TPOLJ: Am I a Christian?

 I'm an atheist.  I don't believe in the existence of God, or that Jesus was the son of God, so I think most people would not call me a Christian.  But I was raised as a Christian, and the symbols of Christianity, such as the cross, still evoke a sense of reverence in me.  And even though I believe that Jesus was just a man, I still believe in his message, "Love thy neighbor", "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", etc..

I believe that these messages are, in large part, what has allowed Western Civilization to flourish.  They allow larger groups of people to cooperate with each other peacefully, forming larger and stronger nations and groups of nations, as well as form large powerful corporations like the British East India Company.  The ideas of fairness led to the development of the patent system to protect intellectual property, which led to the Industrial Revolution, which catalyzed the rise of western civilization, and specifically the British Empire.

As if that weren't enough, I believe the power of Jesus's message of peace may have contributed to the relative peacefulness of the Galilee region during the Zealot revolts around 67 CE, sparing Galilee from the total destruction visited upon Jerusalem and Judea by the Romans in order to quell the revolts further south.

This destruction led to a mass exodus of Jews out of Israel, creating a much larger Jewish diaspora, which led to a lot of resentment of Jews in Europe, which led to the Holocaust, the return of Jews to Israel, the pushing out of the Palestinian people who were then occupying Israel, the resentment towards Israel by the Arab states, and much of the conflict that is going on in the Middle East right now.

I'm sure that there have been a lot of other contributing factors to this history that I'm either unaware of or ignoring, but I can't help but wonder that, if Jesus hadn't been crucified, and had been allowed to continue preaching his message, might this message have permeated more towards the south, reducing the zealot revolt, softening Rome's response to the point where this large exodus would never have happened, and basically stopping this large chain of events that I just mentioned, resulting in more peace in the Middle East today?