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The invention of the printing press. It's importance in transforming human civilization is always underestimated.
I would agree, Gutenberg's printing press changed the world forever. Imagine a world where books were handwritten, scarce and very expensive. Information was hard to come by... then here comes a way to print faster and cheaper, information for the little guy! Newspapers, magazines.... material to read!
Wow! Some really interesting points of discussion and many I had not considered.
I guess for myself I was trying to "wrap my mind" around an event, "documented" in some way....paper, clay tablets, oral traditions, strata layers etc that was so significant that time itself was and IS measured relative to that event....so a time "zero" event.
Creation or the "big bang" would rate right up there no doubt.... It surely happened though no one human person was there to "see" the event. The dinosaurs "disappeared" and asteroids smashed into the planet causing utter devastation even as humans define devastation and so-forth...
Perhaps there is a quandary with events that don't fit a convenient "time" definition...like the big bang...or creation if you will. Such events not only mark time they seem to transcend time....Science tells us that the universe is STILL expanding from the (most recent?) Big Bang....so in many ways that "event" isn't even OVER yet....will it EVER be? History is a thing totally dependent on time but some events were so momentous that to speak of them in-terms of "time" or even "history" almost doesn't make sense....perhaps life or Life is an "event" that DEFIES time and is occurring beginning, stopping continually in such a way that there is not a single point were we human observers can say "here"....xyz "occurred" and we move forward from there...
And then there is the matter of men's souls. We have them, souls...but there is no scientific evidence really that can measure or quantify a "soul". We see people who seem like the don't have them and how they behave and those that claim that they do. Do souls transcend time and space? Are they historical "events"? Certainly they "exist" (what ever that means in this context)...so is it possible for a metaphysical event to be historically significant even to the point of DEFINING humanity?
Jesus was the event that changed history the most . Like it or not, believe it or not, no other single event changed history any more that christianity .
From this came forth the fall of the empires that led up to the 2 greatist nations that ever exisited .
Jesus was the event that changed history the most . Like it or not, believe it or not, no other single event changed history any more that christianity .
From this came forth the fall of the empires that led up to the 2 greatist nations that ever exisited .
Jesus (assuming he existed, something not necessarily proven) was a person, not an event. Arguments that supernatural events occurred will fail, because those events are not historical. If you want to argue that the rise of Christianity is the most significant event in human history, feel free, but that's entirely different than arguing that a guy rose from the dead, because there's no proof of that, nor even any good evidence for it. It is this sort of inability to read the directions that causes so much frustration in thinking people, not merely on message boards (where it's endemic), but in society as a whole.
As for the second statement you made, it's quite ethnocentric and temporally myopic.
It wasn't Christianity that made Europe flourish, it was Europe that made Christianity flourish. By the Middle Ages, Christianity's irrationality had destroyed Europe, in spite of the continents huge geographical advantages, while the non-Christian world forged ahead with superior cultures. Europe enjoyed assets like coal, navigable rivers, temperate climate, predictable rainfall, forests, arable land---all of which allowed for the industrial revolution to take place, which somehow prevailed in spite of Christianity's intellectual orthodoxy, intolerant inquisitions and belligerent monarchies.
If anything, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ set humanity back by a millennium or so. Perhaps it is the answer to the OP, but it was negative significance, as opposed to positive.
Wow! Some really interesting points of discussion and many I had not considered.
......And then there is the matter of men's souls. We have them, souls...but there is no scientific evidence really that can measure or quantify a "soul". We see people who seem like the don't have them and how they behave and those that claim that they do. Do souls transcend time and space? Are they historical "events"? Certainly they "exist" (what ever that means in this context)...so is it possible for a metaphysical event to be historically significant even to the point of DEFINING humanity?
We would have to define Soul. The definition of soul (to me) is life's spark, or essence. Every living thing has a soul. Including plants and insects....There is no soul where there is no life.....
That being said, the soul is carried on by all forms of life. The mass of ones body, the energy in our cells.... it was quite an epiphany when I realized that my mass would be recycled. My water, the energy in my tissues and my nutrients. It is life's cycle.
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