of privation', i.e. evil as privation of the good, with no actual existence. Those who pursue what is evil, in effect punish themselves by becoming attached to unreal things which are inherently painful. So they're not being 'punished by God' in the sense often implied by Christian doctrine, they have instead chosen to pursue what is inherently painful or unsatisfactory. (Hence the aphorism, 'the doors of hell are locked on the inside'.) — Wayfarer
But in terms of the general question, the problem is, in my view, that the tropes and metaphors of traditional religion are completely disconnected from the realities of life in a post-industrial, technological society. It belongs to a different age. The idea of 'sacrifice' makes sense against the background of sacrificial religion, which Judaism was at the time; the imagery of the 'Lamb of God' is intuitively understandable in that culture. But the social context has completely and utterly changed. — Wayfarer
But the point I make is a very general one: that the tradition of the sanctity of every individual is a distinguishing feature of Christianity. — Wayfarer
Seems an apt description.It's all 'cheap grace' described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship. — Bitter Crank
Good point, and a very subtle one. The idea of 'individuation' is one of the key points of Jung's philosophy.maybe it is useful to consider individuation, rather than individualism — ernestm
Do the ideas themselves of the Christian ethos (equality, unconditional love, future salvation) have being or content in themselves, within the evolution of history? Can these ideas breed from religion to religion, worldview to worldview, and if so, will they ultimately breed their own culmination? Do these ideas still have life and are laying dormant in humanism? If so, is it through humanity, through a divine force, through nature (evolution), etc, that they'll come to fruition? In other words, can these concepts survive on their own without their original, mystical-religious context, or are they dependent on that context? — Noble Dust
I'm personally grateful to various sophisticated interpretations of Christianity. — Ignignot
On the lowest level is the material/physical world, which depends for its existence on the higher levels. On the very highest/deepest level is the Infinite or Absolute — Wayfarer
So in broad terms, what I think has happened to Western culture is that it has been hijacked by a hostile force, almost a parasitic entity, namely scientific materialism. — Wayfarer
but I really think materialism has passed its heyday, and is on the wane — Wayfarer
So in broad terms, what I think has happened to Western culture is that it has been hijacked by a hostile force — Wayfarer
these levels appear in both the "external" and the "internal" worlds, "higher" levels of reality without corresponding to "deeper" levels of reality within — Wayfarer
I believed that there was a 'perennial philosophy' that different spiritual philosophies were an aspect of, and that 'spiritual illumination' was a universal source of inspiration in all of them. — Wayfarer
You want to crusade against materialists? Actual scientists stopped being that - in terms of operative metaphysics - about a century ago. — apokrisis
My dissatisfaction with this politics-as-religion is (1) that it's not transcendent enough and (2) that it's inherently unstable as a religion of a progress. I personally want spirituality to be bigger than politics. Of course we remain political animals, but there are states of consciousness that perceive the here and now as perfect and complete, where 'evil' is a necessary dissonance in the music — Ignignot
Whether or not people actually believe in materialism is kind of null vs. the fact that a materialistic ethos controls how society functions, in relation to technology. — Noble Dust
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