What if Christianity didn't exist?

[2bizE]

If there was no Christ and Christianity didn't exist, how different would the world be? What religion would we be instead of Mormon?

[Palerider]

If there was no Christ and Christianity didn't exist, how different would the world be? What religion would we be instead of Mormon?

Just some possibilities...

Pantheistic (Buddhist, etc.)
Jewish
Muslim

[Hogbreath]

Since just about every ancient civilization had some kind of religion you probably would have had religion. The question is whether that religion would have been monotheistic or polytheistic. IMO, taking Christianity out of the picture would not have changed man's basic need to create religion. If there had been no Christianity, the void would have been filled by another religion.

[dogbite]

Islam likely wouldn't have originated without the Christian model imho.

Buddhism would be the majority belief is my thought.

[wtfluff]

The "Savior Archetype" was around long before Christianity came on the scene, so if Christ hadn't been invented, I'm sure some other savior could have easily taken his place.

Humans are drawn to religion (tribalism) and many of those religions are drawn to the Savior Archetype, which seems to be one of many "great" ways to guilt the religious adherents into giving their money to whoever invented their religion of choice (or birth.)

[1smartdodog]

Sundays would be more fun

[oliver_denom]

I just finished reading Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions and am in the middle of Larry Siedentop's Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. Both of these writers touch on this. Armstrong's book traces the origins and transformation of eastern and western religion during the axial age and Siedentop covers the development of the idea of the individual within western thought beginning with early Roman religion through the development of Christianity.

Both are really good.

One idea I've pulled from these books, is that all societies enter periods of upheaval and uncertainty for which the dominant religion(s) or philosophy is completely inadequate. When this occurs, those religions either undergo a wholesale reformation where texts are rewritten, symbols reinterpreted, and ritual is remade, or they are set aside for something entirely new which accomplishes the same. Sometimes these changes are big and happen rapidly, and other times they are incremental. What's consistent between them is that there's never been a single true religion that persists unchanged throughout time. Religion either evolves to fit the needs of the times, or it's dropped into the dust bin of history.

It seems, because we can only speculate, that polytheism as a construct became inadequate to handle the problems of large scale governance and civilization. Why is that? It seemed to work for awhile. If my city conquered your city, then our newly combined people would just add our gods together into a new pantheon, or the conquered god would become a demon of some sort. But maybe in a time of empires and emperors, the proliferation of some many gods and traditions became unwieldy. Or, because there was so much violence and instability, maybe people had to start adopting a personal god because the god of the hearth and city was too unstable to be maintained. No matter how it came to be, it really seems that the environment of the west in particular favored a shift toward monotheism.

Greek culture and philosophy had a huge impact on every region of the Mediterranean and beyond, every place that Alexander truly conquered. He made it to India, but didn't really subdue it. Everywhere it went, local cultures began to Hellenize or add Greek influences to their local customs and religion. This was certainly true of Paul, the founder and creator of western Christianity, who created what's essentially a Hellenized form of Judaism. Did it have to be this one particular religion that caught on and spread to Rome? No. It could have been Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, or any number of similar cults of the time. Hell, it could have been a Hellenized Jainism had Alexander lived longer and pushed further east. As improbable as any given religion's rise might be, the trajectory of society was bending toward monotheism and away from pluralism.

If not Christianity, then my guess is that we'd all be one of the other Roman cults which popped up at the time. It wasn't necessarily the teachings of Christianity which made it unique, because there were many others preaching similar ideals, it was that the most powerful military in the world adopted it as its official religion. If Constantine doesn't give it official status, and empower its leaders with money and state sanction, then it would have floundered and have been crushed by whichever other cult was given those advantages.

I think we've entered another age where traditional religion is inadequate for the times. If history is a guide, then it won't develop overnight and it might take quite a bit of time for something new to fully develop. However, the speed at which anything happens in the information age has been dramatically increased. For all we know, Christianity may all but die and get replaced by something completely new within our life times.

[moksha]

Smith might have received golden runes instructing him to write the Book of the Blue Mormon Druids.

[Mad Jax]

If you're exceptionally stupid, you might think this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnDy9Mjbnc