We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
perell.com
perell.com
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.
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.
I'm sure the reference was to Supreme Judge of the World, and no omnipotence. You need to write more carefully.
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?
I also had a (atheist) friend once tell me he bought copies of the bhagavad gita and quran to put next to his bible so he would look well read instead of christian if anyone looked at his book shelf.
That pretty much describes the entire content of the article, which is filled with mythology with no basis in fact (and I’m not referring to actual Christian doctrine, but all the post-Biblical “history” in the piece), including completely fictional contents attributed to the Constitution.
> 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.
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
Why?
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...
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.
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.
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.
> Accepting the truth of the matter isn't going to cause society to collapse into barbarism and hedonism.
Unmooring social norms and mores from traditional foundations has indeed historically resulted in extremely violent periods. I am not assigning a moral value to this violence, but I am glad I didn't live through it.
> 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
I am not arguing that people do not accept moral frameworks (as social animals we do whether we like it or not), but that typically, atheists, like most people, do not acknowledge that moral frameworks are relative, and jump at every chance to sanction people from different cultures for violations of their moral code. Of course, some atheists might avoid making a moral argument for this very reason! We can always acknowledge that things are simply a matter of our preferences and still advocate for them.
But typically, you instead get vague, waffley treatments about how we have made new discoveries in human rights that, for example, require you to permit gay marriage or face the imperial might of the US. At the end of the day, exactly because this sort of morality lacks persuasive force, it relies more on various sanctions. Meanwhile, theists of varying stripes can fall back on the very powerful argument of "God said so", and trust that he will reward you accordingly for disobeying his dictates. Of course, it's not always the case that atheistic moral realists will bomb you into submission, just as it is not always the case that theistic moral realists won't decide they're the scourge of God. But in 2021, that's how it typically plays out. In short, this particular brand of moral realist seems to be the one presenting to the most danger to the rest of us.
> 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
I left off this until the end of the post because I don't feel particularly comfortable defending Christian thought, but I think these are misleading characterizations of what they say.
The Bible, including the New Testament, does say that slaves should obey their masters. But the same individual (Paul) writes that there is neither slave nor free among Christians. Men are equal before God, though in the world they are placed in hierarchies - this is a common theme. Paul preaches for servants to obey masters for the same reason that Christians are instructed to bless their enemies and do good to them that hate them and persecute them - because by so doing they show their faith in God. I don't think this is itself morally objectionable even from our perspective. 'Turn the other cheek' is still considered the moral high ground by most people, and this is coming from the same place.
Similarly, although homosexual behavior is definitely treated as an abominable sin, it is not treated as worthy of death moreso than other sins, including heterosexual adultery. Although Christians are instructed to cast out other Christians who continue practicing sinful ways, they are otherwise told not to judge. Indeed there is a specific passage where Jesus stops an execution. Of course, once Christians were in actual power, they did often legally sanction sins beyond those we might consider civically useful, but this rarely occurred in a way worth mentioning - homosexuality and adultery remained common and were rarely carcerally punished for most of their 2000 years in power. They certainly were sometimes, though!
I am not aware of any part of the Bible that takes such an extreme view on women. The most extreme stance I know of is taken in Timothy 1, where Paul claims that women should not teach and that men have authority over women because Adam was created first and was not deceived. But nowhere can I find a statement as extreme as yours. It would not surprise me if it were the case many or most practicing Christians still believed these things, although obviously the first one has become moot.
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".
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.
Yes. Hiding the truth is almost always wrong.
I.e. moral principles such as equality and some basic rights result in a safer and more productive society for the vast majority of people, vs. alternate principles.
They are less arbitrary principles than saying this group of people is better than another group, and results in a society with greater productivity and resiliancy than one where the strong continually put down the weak.
The history is still meaningful, but is not the rationale.
They are related, but certainly the latter can be talked of coherently separately - if one chooses.
Equality can be argued for in terms of economics, game theory, the objective recognition of commonality between humans, and from many other avenues, without reference to religion.
Literally none of that makes any sense. Within the system of human dynamics, nothing within that system can place an a priori restraint on the "right" rules for the system's existence, and it is literally impossible to talk about anything objective from within an intersubjective system. You're running up against Godel.
It’s literally impossible for us to be where are without history as it was. It’s not an obligation for us to keep making kids aware Thomas Jefferson existed.
The truth is humans behaved as they needed to survive given the world at the time. The rest is analogy and metaphor handed down as song and story. We can never know truth just speculate.
It can be in books but to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, we must update our society as our experience reveals new truth.
Am I under an obligation to discuss Jesus and Roman Empires to educate my kids why we goto a grocery store and why it’s bad to hate on others? Or repeat the Founders when we vote?
Can’t we simply do as we do, justify it as we need to today, without uttering the names of the dead?
No it certainly does not reference "God".
The "Supreme Being" they were talking about was definitely not the God of Catholic Church that came under direct attack in the French Revolution.
The French revolutionaries did not hide their Masonic root. It's right on the tin.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Declarat...
The "Supreme Being" is the Masonic "Great Architect", a metaphysical notion entirely distinct from the experiential spiritual God of religions with visionary prophets and scripture. You can have a 'born again Christian' who experiences a divine encounter, but you don't have epiphanies with "the Supreme Being".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianisation_of_France_d...
This is, of course, completely bogus; universality works just as well as a standalone a priori moral axiom as it does as a consequence of the Cosmic Punisher.
(From the site guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Btw, when we do these edits we nearly always use some representative phrase from the article itself. I'm pretty sure that was the case here.)
You are this close to a realisation.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe this is just more cut snd dry for me because I’ve studied US history for years and I’m imposing a lot of that into the essay, but I don’t think the author is being disingenuous at all for rightly pointing out the reaching effect of Christianity on our modern understanding of human rights (see Locke’s “Reasonableness of Christianity” for some fun reading).
Maybe we're talking past each other, but the essay seemed to be arguing that Christianity was both the source and only legitimate basis for modern human rights, and I don't think the historical record supports that argument at all.
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?
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.
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?”
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.
The author is claiming otherwise and failing to back it up.
Externally it pretty much does. Unless you have some specific concrete evidence there's not really ever value or reason to claim someone isn't part of the religion they say they are.
If you are _also_ part of the religion they claim then you might have some interest in whether or not they adhere to your doctrines but to outsiders it's all opaque and irrelevant.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
An article being somehow provocative isn't license to flame. If you can't respond in a spirit of curious conversation, there are other threads where that may be easier.
From a quick look at the article, I don't think you're doing it justice—and from what little I know of Holland, he's a serious writer on this topic. However, that's all beside the point. Even if the article is as bad and provocative as you say, it's not ok to fulminate about it on HN. Rather, the thing to do is (a) not post about that, and (optionally) (b) find a different thread to post to, one where you can do so in a curious spirit.
Curious conversation happens when commenters are in a curious state. If you're not in a curious state, you shouldn't be posting. Denunciatory rhetoric is not what we want here.
You were hardly the only offender in this thread, which is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen on HN in quite a while.
I have found it to be a fairly common issue among defenders of certain faiths where they take a popular philosophical stance that was delevoped through Enlightenment thinking or other philosophical countercurrents and ascribe a religious source.
You're not gonna find a lot of fans for honestly discussing this as a worthy point because it is simply ahistorical and goes counter to the principles of the very same authors of said ideas. It's really doesn't take much research to debunk this.
> If you see multiple "offenders" in the same thread
This is the internet; that's the default. We're trying for something other than internet default here. That takes energy—we have to spend energy asking commenters to do better, and commenters have to spend energy doing better and resisting their default instincts. Please do better.
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:
Parts of the white evangelicals going hard into it is weird but not completely out of nowhere I guess.
BUT! Anyway the "judeo-christian" thing is just a rhetorical move. I think overall Americans are very ignorant of judaism and think it's a lot more similar to christianity than it is but no one thinks they're the same religion. Uninformed but not likely to mix the two up like this.
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.
And since it's a discussion forum I thought taking contrarian position was fine.
I stand corrected that religion is a special topic on HN as nearly everywhere else that can be freely promoted and praised but any critique is in bad taste.
I realize that when it's a topic you have strong pre-existing feelings and opinions about, the tendency to rush into the forum and vent them is very strong. It's not just you—we all have it. In order for HN to be the kind of forum we all want—something with the potential to remain interesting over time—we all need to find other ways to process those reactions in ourselves. Then the forum can be free for new exchanges, not just ranty repetition.
One thing to watch out for is whether you're responding to something specific and interesting in the article, or whether you're just taking its appearance as an opportunity to post generically what you think or feel about a large adjacent thing. As I've tried to explain many times here (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), discussion tends to get much less interesting—and also angrier—as it gets more generic, especially on divisive topics.
But if you don't find that curious, but instead a generic incitement to religious flamewar it's fine by me.
I wonder if you also flagged the post itself, because for me it's a clearly a generic incitement to religious flamewar, because it postulates and praises influences of religion (and even a very specific one), which many people might find morally offensive.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Note this guideline also: "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."