Maxprop wrote:
"Jeff" wrote in message
However, civilized societies have emerged all over the world, without the
benefit of Christian salvation.

"Civilized" and "moral" are not synonymous.

Which is better? Is un-civil behavior acceptable if you say a prayer
while doing it?



Because you have been insisting that your religion, Christianity, is
superior to all others. In fact you've been specific that without
Christianity, morality as we now know it would not exist.

Here your prejudice shows through with flying colors. First: you have no
idea what my religion is, or even that I practice a religion. I've not
implied anything w/r/t myself--you have made that assumption all by
yourself. Second, I've used the term "western religion" almost synonymously
with Christianity, despite that Christianity, while the majority shareholder
in western religion, is only a part. I've also used the term
"Judeo-Christian." So what am I, Jeff? Am I a Jew? Christian? Atheist?
Agnostic? Druid? Quaker? You'll have to decide, because my religion or
lack thereof is no one's concern but my own. I was attempting to discuss
this dispassionately and without prejudice, based upon historical fact. As
soon as you label me a Christian, it became a debate of a personal nature.

Forgive me, its true that you did not reveal your personal thoughts,
even though you asked for mine. However, since you are clearly taking
the "Christian side" I think it isn't unfair of me to identify it as
"your religion" in the same sense that I might identify the Chargers
as "your team" even if you are not a member of the team and don't live
in San Diego.


On behalf of all of the would be barbarians of the world I would like to
say that we were getting along pretty well before you came along, and we
could have done just fine without your help, thank you very much.

Yeah, those damned framers of the Constitution and their Christianity. They
ruined everything.

Well, this would be the real issue here. Obviously, all of the
framers of the Constitution were influenced by Christianity. And I
appreciate that books have been written trying to show that much of it
was derived from biblical sources.

However, the Constitution represents a massive break from our European
political heritage. Starting, obviously, with denying the divinity of
royalty, the Constitution is not an endorsement of organized religion,
but a rejection of it.

Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of
Independence, was a Deist, that is, he rejected the divinity of the
Trinity. Although raised in the Church of England, he later seemed to
favor Unitarianism. He clearly did not favor organized religion,
writing: "the serious enemies are the priests of the different
religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind it's improvement is
ominous."

John Adams, another major force in the Constitution, also was a
Unitarian. He was trained as a youth to be a minister, but he felt
that being a lawyer was a more noble calling! He wrote of the
Catholic Church: "Since the promulgation of Christianity, the two
greatest systems of tyranny that have sprung from this original, are
the canon and the feudal law."

Both Jefferson and Adams approved of Christian morals. Adams even
said that the Bible is "the best book in the world." Of course, at
that time the Western world was not exposed to most of the world's
religions and philosophy.

James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution" was a protege of
Jefferson, and clearly shared many of his views. He was the author of
the Bill of Rights, which guarantees freedom of religion, and often
wrote about the complete separation of Church and State.

Unfortunately, the original Constitution was flawed in that it
permitted slavery. This was required, of course, because the southern
states refused to join the Union if slavery was abolished. I'm sure
they had good Christian morals supporting their position.


You should remember that only 75% of the US population considers itself
Christian. And a fair portion of those were forced conversions only a few
generations ago. This country is not 99% Christian, as you seem to
think - its real heritage is quite mixed.

Please produce my statement where I implied that 99% of the country is
Christian. You're beginning to sound like Doug.

yes, but I've already agreed that religion is part of human nature, thus
morals are part of human nature.

You and I will have to agree to disagree. This is becoming pointless,
mostly because you seem unable to differentiate between peace and morality.
They aren't anymore synonymous than "civilization" and "morality."

The problem I have is that its hard to take measure of the motivation
of people from a distance of 2000 years. Its easy to look around
today and see numerous examples of "Christian" generosity or
compassion. Can you honestly say that the same moral motivations were
absent in other societies?

History does not record the motivations of the ordinary people,
especially in peaceful societies. In fact, unless a culture waged a
war, its hard to tell that it even existed! And even the opposite is
true - major societies that we thought existed because of the claims
of their conquests (such as the empire of David and Solomon) we have
trouble finding physical evidence for.

Since there is no way to determine the moral convictions of ordinary
people in societies from the distance past, all we have to go on is
how well the society functioned and how well did the government
provide for the needs of the people.



It's a pointless discussion anyway. The majority of 18th, 19th, and 20th
Century European historians concur that western religions played the
majority role in shaping the morality of the periods. Debate them.

Well Duh! Even a twit like Ellen can see that the morality of any
period is heavily influenced by the religion of the time. The issue
is whether Europe (or the world) would have been better off had some
other religion other than Christianity been allowed to grow and
develop. I claim there's no way to know this.