In a thought-provoking post at Gay Patriot, Dan (GayPatriotWest) reviews a movie I haven't seen and wasn't planning to see (The Da Vinci Code), and the film made him think about the tension between our joint Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman heritage:

Sir Leigh’s insistence on exposing how he believes the Catholic Church misrepresented its own history seems a bit nonsensical to me. He seems to want to expose the church for the atrocities it committed. To be sure, many of his accusations are historically accurate. But, they’re just that — history. The faithful did torture and execute many who did not accept the doctrines they espoused. But, this atrocities began to fade once Christianity began to reincorporate Græco-Roman elements during the Renaissance.

Today, we rarely (if ever) hear of Christians committing such atrocities.

Torturing and executing people for refusing to accept doctrines is generally considered uncivilized behavior, and seemed to be going the way of history's dustbins until Communism and Nazism gave birth to a new Renaissance of old evil.

I don't know whether torture and extermination are part of human nature that civilization keeps under wraps, and I'd hesitate to make any sort of generalized pronouncement about the role of religion. Depending on the time and place (and the level of civilization achieved by a society), religion can be a force in mitigation of man's darker passions -- or (as we have seen in the past few years) a force in aggravation. There's a common stereotype of the ancients -- especially the people we call "Pagans" -- as being cruel, and the Roman thirst for blood is often cited as an example. Yet Christianization of the Empire did nothing to stop torture or cruelty; all that happened was that the official line changed, and Christians were no longer persecuted for being Christians. However, more Christians were persecuted and killed by Christians than had ever been persecuted by "Pagans."

Sigh.

I hate to overuse the quotation marks, but I did so because thinking Roman officials tended to be Pagans In Name Only -- basically atheists who saw religion as symbolizing state power who saw true believers of any kind as crackpots. To quote Seneca:

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

One of the reasons the early Christians so horrified Roman officials was precisely for the reason that they were true believers. (And educated Romans knew religion was a big scam, with corrupt priests, phony rituals, etc. Something to be used.) With the capitulation of the corrupt Pagans In Name Only crowd, the true believers had control of the government. While they of course took down the Pagan statues and closed the temples, the Pagans were dying out, and were a small threat compared to Christian heretics. Stamping out heresy thus became imprinted on the Church when it was in its infancy.

As to bloodthirstiness, torture wasn't any less torture when done in the name of a new God. Crucifixion was abolished, as were the bloody games, but whether people were killed and tortured for public entertainment or in the interests of stamping out heresy made little difference to the victims. A popular form of punishment for centuries was breaking on the wheel, a gruesome punishment which differed little from crucifixion (although the victim's limbs were broken in many places first, then braided into the spokes of the wheel). In Christian England, treason was punished by slow disembowelment. Here's how the much-loved Elizabeth I crushed dissent:

Until 1870, the full punishment for the crime was to be "hanged, drawn, and quartered" in that the convict would be:

1. Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution.
2. Hanged[1] by the neck, but removed before death (hanged).
3. Disembowelled, and the genitalia and entrails burned before the victim's eyes; the heart was the last to be removed and was then shown to the victim before the entrails were burned (drawn).[2]
4. Beheaded and the body divided into four parts (quartered).

I do think that as civilization advances, religions age and become more mature and more civilized. As more time elapses, the more religious conflicts tend to be relegated to history and seen as regrettable.

Back to Dan's Gay Patriot post:

I believe that the greatness of Western Civilization has been its ability, since the Renaissance, to balance the strengths of the Judeo-Christian and Græco-Roman traditions. And to understand that greatness, we need to look at the traditions as they are — and not as they might have been.

The image of a celibate Jesus is essential to that tradition. Acknowledging that, let’s accept Dan Brown’s theory as just that, a theory which, even if true, would not undermine the positive influence Christianity has had on our culture or the impact it has had on hundreds of millions of people — in our era and throughout history.

Not so long ago in Western history, The Da Vinci Code would have been treated as blasphemy, and its author(s) subjected to precisely the type of punishments our founders prohibited under the Eighth Amendment. Today, it's standard entertainment fare. Personally, I think it's historical fantasy, but what I think is irrelevant to the larger considerations.

Still, my dark side still always wonders about others' dark sides. Sometimes I feel morbid; other times it feels like an onerous moral duty to do such wondering. My dark side sees nothing courageous about The Da Vinci Code. What would be courageous would be to make a documentary film exploring the creation of Muhammad cartoons, and the religious warfare that erupted over then. But I don't think Hollywood is about to do that.

Interestingly, some of the same groups which launched the campaign against the Muhammad cartoons have launched a compaign (in Pakistan, at least) against The Da Vinci Code:

KARACHI - Pakistani religious parties Monday vowed to launch a protest campaign against controversial movie The Da Vinci Code, calling it an attempt to secularise world culture "in the garb of art".

"We would hold demonstrations in different cities on the coming Friday to protest against the defamatory film," senior leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance, Liaqat Baloch, told AFP.

The Da Vinci Code has stirred worldwide Christian protests.

"This movie has hurt the sentiments of Muslims alike as we regard Hazrat Esa (Jesus) with the same reverence as the Christians do," he said.

The film is based on the best-selling novel by Dan Brown about a conspiracy by the Catholic Church to hide the supposed marriage of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

The original novel has become a wild hit, with more than 60 million copies sold worldwide.

"It has hurt both Christians and Muslims all around the world and we would continue to protest till the withdrawal of the movie," Baloch said.

MMA, an alliance of six Islamic parties, launched its campaign against "blasphemous" cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed which triggered an uproar in many Muslim countries.

"This is yet another blasphemous attempt by those who are trying to secularise the world in the pretext of art and entertainment without heeding to religious sentiments," he said.

"We see the film as a continuation of the caricatures, which hurt the Muslims of the world."

Five people died in Pakistan during violent demonstrations against the cartoons in March.

The Hollywood entertainment industry knows a "safe" target when they see one.

Even when they're making a "courageous" film.

(God, how I'd hate to think that the more things change, the more things stay the same, because I want to believe in the progress of Western civilization.)