Acknowledging church scandals and faithlessness, a Baylor historian writes,
But as Christians reflect on the incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ, it is a good time to remember that Christianity has massively contributed to good in world history as well. Other religions have done so, too, and Christianity’s effects are impossible to disconnect from the Jewish tradition from which it sprang. Christianity, however, is arguably the greatest engine of moral reform and cultural riches that the world has known.
That’s a big claim, but many studies and books back it up. To cite just one, sociologist Robert Woodberry showed in a landmark 2012 article that Christian missionaries were responsible for much of the global spread of cultural values such as “religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colonial reforms” from Latin America to East Asia. For a century, skeptical scholars have lambasted missionaries as tools of the British and American empires. Sometimes those charges were warranted, as significant numbers of mission stations became sites of economic exploitation, or worse.
But Woodberry demonstrated that the enduring effects of Christian missions were overwhelmingly positive for the countries receiving them.
Thomas Kidd, “Christianity is the greatest engine of moral reform and cultural riches the world has known” at Dallas News
The decline of Christianity, among other things, means wars waged against intellectual freedom and freedom of conscience. The progressive has a right, after all, to a world where no one upsets him by having a different opinion.
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham
See also: Dawkins raises an issue without intending to: Can one “outgrow” God without “outgrowing” morality? Rebecca McLaughlin: To Dawkins’s credit, he comes dangerously close to acknowledging that religious belief is correlated with better moral outcomes—though he would like to think humans are better than that (117). He finds it rather patronizing to say, “Of course you and I are too intelligent to believe in God, but we think it would be a good idea if other people did!” (122).
and
David Bentley Hart offers an honest assessment of Richard Dawkins’s new book. The book is Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. Hart thinks Dawkins has finally found his authorial voice but you had better read the rest.
Besides society at large, there are also tremendous personal benefits, not only in the life to come, but in this present temporal life:
Christians report being much happier than atheists are,
Christians have significantly fewer suicide attempts than atheists do,
Christians report having greater life satisfaction than atheists do,
Christians having less mental and physical health issues than atheists do,
Christians live significantly longer than atheists do.
On top of all that, Christians are assured eternal life in heaven..
BA77
Just a response to a few.
Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, Sri Lanka, China…. had hospitals before Christianity existed.
Yet there were great houses of learning long before Christianity.
Capitalism and free enterprise existed in various forms long before Christianity existed.
The great American experiment that created a government who’s representation was limited to white land owners. Much like what existed in Rome long before Christianity.
Yet the bible condones slavery. Yet the height of the African slave trade started well after the start of Christianity, with active participation by countries that were largely Christian.
Yes, the modern scientific process was greatly influenced by Christians, but it would be false to say that science didn’t exist long before Christianity.
Except that the New World was discovered thousands of years before Christianity.
Elevation to what? Subservient to their husbands? Second class citizens? Not allowed to be priests or cardinals?
Yes, there are great Christian charities. But there are also examples of charity in all other religions as well as in cultures that long pre-date Christianity.
That is certainly debatable.
Most examples of the elevation of common man were the result of actions of common men, not the church.
These condemnations and prejudices long predates Christianity.
Again, not uniquely Christian.
Civilize, barbarian and primitive are highly subjective, to say nothing of being offensive.
Many of which were codified and written long before Christianity.
Subjective claim
Like the subjugation of women, persecution of Jews and homosexuals.
This assumes the existence of an eternal soul.
Ed George @ 2
You don’t believe in absolutes, yet give a lot of absolute statements. Without a soul and without God, there can be no morality at all. How can any criticism you gave be sincere without some moral basis? Where did morality come from, since it cannot exist with atheists? Morality does not exist in nature and never has. When an animal kills another animal, there is no charge of murder.
Ed George’s unreferenced counterclaims,
And yet, (as is usual), the reality of the situation is much different than E.G. would like to portray,
As to:
Yet nobody claimed that “great houses of learning” did not exist before Christianity. The claim was that universities, specifically modern universities, arose out of Christianity:
as to:
And yet even wikipedia, hardly a beacon of Christian apologetics, acknowledges that,,
As to:
And yet, there was an extensive discussion on this just recently on UD, starting here (a discussion which E.G. apparently learned not one thing from since he repeated his lie.)
as to:
E.G. is playing polemics. The undisputable fact of history is that Christianity, and Christianity alone, was the main driving agent that eradicated slavery in the west as well as in much of the rest of the world.
as to:
BS, modern science, the empirical and systematic study of nature, was born directly out of the Christian metaphysics of a rational universe created by a rational God, i.e divine ‘logos’, and the capacity of men, being made in the image of God, to dare understand that rationality:
as to:
E.G. is playing polemics again. Nobody disputes that America was inhabited by Indians “thousands of years before Christianity.” The claim is that Christianity was a, if not THE, driving force behind Columbus’ discovery of the new world:
as to;
And yet, Christianity is the best thing that has ever happened for women
As to:
And yet, charitable giving by individual American Christians alone could, “easily finance the entire gross domestic product of Sam Harris’s more “atheistic” nations, Sweden, Norway, or Denmark.4”
As to
Funny that you offer no ‘debate’ other than your personal opinion that it is debatable. Whereas on the other hand,
As to,
Talk about E.G. missing the forest for the trees,,, Those men, especially in the American revolution, were fighting for principles of equality for the common man that find there basis in Christianity,,,,
As to:
Actually, in the ancient world Christianity offered a radical, (family, women, children), oriented, view of sexuality that was apparently unheard of,
As to:
This ancient historian disagrees with E.G.’s uneducated personal opinion: “most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.”
One of the remarkable but nowadays little noticed consequences of Christianity was the demise of the old gods. For the vast majority of human history, you couldn’t fling a cat across the room in any dwelling on earth without knocking over four or five idols. Now, two short millennia later, they have apparently and for the most part vacated the premises entirely, worldwide. To my Protestant fellow-travelers: veneration of the saints was a poor, and it turns out, temporary substitute for The Great Symbiosis that ruled the world for so long.
Speaking of David Bentley Hart, in 2017 he wrote interestingly on the subject of the difference — specifically the moral and, I’d say, psychological and political differences also (at least in effect) — that Christianity has made in the world:
as to:
I don’t know, perhaps E.G. considers infanticide and cannibalism as somehow ‘unbarbarian’? How else can he possibly claim that it is offensive to say such an obvious truth?
as to:
E.G. is missing the forest for the trees again
as to:
Hmm, the fact that devoutly Christian men (and women) produced exceedingly great works of art is beyond dispute. That E.G. a Darwinian materialist would appeal to his own ‘subjective’ experience of beauty is laughable. According to E.G.’s Darwinian presupposition, E.G.’s subjective experience of himself is an ‘illusion’, i.e. E.G. is nothing but a ‘meat robot’ according to Darwinian metaphysics, Moreover, beauty itself is also an illusion in E.G.’s Darwinian worldview.
as to:
What is the world is E.G. talking about? I could give countless examples of radically transformed lives, but let this one example suffice:
as to
Well actually, this is no longer just a very reasonable assumption, (i.e. what holds the body together for precisely a lifetime if not the soul?), but the claim that we have an eternal soul now finds very strong empirical support from quantum biology:
Verse:
In conclusion, E.G.’s responses were terrible, even uneducated, ‘knee jerk’ reactions that were easily refuted by simple google searches. Moreover, his ‘knee jerk’ reactions reveal that his is much more interested in advancing his atheistic ‘agenda’ than he ever is in pursuing the actual truth of the matter.
If E.G. had an ounce of integrity in his being he would acknowledge his mistakes. But alas, I (and a few others on UD) have given up all hope of E.G. ever being honest towards any evidence that refutes his atheistic belief.
BR
I never said that I don’t believe in absolutes. The “absolute” statements I provided are facts and can be easily verified.
Now who is dealing in absolutes. Our morality is nothing more than an assemblage of judgement values that we have developed over years of indoctrination, teaching, repetition, feedback, experience and the ability to predict likely outcomes of our actions. All gauged against the continued ability for us to live harmoniously within society. I don’t need God to tell me that killing, stealing, lying, persecuting others, racism, etc. are not conducive to a functioning society.
I also don’t need God to tell me that homosexuality and same sex marriage cause to harm to a functioning society.
And because of my desire to continue to live in a functioning, stable society, I feel justified in making every efforts to ensure that others follow these rules as well. The proverbial IS OUGHT nonsense often mentioned here to support objective morality. Now, of course, there may be some values that I think are necessary for a stable functioning society that, in fact, are not necessary. That is the nature of human fallibility. Conversely, there may be values you hold that are not important for a stable functioning society. Things like prohibitions against homosexuality, blasphemy, premarital sex, abortion, divorce, women priests, birth control, etc.
About the only thing that we can say with certainty is that we each hold values that are not necessary for the stable functioning of society.
BA77 @9
Phillip E. Johnson, in either Darwin on Trial or Reason in the Balance or maybe both, discusses the similarity in strategy that Freudians, Marxists, and Darwinists share in argumentation. He demonstrates how literally anything can be explicated — in QED fashion to the faithful — when the facts are viewed through a prism of the Oedipus Complex, or one cut to Dialectical Materialism specifications, or one whose angles match Natural Selection — take you pick!
I don’t know how many, who parrot the pet theory — so postmodern! — that history and politics revolve wholly around the overcoming of the oppressor by the oppressed, realize that they’re following the sightless zombie of that same old Karl Marx, newly raised undead from the grave, straight back into the same old ditch, where the stench of the tens of millions that it murdered last century still fills the nostrils of the sane.
All that I am willing do for them is say, “Good luck with that!” Bless you for your heroic attempts to engage them. Sometimes it works, I guess. (Jude 22-23.)
Jstanley01 at 11,
that was tragically poetic.
Bornagain77 @
Ed George has already done a fine job of answering Kennedy’s hubris but I couldn’t resist adding my own.
…was a pastor and Christian evangelist, not an historian, who had a somewhat tenuous relationship with the Ninth Commandment.
The precursors of modern hospitals can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, for example, well before the Middle Ages.
Yes, what we now regard as modern universities originated in medieval Christian Europe, the University of Bologna being recognized as the first such but there were centers of learning in other non-Christian cultures.
When the printing press was invented, the church authorities of the time strongly objected to the Bible being translated into vernacular and printed so that any peasant could read it.
Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple. The Bible gives the chances of a rich man entering heaven as being equivalent to a camel passing through the eye of a needle and the love of money is castigated as being the root of all evil. Hardly an endorsement of capitalism and free enterprise.
Both ancient Greece and Rome tried limited forms of representative government with varying degrees of success. In Christianity, God is the supreme legislative authority and He most certainly does not delegate that authority to any elected body of representatives of His people.
In Christianity, the only separation of political powers is that God has the supreme power and the rest don’t. God’s decisions cannot be put to the vote in some legislature nor can they be challenged in any court.
At least seven of the Ten Commandments violate the rights and liberties set out in the Bill of Rights set out in the US Constitution.
The Biblical accounts show that early Christianity was prepared to accommodate slavery. Some Christians certainly led the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Other opposed abolition on Biblical grounds and it cannot be denied that slavery was built up into a very profitable industry by European nations which regarded themselves as Christian.
Yes, modern science was fostered in Christian Europe but what we now regard as science was also practiced in non-Christian cultures in China, India, ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and under Islam.
The Americas were originally populated by peoples from eastern Asia and there is evidence they were visited by European explorers long before Columbus got there.
Treating women as chattel, forbidding them to speak in church and regarding them as unclean when they are having their periods doe snot sound like they are being elevated.
Christ certainly urged benevolence and charity but I doubt the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Amalekites, Midianites or Canaanites would have described their treatment at the hands of God and His chosen people as benevolent or charitable.
Where is the justice in God as judge, jury and executioner? Where is the justice in punishing the descendants of Adam and Eve in perpetuity for a relatively minor offense by the unfortunate couple.
Only in so far as he was elevated over women.
Other non-Christian cultures have had similar prohibitions although a God, having created this vast Universe, becoming obsessed with what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms on one minor planet sound somewhat petty to say the least.
Tell that to the Amalekites, Midianites etc, or almost the entire human population of the antediluvian planet.
Meaning either subjugating or exterminating them basically.
Christianity did not invent writing,
Christianity is one of the sources of great art and music but not the only nor original one.
Yes, the charity practiced by Christians who actually live by the faith’s ideals rather than just paying lip-service to it have helped many and should be recognized but they are not the only people who do such good work.
Which might be good of there were any evidence of such an immaterial entity which survives the death of the physical body and is thereby immortal.
Seversky apparently did not bother to read my responses to Ed George.
That Seversky would blatantly ignore the evidence that directly refuted his claims directly prior to him even making them, (besides being extremely embarrassing for Seversky), is par for the course. Seversky is an atheistic troll who could care less for the truth and will repeat the same old tired lies over and over again no matter how many times he is corrected on his errors.
BA77
Did anybody? The scroll ball is the ultimate “read more” button.
If you want to discuss any of these, I will be willing to do so. But not if you provide a Gish Gallop of word salad.
As a matter of fact, God told the Hebrews that he detested slavery, and that they were not to enslave any of their own people.
God’s tolerance of the enslavement of foreigners would surely have been a concession to the evolution – sorry ! I had to say it ! – of our moral growth, rather than a dramatic overthrowing of the old order ; as is reflected in the injunction that the early Christians were to ‘honour’ the emperor …. so that they could live in peace. Abjuring the possession of slaves under Roman rule would presumably have been regarded by the Emperor and his establishment as a dangerous example for others.
Moreover, their slavery, often a result of the changing fortunes of war, which could affect any people, of course, was much more benign than the ‘chattel’ slavery by the vile, nominal European and American Christians of the Christian era.
Axel
But enslaving others was OK. And beating them as long as they didn’t die within a couple days was OK.
Since when does God have to give concessions? Just admit it. God, as described in the bible, condoned slavery. There are only two options available to rehabilitate God’s reputation. One, the Bible is not an accurate representation of reality or, two, God changed his mind about slavery. But the latter would imply that God is not infallible.
Pay attention, Edward, there’s a good chap. Gosh, you atheists are not even sufficiently morally evolved to accept the self-denying love required by Christianity, and you’re cribbing about God ‘cutting some slack’ for mankind, in terms of the evil consequences of the Fall … for which we, not God, are to blame, admittedly in some strange inherited kind of way.
But make no mistake, there is a very significant element of our own volition with regard to what we choose to believe, so abstruse and paradoxical are the deepest truths – not only in terms of religion, but also, of course, of physics ; quantum mechanics being a permanent embarassment to you. Otherwise, only the worldly wise brain-boxes would get to heaven – and those welcomed into the courts of eternity might first be greeted by Mengele and Pinochet. All right, I’ll throw in Stalin.
Ed George, dismissing my references to your unreferenced personal opinions as ‘Gish Gallop’ is a favorite tactic of atheistic trolls who refuse to engage in honest debate., It is, to put it mildly, disingenuous and borders on straight up ad hominem.
I have no time for such childish antics and, make no mistake, I will seek to have you banned if you continue to engage me in such fashion.
Axel
I’m sorry. God gives us slack for acting on the free will that he gave us (for thousands of generations), and we are to blame? Sorry, but I don’t accept culpability for what Adam and Eve did, or for what more recent ancestors did, or even for what my parents did.
If God didn’t want us to act in certain ways it would be a trivial act for him to prevent this. But rather than do this, he blames us for using the free will he gave us and then punished us for acting against his will. Slaves never lost free will, they just got punished for using it if it was counter to what their masters wanted. The only difference between the slave owners and God is that slave owners never deceived their slaves into believe that they truly had free will.
Ed George:
That’s that, then. LoL! It isn’t about accepting anything beyond the situation you were born into.
That would go against the very point.
You can have both- free will and acting within His will.
And back in Biblical times slaves were a means of reparations of war. That you keep ignoring that fact speaks volumes about your willful ignorance and unwillingness to participate in good faith.
Joe
Of course. Do what I say or else. Sounds more like slavery than free will.
What’s your point? According to Joe logic, it would have been morally acceptable for us to have enslaved the Japanese and Germans. Or for the Vietnamese to enslave us. This sort of nonsense is the reason that nobody interacts with you. Advice that I will adopt again. Have fun screaming at the wind.
H’mm:
BA77 At 9:
BA77 is correct. Who gets the headlines and who doesn’t, leads to a distorted view.
In recent times, Wycliffe Bible Translators . . . . now, “Global Alliance” . . . and associated linguistics institutes have in fact led a very long campaign of reducing languages to text, usually based on alphabetic scripts. They have therefore opened up literacy for many cultures. Note, Wiki:
Historically, translation of the Bible into the vernacular and the Protestant Reformation helped trigger widespread literacy, often riding on the back of Gutenberg’s great innovations with movable type printing. In turn that fostered the rise of a significant public opinion thence modern democratisation and linked civil rights movements. I have noted previously how this cluster reached critical mass in Britain (and Holland etc) by about mid to late 1600’s leading to the first modern republic of significantly democratic character based on principles of naturally evident, creation order anchored rights and justice, the USA. The success of the USA triggered developments around the world that attained critical mass across C20. However, currently, the agendas to dechristianise, secularise and radicalise our civilisation make the sustainability of such, doubtful. The USA, for example has been in bleeding Kansas-lite, agit prop, media lynch mob and lawfare driven 4th generation civil war for quite a few years now. At the heart of this is the mass blood guilt of 63 million slaughtered unborn, with cultural marxism, radical atheism [often dressed up in lab coats] and linked phenomena adding to a toxic brew.
Going back further, Cyrillic text is named after the Monk who pioneered translation involving reduction of languages to writing. Wiki:
. . . and:
Going back much further, some argue that miners in Sinai adapted and radically simplified Egyptian hieroglyphics, creating alphabetic script — the very name reflects the Levantine source region, aleph and beth. From the Levant, such spread far and wide.
Alphabetic script, in turn, has been pivotal to our modern digital age, especially when joined to the place value notation numeral system.
Going much further back, to our astonishment, we find digitally coded text in the heart of the living cell.
A signature, of language using intelligence.
KF
EG,
I suggest, you would be well advised to study the principles of liberty expressed in say, Websters 1828:
Freedom, is not licence or anarchy or nihilistic will to power. I know, you were very resistant when earlier the point that there are inescapable first principles and first duties of reason were on the table. It is refusal to accept that there are manifest, inescapable first moral truths constituting a conscience attested corpus of built in law of our morally governed nature that now proceeds to nihilistic chaos. Where, by definition, moral government pivots, equally on built in freedom, so we can choose responsibly or irresponsibly.
That freedom, is foundational to the credibility of reasoning, arguing, warranting knowledge and more. It also leads to the IS-OUGHT gap, thus the need for something else you have resisted. Namely, a reality root that bridges is and ought inherently, thus one that is of awesome power to be creator or source and sustainer of worlds and in so doing, is inherently good and utterly wise.
Turning from this, we can see again and again, ends in patent absurdities involving undermining of responsible reason. Including, self-referential incoherence that leaves the objector without a leg to stand on.
So, no, suggesting that the premise that we are responsibly and rationally free under moral government reflects “slavery” is self-defeating rhetoric. Rhetoric that seems to be motivated in key part, by rebellion against God as reality root.
Plato warned, c 360 BC:
We would be well advised to heed him.
KF
Sev:
Try to account for responsible rational freedom on blind chance, mechanical necessity and computational substrates: ________ You cannot, without self-referential absurdities succinctly highlighted by Haldane so long ago now:
You argue, you demand warrant on our part, you pose on atheistical, skeptical defaults dressed up in lab coats. But all along, you depend on just what cannot be the product of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. Namely, responsible rational freedom, a signature of the soul.
Ironically, you are the very evidence you demand of us.
KF
Ed, I understand your thinking, as I used to share it, but you could get no more fundamental and, perforce, seminal, error than to think you know better than God ; each inference you draw takes you further and further away from the truth – leading, as Keynes said of one of Hayek’s oeuvres, to the madhouse ; indeed, the more flawless the filigree of the ensuing arguments, the more certain the catatonia..
kf states to Seversky,
Very well put!
Both Seversky and Ed George have claimed that there is ZERO evidence for an immaterial soul that survives death. Yet Seversky and Ed George are both dependent on rational reasoning to try to prove their claim that we have no soul. Yet, if Seversky and Ed George did not have immaterial minds and/or souls, then any coherent foundation for rational reasoning is lost.
As C.S. Lewis noted,
As C.S. Lewis (and many others) have succinctly put it in the ‘argument from reason’, our ability to reason in a coherent fashion in the first place proves the existence of God as well as the existence of our immaterial mind and/or soul.
Only Theism, and Christian Theism in particular, gives us a coherent foundation for rational reasoning:
To clarify all this a little better, as Dr. Egnor points out in the following article, Logic (and mathematics) are immaterial,
And the very fact that we can access, via our ability to reason, this immaterial realm of logic and mathematics proves that we must have immaterial minds and/or souls that, at the very least, have the inherent potential of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Alfred Russel Wallace himself pointed out in 1910, mathematics itself proves the existence of the soul:
Thus in conclusion, in Severky’s and Ed George’s claim that there is no evidence for a soul, the fact of the matter is that, in their ability to reason in a coherent fashion in the first place, and as kf so clearly put it,,,
Verse:
Acartia Eddie:
You have to be demented to come up with that response. Nice own goal
Except for the fact that Japan and Germany made reparations for the war. Acartia eddie’s ignorance is not an argument.
So I force you to post the nonsense that you post? Really? How does that work?
It is very telling that several others have pointed out Acartia eddie’s nonsense and delusions
And back in Biblical times slaves were a means of reparations of war.
In. Biblical. Times. So what does Acartia Eddie do? Bring up Japan’s and Germany’s involvement in WWII. Yet even in WWII PoWs were used for slave labor.
But that is moot as the CONTEXT of the discussion was God condoning slavery In. Biblical. Times. And in Biblical times slavery came about via warfare.
BA77
His efforts and achievements were heroic and worthy of being honored. He was the prime catalyst for the conversion of the Americas to Christianity.
Christian missionaries found widespread cannibalism, human sacrifice and slavery in Central and South America when they arrived.
They put an end to this and raised the people to a higher moral level, and ultimately the Christian Faith replaced paganism.
Ed,
I wish to make two observations about your claim in Comment #20 above. You make the claim that you are not culpable for your parents sins and faults.
1 – I agree with you. That is exactly what our Judeo-Christian heritage teaches. Up to the point when God revealed to the Jews that a child could not be punished for his father’s sins there was an understanding of group guilt and punishment. Even in Jesus’ time people still assumed that people were punished because of their parent’s sins. Culpability, a moral claim, is an individual responsibility. Therefore, you make that moral claim of non-culpability standing on the shoulders of three thousand years of Jewish and Christian teaching.
2 – I think you confuse culpability, which is a moral state, with consequences. We are all subject to the consequences of all of our ancestors actions. The good and the bad we face is the consequence of literally billions of individual choices in the past. They all matter and they all affect us.
So you are not culpable for Adam’s and Eve’s decision. They refused a gift they had been offered. A gift of infinite value, I might dare to say. No longer possessing the gift they could not give it to you as an inheritance. You live the consequence of their action. Now however, you have been offered the gift of eternal life. Will you accept this offer?
God Bless and Happy New Year
Seversky
Anyone who affirms atheism would have no incentive to discover if there was eternal salvation of souls, since atheism would remove that possibility.
Atheism, by it’s own principles, will never permit that God can reveal what happens after death, or even that mysteries of the universe, unknowable to human intelligence (without the help of God) will be shown and revealed.
Christianity allows for a greater scope and access for knowledge, since God can reveal much to human beings that we could never know otherwise.
The existence of souls, the judgement of God, the existence of eternal realities beyond earth – are well known by human beings through the centuries.
It only requires that one of these people be correct about what they’ve encountered from the presence and communication from God, for atheism to be falsified.
For atheism to be correct, every religious experience of the human race must be devoid of true content. All must be considered illusory, with no evidence for that conclusion. If one experience with God, one of the spiritual encounters from the Prophets or of the Saints, Mystics, Fathers, Doctors, Stigmatics, Confessors of the Church — only one of those experiences is true, then atheism is falsified. Even if one of the documented miracles is true (Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, shrines of the world, etc,), then atheism is false.
But atheism does not explore or search out such things, for reasons which are understandable, but ultimately dishonest.
EG,
I just cautioned you in another thread as follows, when you tried to put up the issue of holocaust medical experiments:
The same holds for your repeated red herring led away to a strawman caricature soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, confuse, polarise and poison the atmosphere, alleged “condoning” of slavery etc. It has repeatedly been pointed out that there is a world of difference between ameliorative regulation of what is longstanding and tied to the hardness of men’s hearts and establishment of evil. The classic case from Matt 19 is divorce, where in Malachi 2:16 we see the Lord’s attitude to such evils: I hate divorce.
But until men are touched by the gift of repentance and are transformed by renewal in sufficient numbers to reach cultural critical mass, transformative, sustainable reform is not possible if human freedom is to be respected. As I have noted many times, that point was reached, largely in Britain, about the mid to late 1600’s. From then, revivals, renewal and reforms flowed in increasing power, with the Wesley-Whitefield revivals a critical component. We saw democratisation, a civil rights initiative against the kidnapping based slave trade then the institution, reforms of law, work, governance, courts and much more. A wave that is now being subverted by those who undermine the core principle of moral transformation. Namely, that we are inescapably morally governed creatures with built in law of justice that governments can only recognise, they neither establish nor can they repeal.
I suggest, you would be well advised to ponder the consequences of evolutionary materialism warned against by Plato long since:
When you do so, you can then begin to understand the impact of Paul’s letter to Philemon, which provided the motto of the anti slavery society: am I not a man and a brother?
The point should be clear, as should the impact of this letter in fostering reforms fuelled by gospel ethics.
Let’s see some serious reckoning with pivotal issues for kairos in this new year.
KF
At your #30, Silver Asiatic :
‘Christian missionaries found widespread cannibalism, human sacrifice and slavery in Central and South America when they arrived.
They put an end to this and raised the people to a higher moral level, and ultimately the Christian Faith replaced paganism.’ – SA
Not unlike Charlemagne conquering much of Europe for Christendom. One of the first questions put to the Pope by a newly-installed Christian bishop concerned what he was to do as regards the sale of a slave for a human sacrifice. The Ppe’s answer was that it was to be viewed simply as murder.
I don’t recall any tributes from Ed George, Seversky et al to Christianity, for raising the level of morality routinely shown by the pagan world by way of their human sacrifices. Those pagans remind me of eugenicists : ‘Lead the way, McDuff!’