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I am an atheist. I do not believe in God, miracles, or an afterlife. Yet I am convinced that without Christianity, the West as we know it would be in deep trouble. This is not a plea for conversion; it is a historical and institutional argument about causation, moral capital, and societal resilience. Christianity supplied the ethical vocabulary, the metaphysical glue, and the organizational scaffolding that transformed a patchwork of tribes into a civilization capable of self-correction and sustained progress. Remove it, and the structure does not stand neutral—it tends toward fragmentation and moral erosion.

Conceding the Objections

The historical record contains horrors: the Inquisition, the Crusades, witch-burnings, and biblical endorsements of slavery and stoning. The Spanish Inquisition executed 3,000–5,000 people over three and a half centuries (Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, 1997). The Crusades may have claimed 1–3 million lives across two centuries (Thomas Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades, 2005). Leviticus prescribes death for adultery and homosexuality. These human costs cannot be denied.

Yet scale and context matter. The secular French Reign of Terror executed over 16,000 in a single year (1793–94). Twentieth-century atheist regimes accounted for roughly 100 million deaths in six decades (The Black Book of Communism, 1997). The same biblical canon that justified cruelty also contained the seeds of reform. Jesus’ “let him without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7) and Paul’s “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6) inspired Christian abolitionists to resist literalist cruelty. Christianity, unlike pagan or purely rational codes, possesses an internal dialectic capable of moral self-correction.

The Pre-Christian Baseline

The world Christianity inherited was ethically limited. Rome was an administrative marvel but morally parochial: one in four newborns was exposed on hillsides (W. V. Harris, 1982), gladiatorial combat entertained hundreds of thousands, and slavery was normalized by Aristotle and unchallenged by Cicero. Pagan philanthropy existed—evergetism—but it was episodic, tied to civic prestige, not universal duty.

Christianity introduced a transformative idea: every human being, slave or emperor, bore the image of God (imago Dei). Gregory of Nyssa condemned slavery as theft from the Creator in 379 CE. Constantine’s successors banned infanticide by 361 CE (Codex Theodosianus 3.3.1). These were not Enlightenment innovations; they were theological imperatives that eventually rewrote law and custom.

Institutions That Outlived Their Creed

The West’s institutional DNA is stamped with Christian influence:

• Literacy and knowledge: Monastic scriptoria preserved Virgil alongside the Vulgate. Cathedral schools evolved into Bologna (1088) and Paris (1150)—the first universities, chartered to pursue truth as a reflection of divine order.
• Care systems: Basil of Caesarea built the basilias in the fourth century, a network of hospitals, orphanages, and poor relief. No pre-Christian society systematized charity on this scale.
• Rule of law: The Decalogue’s absolute prohibitions and the Sermon on the Mount’s inward ethic created trust horizons essential for complex societies. English common law, the Magna Carta (1215), and the U.S. Declaration’s “endowed by their Creator” trace their lineage to Christian natural-law theory.

Secular analogues arrived centuries later and proved fragile without transcendent accountability. The Soviet Union inherited Orthodox hospitals but could not sustain them after purging “idealism.”

The Borrowing Fallacy

Many modern atheists condemn Leviticus yet insist on universal dignity. That norm is not self-evident; it is a Christian export. Nietzsche saw this clearly: the “death of God” would undo slave morality and return society to master morality (Genealogy of Morals, 1887). When we demand compassion from power, we are smuggling Christian principles into a secular argument. Strip away the premise, and human relations default to “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (Thucydides).

Contemporary Evidence

Secularization correlates with institutional and social atrophy. Europe’s fertility rate hovers at 1.5, and marriage and volunteerism track church attendance downward. The World Values Survey shows that religious societies retain higher interpersonal trust. The West exports human rights grounded in Christian-derived universality; competitors offer efficiency without reciprocity.

Some argue secular humanism could replace Christianity. Yet historical experience shows moral innovation without transcendent accountability is fragile: Enlightenment ethics, while intellectually powerful, required centuries of reinforcement from religiously-informed social norms to take root widely.

A Charitable Conclusion

Christians must acknowledge their tradition’s abuses alongside its capacity for self-correction. Atheists should recognize that our moral vocabulary—equality, compassion, rights—was not discovered by reason alone but forged in a crucible we no longer actively tend. The West lives off borrowed moral capital. When the account empties, we will not revert to a benign pagan golden age; we will confront efficient barbarism dressed in bureaucratic language.

Christianity is not true, in my view. But it was necessary. And it may still be.

References

• Harris, W. V. (1982). Ancient Literacy. Harvard University Press.
• Kamen, Henry. (1997). The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. Yale University Press.
• Madden, Thomas F. (2005). The New Concise History of the Crusades. Rowman & Littlefield.
• Popper, Karl. (1972). The Open Society and Its Enemies. Princeton University Press.
• The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (1997). Stéphane Courtois et al. Harvard University Press.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1887). On the Genealogy of Morals.
• Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Trans. Rex Warner. Penguin Classics, 1972.
• Codex Theodosianus. (438 CE). Codex of the Theodosian Code, Book 3, Title 3, Law 1.
• World Values Survey. (2017). “Wave 7 (2017–2020) Survey Data.” Retrieved from https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org.