I think you might be overlooking the widespread cultural effects of Christian memes. When I had a similar discussion with a friend I argued “imagine a society in which the 12 Virtues had the place the 10 Commandments (or maybe the Beatitudes) do in ours”.
Not everyone or even most people actually _follow_ the 10 Commandments and it is debatable whether Christians follow them any more frequently than non-Christians but if you compare a ours to a society that had basically _never heard_ of the 10 Commandments I think it is hard to imagine that other society would have more Commandment-followers.
Christian memes are _absurdly_ pervasive in the Western canon to the point where historically even secularists conducted their intellectual discourse in Christian ideas.
Consider a world in which children’s literature is filled with rationalist ideas and Good Moral Teaching is all about being a good rationalist and even anti-rationalists have to define themselves on the terms of the rationalists in order to be an effective counter-movement and most people _know_ they’re supposed to Make Their Beliefs Pay Rent and Destroy What Can Be Destroyed By The Truth even if they don’t bother to actually do so most of the time.
I would expect this world to actually be more rational, on net, than our own. In fact, I think that if such a world is _not_ more rational then it is a damning indictment of group rationalism in general and possibly evidence that the whole affair to be a waste of energy.
I think you might be overlooking the widespread cultural effects of Christian memes. When I had a similar discussion with a friend I argued “imagine a society in which the 12 Virtues had the place the 10 Commandments (or maybe the Beatitudes) do in ours”.
Not everyone or even most people actually _follow_ the 10 Commandments and it is debatable whether Christians follow them any more frequently than non-Christians but if you compare a ours to a society that had basically _never heard_ of the 10 Commandments I think it is hard to imagine that other society would have more Commandment-followers.
Christian memes are _absurdly_ pervasive in the Western canon to the point where historically even secularists conducted their intellectual discourse in Christian ideas.
Consider a world in which children’s literature is filled with rationalist ideas and Good Moral Teaching is all about being a good rationalist and even anti-rationalists have to define themselves on the terms of the rationalists in order to be an effective counter-movement and most people _know_ they’re supposed to Make Their Beliefs Pay Rent and Destroy What Can Be Destroyed By The Truth even if they don’t bother to actually do so most of the time.
I would expect this world to actually be more rational, on net, than our own. In fact, I think that if such a world is _not_ more rational then it is a damning indictment of group rationalism in general and possibly evidence that the whole affair to be a waste of energy.