Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

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> Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor.

Well, to be fair, Jesus was the central figure of the religion of the people you're talking about and for a long time outing yourself as a non-believer was "problematic" for your well-being and status in society. Even today in the US politicians know they need to demonstrate their Christianity to become president -- I doubt we'll see an atheist, Jewish, Hindu or even Muslim president within my lifetime (I'm 31).

Also, religious dogma largely lives separate from science and philosophy. It is true that many aspects of what "Christianity" is have been defined by consensus in the Vatican Council (including what scripture -- and which specific version of that scripture -- is considered canonical) and some Christian churches have been adjusting their dogma since (e.g. the CoE has become more accepting of homosexuality, the Catholic church has accepted evolution as factual). But saying "religion has undergone strenuous debate" is a very romanticized view of history.

Not to mention that much of Christian theology/philosophy foregoes the possibility that any other religion might be true to the point where Pascal's Wager only works if you supply the premise "All other religions and sects are definitely wrong" (i.e. you can't accidentally insult the "True God" if you submit yourself to the Christian God and turn out to be wrong).

> Well, to be fair, Jesus was the central figure of the religion of the people you're talking about and for a long time outing yourself as a non-believer was "problematic" for your well-being and status in society.

Not before many, including the earliest Christian leaders, were killed for their belief in Jesus. Christianity has proven to be a determined startup.

A start-up that mostly flourished after they were bought out by the enormous Roman Empire.

This is a fantastic analogy.

Christianity: The YouTube of 0AD

There was enough flourishing before to prove the point.

Prove what point? Take off your retrospective determinism glasses for a second and note that for any alien species, there's probably going to be a few religions which have double-digits of the population. These religions started from nothing at some point, so of course they look extremely tenacious in retrospect, when in fact any other equally viral religion could have taken their place if history had played out slightly differently.

While what you say is true to some extent for Western Christianity, the fact remains that Christianity has taken deep root in a number of places in the world that were free of western biases, e.g., China, Korea, Africa, and South America. A huge diversity of cultures have had their own struggles with Christianity.

In most of these cases, Christianity did not organically spread. It was brought in and forced upon local populations by mostly western colonial powers. Colonial powers always export their cultural beliefs and identities in an effort to bring those subjugated in line with their own ideas and expectations. Where religion wasn't brought in by colonialism's force, it was exported and introduced by typically western missionaries, yet another example of using a different kind of force to help it take root and spread. After some time, it's true that Christianity began to evolve with its own localized flavor, but it's not like these non-western cultures discovered Christianity via their own Damascus Road experiences with local prophets.

While I can't speak about every culture, in W. Africa, Christianity took root because the colonial powers brought missionaries who established religious schools wherein the practice of traditional religion was impossible. For the longest time, these were the only schools available so the educated became Christian, and thus the powerful and well-connected were all Christian as a result.

An even more interesting comparison is the Eastern Christians of Greece, Russia, the Middle East, etc. Their theology and relationship with science has been fundamentally and increasingly different than the West since the Great Schism.

> While what you say is true to some extent for Western Christianity

Its just as true of Eastern Christianity.

> the fact remains that Christianity has taken deep root in a number of places in the world that were free of western biases, e.g., China, Korea, Africa, and South America.

All of those examples are largely a consequence of imperialism (largely, on the part of societies comprising Western Christendom.)

That's not to say that there aren't a few cases of durable Christian communities in regions (IIRC, particularly in the Middle East and East Africa, and some in South Asia) where they aren't a result of the heritage of ties between the common ancestor of modern Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christianity and the Roman empire, including those descendant churches ties to imperialist European states, these isolated communities are notable as exceptions within Christianity.

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