Talk:Western culture

Orphaned references in Western culture

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Western culture's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "euroreligion2012":

• From Culture of Europe: "Discrimination in the EU in 2012" (PDF), Special Eurobarometer, 393, European Union: European Commission, p. 233, 2012, archived from the original (PDF) on 2 December 2012, retrieved 14 August 2013 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) The question asked was "Do you consider yourself to be...?" With a card showing: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, and Non-believer/Agnostic. Space was given for Other (SPONTANEOUS) and DK. Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu did not reach the 1% threshold.
• From European Union: "Discrimination in the EU in 2012" (PDF), Special Eurobarometer, 393, European Union: European Commission, p. 233, 2012, archived from the original (PDF) on 2 December 2012, retrieved 14 August 2013 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help) The question asked was "Do you consider yourself to be...?" With a card showing: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, and Non-believer/Agnostic. Space was given for Other (SPONTANEOUS) and DK. Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu did not reach the 1% threshold.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 07:15, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Original research

I'm not really experienced at editing (I barely added anything here), but many edits seem to be biased and also original research (adding stuff like "based on Christian values" and "since the time of Charlemagne" witholut citing a single source) so I removed them.RotarenegEmem (talk) 02:36, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Huge picture galleries of people not known for their faces.

I recently tried to tone down the massive lists of pictures of people who may or may not be relevant to western culture. However an anon user has now twice readded claiming the 56 of inventors and 40 of authors are of key importance to wikipedia. I challenge this assumption for the following reasons (1) It violates WP:IG as most of these people are not known for their faces but for their known. Hence the use of images is excessive and can easily be replaced by the text. In addition, the galleries are not even clearly linked to the text. (2) These galleries seem a way to circumvent WP:USEPROSE as long lists should be avoided in text. (3) It violates WP:NOTDIR by providing a simple list without sourcing or context (4) it violates WP:OR as the essential relevance for each and any should be provided based on reliable sources. E.g. the inclusion of Tolkien really needs a source. All in all I would say these galleries violate multiple policies and should be removed. (Nota bene, I did not remove e.g. architecture as the building images are central to their relevance.) Arnoutf (talk) 18:09, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Removed the excessive galleries ... if they be of key import ... then the text content should cover it. The galleries were simply excess and distracting fluff. Vsmith (talk) 15:26, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Justification for latest edits

It has been brought to my attention that some might considered my revisions to be removing or otherwise understating Jewish influence or contributions to Western civilization.

It has been claimed I deleted sources: I believe I removed one that was vague and of debatable accuracy, but otherwise I have only added citations where either there were none or there could be more.

The article prior to my edits strongly implied a direct and prominent influence of Judaism upon the West: while this is arguably correct, I improved the accuracy by noting the specific historical context and branch of Judaism out of which Christianity emerged, and which affected the West the most strongly. I also edited the erroneous claim that Jews were considered a Western or European ethnic group or strong cultural or linguistic influence on the West or Christianity and expanded on the remarkably lax paragraph concerning Western antisemitism. I also made the demarcation between Christianity and Judaism more clear; the prior revision made it seem as if post-Temple Judaism and post-Jewish Christianity are more similar than is correct, and influenced Western culture to a similar or equal degree; I added mention of the definite split between the two, and the consequences that had upon later Jewish-Christian relations.

I also added material on Western theatre, improved grammar in several places, corrected an ambiguous and seemingly incorrect reference to Greek and Roman medicine, and added a few miscellaneous citations as needed.

As Jewish and Ancient Near Eastern history are my areas of expertise, I will leave any further edits to parts of the article not pertaining to those topics up to other contributors; I feel that my edits in those particular areas are accurate and well-sourced. Batanat (talk) 09:51, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for your edits, and for taking the time to explain them. Khirurg (talk) 16:58, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

You can't remove sources just because you disagree with them. The sources say explicitly "Judaeo–Graeco–Christianity" and "Judaism". Your replacement with Hellenistic Judaism and Jewish Christians doesn't cover it. Infantom (talk) 17:24, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Britannica says "Judaism". So that's the wording we should use. Not that Britannica is the best source, it is rather generalist. As for Judeo-Greco-Christianity, sure you have a single source from the 1950s, but if you want it in the lede and in boldface, you will need a lot better than that. Khirurg (talk) 18:03, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

The reason I specified Hellenistic Judaism and Jewish Christians is because the statement that simply "Judaism" directly influenced nascent Western civilization is debatable at absolute best. The source used for "Judeo-Greco-Christian" does not adequately justify itself (Christianity may be derived from Judaism, but that is an indirect, not direct, influence from Judaism). The specific historical context in which Judaism influenced the formation of the nascent West was during the period of Hellenization. I feel that this specificity is needed to accurately represent the historical development of Western culture; because as it stands, implying that generic Judaism had a direct or "seminal" impact on the West is in conflict with the several other (correct) references in the article to historical Western and/or Christian antagonism towards Jews and Judaism, and could easily be confusing. "Judaism" is often taken to refer to Jewish religious traditions as a whole, both ancient and modern, and particularly Rabbinical Judaism; but Christianity/the West was not directly, seminally, or otherwise strongly impacted by post-Temple Jewish culture or religion, they were specifically impacted by a specific form of Judaism and Judaic proto-Christianity which existed only during the period of the Second Temple, during which Hellenization was a prominent and influential factor. Batanat (talk) 01:23, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Good point. All that's needed now is a source for that. Currently the only source used is Britannica, which is a very generalist, tertiary source, which is far from ideal, and easily replaced. As for "Judeo-Greco-Christianity", I note that there is no source that uses that as an alternative name for Western civ, rather, it is used to describe Christianity itself, which is obviously not the same thing. Khirurg (talk) 01:38, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Judaism or Jewish culture is one of the corner stones of western civilization, there are plenty of sources for that, not just brittanica. I'll add a section to the body of the article, which should clarify the issue. Batanat, the impact of Judaism far exceeded the boundaries of Hellenistic Judaism, such as the Hebrew bible, a major corner stone, which was composed before the first century and regardless to Jewish Christianity and Hellenized Judaism. Infantom (talk) 10:01, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

It really isn't, Infantom, and I say that as a Jewish person myself. Yes, the Tanakh became a part of Christianity, but again: that's, at best, an indirect influence, as it had to go through the medium of Christianity. The West certainly did not borrow any significant Jewish culture attached to it (which is why Jewish culture was typically considered barbaric, diabolical, or otherwise evil by the Christian West historically). Christians may have emerged from the framework of Hellenized Judaism, but the vast majority of actual Christians, particularly after the 1st Century, were not Jewish: they were Gentiles, with the thoroughly non-Jewish New Testament, rooted only vaguely in a particular syncretistic subset of Judaism. So again, saying "Judaism" or "Jewish culture" was embraced by the West, let alone a "corner stone", is simply not realistic. Jews and Judaism were massively persecuted by the Christian West, and even Jewish diaspora communities living in Western/Christian countries were relegated to ghettoes and segregated villages, not freely intermingling and lending their culture to Western civilization. Certainly many particular Jews or groups of Jews have made important contributions to society or to culture (e.g., I mentioned musical theatre in the article), but that's not the same as saying that "Jewish culture" or "Judaism" itself can be credited with such things. (Almost all of which are modern and done by assimilated or semi-assimilated Jews anyway, so trying to retrogressively insert massive Jewish influence into historical Western/Christian culture is simply anachronistic.) People often overestimate how much Christianity is indebted to Judaism and Jewish culture. Judaism might have been the mantle out of which many Christian ideas were formulated, but Christianity was extremely distinct from Judaism right from the very start: and even the parts of Jewish culture that made it into Christianity, such as the Tanakh, are not used or interpreted the same way by Christian culture as they are within Jewish culture. Christianity is about as similar to Judaism as the Roman cult of Mithras was to the Zoroastrian god Mithra: sure, one is partially inspired by the other, and borrows certain cultural elements, but the bulk of the things are completely different, sometimes even diametrically opposed. The cultural framework in which Christianity gestated might have been a syncretic kind of Judaism, but everything afterward developed independently of Jewish culture, in a cultural framework not only radically different, but indeed hostile towards Judaism.Batanat (talk) 11:35, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Christian bias

This article, like its companion "Christian culture", ascribes too much importance to Christian religion for the development of "Western" civilization; relying mostly on dubious 20th century essays written by biased Christian authors as references.

It is suspicious that an article about a civilization is littered so profusely with credits to Christianity. The article should strictly be about the civilization itself and not the religion that was prominent at certain times. The bulk of Western civilization was created by non-Christian Europeans, and important contributions made by Islamic cultures and the Mongols (see "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World") are ignored, even over the supposed contributions of Jews.

The implication here is of course that this article has been hijacked by Judeo-Christian kooks who are looking to credit their two-bit religion with the creation of Western civilization; which actually peaked long before the adoption of Christianity (concurrent with multiple military defeats and submission to more advanced Islam and the receiving of culture from non-Islamic cultures), and didn't begin to rebound until after the rejection of the primacy of Christianity (Age of Enlightenment).

Christianity was essentially the ghetto of Western civilization. Not unexpected for a religion that came from the ghetto, and which is today most common in ghettoes.

Anilating (talk) 01:27, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

You clearly have anti-Christian and anti-semitic bias. Go read a book.UltimateHope (talk) 04:01, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

"The origin of western civilization is usually dated to 700 or 800 AD. In general, researchers consider that it has three main components, in Europe, North America and Latin America. [...] However, Latin America has followed a quite different development path from Europe and North..."-secular intellectual Samuel P. Huntington.UltimateHope (talk) 04:02, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Samuel Huntington has demonstrated much anti-Islamic and pro-Christian bias as evidenced by the page you link. He is also accused of academic fraud by Serge Lang, limiting his credulity for wholly unsourced claims such as "most people agree Western civ began 1300 years ago".

The Wikipedia article already acknowledges the obvious fact that the bulk of Western civilization was laid in ancient Greece and Rome, hundreds of years before Christ existed. So Samuel Huntington's crackhead quote doesn't justify the blatant Christian bias in the article, which is quite honestly shameless and recalls "We Wuz Kangz" LARPery. Christianity was a ghetto religion and marked an era of great poverty and suffering in Europe; Islamic contributions ought to get more rep than Christian ones if we are going to stupidly mend supposed human developments with the religion of their creators.

Anilating (talk) 12:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Modern Western civilization in modern sense was rooted in the Antiquity, but shaped by Christianity, so I see no particular bias worth of shouting loud but rather usual Wikipedia sloppiness in broad-scope articles. If you have specific suggestions on article improvement, bring them here. Yes Christianity was a major effector, both positive and negative. Of course neither the Jews nor popes invented moral norms, but Christianity did work hard to enforce them. And so on. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:21, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Moral norms are a small part of civilization and the article itself. The primary contents of the article are art, science/technology, media, sports and religion. Yet references to Christianity are exhaustive at the beginning of the article; even though Christianity has absolutely nothing to do with the development of art, technology, media or sports. And the supposed shaping of Western civ by Christianity is only referenced with extremely low quality, obscure mid-20th century books written by Christian authors. The article is CLEARLY hijacked by Judeo-Christian zealots. Anilating (talk) 22:56, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Please refrain from attacking wikipedians, see WP:NPA; other wise you will get yourself into troubles.Staszek Lem (talk) 00:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Second time: What specific changes are you planning to introduce in the article? Staszek Lem (talk) 00:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Where in the article you see how Christianity impacted sports and media? Where in the article undie weight is given to development of technology? Staszek Lem (talk) 00:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Clearly English is not your first language; because that is exactly my point. Christianity is uninfluential in the bulk of the articles' subjects; yet an exhaustive amount of credit is given to Christianity in the article's introduction; at the top of the page. Christianity has been wholly uninfluential to the development of Western civilization; the fact that a guy who happened to be a Christian wrote some law does not justify the excessive Christian celebrity in the articles' introduction.

Anilating (talk) 00:45, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

"Obscure books" - we have WP:RS policy. If you think the books are insufficiently reputable, please discuss them one by one. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Christianity made important contributions to philosophy and law and created an environment favorable to science.

No it didn't. Europe was the backwaters of philosphy and law on the global stage and got their ass handed to them by Muslim cultures with more advanced sciences during medieval periods. Muslim and Asian contributions made Europe favorable to science.

Anilating (talk) 00:45, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• Cannon law developed by the monk Gratian around 1140. It was a systematic organization and compilation and was the first systematic legal treatise in the West.
• “The idea of rights is one of the most distinctive aspects of Western civilization, and scholars are increasingly coming to acknowledge that it, too, comes from the Church.”
• Western moral values derive from the Catholic idea of the sacredness of human life. The uniqueness and value of each person, by virtue of the immortal soul, was nowhere to be found in the ancient world. Where the poor, the sick or the weak were treated with contempt and sometimes abandoned. Catholics spoke out against infanticide, which was accepted in Greece and Rome.
• During the period 1150-1300 there developed a vocabulary related to natural rights. Natural rights that were defined included property, marriage and self-defense. A prince or the state had no jurisdiction over rights based on natural law.Phmoreno (talk) 23:53, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

"Scholars USUALLY agree..."Huntington quotes SCHOLARLY consensus, not his own original opinion. No "crackhead quote" here. Also don't delete other's comments just because you don't want others to see them. I don't think you understand what "Western civilization" is (international law, an important part of modern Western civilization, definitely did NOT exist during Ancient Greece and Rome). And "Christianity has absolutely nothing to do with the development of art, technology, media or sports" is blatantly not true, as hundreds of sources throughout academia, some of which are even in this encyclopedia or this very article, will prove. And given your constant neo-Nazism and praise of Islam, it is obvious you are just here to enforce fascist views upon everyone.UltimateHope (talk) 00:30, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Huntington doesn't quote anyone, and even if he had, a consensus (from the 1950s, no less) isn't fact. Your accusations are laughable.

Anilating (talk) 00:45, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

He quotes EVERYONE. And consensus is what defines a fact (evolution is a fact because it is what the current consensus, based on current evidence, decides to be true)Given your obvious use of "ghetto" and standard neo-Nazi rhetoric, the hilariousness of your rejections of my accusations is huge.UltimateHope (talk) 01:05, 26 October 2018 (UTC)