A world without Christianity

[Fidel_Castronaut]

That was very good Grasshopper, yes, the Muslims would have had Europe and the whole world would be like the Muslim nations now.
Atheists ought to be thankful.

Thanks for persecuting us for over 2 thousand years, guys. We're really greatfull that between abuse at the hands off Muslims and abuse at the hands of christians, you guys took it upon yourself to be the executioner to save us the hassle of deciding.

Seriously. Thanks for that.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I'm going to check all answers in 8 hours or so after I wake up. So far 2 people have failed to provide refutement

Nobody cares.

[Grasshopper]

That was very good Grasshopper, yes, the Muslims would have had Europe and the whole world would be like the Muslim nations now.
Atheists ought to be thankful.

Thanks for persecuting us for over 2 thousand years, guys. We're really greatfull that between abuse at the hands off Muslims and abuse at the hands of christians, you guys took it upon yourself to be the executioner to save us the hassle of deciding.

Seriously. Thanks for that.

Who's we. As was pointed out in another thread, atheists were never a group (hence little mention of Stalin) so you have nothing in common with the atheists that may have been persecuted ( Though I doubt anyone professed atheism in the middle ages)

[Davka]

1) Some other religion would have taken the place of Christianity, just as other religions filled that role in other parts of the world.

Islam would not have emerged, since it was to a large extent a reaction against both Judaism and Christianity.

Asshole despots would have claimed the Divine Right of Kings anyways.

The Enlightenment might well have occurred years earlier, in the absence of the Inquisition.

2) We'd be free to provide for the poor and crippled via government programs, just like the more enlightened nations do today. The "Moral Majority" would not exist, and all the religious justifications for not providing a comprehensive safety-net would be gone, leaving only naked bigotry and racism as excuses.

[Esquilax]

I guess my main problem with what you're saying, Grasshopper (did you pick your name just so that every sentence that ends in it would automatically be read in a stereotypical asian accent? ) is that you're conflating, baselessly, things that originated from christians as things that originated from christianity. I don't think there's any reason to do that, but I understand totally why you do; christianity has a habit of attempting to claim exclusive ownership over the best parts of human nature, and pretending that they come from the religion, rather than the people in them.

But why do you think, say, that the spread of literacy would be stoppered if there was no bible to be the book at the forefront of it? Why attribute the spread of literacy to the book, rather than the people printing and reading it? That's rather like attributing the rise of the automobile industry to cars, as though cars are some naturally occurring resource and not something that human beings make for a reason. The bible, by dint of the narrative concerning its origin and content, might have been the book most urgently propagated, and I can see why those who buy into its divine claims would want those words spread, but it was people doing the spreading. We understand the value of literacy, it doesn't inherently need some additional value stapled onto it to have utility.

Your point about universities is... equally shaky, since christianity has been responsible for the elimination of as many houses of knowledge as it has been their establishment. Let's not forget that it was an emperor looking to impose christian dominance over other points of view who shut down Plato's Academy, after all. "Founded by christians," is not the same thing as "foundation solely attributed to christianity," as well; the unifying thing that all university founders everywhere have had is that they were human beings, so I'm interested as to why you're arbitrarily locking your attributions to the christian religion when there's a much more widespread common denominator that even non-christians share.

In fact, that last point kinda applies to all your arguments here. Without the needless presupposition that christianity was the cause of all these things you list, and not human nature, your argument ceases to be at all meaningful or pressing. What's also strange is that the most likely alternative to christianity disappearing never even seemed to occur to you, which is that the majority of the things you say would never have happened... would still happen, just under the name of a different god, whose religion got to flourish when the suppressive force of early christianity disappeared.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Thanks for persecuting us for over 2 thousand years, guys. We're really greatfull that between abuse at the hands off Muslims and abuse at the hands of christians, you guys took it upon yourself to be the executioner to save us the hassle of deciding.

Seriously. Thanks for that.

Who's we. As was pointed out in another thread, atheists were never a group (hence little mention of Stalin) so you have nothing in common with the atheists that may have been persecuted ( Though I doubt anyone professed atheism in the middle ages)

Who on earth gave you that idea?

Atheists are united by a single concept; lack of belief. I have that one thing in common with every other atheist.

And seeing as the benchmark for large swathes of European theology throughout the middle ages was a dick waving contest between those competing theological paradigms, being an atheist was generally pretty bad for your health.

I mean, re: bold - Did you mean to undermine your own retort or were you trying to be nonconformist in an ironic fashion? Oh dear oh dear.

:|

For the record, I don't disagree with some of the points you raise in your OP, however as it's all effectively extrapolation based on little data, it's impossible to say either way. Some things may have been better, some may have been worse. It's impossible to tell without a crystal ball. I agree with whoever else said that trying to divorce the political and spiritual impact of christianity from European development is an impossibility.

One thing you missed out in your list, probably singularly the most important thing christiainty ever did the for the development of the modern world, was invent and implement secularism; Cuius regio, eius religio.

[Nope]

My post has to be short because I am busy but I will try to provide a longer answer. I am not a historian so hopefully my guesses won"t sound stupid.

I think a religion other than Christianity would have dominated Rome but whether it was something new or not, I don't know. There was a lot of mystery religions tolerated in Rome, plus I think Neoplatism believed there was one god. Maybe Drich would be arguing some of the finer points of Zeusism on this forum.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think men would have found another ideology around which to coalesce. It's sort of what humans do.

I'm going to check all answers in 8 hours or so after I wake up. So far 2 people have failed to provide refutement

No one needs to refute speculation.

[abaris]

I haven't got time nor the inclination to go into all the fallacies of the OP.

First, Europe declined with the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Roman empire. Dumbasses ruled who couldn't even be arsed or were too stupid to maintain the aqueducts. The fact that only the monks could write isn't a positive, it's a negative, since they didn't go out of their way to teach the people and they determined what was worthy of preserving. That's one of the reasons why the islamic world of the middle ages was far more advanced than the christian one. They preserved greek and roman knowledge and built on it. We wouldn't even have the number zero if it wasn't for them.

Second, there would have been no Islam if there had been no christianity. Islam is as much a derivate of the jewish cult as christianity is. Yet the jewish cult wouldn't have gained any importance under roman rule. And it certainly wouldn't have made it's way into Egypt and parts of the Arabic peninsula.

[dyresand]

A world without... christianity... well western society as we know it wouldn't exist.
Because well christianity played well into our advancement. Unlike the other abrahamic
religions out there well i hope you get my point. We would end up like the middle east.
So well christianity did its part and we are here today with this amazing technology.
But we as Americans should take page or two from Europe and get everything
settled down with religion. Its fine to have it its okay to spread it just not everyone is going
to believe it.