I often hear people say that Western society is based on the Christian faith and Christian values (usually as an argument against secularism). Many of the values we have are held by other faiths and by people of no faith. A lot of these values in some way or another predate Christianity. What is it that makes them specifically Christian values?

Because they said so!!! They replaced pagan holidays with theirs and they replaced the old "uncivil" values of other religions and cultures with their all mighty values which are basically the same.

Copy the good stuff and sell it as your own is the oldest business trick in the book.

All I know is they ripped their values off of Judaism. No reason secularists can't rip off the Christians and adopt their values.

The tangle of religion and culture as a root-cause thing is hard to sort out. Often cultures adapt religions because that religion suits their needs (that's how Buddhism spread into China/Mongolia/Japan/Korea, and Eastern Orthodox got up into Russia), and sometimes religions adapt to meet the needs of the culture (how Christianity grew from an underground Jewish sect into the prime religion of the Mediterranean world), and then you get into the murky question of "is Christianity like this because of Mediterranean/European values, or are Mediterranean/European values like this because of Christianity?"

I'd argue for a middle-road approach, that Christianity simply changed the preference order for values in Western culture, such as one can observe the decline of the Greek superman ideal (that people who are physically strong, pretty, and smart are simply better than the rest of us), and the rise of democratic ideals; that society should look to defending its weaker components and that rulers should advocate the common good.

Well said, Mr. Khan.  You won the thread.

The values I hold are what I would think are just values we as a growing society should hold as we continue to live, work, and progress together.

I think it's more likely that these values were simply taken by those who wrote the Christian Bible, and started calling it "Christian Morals." But they're not. Many societies that don't even practice Christianity at all share almost all of the same morals we do (Like Japan). It's human.

Christianity is nothing more then the latest version of many other pagan ideas.
in fact Jesus is a direct copy of ancient religious messiahs.

I don't consider myself any religion really, maybe a man of God in general I suppose.

The only values from the bible I know are slavery and suppression of women which are gone now few more to go ...secularism ,reason and logic is the way to go