On Christian Civilization & Morals
Christians will sometimes point to other cultures' repugnant practices as a means of highlighting the supposed superiority of "Christian" society and values. To those people, I ask them to consider Christian society in the fifteenth century, which was very devoutly Christian and certainly had more church involvement in human affairs:
-- St. Joan of Arc burned at the stake
-- St. Thomas Moore burned at the stake (refusal to recognize the religious authority of the kind over that of the pope.)
-- Jan Hus and some of his followers burned at the stake for heresy, and several other followers were beheaded for questioning indulgences.
-- Heinrich Kramer and Johann Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), a guide used by the Inquisition for the diagnosis, behavior, trial, and punishment of witches.
-- Jews expelled from: Styria - Austria as well as the rest of Austria, Berne, Speyer - Germany, Eger - Bohemia, Spain (3 or 4 separate occasions.)
-- Jews required to attend conversion classes in Sicily (first third of the century)
-- In 1452 Pope Nicholas V, in his Dum Diversas, instituted the hereditary enslavement of "nonbelievers".
-- In 1488, Pope Innocent VIII accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon, and distributed those slaves to his cardinals and the Roman nobility;[15]
Life for women was substantially different too:
married women did not have a legal existence apart from their husbands. They were considered inferior property of their husbands.
If that society was Christian, then many, if not all, of the practices reviled by many in modern times in other cultures are Christian as well. If we consider modern society to be Christian as well, then Christians need to describe what scriptures have changed, or how our interpretation of them have changed between then and now.
My impression is that no such change of values occurred in Christianity. Civilization in Europe (and the colonies) evolved regardless of it's Christian heritage to the more modern state. Peoples attitudes changed and dragged the churches along with them, rather than the church providing any particular guidance. The values of modern society are not actually Christian at all, but indicative of progress on an absolute scale.
Since medieval European society was as Christian, or more so, than today's, Christianity has little to no moral value or lessons for us.
mostly from:
-- http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blchron_xian_medieval6.htm
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hus#Indulgences
-- http://www.castles-of-britain.com/castlezb.htm
-- http://books.google.ca/books?id=pN-GTGzOngAC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=medieval+women+property&source=web&ots=bjQUs_8xOM&sig=6ydeePVQJdkrAHmH8ylUBdqj-84&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA4,M1
-- St. Joan of Arc burned at the stake
-- St. Thomas Moore burned at the stake (refusal to recognize the religious authority of the kind over that of the pope.)
-- Jan Hus and some of his followers burned at the stake for heresy, and several other followers were beheaded for questioning indulgences.
-- Heinrich Kramer and Johann Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), a guide used by the Inquisition for the diagnosis, behavior, trial, and punishment of witches.
-- Jews expelled from: Styria - Austria as well as the rest of Austria, Berne, Speyer - Germany, Eger - Bohemia, Spain (3 or 4 separate occasions.)
-- Jews required to attend conversion classes in Sicily (first third of the century)
-- In 1452 Pope Nicholas V, in his Dum Diversas, instituted the hereditary enslavement of "nonbelievers".
-- In 1488, Pope Innocent VIII accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon, and distributed those slaves to his cardinals and the Roman nobility;[15]
Life for women was substantially different too:
married women did not have a legal existence apart from their husbands. They were considered inferior property of their husbands.
If that society was Christian, then many, if not all, of the practices reviled by many in modern times in other cultures are Christian as well. If we consider modern society to be Christian as well, then Christians need to describe what scriptures have changed, or how our interpretation of them have changed between then and now.
My impression is that no such change of values occurred in Christianity. Civilization in Europe (and the colonies) evolved regardless of it's Christian heritage to the more modern state. Peoples attitudes changed and dragged the churches along with them, rather than the church providing any particular guidance. The values of modern society are not actually Christian at all, but indicative of progress on an absolute scale.
Since medieval European society was as Christian, or more so, than today's, Christianity has little to no moral value or lessons for us.
mostly from:
-- http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blchron_xian_medieval6.htm
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hus#Indulgences
-- http://www.castles-of-britain.com/castlezb.htm
-- http://books.google.ca/books?id=pN-GTGzOngAC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=medieval+women+property&source=web&ots=bjQUs_8xOM&sig=6ydeePVQJdkrAHmH8ylUBdqj-84&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA4,M1
posted by philobyte at 4:29 PM
4 Comments:
Yes, the fifteenth century was a terrible and brutish time when judged by the standards of our moral values, though you can imagine how they might judge us.
But consider, unless I'm mistaken, you are the product of a more or less historically Christian culture. Given that state of things, I think a strong case could be made that your criticism of the Christian morals of the 15th century represents little more than a mostly Christian critique of Christian practice. That is, I'm claiming that for better or for worse, you owe much of your sense of morality to Christianity.
What do you think?
All societies have vast numbers of deeply religious people. Religion does not differentiate us from Muslims (as per the 15th century comparisons) or Hindus, or what have you...
Now you would say that Christianity, being correct, is the reason for the rise of the west and what led to modern society, but this does not make much sense. Scripture has not changed since the fifteenth century, but society has. Hundreds of years of religious wars, followed by the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason happenned.
So the first objection to your statement is to assume that Christianity is what differentiates modern society from what we see in 1500. Christian society in 1500, to me, looks pretty similar to an Islamic one in 1500, or a hindu one for that matter.
But we can leave aside what caused the change since 1500, let's take up the idea that society is, in some sense, "historically Christian". If you want to add up cultural influences from the past, you would have to likely start with 2000 years of Egyptians, then 1500 years of Greco-Romans, with Angles, Saxons, and Celts, and various other peoples and their religions contributing. Our judicial system comes from Roman (ie. pagan) law.
If we just go by which religion was where and for how long, we'll end up with a patchwork of influences, of which Christianity is an important, but not necessarily predominant one. This, to me, fits the data better. Just look at Christmas. There's a tree (pagan) it's held after the winter solstice (Sol Invictus, Roman, as well as a similar thing that was German.)
How about the days of the week? Oh dear, not a Christian one in the lot. Thor, Jupiter, the Moon, Saturn. So sure, our society has a Christian heritage, but also a Norse, Roman, Greek, and a highly under-appreciated Muslim one. I don't think we should be giving offerings to Thor or Jupiter either.
I wouldn't say that Christianity "is the reason for the rise of the west and what led to modern society" and certainly not because it is "correct." I just don't see things that way. And, for what it's worth, I don't disagree with your initial position that the supposed superiority of Christian values prove anything in particular.
All I'm saying is that when evaluating ethics (which has nothing to do with the naming of the days of the week and little to do with the judicial system), Christianity is far and away the predominant influence -- unless you are going to claim an external (i.e. objective) basis for right and wrong, in which case I won't argue the point.
You point out that the Bible hasn't changed, and that's true, but people keep finding new things there. That is, the Bible keeps influencing them. Consider, for example, the opposition to slavery in the United States in the 19th century. While it's true that the proponents of slavery used the Bible to defend their position, it's equally true that the most vocal opponents of slavery opposed it on specifically Christian grounds. Their reading of the Bible compelled them to take a stand against slavery.
Now one of the biggest thing that has changed since the 15th century is that the Christian Church underwent a Reformation in which the Bible was put into the hands of the people and the institution was no longer able to control people with religion.
Granted, the other big change was the Enlightenment (which gave us such wonders as the French Revolution). But this also appeared within an overwhelmingly Christian society. As much as you might like to, you can't deny the influence of cultural context on cultural developments, and if you'd like to thank the ancient Egyptians for the Enlightenment, feel free to do so.
Now one of the biggest thing that has changed since the 15th century is that the Christian Church underwent a Reformation in which the Bible was put into the hands of the people and the institution was no longer able to control people with religion.
The slight fly in that ointment is that the very centre of the enlightenment was and remains mostly Catholic, and so there was no reformation. Catholic places include France (Des Cartes, Pascal, Lavoisier, many others), Italy (Galileo, Leonardo Da Vinci, some others...), and Southern Germany (Einstein, Mendel, and countless others...)
When you say "overwhelmingly Christian society" what you mean to say is a population that claims allegiance to some version of Christian religion. That says nothing about the actual origins of any moral teachings they espouse. It is more of a badge of cultural heritage.
If you really mean Christian, then you have to explain why Eastern Europe, Greece, and, say Armenia and Palestine, long time Christian enclaves, did not rise along with the West. South America in the 17th century was overwhelmingly christian, yet we see no advancement corresponding to Europe or North America. P.S. Slavery was called "serfdom" in Christian Russia, and was only abolished by the arrival of godless Communists in 1917. Not that that turned out to be a good thing, but it does argue that Christianity was pretty uneven in it's awakening to the evil of slavery.
Pop quiz:
People of which religions think you should steal under normal circumstances:
a) catholics
b) Orthodox Jews
c) Shiites
d) hindus
e) buddhists
f) Zoroastrians
g) Atheists
h) Mennonites
i) Mormons
j) this can go on for a while...
zz) none of the above.
If you guessed none of the above, then you have just noticed that some 'Christian values' aren't really Christian at all.
Yes, the point is not that right and wrong are objective, but that they are bioligically determined, and that religions simply codify the norms that humans living in large groups impose on each other anyways. It is akin to beer commercials having scantily clad women, implying that beer is somehow associated with something you want. Religion associates itself with things we consider good, in order for the aura of goodness to rub off on it in our minds. Religions reflect the values of society. When society changes, so does religion. That is a better fit to your data about slavery than people figuring something new out after 1500 years of reading the same book, and arguing with other people who read it the same way everyone else had read it for 1500 years.
A separate problem is that one could just as accurately call the society of 15th century europe over whelmingly white, overwhelmingly shoe wearing, or overwhelmingly immunized to chicken pox. correlation does not equal causation.
I would actually more readily buy the effect of immunization against pox being a decisive factor in the rise of the west, since that is exactly the theory of Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond.
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