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European Atheist Marxist philosophers embrace Christianity

RGacky3

RGacky3

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Not as a metaphysical worldview ... they are still Atheists, they are still Marxists.

But People like Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, and of coarse Jurgen Habermas (who wrote a book With Ratzinger on religion), are starting to realize the importance of the Judeo-Christian worldview in the creation and base of enlightenment thinking, everything from human rights, freedom and Democracy, to egalitarianism, universalism and socialism.

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. - Jurgen Habermas.

I think he's right, Atheists tend to take forgranted the Christian worldview and try and saw off the ladder that they are standing on.

Pagan thought didn't have universal human rights, the Brotherhood of man, the rule of conscience and so on. All the seeds and basis of the enlightenment COME from the Christian worldview.

And now you have the classical enemies of Theism, both Atheists and Marxists, coming around, seeing the state of the west now, With its commodification of everything, the destruction of communal life from the Family, to the neighborhood to the Church, to the post-modern mess the west finds itself in where everything is tolerated other than values Beyond market values, and realizing, the west needs Christianity, the west Needs Jewish Misphat and Christian Agape, otherwise we end up back in a pagan, post-modern, idolatrous age where the market is the only value and where the egotism is the only end.
 
Yes, when I was reading one of James Hillman's books a few years ago, he made a statement that even atheists in our culture are psychologically Judeo-Christian, whether they like to believe it or not. It was an interesting point, which seems to ve valid.
 
Religion is whatever society wants it to be. The values it promotes are utterly flexible based on the viewpoints of the time and place. Case in point: if the OP really thought of the concept of hubris as prohibited by his religion , he wouldn't arrogantly try and take sole credit for vast philosophical concepts influenced by many peoples.
 
RGacky3 said:
the importance of the Judeo-Christian worldview in the creation and base of enlightenment thinking
Click to expand...

The values of the Enlightenment are absolutely antithetical to Christianity.
 
Paleocon said:
The values of the Enlightenment are absolutely antithetical to Christianity.
Click to expand...

Of course. Science versus myth and blind faith. Would you prefer to go back to the dark age?
 
RGacky3 said:
But People like Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, and of coarse Jurgen Habermas (who wrote a book With Ratzinger on religion), are starting to realize the importance of the Judeo-Christian worldview in the creation and base of enlightenment thinking, everything from human rights, freedom and Democracy, to egalitarianism, universalism and socialism.
Click to expand...

Yes, and the scientists of the Scientific Revolution were also Christians, therefore...

Perhaps a phrase of science and statistics could be of value, "Correlation does not imply causation". Iow, a correlation between two variables does not necessarily imply that one caused the other.

Besides, the Greeks had democracy; Cicero philosophized on natural law, the function of government, and individual rights.
 
Many atheists believe in morality and human rights that has absolutely nothing to do with God or Jesus. If you want to define that kind of view as a "Christian worldview", great. But it's a strange use of the term and not what the term is typically understood to mean.
 
Paleocon said:
The values of the Enlightenment are absolutely antithetical to Christianity.
Click to expand...

... What? How?

Do you konw what the enlightenment values are? (they are not just one thing)
 
29A said:
Yes, and the scientists of the Scientific Revolution were also Christians, therefore...

Perhaps a phrase of science and statistics could be of value, "Correlation does not imply causation". Iow, a correlation between two variables does not necessarily imply that one caused the other.

Besides, the Greeks had democracy; Cicero philosophized on natural law, the function of government, and individual rights.
Click to expand...

The greeks did'nt have Democracy really, they had a Democracy of freemen, there was no notion that all men were created Equal and made With INNATE value.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but if there is a correlation you have to look into it.

Historically it's only been the Judeo-Christian tradition that has lead to the ideas of universality, egalitarianism, the innate value and moral agency of the individual and so on. Those Things are found explicitly in the Judeo-Christian tradition ...

Not in the pagan tradition.

Cicero may have talked about Citizen rights, what goverment could nad could not do, but he would have NEVER said "all men are created Equal" and that society had a duty to "even the least of these" or that human value transcended all national borders and ethnicities and so on.

These philosophers, the 3 I mentioned are amung the MOST respected European thinkers alive, all Marxists, all Atheists ... What do you see that they are missing?
 
the_recruit said:
Many atheists believe in morality and human rights that has absolutely nothing to do with God or Jesus. If you want to define that kind of view as a "Christian worldview", great. But it's a strange use of the term and not what the term is typically understood to mean.
Click to expand...

That's after the fact, i.e. they grow up in a Judeo-Christian society, which created Democracy, individual freedom, and socialist principles, and then they don't believe in God, but they still have the ideals that they grew up With in the society they live in, so they have to try and ground it in something else (generally they don't ground it in anything becuase they can't).

If you want to see what TRUE secularism really looks like, look at the cut-throat capitalism, the oligachy, the plutocracy and tryanny of the powerful that is China. Europe is still living in the after glow of Christianity.

The British Labour Party (when it was actually socialist) was EXPLICITYLY christian, and its leadership was explicityly christian, the same With other Labour parties like the Norwegian.

Now that the British Labour party has become more and more secular since the 80s what has happened? This is just one example of many.

Fundemental worldviews DO matter, and ultimately they do result in societal changes.
 
rathi said:
Religion is whatever society wants it to be. The values it promotes are utterly flexible based on the viewpoints of the time and place. Case in point: if the OP really thought of the concept of hubris as prohibited by his religion , he wouldn't arrogantly try and take sole credit for vast philosophical concepts influenced by many peoples.
Click to expand...

I'm not, I'm saying nothing is done in a vacume, and the fundemental worldview that a society has lays the groundwork for the concepts which spring out of it.
 
RGacky3 said:
I'm not, I'm saying nothing is done in a vacume, and the fundemental worldview that a society has lays the groundwork for the concepts which spring out of it.
Click to expand...

Is there a difference between the Roman empire built by men who believed in Jupiter and the British empire built by men who believed in Jehovah?
 
zyzygy said:
Is there a difference between the Roman empire built by men who believed in Jupiter and the British empire built by men who believed in Jehovah?
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I'd say there is a HUGE difference between the ideology of the Roman Empire and enlightenment ideals.
 
zyzygy said:
Would you prefer to go back to the dark age?
Click to expand...

One cannot go back to where one is now.

RGacky3 said:
... What? How?

Do you konw what the enlightenment values are? (they are not just one thing)
Click to expand...

Secularism, liberalism, rationalism, etc. are all contrary to Christian teaching, unless of course you define Christian teaching as "my personal beliefs".
 
RGacky3 said:
That's after the fact, i.e. they grow up in a Judeo-Christian society, which created Democracy, individual freedom, and socialist principles, and then they don't believe in God, but they still have the ideals that they grew up With in the society they live in, so they have to try and ground it in something else (generally they don't ground it in anything becuase they can't).
Click to expand...

:roll: Just silly blind assertions. Don't tell me that without a belief in God people can't tell that rape, torture, murder etc are bad. That you ought not do those things. Maybe you do, but I don't need a stone tablet written by God to understand that.

In fact, it's impossible that that requires religion because religion is man-made in the first place. Humans came up with those ideals all on their own. Then they incorporated them into a fabrication we today call Christianity. You've got it completely backwards.
 
RGacky3 said:
I'm not, I'm saying nothing is done in a vacume, and the fundemental worldview that a society has lays the groundwork for the concepts which spring out of it.
Click to expand...

I admire your audacity in claiming that Catholic feudalism laid the foundation for egalitarianism.

The truth is that Christianity is flexible, like all religions. It contains many passages of universal brotherhood that appeal to people like yourself. It also has many passages condoning prejudice and authoritarianism that tyrants use as justification. There will always be people who persecute, people who fight for justice and the various religious used to justify their actions.
 
RGacky3 said:
The greeks did'nt have Democracy really, they had a Democracy of freemen, there was no notion that all men were created Equal and made With INNATE value.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but if there is a correlation you have to look into it.

Historically it's only been the Judeo-Christian tradition that has lead to the ideas of universality, egalitarianism, the innate value and moral agency of the individual and so on. Those Things are found explicitly in the Judeo-Christian tradition ...

Not in the pagan tradition.

Cicero may have talked about Citizen rights, what goverment could nad could not do, but he would have NEVER said "all men are created Equal" and that society had a duty to "even the least of these" or that human value transcended all national borders and ethnicities and so on.

These philosophers, the 3 I mentioned are amung the MOST respected European thinkers alive, all Marxists, all Atheists ... What do you see that they are missing?
Click to expand...

A huge amount. Are you familiar with the analytical/continental split within academia?

Paul
 
RGacky3 said:
Not as a metaphysical worldview ... they are still Atheists, they are still Marxists.

But People like Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, and of coarse Jurgen Habermas (who wrote a book With Ratzinger on religion), are starting to realize the importance of the Judeo-Christian worldview in the creation and base of enlightenment thinking, everything from human rights, freedom and Democracy, to egalitarianism, universalism and socialism.

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. - Jurgen Habermas.

I think he's right, Atheists tend to take forgranted the Christian worldview and try and saw off the ladder that they are standing on.

Pagan thought didn't have universal human rights, the Brotherhood of man, the rule of conscience and so on. All the seeds and basis of the enlightenment COME from the Christian worldview.

And now you have the classical enemies of Theism, both Atheists and Marxists, coming around, seeing the state of the west now, With its commodification of everything, the destruction of communal life from the Family, to the neighborhood to the Church, to the post-modern mess the west finds itself in where everything is tolerated other than values Beyond market values, and realizing, the west needs Christianity, the west Needs Jewish Misphat and Christian Agape, otherwise we end up back in a pagan, post-modern, idolatrous age where the market is the only value and where the egotism is the only end.
Click to expand...

The Christian worldview is that without their belief system humans are animals. And as such without that Christian belief system man knows not right from wrong. Christians believe that their system of belief own morality lock, stock, and barrel. Its pathetic and certainly not enlightened.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
The Christian worldview is that without their belief system humans are animals. And as such without that Christian belief system man knows not right from wrong. Christians believe that their system of belief own morality lock, stock, and barrel. Its pathetic and certainly not enlightened.
Click to expand...

Actually, it is worse than that because we have to consider, with the religious, that they are a fantasy's width away from raping, looting and murdering all of us.
 
RGacky3 said:
The greeks did'nt have Democracy really, they had a Democracy of freemen, there was no notion that all men were created Equal and made With INNATE value.
Click to expand...

The same could be said about the early US - that it wasn't a true democracy - since only propertied white males had the right to vote. Jefferson's DOI was the first time, that I know of, where the idea that all men were created equal was proffered, and Jefferson was hardly Christian.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but if there is a correlation you have to look into it.

Historically it's only been the Judeo-Christian tradition that has lead to the ideas of universality, egalitarianism, the innate value and moral agency of the individual and so on. Those Things are found explicitly in the Judeo-Christian tradition ...

Not in the pagan tradition.
Click to expand...

If they are found explicitly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, you'd have no problem referencing them? But they aren't in the Judeo-Christian tradition, rather in the philosophical tradition.

Cicero may have talked about Citizen rights, what goverment could nad could not do, but he would have NEVER said "all men are created Equal" and that society had a duty to "even the least of these" or that human value transcended all national borders and ethnicities and so on.

These philosophers, the 3 I mentioned are amung the MOST respected European thinkers alive, all Marxists, all Atheists ... What do you see that they are missing?
Click to expand...

As I pointed out above, it was Jefferson, a non-Christian, who proposed that all men were created equal. In its soaring language, the DOI was a philosophical tract.

Saying "Judeo-Christian tradition" casts an extremely wide net, for proposals which, imo, would be better described as being within philosophical traditions, because there's no basis for philosophical thought within the Bible. Biblically, the tree of knowledge was the "forbidden fruit".
 
William Rea said:
Actually, it is worse than that because we have to consider, with the religious, that they are a fantasy's width away from raping, looting and murdering all of us.
Click to expand...

Well at least you noticed my point. lol. Philosophically though Christian's assert that they belong to a belief system that depends on the belief in Jesus or they would be monsters. It is a very dangerous philosophy that leads to the belief that everyone except true Christians are monsters, and that Christians are also monsters but their belief in a man named Jesus stops them from showing the monster instead of having the personal integrity to do so. It is a weakness of all Christian's and the very root of why Christianity is a harmful belief system since the same philosophy makes for a powerful political authoritarian system.

Trying to assert that morality is a belief system based on what god you believe in is about as primitive as one can get. Morality is a evolutionary tool to preserve the species. Its called empathy.
040219_scyimst_empathy_hlrg.jpg
 
the_recruit said:
:roll: Just silly blind assertions. Don't tell me that without a belief in God people can't tell that rape, torture, murder etc are bad. That you ought not do those things. Maybe you do, but I don't need a stone tablet written by God to understand that.

In fact, it's impossible that that requires religion because religion is man-made in the first place. Humans came up with those ideals all on their own. Then they incorporated them into a fabrication we today call Christianity. You've got it completely backwards.
Click to expand...

First ofall I didn't say that no one thought rape, murder and so on were bad before Christianity ... please og back and re-read the OP.

Second, No, Christniaty created teh Foundation for englightenment values.
 
rathi said:
I admire your audacity in claiming that Catholic feudalism laid the foundation for egalitarianism.

The truth is that Christianity is flexible, like all religions. It contains many passages of universal brotherhood that appeal to people like yourself. It also has many passages condoning prejudice and authoritarianism that tyrants use as justification. There will always be people who persecute, people who fight for justice and the various religious used to justify their actions.
Click to expand...

Feudalism was an improvement from slave societies, and out of Feudalism came the enlightenment, but it wasn't feudalism, it was Christian ideals.

THe point isn't just the passages, it's teh Whole CHristian worldview.
 
gunner said:
A huge amount. Are you familiar with the analytical/continental split within academia?

Paul
Click to expand...

Yes I am, and the philosophers I'm talking about are Continental philosophers, I think that is significant since they are more focused on Critical theory and sociology and so on than analytical philosophy (which very often tries to mascarade their philosophy as a hard science, which it isn't).
 
FreedomFromAll said:
The Christian worldview is that without their belief system humans are animals. And as such without that Christian belief system man knows not right from wrong. Christians believe that their system of belief own morality lock, stock, and barrel. Its pathetic and certainly not enlightened.
Click to expand...

YOu haven't really addresssed the OP at all.
 
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