Three Periods

[This Baron of Mora]

C.S. Lewis once defined time into these three periods; they are of course relative in the sense that there are transitional periods (we are referring to Western Civilization only in this) and no one really wants to think of now as being post-Christian but undeniable Christianity is losing influence and adherence.

[Kessie]

I don't understand the poll's question. How do they go together? In what way? As a fun setting in fiction?

[This Baron of Mora]

Think about it like this: If you had to yank we'll say an "average person" from each of the three periods which two would be the most similar.

[Kessie]

Oh, pre and post. Because they'd both be pagans, just the post would be more bitter.

[Bainespal]

This is an interesting question. By "average person" I'm assuming that we mean non-Christians for every era, even for the nominally Christian era. With that in mind, there are indeed some ways that the Christian and Pre-Christian eras are more like each other than the Post-Christian era. There are also many ways in which the Post-Christian era is far more like the Christian era than the Pre-Christian era. As much as secularists may want to belittle the influence of Jesus, if He had never come, there would be no human rights, no humanitarianism, no fear of offending people with whom we disagree, etc. Contemporary ideas about tolerance, etc., may not be Christian (in some cases they may be anti-Christian), but they would not have arisen without Christianity.

I can't really speculate as much on which aspects of the Christian era were more like the Pre-Christian era than the Post-Christian era, because I don't really know all that much about the ancient pagan West. However, I feel certain that there must be similarities there, as well.

[firestorm78583]

I agree that Christianity is in decline, but I would have to say that true post-christianity would be after the rapture.

Since we're on the subject of the rapture and we are on a speculative fiction forum, I've always wondered what spin story the powers that be would use to explain away the fact that a good chunk of the population of Earth just disappeared. Something like that is pretty hard to explain away, (Although our current administration is fairly adept).

[This Baron of Mora]

When comparing a pagan for pre-Christian, a Christian, and a atheist I think the first two get along better. When ever religious things come up in my Western Humanities class atheists always surge against both as folly while I as a Christian (there aren't any pagans of course) can both defend such as well as the pagan in the since that they at least got "half right."