Through evolutionary biology analysis, I have come to the conclusion that the Christian religion is God's gift to mankind that helped us to a better life. Through my belief in Darwin and Christ, I have come to the conclusion that the most important thing to achieve better living conditions is to counteract the violence that comes from God creating man through natural selection. Important means for this have been; Justice, Monetary, Democracy and Christian Religion. How we act against each other determines what type of society we get.
Humans can, by talking to each other, which animal can not, agree to be kind to each other, and through the judiciary punish those who try to gain benefits by exercising violence against others. The significance of the penalty is that it makes crime an "evolutionarily unstable strategy". Monetary economy means that an individual gets money by performing services for other individuals, after which he can use the money to make others perform services for him, which benefits the individuals to perform services for others. Legislation and money economy mean that for human it is a more "evolutionary stable strategy" to be kind to each other than to other animal species.
The fact that Christian civilization has been more successful than the Muslim is because Christianity is a more effective religion than Islam to counteract human innate violence. Those who believe that the way to God is a ruler who has conquered a kingdom through victories in war has a different attitude to violence than those who believe that the way to God is one who died on a cross for our sins. Although there were pre-Christian religions that were more violent, it is Islam that historically was the alternative to Christianity. The failure of Islam is that the Prophet Muhammad was not only a prophet but also a war fighting ruler. Earlier when we lived in a world where one became ruler and created the kingdoms through victories on the battlefields, many believed that it was God who determined who would prevail and that a victorious ruler was thus chosen by God. When one of God through victories in war selected rulers received revelations, there were many who believed that the revelations were messages from God. Year 0 in Muslim chronology is when Muhammad in 622 became ruler of Medina. Five years after he became ruler of Medina, in 627 he killed the Jews he had not managed to expel from the city and in 628 Khaybar conquered, beheaded the men and took the women as sex slaves and in 630 conquered Mecca. At that time, before democracy was invented, no general election was announced when one had conquered power, so he became a totalitarian ruler. Many Muslims today even dream of new Muhammad in the form of a strong totalitarian ruler who will unite the Muslim world into a Kalifat and give Islam world domination.
Unlike Muhammad, Jesus lacked both political power and military merits. He was tried by the temptation that he would receive political power if he worshiped the devil. When he was asked by Pilate if he was the King of the Jews, he replied that his kingdom was not of this world. In addition, he was executed by crucifixion by the political rulers. The personal cult of the war fighting totalitarian ruler Muhammad implies that Muslims have a more positive attitude towards the use of violence and warlike non-elected rulers than in Christianity. This is something that current dictators in the Muslim world are gratefully using to justify the oppression and preserve their power, thus many Muslim regimes have the death penalty for those who convert from Islam.If Jesus had did as Muhammad and instead of ascending to heaven after the resurrection went to Rome and did what Constantine did 300 years later; gathered an army, won on the battlefields and as ruler of the Roman Empire created the first Christian society. Then Christianity had the same problem as Islam, namely that the believers had a war fighting dictator as the highest moral model. But since it was Constantine who created the first Christian nation by winning on the battlefields and as a Roman ruler introducing a society based on the Christian doctrine, then the development potential of the Christian community became larger as the believers did not have Constantine but Jesus who was not one war fighting ruler as the highest moral model. One can publish how many caricatures most of the war fighting ruler Constantine who won on the battlefields and created the first Christian kingdom but no Christian would care. But if you publish caricatures of the war fighting ruler Muhammad who won the battlefields and created the first Muslim kingdom, it will be riots in the Muslim world and you have to live with police protection for the rest of your life so that you are not killed by any militant Islamist.
Christianity was introduced into the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine and before the advent of Islam, all countries around the Mediterranean were Christians. The Muslim armies managed to conquer the former Christian countries of the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, and penetrate France, where they were, however, stopped in the Battle of Poitiers in 732. Over time, a border emerged between Islam and Christianity, where the dry, hot and poor countries of the south became Muslim while the cooler and forest-rich countries in the north remained Christians. The forest saved Christianity. This is because war is not only won by brave and aggressive warriors who perform heroic warfare on the battlefield but also by hardworking workers who manufacture weapons, and for workers who manufacture weapons, forest was an important asset. Before the 19th century, when developing methods for producing iron with coal, charcoal made from forest was an important prerequisite for iron production. It required large amounts of charcoal to make iron and most of the workforce required for iron production worked in the forests to produce charcoal. With large forests one could make a lot of charcoal and produce more iron, whereby more warriors could be equipped not only with weapons but also with armor. More iron is required if you are to equip a weapon with both arms and armor. Thanks to the armor, the Christian warriors became more invulnerable and could defeat the Muslim invaders. One can say that the Christians, through hard work on charcoal production in the forests, defeated the brave Muslim warriors. Access to forest promoted a religion such as Christianity that was better at getting people to cooperate and help each other and thereby work and manufacture weapons while lack of forest promoted religions that could bring forth strong and aggressive warriors who could perform heroic warfare on the battlefields.
Christianity cannot eliminate violence only to counteract it, which is why there are also Christians who have fought and committed acts of violence. A prerequisite for a religion to be established is that there are rulers who believe in it and in the past it was the battlefields that decided who became ruler. If Christianity had eliminated violence, Christian civilization had not existed and Christianity existed as a minor sect. Any attempt to create a Christian civilization in any country had then been thwarted by believers to a doctrine prepared to practice violence had conquered the country. Before Constantine, the Christians were a small minority. It was Constantine who, by winning the battlefields and conquering power as a Roman ruler, could create a society based on the Christian doctrine where Christianity dominated. Many became Christians because one of God, through victories in war selected rulers, advocated the new religion. The strength of the doctrine of violence is that they can inspire the followers of the heroic deeds on the battlefields required to conquer and defend the kingdoms and so that religion / ideology can thus become state-bearing. Examples of this are communism which, through the belief that the violence in the form of armed revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat through war in a short time, managed to create a great empire in Eastern Europe and northern Asia. Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because more and more people realized that violence teaches poverty and misery, and the group needed to preserve the regimes became too small. The strength of a non-violence religion such as Christianity is that it can make people cooperate and help each other instead of fighting each other, which means that through their work they create better living conditions.
Our society is built on Christian ethics. However, the myths of the identity liberals that it is intolerant to consider that non-Christians do not have the same ethics as Christians and that the success of Western civilization is due to slavery and colonialism, means that many do not see Christian values as particularly valuable. However, without Christianity, Western civilization had not become so successful and created the society with better living conditions that we have today. The left identity liberals claim of slavery and colonialism as the basis for our prosperity is wrong. By portraying Christian Western Europe as an exceptionally evil civilization, they creates an image of Christianity as an evil religion. It was the abolition of slavery that was the basis of the success of the Western civilization, a succes that also created colonialism. Slavery and slave trade were banned in Sweden in 1335. In Europe, Christian values meant that slavery was abolished in the Middle Ages, the age when the Christian church had the greatest influence. This gave rise to technological development and created conditions for today's society with better living conditions and a higher standard of living. Before Sweden was Christianized, a large part of the income from the Vikings' ravages was to take prisoners to be sold as slaves. These incomes and the merit of forcing slaves to work were abstained. By replacing the slave market with the labor market, the person who performs the work gets paid to work instead of being forced to work. By developing their professional skills, new production methods, etc. the worker can give a greater value of his work and thus the opportunity to get more paid for it. This creates a development of working methods and technology in order to maximize results, which creates a technical and economic development. However, after the Middle Ages, the power of the church decreased and the royal power was strengthened. The need for workers that could survive hard labour in hot tropical climate in the colonies in America led to European kingdom begin to buy slaves from the slave exporting rulers in Africa who have since long time been exporting slaves to North Africa and the Middle East. However, slavery in Europe was not reintroduced, which would have been devastating for the development of society in Europe. That African rulers exported slaves was due to the fact that in Africa it was impossible to use taxation of agriculture to finanze the state as in Europe. Before the 19th century agriculture was the base for taxation in most European countries. Most of the people worked in the agriculture and agriculture produced food products that could be stored thus rulers could take part of the food stored by farmers to finance the state and the army needed to conquer a state. In hot tropical climate as in Sub-Saharan Africa it is possible to grow crops but due to the hot and humid climate food products cannot be stored and has to be consumed in the same rate as it is produced. A state can therefore in these regions not be built on taxation of agriculture. In some mountain highlands such as Ethiopia there the climate due to higher altitude is cooler food products can be stored and a state could be created on taxation of agriculture as also the Inka kingdom was built in the Andes mountains in South America. The European colonists in tropical parts of America therefore produced unhealthy products, sugar and tobacco, which thus could be stored and be transported to be sold in Europe. However sugar and tobacco cannot feed a native population.
However, without income from taxation of agriculture, rulers could gain incomes by taking captives and exporting them as slaves. The incoms were used to support the army needed to create the kingdoms and take captives for slave exports. That other parts of the world did not receive a corresponding development as in Europe was due to the fact that in many parts of the world people have Muhammed, a white slave owner with Jewish and African slaves, as prophet and supreme moral model and therefore did not see slavery as something negative that must be abolished and thus missed the development that we got in our part of the world. Slavery existed in the Muslim world long into the nineteenth century. In 1801 Sweden, in alliance with the United States, went to war against the Barbary States in North Africa as we did not accept that Swedes were sold as slaves in their slave markets.
Colonialism, that European rulers managed to conquer empires that stretched all over the world is due to the technological advances in Europe giving them access to better weapons. One claim is that the western colonialism was due to higher taxation in Europe which meant that Europeans could finance larger fleets and armies. Of course, the taxation of agriculture that was possible in a colder climate could give a higher tax burden and thus give the rulers numerically superior armies. But large armies can also be financed through slavery, by prisoners taken in war being sold as slaves in slave markets. With numerically superior armies, rulers can create empires by conquering their neighbors. But as it is very expensive to transport large armies around the world, the creation of colonies requires a superior weapon technology so that a numerically small force can conquer areas that are far from the homeland. Therefore, it was the technological development in Europe coused by abolition of slavery and not a high level of taxation that gave rise to colonialism. All rulers of the past not only our westerns attempted to conquer as large kingdoms as possible. The Macedonian King Alexander was greatly admired because he succeeded in conquering a kingdom stretching from Greece to Pakistan in the 300s before Christ. Muslim rulers conquered former Christian territories in the Middle East and North Africa and created a caliphate extending from Spain to Pakistan, but failed to conquer Europe and creted a Kalift that stretrched from Spain to Pakistan. That colonialism was exceptionally evil is contradicted, for example by the fact that many millions Hindus there killed and taken as slaves when the Muslims, due to obligation of the Qur'an that polytheists should be killed, from the 7th century onwards conquered India (Youtube video). In the 18th century, the British conquered India with Indian soldiers equipped with european weapons employed by the British East India Company, from the Muslims without a similar carnage. It was the war against slavery that created the British Empire (Youtube video, & Youtube video). The North American War of Independence of 1775–1783, through which the United States became independent, led the British to lose most of its American slave colonies. Thus, the British had no greater interest in slavery, but could instead strengthen their power by becoming a moral great power and fighting against slavery. Slavery in England and the British Isles had ceased since the Middle Ages when Wilhelm the Conqueror in the 11th century had banned slave trade. Slave owners in Jamaica who were reimbursed to release the slaves, but had left the US southern states in the empire had the cost of replacing slave slaves for free slaves to be much larger. Those who were hit hardest by British warships hunting slave ships were the slave-exporting rulers of Africa who lost their export earnings and thus could not maintain the armies they needed to defend their kingdoms, which led Europeans to conquer and divide Africa.
In order to manifest Christianity's greatest contribution to the development of society, the abolition of slavery, the Church of Sweden should set up a holiday for thanksgiving over our far-sighted Christian ancestors who already abolished slavery in the Middle Ages. When it was done in the Middle Ages when Sweden was part of the Catholic Church, it can be done ecumenically in collaboration with the Catholic. To celebrate the abolition of slavery in the Middle Ages and its importance in creating the society that we have today is therefore important for getting people to understand that left myths are wrong and thus creating a picture of Christianity as a good religion. Gratitude to our ancestors as a result of Christian faith discontinued slavery has provided better living conditions for anyone living in Sweden regardless of membership in the Swedish Church, which is why this should be a matter for everyone.
The Crusades are often mentioned as proof that Christianity is also a doctrine that advocates war. When the first crusade began in 1095 when Pope Urban II called on the Christians to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims, the Muslims had conquered the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily and Spain in a short time. The pope had to do something to stop the Muslim expansion. If Europe had been conquered, we would have had sharia law and rulers with the war fighting slave owner as prophet and moral role model and slavery would not have been abolished and we would not have had the development of society that created the industrial revolution and our present prosperity. If the war was waged only by the countries that were on the front lines of the Muslim conquerors, it was only a matter of time before the whole of Europe had been conquered country by country. Therefore, it was necessary to gather warriors from all over Christian Europe for the war against the Muslim conquerors. There were two alternatives for this, slavery or modifying Christian doctrine so that it became a religious act to go to war against the Muslims. The Muslim conquest was driven in part by religious injunctions to conquer the entire world and create the global caliphate with sharia law and was financed through slavery. The warriors took in the enemy countries "houses of war" prisoners who were sold on slave markets which provided income to finance the war. The great demand for women to have as sex slaves meant that men were often killed and the women was taken as prisoners. If the pope had chosen to finance the war with slavery, however, the monarchy would have gained more influence at the expense of the church, and we would not have had the development of society that the abolition of slavery gave rise to. Instead, the pope chose to modify Christian doctrine to mobilize warriors from all over Europe to go to war. Since the mobilization took place with religious motives, it was natural that the primary goal was to reconquer Jerusalem and the Holy Land, which succeeded in creating the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But other recaptures were also successful. Norman knights conquered Sicily while the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula took a long time and was completed in 1493 with the conquest of Granada. However, they did not succeed in retaining the Holy Land, which is because European weapon technology in the Middle Ages was mainly about making armor to make warriors less vulnerable to enemy weapons. However, it can get too hot to fight in armor on hot summer days in the Middle East. One solution was to build a fortress where they locked themself in during the summer. When autumn came, they put on your armor and rode out and drove away the Muslims, after which you sowed the fields and salvaged the harvest in the spring before summer came when they closed the gate again to the fortress. After the Middle Ages, when weapons technology developed into firearms, European warriors became more successful also in countries with warmer climates.
In addition to giving a positive development to society, can a Christian believe give personal success? Why should you pray? Since God is good and all-powerful, one need not pray for God to become aware of one's needs and problems. On the other hand, an important effect of prayer can be that prayer reprograms one's subconscious and thereby counteracts one being exposed to temptations that create problems. In the prayer of our Father it says, "Do not subject me to temptation, but deliver me from evil". Following the gospel will achieve prosperity. However the probability of getting prosperity will increase but it will not be guaranteed. Most problems for persons are actually self-inflicted as the individual has fallen for a temptation brought about by his own subconscious mind. The purpose of this temptation is to influence the individual to do what his genes want him to do. According to Richard Dawkin's book The Selfish Gene (1st edition 1976), all living beings are slaves under their genes. By following the gospel he can be more able to resist these temptations. By rewarding the violent man with feelings of lust when he practices violence against others, his own genes through his subconscious can influence him to become violent. The purpose of the genes is that he will by force defeat the other males and get the exclusive right to mate with the females. An abused woman would not be abused if she did not seek out violent men because her own subconscious makes her experience violent men attractive. The purpose of the genes is that she will get violent sons who can be successful in the fight for the females and thereby many grandchildren. The alcoholic would not have to become an alcoholic if he did not fall for the temptation to drink alcohol that comes from his own subconscious rewarding him with feelings of lust when drinking. The genes' purpose in getting people to drink alcohol may be that the mating game of the species of human in our society often takes place in entertainment venues with full rights (alcohol serving permit) alternative party with alcohol serving, where the male awakens the female by bidding on alcohol. Women with genes for pleasure feelings at alcohol consumption experience men who lack these genes as boring because they do not make her drink alcohol and thus the woman does not get the pleasure feelings needed for her to experience him as exciting and attractive. Men who drink can more easily attract a woman to drink and thus have a greater chance of finding a woman. If those who are tempted by their own subconscious to drink alcohol have more children than those who do not have such a temptation, the proportion of individuals who are tempted will increase over time until almost everyone has genes that give rise to this temptation. Since the purpose of temptation is to influence the individual to go through the affairs of the genes, it is thus not so easy to reprogram one's subconscious, so one must have a strong faith and pray earnestly to have a chance to succeed. If faith and prayer can help resist temptations that counter personal success, Christian faith will lead to a better life.
An issue that is often discussed is the ban on female priests coming from Paul's words that the woman should be silent in the church. To understand the commandment, it should be noted that Paul worked in a pre-Christian time before Christianity became a dominant world religion. The great importance of Christianity stems from the fact that it is the religion that has best succeeded in counteracting the need to use violence against others, which comes from the desire of the flesh caused by man being created by natural selection. This need for violence is felt mainly in males, i.e. men, driven to try to show that they are big and strong males who have defeated everyone else. The purpose of Jesus' words that if someone hits you on one cheek, turn the other one as well, is to influence people not to use violence against others. For men who want to show that they are big and strong males who have defeated everyone else, however, a completely different offer applies. Not "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth" but "beat everyone else so that they realize who is the biggest and strongest and if someone hits you then hit him a thousand times so that he realizes that he has made the biggest mistake of his life". Those who try to follow this commandment are called psychopaths. Psychopaths can certainly understand other people's suffering but enjoy inflicting suffering on others. If he succeeds in causing suffering in others, without anyone daring to do anything against him, the psychopath gets a euphoric feeling of happiness that he has defeated everyone else and thus succeeded in becoming the greatest and strongest. If the gospel in Paul's day was preached by women, there was a risk that men did not take the message but thought that this is something that only applies to women and that I as a man have to live by a completely different message if I am to survive. Now, however, the Gospel has been preached for 2000 years, Christianity is a dominant religion and there are many male role models who have lived by the Christian message why Paul's commandment no longer fulfills the same function. Therefore, women priests today play an important role in the ministry of the Gospel, but it should be borne in mind that male role models are needed to reach certain groups with the message.
How would Sweden have been that is strongly influenced by the Christian message based on Jesus, if it had been stated in the Gospels that Jesus, instead of making miracles and healing the sick, had conquered a city, killed the men and taken the women as sex slaves. What a moral role model you have, whether you have a moral role model who conquered a city, beheaded the men and took the women as sex slaves, or a moral role model who did wonders, cured the sick and claimed to love your neighbor, has great significance for how what society we get. The replacement theology has been of great importance in getting the believers to focus on Jesus and his good deeds, and ignore for instance Joshua in the Old Testament and his genocide. That many today can not believe in Jesus is because Jesus according to the scriptures did things that according to modern rationalists are not possible to do, to perform miracles, cure the sick, raise the dead and resurrect from the dead, why they see religion as something you can not say that one believes in. However, they have been influenced by the good deeds that Jesus did and can have a positive attitude towards the church. Muhammad, on the other hand, according to the scriptures, did things that, according to modern rational beliefs, were possible to do besides flying one night to Jerusalem and visiting heaven. That he 5 years after he became ruler of Medina, in 627 killed the Jews he had not managed to expel from the city and in 628 conquered Khaybar, beheaded the men and took the women as sex slaves, is something that rationalists can not dismiss as impossible to do. Although many who have fled Muslim countries are not attracted to the violence perpetrated by their "moral role model", they can say out of self-preservation that they are Muslims in order not to be subjected to violence by religious fanatics. That Islam could take over the Middle East may be because the anti-Trinitarian Christians who were there before Islam believed that Jesus was only human and did not do things that according to common sense are not possible to do, so the rulers could transform the religion by introducing a new more powerful prophet, not divine who did things that are not possible to do, but a ruler blessed by God through victories in wars that, like Joshua in the Old Testament, conquered cities and killed people.
In the time of Jesus 2000 years ago, books were very exclusive, handwritten on papyrus. Absolutely not man's property. Among the Jews, the people gathered one day a week in the house where the common book was kept to read aloud from it. Other peoples also had books and there was a large collection of books in Alexandria, but books were available only to an exclusive elite in society. In other nations, temples were built with images of gods, while the Jews' ban on depicting God meant that financial resources could be directed towards making books so that all Jews could have access to a house with a book. The book contained a collection of stories about the history of the people, various prophets, commandments from God and myths about the creation of the world.
Did God command genocide in the bible? Before Christianity genocide was not something you denied. In the Old Testament the book of Joshua starts with the fall of the walls of Jericho and killing all the people in the city and ending with a list of all the towns and villages whose inhabitants were killed. In that time there was no such things as holocaust deniers. Contrary, it was proof that our God is more powerful than your God. Therefore the extermination of men, women and children done by Joshua was included in the Old Testament as proof that the God of Israel is the only true God. And as proof that it was done on the command of God it started with the miraculous fall of the walls of Jericho. However, this shows why it was necessary for God to send his son Jesus to this world to change our minds in order to create a better world with better living condition. And today instead of seeing genocides as proof of the power of God we ask the question why did God allow this to happen. However the improvement of living conditions due to the message of Jesus was not evenly distributed around the world since it in large parts of the world was counteracted by other messages such as the teachings of Muhammad. Muhammad did not at his conquests the same as Joshua, he only killed the males and toke women and children as slaves (the same as the Romans did then they conquered Carthage). Many regarded what Muhammad was able to do as sign that his revelations with commands to kill/enslave unbelievers was from God as the Israelites in the Old Testament regarded that Joshua was able to do as proof of the power of the only true God.
The fact that Jesus was a Jew meant that he had a literary knowledge even though he did not belong to the highest strata of society. The significance of the Bible is above all that the Gospels contain the story of Jesus while the Old Testament was the literary knowledge that Jesus had. After the advent of the art of printing, books became much more accessible, which is why today we are flooded with books. The notion that the Bible and thus also the Old Testament were absolute truths stated by God thus arose in order to make it extremely exclusive compared to all other books. If you read the Bible, you will find places, but not so many, where it says that God says something, e.g. after jesu baptism a voice is heard saying "this is my chosen son". If all that is said is absolute truths stated by God, why does it say that a prophet receives a call from God to preach to people. And if you read the introduction to the Gospel of Luke, it says that it is a story about Jesus written by a man and not a collection of recorded revelations from God. If one tries to create a Christian Qur'an by gathering all the places with statements from God, it becomes a very thin and difficult book to understand. According to Muslims, the Qur'an is written by God because it is a collection of revelations from God that the Prophet has received. One problem one might have tried to solve by claiming that the Bible is absolute truths uttered by God, was that Muslims recruited followers by claiming that they have a holy book written by God while Christians are written by people, just as their law sharia is written by God while the laws of Christians are written by men. But just because something is claimed to be written by God does not mean that it is necessarily so, why one must compare the message of the Qur'an with that of the Bible. On the day of Pentecost, God sent the Holy Spirit to guide the people. The notion that everything written by Jews before the birth of Jesus is absolute truths stated by God, while what was written by Christians after receiving guidance from the Holy Spirit is not, contradicts the message that God sent the Holy Spirit to guide Christians. . When the apostles spread the message about Jesus, they took stories from the Old Testament and showed that they were prophecies about Jesus. God had included in the writings of the Jews messages about the coming messiah. When you as a church host read today's text from the Gospel book, selected texts from the Old Testament work in the same way as predictions for what is in the Gospel text.
Creationism intends to prove the existence of God by rejecting the theory of evolution and finding something in biological evolution that cannot be considered to be caused by evolution in order to establish that we are created by God and not by biological evolution. However, it means that the existence of God would depend on what we humans can understand and explain. Moreover, the sin of man is not because the first humans ate fruits from a particular tree but are negative side effects of God creating humans through natural selection. If the creationists were right, we would be sinless and live in a much better world, and God would not have had to send his Son Jesus into this world to die on a cross for our sins.
Erik Levlin