brightmoon
Community Member
- MBTI
- INFJ
Yes that's all true. My point is that Christian culture created the conditions that allowed such ideologies to flourish. ideologies that ironically are antithetical to its doctrines.
What we know as secular humanist ethics grew out of Christian culture, so to assert that Western culture would be better off without Christianity doesn't make much sense. In a sense Christianity brought us where we are today. Would the Enlightenment have happened without Christianity? Who knows? In the development and intellectual history of our culture you cannot separate out religion. The very thing ideologies which oppose Christianity also grew out of it in some sense. For example when the doctrine of the church was challenged by Luther, the appeal was partially made on reason and this thought was later taken by Enlightenment thinkers which grew into what we know as secular humanism today. This is, of course simplifying the process, but my point is the rationalist ethics that we know developed as a result of Western culture/religion and are unique to it.
[MENTION=6303]ThomasJ79[/MENTION] Also very true. The secular tradition in Western thought owe a great debt to ancient Greek thought and its later rediscovery. Its very hard to make the argument that humanist thought could have remained influential and developed and flourished much earlier.
Even in the heyday of ancient Greece religion was there. Remember Socrates was charged with corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and of impiety ("not believing in the gods of the state"). I would argue that religion for many people in human history is essential to their being. They have an impulse, a need to believe which cannot be denied. It doesn't exist in everyone, but its there in many people and it expresses itself in different ways, though the various religions that exist on the planet. In other people this impulse is not as strong. Of course, culture also has a great deal to with how religious or irreligious people are. What makes Western culture different is the respect for the individual and also the conflict between the two points of view which continues to this day.
Consider another cultural point-of-view in Hindu culture, which instead of setting these two ideas in opposition, seeks to integrate them. In Hindu thought there are many pathways to understanding and worship/faith is not required for all of them.