What Would The World Be Like Without Christianity?

[M. Porcius Cato]

I'm reminded by today's NYT piece (link below) that my hypothesis about many societies gravitating toward the Roman way of life probably reflects the very Roman, very Athenian, and very modern ideal of Cosmopolitanism.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/magazine...=rssnyt&emc=rss

[Favonius Cornelius]

What would the world be like without Christianity?

 

What would the world be like without grass? Or trees, or painting, or eyes, or...

 

Impossible to conjecture upon, because life is stranger than fiction.

[M. Porcius Cato]

What would the world be like without Christianity?

 

What would the world be like without grass? Or trees, or painting, or eyes, or...

 

Impossible to conjecture upon, because life is stranger than fiction.

 

....or religious fantacism and persecution, the growth of monasticism, holy wars against infidels, inquisitions, the suppression of science, religious sanction of dictatorship... yes, it's all stranger than fiction.

[Primus Pilus]

Considering that Christianity is largely an amalgamation of both its poly and other monotheistic predecessors, perhaps the world wouldn't be that much different without it.

[Ursus]

Except, perhaps, that the world would not be subjected to the sexual ethics of Hebrew tribal law.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Except, perhaps, that the world would not be subjected to the sexual ethics of Hebrew tribal law.

 

Or weeping for salvation from innate sin, or the injunction to love one's enemies, or the injuction against moral judgment as a moral principle (difficult to wrap one's mind around I know)...

[frankq]

Except, perhaps, that the world would not be subjected to the sexual ethics of Hebrew tribal law.

 

Goooood point!

[M. Porcius Cato]

Is Hebrew tribal law really the source of Christianity's hang-ups about sex? Seems to me the neo-Platonists weren't too happy about corporeal pleasures (or corporeal anything) either. If the sexual ethics of Hebrew trial law were really the lasting legacy of Christianity, well that's just sad.

[Ursus]

True, the Neoplatonists saw human sexuality as a distraction from the liberation of the soul into the higher godhead (another reason I don't care for their philosophy).

 

But they still didn't have the amazing list of sexual restrictions as brought forth by the authors of Leviticus. A strict reading of Hebrew sexual ethics says that for a man to ejaculate anywhere but inside the womb of his wife is sinful. While all cultures have sexual taboos, few to none were so restrictive as the Hebrews.

 

And while Christianity abandoned many aspects of Hebrew tribal law - for instance, the dietary restrictions - it did keep the sexual restrictions.

[M. Porcius Cato]

True, the Neoplatonists saw human sexuality as a distraction from the liberation of the soul into the higher godhead (another reason I don't care for their philosophy).

 

But they still didn't have the amazing list of sexual restrictions as brought forth by the authors of Leviticus. A strict reading of Hebrew sexual ethics says that for a man to ejaculate anywhere but inside the womb of his wife is sinful. While all cultures have sexual taboos, few to none were so restrictive as the Hebrews.

 

And while Christianity abandoned many aspects of Hebrew tribal law - for instance, the dietary restrictions - it did keep the sexual restrictions.

 

Thanks Ursus. I'd forgotten about the specificity of Levitican prohibitions. It's interesting how often they come and go out of style. The Victorians seemed to have medicalized all sorts of Leviticus-inspired taboos (the most famous being the alleged connection between 'onanism' and blindness).