Comment by gobdovan
5 hours ago
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
[flagged]
Newton, Tolkien, Aquinas, Descarte, Pascal, CS Lewis, Lemaitre, Bach. All famously uncritical humans.
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.)
The most depressing thing of all is when ppl encounter "bootstrapping" and only see "control"
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.
14 replies →
I was referring to the analysis of Christianity's spread and evolution as amazing. I was not making a subjective judgment about Christianity itself.
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.
4 replies →
There was a time when monks were the few who had time to dedicate to learning and discovery eventually leading to the renaissance.
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.
1 reply →
[flagged]
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
1 reply →
Also spent the whole middle ages rewriting history and erasing the knowledge they did not like, so I am not that enthusiastic about it