Theme: Civilization

–“”Western Civilization,” which is a term of art invented by….”–

That’s just false.

The historian Herodotus (l. c. 484-425/413 BCE) famously made the distinction between ‘civilized’ Greeks and ‘barbarous’ non-Greeks in his Histories. And Aristotle would be considered a white supremacist by any and every measure.

The word ‘civilization’ was first used in eighteenth-century France, but the Western idea of a civilized society dates back to ancient Greece and Rome.

The middle east (“Orient”) referred to the West as the West back, I don’t recall, but certainly in antiquity. The word “west” in west indo european languages originated in pre-history as nighttime, and east for daytime, to reflect the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

It is impossible to defend Christianity on any grounds other than giving the underclasses a means of obtaining status in Aristocratic Western civilization and thereby rising above the status of domesticated animals.

Rome was evolving in the same direction (as were all religions at the time of the roman empire, about 800 years (~one civilizational cycle), from recovery from the bronze age collapse. In other words, it takes 800 years to cook a philosopher for reasons we are just beginning to understand.

Good luck comparing any Christian to Aurelius. Any theologian to the Greeks, or the post-Christian ‘natural philosophers’.

There is nothing good in Christianity that was not good in pre-Christian Europe, other than integrating peasants into society. And that was, truly, a wonderous ambition. But unfortunately, it came at the cost of superstition and the very sophisticated means of Abrahamic deceit. And it is Abrahamic deceit that causes Christians, Muslims and Jews, as much or more as other faiths, to engage in excuse-making and lying to preserve their superstition.

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