Ultimately-from an unbiased standpoint, is our world a better or worse place today with the existence of Christianity?

>Yeah, those gladiators weren't sacrifices. They chose to be slaves and fight to the death.

What are you talking about? The first coded set of laws were written by pagans.

This, it also greatly advanced women's stature in society and was quite progressive for its time. Most of Christianity's earliest and most active converts were women.

Abolitionism stemmed from the enlightenment and enlightenment thought. The main aspiration was that of natural right, and that since slaves were human, it was not just and humane t treat them differently in the face of the law. Perhaps it has christian and humanistic origins in some parts, such as the idea that we are all made by the same creator. But christianity rarely if ever has stepped in the realm of "human rights", rather, treating your slave kindly would be what a christian would do, both in antiquity and in the new world plantations. But in no way does it demand the imposition of rights as rules for individuals.

Too bad women lost nearly all of their legal rights they had gained during the Roman republican and imperial era, such as divorce and owning and inheriting property, when the middle-ages rolled them over under the auspices of the church.

If christianity wasn't beneficial it would have died out sooner desu same with islam or judaism.

I do believe this world is a better place with Christianity, since back then people needed guidance in their life, find meaning, have objective moral ethics of what's good and bad. The world wouldn'tve progressed as much as Christianity brought law and order to places that didn't embrace it.

I said few.

Most pagans just go with custommary law. Some have strong leadership that creates law for lower ranks of society. Abraamics believed the core of law was independent from humans and everyone, even kings and emperors, was obliged to obey it.

Obviously, Romans did come up with Rule of Law (and then they trashed it).

I was talking about the code of Hammurabi, but yeah. I see your point.

initially
but xtianity has run its course

>Christianity prohibited women from owning and inheriting
Source?

The RCC introduced the "consent of the bride" clause to the marriage contracts.

>Yeah, those gladiators weren't sacrifices
They weren't. Human sacrifice to appease the gods is not the same thing as people dying for the entertainment of the masses.

As for the OP's question? The world is a worse place for the existence of monotheism in general.

People had guidance and meaning in their lives already, and there is no such thing as objective morality nor can there ever be.

>>The world wouldn'tve progressed as much as Christianity brought law and order to places that didn't embrace it.
Every society you can name had and has some sort of rules. Not being christian is not the same thing as not having rules.

>Gladiator History - The Roman Funeral
Why did Gladiator History and gladiatorial combat relate to the Roman funeral, what was the connection? The religion of the Romans revolved around the worship of various pagan gods and their belief in the afterlife. Romans believed that human sacrifice at the dead person's funeral would appease the Roman gods and ensure a satisfactory entrance into the afterlife. Earlier customs of sacrificing prisoners on the graves of warriors were adopted by the Romans. Ceremonies connected with funerals lasted for nine days at the end of which a sacrifice was made. The Romans believed that "souls of the dead were propitiated by human blood..." Gladiator history moved on as the preparation for their funeral rites involved enemy captives or slaves being bought, trained to kill and then sacrificed during the funeral rites. This sacrificial ceremony, was called a munus. A munus was a duty paid to a dead ancestor by his descendants, with the intention of keeping alive his memory.

Stop talking out of your ass, you idiot. I hate people like you that can't take 5 seconds out of your fucking day to educate yourself, instead of spewing blatant bullshit to make yourself seem intelligent. Fuck you for trying to play semantics and fuck you for being stupid.

I'd never heard of this before, that said I really don't care. Christendom replaced things like that with their own horrors and I find no real moral progress to have been made.

Besides, gladiator games were used as a means of entertaining the masses(the circus part of bread and circuses) and also used as a way of making sure that the increasingly comfortable urban population of Rome were kept in touch with the more martial ways of their ancestors. Appeasing the gods was simply not part of it.

No, the Abolitionist movement was Christian. It started in the Middle Ages, centuries before the Enlightenment. The King of France abolished slavery in the 14th century. The other European monarchs followed suit over the centuries. Abolitionism proper as a popular organized political movement was pushed hardest by religious groups like the Quakers.

The Kingdom of God is not of this world. This world is fallen. Christianity isn't here to make the world a better place, but to save souls from being destroyed along with it.

>>mywillandwishes.com/the-roman-funeral/
Just found where you got this from. This stuff isn't really about appeasing deities, it may have started that way back before the romans outlawed human sacrifice, but the gladiator games were about entertainment as a I mentioned above, and keeping people willing to fight if necessary.

Appeasing the gods was part of it. How are you going to read my source and say "I didn't know that." and then turn right around and say "It's not true." Just to reiterate. You're a fucking retard. I literally pulled out a spoon put the information on it and force fed it to you, and you still couldn't process the information. Yeah, just ignore history because you don't think it's right. You actually might be the biggest idiot I've run across in a while. Most people stop replying, or admit when they're wrong. You just continue to push forward despite literal THOUDANDS of pieces of evidence, one of which was forced into your mouth like a giant cock. Fuck you, stupid.

Do you need me to find other sources? Because I can do so. There are plenty of other sources that state the same exact thing, if you keep looking through your Google Search.

I by no means say its only Christianity that specifically does it, but I do believe it's one of the better options that provides people a sense of safety and the thought of objective morality. Today it's not as much needed as back in the day since most of us are not barbaric cutting each others eyes put for fun.

But the question overall was would Europe be better with or without Christianity and I'd still yes it'd be better with due to my opinion on Christianity being the superior way of teaching people to be good.

Oh and as a byproduct it also happens to make the world a better place lol.

>>abolitionist movement got started in the middle ages
>>implying that there was some sort of continuation between that and abolitionist groups in 19th century
>>The King of France abolished slavery in the 14th century.
An irrelevant feel-good moralizing gesture because the economy of France was not dependent on slaves but rather serfs.
>>The other European monarchs followed suit over the centuries.
More irrelevant moralizing, where slavery was profitable, it was practiced.
>>Abolitionism proper as a popular organized political movement was pushed hardest by religious groups like the Quakers.
This doesn't matter because Quakers were seen by many as not being proper christians and also because you can find nothing in the bible supporting the abolishment of slavery.

Slavery ended because of the assembly line. Morals, religious or not, had sweet fuck all to do with it other then as a pretext.

>>Appeasing the gods was part of it.
Because it wasn't what the games were being used for. The games were entertainment and a way to keep people from getting too soft by showing them some good old fashioned ultra violence.

>>but I do believe it's one of the better options that provides people a sense of safety
It does not do this.

>>and the thought of objective morality.
Follow the rules or suffer terribly after you die isn't objective morals. It's tyranny with better press.

>>But the question overall was would Europe be better with or without Christianity and I'd still yes it'd be better with due to my opinion on Christianity being the superior way of teaching people to be good.
I'd say no because people only became good in a way that we would recognize as such long after christian influence on society had started to recede. The middle ages were a terrible time to be alive and the christian church did all of jack and shit to stop it from being such.

Actually slavery was one of the things that delayed the industrial revolution so long. Why would you need an assembly line when you have slaves? If the ancient world had abolished slavery, that would have put economic force behind the automation and energy technologies that they already had to develop and spread. You've confused the cause with the effect.

Who build the assembly line?

>Because it wasn't what the games were being used for.
They were both entertainment, a means of control and a ceremony in honor of the gods and the glory they had granted the Roman people. I don't think that they can be called "sacrifices" because the death of gladiators wasn't the end goal of the process, it was an after-effect. But still, Roman festivals were multifaceted and it's impossible to separate the religious from the poltical.

I'm not confusing anything, The industrialized north beat the south because they could outproduce them. The post quoted mentioned various movements against slavery that did all of jack shit to stop the practice of slavery where and when it was profitable to do so. Once industrial production got going, the economic basis for slavery was no longer there and slavery gradually ended.

>>I don't think that they can be called "sacrifices"
Then we don't have much to disagree upon then. As what I was trying to get at there was that gladiators dying in the arena and people being killed to appease a deity or group of deities are different things.

I will say though that games being dedicated to various deities was probably more about the control you mentioned then any genuine desire to honor any one of those deities. At least, not once the games really took off during the imperial era anyway.

Nice mental gymnastic, retard.

Better.

Christianity single-handedly lifted Europe out of barbarism.

Hah no. Barbarism is a nonsensical term to begin with, and the Germanic tribes would have coalesced into more stable polities regardless of their religious beliefs.

>>Mental Gymnastic
That's a long way of saying factually correct statement.

Abolitionists were often devout Christians and used bad interpretation to prove slavery is immoral, but if YOU actually read the Bible you would know that not only slavery is allowed, but slaves are supposed to be loyal no matter how immoral their master is.
Ever wondered what "servant" of God means? It's "doulos", a "slave".

The Spanish (Catholics) banned the slavery of indigenous people. And this is a fact.

Since Protestants can not consider themselves Christians, if not a bunch of bloodthirsty heretics, their massacres and their subsequent plundering imperialism can only be attributed to their heretical doctrines and not to true Christianity. In the other pagan countries, barbarism was normal.

After the "Age of Lights", the two bloodiest wars of humanity took place: thief imperialism, massacres, famines and ethnic cleansing of all kinds. All this perpetrated by the most "enlightened" nations such as England or Germany.

The Portuguese Jesuits were also usually abolitionists. One of the literary authors we learn of in school, apex of portuguese baroque, António Vieira was a priest that decried the horrors of slavery in the New World. He himself was at least 1/8th black, tho, so that might've had something to do with it. Still, his opinion was respected enough that his last sermon in Lisbon drew all the crowds.