How Christianity Helped The West Get Ahead

[micrometers]

So in my time on here I"ve been pretty critical of fundamentalist Christianity, but I want to talk now about how Christianity might have improved Western society compared to other religions.

Christianity worked in large part by

1) creating the idea of a moral all-seeing God.

2) Separating religion from the natural world

First one: basically, the concept of a all-knowing God means that you will be more honest with your fellow man than you would otherwise. That is because there are always little areas where we know we can get away with a little dishonesty and won't be caught for it. But if there is an all-knowing God, then everything matters.

On a large scale, this results in more efficient organizations with less in-fighting.

Second: In Hinduism for instance, you are taught that all life is part of a cycle and we are all one. Practically, what this does is prevent you from really messing with nature if it means disrupting the natural world's spirits. With Christianity, it is taught that God gave man dominion over the Earth. This allows man to really explore chemistry and physics.

 

[Kadarin]

 

[Infohawk]

For 1) and 2), you should probably refer to Judeo-Christianity to be fair to Judaism.

Personally, I think what helped the West the most with Christianity was the Protestant reformation. It's the idea that you don't ask the priest's permission to talk to god or think about god. The initial effects were changing Christian doctrine (for better or worse) but more importantly it asks individuals to challenge the status quo and to challenge authority. This is a huge source of Western individualism and am not aware of such dramatic reforms in other religions. Frankly, Islam probably needs such a reformation right now to make it crystal clear violence isn't doctrinally acceptable.

 

[Kadarin]

To be more serious, Islam offers the same spiritual concepts, but the Islamic world remains mired in its own shit rather than striving to achieve anything as a society beyond the desire to be more purely Islamic.

 

[Texashiker]

Christianity worked in large part by

1) creating the idea of a moral all-seeing God.

2) Separating religion from the natural world

3. Destroy all cultures that reject Christianity.

 

[Mirox]

hardly, considering what they did to people who dared to suggest the earth was round and we weren't the center of the universe. Or the Catholic church taking wealth, land and property to put in a good word for you to have your sins forgiven.

 

[Moonbeam]

hardly, considering what they did to people who dared to suggest the earth was round and we weren't the center of the universe. Or the Catholic church taking wealth, land and property to put in a good word for you to have your sins forgiven.

I am offering half off on that.

 

[peonyu]

Funny pic, but its not at all accurate. Written language was preserved in the scattered Christian monasteries after the fall of Rome, math was taught there, higher learning was taught there. Outside of the Christian Monasteries you had hordes of European tribes fighting each other to the death, and most of these tribes were never under Roman influence and had no concept of Math, reading or writing. Those tribes were the ones that destroyed Rome and brought Western Europe's standard of living to the "dark ages".

Christianity is the one thing that unified Europeans during those times and it took several hundred years for it to happen. That pic better represents what happened when Barbarian tribes destroyed a stable nation rather religion...

 

[Zebo]

I'm sure there is some good things human minds dedicated to Christianity. Like art and architecture. But in general it's opium for the masses. All these religions put immutable limits on what you can do which oftentimes conflicted/conflicts with advancement of the human race. Simple example is women's roles in these religious societies whereby eliminating half the IQ pool has deleterious effects.

 

[sandorski]

The more that the West has rejected Christianity, the more it has benefited.

 

[Texashiker]

That pic better represents what happened when Barbarian tribes destroyed a stable nation rather religion...

we can not blame the barbarian tribes, aka Germanic tribes.

The Huns pushed the Germanic tribes out of their homeland. In their quest for food, land and protection the tribes turned to Rome. What did Rome do, they turned their back on the Germanic tribes.

The people did what they had to to survive.

If the Huns had never invaded Europe, and the Germanic tribes had been allowed to live in peace, who knows where we would be today.

That picture is a representation of a chain of events that led to the dark ages. Its not a true and correct statement to blame Christianity. If anything, Christianity had very little to do with bringing about the dark ages.

 

[cybrsage]

Funny pic, but its not at all accurate. Written language was preserved in the scattered Christian monasteries after the fall of Rome, math was taught there, higher learning was taught there. Outside of the Christian Monasteries you had hordes of European tribes fighting each other to the death, and most of these tribes were never under Roman influence and had no concept of Math, reading or writing. Those tribes were the ones that destroyed Rome and brought Western Europe's standard of living to the "dark ages".

Christianity is the one thing that unified Europeans during those times and it took several hundred years for it to happen. That pic better represents what happened when Barbarian tribes destroyed a stable nation rather religion...

Shush, you are destroying his carefully crafted worldview with facts and knowledge.

 

[peonyu]

we can not blame the barbarian tribes, aka Germanic tribes.

The Huns pushed the Germanic tribes out of their homeland. In their quest for food, land and protection the tribes turned to Rome. What did Rome do, they turned their back on the Germanic tribes.

The people did what they had to to survive.

If the Huns had never invaded Europe, and the Germanic tribes had been allowed to live in peace, who knows where we would be today.

That picture is a representation of a chain of events that led to the dark ages. Its not a true and correct statement to blame Christianity. If anything, Christianity had very little to do with bringing about the dark ages.

I agree with you, its more accurate to say that Christianity took Europe out of the Dark ages in the long run. The European tribes were more than happy to go back to complete tribalism and abandon the progress the Romans made once Rome fell. The exception is the Church began to become powerful and heavily influenced the tribes when they converted. Roman-Catholocism is called that for a reason, its packed with Roman ways of life.

Also if the Church died out after Rome fell, then Europe would most likely be a Muslim state today, the Arabs tried countless times to conquer Europe and what stood in their way was the Church. Several hundred years before the first Crusade there were Muslims making inroads into France after conquering Spain, and attacking Italy itself. What pushed them back were religious zealots [Christian ones].

 

[Ausm]

Sad but true....

 

[Texashiker]

Sad but true....

You do not know your history, do you?

I agree with you, its more accurate to say that Christianity took Europe out of the Dark ages in the long run.

Christianity had a hand in taking Europe out of the dark ages, but a maturing society played a large part as well.

The need for laws, settling legal disputes, documented marriages, land titles, wills,,, played a major part in bringing about the renaissance.

 

[Ausm]

You do not know your history, do you?




Christianity had a hand in taking Europe out of the dark ages, but a maturing society played a large part as well.

The need for laws, settling legal disputes, documented marriages, land titles, wills,,, played a major part in bringing about the renaissance.

Pissed you off eh? I guess it worked and I am quite sure I know more about history then just about anyone in here.

 

[brandonb]

Pissed you off eh? I guess it worked and I am quite sure I know more about history then just about anyone in here.

Why is that?

 

[Ausm]

Why is that?

Why?? Maybe you should as how...

 

[brandonb]

Why?? Maybe you should as how...

/confused.

Why do you know more about history than anybody else here? I can't understand your babble.

 

[Texashiker]

Maybe you should as how...

Maybe you should stop posting.

 

[ElFenix]

no. just no.

a) the eastern empire didn't fall for another 1000 years.

b) the western empire collapsed due to mis-management, wave after wave of barbarian invasion, and sheer sparsity of people in places like gaul. the waves of barbarians have nothing to do with christianity and nearly everything to do with the 'dark' ages.



anyway, europe got ahead due to: european countries got really good at fighting each other and when it came to fighting people elsewhere, the mass of disciplined soldiers developed by europe practically always beat unorganized individual bravery practiced in much of the rest of the world at the time.

 

[micrometers]

You do not know your history, do you?




Christianity had a hand in taking Europe out of the dark ages, but a maturing society played a large part as well.

The need for laws, settling legal disputes, documented marriages, land titles, wills,,, played a major part in bringing about the renaissance.

My theory is that Christianity resulted in better institutions due to the belief in an all-knowing god made people less likely to cheat even if they knew they could get away with cheating.

This is relatively speaking. This allows for better social institutions.

Also, the roman and hindu gods are very amoral, which indicate less trustworthy societies.

 

[brandonb]

My opinion is that the church served as many towns much like a city hall today. People went to the church for school, in the time of need when they needed a hospital (the church was used for that purpose) and to bring the community together. It created a forum which got people talking to one another, and allowed a community to achieve some progress (in whatever they were trying to achieve), which would be hard in an otherwise individualistic world. Community achievements are generally always easier than indvidualistic achievements. Christianity helped that atmosphere grow in a time where it was needed. Which is probably why Christianity was as popular and grew as fast as it did. If you were a god fearing Christian and another was a god fearing Christian, then you were on the same team.

If it wasn't for that, they'd would have still been ighting with each other because someone wasnt part of the tribe and vice versa. It brought the concept of community to a higher level, instead of just tribe or area as a community, it brought an entire faith in as part of the community which surpassed the smaller tribe mentality.

 

[Dman8777]

Medieval christianity viewed anything new as uninteresting and unimportant or even dangerous. That continues largely to this day. The knowledge of the greeks was only reclaimed by europeans after the recapture of Islamic libraries in southern Spain. It's thanks to Muslims that that knowledge survived the middle ages. The hole in progress isn't entirely attributable to Christianity but in it's dogmatic phase, Christianity did play a large role.

 

[RedString]

Funny pic, but its not at all accurate. Written language was preserved in the scattered Christian monasteries after the fall of Rome, math was taught there, higher learning was taught there. Outside of the Christian Monasteries you had hordes of European tribes fighting each other to the death, and most of these tribes were never under Roman influence and had no concept of Math, reading or writing. Those tribes were the ones that destroyed Rome and brought Western Europe's standard of living to the "dark ages".

Christianity is the one thing that unified Europeans during those times and it took several hundred years for it to happen. That pic better represents what happened when Barbarian tribes destroyed a stable nation rather religion...

Yeah you forget to mention that previous philosophical systems originally did all of those things, that was before Christianity came along - banned all thought other than their own, and starting condemning people to be executed or banished...

By your logic, any culture who tried to create a world Empire should be condoned just because of the positive spread of culture that comes with it.