The Bible Created Western Civilization Part 1: Humanity, Rationality and Technology

• ex.  The first voyage by Columbus to the Americas was an incredibly influential event in the course of Western Civilization, shaping the destinies of many Western peoples ever since.  Nevertheless, the first voyage by Columbus to the Americas cannot be properly understood to have created Western Civilization.
  
• ex. The printing of the  King James Version of the Bible was an incredibly influential event in the history of English-speaking peoples but that Bible was created by, for, and within the context of Western Civilization.  Christianity, the Vulgate Bible, the English language, and the printing press were all well-established elements of Western Civilization prior to and necessary for the development of the KJV Bible.  To say that the KJV Bible (or any other contemporary translation) created Western Civilization is more hyperbolic and less rational than to claim that "the KJV Bible created English" or that "the KJV Bible created the printing press."
  

• OBJECTION:  The Catholic interpretation is the predominant interpretation of the Bible in Western Civilization.
  
• For a thousand years, from 500 CE to 1500 CE, the Catholic Church was the defining institution of Western Civilization:
  
• "After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, there emerged no single powerful secular government in the West. There was however a central ecclesiastical power in Rome, the Catholic Church. In this power vacuum, the Church rose to become the dominant power in the West. The Church started expanding in the beginning 10th century, and as secular kingdoms gained power at the same time, there naturally arose the conditions for a power struggle between Church and Kingdom over ultimate authority."
  
• "In essence, the earliest vision of Christendom was a vision of a Christian theocracy, a government founded upon and upholding Christian values, whose institutions are spread through and over with Christian doctrine. In this period, members of the Christian clergy wield political authority. The specific relationship between the political leaders and the clergy varied but, in theory, the national and political divisions were at times subsumed under the leadership of the Catholic Church as an institution. This model of Church-State relations was accepted by various Church leaders and political leaders in European history." [9]
  
• The majority of all Christians are Catholic:
  
• "About half  (50.1%) are Catholic. Protestants, broadly defined, make up 37%. Orthodox Christians comprise 12% of Christians worldwide. Other Christians, such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, make up the remaining 1% of the global Christian population." [10]
  
• 76.2% of Europe identifies as Christian (includes 35% of European Christians who are Eastern Orthodox, 46% of European Christians are Roman Catholic, 18% of European Christians are Protestant.) [11]
  
• More than any other religious tradition, the Catholic interpretation is the mainstream interpretation of the Bible by Western Civilization.  PRO may not credit the influence of vernacular Protestant interpretations on Western Civilization while excluding the far more ancient and deeply rooted influence of the Catholic Vulgate.
  
• The Protestant Reformation cannot be understood absent the dominant influence and culture of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe.
  
• The "protest" in Protestant is in reaction to Catholic tradition.
  
• The "reform" in Reformation is in reaction to Catholic tradition.
  

• OBJECTION:  This statement directly contradicts the sentence immediately before it,
  
• "For many reasons I consider that the Catholic interpretation is based on man's opinion that twists God's Word to fit its own belief system."
  
• and the sentence immediately after,
  
• "I believe Western Civilization began when man began to interpret the Scriptures as written, because the Bible could finally be read by the common man who could see that the Catholic Church had replaced man's authority over God's authority."
  
• PRO's directive that this debate is not about different religious denominations is undermined by PRO's manifest preference for some denominations and exclusion of other denominations.
  

P1: Human dignity is one element of Western Civilization

P2: The concept of human dignity is instituted by Nominalism based on vernacular interpretations of the Bible.

C1: Therefore, the vernacular, Protestant Bible [after 1500 CE] is the foundation for Western Civilization.

• Human dignity is an inalienable right of all humans neither exclusive or particular to Western Civilization.
  
• PRO suggests the absence of infanticide as one hallmark of human dignity.
  
• CON challenges PRO to name any culture that has eliminated infanticide.
  
• PRO identifies the French Revolution and Nazi Germany as two cultures that devalued human dignity although these are both cultures fall well within the traditions of Western Civilization, after 1500 CE and within the context of available vernacular Bibles.
  
• Beyond the Holocaust and the guillotine, we should note that two of the most spectacular examples of genocide are roughly contemporary with the advent of vernacular translations of the bible: 
  
• the mass extinction of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and
  
• the African-American slave trade.
  
• Furthermore, the promulgation of Protestantism across Europe was itself spectacularly bereft of human dignity.
  
• The Siege of Munster is one of the bloodier examples, including forced re-baptisms, mass forced remarriages to Anabaptist leaders, forced public nudity and the slow death by starvation of most of the city's women and children forced outside of the city's walls. [12]
  
• The Thirty Years' War is often named as the deadliest war in human history, killing more than a third of all Germans- 8 out of 20 million. [13]
  
• The concept of Nominalism predates the Bible in Western Civilization: [14]
  
• "The first philosophers to explicitly describe nominalist arguments were the Stoics, especially Chrysippus"
  
• "[Stoics] have often been presented as the first nominalists, rejecting the existence of universal concepts altogether. ... For Chrysippus there are no universal entities, whether they be conceived as substantial Platonic Forms or in some other manner." [15]
  
• Coluccio Salutati, Lorenzo Valla and Pico Della Mirandola were all Italian, Roman Catholic (perhaps heretical by varying degrees) philosophers writing in Latin and sourcing the Latin Vulgate Bible before 1500.  Valla was a Catholic priest.  All three are fine examples of Western philosophers which disproves PRO's assertion that Western Civilization begins after 1500 with vernacular, Protestant translations of the Bible. [16] [17] [18]
  

• For example, PRO first argued that WESTERN CIVILIZATION began 
  

• which any freshman student of history would place after Gutenberg or after Luther.  But PRO now says,
  

• So now the goalpost is "correct interpretation of the Bible" and no longer "access to the Bible."  PRO did give three examples of 15th Century Italian Catholics (Salutati, Valla, and Mirandola) as Nominalists (and though PRO has not said it we must assume "correct" interpreters of the Bible),  but those men were intellectuals, priests, or noblemen reading the Vulgate Bible and writing their arguments in Latin within the tradition of the Catholic Church.  None of those men were commoners in the sense of "common man."
  

• the first common man to correctly interpret scripture
  
• the test by which we know his interpretation of scripture is "correct"
  
• the link between correct interpretation and WESTERN CIVILIZATION
  

• PRO continues to ignore this, CON's only affirmative so far.  Even if PRO does eventually succeed in arguing that WESTERN CIVILIZATION begins with some individual "correct" interpretation of the Bible, the oldest known copy of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus still only pushes PRO's start date back about one thousand years, still 800 or 900 years after Socrates.  PRO has to show how and why Ancient Greece is not the advent of WESTERN CIVILIZATION, as is taught in schools.  [1]
  
• Without some sort of direct response, PRO effectively concedes the debate.
  

• PRO continues to insist that his argument is not religious while forwarding patently religious claims such as:
  

• In R3, PRO argues that "Catholic monks work while Buddhist monks beg" is not a religious claim because Catholic monks are influenced by the Bible. Biblical influence is generally religious influence.  PRO forgets that we have explicitly defined the BIBLE in R1 as a religious book. 
  
• The BIBLE [noun] is "a collection of sacred texts or scriptures. Varying parts of the Bible are considered to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans by Christians, Jews, Samaritans, and Rastafari. The Bible appears in the form of an anthology, compiling texts of a variety of forms that are all linked by the belief that they collectively contain the word of God. These texts include theologically-embellished historical accounts, hymns, allegorical erotica, parables, and didactic letters."  [2]
  
• PRO may not claim that a biblical influence is not by definition also a religious influence without first showing that these monks were not studying the Bible for religious reasons.  CON argues that most monks study the Bible in a religious context.
  
• Even if Catholic monks were not religious, CON has still shown that PRO is violating his own rule against religious arguments to a considerable extent.
  

• In R1, PRO suggested the absence of infanticide is one hallmark of human dignity.
  
• In COUNTER 1.2, CON argued that infanticide is present in every culture and challenged PRO to name a culture without infanticide
  
• PRO failed to name one culture
  
• In R3, PRO admits
  
• every civilization has practiced [infanticide]
  
• In R3, PRO argues that he never suggested that the absence of infanticide is one hallmark of human dignity
  
• Opening sentence of R1:
  

• That's quite explicit:
  
• child sacrifice
  
• Greek infanticide
  
• abortion
  
• are proof of cultures "without a concept of human dignity" and therefore not WESTERN CIVILIZATION
  
• if infanticide is always proof of of an absence of human dignity then it follows that
  
• the absence of infanticide is evidence of human dignity
  
• PRO's claim 
  

• stands disproved.
  
• PRO's claim that child sacrifice, Greek infanticide, and abortion serve as evidence of cultures without a concept of human dignity is likewise disproved by PRO's admission in R3 that every civilization has practiced infanticide.
  

• 1 SAMUEL 15 YHWH orders Saul to kill infants and breastfeeding babies, which Saul does [4]
  
• PRO agrees God approves of infanticide as vengeance vs. Amalek
  
• EXODUS 12 YHWH personally murders many infant first-borns on a national scale simultaneously [5]
  
• PRO agrees this is God's judgement
  
• GENESIS 22 GOD says to Abraham kill me a son [6]
  
• PRO agrees God gave the order
  
• NUMBERS 31 MOSES orders mass infanticide against an enemy people [7]
  
• PRO agrees this was God's judgement.
  
• GENESIS 7  YHWH genocides humanity, including at least hundreds of thousands of infants [8]
  
• PRO argues genocide is God's right as creator
  
• PRO works to justify all this baby killing but justification is irrelevant to our purposes.  PRO has argued that infanticide is not biblical, that adherence to the Bible made infanticide unpopular and yet PRO now admits that in that book,  hundreds of thousands of babies were ordered killed or killed by God directly and righteously.  Both things can't be true.  
  
• Infanticide is quite biblical, often even just and right in PRO's view.
  
• Therefore, the relative unpopularity of infanticide in some cultures can't be credited as adherence to the Bible.
  
• IN COUNTER2.2., CON asked PRO to prove non-WESTERN cultures love their children less
  
• IN R3, PRO replied:
  

• But one of the most defining characteristics separating WESTERN CIVILIZATION from non-Western cultures is legal access to abortion, which PRO has already lumped in with infanticide as evidence of the absence of human dignity [9]
  
• If abortion is infanticide as many Biblical adherents believe, then doesn't that make infanticide more commonplace and more legal in Western societies than non-Western?
  
• Although some stigma is certainly still associated with this type of infanticide, many Westerners claim to be proud and happy with their choice
  
• Here is the testimony of a proud and public abortion provider. [10]
  
• Here is the testimony of a happy and grateful abortion client. [11]
  
• PRO has failed to show that infanticide is less commonplace or less accepted in Western culture, irregardless of biblical influence
  
• In R1, PRO argued that the French Revolution and Nazi Germany were without human dignity
  
• In R2, PRO confirmed those events were unbiblical and therefore not WESTERN CIVILIZATION
  
• In COUNTER 2.1, CON asked for mainstream historical evidence showing that the French Revolution and Nazi Germany are not ordinarily thought of as milestones in Western History.
  
• In R3, PRO admits that Nazi Germany and the French Revolution "happened within WESTERN CIVILIZATION" 
  
• but argues that both cultures reverted to a pre-WESTERN CIVILIZATION state without human dignity, reason, or technological advancement.
  
• PRO has offered no evidence to support this claim but then the claim is also manifestly false.
  
• For example, Nazi Germany was a period of 12 years.  Is PRO really suggesting that 80 million people switched off their biblically created humanity, reason, and innovation in 1933 and then switched their biblical influence back on in 1945 and so awoke anew their humanity, reason, and innovation?
  
• Isn't it more likely that human dignity, reason, and innovation are human traits, not created by the Bible or unique to Western Civilization but found in roughly equal measure in all human cultures, just as human cruelty, and slavery, and wanton destruction are also found in every human culture?
  
• Isn't it more likely that PRO only excludes the French Revolution and Nazi Germany from WESTERN CIVILIZATION because those events aren't consistent with PRO's own idea of what Biblical influence should look like?
  
• Likewise, PRO has dropped any counter to the argument that the mass genocide and enslavement of many non-Western indigenous cultures during the age of Western colonization serves as evidence disproving the superior human dignity of WESTERN CIVILIZATION
  

• PRO argues that Greek and Roman culture hardly affected WESTERN CIVILIZATION
  
• PRO's statement is remarkably ignorant of the profound and persistent influences of Ancient Greece on Western culture.  Just of few of which include: [11]
  
• Democracy
  
• Trial by Jury
  
• Debates
  
• The first Western stories- The Illiad and The Odyssey
  
• Greek Mythology
  
• Libraries
  
• The Scientific Method
  
• Geometry and Trigonometry
  
• Architecture
  
• Standardized Medicine
  
• Medical Ethics
  
• Trial by Jury
  
• Sports
  
• Theater and plays- mass entertainment
  
• PRO seems wholly unaware of how heavily this very discussion depends on Greek culture- Greek logic, Greek letters, Greek words like Bible, Greek concepts like debating.  The Western world is so deeply infused with Greek ideas that PRO cannot make the statement "Greeks hardly affected Western Civilization" without employing multiple Greek influences.
  
• likewise,
  
• PRO's statement is remarkably ignorant of the profound and persistent influences of Ancient Rome on Western culture.  Just of few of which include: [12]
  
• Republic
  
• Common law, legal precedent, and lawyers
  
• The Alphabet
  
• Aqueducts, drinking water, indoor plumbing
  
• Breakfast, lunch, and dinner
  
• Roads
  
• Concrete
  
• Romance language
  
• Bureaucracy
  
• Cultural assimilation, including the admiration for and preservation of Greek culture as well as the admiration for and preservation of Jewish culture. 
  
• Citizens of the Roman Empire wrote, edited, and published the New Testament
  
• St Paul and the Apostles created Christianity by traveling on the new Roman roads and distributing Christian thought to citizens of Roman cities using the Roman postal system.  Without Rome, Christianity would be just another long-forgotten cult from two thousand years ago.
  
• PRO seems wholly unaware of how heavily this very discussion depends on Roman culture- Roman alphabet, Roman words and concepts like "dignitas" and "rationalitas" The Western world is so deeply infused with Roman ideas that PRO cannot make the statement "Rome hardly affected Western Civilization" without employing multiple Roman influences.
  
• PRO argument that Greek and Roman culture hardly affected WESTERN CIVILIZATION may be dismissed as incredible.
  

• But PRO has also argued:
  

• PRO can't have it both ways.  Either Europe before 1500 was not WESTERN CIVILIZATION because it was pagan, cosmological, and fatalistic or it was Europe before 1500 was WESTERN CIVILIZATION and we are still waiting for PRO to explain when Europe became so.
  
• PRO must explicitly state which is true and which false.
  

• PRO's description states that:
  

• John Wycliffe's translation does not fit this description
  
• Wycliffe translated his New Testament from the Latin Vulgate and not the original Koine Greek, "the Scriptures as written" [13]
  
• Wycliffe's translations were hand written and illustrated and were therefore incredibly expensive works of art.
  

• Which roughly translates to more than $20,000 per Bible in 2017  US dollars [14]
  
• PRO can't claim that the Bible was being read by the common man at $20,000 per copy.  
  
• Literacy rates were fairly low. [15]
  

• The Common man would not, could not read Wycliffe's translation and so PRO's starting point for WESTERN CIVILIZATION comes sometime after 1500, when the printing press made literacy commonplace.
  

• PRO argues:
  

• PRO offers no evidence to support this claim and in fact the opposite is true.  Luther clearly read and was clearly reacting to the Western traditions rooted in classical literature: [16]
  

• In fact, Luther complains often about the influences of Greek philosophy in contemporary theology: [17]
  

• PRO's argument that
  

• is wrong.  Greek rationality never withered and died.  [18]
  

• CON argued in R2 that by any definition, human technology precedes the Bible.
  
• PRO responds
  

• CON already defined technology in R1, but the definition is almost identical.
  
• PRO argues that by this definition, the Pyramids don't count as technology but a wheelbarrow does
  
• CON simply fails to follow PRO's reasoning here.
  
• Wikipedia advises:
  

• A pyramid is one fine example of scientific knowledge (geometry, masonry, corbel arches, hieroglyphics, mummification, etc, etc, etc) for the practical purpose of burying Pharaohs
  
• Establishing unequivocally that technology precedes the Bible.
  
• The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece  [20]
  
• Papyrus is technology- using the scientific knowledge of plant biology and plant decomposition, right angles, knives, glue, etc. for the practical purpose of writing. [21]
  
• PRO's claim that the Bible created technology is impossible to support.
  

• CON resourced Wikipedia's outline of prehistoric technology to show that technology goes back 2.5 million years.  Technology even precedes humanity since earlier hominids employed tools to solve problems.
  
• PRO replied:
  

• A lot of gobbledygook to say that if it is not in the Bible it is incoherent and we can't draw any non-Biblical conclusion about pre-history because it is not written down.
  
• That is, the Bible is the only trusted source of information
  
• Even so, the Bible refutes PRO
  
• And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.  And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground  GENESIS 4 KJV [22]
  
• Cain has a plow.  A plow is indisputably technology.   All by itself, the Bible serves as evidence that the Bible wasn't completed for at least 65 generations after Cain had technology. [23]
  
• OBJECTION: unreliable source
  
• mediabiasfactcheck.com rates PRO's source creation.com as LOW for factual reporting
  

• CON recommends that PRO use more reliable evidence to back his claims or at least provide a second, credible source.