Influence of Xtianity

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Talking with mom the other day she asserted that Xtianity had been a positive force for the world. I don't think anyone can't deny it's influence on the western world but was it positive? Most of the morality influence of Xtianity seems to come from the Socratic (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) and Neo-Platonic (Plotinus) schools of thought. Perhaps the critical element is the "theology of disenfranchisement" (the beatitudes) that places religion at the reach of the poor, the sick, the slaves/servants, etc, which helped it gain critical mass an a relatively short period of time. But while the sermon is democratic I contend that the powerful transform it into a tool to keep the status quo ("hey, don't worry about the injustices of this world, be a good boy/girl and you'll get better conditions on the next").

Is there are rational way to say categorically that the influence of Xtianity had a positive effect on the world? How exactly?

[Griffin NoName]

Is there are rational way to say categorically that the influence of Xtianity had a positive effect on the world? How exactly?

Perhaps it depends on definitions of good and evil? The missionaries giving the savages a better code to live by - if one thinks the savages needed redeeming. For the sake of argument.............

[Sibling DavidH]

The collapse of the western Roman Empire into barbarism set Europe back a thousand years.  Many serious students will tell you that the rise of and takeover of administration by Christianity was the - or at least a major cause.
That's the thesis of Gibbon's Decline And Fall, and I agree.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

But there are historians that say not without fair arguments that said decline was strongly influenced by Xtianity. A good portion of the remaining knowledge in Alexandria was deemed the work of satan by the xtians there (leading to the final burn of the library), so while certainly while the remaining knowledge was in the abbeys and monasteries perhaps that knowledge may have been more widely copied (who knows?). Note that the Germanic tribes didn't fall for Xtianity until Charlemagne forced them to convert, so it wasn't a factor on that area (a good word about Norse mythology perhaps?).

Speculative history is a different game in itself, but while we can't say what would've happened can we say with certainty what happened?

[Griffin NoName]

Confused. Aren't you and David saying the same thing?

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

As I understand it, a number of tribes had converted prior to Charlemagne - simply to Arian Christianity rather than the orthodox Latin variety.



Personally, I think that Christianity has the potential to be a very positive faith. Except that it, like all religions I think, got hijacked by both the elite who used it as an excuse to maintain an oppressive status quo, and simple monkey behavior, becoming a tool to Otherize people and suppress contrary ideas/behaviors. And the hijacked version (didn't require actually interpreting scripture in context and with regard to the larger whole, or really, actual thought) is what spread and has been and still is a force of terror instead of the good that I think Jesus, assuming he existed, might have intended it to be.

[The Meromorph]

I've known many wonderful people who were/are devout christians. I've known many wonderful people who were not.
I never felt that their religion was what made them wonderful people, in fact I still see it as their major flaw. It's possible to extract a recipe for good morality out of christianity, and equally possible to extract the foulest evil. I think good people indoctrinated into christianity choose the good bits. I don't think any of the hierarchy do.
I'm open to learning differently, but I, myself, can't think of any positive influence from christianity, let alone enough to balance its copious documented evil.

[Aggie]

Personally, I think that Christianity has the potential to be a very positive faith. Except that it, like all religions I think, got hijacked by both the elite who used it as an excuse to maintain an oppressive status quo, and simple monkey behavior, becoming a tool to Otherize people and suppress contrary ideas/behaviors. And the hijacked version (didn't require actually interpreting scripture in context and with regard to the larger whole, or really, actual thought) is what spread and has been and still is a force of terror instead of the good that I think Jesus, assuming he existed, might have intended it to be.

I think one can argue that the early version of Christianity (i.e. in Jesus's time and for a few decades / centuries after) was potentially very destructive to the established society.  Leave your family, give all your possessions to the poor, stop your business activities and give yourself over to God, all that jazz.  This would seem to be a good motivator for the institutionalization of Christianity under Constantine I.  Institutionalizing anything almost necessarily makes it nothing more than a tool of those with a vested interest in maintaining the institution, and in most cases, those at the top of an institution tend to be there for love of power.  The fact that an institution is promoting 'good' doesn't matter much and IMHO makes it easier to have all involved buy in to tolerating atrocities in the name of 'good'.   

_{McLuhan's assertion that "the medium is the message" applies here (and damned near everywhere else I've looked).}

Whether that early version was a good thing on an individual basis is another matter. I would tend to agree with it in the broad strokes, personally speaking, but that sort of approach is as destructive to today's society as it was back then.  

_{I take a rather dim view of today's society, though...}  

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There is one argument that may or not have something to do with the subject, considering that the root knowledge of the industrial revolution was already present in the old world, some historians argue that technological advancement can't occur without social advancement, that is, that a potential industrial revolution didn't take place in Greece and Rome, because cheap slave labor was too readily available and the dominant classes feared what those idle hands could do. The critical social changes happened during the renaissance and -more importantly- during the illustration. Here comes the kicker, some historians claim that Xtianity is the base for the human rights defended during the illustration, and following the previous train of thought, the industrial revolution.

Now, I do recall that many voices during the illustration were decidedly anti-church (considering 'divine rule' as an endorsement of monarchic systems), yet xtian apologists say the contrary.  Is there any reasonable argument that can place Xtianity at the forefront against slavery and/or serfdom?

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Personally, I think that Christianity has the potential to be a very positive faith. Except that it, like all religions I think, got hijacked by both the elite who used it as an excuse to maintain an oppressive status quo, and simple monkey behavior, becoming a tool to Otherize people and suppress contrary ideas/behaviors. And the hijacked version (didn't require actually interpreting scripture in context and with regard to the larger whole, or really, actual thought) is what spread and has been and still is a force of terror instead of the good that I think Jesus, assuming he existed, might have intended it to be.

I think one can argue that the early version of Christianity (i.e. in Jesus's time and for a few decades / centuries after) was potentially very destructive to the established society.  Leave your family, give all your possessions to the poor, stop your business activities and give yourself over to God, all that jazz.  This would seem to be a good motivator for the institutionalization of Christianity under Constantine I.  Institutionalizing anything almost necessarily makes it nothing more than a tool of those with a vested interest in maintaining the institution, and in most cases, those at the top of an institution tend to be there for love of power.  The fact that an institution is promoting 'good' doesn't matter much and IMHO makes it easier to have all involved buy in to tolerating atrocities in the name of 'good'.   

_{McLuhan's assertion that "the medium is the message" applies here (and damned near everywhere else I've looked).}

Whether that early version was a good thing on an individual basis is another matter. I would tend to agree with it in the broad strokes, personally speaking, but that sort of approach is as destructive to today's society as it was back then.  

_{I take a rather dim view of today's society, though...}  

I suppose you have me there. I need to look into that a little more thoroughly, though.

There is one argument that may or not have something to do with the subject, considering that the root knowledge of the industrial revolution was already present in the old world, some historians argue that technological advancement can't occur without social advancement, that is, that a potential industrial revolution didn't take place in Greece and Rome, because cheap slave labor was too readily available and the dominant classes feared what those idle hands could do. The critical social changes happened during the renaissance and -more importantly- during the illustration.

There's some merit to the concerns of what newly idle hands would be doing, though I kind of think there are some ridiculously large leaps and bounds technologically that they would have had to make.

Here comes the kicker, some historians claim that Xtianity is the base for the human rights defended during the illustration, and following the previous train of thought, the industrial revolution.

Now, I do recall that many voices during the illustration were decidedly anti-church (considering 'divine rule' as an endorsement of monarchic systems), yet xtian apologists say the contrary.  Is there any reasonable argument that can place Xtianity at the forefront against slavery and/or serfdom?

lolNO. That's totally ignoring Buddhism and previous philosophies that contained elements of what I would argue are basics for human rights, not to mention the huge influence OF those philosophies on Christianity.

[Swatopluk]

I think the decline of the Roman empire by itself has nothing to do with religion at all but with gradual changes in society that were independent of it. The empire had reached an unstable equilibrium before any Christians got their hands on the levers of power. Further expansion was not feasible any more but necessary to keep the old model working. The emperors never mananged to keep all of it under control at once (limits of communication and mobility). When command therefore got split (first two then four co-equal emperors) civil war was in the end inevitable. Increased outer pressure and the politically disastrous (in the long term) decision to coopt barbarians to fight other barbarians in exchange for settling rights (because the traditional elites refused to be taxed properly or to serve to keep the system up) led to the downfall.
When Christians took the reigns of power they more or less followed the same policies as their pagan predecessors.
---
Mankind has always shown the ability to commit atrocities on any possible scale more or less independent of the formal ideology behind it. Even Buddhist regimes had their share of genocides. I think the ideologies/religions primarily influenced the shape of the atrocities. Most if not all civilizations of antiquity used genocide as a tool. Caesar caused the death of 1/3 of all Gauls (of an original population of 3-4 million) in less than 8 years, the city states of classical Greece on occasion wiped each other out (before Platon came up with an ideological framework for these things). The Assyrians were seen by contemporaries as genocidal maniacs and in the end suffered the consequences for it etc. The conquest of the Americas was imo driven by greed not by creed and the latter only served as the means to sleep well at night. The Romans had their 'manifest destiny' even before the first Roman set foot in Palestine.
Some historians I know think that some other religion would have taken over Rome in absence of Christianity with the Mithras Cult and a reformed Judaism as the prime candidates (followed by Manicheism and Gnosis). Constantine first opted for Sol Invictus (giving us Sunday as the holy day of the week) then switched to Christianity (himself only receiving baptism on the deathbed. Iirc it was even Arian not proto-catholic). Had some other cult won the race, we might know Christianity only as an obscure Jewish sect that for a time was popular but got out of fashion when the great prophet Zarquon took to long to return.
Would history have been the same? Of course not. But I think it would not have been any less bloody.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There is one argument that may or not have something to do with the subject, considering that the root knowledge of the industrial revolution was already present in the old world, some historians argue that technological advancement can't occur without social advancement, that is, that a potential industrial revolution didn't take place in Greece and Rome, because cheap slave labor was too readily available and the dominant classes feared what those idle hands could do. The critical social changes happened during the renaissance and -more importantly- during the illustration.

There's some merit to the concerns of what newly idle hands would be doing, though I kind of think there are some ridiculously large leaps and bounds technologically that they would have had to make.

Leaps and bounds that would've taken one or two centuries, well within the life span of the Roman empire. Technological advances depend on very expensive R&D and something has to justify the expense. Weapons development had some justification but still you need a mindset that fosters R&D and some basic flow of information. Both things were missing (secrecy was a constant in the trade).

Here comes the kicker, some historians claim that Xtianity is the base for the human rights defended during the illustration, and following the previous train of thought, the industrial revolution.

Now, I do recall that many voices during the illustration were decidedly anti-church (considering 'divine rule' as an endorsement of monarchic systems), yet xtian apologists say the contrary.  Is there any reasonable argument that can place Xtianity at the forefront against slavery and/or serfdom?

lolNO. That's totally ignoring Buddhism and previous philosophies that contained elements of what I would argue are basics for human rights, not to mention the huge influence OF those philosophies on Christianity.

The trick question isn't if Xtianity invented anything (you can find basis in Greek and eastern tradiions) but if it's rise helped effectively to popularize those points of view. IOW, would Zoroastrianism (to name one) had been the same influence on the western world? 

[Sibling DavidH]

I've known many wonderful people who were/are devout christians. I've known many wonderful people who were not.
I never felt that their religion was what made them wonderful people, in fact I still see it as their major flaw. It's possible to extract a recipe for good morality out of christianity, and equally possible to extract the foulest evil. I think good people indoctrinated into christianity choose the good bits. I don't think any of the hierarchy do.
I'm open to learning differently, but I, myself, can't think of any positive influence from christianity, let alone enough to balance its copious documented evil.

That puts my view of it very neatly.  Except that to the Good and the Evil I would add the well-meaning meddlers, the ones who sent me off on a rant last year.  Those that oppose abortion, contraception, assisted dying, stem-cell research and much else from entirely benevolent though irrational motives.  They are doing a huge amount of harm.

Swato gives a very neat and accurate account of the crumbling of the Western Empire but leaves out the corrosive, weakening effect of the Church.  I know that's hard to pin down and quantify, but I'm sure it played its part.

Would history have been the same? Of course not. But I think it would not have been any less bloody.

Probably, but would we have sunk back into barbarism for a thousand years?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

There is one argument that may or not have something to do with the subject, considering that the root knowledge of the industrial revolution was already present in the old world, some historians argue that technological advancement can't occur without social advancement, that is, that a potential industrial revolution didn't take place in Greece and Rome, because cheap slave labor was too readily available and the dominant classes feared what those idle hands could do. The critical social changes happened during the renaissance and -more importantly- during the illustration. Here comes the kicker, some historians claim that Xtianity is the base for the human rights defended during the illustration, and following the previous train of thought, the industrial revolution.

Now, I do recall that many voices during the illustration were decidedly anti-church (considering 'divine rule' as an endorsement of monarchic systems), yet xtian apologists say the contrary.  Is there any reasonable argument that can place Xtianity at the forefront against slavery and/or serfdom?

I'll weigh in here with a bit o'fly in that argumentative ointment:  many historians have observed a couple of facts with regards to slave labor. 

1) a horse eats roughly 5 times as much a day, as a slave-man
2) a horse, without a horse-collar, can do roughly 5 times the work of a slave-man, but requires an operator as well, to make him do the work you want

Once the horse-collar was invented?   #2 becomes #3:

3) a horse with a horse collar, can do roughly 10 times the work of a slave-man.

So simple economics dictates, that horses are cheaper to use as labor than slaves, even if you factor in the horse-operator costs.  Sure, the slave can be told what to do, and does it (usually).  But a 10 to 1 work factor, versus 5 to 1 food-factor, economics will win out eventually.

----------------------

To me, the bottom line is rarely a single cause, or even remotely simple--- clearly there are multiple root-causes for various culture's behaviors (such as slavery).  Sometimes, cultures return to human slavery, when labor-animals are simply not available.

If you look at the sources for labor animals in cultures over the course of history, you'll see the Europeans had a distinct advantage of having a ready supply of easily domesticated quadrupeds, whereas other areas of the world did not.

Having domestic animals on-tap (even without a horse-collar), leads to other things too, such as roads-- it is much more economical to move a team of animals pulling a heavy load down a paved road, than not.  The animals do not need to rest as often, nor eat as much, to go the distance over a paved road than a dirt track or unpaved fields.

Okay, my $0.02 and I'll go back to reading/lurking...

[Sibling DavidH]

So simple economics dictates, that horses are cheaper to use as labor than slaves, even if you factor in the horse-operator costs.

Trouble is, they're a bit cack-handed when told to assemble cheap cameras in Chinese factories.