Ateisto

I am but an occasional surfer to this forum these days, so please don't flame me if the following is a stale idea. But it was a new idea to me, so I thought I'd put it out there.

I've heard it said that during the Roman era, Christianity was just another crackpot cult, one of many competing for attention in the early days. But somehow this particular cult took hold and has become one of the few dominant religions of today. One of the reasons I'm an atheist is that there have been so many gods who've come and gone, so it's unlikely any of the current crop exist either. But it's always nagged me why Christianity hung in there. Some of my Christian friends point to this longevity as proof of their god, and though this reasoning is specious, I always wished I had a good counter for it.

So here's my little brainstorm. Christianity took hold and spread across the world for the same reason disease has: the development of (comparatively) rapid transport around the world, combined with a (comparative) population explosion. Of course rapid transport and population had been increasing, but not to the point where a cultural meme like a religion could spread like wildfire. For the first time in history, the "word" could get passed around with sufficient speed and with sufficient voices to overwhelm the world ("go forth and multiply" probably didn't hurt either). This strikes me as a real parallel to the occurrence of worldwide diseases, and for the same reasons, albeit biological versus verbal. If you look at diseases like syphilis (sp?) and the Black Death, the time scales are even about right.

So what do you think: Christianity as disease?

-DM-

Jews claim that Judaism is the longest-surviving major religion and that its survival against the odds is evidence of its truth.

Some bacteria and viruses are stronger than others.

Here's what fairly often comes to my mind:

Considering the government support that Christianity has gotten (beginning with Constantine) and considering the billions of man-hours and billions of dollars that have been spent advertising, promoting, and at times stuffing it down the throats of people, the wonder is not that it has spread to the extent that it has but that it hasn't spread to an even greater extent, that there aren't even more Christians than there are.

(By the way, Islam seems to be overtaking Christianity these days, and I'm not sure what the reason for that is.)

--Don--

echidna

For better or worse, Christianity is an idea, like our Hindu Arabic counting system. In the Darwinian interpretation of the spread of memes, it appears to have had benefits which allowed it to grow and gradually overtake the competing religions of the day. What were it’s competitive advantages ? Maybe its appeals of compassion and altruism to the downtrodden masses, ultimately its authoritarian power structure.

If one compares the Roman religions and the practices encouraged 2000 years ago, I suspect the infidels website would have just a wee bit more to complain about than they do today.

Christianity is a disease as much as our English language system is.

Orpheous99

Originally posted by Don Morgan:

Jews claim that Judaism is the longest-surviving major religion and that its survival against the odds is evidence of its truth.

From what I understand is that that is a false statement. I've heard that Hinduism is in fact the oldest living religious belief system. So, should we all convert this just because it is the oldest. Would any of these Jews who assert this claim convert now? Afterall, Hinduism is older thus it MUST be more true.

(By the way, Islam seems to be overtaking Christianity these days, and I'm not sure what the reason for that is.)

As belief systems get older they tend to weaken. Islam is around 600 years younger than Christianity and is still in its youth.

lunatic.retired

christianity a disease..hell yea. it we ever find a vaccine i vote we fumigate the whole bloody planet.....now lets start working on a islamandalltheothercrap vaccine.

kill two birds with one stone so to speak <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

cloudyphiz

<a href="http://www.christianitymeme.org/" target="_blank">christianity meme website</a>