tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20103790.post8748895430073913546..comments2022-04-01T20:49:18.401+01:00Comments on I'm not making this up: Worship thatmarkbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08821036154651111315noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20103790.post-44467076690963221802011-11-27T23:27:29.036+00:002011-11-27T23:27:29.036+00:00Have you read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years...Have you read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt? He posits a similar question to yours--what if the Black Death had wiped out 99% of Europeans, rather than 1/3, leaving the world virtually without Europeans or Christians? Imagine the last 700 years totally different. I won't spoil it for you.<br /><br />I tracked to this post after seeing a C4C tag on your latest submission to online writer's workshop. I was thinking of clicking. I've got three C4C things up there myself I just posted in the last several days.<br /><br />Totally different answer to your question than either you or Robinson came to--Marco Polo. He returned from China with pasta and gunpowder. Guns (and diseases soldiers brought) wiped out the great civilizations of the Americas. Then colonialism brought Christianity there and to Africa. So, yes there would still be Christians without Marco Polo. But they would be far less prevalent.<br /><br />Last answer, prostyletizing. Judaism didn't want converts--indeed a rabbi has to refuse you three times symbolically before you can convert. Buddhism, Shintoism and Hinduism really couldn't care less that you are not Buddhist, Shinto or HIndu. The great world's religions where it is your fault that the world is not perfect because you don't believe as they do are Christianity and Islam. No Jain or Bahai has ever put a gun to anyone's head and said "covert or die." <br /><br />AllanAllannoreply@blogger.com