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Look at your bible

He shined God's light of Truth in a dark and dismal world. A light that all who came to believe in him could follow to Heaven. ________________________________________________________________________ that is somewhat correct, but the main reason why Jesus is place third in the most influential men in history is more than just a religious one. Jesus of course started Christianity, and shaped the European world, he even influenced Science through the founding fathers of Science like Issac Newton and Galileo Galilei. Jesus gave us a moral code of honor, respect, piety that should be respected by not just the believer but by the non-believer. Jesus emphasized the golden rule 'treat others how you'd like to be treated' which is our current moral standard in our school systems and modern day society. Today people have lost their moral codes and honestly think what they do is actually the best without taking into consideration any rules or opinions, which in retrospect is dangerous to society. In my opinion as a non-believing Deist I feel that if we all followed the teachings of Jesus we wouldn't be in such global turmoil. Jesus not only affected civilization, ethics, science, religion, and philosophy but he gave us an examplary attitude towards life that could wipe the bereaved face off a destitute family living in a squalid habitat. Jesus gave us the sense of hope that we can all apreciate, Jesus taught believers how to pray, he taught the gentiles to stop being sacrificial monsters, and he gave non-believers and believers alike an examplary lifestyle for all to follow and cherish. _________________________________________________________________ No one can doubt that Jesus had AN effect on history. The institutions founded in his name dominated history though the middle ages. These instituions had a profound effect on shaping our globe though the church's influence on and interference with the colonial period. Wars fought in the name of Jesus changed history forever. We are still dealing with the effect of the Crusades, for example. In every age, the rich and powerful seek to further concentrate wealth and power, and the church / the churches provide the moral cover. Witness The Devine Right of Kings. Witness conservatives using religious wedge issues to garner votes for the politics that resulted in the profound redistribution of wealth upward in the past decade.

But these effects are hardly salutary. The real question is whether Jesus made the world a better place for most people. Was the world a very different or a much better place in the first century CE (AD) than it was in the first century BCE (BC)? Were there fewer wars? Did people get more to eat? Was wealth more equitably distributed so that fewer people were living in misery? Did anyone really pay attention to the majority of the words attributed to Jesus, that preponderance of teaching that admonished us to take care of the poor and needy, and to suspect the motives and morals of the rich and powerful? Jesus said many very nice things, or at least those who wrote what they were told he said (eighty to several hundred years after his death) wrote very nice things. If these nice things help people to feel better about themselves, or teach people to be better neighbors or family members or citizens, wonderful. But this personal growth can also come from the teachings of Kalil Gibran, for example, or many other poets and philosophers. The question for history, at least for moral history, is whether what Jesus said changed how most people treated most other people.

Another way to ask this is: If Jesus never existed, would the world actually be any different from where we are today? Empires would still have been built, and fallen. Technology would still have given us the printing press, the plow, the internal combustion engine, the heart transplant. The middle class would still have created itself, then grown to dominance. And we would have invented religions that helped us feel understand our connection to each other ("Use the Force, Luke!"), or to have less fear of death.

I'm sorry if this does not meet the spirit of WikiAnswers: It seems I can't answer my own questions, much less that of the original inquirer. In many ways, I envy the first responder, who believes he has Answers. Most of us only have more questions.

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16y ago

What else can I help you with?