bacht

Have there been many societies in history that weren't prejudicial?

The quick answer might be that Europe was poor and vulnerable for centuries, and had little time or resources to pursue enlightenment

Solo

Surely, Kris, he was not factoring in the girls if this was an exercise in will-power. How could they have helped him to achieve his aims, any ideas ?

Jiri

Solo

I think they are interpolations for a number of reasons. One of them would be the traditions about Paul as a friend of women (eg Acts of Paul and Thecla).
Another would be the commedation of his co-workers in Rom 16:1-16; this does not make an impression on me of someone who had a gendered agenda. Besides, as you may or may not know, I consider Paul a very likely case of late onset of acute bi-polarity. The condition is frequently marked by a permanent, or protracted, loss of libido (or conversely, as in Mohammed, hypersexuality). Paul would see himself as sexless being and therefore free of want and the genderl agenda that goes with it.

Jiri

Sheshonq

I have no idea. He was Athenian of the 4th century BCE, so presumably not Jewish. He is not listed among the Jewish orators or thinkers.

Several ancient Greek and Roman writers mention "God" in the singular; Virgil for example. God is also equated with Zeus / the mind / fire. See page 43 here for a discussion of how Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics imagined or framed God.

Solo

Kindly understand Joan, that we live in an imperfect world and one that has evolved in the last two centuries into one that has radically different social landscape. I am not saying that the Christian church(es) promoted "human rights" in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. For one thing they would not know what "human rights" meant, they would have no reference. But the people had a certain view of themselves, as being externally examined as moral beings and assessed (by God), and internalized a set of values that helped to promote the development of civil society.

The notion e.g. of separating secular from spiritual (as in "give unto Caesar") is a prerequisite to any civil and rational order.

Or look at the network of church charities and you will have no trouble seeing in them the blueprint of the social safety net.

And yes, it was the church, especially the Protestant versions of it, that introduced universal education and brought about another prerequisite to a modern civilization - mass literacy.

Ot take social justice for example: all the movements for social reform before the advent of industrial society were religious movements. The Lollards, the Hussite Taborites, the Anabaptists, and the Levellers during the Ebnglish Civil War, all basically wanted to return to the primitive communism of the first Christians as a model of just society. They left behind powerful inspirations which later drove the socialist pioneers: the Chartists and the trade unionist movement, Owenites, and St-Simonists.

But naturally, if you limit your review of religious impact on Europe to the mass killings of heretics, witch-hunts, book burnings, and propagating superstitious nonsense - all of which existed, and at times dominated, to be sure - you will get a very distiorted view how we got where we are.

Jiri

Solo

Maybe it is for no other reason than that to get to the concept of human rights, one has to have first an idea what it is to be human, in the abstract. And of course if one refuses to see Paul's vision of humanity that applied in his church as having more to do with rights than the one that designed Auschwitz then one is pleading poverty indeed.

Jiri

KrisK10

Jiri,

I think you're mixing some things here. The desires of someone to have sex can matter to another while at the same time saying no to sex (for whatever reason). The initial context of this discussion was of compassion for others. Your initial point seemed to be that a Christian would have had more feelings for the girl than Gahndi did. That idea doesn't seem to pan out with this example.

Kris

Sheshonq

Your comment was "Paul's formula of equality of all humans before God". You did not indicate that it was an equality in religion - not that it would have mattered much, because there is a practical difference.

My protest is that your description above strayed over the line from being:

1. an equality in the sight of God for a religious community (vertical equality) - which it was;

and back into

2. a general social equality (horizontal equality) - which it was not

He did not view them as equals in the Church. He viewed them as equals in the sight of God in the body of Christ. But as far as the Church goes,

CO1 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
CO1 14:35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

TI1 2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
TI1 2:13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.


Slaves were likewise not equal.

Here are three items to think about.

1. Gender equality in religion - an assorted list of suras:

2. Racial equality in religion - by example, the first muezzin was a black man, Bilal. Moreover it stands to reason that in order to expand into Africa there couldn't really be any racial segregation.

3. Social status (i.e., slaves) equality in religion - Wikipedia:

It's interesting to note that while not eliminating slavery (which neither Judaism nor Christianity did) Islam took the reforms of those two religions and added religious incentives (i.e., atonement for sin) for manumission.

No, they are not - at least not in the affirmational sense. Unless I misunderstand what you were saying here.

You went overboard. You tried to make a claim for no ancient or modern parallel. I don't know how else to describe such an act other than getting swept up by your own rhetoric.

Well, no - maybe not. It depends upon what you mean by that. Even the way you frame the statement suggests that the rationalist movement started with the religious point of view and then tried to reverse-engineer the same conclusions. While that might be true for people like some Catholic scholars like Aquinas, it's not true across the board.

That may have been why you bolded it, but that is not what "self evident" means - or meant at that time.

So?

Your challenge was that no secular humanists were fighting (or speaking out against) slavery prior to John Brown, i.e. the rather late date of 1859. Britannica makes it clear that rationalists were opposing slavery at least a hundred years earlier.

The Quakers have been a noble exception to the general rule about Christian denominations for a long time. However the tipping point in Great Britain was not the Quakers, but Lord Mansfield's decision in 1772 declaring slavery illegal in Great Britain.


Well, not quite. The movement you are now describing came after slavery was outlawed in the UK. Your movement was a grander movement to outlaw it in the British Empire everywhere.


This is hopelessly incomplete and incorrect. If you examine the actual source material (Jomsvikings or Laxdæla saga chapter 23, for example) you see that the de facto practice was to seek the woman's consent before offering marriage. This protected the suitor as well as the woman; in fact, if a marriage proposal did not follow the courtship then the woman's family would be insulted and trouble follow.

Moreover, since divorce was fairly easy and more often initiated by the woman than the man, getting the woman's consent before marriage was a practical necessity. Also see: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/asprin...%20Vikings.pdf

I note that this equality in divorce wouldn't come to Christianity until almost a thousand years later.

Property ownership.
Real estate ownership.
Right of assembly.
Right to sit in a legislative body.
Right to leave a marriage with a dowry.

How generous of a patriarchal Church to sit in judgment and grant a woman a right of divorce.


Dodge - and failed.

Reductio ad absurdium doesn't address my underlying point: people who try to credit the church with all these social advances can only do so by turning a massive blind eye to the majority role that churches played in blocking these advances and/or simply sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing.

1. I've already stipulated to the Quakers.

2. What can be denied, however, is that these movements represented anything more than a mere fraction of the churches in society at the time.

3. The fact that "some pastors and presbyters" were involved doesn't demonstrate that the churches in general were in favor of these socially progressive movements - any more than "pastors and presbyters" who hide illegal immigrants in church basements today demonstrate that US churches ni the 21st century are supportive of that;

4. Moreover, the dominant theology of the time did not concur with these social progress movements.

5. Finally, there's some selection bias here as well. It's likely that these people of conscience would have organized themselves for social progress in some way or fashion anyhow - the church merely provided a convenient focal point. Coincidence is not causality.

I thought it was quite clear where I'm going with this.

Not at all. It comes almost word-for-word from Britannica. I suspect they know more about it than you - or your Jedi master, D'Souza.

An irrelevant quibble.

They were apparently not as radical as you'd like to portray them. Britannica:


SBA and ECS blundered big-time. In fact, they went further by trying to launch a suffrage program on the back of populist fear of foreign (eastern european) immigrants getting too many votes. I never said these people were saints or that their motives and methods were unalloyed. I merely pointed out to you that the church going folks you want to credit with abolition left half the human race waiting for the right to vote.

Good advice is often ignored. Pearls before swine, I suppose.

Joan of Bark

Which misses the point. If Christianity is so full of love, goodwill, and egalitarianism, medievel Europe should have been morally superior to ANY other continent. It would take another thread, but I would argue that Europe was in fact WORSE than any other continent for persecution and inequality.

Joan of Bark

You are evading the essential question. Why would Christianity -- a religion purportedly based on gender equality -- interpolate these statements into Paul? And why were they accepted into the Bible BY CHRISTIANS?