countjulian

So what was the over-all affect of the rise of Christianity? Good? Bad? Indifferent? We already have a discussion going about Christianity's impact on science, now how about other good stuff? women's rights? Cleanliness? Order (chaos? any anarchists or nihilists out there?)Fall of the Roman Empire (if that event was really a bad thing)? Dark Ages? Ending Slavery? Stopping (starting?) of abhorrent social practices? Persecutions?

My personal opinion is that Christianity had an over all negative effect on the above issue, but I am always ready for more discussion. Any takers?

rationalOne

It's impossible to tell - If it hadn't been Christianity, it would have been something else. People will always be warlike, corrupt, superstitious, no matter what system they are under.

I don't see how people can actually read the New Testament, and about Jesus' character, and go on to engage in the type of atrocities we've seen over the past two millenia.

Thomas II

Whatever good they did, it's the least that they could have done, given all the crap that the institution of the Church produced one way or another.
I agree with RationalOne that it is impossible to tell what would have happened without Christianity in the picture, and by now it's besides the point.
The "system" produced Judaism, a "Jesus", Rome,and everything in between.(The "system" being the whole human scene.)
Certain selected factors produced what happened. Who or what selected those factors? The developmental level of all the individuals involved given the available circumstances.

Toto

In the Roman Empire, women did better under Christianity than under the predominant Roman society - not as a matter of legal rights, but in practice. But after that, the overall impact of Christian dogma was deleterious for women and remains so.

Kitty cats did not fare well in medieval Christian Europe.

spin

This is no longer necessarily so. It's now a matter of who has control of the education process and the non-educative effects of those controllers' desires. As long as football is more important than understanding (yup, still bread and circuses), the system will remain in stasus.

Thomas II

I agree.
Rainbows did better than Kitty cats in medieval Christian Europe.
Puppies did ok in Europe, except during plagues...
On the other hand Kitty cats did better in Egypt...

countjulian

Well, let me put forward on of my main objections to Christianity: its persecution of nonbelievers. I'm not talking about witches or the crusades, although those do add to it (I'm doing a study of the Salem witch Trials right now, one of the least important Christian atrocities, IMHO, only 23 people (24 if you're an pro-lifer) killed), but it persecution of the pagans, Jews, and Christian heretics when it took over the Empire. I just got done reading Eberhard Sauer's The Archaeology of Religious Hatred (you can find my very unpolished review of it at Amazon), which detailed the immense size and scope of the destruction of pagan temples and holy artwork. At the end of the book, Sauer compares the Late Antique Christians to the Taliban, which I think is a very fitting description. MacMullen's book Christianity and Paganism in the 4th to 8th centuries is also a wonderful read, and his "prequel" if you will, Christianizing of the Roman Empire, which deals with how Christians got converts from 100 A.D. to 400 A.D., is also a great read (I'm reading it at the same time as Phillip Jenkins The Next Christendom, and finding that Christianity still spreads in much the same way it did 2000 years ago. ) It really gets to me, how "faithful" and "pious" these "pagans" were, yet how Christians relentlessly hounded and persecuted them to extinction even though they shared many things in common.

butswana

Well, I for one am happy as all hell that the events of the past 2,000 years(the past 13 +/- billion for that matter) have transpired as they have. If anything had happened differently, I probably wouldn't be here. As would most of us. Things would be completely different today without Jaheesus.
Christianity is the best god damned thing that could have happened. And with that said, let's fucking irradicate it! Seriously, no one needs that shit any more. It just causes problems and stifles progress.

countjulian

completely true