Cite? (Note: a “cite” for a pagan institution that is paralleled by a Christian institution does not count in this context, for obvious reasons. For instance, “samurai were allowed to kill peasants who dissed them” doesn’t cut it, as it is clearly paralleled by “Christian lords were allowed to execute peasants for lese majeste”.)
Agreed. Subsequent events demonstrated that Geneva was a very good reflection of the charcter of its citizens.
And where in the bible is it wrong to kill babies?
Augustine had little respect for women and I would appreciate any evidence that the early church did not.
“I cannot think of any reason for woman’s being made as man’s helper, if we dismiss the reason of procreation.”
“how much more agreeable it is for two male friends to dwell together than for a man and a woman!”
History doth not record whether he found women deficient in luggage-lifting capacity.
You are aware, are you not, that the whole “Render unto Caesar” story is a liberal corruption of what Jesus actually taught? Fortunately, the Conservative Bible Project has finished the New Testament, so the truth is out there. Their noble aims:[ol]
[li]Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias. For example, the Living Bible translation has liberal evolutionary bias; the widely used NIV translation has a pro-abortion bias.[/li][li]Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other feminist distortions; preserve many references to the unborn child (the NIV deletes these).[/li][li]Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level.[/li][li]Utilize Terms which better capture original intent: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent; Defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer;” similarly, updating words that have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle.”[/li][li]Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census.[/li][li]Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.[/li][li]Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.[/li][li]Exclude Later-Inserted Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, such as the adulteress story.[/li][li]Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels.[/li][li]Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”[/li][/ol]
I’ve already given examples. Infanticide in ancient Greece and Rome. The fact that a Roman male head of household held power of life and death over everyone in the household, under the law known as Patria Potestas. Of course there are other examples, the best known being that in ancient Rome people were forced to fight to the death with each other and animals for public entertainment. Then there was unit decimation, in which an army unit would draw straws and one tenth were chosen to be killed, while the other nine tenths were required to do the killing.
Of course. It’s impossible to separate culture from the founding of a new nation. It doesn’t mean that our law should be Christian law, but it had influence. shrug The only time I have a problem with that notion is when someone asserts that we need to ‘stay true’ to 17th C Christian values.
I’m completely biased here, but Jewish law is a cornerstone of Western Civilization. Or at least our legal systems. 
//half-joking
Separation of Church and State dates back to the “Two Swords” doctrine, and based on how it came to pass in the US, I’m comfortable with describing it as coming from “Christian values.” This also goes more broadly for the liberty of conscience principles. I don’t see how we can get to them in their American contexts without noting the debates and evolutions within American Christianity (and European Christianity) from which they emerged. Journeys are important too, not just the final conclusion.
Like the decimation Moses committed to the Levites?
Or the murder of Crispus and Fausta By Constantine?
The prohibitory stance on infanticide was a Jewish cultural choice that Jesus actually called the priests out on as not following the scripture.
You know that none of your examples are Christian, right? I mean, I don’t care about the argument, but if you’re trying to use examples of systematic Christian evil, you kinda missed the point.
No, actually you just made that up. As for your other two sentence fragmnets, I see zero relevance of them to the topic of this thread.
I do not believe there has ever been a society in all of human history where killing and theft were simply permitted. What human beings have greatly struggled with is extending the universal prohibitions against killing and theft to “others”, to people outside the society. A long history of Christian crusaders, conquistadors, and colonizers demonstrates that the Christianization of the Roman Empire and post-Roman Europe certainly did not lead to a quick and easy shift to the recognition of universal human rights, even for people who are not members of our own tribe, city, religion, or nation. Many Christians over the centuries had no problem with killing other people, enslaving the survivors, and taking their loot–as long as the victims were “pagans” or “heretics”.
The end of Patria Potestas over members of one’s household may be a genuine shift from pagan to Christian values. However, as late as the 18th century, Christians were still asserting a right to kill slaves as a matter of convenience. As for decimation and so on–those were punishments, meted out to people considered criminals (including religious dissidents). Christian societies certainly continued for many centuries to carry out capital punishment, often by extremely gruesome methods, and for all sorts of offenses that we would now consider relatively trivial or not even crimes at all (including the “crime” of dissenting against the established religion–the same as the pagan Roman Empire once did to Christians).
You may want to look at the sticky before you claim I am lie.
If anyone claims that their religion is the SOURCE of values they need to prove that their religion teaches those values vs the culture at large being responsible for them.
You have ignored the request for a cite in the bible that denounces infanticide, so your claim just as useless.
Tacitus said that Jews “regard it as a crime to kill any late-born children.”
Josephus speaking of Jewish custom claimed it “forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward.”
So we have evidence that:
a) Jews, previous to the arrival of Christ denounced infanticide
b) they did so outside of scripture
As another posted out decimation is was an Abrahamic practice and is well documented in scripture.
Constantine, the organizer of the meeting for the first counsel, the ruler that gave Christianity it’s hold on Europe, killed his adult child and wife to appease his mother shortly after doing so. Yet he his still held in high esteem in most church.
I would say this hurts your claim that that morality came from the church
Without the scripture I would say it was the people who became less brutal, and IMHO it was probably due in part to the rise of Epicureanism around the same time.
Sorry people, I pulled an all nighter at work last night and my dyslexia won over on my repeated spelling/grammar check.
But to answer the OP,
It would depend on what you think of as “values”
As for the form of government I would say no it has its grounds in the theory of “social contract”
This IMHO is an outgrowth of humanism, and mostly not the secular kind.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “The Social Contract” was probably a large influence, as it was released about 10 years before the revolution.
Although its contents probably did not reach the average person until after the war had started and Thomas Pain released “Common Sense”
He is probably the best person to be credited for non-landowners being granted suffrage and it was a highly radical idea at the time.
Many of these individuals were deists, no self asserted atheists that I know of although even being a deist cost Thomas Pain a lot so they may have been “closeted”
We for the most part adopted British common law, and that may be an indicator of morality but that was most likely just more practical.
Obviously most immigrants were Christian, but that label is so broad it is hard to ascribe any morality to a person based on that label, but I do not think our system of government and basic concept of justice (if you were white) was based on any biblical pretext, but I am open to being convinced otherwise.
I would argue that our work ethic probably does derive from the puritans who in an attempt to avoid the reformation suffered greatly to displace the native populations and establish agriculture etc…
Obviously I am touching on a broad bunch of subjects here, but do you have a clarification on what form of morality you are asking about?
Or are you talking about the US being mostly Christian? if so the Great Awakenings may be what you are looking for?
A republic is a mere absence of a monarchy.
[QUOTE]
No it merely argues that men is the head of the family, not its absolute dictator who can beat his wife or whatnot.
A republic is merely an absence of a monarchy.
Repeating nonsense does not make it more true with repetition.
There are many forms of government that are not monarchic yet are not republican.
A short list would inlcude tribal, plutocratic, oligarchic, full democracy, or anarchic, (although that last one will never survive long). For that matter, depending on the definition one uses to identify monarchy, even despotism is different than monarchy.
So, your repeated sentence has no validity.
No, republic in its literal sense means there is no monarch. So yes Stalin’s USSR was a republic.
This has been another episode in thread-wrecking pedanticism by Qin Shi Huangdi[. If you’ve enjoyed the preceeding episode, please punch a baby.
It’s pretty clear that the federal government was founded to be explicitly secular. Not so much for the states, though, until later in the 19th century. Massachusetts, for example, had wording such as this in its constitution, that you certainly wouldn’t find in the federal version:
I’m not claiming that you’re lying, but rather that the statement you posted was untrue, which I’m very much allowed to do. You said: “The prohibitory stance on infanticide was a Jewish cultural choice that Jesus actually called the priests out on as not following the scripture.” This is untrue. The fact that the Jews denounced infanticide is true, the claim that Jesus disagreed with this is flatly false. It’s easy to read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and verify that Jesus never did any such thing. Therefore your claim is wrong.
Well, I never said in this thread that the Bible denounces infanticide so there’s no reason why I should provide a cite for it. (Though if I wanted to provide such a cite it would be easy. Luke 18:19 would be one of a great many possibilities.)