A college professor has put together a new book that shows his views on what the world would be like without Christianity — and the conclusions are pretty terrifying.
Jeremiah J. Johnson, professor of early Christianity at Houston Baptist University, argues that “without God there is no humanity” and “without God there are no morals,” making these proclamations in a recent interview with ChristianWeek.
“There is nothing new about the ‘New Atheism,'” he said. “They are going to take us back to a pre-Christian, pagan, racist world of inequality because without God there is no humanity. Without God there are no morals.”
Johnson, author of “Unimaginable: What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity,” divides his book into three sections to make his point that “Christianity is good for the world” — The World Before Christianity, The World Without Christianity and The World with Christianity, ChristianWeek noted.
The author’s argument is that life was no picnic before the Christian faith came onto the scene. From illness to low life expectancy and a slew of other horrors, the world as we know it was a relatively terrifying place.
“By today’s standards, it was hell on earth,” he writes in the book. “Poverty, sickness, premature death, domestic violence, economic injustice, slavery, and political corruption were the given of life.”
Here are some of the subjects that the book covers, as per its description:
- How the plights of women and children in society were forever changed by Jesus
- Why democracy and our education and legal systems owe much to Christianity
- How early believers demonstrated the inherent value of human life by caring for the sick, handicapped, and dying
- How Christians today are extending God’s kingdom through charities, social justice efforts, and other profound ways
Johnson also dives into the 19th century to explore a “toxic brew of worldviews,” with the author calling Hitler the “end-product of the West’s determination to move away from its Christian heritage.”
The move away from Christianity, he said, created a scenario in which society moved back a few steps, descending into its “pre-Christian barbarism.”
“Theistic-based ethics were swept aside and replaced by new ‘scientific’ ethics that had no problem with supposedly superior humans enslaving and murdering supposedly inferior humans,” Johnson wrote.
Read more about the author’s thoughts on the matter here.