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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  3851 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

I'm not a Christian, and I have no skin in the game. That is, it makes no difference to me whether or not Jesus was an historical person. But here's where I disagree with the author, and the conventional wisdom generally:

    Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history.

"Christianity" isn't what's causing these things. What causes them is human nature, hegemony, paternalism, greed, etc. Christianity just happens to be the substrate on which they have operated for centuries. If it were never convened as a religion, there would have been something else. One need only to look to the similar myths of other religions to see that Christianity isn't really any different from the rest, although its core tenets of charity and anti-materialism seem to be quite peace promoting when taken literally. Anyway, my point is that people were warring and greedy before Christianity, and would have been warring and greedy still had Christianity never been invented. Many of the worst things of the Church were all holdovers from the Roman Empire anyway, after they usurped the church authority from the small groups of practitioners.





ixnar  ·  3850 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've tried telling some of my anti-religion friends this more than once. The problem isn't $RELIGION - it's the people involved (clergy especially). That said, Christians and priests in Sweden seem like a decent bunch for the most part.