Early Christian Growth: Was it Actually More Moral? (Scott Alexander & Rodney Stark)

Join us in today's episode as we delve into the remarkable rise of Christianity, examining factors like martyrdom, plagues, and moral dynamics. Building on previous discussions, this standalone exploration dives deep into how Christianity managed to outcompete other religious cultures. We discuss the impact of plagues on Christian growth, the role of martyrdom, and how early Christians' behavior during catastrophes set them apart from pagans. Gain insights into the societal and religious shifts that propelled Christianity to prominence.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be doing an episode where we. Continue exploring how did Christianity outcompete other religious cultures and grow as fast as it did. This is going to build on another podcast that we did on this subject, but it's totally okay to watch as a standalone.

The subjects that we're going to focus on most here are the topic of martyrs as a conversion mechanism.

Plagues, and did christianity actually have a more moral system than the system Against in the mind of the average person in the last time we went on this I mean, certainly when you look at the exposure of babies being a common thing and we mentioned that some like Roman philosophers complained about how and saw it as one of the evils of the Jewish people that they tried to get people to not drown their babies.

Cause they're like, you, you shouldn't expose or kill newborns. And they're like, [00:01:00] no, wait, wait, wait. That's such a Jewish, what, what a, what a Jewish and nefarious thing to complain about.

Speaker 11: I'll take care of this. Hey Clara, there's a Jew outside, trying to poison a well! Ah! Oh my God! Get away from that well, Hebrew! What? I'm putting in water purification tablets. Spanky tricked me!

Malcolm Collins: Which is one of the holdovers that came into Christianity, but let's start with martyrs. And I just want

Simone Collins: to be clear, this is Scott Alexander's book review on the Rides of Christianity by Rodney Stark, in case you want to look at it yourself.

Martyrs. Martyrdom not only occurred in public, often before a large audience, but it was often the culmination of a long period of preparation, during which those faced with martyrdom were the object of intense face to face adulation.

Consider the case of Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius was condemned to death as a Christian, but instead of being executed in Antioch, He was sent off to Rome in the custody of 10 Roman [00:02:00] soldiers, thus begun a long leisurely journey during which local Christians came out to meet him all along the route, which passed through many of the more important sites of early Christianity in Asia Minor.

on its way to the West. At each stop, Ignatius was allowed to preach and meet with those who gathered, none of whom was in any apparent danger, though their Christian identity was obvious. Moreover, his guards allowed Ignatius to write letters to many Christian congregations and cities bypassed along the way, such as Ephesias in Philadelphia.

As William Schnoedl remarked, quote,

Malcolm Collins: Hold on, hold on, before we go further with this. The thing insane is this, so you, I kill you, but you

Simone Collins: get to go on tour first. So don't worry.

Malcolm Collins: No, he's like a famous musician or something. Like, it's like, we're going to have you fed to the lions, but you know, on the way, like imagine, okay.

So this is basically what happened here. You know, the guy who killed the like in, in UNH the, the, you[00:03:00]

If the U. S. arrested him, but then had him do public speaking events in every major U. S. city, while also, like, the cities he didn't get to, he created, like, podcast recordings for, so he could do the rounds in the media as well. Like, are you insane? And the guards apparently were like, cool, is it? So they were like, yeah.

Sure. But also

Simone Collins: then he had the social proof of being flanked by 10 Roman guards, so he looked important.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. That he would have looked like a rapper, like walking into these cities. Well, and this actually, this, this

Simone Collins: shows up in some press coverage of Luigi Mangione. He looks super badass surrounded by all these, these policemen.

Malcolm Collins: It's really funny. Yeah. No, no. It shows like, it shows that Rome, and this is what's so great about this, right? So it shows that Rome from all these guards around him, saw him as a threat. Yeah. Yeah. But he had done nothing to attack Rome. He had done nothing to threaten Rome. He [00:04:00] just wanted to share his ideas.

Now if I knew that the state saw this guy as a threat for just his ideas and I can go to one of these speeches I'm gonna go I'd be like christian curious at this point. I'm like,

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: what are these ideas that are scaring Rome so much? Yeah, yeah

Simone Collins: Speaker on tour coming to my town soon. This is great before he gets fed to the lions, you know You don't want to miss this speech So then I can go watch the Lion

Malcolm Collins: King in Rome, you know, you know, I, I get, you get the whole thing here.

Like the level of, I think rockstar status that these individuals would have had in the Christian community. I was going to talk about this later, but like they, they knew that like the other people who had done this before people like, Kept their bones and like giant reliquaries or like their, their toe bone would be have like magical powers and people would pray to it.

And like all of this, like, you're going to be like, Oh s**t. Like, and in a world that's bad, I mean, you don't know, these people could be living with chronic pain. These people could be living with, you know, [00:05:00] that the world of Rome was pretty horrifying. Right. That you could get this kind of status is huge.

And he talked before this in a bit I cut out about how previous people acted like the martyrs were like these big masochists. Not true. They were not big masochists. You can see that there is other reasons to want to be a martyr. I probably even would have liked being a martyr in this environment. Like it's just so pro martyr.

Actually, as a negative result of this, early Christian culture grew up to be so pro martyr that there was a huge problem when the Roman Empire legalized Christianity. Like, apparently when this first happened, they were, they were almost, like, sort of broken for a second, where they kept trying to get themselves martyred by doing, like, escalating things, and they quit.

And it was out of this that the monastic movement formed where some of the people who previously would have gone to do like martyrdom, they just like went out into the desert or the [00:06:00] wilderness. And there were so many of these people who did this sort of self martyrdom of like walking out into the wilderness that they just like kept writing into each other in the wilderness.

And they're like, Oh s**t, like, I guess we're starting a thing here. Or like one of them would go out into the wilderness and be like, Oh. Me, philosopher, I'm going to go, you know, like, you know, live this incredibly hard life in the deserts of like Egypt or whatever. And then he's out there for a bit.

And then a couple months later, like more people come and they're like, Hey, we're big fans. We're going to do the same thing. And then you, you end up getting this like big community doing this and it's like, Well, I guess we'll build a monastery. And now, and this is how you end up with these monasteries on like the tops of mountains and everything like that, which you've seen from pictures.

If they kept trying to get further and further away from people, but the further way they get from people, the more popular they'd become. So the more people would come to try to follow them and do this.

Simone Collins: Oh, goodness gracious. Well, if we had some kind of system whereby we could get egotistical self importance.

[00:07:00] Attention horrors to just all go somewhere together.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, side note, by the way, which is also worth worth noting here is how did Constantine like first? Why did Constantine convert to Christianity? It may have been a genuine conversion, but there was an alternate reason for him to convert, which I think a lot of the modern or Christian audience.

doesn't seem aware of, which explains Christianity's rapid rise. Well, so Constantine had a major problem with the existing bureaucratic apparatus of Rome because it had become incredibly corrupt, specifically like the Praetorian guard who was supposed to guard the emperor, but instead kept like massacring the emperor.

They were so bad to the emperor that they would like in one instance, they killed the emperor. They put another guy in charge. There was no money to pay them the bribe that they demanded of him because the guy before him had done such a bad job as emperor that they had no money. And he's like, look, I got no money like through no fault of my own.

He took the head of the Praetorian guard there. He's like, there is no money. This is the vault. I have nothing to pay you. The bribe was that you demanded, like, I [00:08:00] didn't even like, And so they kill him, right? And then they try to sell the emperorship to the highest bidder.

What did I tell you, huh? The worst!

She's the worst in the world.

Malcolm Collins: Like, they were just the biggest douche canoes in history, but like, that is how bad the Deep State has gotten.

The Praetorian Guard is like the personification of Deep State. So, That's interesting. Normally

Simone Collins: the Praetorian Guard is mentioned in a positive context, like, this person's Praetorian Guard, blah, blah, blah. Not, not as in like

Malcolm Collins: No, the Praetorian Guard Are the worst ever

the worst! She's the worst person in the world. Huge skank. Terrible..

Simone Collins: Classic

Malcolm Collins: I would put the, the scene from Dahabadi's Unbiased Rome, which everyone should watch if they haven't watched it, about the killing of the Praetorian Guard, but unfortunately he puts music behind the things, which gets things copyright stricken which really frustrates me.

Speaker 10: The time had finally come, the time for a new age, the time for [00:09:00] revenge. And so, Constantine proclaimed that the Praetorian Guard would be

Speaker 11: abolished!

Malcolm Collins: But anyway Constantine, absolute goat and so, Constantine is like, well, how do I?

Fight this deep state network, right? I need some alternate network that has no real allegiance to the old deep state or Rome and might even have a degree of animosity to it, which is operating with a degree of hierarchy in pretty much every major Roman city. Oh, the Christians! Perfect counter deep state.

I can just replace all of the deep state networks with the Christian networks. And so he came in and he now of course we believe this was partially divinely inspired. I'm not saying it wasn't divinely inspired, but sometimes the thing can be both logical, like Christianity spread and divinely inspired or Constantine's use of [00:10:00] Christianity as a counter deep state force.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Why would, why would God not align the incentives in favor of that which must happen?

Malcolm Collins: And when you really think about it, if he was going to try to destroy and replace the Roman Deep State, what other force could he use to do that? There literally was no one else he could use. There was no other large cult.

When I say cult, I don't mean that in like a modern way where it's like derogatory. In Rome, cult was just meant to describe any large religious organization. There was none that existed in almost every city. All of the ones were fairly region locked or tied to regional deities. Christians were the only one that was really this big and this organized and this hierarchical.

Except of course for the mystery Colts, but the last thing you want to do, if you're looking for a counter, deep state is put in place a secret society.

But anyway, continue.

And this is as William Showbler Yeah, sorry,

Simone Collins: are you, are you moving the [00:11:00] document around? No. Okay. That's weird. Oh, I know what's going on. I fixed it. As William Schoedl remarked, it is no doubt as a conquering hero that Ignatius thinks of himself as he looks back on a part of his journey and says that the churches who received him dealt with him not as a transient traveler, noting that even churches that do not lie in my way, according to the flesh, went before me.

Me city by city, unquote, what Ignatius feared was not death in the arena, but that well meaning Christians might gain him a pardon. He expected. To be remembered through the ages and compares himself to martyrs gone before him, including Paul quote, in whose footsteps I wish to be found when I come to meet God, unquote.

Yeah. This man had a clear agenda. Can you imagine being like, please don't pardon

Malcolm Collins: me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Please don't. You don't understand. This is my ticket straight to the highest rung of heaven. Like, yeah. And being remembered forever and living a life of value [00:12:00] and like It's the full set.

Speaker 5: The whole set

Malcolm Collins: It's not confusing why early Christianity was so martyr crazy.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, Scott Alexander continues. It soon was clear to all Christians that extraordinary fame and honor Attached to modern martyrdom. Nothing illustrates this better than the description of the martyrdom of polycarp contained in a letter sent by the church in Smyrna to the church in Philomelidium polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna who burned alive in about 156 after the execution his bones were retrieved by some of his followers and act witnessed by Roman officials who took no action against them.

The letter spoke. of, quote, his sacred flesh, unquote, and described his bones as, quote, being of more value than precious stones and more esteemed than gold, unquote. The letter writer reported that the Christians in Smyrna would gather at the burial place of Polycarp's bones every year to, quote, celebrate with great [00:13:00] gladness and joy the birthday of his martyrdom, unquote.

The letter concluded, quote, Quote, the blessed polycarp, to whom be glory, honor, majesty, and a throne eternal from generation to generation, amen, unquote. It also included the instruction, quote, on receiving this, send to the letter to the more distant brethren that they may glorify the Lord who makes the choice of his own servants, unquote.

In fact, today, we actually know the names of nearly all Christian martyrs because their contemporaries took pains that they should be remembered for all their great holiness.

Malcolm Collins: I'd point out here that this is not just a then thing. Every time there was a new opportunity for martyrdom, Christians were pretty big on it.

Like, the college I went to, St. Andrews, there was a spot on campus where one person had been burned alive by the Catholics.

So for some context here, Hamilton returned to St. Andrew's in early 15, 28 to meet with the Archbishop. And while there he was arrested, tried and burned at the stake outside St. Salvador's chapel. [00:14:00] He was only 24. It has said that he burned for six hours and that he died so briefly that the Archbishop started to discourage public executions because quote, the reek of Mr.

Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon in quote.

So, uh, as you can see,

At least the Catholics had the common sense to stop it after they realized how effective the martyrs were at converting people and breeding sympathy for their causes.

In this one instance.

Oh, yeah. Even in our house, we have at least three or four copies of the book of martyrs in our house. The people who don't know the book of martyrs, these are people who fought against

Malcolm Collins: . But then Catholics have their own martyrs that were killed by Protestants.

And they I guess didn't. I don't know if there's like a central collection of them, like the book of martyrs in the same way, but the, the, whatever, there was a chance to martyr themselves. Christians are really big on this. And I think it's a much more central theme to the real Christian tradition than [00:15:00] many people realize.

And I think one of the weakening facets of Christianity today is there just haven't been many opportunities to be a good martyr in a while.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, we may be entering a new age. Yeah. Right. Especially Luigi Mangione having, being at risk of a death sentence is now sort of entering a new martyr status.

People are literally using AI to make art of him in the style of a Catholic saint. Oh, really? Yeah, look at Drudge Report's front page. It's right there. So, Scott Alexander continues. I don't know. I'm not putting too much effort into writing up this section because it doesn't feel like much of a mystery as some of the others.

Maybe all of this was weird in 1996, but since then I've seen plenty of suicide bombers willing to die for their faith. I accept that the Christian martyrs were more impressive. A slow death in the Coliseum takes more grit than the quick detonation of an explosive fest. And dying for peace is more impressive than dying in war.

But it hardly seems like as much of a leap. However bad you [00:16:00] imagine daily life in ancient Rome, it was worse. Historians estimate that ancient Rome had a population density of 300 people per acre. That's almost 10 times denser than modern New York city. 2000 years. 10 times denser than modern New York.

2000 years before anyone invented the skyscraper too, because we also forget how vertical New York city goes. How did they do it? By cramping people together in unbearable filth and misery. Another source says 200 people per acre. Oh, so from a footnote, another source says 200 people per acre, which is only six times denser.

These numbers are for New York City as a whole. If we limit ourselves to Manhattan, Rome was only two to three times as dense. Do you have any idea how insane that is? What's worse is that people, they did have multi story buildings, but of course these buildings didn't have plumbing and they burned down all the time, killing everyone inside basically.

Or fell over all

Malcolm Collins: the time. We'll be getting into that. But, [00:17:00] but, but you got to imagine you didn't have plumbing. Okay. That meant that the poo that was coming out of these buildings was just going onto the streets every single day.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, they talk about I mean, this, this existed sort of all over the place, even in medieval cities.

That's why when we went on that tour in Edinburgh in the news, they talked about how they would yell guard, you knew, like, all the time, because that was what you said when you were about to like, throw your poop,

Malcolm Collins: the, the, the density to be you. Three exits. That meant that basically when people today are like, I can't have kids because like, I don't have a house for them.

It's like, well, clearly, even though they were like low fertility, they weren't that low fertility in Rome, clearly. Alexander pointed

Simone Collins: out that we did this in the first episode of this. Scott Alexander points out that there were many, many, many forms of contraception and abortion used in ancient Rome.

Plus people were wise enough to know which hole to. Have sex with if they didn't want to create a [00:18:00] pregnancy. I love

Malcolm Collins: this thing by Octavia, who was one of Octavian's like, daughters or something. Where somebody was like Well, her sister. His

Simone Collins: sister was Octavia. Yep.

Malcolm Collins: There were multiple Octavias. I forget which one this was.

Where she was like you, you, do you remember the quote? It was something like, they're like, well, be careful. And she's like, oh,

Simone Collins: yeah. Like I, I know like when, when my ship is holding cargo, like only when my ship is holding cargo.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Only when my ship is holding cargo. Yeah. Do I have fun?

Yeah.

Which is great.

Basically only when she's pregnant.

Cause then you know, safe. No problem.

Okay. But what ancient Romans got up to? Pretty debauched. But anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: Most people lived in tiny cubicles in multi story tenements. Quote, there was only one private house for every 26 blocks of apartments. Unquote. Within these tenements, the crowding was extreme.

The tenants rarely had more than one room in which, quote, entire families were herded together. [00:19:00] Unquote. Thus, as Stoneberg tells us, privacy was a hard thing to find. Not only were people terribly crowded within these buildings, the streets were so narrow that if people leaned out their windows, they could chat with someone living across the street without having to raise their voices.

To make matters worse, Greco Roman tenements lacked both furnaces and fireplaces. Cooking was done over wood or charcoal braziers, which were also the only source of heat. Since tenements lack chimneys, the rooms were always smoky in winter. Because windows could be closed only by hanging clothes or skins blown by rain, the tenements were sufficiently drafty to prevent frequent asphyxiation, but the drafts increased the danger of rapidly spreading fires, and dread of fire was an obsession among the rich and poor alike.

Malcolm Collins: And there were lots of big fires in ancient Rome.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, not fun. Pracker in 1967 doubted that people could actually spend much time in quarters so scramped and squalid. Thus he [00:20:00] concluded that the typical residents of a Greco Roman city spent their lives mainly in public spaces, And the average domicile must have served only as a place to sleep and store possessions, which totally makes sense.

Basically, it's the equivalent of a sleeping bag. Alexander continues. These tenements had no plumbing. Waste was eliminated by pouring it onto the street, often to the detriment of people walking underneath. Water was brought home from public wells. If you were out, you either walked back to the well or made do.

Total public baths capacity of Rome was about 30, 000. The total population of Rome was about a million. In practice, the upper classes used the public baths and the average citizen had never bathed in their life. Soap had been invented a century or two earlier, but was limited to a small pool of early adopters.

The city's buzzed with flies. Early adopters

Malcolm Collins: of soap. I love this. Early adopters. Have you seen the new tech? Soap! Soap! It's like, oh my god, you're always into the new fad, like. Yeah, it's great.

Simone Collins: [00:21:00] It would be 1800 years before anyone invented germ theory. Tenements were six stories high and frequently collapsed, killing everyone inside.

Fires consumed the city on a regular basis, giving rise to colorful legends like Nero fiddling when Rome burnt. Police were limited, and it was understood that you would be robbed immediately if you set foot outside at nighttime. How did people survive? Mostly they didn't. Cities were destroyed regularly, multiple times within a single human lifetime, then rebuilt and replenished with the rural population.

Stark focuses on Antioch, a Syrian city, which was a center of early Christianity. During 600 years of intermittent Roman rule, he finds It was conquered 11 times and burned to the ground four times and devastated by riots six times. There were eight earthquakes large enough that nearly everything was destroyed, and three plagues large enough to kill at least a quarter of the population, and five really serious famines for an average of one catastrophe every 15 years.

The Romans rebuilt the city [00:22:00] each time because it was a strategically important place.

Malcolm Collins: Now, start to wonder how horrifying this is, right? Given the number of people in these cities, the number of bodies we're talking about here in these ultra dense cities you know, a quarter of a population like that is, is dying.

Those are people just never found left rotting as buildings are built on top of other buildings. You know, this is how cities back then got built on top and built on top and built on top of the city It really reminds me one of the things I noticed about when we were in morocco, which is so interesting So you can see these older style city designs is you could climb to a high building and look down at the Structure of the way that the houses and the various properties intertwined with each other because in morocco Super super old goes back really long ways And you could see some that looked like they may have actually been forgotten.

Like maybe nobody owned them anymore. That they were, like, encapsulated by other buildings. And that the ownership structure may not know or have a way to track who [00:23:00] this building belonged to anymore, and it just got sort of built over and around, because who knows, the family died there in a plague in Roman times, or something like that.

Which is absolutely wild how horrifying these conditions were, but also how you know, after earthquake happens, okay, everyone's just going back. Yeah,

Simone Collins: start building a front. Oh, gosh.

Malcolm Collins: And every 15 years, every 15 years, what was happening 15 years ago, Simone? Was that when, like, Lady Ghostbusters was coming out?

Was, like, their version of Lady Ghostbusters, everyone dies?

Simone Collins: Yeah. This

Malcolm Collins: thing burns to the ground and everyone dies and we resettle it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So, to Scott Alexander's point, yeah, it is way worse than you could even imagine. Death really wasn't that bad apparently, it just, just, end it. End it. Besides, Christians can't commit suicide, so this was one of the easiest ways to actually end it if you wanted to.

All right, I continue [00:24:00] reading Stark focuses on one of these disasters plague the Roman Empire suffered two major plagues during this era the Antonine plague of 165 AD and the Cyprian plague of 251 AD. He theorizes that Christians made it through these plagues much better than pagans gaining an additional population boost.

It's time for some game theory. When a plague comes, you can either defect, flee, isolate, or hide or cooperate enthusiastically try to help or nurse other victims. An individual does better by defecting, but a community does better if all its members cooperate. Stark thinks the pagans defected and the Christians cooperated

here is Thucydides description of a plague in pagan Athens, admittedly 500 years before the time we're studying. People quickly got an instinctive proto knowledge of how contagion worked, after which, quote, People died with no one to look after them. Indeed, there were many houses in which all the inhabitants perished through lack of any attention.

The [00:25:00] bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and half dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets of Athens. or flocking around the fountains in the desire for water. The temples in which they took up their quarters were full of dead bodies of people who had died inside them, for the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or law.

Compare the Christian writer description of a plague afflicting his own community.

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.

Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ. And with them departed this life serenely happy, for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains.

Many in nursing and curing others transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead. The best of our [00:26:00] brothers lost lives in this manner. A number of Presbyterians, deacons and laymen winning high commendation so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom. The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled to, from their dearest, throwing them in the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses of dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease.

Could

Malcolm Collins: you go further here? I, I would note that you see here the love of martyrdom. These people were really looking for, he said, in every way, the equal of martyrdom. They were looking for an opportunity to martyr themselves. And that was really big in early and in most of the vitalist periods of Christianity.

Good point. Is the desire for martyrdom.

Yeah,

that is what [00:27:00] drove this behavior. I don't care if I die, if I die doing the right thing. And I think that that's something that we need to rekindle was in the new iterations of Christianity. I mean, if you look at Technopuritanism, which takes the martyrdom of man as one of its founding texts, you know, we've focused a lot on this concept of martyrdom.

Live your life as a sacrifice for future generations. That is what these Christians were doing again and again and again. And so many Christians today do not understand your life is a sacrifice. When you live your life as a martyr, For the future, you live a life like these early Christians. When you live a life for yourself or moderated or like, Oh, I want to be part of a community and blah, blah, blah.

It's like, that's not what Christianity was originally or in its periods of great fertility. And when I say fertility, I mean like, like, like intellectual fertility

about.

Simone Collins: Could Dionysius [00:28:00] be embellishing matters to make his friends look good and his enemies bad? Maybe, but And this is from the book that Scott Alexander is quoting, there was compelling evidence from pagan sources that this was characteristic Christian behavior. Thus, a century later, the emperor Julian launched a campaign to institute pagan charities in an effort to match the Christians.

Julian complained in a letter to the high priest of Galatia in 362 that the pagans needed . to equal the virtues of the Christians. For recent Christians growth was caused by their, quote, moral character, even if pretended, unquote, and by their, quote, benevolence towards strangers and care for the graves of the dead, unquote.

In a letter to another priest, Julian wrote, quote, I think that when the poor happened to be neglected and overlooked by the priests, the impious Galileans observed this and devoted themselves to benevolence. And then he wrote, quote, the impious Galileans support, not only their poor, but ours as well.

[00:29:00] Everyone can see that our people lack and lack aid from us. Unquote.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hold on. I want to take it. This is a Roman emperor who didn't like Christians. Like they're only pretending to be nice. Yeah. But like, They keep helping our poor. They keep helping, like, protect the graves of our dead. They keep doing all of this moral s**t.

Like, why aren't our own people doing this? Like, why are they the ones out there doing all the nice stuff? And there is a Parallel that he draws later in this and in the video before, which is early Christians and Mormons today. And if you don't understand how you can both think that somebody is in a way more morally strict, but also in a way, like, you're disgusted by them and they do all sorts of weird practices Where people are like, oh yeah, well, I mean, I know Morons are like, unusually nice, and like, may exhibit unusual amounts of charity, but they're still a disgusting cult.

Like, that's the way that people saw the early Christians. But you, I think, can [00:30:00] see on the wall here, already, who's gonna win in the long term. The ones that people are complaining about. Hey we need to like up government donations to this because these Mormons keep giving more money than our government is giving, or our local churches are giving.

They keep helping the poor more than even we're helping our own poor. I love that they point that out. The Christians are helping the pagan poor more than the pagan authorities are, and they're helping their own poor. Why would you not convert? Yeah, they didn't win. And I think what people miss here is they think that Christians won the moral battle by a margin or by an argument, not by a preponderance, but they won it by a preponderance.

Like you had to be kind of crazy or like invested in some weird status game to not be like, Oh, these are the good guys. Anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: Alright. Did this matter? [00:31:00] It might have. Modern medical experts believe conscientious nursing without any medications could cut the mortality rate by two thirds or even more.

If this sounds implausible, keep in mind that nursing here includes things like bringing water from the public well to bedridden people who are too weak to get out of bed and get it themselves. Makes a lot of sense. Stark believes that plagues helped Christians in multiple ways. One, the obvious way, 30 percent of pagans died during the plague, but only 10 percent of Christians, making Christians proportionally more of the population.

Two, altering the social graph. Remember, Stark believes that you convert to Christianity after your Christian friends outnumber your pagan friends. If all your pagan friends die, and none of your Christian friends do, this suddenly gets much easier. Three. Moral testimony. Pagans saw their priests and institutions fail the moral test of helping others while Christians succeeded.

Four, even more direct moral testimony. Many Christians nursed and helped their [00:32:00] pagan neighbors. If you owed your life to the Christians and all your pagan friends who could judge you were dead, it would be hard not to convert. Five, supernatural testimony. If you didn't understand game theoretic logic above, then dramatically higher Christian survival rates might seem like God's favor.

Stark additionally speculates that since Christians didn't flee the disease, they got it much earlier, therefore getting immunity much earlier and allowing them to walk through hospital corridors full of plague victims with apparent miraculous invincibility. Six, search for meaning. In some cities, 50 percent of the population died.

The survivors must have been shell shocked and looking for some sort of meaning behind it all. Paganism had nothing for them. Sorry, we don't do that kind of thing. Would you like to hear another story about Zeus raping women and turning her into an animal? Christians. Who had a wise words about how God tests the faithful and sometimes brings people to heaven before their time must have been a [00:33:00] vastly superior alternative.

No kidding.

Malcolm Collins: Right? Like you, you hear these two explanations and you're like, well, these guys seem to buy it. When I point this out in the last video on the subject that people don't realize how much Christianity was the first real religion of this region in the way that we think of a religion.

Simone Collins: Right?

Malcolm Collins: It just was, people can be like, what about Judaism?

And I go, well, look at Look at the the temple period Judaism scripts, which you can get from things like, like what sort of ceremonies were going on there while they were ripping doves apart, ripping their heads off while they were alive, then ripping them apart, spilling the blood on the altar, letting it like blow as they were talking.

It would have looked like sugar.

Nam S to

Malcolm Collins: I'm like, they were, they were transferring. their sins to [00:34:00] goats and then other is sacrificing them in front of a crowd and then another goat they'd send in the wilderness and it's like all of this stuff did it seemed very pagan

And I think some Jews take a lot of offense when I argue that the religion that they're practicing now is not fundamentally the same religion that was practice. You know, pre second temple or. You know, when the temple was standing as Judaism. And I really do not mean that insulting. It's only insulting because it goes against a lot of Jewish theology today. , because that religion was quite, I think, by modern standards, barbaric, and I've realized that a lot of Jews have this, , sort of like mental filter. On the things that happened during that period.

, and not just the, you know, rampant animal sacrifice, the worship of ball in the central temple,

et cetera, that was removed during the Josiah reforms. , but also things like the caste system. I remember [00:35:00] once I was at a party and \ . I made some joke about like how barbaric caste systems are. And I realized that one of the people, there was a friend of mine who is a very jingoistic Jew. I don't know if that's a. Well, what do you call a Jew who?

Super pro Jewish anyway. , he, , I turned him immediately because I really, in my mind, I had just made a major for pot. I'm like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. And he was very confused

And I was like, well, I mean, you do come from a culture that has a strict caste system, or at least traditionally had a strict caste system.

And it had never occurred to him that Judaism used to have a really strict caste system or that he came from a culture based on a caste system that the Cohain the Levis, the Mazza rim, the.

The, the people was convert backgrounds that these people would have been treated differently would have had different ways of related to jobs would have had different ways of relating to society.

All ruled over by a hereditary king, the type of king that would have had 700 wives and 300 concubines in some [00:36:00] instances.

You know, as much as I give Catholics s**t about things. It least when they were building the management system for their religion, even in the earliest days, there was not even talk about making it hereditary. , and yeah, their system picks some real stinkers over to the time. But they never, it's never like, oh yeah. The Christianity at its very inception was like, well, obviously it's going to be based on a voting system.

And then everyone is born equal.

That's wild that we don't even talk about, like how crazy that is.

And this is not a bad thing. If you look at our video on slavery, we point out that the Jewish system was a league above. Eh, any of the pagan systems in terms of its morality in terms of its level of civilization, in terms of all of that. But, , it was not what we would think of as a modern religion, whether you go to the caste system or the animal sacrifices or the sin transference or the blood rituals, , we would not think of it as being very much like a modern religion.

[00:37:00] like christianity really kind of invented something new and judaism was A huge part of the way there, like the fact that the pagans would always complain about the nefarious jews trying to stop them from drowning their babies.

Like, they saw this as like a nefarious and evil thing, or the nefarious jews who had rules where you could lose your slave if you hurt them? What? What, what, what insanity now, while Christianity built on a lot of these ideas and Judaism did later as well, it's important to contrast, which I think isn't fairly done today, early Christians with Jews of their time period, not modern Jews, which are a much evolved religion from that time period.

But I think that when you do that, you can understand that Christianity was really the start of something totally new in human history.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But continue because he goes into this as well and you might have some thoughts on this. [00:38:00]

Simone Collins: New section. I think this is a very interesting way for it to end, right?

But is Christianity just better? Paganism was framed as a business relationship with the gods. You perform the rites and sacrifices, they give you supernatural aid. You didn't have to like them any more than you liked your supply chain for any other commodity. They certainly didn't like you. At its absolute most touchy feely, paganism might posit a special relationship between a god and a city like Athena and Athens.

But even this is maxed out at the sort of relationship between a shopkeeper and a favorite recurring customer who we always remember to greet by name. Judaism did better. God has a sort of love hate relationship with his people, Israel. But At least there are clearly strong

Malcolm Collins: emotions involved. Now hold on, before you go further, I want to point out here that the person writing this is Jewish in background.

Simone Collins: Continue. Still, Stark thinks it was Christianity that really pioneered the [00:39:00] idea that God loves individuals. From that, everything else flows. You should love your fellow man and nurse him during plague. You should love your children and not committed fandicide or abortion. You should love God back and be willing to die a martyr for him.

For God's love flows naturally. The promise of heaven, instead of a shadowy, semi naturally forming underworlds of the Greek and early Jews. The pagan priests were people who were skilled at the relevant rituals. Christian bishops slash priests slash deacons were people who loved God, especially much aside from all the individual ways that Christian love provided an advantage.

Stark thinks that paganism just couldn't compete.

Malcolm Collins: So here I'd like to, because I think that this is something people don't understand. If you. Imagine you're a pagan living during these times, right? And you see this one group acting more morally. They don't have, like, some sort of contract with their god.

Their god loves them, right? Like, you are just [00:40:00] not gonna be able to compete with this message. Even if you think it's weird, the moment somebody starts to engage with this, and if you watch the first episode where we're going over this, you hear about how cults work. Which at first you're like, because a lot of people will be like, Oh, I was just so compelled by like the message of the call, but that's not really what it is.

It starts with a lot of my friends are in it and blah, blah, blah. And I think it's pretty weird, but whatever. But then you begin to accept parts of the message and all of a sudden you're like, Oh my God, like this is great. Like this, so much of the world makes sense now that didn't make sense before.

And. You see these big C shifts here, and I think C shifts in religion and building civilization. So you look at something like paganism. Paganism says, do it because you will be rewarded for doing it. And Christianity says, do it because God loves you. And while this is a huge There still is a dramatic moral flaw to this jump, [00:41:00] which is you didn't consent to God loving you, you know, God loves you like a stalker.

He's like, I love you. Therefore, do what I say, right? Like, you didn't, you didn't say, oh, like, God, I, I, it's God's like, I love you. So do what I want. Whereas we. Reinterpret and I think more accurately interpret what's actually written in the Bible to argue that as techno puritanism, it says, do it without guilt or expectation of a reward because it is the right thing to do.

And in techno puritanism, you're doing it because of the impact it will have on future people and God, which you will never be personally rewarded for. Which is just like a strictly more moral way to act than the way the older interpretations of Christianity would act, or at least that's the way we see it.

I mean, obviously we're putting this together for our kids and stuff like that, but I see reacting, you know, and we, we have people ask us and we've had Christians ask us, they go, why are you working to create a better future that you are [00:42:00] never going to get experience and that you're not going to be rewarded for creating?

And it's like, well, because we have a religious duty to do so and they're like, well, I don't understand how you could have a religious duty to do something that doesn't personally benefit you in some way. And it's like, well, that's where the moral superiority comes from within this context. And you know, the, the old Greek philosophy here, which is a society grows.

Great. When old men plant trees whose shade they shall never sit in. And Christianity found a way to motivate this. Unfortunately it, it, it was better than the pagan traditions. Early Christianity, I should say. But it still lacked because it still was either promising to reward them in the afterlife, or it was promising to reward them with adulation within this world.

Whereas we have removed those two rewards while still maintaining the moral mandate.

The question is, can people really Motivate themselves with that. We'll see. I mean, I find it to be very motivating. But [00:43:00] I am a crazy person people are always like malcolm other people don't think like you stop assuming that other people think like you and I'm like, well, then i'll breed a generation that does just like the early christians did right?

Simone Collins: I mean, yeah works. It apparently worked very well for them. And I do appreciate this Posit of this is maybe just a stronger meme and I think that that's You A huge part of it, but I do think that these other factors like birth rate, like plague management, like martyrdom play a role too. And it's so cool seeing Scott Alexander's annotation of another author's breakdown of these dynamics because this is totally core in culture crafting.

This is. This is essential if you want to build a sustainable religion or see if your nascent religion that you want to hit your cart to is doing well. And by these metrics, EA is doing all right, I guess. Mormonism is doing great. I [00:44:00] guess the Amish are doing all right. Some Mennonites are doing all right.

So.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he points out here, which I find really compelling is that if you look at the way these early Christians look, they look the way a lot of people talk about Mormons today, which is to say a weird cult that's like weirdly nice for whatever reason. They're

Simone Collins: so nice, but they're so weird.

Malcolm Collins: No one takes them really seriously, but look at them go, you know?

And he pointed out in the first one that they are actually growing at a rate faster than early Christianity grew.

Simone Collins: So as long as they figured out how to get through This little birth rate problem they seem to be having right now.

Malcolm Collins: But it's still a less problem than their neighbors. I mean, look, when we are talking about the plagues of our generation, when future authors are writing about this, they're going to be talking about the plague of sexual degeneracy as it related to fertility rates.

And you can look at the techno puritan hypothesis here, which is to say that we need to completely disentangle The desire to have kids from the desire to achieve sexual release. [00:45:00] You need to say, these two things have nothing in common. I want to have kids because I want to have kids and kids are a moral good and kids make the future a better place.

And I will create kids for that reason, not because I denied myself pornography or I denied myself birth control. And then some other groups are taking the hypothesis, basically saying, no, we need to go back to older ways of doing this. I always mention in Rome. When their society was collapsing, there was two hypotheses.

There was one group of people that were like, let's experiment with new ways of doing things, ways of building a stronger culture. And there was another group that said, we need to go back to the old ways of doing things. And that was a mystery cult. I mean, in many ways, the trad Christians today represent the mystery cults of our time.

And we represent the early Christians saying, Hey, no, there's a new system. We need to upgrade our morality. We need to expect more for ourselves than people of the past. And they're like, no, what we need to do is go back to just the way the people in the past did things. And we're like, those systems won't work in this context.

Like more is expected of us, more [00:46:00] morality. Is expected of us. More civic virtue is expected of us. It being able to resist even a higher level of debauchery and degeneracy is expected of us. And if you can't do that, if you try to attempt that by saying just ignore this stuff just, you know, as we can see by the statistics, you're losing the next generation.

And, and, and don't tell me like, everyone's like, Oh, join our side. Like clearly we're doing well. And I'm like, yeah, the ones who stay in the faith are doing well. And they're like, well, why do you care about the ones who aren't? I'm like, because they're leaving it record numbers. That's like saying only the people who got shot died.

It's like, well, Yeah, duh. That's what we're afraid of for our kids. We're afraid of them falling to the urban monoculture and they just don't seem very resistant solutions. So I think we're at this great turning point in human civilization where we get this opportunity to build and innovate in the same way the early Christians did because we have new plagues, memetic plagues which humanity hadn't [00:47:00] had to face before.

Simone Collins: Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: Any, any thoughts or you want to go straight into this last point here?

Simone Collins: Last point. because I need to make dinner. So he finishes with, is this all there is? I'm not sure. I'll also talk about Jesus as cheap, but I still don't understand how they managed to be so virtuous and loving in a way that so few modern Christians, even the ones who really believe in Jesus are.

I'm not making boring, liberal complaint that Christians are hypocritical and evil. Although, of course, many are, I'm making the equally boring, but hopefully less inflammatory complaint that many Christians are perfectly decent people, upstanding citizens, but don't really seem like the type who would gladly die in a plague just so they could help nurse their worst enemy.

I'm not complaining or blaming Christians for this. Almost nobody is that person. I just wonder what the early Christians had, which modern Christians have lost. Very interesting question and observation.

Malcolm Collins: I can tell you, the early Christians weren't doing this, they were doing, they weren't doing this [00:48:00] because they were good people, they were doing this because they were giddy about becoming martyrs.

As you can see from their own writings, they were giddy about dying for a better future. The concept of martyrdom, of making, as we say within techno puritan, your entire life needs to be lived as a martyr for future generations. And every moment you spend on yourself is a moment where you are not living within God's plan.

And we should all understand, we all fall short of a perfect person. We are all going to indulge to some extent. But the other iterations of Christianity have completely abandoned the concept of genuine martyrdom. Of, of, of genuinely saying I am going to live every moment I can as much on the edge as I can, like you need to be basically edging your life in terms of how difficult you're making it for yourself.

You know, why would you pay for, for, for one additional thing? Why would you pay for one additional ounce of heating [00:49:00] if you can handle the cold? Why would you pay for one additional meal out if you can motivate yourself without that? Why would you pay for, and we fail, we fail, like I, I fail all the time at this.

Like I am not trying to be the perfect Christian. Within this iteration of Christianity, there are people who will do better than me, but I think having the one, the humility to admit that about yourself and to not pretend, which I think is one of the biggest problems that modern Christians face, is to pretend that your sins, your indulgences, whether they are indulgences in your ego, indulgences in how you are signaling to other people, indulgences in whatever, are virtues.

You know, one of the things I was talking to somebody about the discord server about is like, why don't you attack? Gay people more like in our family, like I wouldn't want my sons to be gay I wouldn't approve that but I approve of somebody else who's living a gay lifestyle, right? And they're like, so then why don't you attack them and I go because that would be a complete personal indulgence They [00:50:00] are a large and powerful community today.

If you go out and attack them if you say that they shouldn't be living this lifestyle that is going to completely derail something like the pronatalist movement, which we're trying to grow. Like you are picking a fight with a group that we need to win election cycles out of personal pride. That is an indulgence, that is a sin.

And Christians today, I'll frame that like, you know, there's many Christians who have these misogynistic framings, who will have these homophobic framings, who have these anti-Semitic framings. You need Jews on your side if you're gonna win in the future. And when you attack groups that are more powerful than your own.

When I say more powerful, I mean doing better than your own are obviously going to matter more than your own. I mean, look at something like the Catholics with their abysmal fertility rate. That's like lower than the secular fertility rate in the United States if you don't include immigrants. Like that they would like be like, who, who, who, like, for example, like

Malcolm Collins: It's either the Catholics or the Jews.

[00:51:00] Pick a side, do not performatively attack potential allies That is sinful and indulgent in a world where we are entering one of the hardest of timelines and we need as many allies as you can have, even if you might disagree with them from your own families and cultures perspective, you can say, oh, I don't want my own kids doing this, but I'm open to outlying and working with other people who do this.

And, and I especially am not interested in antagonizing them.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I think it's important that we see individuals who indulgently.

Or performatively attack other groups.

The way we see any other form of intemperance and look at them with the same level of disgust in those moments. As the drunker stumbling down the streets, barely able to hold themselves together. , because this is an individual who puts all of us at risk. [00:52:00] If they are seen as part of your community and they are regularly going out and shooting at other communities. , with words. , they make Alliance with those communities harder and they make those communities more likely to retaliate, you know, back in the days of the American clan system and like the Appalachian region or something like that.

If you had one person. Who would pick too many fights? , Was outsiders that Klan would, you know, take them out back and beat them to death. Like that's what you had to do because people needed to know you don't act that way because you put everyone else at risk. When you act with this level of intemperance and personal indulgence.

If the people you're attacking, aren't an active and ever present threat to you.

Not just not aligned with you. If they earn an active threat to you, then leave them alone.

Anyway, any final thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: I'm going to have to chew on this for a long time and I'm really grateful. This really great summary exists. Probably need to read the book too. So thanks for. [00:53:00] Going over this with me. It was fun to read the original.

It was fun to talk about it with you. And I think it's all about the birth rates in the end. So there you go. I think it's, well, it's about the birth rates and creating a great life and, and the Christianity offered both of those. They offered a better way of living. That was more fun for all people involved.

And that's, I think your big point about prenatalism. It's not about coercing anyone. It's just about providing a better way of living, loving your kids better, giving them such a great experience that they want to pass that on and that they're capable of passing it on because they're thriving and that's what Christianity did and that's what any good religion that's going to survive into the future.

I completely

Malcolm Collins: agree. We've got a Madagascar it,

There's room on the fun side for one more. No thanks. Look, I've been thinking. Maybe if you gave this place a chance, you might even enjoy yourself. [00:54:00]

It's him. Can I come to the fun side?

Malcolm Collins: you know, as I've said before, you need to have a more fun when people come in, they need to enjoy the vitalism that they're experiencing here more with other communities. Don't be in some circle jerk about who's being more virtuous or who's being more. That, that destroys the vibe.

When people come in, they need to come in and be like, Oh yeah, this is cool.

The core of Christianity, the reactor that makes it work and so powerful. Is not a set of rules. Or.

, hierarchy. It's martyrdom itself. That is what Jesus represented. That is what all of the early Christians focused on it is. To martyrs that we look to with respect. Not the fuddy-duddy, who's following all of the rules as strictly as they can and trying to enforce them on [00:55:00] other people that doesn't make other people want to join your group.

What does make other people want to join your group is seeing people live their lives as martyrs. Because as I pointed out, it's not really your death that makes you a martyr. Everyone dies. What makes you a good martyr? Is how you choose to spend this one short existence? You get on earth. That's what makes you a martyr?

So you don't need to go out and get yourself killed, to be a martyr. And in many ways I'd argue that you are more of a martyr. If you spend a long life in murderdom then if you spend only a few moments,

In a. Showy murderdom which in a way can be kind of. Indulgent to monitor yourself too fast. And in two showy away.

And a lot of our religious stuff around the book, the partner to move man or in our tracks theories. We contextualize.

Humanity. As an intergenerational cycle of martyrdom, where every generation is duty is to murder themselves. For the sake of the next generation to help [00:56:00] improve their lot. And it's funny that a, , antinatalist might hear that and be like, yes, we agree. We need to stop the cycle of martyrdom. But because we have this very Christian infused ideology, we're like, no, the martyrdom is good.

The martyrdom is what gives life meaning and value.

And by the way, are you seeing the snow? It's actually beginning to build up first real snow of the year.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's really pretty.

Malcolm Collins: And what are we making for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: I was thinking for you grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, perhaps.

Or I can make vegetables gyoza. Or I can make more teriyaki chicken. This time, if you want vegetables stir fry, I can add that. Or I can make just egg fried rice.

Malcolm Collins: I'll let you choose between teriyaki chicken and grilled cheese sandwiches. I really could do either if you do make teriyaki chicken cut it into smaller pieces this time That was like huge and weird last time. I don't know what was weird about that pack It was very different from the other packs that you've cooked

Simone Collins: yeah, I'll just I'll saute the chicken first and chop it up and then put it back in.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then serve it [00:57:00] separately because all the sauce from that moved into the rice and that created a situation.

Simone Collins: Oh, you don't want saucy rice? Cause the other day you asked me to pour your curry over your rice.

Malcolm Collins: I do that myself, or I'd ask you to do it, but with the teriyaki, I want to do it one bite of teriyaki, and then the rice.

A bite of plain rice.

Simone Collins: Okay, sorry, I didn't realize you're eating procedure. You're, shut up, you're weirder than I am. Oh, yeah, I am. I'm very aware. I'm very aware of the fact, because a copy of me now comments about his mouth getting wet when he eats strawberries, and that's a problem. They can't keep eating.

Mommy, my

Malcolm Collins: mouth is wet. My mouth is getting wet and it's like your mouth is already wet. My mouth is dirty. No, there's food in it. Torsten. Torsten. Torsten.

Simone Collins: Torsten. Torsten. All right. Well, I love you. I'll get started on dinner. Love you too. Until you get the kids. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Absolutely.

Simone Collins: Thank you, gorgeous. [00:58:00] I love you so much.

Malcolm Collins: Happy to be married to you.

Simone Collins: You're perfect. I hit it. Sorry. There it clicks. Okay, everyone. In March, there is NatalCon. This is the second inaugural Pronatalist convention. You should be there. We're going to be there. It's in Austin. And if you want a 10 percent discount, you can enter the code Collins at checkout.

Malcolm Collins: And it's being run by Kevin Dolan, our good friend.

Very spicy, very spicy. Yes. Love him.

So for those unfamiliar, with the tradition that we're going to show in this family video. , in America, it is common on the night before Christmas to leave out milk and cookies or brownies or something like that for Santa Claus. We did that. The kids knocked over the glass of milk and here they are cleaning it up.

And then one of them breaking my wife's mind. Decides to start ringing the napkins that they're using to clean the milk off the floor into Santos cup.

Speaker 4: It's going into the top. There we go. [00:59:00] That was very careful. Now I'm just going to dry it. There we go. Wow. Good job, buddies.

Oh dear, oh. Don't get them off there! Yes, or else they'll get ruined. There we go. It's, it's drying. Drying. I'll make sure they don't get wet. Yes, I'll make it dry, lads.

There we go. I think that's it. There we go. I'm going to put it Oh, just a little bit of milk on the table. There you go. We're going to be, we're going to be on an ostrich! I'm squeezing in the car. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm gonna punch your phone. You don't want to do that, Toastie. I punched it. I punched it.

Speaker 6: Alright, buddies. Alright, let's go to bed so Santa doesn't miss our house because we are awake. You got it? Oh dear. No, [01:00:00] Toastie, no. No. Santa's drinking that. Toastie, Santa's drinking that. Is Santa's drinking it? I think we need to replace that milk because that's, you don't.

Oh, you're trying to get more milk for Santa.

You're worried that Santa is not going to have enough milk. Hey.

Alright. High five, buddy. Thank you.[01:01:00]

So that he would have enough milk?

It's okay, Toastie.

Speaker 4: I think, hey guys, let's go to bed before Santa comes. That's a good idea. High five, buddy. Can I stay? We're gonna go to bed! High five! High five!