Christianity Was A Good Thing?

[Noggy]

10,000 years from now, how will society look upon the religious portion of our development?

 

Specifically the "dark ages" up to now, where religion dominates so many things.

 

Will they be pissed at the lack of scientific advancement? Appalled by the savagery of it all?

 

Or will they see something bigger?

 

Perhaps Christianity was a good thing. Perhaps human society needed this period. If we had always been predominately mythology free, how would society have evolved differently?

 

I would say that the strong leaning toward the love of knowledge, and our heavy emphasis on a sensoral reality, is STEEPLY based in an anti-mythological sentiment. The harshness at which religion and superstitious things are critiziced by the educated community would predominantly be because of the strong influences religion has had of our culture.

 

Would a society be as critical of ridiculous non-evidence based things if we hadn't of gone through that period? How do you think that period has affected our view of reality? And will this lesson learned end up being worth it in the end?

[agnosticator]

10,000 years from now, how will society look upon the religious portion of our development?

 

Specifically the "dark ages" up to now, where religion dominates so many things.

 

That depends on whether or not the religious/tribal mind set hasn't destroyed humanity. If we survive, I would hope we had learned our lesson.

 

Perhaps Christianity was a good thing. Perhaps human society needed this period. If we had always been predominately mythology free, how would society have evolved differently?

 

I don't know if it was a good thing, because it wasn't for most individual humans. Maybe it was unavoidable for the evolving brain. I don't see how mythological thinking could be removed from the evolution of humans.

 

 

Would a society be as critical of ridiculous non-evidence based things if we hadn't of gone through that period?

 

Probably not. Religion has a tendency of making people believe and do foolish things.

 

How do you think that period has affected our view of reality? And will this lesson learned end up being worth it in the end?

 

Speaking from my experience as an individual, christianity blocked my goals by dictating the direction my life was to go. It muddled my view of reality, changed my values, and deflated my sense of self. Had I not been "born again", I would have reached my potential personally and professionally much sooner. It hijacked everything that I was and valued. In the end, it wasn't worth it for me.

 

If it was a personal religious belief system as opposed to organized religion, all this would not have happened, nor would have been negative. My sense of self would have remained intact. For humanity, religion probably was a necessary step in evolution. But now it is obsolete in every way.

[PatrickG]

10,000 years from now, how will society look upon the religious portion of our development?

 

Heck I'd hope that the soon return of Jesus Christ whould have been shown to be wrong.

 

 

 

Perhaps Christianity was a good thing. Perhaps human society needed this period. If we had always been predominately mythology free, how would society have evolved differently?

 

It helped me. I had no Idea about anything spiritual, until I made Christainity work in my life.

 

Maybe we will develope ways of teaching spirituality without dogmatic trappings.

If that is the case, then it could be argued that we needed to experience the trappings of

dogmatic belief in order to grow out of it. It is true for me, so maybe it is true for all?

 

 

I would say that the strong leaning toward the love of knowledge, and our heavy emphasis on a sensoral reality, is STEEPLY based in an anti-mythological sentiment. The harshness at which religion and superstitious things are critiziced by the educated community would predominantly be because of the strong influences religion has had of our culture.

 

Would a society be as critical of ridiculous non-evidence based things if we hadn't of gone through that period? How do you think that period has affected our view of reality? And will this lesson learned end up being worth it in the end?

 

I'm thinking that all religion is a attempt to explain our very real spirituality. Our religion evolves if we let it. I grew out of Christainity but I still consider myself a spiritual being. I do feel connected to whatever spiritual power is in this world. If Christainity is gone in 10,000 years, maybe the need for a belief in God somehow will not be gone. Good question.

[Vigile]

A question this broad can never have only one answer. By and large though, xianity was a cult used by the ruling elite for eons to maintain monocratic rule at the expense of the millions. Prior to its emergence on the political scene in Rome, the average person was much more ecumenical in their thinking, both politically and spiritually and xianity was, IMO, a cancer, which stunted societal growth for ages. We have been slowly emerging from its stranglehold for the past 400 odd years. What good has come out of it on occasion could arguably have come from other forms of political and religious thought had it been free to do so.

 

I just posted this the other day, but it's worth posting again as it explores this very issue to a good degree: http://www.1channel.ch/watch-2727677-National-Geographic-When-Rome-Ruled-Rise-of-Christianity

[Margee]

Perhaps Christianity was a good thing. Perhaps human society needed this period.

 

Noggy....... as silly and harmful as christianity looks to me today (and is!) - I don't think I could have survived my whole life without the 'fairytale' of a good god, who would finally rescue from all my problems. This hope kept me going for years......It's one of the ways I survived. I think it's how a lot survive.Take this belief from them ( like it was from me) - and you got to make it on your own........... scary...........

 

Only in this way, would I say that religion has helped me through the years.

 

I would probably do it all over again????

[Vigile]

Margee, have you considered the fact that you were raised in a culture that framed for you the idea that you need to be rescued and that there is someone out there to rescue you in the first place? Literally billions of people in the world survive without such belief systems. We survive inside our own paradigms, which frame our world views. With different paradigms people experience different realities. Yours happened to be one that told you you are weak and needy and in in need of a savior and helper. Without this paradigm and in another cultural experience, you no doubt might have believed that certain rituals would bring luck and ward off evils, but I doubt very much you wouldn't have survived without one particular belief system in lieu of another.

[Margee]

Margee, have you considered the fact that you were raised in a culture that framed for you the idea that you need to be rescued and that there is someone out there to rescue you in the first place? Literally billions of people in the world survive without such belief systems. We survive inside our own paradigms, which frame our world views. With different paradigms people experience different realities. Yours happened to be one that told you you are weak and needy and in in need of a savior and helper. Without this paradigm and in another cultural experience, you no doubt might have believed that certain rituals would bring luck and ward off evils, but I doubt very much you wouldn't have survived without one particular belief system in lieu of another.

 

you are right on Vigile!! I am still 'needy', but I know now that I must rescue myself.I am also counting on different friends to help me through, especially on this site. I am also learning that I am a strong woman and I will make it!

[DesertBob]

Perhaps Christianity was a good thing. Perhaps human society needed this period.

M. Scott Peck and Ken Wilbur, to name just two recent thinkers on this topic, believe that a relatively primitive religious phase is a necessary part of individual and societal evolution. In the case of individual development, this phase (if I recall correctly, Peck called it the "magical thinking" phase) can be lifelong or very brief. People sometimes get "stuck".

 

At the societal level I think we are in the process of casting off the last vestiges of this phase. It's difficult to rise very far above the level of the milieu you live in, so this is good news for individuals as well.

 

Both of the above-mentioned thinkers also believed that one goes through a reactionary phase of empiricism and then ultimately, you return to a more enlightened spirituality. For Peck, it was mystical Christianity, for Wilbur, an eclectic stew of more overtly Eastern thought. The jury is still out on that one for me as to whether that's actual progress or just bumping one head against some glass ceiling of what's sustainably possible at this point in human evolution generally -- a tendency to return to an earlier set-point and reconcile it with partial understanding of the true nature of reality.

 

Wilbur, to the extent I understand his rather baroque musings, assumes that many of the ancient philosophical systems are valid -- a big assumption in my view -- and tries to synthesize and reconcile all of them in light of modern understanding, into a sort of Unified Field Theory of metaphysics. Sometimes, though, I wonder if metaphysics isn't just a dead end, an optical illusion on the way to the full realization that there is no "there" there.

[florduh]

The implementation of Christianity (and the other Abrahamic systems) has retarded scientific progress, human rights, and progress toward peace. I doubt if it was a necessary phase of societal evolution, but it's what happened and we're stuck with it.

[Spectrox]

The implementation of Christianity (and the other Abrahamic systems) has retarded scientific progress, human rights, and progress toward peace. I doubt if it was a necessary phase of societal evolution, but it's what happened and we're stuck with it.

 

Here here. Seconded. Couldn't have put it better myself!

[paul34]

Perhaps Christianity was a good thing. Perhaps human society needed this period. If we had always been predominately mythology free, how would society have evolved differently?

 

 

 

Not sure. So many various contingencies determine any single moment, that making such a prediction is difficult. If xtianity had never taken hold, maybe the Muslim conquerors would've been able to solidify a hold on most of the world through military conquest. Or maybe mass atheism would've grown in and spread out of ancient Greece to the rest of the world, meaning we could be at least a thousand years more advanced, with the rate of progress in those thousand years as a similar rate of progress as what we've had during the past few hundred years.

 

There is also the concerning possibility that in 10k years, we may be deep in the intellectual muck of another religiously-driven dark age.

 

The issue with this argument is that it could be made with so many other things. Was 9/11 a good thing? We definitely learned a lot from it. How about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings? Would we have developed such a reluctance to use and fear of the nuclear weapon as we have now, after having seen it actually used? Would we hold human rights in such high regard if not for the atrocities perpetrated by some humans in our past?

 

All good questions that ultimately are difficult, if not impossible, to answer. But ultimately, no, I don't think we'd say they were "good" things although we certainly learned many useful lessons from such incidents.

[DT761138]

I don't see why one has to see it all black and white. Christianity helped european civilization in some ways, in other ways it hurt people. On the whole? I think it was a necessary stage. Every civilization has some kind of metanarrative behind it.