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Asking “What If” Questions About the Salvation Religions
Playing “what if” with salvation and religions sounds easy. Would any of these “what ifs” have led the world down a radically different path, or would the path be closely parallel to the one we have already followed?
What if Constantine had converted to Mithraism, the religion of much of the Roman army, instead of Christianity? What if Ashoka had not converted to Buddhism? What if Muhammad had died ten years earlier than he actually did? But pondering such questions productively (they cannot be answered, of course) requires some serious thought about the relationship of the religions in their contexts. Did hierarchical power dynamics and network connections, the evolutionary environment for the religions’ development, matter more than the religions’ specific doctrines? Consider and defend an alternate history based on one of these questions.