>>161459Yeah this. "Judeo-Christianity" isn't a real thing.
I basically agree with OP in the sense that I do, sincerely, think that the massive erasure of history and culture was a great loss. Of the three biggest Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, although there are other smaller ones like Samaritanism, Manichaeism, etc., too), Christianity has been the worst just in terms of eradicating pre-Abrahamic faiths on lands where it dominated - which isn't a moralistic or speculative critique, but simply a commentary on the state of Zoroastrianism in Iran, Buddhism and folk religions in Muslim-dominated parts of eastern Asia, Hinduism in India (which was once under an especially repressive, by Islamic standards, Muslim rule), etc. when compared to the state of traditional pre-Abrahamic faiths in Christian Europe and even in North America. Basically, one state is a state of existence (and, in countries like Iran, cultural celebration), and the other is a state of eradication. To my knowledge, the only European states where pre-Abrahamic non-Christianized religious practices still survive (without having to have been revived from a state of eradication), to a very small extent, are Finland and parts of Russia and eastern Europe/Eurasia. Historic Christianity was even the most hostile towards other Abrahamic faiths of all three of the biggest ones, as evidenced not only by the Crusades, but also by the comparative ease with which Jews lived under Muslim rule at most times when compared to the hostility they regularly met in Christian countries.
I actually do not begrudge Christianity or Islam or Judaism, on their face, as religious faiths, but the damage they've done to diverse philosophies, cultures, histories, and religious traditions is nevertheless a horrible thing. I actually, despite my reservations about Christianity, like Jesus as a figure; I think his philosophy was generally a very nice one. I find old Christian architecture to be beautiful, and see the concept of Christian neighborliness and compassion, at least in its letter, to be very good, and I admire the communal aspects of early Christianity and of Christian monastic life. Muhammad was a great leader, and Shia Islam is a surprisingly rationalistic school of religious thought, and I see in Islam that there is a devotion to being true to a collective sense of justice bigger than one's self and one's own life or death, and I think that this particular reconciliation of the meaning and purpose of life and mortality is an area where religion still exceeds other forms of thought. Jewish, Samaritan, and early Abrahamic myths/fables are interesting, and, like most religions, contain some interesting philosophical content.
I don't believe that there is any practical reality in turning back the clock, or even in turning it
forward into a half-imagined future. To me, there are clearly things about human subjective reality (that is, life and death from the subjective point of view of a single human being) which draw people towards religion, spirituality, and spiritual philosophy. Even communism, at its most successful, operated with faith in history and faith in the transcendence, past an individual subject's death, of humanity, embodied in the workers and their collective power and ability to direct the course of history. Without all the distinctive trappings of Allah, that is still, in its manifest power, a God by another name. So to me, God, Gods, etc. are not a problem to be overcome; culture, history, and common love and common goals and common works are things to be celebrated and championed. Though we cannot, today, take hold of religious institutions, which operate functionally as arms of existent imperialist states (see Evangelical Christianity/Prosperity Gospel in America), I personally see it as valuable to relate to people on spiritual terms where their desire to do good begins to resemble, in their eyes, the works asked of them by the divine.
I see humankind living with a divine unity which transcends all today's faiths rather than seeking their cultural destruction. I see a great awakening of the human spirit and the human body which strives towards liberation, and all religious currents where freedom and justice are sincerely fought for are allies in my mind until that day comes, even though I don't believe in relying strictly upon them.