A world without Christianity

[Strider]

It's impossible to describe what the world would be like now if Christianity never existed. Christianity is intertwined with history and responsible for the much of the modern world today with all its faults and its good points, its laws, traditions, societal norms, and culture. Taking it out of the equation entirely raises an unanswerable hypothetical IMO. I can see some of the scenarios you described as valid and plausible, but a millionfold equally conceivable scenarios are possible as well, or perhaps the hypothetical scenario we're discussing never comes to fruition in the first place because of such a significant change.

If Christianity disappeared tomorrow...another religion would come about. I think people are too weak-minded at this point in time to accept the nothingness after death. People will find something else to believe in, something that tells them they are special little snowflakes destined for an eternal life instead of the gaping maw of oblivion. It's just easier on the mind, but false solace isn't solace at all in my view.

[Silver]

[dyresand]

But... we wouldn't really modernize very well to have something like that. even still Abrahamic religious would be around just lacking one less crazy death cult.

[Grasshopper]

It's impossible to describe what the world would be like now if Christianity never existed. Christianity is intertwined with history and responsible for the much of the modern world today with all its faults and its good points, its laws, traditions, societal norms, and culture. Taking it out of the equation entirely raises an unanswerable hypothetical IMO. I can see some of the scenarios you described as valid and plausible, but a millionfold equally conceivable scenarios are possible as well, or perhaps the hypothetical scenario we're discussing never comes to fruition in the first place because of such a significant change.

If Christianity disappeared tomorrow...another religion would come about. I think people are too weak-minded at this point in time to accept the nothingness after death. People will find something else to believe in, something that tells them they are special little snowflakes destined for an eternal life instead of the gaping maw of oblivion. It's just easier on the mind, but false solace isn't solace at all in my view.

Good answer. Thanks for not saying it is improbable and not giving answer.

Oh and to the others- Islam WOULD develop without Jesus, just 1 less prophet. They're thing's not based on the new testament.
And to those who said any other religion would've come up- I agree. That's why I used the umbrella term Paganism.
Any way, Rome would fall anyhow and we have no monks motivated to keep translating the bible or anything else.
Esquilax- I'm not attributing literacy to bibles. I'm attributing them to monks who were passionate enough to translate and passionate about starting Oxford and Cambridge. Yes I'm attributing it to Christians who were motivated by christianity.

Oh I just got one more for the list. Emperor Constantine under the pope's influence abolished a law called Patria Potentis which gave husbands power over their wives and kids- even power over death.

[psychoslice]

Sadly most people in the world are stupid, take away religion and they will cling to some other belief system, they will eventually organize their belief and start fighting over who's belief is the true belief. Us humans need to grow a lot more yet, we need to do away with territorial ownership, and see the whole earth as one, as one nation, in stead of wasting so much money on space travel we will spend the money on those who live in poverty, we will see all as one, not just our immediate family who we put up on a pedestal. Until these things happen we will always be fighting over childish things such as religion, or even atheism.

[Davka]

Oh and to the others- Islam WOULD develop without Jesus, just 1 less prophet. They're thing's not based on the new testament.

That's irrelevant. Without Christianity, monotheism would not have spread to the Tigris-Euphrates valley with such powerful influence, inspiring Mohammed to create a monotheistic religion for Arabic speakers (which coincidentally placed them as the true 'chosen people'). The region would either have remained polytheistic, like their distant neighbors in India, or - if they did adopt monotheism - they would have adopted the Zoroastrian model rather than the Judeo-Christian one.

As for what we would do if Christianity vanished overnight, I just got home from a very enlightening meeting of local Skeptics. They do volunteer community work, simply because it's the human thing to do. One of the people there is an ex-Pastor, and he told us about a pastor's conference he attended years ago in which he confessed to having lost his faith - only to discover that at least half the pastors at the conference were in the same boat. Today he runs a nationwide group of pastors who are either faithless or are borderline agnostic at best.

It seems that the drive to make the world a better place is not at all dependent on faith. Volunteers at soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and so on would keep on volunteering regardless of faith or the lack of it. They do it because it's the right thing to do, not because "god" told them to. Lots and lots of people are good without god.

So where would we be without religious conviction telling people to go against their better judgement? Not at war in Iraq, for one thing.

[Ravenshire]

What would the world be like if Christianity was never started?

I'm not going to try to refute (or defend) any of your assertions. Simply put, I don't think (in general terms) the world would be much different than it is now. Probably there would be a different religion filling the place that christeranity fills now. Many of the details would probably be different, but we'd likely still be driving cars (burning fossil fuels to power them) to work, playing the same or similar games, communicating over cell phones and the internet, etc... Perhaps we would have gotten to this point earlier without the christer oppression and active opposition to all things science during the dark ages. Still, in all, I don't think there would be any great deviation had the christ myths never taken hold.

[Esquilax]

Esquilax- I'm not attributing literacy to bibles. I'm attributing them to monks who were passionate enough to translate and passionate about starting Oxford and Cambridge. Yes I'm attributing it to Christians who were motivated by christianity.

Yeah, and I'm still wondering why; you've got one common denominator that every person involved in the spread of literacy shared- human dedication to a cause- and one common denominator that only a fraction of those same people shared- that cause being christianity- and for some reason you're attributing the bulk of the responsibility to the objectively smaller commonality and not the larger, when we know that the smaller one is not necessary for that level of dedication, but that the larger one is.

You've put the cart before the horse here, big time.