Quote:
Originally Posted by nguirado
I will contend that it was ideals of the three Abrahamic religions that spawned the idea of selfless charity. Specifically, the view that all people, from the leper to the king, are equal in some fundamental way.
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This view also exists in Buddhism, and we've seen that the earliest institutions were Buddhist and pre-dated those of the Abrahamic faiths.
Remember, my contention isn't that the Abrahamic faiths (and I'm glad to see you've widened it from just Christianity now) didn't influence and promote the growth of medical institutions - of course they did - but that the concepts had been around a long time. So I disagree that they 'spawned the idea of selfless charity'.
Graham