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It's even more interesting when you think about Christianity not as a clear category, but as a cloud of practices, beliefs and institutions in a broader family

It's even more interesting when you think about Christianity not as a clear category, but as a cloud of practices, beliefs and institutions in a broader family of religious patterns. Mircea Eliade asks how Christianity reinterpreted sacred history, myth, salvation. What does Christianity do with motifs older than itself, such as paradise, rebirth, sacrifice? In A History of Religious Ideas [0], he treats the emergence and development of Christianity, including Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism, late antiquity, medieval religious forms and also how it interacted with other traditions. I think it complements quite nicely the geographical spread of Christianity by also clarifying what kind of transformations of religious symbols make it recognisable as Christianity across such different contexts. There's also "Darwin's Cathedral" [1] that analyses religion as group-organizing system, with a focus on Calvinism. Didn't go through it, but seems relevant. It was recommended by Robert Sapolsky in his Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology lecture series [2]. [0] A History of Religious Ideas - Mircea Eliade [1] Darwin's Cathedral - David Sloan Wilson [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA

Curosinono 5mo ago
[flagged]
- gobdovan 5mo ago
  I was referring to the analysis of Christianity's spread and evolution as amazing. I was not making a subjective judgment about Christianity itself.
  - Curosinono 5mo ago
    Yes i know. I still think its depressing. Perhaps we use the sentiment differently? Like the spread of the black death? I would say its depressing how fast and easy it spread.
    - prerok 5mo ago
      It's a bit disingenius to equate spread of a religion to a disease.
      - embedding-shape 5mo ago
        Yeah, probably "epidemic hysteria" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness) or something similar might be more accurate, but that's also "a disease" of sorts, just mental/psychological rather than biological.
      - Curosinono 5mo ago
        Why? 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.
    - simpaticoder 5mo ago
      It is a mistake to anthropomorphize large groups of people.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
- mc32 5mo ago
  There was a time when monks were the few who had time to dedicate to learning and discovery eventually leading to the renaissance.
  - Curosinono 5mo ago
    If you are trying to point out that there was something good with religion or necessasity of it, i'm aware of this argument. 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.
    - mc32 5mo ago
      I’m not arguing for religion or that it’s good or bad only that one facet of that religion allowed for exploration (they had lots of time to think) and that along with stewardship of critical texts (books) fomented the European renaissance from which we still benefit today and likely tomorrow.
- aerodexis 5mo ago
  The most depressing thing of all is when ppl encounter "bootstrapping" and only see "control"
  - Curosinono 5mo ago
    What do you mean? 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.
    - aerodexis 5mo ago
      > religion is primarily for control of the people. Thats why you see a lot of rules in the bible. thank God the world has moved past this kind of 2010s New Atheism.
      - pstuart 5mo ago
        Oh, the irony. 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.
        aerodexis 5mo ago
        There is a control dimension, because humans require some degree of limitations in order to thrive. Ultra-individualism breaks down entirely the moment you think about actual society (like actually considering children) rather than utopian fantasies about how some people want society to work. 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.
- talentedcoin 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - pstuart 5mo ago
    Yes, and that's always been vexing to me. I think the reason is like a combination of brainwashing (indoctrination if you must insist), and the fact that Church does offer comforts that most humans need: a feeling of belonging, a meaning to life (handwavey but real), and the perception of being loved. I'd join the Church in a heartbeat to get those things if I thought the foundational concepts were real.
  - embedding-shape 5mo ago
    Yeah, agree. But also, how critical can you really be if you are a practicing Christian? What is it that you're critical of exactly, and why doesn't it also apply to your religion, if you're "critical"? I'm an atheist, but hang out with plenty of Christians (protestants mostly, some catholic) and Muslims, and I have nothing against religion per se, can even see some bright and good things coming out of it, and spent most of my childhood in a church, but I know there are plenty of self-labeled Christian scientific researchers who do practice their religion yet would also call themselves "critical", I can totally see why some folks feels like that's slightly hypocritical or contradicting.
- gausswho 5mo ago
  Critical thinking, by some boundaries of how you define it, was a threat to power that led to the many schisms the video demonstrates. Suppression of it I find to be endemic in monotheistic organized religions. As an outsider to Christianity, it's always seemed odd to me the fluid boundaries of what you can critique and what you can't while remaining faithful. Most Christians would argue you cannot reason your way to the will of God due to the inherent flaws of humanity. I find that a convenient way of saying 'don't rock the boat'. 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 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.
  - acedia000 5mo ago
    This is largely ignoring the fact that Manichaeism was uniformly and severely persecuted under virtually every empire (and respective theology, or lack thereof) it came into contact with, which the Wikipedia article portrays pretty thoroughly. 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.
    - gausswho 5mo ago
      I agree Manichaeism was persecuted, and not only for reasons I purport to be it hewing closer to reason. Fair play. 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.
- ecshafer 5mo ago
  Newton, Tolkien, Aquinas, Descarte, Pascal, CS Lewis, Lemaitre, Bach. All famously uncritical humans.
  - dsr_ 5mo ago
    Pascal of the famously backpedaling and unsupportable Wager? 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.)
thefz 5mo ago
Also spent the whole middle ages rewriting history and erasing the knowledge they did not like, so I am not that enthusiastic about it

Curosinono 5mo ago

[flagged]

gobdovan 5mo ago
I was referring to the analysis of Christianity's spread and evolution as amazing. I was not making a subjective judgment about Christianity itself.
- Curosinono 5mo ago
  Yes i know. I still think its depressing. Perhaps we use the sentiment differently? Like the spread of the black death? I would say its depressing how fast and easy it spread.
  - prerok 5mo ago
    It's a bit disingenius to equate spread of a religion to a disease.
    - embedding-shape 5mo ago
      Yeah, probably "epidemic hysteria" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness) or something similar might be more accurate, but that's also "a disease" of sorts, just mental/psychological rather than biological.
    - Curosinono 5mo ago
      Why? 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.
  - simpaticoder 5mo ago
    It is a mistake to anthropomorphize large groups of people.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
mc32 5mo ago
There was a time when monks were the few who had time to dedicate to learning and discovery eventually leading to the renaissance.
- Curosinono 5mo ago
  If you are trying to point out that there was something good with religion or necessasity of it, i'm aware of this argument. 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.
  - mc32 5mo ago
    I’m not arguing for religion or that it’s good or bad only that one facet of that religion allowed for exploration (they had lots of time to think) and that along with stewardship of critical texts (books) fomented the European renaissance from which we still benefit today and likely tomorrow.
aerodexis 5mo ago
The most depressing thing of all is when ppl encounter "bootstrapping" and only see "control"
- Curosinono 5mo ago
  What do you mean? 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.
  - aerodexis 5mo ago
    > religion is primarily for control of the people. Thats why you see a lot of rules in the bible. thank God the world has moved past this kind of 2010s New Atheism.
    - pstuart 5mo ago
      Oh, the irony. 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.
      - aerodexis 5mo ago
        There is a control dimension, because humans require some degree of limitations in order to thrive. Ultra-individualism breaks down entirely the moment you think about actual society (like actually considering children) rather than utopian fantasies about how some people want society to work. 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.
talentedcoin 5mo ago
[flagged]
- pstuart 5mo ago
  Yes, and that's always been vexing to me. I think the reason is like a combination of brainwashing (indoctrination if you must insist), and the fact that Church does offer comforts that most humans need: a feeling of belonging, a meaning to life (handwavey but real), and the perception of being loved. I'd join the Church in a heartbeat to get those things if I thought the foundational concepts were real.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  Yeah, agree. But also, how critical can you really be if you are a practicing Christian? What is it that you're critical of exactly, and why doesn't it also apply to your religion, if you're "critical"? I'm an atheist, but hang out with plenty of Christians (protestants mostly, some catholic) and Muslims, and I have nothing against religion per se, can even see some bright and good things coming out of it, and spent most of my childhood in a church, but I know there are plenty of self-labeled Christian scientific researchers who do practice their religion yet would also call themselves "critical", I can totally see why some folks feels like that's slightly hypocritical or contradicting.
gausswho 5mo ago
Critical thinking, by some boundaries of how you define it, was a threat to power that led to the many schisms the video demonstrates. Suppression of it I find to be endemic in monotheistic organized religions. As an outsider to Christianity, it's always seemed odd to me the fluid boundaries of what you can critique and what you can't while remaining faithful. Most Christians would argue you cannot reason your way to the will of God due to the inherent flaws of humanity. I find that a convenient way of saying 'don't rock the boat'. 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 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.
- acedia000 5mo ago
  This is largely ignoring the fact that Manichaeism was uniformly and severely persecuted under virtually every empire (and respective theology, or lack thereof) it came into contact with, which the Wikipedia article portrays pretty thoroughly. 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.
  - gausswho 5mo ago
    I agree Manichaeism was persecuted, and not only for reasons I purport to be it hewing closer to reason. Fair play. 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.
ecshafer 5mo ago
Newton, Tolkien, Aquinas, Descarte, Pascal, CS Lewis, Lemaitre, Bach. All famously uncritical humans.
- dsr_ 5mo ago
  Pascal of the famously backpedaling and unsupportable Wager? 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.)

thefz 5mo ago

Also spent the whole middle ages rewriting history and erasing the knowledge they did not like, so I am not that enthusiastic about it