I agree with that. I’m not much on blaming religion for the evils of the world, I think people are just assholes all by themselves.
I hard pressed, though, I think I’d have to say that Christianity does bear some significant responsibility for institutionalized homophobia and homophobic attitudes in gneral in the US. Christianity didn’t invent homophobia, but it (along with some help from other smaller religions) has certainly played a significant role in resisting attempts to de-institutionalize it, and continues to mainstream those attitudes and discriminatory laws as legitimate long after they should have gone the way of Jim Crow.
Yeah, most people don’t need any help in that area.
In the West, yes. But the homophobia institutionalized in the Islamic world is much worse. At least it is currently. That goes the same for whatever we’re calling China these days.
As I don’t see a lack of awful behaviour in cultures without reference to the Abrahamic religious standards, I think the only answer is that a few details might be different (maybe re homosexuality, but maybe not).
Religion follows already innate human nature. It doesn’t create attitudes and tendencies, it just reflects them. If it hadn’t been Christianity, it would have been something else that was exactly the same.
Buddhism teaches that desires are the cause of suffering. It’s a way of wanting less and expecting less. Sure, there are going to be people who want and desire to harm you, but it’s not like Buddhists are completely defenseless and pacifists. Hardly the douchebag lessons you were equating them to. Compare that to the Christian concept of original sin where an innocent baby’s suffering is ok because of the actions of a couple of people from 6000 years ago, or how things like floods and earthquakes, independent of human influence, cause great suffering and it’s all part of “god’s will”.
To compare China and Japan back then when they were still in a feudal system to Christianity now is idiotic. What were the Christians doing at the same time? Crusades, inquisitions, burning people at the stake. Yeah, real civilized there :rolleyes: And Der Trihs is right, you cannot discount the Christian influence in any civilization now. You have no equivalent control group
“Exactly the same” is a poor choice of words. It would have been something else that had pretty much the same effect. Maybe a little better, maybe a little (or a lot) worse.
True; false, however, to think the influence runs in one direction only. The particular revealed content of the religion in question does make a difference in the shape of the society converted to it – never as much of a difference as the prophet/founder might have expected, but a real difference nonetheless.
You’ve got your strawman version of Christianity, I’ve got my strawman version of Buddhism.
I’m not comparing China and India 500 years ago to Europe and America today. I’m comparing China and India 500 years ago to Europe 500 years ago. If China and India had religious beliefs that weren’t hostile to science and reason like Christianity was, then how the fuck did Europe become the center of science and reason when Europe was infested with Christianity and they weren’t?
Note of course that the religious wars that ravaged Europe happened AFTER the Renaissance, not before. Between the fall of the Roman Empire and Martin Luther nailing his thesis to the church doors, the only religious wars in Europe were between Christians and Muslims in the Balkans and Iberia.
As for complaining that Christianity infected the whole world, so we might as well blame Chinese homophobia on Christianity, well, surely you see the problem. I can claim that every problem in the world is the fault of Buddhism influencing everywhere else, and without a control group how can you contradict me?
Now, the notion that without Christianity we’d have another religion that would pretty much the same as Christianity, I disagree. China, Japan, and India were never swept by a mass conversion to a universalist religion along the lines of Islam or Christianity. Modern Hinduism is pretty much the exact opposite of that. And if Europe had never been Christianized or Islamicized, or only marginally Christianized, the resulting stew-pot of folk religions carried into the modern world could easily resemble Hinduism. Hinduism isn’t really a religion, it’s a whole bunch of religions tied together by history and shared development, practiced by dozens of different ethnic groups in different ways. And so you have a temple to Artemis, and a temple to Zeus, and a city dedicated to Athena, and people over here worship Hera in a particular ceremony, while in the next town they have a similar ceremony but it’s dedicated to Demeter, and so on.
Or China, where you have a stew of Taoism and folk religion, Confucianism and Buddhism, with a quasi-religious overlay of Communism just to screw everything up. The parallels between Confucian ideas and classical Roman ideas are pretty obvious–veneration of ancestors, deification of the state and one’s place in it, and so on.
It’s easy to imagine a world without proselytizing universalists religions, because 2000 years ago we had one, and there are whole continents today where they never became dominant.
Well, for example, if you look back to the industrialization of Britain, especially the mining industry, there was a history of corporate towns, where the pit (or factory) owner would own everything - including the Church, having to approve the vicar. And the vicar’s message, of course, would focus on the rewards people would build up in heaven. There wasn’t a need for nasty things like union activism, because the reward for good behavior was so much bigger than anything that could be gained on earth. And of course there were lots of messages about the importance of obeying authority here on earth, and the nobility of poverty thrown in to make it very clear that expecting not to work 6 12 hour shifts a week in unsafe conditions would put one’s eternal soul in danger.
It was a major impetus in the growth of non-conformism in some areas.
Isn’t most of western europe a place of “marginialized” Christianity now?
most people don’t attend n church any more-many of the great cathedrals are mostly empty.
My question: in countries where the religious leaders are paid salaries by the state-what happens when there are no longer any worshipers? Do the priests and ministers prech to empty churches? and get paid for it?
Original sin, the Old Testament, shit like Leviticus, and Jesus sacrificing himself are core testaments of Christianity. You can’t say Christians are good and ignore all the crap they do based on those beliefs.
With Buddhism, reincarnation isn’t expressly seen as a bad thing. Just because someone was rotten and came back as a roach doesn’t mean Buddhists think it’s ok to step on roaches or beat up the homeless. Every living thing works towards Nirvana and if they don’t reach it, yeah they are birthed into the world as what they deserve, but even the poor and destitute are able to work at overcoming desires and reach the title of Buddha. Reincarnation and karma only accounts for the body into which you’re born, after that it’s up to you.
I think you overestimate Europe being the center of science and reason. In fact, the Arab world was much more a center of science and reason than Europe during that time. Europe flourished in the time of the Greeks and Romans, later not so much. And China is hardly inconsequential in that realm, having been astronomers and mathematicians back when Europe was still thinking the universe revolved around the earth. I think you’ll find that if you move outside of your Christian-centric viewpoint, you’ll find that stuff was going on outside Europe’s borders
As for why Europe became dominant? Hell if I know
So it’s ok that religious wars happened because Europe gets a mulligan since they did so well in the Renaissance? :rolleyes: The fact that you call these “religious wars” prove my point. Eventually, the Christians became so innundated with power and wealth that your precious religion, as you rightly place the blame, started a massive slaughter of people and knowledge. Buddhists and Hindus may have their problems, but I don’t see their negatives destroy in such a large scale as the Christians inflicted upon the world. Chinese people weren’t even THAT religious. They had a lot of nature gods and random beliefs, but theirs was much more about worship of authority. Established religion in China before the modern period worshipped the Emperor, not a god, and Confucious was more of an academic philosopher rather than a religious scholar
I would love to see you cite when exactly this Chinese homophobia was uniquely developed and powerful enough to shape the world. It’s more of a human phobia of different people.
I can contradict you by pointing out that Buddhism’s limitations within it’s borders. Even in the land of it’s source, India, Buddhism has always battled Hinduism for prominance. It’s reach never really spread out to the Americas or Europe or Africa. Countries that are majority Buddhist didn’t have world-wide imperial colonies to spread their influence. So yeah, even without a control group, thinking that Buddhism has influenced people to the degree of Christianity is pretty asinine
Yes. But, there is a difference between a post-Christian society and a never-was-Christian society. The world-view, the moral paradigm, of Christianity shaped Western civilization, and all of us raised in that civilization – yes, all of us, even Jews – will always bear some marks of that shape, whatever might be our personal spiritual beliefs. And if the Islamic societies of the world ever become post-Islamic societies where only a minority pray or go to mosque any more, they still will remain Islamic societies in that sense.
Christianity took over the Roman Empire because it offered a more appealing world-view and set of spiritual promises than Greco-Roman mythology did. It failed to make much headway in Persia/Parthia and India, because they already had Zoroastrianism and Hinduism respectively. Any ground Buddhism was able to gain in India is impressive. (Likewise with Jainism and Sikhism.)
I mean as in underage prostitutes, rampant AIDS and STDs, yeah, sounds real pleasent.
On the contrary Anglicans are the most liberal denomination in Trinitarian Christianity.
Non-Conformism was simply a lump term for non-Anglican Protestantism (ie Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists).
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While the Arabs, Greco-Romans, and the Chinese all were intellectually brilliant cultures they failed to have a real scientific or industrial revolution which Western Civilization eventually did. And while the Middle Ages brought about a decline of cities, practical technology in weapons, windmills, and the like still steadily advanced.
Caste system anyone? As in basically th only religiously mandated class system that is absolutely unbreakable? And Muslims have started religious war on an even larger scale. Plus Buddhism/Daoism/Shintoism certainly didn’t prevent China and Japan from persecuting Christians well into the 19th Century.
The Netherlands is not really without religion. It’s mostly apathetic to religion and calling yourself an atheist (or even being explicitly anti-religious) will give you a response like “duh. your point is?” and the more “serious” believers tend to be viewed with one or more raised eyebrows, but Christianity and to a lesser extend Islam are still fairly strong influences in everyday politics over here.
As someone who’s lived in Amsterdam for 10 years, and who’s ambivalent about prostitution (though not nearly to the point of wanting to make it flat out illegal) I seriously think that it would be a better place if there was more sex there rather than less. Sex’s got a lot going for it.
If you’re describing Amsterdam, you’re way off. Please look up some facts. Yes, there are underage prostitutes in Amsterdam, but that sort of thing is taken VERY seriously by the police - and the general public - over here. AIDS and STDs are low. I don’t want to look up the stats right now, but STDs in general are probably a lot lower in Amsterdam than even the average in the US, and so are teenage pregnancies and abortions. And the actual amount of sex is probably just about the same. We just don’t get hung up about it as much as you do. ETA: And we give people the actual information they need to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs.