Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyBGood
From a western judeo-christian perspective an easy way of looking at it would be to consider the ten commandments. To a large extent the origin of any moral principles we have in our society today can be considered to arise from that set of imperatives.
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I think that Christianity still plays a very significant role in constituting our general worldview (even among atheists) but I'd disagree that the 10 commandments is one of the ways it manifests itself. Many of the commandments are ignored ('dont worship false gods'/'dont covet neighbours wife' etc), and the ones that still form a central part of the legal system ('dont murder/steal') are generally just those that are necessary for a stable society and would be expected to be present in most cultures. There's nothing intrinsically Judeo-Christian about not murdering people, and youll find similar doctrines in most places regardless of their religious context.
I'd say that the major Christian doctrines which still hold sway over most people include things like measuring the worth of a person by how nice they are to others (contrast this with the Greek view), a sense of duty towards those who exist in worse circumstances, a general guilt-based culture, the doctrine of a soul or immutable personality ('my true self'), a certain way of thinking about free will, and so on.