Well, humph, Unca Cecil. Ending a column on Christianity (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_248.html) with a puzzled sneer at those who look forward into going into the void ignores the eloquent statement of Isaac Asimov on the subject.
In I. Asimov, his final autobiography, he comments on being a lifelong atheist, and in the debate over an afterlife, comments “After a long, busy life, what could be better than an eternal, dreamless sleep?”
I’ll buy it, thanks.
(post edited to make the link a clickable link)
(this post has been edited by Arnold Winkelried)
Golly, that must have been the wrong link, to a different column. The column I just read ended like this:
Sorry, I don’t read that as an anti-atheist “puzzled sneer” at all. But I understand that the atheists on the overwhelmingly pro-Christian Straight Dope Message Board tend to be a little touchy, what with all those horrible Fightin’ Fundies picking on them all the time. Why, practically every other thread over in Great Debates is about religion, and those poor atheists are just getting a walloping, every time.
[this post is available in a special format for the sarcasm-impaired; see the Straight Dope Home Page.]
One thing Cecil doesn’t mention, which some historians
have recently brought up, and which I think makes
sense:
Christianity worked better as a ‘social contract,’ than
what was available at the time.
Ignoring the afterlife, which I’m not sure Jesus believed
in, the whole ‘take care of everybody as you would Me’
is an attractive selling point of a group.
Early Christians took care of widows, orphans, the
infirmed - they were the first semi-organized group who
treated the less-than-fortunate as worthwhile. And even
if Joe-mius Blow-mius is healthy, wealthy, and wise, it
makes sense to join this group in case something happens
to his health, wealth, or brain. Or if he dies, to know
that his children will be taken care of. In return, he
has to be caring, a process that felt surprisingly less
terrible than the common knowledge of the time.
Jesus had good ideas of how to make this world more
bearable.
I didn’t read Cecil’s final remark as anti-atheist/pro-Christian at all. In fact, maybe this is projecting, but I’ve always assumed Cecil to be, like me, an atheist, and his remark as mirroring my own ineffable terror of the oblivion that will follow my death.
I certainly don’t look forward to it! I envy Asimov’s sanguine acceptance of the “eternal, dreamless sleep,” but for myself I can’t imagine anything worse than non-existence. I’d rather go to Hell.
The column (including Slug Signorino’s illustration) can also be found on pages 248-250 of Cecil Adams’ book “Triumph of the Straight Dope”.
I think a discussion of the popularity of Christianity in the 20th century should also warrant a mention of the successful colonial endeavours by Western Europeans, starting (approximately) in the 15th century.
Arnold, the trouble with that is that the ‘expansion’ of the religion to the New World isn’t a sign it was ‘popular’; the expansion followed totally from the military conquest by the Christian nations and subsequent population explosion from colonialism that followed. By contrast, the expansion of the religion from a small sect in the First Century AD to the official state religion of the remnants of the Roman Empire, the conversion of almost all European ‘barbarian’ cultures by the end of the First Millenium AD and the general success of the religion in managing to avoid the challenges of Islam or any other fundamentally new religion for the first 1500 years can be related directly to the religion itself, both as preached and as practiced. So, yes, Christianity is ‘popular’ in the sense that it has large numbers of adherents in the Western Hemisphere, but that doesn’t really show it is/was popular, meaning something a culture chose over something else.
If you want an indication of how popular the religion was in the 20th Century, a much better thing to look at is the Reformation. Certainly, in the face of persistent criticism and truculent conservatism (how do you like THAT wording? ), the Roman Church might well have been toppled by a strong effort to establish something totally new. However, while there were changes in both practice and content, the main religion remained largely intact; even a Mormon has more in common with a Catholic than does a follower of Islam or Buddha.
I couldn’t agree with you more, DSYoungEsq. Thank you for your salient points.
In my post, I was thinking of the comment by Cecil Adams that “Tellingly, Christianity made less headway against the religions of the east, which offered a world view that was equally compelling.”
If people from India or China had settled the New World and established colonial governments in Europe and Africa, I am willing to beat that Christianity would not be as widespread as it is now.
And Christianity, or more likely a “lite” mishmash of Judeo-Christian doctrines, would be viewed by many in the upper crust of that alternate world as an exotic, esoteric Ancient Way with some Deep Insights for the New Age
Hmm… Members of the International Society for Christos Consciousness, in Carmelite-brown habit and chanting a fragment of the Rosary, accosting you at the airport to sell you flowers and copies of a book made up of a heavily modified version of the Gospel of John and some chapters from Aquinas. Lama Phat Ramartsong asking viewers to send money to his ministry to establish missions at Assisi… (wakes up screaming)
And I do not find Cece’s comment dismissive, but rather realistic. For 99% of people, “onward into the void” IS a sucky feeling.
), the Roman Church might well have been toppled by a strong effort to establish something totally new. However, while there were changes in both practice and content, the main religion remained largely intact; even a Mormon has more in common with a Catholic than does a follower of Islam or Buddha.