Peterson says that most Islamic nations are dictatorships. Unarguably true. He further states that 100% of Catholic and Protestant countries are free and flourishing democracies. Rubbish. Is he not aware of the dismal record of Central and South American Catholic nations? Don’t get me started on the Orthodox Christian historical position on human rights. Is he not aware that when Christians held political power (as Islam does today), their last concerns were for such things as freedom of the press, speech, worship, etc.? Christianity was only defanged and civilized by the Enlightenment.
Yes, the authoritarian rule of the Church was broken by the Enlightenment.
But as bad as it’s authoritarian rule was, can it even hold a candle to Islam’s barbaric rampage through history, that persists even today?
In that sense, Peterson may have a point.
Thank you for this post, Cogito. You are so right!
Christians like to forget their own history.
They defend the Crusades despite the evil the crusaders did to Jews in Germany and fellow Christians in Constantinople.
They pretend the Inquisition never happened. It was one of the most evil institutions of all time.
And their faith is premised on the absurd belief that a Jewish man created the universe. In his alter ego, that is, as a section of “God”. And then a lot of them persecute Jews for not believing the same idiocy.
American Christians have a better history in recent times. At least some of them - brave Evangelicals for the most part - support Israel and not Nazi Hamas.
It’s a hard choice. But yes, Christianity was tamed by the Enlightenment, as you say, and Islam has never been ideologically challenged to any sufficient extent to reform it.
