(February 25, 2011 at 1:06 pm)Rwandrall Wrote:(February 25, 2011 at 12:57 pm)Shell B Wrote: I wish I could give you one hundred kudos for that. I'll further your response and say that religion itself is probably not responsible for respect for life, equality and compassion. All of these things go back as far in human history as we've been able to delve.
Christianity also went against human and animal sacrifices for example. Again, nothing is all black or all white.
About the moral concepts, Aristotle, who is pretty much a big deal in te world of philosophy, thought that the poor and the downtrodden deserved sympathy and pity. A big idea for his time, but nowhere as far as what christianity brought.
If you take China or its neighboring countries, you'll see that human life simply does not possess the same value. In the groups advocating for the suppression of the death penalty, and humn rights as a whole, many of them were religious. Yes, many amongst the religious are bigots and full of hatred. Many are not.
Even if what you say above is true, which I will argue in a moment, that doesn't mean that Christianity introduced equality, compassion and sanctity of life, or even that it represents it.
Do you think Aristotle was the first person to feel sympathy for the poor and express it? Have you not considered the civilizations that came before Ancient Greece? Furthermore, you have wandered off your original argument that compassion, equality and sanctity of life were introduced by Christians. You've now shown that compassion was introduced long before Christianity.
Compassion is not a concept that only describes feeling sorry for the poor. I am sure that compassion has existed as long as the concept of family or motherhood has existed. In other words, animals had it before we did. As for equality, check out Sumerian law. Women and men were equal, a concept Christians fought for a very long time. Sanctity of life? What is sanctity of life to old school Christians? Kill them if they piss you off? Pretend he's a witch and then you won't have to pay your debt because we'll burn the motherfucker?
