# Are Human Rights Just an Outgrowth of Christian Culture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 17, 2015, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539 "2015-09-17T05:18:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mikeisskeptical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@Mikeisskeptical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikeisskeptical)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/21 "2015-09-17T13:52:33Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s equally plausible to argue that human rights represent a rejection of Christian culture. I would want to broaden that though, to ‘a gradual rejection of unjustified ideas’. People demanding good reasons to accept their lot in life, evidence for assertions about the natural world etc. The prevailing Christian culture was weakened by this attitude as were the dominant social hierarchies and many pre-scientific philosophies. I regard the whole thing as a general trend towards increased rationalism. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/22 "2015-09-17T13:55:56Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Human Rights came from the powerful relinquishing small doses of that power when it became convenient to do so I would agree with this bit. Although not only when convenient, but also under threat, like with the mentioned Magna Carta. I don’t make a special distinction between human-rights workers-rights or whatever-rights. Rights are indeed relinquished by those in power. Be that a king a ‘government’ , a landowner an employer or what have you. ---
**Author:** ![Mikeisskeptical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@Mikeisskeptical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikeisskeptical)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/23 "2015-09-17T13:57:53Z")
That said, I definitely think social factors provided the most significant push. When people rejected the idea thatthey and all their dependants were destined to miserable servitude for ever, they were more inclined to question other received wisdoms. ---
**Author:** ![Mikeisskeptical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@Mikeisskeptical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikeisskeptical)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/24 "2015-09-17T14:00:57Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Rights are indeed relinquished by those in power. Be that a king a ‘government’ , a landowner an employer or what have you. Indeed, or the church. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/25 "2015-09-17T15:25:58Z")
It’s almost like Ancient Greece never happened. Perhaps Al Gore invented Human Rights? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/26 "2015-09-17T16:43:24Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Indeed, I think the idea of people having rights has grown more from the power struggles , first between feudal lords and their king later between, then between wealthy burghers and nobility and then between workers and employers. And the Magna Carta was English, not Christian. Some of the rights in it (which were only for nobles, remember) like trial by a jury of your peers are not the case in other equally Christian countries. I believe there are Islamic courts also. That powerful rulers violate them is not a matter of religion. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/27 "2015-09-17T16:50:07Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > As a plain fact, yes. Let’s rewind the clock to about 1600 A.D. In England the Magna Carta has been in effect for centuries. Protections exist in law guaranteeing that there can’t be criminal punishment without trial, that trials must follow certain procedures, that the government can’t seize a person’s property without due process of law, etc… Similar progress exists in various state and cities across Europe. But did the Ottoman Empire, or China, or any other civilization have similar protections? Ottoman Sultans or Chinese Emperors could seize property whenever and however they pleased, imprison or otherwise punish whoever they pleased, and so forth. Henry VIII had no trouble taking church lands. In Elizabethan times Catholics found preaching found their heads on post. Is there really a lot of difference between a monarch jailing someone because he feels like it and him forcing the law writers to write laws to allow him to do so “legally?” If rights grew out of Christian culture, it sure took them a long time to implement them. (And the prime advocates of Christian culture are battling against human rights even today.) ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/28 "2015-09-17T18:01:00Z")
It’s more accurate to say that human rights are a result of the secularization of once-Christian cultures. The less sway the Bible held over people, the more they had to establish a firm moral foundation to replace it with. Human rights are a result of humanism, which is not a rejection of Christianity, but more an ignoring of it. Also, plenty of Muslims and other non-Christians are for human rights. Most of them, probably. Just not the Iranian UN ambassador, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/29 "2015-09-17T18:32:13Z")
Still, why does it seem like human rights are only embraced by peoples with a Christian cultural heritage? I can’t think of any place in the Muslim world that I would trust to recognize the rights of a non-believer (or any kind of minority, really). Many of them will explicitly refuse to do so. As for Asian countries (China, Japan, etc), they operate on a “society first” premise that would seem to be incompatible with the concept of human rights (which after all are limits on the level of control a government is allowed to exert on its people). ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/30 "2015-09-17T18:44:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’s equally plausible to argue that human rights represent a rejection of Christian culture. Europeans were lucky; they had strong historical examples of functioning non-Christian systems as role models. Muslims didn’t have that; their historical antecedents were either disorganized tribal structures like Arabia or autocratic empires like Persia and Egypt. So Muslims made the mistake of equating religion with civilization. Errrr, sorry _what_? The Arab conquests of the seventh century took over and maintained the infrastructures of two functioning empires, empires which many Arabs had been part off (Rome and Persia both had Arabs within their borders even before the 630’s). And the inavsions were led by people who mostly were not tribal, except perhaps in a nominal sense, they came from settled urban cities, and regions, like Mecca, Yathrib (npw Medinah), Taif and Yemen Persia was not autocratic in the least, they pretty much left you alone, after conquering you. And that ignores places like India or the Far East. UDHR is lets face it not particularly original and forced through by representatives of nations who at the time (and still to an extent) excelled in breaching it. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/31 "2015-09-18T00:26:22Z")
They are the outgrowth of Enlightenment thinking: That basic human freedoms are inalienable. Those thinkers may have inserted a “creator” for the purposes of limiting government’s potential to suspend the rights of man, but as a concept human rights come from secular, rational thought. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/32 "2015-09-18T04:35:51Z")
> [@up\_the\_junction](#): > > It’s almost like Ancient Greece never happened. Perhaps Al Gore invented Human Rights? It is true that many of the rights that we consider basic came to be accepted in recent times, but IMHO thinking that Christianity came with those is not the whole history. The ancient Babylonians came up with things like the idea of minimum wage and the presumption of innocence. On the other hand they had very harsh and barbaric punishments. > **[8 Things You May Not Know About Hammurabi’s Code | HISTORY](https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-hammurabis-code)** > > Find out more about the fascinating history behind one of antiquity’s most important legal codes. > [@](#): > > The Code includes one of the earliest examples of the presumption of innocence. > > While it’s notorious for its catalog of barbaric punishments, Hammurabi’s Code also set several valuable legal precedents that have survived to this day. The compendium is among the earliest legal documents to put forth a doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty.” In fact, the Code places the burden of proof on the accuser in extreme fashion when it says, “If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.” The Code also includes a modern take on judicial procedures. For example, when two parties had a dispute, legal protocol allowed them to bring their case before a judge and provide evidence and witnesses to back up their claims. The ancient Persians can point to Cyrus the Great as another great figure that did not depend on Christian culture: > **[History of Natural Law & Basic Freedoms, Cyrus the Great: United for...](https://www.humanrights.com/what-are-human-rights/brief-history/)** > > Learn more about human and equal rights history or foundation in the rule of Cyrus the Great of Persia ending slavery, instituting freedom of religion, and stopping racial discrimination in the ancient empire. Find out about spreading international... > [@](#): > > 6th Century B.C.: The Charter of Freedom of Mankind > > In 539 B.C., the armies of Cyrus the Great, the first king of ancient Persia, conquered the city of Babylon. But it was his next actions that marked a major advance for Man. He freed the slaves, declared that all people had the right to choose their own religion, and established racial equality. These and other decrees were recorded on a baked-clay cylinder in the Akkadian language with cuneiform script. > > Known today as the Cyrus Cylinder, this ancient record has now been recognized as the world’s first charter of human rights. It is translated into all six official languages of the United Nations and its provisions parallel the first four Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/33 "2015-09-18T04:44:07Z")
Don’t hurt yourself getting your arm far enough back to start patting, OP… ---
**Author:** ![Raining\_Facts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e95f7d/32.png) [@Raining\_Facts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raining_Facts)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/34 "2015-09-18T17:37:45Z")
I agree with Stoneburg that most advances have been in spite of organized religion rather than caused by it. A great read is “The Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan. In it he touches on a long history of superstition, violence, and trampling of human rights. From the witch hunts in Europe, and the torture and murder of vast numbers of people all in the name of god, to modern day morality laws, the concept is the same. There can be no human liberty in a system where civil law is predicated on religion. Our constitution protects against freedom from religion more so than guaranteeing freedom of religion. Our penal code is not in place to uphold the 10 commandments. And while on that topic, our founding fathers were not seeking to establish a Christian nation per se. Do some concepts from Christianity or any other religion ring true in the public sector? Absolutely. But many are based on antiquated thinking and we have evolved past it. Many of the struggles and battles in our country have been a result of the movement away from so called Christian ideals. Political debates, rather than being about things that matter, have sucked up time and resources for things such as SSM and marijuana. The very arguments against these things are based on superstition, nonsense, and people that feel everyone should live just like they do. Anyone on that side of the fence has yet to demonstrate a single valid argument against it, and eventually human rights prevail. To continue would be to open many cans of worms and to go off topic, so I shall stop. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/35 "2015-09-18T19:23:32Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Human Rights are a result of technological advancement, not spiritual theorizing. When you develop machines that wash your clothes or pick your cotton, you’re more inclined to treat the people who used to do those tasks like fellow humans and not just organic washing machines and cotton-pickers. When you improve the machines so they don’t need to be serviced by children, it becomes permissible to send the children to school. I think that gets it backwards. If you’re a wealthy landowner in ancient Egypt, Greece, or Rome, medieval China or Arabia, or the antebellum South, your work is done by slaves. If you want to increase your profits, you can whip your slaves harder or otherwise drive them to work more. If you’re a wealthy owner in the northern United States circa 1820, your work is done by employees. You can drive driving your employees harder, but they might quit or demand higher wages. If you want to increase your profits, your best bet is to invent new technology that replaces your workers or increases their productivity, and to quickly adopt any technology that’s invented by someone else. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/36 "2015-09-18T19:32:48Z")
Or house them at their own expense, pay them in company scrip, and make them purchase from the company store, using the scrip that no one else will take, so they become indebted and re-enslaved. And this didn’t end with the Civil War, either. It was in practice as late as living memory, when Cesar Chavez fought against it. Capitalism – and Christianity – are not created for the benefit of the majority of the populace. Human Rights have become a highly regarded moral touchstone despite the efforts of the ruling classes. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/37 "2015-09-18T19:45:00Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If you’re a wealthy owner in the northern United States circa 1820, your work is done by employees. You can drive driving your employees harder, but they might quit or demand higher wages. If you want to increase your profits, your best bet is to invent new technology that replaces your workers or increases their productivity, and to quickly adopt any technology that’s invented by someone else. The vast majority of the advances of the Industrial Revolution came from Britain, where workers had almost no rights in 1820. Most of them were invented by the laboring classes, too, or at least [by people with no direct interest in productivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Cartwright). ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/38 "2015-09-18T20:35:49Z")
Regardless of Christianity’s influence in creating human rights, Christianity (and religion in general, really) have to be thoroughly separated from governance if we want to _preserve_ human rights. Sure, Chris, take your bow, claim the credit, whatever… and get the fuck off the stage. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2015, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/39 "2015-09-18T21:53:55Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I think that gets it backwards. If you’re a wealthy landowner in ancient Egypt, Greece, or Rome, medieval China or Arabia, or the antebellum South, your work is done by slaves. If you want to increase your profits, you can whip your slaves harder or otherwise drive them to work more. So it turns out that Christian Enlightenment America had slavery of a particularly brutal kind. Now explain to me again how human rights are a direct outgrowth of Christianity, given that Christian Europe and America had slavery until the 1800s. By my count that’s 1800 years before the human rights implicit in the Christian religion managed to reveal themselves. Human rights haven’t exactly been a universal feature of European or Christian countries. You might remember a little disagreement in the 1930s that caused some trouble. Christian Spain just managed to get rid of fascism in 1975. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2015, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539/40 "2015-09-19T01:03:03Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > Still, why does it seem like human rights are only embraced by peoples with a Christian cultural heritage? Israel does pretty well for itself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-human-rights-just-an-outgrowth-of-christian-culture/731539.md?page=3)