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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

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.
  - cconcepts 10y ago
    Yes, thankyou. An unhealthy habit for any worldview is to live in an echo chamber of people who agree with you.
- cconcepts 10y ago
  They challenge my belief and make me think about it in ways I otherwise wouldn't. Miracles are, by definition, hard to believe and are a suspension of testable, repeatable scientific law. Something that, an all powerful God could do if that all powerful God really existed.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
    So surely then, the simplest answer is that those miracles did not happen and god is not real?
    - lostcolony 10y ago
      Curious what your goal is with this comment? Because you seem to be implying that that's a relevant question. Occam's Razor is a useful heuristic, but hardly lays claim to truth. Classical physics is, after all, simpler than quantum physics. Reality is far more complicated.
      - narag 10y ago
        More complicated than what? Quantum physics deal with a different kind of phenomena that seems to be random in nature. Macroscopic physics emerge from micro-world, so different scale. If what you are comparing is classical with relativity, Occam only applies to simplest answer that explain all observable reality. Classical didn't explain enough, so it needed to be corrected by a more complex system.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
        Well, after all that reading to challenge your views, the original poster came to the conclusion that god is real and Christianity is the religion for them. I am wondering what the reasoning behind that is.
    - hoke_t 10y ago
      How is this "surely" the simplest answer? And if it is, since when is the simplest answer the true one?
- kamaal 10y ago
  Those people(Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris) are hardly atheists. In many ways they believe and practice every single aspect of religious life dominant in the western hemisphere minus belief in God.
pcardh0 10y ago
Christians support of Trump, might be a reaction to the relentless assault by the left on their religion. Trump isn't a Christian (IMO) but he isn't going to turn the State against them. Christians looked at the choices and voted for the lesser evil
nvahalik 10y ago
> ... In considering whether or not Christianity is true it is hard to ignore the actions of those who claim to be its adherents. Yes, but the key word here is _claim_. If someone calls themselves a vegan and yet eats veal then you, as someone who understands what a "vegan" is, you can call them out for their hypocrisy. There are a few problems here: 1) Many, many people have no idea what an actual Christian is or what we believe. 2) Furthermore, nobody wants to know because their worldview is justified much more easily by fighting against a straw man rather than objective truth. 3) We as a society don't value objective truth. So I can call myself whatever I want even if I don't really believe in the key doctrinal points. 4) Going down that same path, the people who actually stand up for what is truth and calling out those who are not, get labeled as rabble-rousers and are chastised as being "judgemental." In any case, what we have here is a big heaping helping of nobody knowing anything anymore... and nobody seems to care. FWIW: I am a Christian and I did not vote for Trump.
- flukus 10y ago
  > Many, many people have no idea what an actual Christian is or what we believe. Christians have been fighting over that for as long as there's been Christians. I'm not convinced the word is in any way useful.
  - nvahalik 10y ago
    Though the term has been usurped, tracked through the mud, and left out to be baked out in the sun the word is still very useful. At the end of the day even though we might call ourselves different types of Christians based on the traditions and non-essentials that we hold to, there are still Christians from every tribe, tongue, and nation that are united by Christ... and Christian is really only the word I can think of that makes sense.
    - flukus 10y ago
      You can't really say they're united by Christ when they can't agree on the nature of Christ (man, god or both?) and have frequently fought over the particulars. About the only way you can group all Christians together is that they believe a Christ of some form existed. But that definition is loose enough to include atheists, muslims and others.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
vacri 10y ago
> I find the political association of Christianity and certain spheres of politics disheartening for the cause of logical discourse about the matter. As a lifelong atheist, I've noticed the resurgence in Anglo nations of religion, post 9/11, overwhelmingly from the US. Part of it is due to the grassroots movement in the US by conservative christians to dictate school curriculae, an explicit move started in the mid-80s that would be bearing fruit around the turn of the century, but mostly it seems to be a response and counter-response to that one terrorist attack. Whether it's people turning to religion for comfort, or people defending the religion of minorities to fight for their civil rights, religion has been back on the main card since 2001, whereas in the decade previously, secularism was only getting stronger. Is religion much more in the mainstream now? From what I see, not much over the past 10-15 years, but definitely more than in the 90s. Trump isn't the only US politician to talk about God in speeches - in fact, you can usually tell whether or not a speech was performed by an American politician simply if it mentions god (and frequently!). > 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 Outside of the US, fundamentalist christians are much thinner on the ground, though they are around. > No political agenda can encapsulate who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he came to do. The interaction of humans = politics. Even if all you want to do is heal the sick, that is your political agenda.
- flukus 10y ago
  > As a lifelong atheist, I've noticed the resurgence in Anglo nations of religion, post 9/11, overwhelmingly from the US The exact opposite has happened in terms of numbers. You may be right that it's become more visible, but I think that might be more of a backlash against other changes like gay rights and sexual openness than a response to 9/11. This is the "bandwagon" that put bush in the white house 9 months earlier.
  - cconcepts 10y ago
    Relevant comic: http://adam4d.com/death-of-christianity/ http://adam4d.com/death-of-christianity/
- 10y ago
cconcepts 10y ago
Surprisingly civil folks, thanks for the discourse.
Mikeb85 10y ago
> 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. How do you figure? Trump is the least religious Republican candidate ever, and the Republicans today are far more accepting of LGBT issues than ever before. Trump was elected by a working class that had been left behind by the status quo...
- soundwave106 10y ago
  That's the contradiction: Donald Trump is indeed the least religious Republican candidate ever, with a wide variety of flaws and sins that might make Donald Trump less appealing for devotees of the Gospel ideas. Yet approximately 80% of evangelical Christians voted for him. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/11/09/exit-polls-show-white-evangelicals-voted-overwhelmingly-for-donald-trump/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/11...). Other religious identities were more split, but not evangelical Christianity. I'm sure some of this was class issues. Anecdotally, of the people I know in the extended family that were both Trump supporters and of strong Christian faith, the Trump vote seemed either to be single-issue voting (eg abortion), or what I gathered was more just general cultural alignment. The later sort of ties into class: religion and class can go hand in hand. The biggest question is whether this strong tie in America of "Christianity=evangelical", and the strong political stances this often evokes, damages the Christian brand overall here. It's possible: there's a pretty clear trend especially among younger people towards secularization, and seemingly hypocritical stances might be one of the reasons for this (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/24/why-americas-nones-left-religion-behind/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/24/why-americas...).
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
>> 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. I kind of see this uptick more related to the liberal intellectuals' (rightful) consternation with the persecution of religious minorities that hasn't really stopped in modern times, as one would hope- for instance, with the treatment of Jewish people well into the 20th century and the rise of Islamophobia in recent days. The article discusses the persecution of early Christians by Roman emperors before Constantine, so I thought it was more relevant to Trump's muslim ban. I don't see him as a Christian emperor that is, rather the opposite. He's definitely more Diocletian than Constantine. Btw I'm a bit surprised at the article's statement that the persecution of Christians was not as big as we think these days. In the article itself, there's at least three distinct periods where Christians suffered severe consequences for their faith. That's not exactly something you brush off lightly, in my humble etc.
Shorel 10y ago
> 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. The ancient religions in the Levant were basically this. Each city-state had its own deity, and when you went to any city, you were expected to worship the local god. This changed when the Babylonian empire overthrew the ancient kingdom of Israel, ended the promised 'Eternal dynasty' of king David after just a couple generations, and exiled the priests. This led to the writing of the book of Job, from one side, and to the dissociation of the deity from the city, as the priests lost their homeland. I see the current developments as a 'regression to the mean'.
Spooky23 10y ago
> 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. Not at all, Christianity has always been practiced as a social and political construct as well as a spiritual one. That's the core of it's power. Earthly institutions don't persist for thousands of years otherwise. You really need to look at more ancient practices that are further away from modern practice and politics. Places like England and France were transformed from a collection of warring barbarian bands to nations by the cultural standardization brought by christianity. Later reforms were driven by schisms like the reformation and other things.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  > Places like England and France were transformed from a collection of warring barbarian bands to nations by the cultural standardization brought by christianity. Later reforms were driven by schisms like the reformation and other things. IMO you have the cause and effect here completely backwards.
  - arjie 10y ago
    In A Splendid Exchange, William Bernstein actually argues that Islam acted in that direction because of how rigidly and in detail it specified trade rules. It's possible Christianity had a similar effect as well if it specified social rules.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    I don't think he does. When the English kings adopted Christianity, a big part of the draw (for the kings) is the church offered large numbers of literate men that could be used to extend the reach of the king's law. There's a limit to how large your kingdom can be if people are repeating your orders and those of your court from memory.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    That's why I suggested looking further back. The medieval era, as gozer88 said, the priests were the only literate people to transmit orders and record things. They also got to define history... significant amounts of historical and contemporary knowledge at that time was always filtered through the lens of the catholic church. Zip ahead to US colonization. Why did people come to North America? In many, if not most cases it was to escape religious prosecution or the blowback relating to that persecution.
sigi45 10y ago
I find it laughable to believe in Christianity in the 21th century. Believing in a god is one thing and everyone can decide if they wanna do this. I personally don't believe in any higher being. I don't think it matters to my life in any way. But believing in in a book, found 100 years after 0 (...) going to church, believing that there is a son of god who decided to come to earth exactly when he decided it and not anytime before or any time after and ignoring all other believes and cultures like celts which are older is just stupid. We are not those people from 2000 years ago who need Christianity to explain shit to us. Religion hinders us to become a united world. A world who builds its values on living on the same fucking planet.

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.
- cconcepts 10y ago
  Yes, thankyou. An unhealthy habit for any worldview is to live in an echo chamber of people who agree with you.
cconcepts 10y ago
They challenge my belief and make me think about it in ways I otherwise wouldn't. Miracles are, by definition, hard to believe and are a suspension of testable, repeatable scientific law. Something that, an all powerful God could do if that all powerful God really existed.
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
  So surely then, the simplest answer is that those miracles did not happen and god is not real?
  - lostcolony 10y ago
    Curious what your goal is with this comment? Because you seem to be implying that that's a relevant question. Occam's Razor is a useful heuristic, but hardly lays claim to truth. Classical physics is, after all, simpler than quantum physics. Reality is far more complicated.
    - narag 10y ago
      More complicated than what? Quantum physics deal with a different kind of phenomena that seems to be random in nature. Macroscopic physics emerge from micro-world, so different scale. If what you are comparing is classical with relativity, Occam only applies to simplest answer that explain all observable reality. Classical didn't explain enough, so it needed to be corrected by a more complex system.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
      Well, after all that reading to challenge your views, the original poster came to the conclusion that god is real and Christianity is the religion for them. I am wondering what the reasoning behind that is.
  - hoke_t 10y ago
    How is this "surely" the simplest answer? And if it is, since when is the simplest answer the true one?
kamaal 10y ago
Those people(Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris) are hardly atheists. In many ways they believe and practice every single aspect of religious life dominant in the western hemisphere minus belief in God.

pcardh0 10y ago

Christians support of Trump, might be a reaction to the relentless assault by the left on their religion. Trump isn't a Christian (IMO) but he isn't going to turn the State against them. Christians looked at the choices and voted for the lesser evil

nvahalik 10y ago

> ... In considering whether or not Christianity is true it is hard to ignore the actions of those who claim to be its adherents. Yes, but the key word here is _claim_. If someone calls themselves a vegan and yet eats veal then you, as someone who understands what a "vegan" is, you can call them out for their hypocrisy. There are a few problems here: 1) Many, many people have no idea what an actual Christian is or what we believe. 2) Furthermore, nobody wants to know because their worldview is justified much more easily by fighting against a straw man rather than objective truth. 3) We as a society don't value objective truth. So I can call myself whatever I want even if I don't really believe in the key doctrinal points. 4) Going down that same path, the people who actually stand up for what is truth and calling out those who are not, get labeled as rabble-rousers and are chastised as being "judgemental." In any case, what we have here is a big heaping helping of nobody knowing anything anymore... and nobody seems to care. FWIW: I am a Christian and I did not vote for Trump.

flukus 10y ago
> Many, many people have no idea what an actual Christian is or what we believe. Christians have been fighting over that for as long as there's been Christians. I'm not convinced the word is in any way useful.
- nvahalik 10y ago
  Though the term has been usurped, tracked through the mud, and left out to be baked out in the sun the word is still very useful. At the end of the day even though we might call ourselves different types of Christians based on the traditions and non-essentials that we hold to, there are still Christians from every tribe, tongue, and nation that are united by Christ... and Christian is really only the word I can think of that makes sense.
  - flukus 10y ago
    You can't really say they're united by Christ when they can't agree on the nature of Christ (man, god or both?) and have frequently fought over the particulars. About the only way you can group all Christians together is that they believe a Christ of some form existed. But that definition is loose enough to include atheists, muslims and others.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

vacri 10y ago

> I find the political association of Christianity and certain spheres of politics disheartening for the cause of logical discourse about the matter. As a lifelong atheist, I've noticed the resurgence in Anglo nations of religion, post 9/11, overwhelmingly from the US. Part of it is due to the grassroots movement in the US by conservative christians to dictate school curriculae, an explicit move started in the mid-80s that would be bearing fruit around the turn of the century, but mostly it seems to be a response and counter-response to that one terrorist attack. Whether it's people turning to religion for comfort, or people defending the religion of minorities to fight for their civil rights, religion has been back on the main card since 2001, whereas in the decade previously, secularism was only getting stronger. Is religion much more in the mainstream now? From what I see, not much over the past 10-15 years, but definitely more than in the 90s. Trump isn't the only US politician to talk about God in speeches - in fact, you can usually tell whether or not a speech was performed by an American politician simply if it mentions god (and frequently!). > 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 Outside of the US, fundamentalist christians are much thinner on the ground, though they are around. > No political agenda can encapsulate who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he came to do. The interaction of humans = politics. Even if all you want to do is heal the sick, that is your political agenda.

flukus 10y ago
> As a lifelong atheist, I've noticed the resurgence in Anglo nations of religion, post 9/11, overwhelmingly from the US The exact opposite has happened in terms of numbers. You may be right that it's become more visible, but I think that might be more of a backlash against other changes like gay rights and sexual openness than a response to 9/11. This is the "bandwagon" that put bush in the white house 9 months earlier.
- cconcepts 10y ago
  Relevant comic: http://adam4d.com/death-of-christianity/ http://adam4d.com/death-of-christianity/
10y ago

cconcepts 10y ago

Surprisingly civil folks, thanks for the discourse.

Mikeb85 10y ago

> 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. How do you figure? Trump is the least religious Republican candidate ever, and the Republicans today are far more accepting of LGBT issues than ever before. Trump was elected by a working class that had been left behind by the status quo...

soundwave106 10y ago
That's the contradiction: Donald Trump is indeed the least religious Republican candidate ever, with a wide variety of flaws and sins that might make Donald Trump less appealing for devotees of the Gospel ideas. Yet approximately 80% of evangelical Christians voted for him. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/11/09/exit-polls-show-white-evangelicals-voted-overwhelmingly-for-donald-trump/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/11...). Other religious identities were more split, but not evangelical Christianity. I'm sure some of this was class issues. Anecdotally, of the people I know in the extended family that were both Trump supporters and of strong Christian faith, the Trump vote seemed either to be single-issue voting (eg abortion), or what I gathered was more just general cultural alignment. The later sort of ties into class: religion and class can go hand in hand. The biggest question is whether this strong tie in America of "Christianity=evangelical", and the strong political stances this often evokes, damages the Christian brand overall here. It's possible: there's a pretty clear trend especially among younger people towards secularization, and seemingly hypocritical stances might be one of the reasons for this (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/24/why-americas-nones-left-religion-behind/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/24/why-americas...).

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

>> 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. I kind of see this uptick more related to the liberal intellectuals' (rightful) consternation with the persecution of religious minorities that hasn't really stopped in modern times, as one would hope- for instance, with the treatment of Jewish people well into the 20th century and the rise of Islamophobia in recent days. The article discusses the persecution of early Christians by Roman emperors before Constantine, so I thought it was more relevant to Trump's muslim ban. I don't see him as a Christian emperor that is, rather the opposite. He's definitely more Diocletian than Constantine. Btw I'm a bit surprised at the article's statement that the persecution of Christians was not as big as we think these days. In the article itself, there's at least three distinct periods where Christians suffered severe consequences for their faith. That's not exactly something you brush off lightly, in my humble etc.

Shorel 10y ago

> 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. The ancient religions in the Levant were basically this. Each city-state had its own deity, and when you went to any city, you were expected to worship the local god. This changed when the Babylonian empire overthrew the ancient kingdom of Israel, ended the promised 'Eternal dynasty' of king David after just a couple generations, and exiled the priests. This led to the writing of the book of Job, from one side, and to the dissociation of the deity from the city, as the priests lost their homeland. I see the current developments as a 'regression to the mean'.

Spooky23 10y ago

> 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. Not at all, Christianity has always been practiced as a social and political construct as well as a spiritual one. That's the core of it's power. Earthly institutions don't persist for thousands of years otherwise. You really need to look at more ancient practices that are further away from modern practice and politics. Places like England and France were transformed from a collection of warring barbarian bands to nations by the cultural standardization brought by christianity. Later reforms were driven by schisms like the reformation and other things.

throwaway729 10y ago
> Places like England and France were transformed from a collection of warring barbarian bands to nations by the cultural standardization brought by christianity. Later reforms were driven by schisms like the reformation and other things. IMO you have the cause and effect here completely backwards.
- arjie 10y ago
  In A Splendid Exchange, William Bernstein actually argues that Islam acted in that direction because of how rigidly and in detail it specified trade rules. It's possible Christianity had a similar effect as well if it specified social rules.
- gozur88 10y ago
  I don't think he does. When the English kings adopted Christianity, a big part of the draw (for the kings) is the church offered large numbers of literate men that could be used to extend the reach of the king's law. There's a limit to how large your kingdom can be if people are repeating your orders and those of your court from memory.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  That's why I suggested looking further back. The medieval era, as gozer88 said, the priests were the only literate people to transmit orders and record things. They also got to define history... significant amounts of historical and contemporary knowledge at that time was always filtered through the lens of the catholic church. Zip ahead to US colonization. Why did people come to North America? In many, if not most cases it was to escape religious prosecution or the blowback relating to that persecution.

sigi45 10y ago

I find it laughable to believe in Christianity in the 21th century. Believing in a god is one thing and everyone can decide if they wanna do this. I personally don't believe in any higher being. I don't think it matters to my life in any way. But believing in in a book, found 100 years after 0 (...) going to church, believing that there is a son of god who decided to come to earth exactly when he decided it and not anytime before or any time after and ignoring all other believes and cultures like celts which are older is just stupid. We are not those people from 2000 years ago who need Christianity to explain shit to us. Religion hinders us to become a united world. A world who builds its values on living on the same fucking planet.