The Bible used to be the linchpin of Western morality, art and literature, but that's passing.
Is there any secular thought to another text that should function as this linchpin? Do you want one? There was a big movement for Shakespeare's corpus to effectively take the place in the Romanticist movement, but that's not as common now except among hold outs like Bloom.
Any thoughts on what would should be THE book?
the cantos
...
Need you even ask?
The God Delusion.
What the fuck is on that cover?
Has it really passed? Even among those of us who are agnostic or atheist, we still follow Christian morality and are familiar with many of the stories in the Bible. But I also think in addition to the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Shakespeare are almost as important as the Bible.
Isn't it a bit spooky that certain ideas are considered to be solely derived from a particular religion source etc, or is this just for convenience rather than actually ascribing ideas developed by people to an amorphous shared (partially if at all) entity such as religion?
I believe he meant Christian as in good/evil not good/bad, in Nietzschean terms
>There Bible used to be the linchpin of Western morality, art and literature, but that's passing.
Already Kant was coming from that stance, and surely Nietsche, and so on.
Will this never end? And will it never end that this is treated as a new revelation?
What if there is an evolutionary predisposition?
Getting your morality from one book is a good way to wind up crashing aeroplanes into skyscrapers.
Kirkegaard and Kant.
Looks like an open sore of some kind.
The accounts of the trial and execution of Socrates (Plato's Apology and Phaedo, as well as Xenophon's writings) have several parallels with the Christian gospels. It is a depiction of a man dying in the defence of 'goodness' and 'wisdom' while rejecting material concerns, written by close friends. There is a lot of noble sentiment in these writings.
>The Bible used to be the linchpin of Western morality, art and literature, but that's passing.
Isn't it always passing?
From the closing paragraph of Plato's The Apology, when Socrates has been found guilty for corrupting the youth of Athens, and is sentenced to death.
>You too, gentlemen of the jury, must look forward to death with confidence, and fix your minds on this one belief, which is certain: that nothing can harm a good man in either life or death, and his fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods. This present experience of mine does not result from mere earthly causes; I am quite clear that the time has come when it was better for me to die and be released from my distractions. That is why my sign never turned me back. For my own part I bear no grudge at all against those who condemned me and accused me, although it was not with this kind intention that they did so, but because they thought that they were hurting me, and that is culpable of them. However, I ask them to grant me one favour. When my sons grow up, gentlemen, if you think that they are putting money or anything else before goodness, take your revenge on them by plaguing them as I plagued you; and if they fancy themselves for no reason, you must scold them as I scolded you, for neglecting the important things and thinking that they are good for something when they are good for nothing. If you do this, I shall have had justice at your hands - I and my children.
:'(
Nietzsche, Marx and Freud filled the gap. You mightn't like it, but it's true.
For most of the history of the Christian west, moral authority didn't rest in the Bible so much as the Church did as an institution.
Most people were illiterate in their vernacular languages, and pre-reformation Bibles were only available in Greek or Latin. The church required priests to mediate scripture for the population.
What I'm saying is that it's only fairly recently that people could reliably use the bible as a source for moral guidance. Even after the reformation, Church community likely held a greater importance for peoples' moral belief than the Bible itself.
The linchpin you're describing would be more accurately described as the Christian community of believers and its institutions, I think. In the "secular" world moral authority is still, in the main, mediated through institutions, but that there are a greater plurality of institutions from which moral guidance is accepted.
Marx is just contrarian Christianity and Freud is just shallow Nietzsche on cocaine.
Nietzsche alone created the modern value system.
that's definitely a penis