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Lewis the apologist?
Bach the "who pays for music around here? OK, I'll get them to pay me" pop songwriter?
All of these folks living so far apart from each other in time and place that some of them would vitriolically deny being of the same religion as some of the others?
(Bach was an awesome composer, but he needed the money and catered to his audience.)
There is a clear phase in our history which was long and no progress was made "Dark age". In that time religion already existed right?
So what was the speciality of christianity apparently bootstrapping everything else? You could only be religious if you had resources to do so. Could have been filled with something else instead.
Napoleon wrote somewere (i read that in a museum) that education is ncessary to fight religion.
We do not know if it hold us back or not, but it also didn't push us through phases like the dark age.
But religion is primarily for control of the people. Thats why you see a lot of rules in the bible. Like paying 5 silver for raping a woman and having to take her as abride.
thank God the world has moved past this kind of 2010s New Atheism.
Yes, it does feed a spiritual need but is's absolutely about control. The current US administration is guided by Project 2025 which wants God to govern (so to speak).
I spend a lot of time thinking about religion, and most of that is anger/fear over the religious zealots who want to control everybody else.
That being said, the way anti-religion ppl talk about "control" is so profoundly sloppy and underdefined that it's entirely meaningless. If I try to stop someone from shooting me, am I trying to control them? If I change the the youtube algorithm, did I control them? If I spread a bunch of malaria-resistent mosquitos around, did I control them?
Christianity is evangelical because it believes what it's doing is good and should be shared. If you can only conceptualize this as "control", then I feel sorry that you've internalized the worst and most misery-inducing parts of the last 100 years of western philosophy.
This evangelical quality is a feature of many world religions, including the ones that don't normally get called religion, like the New Atheism movement.
Not a religion, not a faith. It's simply well-publicized challenging of religion.
I think that you only see it as such because of how you see the world, but Dawkins, Harris, et al are not my leaders and I strongly disagree with several of their positions.
Also relevant here is that the concept of "religion" itself was introduced very recently in the 16th and 17th centuries, and seems to have been created so that specific groups of people could consider their own activities as being non-religious. See Before Religion by Nongbri.
While it's nice to be vindicated, I'd much rather we live in the same universe and this is why I try to engage. I saw dang's warning about this is a flamebait topic, but I need to stress a couple points:
* I'm in no way trying to attack *anyones* spiritual beliefs
* I'm not trying to denigrate their religion of choice
* I *am* trying to point out the nature of their religion in regards to outsiders
That said, drug abuse can happen and it can spread in society in a very unhealthy way. My point analogy is: let people do what they want but let's not have a public health crisis with people overdosing in the streets.
It's a crude analogy, but it's the best I've got for the moment.
I think you see my comments as an attack and that I am "the enemy", but I'm not. I just want to be able to live my life the way I choose to, rather than by somebody claiming to speak for God.
What is the analysis? What is the behavior? I'm genuinely curious. Help me see what I am apparently blind to seeing.
The Dark Ages are kind of a myth. The Eastern Roman Empire (aka. Byzantine Empire) existed through the whole time period up to the beginning of the Renaissance. And while some parts of Western Europe were "dark" (mainly due to Viking and Islamic invasions), Western Europe wasn't and isn't the whole world.
Conversely, a lot of the writings of the Antiquity are preserved, in large part due to Middle Eastern scholars. The Dark Ages aren't a myth, but rather what is meant by "dark" is misunderstood.
The Dark Ages refer specifically to Western/Central Europe, so without Byzantium. Byzantium and the Islamic kingdoms were very much thriving, intellectually and culturally, in that period.
Equally, "parts of Europe" weren't dark because of "Vikings and Muslims": the reasons were multiple, from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, to infighting, to poverty, and to religion.
From your comments elsewhere however I understand you simply have a very caricatural view of Muslims and use them as a historical scapegoat.
> Equally, "parts of Europe" weren't dark because of "Vikings and Muslims": the reasons were multiple, from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, to infighting, to poverty, and to religion.
The fall of the western Roman Empire was literally because of invaders (the Goths and Vandals I forgot to initially mention), the infighting was to fill the void and the poverty also related to that as well as constant Viking raids. Literally half the west (Spain) conquered by Muslims for 700 years. Religion not a factor, the Eastern Roman empire was also Christian and stayed rich until it also fell to invaders.
> From your comments elsewhere however I understand you simply have a very caricatural view of Muslims and use them as a historical scapegoat.
Did they not invade the area that is today Spain and France during the "dark" ages? Did they not invade the Byzantine empire (now referring to the other thread)? This is literal history.
well, now you're just revealing that you don't understand the religion of Christianity at all
This is control.
I only started to question this when I was 14 and i do remember that I had the empiphany that its okay that i might go to a hell. Then i questioned what hell would even be.
Christianity literaly controlled me through this garbage.
And its also the fault of Christian priests that apparently 'i don't understand the religion of christianity'.
Ah yes the 5 silver is a old testament thing, plenty of weird stuff in the new testament as well.
And lets not ignore the basic fact, that for Christians woman are second class citizen.
I just stoped accepting to be that ignorant and I prefer to see woman as equal, also homosexual people and co. The bishop of passau, btw. is not. He doesn't like the 'different'.
Perhaps we use the sentiment differently?
Like the spread of the black death? I would say its depressing how fast and easy it spread.
Indoctrination gives you a worldview before you can question things. Its a vocal virus.
My mother left the christian church when she was 65 with the sentence "THese old white man don't have to tell me what i can do". And the context was a cousin of us coming out as a lesbian.
We do not know what would have happened without religion.
Just because some aspects of it was helpful (perhaps) to our current state, doesn't mean you can be against the whole concept of it. I also do not have to bow down to it or see it as a positive because of it. I can easily call it an evil necessaity.
As a separate aside, you may be interested to learn about the Manichean faith, which for a short period rivaled Christianity as a kind of syncretic mix of faiths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism
I suspect (but am not expert enough to claim) that Christianity's suppression of reasoning-your-way-to-God is a historical artifact of this rivalry. Manichean faith borrowed the ancient Greek concept of the Great Nous and the concept of the "Five Limbs": Reason, Mind, Intelligence, Thought, Understanding.
Many recovering Christians that remain pious, in my experience, retreat to a kind of uber-faith that is not unlike this concept. "I see truth in all religions".
The Christian churches that retained power said: you don't get to determine that.
Also, this is pretty ignorant of the fact that one of the most significant theological and philosophical movements of recent western history was the Reformation, which was specifically staked on the claim that "reasoning-your-way-to-God" was a fundamental right and responsibility of all believers, not just a limited caste of priests. This had implications far beyond theology, and is arguably the foundation of most western ideas of self-determination to begin with.
Also a valid argument about the Reformation. Although, by that point Christianity (via the Catholic variant) was so dominant in Europe that I daresay that it was suffering from centuries of too-big-to-fail and was ripe for disruption. Almost an IBM meeting its PC-clone moment. Which is not to dismiss that it was a profound effect upon world history. Rather that the Reformation was the backswing against a great degree of intellectual intolerance from Rome. That the Reformation succeeded doesn't negate the fundamental anti-reasoning bend of the Church at that time.