Dear Jay of Melbourne,

Western civilisation is a late comer to the civilised world. As far as we know the earliest civilisation was in what is now called Iraq. Other early civilisations were in Egypt, China and the Indus valley in what is now called Pakistan. John Keane in "The Life and Death of Democracy" places the beginnings of democracy in Asia where there is an ancient tradition of settling matters by bringing them up in discussion in assemblies generally open to the adult male population of the area. Greek democracy came later.

John Hobson in "The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation" regards western civilisation as an offshoot of developments in Africa and Asia. For example the Chinese had the seed drill 2,200 years before it got to Sicily, printing with movable type in Korea 400 years before Gutenberg, blast furnaces in China 1,700 years before they were in Europe etc.

Before the nineteenth century Europe acknowledged that debt. However, in the nineteenth century Weber, a capitalist historian, and Marx, an anti-capitalist historian, denied the debt to Asia and Africa and saw the east as characterised by 'oriental despotism.' I definitely was not restricting my comment on civilisation to western civilisation.

I believe Gandhi thought western civilisation was a good idea which he recommended trying.

Dear csteele,

You wrote: "Yet Jesus called on the slave to respect his master and the Old Testament God instructed Moses to enslave entire peoples."

The above is true. The Bible nowhere in either testament condemns slavery.

A few years ago I visited Delphi in Greece which was a shrine several hundred years before the invention of Christianity. There were many inscriptions placed there by people who wanted to be remembered for their good deeds. Many of the inscriptions were by those ancient Greeks who wanted to be remembered for freeing their slaves. Although slavery was a recognised institution in classical Greece there were apparently many who thought it a bad thing. Those Greeks were better examplars of human rights than either Moses or Jesus.

David F,
Thanks for detailing your personally constructed version of history, like it or hate it there's only one authentic civilisation in existence at present so we need to fix our gaze firmly on the present, you didn't answer my question on tolerance.
Claiming to respect another's right to hold views which you yourself find unpalatable yet reserving the right to critique those opinions forces the critic into generalisations and abstraction which are as corrosive to the concept of liberty as any direct confrontation.
Nobody takes Voltaire literally,the Jacobins certainly didn't, tolerance is for chumps, if you want to be tolerant become a Mennonite or a Jain.

Dear David f,

I can respect convictions that go counter to mine, of course not all. So here we differ, although this might be caused by the many connotations the word “respect” has (one of them is ‘admire’, which I certainly did not have in mind). Also, when you say “I do not expect you to respect all of my ideas, and I will not respect all of your ideas” I can only reciprocate to a point: I respect not only you as a person, but also your opinions, (or convictions) insofar as I find them insightful, which does not imply I have to share them. To respect somebody’s opinion or belief does not imply you can identify with it. Well, I think I am repeating myself.

However, all that was not the point here. The question was, whether one can respect (or require others to respect) BOTH alternatives of this particular conviction, about lending “a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth.” I take it that your answer is NO. Both as an individual and society (which, in my opinion, could then hardly be called open).

As far as the question of whether belief in God and afterlife had a more positive or more negative moral impact on human actions throughout history, there are many facts that point one way and many which point the other way. Neither that was the original question. It is a different Pandora’s box that I certainly did not want to reopen here. (Though others perhaps do, and I will try to follow the arguments from both sides as I usually do.)

Dear George,

You wrote: "I take it that your answer isle NO. Both as an individual and society (which, in my opinion, could then hardly be called open)."

I wrote only as an individual. I cannot speak and do not wish to speak for society. Society is not an individual. As long as there are some ideas that are considered unacceptable society is not completely open. However, if all ideas are considered acceptable the idea is acceptable that dissenters can be silenced. With that idea we cannot have an open society. We can maximise the degree of openness by exhibiting tolerance toward all ideas with the hope that the those with unacceptable ideas will not be too numerous. There is the risk that those with ideas opposed to an open society will seize control. There is the certainty that banning those with certain ideas will cause us to lose the openness we have. We cannot have a completely open society. We can only try to maximise the degree of openness. All ideas must be allowed expression. However, all acts proceeding from those ideas are not acceptable. What acts are considered acceptable varies with the society.

We are awash on a sea of uncertainty.

Jay,

David has consistently shown his diabolical hatred for Christianity. Talk about biting the hand that feeds him for he having grown up in a majority Christian country and then migrates to another of the same.

I think his preferred religion is Hinduism as I'm pretty sure he once stated. India, a country which has institutionalised discrimination and about 5 different caste systems which includes the Untouchables. Not that I dislike Hinduism. I've travelled there. There are good and bad elements.

I think David is one mixed up man. He has a fundamentalist way of thinking, ie. taking everything literally as he continually quotes from the Old Testament for eg., not the New Testament.