good things from christianity?

could anybody show some of the good things christianity has done since it's begining. these must be things that can only be attributed to christianity.?

 

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Charity work. Though this is not unique to christianity the scale is far bigger than any other group.

 

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The worst thing it has done is to sully and distort the teachings of Jesus.

 

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musta ask for things solely from xianity, and all we got so far is charity work, which is a partially and she never ask for the bad things theres far to many, and to distort some words is not the worst.
however I've tried but cant think of anything, thats a damn good question musta.

 

every religion for that matter is a way to bring people to behave like humans...
but religion itself is the key source of all the evil happening in the world today!

 

As usual this question is a gross over simplification. Christianity has clearly done a lot of good in the world in the lives of individuals. I have seen this first hand in an alcohol and drug abuser who after psychologists and rehab and failed eventually gave up and turned their lives around after coming into contact with Christianity. There is undoubtedly a huge amount of war, persecution and personal negativity that can be attributed to Christianity as well. But, if we want to determine if Christianity has had an overall positive or negative effect on the world we would have to undertake the following research and analysis.

1. On a personal level
We would have to examine the lives of every individual who has come within the influence of Christianity in the last 2000 years. We would need to establish if Christianity had a positive or negative effect on their lives, and not only that but try to make a judgment as to whether their individual lives would be greatly different without Christianity (which will always be purely hypothetical).

2. On a worldwide level
We could very easily catalogue a huge number of wars, persecutions and atrocities that we could attribute to Christianity. But, then we would have to make an assessment of what the world would have been like without Christianity (which again would be purely hypothetical). To look at the evidence we have for this, we can look at (lets say) Europe just before Christianity. It was a place of chaos/ warring tribes and countries, a place where poverty existed, torture, murder, war, women were downtrodden, so were the poor, slaves were kept and no doubt mistreated. In short not a nice place by today’s standards. So lets look at Europe post Christianity through to the 20th century. Well its pretty much the same really war, poverty, persecution, torture etc. The reasons for some of these atrocities may have changed but the events remain largely the same. And this model works not just for Europe but for most other parts of the world.

So do we imagine that a world in which Christianity had never existed would have been an idyllic place filled with flowers, peace and brotherly love? Well the evidence certainly doesn’t suggest this. Lets face it there is something in the human make up that leads us to do bad things, and whether we do them in the name of Christianity, Islam, Communism, Fascism or to appease pagan gods or increase our property and wealth we still do them.

It is very easy to try and lay all the world ills at the feet of Christianity or Islam or Religion in general. But this is far too simplistic, the world is very rarely black and white and usually shades of grey. Wars have even been fought in the name of love – does that make love evil, or women evil – of course not.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not a particular fan of Christianity or organized religion in general (although I am a student of religious teaching), but the truth is we will never know what the net effect of Christianity has been over the last 2000 years.

Probably without it humanity would have found something else to take its place and the world would not be much different, because Christianity is not an entity in itself, it is made and propagated by humans to fulfill needs humans have.

The teachings of Jesus I would argue are something else and if they had been followed / taught as intended the world would indeed be a better place.

 

One of the worst things about Christianity is the fixed Canon. People have with live with unchanging, ass backward moral for either until the religion dies or our sun turns supernova.

 

agreed joe.

light: this thread might be an over simplification, however you would think in 2000+ years that something major would be attributed to christianity, individuel people have had major things attributed to them, countries have had major things attributed to them.
why cant, including myself anyone think of anything worthy of praise from christianity alone.

 

Well like I said I'm not really a fan of christianity but noone else seems to be fighting its corner so i'll have a bash (just for arguments sake).

Good Things attibuted to christianity;

inspiring the work and lives of people such as
marting luther king
mother theresa
george washington
abraham lincoln
isaac newton
galilio galilei
nicholaus capernicus

Would these people or others like them have been inspired to do the same without christianity - of course we can never know.

Christianity like any movement is not any enity in its own right and only inspire individuals to do things. This like say communism. Communism does nothing on its own, it cant it doesn't exist, but communsim is an idea that does inspire individuals to do things. Some bad and some good - the same as christianity or sikhism or capitalism.


Lets look at what christianity is not reposible for;
capatlist greed
world polution
communist oppresion

Actually thinking about it what good things can be attributed to any major movement (religious or ortherwise), there must be loads but I am having a mental blank and cant think of any. Maybe beacuse it is individuals who do things (not movements) inspired by ideas.

NB; i do not consider the general field of science and mathemetics to be a movement as scientists can be communist, capitalist, christian or facist. And even then for every positive creation from science they seem to counter it with something equally destructive.

 

Why does a religion need to be judged on its global achievements?

Why can't it concentrate on the individual - and leave the global stuff to those individuals?

All a religion can do is guide its followers as best it can, according to its doctrine. If the individual gets something from it then the religion is succeeding.

 

pretty poor list, martin luther king and Mother Teresa, one a preacher the other a nun. and isaac newton I admit was very devout( this is the one name in the list you can claim)

George Washington never once in any of his quotes refered to a believe in a god "If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution."more here http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/washington.htm

Abraham Lincoln again same thing "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." "When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." http://www.coolquotes.com/quotes/abraham_lincoln/5.html

Galileo Galilei though this man wanted at a young age to become a monk, during the course of his life, this changed he was a professor of mathmatics and studied the planets. "They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit." "I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them."not such a religious man. http://www.atheistempire.com/greatminds/quotes.php?author=20

Nicolaus Copernicus he studied mathematics, law, Greek language and medicine. and is class along side Galileo Galilei and Darwin as the the men who changed the world. again more non religious then religious, "So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it." http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/nicolausco184055.html

and thats a pretty small list of bad things.
would you like to see a list of bad things, christianity is responsable for.
then go here http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm
and thats just the known.

they only followed by example, you only have to read the bible to know that.

 

What are you getting at? (Judging Christianity as a whole on the scale of famous/good Christians and famous/good Christian events could not lead to inaccurate inferences about its nature.)

 

everneo: Charity work. Though this is not unique to christianity the scale is far bigger than any other group.
*************
M*W: References, please.

 

I guess Christianity kept the masses in line before a more structured justice system was in order. I guess they "may" have stopped more killing than they caused.

 

that's what is the main principle of all major religions!

 

It is actually Islam that is the most charitable religion. It is written through out the Koran, over and over again. The two things a muslim must do is pray and give alms (give to charity).

The koran says a muslim should give 1/40th of their total earnings to charity and all genuine muslims do this.

 

I got these names here.

http://www.christianadvice.net/famous_christians.htm

Like I said i'm not a big fan of christianity but I did a 5 minute research and thats what I found.

I thinks its the principal that I am getting at though - that people can be inspired to do things through ideals such as christianity or any other religion. Not that these people are representing christianity in their work.

 

But to go back to what I asked earlier;

could anybody show some of the good things that any movement (religious, political or philosophical) has done since it's begining. these must be things that can only be attributed to that movement.?

 

Christianity, broadly, inspired the Renaissance, the greatest art the world has ever seen. Two hundred years later it inspired some of the greatest music the world has ever seen.

Judaism provided the earliest and longest lasting system of written Law. There is also a very strong cultural tradition in Judaism for learning and study, which at the very least inspired the concept of widespread literacy.

 

silas some examples would not go amis.
xianity has been around a long time, but I sorry you cant say it inspired everything, individuel people maybe.
for instance During the era known as the Renaissance (French for rebirth,), Europe emerged from the economic stagnation of the Middle/Dark Ages and experienced a time of financial growth. Also, and perhaps most importantly, the Renaissance was an age in which artistic, social, scientific, and political thought turned in new directions.(education, the age of reason) nothing to do with religion, infact more the opposite, most people were rebeling against the church at this time.
at this time people started to get married at home informally or outside or the church(civil weddings)but the church outlawed it, stating only marriages performed with a church official present would be declared valid.

China is the only country in the world with a literature written in one language for more than 3,000 consecutive years. This continuity results largely from the nature of the written language itself. It is the use of characters, not letters as in Western languages, that is most important in the Chinese language.
but the oldest written language/laws are in Cuneiform, which flourished in Mesopotamia about 5,000 years ago, from the Sumerians the earliest known people of the Fertile Crescent.
the Sumerians made the first wheeled vehicles, towns, cities. civilisation.