Christianity is not popular in the same way that skateboarding was popular. Most christians are christian by birth… and a lot of them don’t bother to practice, anyway. These people are the descendants of europeans, or people who were converted (often under duress) by european missionaries, or who simply lived in christian societies for enough generations that they were assimilated.
It’s not like there are huge crowds outside the churches each day of people pleading to become christian.
What may attract the people who do convert to christianity (for reasons other than to please their fiancee or to fit in in their new country) may be the prospect of the forgiveness of sins. Most all of the big christian sects allow for confession and subsequent forgiveness of earthly transgressions, and this can be attractive to one who feels intense guilt fo some reason, or simply wants an insurance policy on their relationship with their diety. It’s a way around fasting, or ritual sacrifice, or suicide, all of which are sanctioned by one religion or another.
As well -and this is a little less concrete- is the personability of the deity. Christ, after all, was a man (at least in part) so he’s easier to relate to. Believers aren’t faced with having to ‘be as good’ as a classic god; they have only to follow the example of the god-human, Jesus. Of course, Christ is supposed to be perfect anyway, but you can (and christian leaders do) make the argument that he’s closer to human, and so easier to emulate/understand/relate to. Plus, his corporeal absence makes him, to some, a little more credible than statues or landforms that need to be worshiped.
Third is the presence of a written account of the teachings and actions of Christ, and of God himself, in the older books. With a little poetic licence and creative explanation, this can be taken both as strong evidence in support of the belief, and as a much more accesible and consistent reference than an elder in a far-off temple.
To those in need of comfort, Jesus can also be seen as a source of love. For the lonely, a concrete person with a real history as reported in the bible can be a great solace. The Christ figure can be a source of company, of hope, of confidence, even of friendship to the believer. This may be made a little easier because of Christ’s aforementioned ‘humanoid’ state.
Christianity can also be said to have guidelines for a lot of the common problems that people run into; these being found in the letters of the new testament, and the parables told by Christ.
Christianity is also a largely undisturbing faith. The new testament features little violence, few social indelicacies by modern standards (they don’t talk about torture or sex much) and simple, uninvolved rituals. Crossing oneself is easier for some people to swallow than sacrificing a lamb. There are no calls to violence, no demands for anything frightening (generally- that one’s easily argued).
An addition, there’s something to be said for the simpicity referred to in the first post. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost make life a lot easier and less complicated than an extensive system of dieties and semi-gods.
Lastly, christianity is easy to reconcile with secularism, given the right belief system. “Give to God what is God’s, and to Caesar what is Caesar’s”. Christianity doesn’t have much in it, if properly interpreted, to prevent it’s believers from living in most modern political systems. It also doesn’t require changes to one’s habits. There are no ingrained rules about clothing, nor about which foods are acceptable. Believers are not compelled to any strict patterns of behaviour, although there are a number of rituals in place. The right interpretation gives the christian a lot of personal freedom.
Many of the points raised in the Original Post, however, have been considered in the past and do have merit.
The comparison to the ‘Great Eastern Philosophies’ has been made by scholars before (often with a tremendous amount of bias). Indeed, some of those philosophies were many thousands of years old when Christ is said to have walked the earth. In fact, there are some christian sects, notably in the southern United States, that are less than two hundred years old. It can be seen how the Older phiosophies could be thought of as carrying more weight.
Indeed, may of the tenets of classic christianity were not ‘original’, an argument that has been made by anthropologits who have studied both the bible and earlier records of other cultures. If the New Testament were taken to be fiction, there are plausible explanations for where the writers could have got their ideas.
Of course, it can be difficult to believe the books of the bible when it is discovered that they were written decades after the events are held to ave occurred. It doesn’t help, either that the New and Old Testaments are often out of line with each other, that there are internal inconsistencies in both testaments, and that there are no less than four different accounts of Christ’s life. To explain these away, one needs to break from fundamentalism, and consider that the stories as written may not be exactly the events as first told; that they may have been modified slightly in the years between occurrence and inscription. And if that is to be believed, then can they truly be held to be the word of God?
As for the idea of believers discovering their own truths and values, the christian take on this is sometimes expressed in a line from the gospel, where Christ reports: “I am the way, the truth and the light.” He goes on to say that no one may enter heaven “except by me.” Case closed, it would seem. Not much room for personal truths there.
Another fact that could discourage converts is the questionable past of christianity. The church has a history of devisive internal disagreements. It has historically been unable to hold itself together, frequently spawning disgruntled subgroups. It also has a track record that lists crusades, executions, forced conversions and witchhunts. The christian religions have not traditionally been a very friendly lot.
In all, there is no single reason (and some would say no good reason at all) why people still choose to become christian from time to time. A number of reasons have been put forward why christianity is perhaps not the best choice for everyone. Nonetheless, it has estalished itself extensively, by various means, and doesn’t seem to be at risk of being snuffed out, except perhaps, by the modern apathy of its followers, particularly in some developed regions.
