What has Christianity truly contributed to humanity

[Belacqua]

I should now ask: What is Christianity exactly? And what counts as contributing to humanity/world? If the contribution itself is not original, is it still a contribution? Must we filter out all other influencing factors before we can say Christianity has contributed anything?

Very reasonable questions. 

~ What is Christianity exactly?

I'd say there is no one answer to this. There are lots of different things that people call Christianity, and very different kinds of people who call themselves Christians. It's probably more accurate to say that Christianity is a group of things that have the same name due to family resemblance (in Wittgenstein's sense) rather than having an essential characteristic. 

This is why just about any single statement we can make about what Christianity has caused will be contradicted by other things that Christianity has caused. And of course it would be unfair to point only to the good things and say "that's the real Christianity," or only to the bad things. 

~ And what counts as contributing to humanity/world?

In the most general sense: alleviating bad things, and improving good things. 

There is no doubt at all that Christians motivated by their religion have done both of the above. They have also done things that you and I disapprove of, and whether we conclude that on balance they've made things better or worse is hard to call. 

The main problem in judging is that when we're talking about the history of Europe and America, we have only the history that we have. Some people will fantasize that without Christianity things would have been better, but since we don't have that history it is only fantasy. We don't know. A lot of foolish things have been said on the Internet about Christianity intentionally holding back human learning for centuries, but almost all of that turns out to be myth. 

~ If the contribution itself is not original, is it still a contribution?

Sure, why not? 

It's very possible that if the dominant thought in Europe had become Mithraism instead of Christianity, people would still have built big beautiful buildings. Or if the Roman pantheon had continued, we would have gotten nice Roman temples. But that in no way takes away from the fact that it was the Christians who actually did it. For whatever reason, they got the dominant spot, and so it was them who dominated European art, music, architecture, philosophy, and social programs for a very long time. 

~ Must we filter out all other influencing factors before we can say Christianity has contributed anything?

I have no idea how we could or should. 

Christianity itself is influenced from older systems, so it would be impossible to discuss Christian influence while filtering out its Jewish and Neoplatonic and Aristotelian roots. Nothing is pure. 

Gothic architecture is influenced by Moorish architecture. But this doesn't mean that the great Christian cathedrals are not serious contributions to the beauty of the world. 

Large-scale social movements, like the end of slavery, have many causes operating at once. Economic, moral, etc. etc. The fact that Christian social reformers were opposing slavery means that Christianity played a role in reforming slavery. Of course some Christians wanted it continued. But as I said, Christianity is a lot of different things all at once. And you can't just say that navies ended slavery, because navies are run by people, and people get their goals and ideals from different sources. 

Sad to say, economic changes probably make it easier for moral reform to take place, so some can follow the money and ignore the religion, but in fact it's a mix. 

Nothing in the modern history of Europe or America is free of Christian roots. Science grew up due to monotheistic ideas about metaphysics and all of the ambitious monks who got the idea that knowing how God works in the world means knowing more about God. The fact that science works with less of that attitude now doesn't remove its historical beginnings. 

So I think it's foolish bigotry to say that Christianity contributed nothing, and idle fantasy to say that the world would have been better without it.