Abolition issues aside, all religions adopt many of the principals of former religions.

The golden rule theme is present in almost every major religion because it has been proven to be an Intelligent and effective way to organize society.

I think regardless of the religion or the current mores of a society you will find people with empathy and people without it. Both kinds of people will use whatever is available to prove it is right to do what they want to do.

I am sure we gained as much from the Greek and Roman cultures. One example is the Hippocratic oath taken by doctors. And what did the Romans ever do for us apart from --------------

I'm about 100 pages in to it so I can't really say anything about the book. I think the mythic Jesus was an archetype made of all the best features of the spiritual zeitgeist. If that's true, then we can say we enjoy the best parts of Greek and Christian culture. History, of course, is a different matter. Religion turned out to be both a driving force in philosophy and also the suppression of mental freedom for the masses at the same time.

Everything, and I do mean Everything, will receive the churches "treatment" about 2 generations after it happens. It is deemed acceptable (popular among the masses and threatening to its membership) after they have sufficiently tweaked the narrative to their satisfaction.

Reading and understanding history is tricky.....it's written by the winners (powerful) after all

Just finished reading "The underground Railway" by Colson Whitehead. Great description of slavery in the southern states. On the contrary I would say that whites used christianity to justify slavery. Black Africans were descendants of Ham. A baddie from the bible and should therefore be seen and treated as inferior beings.

"The Internet is your friend".

More seriously though, it seems William Wilberforce, having earlier become an evangelical Christian, was a driving force for the abolition of slavery. See [bbc.co.uk] for more details.