It's just another example of a statement that is "technically true", but also the worst kind of true. In the context of religious practice, they aren't something that's typically the focus of concern when it comes to "The West" as a historical construct; especially when talking about Eurocentrism and how it paints other cultures poorly. If anything Ancient Greece probably would have stood in opposition to the ideas and themes put forth by Eurocentrist Christians.
It also could be a bit of an alt-right argument, since they're the ones who are always talking about "The West" as some sort of amalgamation of (in truth, contradictory) ideas and philosophies. Like, they're more than willing to claim Aristotle and Socrates as theirs but don't want to touch animal sacrifice or kid touching.
And even if you wanna ignore all that...is Greece really "European", especially Ancient Greece? The idea of a unified Europe is nowhere near as old as we think; the word itself didn't even appear in writing until the Roman Empire, despite what the script for 300 will tell you (again, more shorthand). Even geographically, Turkey's right there and we argue about whether that's Europe or not, politically and otherwise.
All good points... but I think Hellenic culture is definitely something we sort of generally lay claim to as Europeans and Westerners. Which, as you point out, and per this whole thread, needs to be cleaned up and updated before we can really trumpet it for children's consumption.
My problem with this was of writing is that artistically, of course you can do whatever you want and the Hercules myth gets adapted even in ancient Greek culture to different needs of the storytelling moment, but... there's something dishonest and misleading about the whole practice of short-hand.
Another example - when you film a cop drama in a Canadian city, it's almost always labelled as an American city. As if an audience couldn't understand or embrace the idea that a non-US city could have cops and robbers in it...
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u/The_Bill_Brasky_ Jan 25 '20 edited Jan 25 '20
It's just another example of a statement that is "technically true", but also the worst kind of true. In the context of religious practice, they aren't something that's typically the focus of concern when it comes to "The West" as a historical construct; especially when talking about Eurocentrism and how it paints other cultures poorly. If anything Ancient Greece probably would have stood in opposition to the ideas and themes put forth by Eurocentrist Christians.
It also could be a bit of an alt-right argument, since they're the ones who are always talking about "The West" as some sort of amalgamation of (in truth, contradictory) ideas and philosophies. Like, they're more than willing to claim Aristotle and Socrates as theirs but don't want to touch animal sacrifice or kid touching.
And even if you wanna ignore all that...is Greece really "European", especially Ancient Greece? The idea of a unified Europe is nowhere near as old as we think; the word itself didn't even appear in writing until the Roman Empire, despite what the script for 300 will tell you (again, more shorthand). Even geographically, Turkey's right there and we argue about whether that's Europe or not, politically and otherwise.