Anyone read Tom Holland's book 'Dominion'?

[TenzenT]

In it he claims that Western Civilisation and secularism ultimately owe themselves to Christianity.

I was gifted the book for Christmas, so have only skimmed the first few pages. However, I did listen to Holland on The Rest is Politics, where he called Alastair Campbell a christian even though he is a self proclaimed atheist. I found it borderline offensive quite honestly.

I quite like Holland and enjoy his history podcast, but I really don't understand his argument here. It seems to me that he suggests everything that is good about Western society (human rights etc) are exclusively Christian.

I mean, of course our society is influenced by Christian values, but so what? Whenever I see Holland asked a difficult question he always just says 'I'm a historian, it's not my job to say what is right or wrong'. Feels like a cop out. He claims to be an Atheist, but for some reason acts as an apologist to the Church and seems to deny all their atrocities and claims that the reason we even recognise their misdeeds as atrocities is because of Christian values.

Just seems like a load of nonsense. Interested to hear other people's thoughts from this sub and would have loved to hear Hitch's take.

[Link to a debate where Holland addresses some of his points from the book:

]

 

[TenzenT]

I agree, this is very Euro-American centric belief that somehow "we are the world" and completely ignore the other 60%.

Morality, that vague personalized interpretation of right of wrong, that has existed since the beginning of time. Even enfant babies have they're own belief that they should be nursed and fed. That's all that morality is anyways. Our personal belief that WE should be treated in manner that favors our selfish needs, and even that's not enough. To satisfy our emotional desires to be loved and respected we refer to those morality codes as being noble and deserving of praise, when really they're just a bunch of fabricated bull shit we tell ourselves and others.

All the while we have never assigned that same respect to any other living beings. And why? Because we don't see them as equals and because largely we are no longer threatened by them. Short answer; we are not forced to.

I enjoy Christopher Hitchens and many other atheists but none of them have ever has given me any more reason to be atheist than I already have. There's no proof and until there is, I won't waste time hypothesizing. Even if somehow the religious could span that great chasm and prove there is an actual supreme being that created the Universe, it would still be billions of light years away for their argument that it was "their supreme being" or that it had any interest in us. AND THEN even if we were to find out that there was a supreme being that was interested in us, there would be just as equally great distance to go prove that it wish to worshipped and demanded our eternal devotion and eternal souls. AND THEN, if even we were able to prove that this 'god' created us and demands unconditional love and idolatry, who intentionally created us to be flawed and demands we apologize to for those flaws it gave us, and will punish with eternal fiery pain, cannot ever be considered to be "good". How that kind of God could ever be considered good, is actually the strongest part of my argument that all morality is a 100% subjective rationalization for us to get what we want. And that is MY "vague personalized interpretation of right of wrong".

I am my own GOD, and when I die, so will MY universe