R. S. Martin Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 Christian thought has had such a profound impact on the world as we know it today. For at least a thousand years after it has been wiped off the face of the earth, thinkers and scholars will have to have some understanding of Christianity and its impact on the world and society. I try to imagine what the lessons will sound like. I'll let my imagination lose. Here's a sample lecture: There was this person named Jesus of Nazareth--whether he actually existed is an open question. Most think today--actually we know for a pretty sure fact--that he did not exist. But as I was saying there was this person named Jesus and he was said to have performed a number of outstanding miracles such as feed several thousand people with a few small fishes and a few loaves of bread. According to the book his followers left us--normally known as the Bible (you will be reading portions of it in this course)--the Roman authorities eventually executed him as a common criminal, probably for stealing donkeys but we'll never know for sure. His followers thought it was to save them from their sins or short-comings. As you know, people used to believe in superstitious beings living in the sky known as gods. Somehow, they believed that they had to sacrifice animals, and in some cases, humans to pacify the wrath of these gods. Jesus' followers believed Jesus was the sacrifice to pacify the wrath of their god. So strong was their belief about this that a religion developed that lasted for more than TWO THOUSAND YEARS. *collective gasp from all the student body* That's right. Several hundred years later, so we are told, the Roman Emperor adopted this religion and enforced it on the entire Empire. From there, over the next number of centuries, it spread to the rest of the world. Of course there were continents where it never became the dominant religion but at one point in history there were two billion Christians--a third of the human population of the time. *anoher gasp* Often it was enforced by military might. It was the largest, most powerful force, not to mention by far the most barbaric social power, ever known to humanity. *shudder* A student raises hand and asks: Could it not be stopped? Professor: Remember, the Emperor enforced it with military might. Student body cringes in horror. The professor continues: Often entire armies would round up the countryside and force people to mass baptisms. Baptism is when a person goes into the river and is dunked under-water three times "in the Name of the Father, and the Name of the Son, and the Name of the Holy Spirit." They believed that made people holy. Student: I wouldn't do it! Professor: You would have gotten a sword run through you. Lecture continues: In later times there were world wars and ethnic cleansings. There were what was called the Abrahamic religions. I think you remember from earlier in the term we talked about Abraham and his sons Ishmael and Isaac. The Jews were said to be descended from Isaac. Jesus and his followers (called Christians) were said to be descended from one of Isaac's descendents. The Muslims were said to be descended from Ishmael. Two thousand years after Jesus was believed to have been born, some Muslims attacked the most powerful country of the christians at the time. It was a guerilla type attack--jets were hijacked and flown into buildings, to be exact. That prompted a backlash from the Christians on Muslim soil that lasted the best part of a decade and pulled the world economy to the brink of dissaster. THAT is the power of religion. *the silence in the room is deafening* A student raised her hand and respectfully breaks the silence: You said the Christians forced their religion on the rest of the world. Didn't they bring the attack on themselves? Professor: I was hoping someone would ask that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MonolithTMA Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 interesting, I really don't know if Christianity will ever die out. I don't know if I will stop believing in it. I know I certainly don't hold orthodox views anymore, and at times I don't believe at all. I recently read an article talking about Christianity in the future and how we may not recognize it, just as Christians from a thousand years ago wouldn't recognize modern day Christians as such. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080...2C000_Years.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MathGeek Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 Considering how I believe that agnosticism is the default belief system for humankind, then certainly any impulse toward religiosity wouldn't be snuffed out. In fact, if Christianity had been snuffed out say 200 years ago, then we'd all be called something on this website like ex-Baconites or something. Since humans are prone toward belief, then we are liable to believe anything no matter illogical it looks or sounds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 The gods of Egypt had a run of 7000 years... they're history... the Gods of Greece ran for 4000, same with the Gods of Rome... although it could be argued that Christianity, taking on a 5000 year old Hittite God of War, and then stealing most of the major themes of Pagan man gods, was little more than a syncretic mess that got 'lucky' as a method of crowd control... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 But if xianity hadn't reared it's ugly head it makes one wonder if those other gods might have had a slightly longer run? Even the rise of xianity wasn't enough to immediately snuff them out after all. Like little old Isis hung in there for a good while longer (and some consider her to finally be usurped by Mary). mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 Well, there Bah'ai, Islam and a number of other cults all waiting to supplant Christianity and are younger than it... Bah'ai is doing well considering it's only 150 years old... 2000 year for a cult isn't long... And don't forget, Hinduism is still doing it's thing after a likely 8000-10000 years... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 Yeah, but those cults all suck. Especially the current stick up the ass, err, ass nailed to the stick. Give me some fun loving orgiastic cult over the pious bunch we got now any day. I got this from the wiki page just now "Her rites were considered by the princeps Augustus to be "pornographic" and capable of destroying the Roman moral fibre." What more could you ask for? mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MathGeek Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 I think this thread may not be about so much about the transmogrification of Christianity over time as is the fact that "religious belief" will never die. If cults have been breathing fire and growing more heads than a DHARMA research facility since the inception of human history, then who's to say that some out there idea in today's time won't become the "next big religion" in the far flung future? Belief of some kind has always motivated humankind to commit altruistic actions and sadistic atrocities and even both under some utilitarian utopian ideal. I have even heard that shrilled-toned, Marcy D'arcy-lookalike Ann Coulter refer to American liberalism as church, which she referred to as godless. As a matter of fact, if you can recite your beliefs off as a memorized to-do list, you might as well be called a foot soldier within your respective belief system (be it atheism, anarchism, environmentalism, et al). If a belief system becomes militantly evangelistic, I think it deserves to be called a church because that is the archetype of the historical and modern missionary. If Christianity could be turned into a life-stealing, money-hemorrhaging, power-tripping beast of burden, then what's to say that something like "science" won't be turned into a religious system in the future? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWIM Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 And don't forget, Hinduism is still doing it's thing after a likely 8000-10000 years... Makes you wonder how "strong" hinduism would be if not for the invention of xtianity. Who knows, it might have ended up being the dominate religion in the US... History would have been so different! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 Yeah, but those cults all suck. Especially the current stick up the ass, err, ass nailed to the stick. Give me some fun loving orgiastic cult over the pious bunch we got now any day. I got this from the wiki page just now "Her rites were considered by the princeps Augustus to be "pornographic" and capable of destroying the Roman moral fibre." What more could you ask for? mwc Gaius Caligula, that well known party dude, suppressed the religion as 'too foul for words'... there again serving up the roasted testes of people who'd cut their own stones off is a tad beyond the pale... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 And don't forget, Hinduism is still doing it's thing after a likely 8000-10000 years... Makes you wonder how "strong" hinduism would be if not for the invention of xtianity. Who knows, it might have ended up being the dominate religion in the US... History would have been so different! It lost it's guts about 2500 years ago... in some respects The Buddha was trying to break the hegemony of the Bhramans... basically the Gita was heavily edited by religious interests, more geared to crowd control than the ennobling of man (sound familiar?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evolution_beyond Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 The gods of Egypt had a run of 7000 years... they're history... the Gods of Greece ran for 4000, same with the Gods of Rome... although it could be argued that Christianity, taking on a 5000 year old Hittite God of War, and then stealing most of the major themes of Pagan man gods, was little more than a syncretic mess that got 'lucky' as a method of crowd control... I must confess I am confused where you are getting your figures from. Are you saying there is evidence for these gods in prehistoric times? The Egyptian gods stopped being worshipped when muslims took over Egypt, say about 700 CE. Even if you start Egyptian culture at around 5000 BCE this still gives you less than 6000 years. Minoan civilisation (the earliest 'Greek' god was Gaia from Minoan Crete) started around 2000 BCE maybe 2500 and Christianity replaced the Greek and Roman gods not long after 300 AD. That gives us only about 3000 years if being generous. And how much evidence do we have of Indian gods before about 3500 BCE? Where does 8000-10000 years come from? Maybe I'm out of date with recent archaeological discoveries or something. Many of those ancient societies started between 3500 BCE and 3000 BCE. At least that's what I've been led to believe. Some of the gods may have existed in prehistoric forms, but I'm sure the evidence for gods that can definitely be identified as belonging to a specific later society can't be dated all that far back. 5000 BCE at most. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-Captain Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 The gods of Egypt had a run of 7000 years... they're history... the Gods of Greece ran for 4000, same with the Gods of Rome... although it could be argued that Christianity, taking on a 5000 year old Hittite God of War, and then stealing most of the major themes of Pagan man gods, was little more than a syncretic mess that got 'lucky' as a method of crowd control... I must confess I am confused where you are getting your figures from. Are you saying there is evidence for these gods in prehistoric times? The Egyptian gods stopped being worshipped when muslims took over Egypt, say about 700 CE. Even if you start Egyptian culture at around 5000 BCE this still gives you less than 6000 years. Minoan civilisation (the earliest 'Greek' god was Gaia from Minoan Crete) started around 2000 BCE maybe 2500 and Christianity replaced the Greek and Roman gods not long after 300 AD. That gives us only about 3000 years if being generous. And how much evidence do we have of Indian gods before about 3500 BCE? Where does 8000-10000 years come from? Maybe I'm out of date with recent archaeological discoveries or something. Many of those ancient societies started between 3500 BCE and 3000 BCE. At least that's what I've been led to believe. Some of the gods may have existed in prehistoric forms, but I'm sure the evidence for gods that can definitely be identified as belonging to a specific later society can't be dated all that far back. 5000 BCE at most. Gou'ald? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 The 'Gods' of the Vedas were old when writing was invented... the internal evidence of that is pretty clear even on a desultory read. Bear in mind, anything more that anything before 4000 BC was redated in the 19th Century. There is archaeological evidences of VERY old cities, in places borne out by the Vedas... rather like Troy was borne out by Greek mythologised literature... A lot of 19th C Christian dating is still being shaken out of the old Chronologies... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MonolithTMA Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 Gou'ald? 100 Points for the Stargate reference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-Captain Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 Gou'ald? 100 Points for the Stargate reference. Danke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 But it does mean you probably won't get laid until after the 2012 elections... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted February 11, 2008 Author Share Posted February 11, 2008 I think this thread may not be about so much about the transmogrification of Christianity over time as is the fact that "religious belief" will never die. I can see where you get that idea. I'm just captivated by the idea of how foolish the Christian religion must look to people who have never seen or heard of it. The only such people I can conceive of are people so far in the distant future that Christianity has been all but forgotten. (I cannot set a date for it.) Christianity will be no more than a footnote in history books. Or maybe you have to take graduate studies in university to learn about it or know it ever existed. Or find it on some exotic website or bookstore. Who knows what technology or education, or even language, will look like by then? So long as Christianity just metamorphoses into another shape or form, if people still identify as Christians, they won't see the stupidity. They will see it in terms of evolving awareness of God. So long as Christians believe even marginally that God is in some way the source of morality, Christians will explain away the cruelty and violation of personal conviction and autonomy of mass baptism. They will continue to see it as part of the enlightenment as Law and Order were brought to the Hinterland of Europe, Russia, the Americas, and other European colonies. THIS IS NOT OKAY! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted February 12, 2008 Share Posted February 12, 2008 Gaius Caligula, that well known party dude, suppressed the religion as 'too foul for words'... there again serving up the roasted testes of people who'd cut their own stones off is a tad beyond the pale... I think he just wanted to have it all to himself. Better I mangle my own bits than have someone do it for me though. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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