Paul's Writings Underpin Western Thought

[Angrboda]

Just as a counterpoint, and lacking the energy for a greater reply, I want to suggest something. I think, though I'd have to research it more, that what Paul is being credited for here is some of the more humanistic elements that he and his movement may have contributed to us. Thinking back to such examples as The Eloquent Peasant, I can't help but be skeptical that such impulses are original with Paul, but rather reflect a greater zeitgeist that was already present in society. (And I think it unfair to draw explicit comparisons to specifically Roman ideals as such a process leads to ignoring social elements that may have existed prior to Paul, but are not well represented by a simplistic take on Roman society. I think specifically of the contributions of Hellenism and Judaism here, in addition to other movements we are not well informed about. Such comparisons, especially in the hands of a dishonest and biased advocate, can be grossly misleading.) With that digression aside, I think that one of the things we can credit to Paul and Christianity is to give a divine mandate to some of these more humanistic impulses. However, in that I see a two-edged sword. Society as a whole seems to have progressed best over the past few centuries in as much as it became secular and abandoned such divine justifications for purely human and mechanistic ones, based on a philosophy of rationalism, rather than a divine mandate. It may be somewhat unfair to attribute this all to secularism in contrast to the religious impulse and its contribution, but I don't think it can be sufficiently minimized as to be ignored either. We have noticed in numerous contexts the effect of religion and Christianity impeding progress in various areas, from the scientific to the social, and often explicitly via the authorization of its divine mandate. So, in some senses, even if Paul's thinking brought us one or two steps forward, it simultaneously set us one or two steps back. (I think of the issues of free will and morals, and the notion that we should still be largely constrained in our search for answers by ancient appeals to divinely sanctioned bollocks like the soul and the divine origin of morality, particularly as it applies to same-sex relations, abortion, and so forth, and can't help but think we are still experiencing the regressive effects of sourcing our views in any religion's "special revelations.") Regardless of how much or how little one attributes the advances of the past few centuries to the rise of secularism, it's indisputable that some of the most profound contributions to the modern world and human well-being, from agriculture, to medicine, to government, to globalization, and to technology, have come in an era where divine mandates were pushed aside in favor of secular imperatives which did not impede our progress to the same extant as religion did.

So, ultimately, I'm skeptical of how much Paul and Christianity contributed that we supposedly wouldn't have had without them (and that seems to be the implicit thesis, not only that there were good things in Paul, but that without Paul and Christianity, we wouldn't have had these good things). I'm, as noted, highly skeptical of such a thesis, and, lacking specific competence in the relevant subjects of history, and so forth, I'm not inclined to believe such claims when put forward largely as mere assertions, many of which quite likely rest upon a selective and biased reading of the evidence. That being said, just intuitively, I think Paul and Christianity did as much to set us back as move us forward, and the ways in which they did were explicitly based in being religiously based contributions. I'm not inclined to favor the more general thesis of an overall benefit, given the slim evidence presented in this thread, nor do I intend to do a significant amount of research into the relevant fields to answer the question on my own. So I'm inclined to remain agnostic about Steve and Holland's claims, admittedly colored by considerable skepticism, as well as being colored by an element of cynicism on account of prior experience with apologists and apologist arguments, both as to the specific type of thesis -- Christianity's contribution to the greater good -- as well as generally -- being that apologist's have a well-attested track record of shitty and sophistic arguments, cherry-picking, distortion, bias, and outright dishonesty. My skepticism needs no defense. And I think my cynicism is quite well justified.

(Now, I've talked at length here and still haven't responded to Steve's most recent contributions. Hopefully, I'll get to that in the coming days. First, however, I'd like some clarity from Steve on just what his thesis is, as noted in my last post. He doesn't appear altogether clear himself. Anyway, as noted, I'll try to muster the energy to reply to Steve's latest volley at another date. I may not succeed. Oh well, I guess.)