Why atheists, Satanists, heathens, etc can't be Americans or Westerners

StoneByStone said:
That seems unlikely considering Westerners had Christianity for over a thousand years before they ended slavery and, as previously stated, the Bible clearly says slavery is alright.



I know that's a common view, but Romanticism was really a rebellion against industrialization. The Enlightenment promised that industrialization would make life easier because people would be able to spend less time working while making more money. Instead what happened is people got laid off and went poor. It was the cold uncaring hand of Capitalism that brought about Romanticism.
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I know that is what you happened to stumble across via a google search, but in all the philisophy and literature classes I took, Romanticism was a wide-ranging phenomena in literature, philosophy, art. And to that end, I give more credit to Romantic and Transcendentalist traditions for playing a more important peripheral role in abolitionist sentiments, than the 18th century enlightenment thinkers ever did.

My bottom line is that I really cannot think of anything Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, or Ben Franklin did to end slavery or to inspire people at an emotional level to be repulsed by slavery.

The abolitionist movement was not driven by reason, higher intellect, or the scientific method.

And that is why Enlightenment traditions were not driving the abolitionists.

Abolition was driven by emotion, disgust, personal conscience, soul-searching. And I believe that is more aligned with the Romantic and Transcendental traditions.

Wrapping up, the fact is it is a historical fact that liberal Christians ( along with deists and agnostics) were the vanguard of the abolitionist movement. It is merely your opinion that in doing so, the Christians were acting counter to their faith.
 
Cypress said:
I know that is what you happened to stumble across via a google search, but in all the philisophy and literature classes I took, Romanticism was a wide-ranging phenomena in literature, philosophy, art. And to that end, I give more credit to Romantic and Transcendentalist traditions for playing a more important peripheral role in abolitionist sentiments, than the 18th century enlightenment thinkers ever did.
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Don't be a trolly boi. I took classes on philosophy and literature when I was in college too. Romanticism was mostly about art. The philosophy was just Enlightenment thinking with an extra importance placed on emotion.

My bottom line is that I really cannot think of anything Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, or Ben Franklin did to end slavery or to inspire people at an emotional level to be repulsed by slavery.

The abolitionist movement was not driven by reason, higher intellect, or the scientific method.

And that is why Enlightenment traditions were not driving the abolitionists.

Abolition was driven by emotion, disgust, personal conscience, soul-searching. And I believe that is more aligned with the Romantic and Transcendental traditions.

Wrapping up the fact is it is a historical fact that liberal Christians were the vanguard of the abolitionist movement. It is merely your opinion that in doing so, they were acting counter to their faith.
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I think I already explained how the roots of the modern Abolitionist movement were in the Enlightenment and the liberal Christians you're talking about were influenced by philosophy and went against Christian scripture and tradition to fight against slavery. You can bring up the fact again and again that there were Christians against slavery, but that's beside the point.
 
Woko Haram said:
Plenty of atheists actually subscribe to Christian morals, whether they admit it or not. Secular humanism is basically just Christianity without the supernatural aspects.

95% of the American population was raised in a Christian context in terms of morals, so whether an individual actually believes in God or not is somewhat irrelevant in terms of ethical frameworks.
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Nope. Morals and ethics are apriori. Religions codified and profited off the rules that societies established to live in groups. There were ethics and morals long before Christianity was established.
 
MarcusA said:
The Common Law in the US is based off of "religious" morality and values.

For example, not only rape, murder and things of that nature "sins" in Christianty and world religions, but are also "crimes" under "secular" law; with "secular law" having developed or evolved out of older religious and legal systems, such as Roman, Exodus, and so on.

An atheist, for example, can't have any objection to murder, rape and things of that nature except on faith, or on stealing and appropriating those moral values and axioms from world religions (much as degenerate heathen "religions" and cults such as "Satanism" have no morality to speak of which is compatible with that that of law, society and so forth).

So yes, I'd argue based on these facts, state and federal can and should, indeed favor Christianity (and monotheistic, world religion with compatible values) both in public and private over inferior and socially unacceptable trash such as atheism, Satanism and so forth, rather than pretending that such filth and worthlessness is in anyway "equal" to them, when it is decidedly inferior, and has no right to exist it all.
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Christianity is not monotheistic. It has as many gods as Romans did. The devil is a powerful god. The father, son and holy ghost are 3 gods. They cobbled together a weak ass explanation because they wanted to pretend they had advanced to monotheism, they did not. There are angels. There are devils minions. There are plenty of powerful spirits and gods.There are eternal saints. The Virgin Mary is prayed to. Christianity is ass deep in gods.
 
StoneByStone said:
Don't be a trolly boi. I took classes on philosophy and literature when I was in college too. Romanticism was mostly about art. The philosophy was just Enlightenment thinking with an extra importance placed on emotion.



I think I already explained how the roots of the modern Abolitionist movement were in the Enlightenment and the liberal Christians you're talking about were influenced by philosophy and went against Christian scripture and tradition to fight against slavery. You can bring up the fact again and again that there were Christians against slavery, but that's beside the point.
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My humble apologies

Romatism was a broad based intellectual movement which included more than just art. Art and literature are always just an expression of what is going on in society at large. Transcendentalism was an important part of the Romantic tradition.

Of course, defining intellectual movements is totally subjective.

There is no proof either of us can provide as to who gets the majority of credit for abolition. In reality it was probably due mostly to black people.

For me the bottom line is that the abolition movement did not get into high gear until decades after the commonly accepted end of the Enlightenment era. In fact, it coincided exactly with the period of time that cultural, intellectual, and philosophical trends associated with Romanticism and Transcendentalism held sway.f
 
Cypress said:
For me the bottom line is that the abolition movement did not get into high gear until decades after the commonly accepted end of the Enlightenment era. In fact, it coincided exactly with the period of time that cultural, intellectual, and philosophical trends associated with Romanticism and Transcendentalism held sway.f
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But we can say that the abolition movement started after the West stopped basing laws solely on the Bible and Christian tradition in favor of logic and Greek philosophy, right?
And the Bible does permit slavery and traditionally Christian societies have allowed slavery.
Again, not saying there were no Christians who fought to end slavery. But when you take all that into account, we can say it's more likely that modern Abolitionism's roots are in the Enlightenment.
 
StoneByStone said:
But we can say that the abolition movement started after the West stopped basing laws solely on the Bible and Christian tradition in favor of logic and Greek philosophy, right?
And the Bible does permit slavery and traditionally Christian societies have allowed slavery.
Again, not saying there were no Christians who fought to end slavery. But when you take all that into account, we can say it's more likely that modern Abolitionism's roots are in the Enlightenment.
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Religion has been involved in crimes against humanity, as have all other human institutions.

The bible is written by humans, is inconsistent, nebulous, and sometimes contradictory. I take Saint Augustine's belief that slavery is against God's intent, and results from human sin. Saint Augustine is no garden variety Saint. He is the most prominent church father of western Christianity. Enslaving other Christians has been a violation of Christian theology for over a thousand years. So Christians were placing limitations and prohibitions on slavery long before some other cultures, and an entire millennium before the enlightenment era.

I actually think that secular authorities and capitalism is what kept enslavement of Africans going as long as it did. And it was Quakers, Mennonites, Transcendentalists, liberal New England congregationalist Christians, and free black activists who drove the abolitionist movement. The Enlightenment thinkers had been dead for decades when the Abolitionists really gained purchase and credibility.
 
Cypress said:
Religion has been involved in crimes against humanity, as have all other human institutions.

The bible is written by humans, is inconsistent, nebulous, and sometimes contradictory. I take Saint Augustine's belief that slavery is against God's intent, and results from human sin. Saint Augustine is no garden variety Saint. He is the most prominent church father of western Christianity. Enslaving other Christians has been a violation of Christian theology for over a thousand years. So Christians were placing limitations and prohibitions on slavery long before some other cultures, and an entire millennium before the enlightenment era.

I actually think that secular authorities and capitalism is what kept enslavement of Africans going as long as it did. And it was Quakers, Mennonites, Transcendentalists, liberal New England congregationalist Christians, and free black activists who drove the abolitionist movement. The Enlightenment thinkers had been dead for decades when the Abolitionists really gained purchase and credibility.
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excellent analysis, I approve of your message. keep up the good work, friend!
 
Woko Haram said:
Few surviving cultures into the modern age didn't engage in some form of imperialism. History is often just a matter of conquering or being conquered.
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What of it? They also tortured people, abused children and got up to all sorts of jolly games that Christians found incompatible with anything they could believe.
 
StoneByStone said:
Well yeah, what makes it invalid is the superstitious bullshit. But it is totally true that religion evolves. Today's Christianity has been so influenced by the Enlightenment that it hardly resembles the Christianity of the Middle Ages or Roman Empire.
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By superstitious, do you mean the existence of a god, or something more specific?
 
StoneByStone said:
Deism is just the belief that there is a god, but it plays no role in human lives. So I wouldn't say it's a form of Christianity. Aside from Deism being older than Christianity, the latter is all about an active god and a lot of mythology.
The Enlightenment can be called a reinterpretation of religion, but the reinterpretation was the secularization of religion and society. At the most, we can say Christianity became less Christian and more Greek and logic-based.
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Deism started in the 1500s. You could argue that similar concepts existed before that, but Deism itself does not predate Christianity.
 
StoneByStone said:
Existence of a god and all of the other wacky stuff.
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Even as an atheist, I don't claim to know there is no god. I merely am atheist by default. I cannot disprove the existence of a god anymore than someone can prove the existence of one. Through logical positivism, I understand that the burden of proof is on belief rather than disbelief, but I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I know enough about the universe to definitively say there is no supreme being.
 
Woko Haram said:
Deism started in the 1500s. You could argue that similar concepts existed before that, but Deism itself does not predate Christianity.
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That's when the word "Deism" started to be used in this context. But the belief in a non-active creator deity goes back at least to the Ancient Greeks.
 
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