Relative Newcomer

As defined by Dictionary.com:

Miracle: "specifically an event or effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things, or a deviation form the known laws of nature; a supernatural event, or one transcending the ordinary laws by which the universe is governed".

Supernatural: "Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond the natural forces".

Personally, I'd be hard pressed to believe anything that could originate in the physical world could be identified as either a miracle or supernatural. "The god of the gaps" and other "acts of god" are constantly being replaced by the scientific method.

JerryM

From what I've read, there's little doubt that Constantine's victory and subsequent conversion to Christianity is the biggest factor in the success of the Christian religion in Europe. Supposedly, Constantine had a vision of something in flames in the sky before the battle at the Mulvian Bridge in 312. And there were the words "By this sign you will conquer." He thought it was the Christian symbol, and he attributed his victory to it. But I've read that many scholars feel that whatever he saw, it was not the Christian cross, and he was mistaken in giving credit to Christianity. So it may well be that Christianity simply benefited from Constantine's error. I guess some could call that miraculous.

River

ya , Islam has always grown at a faster rate than Christianity. It is currently growing 22x faster than any other relgion with 1.6 Billion followers. At this rate, It will be the largest Religion in the world with 33% in the year 2020.

Rational BAC

I think you have to give both Christianity and Islam credit for having grown from nothingness to the 2 largest religions in the world fairly quickly and due to no particularly good reason at all.

Sounds like miracles to me. Or just dumb luck. (which could be describing the same thing)

Amaranth

No particuarly good reason? Have you even read this thread?

Mageth

It is currently growing 22x faster than any other relgion

Where'd you get this statistic?

Rational BAC

No particularly GOOD reason. An awful lot of dumb luck though.


Christianity is very interesting in that it started from less than nothing--a failed messiah--a very strange message unattainable by anyone at any time. To hang in there for 3 centuries and keep growing for Lord knows what reason. (I think Jesus' message stuck in people's craw simply because it was such an unusual one.) And then be adopted by the Romans because some Emperor probably had too much to drink one night and thought he saw a cross in the sky the next day. And then won a difficult battle. Talk about your dumb luck.

The fall of Rome should have been the fall of its "official religion". Within a couple centuries all of Europe should have gone back to very varying pagan roots. That didn't happen either. Christianity ended up stronger than ever. And since absolute power corrupts absolutely, Christianity also got corrupted. That corruption should have killed it. The reformation should have killed it. The counter-reformation should have killed it. The development of science should have killed it. Nothing seems to kill it. After 2000 years I think we all have to finally admit that something somewhere has been giving some mysterious support to this strange belief called Christianity that practically speaking should have died out within a few short years of Jesus' death.

Now Islam is a whole 'nother animal. Spreading a religious movement by conquest can be considered lucky when you seem to win almost all the battles. But I guess River can explain that better.

Milton

I have to agree with RBAC on that. Christianity should have perished a long, long time ago. Throughout the course of time, it has suffered so many attacks, both from outside and from within. Yet, it has managed to shape the entire world in more than one way.

I don't believe that fast growth is the point here, but it still makes a good point. I think Islam has a supernatural force, though I will not claim it to be the same as the Christian.

Howard

Are you serious? If any religion should have died out, it’s Judaism. A people with no homeland for most of their history; persecuted relentlessly, often by Christians, to the point of near extermination.

Christians had a few hundred years of being victimized; the Jews had thousands of years Ironic isn't it - God's "chosen people" are the world's most persecuted. Fat lot of good it does to have him on your side.

As for "shaping" the world, what Christian nations primarily did was to conquer, subjugate, exploit and ravage much of the world. No religion has as much blood on its hands

rfwu

I know, just look at the Latin Americans! They're now a whole new race just because the Spanish Conquistadores (bad spelling) went through spreading their DNA everywhere while being "missionaries".