Why No Major Western Religions?

[Augustus]

Why are all major religions from the East?

Even historically, Rome was full of Mirtha-worshippers and Manichaeans.

Why hasn't the West (Europe, the Americas etc.) produced any religions the likes of Islam or Zoroastrianism?

I'm not talking about small Pagan religions followed by a small amount of people who are essentially re-inventing it.

We just didn't seem to create anything on that scale and pass it along.

Protestantism and its offshoots like secular humanism. Marxist communism, etc would be on my list.

Until (arguably) Zoroastrianism, religions were not universalist, but primarily ethnic.

At the time universal religions became popular, the Mediterranean was the main centre of cultural and military power and so spread their religions.

These universal religions then became re-ethnicised (Islam, Protestantism, Humanism, etc. ) and spread through the dominant powers or later eras, so the cycle continues.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Yes, but they are essentially connected to the ME, not the rest of Europe. The Romans are really the first true European, West-looking civilisation. Sure Greece had philosophies, but they hardly spread to the Scandinavians etc.

Exactly. Because of the Romans the Greek thought became European. Scandinavians don't teach Plato and Aristotle in schools?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Why hasn't the West (Europe, the Americas etc.) produced any religions the likes of Islam or Zoroastrianism?

The Americas did. Primarily the English and Spanish destroyed it with not a whole lot surviving today.
I would argue it was the same in Europe. The Celtic people dominated much of Europe at one point, but they didn't really write anything down until much, much later, closer to when we started having Irish, Scots and Welsh. Then the Germanic tribes ascended. But they were militarily thrashed and diminished by Rome (as were the Celts). And we know what of there's does survive does have some Christian Scribe tampering. And what we have that does survive isn't much because the was destroyed by Rome, Ottomans, Christians, et. al..

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Yes, but they are essentially connected to the ME, not the rest of Europe. The Romans are really the first true European, West-looking civilisation. Sure Greece had philosophies, but they hardly spread to the Scandinavians etc.

The Greek Philosophy is still considered the bedrock and foundations of Western Democracy and Society. And of course they also had a heavy influence in Ottoman thought.
Due to the Mediterranean Exchanges I think it's safe to say Europe, Asia Minor and Northern Africa can all rightly claim various aspects of Greek philosophy.
But I also get what you're saying. While even Rome was heavily influenced by Greece, most of Europe was subjected to Roman rule, and as Christianity spread Europe would still largely turn to Rome for influence even after it's decline as a state.

 

[Rival]

Exactly. Because of the Romans the Greek thought became European. Scandinavians don't teach Plato and Aristotle in schools?

This is modern.

The Vikings did not exactly bring Greek philosophy to the Saxons.

Wish people would grasp what I'm saying. I'm talking about Europe pre Christianity. Why so hard?

What books were pre Christian Europeans writing about their religions and philosophies?

 

[crossfire]

This is modern.

The Vikings did not exactly bring Greek philosophy to the Saxons.

Wish people would grasp what I'm saying. I'm talking about Europe pre Christianity. Why so hard?

What books were pre Christian Europeans writing about their religions and philosophies?

Aside from the Greeks and Etruscans, Europe was rather late with written language. There is a rather large corpus of Greek writings. The Greeks got their writing from the Phoenicians. Germanic Runes weren't used until the 2nd century AD.

European religion was passed down through oral tradition, sometimes poetic in nature.

 

[Koldo]

Why are all major religions from the East?

Even historically, Rome was full of Mirtha-worshippers and Manichaeans.

Why hasn't the West (Europe, the Americas etc.) produced any religions the likes of Islam or Zoroastrianism?

I'm not talking about small Pagan religions followed by a small amount of people who are essentially re-inventing it.

We just didn't seem to create anything on that scale and pass it along.

As for the Americas because they were colonized by Christian europeans.

As for Europe, I don't know much, but as far as I do, Constantine had a major role.

 

[Rival]

As for the Americas because they were colonized by Christian europeans.

They had hundreds of thousands of years.....

They arrived around 13,500 years ago.

 

[Koldo]

They had hundreds of thousands of years.....

And they had/have their own religions.
Historically, the main way to spread religion is through conquest and/or the influence of a ruler. The colonizers won.

 

[RestlessSoul]

And they had/have their own religions.
Historically, the main way to spread religion is through conquest and/or the influence of a ruler. The colonizers won.

India was colonised by the Mughals and the British, but remains majority Hindu. Greece was colonised by the Ottomans, but is almost universally Orthodox Christian. And the Jews have retained their unique religion throughout centuries of invasion, persecution and exile. So clearly conquest and colonisation alone, doesn’t account for the eradication of indigenous religions.

 

[Bear Wild]

Patriarchal culture was rampant around the world since the time of the Indo-European conquest. The existences of goddesses in cultures did not protect women from oppression. Some cultures were a little more open than others, but all of them were pretty bad. Consider how deeply misogynistic Greek and Roman culture was. SMH no, sorry dude. You cannot claim that paganism necessarily gives women a better deal.

You completely misunderstand. I know you to be open and understanding. I am not talking about the Greek and roman of the city-state. The development of cities helped lead to the subjugation of women. I am talking about those cultures that were still connected with the land. You cannot subjugate the people if you must depend on them for your survival. Those whose cultures still absolutely required the input of women to maintain life did still honor women and the goddess. That changed with the development of cities which separated the people from the land. In these cultures the dependence of the contribution of the woman was then seen as secondary which lead to the increasing decay of the value of what woman contribute. Evidence even of the late Nordic culture where patriarchal culture was taking hold still show women as the warrior in archeological record and not just in idealization. The role of women before this time was even stronger with new evidence that women also were hunters. Native American culture particularly in the Iroquois culture placed women in the control of the council with the women. There is this need for Christians to demonize those of the pagan religions touting superiority and yet women in most pagan cultures prior to the development of the city that was dethatched from the land were not only realized women as vital to the survival but as essential to connection with the land. Christianity placed god as a man, Celtic culture placed the goddess as the sovereignty figure. So no I am correct on this.

 

[Koldo]

India was colonised by the Mughals and the British, but remains majority Hindu.

India was already absolutely massive during the british raj. Britain had neither the power, nor the time, to pull it off. How would Britain achieve that when it's own population was like one tenth of India's population?

Greece was colonised by the Ottomans, but is almost universally Orthodox Christian.

In no small part because (1) the Greek Orthodox Church retained much of it's power during the Ottoman Empire and (2) the population exchange that happened between Greece and Turkey. It is also worth of note that the muslim population, even though a minority, was fairly sizeable.

And the Jews have retained their unique religion throughout centuries of invasion, persecution and exile.

Likewise, many tribes kept their beliefs. They simply became a very small minority within a territory.

So clearly conquest and colonisation alone, doesn’t account for the eradication of indigenous religions.

I wasn't talking about the erradication of indigineous religious though. I was talking about why those religions never became influential through the world (not even in the Americas, after colonization).

 

[Dawnofhope]

Why are all major religions from the East?

Even historically, Rome was full of Mirtha-worshippers and Manichaeans.

Why hasn't the West (Europe, the Americas etc.) produced any religions the likes of Islam or Zoroastrianism?

I'm not talking about small Pagan religions followed by a small amount of people who are essentially re-inventing it.

We just didn't seem to create anything on that scale and pass it along.

FWIW here's a Baha'i perspective on this important topic.

Why Did So Many Major Religions Begin in the East?

For much of today’s world, spiritual inspiration originally came from the global East. Why? Let’s examine the facts, see if we can find a pattern, and try to understand it....

bahaiteachings.org

 

[Augustus]

I am not claiming perfection in pre-Christian societies but there were more options for women as seen in the druidic orders. Women were druids from what sources we have. The importance of the goddess is equally important as the god. After the Christian takeover woman were not allowed to be a part of the religious order. This was clearly a step backward for the place of women while we hear about the superiority of Christianity.

Whether there were more options for women depends on the societies in question.

Given the massive diversity, if you compare all “pagan” societies to all “Christian” ones you can find examples where women were better or worse off in each.

You can find women rulers, military leaders, scholars, religious figures, entrepreneurs, etc. in each and you can certainly find women playing an important role within the household economy in each.

You can find them subjugated and treated as property in either too.

This covers such a diversity of societies that it could hardly be anything other than a mixed bag.

 

[PearlSeeker]

This is true, but there were people living in Europe for thousands of years, into the Stone Age, and still nothing.

Wish people would grasp what I'm saying. I'm talking about Europe pre Christianity. Why so hard?

What books were pre Christian Europeans writing about their religions and philosophies?

OK. I get it. Yes, there were old cultures in Europe but no civilisation (other than Greece). Some possible reasons:

There’s a very strong tendency for pristine civilizations to form in river valleys surrounded by desert. This happened in Mesopotamia, Peru, Egypt, and along the Indus, and while the terrain around the Yellow River wasn’t quite desert, it was, I gather, rather dryer at the time (swampy southern Mexico, where the Olmec appeared, is an exception and we don’t really know why yet). The idea which has been advanced to explain this tendency is one of circumscribed and labor-intensive resources. The river valley has desirable productive land, so people want to live there and they may participate in things like irrigation canals which take a lot of effort to build, but the land is surrounded by vastly less desirably territory. People don’t want to move there if things go badly and are strongly motivated to stick with the infrastructure they’ve spent so much effort building. Population densities grow and people bump up against one another more and more often, and social conflicts proliferate. One way of dealing with that is by creating complex social structures to regulate those social conflicts, and pretty quickly you get kings, priests, palaces, temple complexes, and urban centers around them.​

Europe, then, doesn’t have a lot of deserts. The conditions to be an early center of civilization doesn’t exist. It’s a well-watered territory for the most part, where you’re not limited to the immediate environs of a single major river for good farmland. It’s also worth noting that regions like Mesopotamia, Egypt, and so on had a bit of a head start. Agriculture started there earlier, so they had much longer to develop the social conditions leading to agriculture. In time, somebody somewhere in Europe might have created their own pristine civilization, but in the actual event, the practice arose in not just one but two adjacent regions and it spread into Europe before that could happen.​

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(Matt Riggsby, Quora)​

​

 

[Bear Wild]

Whether there were more options for women depends on the societies in question.

Given the massive diversity, if you compare all “pagan” societies to all “Christian” ones you can find examples where women were better or worse off in each.

You can find women rulers, military leaders, scholars, religious figures, entrepreneurs, etc. in each and you can certainly find women playing an important role within the household economy in each.

You can find them subjugated and treated as property in either too.

This covers such a diversity of societies that it could hardly be anything other than a mixed bag.

I am not saying all previous pagan societies were good or helpful to women. What I am saying is when societies live in relationship with the land where both men and women play important roles for survival the role of women played a much more dominant role. It was the development of the Cities disconnected from the land where the role of the woman decreased for survival that there was a shift. When Christianity developed they changed the dynamics of the god by making a man and not a woman a god. This shift created a differentiation of male and female which was not seen in most pagan cultures. If a man is god then man is dominant. History of women without rights followed.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Neither is Buddhism. That doesn't stop it from being a religion or belief system.

I think it's because of the hats.

 

[Augustus]

I am not saying all previous pagan societies were good or helpful to women. What I am saying is when societies live in relationship with the land where both men and women play important roles for survival the role of women played a much more dominant role. It was the development of the Cities disconnected from the land where the role of the woman decreased for survival that there was a shift. When Christianity developed they changed the dynamics of the god by making a man and not a woman a god. This shift created a differentiation of male and female which was not seen in most pagan cultures. If a man is god then man is dominant. History of women without rights followed.

Development of cities was distinct from Christianisation though.

Until the Industrial Revolution most Christians “lived in relationships with the land”.

Whether women gained or lost overall is a mixed bag, as is the degree to which they had “rights”.

 

[The Hammer]

Neither is Buddhism. That doesn't stop it from being a religion or belief system.

Buddhism is a theology imo.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

I am talking about those cultures that were still connected with the land.

I will certainly agree that the sort of animistic hunter gathered tribal groups that existed before the Neolithic revolution had a greater variety of cultures, including some that were Matriarchal. Yes, I was delighted to read that we even have evidence of women being hunters. And yes, I am also aware of some of the matriarchal cultures that existed among the Native Americans such as the Iroquois.

I may have misinterpreted your posts. I thought you were attaching Patriarchy to the monotheistic faiths. I hope I have done a good job showing that the rise of Patriarchy came from the Indo-European invasion, not monotheism -- these people were very much pagan and they were not city dwellers, and influenced most of the paganism in Eurasia as well as the subsequent monotheistic faiths.

I think it is also an important point to say that it has been in the Christian west that the idea of human rights has evolved, including women's rights. Such cultural changes take many hundreds of years, and it will be another hundred years before women are truly equal in our society. Nevertheless, credit where credit is due.