Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Here are some of my thoughts (not sure how precisely any of these might be measured/delineated)
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christianity
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Significantly more important than christianity is judaism. Judaism was the first major monotheistic religion and we should not forget that Christ was born and died as a Jew, not a christian. If it weren't for judaism, there wouldn't be any christianity.
Also not on your list was the papal decision to require priests to be celibate, something that was not on christianity's radar in the first several hundred years of christianity's history. Why was this so significant? For two reasons: First it demonstrated that it was humans who were setting the parameters of the religion, with those parameters shifting as earthly material and political needs had to be met. Second, because it created wealth for the papacy, which enabled it to grow catholicism, the original christianity, by confiscating wealth that would otherwise have been passed on outside the church. The need for material wealth is what humans needed for their own benefit; God certainly didn't need it to get any of his/her previous messages across to humans.
Once the church gained wealth, it could fund events, which is why it took so long to break from the Aristotelian view of the Earth's importance in the universe. Wealth enabled the church to control the sciences and the arts through its patronage, thus creating the world's first organized and foremost propaganda machine.
The wealth from celibacy also made the church such a powerful force that it became its own nation-state, something no other religion was/has been able to accomplish.
Of similar importance was the establishment of the Anglican church by Henry. It was the first successful knife thrust into the heart of the papacy, creating a major rival and laying the groundwork for future schisms. The schisms were of major consequence because they not only caused numerous devastating wars in Europe and the Americas, but they became the foundation on which the idea of European/white supremacy was built.
The final important event as regards christianity was the writing by committee of the King James bible. Its importance was not recognized at the time and is still not widely recognized. What is its importance? It underscores that the bible is the word of man, not the word of a deity because the text of many passages were compromises, that is, the committee members had divergent views and had to negotiate to create a single meaning, something that would not be either acceptable or possible if in fact the text was the unmolested word of a deity. In addition, the bible-by-committee demonstrated that there was/is no single, universally recognized deity. If there were, then there would be but one version of the bible that would be used by every person and religion. Instead, the bible is the product of the telephone game that children play -- wording shifts with every telling.