What has Christianity done for the world?

[Antlerman]

I’m having a hard time seeing anything positive that comes from religion that outweighs all the bad that comes with it. I would like to hear some offerings of some of the positive things Christianity has done for humanity. But the challenge is this: Then explain how those could have not been accomplished any other way through purely secular means? You certainly may cite things from history, but also what it's doing today - that religion alone is capable of doing?

 

Example: Making someone feel a sense of belonging is important, but also try to explain how religion is better at that than anything else? Then answer along with that, does that gain outweigh the grief that religion has brought to the world throughout its entire history?

 

One rule: Please limit the responses to the *real world*, avoiding things like “saving our souls”, so we all have some common frame of reference. I’m interested in the context of where real people live, not fanciful stories of mystical cities where transcendent creatures dance on golden streets!

 

I will give credit when credit is due, but it needs to be due.

[Guest Priapus]

I know a number of people who went to remote, developing countries as missionaries. Yeah, big deal, but because those countries had governments hostile to Christianity, these missionaries went under the auspices of their professions, usually in the medical or engineering fields. Now, had these people not felt compelled to share the gospel, pointless as it is, the locals in these remote places would never have had modern medical care or much-needed water/sewer/agriculture/construction expertise to improve their physical situations.

 

Added to which, the American Abolitionist movement in the early 19th century was heavily supported by the Quakers. It was also Christians who pushed for teaching blacks to read. There's an irony, it was OK to keep 'em enslaved but they should be able to read the Scriptures. Likewise a strong motivation to teach poor white indentured servants to read was so they could study the Bible. But hey, once you've learned to read, you can dump the Bible for Fanny Hill, right?

[BuddhistCommunist]

Well the majority of eastern faiths have offered many good things, for instance buddhism doesn't follow false hope and blind faith, it mostly preaches out against that. but thats research people will have to do on their own, Im not here to evangelize(spl?) Buddhism. Christianity=0, Native american= does more good than bad, paganism=depends, islam=0, Judaism=0. basically besides Native american and eastern faiths, Atheism is the greatest help, it opens peoples eyes and you can go anywhere or stay the same easily with Atheism. Truly the only thing that drives people away from Atheism is fear. Which is why I have unlimited respect for anyone that can call themselves an Atheist and mean it. So mostly,

 

RELIGION BAD!!!!!!

[aspirin99]

In my opinion, it's not a matter of what religion has done, but what organization has done. When you gather people into an organization, you have the power of combined effort. It's this same cooperation that provides the power to cities and government, allowing them to accomplish things that would be impossible few or scattered resources.

 

Jared Diamond has a PBS series out right now called Guns, Germs and Steel. He shows why some civilizations prosper while others do not. In short, if you have fertile land and the right animals, you can grow a society that does not have to spend all its time hunting. It leaves time for others to develop specialty areas like weapons development and scientific advancement.

 

Religion organizes people into similar structures. Therefore, when someone in need enters their congregation, they can devote resources to helping that person. The larger the congregation, the more specialized help systems will exist. Soon, they might branch out and help staving children or the homeless. Helping people in need is more of a humanistic instinct than a religious command.

 

Of course, it also breads the worst of mankind as well - just as any society would produce. It's always much easier to think of the bad things they produce, but they certainly are not without some good.

 

The same good is being produced by secular means, but not with the frequency that the population requires. Therefore, to answer your question - it's not that it's doing something that the secular world cannot, it's that it's doing something that secular world will not do- at least with the needed frequency.

[Antlerman]

Well the majority of eastern faiths have offered many good things, for instance buddhism doesn't follow false hope and blind faith, it mostly preaches out against that. but thats research people will have to do on their own, Im not here to evangelize(spl?) Buddhism. Christianity=0, Native american= does more good than bad, paganism=depends, islam=0, Judaism=0. basically besides Native american and eastern faiths, Atheism is the greatest help, it opens peoples eyes and you can go anywhere or stay the same easily with Atheism. Truly the only thing that drives people away from Atheism is fear. Which is why I have unlimited respect for anyone that can call themselves an Atheist and mean it. So mostly,

 

                                      RELIGION BAD!!!!!!

A good point. If you're talking secular religions such as Theravada Buddhism, it seems more beneficial to people through the use of disciplines and rituals (as I understand in what little I do). The whole focusing of energies into the promises of tomorrow seems to be a large part of the harm I see from theistic religions. This is why being an Atheistic has released me from looking for anything outside of reality. I've never felt this freedom and confidence that I now have, during my entire time searching for answers in some mystical system. The answer was life, not God.

[Antlerman]

The same good is being produced by secular means, but not with the frequency that the population requires. Therefore, to answer your question - it's not that it's doing something that the secular world cannot, it's that it's doing something that secular world will not do- at least with the needed frequency.

I understand the organization is what is beneficial, and that religion has been the most prominent in this, such as bringing knowledge and medicine to remote areas. But is that frequency due to the fact of how the cards fell, rather than some inherent quality that makes them better suited? In other words, they were good at it because they were the dominant polictical force at the time?

 

If we were to look back through history and imagine no religion, would the world have benefited the same (or better), however in different ways? I tend to think we would be far, far, far beyond where we are now if religion's only influence was in what color animal made their god the happiest.

 

I guess in part the question is, world the world as a whole be healthier and happier if religion were gone?