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Christianity has failed to¦



I claim that the Christian religion has failed to teach empathy; one of the most important moral concepts we have.

There are various definitions of empathy given by various individuals but almost all of them point to the same meaning. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs of another person. Empathy is often characterized as the ability to “walk in the shoes of another, i.e. to acquire an emotional resonance with another.

In his classic work about modern art, “Abstraction and Empathy, Wilhelm Worringer provides us with a theory of empathy derived from Theodor Lipps that can be usefully applied to objects of art as well as all objects including persons.

“The presupposition of the act of empathy is the general apperceptive activity. Every sensuous object, in so far as it exists for me, is always the product of two components, that which is sensuously given and of my apperceptive activity.

Apperception—the process of understanding something perceived in terms of previous experience.

What does in so far as it exists for me mean. I would say that something exists for me when I comprehend that something. Comprehension is a hierarchical concept and can be usefully considered as in the shape of a pyramid. At the base of the comprehension pyramid is awareness that is followed by consciousness. We are aware of many things but we are conscious of much less. Consciousness is awareness plus our focused attention.

Continuing with the pyramid analogy, knowing follows consciousness and understanding is at the pinnacle of the pyramid. We know less than we are conscious of and we understand less than we know. Understanding is about meaning whereas knowing is about knowledge. To move from knowing something to a point when that something is meaningful to me, i.e. understood by me, is a big step for man and a giant step for mankind.

My very best friend is meaningful to me and my very worst enemy must, for security reasons, also be meaningful to me. The American failures in Vietnam and Iraq are greatly the result of the fact that our government and our citizens never understood these ‘foreigners’. We failed at the very important relationship—we did not empathesize with the people and thus failed to understand our enemy. It is quite possible that if we had understood them we would never have gone to war with them.

If we had empathy with Germany in the 1930s would we have stopped Hitler before he forced us into war?

If we had empathy with Germany before August 1914 would we have prevented WWI?

Do you agree that we understand our best friend and that we must also understand our worst enemy?

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider?

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give, yes or no, or maybe

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

-William Stafford

Your post doesn't support it's claim. No part of our society has successfully injected empathy into our culture. Not Christian, Jew, Hindu, or hippy dippy weatherman.



We in the US are generally two-dimensional thinkers. We prefer either-or choices and dislike having to acknowledge degrees or facets. You're either with us or against us. Vote Republican or Democrat; anything else is throwing your vote away. We have both kinds of music: country AND western. A stereotype for everything and every stereotype in its place.



In this two-dimensional world, competition (sports, business, or war) becomes win/lose. One must win at all costs because anything short of complete domination is losing, and nobody likes a loser. Winning has become the end in and of itself. Politicians want to be President because it's the top. I get the feeling they would be happier if it came with a trophy rather than a four-year commitment.



Bringing empathy into such a scenario just confuses things. We view empathy as a nicety reserved for our friends -- the guys on our side.



Good strategists and competitors use empathy without even acknowledging it. They see it only as a weapon or tool to assist in the quest of winning, completely separate from the skill of understanding a friend.





End of ramble.

Jester;779689 wrote: I think christainty has taught empathy very well, its mankind that has failed to avail themselves of the opportunity to learn it.That's like fingernails on a blackboard to a teacher, Jester. If it ain't learned, it wasn't taught. The Bible holds the information to be learned, not Christianity. Picky point, I know. Sorry.



Jester wrote: The very breath of the NT teachings of Christ is based on compassion, you can't be compassionate without empathy.



I agree, knowing the enemy is one of the fundamentals of the art of war. I want to understand his methods and motivations, his tendencies and mode of attack and retreat, but I do not want to feel his emotions. I actually want it as emotionless as possible. It is of course impossible for me to not feel this, but minimizing it helps me to live through what needs to be done.



The very thing you're suggesting is counter to winning a war.



I assume thats your intent.
I agree you don't want to feel what he feels, but you have to understand what he feels and why he feels that way. Those are powerful weapons.

Jester;780018 wrote: No its a good point, but the learner has to be teachable too, its a 50-50 deal or there is at least some precentage that the learner is responsible for. I guess thats a whole thread by itself.



I get ya, about understanding the whyfors etc of our enemies, I covered that under 'motivations'. I see Coberst's point really, and thats fine for conflicts where both parties still have some common ground, but when it reaches the point of war then its too far gone for that until there is a point that the enemy capitulates then I agree, we then need to understand them better we dont want to demoralize them to the point at which they'd rather live dead.



I am probably getting lost in the subtlty of the words being tossed around here.
Nah, seems to me we're on the same page as usual.

Accountable;779581 wrote: Your post doesn't support it's claim. No part of our society has successfully injected empathy into our culture. Not Christian, Jew, Hindu, or hippy dippy weatherman.



We in the US are generally two-dimensional thinkers. We prefer either-or choices and dislike having to acknowledge degrees or facets. You're either with us or against us. Vote Republican or Democrat; anything else is throwing your vote away. We have both kinds of music: country AND western. A stereotype for everything and every stereotype in its place.



In this two-dimensional world, competition (sports, business, or war) becomes win/lose. One must win at all costs because anything short of complete domination is losing, and nobody likes a loser. Winning has become the end in and of itself. Politicians want to be President because it's the top. I get the feeling they would be happier if it came with a trophy rather than a four-year commitment.



Bringing empathy into such a scenario just confuses things. We view empathy as a nicety reserved for our friends -- the guys on our side.



Good strategists and competitors use empathy without even acknowledging it. They see it only as a weapon or tool to assist in the quest of winning, completely separate from the skill of understanding a friend.





End of ramble.


I assume that religion is the primary teacher of morality in the US society.

I am convinced that empathy is one of the principal concepts of morality.

Evidence indicates that less than 10% of Americans know the difference between empathy and sympathy.

Christianity is the principal religion in the US.

Ergo Christianity has failed to teach empathy.

Empathy is about understanding. We empathesize with our best friend and we must empathesize with our worst enemy. We can more easily manage an enemy when we understand that enemy.

Empathy is an act of the will, it is a conscious action. It is an act of understanding.

Jester;779689 wrote: I think christainty has taught empathy very well, its mankind that has failed to avail themselves of the opportunity to learn it.

The very breath of the NT teachings of Christ is based on compassion, you can't be compassionate without empathy.

I agree, knowing the enemy is one of the fundamentals of the art of war. I want to understand his methods and motivations, his tendencies and mode of attack and retreat, but I do not want to feel his emotions. I actually want it as emotionless as possible. It is of course impossible for me to not feel this, but minimizing it helps me to live through what needs to be done.

The very thing you're suggesting is counter to winning a war.

I assume thats your intent.


I am speaking of empathy and not sympathy or compassion.

Empathy might have prevented WWI and WWII in my opinion. It seems to me that religion promotes love rather than empathy. I know how to attempt to generate empathy but I do not know the steps required to generate love unless one first generates empathy. Religion seems to hold the intellect in low regard and tries to focus primarily on emotion.

Webster says empathy—the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it—the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiencing of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

Webster says sympathy—an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly the other.

Webster says compassion--sympathetic consciousness of other's distress together with a desire to alleviate it.