Originally posted by whodey
I was in the thread about the world's greatest Jew and Christ's name naturally came up. However, twhitehead made the comment that the negative effects of Christs existence far outweighed the positive ones. I then asked him to explain his position but as yet have not recieved an explanation. However, I was just wondering, does anyone else feel the same? If so, why?
Well, nobody can ever truly answer an 'if' question, one can only guess. If Hitler won WWII would the world be better or worse? We don't know. We can only guess.
However, I do believe that the world would be a better place without religion, especially religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and Jesus started one of the worlds largest religions (and don't forget that Islam probably also started as a result of him too). However, I obviously do not know what religions would have appeared if Christianity hadn't.
One of my biggest issues with religion is their tendency to create divisions both between people of different religions and even people within a religion but of different beliefs (denominations etc). (Northern Ireland for example).
Other famous figures such as Ghandi, and Mandela, have both brought about massive positive political changes, Jesus did not. If anything, Jesus brought about greater division during his lifetime.
Of course most of Christianities later effects has far more to do with Paul than it does with Jesus.