The argument I have heard most frequently is that Judeo-Christian values/morals laid the groundwork for our particular system and most western systems. The claim is that without the generic framework, western morality (the good stuff…the stuff we all virtually agree on) would look vastly different.
I know Christopher Hitchens didn’t buy that argument, but other atheists/non-theists have started to back off that a bit. I’m somewhere in the middle. I think, as much as we don’t want to admit it, we are heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian framework.
What I’m not saying is the Judeo-Christian framework is perfect and/or able to provide strong answers to modern morale issues.
There may be some truth to that claim about it laying the groundwork. With an N of 1, there's no way to ever know if our society would look similar, better or worse if a different school of thought had dominated. I agree completely that there's still a great deal of influence on our culture, although the fact that that influence is still this strong is arguably a negative--or more like the fact that people can't seem to let go of the claim that Judeo-Christian principles are the only way to morality is a negative. We do have Eastern cultures that we can compare to, and overall they have a lot of overlapping values with the West even though they didn't rely on Judeo-Christian monotheism. I think humans would have figured out that they had to behave decently towards one another to live together in societies without needing 'revealed truth' to tell them that.
The Bible/God/Jesus are deployed and behave very much like a ventriloquist dummy when it comes to ethics and politics.
The argument I have heard most frequently is that Judeo-Christian values/morals laid the groundwork for our particular system and most western systems. The claim is that without the generic framework, western morality (the good stuff…the stuff we all virtually agree on) would look vastly different.
I know Christopher Hitchens didn’t buy that argument, but other atheists/non-theists have started to back off that a bit. I’m somewhere in the middle. I think, as much as we don’t want to admit it, we are heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian framework.
What I’m not saying is the Judeo-Christian framework is perfect and/or able to provide strong answers to modern morale issues.
There may be some truth to that claim about it laying the groundwork. With an N of 1, there's no way to ever know if our society would look similar, better or worse if a different school of thought had dominated. I agree completely that there's still a great deal of influence on our culture, although the fact that that influence is still this strong is arguably a negative--or more like the fact that people can't seem to let go of the claim that Judeo-Christian principles are the only way to morality is a negative. We do have Eastern cultures that we can compare to, and overall they have a lot of overlapping values with the West even though they didn't rely on Judeo-Christian monotheism. I think humans would have figured out that they had to behave decently towards one another to live together in societies without needing 'revealed truth' to tell them that.