Originally Posted by KrisK10

Jiri,

You seem pretty well versed in the ideas of D'Souza. Would be curious your opinion on something he says on pg. 78 of "What’s So Great About Christianity":

"We may say we believe in human equality, but why do we hold this belief? It is the product of the Christian idea of the spiritual equality of souls. We may insist we believe that all human life has dignity and value, but this too is the outgrowth of a Christian tradition in which each person is the precious creation of God. There is no secular basis for these values, and when secular writers defend them they always employ unrecognized Christian assumptions. In sum, the death of Christianity must also mean the gradual extinction of values such as human dignity, the right against torture, and the rights of equal treatment asserted by women, minorities, and the poor."

It seem to me that D’Souza has a point. Western civilization, including its concepts of human equality, human dignity, and human value, from which modern democracy sprung, was built on and propagated through the Christian tradition. D’Souza concludes from this that there is no human equality, human dignity, or human value without Christian belief. But it seems to me that these things are more likely rooted in human compassion. In this case Christianity, instead of being the sole source of human equality, human dignity, and human value, is more accurately the primary venue which made a significant advancement in these concepts and then took them the farthest.

What do you think?

Kris

Originally Posted by Toto

Let's suppose that in Europe and North America, concepts of human equality came out of the Christian tradition. ...

How does it follow that without Christianity, these ideas will die?

Originally Posted by Solo

...the canon law since 12th century required the consent of women to marriage. This of course, was not the church'es invention but adaptation of ancient Roman laws, nonetheless it created a specifically western style of marriage, based on amorous desire and "partnership", an idea either unknown or considered "crazy" in other cultures (Dinesh de Souza writes about this often).

Originally Posted by Solo

Finally of course, it appears that almost all the early women suffragists (in the US, at any rate) were organized in churches. In fact, all the major figures recruited from the Quaker, Calvinist, Methodist, and Unitarian churches as an offshoot of the early anti-slavery movement.

Jiri

Originally Posted by Solo

Paul's formula of equality of all humans before God,

Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

was a novel and breakthrough idea which had neither precedent nor independent parallel in antiquity or in modern times. ...the vision behind it was so compelling, that once it took root, it acquired a life of its own. The rationalism of the eighteen century transformed it into a vision of a civil society, a truth that was self-evident without the religious casting. Yet it was at origin a religious vision

Originally Posted by KrisK10

Hi Folks,

Curious if any one has done any research on this topic. A popular commentator from the right, Dinesh D'souza, has claimed Christianity to be the origin of Human Rights. He even provides the following quote from a famous atheist philosopher who hated human rights, Friedrich Nietzsche, to support this assertion:

"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: no wonder that man ended by taking it seriously, taking it practically, socialistically, in the spirit of the pessimism of indignation."

Does anyone disagree that Christianity brought human rights to the world?

Further, if Christianity is not of divine origin, then it seems to me that the real origin of human rights is whatever brought about the Christian idea of "equality of souls before God". Doesn't this just lead back to empathy?

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

As Nietzsche points out, it so obviously flies in the face of reality - unless you take it in the abstract, i.e. unless you take in the sense that we are all equal in that we are choosing, self-steering beings, and we ought to treat each other with respect and dignity appropriate to that, regardless of our station in life.