Jan 21, 2025 08:20 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 22, 2025 07:06 PM by C C.)
In the years after the French Revolution, some of the proto-anarchists and precursor nihilists -- who had a distaste for fabricated "oughts" or invented BS in general -- did seem to border on mocking both Enlightenment liberalism and the early left (pre-Marxist collectivism) as secular continuations of Christian spawned slash inspired morality, social justness, and other sets of principles.
At any rate, the religious personification of abstractions as deities -- that goes back to the most ancient of times -- entails that what people were really worshiping all along were the regulating conceptions and values of the creed. Dropping the superficial "godhood" stuff/myths doesn't end genuflection to ideology and interpreting much of what happens in the context of the latter. Bowing to useful, unifying, and governing fiction still persists; and both state and individual can seem to revere such at times, in ways beyond a mere social contract status.
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Historian says atheism and trans-rights movements owe a big debt to Jesus
https://religionunplugged.com/news/2025/...t-to-jesus
EXCERPTS: Tom Holland might be one of the smarter and more engaging guys I’ve heard. The British novelist, popular historian and podcast host, who attended Cambridge and Oxford universities, seems to know everything that can be known about ancient cultures.
[...] Some of his insights are surprising, including his contention that modern developments including the transgender rights movement and a recent spike in atheism probably wouldn’t exist were it not for the West’s Christian philosophical and moral foundations.
[...] I first encountered him during the holidays on a podcast other than his own: Bari Weiss’ “Honestly.” Fortunately, Weiss is as fine an interviewer as Holland is a raconteur. Their topic was “how Christianity remade the world.”
For Holland, that’s not an exaggeration. He says everything from the way we measure time to our fondness for underdogs to the American and French revolutions was generated largely by the life and teachings of Jesus.
In the West, even secular progressives who dismiss Christianity as superstitious mumbo jumbo are actually driven by early Christian assumptions about the nature of God, humans and justice. Without realizing it, such critics “are the slaves of some defunct theologian,” Holland said.
He makes these observations although he doesn’t much believe Christianity is true. He was raised in the Church of England, but developed early on as an atheist.
[...] Roman society was all about empire: about winning, conquering, dominating. It idolized the strong, the heroic. People perceived as losers — slaves, the poor, prisoners, the sickly, the conquered — were fit only for contempt and abuse.
Jesus came along teaching unprecedented things about such outcasts: blessed are the poor, the hungry, the sick. The last will be first, and the first last.
Then he was crucified. And resurrected. Then he was raised into heaven as the rightful heir of God, as if he were God himself, or as if, you might say, he was the cosmic Caesar.
The idea that a crucified person could do this was simply madness. It made a hero of victims. It implied that God is closer to the weak than to the mighty. That any beggar might be divine. That the slave had triumphed over the master. That the tortured had bested the torturer.
[...] The Christian message proved inherently subversive. Kings were no more important to God than any given beggar. Every human deserved to be treated with dignity.
As the centuries rolled along, such teachings sowed the seeds of revolutions, as I mentioned. [...] Because Christianity began with Jesus, the ultimate victim of misused power, it bestowed “an inherent virtue within victimhood,” Holland said.
“The idea that to be oppressed is the source of power. I mean it’s a very radical idea that Christianity weaponizes and has weaponized again and again and again... (MORE - missing details)
At any rate, the religious personification of abstractions as deities -- that goes back to the most ancient of times -- entails that what people were really worshiping all along were the regulating conceptions and values of the creed. Dropping the superficial "godhood" stuff/myths doesn't end genuflection to ideology and interpreting much of what happens in the context of the latter. Bowing to useful, unifying, and governing fiction still persists; and both state and individual can seem to revere such at times, in ways beyond a mere social contract status.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Historian says atheism and trans-rights movements owe a big debt to Jesus
https://religionunplugged.com/news/2025/...t-to-jesus
EXCERPTS: Tom Holland might be one of the smarter and more engaging guys I’ve heard. The British novelist, popular historian and podcast host, who attended Cambridge and Oxford universities, seems to know everything that can be known about ancient cultures.
[...] Some of his insights are surprising, including his contention that modern developments including the transgender rights movement and a recent spike in atheism probably wouldn’t exist were it not for the West’s Christian philosophical and moral foundations.
[...] I first encountered him during the holidays on a podcast other than his own: Bari Weiss’ “Honestly.” Fortunately, Weiss is as fine an interviewer as Holland is a raconteur. Their topic was “how Christianity remade the world.”
For Holland, that’s not an exaggeration. He says everything from the way we measure time to our fondness for underdogs to the American and French revolutions was generated largely by the life and teachings of Jesus.
In the West, even secular progressives who dismiss Christianity as superstitious mumbo jumbo are actually driven by early Christian assumptions about the nature of God, humans and justice. Without realizing it, such critics “are the slaves of some defunct theologian,” Holland said.
He makes these observations although he doesn’t much believe Christianity is true. He was raised in the Church of England, but developed early on as an atheist.
[...] Roman society was all about empire: about winning, conquering, dominating. It idolized the strong, the heroic. People perceived as losers — slaves, the poor, prisoners, the sickly, the conquered — were fit only for contempt and abuse.
Jesus came along teaching unprecedented things about such outcasts: blessed are the poor, the hungry, the sick. The last will be first, and the first last.
Then he was crucified. And resurrected. Then he was raised into heaven as the rightful heir of God, as if he were God himself, or as if, you might say, he was the cosmic Caesar.
The idea that a crucified person could do this was simply madness. It made a hero of victims. It implied that God is closer to the weak than to the mighty. That any beggar might be divine. That the slave had triumphed over the master. That the tortured had bested the torturer.
[...] The Christian message proved inherently subversive. Kings were no more important to God than any given beggar. Every human deserved to be treated with dignity.
As the centuries rolled along, such teachings sowed the seeds of revolutions, as I mentioned. [...] Because Christianity began with Jesus, the ultimate victim of misused power, it bestowed “an inherent virtue within victimhood,” Holland said.
“The idea that to be oppressed is the source of power. I mean it’s a very radical idea that Christianity weaponizes and has weaponized again and again and again... (MORE - missing details)
