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The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

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Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#121

Post by aerodexis »

pstuart wrote: post #110
aerodexis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you abstract away the specific claims made by new New Atheists (either the leaders or the footsoldiers) and analyze it from a purely sociological point of view - it behaves identically to any other religion or faith - especially when you consider that strong, top-down leadership is not a universal property of religion. Also relevant here is that the concept of "religion" itself was introduced very recently in the…

> analyze it from a purely sociological point of view - it behaves identically to any other religion or faith What is the analysis? What is the behavior? I'm genuinely curious. Help me see what I am apparently blind to seeing.

[dead]

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#122

Post by riffraff »

empath75 wrote: post #65
riffraff wrote: post #7

what's up with the red isolated somewhere around Bhutan in 700AD? Is that Prester John[0]? :D [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John

Short answer: No Long answer: prester john was probably inspired by a mixture of rumors of various asian churches.

I was joking, but my question remains: what was that community?

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#123

Post by 3683826312819 »

za3faran wrote: post #118
dismalaf wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you read about Islamic conquests, you would see that in the vast overwhelming cases, no such events took place, if ever. Demographics changed because people entered Islam. Islam is against genocide.

[flagged]

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#124

Post by jltsiren »

mlmonkey wrote: post #23

I wish it was an actual interactive map instead of a video, as it raises so many questions. Where did Christianity come from in Tibet? If I'm reading it correctly, around 1100AD there seems to be a large number of Christians near Lhasa. And then around 1266 a majority Christian region around (I think) Mongolia suddenly gets wiped out.

The short version is that the internal politics of the Mongol Empire shuffled the religious map of Asia.

Christianity gradually spread further into Asia, but the rise of Islam severed the contact between the Church of the East and Western Christianity. Mongols had their own shamanistic religion, but many of their tribes had also become Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist. The Mongol Empire tolerated most religions, and individual leaders often favored one religion or another. When the empire fragmented, three of the major khanates chose Islam and the fourth chose Buddhism, while Christianity largely faded away in the Asian parts of the empire.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#125

Post by keiferski »

moralestapia wrote: post #90

I have recently noticed (especially over the last year) a lot of mainstream stories portraying Christianity as growing significantly, things like Instagram posts, tweets, etc., with phrases like “Christianity is back”, you get the idea. I’m not really sure to what extent this is accurate, though, since those platforms are obviously shaped by my own algorithm. For example, Instagram knows I’m Catholic, so it tends to…

You might be interested in a book called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? by Kaufmann. Basically a lot of it comes down to birth rates and cohesiveness of culture.

Another good one is A Secular Age, although it's on a much longer timeline. It tracks the shift of Christianity from ±1500 to the present and what it will likely be in the near future.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#126

Post by akikoo »

za3faran wrote: post #118
dismalaf wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you read about Islamic conquests, you would see that in the vast overwhelming cases, no such events took place, if ever. Demographics changed because people entered Islam. Islam is against genocide.

[flagged]

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#127

Post by vattoli_porinju »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #102
whall6 wrote: post #4

What blew me away was the proliferation of the Church of the East. I never knew Christianity had that much of a foothold in Asia. I wonder if geographically it appears more significant due to that region’s sparse population?

If you come from a American Christian background these are really worth exploring. Being ex-catholic/ex-Christian I found that they share enough to make them more accessible (I guess) than other religions, but also different in thought from what I grew up in, and those combined really help me expand on my personal thinking. I did a study group that a Greek orthodox priest put on for non-orthodox and it was awesome. W…

For indian you can check the st thomas christians or syrian christians or malankara nasranis from state of kerala that trace their origin to st thomas visit in the 1st century and were under the church of east. They follow the syriac based liturgies. I mentioned to specifically check with these because other christians in india are all latin rite catholic or protestant, which all started with european arrivals and so most won't be much aware of the histories outside their group. And checking with any hindu or muslim from india won't do any good because first they are not even much aware of all these different denominations, and most outside kerala won't be aware of all these since this community is historically concentrated in that specific region of the country; now the second reason is the nation is now in hinduthva peak where there is a lot of conflict from majority hindus with muslims and christians and the ideology itself say muslims and christians are internal threats and they all just dismiss everything about christianity as fake and try to always associate christianity with euorpean colonisation and hence anti national cheaters.

Now the migrants of st thomas christians or syrian christians or malankara nasranis community from the state of kerala are present in western nations, including america and have churches there. Currently, the community is split into the following different denominations:

* Syro malabar catholic church - follows a modified east syriac litrugy * Malankara orthodox syrian/malankara jacobite syrian church - follows west syriac litrugy * Syro malankara catholic church - follows a slightly modified west syriac litrugy * Marthoma syrian church - follows a protestantified west syriac

You can check with these churches to know more.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#128

Post by constantius »

dismalaf wrote: post #42
Curosinono wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? There is a clear phase in our history which was long and no progress was made "Dark age". In that time religion already existed right? So what was the speciality of christianity apparently bootstrapping everything else? You could only be religious if you had resources to do so. Could have been filled with something else instead. Napoleon wrote somewere (i read that in a museum) that education is nce…

> There is a clear phase in our history which was long and no progress was made "Dark age". The Dark Ages are kind of a myth. The Eastern Roman Empire (aka. Byzantine Empire) existed through the whole time period up to the beginning of the Renaissance. And while some parts of Western Europe were "dark" (mainly due to Viking and Islamic invasions), Western Europe wasn't and isn't the whole world.

Your understanding of history, here and downthread, is fascinatingly selective, and, as far as the historical consensus goes, very mistaken.

The Dark Ages refer specifically to Western/Central Europe, so without Byzantium. Byzantium and the Islamic kingdoms were very much thriving, intellectually and culturally, in that period.

Equally, "parts of Europe" weren't dark because of "Vikings and Muslims": the reasons were multiple, from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, to infighting, to poverty, and to religion.

From your comments elsewhere however I understand you simply have a very caricatural view of Muslims and use them as a historical scapegoat.

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#129

Post by constantius »

dismalaf wrote: post #44
whall6 wrote: post #4

What blew me away was the proliferation of the Church of the East. I never knew Christianity had that much of a foothold in Asia. I wonder if geographically it appears more significant due to that region’s sparse population?

No, it's because your education is western-centric and Islamic invasions took over the east. Eastern Christians have been subjected to genocide at the hands of Muslims for 1300 years. Edit - really, someone is asking for a citation that the Islamic conquests happened? Next should ask for a citation that the sky is blue... This is basic world history, like the discovery of the new world, Alexander the Great's conquest…

[flagged]

Re: The spread of Christianity, from antiquity until today, on an animated map

#130

Post by Curosinono »

aerodexis wrote: post #109
pstuart wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the New Atheism movement Not a religion, not a faith. It's simply well-publicized challenging of religion. I think that you only see it as such because of how you see the world, but Dawkins, Harris, et al are not my leaders and I strongly disagree with several of their positions.

If you abstract away the specific claims made by new New Atheists (either the leaders or the footsoldiers) and analyze it from a purely sociological point of view - it behaves identically to any other religion or faith - especially when you consider that strong, top-down leadership is not a universal property of religion. Also relevant here is that the concept of "religion" itself was introduced very recently in the…

Accepting, that we do just not believe in something someone else said, is not a different kind of religion. It is acceptance and growth and mental freedom
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