When do you plan to Convert to Christanity?

[Angrboda]

Secular morals are what common law is.

No siree. Common law upholds Christian morals such as forgiveness. Secular morals still have Christian influence. I heard recently forgiveness and Christs example used as a defense against the animal populist pressure for an eye for an eye type justice.

This of course explains why the very phrase "an eye for an eye" comes from the bible. (Exodus 21)

In case there is some confusion here, the term common law refers, properly, to that body of law that resulted from the precedents set by judges and the judiciary. I don't see a lot of relationship between the principles of jurisprudence developed in Britain and America, and that of Jewish law or later ecclesiastical courts. (Off the top of my head, I'm reminded of the doctrine of Crimen sollicitationis, which deals with how to handle charges of sexual abuses by clerics, and of which it was forbidden to publish or write about, and how it, combined with the church's insistence of handling such cases 'in house', contributed materially to the suppression of the awareness of the epidemic of sexual abuse of children by the Catholic clergy. If this is an example of how "Christian morals" undergird the practice of jurisprudence in western democracies, I'm not sure I can agree that such influence is a good thing.) I think perhaps you meant (or would have, if you'd thought of it), that the law and government of popular western governments such as Britain and the U.S. are founded upon Christian principles. Whether that claim itself is more defensible is another matter.

(ETA: Another question arises out of the Spanish inquisition and the European witch craze. During both episodes, the actual business of executing criminals and heretics was often deferred to secular authorities, but at the insistence of the church authorities. This practice of "washing one's hands of the blood" is hardly one I would like to be a stable part of our legal system, and it makes one question the very foundation of Christian claims to morality. I watched the documentary Freakonomics last night, and one of the segments covered corruption in Sumo wrestling. In particular, it noted how Japan boasts that it has a 96% conviction rate in murder cases; however, the authors suggested this high figure was a result, not of effective law enforcement, but rather was a result of a widespread practice of not investigating deaths for which there was not a high probability of successful prosecution. [The documentary pointed out that advancement in Japanese law enforcement is tied to numbers of arrests and convictions, providing strong incentive to "game the system," a practice they claimed is widespread and systematized.])