[Infinite Worlds] What if Jesus Christ never existed?

[Gudiomen]

Originally Posted by Earther

If Jesus Christ never existed, what is happening in the world today would have started a lot sooner. So the world would be in a far worse shape than it is now.

Just look at societies today that have removed Jesus Christ in the past. Then fast-forward those same societies and see how much more they degrade. That would be the world now. One with more terror. More concentration camps. More torture chambers. And no Christians to fight back those things.

You mean like these countries?

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Gudiomen

You mean like these countries?

Most of those are Christian-majority countries, are they not?

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Aquinas is largely about Just War. Different concept from the legitimate targets concept. In a just war it is acceptable to kill people just because they support Evil. I'm not sure what you mean by the Peace of God movement, the one I'm familiar with has to do with not fighting at all at particular times - I suppose it is about rules of war, though rather different ones.

The idea of 'nocombatant immunity' derives in part from the teachings of medieval Christian scholars, including Thomas Aquinas. Granted the medieval take on this is rather different than what you see later, but I challenge the claim that the idea suddenly appeared during the 'Enlightenment' and has mainly to do with respect for individual rights.

I suggest also reading up on the 30 Years War, the reaction to which arguably did as much to promote the idea of restraint in warfare as any Enlightenement philosopher.

[nik1979]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Pretty much of the competitors to Christianity in the Roman Empire were at least in some sense evangalizing - after all, the thing that *made* them serious competitors (and worrisome to Roman traditionalists) was that they made converts.

It is true that a lot of traditional religions are not usuallly expansionist. The gods of your ancestors are after all the gods of your ancestors - you can't very well get new ancestors, and what would be the point of worshipping gods that hadn't helped out your ancestors and received them in death. Traditional gods care about cities or kingdoms or tribes rather than individuals, a god that never cared about your people before just doesn't matter to you, after all why should he change now? Most of the really successful expansionist religions manage to change that, with either a stronger focus on the individual, or what amounts to a major adoption ritual - baptism in Christianity - that can be applied to individuals to magically alter their tribal affiliation. It's that second kind that made the Roman authorities really nervous - Christian converts took it so seriously they professed not to be part of the Roman society anymore.

Hey I didn't know that. I guess if someone has been suffering a lot and all that prayer to Ancestral Dieties didn't help with all that suffering and death, and some people told you they can offer you New Gods and wipe away your old ones It will always be better than a Diety thats "seems" to be broken.

The powerful conversion through baptism can be attributed to the pent up frustration and loss, with no other way to look at the situation. The Baptism is like any ritual, empowered by the anyone who grants it any power over them. It is a combination of cognitive bias of self-fulfilling prophecy, mob mentality, and cognitive dissonance.

[Gudiomen]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Most of those are Christian-majority countries, are they not?

Not really, the most developed (with the notable exception of USA and Ireland) are the least religious. It's christian if you can say that a country where 80% of people are atheist/agnostics, 12% christian and 8% miscellaneous has "christianity as the dominant religion".

I'm not establishing a causal link, mind you!*

I'm just responding to the absurd implication that societies that turn away from religion, or Jesus specially, as was stated by the poster I'm responding to, turn into barbarious human-devouring sin-filled hell-holes.

The article is just a nifty reference I came up rather quickly on google, trying to find the HDR reports for 2004 and 2005... which I had previously used in a paper (there's other sources supporting this, like the Gallup Institute research, and what have you, but I don't see the point in digging it up).

* take whichever view suits you best: well to do countries don't need religion to feel good about themselves, or poor countries need the respite of religion more due to social circumstances, you can interpret the data any way you wish... what you can't do is say that very secularized countries are plummeting in human-rights or the moral, economical, social, aspects. You might find a few exceptions, but largely speaking the data might indicate the opposite.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Earther

If Jesus Christ never existed, what is happening in the world today would have started a lot sooner. So the world would be in a far worse shape than it is now.

Which particular thing that is happening in the world? A lot is going on, and for a huge number of people life is getting better. Here's a very interesting 18-minute talk about the changes in income, life expectancy, and inequality that have been going on since the 1960s: it is well worth your time to watch it.

Or are you talking about the wars that America is involved in at the moment? War is always horrible, but these are not particularly bad. Sadly, many religious wars have been far worse, including wars fought between Christians on both sides, over Christianity. The Thirty Years War, for example.

Despite the teachings of the Christ, Christians are not especially peaceful people. Jains and Buddhists are much less warlike and violent (not perfect by any means, just much less warlike than Christians). Besides, if Jesus had not lived it is entirely possible that a similarly considerate and more non-violent set of ethics from another source might have appealed to the same sorts of people for the same sorts of reasons. For instance, we have already mentioned that Buddhist missionaries got into that area long before the time of Christ.

Just look at societies today that have removed Jesus Christ in the past. Then fast-forward those same societies and see how much more they degrade. That would be the world now. One with more terror. More concentration camps. More torture chambers.

You're thinking of the western parts of the Soviet Union, I suppose. And maybe Eastern Europe under the Warsaw Pact. All areas under the influence of Stalin and the Russian Communist Party. I can't say that it's clear that all their travails were owing to the suppression of Christianity, especially since similar politics led to similar repressions in countries that either never had Christianity to begin with or never repressed it. For example Germany under the NAZIs, Spain under Franco, Italy under Mussolini, and most of South and Central America under various dictators. Or consider any Christian country during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation: plenty of persecution and horror in the name of Jesus Christ.

On the other hand we have modern Japan and a lot of countries in Western Europe that are prosperous and more peaceful than (say) the USA, but in which Christianity is no longer a majority belief, or in which people are only Christian at weddings, at funerals, or on the census forms. Look at a list of the twenty-odd richest countries in the world along with the percentage of their populations that is Christian. Which ones have been using torture lately? Which ones have had the largest proportions of their population in prison? Which have had camps where people were imprisoned for years without trial. It's not that ones that have fewest Christians.

And no Christians to fight back those things.

Gandhi wasn't a Christian.

You're leaping from the fact that Christians ought to be good to the unwarranted conclusion that Christian are good, and from there to the illogical conclusion that non-Christians aren't good. That's very poor logic, and has led you to a conclusion that is false to fact.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by nik1979

Hey I didn't know that. I guess if someone has been suffering a lot and all that prayer to Ancestral Dieties didn't help with all that suffering and death, and some people told you they can offer you New Gods and wipe away your old ones It will always be better than a Diety thats "seems" to be broken.

It's still pretty much true. Governments usually start getting excited about new religions (or identity movements or political parties) about the point they start to consider them traitors. When the gods formally support the state, any non-conformist can qualify, but you still see it even when that isn't the case. Look at American politics when a Catholic or Mormon or Muslim runs for high office - a fair number of people question their loyalty to the state on the basis of loyalty to their religion.

And yeah, new religions, or any other new identity group, will tend to spread best among people who are not doing so well. You can see a good modern example in the penetration of Evangelical protestantism into Latin America.

The other good ground for new faiths are groups who may not be economically bad off, but who are somewhat isolated from the rest of their society - through just the sense of adopted community. The "unpopular" group has always been a target for new cults, some of the success of Scientology among the celebrity community may be due to this effect, and the Gay Pride/LGBT identity, which has a lot of the same sociological characteristics is another possible model.