What has Christianity truly contributed to humanity

[Nishant Xavier]

Well, if by consideration, you mean Reason and Conscience, then Traditional Catholic Augustino-Thomistic Christianity has always agreed. That's called Natural Law, which is binding on our Consciences, and all people everywhere are bound by them, even those who've never heard of Christ, and will be judged by them. I gave the example of those Native Indians in America who had never heard of Christ but were sincerely serving God and loving their neighbor before Missionary Priests met with them. Then they heard about the True God who loves them with Perfect Love and wants to give them Eternal Happiness and became Christian. And St. Francis Xavier also used a similar argument with the Japanese, which convinced them of God's Existence and Christianity's Truth. He said, even someone brought up with hardly any moral influence from others is still able to know Good from Evil, and that he is bound to choose the Good; and then that only a Good God could have designed or programmed humanity this way, which those who were questioning him and had some doubts about Christian Religion accepted. He also had recourse to all manner of other arguments, after which they finally acknowledged Christianity was indeed the One True Religion.

But Reason is backed up by Revelation, because without explicit written reminders from time to time, "Thou shalt not kill", "Thou shalt not steal", "Thou shalt not commit adultery", "Thou shalt give to the Poor", "Thou shalt not covet, thy neighbor's wife, or goods etc", experience shows, people would sooner or later fall into errors even on what they know through Conscience.

I will give the example of Margaret Sanger: "A close reading of the works of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, reveals that she was a champion not just of contraception, as is usually thought, but also of abortion and infanticide. She claimed that there was a natural “evolution” from infanticide to abortion to contraception, with all three stages of fertility-control offering legitimate ways for women to avoid what she called “involuntary motherhood.” Moreover, if contraceptives proved not to be foolproof, she saw no reason not to fall back on abortion (if it were “skilled”) and infanticide. Indeed, she explicitly approved of mothers exposing their infants in ancient Sparta and Rome, as well as drowning their girl-infants in contemporary China. She regarded the right to kill their infants as evidence of women’s high status in antiquity, and so she excoriated early Christians for replacing infanticide with orphanages" https://www.uffl.org/vol16/gardiner06.pdf Contraception and Abortion of course most Atheists today accept, so we'll pass over that; what about Infanticide? Doesn't Conscience clearly teach us it is wrong? Yet Sanger disagreed, and praised instead those early pagans who believed killing children post-birth was good, whereas Christianity abolished that and gave birth to Orphanages. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for all You have done for Humanity's Sake! Christianity is the Best Thing ever to happen to Humankind. God Bless.

An excerpt from the above: "Infanticide is simply ridding oneself of an intolerable “nuisance.”1 This passage demonstrates Sanger’s pitiless view of nascent life and shows how fitting it is that she should be the founder of Planned Parenthood, today the chief purveyor of abortions in the United States. In another place she remarks, “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” She is remembered for her 2 fight to legalize birth control, but a close reading of Sanger’s work shows that she saw birth control, abortion, and infanticide as differing only in degree, not in kind. They were points on the same continuum." Fascinating stuff. So infanticide is ok after all. Who knew? Lol. Crazy Sanger.

[Nishant Xavier]

"Conscience", said St. John Henry Newman "is the aboriginal vicar of Christ". Which means it is how God speaks to every one who listens to His Moral Law.

As the CCC explains further. "1776 "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment.... For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths." 47" https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/...ecnum=4994. Every one of us, through Conscience, should do what we know to be Good until we receive further light from God into what is better. But killing children after birth is something clearly wrong - which Christians and Atheists agree on - , and kidding aside, Margaret Sanger clearly should have known better. If someone can explain why she said that, pls go ahead. What she said about African Americans I won't repeat. Bad Lady, this Sanger. Just like Darwin and Marx said bad things about Africans and other Races too. Bad Men, they were, at least on Racism. All of this shows that we do have need of Continual Exhortations to keep the Moral Law of loving one's Neighbor - all neighbors as Christ taught - otherwise we may often fail to do so.

[Belacqua]

"Conscience", said St. John Henry Newman "is the aboriginal vicar of Christ". Which means it is how God speaks to every one who listens to His Moral Law.

The Japanese word for "parents" is 両親 and the word for "conscience" is 良心. If you're reading, you can't mix them up because the characters are different.

However, they are both pronounced "ryoushin," exactly the same way. 

Japanese people claim this is a coincidence, but I say nope, it's the voice of your parents, eternally telling you to be good.

[Variachial]

"Well I think it's obvious that according to lots of different measures, certain people are better at certain things than others. 

I am inferior to many many other people in athletics, musical talent, organizational leadership ability, financial acumen, etc. etc. many etc. "

Yes but those are skills you're able to build up in life (for the most part). Everyone is born with little-to-no musical talent, that's something people achieve.

"The question of why people of different degrees of ability are assumed to have equal rights, or equal value in a society, is the question to me. How did we decide this? What makes us believe that regardless of, say, intellectual capacity, we are all equal?"

Not everyone is necessarily equal physically or mentally, however we are all people so even to those who are inferior in those ways, we should still treat them as human and not property.

"Please notice that I am NOT saying equal rights are bad. I'm FOR equal rights. But how we got from, say, the Roman Empire, which didn't believe these things, to today, in which they are widely believed, is a historical question. I don't believe it's 'just obvious.'"
 
I just think society changed for the better and started to focus more on the people.

"What science did the Ancient Greeks or Egyptians use to justify slavery?"

I was more referring to American slavery and how they used untrue racist science to justify enslaving Africans.



"If infanticide is so clearly against human nature, why was it practiced so widely and for so long? Has human nature changed?"

I do believe human nature has changed with society, natural human behavior tells us to care for children no matter what. Then people got desensitized (for lack of a better word) to death and war, so they stopped caring about babies, and stopped seeing them as helpless and innocent, but as things that should be killed for whatever reason they had. (I may be wrong on this)

[Nishant Xavier]

"Conscience", said St. John Henry Newman "is the aboriginal vicar of Christ". Which means it is how God speaks to every one who listens to His Moral Law.

The Japanese word for "parents" is 両親 and the word for "conscience" is 良心. If you're reading, you can't mix them up because the characters are different.

However, they are both pronounced "ryoushin," exactly the same way. 

Japanese people claim this is a coincidence, but I say nope, it's the voice of your parents, eternally telling you to be good.

Agreed. It's the Voice of God the Eternal Father speaking in the heart and Conscience of every man and woman. Christ confirms all this as He repeatedly teaches, in essence: "Do Good, there are Great Rewards for it in Heaven"; "don't do evil, there are penalties for doing so". Almost as if God were continually saying to us, "Be Good, Little Children, Be Good", that Earth may be more like a Heaven of Love rather than become a Hell-Hole of Hatred through human free choice and bad men like Darwin and Marx.

[Fake Messiah]

I gave the example of those Native Indians in America who had never heard of Christ but were sincerely serving God and loving their neighbor before Missionary Priests met with them. Then they heard about the True God who loves them with Perfect Love and wants to give them Eternal Happiness and became Christian.

This is beyond horrible watering down of history and atrocities committed on Native Americans in the name of Christ.
When missionaries came to the Americas, the Aztecs and Inca were destroyed, and their peoples were enslaved or murdered. As Bartolomeo Las Casas noted Catholics killed children, slit open the bellies of pregnant women, gouged out eyes, roasted whole families alive and set fire to villages in the night. They trained dogs to go into the jungles where the Indians had fled and to tear them to pieces. Men were sent to work in gold and silver mines, chained together by iron collars. When a man died, his body was cut from the chain, while his companions on either side continued working. Most Indians did not last more than three weeks in the mines. Women were raped and disfigured in front of their husbands.
The favored form of mutilation was to slice chins and noses. Las Casas told how one woman, seeing the Spanish armies advancing with their dogs, hanged herself with her child. A soldier arrived, cut the child in two with his sword, gave one half to his dogs, then asked a friar to administer last rites so that the infant would be assured a place in Christ’s heaven.

[Belacqua]

Belacqua

"Well I think it's obvious that according to lots of different measures, certain people are better at certain things than others. 

I am inferior to many many other people in athletics, musical talent, organizational leadership ability, financial acumen, etc. etc. many etc. "

Yes but those are skills you're able to build up in life (for the most part). Everyone is born with little-to-no musical talent, that's something people achieve.

"The question of why people of different degrees of ability are assumed to have equal rights, or equal value in a society, is the question to me. How did we decide this? What makes us believe that regardless of, say, intellectual capacity, we are all equal?"

Not everyone is necessarily equal physically or mentally, however we are all people so even to those who are inferior in those ways, we should still treat them as human and not property.

"Please notice that I am NOT saying equal rights are bad. I'm FOR equal rights. But how we got from, say, the Roman Empire, which didn't believe these things, to today, in which they are widely believed, is a historical question. I don't believe it's 'just obvious.'"
 
I just think society changed for the better and started to focus more on the people.

"What science did the Ancient Greeks or Egyptians use to justify slavery?"

I was more referring to American slavery and how they used untrue racist science to justify enslaving Africans.



"If infanticide is so clearly against human nature, why was it practiced so widely and for so long? Has human nature changed?"

I do believe human nature has changed with society, natural human behavior tells us to care for children no matter what. Then people got desensitized (for lack of a better word) to death and war, so they stopped caring about babies, and stopped seeing them as helpless and innocent, but as things that should be killed for whatever reason they had. (I may be wrong on this)

Well, I'm just thinking of the Bad Old Days, before people started saying that everyone has [or should have] equal rights. 

Like in Ancient Greece or Rome, it was just assumed that a person who is athletic, good-looking, rich, speaks well, reasons well, and has leadership abilities in politics and war, is just a superior person and ought to have more power and privilege. The thought that someone who is the opposite of all these things should somehow have equality would have seemed unnatural back then. 

You can say, "well, we just changed our minds," but that doesn't really explain to me why or when our values changed. Or whether our current thinking is somehow more "natural," or likely to endure.

[Nishant Xavier]

I was speaking of one particular incident. I know abuses happened, and I agree with Las Casas who condemned it.

I also mentioned this, which you haven't replied to: "The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.

We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect."

From: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/paul03/p3subli.htm

[The Architect Of Fate]

Translation 

I don't really care but i have to virtue signal that I do care and now here my attempts at downplaying the issues with theological babble.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I gave the example of those Native Indians in America who had never heard of Christ but were sincerely serving God and loving their neighbor before Missionary Priests met with them. Then they heard about the True God who loves them with Perfect Love and wants to give them Eternal Happiness and became Christian.

You should probably learn up on the requermiento practiced by the Spanish missionaries of your beloved Catholic Church. It was, I understand, quite Christian.