Try reading about Kafiristan, where primitive Hinduism (think Rig Veda) survived for 3500 years before being wiped out in the 1890s by a British-appointed Islamic despot.
The Kalash are very similar genetically and culturally and are also facing cultural genocide by Islamists. Truly one of the most fascinating ethnic minorities extant.
There is a certain irony in your comment written in English posted on July 11, the 2026th year of Our Lord (though not mine), according to the Gregorian calender (named after Pope Gregory XIII who issued the papal bull that ordained said calendar) at 03:42:12, Universal Standard Time (the local time in London, United Kingdom). And the fact that i am reading this comment in the weekend (the Christian and Jewish days of Sabbath) and replying in similar fashion, (which is mostly historically rooted in the fact that these customs and culture were originally imposed on my country, India by our conquerors, than because it won out in some nebulous contest in the marketplace of ideas)
Christianity was very different, and the evidence for that is undeniable and gigantic. The fruits of diversity within christendom is offered in great treasure heaps within science, music, art, philosophy, theology, lifestyles, ways of worship, mysteries of the faith, and culture in general.
Christianity merged with local cultures, removing some aspects and adding some aspects.
Translating the arabic texts of science (either copied and expanded from greek, latin and other places, or new research) and claiming that it was widom of the ancients?
Please educate yourself more on this. Step out of your bubble.
Christian nations have created the cultural and technical achievements over the last thousands of years. There is nothing even remotely comparable.
I wouldn't thank Christianity for the scientific advancements of the West, except maybe for protestant work ethic. Science only started to flourish when Catholic church started to lose power, and religion became a bit more separated from law and politics.
Best religion for progress of humanity is the one that embraces work, tells people to treat each other fairly, and otherwise keeps its hands off from irrelevant details of people's lives - things like what consenting adults do in bed, what they eat or drink, what they can or can't say.
Unfortunately Christians have been historically way too focused on the bad parts while ignoring the good parts, leading to madness like wars between Catholics and Protestants and discrimination of minorities. Think of the current conservative elite in America for example - it's hard to find people who are further away from teachings of Jesus Christ than those greedy, hateful idiots.
More like the last 500 years.
Before that the cultural and scientific centers of the world were variously in muslim, hindu, chinese, roman and other civilizations.
The Roman/Byzantine empire was pretty much destroyed by Muslims, though. Its a but like thanking the Franks/Goths/etc. for preserving Roman cultural identity in Western Europe by preserving some of their texts..
> The Roman/Byzantine empire was pretty much destroyed by Muslims, though
This is hilariously untrue, if one is talking about the Western Roman empire. An islamic state did conquer Constantinople, which I presume is what you mean.
The Roman empire (western) basically fell apart due to infighting more than anything else.
I don't believe in the original sin of slavery in Western countries.
Slavery has been existed for centuries before and, despite being abolished by Western countries (hint: there were several wars were people lost lives), still exists in China, India, Indonesia, and a large group of Arab countries.
> I don't believe in the original sin of slavery in Western countries.
I have no idea what that sentence is specifically meant to mean, that aside, western countries have had actual slavery and effective slavery both in the past and the present.
I don't mean to exclusively beat on Christians or just Catholics here; but I do intend to counter your apparent narrative of good Christians and evil Muslims.
Christians certainly diminished a lot of cultures, just as other religions also did - the initial point that started this above.
Be fair now, the Catholic Church hasn't always and consistently been a backward medieval deathcult - there have been periods of non Crusading, non Inquisition, not slaughtering Cathars, not trading in babies, etc.
Its been the most anti-slavery religion and was the main motivation for the abolition of slavery. There is no Christian objection to 'miscegenation' and its a weird concept only taken up in America and a few other places like South Africa during apartheid, and it owes more to race science than Christianity.
> Its been the most anti-slavery religion and was the main motivation for the abolition of slavery.
Which branch of Christianity though? There was a huge disparity in approaches in new england colonies (ie rhode island thought the indigenous should have rights, Massachusetts couldn't give a shit about anyone other than the elected.)
A lot of the english abolitionists were radicals, well outside the mainstream. The Quakers, Methodists, shakers were all deeply scary to the establishment
There was always Christian opposition to slavery much of it from the mainstream as well as radicals. St Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, several Popes and . Several Christian kingdoms (including England) abolished slavery and/or slave trading in medieval times.
The US has tended towards justifying slavery, and its arguments included the ¨curse of Ham" borrowed from Muslim slave traders. British colonies in the Caribbean produced censored version of the Bible for slaves.
Yet Christians had no problems taking, owning an selling slaves on an industrial scale for 100s of years. Their book even includes an ownership guide. And then you want a gold star for stopping what you created? The theocratic mind is laughable.
You mean the books of the Bible containing rules explicitly rejected by Christians from the start? The rules that Jesus is recorded as saying was a moral compromise? You are also conveniently skipping over the declarations of equality (with regard to slavery, race and sex) in the New Testament.
That's the thing, there's something about just about everything that can be interpreted in either direction. But christians are just humans, we do these things. The problem I have is when christians pretend they are better and always were because their new interpretation of some text. American slavery being a great example of this as the bible was just to both justify and in abolishment. And as usual, its all about what parts we currently like while ignoring the others.
To be fair in addition to the uncountable horrible things it did or took part in the Catholic church did build the foundations that allowed the concepts of modern scientific thought to develop. No other religion did that.
And they burned quite people for defending the science that went against their beliefs. They only stopped when they thought it would be good for their economic profits.
Exactly the same when they stopped protecting slavery, when they thought it would be good as they would get a lot of new followers and all the money and influence that would come with them.And all the fights that gave birth to the other Christian churches always for the same reasons power and money.
Oh playing the old game of "you more" , we're not debating which belief is more savage than the other, all of them are, we're pointing out that the followers of the supposedly all loving version of a god killed,should we say assassinated, lots of people just because their discoveries did not fit in their stories books.
That varied wildly. Generally more of an exception that the rule but in the worst cases like under the Almohad’s you did have Jewish or even less extremist Muslim refugees fleeing to the more tolerant (at the time) Christian kingdoms.
Well yes it’s relative. However the Church in the 1400s to 1600s or so was generally very permissive of scientific debate and not strictly dogmatic. See Galileo’s story, the issue is that when they rejected something (based on a reasonably valid scientific process albeit based on flawed evidence available at the time) that was kind of it and continued to challenging the consensus got you into some deep trouble (with a few exceptions).
One interesting thing is that in the 1400s open debate and heterodoxy was generally tolerated or even accepted IF you did it in Latin and only inside the “international scholar network” that existed at the time and didn’t go around preaching your ideas to peasants and such.
I’m certainly not implying that it was in any way good or let alone perfect in absolute terms, just that it.
To be fair for the most part Christianity didn’t spread top down through violent conquest (obviously with some huge exceptions) at least in the Middle East and surrounding regions. Also it’s historically better at integrating local cultural practices and languages.
Unlike Islam which which usually wiped out local cultural and linguistic identities (during the periods of Arab conquests, that shifted quite a but later on of course)
And when you say “historically better at integrating local cultural practices”, India, China and Australia, would like a word with you. Holy shit you should just delete your account right now
No, why would you say I did that? Also if everyone ever referencing any historical event ever would have to explicitly list and condemn every single thing they think was wrong it would become rather verbose and boring to read. Overall the crusaders were worse than some violent conquerors and better than others.
Well the crusades, northern crusades and most of imperialism.
For the most part it's enough to conquer a place. People below the timing elite would switch religions as it would be beneficial for them, and eventually trickle down to peasants and such.
Many of the regions they invaded were still (or until quite recently) majority Christian. After all initially it was a defensive relief expedition organized by the pope and the Byzantine emperor to free the territories the empire lost in Anatolia very recently. Of course it was massively more successful than anyone anticipated and they just kept on going and then the whole thing got “slightly” out of hand..
But yes, as I said there were some huge exceptions. However early on the way Christianity spread was fundamentally different to Islam. It was usually not through violent conquest but bottom up.
European imperialism was quite mixed as well. Christianity played a huge part in the Spanish conquests of the Americas. Much less so in British India and other similar places.
Very peaceful when you convienently ignore all the violence.
Northern crusades were extremely bloody and defeated people would accept baptism or be executed.
Charlemange was more of the same deal.
Catholic church left pagans to their own devices?
Christian history is littered with these examples, it has not been a peaceful religion since it merged with Roman society. The only real good examples you could have are missionaries and top down conversion as kings and such voluntarily switched religions.
> Catholic church left pagans to their own devices?
It varied, although generally the Catholic church was fairly open at integrating or even occasionally tolerating pagan practices or providing alternative options to people used to more polytheistic religions. Like the whole saint worshipping (“venerating”) thing. Often (with some exceptions) pagans found conversion fairly easy since they could just map their gods to equivalent Christian saints continue worshipping them. Basically every converted pagan society had a multi-generationa transition period.
Then you had stuff lime praying to magical corpses or body parts, so their previous owners could perform miracles. With some exceptions it has generally been a highly flexible religion before the reformation.
Islam is much more rigid about following the rules and stuff like idol worship (as a consequence they brought back visual arts back to the stone ages..)
It doesn't absolve those who commit the atrocities, even if there are externalities involved. It's not always the White Man's fault - neither in Africa nor the Middle East. We can and should hold the societies in those places to a certain global standard of conduct.
Hell no, that's ridiculous. Israel is a wholesale violator of human rights at massive scale, along with its criminal 5-eyes cronies, and it is in the midst of an imperialist genocide, murdering children every single day. If a state cannot defend itself against children, it is failed and should be refactored by its citizens, immediately and with haste.
We also strike the USA off the list, which cannot even take care of its peoples' most basic needs.
Switzerland. The answer you're looking for, is Switzerland. /s
It's such a shame that the various cultural holdouts in the Middle East never get much attention when they're systematically wiped off the map.
The Mandaeans in the marshes near Basra will probably be next to disappear into the sands of time. Not even a whisper in the media.
Oil sure has a way of drowning out 'human rights' in conversation.