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Afghanistan is wracked by multiple decades long wars and governed by lunatics. It’s not clear to me that Bangladesh is worse and it’s unclear that Pakistan is significantly worse, especially not in ways that aren’t just side effects of geography(mountains+third world is a bad combination).
The last civilized society run by an elite with Indo-European religious beliefs was what, Persia in the 600’s? Abrahamaic religions, Confucianism, and communism have all shown they can run a civilized and technological society. It may not be to your or my preferences, but they can. In contrast Indo-European religions have not.
Hindu supremacy is laughably dumb to me. Hindus didn’t rule themselves for centuries before British budgetary constraints came due for a reason. My ancestors stopped practicing Indo-European paganism under king Clovis for a reason. Some beliefs are just better.
Bangaldesh is absolutely worse by every metric.Christianity exists in both Africa and Scandinavian nations the way Islam exists in both Turkey and Nigeria. Is it Islam's fault that Nigeria is bad or the fault of Christianity that ghettos and inner cities cannot be fixed? Leftism itself came out of protestant values, I'm pretty sure nothing like that was ever encouraged by people of the steppe.
India was alright up until early medieval ages. Indo European religions absolutely can and have run societies fine. The decay here is due to the people being too stupid and lacking the characteristics required to abideyby by their religious beliefs. This is in ways inevitable, things peak and decline. The Victorian brits were far more dominant than current ones.
Christian beliefs are just not better, better than Islam but they are just not better. I don't write agaisnt about them because the majority of people here are practicing Christians. Buddhism btw is an offshoot of Hindu values, Buddha was an Indo European man and his worldview exists in plenty of East Asian nations, even ones without explicit confucian values.
Europe did well because of its people, it would have done well had it been Islamic, Jewish or kept it's real faith alive.
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Many pagan societies were at the same level of technological development as their Abrahamic/Confucian contemporaries, though. They weren’t comparatively primitive. They were defeated militarily, yes, but it’s nowhere near as simple as saying that this was because their societies were not able to maintain civilization and technology while the non-pagan ones were.
A huge number of the “conversions” of pagans to Christianity were compelled by military force and just straight-up slaughter and torture. Charlemagne had to fight the brutal thirty-year Saxon Wars to conquer, subjugate, and forcibly convert the pagan Saxons, who were a peer society.
The Northern Crusades were fought in the 12th century to conquer and forcibly convert the pagan Slavic, Baltic, and Finnic people, who had managed to resist Christianization over a thousand years after the birth of Christ. These peoples were not savages living in mud-huts.
The Muslim conquest of the Zoroastrian Persians led to such brutal persecution of those who refused to accept Islamization that they had to flee all the way to the Indian subcontinent, where their modern descendants, the Parsees, are very disproportionately successful and wealthy relative not only to Hindus but also to the Abrahamic Muslims who, in your formulation, should be the ones who are the most successful and civilized.
Abrahamic religions didn’t simply “win in the marketplace of ideas.” Certainly a great number of conversion were sincere! A much larger number of them, though, were made either out of political/economic considerations — leaders wishing to become integrated into the political and financial networks emanating from the Christian Mediterranean — or by force. We didn’t have any opportunity to observe how a pagan society with a European level of human capital would have handled the Industrial Revolution, as they’d all been wiped out hundreds of years prior. The closest example we do have — Japan post-Meiji Restoration — is one of the most successful and civilized industrial societies on earth. I think it’s wildly dishonest to claim that paganism can’t sustain civilization or technology, when we simply have no idea whether or not it could. We have little to no data to work with.
Agree on all points. You see the same religious trains of thoughts in two wildly different places and somehow only the smarter ones are "blessed by god".
Abrahamic faiths, Islam and Christianity work on conversions, devotees having instincts to convert others indirectly or call others demon worshippers are understandable to an extent, they still not make low effort easily disprovable claims that do nothing but seem antagonistic.
The single most harmful strain of social chaos was a result of protestant values in modern leftism which seems to be beyond solutions as of now. Indo European societies existed around ancestor worship, you could never have had a pope equivalent telling people to accept refugees in such a system without the said person losing all relevance overnight.
People had to convert due to violence or at least threats protected by violence the same way many have to abide by crazy laws in our own nations. Modern society is explicitly anti christ and far more technologically sound than the 1800s, so is only leftism capable of sustaining the world's most advanced point times?
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