Man, cathedrals are beautiful, but now I’m wishing they had a religious motivation to construct fantastic, ornate furnaces (hopefully ones that do not necessitate human sacrifice, or where sacrifice has been abstracted away from their ritual purpose). If Carthage had martyred Christ instead of Rome, we might have had awesome hearths throughout Europe wherever there are crosses today. Great for worshipping in winter, perhaps bad for the lungs! Could a population suffering emphysema in large part have held off the Ottomans?
I can't see child sacrifice and Christianity co-operating in any universe. That's the sort of thing that the early Church fathers would have directly condemned, much as they condemned the sexual sins of the Romans.
What a deep thought experiment! But I don't think a civilization's values are so arbitrary. A culture's ideas have a vital impact on its ability to survive and outcompete rival ways of life.
Man, cathedrals are beautiful, but now I’m wishing they had a religious motivation to construct fantastic, ornate furnaces (hopefully ones that do not necessitate human sacrifice, or where sacrifice has been abstracted away from their ritual purpose). If Carthage had martyred Christ instead of Rome, we might have had awesome hearths throughout Europe wherever there are crosses today. Great for worshipping in winter, perhaps bad for the lungs! Could a population suffering emphysema in large part have held off the Ottomans?
I can't see child sacrifice and Christianity co-operating in any universe. That's the sort of thing that the early Church fathers would have directly condemned, much as they condemned the sexual sins of the Romans.
What a deep thought experiment! But I don't think a civilization's values are so arbitrary. A culture's ideas have a vital impact on its ability to survive and outcompete rival ways of life.