One of the strong impressions I was given as a Christian is that all other worldviews are so very wrong. At their best they are humanity’s feeble attempts to fill a void that only the Christian worldview can fill. We looked on them in pity, wishing they would accept the Truth. I was completely disinterested in Philosophy. We had this distinction, you see, between stuff that humans did, and stuff that God did. The Christian worldview was God’s way of doing things, his wisdom, his ideas. Philosophy was man’s attempt to be wiser than God, to do it our own way.
One of the lies that I found myself believing until very recently was this: Even if you’re not a Christian, you ought to be grateful that Christianity existed because it gave us so many of our morals and ethics that we have today. In other words, I had this idea that, despite not believing in all the supernatural claims, the religious movement had a hugely positive impact on society in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise have had. That Christianity contributed to our moral progress in a way that was irreplaceable.
Now, some of this might be true, even trivially so. Christianity has dominated the west for nearly 2000 years. It has obviously left it’s mark.
But I now think I understand the general Christian aversion to Philosophy. Upon studying Philosophy, it becomes increasingly obvious how much Philosophy influenced Christianity. You realize that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of smart people actively working on the problems of society. And Christianity borrows heavily from several philosophical schools of thought.
In our ignorance, Christianity gets all the credit. In our ignorance, we fear what humanity would be without Christianity. In our ignorance, Christianity gets to rewrite history and make itself the center of the human story.
But now I’m starting to think we were close to an enlightenment 2000 years ago, and Christianity may very well have been a setback.
