RE: What if Christianity never existed?
January 11, 2016 at 10:16 am
(This post was last modified: January 11, 2016 at 10:18 am by The Grand Nudger.)
A fun "what-if" question. Book recommendation time. God against the Gods, Jon Kirsch. The culmination of the book is the dispute between Constantine and Julian, and how the consequences of that dispute would have left us, directly, with a strengthened paganism or a burgeoning christianity. We all know which way it went...but assessing these two rulers does show us that the terrible picture christianity painted for the mire out of which it arose was entirely baseless. The christian faction was not the faction of tolerance or peace or progress. They did not rescue Rome or, indeed, the world...from savages intent on sacrificing their children to the gods.
Quote:Kirsch's controversial and illuminating new book demonstrates that, contrary to the conventional wisdom of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, religious liberty and diversity were core values of classical paganism -- and it was monotheism that introduced the terrors of true belief, including holy war, martyrdom, inquisitions, and crusades.
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