What good has the Christian faith brought to us

What good has the Christian faith brought to us

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1452-what-good-has-the-christian-faith-brought-to-us

To me, it's a difference between day and night. Adopting a theistic worldview, I can know God and experience his grace and love of a loving father. It's a joy to be able to witness to others the greatness of God. In that way, I am making a difference in this world, and my life has also value for others.   It means loving and being loved by others.  Furthermore, I find meaning, self-worth, and ultimately it makes a difference, how I live, who I am, and what I do today, has significance and consequences also in eternity. My life is not doomed when I die, rather I have the perspective of living eternally with God. So belief in God gives me hope for eternal life in heaven. Furthermore, I find peace with God through the forgiveness of my sins, through Christ's death on the cross and his resurrection. Without faith in God, there is no hope of deliverance of injustice and evil. Nor are there objective moral values. Everything becomes subjective and relative and depends entirely on each individual's standpoint. Ultimately, there is no good, and no evil. There are just different viewpoints and standards based on personal preferences. Furthermore, the existence of the universe and life makes sense and its existence is explained in a satisfying manner through a creator.

Development of the educational system through Christianity
Indeed it’s impossible to study history without seeing the extraordinary role Christianity has played not only in the development of rational thinking but also in the spreading of such thinking—that is, the creation of an educational system. Though education was important in the pagan world, it didn’t become institutionalized until Christianity began its march across the globe. The early Greeks and Romans had no public schools of higher learning. It was Christians who established those. When the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and other “barbarian” tribes overran what was left of the Roman Empire, it was the Christians who took the smashed European continent and imposed learning, order, and stability upon it. In the so-called Dark Ages, it was Christians again who painstakingly preserved, copied, and studied manuscripts from antiquity in order to pass them on to future generations. Christianity, therefore, was responsible for the Renaissance, or “rebirth,” of Greek and Roman culture. Now, if the Christian religion had really been so opposed to critical thinking, why in the world would it have acted so decisively to protect and preserve the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and other pagan philosophers? Why wouldn’t Christians have burned them in a big bonfire, as atheists claim they are so fond of doing to books that “contradict” the faith?

But there’s more. It was the monastery system of the church that maintained the intellectual culture of the West for hundreds of years and gave birth to the first universities and libraries. These great institutions spread throughout Europe and provided a systematic—as well as integrated—form of public education for the masses. For the first time in history, individuals from all social and ethnic groups were included, without bias toward ethnicity or class. This contribution was revolutionary. Nor was it just the Catholic Church that was responsible for the development of education. The Protestant reformers, who wanted everyone to be able to read the Bible, introduced to the world the concept of compulsory education for boys and girls. This, again, was a radically new idea. With all this focus on learning, is it any surprise that, later on, all but one of the first 123 colleges in colonial America were founded as Christian institutions—including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale? 

Religion, the enemy of art ?
And what of the criticism that religion is the enemy of art? Jack Huberman, in his book The Quotable Atheist, says: “Religious authority has always sought to . . . control and censor art and literature.” Likewise, Rob Boston writes in Church and State magazine: “The truth is, religiously based censorship [of the arts] by the government has a long history in Europe and the United States.”

Just as scientific inquiry was founded on the idea that God and his creation are rational, so, too, was religious art founded on the idea that God and his creation are beautiful, and that humankind, being made in the image and likeness of God, has the power and the responsibility to make beautiful things too. This is the philosophy that lies behind so much of the world’s greatest artistic expression. And yet atheists continue to claim that religion has always been the enemy of art. Amazing!

Religion & freedom 
They also contend that religion destroys freedom. But again, an unbiased look at history shows the exact opposite to be true. The biblical concept that all people are created in the “image and likeness of God” is the foundation of universal human rights—including freedom. Before Christianity, human life on this planet was considered cheap. Infanticide was not only common but applauded. Newborn children were routinely abandoned on the hillside, left to starve or freeze to death. Or they were killed outright through drowning—especially if they were baby girls. Adults didn’t fare much better. Everyone has heard about Roman arenas like the Colosseum, in which whole families were bludgeoned to death, mauled by wild animals, or burned alive—just for sport. The greatest and most respected ancient writers and philosophers didn’t object in the slightest to these barbaric practices. It was Christians who finally banned them. Why? Because the religious belief that all men are created equal is not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson famously wrote. To pre-Christian cultures, equality was a totally foreign concept. When the people of antiquity looked around at the world, they saw inequality everywhere—in physical appearance, mental capacity, moral conduct, economic and material possessions, and political power. The idea that all human beings were equal would have seemed preposterous to them. It was the Christian religion, building on Jewish tradition before it, that introduced the bedrock principle that all human beings are equal—maybe not in physical traits or material possessions, but in dignity, in honor, in value, and in spirit. Most importantly, Christianity taught that human beings are equal because God created them and loves them equally and to an infinite degree. Therefore, each human life has equal and infinite value. This is a Christian insight—not a pagan, secular, or atheist idea. When people today proclaim that human beings have a universal right to express their opinions freely, to go wherever they choose, to buy and sell property, to live the way they want to live—they are expressing an idea that has a distinctively Christian origin.

Humans are moral agents
As Dinesh D’Souza says in What’s So Great About Christianity:
Christianity emphasizes the fact that we are moral agents. God has freely created us in His own image, and He has given us the power to take part in His sublime act of creation by being architects of our own lives. . . . John Stuart Mill’s influential doctrine of liberty, which so many of us take for granted, is a direct inheritance from Christianity. It is no use responding that Mill was a product of the Enlightenment understanding of human freedom and equality. That notion was itself a product of Christianity. Where else do you think the Enlightenment thinkers got it?

Human equality
The point that atheists refuse to grasp is that Christianity espoused a revolutionary philosophy of equality that set into motion an intellectual process that gradually changed everything. It was Christianity which rejected polygamy and adultery and exalted monogamous love—love geared toward the raising of children. This is the basis for the traditional family, and no matter how much secularists decry that institution today, there is still no other force more stabilizing and beneficial to civilization.

Equality of women
Throughout much of human history, women have been oppressed and treated as second-class citizens. In ancient cultures, such as those of Greece and Rome, women were regarded as little more than property, with no rights or autonomy of their own. They were not allowed to vote, own property, or participate in public life in any meaningful way. In some cases, infant girls were even abandoned or exposed to the elements to die because they were seen as a burden on their families.

However, Christianity challenged this oppressive cultural norm and dramatically elevated the status of women. The early Christian church recognized the equal value of men and women and gave women leadership roles within the church. Women such as Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, and Priscilla were recognized as important figures in the early Christian community, with Phoebe being referred to as a deaconess in the New Testament. Furthermore, Christianity provided financial support for widows and orphans, often left destitute in a society where women had few rights or means of support. This support allowed women to thrive and to receive an education, which was often denied to them in other cultures. Christian monasticism also provided a refuge for women who wished to dedicate their lives to religious service, offering them a level of independence and agency that was rare in the ancient world. The medieval concept of chivalry arose from the Christian belief that women were of higher dignity than men. This concept, which emphasized the protection and honor of women, was a radical departure from the prevailing attitudes of the time and had a profound impact on the status of women in Western society. It influenced the development of romantic love, which placed a greater emphasis on mutual respect and companionship between men and women.

The women's rights movement of the last two hundred years has its roots in Christian principles. The idea that all human beings are created equal and have inherent dignity and worth comes directly from Christian theology. The Christian emphasis on compassion, empathy, and justice has inspired countless social movements aimed at improving the lives of marginalized groups, including women and people of color. Similarly, Christianity played a significant role in ending slavery. The Christian belief in the value of human life and the equality of all people before God provided a moral imperative for abolitionists. Many of the leaders of the abolitionist movement, such as William Wilberforce and Harriet Beecher Stowe, were motivated by their Christian faith. Christianity has had a profound impact on the status of women and the abolition of slavery. By challenging oppressive cultural norms and emphasizing the equal value of all human beings, Christianity has inspired countless social movements aimed at promoting justice, equality, and compassion. The legacy of Christianity continues to shape our understanding of human dignity and our vision for a more just and equitable society.

The Bible & slavery
Atheists are always claiming that because Christians owned slaves at various times in history, the whole Christian religion is hypocritical. But that’s nonsense. Slavery was practiced for centuries all over the world before Christianity came on the scene. No one ever criticized or opposed slavery in any systematic way—until Christianity. From its very beginning, Christians discouraged the enslavement of fellow Christians. And many early Christians purchased slaves for the sole purpose of setting them free. Because human dignity is at the heart of Christian doctrine, it was only a question of time before Christians began to realize that the very idea of “owning” another human being was contrary to their faith. By the Middle Ages, the institution of slavery—which provided the whole foundation for Greek, Roman, and Egyptian civilizations—was largely replaced by serfdom, a system which at least guaranteed basic human rights to all workers—such as the right to marry and to own property.

Later it was Christians who started the first antislavery movement in history. It wasn’t Democrats who did that. It wasn’t Republicans. It wasn’t politicians or unions or any other kind of socially conscious group. And it certainly wasn’t atheists. It was the church. Slavery came to an end in Europe mainly because of the work of Christian activists such as William Wilberforce, the famous British evangelical philanthropist. And the successful antislavery movement in England—made up overwhelmingly of religious groups—took the lead in the international campaign to end slavery as well. By the early 1800s, two-thirds of the members of the American abolition society were Christian ministers. We see this same positive influence in every area of social reform. Take economic freedom. The ancient world—built on the backs of slaves—had no real concept of the value of labor; yet Christianity—with its emphasis on human equality and dignity—revolutionized the workplace. The concept of private property, property rights, workers’ rights, and unionization all flow from the Judeo-Christian understanding of work and its proper relationship to social justice.

Politics
Take the world of politics. We’ve seen how the idea that all men are created equal has its origins in the Bible. Well, the whole idea of limited government comes from Judeo-Christian tradition too. The notion that there are certain God-given, unalienable, moral absolutes—such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that take precedence over any edict issued by a king, derives from Christianity. Is it any wonder that so many of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and at least fifty of the fifty-five signers of the US Constitution, were committed Christians? And what of the argument that Christianity is so concerned with getting people to heaven that it
neglects to care for them here and now? This is perhaps the most preposterous of all the atheist claims.

Social engagement & Charity
Before Christianity, there was virtually no institutional interest in helping the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, the disabled, the elderly, or the dying; but because of Christian teaching on the dignity of the human person, this societal callousness came to a screeching halt. In the year 369, Saint Basil of Caesarea founded a three-hundred-bed hospital—the first large-scale hospital for the sick and disabled in the world. Christian hospitals and hospices started springing up all over the European continent. These were civilization’s first voluntary charitable institutions, and they were built and paid for by the church. To this day, Christian influence permeates the health-care system. Just do an Internet search for Christian charities and see how many names appear. They are legion: missions to foreign countries, organizations to fight world hunger, inner-city soup kitchens, and ministries to assist those with every kind of infirmity. Think of the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. Think of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Think of all the orders of nuns established to care for the diseased and dying. Think of all the Christian orphanages that have helped so many abandoned and destitute children over the centuries. Think of the thousands of religiously affiliated hospitals that are still in operation across the globe. There’s simply no end to the number of charities founded in the name of Christ.

The only plausible explanation is that, contrary to what so many feebleminded atheists believe, the Christian gospel is not just about getting people into heaven. It’s about improving conditions in this life too. And isn’t that logical? If human beings are really made in the image and likeness of God, and if they truly have infinite value, then of course it’s an obligation for us to be caring and compassionate—to help people everywhere, especially those who are least fortunate. And yet atheists insist that Christians have their heads in the clouds and are happy to sit back and twiddle their thumbs as they await the Second Coming. That’s not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of effort to keep your eyes clamped shut in the face of so many facts. How can anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of history be so ignorant of all these social, intellectual, scientific, cultural, political, educational, institutional, and artistic gifts that Christianity has bestowed on civilization?

Christianity has shaped western civilization in many ways for the better. The Bible itself is responsible for much of the language, literature, music, and fine arts we enjoy today as its artists and composers were heavily influenced by its writings. The liberties and human rights of secular governments,  freedom, and rights of the individual,  and so the criminal and justice system are a direct consequence of the Bible, and so the belief that man is accountable to God and that the law is the same regardless of social position, power and wealth. The education system, care of orphans and the elders, and hospitals goes back to the spread of monasteries, which were taking care of the general population. Science began to flourish in the western world, like Occam's razor in the twelfth century, and many science fathers, like Galilei, Newton, Volta, Ohm, Ampere, Kelvin, Faraday, etc. were all Christians.  There are many other things, but this is just to name a few.

If you're talking about many of the first orphanages, all of our major Ivy League universities, in fact, all but one the first 123 colleges and universities in colonial America, almost every charitable organization i.e. the Red Cross, Nursing (Florence Nightingale), the abolition of slavery in both the Roman world and the European Slave Trade, ALL of the first sciences including the scientific method (as we know it today), Kepler, Newton, Pasteur, Boyle, Maxwell, Steno, Martel, etc; free enterprise and work ethic (ethics in general), wherever there are starving people, there are Christians feeding, wherever there are homeless, Christians are building shelters, in Rome during a plague Christians would not flee but tend to the sick and dying, the greatest contributions to music, literature, and art who brought them to music theory and even revolutionizing literature as we know it today are all contributed to Christians and Christianity.

"This is our culture's powerful emphasis on compassion, on helping the needy, and on alleviating distress even in distant places. If there is a huge famine or reports of genocide in Africa, most people in other cultures are unconcerned. As the Chinese proverb has it, 'the tears of strangers are only water.' But here in the West, we rush to help....Part of the reason why we do this is that of our Christian assumptions....The ancient Greeks and Romans did not believe this. They held a view quite commonly held in other cultures today: yes, that is a problem, but it is not our problem....However paradoxical it seems, people who believed most strongly in the next world did the most to improve the situation of people living in this one." -D'Souza

Objection: Religion and Christianity are responsible for many wars and suffering in the world.
Response: The false and bigoted narrative that Religion causes all the world’s problems, especially the most deaths is empirically false, willfully ignorant & purposefully dishonest. Biased & unbalanced as no credit given for the good religion has done (hospitals, care of needy, founding scientific method, abolishing slavery, etc). The facts of history show that only 7% of wars ever fought were for religious reasons. (Philip and Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars).

While millions (around 259+ million in the last 100 years) have been killed by Atheists regimes like Stalin, Mao, etc.). That’s not counting the 56 Million+ abortions per year secular humanism has done and expands to now killing babies even AFTER they are born now in some areas.

Gregory Koukl summarizes it well:
“It is true that it's possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we look closer at the detail it produces evil because the individual people are actually living in a rejection of the tenets of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it can produce it, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We're talking about tens of millions of people as a result of the rejection of God.”

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1452-what-good-has-the-christian-faith-brought-to-us

The dramatic transition from a spiritually non-living, to a spiritually living follower of Christ

http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1452-what-good-has-the-christian-faith-brought-to-us#5665



Denton: Evolution, A Theory in Crisis, p249 writes:
We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature. Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive.

The same break happens in the transition from a spiritually non-living, to a spiritually living Child of God, and represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of human life. there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive.

FINALLY ALIVE - What Happens When We Are Born Again, John Piper :

Before the new birth happens to us, we are spiritually dead; we are morally selfish and rebellious, and we are legally guilty before God’s law and under his wrath, our present condition is hopelessly unresponsive, corrupt, and guilty.

Eph. 2:1–2 : Apart from the new birth, we are dead in trespasses and sins

Eph. 2:3:  Apart from the new birth, we are by nature children of wrath

John 3:19–20:  Apart from the new birth, we love darkness and hate the light

Rom. 8:7–8: Apart from the new birth, we are unable to submit to God or please God

Ephesians 2:4–5: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”

Without the new birth, we won’t have saving faith, but only unbelief, we won’t have justification, but only condemnation, we won’t be the children of God, but the children of the devil, we won’t bear the fruit of love by the Holy Spirit but only the fruit of death, we won’t have eternal joy in fellowship with God, but only eternal misery with the devil and his angels

Dead implies lifeless. Not physically or morally lifeless, but spiritually lifeless. Verse 1: We are “walking” and “following” the world. Verse 2: We have “passions” of the fl esh, and we carry out the “desires of the body and the mind.”

The new birth is unsettling because it refers to something that is done to us, not something we do.

John 1:13 emphasizes this. It refers to the children of God as those “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” God causes the new birth; we don’t. Peter stresses the same thing: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again” (1 Pet. 1:3).  
The Holy Spirit supernaturally gives us new spiritual life by connecting us with Jesus Christ through faith. It is a newness that involves a cleansing of the old and a creation of the new.

Ezekiel 26–27: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your fl esh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

It means soft and living and responsive and feeling, instead of being a lifeless stone. In the new birth, our dead, stony boredom with Christ is replaced by a heart that senses the worth of Jesus.

1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.”

1 John 4:7: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”

1 John 5:1: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.”

1 John 5:4: “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”

1 John 5:18: “We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.”

Gal. 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control

When God causes us to be born again, saving faith is awakened,
and we are united to Christ.

1 John 5:1: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” Not will be born of God, but has been born of God. Our first faith is the flicker of life through the new birth.
When the new birth awakens faith, and unites us to Christ, we are justified—that is, counted righteous—through that faith.

Romans 5:1: “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” New birth awakens faith, and faith looks to Christ for righteousness, and God credits righteousness to us on the basis of Christ alone through faith alone.

When new birth awakens faith and unites us to Christ, all the legal obstacles to our acceptance with God are removed. So God adopts us into his family and conforms us to the image of his Son. John 1:12: “To all who
did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the fl esh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
We are born again from God, not from the will of man, and we believe on Christ and receive him, and God makes us his legal heirs and spiritual children.
All condemnation is replaced with justification and the Spirit of adoption moves into our lives, he produces the fruit of love.

Galatians 5:6: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”
1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.” Where there is new birth, there is love.
Finally, when the new birth wakens faith and unites us to Christ, who is our righteousness, and unleashes the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, we are on the narrow way that leads to heaven. And the pinnacle of heaven’s joys will be eternal fellowship with God. “This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). The pinnacle of the joy of our new life is God himself.

It takes a short moment of enlightenment, a leap of faith, courage, humility and goodwill to make the best decision in someone's life and say: I will try. Lord, reveal yourself to me, I repent from my sins. Change my life. This decision of surrender represents the most dramatic, the most important and fundamental of all the discontinuities of someone's life. A spiritual birth which will remove a soul from the claws of darkness and evil forces, bondage to sin and eternal death, straight into a new life where someone can begin to experience the Lord's redemptive grace, power and love of a loving father. God gives peace through the forgiveness of sins, through Christ's death on the cross, and his resurrection. It is a joy to begin a new way of life, discipleship, and be able to witness to others about the greatness and goodness of God, making a difference in this world,  genuinely love and being loved by others. Finding true meaning, self-worth, and the perspective and hope of living today, into all eternity with the almighty God. A believer is not alone anymore in this insecure world, but he has a heavenly father which has set a plan for his life, and which he can trust. If you never did this step, why not now?

If there were no God, there would be as many atheists, as ASanta's, Afairie's, APixies, AUnicornist's, Apolytheists, ABuddhists, Aconfuciunists.

There is truly no point to be an activist to promote your ignorance and proclaim loud and clear what you do not believe in. Atheism is an idea that doesn’t matter. It leads to no good, it helps no one. It is an enterprise with the unique and only scope to promote void and meaninglessness.

Of course, there are some, that argue that the influence of Christian thought harms their quality of life somehow, and they fight that.

But if we remove Christ as a historical figure and disconsider who he is, and why he came, and just analyze what he thought then we see, there is no more sublime teaching than his central commands: Love your neighbour as yourself, and love God above anything.

I do not know of a higher moral standard than this, resumed in such an extraordinary semantic resume. If all people would live what Christ actually taught, we would experience heaven on earth, or almost.

You cannot blame the Bible for the fact that people have used it to commit all kind of atrocities in its name during world history. They are hypocrites and do not follow Christ.

And why do unbelievers commonly only mention what in their view was immoral, but disconsider all the good that has been done to shape western civilisation through the Christian faith & worldview?

What good has the christian faith brought to us
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1452-what-good-has-the-christian-faith-brought-to-us

What good has the christian faith brought to us

Development of the educational system through Christianity
Indeed it’s impossible to study history without seeing the extraordinary role Christianity has played not only in the development of rational thinking but also in the spreading of such thinking—that is, the creation of an educational system. Though education was important in the pagan world, it didn’t become institutionalized until Christianity began its march across the globe. The early Greeks and Romans had no public schools of higher learning. It was Christians who established those. When the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and other “barbarian” tribes overran what was left of the Roman Empire, it was the Christians who took the smashed European continent and imposed learning, order, and stability upon it. In the so-called Dark Ages, it was Christians again who painstakingly preserved, copied, and studied manuscripts from antiquity in order to pass them on to future generations. Christianity, therefore, was responsible for the Renaissance, or “rebirth,” of Greek and Roman culture. Now, if the Christian religion had really been so opposed to critical thinking, why in the world would it have acted so decisively to protect and preserve the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and other pagan philosophers? Why wouldn’t Christians have burned them in a big bonfire, as atheists claim they are so fond of doing to books that “contradict” the faith?

But there’s more. It was the monastery system of the church that maintained the intellectual culture of the West for hundreds of years and gave birth to the first universities and libraries. These great institutions spread throughout Europe and provided a systematic—as well as integrated—form of public education for the masses. For the first time in history, individuals from all social and ethnic groups were included, without bias toward ethnicity or class. This contribution was revolutionary. Nor was it just the Catholic Church that was responsible for the development of education. The Protestant reformers, who wanted everyone to be able to read the Bible, introduced to the world the concept of compulsory education for boys and girls. This, again, was a radically new idea. With all this focus on learning, is it any surprise that, later on, all but one of the first 123 colleges in colonial America were founded as Christian institutions—including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale? 

Religion, the enemy of art ?
And what of the criticism that religion is the enemy of art? Jack Huberman, in his book The Quotable Atheist, says: “Religious authority has always sought to . . . control and censor art and literature.” Likewise, Rob Boston writes in Church and State magazine: “The truth is, religiously based censorship [of the arts] by the government has a long history in Europe and the United States.”

Just as scientific inquiry was founded on the idea that God and his creation are rational, so, too, was religious art founded on the idea that God and his creation are beautiful, and that humankind, being made in the image and likeness of God, has the power and the responsibility to make beautiful things too. This is the philosophy that lies behind so much of the world’s greatest artistic expression. And yet atheists continue to claim that religion has always been the enemy of art. Amazing!

Religion & freedom 
They also contend that religion destroys freedom. But again, an unbiased look at history shows the exact opposite to be true. The biblical concept that all people are created in the “image and likeness of God” is the foundation of universal human rights—including freedom. Before Christianity, human life on this planet was considered cheap. Infanticide was not only common but applauded. Newborn children were routinely abandoned on the hillside, left to starve or freeze to death. Or they were killed outright through drowning—especially if they were baby girls. Adults didn’t fare much better. Everyone has heard about Roman arenas like the Colosseum, in which whole families were bludgeoned to death, mauled by wild animals, or burned alive—just for sport. The greatest and most respected ancient writers and philosophers didn’t object in the slightest to these barbaric practices. It was Christians who finally banned them. Why? Because the religious belief that all men are created equal is not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson famously wrote. To pre-Christian cultures, equality was a totally foreign concept. When the people of antiquity looked around at the world, they saw inequality everywhere—in physical appearance, mental capacity, moral conduct, economic and material possessions, and political power. The idea that all human beings were equal would have seemed preposterous to them. It was the Christian religion, building on Jewish tradition before it, that introduced the bedrock principle that all human beings are equal—maybe not in physical traits or material possessions, but in dignity, in honor, in value, and in spirit. Most importantly, Christianity taught that human beings are equal because God created them and loves them equally and to an infinite degree. Therefore, each human life has equal and infinite value. This is a Christian insight—not a pagan, secular, or atheist idea. When people today proclaim that human beings have a universal right to express their opinions freely, to go wherever they choose, to buy and sell property, to live the way they want to live—they are expressing an idea that has a distinctively Christian origin.

Humans are moral agents
As Dinesh D’Souza says in What’s So Great About Christianity:
Christianity emphasizes the fact that we are moral agents. God has freely created us in His own image, and He has given us the power to take part in His sublime act of creation by being architects of our own lives. . . . John Stuart Mill’s influential doctrine of liberty, which so many of us take for granted, is a direct inheritance from Christianity. It is no use responding that Mill was a product of the Enlightenment understanding of human freedom and equality. That notion was itself a product of Christianity. Where else do you think the Enlightenment thinkers got it?

Human equality
The point that atheists refuse to grasp is that Christianity espoused a revolutionary philosophy of equality that set into motion an intellectual process that gradually changed everything. It was Christianity which rejected polygamy and adultery and exalted monogamous love—love geared toward the raising of children. This is the basis for the traditional family, and no matter how much secularists decry that institution today, there is still no other force more stabilizing and beneficial to civilization.

Equality of women
It was Christianity that dramatically elevated the status of women at a time when practically every other culture in the world oppressed them. Indeed, the ancient world treated women like animals. Read the Greek and Roman historians (such as Thucydides, Polybius, and Livy) to verify the truth of this! Women were the property of men, just barely higher than slaves. They had no rights at all. That’s why they were so frequently exposed to the elements as infants. Christianity changed that. Women had leadership roles in the early church. They were supported financially when their husbands died. They were given an education. Instead of being abused, they were sheltered and protected. The whole medieval concept of chivalry arose because Christian civilization considered women to be of a higher dignity than men. The indisputable fact is that the women’s rights movement of the last two hundred years has its roots not in pagan society, but in the principles of Christianity. The same can be said about slavery. 

The Bible & slavery
Atheists are always claiming that because Christians owned slaves at various times in history, the whole Christian religion is hypocritical. But that’s nonsense. Slavery was practiced for centuries all over the world before Christianity came on the scene. No one ever criticized or opposed slavery in any systematic way—until Christianity. From its very beginning, Christians discouraged the enslavement of fellow Christians. And many early Christians purchased slaves for the sole purpose of setting them free. Because human dignity is at the heart of Christian doctrine, it was only a question of time before Christians began to realize that the very idea of “owning” another human being was contrary to their faith. By the Middle Ages, the institution of slavery—which provided the whole foundation for Greek, Roman, and Egyptian civilizations—was largely replaced by serfdom, a system which at least guaranteed basic human rights to all workers—such as the right to marry and to own property.

Later it was Christians who started the first antislavery movement in history. It wasn’t Democrats who did that. It wasn’t Republicans. It wasn’t politicians or unions or any other kind of socially conscious group. And it certainly wasn’t atheists. It was the church. Slavery came to an end in Europe mainly because of the work of Christian activists such as William Wilberforce, the famous British evangelical philanthropist. And the successful antislavery movement in England—made up overwhelmingly of religious groups—took the lead in the international campaign to end slavery as well. By the early 1800s, two-thirds of the members of the American abolition society were Christian ministers. We see this same positive influence in every area of social reform. Take economic freedom. The ancient world—built on the backs of slaves—had no real concept of the value of labor; yet Christianity—with its emphasis on human equality and dignity—revolutionized the workplace. The concept of private property, property rights, workers’ rights, and unionization all flow from the Judeo-Christian understanding of work and its proper relationship to social justice.

Politics
Take the world of politics. We’ve seen how the idea that all men are created equal has its origins in the Bible. Well, the whole idea of limited government comes from Judeo-Christian tradition too. The notion that there are certain God-given, unalienable, moral absolutes—such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that take precedence over any edict issued by a king, derives from Christianity. Is it any wonder that so many of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and at least fifty of the fifty-five signers of the US Constitution, were committed Christians? And what of the argument that Christianity is so concerned with getting people to heaven that it
neglects to care for them here and now? This is perhaps the most preposterous of all the atheist claims.

Social engagement & Charity
Before Christianity, there was virtually no institutional interest in helping the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, the disabled, the elderly, or the dying; but because of Christian teaching on the dignity of the human person, this societal callousness came to a screeching halt. In the year 369, Saint Basil of Caesarea founded a three-hundred-bed hospital—the first large-scale hospital for the sick and disabled in the world. Christian hospitals and hospices started springing up all over the European continent. These were civilization’s first voluntary charitable institutions, and they were built and paid for by the church. To this day, Christian influence permeates the health-care system. Just do an Internet search for Christian charities and see how many names appear. They are legion: missions to foreign countries, organizations to fight world hunger, inner-city soup kitchens, and ministries to assist those with every kind of infirmity. Think of the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. Think of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Think of all the orders of nuns established to care for the diseased and dying. Think of all the Christian orphanages that have helped so many abandoned and destitute children over the centuries. Think of the thousands of religiously affiliated hospitals that are still in operation across the globe. There’s simply no end to the number of charities founded in the name of Christ.

The only plausible explanation is that, contrary to what so many feebleminded atheists believe, the Christian gospel is not just about getting people into heaven. It’s about improving conditions in this life too. And isn’t that logical? If human beings are really made in the image and likeness of God, and if they truly have infinite value, then of course it’s an obligation for us to be caring and compassionate—to help people everywhere, especially those who are least fortunate. And yet atheists insist that Christians have their heads in the clouds and are happy to sit back and twiddle their thumbs as they await the Second Coming. That’s not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of effort to keep your eyes clamped shut in the face of so many facts. How can anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of history be so ignorant of all these social, intellectual, scientific, cultural, political, educational, institutional, and artistic gifts that Christianity has bestowed on civilization?

Life on Earth will be /very/ much enhanced for anyone who is able to rid themselves of the intellectually crippling lie of evolution. The ID movement is doing a /splendid/ job of enhancing life on Earth in that way.
Who could possibly want the ID movement to water down its useful efforts in that pursuit by also trying to provide some OTHER type of enhancement? The thinking which demands it should do so is extremely A.D.H.D. and silly.
The American Cancer Society labors usefully toward a cure for cancer. The ID movement labors usefully toward a cure for deception. Either group would be foolish to divide its efforts.
I’m actually quite encouraged that an evolutionist would even dare to present an argument this weak. It can only mean they are seriously scraping the bottom of their rhetorical barrel, out of desperation. ID caused that desperation. That IS the functional enhancement, and it’s wonderful.

Christian faith x lack of faith / atheism

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1452-what-good-has-the-christian-faith-brought-to-us#7118

1. The Christian faith promotes wellbeing. Independently of if its true or not. Christs golden rule has historically proven & demonstrated to promote a better society, the build hospitals and health care, care of the needy. Abolishing slavery, promoting education, equality of women and humans in general, social justice, engagement & charity, development of music & art etc. The Christian faith also promoted the exploration of the natural world, and Christians invented the scientific method,
2. Materialism & atheism on the other hand does not promote anything positively. It results in a lack of binding objective moral values, meaning of life, a lack of recognition of the real intrinsic value of human beings, it provides no inner peace & security.
3. The Christian worldview, therefore, independently of if its true or not, is a superior worldview, and should be preferred over materialism & atheism.

Christian:

knowing God and having a relationship with him
receiving salvation and eternal life
receiving a new nature, and the holy spirit
Being his adopted child
experiencing his grace and love  
witness to others
having true meaning, which will last forever
self-worth,
hope for an eternal life in heaven.
peace with God

1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.”
1 John 4:7: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
1 John 5:1: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.”
1 John 5:4: “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”
1 John 5:18: “We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.”
Gal. 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control

Atheist:

Atheists commonly confess ignorance and base it on the claim that there is no evidence of God. The consequence of such a position is:

the lack of
objective moral values
meaning of life
lack of recognition of the real intrinsic value of human beings
what really matters in life ( to love God, and your next )
understanding
inner peace
knowledge
security

and ultimatively nihilism, bitterness, hopelessness and despair.

Atheism is an idea that doesn’t matter. It leads to no good, it gives an illusion of freedom, it helps no one and it tends to either universal anarchy and chaos or totalitarian despotism, and the ultimate fate and consequence is to die and be judged upon their own sins and mistakes and paying for their sins and rejection of God in Hell forever and ever.

Atheism is cancer no matter how you try and sugar coat it. The only manifestation of atheism in state power is totalitarianism. No exceptions. For two centuries-- from 1789-- every atheist philosophy that has risen to power has brought hell to earth among the people under its boot. Atheist 'secular humanism' has one salient characteristic-- it never survives the rise of atheism. What begins with an edited Jefferson always ends with a pockmarked Caligula. Atheism in power has always been totalitarian.

Atheist rank the highest in 4 stats, suicide, depression, medication intake and school shootings. If that is not FAIL, I do not know what is...

What good has the Christian faith brought to us

The education system, care of orphans and the elders, and hospitals go back to the spread of monasteries, which were taking care of the general population.
Christianity has shaped western civilization in many ways for the better. The liberties and human rights of secular governments,  freedom, and rights of the individual,  and so the criminal and justice system are a direct consequence of the Bible, and so the belief that man is accountable to God and that the law is the same regardless of social position, power and wealth. Science began to flourish in the western world, like Occam's razor in the twelfth century, and many science fathers, like Galilei, Newton, Volta, Ohm, Ampere, Kelvin, Faraday etc. were all Christians.  There are many other things, but this is just to name a few.

Do you know who founded the Red Cross? Henry Dunant ( 1828 –  1910),  was a Swiss humanitarian, businessman and social activist. He was the visionary, promoter and He was the founder of the Swiss branch of the Young Men's Christian Association YMCA.

In 1863, Henry Dunant founded the Red Cross, which would go onto receive the Nobel Peace Prize three times.

During the Battle of Solferino in the Franco-Austrian war, Swiss businessman Dunant was shocked to witness tens of thousands dead or wounded left on the field after just one day of fighting.

After this experience, on 17 February 1863, he decided to form the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva Switzerland with four other Swiss businessmen to take care of casualties and prisoners of war. In the following year, the first Geneva Convention was adopted, "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field."

In 1901 he received the first Nobel Peace Prize together with Frédéric Passy, making Dunant the first Swiss Nobel laureate.

Henry Dunant's Christian faith was shaped by the Geneva theologian Louis Gaussen, who founded the Société Evangélique de Genève in 1831 and attended Dunant's Sunday school as a teenager.  The Société Evangélique was a parish that also included his mother, his father's sister, and his own sister Marie. Desiring to become socially active, Henry Dunant, at the age of 18, joined the Geneva Société d'Aumônes (Society for Alms Donation) under the influence of Réveil, a 19th-century revival movement in Geneva and other French-speaking regions. The following year, he founded the so-called "Thursday Association" with friends, a loose association of young people who met for Bible studies on the premises of the Société Evangélique and supported hungry and sick people together.

Henry Dunant spent most of his free evenings and Sundays visiting prisoners and helping poor people. From an early age he was gifted in getting other people excited about a common goal and motivating them to follow him in his activities. Animated by a stay of the revival preacher Adolphe Monod in the Thursday Association, on November 30, 1852 he founded a Geneva group of the Christian Association of Young Men (CVJM), in which he acted as secretary. Three years later, he was instrumental in founding the Young Men's Christian Association in Paris. Dunant was one of the fifteen founders of the Swiss Evangelical Alliance in 1847 in the Evangelical Alliance, which spread from England in 1846 and contributed to the formation of the YMCA groups in various countries. He became her secretary in 1852 at the age of 24 and headed her until 1859.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan Luke 10:25-37
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.  A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.  So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.  He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

We can also see the good Samaritan representing Jesus Christ, who came to save us from eternal punishment because of our sins.

Above stands diametrically opposed to Dawkins blasphemous mischaracterization of God as “ a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” based on misunderstanding and misrepresentation of passages in the Old Testament, and the willful ignorance of Christs Character, which IS the second person of the holy trinity.

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1452-what-good-has-the-christian-faith-brought-to-us#7240

The science fathers were Christians.

Who do you think coined the term scientist? It was William Whewell, an Anglican priest, and theologian, who also came up with the words physicist, cathode, anode, and many other commonly used scientific terms. Essentially, the very language used by scientists today was invented by a believer.

When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species in 1859—the work that first proposed the theory of evolution—he was definitely a believer in God. It’s true that as he grew older, he began to doubt the existence of a personal Creator who cared about his creatures, but Darwin always struggled with his lack of faith. He was at times a Christian and at times an agnostic. But he never thought that his scientific theory was incompatible with the idea of God. Rather, he thought that while God did not have a direct hand in creating the different species of the world, he did indeed create the natural laws that governed the cosmos—including the laws of evolutionary development.

And what of the science of genetics—the means through which evolution supposedly takes place? According to proponents of evolutionary theory, it is only through genetic mutation and the process of natural selection that life on this planet is able to undergo gradual development. Who, then, was the father of this field of study? The answer is Gregor Mendel—an Augustinian friar and abbot of a Catholic monastery! This monk, botanist, and professor of philosophy was the man whose famous experiments on peas led to the formulation of the rules of heredity and to the proposal of the existence of invisible “genes”—which provide a basis for the science of modern genetics.

Well, then what about the big bang theory—the leading explanation of how our universe began? In fact, the man who proposed both the theory of the expansion of the universe as
well as the big bang theory of the origin of the universe—effectively changing the whole course of modern cosmology—was Father Georges Lemaître, a Belgian astronomer and Roman Catholic priest! A priest came up with the big bang theory! This cleric, who taught physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, delivered a famous lecture on his theories in 1933 that was attended by Albert Einstein in California. When Einstein heard Father Lemaître delineate his theory, he said: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened. Now how could this be?

How could the father of genetics be a monk and the father of the big bang theory be a priest? Didn’t these men know what all modern atheists seem to take for granted—that the very theories they espoused contradict the idea of God and nullify the possibility of his existence? Didn’t they know that their belief in God was therefore absurd? Were they really that blind?
Or is there, perhaps, another explanation? Could it be that these great men of science were not blind at all, but rather that modern atheists fail to understand the most simple principle of rational thought— namely, that explaining the scientific process of how the universe came to be does not in any way explain why it came to be. It does not explain the fundamental mystery of existence itself. This mystery can never be explained by science.

None of these giants in the field of science was an atheist. All believed in a Supreme Being who created and designed the universe

In a naturalistic worldview, everything starts with the inanimated matter and ends with the heat death of the universe.
In a Christian worldview, everything starts with a living eternal God and creator, that created a finite universe, and when it ends, there will be billions of people who enjoy eternal life in heaven with their loving creator. Those that rejected Him, will get their wishes as well fulfilled.

One is a cult of death, the other celebration of life.
In a No-God world, there is no objective moral truth, and evil, suffering and pain inflicted by man against his next might find some punishment through the human justice system, but most crimes, and evil, will remain unpunished. That means, without God, this is an essentially unjust world.

In a God-world, God, a moral being, sets the standard of good and bad, and ought to be's. He is the moral authority that enforces how we ought to live and treat our neighbors. Those that have suffered evil, and the perpetrator that has never been caught, will eventually die, and the criminal be judged gets a righteous judgment based on his doings. The victim that believes in God, might have hope, that evil, one day, will find its righteous judgment.

The Christian worldview is a world, where life, love, and justice reign. Even if there is temporally evil in the world.
In the No-God world, no hope, but death awaits us, and all evil that has been done in between birth and death, will in most cases never be punished. And the victim of a crime will never see justice, and the criminal that was never caught, gets a free pass.

Here are 12 unique attributes that Christianity offers that other world-views, philosophies, and religions do not. Enjoy!

1. Christianity offers contentment and joy not based on changing circumstances. Our bad things will turn out for good (Rom 8:28) our good things can't be taken from us (Eph 1:3) and the best things are yet to come (1 Jn 3:1-3).

2. Christianity uniquely offers a non-performative identity--not constantly ebbing and flowing based on your accomplishment and conduct. (Phil 3:4-9; 1 Cor 4:3-4)

3. Christianity offers a basis for morality and justice that avoids the twin dangers of relativism and oppression. (I freely admit that many Christians use secular moral foundations and themselves veer toward relativism or oppression).

4. Christianity offers a kind of freedom (embracing the right restrictions) that, unlike the secular definition (the absence of restrictions), does not undermine love relationships.

5. Christianity offers a unique hope for the world--not eventual nothingness (secularism) and not even mere spiritual paradise (other religions). It promises a renewed, perfect physical world--a new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

6. Christianity offers a resolution to guilt, shame, and self-laceration that avoids both minimizing your own failures and allowing other people to ultimately define you.

7. Christianity offers a unique view of power. The incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus shows us power both voluntarily relinquished and yet deployed for service to others.

8. Christianity offers meaning and purpose in life that suffering not only cannot take away from you but can only enhance. It can enable you to face death without any fear.

9. Christianity offers a unique account of morality/truth. Not subjectivism is grounded in culture or evolution (secularism) nor objectivism is grounded in an impersonal transcendent norm (Greek-Roman; idealism). Rather it is grounded in an absolute Person--Jesus. See L.Ferry, H.Bavinck.

10. Christianity offers a unique view of salvation. We are saved by sheer grace and Christ's work, not ours. We cannot contribute to salvation with moral effort, religious observance, prayers, transformed consciousness, etc. Finished salvation is received, not achieved.

11. Christianity offers a unique approach to repairing relationships. It neither privileges the forgiven (so that justice is not done) nor privileges the forgiver (so forgiveness is withheld). Without both we can't maintain human social relationships. (Writing a book on this now.)

12. Christianity offers a unique view of uniqueness. The claim of uniqueness plays into the human need to feel superior. But Christianity's difference is the grace claim: saved Christians are NOT better than anyone. That particular uniqueness can subvert the dangers of claiming it.

Brothels were common place within antiquity and were often placed between houses of respected Roman families.
Far from being perceived as taboo, brothels were one of the most common gathering places for Roman men. It was seen as antisocial for men not to engage in activities with prostitutes.

There are two ways archaeologists know whether a building discovered is a brothel or not.
The first is by signage — with names and prices on one side and “occupata” (“occupied” in Latin) on the reverse. Or obvious inscriptions like “cellae meretriciae” (prostitute’s cot) which marked out the purpose of the location.

The other way is the discovery of the mass graves of children.

In Roman Antiquity children were not considered real people until they were at least two. Fathers were legally allowed to kill their children without legal repercussion.
This made infanticide rampant in the ancient world. The presence of fetal and newborn skeletons in mass graves give archaeologists an indication that what they’re excavating could very well be a brothel.

There was no ethical dilemma in the ancient world with these situations because children had been fully dehumanized in antiquity. They “looked human” but were “non complere personas” (not fully persons yet), as one ancient writer put it.

Infanticidal practices were considered acceptable, justifiable, and necessary due to the lack of contraception and the adult who was (unlike children of course) a “full person” and therefore within their rights to do as they pleased.

The concept of intrinsic human value — that you have dignity, worth, and purpose by nature of simply being human — is foreign to the vast majority of human history.
It has only recently been broadly accepted, and only due to the Judea-Christian ethic, that the value of the human being no matter what size, stage, situation, race, gender, etc., etc., came into fruition as a societal norm.

I’m seeing a lot of very relevant conversations that both sadden and worry me. Worry me about the state of how we view human worth, dignity, and value - concepts which only have a leg to stand on via historical biblical grounding. As a historian I spend a lot of my time reading the writings of ancient pagans and sometimes their arguments justifying their dehumanizations and sacrifices (literal sacrifices in many cases) don’t sound nearly as ancient as they ought to be.
The ancients had no qualms with child sacrifice because they had utterly dehumanized babies. Another reminder that societal assumptions do not equate with truth, morality, or justice.

———————————————
Relevant sources:
Harris, W. V. “Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire.” The Journal of Roman Studies 84 (1994): 1–22.
Shaw, Brent D., Raising and Killing Children: Two Roman Myths, Fourth Series, Vol. 54, Fasc. 1 (Feb., 2001), pp. 31-77, Brill.
H. Bennett, "The Exposure of Infants in Ancient Rome" The Classical Journal, Vol. 18, No. 6 (Mar., 1923), pp. 341-351 (11 pages) John Hopkins University Press.
Crook, John, Patria Potestas. Vol. 17, No. 1 (May, 1967), pp. 113-122 (10 pages), Cambridge University Press.
Boswell, John Eastburn. ìExpositio and Oblatio: The Abandonment of Children and the Ancient and Medieval Family,î American Historical Review 89 (1984): 10-33.
Dixon, Suzanne. The Roman Family. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Golden, Mark ìDemography, The Exposure of Girls at Athens,î Phoenix 35 (1981): 316-331.
Golden, Mark ìDemography, Did the Ancients Care When Their Children Died? Greece & Rome 35 (1988): 152-163.
O. M. Bakke, "When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity," 2005.
Rawson, Beryl, Children and Childhood in Roman Italy. Oxford: Oxford University., Press, 2003.
https://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/.../the-babies-and.../
https://www.bbc.com/news/10384460
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42911813

Development of the educational system through Christianity The early Greeks and Romans had no public schools of higher learning. It was Christians who established those.  

Religion & freedom 
 The biblical concept that all people are created in the “image and likeness of God” is the foundation of universal human rights—including freedom. Before Christianity, human life on this planet was considered cheap. Infanticide was 

Family: It was Christianity which rejected polygamy and adultery and exalted monogamous love—love geared toward the raising of children. This is the basis for the traditional family, and no matter how much secularists decry that institution today, there is still no other force more stabilizing and beneficial to civilization.

Equality of women
It was Christianity that dramatically elevated the status of women at a time when practically every other culture in the world oppressed them. Indeed, the ancient world treated women like animals. 

Politics
Take the world of politics. We’ve seen how the idea that all men are created equal has its origins in the Bible. Well, the whole idea of limited government comes from Judeo-Christian tradition too. The notion that there are certain God-given, unalienable, moral absolutes—such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that take precedence over any edict issued by a king, derives from Christianity. Is it any wonder that so many of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and at least fifty of the fifty-five signers of the US Constitution, were committed Christians? And what of the argument that Christianity is so concerned with getting people to heaven that it
neglects to care for them here and now? This is perhaps the most preposterous of all the atheist claims.

Social engagement & Charity
Before Christianity, there was virtually no institutional interest in helping the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, the disabled, the elderly, or the dying; but because of Christian teaching on the dignity of the human person, this societal callousness came to a screeching halt. In the year 369, Saint Basil of Caesarea founded a three-hundred-bed hospital—the first large-scale hospital for the sick and disabled in the world. Christian hospitals and hospices started springing up all over the European continent. These were civilization’s first voluntary charitable institutions, and they were built and paid for by the church. To this day, Christian influence permeates the health-care system. Just do an Internet search for Christian charities and see how many names appear. They are legion: missions to foreign countries, organizations to fight world hunger, inner-city soup kitchens, and ministries to assist those with every kind of infirmity. Think of the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. Think of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Think of all the orders of nuns established to care for the diseased and dying. Think of all the Christian orphanages that have helped so many abandoned and destitute children over the centuries. Think of the thousands of religiously affiliated hospitals that are still in operation across the globe. There’s simply no end to the number of charities founded in the name of Christ.

The only plausible explanation is that, contrary to what so many feebleminded atheists believe, the Christian gospel is not just about getting people into heaven. It’s about improving conditions in this life too. And isn’t that logical? If human beings are really made in the image and likeness of God, and if they truly have infinite value, then of course it’s an obligation for us to be caring and compassionate—to help people everywhere, especially those who are least fortunate. And yet atheists insist that Christians have their heads in the clouds and are happy to sit back and twiddle their thumbs as they await the Second Coming. That’s not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of effort to keep your eyes clamped shut in the face of so many facts. How can anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of history be so ignorant of all these social, intellectual, scientific, cultural, political, educational, institutional, and artistic gifts that Christianity has bestowed on civilization?

Christianity has shaped western civilization in many ways for the better. The Bible itself is responsible for much of the language, literature, music, and fine arts we enjoy today as its artists and composers were heavily influenced by its writings. The liberties and human rights of secular governments,  freedom, and rights of the individual,  and so the criminal and justice system are a direct consequence of the Bible, and so the belief that man is accountable to God and that the law is the same regardless of social position, power and wealth. The education system, care of orphans and the elders, and hospitals goes back to the spread of monasteries, which were taking care of the general population. Science began to flourish in the western world, like Occam's razor in the twelfth century, and many science fathers, like Galilei, Newton, Volta, Ohm, Ampere, Kelvin, Faraday, etc. were all Christians.  There are many other things, but this is just to name a few.

If you're talking about many of the first orphanages, all of our major Ivy League universities, in fact, all but one the first 123 colleges and universities in colonial America, almost every charitable organization i.e. the Red Cross, Nursing (Florence Nightingale), the abolition of slavery in both the Roman world and the European Slave Trade, ALL of the first sciences including the scientific method (as we know it today), Kepler, Newton, Pasteur, Boyle, Maxwell, Steno, Martel, etc; free enterprise and work ethic (ethics in general), wherever there are starving people, there are Christians feeding, wherever there are homeless, Christians are building shelters, in Rome during a plague Christians would not flee but tend to the sick and dying, the greatest contributions to music, literature, and art who brought them to music theory and even revolutionizing literature as we know it today are all contributed to Christians and Christianity.

"This is our culture's powerful emphasis on compassion, on helping the needy, and on alleviating distress even in distant places. If there is a huge famine or reports of genocide in Africa, most people in other cultures are unconcerned. As the Chinese proverb has it, 'the tears of strangers are only water.' But here in the West, we rush to help....Part of the reason why we do this is that of our Christian assumptions....The ancient Greeks and Romans did not believe this. They held a view quite commonly held in other cultures today: yes, that is a problem, but it is not our problem....However paradoxical it seems, people who believed most strongly in the next world did the most to improve the situation of people living in this one." -D'Souza

Question: I've not heard of any positive consequences for research.  A good worldview should provide a positive influence on research.
Reply: Is the goal of man to serve science, or is science to serve man? Since the 19th century, the X-Club, Thomas Huxley, and co. imposed philosophical naturalism applied to historical sciences, and hijacked the various faculties dealing with history, with tragic consequences. Laypeople that do not have the disposition, erudition, education, and time, are being manipulated to believe the naturalistic narrative, which leads away/astray from God.
Science should lead mankind to the truth, and when the philosophical foundation is manipulating the outcome to permit only a desired, but misleading result, people can suffer harm with eternal consequences.  Methodological naturalism applied to operational sciences is perfectly fine. Nobody expects God to intervene somehow for a protein to perform its catalytic activity. It's preprogrammed to perform its action, so one should expect and search exclusively for naturalistic explanations. In historical sciences, it makes a lot of difference, if someone has the courage, to permit the evidence to lead wherever it is, as well towards ID and creationism, if that is the case, or just go with the current and scientific establishment, and exclude anything that is outside the naturalist agenda from the explanatory toolbox.

Historical sciences, and methodological naturalism
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1692-historical-sciences-and-methodological-naturalism

Question: If you believe God guides evolution, what does that enable you to do, in the lab - how does it push knowledge forward? It seems to me that it's most often a research-inhibitor.
Reply: Why put the horse in front of the cart? The issue is not what I believe or want to be true. The issue is what is actually true, and do scientists permit a philosophical foundation to be applied that permits the evidence to lead wherever it is? Today, that is definitively not the case, and that is a problem.

Question: ll have a ton of experiments that need doing, based on specific worldviews.
Reply: If we posit design, science should stop seeking answers? Like abiogenesis?  I do not know how the mechanisms of funding in science work, so I cannot comment on this. But, as the bottom line I think, scientists should always seek truth, and not bend the truth for financial reasons, like getting funding. Done right, I believe  ID/creationism is not a science stopper. Research can continue as usual, but without the superfluous naturalistic framework applied to history.

I am a theist, a creationist because I believe it mirrors reality - what is true. My worldview permits me to understand my place in the universe, who I am, where I came from, where I go, why there is evil in the world, who God is, why he created the world, and us, and find the meaning of life. My conclusions permit me to have a solid foundation for my life, that directs my daily, and long-term decisions, moral standards, family life, and views. I am not a brain in a vat, and I see no reasons to be a nihilist or believe that we might be in a simulation, performed by a 15-year-old in a parallel universe.  My worldview is based on considerable scientific, philosophical, and theological considerations, and sound, logical reasoning. 

Genesis 1.28: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Subduing includes understanding the natural world, exploring it, use it for our own benefit. Medicinal plants help to cure diseases. Today we can cure many diseases because we understand chemistry. So doing science, and working to move on with scientific progress and knowledge, is God's will, and therefore a good thing. Being curious is an important motivator for science-oriented minds to investigate, to go and find out what is, exists, and how things work beyond the known limit and border of human knowledge. The science fathers, most Christians, started with the presupposition that the God of the Bible exists, and wanted to unravel the mysteries of God's mind, and think his thoughts. Einstein said: I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.

Truth can be defined as that which corresponds with reality. However, how can we know what reality is?  If there is no God, there is no reference point for us to know what is ultimately true and real. It can be anything. We can exist in a matrix, we can be the experiment of an alien life form outside the universe, we can be the byproduct of a multiverse. Maybe solipsism is true. Whatever. We are left with the sober recognition that our lives are ultimately absurd. That leads to nihilism. 

Only theists can trust their reasoning and have justification for it. J. B. S. Haldane, British Evolutionist. “If my mental processes are determined wholly by motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true – and hence I have no reason for believing that my brain is composed of atoms.”  Atheists assume their senses and ability to reason are accurately digesting the information around us. C.S. Lewis: Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true?  But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course, I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. 

What about the laws of logic? Atheists have to assume them. Which is another presupposition most all humans hold. Non-material entities such as objective truth is a myth since even the most basic principles of logic are all produced by a random accident, as is so the brain.

Intelligibility: Russell’s “naïve realism” (things are what they seem) is the idea that our sensory perceptions of color, shape, hardness, etc. drive our concept of reality, and produced the pursuit of reality: Physics. Yet they are not the things of physics, which goes deeper than the cosmetics of the object being observed, and shows that things are not “what they seem”.

The atheist mind recognizes only “Natural” and Material” effects, rejecting everything that cannot be proven empirically or forensically.  So the Atheist mind must also reject the existence of a mind, since such an intangible cannot be proven to exist empirically or forensically.

In order to understand our existence, we need to presuppose an orderly universe, governed by physical laws.  Atheists have to assume it without having an explanation why it is so.  An atheist has no answers to why the initial conditions, and why physical laws exist at all. They have to presuppose intelligibility of the created order without having a justification of that state of affairs.  If man could not be assured that the future will be like the past, that subsequent events will sustain a causal relation to previous states of affairs, the basis for any science would be lost. Initially, he would appeal to past uniformity; yet this fails to answer the question. What right have we to read the past into the future? Then the autonomous thinker might observe that we all assume this uniformity and even his critic relies on such a crucial axiom; however, this observation simply fails to justify the autonomous man’s axiom and only reiterates his uncritical dependence on it.

The mere fact that we are able and capable, as rational conscious beings to appreciate the physical world, its beauty, and variety from the macro to the micro is evidence of a creator. In order to evaluate evidence, one has to presuppose the following conditions: 

1. The uniformity of nature 
2. The ability to process the information ( using the laws of logic ) 
3. Reliability of our senses 

Creationists number among the greatest scientific minds in all history. And today’s creationist scientists are very well educated in their scientific domains in major universities.

“Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.” – C. S. Lewis on Mere Science 1998 First Things 86 (October, 1998): 16-18.

Harvard University, which is considered today as one of the leading universities in America and the world was founded by Christians. One of the original precepts of the then Harvard College stated that students should be instructed in knowing God and that Christ is the only foundation of all “sound knowledge and learning.

Bruce Charlton’s Miscellany – October 2011

Excerpt: I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence, it had undergone a significant Christian revival. ,,, The point I put to (Richard) Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world. How, I asked, could this be – if Christianity was culturally inimical to science?
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/meeting-richard-dawkins-and-his-wife.html

Atheism would never have given birth to modern science at all. It is perfectly at home with all kinds of idiocy, superstition and irrational nonsense like “a universe from nothing”.

Claim: Religious institutions have been covering up criminals and fighting accusations tooth-and-nail, while secular organizations are typically transparent.

Response: The argument you presented conflates the message of the Bible with the behavior of religious institutions and their members. It is important to recognize that religious institutions are human organizations, and as such, they are susceptible to the same flaws and shortcomings as any other institution. While some religious institutions have been accused of covering up criminal behavior and fighting accusations, it is not accurate to say that all religious institutions behave this way. Furthermore, it is important to note that not all members of religious institutions behave in a way that is consistent with their faith/religion.

It is also important to acknowledge that secular organizations are not immune to misconduct and cover-ups. In fact, many secular organizations have been exposed for engaging in similar behavior, such as covering up sexual harassment and assault. The difference is that secular organizations are often subject to greater scrutiny and accountability due to the legal and regulatory framework they operate under.

In summary, while it is true that some religious institutions and their members have behaved in ways that are inconsistent with the teachings of the Bible, it is not accurate to conflate the message of the Bible with the behavior of these institutions. It is also important to recognize that secular organizations are not immune to misconduct and cover-ups. Instead, we should hold all institutions, religious and secular, to the same standards of transparency, accountability, and ethical behavior.

The secularization of modern culture is a complex phenomenon with deep roots. It can be traced back to a gradual shift in worldview, where the once predominant Christian foundation was gradually replaced by a secular, humanistic perspective that exalts autonomous human reason over divine revelation.

One of the primary driving forces behind this cultural transformation has been the widespread acceptance of evolutionary naturalism and the belief in billions of years of Earth's history. This started with Thomas Huxley and the X Club, which actively, in the period of about 20 years, brought philosophical naturalism into academia and science, practically removing a creator as a legitimate scientific explanation for natural phenomena in the world, and consequently, the biblical narrative. Thomas Huxley, a close friend and ardent defender of Charles Darwin, played a pivotal role in promoting and disseminating the ideas of evolutionary theory and naturalism. Along with a group of like-minded scientists and intellectuals known as the X Club, Huxley actively campaigned to establish naturalism as the dominant worldview within the scientific community and academia.

The X Club's efforts were strategic and sustained over approximately two decades following the publication of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. Through their collective influence and relentless advocacy, they succeeded in marginalizing the concept of a creator as a viable scientific explanation for the natural world, effectively removing it from serious consideration within the scientific discourse. By embracing philosophical naturalism, which asserts that only natural causes and laws can account for natural phenomena, the X Club effectively excluded the possibility of divine intervention or intelligent design as explanations for the observed complexity and diversity of life on Earth. This naturalistic worldview was then systematically woven into the fabric of scientific education, research, and discourse, effectively supplanting the biblical narrative as a legitimate framework for understanding the origins and development of the natural world. The widespread acceptance of evolutionary theory and the belief in billions of years of Earth's history, promoted by Huxley and the X Club, provided a foundation for rejecting the biblical account of creation as literal historical truth. This shift in perspective had far-reaching implications, eroding the authority of Scripture and paving the way for a more secular worldview that relied solely on human reason and empirical observation to make sense of the world.

As generations of scientists, educators, and students were indoctrinated into this naturalistic paradigm, it became deeply entrenched in the collective consciousness, shaping not only scientific endeavors but also permeating various aspects of culture, education, and societal norms. The once predominant Christian foundation, which had previously permeated Western culture, was gradually supplanted by a secular, humanistic perspective that exalted autonomous human reason over divine revelation. As generations were indoctrinated with these ideas, it sowed seeds of doubt and disbelief in the reliability and authority of the Bible, particularly its historical accounts in the early chapters of Genesis.

As people began to reject the Bible's historicity, they inadvertently built a secular worldview based on moral relativism. This shift in worldview permeated various spheres of society, including education, government, legal systems, and media. Individuals holding these secular humanist views increasingly occupied influential positions, shaping laws, curricula, moral choices, and societal norms. The solution to this cultural shift lies not primarily in government or legislative action but in the transformative power of God's Word and the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. As individuals repent, are converted to Christ, and consistently build their thinking on the foundation of Scripture, they can become agents of change, impacting their spheres of influence as "salt and light" (Matthew 5:13-14).

The way back is to uphold the authority of God's Word by providing answers to skeptical questions that cause people to doubt the Bible's historicity. In particular, it focuses on defending the historical accounts in the early chapters of Genesis, which are often the most attacked and misunderstood parts of the Bible. By helping people understand that they can trust the history recorded in Genesis, this book aims to remove barriers that hinder a proper understanding and acceptance of the gospel message, which is rooted in that same historical narrative. Ultimately, the goal is not merely to change the culture but to see lives transformed by the power of the gospel, one person at a time. As these transformed individuals take their Christian worldview into various spheres of society, they can become catalysts for cultural renewal, impacting the world for the glory of Christ.