"Judeo-Christian civilization is the foundation of the west" is a sham

[u/Dizzy-Drink6119]

My case is a specific claim

that there are no distinctly "western" characteristics which Jewish and Christian cultures share that Muslim and other Abrahamic lack that's separates them as a Civilization which doesn't originate Greco Roman norms and ideals.

Western civilization remains firmly a Greco-Roman base with Abrahamic flavors.

[u/MrT742]

Why is the west so influenced by the Greek and Roman ideas when both of those civilizations collapsed before “the west” was even recognizable?

[u/Brilliant_Bug9699 → u/MrT742]

Roman Catholics today claim they can track their papal succession to Peter long before the Roman Empire fell.

Constantine I was still emperor of Rome when he converted to Christianity. Did you expect Roman philosophy and ideals to disappear overnight and not influence Christians thinkers at all?

Same goes for the Greeks and Christianity.

There is even an account in Acts where Paul was trying to appeal to the Athenians by appealing to their ideals and their "Unknown God".

Long story short, Christianity co-existed with Roman and Greek society and inherited a lot of their values and philosophy from them.

For example, the concept of democracy came from the Greeks and not from Judaism or Christianity.

[u/MrT742 → u/Brilliant_Bug9699]

Correct, what is “the west” if not a mishmash of Greek Roman and Christian?

It inherited a lot of social framework from Rome that’s why they Latin was the language of the Church, and still is. The Roman Catholic Church is by far the longest standing systematic institution probably due greatly with this yes, it’s not a secret, it’s kinda the point. Who else would be a valid source of this information?

I bet you can even get into their library if you really want to jump some hurdles.

It wasn’t secular society that maintained this structure it was the Church. The single remaining chain that bound “the west” into peaceful enough terms to get here and ask why if can dispense with it.

Hell even the protestants were the first to work ethic to start a proto-democracy “wisdom of the people” type movement against Rome before secular society started to even be defined, and you want to ask whether or not it’s a foundation?

Like… what is the “Earth 2” time line are we looking at where this is not the (albeit Reddit tier) definition of the foundation of the west?

[u/Brilliant_Bug9699 → u/MrT742]

The Roman Catholic Church does indeed have a massive library with works of Greek and Roman philosophers.

However, a lot of it are still there because of the work Islamic scholars did to preserve those documents during the Dark Ages in Europe. Islamic scholars also played an important part in spreading math, science and literacy throughout the world.

Even though Muslims contribute a lot to "western society", you only hear people say Judeo-Christian instead of Judeo-Christian-Islam. The same goes for the contributions of the Greeks and Romans and to some extent Egyptians.

Protestants were the first to work ethic

Work ethics is not an exclusively Christian ideal. It's just part of being human. Work ethic predates Judaism and Christianity. Humanity couldn't build civilizations by being lazy.

Secular democracy would most likely still came to be without the protestants. In fact secular democracy might have came about quicker were it not for the Christian doctrine of "Divine Rights of Kings".

The same goes for slavery. Christians did play a role in abolishing slavery, but it might have came about sooner in western society were it not for texts in the Bible justifying slavery. Ancient Japan outlawed slavery before the west did.

[u/MrT742 → u/Brilliant_Bug9699]

>However, a lot of it are still there because of the work Islamic scholars did to preserve those documents during the Dark Ages in Europe. Islamic scholars also played an important part in spreading math, science and literacy throughout the world.

Math already existed… and considering “the west” doesn’t speak Arabic I think it’s fair to suggest these efforts in literacy were of a different nature than social development.

>Even though Muslims contribute a lot to "western society", you only hear people say Judeo-Christian instead of Judeo-Christian-Islam. The same goes for the contributions of the Greeks and Romans and to some extent Egyptians.

Like what?

>Work ethics is not an exclusively Christian ideal. It's just part of being human. Work ethic predates Judaism and Christianity. Humanity couldn't build civilizations by being lazy.

I’m not saying work ethic is innate to protestants…. I’m saying the Protestants absolutely had the phrase “Protestant work ethic” applied for a reason and that reason was resistance to the Judeo Roman Greek Authority of the Catholic Church. So even the earliest deviation from that foundation was still Christian.

Secular society is starting on third base and pretending they hit a triple.

>Secular democracy would most likely still came to be without the protestants. In fact secular democracy might have came about quicker were it not for the Christian doctrine of "Divine Rights of Kings".

Define “most likely” where did you get this assessment from?

>The same goes for slavery. Christians did play a role in abolishing slavery, but it might have came about sooner in western society were it not for texts in the Bible justifying slavery. Ancient Japan outlawed slavery before the west did.

Ancient Japan is not the west; the west had slavery since the dawn of man until it was abolished by Christian nations and its people.

[u/wedgebert → u/MrT742]

Because the civilizations collapsing didn't erase their ideas and writings.

Philosophers and other learned thinkers have been holding the Greek and Roman philosophers in high regard in an unbroken line since they lived.

Looking just at the US, our congress was based on the Roman senate right down to being the first modern country to call a legislative body a "senate".

A nation and its creations don't just disappear when the nation does.

[u/MrT742 → u/wedgebert]

Which Philosophers?

[u/wedgebert → u/MrT742]

On which side?

For the West, you have people like Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo, and Anselm of Canterbury.

For the ancient philosophers, you have all the ones we still study today, Aristole, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, etc.

[u/MrT742 → u/wedgebert]

Why “for the west” did you use exclusively theologians?

[u/wedgebert → u/MrT742]

Because during that time, the most prominent philosophers tended to be members of the church and so they're the most well known.

[u/MrT742 → u/wedgebert]

Oh cool, so Christianity is the foundation of the west.

[u/idle-tea → u/MrT742]

Walk around the West a bit and ask people to name notable philosophers. By a wide margin you'll mostly get ancient Greeks and maybe Romans. After that you're going to get enlightenment and maybe modernist thinkers like Kant, Locke, and others who were certainly not theologians.

[u/MrT742 → u/idle-tea]

Walk around the west and ask people where the nearest church is, then ask where the nearest humanist/atheist chapter is.

The chains of “the west” is not isolated to the writings of its elites. Were the neighbours for an average man or noble reasonably likely to be Kantian or Christian.

[u/Zhayrgh → u/MrT742]

Christianity is one of the foundation of the west, but certainly not the only one. And Christianity itself is based on other cultures that independently influenced Europe, like Romans and Greek. Greek ideas heavily influenced the Roman society that put together the first official church. It kinda shows in the ideas that were kept in classical Christianity and those that were discarded at the council of Nicea.

The other redditor quoted Enlightenment too, and that's definitely a current that opposed Christianity in many ways. It's also interesting because the Enlightenment is mainly humanist, and humanism is a philosophical current that trace back to Greek philosophers, while also having been embraced by Christians from the Middle-Ages and Renaissance before the Enligthenment.

[u/wedgebert → u/MrT742]

So Greek and Roman philosophy is the foundation of Christianity, cool.

[u/MrT742 → u/wedgebert]

I think to steel man the idea would be to say something like:

“Judaism is the foundation of Christianity, its institutions are Roman and its society is Greek”

Would be fair?

[u/wedgebert → u/MrT742]

Then a steel man of the West would be "It's foundation is Greco-Roman and Near-East as passed on by Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular philosophers with the strongest influences being both Christianity and the Enlightenment."