How so? The Catholic Church was the main preserver of books and education in Europe throughout the Dark Ages.
There would be less justification for suffering and less justification for suffering is always good.
The fairly unique influences of Christianity cannot be understated. Monotheism, original sin, a sacrificial deity, hell, and others got a lot of traction due to Christianity’s influence. Comparing some of the older religions and you can see that they do not have a similar focus, and thus humanity would have turned out a lot different. For instance, Buddhism doesn’t have a sacrificia deity, there isn’t a creation myth, and it’s not monotheistic. Judaism’s version of “hell” isn’t close to Christian hell. There is no concept of original sin in many ancient asian religions.
Without Christianity, people would probably have had thousands of years to ponder “If god is good and powerful, why is there suffering?” Buddhism turns that question inward, and being a pretty old religion in itself, it’s teachings may have a profound effect on man’s thinking. Can any Christian not understand that being taught that some ancestor of yours did something bad, and that’s why you feel pain, is such a douchebag thing for kids to grow up learning? People want to believe their suffering is going to be rewarded and that there’s a reason for it. If man went through the last 2000 years thinking that your own desires cause it and not because of some antidiluvian punishment, that would have changed humanity significantly for the better
Imagine people actually accepting that sometimes life sucks because of you and other people, and do something about it, rather than simply accepting it as divine will and forcing other people to accept it as well. I know one thing for certain: suicide and things of that nature wouldn’t be nearly the issue it is now.
How about being taught that if you’re suffering, it’s your fault–either because of something you did in a past life, or because you’re unable to detach yourself from suffering. Yeah, that’s the way to fix suffering–stop caring about it!
Thus are the douchebag lessons of Buddhism.
It’s kind of hard to believe that people in India and China and Japan were changing humanity for the better until the Christians arrived and fucked everything up.
On the contrary Communism, and Hindu nationalism respectively have preserved the subjugation of women. British rule actually stopped some of the more despicable practices such as the Thugee or the suti.
You know Christians are actually persecuted in parts of India and Nigeria today
It also completely ignores the Butterfly effect.
I don’t think that was the message of the book at all, though perhaps it’s the one some got.
You’ll notice that at the end of the book, at the beginning of what would be the 21st Century, there are no liberal democracies.
There are certain issues I had with the book, most notably the way the industrial revolution happens far too close to our timeline.
If Christianity is crushed in it’s infancy or never spreads you don’t get Islam because Islam was so strongly influenced by Christianity.
After the accidental destruction of the library at Alexandria, it’s “back up” The Serapeum in Alexandria was destroyed by a christian mob tearing down pagan worships sites. (the Serapeum was attached to a pagan temple). Though accounts differ, and some place the blame on roman soldiers, it certainly was destroyed in a religious conflict between the two factions, started by the Christians. After that, we only had the copies of the Muslim scholars and whatever the early church collected. it’s worth noting that concentrating knowledge is not the same as utilizing or sharing it. The church kept a great political stranglehold on much of the world by limiting scholars to the priestly ranks. An uneducated, religious, and credulous public and monarchy was extremely lucrative for the church.
Not to mention there is an eighty-year long version of World War I killing one billion people.
Hey man, don’t knock it 'til you try it. 
The pros of a non-Christian world would include lots of guilt-free sex, plus extra paid holiday time for the quarterly harvest festivals. The cons? No Jack Chick to make fun of.
And probably no abolition of slavery, or much worth to human life.
Oh, please. Christianity never had any problem with supporting slavery. And an utter contempt for human life is a basic part of its worldview; after all, it’s the soul and afterlife that matters. A concern for human life and a desire to ameliorate human suffering requires that one first reject or ignore the basic tenets of Christianity about how the world works. There are many Christians who do just that of course; but however much they dislike admitting it, they are perverting their fundamentally evil religion by trying to do good in its name.
Yet Christianity constantly denounces violence and why should believe in an afterlife prevent people from reducing human suffering here?
orly? Islam was strongly influenced by Judaism. Notice that standard accounts of early Muslim history talk a lot about their dealings and conflicts with Jews (possibly Arabs of Jewish faith, in reality) but little about Christians.
Incidentally, the Bar Kochba rebellion could well have given rise to a much more militant form of Judaism reminiscent of Islam but, obviously, a lot more faithful to the Torah. That didn’t work out because the wannabe messenger of God got utterly crushed with all of his followers by the Romans. Imagine that - bar Kochba the victorious “messiah” has just kicked out the Romans out of the eastern Mediterranean and is demanding that the local gentiles start observing the Sabbath and circumcise or else get beheaded. Scary stuff. In real life they did behead a lot of Jewish Christians over the “who is the messiah” question, before the Romans showed up and killed everybody in sight.
One of the things that made me livid while looking at the history of my ancestors was the tale of one of the biggest destruction of culture criminals: Diego de Landa
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/when-worlds-collide/people/diego-de-landa.html
And yet Christians have such a history (continuing into today) of violence and repression. And the second half of your sentence doesn’t parse according the rules of English.
As you noted, the library had already been burned down on two separate occasions by the Romans in 48 BC and 274 AD. And it was burned again by the Arabs in 642. So why single out the Christians? I’m not denying that Christians did sometimes burn books, I’m just saying it was nothing particular to Christians. If Christianity hadn’t existed, there would have been some other ideology or collection of ideologies in its place. Battles would have still been fought and cities would have still been burned.
Overall, Christianity acted to mitigate violence, ignorance, and disorder. It did preserve literacy when no other institutions in Europe were doing so. Monotheism may have suppressed other religions but it also prevented religious conflicts once it was achieved (look at the religious wars that arose was Christian monotheism ended as an example of the alternative). And it did at least offer a modicum of moral guidance that rose above secular concerns.
It has only collectively decided to “denounce violence” when and where it is no longer in a position to indulge in violence itself. As for the latter, for a few examples, there’s the constant harping on how the suffering of people doesn’t matter because it is nothing compared to the eternity that awaits; the use of the infinite suffering of Hell to justify persecution of heretics and conversion by the sword; handwaving away suffering and injustice because everyone will get what they deserve in the afterlife; and the opposition to life extension research.
No particular reason other that it’s the subject of the thread, and without their influence there would have been at least one less major loss of knowledge, in this case a fairly critical one.
Certainly they would have, but since we can only extrapolate from what we KNOW of the past, It’s only logical to assume that one less major incident would have been to the benefit of mankind.
That is debatable. The Church did those things when they were in it’s best interest. It was perfectly happy to foment discord, war, genocide,and slavery when that was in it’s interest as well. It often acted harshly to silence those who presented any worldview that challenged their authority and dogma as was not above executing innocents as collateral damage in the process. The collection of knowledge was not accomplished for the betterment of mankind, it was done to bring anything of use to the church into it’s possession and keep it from anyone else who might share it and lessen it’s grip. For all those reasons I think that point ethically washes.
As for you last point on morals, the necessity of a religion for those purposes is dubious at best. The church actively sold indulgences, persecuted innocents, and generally ran roughshod over anyone who got it it’s way. The morality was only at best a gloss over the traditional values of the societies it encountered. In places it arrived late like Iceland for example, it never truly “took” as people were already moving into a period of literacy and knowledge that precluded the wholesale influence of blind adherence.
Since converting by the sword does not produce real conversion it makes no difference in the fate of the unbeliever.
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Such as…
Not Islam as it appears today, but perhaps something like it. You are correct that Islam derives much of its nature from Christianity and Judaism.
That’s why I asked if there were no Abrahamic religions. I would expect something like Islam, in that it would be monotheistic and proselytizing. The success of Christianity and Islam seems to show that a lot of people find that form of faith convincing, and fulfills a need. So maybe a faith of that sort would have arisen around some other charismatic individual, like Jesus or Muhammed.
Regards,
Shodan