There may be overlap, but why is that meaningful? It's the differences between the two that matter.
Why that is meaningful, is because of influence. Humanistic, or better stated modernist and postmodernist perspectives are part of culture at large. As such they create "grooves" in society for others to follow, like a trickle of water creates a path for other water to follow behind it, which creates a deeper groove for greater volumes to follow that course behind, creating deeper grooves, creating greater flow.
I'll try to explain further.
It is humanism that has shaped Western Christianity over the centuries since the Enlightenment and made the differences narrower.
It is not a philosophical movement per se, but rather it is a certain developmental level that has, from within religion, as well as from outside of it influenced culture at large. The religions or the movements, are reflective of the source of change. They are not the causes of the change, even though once established they may influence change, as in my cutting a groove metaphor above, as a self-amplifying feedback system.
Today, Western Christians prefer democracy to the biblical model of government, often accept the sciences and things such as church-state separation, and recognize that slavery is immoral.
The age of reason,
modernity itself is what is responsible for this. Modernity can be found both in religion, and in secular movements, such as secular humanism as well. Those are simply different expressions of the same thing.
They didn't get that from their Bibles.
Historically, that is untrue. If you look at the Apostle Paul, for instance, in his original authentic texts, he was against slavery. It was only the much later Pseudo-Pauline writings that written in the 2nd century by other authors in his name that "radical Paul" was softened so as not to upset the cultural apple cart. So anti-slavery is not solely something that came from modern day humanism.
Furthermore, there were entire Christian movements during Civil War days that were opposed to slavery. As I've said, humanism is in the teachings of Jesus, as well as many of the early church fathers. That the ******** in the South used the Bible to justify slavery, has more to do with their stage of development (tribalistic, warrior meme level), than it does with scripture itself.
The fact that the ancients decided that murder and theft were immoral does not make those moral systems of value today except perhaps from a historical perspective as examples of where we were compared to where we are.
All our systems are a matter of evolution. What we have today in modernity, is due to those earlier systems upon with it was dependent upon in order to evolve into what it is, both the good and the bad.
A recurring theme in our discussions is you seeing value where I don't. My problem with your claim is that you don't explain what that value is except in broad, general terms that also don't actually describe the value, either.
I see baby and bathwater. You see only bathwater. It seems to me that way. I can give you specific examples of what that value is, so it may help you understand what I'm focusing on, that I see you as overlooking.
Each stage of human development has brought something positive that is carried with us into the next stage beyond it. As a state of development is transcended into the next, it brings forward the positive contributions of the previous stage, and discards the outgrown, or unhealthy aspects of it. The motto is "transcend and include". So while we as modernists make look at the mythic, traditionalist systems as old fashioned, or antiquated, in reality the "dignity" of that stage is what we hold onto while discarding the "disaster" of it. That is bringing the baby forward, while discarding the bathwater.
What I feel will help us here, is if you took a look at this link here I found just now to help bring some perspective to what I'm talking about. I like he he lays out for each of these stages of human development with brief explanations and video clip examples of how that appears. I'll add here, no matter where you or I may be at those stages of development, each and every stage before it is a part of who we are today. It informs who we are, and lives and acts out from within each of us. We all have that 'warrior' in us, even if we are socialized postmodernist pluralists today.
Let me know your thoughts to this, as it will be helpful to direct our focus more clearly:
What Are the Stages of Development? – Integral Life
I say that I have not benefitted from myths and find no value in modern or ancient religious moral systems simply because of their method for deciding such things is received morals, which leaves them stuck in the past until a rational ethicists explains why such ideas are irrational, unkind, and how and why they can be improved.
But you actually have, and do, even if you are not consciously aware of it. We evolved to think symbolically, and mythic systems communicate values and meaning through a systems of signs and symbols, even if those are "secular" in nature, they are still mythic in function. "Transcend and include", we simply dress up our myths differently now, getting rid of gods, and replacing them with national flags, for instance.
I don't see a problem with my approach. We did something similar in the sciences, tossing out the failed predecessors of science such as creationism, astrology, and alchemy.
No, we didn't toss them out. We evolved them. We transcended and included the positive lessons, and discarded what no longer worked as we grew. We just got a larger shoe size, not got rid of shoes. We kept the basics of shoe designs however.
This is how evolution works. It doesn't reinvent. It modifies what exists, transcending and including it into the next stage.
They're based in failed principles as are received morals. My moral values don't draw from any religion or any other external source.
Yes, your value did come from the culture, which was informed by the religion, which was informed by the culture, in a self-amplifying feedback system. These are systems in which we "live and move and have our being". They inform and influence our experience of reality and ourselves through them as we move within them.
As you go through that link I shared, which I hope you will, this is what you begins to recognized at the later postmodernist stage, moving into Integral.
They are all endogenous, all the result of applying reason to a compelling utilitarian moral intuition, just as all of science results from tossing out failed systems based in false beliefs believed by faith and starting from scratch. I did not build on the Christian system.
Yes, they are all endogenous. But your internal subjective reality, is shaped and connected with your intersubjective or cultural reality, as well as informed by your external experiences of systems of information and infrastructure, signs and symbols and language and myths (either secular or religious in nature). No one is a subjective island. We were not raised in sensory deprivation tanks. And if we were, what would be? Would we even be human?
So, in that sense, yes you did build upon the Christian system, even if you never went to church one day in your life. You are part of a culture which was shaped by it in the West. It permeates the air we breathe. Even it if is not overtly religious in content, the core values and meanings and worldview are there. The same holds true for Eastern culture for its members as well. They don't need to be a practicing religious Taoist, to think as a Taoist, for instance.
I'd say that it's like saying that now that I'm no longer a child and that therefore, childish thinking is no longer appropriate, which is why I updated it.
As have I. But that doesn't mean throwing out the dignity of the earlier stages with the disasters of them, or to quit wearing footwear, because my shoe size is no longer a 4. Updating how we think is permissible. Denying the imagination and joy of childhood in service of being "mature", is not. That itself is one of the disasters of the modernist stage, tucked in right alongside its many dignities.
And if I teach someone younger than me, I will not teach them what my childish mind mistakenly thought, although had I written those thoughts down as a child, somebody might value them as sage advice like they do scripture written in man's cultural infancy.
The saying, "When I was a child, I thought as a child", is not a put down to children. Children need to think as children. It is part of healthy normal and vital development for them. If they bypass this, if you shove a technical manual in front of them, instead of allowing them play and use their fantasy filled imaginations to create the magical to explore, then you do them a grave disservice.
As I've said, you can't skip stages. You can't kick out the rungs of the ladder they need to climb upon. What needs to be done if you wish to convey higher stages of development to them, is
put it in the storybook forms of imaginative symbols and characters that they can understand, given their stage of development, or "thinking as a child".
That is my point. That is why the symbols of myth from scripture, plays a role in development for children (or for biological adults who are still children spiritually), if you have a mature adult somewhere in there helping shape and mold that development, as opposed to children teaching children, which is the disaster of fundamentalist religions.
I'll pause here. Let me know what you thought of that link I shared, if it helps any understanding in our ongoing discussions. I'm certainly hopeful it will.
