dog-on

From a modern perspective, I would say:

Individuals got tired of getting ganked and wtfpwned, at every turn. As a result of the extreme ganking and pwning that was taking place, people finally realized that there needed to be some basic protections, etc...

Joan of Bark

I'm not sure where this passage originates, but I would suggest the author meant the equality of men's souls. In ancient times women and children were never considered equal to adult males, and this belief would probably extend to their souls. In fact, if the passage has a Jewish origin, the author may have been referring to Jewish adult male souls only.

mountainman

Also have a read of the neopythagorean Porphyry's "On the Abstinence of Animal Foods" in which he points out that the principle of vegetarianism as he sees it as having been passed down from the ANCIENTS is related to the concept of justice, and thus includes the provision for the souls of all living creatures, not just the human creatures.

Are humans so stupid to think they have any rights? This Human Rights thing was just some political propaganda bullshit fabricated at the end of the second world war by the victors to make people think they were victoriously civilised. Where is the justice that Porphyry sees as foundational?



Best wishes,


Pete

KrisK10

Thanks all for the comments so far. Here’s a few more cents from my end.

Sociologist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Rodney Stark suggests that the “ultimate factor” in the rise of Christianity was that “Central doctrines of Christianity prompted and sustained attractive, liberating, and effective social relations and organizations” (The Rise of Christianity, pg. 211). He goes on to say, “Christianity brought a new conception of humanity to a world saturated with capricious cruelty...what Christianity gave to its converts was nothing less than their humanity” (pg. 214, 215). From there, Christians like Dinesh D’Souza say, “The Christian doctrine of human equality is also the basis for all modern doctrines of human rights” (What’s So Great About Christianity, pg. 73). Furthermore, as I already mentioned in my first post, the nineteenth century atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who opposed the idea of equal human rights, also attributed equal human rights to Christianity: “Another Christian concept, no less crazy, has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the ‘equality of souls before God.’ This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights: mankind was first taught to stammer the proposition of equality in a religious context, and only later was it made into morality” (The Will to Power).

It seems to me that all these people just haven’t traced this back far enough. Stark’s “new conception of humanity” seems to me to be just basic compassion taken to another level or, more likely, a social momentum that brought about a compassion that many had been yearning for for a long time. For this I think Christianity should be applauded and indeed I think it may be correct that it was through Christianity more than any other venue that the idea of equal human rights was further developed. But ultimately, the idea of human equality seems rooted in empathy, or compassion, or the Golden Rule, whatever you want to call it, which appears all over the world and well before the time of Christianity.

Comments?

Kris

andrewcriddle

See Galatians 3:28 for the fundamental spiritual equality of men and women etc. (Although Toto is correct to say that Christians have generally not seen this spiritual equality as necessarily requiring secular legal equality.)

Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

It seems pretty easy to me to reconstruct an early layer of Christian society that, at least in principle, stressed gender, racial, and social equality. This emphasis was lost fairly quickly, but certain Pauline texts (Galatians 3.28 being perhaps chief among them) seem to require equality between all humans.

The Christians from this egalitarian layer would not have had the means to effect secular legal equality; by the time that power came, the emphasis had been washed over.

Ben.

bacht

Yes but the earliest Christians were apocalyptic messianists were they not? Wasn't their version of ethics considered temporary?

Ben C Smith

Temporary is a relative term. It is equally valid in such a case to say that their ethics would last until the end of time.

Ben.

Toto

But Christians could have mandated equality in their own institutions.

If you think that there was an early Christian society that believed in gender equality, that belief must have been lost or forgotten by the time an editor added the prohibition against women speaking in church to Paul's writings.

I continue to be dumbfounded that Christians try to claim any credit for women's rights or equality in general. It's as if a large part of history is being consigned to the memory hole. Read anything about the 19th and early 20th century feminists (e.g. Women Without Superstition: "No Gods - No Masters", or freethinker Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk).

bacht