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Why is this piece of trivially debunkable Christian propaganda here? First of all, any moderately educated person in Western history makes the connections betw

Why is this piece of trivially debunkable Christian propaganda here? First of all, any moderately educated person in Western history makes the connections between contemporary thinking and Christianity inasmuch as it was the dominant religion in the West. That is neither novel nor particularly contentious. The extrapolation to the idea of human rights is... iffy. First of all because there are _quite a few_ systems of philosophy and religion that encode it as much if not more. I can think of Jainism and many Buddhist schools that were much close to modern human rights thinking 2000 years ago than mainstream Christianity was 150 years ago. The rest, just... it sounds like the author hasn't grasped enough of the fundamentals in exactly how Enlightenment thought makes a very clean, deliberate break from Christian thought of its time. Religious systems of thinking are so broad, so inconsistent, so encompassing and so ambiguous that you can make up whatever connection you wish to nudge it towards modern Human Rights. But then again there are equally compelling narratives from practically any religion. You could link it to slavery, the Holocaust, the Industrial Revolution or anything just by linking ideas together. You're going to need a much stronger, direct, causal relation and a comparative study that shows better than this rambling.

dang 6y ago
Please don't go straight into religious flamewar. We're trying to avoid that here, and jumping immediately into it doesn't really sit with that. An article being somehow provocative isn't license to flame. If you can't respond in a spirit of curious conversation, there are other threads where that may be easier. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Daishiman 6y ago
  A curious conversation would come if the author made an argument with more substance. This doesn't have the merit to any response besides the ones that point out how incredibly flawed the original argument is. It's hard to assume an intention of honest debate.
  - dang 6y ago
    None of that makes it ok to break the site guidelines. Bad articles don't excuse bad comments. From a quick look at the article, I don't think you're doing it justice—and from what little I know of Holland, he's a serious writer on this topic. However, that's all beside the point. Even if the article is as bad and provocative as you say, it's not ok to fulminate about it on HN. Rather, the thing to do is (a) not post about that, and (optionally) (b) find a different thread to post to, one where you can do so in a curious spirit. Curious conversation happens when commenters are in a curious state. If you're not in a curious state, you shouldn't be posting. Denunciatory rhetoric is not what we want here. You were hardly the only offender in this thread, which is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen on HN in quite a while.
    - Daishiman 6y ago
      If you see multiple "offenders" in the same thread, it's because the implicit critique is pointed at the same place in the folly of the author's main point, which is ironically due to the lack of curiosity of the research behind the ideas of the Enlightenment. I have found it to be a fairly common issue among defenders of certain faiths where they take a popular philosophical stance that was delevoped through Enlightenment thinking or other philosophical countercurrents and ascribe a religious source. You're not gonna find a lot of fans for honestly discussing this as a worthy point because it is simply ahistorical and goes counter to the principles of the very same authors of said ideas. It's really doesn't take much research to debunk this.
      - dang 6y ago
        If you want to make a case about something being "ahistorical", you should post thoughtful, substantive, informative comments, not flamewar rants. That would have the nice side effect of making this place better instead of worse. > If you see multiple "offenders" in the same thread This is the internet; that's the default. We're trying for something other than internet default here. That takes energy—we have to spend energy asking commenters to do better, and commenters have to spend energy doing better and resisting their default instincts. Please do better.

dang 6y ago

Please don't go straight into religious flamewar. We're trying to avoid that here, and jumping immediately into it doesn't really sit with that. An article being somehow provocative isn't license to flame. If you can't respond in a spirit of curious conversation, there are other threads where that may be easier. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Daishiman 6y ago
A curious conversation would come if the author made an argument with more substance. This doesn't have the merit to any response besides the ones that point out how incredibly flawed the original argument is. It's hard to assume an intention of honest debate.
- dang 6y ago
  None of that makes it ok to break the site guidelines. Bad articles don't excuse bad comments. From a quick look at the article, I don't think you're doing it justice—and from what little I know of Holland, he's a serious writer on this topic. However, that's all beside the point. Even if the article is as bad and provocative as you say, it's not ok to fulminate about it on HN. Rather, the thing to do is (a) not post about that, and (optionally) (b) find a different thread to post to, one where you can do so in a curious spirit. Curious conversation happens when commenters are in a curious state. If you're not in a curious state, you shouldn't be posting. Denunciatory rhetoric is not what we want here. You were hardly the only offender in this thread, which is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen on HN in quite a while.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    If you see multiple "offenders" in the same thread, it's because the implicit critique is pointed at the same place in the folly of the author's main point, which is ironically due to the lack of curiosity of the research behind the ideas of the Enlightenment. I have found it to be a fairly common issue among defenders of certain faiths where they take a popular philosophical stance that was delevoped through Enlightenment thinking or other philosophical countercurrents and ascribe a religious source. You're not gonna find a lot of fans for honestly discussing this as a worthy point because it is simply ahistorical and goes counter to the principles of the very same authors of said ideas. It's really doesn't take much research to debunk this.
    - dang 6y ago
      If you want to make a case about something being "ahistorical", you should post thoughtful, substantive, informative comments, not flamewar rants. That would have the nice side effect of making this place better instead of worse. > If you see multiple "offenders" in the same thread This is the internet; that's the default. We're trying for something other than internet default here. That takes energy—we have to spend energy asking commenters to do better, and commenters have to spend energy doing better and resisting their default instincts. Please do better.