(July 25, 2023 at 10:32 pm)The Valkyrie Wrote: We keep hearing, from Christians mainly, that Christianity has been, for the most part, a positive force in the world.

I dispute that, and would be happy to have anyone post anything good that Christianity has contributed to humanity or the world in general.

Of course, anyone can feel free to dispute, debate, or otherwise shut down any claims.

Also, feel free to list anything that Christianity has done to damage the planet or humanity.

This thread is open to all varieties of Christianity, from Catholics to Mormons to Johos.

And...


GO!

(July 25, 2023 at 11:58 pm)Nishant Xavier Wrote: Abolition of Infanticide and Slavery, Establishment of Charities and Hospitals at a rate unprecedented in the ancient pagan world (Roman Empire) and much more.

I recommend 2 Great Books (1) How Christianity changed the world by Prof Alvin Schmidt
(2) How the Catholic Church built Western Civilization by Professor Thomas Woods.

https://www.amazon.in/Christianity-Chang...0310264499
https://www.amazon.in/Catholic-Church-Bu...1596983280

Both written by Western Scholars though the above links are to Amazon India. I ordered both these books recently and read them and they're excellent imo.

(July 28, 2023 at 12:28 pm)tackattack Wrote:

(July 26, 2023 at 1:41 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote:

---

While 93 percent of the members of the National Academy of Sciences,
one of the most elite scientific organizations in the United States, do not believe in God, ... is true,
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comment...l_academy/
the entire discussion is invalid in Logic.

It is an example of the "argumentum ad vericundiam", (the argument from authority) fallacy.

Their expertise is in science, not religions, philosophy or history.

---

here's a free one that's better than reddit.  

---

Stirrat, M., Cornwell, R.E. Eminent scientists reject the supernatural: a survey of the Fellows of the Royal Society. Evo Edu Outreach 6, 33 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/1936-6434-6-33

---

Which shows that our British counterparts agree. It's not a logically unsound argument though.
I'm not arguing that they are the authority on anything. I argue that their self-identity classifies them as Christian, and as such, within their field they have contributed to society. I don't think you can separate the who they claim from the who they are. Not that it matters. In some way part of who they are is/was Christian. Their Christianity may have zero bearing on their scientific contribution, but it can't be divorced from who they are. Therefore it meets the definition of Christian contribution.

(July 26, 2023 at 12:40 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote:

(July 26, 2023 at 12:08 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Nope.

The British navy basically brought the Atlantic slave trade to an end.

Christians in the Americas were still using the bible to justify slavery up to the civil war.

Well. Pls read the books and then decide for yourself, Valkyrie. There's a wealth of historical information in them one would hardly find anywhere else imo. All well documented with unimpeachable historical references to other historians.

As for Abolition and Slavery, Prez. Lincoln and William Wilberforce, for e.g. as well as Anti-Slavery Crusader David Livingstone, were the Accomplished Abolitionists of their time, and they were devout Christians. Meanwhile, Darwin, Marx, Sanger and Nietzche were all Vicious White Racists. They lacked Gospel Values, the first and foremost of which is to Love your neighbor as yourself, as Jesus Christ taught. He also showed, by His Good Samaritan Parable, that that moral obligation to Love one's Neighbor transcends the boundaries of Race and Religion. That Dr. Martin Luther King was both a Christian Pastor and one of the greatest Anti-Racists of all time is well known. So were many Popes, Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Rev. Billy Graham, Rev. Reinhard Bonnke, who is called "the Billy Graham of Africa", had Great Love for the African People etc. What the world needs is Love, and that's what Jesus Christ commands of all, especially His own disciples.

As for Science and Charity, the Great Medieval Universities of Catholic Christian Europe etc, pls see this in the quote box below:

Quote:

---

"The Jesuits also were the first to introduce Western science into such far-off places as China and India. In 17th-century China in particular, Jesuits introduced a substantial body of scientific knowledge and a vast array of mental tools for understanding the physical universe, including the Euclidean geometry that made planetary motion comprehensible.

Jesuits made important contributions to the scientific knowledge and infrastructure of other less developed nations not only in Asia but also in Africa and Central and South America. Beginning in the 19th century, these continents saw the opening of Jesuit observatories that studied such fields as astronomy, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology and solar physics. Such observatories provided these places with accurate time keeping, weather forecasts (particularly important in the cases of hurricanes and typhoons), earthquake risk assessments and cartography...

The first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Father Giambattista Riccioli. The man who has been called the father of Egyptology was Father Athanasius Kircher. Father Roger Boscovich, who has been described as “the greatest genius that Yugoslavia ever produced,” has often been called the father of modern atomic theory. In the sciences it was the Jesuits in particular who distinguished themselves; some 35 craters on the moon, in fact, are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.

By the 18th century, writes historian Jonathan Wright, the Jesuits “had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes, and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics, and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula, and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light.” ...
The early church also institutionalized the care of widows, orphans, the sick, and the poor in ways unseen in classical Greece or Rome. Even her harshest critics, from the fourth-century emperor Julian the Apostate all the way to Martin Luther and Voltaire, conceded the Church’s enormous contributions to the relief of human misery.
The spirit of Catholic charity — that we help those in need not out of any expectation of reciprocity, but as a pure gift, and that we even help those who might not like us — finds no analogue in classical Greece and Rome, but it is this idea of charity that we continue to embrace today.
The university was an utterly new phenomenon in European history. Nothing like it had existed in ancient Greece or Rome. The institution that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations and degrees, as well as the familiar distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, come to us directly from the medieval world.
By the time of the Reformation, no secular government had chartered more universities than the church. Edward Grant, who has written on medieval science for Cambridge University Press, points out that intellectual life was robust and debate was vigorous at these universities — the very opposite of the popular presumption.

---

From: https://www.bigrapidsnews.com/columns/ar...127248.php

God Bless.

(July 28, 2023 at 10:45 am)Aegon Wrote:

(July 27, 2023 at 7:57 am)Angrboda Wrote: Donald Trump argues that he won Arizona.

What? Lol. I don't even care about this topic all that much but this is an absurd response. I imagine a historian has better ground to stand on for his history opinion than Trump does for his electoral opinion.

(July 28, 2023 at 5:12 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: People shouldn’t say such silly things if they need to be taken seriously.