Reply #14: Curious... [View All]

[Wordie]

A series of developments, in which reason won the day, gave unique shape to Western culture and institutions. And the most important of those victories occurred within Christianity. While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guides to religious truth. Christian faith in reason was influenced by Greek philosophy. But the more important fact is that Greek philosophy had little impact on Greek religions. Those remained typical mystery cults, in which ambiguity and logical contradictions were taken as hallmarks of sacred origins. Similar assumptions concerning the fundamental inexplicability of the gods and the intellectual superiority of introspection dominated all of the other major world religions.

I would see Judaism, with its emphasis on law, as the root of those beliefs which emphasized reason and logic, far more than Christianity. Of course, in a certain sense, Christianity is an outgrowth of Judaism. But the Greek influences are certainly relevant, too.