[Frank777]

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky This argument is specious. Just as the rest. You're trying to beg a uniqueness to Christians, assign them the full measure of advancement in a prodigious amount of advancements, and then imply this was because of their religion. When in point of fact, Christians killed off competing ideologies that were arguably more advanced, and allowed no other belief systems to exist.

I nowhere said that other religions didn't do good works, or made strides in public health. It's clear that Moses was educated as a Egyptian Royal, and that education shows in the ways he compiled the Old Testament laws. [Of course, there is much unique to Leviticus that did not come from surrounding societies.]

[quote=Dr. Bobsky;812583] And yet still even with that historical cultural dominance in European history (and NOWHERE else), you forget that the earliest General hospital was actually a Muslim invention, based upon hospitals for antiquity. You can choose to have your limited definition of hospital to suit your needs, but it is clear to EVERYONE that you're scraping the bottom of the barrel here./QUOTE]

Look I was trying to be charitable here. You are the one who posted the wiki link to the History of Hospitals, and I thought I was being kind by not posting the very first paragraph:

The Greek temples were dedicated to the sick and infirm but did not look anything like modern hospitals. The Romans did not have dedicated, public hospitals. Public hospital, per se, did not exist until the Christian period.[1] Towards the end of the 4th century, the "second medical revolution"[2] took place with the founding of the first Christian hospital in the eastern Byzantine Empire by Basil of Caesarea, and within a few decades, such hospitals had become ubiquitous in Byzantine society.

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky oh and blood libel (murderous rampages against Jews in europe were all the rage until, well today, supported by Christians), and indoctrination of indigenous people, and elimination of native knowledge of plants and history. All because of the Cultural Ego you display here. Christianity is one religion amongst a plethora, it is no more true than the rest, and it is one of the more violent ones in its written fabric building out a story of purpose around a religious war at the end of times.

The entire Bible showcases the stupidity and ignorance of man, and I can't and won't argue that Christians have not done some very stupid things. However, I would say that it's important to distinguish actions that are driven directly by Scripture, and those that are simply political actions that use religious belief merely as a pretext.

As for the last sentence, you should re-read the very end of the Bible again. The Messiah's return ends all war on Earth, not starts it.
Men do world wars very well, all by themselves.

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky The stories of genesis (and there are two versions of the story within the old testament that do not line up perfectly) are non-literal allegories written by a population with its first encounter with a writing system in an attempt to record its oral history -- prior to this it was telephone tag, so your faith in this written word as literal truth is sad.

Understanding ancient historical methods can indeed be a complex business.
But modern archeology doesn't write it all off derisively as 'telephone tag', and with good reason.

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky Just because you are a member of one church doesn't give you insight into the function of any other church. Particularly ones build on Christian Capitalism and the Money Gospel.

This is hilariously wrong, for reasons I won't expound on now. But I did post links to some of the group support networks that area churches use on a daily or weekly basis to co-ordinate outreach and counselling. Feel free to look into them and see how widespread they are used in cities across North America.

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky Your phrasing and argument are specious. Plenty of secular organisations do this as well and other religious organisations do too. And the government as a secular organisation does this even better than the Church on a scale no Church or group of Churches could possibly.

Lol. I understand that government is god to an atheist. But it's amazing to be saying that in the midst of a pandemic, where government incompetence - regardless of country or party affiliation - is directly responsible for the deaths of a staggering number of people.

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky No you have a nagging tendency to claim to be showing up first in war zones, when in point of fact you're most often part of the warring groups.

Weren't you complaining about blood libels just a few sentences north of this?

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Carter Foundation. But this argument is again specious -- you're trying to suggest that Christians do this uniquely. And they don't. And your argument is that you can exclude government from this because of reasons? Government particularly our modern secular democratic governments exist because the Church as a whole and in part is incapable of doing 1/100 of the amount needed for communities to survive.

You again misunderstand the point. It's not that good works don't exist outside of Christianity. Of course they do. I'm talking about the sheer scale of Christian ministry in the world, without any umbrella co-ordination outside of the Holy Spirit, dwarfing everything else. Every city, tribe and nation. Working in every corner of the Earth, without a central government authority responsible for co-ordination. Christianity has been [rightfully at times] criticized for fracturing into hundreds of smaller church families or denominations. And yet somehow, they are working globally largely in unison.

Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky This isn't at all the question you need to ask. There are plenty of fictional person's that have had the same effect. The entirety of the old testament is chock-a-block full of them, whose impacts have been even more significant. Your question is more about why Chritianity developed out of a Jewish-Roman cult into the obnoxious, arrogant, swaggering-until-it-is-dead religious bullshit it is today. And this has...to do with a handful of myths written about a non-existent person two-millenia ago, and much more to do with the machinations of the Catholic church integrating itself into power structures in Rome and other European capitals as history developed. Without the desire to be close to power, Christianity would have died off like so many other Jewish Cults...

As opposed to all those other world religions that demonstrate a desire to be far from power?

I posted a link above to a book by an Indian intellectual on how Western Civilization was shaped by the Bible. You should look into it. You're arguing that Christianity wedded itself to power and survived. But Roman gods were embedded into the political system and daily life with dissenters being thrown to lions as public sport. And they were still overthrown by a God who told His people to care for children abandoned to die outside cities, and for those abandoned by Roman society and dying in epidemics.