Duhon wrote:Ignoring the duration of Christendom or even Judaism for the time being (except to note that Judaism couldn't have been older than the general collapse or weakening of various Bronze Age polities around eastern Europe and the Middle East around 1100 BC), loyalty to apparently everlasting and divinely appointed institutions is... good and all, but they cannot provide for life on earth. They simply have not been capable of that. So long as heaven is viewed as an escape hatch for earthly miseries, so long as the only ecclesiastical response is an admonition to spiritual responsibility, it cannot be tenable for us who have to live here in the interim.
Judaism is thought by most historians ( religious and secular ) to be at least 3500 years old, likely older. It's been around since around the middle kingdom of Ancient Egypt.
What is more - loyalty to ideology cannot provide anything for life on Earth. It's in implementation of said ideas. In which case, there is about 3000 years of evidence saying that the Abrahamic faith ( counting Judaism which makes it 3000 years, the founding of the kingdom of Israel ), and the entire last 1500 years of European history that says it absolutely can provide for life on Earth.
The very point of the old and new testaments was how to live on the Earth: with love as the core tenate. Once the testaments were accepted by an individual, all those around them would prosper - Heaven is simply a by product of this enlightenment.
I believe it was the Greek Archdiosece that explained that Christianity is a material faith. Man was made in, and a part of the material world. Therefore, he should do all that he is able to provide for and support the world made for him by the Lord. Heaven is what occurs when we come into communion with God for our service.