Is Christianity responsible for equality and liberty?

Why so testy you old lib from the beautiful town of Ludington?

I can also attest to controlling my behavior by using REASON...unlike some libs who evidently are incapable of reason. So, they invariably behave like animals...they act on their instincts and insatiable desires rather then their God given abilities to REASON.

Very ironic yes? Since many libs do not believe in God, God has relieved them of their ability to REASON.

That is entirely reasonable.

Actually, it's totally devoid of reason and based entirely on emotion.

"Libs", meaning, according to your definition, people who favor powerful government over individual liberty, "invariably behave like animals", "act on instincts rather than reason", and "do not believe in god."

In the unlikely event you can come up with a shred of fact to back up that totally unsupportable and absurd opinion, then do so.

Otherwise, it will have to be categorized as the rantings of unreason and illogic, much as you have accused the "libs" of doing.
 
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Actually, it's totally devoid of reason and based entirely on emotion.

"Libs", meaning, according to your definition, people who favor powerful government over individual liberty, "invariably behave like animals", "act on instincts rather than reason", and "do not believe in god."

In the unlikely event you can come up with a shred of fact to back up that totally unsupportable and absurd opinion, then do so.

Otherwise, it will have to be categorized as the rantings of unreason and illogic, much as you have accused the "libs" of doing.

Well I was a bit facetious and playing off the old fart from Ludington's illogical post. But for YOU, I am always up for a good debate...

First - it is a fact "many libs do not believe in God." Here check this out:
The Faith Alignments of Liberals and Conservatives

Most liberals, as well as conservatives, consider themselves to be Christian. However, the proportion of adults in each group who embrace that identity differs significantly: 94% of conservatives call themselves Christians, while just 74% of liberals do so.

There were other distinctions regarding the faith groups with which these ideological opposites were aligned. For instance:

* 2% of conservatives and 11% of liberals were atheist or agnostic
* 15% of conservatives and 2% of liberals were Christian evangelicals
* conservatives were twice as likely as liberals to be categorized as born again, based on their theological views about salvation (63% vs. 32%)
* 21% of conservatives were associated with the Catholic church, compared to 30% among the liberals.
http://www.barna.org/barna-update/a...-and-conservatives-differ-on-matters-of-faith

Second, the comment about libs behaving like animals was a response to Ludington boy's comment that people would kill and rape if government did not punish them for these acts. Sort of like an animal. Right? Apparently he believes people act only on instincts and do not reason.

Are we cool now?
 
Why so testy you old lib from the beautiful town of Ludington?
I am not a "lib".
My "Conservative" beliefs:
1)Schools should abandon the current ineffective approach to teaching, and return to the "Three R's", and memorization.
2) School children should be required to dress in uniforms.
3) School children should be required to stand a attention when addressing a teacher.
4) School children should be required to march in silence between classes.
4-a) School children who do not obey the above should be struck with vigor upon the behind 5 strokes with a leather belt.
4-b) School children may not own or drive a car to school, they must walk, ride public transportation or school buses.
5) The first non-violent offense for those under twenty-five years of age should be 12 hours locked in a pillory under public display.
6) All capitol offenses must have DNA evidence and execution should take place with 30 days with the only form of execution be a public hanging (not just witnesses representing the public).
7) All persons over the age of majority (21 in all instances) have the right to carry any small arm of their choice either concealed or in the open.


My Liberal beliefs:

1) Collective Bargaining.
2) Economic controls on business and industry.
3) Universal health care (not to be confused with universal health insurance).
4) It is unlikely that a god exists, and most assuredly organized religions would not likely represent the nature of god if he/she/it did exist.

Therefore, I am a Conservative/Liberal, or a Liberal/Conservative. So, stop generalizing and calling me a "lib".
 
Are we cool now?

We've always been cool.

So, the above absurd statements were meant as satire, and based on your tendency to categorize everyone as a liberal or a conservative.

Meaning, according to your definition, people who favor strong central government vs individual liberties.

Which, as I've said before, is an overly simplistic and inaccurate model of the political views of most people. See Darermit's response to your post as an example.
 
Here's an article entitled:Christianity responsible for equality and liberty
By: DINESH D'SOUZA. What do you think?

Christianity is largely responsible for many of the principles and institutions that even secular people cherish -- chief among them equality and liberty.

In recent years there has arisen a new atheism that represents a direct attack on Western Christianity. Books such as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, and Sam Harris' The End of Faith, all contend that Western society would be better off if we could eradicate from it the last vestiges of Christianity. But Christianity is largely responsible for many of the principles and institutions that even secular people cherish -- chief among them equality and liberty.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," he called the proposition "self-evident." But he did not mean that it is immediately evident. It requires a certain kind of learning. And indeed most cultures throughout history, and even today, reject the proposition. At first glance, there is admittedly something absurd about the claim of human equality, when all around us we see dramatic evidence of inequality. People are unequal in height, in weight, in strength, in stamina, in intelligence, in perseverance, in truthfulness, and in about every other quality.

But of course Jefferson knew this. He was asserting human equality of a special kind. Human beings, he was saying, are moral equals, each of whom possesses certain equal rights. They differ in many respects, but each of their lives has a moral worth no greater and no less than that of any other. According to this doctrine, the rights of a Philadelphia street sweeper are the same as those of Jefferson himself.

This idea of the preciousness and equal worth of every human being is largely rooted in Christianity. Christians believe that God places infinite value on every human life. Christian salvation does not attach itself to a person's family or tribe or city. It is an individual matter. And not only are Christians judged at the end of their lives as individuals, but throughout their lives they relate to God on that basis. This aspect of Christianity had momentous consequences.

Though the American founders were inspired by the examples of Greece and Rome, they also saw limitations in those examples. Alexander Hamilton wrote that it would be "as ridiculous to seek for [political] models in the simple ages of Greece and Rome as it would be to go in quest of them among the Hottentots and Laplanders." In The Federalist Papers, we read at one point that the classical idea of liberty decreed "to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next ... ."

And elsewhere: "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." While the ancients had direct democracy that was susceptible to the unjust passions of the mob and supported by large-scale slavery, we today have representative democracy, with full citizenship and the franchise extended in principle to all. Let us try to understand how this great change came about.


A New Morality

In ancient Greece and Rome, individual human life had no particular value in and of itself. The Spartans left weak children to die on the hillside. Infanticide was common, as it is common even today in many parts of the world. Fathers who wanted sons had few qualms about drowning their newborn daughters. Human beings were routinely bludgeoned to death or mauled by wild animals in the Roman gladiatorial arena. Many of the great classical thinkers saw nothing wrong with these practices. Christianity, on the other hand, contributed to their demise by fostering moral outrage at the mistreatment of innocent human life.

Likewise, women had a very low status in ancient Greece and Rome, as they do today in many cultures, notably in the Muslim world. Such views are common in patriarchal cultures. And they were prevalent as well in the Jewish society in which Jesus lived. But Jesus broke the traditional taboos of his time when he scandalously permitted women of low social status to travel with him and be part of his circle of friends and confidantes.

Christianity did not immediately and directly contest patriarchy, but it helped to elevate the status of women in society.The Christian prohibition of adultery, a sin it viewed as equally serious for men and women, and rules concerning divorce that (unlike in Judaism and Islam) treated men and women equally, helped to improve the social status of women.

Indeed so dignified was the position of the woman in Christian marriage that women predominated in the early Christian church, and the pagan Romans scorned Christianity as a religion for women.

Then there is slavery, a favorite topic for the new atheist writers. "Consult the Bible," Sam Harris writes in Letter to a Christian Nation, "and you will discover that the creator of the universe clearly expects us to keep slaves." Steven Weinberg notes that "Christianity ... lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries." Nor are they the first to fault Christianity for its alleged approval of slavery.

But we must remember that slavery pre-dated Christianity by centuries and even millennia. It was widely practiced in the ancient world, from China and India to Greece and Rome. Most cultures regarded it as an indispensable institution, like the family. Sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted that for centuries, slavery needed no defenders because it had no critics.

But Christianity, from its very beginning, discouraged the enslavement of fellow Christians. We read in one of Paul's letters that Paul himself interceded with a master named Philemon on behalf of his runaway slave, and encouraged Philemon to think of his slave as a brother instead. Confronted with the question of how a slave can also be a brother, Christians began to regard slavery as indefensible.

As a result, slavery withered throughout medieval Christendom and was eventually replaced by serfdom. While slaves were "human tools," serfs had rights of marriage, contract, and property ownership that were legally enforceable. And of course serfdom itself would eventually collapse under the weight of the argument for human dignity.

Moreover, politically active Christians were at the forefront of the modern anti-slavery movement. In England, William Wilberforce spearheaded a campaign that began with almost no support and was driven entirely by his Christian convictions -- a story powerfully told in the recent film Amazing Grace. Eventually Wilberforce triumphed, and in 1833 slavery was outlawed in Britain. Pressed by religious groups at home, England then took the lead in repressing the slave trade abroad.

LINK
This was the thought of the American Founders too.

The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics​

by Kody W. Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer

But long ago this was substantiated by Donald S Lutz. I can only proved one sample from his vast research

"Following an extensive survey of American political literature from 1760 to 1805, political scientist Donald S. Lutz reported that the Bible was cited more frequently than any European writer or even any European school of thought, such as Enlightenment liberalism or republicanism. The Bible, he reported, accounted for approximately one-third of the citations in the literature he surveyed. The book of Deuteronomy alone is the most frequently cited work, followed by Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In fact, Deuteronomy is referenced nearly twice as often as Locke’s writings, and the Apostle Paul is mentioned about as frequently as Montesquieu."
 
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I am not a "lib".
My "Conservative" beliefs:
1)Schools should abandon the current ineffective approach to teaching, and return to the "Three R's", and memorization.
2) School children should be required to dress in uniforms.
3) School children should be required to stand a attention when addressing a teacher.
4) School children should be required to march in silence between classes.
4-a) School children who do not obey the above should be struck with vigor upon the behind 5 strokes with a leather belt.
4-b) School children may not own or drive a car to school, they must walk, ride public transportation or school buses.
5) The first non-violent offense for those under twenty-five years of age should be 12 hours locked in a pillory under public display.
6) All capitol offenses must have DNA evidence and execution should take place with 30 days with the only form of execution be a public hanging (not just witnesses representing the public).
7) All persons over the age of majority (21 in all instances) have the right to carry any small arm of their choice either concealed or in the open.


My Liberal beliefs:

1) Collective Bargaining.
2) Economic controls on business and industry.
3) Universal health care (not to be confused with universal health insurance).
4) It is unlikely that a god exists, and most assuredly organized religions would not likely represent the nature of god if he/she/it did exist.

Therefore, I am a Conservative/Liberal, or a Liberal/Conservative. So, stop generalizing and calling me a "lib".
You are completely a lib, Anyone who would not have a definite opinion on God and admits it but leaves it at that is trivial if nothing else. So you can't claim to be a heavyweight thinker.

If you are crowing about serving two masters, know that you can't. And you are illogical to confuse ends and means.
Conservatism is based on ends. and the disputes of LIberals and Conservatives, where they are valid, are about the means to ends.
You can have a mixture of views on means, that is something common to almost the whole political spectrum

But you are hardly an American if you sideline religion

In his Farewell Address of September 1796, Washington called religion, as the source of morality, "a necessary spring of popular government," while Adams claimed that statesmen "may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand."

To say that you disagree with our Founders is to say you are not liberal or conservative but anti-American. How can it be otherwise

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
 
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