19 ms·

How an obscure cult grew to become the dominant religion of the Western world

155 points by Thevet 10y ago

phs318u 10y ago
a. I honestly thought this was going to be about the alt-right or neoliberal orthodoxy or similar. b. Synchronicity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13585873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13585873
geofft 10y ago
> Quite a few people believed them, including Saul of Tarsus, who took the message on the road, changing his name to Paul as a token of his conversion. This is common folklore, but the claim does not appear in the Bible, and everything in the Bible or in any other source implies that "Saul" was his Hebrew name and "Paul"/"Paulus" was his Greek/Latin name, each used when around people who spoke that language. It just so happens that before his conversion, he basically was only ever around Israel, and afterwards, he preached to the other parts of the Roman Empire. Taking two names in two languages was a common practice at the time, and remains a common practice; nobody claims that Piyush Jindal took the name Bobby when he converted to Christianity.
- helthanatos 10y ago
  What Bible have you been reading? Many times throughout, people's names were changed to indicate change. "And there came a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” And from that time, Saul was changed to Paul and become a real believer and a worker in the church"
  - geofft 10y ago
    I am reading a Bible that does not contain the phrase "And from that time, Saul was changed to Paul and become a real believer and a worker in the church." The only Google result for that is some RTF of a sermon or something. Can you provide a chapter and verse? The first half of what you quote ("why persecutest thou Me") occurs twice, once in Acts 9:4 and once in Acts 22:7, but neither time is it followed by "And from that time, Saul was changed to Paul".
  - freditup 10y ago
    geofft is likely right, and it doesn't seem to be a particularly controversial topic amongst different strains of Christianity topic at that. (I've seen conservative and more liberal sources that think Saul/Paul was a sort of dual name.) The most concrete verse on the matter seems to be Acts 13:9: > But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze on him That's not to say that name changes are never indicative of internal change in the Bible, and it's possible that Saul started using the name Paul more intentionally to represent his change. But there doesn't seem to be much concrete evidence of that.
    - JackFr 10y ago
      Very clear explanation: "Many mistakenly assume the Lord changed Saul's name to Paul sometime after Saul converted from Judaism to Christianity, which happened during his encounter with Christ on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-19). Unlike the instance of Jesus changing Simon's name to Kepha (Gk. Petros) as a way of signifying the special role he would play in the Church (Mt 16:18, Jn 1:41-42), in Paul's case there was no name change. Saul of Tarsus was born a Jew, "circumcised on the eight day, of the race of Israel, or the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew parentage, in observance of the law a Pharisee" (Phil 3:5). The Hebrew name given him by his parents was Saul, but, because his father was a Roman citizen (and therefore Saul inherited Roman citizenship), Saul also had the Latin name Paul (Acts 16:37, 22:25-28), the custom of dual names being common in those days. Since he grew up in a strict Pharisee environment, the name Saul was by far the more appropriate name to go by. But after his conversion Saul determined to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, so he dusted off his Roman name and became known as Paul, a name Gentiles were accustomed to." https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-did-god-change-sauls-name-to-paul https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-did-god-change-sauls-name-to...
vondur 10y ago
One interesting fact. Constantine was being held as a prisoner at the court of Galerius in Nicomedia. He asked Galerius if he could leave to join his Father in York. Apparently Galerius was inebriated and allowed him to go. And the rest is history.
cconcepts 10y ago
Very well written article. On a social note, it does feel as though (and I could be wrong) the seeming uptick in discussion about Christianity is because it is associated with the Trump/Republican/"How on earth did so many people vote for him?" question regarding US politics. As the article alludes: > How Christianity went on to become not just a state religion, but the central fact of political life, and how Christian institutions of the Middle Ages both maintained and distorted the legacy of the ancient world, is another, different story. That Christianity and its adherents are manipulated for political ends is a sad fact of life. This doesn't change whether or not Christianity is true, it simply confirms the biblical assertion that people are potentially naive As a reflective person who reads Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and has become a follower of Jesus (Christian) I find the political association of Christianity and certain spheres of politics disheartening for the cause of logical discourse about the matter. In considering whether or not Christianity is true it is hard to ignore the actions of those who claim to be its adherents. Yes, it seems an unusual number of people who support Trump identify as Christian - isn't that more likely to do with recent demographics than hypotheses about the lack of reliability of the biblical narrative about Jesus of Nazareth? Where I am from (New Zealand) a lot of Christians I have spoken with are appalled by Trump and don't buy into the whole "Gawd Bless Americuh" narrative that Trump seems to use to persuade a certain demographic into voting for him. No political agenda can encapsulate who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he came to do. If it could, that would render the notion of Christianity absurd in the first place. EDIT: Clarity
- pault 10y ago
  How do you reconcile the writings of those rabid atheists with your belief? Do you just follow the teachings of Christ but dismiss the miracles as myth?
  - lostcolony 10y ago
    cconcepts didn't say they automatically accepted everything those authors say. Obviously. It's called challenging yourself, expanding your horizons, seeking truth rather than dogma.
caublestone 10y ago
Isaac Asimov was inspired to write "The Foundation" series after reading "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". He borrowed Constantines strategic use of Christian ideology to thwart his enemies by applying the ritualistic methods of religion to protect science in a fictional universe 50k years into the future. If you have the time, read Decline and Fall and then "The Foundation" series.
- gens 10y ago
  From what i remember it was but a part of one book. Funny enough Warhammer 40k tech priests were probably inspired by this.
kapauldo 10y ago
It's so refreshing to hear an adult voice describe Christianity in a historical context instead of one that assumes that the supernatural is real and a given. The historical narrative is a million times more plausible than conception without sperm or consent.
- helthanatos 10y ago
  Remember: the historical may not be accurate because history is easy to influence.
  - douche 10y ago
    Which is a wise thing to keep in mind when studying the bible. The history surrounding the writing, compiling, codifying, translation and reinterpretation of what became the bible is somewhat fascinating.
  - chubs 10y ago
    History isn't impervious to investigation, there are opportunities to verify it that are worth considering if anyone is intellectually curious about such things: * Biblical accounts are largely corroborated by archaeology. * The bible isn't 2000 years old - early copies have been discovered that date from the 2nd century. So there's only an initial 200 year gap to consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri * Thousands of copies of the books that make up the bible have been found, and they generally only vary in insignificant ways - it's not like the legend grew and changed as it was copied over the centuries. * Non-biblical atheist ancient writings corroborate many of the claims surrounding jesus' life. * Even atheist historians generally concede what is known as the 'minimal facts' surrounding christianity's founding, and if you're curious, these facts make you at least consider your philosophy more seriously: http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2013/the-minimal-facts-of-the-resurrection http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2013/the-minimal-facts-of-the-re... Not all christian's hold blind faith - many of us are hard-nosed skeptics who examined the facts and still believe in it. I mean we're normal people right, we don't want to waste our lives believing a lie! So we really probe what we believe.
defen 10y ago
Based on the headline I thought this was going to be about Quakers - you can map current Western elite beliefs onto Quakers fairly straightforwardly
- wcummings 10y ago
  How so?
  - defen 10y ago
    Religious tolerance Abolitionism Women's rights Prison reform Radically elevated role of individual conscience (inner light) They were into all those things way before it was cool. I see modern day divestment campaigns, ethical sourcing of goods and materials, and even "socially conscious" business in general ("Effect change in the world" / "make a difference") as direct descendants of the Quaker approach to abolitionism - "It is beginning to be seen that they must despise the gain of oppression, and deny themselves the blood-bought sweets and the blood-stained cotton that has come through this corrupt channel." Look up the Quaker approach to capitalism.
    - flukus 10y ago
      > Women's rights From a bit of reading it seems like their definition of womeens rights was quite different to how most people today would use the term. Quite controversial at the time too. A quote from wikipedia: > Also particularly within the relatively prosperous Quaker communities of the eastern United States, the focus on the child and "holy conversation" gave women unusual community power, although they were largely excluded from the market economy. With the Hicksite–Orthodox split of 1827–1828, Orthodox women found their spiritual role decreased, while Hicksite women retained greater influence. Correct my if I'm wrong, I know very little about quakers, but that sounds a lot like women were expected to remain barefoot and pregnant.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
I have this notion that Abrahamic religions are the worst single thing that happened to Homo Sapiens to date. And that they're also trying to appropriate human progress for themself, but now we know the real achivements of Greeks and Romans, surpassed only by early XX century. They managed without. My wife says: "But you personally have no other culture to belong to". That doesn't make me happier. > in 324, he extended similarly pro-Christian policies to the eastern empire, where he not only favoured Christians, but actively discriminated against non-Christians, restricting their ability to worship or fund their temples. And it mostly went downhill from that.
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  Nah, religion is just repackaged tribalism. Not like we wouldn't replace it with something equally stupid, like rioting and fighting each other over politics... At least religion includes a sort of morality as part of the deal.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    When you're fighting over politics, you can usually convert most of the losing side before resorting to slaugter. When you're righting over religion, people are very reluctant to convert (which is usually a sin), and to accept the converted, so it ends with cleansings and genocide. Same thing with ethnic conflicts, but they're religion-driven more often than not.
    - chubs 10y ago
      FWIW, the christian answer to this is jesus' command to 'love your enemy', which is the foundation of what, in our culture, we usually call 'tolerance'. I think it's more accurate to judge a belief system by its founder than by those who abuse it later, eg europe's historical religious wars.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > I think it's more accurate to judge a belief system by its founder than by those who abuse it later, eg europe's historical religious wars. If those two things aren't identical, then you have two or more different substantove belief systems that happen tobshare a common label; it's inaccurate to judge everything going under the label by either the founding philosophy or any of the later incarnations; they are separate things that must be judged separately.
senior_james 10y ago
Why focus on just Christianity? Islam started as an 'obscure cult', like most religions.
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  Why... not? It's an article. It doesn't preclude other articles on related subjects. I guess I'm a little confused about what you think a good answer to your question would address, beyond the obvious fact that the author didn't decide to write about Islam.
  - senior_james 10y ago
    It was a rhetorical question. If He wrote about Islam, he would get death threats. My point is that the current trend is to shit on Christianity and praise Islam.
edblarney 10y ago
Reasonably written from a historical perspective, but it's missing a few points: 1) The 'monotheistic' religions, particularly Christianity and Buddhism (though Buddhism is not exactly 'monotheistic' it's not 'pantheist' in the classical sense) - represented a fundamental shift from pantheism. It's wrong to claim that 'Pantheism = many gods' and 'Monotheism = one god'. This the literal meaning, but it's not remotely accurate. Pantheistic gods were almost always a soap opera of 'super human like' people who loved, fought and interacted with each other like a superior cast of beings. 'Pray to me and I'll smote your enemy' 'Give me offerings or I'll hurt you'. Montheism wasn't just about having 'one god' - monotheistic religions were about ideas not so much rites and rituals (as mentioned in the article). Particularly - monotheistic religions required moral and conscientious behaviour. Jesus had only two commands: 'Love God and love one another'. In a more secular sense that could be 'Recognize the divine and knowing that - do your best with what you have to make the world a better place'. Buddhists are required to be 'more enlightened' and more civilized people lest they be reincarnated as animals, if they want to 'escape the cycle of reincarnation'. Christian and Buddhist religions centre around moral philosophies at least in terms of how they apply to the real world. The Christian God is not a 'bearded buy in the sky' (even though he is often presented as such). He's 'unknowable' and completely transcends our understanding. 'I am that I am'. This is not like the Greek gods who all have very tangible attributes and are mostly interested in human like things - i.e. power. Similarly, though Buddhists are technically 'atheists' in that they don't have a 'God' per say - they do have a kind of 'monotheism' in that they present very specific ideals of 'nothingness' etc.. They definitely present a metaphysical construct for us. And it's not a bunch of angry super-dudes. Monotheism is a huge leap forward in terms of our metaphysical evolution. 2) It's not fair to use the word 'exclusive' so many times in this text. The most powerful element of Christianity is that it was open to anyone. For the first time slaves were equal to kings. This was a very, very powerful idea, and obviously scared the bananas out of the elite. Status and class were clearly delineated in terms of class in Greek mythology. Higher status = more 'godliness'. That's an artifact of human culture ... but it's rejected in Christianity (and Buddhism). Your 'status' in Christianity is dependant on how good you are, not 'how much money you have'. For the first time, you couldn't just buy your way out of bad deeds (at least in theory, obviously not in practice, quite often). Christians were the first international solidarity movement. They were the first 'social movement of equal peoples'. The first to feed the poor as moral action, not just a political action. Moreover - they were organized. What the article failed to mention was that Constantine had a political motivation to be Christian because he could leverage the international network of organized and efficient non-state bureaucracy that the Christians had. Their 'system' had efficiency on some level - and authenticity. A strict historical articulation of the facts, I think fails to illustrate what it was that made Christianity so widespread. I think the key to understanding is that 'common era' religions such as Christianity and Buddhism are completely unlike their predecessors.
antognini 10y ago
For anyone interested in the very early origins of Christianity (first century AD) I recommend reading some of the work of Margaret Barker. In particular, An Introduction to Temple Theology is very good for someone who doesn't know much about the subject, and it's not very long, either. Barker is an old testament scholar and has done a lot of work trying to understand the way that Judaism was practiced in the time of Christ, and why Christianity was as successful in that environment as it was. Most of us in the modern West only understand the religion ancient Israel through the texts that have survived in the Bible, but there are a number of other surviving works, fragments, and archaeological evidence that provide clues about religious practice in that time. (For example, one prominent text that Barker frequently draws on is the Book of Enoch, which was considered canonical by many Jewish communities in the time of Christ --- and actually still is by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church --- and was cited in the Letter of Jude.) Of course, a lot of this research is necessarily somewhat conjectural, but it was fascinating to read about why exactly there was so much messianic fervor in the Levant in the time of Christ.
- flukus 10y ago
  The great course plus also have a good series on early christianity: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/lost-christianities?tn=History_0_71 https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/lost-christianities?tn=H...
- notacoward 10y ago
  Also, anything by Elaine Pagels - Gnostic Gospels, Origin of Satan, etc. Really opened my eyes to what Christianity could have been if not for the toxic influence of Paul.
  - camperman 10y ago
    About the best you can hope for when reading Elaine Pagels is getting her opinion on what Gnostic authors may have thought of Paul's letters. She makes the same mistake as the author of this article makes: that Christianity just started because a small bunch of men decided to worship Jesus as divine, instead of being confronted with him alive and well somehow after had been executed.
posterboy 10y ago
I like the title, although - or because - obscure could imply weird, mysterious rather than secluded, hidden in secrecy.
fusiongyro 10y ago
Another great book on this topic is Rodney Stark's The Rise of Christianity https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Christianity-Marginal-Religious-Centuries/dp/0060677015/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486480140&sr=8-1&keywords=the+rise+of+christianity https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Christianity-Marginal-Religious-... Stark is mostly interested in the period of time between Jesus and Constantine and brings a ton of historical and sociological evidence to bear on the question. A really amazing book. Learned a lot about Rome from it.
- camperman 10y ago
  I was going to recommend this book but you beat me to it. Christians were much longer lived because of their social practices more than anything else.
known 10y ago
Religion was born when the first con-man met the first fool; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth
Pocketsnakes 10y ago
expected an article about scientism

155 points by Thevet 10y ago

a. I honestly thought this was going to be about the alt-right or neoliberal orthodoxy or similar. b. Synchronicity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13585873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13585873

geofft 10y ago

> Quite a few people believed them, including Saul of Tarsus, who took the message on the road, changing his name to Paul as a token of his conversion. This is common folklore, but the claim does not appear in the Bible, and everything in the Bible or in any other source implies that "Saul" was his Hebrew name and "Paul"/"Paulus" was his Greek/Latin name, each used when around people who spoke that language. It just so happens that before his conversion, he basically was only ever around Israel, and afterwards, he preached to the other parts of the Roman Empire. Taking two names in two languages was a common practice at the time, and remains a common practice; nobody claims that Piyush Jindal took the name Bobby when he converted to Christianity.

helthanatos 10y ago
What Bible have you been reading? Many times throughout, people's names were changed to indicate change. "And there came a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” And from that time, Saul was changed to Paul and become a real believer and a worker in the church"
- geofft 10y ago
  I am reading a Bible that does not contain the phrase "And from that time, Saul was changed to Paul and become a real believer and a worker in the church." The only Google result for that is some RTF of a sermon or something. Can you provide a chapter and verse? The first half of what you quote ("why persecutest thou Me") occurs twice, once in Acts 9:4 and once in Acts 22:7, but neither time is it followed by "And from that time, Saul was changed to Paul".
- freditup 10y ago
  geofft is likely right, and it doesn't seem to be a particularly controversial topic amongst different strains of Christianity topic at that. (I've seen conservative and more liberal sources that think Saul/Paul was a sort of dual name.) The most concrete verse on the matter seems to be Acts 13:9: > But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze on him That's not to say that name changes are never indicative of internal change in the Bible, and it's possible that Saul started using the name Paul more intentionally to represent his change. But there doesn't seem to be much concrete evidence of that.
  - JackFr 10y ago
    Very clear explanation: "Many mistakenly assume the Lord changed Saul's name to Paul sometime after Saul converted from Judaism to Christianity, which happened during his encounter with Christ on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-19). Unlike the instance of Jesus changing Simon's name to Kepha (Gk. Petros) as a way of signifying the special role he would play in the Church (Mt 16:18, Jn 1:41-42), in Paul's case there was no name change. Saul of Tarsus was born a Jew, "circumcised on the eight day, of the race of Israel, or the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew parentage, in observance of the law a Pharisee" (Phil 3:5). The Hebrew name given him by his parents was Saul, but, because his father was a Roman citizen (and therefore Saul inherited Roman citizenship), Saul also had the Latin name Paul (Acts 16:37, 22:25-28), the custom of dual names being common in those days. Since he grew up in a strict Pharisee environment, the name Saul was by far the more appropriate name to go by. But after his conversion Saul determined to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, so he dusted off his Roman name and became known as Paul, a name Gentiles were accustomed to." https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-did-god-change-sauls-name-to-paul https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-did-god-change-sauls-name-to...

vondur 10y ago

One interesting fact. Constantine was being held as a prisoner at the court of Galerius in Nicomedia. He asked Galerius if he could leave to join his Father in York. Apparently Galerius was inebriated and allowed him to go. And the rest is history.

cconcepts 10y ago

Very well written article. On a social note, it does feel as though (and I could be wrong) the seeming uptick in discussion about Christianity is because it is associated with the Trump/Republican/"How on earth did so many people vote for him?" question regarding US politics. As the article alludes: > How Christianity went on to become not just a state religion, but the central fact of political life, and how Christian institutions of the Middle Ages both maintained and distorted the legacy of the ancient world, is another, different story. That Christianity and its adherents are manipulated for political ends is a sad fact of life. This doesn't change whether or not Christianity is true, it simply confirms the biblical assertion that people are potentially naive As a reflective person who reads Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and has become a follower of Jesus (Christian) I find the political association of Christianity and certain spheres of politics disheartening for the cause of logical discourse about the matter. In considering whether or not Christianity is true it is hard to ignore the actions of those who claim to be its adherents. Yes, it seems an unusual number of people who support Trump identify as Christian - isn't that more likely to do with recent demographics than hypotheses about the lack of reliability of the biblical narrative about Jesus of Nazareth? Where I am from (New Zealand) a lot of Christians I have spoken with are appalled by Trump and don't buy into the whole "Gawd Bless Americuh" narrative that Trump seems to use to persuade a certain demographic into voting for him. No political agenda can encapsulate who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he came to do. If it could, that would render the notion of Christianity absurd in the first place. EDIT: Clarity

pault 10y ago
How do you reconcile the writings of those rabid atheists with your belief? Do you just follow the teachings of Christ but dismiss the miracles as myth?
- lostcolony 10y ago
  cconcepts didn't say they automatically accepted everything those authors say. Obviously. It's called challenging yourself, expanding your horizons, seeking truth rather than dogma.

caublestone 10y ago

Isaac Asimov was inspired to write "The Foundation" series after reading "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". He borrowed Constantines strategic use of Christian ideology to thwart his enemies by applying the ritualistic methods of religion to protect science in a fictional universe 50k years into the future. If you have the time, read Decline and Fall and then "The Foundation" series.

gens 10y ago
From what i remember it was but a part of one book. Funny enough Warhammer 40k tech priests were probably inspired by this.

kapauldo 10y ago

It's so refreshing to hear an adult voice describe Christianity in a historical context instead of one that assumes that the supernatural is real and a given. The historical narrative is a million times more plausible than conception without sperm or consent.

helthanatos 10y ago
Remember: the historical may not be accurate because history is easy to influence.
- douche 10y ago
  Which is a wise thing to keep in mind when studying the bible. The history surrounding the writing, compiling, codifying, translation and reinterpretation of what became the bible is somewhat fascinating.
- chubs 10y ago
  History isn't impervious to investigation, there are opportunities to verify it that are worth considering if anyone is intellectually curious about such things: * Biblical accounts are largely corroborated by archaeology. * The bible isn't 2000 years old - early copies have been discovered that date from the 2nd century. So there's only an initial 200 year gap to consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri * Thousands of copies of the books that make up the bible have been found, and they generally only vary in insignificant ways - it's not like the legend grew and changed as it was copied over the centuries. * Non-biblical atheist ancient writings corroborate many of the claims surrounding jesus' life. * Even atheist historians generally concede what is known as the 'minimal facts' surrounding christianity's founding, and if you're curious, these facts make you at least consider your philosophy more seriously: http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2013/the-minimal-facts-of-the-resurrection http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2013/the-minimal-facts-of-the-re... Not all christian's hold blind faith - many of us are hard-nosed skeptics who examined the facts and still believe in it. I mean we're normal people right, we don't want to waste our lives believing a lie! So we really probe what we believe.

defen 10y ago

Based on the headline I thought this was going to be about Quakers - you can map current Western elite beliefs onto Quakers fairly straightforwardly

wcummings 10y ago
How so?
- defen 10y ago
  Religious tolerance Abolitionism Women's rights Prison reform Radically elevated role of individual conscience (inner light) They were into all those things way before it was cool. I see modern day divestment campaigns, ethical sourcing of goods and materials, and even "socially conscious" business in general ("Effect change in the world" / "make a difference") as direct descendants of the Quaker approach to abolitionism - "It is beginning to be seen that they must despise the gain of oppression, and deny themselves the blood-bought sweets and the blood-stained cotton that has come through this corrupt channel." Look up the Quaker approach to capitalism.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > Women's rights From a bit of reading it seems like their definition of womeens rights was quite different to how most people today would use the term. Quite controversial at the time too. A quote from wikipedia: > Also particularly within the relatively prosperous Quaker communities of the eastern United States, the focus on the child and "holy conversation" gave women unusual community power, although they were largely excluded from the market economy. With the Hicksite–Orthodox split of 1827–1828, Orthodox women found their spiritual role decreased, while Hicksite women retained greater influence. Correct my if I'm wrong, I know very little about quakers, but that sounds a lot like women were expected to remain barefoot and pregnant.

guard-of-terra 10y ago

I have this notion that Abrahamic religions are the worst single thing that happened to Homo Sapiens to date. And that they're also trying to appropriate human progress for themself, but now we know the real achivements of Greeks and Romans, surpassed only by early XX century. They managed without. My wife says: "But you personally have no other culture to belong to". That doesn't make me happier. > in 324, he extended similarly pro-Christian policies to the eastern empire, where he not only favoured Christians, but actively discriminated against non-Christians, restricting their ability to worship or fund their temples. And it mostly went downhill from that.

Mikeb85 10y ago
Nah, religion is just repackaged tribalism. Not like we wouldn't replace it with something equally stupid, like rioting and fighting each other over politics... At least religion includes a sort of morality as part of the deal.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  When you're fighting over politics, you can usually convert most of the losing side before resorting to slaugter. When you're righting over religion, people are very reluctant to convert (which is usually a sin), and to accept the converted, so it ends with cleansings and genocide. Same thing with ethnic conflicts, but they're religion-driven more often than not.
  - chubs 10y ago
    FWIW, the christian answer to this is jesus' command to 'love your enemy', which is the foundation of what, in our culture, we usually call 'tolerance'. I think it's more accurate to judge a belief system by its founder than by those who abuse it later, eg europe's historical religious wars.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > I think it's more accurate to judge a belief system by its founder than by those who abuse it later, eg europe's historical religious wars. If those two things aren't identical, then you have two or more different substantove belief systems that happen tobshare a common label; it's inaccurate to judge everything going under the label by either the founding philosophy or any of the later incarnations; they are separate things that must be judged separately.

senior_james 10y ago

Why focus on just Christianity? Islam started as an 'obscure cult', like most religions.

GavinMcG 10y ago
Why... not? It's an article. It doesn't preclude other articles on related subjects. I guess I'm a little confused about what you think a good answer to your question would address, beyond the obvious fact that the author didn't decide to write about Islam.
- senior_james 10y ago
  It was a rhetorical question. If He wrote about Islam, he would get death threats. My point is that the current trend is to shit on Christianity and praise Islam.

edblarney 10y ago

Reasonably written from a historical perspective, but it's missing a few points: 1) The 'monotheistic' religions, particularly Christianity and Buddhism (though Buddhism is not exactly 'monotheistic' it's not 'pantheist' in the classical sense) - represented a fundamental shift from pantheism. It's wrong to claim that 'Pantheism = many gods' and 'Monotheism = one god'. This the literal meaning, but it's not remotely accurate. Pantheistic gods were almost always a soap opera of 'super human like' people who loved, fought and interacted with each other like a superior cast of beings. 'Pray to me and I'll smote your enemy' 'Give me offerings or I'll hurt you'. Montheism wasn't just about having 'one god' - monotheistic religions were about ideas not so much rites and rituals (as mentioned in the article). Particularly - monotheistic religions required moral and conscientious behaviour. Jesus had only two commands: 'Love God and love one another'. In a more secular sense that could be 'Recognize the divine and knowing that - do your best with what you have to make the world a better place'. Buddhists are required to be 'more enlightened' and more civilized people lest they be reincarnated as animals, if they want to 'escape the cycle of reincarnation'. Christian and Buddhist religions centre around moral philosophies at least in terms of how they apply to the real world. The Christian God is not a 'bearded buy in the sky' (even though he is often presented as such). He's 'unknowable' and completely transcends our understanding. 'I am that I am'. This is not like the Greek gods who all have very tangible attributes and are mostly interested in human like things - i.e. power. Similarly, though Buddhists are technically 'atheists' in that they don't have a 'God' per say - they do have a kind of 'monotheism' in that they present very specific ideals of 'nothingness' etc.. They definitely present a metaphysical construct for us. And it's not a bunch of angry super-dudes. Monotheism is a huge leap forward in terms of our metaphysical evolution. 2) It's not fair to use the word 'exclusive' so many times in this text. The most powerful element of Christianity is that it was open to anyone. For the first time slaves were equal to kings. This was a very, very powerful idea, and obviously scared the bananas out of the elite. Status and class were clearly delineated in terms of class in Greek mythology. Higher status = more 'godliness'. That's an artifact of human culture ... but it's rejected in Christianity (and Buddhism). Your 'status' in Christianity is dependant on how good you are, not 'how much money you have'. For the first time, you couldn't just buy your way out of bad deeds (at least in theory, obviously not in practice, quite often). Christians were the first international solidarity movement. They were the first 'social movement of equal peoples'. The first to feed the poor as moral action, not just a political action. Moreover - they were organized. What the article failed to mention was that Constantine had a political motivation to be Christian because he could leverage the international network of organized and efficient non-state bureaucracy that the Christians had. Their 'system' had efficiency on some level - and authenticity. A strict historical articulation of the facts, I think fails to illustrate what it was that made Christianity so widespread. I think the key to understanding is that 'common era' religions such as Christianity and Buddhism are completely unlike their predecessors.

antognini 10y ago

For anyone interested in the very early origins of Christianity (first century AD) I recommend reading some of the work of Margaret Barker. In particular, An Introduction to Temple Theology is very good for someone who doesn't know much about the subject, and it's not very long, either. Barker is an old testament scholar and has done a lot of work trying to understand the way that Judaism was practiced in the time of Christ, and why Christianity was as successful in that environment as it was. Most of us in the modern West only understand the religion ancient Israel through the texts that have survived in the Bible, but there are a number of other surviving works, fragments, and archaeological evidence that provide clues about religious practice in that time. (For example, one prominent text that Barker frequently draws on is the Book of Enoch, which was considered canonical by many Jewish communities in the time of Christ --- and actually still is by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church --- and was cited in the Letter of Jude.) Of course, a lot of this research is necessarily somewhat conjectural, but it was fascinating to read about why exactly there was so much messianic fervor in the Levant in the time of Christ.

flukus 10y ago
The great course plus also have a good series on early christianity: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/lost-christianities?tn=History_0_71 https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/lost-christianities?tn=H...
notacoward 10y ago
Also, anything by Elaine Pagels - Gnostic Gospels, Origin of Satan, etc. Really opened my eyes to what Christianity could have been if not for the toxic influence of Paul.
- camperman 10y ago
  About the best you can hope for when reading Elaine Pagels is getting her opinion on what Gnostic authors may have thought of Paul's letters. She makes the same mistake as the author of this article makes: that Christianity just started because a small bunch of men decided to worship Jesus as divine, instead of being confronted with him alive and well somehow after had been executed.

posterboy 10y ago

I like the title, although - or because - obscure could imply weird, mysterious rather than secluded, hidden in secrecy.

fusiongyro 10y ago

Another great book on this topic is Rodney Stark's The Rise of Christianity https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Christianity-Marginal-Religious-Centuries/dp/0060677015/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486480140&sr=8-1&keywords=the+rise+of+christianity https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Christianity-Marginal-Religious-... Stark is mostly interested in the period of time between Jesus and Constantine and brings a ton of historical and sociological evidence to bear on the question. A really amazing book. Learned a lot about Rome from it.

camperman 10y ago
I was going to recommend this book but you beat me to it. Christians were much longer lived because of their social practices more than anything else.

known 10y ago

Religion was born when the first con-man met the first fool; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth

Pocketsnakes 10y ago

expected an article about scientism