Maybe there's something like a god out there.

[The Grand Nudger]

My favorite part of jesus-as-a-real-boy...is that it's probably the crazy nutter shit attributed to jesus, that the real jesus said. He wasn't drawing in multitudes of common joes by boring them to death with zeno.

[The Grand Nudger]

Aaaanywho, we're teetering on the edge of some serious historic revisionism, I think.

Asserting that christian culture and christian culture alone produces the contents that it borrowed from other cultures at the outset - which was then affected and modified by contact with yet more culture as it spread through europe, and even more in contemporary christianity as culture and christendom became truly global. All while ignoring that history and culture chugged along in other areas of the world with their own homegrown advocates for any given idea with a western christian counterpart.

Then there's the nagging suspicion that our myopic view, already significantly divorced from facts, is a case of presentism in a single dominant culture. If we ask these questions in 2020, as westerners, ignoring all of the above....our answer may be different from a chinese person considering the same in 2050, or even a pagan european at the borders of christendom in 700ad. Personally, I think that it's a very poor attempt at appropriation.

Julian Apostate said it best and said it first, at the very dawn of christendom. If christians thought that pagan traditions were evil, then they should stop teaching them to their children. They have magic book, let them use that instead of the classics. Even the christians of that time realized that this would be deleterious to their movement.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Despite what some will insist 

Science was secular and Christianity's contribution was minimal . Simply preserving and and cherry picking idea's from previous civilization isn't science . 

Philosophy was secular 

Hospital existed before Christianity 

Universities existed before Christianity

Charity existed before Christianity

[Rahn127]

Morals, integrity, ethics all existed before christianity

[The Grand Nudger]

The idea is that we can negotiate over valued items, asserting that they belong to christianity, and in that negotiation confer value to christianity.

IDK if that's how it works, but if so, then we could only negotiate over the items that actually do belong to christianity exclusively, which is a short list. Vicarious redemption through jesus christ.

[The Valkyrie]

Morals, integrity, ethics all existed before christianity

Gods, religion, and the planet existed before Christianity.

[The Grand Nudger]

Exactly. Christianity is a product of culture, not it's source.

[Succubus#2]

Take Jesus, as an example. Now, you won't say anything about the religion I haven't, but as a historical figure (and I accept that he was), he had some good ideas about love, compassion and toleration...

Love compassion and toleration also known as the golden rule, predates Christianity by thousands of years. The Egyptians and the Chinese had their versions of it, as did the Persians, the Greek and India.
There is nothing in any way new in Jebus teachings.

[The Grand Nudger]

The specific instantiation of the golden rule as seen in magic book has a known history. It may have been that the people in the region believed it prior to their writing it down (almost certainly true) - but the manner in which it was written, specifically, is traceable to confucianism through the silk road. It appears in the liturgical record along that trade route, and as that trade route extends in time.

The significant christian revision to what had become a maxim all over the east and ancient near east was a change in tense from the passive to active. While the popular saying at the time was to -not do- to others what you would not have done to yourself, the confluence of western ethics with an eastern slogan was -do unto- others, what you would have done to you. It's not clear that this would have been seen as a revision or a clarification to a confucian scholar, who could agree almost as a matter of course with such a statement in the context of one being yin, the other yang. In fact, the confucian scholar might suggest that neither formulation is complete on it's own, and that the truth lie somewhere in wu - the middle/all encompassing whole of both/nothing particular.

...but, you know, only christianity......

In mere reality, all human beings have thoughts and opinions and positions on love, compassion, and toleration. They are a product of our shared humanity, not our disparate religions. There's no downplaying the vast differences between cultures, but..similarly, there is no way to ignore our common interests in those items of utmost and deepest importance to us.