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Comment by sjwright | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit parochial to hear someone in the twenty-first century describe honesty as a particularly Christian value. You do know you're talking to the whole world here? Most human cultures have valued honesty to a similar degree. Even many animal communities value honesty.

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Religion has historically and continues to play a major role in geopolitics... there's nothing parochial about it. The Christian belief system was objectively instrumental in the creation of the West's institutions, system of government, beliefs about trade, etc. You don't have to be religious (as I am not) for this to be true.

People, especially Americans, conflate Christianity with Western culture. But this is erroneous thinking:

1) Western liberal values are not co-extensive with Christianity. Christianity is geographically much larger. This has been true historically, and even more true today with the rise of Christian nations like South Korea and various nations in Southern Africa.

2) Western liberal values came to predominate in Europe centuries, even millennia, after Europe was Christianized.

3) Many Western liberal values are easily traced to pre-Christian movements, such as Greek Stoicism.

4) The Christianity of most Western Europeans today is not the Christianity of centuries ago, let alone millennia ago. The Protestant Revolution was like a giant flask where people took Christian doctrines and mixed them together with contemporary civil and philosophical values which emerged from the Enlightenment and then the dawn of the scientific and industrial ages. It's one thing to say that Christianity was conducive to the emergence of those other phenomena; it's quite another to say that they were Christian.

1) Christianity has been a major export of the West through missionaries and colonization. It was hardly the native religion of, say, Mexico or the Philippines.

2) That's hardly a compelling case against the influence of religion on Western values. It could even be a contributor, or neutral.

3) These values were well-documented but, for whatever reason, did not spread to the Muslim or Hindu world first. Islam had its brief progressive renaissance but was not able to sustain liberal values over the long-term. There are some small exceptions - Ismaili Muslims are quite liberal - but they're a tiny fraction of the Islamic world.

4) America was essentially founded by religious zealots and/or adherents to marginalized religions. The very architecture of early America - the gothic styling of Boston, for example - is of that era and persists. You can't wipe out that kind of influence in 100 years.

I'm not saying religion is the ONLY factor, but I find it odd that people try to ignore the impact it's had on the shaping of the modern world. I'm an atheist so I view this more as a historical fact - I'm not a fan of organized religion and would be perfectly happy if it went away.

It's a problem of timing and geography. Eastern Orthodox falls under the Christian religious umbrella, but it's very different under the surface demonstrating how western culture has influenced Christianity.

The Protestant Reformation was a religious movement, but ended up importing a lot of western beliefs into Christianity. Democracy for example is a western belief, Christianity is closely tied to Kings.

Nobody is arguing that religion did not have a substantial and dramatic impact on western culture, though it's disputable whether much of that impact was at all positive, let alone a net positive.

EDIT: wahern's reply above is far better than mine. Read that one instead. I'm removing most of what I originally wrote except for this bit:

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I would argue that Christianity has influenced western culture far less than western culture has influenced Christianity. And that the key benefit attributable to Christianity—insofar as it was the lucky religion which happened be closest to the people who built western civilisation—is arguably its adaptable and relatively non-invasive nature compared to many of its contemporaries.

We do have a parallel universe. Christianity and "the West" are not co-extensive. Christianity was and is much more widespread. The West emerged from a corner of the Christian universe, and what made that corner unique is readily distinguishable from Christianity. At best one could say that the Christian universe was relatively more conducive to the emergence of Western values.

For example, Christianity is tolerant of the concept that God primarily operates indirectly through physical laws, a concept which was normatively rejected early in Islam (circa 1100). Thus, Christianity was relatively more conducive to the emergence of science. But, Christianity is hardly the only religion so tolerant, so it's not like it deserves special credit in that regard. Indeed, this tolerance is sort of a fluke and really a vestige of Roman and Greek influence--influence that Muslim scholars were deliberately rejecting.

Western philosophy predates the Christian belief system. It's slightly more accurate to say Christianity was influenced by western culture than western culture was influenced by Christianity. (Though clearly adoption occurred in both directions.)

Christmas trees and holly are obvious, but compare old vs new testament and it's much deeper than that. On top of that you get the Protestant Revolution which really westernized Christianity.

They were talking about the rise of western culture, for which Christianity is the major religion.

And they were talking as if "don't trust" was the default before Christianity, which is wrong, absurd even.

Human and technological development in spite of Christianity and other religions.

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