I found these pithy observations at the Spectator:
Progressives hate this, but the extraordinary influence of the Bible on history — and Western civilization in particular — is undeniable. The Bible gave rise to Western law, government, art, literature, and science. According to sociologist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Rodney Stark, because the West believed in a God of logic and order, they believed his creation was likewise logical and orderly and should be explored, subdued, and studied. Stark writes, “Most non-Christian religions do not posit a creation at all … it is without beginning or purpose, and, most important of all, having never been created, it has no Creator. Consequently, the universe is thought to be a supreme mystery, inconsistent, unpredictable, and arbitrary. For those holding these religious premises, the path to wisdom is through meditation and mystical insights, and there is no occasion to celebrate reason.” Eminent mathematician, philosopher, and agnostic Alfred North Whitehead is again instructive here on what set the West apart: “When we compare the tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilizations when left to themselves, there seems but one source of its origin. It must come from the Medieval insistence on the rationality of God.” This faith in rationality catapulted the West ahead of the rest of the world culturally, militarily, technologically, and economically. So intrinsic is Christianity to the fabric of the West, wrote T. S. Eliot, that “It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning.… I do not believe the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole culture goes.”
Christianity, the only faith that posits both unbreakable natural laws and the benevolence of God, is the foundation upon which the whole of the Western edifice – what I’ve often called the Christian Enlightenment — is built. Remove Christianity and you undermine the lot: individual rights, political freedom, reason and science, good will among men, the belief in the possibility of progress, and all the things that go with them.
Now reflect on the influence the following incursions into Christian-Enlightenment societies have had:
- Solipsism / Social-constructionism
- Gender-war feminism
- Deconstructionism and associated theses
- The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
- The Frankfurt School
- Islam
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
I watched an incredible video by Bill Whittle (https://youtu.be/AduC5MsRzdc) that discusses that Western Civilization is the marriage of Judeo-Christian ethics (i.e., with One G-d there is ONE TRUTH, not pick-as-you-want truth - and that morality is the same: coming from above man)… Greco-Roman philosophy (that the world is understandable)… and he argues Anglo-Saxon law which really means The Rule of Law. I've seen similar arguments elsewhere, independently arrived-at.
ReplyDeleteA large part of a functioning civilization is, IMHO, the ability to defer gratification / resist temptation for the immediate. Consider the UK newspaper article recently that said husbands should allow their wives a free-cheat ticket. That would destroy marriage; I could not countenance my wife cheating on me nor, of course, would she do likewise.
If you believe in G-d you are willing to endure and persist rather than just say WHADDEVAH.
But we are hardwired for faith. Absent believing in G-d, we glom onto Marx, or Climate Change, or just our own glory. Displacing G-d - whether Hashem or Jesus - elevates worldly things to that status.