Very Well said.

I'm not sure christianity DID take off all that fast. I mean...weren't some books of the bible written long after the supposed existence of christ? There are a lot of factors in play here & I think a major one is the jaded truth that "the winners get to write the history books." We have actual writings from the hand of Jefferson & others of the founding fathers in which they clearly argue for separation of church & state & even with these relatively recent & verifiable documents available, an oft-heard cry of the evangies goes something like "...our founding fathers created this nation based on god & it's being stolen away from us!" And that was just in the 1700s.

Another thing is the tipping point movements reach, when they become common enough in the general population to be normalized. So many fads would seem utterly devoid of taste or even common sense, but once enough people adopt them, it's the outsiders who seem weird. (Farrah Fawcett hair. Jeans that bag the hell around the knees.) When you hear the xtian dogma from the time you're born, it's hard to step back enough to find it freaky.

And it's worth keeping in mind that there are different strains of xtianity. Sure, they all use the bible, but my neighbors across the street, who have little crosses hanging in the kids' windows for pity's sake, would no doubt be damned to hell in the minds of the xtians who spend every halloween praying on their knees for the salvation of trick or treaters.

And another thing is our current lives make it easy to doubt. I'm sitting here on a computer more powerful than the one used to send the Apollo 13 to the moon. I just heard the dishwasher finish its cycle. My son is sleeping peacefully under clean sheets in a climate controlled room. I don't have to squint because once my eyes got tired, I took my contacts out & put my glasses on. And if I feel lonely or doubtful, I can call any of a number of friends, or get in the car & go find people. I don't think I CAN imagine what it would be like to have every illness cast a fear into me that this is the last time I'll see my son or my husband. I've never had to scratch the earth or scour the woods for each & every bite to pass my lips. My dog is a kindly creature, friendly to all, my sweet girl. She has never had a screaming fight with a wild animal while I've hurled rocks & thrown my child behind me for safety. If I were living in a world in which I had not the slightest hint of science, a world in which my mind was dulled by sporadic malnutrition & frequent pregnancy, a place where every day seemed like yet one more series of insults small & large on my very existence, it would be indeed tempting to hear that if I simply followed a certain set of rules, the sweetest moments of my life could be replayed over & over into infinity. And all the pain would be gone forever.

But we are not in those dark ages. And as horrific as even my weak imaginings of ancient life are, I cannot find it in me to have much in the way of tolerance at all for today's xtians. They can look out of their tiny boxes & see a vastly wider would. Their sufferings have been relieved. A great space has been opened in which they can think & consider & reflect. they no longer have to turn to a broken & limiting set of beliefs as their only hope. But they stay right there. Right there.

You know...historically many of the great philosophical & scientific achievements have been reached by upper class men. This is not because men are smarter, it's because the upper classes had TIME, they had servants to skin the deer & lay the fire. And men were educated. But now the vast majority of US people, at least, & many in other countries, ALL have these freedoms. Even the those idgits in "jesus camp" can get all the calories they need & more for no more effort than it takes to drive the minivan to costco. That they have such EASE & still cling like ticks to the bible when all its comforts have faded, leaving nothing but the manipulations & the lies, is inexcusable.

simple people want simple answers to complex and frightening questions.

I don't know. Celsus sounds a lot like a class consciouss snob more than anything. :) (LOL)

Ever since there were "Gods" there have been atheists and freethinkers, forced to keep their traps shut.

But since christianity in particular (and this pisses them off to no end) is no longer allowed to immolate, torture and torment atheists, we have come out a lot more now. This is, I suspect, why they call it the New Atheist movement - but there's nothing new about it. We just dont have to take this religious shit any more and the internet is where religion comes to die.

"Maybe that's why you never hear about the great atheists of old"

In most of Europe for most of the 1,700 years that christianity has held power, atheism was not an option. You were christian by default and if you were suspected of doubting the existence of god (let alone publicly expressing this doubt) you would be killed for it. More likely tortured into confessing and then killed.

A great example of why you do not hear more about the great atheists of old is a guy named Celsus. We don't actually know if he was an atheist or not, but the principle is the same. Celsus was one of the earliest critics of christianity (2nd Century C.E.). He wrote an anti-christian polemic called 'The True Word' (sometimes called 'True Discourse') which is a fairly well known book for something we do not have one surviving copy of today. The primary reason we do not have any surviving copies of this text is because christian zealots tossed them into the fire with most of their other pre-christian documents. The reason we still have some of it is because of a church father and early christian apologist named Origen. Origen wrote a counter-polemic against Celsus called 'Contra Celsum' which we do have access to today. In Contra, Origen quotes Celsus several times (often quoting fairly long passages) in order to argue against him. And even though the only words we have from Celsus are the ones Origen chose specifically to use against him, the fragmented and badly represented Celsus still puts forward a pretty good refutation of christianity.

A few segments of what Origen chose to quote Celsus as saying can be read here:
http://www.bluffton.edu/~humanities/1/celsus.htm

My favorite: "It is only foolish and low individuals, and persons devoid of perception, and slaves, and women, and children, of whom the teachers of the divine word wish to make converts."

I have heard certain "Theologists" acknowledge that if you had been a gambling man, around the time that christianity was taking off, you could have put your money on the cult of Mithras taking off ahead of christianity - but Mithras worship was for males only and this stopped it flourishing. In an age where the ignorant would believe anything, the more outrageous the claim, the more it was believed - and Christianity welcomed women too.

Huh. Maybe that's why you never hear about the great atheists of old?

That reminded me of this picture.

Huh. Maybe that's why you never hear about the great atheists of old?

The periods when christianity spread like wildfire have usually been the periods when christians had the opportunity to force christianity on new christians. Constantine did more for the spread of christianity by declaring it the new official religion of the Roman empire than Paul did with all those churches he is supposed to have built. Once christianity became dominant in Europe the big key to maintaining that dominance was the systematic slaughter of millions of heretics. Think about why Islam is so popular in islamic countries. Part of it is because people are raised to believe in Islam. The other part is natural selection. If you stop believing in Islam they stone you to death, and all the people who watch you die are just that much more convinced of the truth of the qu'ran. This principle has been exploited to full advantage by the christian church, who now likes to tell the story as everyone who heard the gospel realized it was true. If that had actually happened, I bet they could have skipped that whole inquisition thing.

One of the big disappointments I went through in the years after becoming a Christian was what I viewed as not only the slow pace of the spread of the faith historically, and the limited regional expanse (not much sub-Saharan Africa, very little east of the Tigris/Euphrates, slow north of the Roman line across Germania.

Bear in mind that Modern Christianity represents largely Western Christianity, or Latin Christianity. There were two other major branches: Greek and Syriac Christianity. In terms of spread, Syriac Christianity had Latin Christianity beat hands down: it had outposts from the Tigris all the way to the coast of China, and maybe even into Japan.

Even after the spread of Islam, Syriac Christianity made up a significant percentage of world Christian population. One estimate has it that 1/3 of all Christians were in Asia around the turn of the Millennia. About 1/10 were in Egypt and down through Africa. It was only after the Crusades and the Mongol invasion that Syriac Christianity really started to get pruned back.

"...what I viewed as not only the slow pace of the spread of the faith historically, and the limited regional expanse"

That's something I've thought too... but Christians don't seem to see it that way. They will hold to the idea that Christianity spread rapidly to all parts of the earth (much like Judaism spread so vastly from the descendants of Noah, right?), and that the spread of Christianity is an ongoing process.
And for all the non-christians still around, I've heard christians spout waaaaay too often that "god has a plan for them." ...Does the bible ever actually say "god has a plan for non-christians"? I thought that plan was called hell...

That's funny. One of the big disappointments I went through in the years after becoming a Christian was what I viewed as not only the slow pace of the spread of the faith historically, and the limited regional expanse (not much sub-Saharan Africa, very little east of the Tigris/Euphrates, slow north of the Roman line across Germania.

Secondly, I remember well my great disappointment when, upon taking up the reading of the early church fathers at some point, I found them diverging so far from Pauline doctrine, and I saw in them the early growth of Catholic teachings beginning to spread. As much different from the teachings of Christ had been Paul, so were the teachings of the fathers different from Paul.

Overall, I got the distinct feeling of unease that if the almighty God was behind the Gospel/Church, that it should have swept the world within a decade or so, maintained the orthodox teachings of the New Testament, and then reigned powerfully until the imminent return of Christ. That the church instead remained limited geographically to the Mediterranean/Hellenistic zone, fell almost immediately into widespread heresy from which it was not able to be even remotely successfully pulled until Martin Luther 1500 years later, and has at all times evinced an external weakness and lack of internal cohesion-- the bickering of the Christian Churches served the spread of Islam quite well, in fact-- were all factors, which when combined with the many errors, contradictions, and horrific acts of genocide and senseless bloodletting recorded in the pages of the Old Testament, are now just more nails in the coffin of the Christian religion, IMHO.

And as far as the doctrine of the Trinity goes, I have always seen it as the essential fusion between the idea of the morally stern, formless and distant one God of Spirit held by the Jews, fused with the morally ambivalent, multi-gods of the Greco-Romans, who were depicted as having perfect human forms. The hybrid which emerged was morally stern, with three parts-- distant Father, roaming Spirit, and always close-by mediator/human/god/messiah Son-- Emmanuel, god with us.

It was a successful blend of the psychological advantages of each: the awe-inspiring sovereign regality of an all-powerful all-knowing God with the human intimacy of a God-man avatar.

The trinity is just a poor attempt to patch all the very obvious questions that arise from such an arrangement. But often, if something feels good, people don't require it to make sense.

"Christianity sprang up in Rome when the existing polytheism was losing its grip."

Just a thought... the whole monotheism-with-three-godheads thing always bugged me, and I never understood why Christians couldn't admit either A) There are actually 3 gods, or B) There's one and he's just got multiple forms.
But to branch off of a monotheistic religion, and spread to where polytheism was always around, this combination of the two makes more sense - at least in a selling point kind of way. It kind of lets everyone justify it as they please, with the final answer to "does that even make any sense?" being yeah, since God is omnipotent... a.k.a. "No its actually really impossible but that's ok cuz god can do impossible things." Yeah, that makes sense.

Think of an invasive exotic suddenly entering a new ecosystem...

Christianity is bunnies in Australia.

Another couple of things to take into account: timing and location.

Mormonism sprang up in the Burned Over District, where there were thousands of people looking for a new type of religious experience.

Islam sprang up in a time and place where people were practically salivating for a new religion, and where they had already seen other people get caught up in monotheism.

Christianity sprang up in Rome when the existing polytheism was losing its grip. You had mystery cults offering salvation springing up among the middle and lower classed, and Christianity was among them.

You can think of it as a kind of evolution: when an organism is born with a new and particularly useful adaption, you're likely to see an explosion as that organism exploits, reproduces, and spreads its descendants out in all directions. Think of an invasive exotic suddenly entering a new ecosystem (which isn't a bad analogy for a new type of Hebrew monotheism suddenly entering polytheistic Rome).

I think this is a very good question, and if anybody can recommend any good books on the subject, then let me know.

Richard Carrier's "Not the Impossible Faith," which is freely available online at Internet Infidels, or in a lightly revised print edition.

I think this is a very good question, and if anybody can recommend any good books on the subject, then let me know.

Anyhow, my understanding is that around the Mediterranean area, at the time when Christianity was beginning to flourish, there were several highly developed value systems competing with each other in the marketplace of ideas (Stoicism, Epicureanism etc.). Understanding these systems required a certain degree of education and mental legwork, not to mention certain, often difficult, changes in lifestyle. Christianity cuts the Gordian knot in this respect. The Christian need not understand anything about the little philosophical details. She is safe in the knowledge that Christ has done all of the hard work. Is life a bit shit, doing back-breaking labour out in the Mediterranean sun, or fighting wars in far away places? Don´t worry about it or try to change things. In a few short years you´ll be dead and living in paradise.

Its quite easy to see how such a philosophical system might appeal to the uneducated, whilst at the same time bestowing great benefits upon those who would wish to control them.

Argument from numbers. If every person on the planet thought the Earth was flat, it wouldn't make it true. If you can spread a religion by coercion, fear and brutality, that also seems to get people's attention.

"If the resurrection didn't happen, then there would be no point to Christianity in the first place"

Which just goes to show that things happen that are pointless. Or of course ask them how say, Islam started.

"They use the bible as its own source of validity while stating that all other religious scripture and history is false. I just don't get it."

Never been a believer and the above is the thing I find most difficult to understand i.e. how can someone believe the truth in your own religion's ludicrous claims yet dismiss as rubbish a different religion's equally ludicrous claims.

Then how come Christians give, say, Islamic religions such a bad rep?

Competition.

Then how come Christians give, say, Islamic religions such a bad rep? The obvious answer being that they think "Christianity is the one true religion" - but what are they basing that on? They use the bible as its own source of validity while stating that all other religious scripture and history is false. I just don't get it.

Evangelism. Evangelistic religions all spread at that crazy-fast rate: Islam and Mormonism show similar rates of growth over time as Christianity did.

This is the one question that Christians often ask me, and I have no answer for it. To myself, I've looked at it in comparison to the creation and growth of Mormonism - but even for that, I don't have any concrete reason for WHY these religions took off... I just know they did.

I know that Catholicism specifically has a lot of history of forcing religion on other peoples, nations, cultures etc., such as in South America, but I'm not sure if Christianity as a whole has this same history.

More specifically, the question that I never have a good response to is: If nothing else can prove to you that Jesus' resurrection was real, then how do you explain Christianity beginning right after it happened and not being instantly disproved? How did it start if not from the resurrection?

I've noticed that at this point, regardless of my attempted reply, they especially like playing the "If the resurrection didn't happen, then there would be no point to Christianity in the first place" card. Which... There's really no reply to that.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

P.S. Sorry for putting this in the wrong section! There's no Undo for that...