Yes it does, since there is no afterlife a conversion by the sword means they get to live longer and have if not everlasting, longer-lasting life.
Stem cells?
Well, it’s conceivable that Classical Mediterranean civilization would simply have survived to the present day, as Classical Chinese civilization has survived to the present day, through all changes, in the form of modern Chinese civilization. Two things happened to that civilization: (1) It went Christian. (2) It was overrun by Germans (and later, Arabs, Turks, etc.). You could make a case for a causal relationship between (1) and (2) – that Christianity weakened the Empire and left it vulnerable to the barbarians. OTOH, the Christian Byzantine Empire hung on another thousand years. An alternative theory is that the Empire was weakened by other means, and more and more people turned to Christianity, with its otherworldly hopes, for solace in an increasingly threatening time.
When I read the OP, I thought of Mithraism right away. There seemed to have been a lot in common with Christianity. At least in their Eastern Mystery religion thing (before Christianism shifted in focus and adapted itself to become a mass religion). But Mazdaism or Zoroastrianism could totally have caught on in Rome. Would be funny to have a Zoroaster Europe.
We know the unspeakable, wide ranging social damage Christianity caused in the past 2,000 years.
It’s difficult to speculate what would have happened without it, but anything would most likely be significantly better than the state of the world right now.
The Abrahamic religions strangled intellectual thought for 2,000 years (and still do) and allowed people to justify their horrific behavior, destruction and mass killing, which still continues to be the case.
We had the Greeks measuring the diameter of the Sun in 600 BC and proving the fallacy of the idea of a god in 300 BC.
It all went to hell after that… with the social development of monotheistic religions and the apparent willingness of people to be dominated by a fantasy.
The world without Christianity would be better, indeed.
I thought about Zorastrianism. But I figured it was too closely linked with the Persian state to have made serious inroads in the Roman world (barring a Persian conquest).
So, Christianity strangled intellectual thought? You just ignore the Enlightenment? How the heck did Europeans create the industrial and scientific revolution? How the heck did the Europeans divvy up the entire world?
It’s kind of mind-boggling. I guess Europeans must be some kind of superhumans to have created all this with the crushing hand of Christianity strangling them the whole time.
Huh?
Enlightenment was the rebirth of secular morality that was free from religious dogma.
The industrial revolution was an achievement of reason and scientific analysis, not belief. Its grave results were due to religious beliefs, yes, like the right to enslave people for profit, which comes directly from a Christian religious perspective of the world.
How did Europeans “divvy up the entire world?” Read up on history, at least start from the 1500’s and the Christian blessed abuse and mass killing of native Pacific islanders.
Yes really. I never said that Islam wasn’t influenced by Judaism, just that it was heavily influenced by Christianity.
You’ll notice that Allah in the Quran behaves and displays attitudes towards mortals dramatically different than he’s viewed in the Jewish Bible but fairly similarly to the way he’s viewed in the New Testament.
Allah is portrayed as a kind, and merciful God who has a message for all mankind that he wants his messengers to deliver to them whereas the God of the Jewish Bible cares about the Jewish Tribe and has a message for them, but not for the rest of mankind. That’s why Jews don’t evangelize the way Muslims and Christians do nor are Jews concerned about non-Jews not being “saved” if they don’t believe in God the way Muslims and Christians do.
Moreover, the Islamic concept of heaven, hell, and Judgement Day owes far more to Christian theology than Jewish theology(which isn’t terribly concerned with the afterlife or hell in stark contrast to the Muslims and Christians). Similarly, the Devil in Islamic theology is clearly far more like the Devil of the New Testament than the Satan portrayed in Job.
Nor for that matter do Jews, as far as I know, pray to saints or have shrines to their dead Imams which they make pilgrimages to and pray to the way Shia Muslims do(a tradition clearly owing far more to Christianity).
And of course, don’t forget that Muslims believe Jesus was the Messiah, believe in the virgin birth and believe he will return on Judgement Day to battle the Anti-Christ.
Now, obviously there are plenty of other Islamic traditions that are influenced by Judaism, such as their dietary laws and, like the Jews, they do object to the Christian concept of the Trinity, but on balance I’d say they clearly are far more like Christians than Jews and most Muslims share this belief.
Now, obviously some non-Muslims feel that Muslims are more like Jews than Christians, but no one knowledgeable about Islam would deny that it wasn’t dramatically influenced by Christianity and without Christianity it would have turned out dramatically differently.
I believe it was Harry Turtledove who once said, “A world without Christianity would also be a world without Islam.”
No it wasn’t.
How the fuck did these backward religiously strangled Europeans manage it then? I mean, over in China they didn’t have the Jesus-freaks, so why didn’t China make it to the moon in 400 AD? It isn’t like all of Europe stopped being religious in 1687 with the publishing of Principia Mathematica.
I live in a society in which Christianity is extremely marginalized, and I love it. Buddhists, unlike many Christians, never ever try to bug the hell out of me about religion.
As for a society with no religion, although I’ve not been to the Netherlands, reports I’ve heard indicate that country comes pretty close to it. There are religious citizens of course, but it sounds like many of the churches are just sort of museum pieces today.
If you are associating a religious dogma like Christianity with the Industrial Revolution, you need to go back to your school and ask for your money back.
That’s all.
Yeah, it was. AKA The Age of Reason. Highlights: science, rational thinking, questioning of traditional authority (AKA The Church)
That’s just nonsense. Christianity probably strengthened the Empire if anything by giving it full religious unity.
Pagan Rome or Greece was never particularly concerned about the value of human life or brotherhood of man. And neither had a scientific or industrial revolution. Indeed it is argued that the picture of God as almighty Creator helped make a mental environment more conducive for scientific investigation than the more superstitious views of the Classical deities. More than likely we’d be living in a world where slavery is commonplace, where technology is centuries behind, where there is no real view of human equality or brotherhood.
It was the age of reason. It wasn’t the age of rejection of religion.
What religion was Isaac Newton?
Tell me again how the Church crushed the inventors of the steam engine.
Look, the simplified children’s history where the horrible Catholic Church suppressed science, reason and technology is a fable invented by English Protestants.
Ah yes the Sex Capital of the World.
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Deism, and theistic rationalism both appealed in part to Christian morality and considered Jesus if not Son of God to be a great moral philosopher.
Have you not heard of social Darwinism?
Which many clergymen fought against, Bartholomew De Las Casas. Indeed it was Christians (Wilberforce, Garrison, et. al) who first fought for the abolition of slavery.
Enslaving people for profit is one of those ideas so elegant in its simplicity with such self-evident benefits that it tends to develop independently in most societies, and it started doing so thousands of years before Jesus was just a glint in his daddy’s eye.
Sorry, you’re seriously lacking of basic education.
See for instance Cato’s writings on slavery.
See what the Bible has to say about slavery,
You mean, Isaac Newton, who unweaved the rainbow, thus debunking the post-flood covenant myth? That Isaac Newton?