Would the world be better with or without Christianity? [View all]

[Taverner]

Thought Experiment:

Let's just say we could convince every Christian that Christianity is untrue, a myth, and convince them not to practice it. Similar to a question Prof. Dawkins once asked Christopher Hitchens. But let's postulate for a moment that this could be achieved. Would it do any good? Would it do any harm? Or would it do nothing?

I opt for the latter. In reference to Dawkins' quote that "for good men to do evil, it takes religion," I argue lots of things can trigger a good man to do evil. Psychoses, hallucinations, fear, and the influence of drugs can make a person commit evil. And when I mention fear, I am not referring to Xenophobic fear, but more the 'seeing a shape moving in the night, and you shoot at it first' type of fear.

Christianity, and all religions for that matter, are pretty much what the believer makes of them.

Yes, there are cultic tendencies, and these are never more apparent than in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity. But in the end, these are more the fault of authoritarianism, of cult of personality or manipulation. The same thing happens at a Lyndon LaRouche movement, or a Maoist uprising, or in North Korea.

But many people choose religion for mundane reasons. The believer likes the congregation, or the church has a great youth program, or the believer really likes hymns. Or, as in many cases, the believer wants to change the world for the better.

Now, I am not advocating theism with this thread, but at the same time I am not viewing Christianity as all good or all bad. It is a tradition conceived at a time before germ theory, before genetics, before the theory of evolution - even before we knew the Earth was round. Like any tradition, it has changed with time, and has had reactions against those changes.

As any revolutionary will tell you, large sweeping changes usually don't occur during times of oppression, but during times when certain freedoms were extended, then taken away. Think the US after WWII, USSR after Glasnost, and a current example is Syria.

And of course, with every large sweeping change there is a backlash. But I digress.

Your thoughts?