What if Christianity never was? (short)

Now, I know I’m not nearly as qualified as one has to be to talk about this sort of thing, but I want to speculate about it anyway because the more I think about it the more interesting it seems. I also can’t really be bothered to flesh this post out into something that resembles a half-decent essay, so I’m just gonna ramble on about shit.

Consider for a moment that Jesus of Nazareth slipped and fell into a river as a child, drowning himself (heh, I’m going to hell for this) and Christianity never existed. There would be no Bible, no crusades, no warring between Catholics and Protestants in England and Ireland, no Roman persecution, no missionaries running off to all corners of the globe trying to convert people to Christianity.

I’m not trying to point out all the negative things, I’m really just trying to grasp how different the world would be today. The Romans would have still invaded Britain, the African slave trade would have almost certainly happened and the American War of Independence is something I would still have expected to see.

It is unclear how or when Christianity came to Britain (most guesses point towards Roman influence in c. 200-400 A.D.), but without Christian influence wouldn’t the native peoples remained pagan? Wouldn’t that be the same for most places in Europe too? I don’t really know a lot about pagan religions, other than that they tend to be a lot more gender-equal. Perhaps modern Western society would be greatly influenced by beliefs similar to Wicca or other neopaganist religions.

Come to think about it, maybe it wouldn’t be THAT different, irrespective of the “butterfly effect” that would no doubt make more than its fair share of significant changes throughout history.

If that were the case, perhaps we’d all be a promiscuous bunch of amoralites living in a society sculpted by our own decadence and lacking not only what I would like to call “civilized laws”, but any form of art or culture (thanks Huxley). But then again by saying that, I’m implying that Christianity is the basis for where a lot of our morals come from. And I don’t believe that.

You see, I’m a firm believer that religion does just as much, if not more, harm than good. For every well-established charity or young students’ group building schools in Africa there’s a war or act of religious prejudice to balance it out. You don’t need religion to mould you into a good person because you naturally develop into someone who knows the difference between right and wrong as long as you’re raised properly (I know, I know... “right/wrong” = subjectives, I’m not the divine person who establishes these cross-culture principles, but you see my point).

I kinda like the idea of a society based around atheism, if only because logic and science would remain largely unhindered by religious (not just Christian) objections and people would be little less ignorant...if only in one way. Deism is an interesting theology because it teaches that there is a supreme being that created the universe out there, but that he basically fucked off somewhere along the line and everything around us can be explained rationally and by observing our natural surroundings. No miracles. No revelations. Just a mysterious, incomprehensible creator and logic.

But what would that society be? More compassionate? Smarter? Would its lack of religion be detrimental to our mores and culture? I dunno, I doubt it. I think we’d be a lot more genuine in our love of things because it wouldn’t be ingrained into our beliefs that we HAVE to love everything. I think we’d have a lot more initiative to look, see, hear and explore because religion wouldn’t be trying to tie us down to something that doesn’t change.

Because everything changes; it’s how we get better. We see, we do, we fail and we learn. I don’t see why this can’t be applied to our beliefs either – we believe something, it gets disproven or something else makes more sense, and we believe that instead. Kinda like evolution I guess, or perhaps I’m just being retarded now.

Meh, no one man can understand it all anyway. We’re all just cogs turning in the great gestalt of society, constantly being replaced by newer and better parts. I’d love to see the day when society lets people act like people, but perhaps society will change what it means to be a “person” before that day becomes. I’ll keep my love in a box and bury it until the day the soil moves it under the feet of someone who cares in any case.

Quid me nutrit me destruit. "What nourishes me destroys me."