Why Should Anyone Care What the Bible Says?

[POI]

For eons, theists will quote Scripture, with the presupposition that it is authoritative in some kind of way. I contend that the Bible is no better or worse than any other collection of writings. Meaning, it may appear to have some 'good' things to say, some 'bad' things to say, some 'strange' things to say, some 'wrong' things to say, some untenable things to say, some contradictory things to say, etc etc etc....

Any of us can produce passages and quotes from anyone, or any publication. To many, the Bible is just another one of those tools for use, where applicable.

For Debate:

Why should one more-so care what the Bible says? Is it because....

1. It is the inspired word of God? If so, how do you know?

2. Another reason(s)? If so, what, and why does this make anyone care what the Bible says?

[TRANSPONDER]

You should have done as it's been argued ever since I've been in the apologetics business - Human morals and ethics are as old as humans themselves and were being put into efforts as moral codes even before Israel existed, let alone the Exodus was written. Moral codes and legal systems and even moral philosophy was done in cultures that never heard of Abraham. Christianity merely used all that was around at the time and credited morals and ethics to their version of God. I'm not going to say it was a bad effort but (as is argued today) it wasn't perfect and by the 18th c, was being overtaken by humanist thought, most notably with ideas of Democracy and human emancipation. The advances since them have been (generally, so far as I can think) humanist, with religion pulling back more often than not. While one might credit Christianity adding its'own preferences to human morals in post Roman Christianity, since the 18th c, it is not Christianity that should be getting the credit for morals and ethics, though as your post shows,it is still trying to.

[historia]

Of course Nietzsche didn't believe in God but though that if 'God was Dead' and people didn't believe - where would morals come from? Mind, you have a point that he must have thought it came from man, but probably bought it that it was an ad hoc system that was so ramshackle that it needed religion - based moral codes to make it stick. I think that understanding it better means that we can work with what we have (an evolved instinct) and not panic because it isn't reliable (the opinions of an invisible dictator put in an ancient book). I ain't sayin' he was dumb, but he was short on some information.

As I understand his (admittedly rather unsystematic) writings, Nietzsche thought morality was subjective and relative, something that philosophers like himself devised. He certainly thought that religion, as an aspect of culture, was a useful mechanism for spreading those devised morals. But that doesn't entail the further conclusion he thought religion or belief in God was necessary for morality, which you seem to be suggesting here.

It is because morals are subjective and relative that we can scrap the old ones and adopt the better.

And the Nazis certainly thought their morals were better. After all, they were eliminating the physically and mentally disabled and other 'lesser' genetic stock from their society, making it 'stronger.' If you bristle at that idea, maybe it's because you haven't scraped the Christian ideal that all people have inherent moral worth.

Human morals and ethics are as old as humans themselves and were being put into efforts as moral codes even before Israel existed, let alone the Exodus was written. Moral codes and legal systems and even moral philosophy was done in cultures that never heard of Abraham.

Nobody is arguing that Jews and Christians invented morality.

Christianity merely used all that was around at the time and credited morals and ethics to their version of God.

Christianity inherited a lot of ethical beliefs from Judaism, to be sure. But the early Christians didn't "merely" use "all" that was around them. They expressly rejected some of the morality of the Greeks and Romans.

This is Holland's point. The moral assumption that all people have inherent moral worth was not shared by the pre-Christian Roman Empire and European societies in which Christianity spread. And that moral assumption would later be rejected by the Nazis and others intent on returning to a pre-Christian ethic. This particular idea is not a universal moral instinct that evolved in all human societies, like some other ideas we share. Rather, it has come down to us from the Bible.

I'm not going to say it was a bad effort but (as is argued today) it wasn't perfect and by the 18th c, was being overtaken by humanist thought

As you like. But some of the core moral assumptions underlying humanism come from Christianity, and ultimately the Bible. So it hasn't "overtaken" Christian morality so much as adapted it.

[JoeyKnothead]

Thus we have no reason to conclude their influence is some great good for which the world should be extra super proud.

No one is arguing that we should celebrate everything Christians have ever done.

I absolutely reject the statement, or implication, that my values are derived from Christianity.

No one is arguing that all of your values are derived from Christianity.

Rather, the point Holland is making -- which I take to be widely shared by historians, and is in no way controversial -- is that some of the most deeply held moral assumptions that people in western society possess, such as the belief that all people have an inherit moral worth, have come down to us from Christianity, and ultimately the Bible.

I can appreciate that some critics of Christianity might not like that fact. But I have yet to see an argument in this thread that Holland is wrong in this historical assessment.

Considering that a society will 'create' their morality, claims of Christianity being this great driver ring hollow. It's a "right time" sort of coincidence.

[Purple Knight]

I absolutely reject the statement, or implication, that my values are derived from Christianity.

What I think comes from Christianity is pacifism: The idea that you should turn the other cheek and let someone hit you, over and over, because you're doing something immoral by stopping him. If someone sues you to take your coat, give him your tunic also. Love even your enemies.

This is something modern morality likes to take credit for, but fictional or not, Jesus seems to have been the one to popularise this idea.

Most of it, I agree with you. The Old Testament rules are mostly common sense, and no coincidence that it aligns with treating people decently in cases where both people happen to be in the in-group, because doing otherwise just wastes energy. Christianity did not invent the idea that people have inherent value. The enlightened pacifism? That looks like something they get credit for.

[TRANSPONDER]

Of course Nietzsche didn't believe in God but though that if 'God was Dead' and people didn't believe - where would morals come from? Mind, you have a point that he must have thought it came from man, but probably bought it that it was an ad hoc system that was so ramshackle that it needed religion - based moral codes to make it stick. I think that understanding it better means that we can work with what we have (an evolved instinct) and not panic because it isn't reliable (the opinions of an invisible dictator put in an ancient book). I ain't sayin' he was dumb, but he was short on some information.

As I understand his (admittedly rather unsystematic) writings, Nietzsche thought morality was subjective and relative, something that philosophers like himself devised. He certainly thought that religion, as an aspect of culture, was a useful mechanism for spreading those devised morals. But that doesn't entail the further conclusion he thought religion or belief in God was necessary for morality, which you seem to be suggesting here.

From what I read, (and I am no expert on Philosophy let alone Nietzsche - for which i make no apology as an apologist has to be a jack of all trades and master of none) he was worried that the end of Theism and religion would leave ethics at a loss without an Authority to act as a (spurious) objective source and morality would suffer. I don't think it as bad as that, even though Bible morality does not impress me nor seem to prevent immorality, but rather arranges cover - ups to preserve the Authority. I think that understanding the genetic basis of morals will help people to understand the need for morals better than a Biblical 'say so'.

It is because morals are subjective and relative that we can scrap the old ones and adopt the better.

And the Nazis certainly thought their morals were better. After all, they were eliminating the physically and mentally disabled and other 'lesser' genetic stock from their society, making it 'stronger.' If you bristle at that idea, maybe it's because you haven't scraped the Christian ideal that all people have inherent moral worth.

It was a Dogma lacking in scientific credibility, and refusing all criticism of it (Just like the Marxist Dogmas) and it was in no way incompatible with Biblical theism if it played ball (as in Dogmatic Russia and China right now). I certainly agree that morality can do better than the religious idea thanks very much for the reminder that a person or body less than Perfection has to be satanic or sinful, and humanist morality (without pseudo -scientific dogma such as Aryan purity) can reject a purely logical view of natural selection (breeding) and take the humanist view that evolution may be true but it is not nice or fair, and we can do better by everyone, especially if someone in a wheelchair can be one of our best thinkers.

Human morals and ethics are as old as humans themselves and were being put into efforts as moral codes even before Israel existed, let alone the Exodus was written. Moral codes and legal systems and even moral philosophy was done in cultures that never heard of Abraham.

Nobody is arguing that Jews and Christians invented morality.

I'll take that as a slip rather than crafty misdirection. The point of 'no morality without God' (religion) is that God invented morality. He made it and downloaded it into humans and moreover, one has to pick the right religion to be moral. You appear to recognise that this is simply not true, but seem to have problems with the idea that One religion - morality, other religions (or none) immorality, is a pernicious doctrine that we can well do without. It is perhaps why Humanism includes(so I read) many religious members because they see morals as human, and not due to any one religion.

Christianity merely used all that was around at the time and credited morals and ethics to their version of God.

I have never said otherwise, though I would add that they made a dogs' breakfast of it in trying to make their religion the Authority, which led to Matthian absurdities about giving all you have to the poor, which no everyday Christian does, of course.

Christianity inherited a lot of ethical beliefs from Judaism, to be sure. But the early Christians didn't "merely" use "all" that was around them. They expressly rejected some of the morality of the Greeks and Romans.

This is Holland's point. The moral assumption that all people have inherent moral worth was not shared by the pre-Christian Roman Empire and European societies in which Christianity spread. And that moral assumption would later be rejected by the Nazis and others intent on returning to a pre-Christian ethic. This particular idea is not a universal moral instinct that evolved in all human societies, like some other ideas we share. Rather, it has come down to us from the Bible.

It has not. Rather it has passed down the reprehensible idea that only those Right with God are moral or have worth. It further makes it worse by hi -jacking humanist ideas of emancipation and equality (where it does not reject them) and pretending it was all theirs. If they rejected anything from old Greece and Rome, it was because it celebrated paganism rather than was immoral. I am not at all sure that Christianity did away with slavery - only for themselves (but I could be wrong). Their persecutions were as bad as anything old Rome did, and against fellow Christians, if they weren't Interpreting the Bible right. True, they didn't crucify as that would have disrespected Jesus, but they could devise perfectly adequate horrors and persecutions of their own. If some German Christians were targeted by Hitler, it was because they used humanist reasoning to reject his dogma; other Christians played ball and shrugged when the ones who didn't were sent to the labour camps. So don't you (or your Authority Holland) try to wish the horrors of Nazism on humanism and atheism.

The best I can see (and the worst) is universal in humans, even if they never heard of the Bible, so don't you (or your apologetics source Holland) try to pretend that morals come only from the Bible

I'm not going to say it was a bad effort but (as is argued today) it wasn't perfect and by the 18th c, was being overtaken by humanist thought

As you like. But some of the core moral assumptions underlying humanism come from Christianity, and ultimately the Bible. So it hasn't "overtaken" Christian morality so much as adapted it.

What I like is not what matters (unlike what Christian apologists like) but is what the evidence, like, suggests. Which is that "some of the core moral assumptions underlying humanism" come from evolved instinct plus philosophical reasoning. Religions (not just the Biblical ones) hi - jacked it and claim the credit. Bad enough, but worse, it pushed their own dogmas and preferences as though they were God -approved as well.

"In another entry, Goebbels wrote that Hitler was "deeply religious but entirely anti-Christian".[94][95] Goebbels wrote on 29 December 1939:[96]
The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race. This can be seen in the similarity of their religious rites. Both (Judaism and Christianity) have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end they will be destroyed. The Führer is a convinced vegetarian on principle.
— Goebbels Diaries, 29 December 1939 (Wiki)

Hitler, like Napoleon and indeed Nelson, believed in 'divine providence' - the sort of instinctive theistic belief that gives confidence to succeed and is credited by many an athlete to God. This is not the belief of humanists or atheists who see it (or will come to) as an evolved survival instinct. It even has (I suggest) an innate reverence for the rulers and authorities and is something that we have to understand rationally not dogmatically or (heaven forefend) God - willed.

A review of Tom Holland has: "Holland’s quest to answer this question resulted in Dominion. Throughout his work Holland attempts to answer a singular question about power—how did the totalizing and draconian power of the Greco-Roman world become the liberating and redeeming power of the modern western world? Holland walks his reader through more than twenty-five hundred years of western history—from Athens in the fifth century B.C. to the present day. And his answer—unexpected for one of Holland’s liberal atheistic orientation (unexpected even to himself, he admits)—is Jesus on the cross. Christianity, Holland writes, began a “revolution that has, at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on the cross.”[2]"

Now, I'm not going to dismiss him - or claim he is a secret Theist; nor will I repeat how demonising the Pagan world and whitewashing antique Christianity seems short - sighted, not to say biased. I had one opponent putting himself forward as non theist who battled for the need for Catholicism (in particular) as necessary to stop all this liberal moral decline and trumpetting how monasticism preserved learning for so long.

In its' day, yes, but post 18th c. such became a reactionary and in fact immoral force and we can and must do better now. I don't know (nor much care) whether Holland is talking about past history or claiming that we need religion, true or not, to stop social collapse. But his view is on one particular aspect and either does not deal with or is ignorant of,the evolutionary - humanist aspect of history and morals.

[historia]

I can appreciate that some critics of Christianity might not like that fact. But I have yet to see an argument in this thread that Holland is wrong in this historical assessment.

Considering that a society will 'create' their morality, claims of Christianity being this great driver ring hollow. It's a "right time" sort of coincidence.

Okay, interesting claim.

I agree, of course, that societies shape their morality. But surely you would also agree that they do so based on ideas circulating at the time, including religious ideas.

After all, your earlier criticisms of Christianity in this thread wouldn't make a lot of sense if you didn't think that religious ideas could influence a society's moral code. To illustrate that using one of your earlier examples: pre-Christian Greco-Roman society largely didn't view (at least some) male homosexual relations as immoral. But that slowly changed in Europe due to the influence of Christianity.

We see that same thing with the idea that all people have an inherent moral worth. Again, pre-Christian Greco-Roman society didn't hold that value. Ancient Greeks and Romans largely had no qualms about infanticide, for example, among many other cruelties. That slowly changed in Europe due to the influence of Christianity.

So, you can't have your cake and eat it too here, ascribing to Christianity those moral values you dislikes while ascribing to "society" the ones you do. When historians and philosophers tell us that certain moral values (again, not all) have come down to us in large part from Christianity and the Bible, we should acknowledge that fact, whether we happen to like those particular moral values or not.

[historia]

From what I read, (and I am no expert on Philosophy let alone Nietzsche . . .) he was worried that the end of Theism and religion would leave ethics at a loss without an Authority to act as a (spurious) objective source and morality would suffer.

I don't think too many people in this world are experts on Nietzsche, so no worries there.

But it is not clear to me which, if any, of Nietzsche's writings you are basing your impressions on. Where in On the Genealogy of Morality, his most detailed work on ethics, or any of his other treatises, does Nietzsche say that ethics would be at a loss without the concept of God as a moral lawgiver?

It is because morals are subjective and relative that we can scrap the old ones and adopt the better.

And the Nazis certainly thought their morals were better. After all, they were eliminating the physically and mentally disabled and other 'lesser' genetic stock from their society, making it 'stronger.' If you bristle at that idea, maybe it's because you haven't scraped the Christian ideal that all people have inherent moral worth.

It was a Dogma lacking in scientific credibility

As is true of all morality. Science is a methodology that allows us to explain how the physical world operates. It cannot tell us how we ought to act toward one another, and so cannot serve as your objection to Nazi morality.

Human morals and ethics are as old as humans themselves and were being put into efforts as moral codes even before Israel existed, let alone the Exodus was written. Moral codes and legal systems and even moral philosophy was done in cultures that never heard of Abraham.

Nobody is arguing that Jews and Christians invented morality.

I'll take that as a slip rather than crafty misdirection. The point of 'no morality without God' (religion) is that God invented morality.

Again, nobody in this thread is making the argument that there is no morality without religion.

You appear to recognise that this is simply not true

More to the point, it's simply irrelvant to the argument that Holland and I are making, which is a straight-forward historical claim about where certain western moral values originated.

don't you (or your apologetics source Holland) try to pretend that morals come only from the Bible

Neither Holland nor I have argued that morals only come from the Bible.

Again, the point I've made is that some (not all) of our most deeply held moral assumptions, such as the idea that all people have inherent moral worth, come down to us from Christianity and ultimately the Bible.

I'm not going to say it was a bad effort but (as is argued today) it wasn't perfect and by the 18th c, was being overtaken by humanist thought

As you like. But some of the core moral assumptions underlying humanism come from Christianity, and ultimately the Bible. So it hasn't "overtaken" Christian morality so much as adapted it.

What I like is not what matters . . . but is what the evidence, like, suggests.

On this we are in complete agreement!

Again, let me just note that Holland's argument broadly reflects what many other historians have concluded as well. The Stanford Encyclopedia on Philosophy article on egalitarianism, for example, summarizes the mainstream view:

Egalitarian doctrines tend to rest on a background idea that all human persons are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. So far as the Western European and Anglo-American philosophical tradition is concerned, one significant source of this thought is the Christian notion that God loves all human souls equally.

In Equality and Non-Discrimination Under International Law (2017), Jarlath Clifford, an international lawyer, also notes:

This basic human rights principle is absent from Greek thinking, which envisaged equality between citizens of the state, but not between citizens and non-citizens. Indeed, the idea of equality was applied differently to different people, depending on their political status.

The idea of universal citizenship, a concept with which international human rights law and contemporary constitutions struggle today, was absent form classical Greek philosophy.

Universalism was critical to Christian thinking on equality. St. Thomas Aquinas emphasized an approach to equality that united everyone under God's direction in a common bond of happiness. Aquinas' concept of divine law commanded that all unite in mutual love of God.

Thus, in contrast to Greek philosophers who limited the application of the principle of equality to members of set democratic orders, Aquinas presupposed that by divine design and law the principle of equality applied to everyone.

Those who have most closely studied the historical evidence recognize that Christianity developed and shaped some of our core moral assumptions.

I have nothing against humanism -- far from it. But it didn't just pop into existence out of nowhere during the Enlightenment. It emmerged and developed in Christian societies, and so naturally adapted many Christian ideas.

This is Holland's point. The moral assumption that all people have inherent moral worth was not shared by the pre-Christian Roman Empire and European societies in which Christianity spread. And that moral assumption would later be rejected by the Nazis and others intent on returning to a pre-Christian ethic. This particular idea is not a universal moral instinct that evolved in all human societies, like some other ideas we share. Rather, it has come down to us from the Bible.

It has not. Rather it has passed down the reprehensible idea that only those Right with God are moral or have worth.

This is just inaccurate, as can be seen from the sources already quoted above. But let's also contrast your loose impressions here with what the Catechism (§ 1934-35) says:

Created in the image of the one God and equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature and the same origin. Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude: all therefore enjoy an equal dignity.

The equality of men rests essentially on their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it: Every form of social or cultural discrimination in fundamental personal rights on the grounds of sex, race, color, social conditions, language, or religion must be curbed and eradicated as incompatible with God's design.

And from the proceeding section (§ 1931-33):

Respect for the human person proceeds by way of respect for the principle that "everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as 'another self,' above all bearing in mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity." No legislation could by itself do away with the fears, prejudices, and attitudes of pride and selfishness which obstruct the establishment of truly fraternal societies. Such behavior will cease only through the charity that finds in every man a "neighbor," a brother.

The duty of making oneself a neighbor to others and actively serving them becomes even more urgent when it involves the disadvantaged, in whatever area this may be. "As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt 25:40).

This same duty extends to those who think or act differently from us. The teaching of Christ goes so far as to require the forgiveness of offenses. He extends the commandment of love, which is that of the New Law, to all enemies (Cf. Mt 5:43-44). Liberation in the spirit of the Gospel is incompatible with hatred of one's enemy as a person, but not with hatred of the evil that he does as an enemy.

As the biblical references here attest, much of this rests on very ancient ideas from Jesus himself. Those were then further shaped and developed by later Christian authors from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, with expansion of those ideas in our own time.

If some German Christians were targeted by Hitler, it was because they used humanist reasoning to reject his dogma

It seem like you also want to have your cake and eat it to, attributing anything you like about Christians or Christianity to "humanism" while those things you dislike to "religion." Needless to say, the Nazis didn't persecute the Catholic Church in Germany or throw Jehovah's Witnesses into concentration camps because of their "humanist reasoning."

Christianity merely used all that was around at the time and credited morals and ethics to their version of God.

I have never said otherwise

I should hope so, since you are responding to your own quote here, TRANSPONDER.

[JoeyKnothead]

...
So, you can't have your cake and eat it too here, ascribing to Christianity those moral values you dislikes while ascribing to "society" the ones you do. When historians and philosophers tell us that certain moral values (again, not all) have come down to us in large part from Christianity and the Bible, we should acknowledge that fact, whether we happen to like those particular moral values or not.

Any notion that I wouldn't hate a secular society having evil morals is an omission on my part. That said...

I don't consider Christianity to have anything to do with my moral principles, and consider such an accusation to be a disgusting libel against me.

I understand many a theist likes to claim their morality supercedes, or informs the morality of others, but I ain't having it.

Where the Christian promotes their "virtuous" morality, they must also be held for the unvirtuous, to downright evil morality their religion promotes.

I don't have a problem with homosexuals. I don't have a problem with adulterers. I don't have a problem with a man wearing a dress, or a woman wearing britches. I don't have a problem with folks believing as they see fit. I don't have a problem with cartoon characters or beer cans, or whatever is the current Christian rage of the day.

I'll not be held accountable to or for Christian morality, where I consider so much of it to be, with a few shining exceptions, the home of bigots, haters, and various other forms of vile human beings.

I'll not have my moral principles clumped into the clod of ignorance and hatred Christianity has a long history of promoting, and worse, enforcing.

As I said before, any coincidental coincidenting of my morality and that of the Christian is purely coincidence.

I'd rather burn in Hell than bend the knee to such a vengeful god that'd send me there for no other reason than I live the best morality I know how.

[TRANSPONDER]

From what I read, (and I am no expert on Philosophy let alone Nietzsche . . .) he was worried that the end of Theism and religion would leave ethics at a loss without an Authority to act as a (spurious) objective source and morality would suffer.

I don't think too many people in this world are experts on Nietzsche, so no worries there.

But it is not clear to me which, if any, of Nietzsche's writings you are basing your impressions on. Where in On the Genealogy of Morality, his most detailed work on ethics, or any of his other treatises, does Nietzsche say that ethics would be at a loss without the concept of God as a moral lawgiver?

It is because morals are subjective and relative that we can scrap the old ones and adopt the better.

And the Nazis certainly thought their morals were better. After all, they were eliminating the physically and mentally disabled and other 'lesser' genetic stock from their society, making it 'stronger.' If you bristle at that idea, maybe it's because you haven't scraped the Christian ideal that all people have inherent moral worth.

It was a Dogma lacking in scientific credibility

As is true of all morality. Science is a methodology that allows us to explain how the physical world operates. It cannot tell us how we ought to act toward one another, and so cannot serve as your objection to Nazi morality.

Human morals and ethics are as old as humans themselves and were being put into efforts as moral codes even before Israel existed, let alone the Exodus was written. Moral codes and legal systems and even moral philosophy was done in cultures that never heard of Abraham.

Nobody is arguing that Jews and Christians invented morality.

I'll take that as a slip rather than crafty misdirection. The point of 'no morality without God' (religion) is that God invented morality.

Again, nobody in this thread is making the argument that there is no morality without religion.

You appear to recognise that this is simply not true

More to the point, it's simply irrelvant to the argument that Holland and I are making, which is a straight-forward historical claim about where certain western moral values originated.

don't you (or your apologetics source Holland) try to pretend that morals come only from the Bible

Neither Holland nor I have argued that morals only come from the Bible.

Again, the point I've made is that some (not all) of our most deeply held moral assumptions, such as the idea that all people have inherent moral worth, come down to us from Christianity and ultimately the Bible.

I'm not going to say it was a bad effort but (as is argued today) it wasn't perfect and by the 18th c, was being overtaken by humanist thought

As you like. But some of the core moral assumptions underlying humanism come from Christianity, and ultimately the Bible. So it hasn't "overtaken" Christian morality so much as adapted it.

What I like is not what matters . . . but is what the evidence, like, suggests.

On this we are in complete agreement!

Again, let me just note that Holland's argument broadly reflects what many other historians have concluded as well. The Stanford Encyclopedia on Philosophy article on egalitarianism, for example, summarizes the mainstream view:

Egalitarian doctrines tend to rest on a background idea that all human persons are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. So far as the Western European and Anglo-American philosophical tradition is concerned, one significant source of this thought is the Christian notion that God loves all human souls equally.

In Equality and Non-Discrimination Under International Law (2017), Jarlath Clifford, an international lawyer, also notes:

This basic human rights principle is absent from Greek thinking, which envisaged equality between citizens of the state, but not between citizens and non-citizens. Indeed, the idea of equality was applied differently to different people, depending on their political status.

The idea of universal citizenship, a concept with which international human rights law and contemporary constitutions struggle today, was absent form classical Greek philosophy.

Universalism was critical to Christian thinking on equality. St. Thomas Aquinas emphasized an approach to equality that united everyone under God's direction in a common bond of happiness. Aquinas' concept of divine law commanded that all unite in mutual love of God.

Thus, in contrast to Greek philosophers who limited the application of the principle of equality to members of set democratic orders, Aquinas presupposed that by divine design and law the principle of equality applied to everyone.

Those who have most closely studied the historical evidence recognize that Christianity developed and shaped some of our core moral assumptions.

I have nothing against humanism -- far from it. But it didn't just pop into existence out of nowhere during the Enlightenment. It emmerged and developed in Christian societies, and so naturally adapted many Christian ideas.

This is Holland's point. The moral assumption that all people have inherent moral worth was not shared by the pre-Christian Roman Empire and European societies in which Christianity spread. And that moral assumption would later be rejected by the Nazis and others intent on returning to a pre-Christian ethic. This particular idea is not a universal moral instinct that evolved in all human societies, like some other ideas we share. Rather, it has come down to us from the Bible.

It has not. Rather it has passed down the reprehensible idea that only those Right with God are moral or have worth.

This is just inaccurate, as can be seen from the sources already quoted above. But let's also contrast your loose impressions here with what the Catechism (§ 1934-35) says:

Created in the image of the one God and equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature and the same origin. Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude: all therefore enjoy an equal dignity.

The equality of men rests essentially on their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it: Every form of social or cultural discrimination in fundamental personal rights on the grounds of sex, race, color, social conditions, language, or religion must be curbed and eradicated as incompatible with God's design.

And from the proceeding section (§ 1931-33):

Respect for the human person proceeds by way of respect for the principle that "everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as 'another self,' above all bearing in mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity." No legislation could by itself do away with the fears, prejudices, and attitudes of pride and selfishness which obstruct the establishment of truly fraternal societies. Such behavior will cease only through the charity that finds in every man a "neighbor," a brother.

The duty of making oneself a neighbor to others and actively serving them becomes even more urgent when it involves the disadvantaged, in whatever area this may be. "As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt 25:40).

This same duty extends to those who think or act differently from us. The teaching of Christ goes so far as to require the forgiveness of offenses. He extends the commandment of love, which is that of the New Law, to all enemies (Cf. Mt 5:43-44). Liberation in the spirit of the Gospel is incompatible with hatred of one's enemy as a person, but not with hatred of the evil that he does as an enemy.

As the biblical references here attest, much of this rests on very ancient ideas from Jesus himself. Those were then further shaped and developed by later Christian authors from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, with expansion of those ideas in our own time.

If some German Christians were targeted by Hitler, it was because they used humanist reasoning to reject his dogma

It seem like you also want to have your cake and eat it to, attributing anything you like about Christians or Christianity to "humanism" while those things you dislike to "religion." Needless to say, the Nazis didn't persecute the Catholic Church in Germany or throw Jehovah's Witnesses into concentration camps because of their "humanist reasoning."

Christianity merely used all that was around at the time and credited morals and ethics to their version of God.

I have never said otherwise

I should hope so, since you are responding to your own quote here, TRANSPONDER.

It is not from any particular work, but from various writings and comments he made to people. Wiki sums up his problem thus "Explanations
Nietzsche recognized the crisis that this "Death of God" represented for existing moral assumptions in Europe as they existed within the context of traditional Christian belief. "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident [...] By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands." I trust that you won't be playing the 'Wiki is not reliable'card any more that you were (I do hope) not playing the 'Dis he use the exact words you did?" gambit.

Apart from what is a mispost of mine that you could not forbear to waggle about garbage; it is just religion trying to claim the credit for morality, using the claims of the Bible which proves nothing but my point that the religion is trying to claim the credit for morality.

You misunderstand my point about German Churches, (I assume not a deliberate misrepresentation).It is not about blaming anything bad on Christians and anything good on ...hang on, what was you argument? Yes crediting anything good to humanism (though I can imagine that reversing theist -thing apologetics would look like that) But the point is that morality is man made, good and bad, and Church morality borrows from human morality; it adapted it but didn't invent it. No more than argumentative discourse was invented by the Bible;it borrowed what humans has already got. You can no longer claim human morals for religion, let alone one particular one, nor blame all the bad on atheism.

[historia]

As I said before, any coincidental coincidenting of my morality and that of the Christian is purely coincidence.

Your opinion is duly noted. But the various secular and atheist historians and philosophers cited above who say otherwise have made a far more convincing case, since their conclusions are actually based on the historical evidence.