Was Christianity the worst thing to ever happen to the world?
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  Was Christianity the worst thing to ever happen to the world?
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Author Topic: Was Christianity the worst thing to ever happen to the world?  (Read 2608 times)
SnowLabrador
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« on: March 26, 2023, 10:51:34 AM »

In my opinion, there is a case to be made that it was responsible for the Dark Ages, during which a large amount of knowledge gained by the Romans was lost. Additionally, it played a role in the Holocaust and the election of Donald Trump.

I'm not going to vote, but I'd like to hear everyone else's opinions.
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President Punxsutawney Phil
TimTurner
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« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2023, 11:01:39 AM »

The alleged "Dark Ages" were mostly a myth.
Not to mention, the church was a leading player in science for literally millennia, as monks in particular helped keep the institutional cohesion of the West together. Of course, there was oppression towards the scientific community in some areas, but that does not nullify the former, it only makes it a gatekeeping institution (of which there has been quite a few in history, with widely varying effects).
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Beet
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« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2023, 11:03:21 AM »

No, it was the best thing that God decided to forgive us for our sins. But if you would rather live in the Old Testament, go ahead and wish.
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FEMA Camp Administrator
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« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2023, 08:18:01 AM »

It's too soon to tell.

And I find it hilarious that (a) you pass right over the crucial role of the Church in preserving knowledge and literacy in the West after Rome; and (b) you place the Holocaust alongside the election of Donald Trump as catastrophes of roughly comparable horror.
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« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2023, 09:53:09 AM »

No, it was the best thing that God decided to forgive us for our sins. But if you would rather live in the Old Testament, go ahead and wish.

If you consider Christianity the worst thing to ever happen to the world you are probably longing for some sort of paganism, not the Old Testament.  Some Jews consider Christianity to be for all its faults a way in which God spread knowledge of himself to the gentiles.
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FloridaMan1845
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« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2023, 10:12:04 AM »

Lol, no. Next stupid question!
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Vice President Christian Man
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« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2023, 11:11:10 AM »
« Edited: March 27, 2023, 11:15:39 AM by Christian Man Stands With The French Protestors »

Additionally, it played a role in the Holocaust

Don't mistake the Nazi's pandering to Christians as Hitler being a Christian. He suppressed Abrahamic religions as Jewish inventions and cracked down on the ones which wouldn't honor Nazism. Christianity has made a lot of mistakes over history which should be acknowledged as it's not perfect but to make this assertion is incorrect.

And the statement about Donald Trump is an oversimplification. Trump knew he couldn't win as a Dem so he overlooked and modified his platform to appeal to the Tea Party crowd. While many of them are Christian's, there were plenty who opposed his presidency. And while the two are correlated, they're not exact. It was much more of a cultural phenomena as many of his voters were Christian's but it wasn't the religion that got him elected.
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MABA 2020
MakeAmericaBritishAgain
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« Reply #7 on: March 27, 2023, 12:49:57 PM »

Not a big fan of any religion, but this seems like an awful stretch
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Sol
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« Reply #8 on: March 27, 2023, 01:53:42 PM »

In my opinion, there is a case to be made that it was responsible for the Dark Ages, during which a large amount of knowledge gained by the Romans was lost. Additionally, it played a role in the Holocaust and the election of Donald Trump.

I'm not going to vote, but I'd like to hear everyone else's opinions.

lol
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #9 on: March 27, 2023, 05:51:09 PM »

Wow, the very premise of this post is just so dumb, haha.  It shows a fundamental and lazy misunderstanding of "the Dark Ages," not to mention the Nazi ideology behind the Holocaust.  I also love how this type of weird revisionism discounts how violent and genocidal the world was before any of the post-Axial Age religions.  You can debate whether or not the pagan Classical world or the Medieval Christian world were "better" in one way or another, but you absolutely cannot pretend like everything was great and enlightened until Christianity came along, haha.
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Snow Belt Republican
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« Reply #10 on: March 28, 2023, 08:25:05 AM »

In my opinion, there is a case to be made that it was responsible for the Dark Ages, during which a large amount of knowledge gained by the Romans was lost. Additionally, it played a role in the Holocaust and the election of Donald Trump.

I'm not going to vote, but I'd like to hear everyone else's opinions.
First time I've read a post here that legitimately made me go "WTF?!"
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Buffalo Mayor Young Kim
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« Reply #11 on: March 28, 2023, 12:51:05 PM »

In my opinion, there is a case to be made that it was responsible for the Dark Ages, during which a large amount of knowledge gained by the Romans was lost. Additionally, it played a role in the Holocaust and the election of Donald Trump.

I'm not going to vote, but I'd like to hear everyone else's opinions.
‘Christian Dark Ages’ is a great way to identify someone as not worth listening to.
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Progressive Pessimist
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« Reply #12 on: March 28, 2023, 05:07:29 PM »

When I was a more militant atheist in my youth I would have said so, but I think that's a bit too simplistic of a take in considering it more over the years.
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Continential
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« Reply #13 on: March 28, 2023, 08:04:33 PM »

In my opinion, there is a case to be made that it was responsible for the Dark Ages, during which a large amount of knowledge gained by the Romans was lost. Additionally, it played a role in the Holocaust and the election of Donald Trump.

I'm not going to vote, but I'd like to hear everyone else's opinions.
Today I learned that the election of Trump is equivalent to the death of millions of people.
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SWE
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« Reply #14 on: March 29, 2023, 08:21:10 AM »

I have a very negative view of Christianity but it'd be tough to express such a sentiment in a dumber way than this thread has
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Meclazine for Israel
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« Reply #15 on: March 30, 2023, 08:04:34 AM »

I don't think so.

We don't understand the necessity for religion as we live in the technocrat era.

You can watch religion being slowly washed from many cultures in your lifetime.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #16 on: March 30, 2023, 10:44:56 AM »

Traditional Christian doctrine goes back a long way.
The traditional or so called "orthodox" doctrines which are common today go back
to before the dark ages (a good example being Augustine).
Augustine defended a lot of the beliefs that have yet to be rejected.
Martin Luther added the idea of faith alone, which is rejected by the Roman Catholic Church.

If a person deviates from the "orthodox" that person is considered a heretic.

A literal interpretation means a literal eternal hell fire simply for rejecting the party line.

I don't think liberal Christianity is ever going to be the norm, so many people feel compelled into a binary choice of rejecting Christianity altogether or adhere to a gruesome dogma that would send the majority of earthlings to an inescapable eternal fire.
As for me, I chose the former.

Orthodoxy seems to have too great a hold on minds for liberalism to ever compete.

Most Christians did vote for Donald Trump, which is reason enough (for me) to choose an alternative to Christitianity. There is just too much in religion that can't be proven.

One final point is that in orthodoxy the emphasis is more on doctrine that on simply being a good person. Any person can choose to be a good person regardless of religion or the complete lack thereof.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #17 on: March 30, 2023, 12:58:56 PM »

I don't think so.

We don't understand the necessity for religion as we live in the technocrat era.

You can watch religion being slowly washed from many cultures in your lifetime.

This ... seems like an incomplete and oversimplified take.  Exactly how much further do you think religion is going to fall?  It seems asinine to think that people will ever stop searching for spiritual or philosophical meaning beyond materialism, and you could reasonably argue that the main group that has been shed from the ranks of "the religious" were Christmas & Easter types who felt compelled to be part of an organized religion because "that's what you did," and now they no longer feel that way.  This group was always bigger in places like Western Europe, Canada and Australia/New Zealand, hence the bigger decline.
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Just Passion Through
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« Reply #18 on: March 30, 2023, 02:13:11 PM »

Additionally, it played a role in the Holocaust

Don't mistake the Nazi's pandering to Christians as Hitler being a Christian. He suppressed Abrahamic religions as Jewish inventions and cracked down on the ones which wouldn't honor Nazism. Christianity has made a lot of mistakes over history which should be acknowledged as it's not perfect but to make this assertion is incorrect.

And the statement about Donald Trump is an oversimplification. Trump knew he couldn't win as a Dem so he overlooked and modified his platform to appeal to the Tea Party crowd. While many of them are Christian's, there were plenty who opposed his presidency. And while the two are correlated, they're not exact. It was much more of a cultural phenomena as many of his voters were Christian's but it wasn't the religion that got him elected.

I get that it's a SnowLabrador thread, but the notion that Hitler was a genuine Christian is one of the biggest historical myths trotted out by atheists. Hitler's plan after winning the war was to corrupt the churches and use them to promote his own bastardized version of the faith, ironically named "Positive Christianity."

Trump is not a particularly religious man either and probably a majority of evangelicals supported Cruz or other candidates in the primaries. And this is what Trump said when an interviewer asked him if he ever sought forgiveness from God:
Quote
“I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so,” he said. “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

Trump is easily one of the most secular presidents we've ever had and in fact, both Hillary Clinton (who thought about becoming a Methodist minister) and Biden are very open about their faith.
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LabourJersey
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« Reply #19 on: March 30, 2023, 09:06:00 PM »

The idea that Christianity, or indeed any major religion, was "the worst thing to happen" is a thought just deeply disconnected from reality, from history and from any kind of cultural understanding.

All things that people attribute to the awful elements of religion are the awful elements of human society, or the awful elements of the human spirit. The quest to find God, which is what religion (should be) about, is a vessel for all aspects of society and the human spirit, both good and evil.

A world without religion would not be better. Human spirit would not improve in a secular world. The awful elements are still there. And in fact it probably would be worse.
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Samof94
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« Reply #20 on: March 31, 2023, 06:32:56 AM »

The idea that Christianity, or indeed any major religion, was "the worst thing to happen" is a thought just deeply disconnected from reality, from history and from any kind of cultural understanding.

All things that people attribute to the awful elements of religion are the awful elements of human society, or the awful elements of the human spirit. The quest to find God, which is what religion (should be) about, is a vessel for all aspects of society and the human spirit, both good and evil.

A world without religion would not be better. Human spirit would not improve in a secular world. The awful elements are still there. And in fact it probably would be worse.
I do think that one religion I personally would be fine getting rid of would be Juche. It has no redeeming qualities and is only practiced in North Korea.
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CrabCake
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« Reply #21 on: March 31, 2023, 04:38:44 PM »

I think if you narrow the question down a bit, you can point the finger at early Christianity's tendency towards schisms over seemingly minor theological matters (Arianism, Monophysitism) as weakening the Roman Empire at a very unfortunate time.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #22 on: April 02, 2023, 07:34:48 PM »

I think if you narrow the question down a bit, you can point the finger at early Christianity's tendency towards schisms over seemingly minor theological matters (Arianism, Monophysitism) as weakening the Roman Empire at a very unfortunate time.

But can we really be sure that was so bad with hindsight?  No society has been or ever will be perfect, but the late Roman Empire sucked and could have Frankly (heh heh) learned something from the so-called barbarians who brought about their downfall.  It was a decadent pile of waste by 476 AD.
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