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Originally Posted by lagtight
Maybe I'm committing the Genetic Fallacy in reverse or something, but I'm not clear on how a "nutty religion built on an even nuttier religion...singlehandedly civilized the world (most that's good about the modern moral world...[is] the direct outcome of Christianity." Nuttiness isn't typically a foundation for bearing sweet fruit on anything on a grand scale that I'm aware of. That would seem to make it, by definition, not particularly "nutty."
Well, to give an example, Islam is an even nuttier religion than Christianity (sexual slavery, Jinns, paradise for making war on non-believers, the prophet a
pedophile & warmonger), and yet it managed to unite and civilize the dispersed, warring desert tribes and turn them into a major cultural and military force, some of it for good.
To give another example, Adam Smith, a charlatan with some hilariously crazy ideas even to mainstream Christians, led to a movement that's extremely peaceful and gentle and civilized (Mormonism), in a way that makes regular culture appear barbaric.
So it can and does happen. With Christianity, its notions of guilt and blood sacrifice and Original Sin and a super power entity sending down his son to forgive mankind by dying on a cross to forgive us for original sin is crazy. That's without getting into eating his body. If aliens arrived and had a sense of humor, they'd be laughing like crazy at how backward we are and how absurd our religions are.
Yet at the same time, the tenets of Christianity revolutionized society. It lead to greater kindness, to personal sacrifice, to pride in a work ethic, to humility, to a search for eternal principles that guided man rather than worldly power, etc. All of it lifted Western Civilization's eyes and thoughts upward rather than down or outward. It's pretty unique in that regard, and it that background ultimately fueled the Enlightenment.
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But you know what they used to say: "Sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don't." (Okay, I'm almost 60 years old so maybe I'm the only one here who remembers that commercial.)
n.b. thread derailment complete
Thread was dead already. I am too young but it's a good quote