(September 20, 2019 at 9:57 pm)Kurtchen Wrote: What are the historical roots of human rights and which part did religion play in their development?
Human rights as human morality is something that is developing and refining over time by society itself all the time. Religion doesn't play any role in it because religion is based on a notion that thousands of years ago some guy on some mountain told people how to behave and that is how it should be forever - so religion is static and inert about, as you call it, development of human rights and morality.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
