# Human Rights and 'Christian Culture'. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 6, 2013, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231 "2013-11-06T10:01:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/21 "2013-11-06T15:51:54Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > That the French revolutionaries were anti-Christian, I think we can all agree with. They were certainly anti-Catholic/Clergy but that isn’t the same as being anti-Christian. And, no, I’m not arguing that Catholics aren’t Christian. It’s just that the RCC in France held a significant amount of land, wealth and political power so it was natural for them to become a target. The same thing happened in Mexico during the years following their revolution. President Plutarcho Calles was an atheist who strongly disliked the Catholic church and he actually provided some protestant programs with money just as a way to stick it to the RCC. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/22 "2013-11-06T15:52:12Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The OP’s idea seems to be that fundamental rights are somehow “pro-Christian”, though. I’ve seen arguments for this notion not in the context of human rights in general, but as to the specific doctrine of the separation of church and state, which is theoretically more pronounced under Christianity than Islam. Even thus limited, though, I think it’s overstated; there are plenty of examples in Christendom of a ruler being the head of the church, or determining the denomination to be followed by the populace, or appointing church officials. ---
**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:** [November 6, 2013, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/23 "2013-11-06T15:54:58Z")
That’s what I’m saying. It may exist in Christian (or nominally Christian states), but it’s clearly not a “Christian idea”. Divine Right of Kings, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/24 "2013-11-06T16:24:47Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > When God was done away with, the problem presented itself that the authority apect of rights fell away. Who grants the right to rebel against a king? What are rights anyway? According to the writers of the Constitution, people are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. This includes rebelling against a king. So God grants the right to rebel against a king, just like He grants all other rights (according to the Founding Fathers). God was not done away with; His authority is explicitly made the basis for the American Revolution and the foundation of the US. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/25 "2013-11-06T16:26:11Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Because the Bible doesn’t allow any of these things. Could you please cite the verses of the Bible that forbid Gentiles from voting for their leaders? Regards, Shodan ---
**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:** [November 6, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/26 "2013-11-06T16:29:29Z")
Don’t be dense. How were the biblical kings selected? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/27 "2013-11-06T16:43:51Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Don’t be dense. How were the biblical kings selected? Could you please cite the verses that forbid Gentiles from voting for their leaders? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/28 "2013-11-06T17:05:11Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Could you please cite the verses that forbid Gentiles from voting for their leaders? > > Regards, > Shodan I’ll give this a try… how about Romans 13? This, of course, assumes that the “authorities” mentioned that must be obeyed do not allow voting for the leaders. ---
**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:** [November 6, 2013, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/29 "2013-11-06T17:12:52Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Don’t be dense. How were the biblical kings selected? I’m sure you’re aware that a narrative which contains kings who were not elected is not the same things as a statement that democracy is not allowed. Likewise your claim about banning established religion and freedom of speech. (That said, the American revolution did not lead to a ban on establishment of religion. The First Amendment banned the federal government from having an established religion, thus leaving questions about the ties between government and church to the states.) ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/30 "2013-11-06T17:13:59Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > Anyways, I can already find fault with this claim. Human rights partly began, or at least got a big boost, in the French Revolution. And the French Revolution, remember, was in many ways anti-Christian (sorry, I don’t have a cite–but I assume we can all agree on this point). I would surmise that, rather, the Catholic church was anti-revolution. And even if the revolution was anti-something, it was anti-Catholic church rather than anti-christian. Apart from that, I would say that human rights aren’t a natural outgrowth of Christian religion, that historically didn’t favour values such a freedom of speech or popular participation in the political process, let alone freedom of religion. Christians coopted them later, but they had to be established _against_ the will of the churches, not with their support. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/31 "2013-11-06T17:22:04Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > That the French revolutionaries were anti-Christian, I think we can all agree with. That they were devoted to human rights seems more sketchy. Some of them put forth some nice rhetoric on the topic, to be sure. But a few thousand people might have questioned their actual dedication to human rights as their heads rolled away from the guillotine. They were definitely devoted to such values. Even those who eventually decided that they had to burn the village in order to save it (in which they might even have been right). The terror isn’t all of the revolution. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/32 "2013-11-06T17:22:39Z")
Central to religions such as Christianity is the rejection of reality for an idealized version of the universe based solely on their stories. Whatever human rights may spring from that does so despite Christianity, not because of it ---
**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:** [November 6, 2013, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/33 "2013-11-06T17:29:14Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Could you please cite the verses that forbid Gentiles from voting for their leaders? > > Regards, > Shodan Also, airplanes and computers are not mentioned in the Bible, so airplanes and computers are Anti-Christian. Did Jesus ride in an airplane? No? So neither should you! ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/34 "2013-11-06T17:36:28Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Certainly human rights advancement has been informed by Christianity in the West. Abolitionists, for example, usually based their ideas and actions in deep Christian faith, as they interpreted it. And so did slave-owners. It’s quite obvious that in modern times Christians managed to interpret scriptures as always supporting their point of view, whatever it was. I would even say that they always did that : “There’s a king? Surely he’s God-appointed!”. Western nations discarded traditional values and churches just followed the lead (with a significant delay required to reevaluate God’s will). ---
**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:** [November 6, 2013, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/35 "2013-11-06T17:42:54Z")
Christians of various sorts had over 1500 years to come up with the idea of human rights and failed to do so. Human rights arose in situations where traditional religion had less power - France and America. The founders who set the tone for the Revolution and the Constitution were deists - Jefferson and Madison specifically. Human rights come from a view of the inherent rights of man. That is different from a view where all rights come from God, which so often allows those claiming to know the will of God to squelch rights because God says to. Those who believe in a historical imperative more important than individual people, like Communists, do the same, though it is the Revolution and not God who makes the rules. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/36 "2013-11-06T18:00:34Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > To my mind, an “anti-Christian” revolution would be something like the French or Russian: clergy arrested, murdered, or exiled; Christian buildings and monuments burned; church property seized by government; religious practice banned or restricted. None of those things occurred in the American revolution, so by what standard was it anti-Christian? Likewise, which rights were “anti-Christian”? It didn’t declare Christianity to be the state religion; that’s anti-Christian. It just wasn’t as aggressive and ruthless about it as the French Revolution. Tolerance of anything besides Christianity is anti-Christian, since the position that it is absolute truth and that believing _anything else_ is totally evil is a central feature of Christianity. “Live and let live” is a deeply un-Christian concept. > [@clairobscur](#): > > It’s quite obvious that in modern times Christians managed to interpret scriptures as always supporting their point of view, whatever it was. I would even say that they always did that : “There’s a king? Surely he’s God-appointed!”. Western nations discarded traditional values and churches just followed the lead (with a significant delay required to reevaluate God’s will). And then as is standard with Christianity tried to claim the credit for the concept of human rights, despite opposing them for centuries. Its proponents are always handing it credit for things it opposed or had nothing to do with. If anything, the origin of human rights goes back not to Christianity, but to the creators of the concept of laws and the rule of law. Declaring murder to be forbidden under penalty of law isn’t quite the same as a declaration of support for human rights, but it’s a step in that direction. You could have human rights even if the concept of religion never existed, but I don’t see how you could have them without the idea of law. > [@Lemur866](#): > > Also, airplanes and computers are not mentioned in the Bible, so airplanes and computers are Anti-Christian. Indirectly they are, due to being based on science which is by its nature anti-Christian. Just by existing they harm Christianity, due to demonstrating a superior source of knowledge of reality than Christianity. The fact that modern technology works is in fact often used by atheists as a demonstration of how science is true while religion is false; you don’t need to have faith in a plane to convince yourself it flies. One example: [QUOTE=Isaac Asimov] The amazing thing about the “religion of science”, what separates it from all the other ones, is that it WORKS and that its curses can kill. [/QUOTE] Hellfire missiles are more deadly than actual hellfire…because they _exist._ ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/37 "2013-11-06T18:16:24Z")
I think the fact that human rights are basically an invention of Christianity can be seen, even today, in its tireless advocacy of gender equality and gay rights. …Oh, wait. :smack: (Though I suppose that in a hundred years or so, there will be people who with a straight face will claim that gay rights really are a fundamentally Christian idea.) ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/38 "2013-11-06T18:18:24Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Also, airplanes and computers are not mentioned in the Bible, so airplanes and computers are Anti-Christian. Did Jesus ride in an airplane? No? So neither should you! The Amish would certainly agree ;). ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2013, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/39 "2013-11-06T18:24:48Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I’ll give this a try… how about Romans 13? This, of course, assumes that the “authorities” mentioned that must be obeyed do not allow voting for the leaders. That passage does not mention voting at all. **Really Not All That Bright** , you appear to think that it is “dense” not to know the verses in the Bible that forbid democracy in general. If it is that obvious, you should be able to cite them. Feel free to do so. Regards, Shodan ---
**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:** [November 6, 2013, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231/40 "2013-11-06T18:29:47Z")
No, it is “dense” to limit the inquiry to express prohibitions. The Bible describes only monarchial societies - and generally with approval. Therefore, the Bible endorses monarchy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human-rights-and-christian-culture/673231.md?page=3)