For Believers And Unbelievers
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- Difflugia
- Prodigy
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Re: For Believers And Unbelievers
Post #2In broad terms, not much until at least AD 500 and probably later. The Assyrians would still have conquered Israel, Babylon would have conquered Judah, the Persians would have sent loyal settlers back to Jerusalem, Alexander the Great would have defeated the Achaemenids, the Roman Empire would have expanded around the Mediterranean and through Europe, and begun to decline as reliance on Germanic tribes with little loyalty to Rome weakened the hegemony of the Empire.
Even the advent and rise of Christianity might not have changed much. Paul's Christianity was as much a fusion of Persian and Greek religious ideas as it was Jewish. Were the sacrificial crucifixion of Jesus and genius of Paul responsible for the rise and spread of early Christianity, or was Christianity an inevitable religion whose time had come and its Jewishness was merely a historical accident?
Islam was as apparently as much a political strategy for unifying various Arabian tribes during a period of anarchy as it was a religious movement. Even so, would Muhammad's quest for a more spiritual and introspective form of religion have failed without a Judeo-Christian background, or would it have just settled out slightly differently? Instead of the "angel Jibreel" sent by "Allah," would Muhammad still have received dictation from someone in that cave? Islam includes influences from a number of religious systems present in the region, so filling the blanks in with slightly different answers might not really have altered much.
Were the Crusades based in religious sensibilities or secular power? Would a Martin Luther still have been drawn to oppose abuses of religious power if that religion had been more obviously Zoroastrian than Jewish? Would the Thirty Years' still have happened without the religous excuses? Would the settlers to the United States still have been religious nuts, but with a slightly different religion?
It's always tough to speculate on just how different things would be based on small differences (would World War I have happened if Franz Ferdinand had stayed home that day?), but I see very few trends that were specifically Jewish or Christian or Muslim that weren't also political, economic, or even just religious in a non-specific way.
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- Guru
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Re: For Believers And Unbelievers
Post #3I think the more pertinent question is what would the world be like if not for Jesus? The answer is that humanity would remain irrevocably lost to God. I'm so glad God wasn't willing to let that happen.
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- Prodigy
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Re: For Believers And Unbelievers
Post #4Another religion would have stepped in and, in part at least, filled those shoes. Some people tend to need something 'bigger than them' to believe in, while others tend to need those people to believe in something so they can be a leader, take their time, energy, effort and money, allowing for them to influence others to spend more money and on and on.
Have a great, potentially godless, day!
- Miles
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Re: For Believers And Unbelievers
Post #5.
For what it's worth, the OP here, DavidLeon, has since left the website and hasn't posted since Oct 15, 2020.
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For what it's worth, the OP here, DavidLeon, has since left the website and hasn't posted since Oct 15, 2020.
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