DeadNotSleeping on 21 February 2012
| Mr Khan said: 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.
