I find it ridiculous how downvoted you got. Of all the major religions Christianity is the one that went through the greatest processes of self-reflection and criticism and while I find most of its institutions still very flawed, it offers a lot of deep and compassionate thought and traditions. Also it actually has excellent philosophers and thinkers that integrate a scientific world view in theirs.
Lemmy is very ridiculous in this regard. People have intense opinions on things they have no deep understanding of. It’s like how MAGA people react to things like gun control or vaccines. They preach tolerance of some things and not others.
The thought of Putin finding Jesus could have led to a funny and weird conversation, and yet you were just met with hate. It’s so sad.
Well thanks to Socratic tradition of critical thinking, I’d say that the reason Christianity had self-reflection is precisely because of it. If it so happens that Socrates did not exist or his works weren’t passed down, Western culture would be totally different from the one we know now.
Of all the major religions Christianity is the one that went through the greatest processes of self-reflection and criticism and while I find most of its institutions still very flawed, it offers a lot of deep and compassionate thought and traditions
Christianity is responsible for the crusades…
Of all the major religions Christianity is the one that went through the greatest processes of self-reflection and criticism
When did this happen? Because I still see a lot of self-righteous hate and bigotry from Christians all over the world.
Ever heard of the age of enlightenment? Holy hell. Also, you can make jokes about Christianity publicly without having to fear for your life. Lots of preachers have problems with their churches and are progressives. What is wrong with you people.
The Age of Enlightenment was when intellectuals abandoned Christianity for Deism.
And yes, you can absolutely be punished for joking about Christianity publicly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#By_country
That’s the age where we said “all men are equal” while keeping lots of people as slaves, right?
Coming from a country - Portugal - which was very Catholic not that long ago, I would say that the children of Catholic parents went through a great process of “self-reflection and criticism” and dropped Catholicism.
The religion itself is pretty much as backwards as ever.
What happened is that the number of actual practicing Catholics (you know, people who actually go to church and spend time thinking about that stuff) has fallen steeply, even if there are still many who just because they got baptized (which is something one has no choice on), get counted as religious.
Even with the Christian sects dominant in places like the US and Brazil trying to get a foothold over here, there’s nowhere the level of dominance of religion in public life there seems to be in the US. It’s funny that a country which maybe 50 or 60 years ago was, IMHO, very socially backwards compared to the US, is now more socially evolved than it.
I’m from a Portuguese family, and have been back to the Acores a number of times to visit family, etc… Even when I was very very young I remember going into the local church to look around and seeing how much gold was wasted on its interior while the village around it was still very much in a semi-poverty state. It was mind-blowing that that ever seemed “okay”.
When my folks were growing up (dad was born in 49, mom in 52) there were people on the island that didn’t have access to indoor plumbing, and yet every village’s local church was laced in gold.
Shameful.
It sounds like Christianity didn’t go through self-reflection, it sounds like Christians did and many of them stopped being Christians.
