Interesting bit about the history of St. Patrick’s Day, which like most that is Western and wonderful is Christian in origin.
To be celebrated of course by another great Christian invention, a pint of Guinness.
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“like most that is Western and wonderful is Christian in origin.”
Sometimes you make radical claims which seem intended just to provoke atheists. My thoughts go to the Greek and pre-Christian Roman world and all the wonderful things they did and achieved. I think of Western beautiful things which can be associated but not reduced to any religious position, like Shakespeare and Mozart and Beethoven. I think of scientists like Galileo or anatomists like Leonardo, and all the trouble they went through because their ideas were opposed by the Church.
Stating your opinion as fact can be a seductive option for any writer. I bookmarked your blog because you seemed to be better than that. I hope I won’t have to reconsider.
Nice video, anyway.
Not meant to provoke anything but thought Judge; we have in fact forgotten much of our Christian heritage. But do I refuse to believe pagans could have developed Guinness. 🙂
We have to assume that if the religion of the west had been different than so too would everything else. Shakespeare certainly would have been living in a different world, and so would have had different influences.
If the Muslims had not been turned back in the 700’s than it is very likely that the forms of government would have been different, in addition to the obvious cultural changes.
While Christianity isn’t by necessity responsible for any scientific or literary accomplishments, the world in which they were attained was shaped by Christianity, the results of which cannot be underestimated.
While Christianity isn’t by necessity responsible for any scientific or literary accomplishments, the world in which they were attained was shaped by Christianity, the results of which cannot be underestimated.
You’re contradicting yourself.
we have in fact forgotten much of our Christian heritage.
That’s a truism. We have forgotten most of our Greco-Roman roots as well, and for that matter most of the things we learnt from the Renaissance or the Enlightenment. It is the nature of history that more is forgotten than remembered.
Besides, you are not hearing me. When you say things like in an effort to diminish the EVIDENT design of earth and the universe (my emphasis) your tone switches from reflexive and meditational to patronising and discriminatory. When you state that most Western wonderful things are Christian, you are not only making a highly controversial and consequential statement, you are also excluding (if not contemptuously brushing away) all those who disagree with you, because you are relegating them (or us) to the status of ‘exceptions’ in the Western historical movement. You disacknowledge them (or us).
I don’t mind you making these claims, if you’ll at least bother to back them up. But tossed out casually, they’re insulting. I don’t go around saying “Seeing the obvious falsification inherent in the Gospels…” if I want to criticise Scripture historiography. These topics deserve a more considerate tone.
I didn’t contradict anything.
Yes everything we have could well have been created/discovered with no Christianity.
However, to think that we would have had the same achievement with a different culture/religion is just crazy. We may have made greater strides, but I don’t think so.
http://congressshallmakenolaw.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/one-battle-no-dark-ages-a-different-world/
That post isn’t right on topic but it kind of covers what I’m talking about. You just can’t discount such a large part of a culture and expect the same results.
My response became very extensive, Nate. I decided to just publish it on my own blog: http://theonerantmachine.blogspot.com/2011/03/reading-history-through-lens-of.html