Category: Religion, Myth, and Theology

https://quillette.com/2018/08/23/progress-and-polytheism-could-an-ethical-west-exist-without-christianity/READ THIS ARTICLE ON QUILETTE : THE WEST WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY

https://quillette.com/2018/08/23/progress-and-polytheism-could-an-ethical-west-exist-without-christianity/

Ben,

Well done. I work on this problem and have for many years, and you’ve touched on the major points except for three:

1 – that each civilization is formed by it’s customary law, and its religions evolve to justify that law. And despite her attempts the church was never strong enough to other than influence customary law in europe. European customary law is thousands of years old, and originated the primacy of sovereignty, and the responsibility of speaking the truth regardless of it’s impact on the dominance (competence) hierarchy.

2 – That what we call ‘ethical advancement’ is merely ‘affordability due to the agrarian, industrial, and monetary revolutions. Civilizations have the ‘tolerances’ that they can afford. We can afford tolerances because they are no longer harmful, not because we are virtuous.

3 – That our dear friend Dr Pinker’s observation that violence has declined does not account for the shift from violence to theft to fraud to proceduralization and financialization. In other words, we are subject to equally great harm as in the past, it is just conducted indirectly. The reason this is invisible is that economics has replaced morality in law, and economics cherry picks consumption rather than the suite of changes in all forms of human capital. In other words, economists run on an income statement, while societies used to run on balance sheets. They were right and we are wrong.Updated Aug 23, 2018, 9:54 PM