It was the Microsoft of its time.
I think a big advantage Christianity had was it wasn’t promising any secular rewards. Which seems like a disadvantage in comparison to other religions that did promise those rewards.
But the reverse side of promising secular rewards is failing to deliver. It was easy to worship Jupiter is you were doing well - you were giving Jupiter what he wanted and Jupiter was giving you what you wanted.
But what happens if you were down at the bottom of the social pyramid? You had to start asking yourself why you should be worshiping Jupiter when he apparently wasn’t holding up his end.
Christianity was at least offering something to you even if it was just a promise that you’d be better off after you died. It might not have been much but it was more than you were getting from Jupiter.
Excuse the interjection, but I so rarely see the term, “begging the question” used properly that I wanted to comment: Uh, that’s the correct usage. Thank you. Carry on.
Didn’t the church send some “heavy hitters” to your place to straighten you out if you didn’t go along?
Haven’t thought about, yes; I’ll accept that there’s a third option prior to the introduction of the topic. But once the topic has been introduced, you immediately either withhold acceptance of the proposition pending convincing evidence (skepticism) or you accept the proposition without evidence (credulity). There is no other option, whether or not you care.
It’s the same duality as atheism: you are either a theist or an atheist; there is no middle ground.
Powers &8^]
Paul was definitely an ambitious zealot and natural public relations and “marketing” genius who “repackaged” Christianity and turned its relatively modest status as a mystical Jewish reformed sect into a religious movement open to the rest of the world.
But I’m surprised that Cecil leaves out Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the 4th Century.
Constantine’s enthusiastic patronage of the nascent Christian institution legitimized it; Christianity went from a still-suspect, unorthodox, persecuted cult to fashionable quasi-state religion in practically one fell swoop. True believers regard Constantine as history’s “first Christian monarch”.
Paul’s work and the inherently attractive features of Christianity cited by Cecil notwithstanding, the Emperor’s endorsement of Christianity as the one true religion both gave its enduring institutional structure freedom to take root, expand, and flourish, and conferred a popular cachet that made Christianity fashionable.
The Empire was in decline, but had Constantine not given Christianity the Imperial Seal of Approval it certainly would not have flourished, expanded, and become so popular and entrenched as quickly as it did.
I think part of the problem is the lay understanding of the term skeptic. And Theist/Atheist is the specific dichotomy that I see creating that misunderstanding most often.
Skepticism is not about not believing in something. It’s about remaining unconvinced. One of the things I run into often are devout Atheists. You can believe that there is a god. You can believe there is no god. Or you can be a skeptic and be unconvinced that there is a god because you have yet to see any proof. I’ve met many atheists who are not skeptics, but refuse to accept any sort of evidence that might be someday presented to them as evidence of a god of any sort. If you believe with all your heart in a negative, it’s no different from believing with all your heart in a positive. You’re no longer a skeptic, you’re a devout believer, it’s just something different you believe in.
Skepticism is the foundation of science and the scientific method. It’s not about refusing to believe in something, it’s about withholding acceptance until evidence is found.
In US law, there are two different analogous standards. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” and “within a preponderance of the evidence”. If you refuse to believe something (ie that someone is guilty) until you are beyond a reasonable doubt, you are going beyond skepticism. A preponderance of the evidence means something is, based on a review of the evidence, ‘more likely than not’. A true skeptic is going to rule based on a preponderance of the evidence, though they should be open to the idea that they will change their mind should more evidence come to light.
Also, whether you’re an atheist or a theist depends on your definition of ‘The’. Er… of theism I guess. 
If one person’s definition of a god is that said god must be omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and responsive to individual prayer, then they will see anyone who believes in the ‘god is dead’ perspective of a original creator who then ceased to be aware of the universe as an atheist. But if your definition of God is an outside force that exists outside of the universe and had the power to create it, then the ‘god is dead’ concept would definitely make one a Theist.
So while you can argue that there is nothing between being a Theist and an Atheist, and I get your meaning, there’s a hell of a lot of gray in how that’s understood.
I just wanted to point out the series of Staff Reports on “Who Wrote the Bible?”
The last two sentences of the column are: “Sure, I know some profess to take solace in science. But who in his final hour rejoices at the thought, onward to the void?”
But what if that is exactly what happens, that you travel back into the void? If that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is, and I’m not going to adopt a false religion just because it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Might as well take the Harry Potter series as gospel if you’re going to embrace fiction due to wishful thinking.
Of course, very early Christianity failed to deliver spectacularly when the promise that the end times would come in the lifetime of the first believers and that none of them would die failed to materialize. They got round that one pretty slickly and the religion hasn’t looked back since.
But as you note, that’s not the version of Christianity that caught on.
I’m not claiming that Christianity succeeded because it reflected some true version of some actual divine message. If some people want to argue that there’s a real God out there, then they can make the argument that he’s influencing which religions succeed and fail here on Earth.
I’m offering a theory of why Christianity succeeded that doesn’t require God as an explanation.
Posted with permission of my friend Gary, an Episcopal priest:
*For what it is worth, what I read Cecil to say was that Paul gets a lot of credit for DESIGNING Christianity. Truth be told, Jesus did not found Christianity hardly at all, although the Bible does quote Jesus as directing his disciples to “teach, preach, and baptize.” Jesus spoke very little about theology or religion but mostly about how we were to treat one another in our day-to-day life.
Jesus was a Jew, through and through, and while he had a very hard time with the Jewish leaders of his time, he was not trying to change Judaism per se, just reform it. Martin Luther is an interesting parallel who, at least at first, just wanted Catholicism to clean up its act.
It was Paul who really first articulated the idea of atonement theology (Jesus died to save sinners) and Christian ecclesiology (the Church is the “body of Christ”) and escatology (Jesus will come again to judge the world at the end of time - which is tied closely to Jewish messianic expectations.) What is also interesting is that individualism in Christianity (how do I get to heaven?) is a fairly modern phenomenon, since, of course, individualism itself is less than a few hundred years old.
As for why Christianity has lasted so well, I do give a lot of credit to Constantine and, frankly, to Queen Elizabeth who picked up Henry’s power grab and made a Christianity that traveled better than Roman Catholicism was going to through the enlightenment and, importantly, that could span the globe with the English navy. Both these folks had the political power to set up the institutions (and the councils) that made it the Way Things Were. Never underestimate the power of the King to get people to do things his (or her!) way!
Also, remember, Christianity has evangelism as a very central focus, far more than most religions, I think. Perhaps “virulent” is a good word.*
The rest of the post is interesting but this is the Internet so I’m going to nitpick the sidebar.
What in the world does Gary think would have happened if the Pope gave Henry the divorce he asked for? England might well have stayed staunchly Catholic. The nation was going to spread its religion to its colonies no matter what it was. The Spanish and Portuguese never had any trouble exporting their Catholicism with permanent effects. The resulting world would have been unimaginably different - a Catholic America that didn’t encourage immigrants from Protestant Europe! - but I can have no possible doubt that some form of Christianity would have been as dominant as it is today.
Gary asked me to post his reply:
*My understanding is that the divorce thing with Henry was but a small part of Henry’s desire to be free from the Pope, especially financially, although the guy certainly did have a thing about wives.
Why I credit Elizabeth, though, was not that Catholicism wouldn’t have spread if that had been the English way, but given the mess that Henry (and next, Mary) made of things in England religiously, without Elizabeth’s Via Media, I’m not sure that what England would have exported would have held together so well. *
I’m still not understanding this, but it doesn’t belong here. And by definition anything said about alternate history is correct, so it’s normally not a route I go down. Thank your friend for the reply.
How could it, with Santa and Rudolph and Hardrock, Coco and Joe on its side? Xmas is here to stay. 
Thanks, but if the link works, people have to watch it!
Sure, but are you going to be rejoicing, or merely acknowledging the inevitable?