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Originally Posted by elcasey  The advent of Christianity in Europe led to some fairly catastrophic events. First, you have the fall of Rome. It wasn't due entirely to Christianity but when you start tolerating alien religions while at the same time are led by a string of inbred idiots, you have problems. |
If you ask the people who have studied the fall of Rome, they wouldn't tell you that Christianity was the problem. More likely then not their problem was they got too lazy and started hiring mercenaries to do their fighting, who, of course, are out for themselves.
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Originally Posted by elcasey Then you have the rise of The Church. It decided it needed to control pretty much every aspect of European life for centuries, nearly a millennium, and succeeded over all in that. |
Rise of the
Catholic church, which was not following the Bible at the time. Current Christianity is not looking to control the world, but rather to convince the world, and let it make its own decisins. We essentially leave God at the controls.
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Originally Posted by elcasey Women became suspect because of the "Eve" stuff, knowledge and medicine were "works of the devil" because Christianity preached that one should be simple and not fill your minds with all this newfangled "knowledge" (go look it up if you don't believe me). Because they were indeed simpletons (the masses, not the evil bastards running the Church) they turned to violence to solve these problems and "get right with God." |
Women are not bad just because they made the first mistake. Just because something has a flaw doesn't make it all bad. Christianity never says to not learn (in fact, it is encouraged!) either.
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Originally Posted by elcasey The Crusades were merely an imperial expansion. Sure, they got the rabble worked into a frenzy with all this talk of the Holy Land and the True Cross and all that, but it was simply an attempt to annex the Mideast when you get right down to it. Didn't work out too well, but it had an interesting side effect in that Islamic knowledge and trade goods began filtering back into Europe. We all know the story of the Renaissance and how it ended the Dark Ages because we began trading with the Arabs and Persians, so I'll skip that. |
Again, Catholic churches were not following the Bible when they created the Crusades.
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Originally Posted by elcasey Even modern Christianity is extremely problematic in my view. It's a Middle Eastern religion and doesn't belong in Europe and the Americas. But it's not going anywhere anytime soon, so I guess all we can do is hope to limit the influence of ignorant zealots on our governments (unfortunately they're allowed to vote). And for the record, I'm not an atheist. I'm just not a fan of ignorance, hypocrisy and unnecessary violence. |
Christianity
is against ignorance, hypocrisy, and unnecessary violence.