What If?

Growing up, I became aware that much of our current circumstances have been determined by previous events. Consider technology. When videotape came on the market, we had two options: VHS or Beta. Beta was, essentially, a superior product. But VHS had better marketing. So we got an inferior product because of marketing, not technology. Or consider PCs. Apple and IBM had their versions out in a similar time frame, but IBM had what was called "open architecture" -- they allowed outsiders to have access to programming instructions. So IBM became the market standard and Apple is only recently recovering from that blow.

I remember an episode of the '60's TV show, Dennis the Menace, where Dennis tried to win a car for his mom by guessing the number of balls in a jar. An elderly lady won, but when she heard why Dennis wanted to win, she donated her old car to Mrs. Mitchell. It was ... get this ... an electric car. Yes, back in 1960 there were still some electric cars to be had. So, why are they new on our market? Because the gas engine was developed to have greater range and speed on newer and better roads. So ... what if the electric car was pursued instead? Market forces would have driven us to a different place, a place the industry is only now trying to achieve.

These were the kinds of things I mused about (occasionally) growing up. "What if?" You couldn't know, actually, but it was an interesting thought experiment. There was no way to compare two possible technology lines to see which would have had what affect on society this far down the road. Just a matter of interest.

This isn't always the case, however. It is possible, for instance, to ask, "What if Christianity had not had such an effect?" A lot of what we see in modern society today was built on the back of 2,000 years of Christendom. Christianity has influenced morals, laws, worldviews, science, philosophy, medicine ... just about any major component of Western Civilization. Asking, "What would it have been like without that?" is actually possible, though, because there have been examples. We know how civilization progressed with Christian influences. Under Christendom we have nice things like human rights endowed by a Creator, world charities, and hospitals. Modern science owes its beginnings to the Christian belief that a rational God made a rational universe, and we could follow it out. Capitalism is a product of the Puritan work ethic. Martin Luther King based his civil rights movement in America in his Christian beliefs. We can see what effects Christianity has on societies. What about ... not?

You can find societies that have not been influenced by Christianity. There aren't too many left, of course, but go to some jungle tribe in South America and see how that works for you. For a more sophisticated version, try out the historical Soviet Union or Communist China. These were societies built on an atheist worldview. How did that work for them? Stalin executed an estimated 20 million people. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn estimated that 66 million political prisoners died in prison under Soviet communism. Mao is estimated to have had 40-70 million executed. Another communist, atheist dictator, Cambodia's Pol Pot, is reputed to have killed 1.7 million. It's not that atheism killed these millions. It's that the removal of the premise of a God who endows people with rights removes the reason to not eliminate anyone that is in the way. So when the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own oppression of its people and the decline of its economy, it was not unexpected. Without religious influence, it would be mandatory.

I don't know what life would have been like if Beta became prevalent rather than VHS. I can't say for sure how things would have been different if electric cars were developed rather than gasoline-driven vehicles. Would we live in a better world if Apple had been the primary PC rather than IBM's version? Who knows? But I can tell you this. Given examples on both sides, I can say with certainty that the world is a better place because of Christianity. I can go one step further. The more a society (oh, say, like our own) distances itself from Christian moorings, the farther away from quality it will get. We've seen it. It's not pretty.