Perhaps others views about ourselves are the most revealing.

This comment made to Journalist David Aikman in 2002 by a professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to a group of American visitors about his years of study in the West:

"One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West over all the world. We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. The moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about this."

It is a crying shame that more secularists don't acknolwedge this truth.

Jim Wallace,

You hold up capitalism as if it's not some avaricious, insatiable and unsustainable system upon which the more fortunate among the world's population overindulge themselves at the expense of the planet.

Somehow, I don't think it's what Jesus had in mind at all.

If Christianity is not so influential on our culutre, perhaps Leslie would like to explain that to Melbourne literary critic Peter Craven,, who when asked yesterday to comment on the popularity of the a new print of the 400-year-old King James Version of the bible said it: "was rivalled only by Shakespeare for its influence on the English language". Language - a rather important aspect of culture!

Sorry to let fact ruin a good beat up again.

I don't doubt that the "christians" who invaded Greece long ago had a profound influence on our culture now.

Did "christianity" endorse democracy, organised medicine, the university, free speech and free enguiry, religious tolerance, and many other pillars of our and other somewhat enduring civilisations? when these ideas were new?

Or did "the church" only take them on when others had shown them to be indispensibly good, and a reason to leave if the church did not.

The expediential conflation of christianity with all things good, when so many of the biggest and most important of these were developed by others is odd, if not downright dishonest. Good marketing to adopt the good ideas of others, of course, but not admirable to claim them as your own.

Other organising institutions could have adopted the same ideas.

Ray Kroc whitewashes his own actions in the early history of McDonalds, I am not obliged to accept his version of events.

Similarly, "christianity" has held a preeminent position in our history, having exerted the greatest of chicanery, violence, intolerance, vile torture and standover tactics, propaganda and conditioning to achieve it. I think the strong influence of "the church" owes a lot more to the malevolent intolerance of it's zealots than to it's unique contribution to our culture.

Smallpox, bubonic plague, malaria and measles *also* had a large role in our political, military, cultural and economic history. I would not weep if these too disappeared without trace.

Rusty

Yes Leslie, I want Australia to have more public holidays, like Singapore: lets all have days off work for Deepvali, the birthday of the Buddha, the end of Ramadan, and the "Sweeping of the tombs" day, as well as for Easter and Christmas: it doesn't do Singapore's economy any harm.
The "Christian" values Australia was founded on: snobbery (Rum corps giving themselves the biggest land grants and trying to set themselves up as a colonial upper class); warfare and racism against Aboriginal people and later Chinese (Lambing Flat); sectarianism and prejudice, with Anglicans trying to set themselves up as a state religion to discriminate against Catholics and non-conformists.
Today Australia has a better more tolerant society due to people like the colonial Governors Bourke (who gave Catholics and non-conformists, not just Anglicans, money to build churches), and Macquarie, who favoured emancipists for land grants, and the emancipist Dr. Redfern of Campbelltown, who travelled to England to successfully appeal direct to the Colonial authorities to alter discriminatory colonial laws preventing emancipists from receiving large land grants.
While church missions may have done good work protecting Aboriginal people from slaughter, many missions also tried to destroy Aboriginal culture and languages; and church opposition to a secular public education system prevented Governor Bourke from setting one up in the 1830s (we had to wait till the 1860s).

mcreal quote""Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"

i thought it was
'not cast the first stone'
[no death honours god..the only life-giver]

for me the biggest guide to being xtian is letting the tares and wheat grow in peace[till harvest]..till death...

ie not casting slurs
not judging others that we be not judged
by the same hurtfull measure....

[jesus tried to love others
i think any xtian that dosnt at least try
to love others..is fooling only themself..certainly not doing as we saw him doing..[ie doing that [love]..he saw our father do]

thanks for the link
''Interestingly,this phrase is missing from the earliest Bibles discovered so far:'codex Sinaiticus' and 'codex Vaticanus'""

its hard to get to what jesus actually said
but it seems so much has been corrupted
most obviously a judgmental good [god..with grace and mercy]

yet read the fear..throughout the whole text's..
[god is love..live with it]..know thy masters voice[is love]

we must get to know our personal saving
[the good still loving voice of god/within..]

that voice that says forgive them they know not what they do
nor what they say...

[know we are eternal spirits...cast down from heaven..]
that from heaven we come..and to heaven we ALL return..[eventually]

we are eternal spirit
having..[serving out] a life sentance
sentanance[em-body]..mortal flesh..but spirit we are
and to spirit we shall return

let it be done on earth as in heaven
not drag heaven down to earth

earth is for those too good to live in hell
but not good enough yet..to dwell in heaven

the key is atonement..[at one meant]

emmanuel..[god with in us all]
that we do to the least
we did..to god