In recent years there has arisen a new atheism that represents a direct attack on Western Christianity. Books such as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, and Sam Harris' The End of Faith, all contend that Western society would be better off if we could eradicate from it the last vestiges of Christianity. But Christianity is largely responsible for many of the principles and institutions that even secular people cherish -- chief among them equality and liberty.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," he called the proposition "self-evident." But he did not mean that it is immediately evident. It requires a certain kind of learning. And indeed most cultures throughout history, and even today, reject the proposition. At first glance, there is admittedly something absurd about the claim of human equality, when all around us we see dramatic evidence of inequality. People are unequal in height, in weight, in strength, in stamina, in intelligence, in perseverance, in truthfulness, and in about every other quality. But of course Jefferson knew this. He was asserting human equality of a special kind. Human beings, he was saying, are moral equals, each of whom possesses certain equal rights. They differ in many respects, but each of their lives has a moral worth no greater and no less than that of any other. According to this doctrine, the rights of a Philadelphia street sweeper are the same as those of Jefferson himself.
This idea of the preciousness and equal worth of every human being is largely rooted in Christianity. Christians believe that God places infinite value on every human life. Christian salvation does not attach itself to a person's family or tribe or city. It is an individual matter. And not only are Christians judged at the end of their lives as individuals, but throughout their lives they relate to God on that basis. This aspect of Christianity had momentous consequences.
Though the American founders were inspired by the examples of Greece and Rome, they also saw limitations in those examples. Alexander Hamilton wrote that it would be "as ridiculous to seek for [political] models in the simple ages of Greece and Rome as it would be to go in quest of them among the Hottentots and Laplanders." In The Federalist Papers, we read at one point that the classical idea of liberty decreed "to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next ... ." And elsewhere: "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." While the ancients had direct democracy that was susceptible to the unjust passions of the mob and supported by large-scale slavery, we today have representative democracy, with full citizenship and the franchise extended in principle to all. Let us try to understand how this great change came about.
Read the rest of the article at:
Created Equal: How Christianity Shaped The West ~ Catholic Education Resource Center
I slightly dislike the concept of a "moral" right to equality. That's a man made construct particularly pertaining to Christianity.
ReplyDeleteTo me, a created human has certain innate properties.. something like a property of a chemical element; and like an element that's added to something else it may change that something but is unchanged itself. That takes us beyond Christianity, Atheism or whatever and which are explanatory notes to the property of the element.
The argument is then about whether "rights" are innate, God made or a human construct.. and I suspect it doesn't matter too much because, as we know, a person with no religion or any religion can subscribe to a concept that any person has God endowed, elemental, innate, organic or moral rights.. but it may well be that Christianity has best expressed the concept, except for the disgusting "predestination" dogma.
JC
except for the disgusting "predestination" dogma.
ReplyDelete..I saw that coming :-)
And this:
What people often forget when they talk about rights is that they are linked strongly to responsibility. You have the right do live as you like on your land, but you have the responsibility not to imped that same right in your neighbor ;p.
ReplyDeletePerhaps instead of being selfish little creatures (demanding our right) the human race should start talking about "human responsibility" rather than "human rights", not going to happen in my time 'sigh'.