Those of us outside looking in have to make our best judgements of what "Christianity" really means.
Obviously we can tell from EvC that there is a wide range of variation in the individuals who profess themselves Christians. To attempt to determine what value there is in Christianity from the individuals gets one lost because of the diversity of opinion and the individual personality. We have here on the site those who show both the compassion that I understand the Christ was supposed to have taught and the most hateful and closed-minded bigots.
We can't judge Christianity on either. The individual is overwhelming the teaching.
We can however, judge it on the major themes of history where the individuals are subsumed in the large ebb and flow.
The supression of women, the support for slavery, the bigotry that having the only "truth" and being utterly sure of oneself leads to are some themes to judge the religion on.
The support for the hungry and poor in the world is another. The times when churches have stood up to oppressors something we can judge Christianity as a whole on.
On balance where does it stand? I don't think it can be weighed well enough to come to an objective opinion. Nor can we replay history to see how it would have gone without the influence of Christianity. It is a subjective judgement.
Personally I find it hard to put aside the kind of disgusting attitudes that we see portrayed by the "traditional" Christians that have posted to this thread. This is in spite of the kind of Christians I have as friends and the likes of Jar. They are just not enough to overcome the poison that I see here.
My subjective judgement is thumbs down. Too bad the roman emperors hadn't kept them down 1700 or so years ago. Christianity owes it's survival to the politics of the Roman empire. Not the best legacy.
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