OH MY GOD. You people...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More Native Americans would be here if it weren't for Western European imperialists who called themselves Christians.

Also, why do the cowardly go to hell? You go to hell for being scared?

Fixed that for you. Also the reference is to the morally cowardly, obviously.

Riiiight.

Just think of all the lives WORLDWIDE that would not have been killed or sold into slavery or indentured servitude if there was never a Jesus that people pretended to believe in. Those priests that always brought along with them must have just been calling themselves Christians too.

The world doesn't exist in a vacuum that allows you to neatly remove one major factor and assume the rest would have remained unchanged. For example, the Aztecs in Mexico were pretty brutal and bloodthirsty, sacrificing tens of thousands of victims to their gods. Had Europeans never arrived in the New World, who knows what would have happened but one thing is pretty constant throughout the history of humanity and among all cultural groups, the amazing ability to hunt, kill, and destroy other people. Who knows what new empires would have arisen out of the Americas that would have wiped out earlier empires? The Indian tribes of the Americas could be extremely savage towards one another. The real destruction wrought by European invaders wasn't the faith, but diseases, which wiped out millions who had no immunity or resistance to diseases they'd never encountered before.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess there's some truth in the OP's statement - if the Russians weren't Christian, they probably wouldn't have hated the Jews.

And if the Russians didn't hate the Jews, they wouldn't have thrown them out of the Pale.

And if they hadn't thrown them out of the Pale, my family would have stayed home happy in the shtetl.

And if my family had stayed home happy in the shtetl, they wouldn't have been in NY when the Nazis controlled Eastern Europe.

So should I thank you for all this?

Probably another group would have gotten to the Jews. Without Christianity it's likely Islam would have spread into Europe. Or maybe the existing pagan religions would have created something else. One way or another Jews are always persecuted.

Q
Until recent times, Jews in Arab lands did pretty well, so I'm not sure about that.

How so? They were expelled from Arab lands, their property stolen.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess there's some truth in the OP's statement - if the Russians weren't Christian, they probably wouldn't have hated the Jews.

And if the Russians didn't hate the Jews, they wouldn't have thrown them out of the Pale.

And if they hadn't thrown them out of the Pale, my family would have stayed home happy in the shtetl.

And if my family had stayed home happy in the shtetl, they wouldn't have been in NY when the Nazis controlled Eastern Europe.

So should I thank you for all this?

Probably another group would have gotten to the Jews. Without Christianity it's likely Islam would have spread into Europe. Or maybe the existing pagan religions would have created something else. One way or another Jews are always persecuted.

Q
Until recent times, Jews in Arab lands did pretty well, so I'm not sure about that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess there's some truth in the OP's statement - if the Russians weren't Christian, they probably wouldn't have hated the Jews.

And if the Russians didn't hate the Jews, they wouldn't have thrown them out of the Pale.

And if they hadn't thrown them out of the Pale, my family would have stayed home happy in the shtetl.

And if my family had stayed home happy in the shtetl, they wouldn't have been in NY when the Nazis controlled Eastern Europe.

So should I thank you for all this?

Probably another group would have gotten to the Jews. Without Christianity it's likely Islam would have spread into Europe. Or maybe the existing pagan religions would have created something else. One way or another Jews are always persecuted.

Until recent times, Jews in Arab lands did pretty week, so I'm not sure about that.

An argument can be made that Christianity, based on the teachings of Jesus, introduced a radical different understanding of the relationship between men. It's a very different mindset and valuing of the well-being and self-worth of the individual human compared to the pre-Christian world. In Roman days, the concept of rights was strongly based on social classes and privilege and the law codes of the day reflected this, a rich Roman citizen would be accorded a very different treatment by the courts than a slave or a lowly freeman from a different nationality. Christianity was the first to introduce a common understanding that humans could be equal, to some degree. Of course it wasn't perfect but the early faith promoted the notion that each human has a self-worth based on being the followers of God and Jesus' teachings. All Christians were, in theory, equal. It helps to explain why the religion became wildly popular among the poor and dispossessed and slaves of the Roman empire and why it spread so quickly. Jesus' teachings was quite radical for its day, and not just for the promotion of the value of the individual human as an important entity to be respected, but his teachings on love, mercy and forgiveness as well, in direct contradiction to the much more brutal, unsympathetic and uncaring world of the ancients.

Indeed, so much of modern day liberalism has roots in Christian teachings and modern liberalism is a direct descendant of 19th century Christian socialism. Western history is the story of Christianity as well as the struggle with and opposition to Christianity. So it's likely true that without Jesus, we wouldn't be today as we are, but we would be very different people. There's no liberalism in the non-western world, after all, certainly not the kind of liberalism and equality you find in the West. Even in Islam which has similar notions of equality among worshippers, the concept of individualism and individual respect has radically different meaning.

Anonymous wrote:Say what? If if weren't for people who elevated Jesus to a god, and thus no Christians to whom Hitler thought superior, a lot of more Jews and their descendants would be here today.

Hitler was not a practicing Christian and was heavily skeptical of Christianity and admired Islam more than Christianity. Hitler's orthodoxy rested more in the superiority of the German race (tribes) and that has pre-Christian antecedents. Which explains why he loved Wagner and definitely not Christian operas based on the Norse gods.

Anonymous wrote:I guess there's some truth in the OP's statement - if the Russians weren't Christian, they probably wouldn't have hated the Jews.

And if the Russians didn't hate the Jews, they wouldn't have thrown them out of the Pale.

And if they hadn't thrown them out of the Pale, my family would have stayed home happy in the shtetl.

And if my family had stayed home happy in the shtetl, they wouldn't have been in NY when the Nazis controlled Eastern Europe.

So should I thank you for all this?

Probably another group would have gotten to the Jews. Without Christianity it's likely Islam would have spread into Europe. Or maybe the existing pagan religions would have created something else. One way or another Jews are always persecuted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More Native Americans would be here if it weren't for Western European imperialists who called themselves Christians.

Also, why do the cowardly go to hell? You go to hell for being scared?

Fixed that for you. Also the reference is to the morally cowardly, obviously.

Riiiight.

Just think of all the lives WORLDWIDE that would not have been killed or sold into slavery or indentured servitude if there was never a Jesus that people pretended to believe in. Those priests that always brought along with them must have just been calling themselves Christians too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can’t I live a Jesus free life and a moment before death believe in Jesus and go to heaven?

Or get someone to baptise you after death. Mormons are into that. I don't know how you get on their list tho....

I'm sure you can just put in your will to have someone send them a postcard.

Anonymous wrote:That why we should say Merry Christmas

I came indirectly from Adam’s rib, OP.

Praise Adam!

Proof, please. Actual scientific proof that there's a hell and that Jesus saves, and I'll become a believer!

Anonymous wrote:Say what? If if weren't for people who elevated Jesus to a god, and thus no Christians to whom Hitler thought superior, a lot of more Jews and their descendants would be here today.

I mixed up my post. That obviously should be....no Christians that Hitler thought superior to Jews.

Say what? If if weren't for people who elevated Jesus to a god, and thus no Christians to whom Hitler thought superior, a lot of more Jews and their descendants would be here today.

Anonymous wrote:More Native Americans would be here if it weren't for Western European imperialists who called themselves Christians.

Also, why do the cowardly go to hell? You go to hell for being scared?

Fixed that for you. Also the reference is to the morally cowardly, obviously.