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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

#81

Post by dsr_ »

ecshafer wrote: post #77
Curosinono wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Newton, Tolkien, Aquinas, Descarte, Pascal, CS Lewis, Lemaitre, Bach. All famously uncritical humans.

Pascal of the famously backpedaling and unsupportable Wager?

Lewis the apologist?

Bach the "who pays for music around here? OK, I'll get them to pay me" pop songwriter?

All of these folks living so far apart from each other in time and place that some of them would vitriolically deny being of the same religion as some of the others?

(Bach was an awesome composer, but he needed the money and catered to his audience.)

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

#84

Post by dang »

All: please don't post religious flamewar comments to Hacker News. That includes proselytizing in any direction, pro or anti. Such threads are as tedious as they are flamey, and those are the two qualities we can most do without here.

Intellectually curious conversation is an entirely different thing and is of course welcome on this or any topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#85

Post by jvdvegt »

Interesting that in the last two years of the video, central Europe seems to turn gray. The decline has been going on for several decades (and the official numbers of Christian people are artificially inflated due to weird exceptions the church has by law).

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

#86

Post by keiferski »

I’m sure a book has been written with this thesis, but I often think that a system like Christianity was somewhat inevitable, sociopolitically.

By this I don’t really mean the specifics of the religion; but rather 1) the idea of universalizing the value all human life and not only certain subsets and 2) a synthesis of ideology and politics with the explicit goal of expanding its domain by means of assimilation, not just conquest.

Now of course the reality didn’t actually play out exactly along those lines, but I think a similar sort of movement probably would have occurred across the Roman Empire, had Christianity not specifically grown.

In other words I have a hard time imagining that the world would have continued with Roman values indefinitely. The world was changing and Christianity was as much a consequence as a cause.

Very interesting to consider in any case!

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

#87

Post by acedia000 »

gausswho wrote: post #76
Curosinono wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Critical thinking, by some boundaries of how you define it, was a threat to power that led to the many schisms the video demonstrates. Suppression of it I find to be endemic in monotheistic organized religions. As an outsider to Christianity, it's always seemed odd to me the fluid boundaries of what you can critique and what you can't while remaining faithful. Most Christians would argue you cannot reason your way to…

This is largely ignoring the fact that Manichaeism was uniformly and severely persecuted under virtually every empire (and respective theology, or lack thereof) it came into contact with, which the Wikipedia article portrays pretty thoroughly.

Also, this is pretty ignorant of the fact that one of the most significant theological and philosophical movements of recent western history was the Reformation, which was specifically staked on the claim that "reasoning-your-way-to-God" was a fundamental right and responsibility of all believers, not just a limited caste of priests. This had implications far beyond theology, and is arguably the foundation of most western ideas of self-determination to begin with.

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

#88

Post by craftkiller »

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.

If they made it interactive, it would be nice to be able to toggle various layers. For example, I was watching it thinking "It's odd that nestorianism is drifting away from the rest" until I realized that empty void in the middle was Islam. It'd be nice if they also had other religions like Islam mapped, and let us toggle which ones we want to see so it doesn't become too noisy.

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

#89

Post by boston_clone »

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…

How can “genocide” apply to a voluntary religious group? And even if it could, the linked wikipedia article doesn’t seem to support your claim, either. Do you have anything else we could review?

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

#90

Post by moralestapia »

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 show me Catholic-positive content.

Does anyone know of a reliable source where I can check the actual numbers? I’m especially curious about Gen Z, since it seems to be relatively pro-Christian.

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