The Conversion of Europe to Christianity: A Tragedy?

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The Jewish religion is a disgrace! Why is it ok to criticize Christianity and Islam but not the Jewish religion? As I said, I have nothing against any ethnicity. If someone chooses to follow the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic religions I will not respect them much. They have chosen disgraceful ideologies, and they can be judged on their choices just like everyone else. Again the Jewish religion is worthless garbage! Hope that makes things clear.

If antisemitism is defined as dislike of Judaism and its adherents there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. The antisemitism I have a problem with is the one based on ethnicity. Ethnicity is not chosen and does not tell you anything about a person?s moral character, whereas ideology like religion tells you a lot about a person?s morality. People can absolutely be judged by their morality and should be judged by their morality. If a person has chosen to become a member of Judaism she or he believes that it was righteous for the people of the Bible to commit genocide, infanticide, rape and murder in the name of a psychopathic deity. I despise these scum with all my heart as should any decent individual. I would take no action against them until they had taken some sort of immoral action. I would only punish evil actions not evil beliefs. But I despise individuals with evil beliefs nonetheless. If we do not judge based on ideology then we cannot judge Nazis or the KKK. We might as well call it bigoted and racist to criticize the members of such organizations. I did not tell these individuals to choose evil beliefs, they chose them themselves. And for that I despise them.

To call this racist is an insult to non-religious Jews. Not all Jews are members of Judaism! One is an ethnicity the other is an ideology. To not criticize trash like Judaism, Christianity and Islam is immoral!

I have not discriminated based on race and take offence to that.

They worship a god who ordered those massacres. They made Hollywood movies about god killing the babies of the Egyptians. They endorse these actions when ordered by god! If they don't then they disobey their own god and are confused individuals for claiming to be part of those religions. Furthermore, they endorse eternal torture for not holding the beliefs of their religion. Anyone who thinks that way is contemptible.

Most Christians believe in hell and endorse it. I would say most see nothing wrong with those stories of the Bible. At least they condone those stories. I don't hate the ones who don't, but I would call them confused rather than Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Take the story of Abraham for example. The core of these religions. I say what Abraham was willing to do and what god asked of him (before stopping him) is despicable. If religious people think like me how can I call them Jews, Christians and Muslims? If they reject the core of the beliefs how can they be considered a member of those religions? It's like saying I am a Nazi who despises everything Hitler stood for and am a pacifist and love everyone.

Jesus had some nasty parts to him too. Eg. he asked people why they don't kill disobedient children in one instance. He clearly endorses the Old Testament. I.e. I came to fulfill the law and not to change it. Don't remember which book that was in but I can find out if you want me to. He clearly endorses Hell and the idea that most people will end up there (most will choose that path). If Jesus is correct, many of us in this forum will go to Hell not only Hitler and his kind. All that is required is lack of faith. But even Hitler and Stalin don't deserve eternal torture. No one does. No one has done infinite wrong to deserve infinite punishment. If someone thinks I deserve eternal torture for not having faith in the Christian god how can I respect them?

It was a very mixed bag.

Seems like when one looks back at the spread of Christianity and Islam, being close contemporaries, and especially with the conditions of Islam's request of new territories (ie. not necessarily Islam but some local monotheism with similar codification) there was a major cultural problem in the pagan world that was coming to a head. One has to consider that people were sick enough of an old system for a new one this radically different to go anywhere.

The blessings of a Judao-Christian Europe and Islamic Mideast - charity, hospitals, and education. Apparently ground-level paganism had a noted lack of charity, focused on individual honor to the point of social Darwinism, and doctors and educators were only for the elite. It was the belief in the equality of man found in the monotheisms that worked to push things in the other direction.

Obviously we're all aware of the problems that come with fundamentalist beliefs in any monotheistic dualism - particularly rabid exclusivism. You have to consider, however, that things were that much worse in pagan areas to where people were ready and willing to convert from 5th to 9th century CE just on the grounds that Christianity seemed to be a step above what they had (the pagan mythos in most places may have had a great deal of monist wisdom and cyclical considerations but most of that was as buried by that time as Christ is under organized orthodoxy today). There were some losers in this game and few more tragic than the loss of the Neoplatonist schools, which were not only way ahead of their time but in many ways perhaps even past Christianity as it was conveyed. Hypatia was one of the better-known examples of Neoplatonist martyrs to the sweeping tide of Christian monotheism. Seems like the Johnian gospels attempted to weave Neoplatonism and at least a sense of emanationism back into Christianity but with mixed results.