Apr
09
Christopher Hitchens vs Ken Blackwelll on the US Being a Christian Nation
By
What Hitchens refuses to realize is that our basic principles are in fact based in Christian theology. These same principles are what allowed Christianity to endure, and in the end flourish. Christianity offered a better way of life than the pagan philosophy. The idea of the sanctity of life, the rights of the individual coming from God, and the freedom to pursue happiness, all have their roots in Christian thinking.
While Jefferson and others were not Christians, they did embrace those concepts that we still hold today. So in a larger sense, we are a Christian nation. Not that we are all Christian, but that our founding principles come from the mixing of Judeo-Christian principles.
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5 Comments
April 9th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Ken Blackwell really likes the word “precept.”
April 9th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
You took the time to fill out your name and email just to say that?
April 10th, 2009 at 6:43 am
“The idea of the sanctity of life, the rights of the individual coming from God, and the freedom to pursue happiness, all have their roots in Christian thinking.”
Really? So, essentially you are saying the above didn’t exist before approx. 1AD. In addition, any culture not based on Christianity still doesn’t have the above.
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“What Hitchens refuses to realize is that our basic principles are in fact based in Christian theology.”
Actually, his point was our government is secular (and more based on Greek and pre-Christian Roman ideas).
Read the Treaty of Tripoli Article 11, “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.” Made in 1796 it is near the founding of the country and passed the Senate unanimously.
Of course, anyone can make generalities about how many Americans feel about the connection of politics and religion. But the fact is America is not based on religion. Get over it.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:18 am
From a reader…
“Hitchens has become boring. He’s like Dawes, another famous atheist. These guys are no better than the fundamentalists. How did life begin? “Intelligent design, but not from any God, from Aliens.” Who created the aliens? -Dead silence.
I think it’s a cop out. Same thing on Big Bang singularity. Where did a Universe full of energy come …Read More from? “We don’t know, perhaps another dimension. “Where did the other dimension come from? -Dead silence.
At least the fundies say, “Any God powerful enough to encapsulate all of the matter and energy in the Universe, and put it on the head of a pin, is smart enough to create a Universe in 5000 years, and make you believe it’s been here for 13 billion.”
April 10th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Charles Taylor, in his masterful work titled “Sources of The Self,” details the evolution of “hypergoods” held throughout the ages. We live in the age of “the common man.”
Nietzsche often spoke in opposition to Christianity for ushering in this “new age.” Slave morality he called it…
Reading through some of the accounts of the Plague of Galen, during the time of Marcus Aurelius , one can clearly see this new “slave morality” displayed by Christians,often women…Christians took care of not only their sick and dying, but the family members of others. This freaked people out…this was new…
We are a mixture of many things, including Christianity. To not see this is to be a fundamentalist.
Also see:
1.The rise of Christianity
By W. H. C. Frend
Edition: illustrated
Published by Fortress Press, 1984
ISBN 0800619315, 9780800619312
1022 pages
2.Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self established him as one of the paradigm figures of contemporary philosophy. Sources of the Self is a rarity in that it is a book of philosophy that achieved a wide readership outside of philosophical circles, as did his The Ethics of Authenticity, an extended version of the 1991 Massey lectures which were broadcast in November 1991 as part of CBC Radio’s Ideas series. :finger: