Introduction:
· Time magazine’s correspondent David Aikman reported what one Chinese scholar said “One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the west all over the world. We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next, we focused on your economic system. But in the past 20 years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the west has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.” Representing one of China’s premier academic research organizations the Chinese academy of social sciences.
· Despite the cheap and cartoonish attacks from sceptics, the Bible has civilized the world. Christianity gave us ethics, hospitals, charities, educational systems, human rights, personal freedoms, preservation of literature, modern science, cultivating art and music, better working conditions, slavery abolition and many other things we value.
· Sceptics like Seth Macfarlane may either butcher history in an attempt to deny these things, or highlight atrocities done in the name of ‘religion’ (dark ages, crusades, inquisition) and the church’s suppression of science. The latter is just poor history. John Dickson’s Bullies and Saints goes over the history of the church, expounding on its atrocities and evils, more often than not having to separate the hyperbole that atheists bring from the facts of the matter. Sort of beside the point anyway unless they will own up to the acts of atheists Stalin, Zedong and Pol Pot, the terrors of the French Revolution etc who were responsible for far more damage than all the religious atrocities combined. The argument also fails if the bible can’t even be used to justify any of these behaviors! All you will find is the standard that Jesus Christ set that condemns all of it. There is a published paper calling out atheists for their strong use of this attribution error by Amarnath Amarasingam To Err in their Ways: The Attribution Biases of the New Atheists.
Ethics & The Imago Dei: Jesus transformed the world by first transforming our ethics.
· Half the time the village atheist will use biblically based morals to denounce the bible! The imago dei (image of God), is the biblical teaching that every man is made in the image of God thereby making every human 1. Equal and 2. Inherently, inestimably valuable. Only the Jews and Christians believed this. That’s why historians will talk about the impact of Judeo-Christian values.
· The opening words of the bible are revolutionary because at that time kings and rulers were the image of divinity but Genesis democratizes that. We are all in God’s likeness. The first reference to imago dei was made when Constantine outlawed tattooing crimes on criminals faces.
· US Continental Congress affirmed 4 July 1776 “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights”, the original draft by Thomas Jefferson (more secular founder) called it a “sacred truth”. The same is true of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ratified by the UN in 1948 which talks about being free and equal with rights.
· Can you imagine what a society must look like if they don’t believe these fundamental things? Here in the west we believe this but we are becoming very complacent as we become more atheistic. Imagine what the world would look like if everyone treated each other like they were related to God? Or God himself?! Because we take it for granted now, it’s easy to assume people of every age had this view of humanity. They did not. Consider the following letter dated 17 June 1BC. A roman soldier writing home to wife “above all, if you bear a child and it is male, keep it, if it is female cast it out.” In ancient times this was neither shocking nor illegal. Excess children were frequently discarded.
· Without God, on what basis can we say all humans are inherently valuable and equal? And why is it not just an opinion? Would we say all animals are equal? Are all tools equal? What justifies your belief in that? Your opinion? On purely evolution, you should favor the survival of the fittest, shouldn’t you? Should you favor truth or what makes humans and society flourish? It doesn’t seem that you can have both.
· It seems quite ridiculous to say we evolved with morality; morality wasn’t a thing before Jesus showed up. There was only honor shame culture where if doing something would bring you shame then that was the enforcement mechanism of behavior not the wellbeing of others. Survival of the fittest seem to be exactly how everyone else lived! The sick and needy would be on the streets with no one to help or care for them unless there was some sort of gain. It was from here that Christians began putting together hospitals and charities. Eventually when it was tolerated and not persecuted anymore, Constantine enhanced the church’s ability to do this with certain tax breaks allowing them to become the principal source of social welfare in the west for the next 1500 years. Christians made up 10% of the 50 million people of the empire by 300ad. 3 bishops were responsible for the first hospital. Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesura and Greg of Nyssa, Cappadocian fathers. They are known for defending the trinity. Violence has been a universal part of the human story. The demand to love one’s enemy has not. Division has been a norm. Inherent human dignity has not. Armies, greed and politics of power have been historic constants, hospitals, schools and charity have not.
· It was this type of ethic and theology that led Christians to rescuing infants and children that simply got abandoned and left for dead in the Greek and Roman practice of ‘exposure’. Literally. Parents would just leave their kids somewhere if they couldn’t afford them, leaving them vulnerable to predators-wild or sexual. There was an official ban of killing infants in 374 in Rome.
· The Cyprian plague that is described as almost Ebola, Christians were right there on the front lines amongst the sick and infectious helping out. Only they could do this due to the hope they had in Christ and the incentive to be self-sacrificial as Jesus was for the Church. People abandoned their own families to avoid this thing. Bishop Dionysius (200-264) along with other priests and deacons assisted the sick and dying. Leper shelters were put up in Christianized places too
· Eliminating gladiatorial games: Telemachus in 404. Pious monk, travelling to Rome, turned up at stadium, leapt over guard rail, raced in to stop the fighting. “The spectators were indignant” “and stoned the peacemaker to death”. When this reached emperor Honorius, he declared Telemachus a martyr and put an end to a 500-year tradition. Its why star trek has an episode of the world without Christianity, people are still competing in these death games. The celebrated 18th century historian Edward gibbon quipped “Telemachus’ death was more useful to us than his life”.
· Abolishing Slavery: The only people opposing slavery were Christians and all the arguments were theological because there was no economic, political or scientific gain. That’s why no one else was interested in changing anything. Yes there were Christians that had slaves and tried to use the bible, but critics who point this out don’t usually bother to assess their biblical justification. Men twist and abuse ideas and tools, doesn’t make those things inherently bad otherwise natural science should be done away with because it was used to demonstrate “negros unfitness for civilization” in the 19th century. The biblical justification can’t be much good if they needed to create an edited version called the slave Bible. Now why would they do that if the bible really did supported slavery in that context?
“If the abolition of slavery had been left to enlightened secularists…we would still be waiting” Professor Rowan Williams. He says Christianity lit the fuse of argument and discovery about slavery which eventually exploded. American authority on slavery David Brion Davis and professor of history at Yale, titled his sweeping history of the subject In the image of God “the popular hostility to slavery that arose almost simultaneously in England and in parts of the US drew on traditions of natural law and revivified sense of the image of God in man.” Frederick Douglass the American campaigner and former slave was pissed off at churches that supported slavery and pointed out to them they were going against central tenets of their belief. Another clear indication the Bible isn’t into slavery.
· When Constantine converted whether true or not, he changed family laws in humane ways. Like making it harder for men to divorce women and laws regarding finance and infanticide. Though he also issued anti-Semitic laws.
· Apart from the sabbath, regular scheduled rest was unknown to the ancient world. Peasants worked all the time and elites worked as little as they could. We owe the notion of a weekend to Moses and Constantine.
· A brief history of thought. “Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity-an unprecedented idea at that time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.”
· Jurgen Habermas one of Europe’s most prominent philosophers (and atheist) “Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and a social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.”
· Professor of law and history at Yale and author of Volume on the Origin of Human Rights, Samuel Moyn “I don’t doubt that Jesus Christ in particular brought about a revolution in thinking of people as equal in the sight of God.”
Paul Copan says "For decades, sociologist Rodney Stark has been writing about these historical transformations. Although he had been a professing agnostic 13 years. I wrote him an email in 2011, asking him where he was in his faith pilgrimage. He wrote back informing me that he had come to identify himself as a Christian, observing the remarkable historical transformations inspired by those who had been changed by the message of Jesus: "I basically wrote myself into the Christian faith."
In his book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion Historian of Science Noah J Efron says "To be fair, the claim that Christianity led to modern science captures something true and important. Generations of historians and sociologists have discovered many ways in which Christians, Christian beliefs and Christian institutions played crucial roles in fashioning the tenets, methods and institutions of what in time became modern science."
· Human rights scholar Max Stackhouse “intellectual honesty demands recognition of the fact that what passes as ‘secular’, ‘western’ principles of basic human rights developed nowhere else than out of key strands of the biblically-rooted religion”. Talk of natural rights emerged out of catholic theology in the Middle Ages. Chief movers who established universal declaration on human rights of 1948 were church coalitions and Christian leaders.
Jesus’ Teachings
· The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth a man who never even wrote anything down, over the course of 3 years have undoubtedly been the most influential and wisest truths for all of history. Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins admits sermon on mount is way ahead of its time. Jesus points out that treatment of neighbor is equal or parallel to your worship of God.
· British historian Tom Holland numerous books on Rome, Persia and Islam. Knowing the ethic he has loved and lived by came from Jerusalem. He gave full voice to this in Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind.
· Teachings that so positively change lives all throughout history, where ever Jesus has been preached, nations improve, thieves are made honest, alcoholics are cured, hateful people are made loving, corrupt become just, miracles occur! The testimonies of Roman Gutiérrez and David Wood (among millions of others online) are prime examples of how Jesus can break chains and transform.
· Tertullian was groundbreaking in his position on right to free worship and that religion should not compel religion. And as he talks about persecution in 215AD he notes that Christians led one of the first peaceful protests ever by simply turning up in masses with the intention being that they wouldn’t kill all of us. What made Christians great is the idea that they had already won in Christ so death couldn’t really hurt them. By the 200s Christ had reached almost every part of roman empire. Lucius Lactantius was an academic and responded to intellectual attacks in the divine institutes. He wrote during the great persecution when he fled to west for safety. He pointed out that imago dei and the reason for Christian love of enemies while being killed. Jefferson’s book collection included Tertullian and Lactantius.
· The truth about the golden rule that shows up in every religion is that it’s actually the silver rule. Others say don’t do what you wouldn’t like done to you-the silver rule commands the negative. Jesus offers the positive saying do to others as you would have them do to you. And also love your enemies. The true golden rule.
· Love doesn’t show up anywhere in the ancient moral codes except for OT. There was justice, courage, wisdom and moderation. But not love, mercy, humility, non-retaliation.
· In response to the idea of Jesus being insane, theologian Clark H Pinnock “again, the skill and depth of his teachings support the case for his total mental soundness.” Historian Philip Schaff “self-deception in a matter so momentous and with an intellect in all respects so clear and so sound is equally out of the question. He never lost the balance of his mind, sailed serenely over all the troubles and persecution, always returned the wisest answers to tempting questions, calmly and deliberately predicted his death and resurrection and the destruction of Jerusalem (70AD). A character so original, complete, uniformly consistent, perfect. It would take more than Jesus to invent Jesus” and “is such an intellect-clear as the sky, bracing as the mountain air, sharp and penetrating as a sword, thoroughly healthy and vigorous, always ready and always self-possessed-liable to a radical and most serious delusion concerning his own character and mission? Preposterous imagination!”
· Historian C. John Sommerville “Jesus is the central figure of the entire human race”. Argues the moral views prior to Christianity were far different than what we have today, and Christianity is responsible for shaping our moral views in the west. The Anglo Saxons had honor-based societies where their highest goal was respect from others whereas incoming monks prided charity, service and putting others first. Christianity changed our ethical views at a foundational level, it’s wrong to steal not because it brings shame to us but because it is to the detriment of another. Keep in mind the morals and evils set out in the Bible have so much credibility and confirmation from science in terms of their affects. Dr Os Guinness “if Jesus had never been born, we would have had no Francis of Assisi, William Wilberforce, Mother Theresa. The world would have been a very cruel and heartless place.”
· William Lecky one of Great Britain’s most noted historians, political theorists and opponent of Christianity “it was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which through all the changes of 18 centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love, has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions: has been not only the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice. The simple record of these 3 short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.”
· Atheist Phil Zuckerman “there’s a lot I admire and respect about Christianity and if I had to pick 3, I would pick love, peace/nonviolence and forgiveness. I think they should be at the heart of any civil society. It has contributed much in terms of moral progress, there’s no question that Christians give more in terms of charity and volunteering and service than secular Americans.
Science:
· Respected Sociologist in his book The Voice of Reason “success of the west, including rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians”.
· In the 20th century, 72.5% of Nobel prize winners in chemistry and 65.3% in physics, were Christians. Atheists were not part of the scientific revolution. Christianity gave rise to science in the western world. Sceptics may say “Yeah well everyone was a Christian back then!” And? Usually in the next breath they’ll say “religion and science don’t mix!” Some even attempt to read the minds of these scientists by saying they were closet atheists and felt too pressured to speak out.
· The rest of the world believed a lot of deceptions and falsities like fairies and polytheism. But the realization of Judeo-Christian traditions led to people concluding that there must be discoverable laws and order in the universe. To them, the world was a work of cosmic engineering and they weren’t slowed down by believing god was in creation as a sun or moon or animal like so many others thought. Jerry Newcombe “just about every branch of science originated by someone who believed the bible.” Daniel Lapin “until recently all the great scientists were great Christians”. E.O Wilson asks “why didn’t science arise in China?” It had far more technology than Europe. Because Chinese scholars abandoned the idea of a supreme being with personal creative properties. Consequently, “in the absence of a compelling need for the notion of general laws-thoughts in the mind of God, so to speak-little or no search was made for them.”
Preservation of Culture:
· There were hundreds of languages first set to writing by missionaries in order to translate the bible.
· Brian Tierney points out “more than 90% of the works of ancient rome that we know exist in their earliest form in a Carolingian manuscript.” (in a text studied and copied by Christian scholars from the era of Charlemagne 8th/9th centuries. Their meticulous endeavors form the basis of nearly all modern editions.
· It is only because of Christians and bishops that much of Greek literature and philosophy survives to this day.
Societal benefits:
· Dozens and dozens of studies show religion is extremely beneficial and promotes ethical behavior in several ways. There are some that don’t show a correlation between ethical behavior and religion but there are far more studies that do and meta-analysis studies. If atheists want to say “let’s create our own personal/subjective meaning and purpose and live like its real because it will be good for us”, then how about just becoming a Christian because that is also good for you and there is the added bonus of it being true. Andrew Sims “the advantageous effect of religious belief on mental and physical health is one of the best kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction, it would have been front page news in newspaper in the land.” The worlds “blue zones” are all religious.
· There was a study called ‘Religious upbringing associated with less altruism’ and an article done on it called religious kids are jerks, ended up getting debunked. Studies only show the opposite, which is why this study originally got so famous! But the debunking of course didn’t get covered in the media. There is backing however that religious people are more punitive, that makes sense.
· Martin Seligman professor of psychology, leader in positive psychology movement. The view that psychological insights can be applied to enhance healthy mental states as well as treat unhealthy ones, published Character Strengths and Virtues. Wide ranging review of published research to date on human development in areas like creativity, open mindedness, social intelligence, humor, gratitude, and more. Trying to find the factors that enhance and hinder human excellence. Those who scored higher on extrinsic religiosity were more prejudiced and had more negative attributes. The more strictly you take the bible, the more punitive you are. Extrinsic religious belief is those who use religion for their own goals and purposes. Not to live it out internally and for the sake of selflessness, like what Christianity actually is. The more it’s used as a social and political badge, the harsher one is. Recent research shows highly religious couples have high quality relationships. Intrinsic belief better for individual and society. A sizable body of research says Seligman has demonstrated a positive link between religiosity, particularly religious involvement, and psychological and physical wellbeing. Himself not religious, briefly reviews 15 separate studies underscoring this conclusion in his book.
· More striking than Seligman is 2012 Oxford Handbook of Religion and Health, provides comprehensive meta-analysis of all published studies on the association between religious involvement and medical and mental health. Focusing mostly on west.
· Wellbeing: 78% of more than 300 studies report a positive association between religiosity and wellbeing.
· Optimism: 81% of 32 studies.
· Meaning and purpose: 93% of 45
· Social support: 82% of 74
· Depression: 61% of 413 report lower rates or faster recovery.
· Suicide: 75% of 141 associated with less ideation, attempts, or successful.
· Social capital (participation in community): 79% of 14.
· A recent 2017 review and synthesis of the literature by the director of Harvard’s School of Public Health has confirmed and bolstered the conclusion that religious participation is positively associated with a wide range of physical and mental health outcomes including even lower mortality.
· Social capital: religiousness is associated with lower levels of marital conflict, greater perceived spousal support, more consistent parenting, less conflictual and more supportive relationships between adolescents and parents. Religiousness particularly church involvement also has been identified as a robust predictor of altruism, volunteerism and philanthropy.
· Church and social capital was put to test in famous series of studies by Robert Putnam. Compared Italian society with US. Social capital is social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. His book American Grace.
· 2018 Deloitte Access Economics report, “controlling for a range of observable factors which might affect people propensity to donate and to volunteer, we find that religious people are more likely to be donors and volunteers than non-religious people.”
· The business review weekly, once calculated the largest 200 hundred charities in Australia by revenue, 39 of the top 50 charities were religiously affiliated and the other 11 used to be.
· Blood donations are higher among the religious.
· And when it comes to 3rd world countries, here’s what British political writer, broadcaster and atheist Matthew Parris writes in The Times 2008 “I truly believe Africa needs God. Missionaries, not aid money are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem, the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset. Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa, sharply distinct from the work of secular NGO’s, govt projects and international aid efforts. This alone will not do, education and training alone will not do, in Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation the rebirth is real the change is good, those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the know-how that accompanies what we call development will make the change a whole belief system must first be supplanted and I’m afraid it must be supplanted by another, removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.”
Education:
· Founding Europe and America’s great universities Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton. Oxford’s motto remains “the lord is my light”.
· Alcuin was the Christian that had an impact in softening Charlemagne. And was also the architect of educational reforms that spread through Europe. York cathedral adopted an educational philosophy called wisdom theology. Appreciating that the world was a result of God’s wisdom and studying every bit of it was an act of worship. As a result, the school focused broadly, grammar, logic, maths, music etc.
· The approach wasn’t completely new, it was all throughout the early church. Wisdom literature was in works in 2nd century: Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, 3rd century: Tertullian and Origen of Alexandria, 4th century: Gregory of Nazianus, Bazil of Caesura, Gregory of Nyssa, Lactantius of Nicomedia, 5th century: Augustine of Hippo, Jerome of Bethlehem, 6th century: Boethius and Cassiodorus.
· Anyone wanting to be a disciple underwent serious training and teaching taking up many hours and weeks of a year. Heavily apologetic in nature showing how it was all superior to pagan stuff. In 500s, Europe suffered turmoil from Merovingians and then Carolingians jockeying for power. Education became an elite luxury. The stability of Charlemagne’s reign in 700s provided conditions for recovery. Alcuin came to the attention of Charlemagne; he became an adviser and secretary. From over 200 letters from Alcuin, it was clear he took a personal interest in educating girls.
· He standardized the basis of modern non-cursive handwriting in the west. Alcuin insisted on the 7 liberal arts. First three made up the trivium: grammar, formal logic and rhetoric or the study of persuasion. After completing this, students could enter the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. Once the liberal arts were mastered, students could move on to history, natural history (physical sciences) and theology. There was also medicine and law.
· Rosamond Mckitterick “The Christian church provided both the spiritual and moral framework and the specific educational and liturgical needs which the Carolingians strove to fulfil.” Later in 1079, pope Gregory vII decreed every cathedral should establish a school in its region. “even penniless students should be taught”.
· Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274. Gifted with unusual intellectual powers. Able to integrate classical philosophy with Christian theology called Thomism. Apparently had photographic memory. This theology was reflected in church law. Decretum compiled around 1140 by monk Gratian and Glossa Ordinaria by Teutonicus in 1216. These were instrumental for the development of the western legal tradition. Some of the laws seem super socialist. The magna carta of 1215 declared limits on royal authority. Church law gradually became secular law. In the 16th century, state absorbed the church. Government was now responsible for the poor, though the church continues its efforts.
· Byzantine never really had dark ages and just continued in advancement, learning and building.
· So no, the Bible hasn’t been very useful, it only laid the foundations for the western world and everything we hold to and value today, no biggie. Colossians 1:6. But apparently “Religion poisons everything!” the more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be.
Sources:
· Paul Copan “Is God a Moral Monster”
· Soren Kierkegaard "Attack upon Christendom"
· E. Randolph Richards & Brandon J. O'Brien "Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes"
· Stanley L. Jaki "The Savior of Science"
· Rodney Stark "For the Glory of God"
· Peter Harrison "The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science"
· D. James Kennedy & Jerry Newcombe "What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?"
· Pierre Duhem "Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science"
· A.C. Crombie "The History of Science From Augustine to Galileo"
· James Hannam "God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science"
· ” E.O. Wilson "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge"
· C. John Sommerville "The Decline of the Secular University" Page 63-70
· Michael E. McCullough & Brian L. B. Wiloughby "Religion, Self-Regulation, and Self-Control: Associations, Explanations and Implications"
· Andrew Sims "Is Faith Delusional"
· Bullies and Saints John Dickson
· Michael Blume "The Reproductive Benefits of Religious Affiliation" http://www.blume-religionswissenschaf...
· Dr. John Lennox "Gunning For God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZKy7F...
· Science is a gift from Jesus Christ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tcC6c...
· Phil Zuckerman on Christianity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bSzPE...
· White brothers plane invention.
The fuel projects videos on Jesus, has a compilation of quotes by famous people
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