Has Religion Done More Good Than Bad?

[Jotari]

Look, relevant, recent and nerdy.

 

[Res]

2 hours ago, SullyMcGully said:

Love, compassion, and guilt exist in spite of reason. And they are many times more apparent in humans than in animals. If animals were the only irrational creatures, we would expect them to be hopelessly emotional for no good reason, while we rational humans operated on a near-robotic level of uniformity. However, the last creature I saw cry over Ben and Jerry's after watching a sad movie was not my cat, but my sister. 

If we humans are supposed to be completely rational, then a lot of our actions don't make sense. Why is it that the humans in our world that do not display emotions are treated as tricky psychological cases? Shouldn't we see them as ideal citizens or as the pinnacle of evolutionary success? 

When somebody hurts me by accident, they say sorry. They say that so I won't be offended with them and so that they won't feel guilty. But why should they care? And why should I care that they care? To me, there's just too much that a purely rational view of humanity is unable to figure out. That's just my opinion, though.

Emotions are not inherently irrational. It's about balance.

Love enables humans to build familial and friendship bonds. It's necessary for a cohesive, progressive society. People who are unable to experience emotions on a healthy level are often loners and find it difficult to work with others. 

The bonds we form also protect us in other ways; they prevent us from committing incest, for example, as most animals do, or from eating our babies when we're stressed (as many rodents do). An overabundance of emotion is also irrational, though; we recognize as a society that loving someone in excess is irrational and can be dangerous; for example, when someone continues to love their abuser, or loves to the exclusion of people around them. 

Similarly compassion and guilt are very much reasonable and rational in a functioning human society, so long as they are not present in excess. We don't want a jury that's so compassionate that the criminal is completely pardoned (we also don't want a jury that's vindictive. A lot of laws, and the rules we've laid out for how society operates, are all about that delicate balance. Finding people who are impartial; not overly sympathetic or overly angry). 

If I hurt someone, caring about that, and apologizing, produces the following results: a) it makes me more cautious in future; it's a constant learning process, and b) it allows the both of us to move on past the hurt and get back towards cooperating together.

Emotions that are perceived to be negative can be good, too. A right amount - a rational amount - of fear keeps us safe. We call people who are fearless 'dangerous', 'reckless', sometimes even 'stupid' - even if we might admire what they can achieve as a result of their fearlessness (on the other hand, plenty of people DO die when chasing storms, climbing the world's highest mountain, or scaling buildings without safety equipment). Conversely when people have too much fear - an irrational amount of fear - we say they have phobias; I have an irrational fear of spiders that goes beyond a natural sense of preservation, so I have arachnophobia.

Also, having an emotional reaction to a book/movie/game is not necessarily irrational, either. We can practice/learn to experience emotions, and how to handle them, through our emotional response to stimuli in a safe, controlled environment. 

[Tetragrammaton]

11 hours ago, DiogoJorge said:

Why? I can believe just fine in a god whitout one.

Do you really know nothing?

Let's say the whole America continents, billion of Christian believers are living there because most of the non believers were killed in many wars.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, hanhnn said:

Do you really know nothing?

Let's say the whole America continents, billion of Christian believers are living there because most of the non believers were killed in many wars.

That's the equivalent of saying electricity and flushing toilets owe their popularity due to war.

[Tetragrammaton]

51 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's the equivalent of saying electricity and flushing toilets owe their popularity due to war.

You know people don't get killed because they do not use electricity and flushing toilets.

But there were and are people being killed because they do not worship the same god.

[DiogoJorge]

4 hours ago, hanhnn said:

Do you really know nothing?

Let's say the whole America continents, billion of Christian believers are living there because most of the non believers were killed in many wars.

That was a ages ago. And I can believe in gods just fine nowdays where wars are less prevalent.

Edited July 27, 2017 by DiogoJorge

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, hanhnn said:

You know people don't get killed because they do not use electricity and flushing toilets.

But there were and are people being killed because they do not worship the same god.

Who was being killed for not worshipping the same god? The conquistadors were exactly what their name implies. Conquerers. They were there to pillage the natural resources and take control of the land. Any wholesale slaughtering they were doing was done without any religious motivation.

Edited July 27, 2017 by Jotari

[Moblin Major General]

4 hours ago, hanhnn said:

You know people don't get killed because they do not use electricity and flushing toilets.

If wind blows out a fireplace inside a home in winter, or you breathe in something from an outhouse? No electricity could mean no heat, and no plumbing means that you are breathing in something unhealthy every time you shit. People do die from those things, therefore your analogy doesn't work.

[SullyMcGully]

53 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Who was being killed for not worshipping the same god? The conquistadors were exactly what their name implies. Conquerers. They were there to pillage the natural resources and take control of the land. Any wholesale slaughtering they were doing was done without any religious motivation.

Indeed. Very few modern religions actually mandate murder. The trouble is that many with ulterior motives will twist religious texts out of their original context in order to push their own agenda and impose it on others.

I mean, seriously, do you think the Jesus who said to love your enemies and even forgave his own murderers would want people to be killing other people in His name? No, but that's exactly what happened all throughout the Middle Ages.

[blah the Prussian]

The point that atrocities which on the surface appear religiously motivated but are actually more complex is an important one. Take for example the Thirty Years War; on the surface, it was a war between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire. However, what it was ultimately really about was the northern Princes resisting Hapsburg attempts to centralize the HRE; religion was merely a way to identify each other. The same is true of many wars today; Israel vs Palestine is really a conflict between a colonial state and the natives, not Judaism and Islam.

[Moblin Major General]

2 hours ago, blah the Prussian said:

The point that atrocities which on the surface appear religiously motivated but are actually more complex is an important one. Take for example the Thirty Years War; on the surface, it was a war between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire. However, what it was ultimately really about was the northern Princes resisting Hapsburg attempts to centralize the HRE; religion was merely a way to identify each other. The same is true of many wars today; Israel vs Palestine is really a conflict between a colonial state and the natives, not Judaism and Islam.

Also, the Crusades were an attempt to create a buffer zone for Eastern Europe and also to help the Byzantine Empire gain back territory lost to the Ummayads.

[Acacia Sgt]

Besides, diseases also did a number on the natives. Well, at least, in my corner of the Americas. In fact, there was a bigger interest in converting them, not killing them.

[Jotari]

14 hours ago, hanhnn said:

Do you really know nothing?

Let's say the whole America continents, billion of Christian believers are living there because most of the non believers were killed in many wars.

Oh yeah, point of trivia more than contention, but the North and South American continents combined barely break the one billion barrier. Yeah, there's more people in India than there is in all of America combined despite the USA being the third most populous country. Kind of puts a bit of perspective on those Asian populations.

Edited July 27, 2017 by Jotari

[DiogoJorge]

In the end, it's not religion that it's at fault, but rather the evil people who twist it for their selfish purposes. If people could be controlled so that nobody every strays from the right path, then religion would have easily made this world a better place.

Edited August 5, 2017 by DiogoJorge

[Skynstein]

On 27/07/2017 at 9:19 AM, SullyMcGully said:

Indeed. Very few modern religions actually mandate murder. The trouble is that many with ulterior motives will twist religious texts out of their original context in order to push their own agenda and impose it on others.

I mean, seriously, do you think the Jesus who said to love your enemies and even forgave his own murderers would want people to be killing other people in His name? No, but that's exactly what happened all throughout the Middle Ages.

The religious motive for the Crusades was that Catholicism is supposed to be universal. If it's universal, it cannot coexist with other religions, or even branches of Christianism. Therefore, all non-believers are infidels and should be either converted or eliminated, as they're heretics.

[Acacia Sgt]

1 hour ago, Skynstein said:

The religious motive for the Crusades was that Catholicism is supposed to be universal. If it's universal, it cannot coexist with other religions, or even branches of Christianism. Therefore, all non-believers are infidels and should be either converted or eliminated, as they're heretics.

I wouldn't say it was that, or just that.

The First Crusade, at least, was called forth because of the Seljuk Turks' invasion of the Holy Land, which led to the massacre of Christian pilgrims and defamation of temples (previously, Christian pilgrims were actually granted safe passage even though the Caliphs controlled the land; on the contrary, the Seljuks were much more zealous on the matter). And in fact, the Pope called the Basileus for support, so it wasn't Catholicism against other Christianity branches. At least on the First Crusade. I can grant that things changed as more Crusades happened. But that is more the human influence on the matter.

Edited August 5, 2017 by Acacia Sgt

[FionordeQuester]

On August 5, 2017 at 8:43 AM, Skynstein said:

The religious motive for the Crusades was that Catholicism is supposed to be universal. If it's universal, it cannot coexist with other religions, or even branches of Christianism. Therefore, all non-believers are infidels and should be either converted or eliminated, as they're heretics.

Actually, the wonderful thing about Christianity is that it CAN co-exist with other religions.  Others aren't required to believe what we believe in order for us to survive; that's how it survived in it's infancy.  Remember; it STARTED as a small, ragtag group of "heretics" promoting a gospel that was radically opposed to both of the dominant religions of that time (the first being the Roman belief that Caesar was a divine being, the second being the Judaistic belief in an overly legalistic version of the laws of Moses).  Jesus was literally crucified for his teachings, as were many of his followers.  

And yet, it still took its place as one of the world's dominant religions; not by force, but because of its ability to speak to men and women.  If medieval Catholicism couldn't survive without forcing it's will on other people, then that's a failure of the medieval Catholic Church, not of Christianity in general.

Quote

You know people don't get killed because they do not use electricity and flushing toilets.

But there were and are people being killed because they do not worship the same god.

On the other hand, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Adolf Hitler were all atheists; atheists who did just about everything they could to eradicate the influence of religion in their country.  Didn't stop them from massacring millions of their own people, did it?

 

 

Edited September 21, 2017 by FionordeQuester

[blah the Prussian]

1 hour ago, FionordeQuester said:

Actually, the wonderful thing about Christianity is that it CAN co-exist with other religions.  Others aren't required to believe what we believe in order for us to survive; that's how it survived in it's infancy.  Remember; it STARTED as a small, ragtag group of "heretics" promoting a gospel that was radically opposed to both of the dominant religions of that time (the first being the Roman belief that Caesar was a divine being, the second being the Judaistic belief in an overly legalistic version of the laws of Moses).  Jesus was literally crucified for his teachings, as were many of his followers.  

 

The Romans did not believe that Caesar was a divine being. Their pantheon was actually special in that it incorporated the Gods of people they conquered, so for example when the Romans conquered the Guals Celtic Gods were simply incorporated into the Roman pantheon. Christianity(and Judaism in the same period) was opposed to the Roman pantheon explicitly due to its assertion that there was more than one God, period. I'd also question the assertion that Christianity spread without violence. Remember, Constantine, the Emperor who converted Rome to Christianity, didn't inherit the throne, he took it by force, in a rejection of the previous Emperor Diocletian's Tetrarchy. Then, after he conquered Rome, he marched on his former ally Licinius precisely because Licinius did not convert to Christianity. Additionally during and after the reign of Theodosius I the Roman government actively persecuted Pagans, so no, Christianity did not spread peacefully in Rome.

[FionordeQuester]

6 hours ago, blah the Prussian said:

The Romans did not believe that Caesar was a divine being. 

Wikipedia would beg to disagree with you.  I can find official texts from my College library if you're not comfortable with Wkkipedia as a source; but for now, I would point you to this quote...

Julius Caesar was the first historical Roman to be officially deified. He was posthumously granted the title Divus Iulius or Divus Julius (the divine Julius or the deified Julius) by decree of the Roman Senate on 1 January 42 BC. The appearance of a comet during games in his honour was taken as confirmation of his divinity. Though his temple was not dedicated until after his death, he may have received divine honours during his lifetime:^[120] and shortly before his assassination, Mark Antony had been appointed as his flamen (priest).^[121] Both Octavian and Mark Antony promoted the cult of Divus Iulius. After the death of Antony, Octavian, as the adoptive son of Caesar, assumed the title of Divi Filius (son of a god).

And I would also point you to this article here, again from Wikipedia...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_(ancient_Rome)#Divus_Julius

 

Quote

Remember, Constantine, the Emperor who converted Rome to Christianity, didn't inherit the throne, he took it by force...

Yes, he did...in 306 A.D.; more than three hundred years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  I think it's fair to say that Christianity was doing just fine without him.

If anything, he's yet another another example of a VERY long and extensive list of folks who used religion to advance their own desires (just like some of the politicians that govern us today!). 

So I would advise not looking to him as a representative of Christianity.  Instead, look to the people who founded the religion; Jesus, the 12 disciples, the apostle Paul.  Comparing them to some of the hypocrites that came after them is like comparing Bruce Lee's movies to the many, MANY knockoff films that attempted to cash in on his image after his death.  You certainly wouldn't think the latter would be a fair representation of the former, would you?

Edited September 21, 2017 by FionordeQuester

[blah the Prussian]

1 hour ago, FionordeQuester said:

Wikipedia would beg to disagree with you.  I can find official texts from my College library if you're not comfortable with Wkkipedia as a source; but for now, I would point you to this quote...

Julius Caesar was the first historical Roman to be officially deified. He was posthumously granted the title Divus Iulius or Divus Julius (the divine Julius or the deified Julius) by decree of the Roman Senate on 1 January 42 BC. The appearance of a comet during games in his honour was taken as confirmation of his divinity. Though his temple was not dedicated until after his death, he may have received divine honours during his lifetime:^[120] and shortly before his assassination, Mark Antony had been appointed as his flamen (priest).^[121] Both Octavian and Mark Antony promoted the cult of Divus Iulius. After the death of Antony, Octavian, as the adoptive son of Caesar, assumed the title of Divi Filius (son of a god).

And I would also point you to this article here, again from Wikipedia...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_(ancient_Rome)#Divus_Julius

 

I had typed a thing here but it got eaten. The long and short is that while you are not technically wrong the Roman Emperors were among the thousands of minor gods and so not important to the religion.

1 hour ago, FionordeQuester said:

Yes, he did...in 306 A.D.; more than three hundred years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  I think it's fair to say that Christianity was doing just fine without him.

If anything, he's yet another another example of a VERY long and extensive list of folks who used religion to advance their own desires (just like some of the politicians that govern us today!). 

So I would advise not looking to him as a representative of Christianity.  Instead, look to the people who founded the religion; Jesus, the 12 disciples, the apostle Paul.  Comparing them to some of the hypocrites that came after them is like comparing Bruce Lee's movies to the many, MANY knockoff films that attempted to cash in on his image after his death.  You certainly wouldn't think the latter would be a fair representation of the former, would you?

Christianity was not doing just fine without him; only a few years before Constantine they were undergoing their worst persecution since at least Nero and it wasn't until much later that the common people adopted Christianity. The fact is, what allowed Christianity to spread so far in the West was the prominence of the Church under Theodosius and that prominence continuing even after the fall of Rome making it expedient for Kings like Clovis of the Franks to convert. You can talk all you want about humans corrupting the religion but the fact is that without those humans Christianity would not have spread as far as it did. Look, I actually like Constantine(he ended Diocletian's asinine Tetrarchy) but to claim that Christianity spread without violence is absurd. Politics impact religion much more than religion impacts politics; the political powers of the land MUST adopt a religion for it to have a chance at real prominence. It's what separates religions from cults, and why Catharism never caught on while Protestantism did.

[FionordeQuester]

Before we go on, I must know.  How ARE you generating multiple quote boxes while still preserving the "2 hours ago, this guy said:" label?  I could NEVER figure out how to do that once Serenes changed the way it encoded it's forum posts; so if you could enlighten me, that'd be great!

Anyway...

7 hours ago, blah the Prussian said:

I had typed a thing here but it got eaten. The long and short is that while you are not technically wrong the Roman Emperors were among the thousands of minor gods and so not important to the religion.

Even so, Caesar used his supposed "divinity" to further impose his will upon his people.  His religion may not have been the only one widely accepted by the Romans, but it was pretty clearly the one with the most force behind it; the one that ACTUALLY mattered in terms of moving and shaking the world it was preached in.  Any other pagan religions that did their thing did so only with the approval of Caesar himself.

Quote

Christianity was not doing just fine without him; only a few years before Constantine they were undergoing their worst persecution since at least Nero and it wasn't until much later that the common people adopted Christianity.

See, that's where you're getting your terms mixed up.  What you're actually saying is that the Christian people weren't doing fine without Constantine.  But that is not a good indication of how well Christianity itself was doing.  

To illustrate my point further...imagine Kim Jong un.  Let's say he one day decided he hates Mathematics.  HATES IT!  He thought his college teacher was a smelly jerk who had it out for him; so he, in a burst of insanity, decides that mathematics needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.  So he (somehow) ropes the whole world into the mass murder of every mathematician in existence.  He kills so many mathematicians in his mad quest that only 2% of them are left alive.

Does that mean the very concept of mathematics itself has been wiped from the face of the earth?  No.  Because, evidently, mathematics is such a powerful tool for relating to the physical realities of our world, that nothing could ever replace it.  Whosoever gains knowledge of it has their lives irrevocably changed.  Never again will they be as helpless as they were when they couldn't do 2 + 2.

That's what I meant when I said that Christianity does not need to force itself on others in order to survive.  No matter how hard the dominant culture tried, it could never be snuffed out; not even after 300 years.  There were (and are) always martyrs willing to lay down their lives, and new converts to replenish it's numbers (even if they didn't represent the popular opinion).  Evidently, the effect Jesus's teachings had on his followers was so powerful, that even the threat of death could not deter them.  Paul, Thomas, and those that followed them went on, even after seeing their own teacher get strung up on the cross.

Quote

The fact is, what allowed Christianity to spread so far in the West was the prominence of the Church under Theodosius and that prominence continuing even after the fall of Rome making it expedient for Kings like Clovis of the Franks to convert...to claim that Christianity spread without violence is absurd.

Yes; and look how wonderful our religious institutions are now >_> ... 

Modern skeptics of the Church today argue that churches have gotten to the point where "logic", "reason", and "science" have somehow been labeled as diametrically opposed to "faith".  I personally have never been raised in a church that preached that, and I don't know of any empirical studies that were done on whether or not that is how most churches operate.

But in any case, logic, science, and faith are meant to go hand-in-hand with each other; a fact that is evident to anyone who has ever read Proverbs (with Ecclesiastes also being a pretty decent indication of this fact).  If it's critics truly are correct, and the church seriously can't grasp even that simple truth (again, I haven't verified that one way or the other, nor am I aware of any empirical studies that have)...then it would've been better if Christianity HADN'T spread as far as it did.  Then, at least, the institutions it DID beget would've been much more faithful to what was written in the Bible.

Edited September 22, 2017 by FionordeQuester

[Jotari]

Regarding Religion spreading through violence, it might be accurate to say it but it's more a secondary cause of culture being spread rather than an instigator of violence. It would be the equivalent of saying aqueducts were spread throughout the world through violence. Violence was the name of the game for thousand of years. Every idea a nation had was spread through either conquest or trade If Rome didn't go all heavy with its empire building then maybe Christianity wouldn't be as big. But other things like concrete, plumbing and our time system might not be as widespread either (though imo, fuck the time system we use it's completely ridiculous. And yes I know a lot of Roman technologies were lost with the fall of Rome but what they specifically did or didn't do isn't really the point I'm making).

Edited September 22, 2017 by Jotari

[Time the Crestfallen]

8 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

But in any case, logic, science, and faith are meant to go hand-in-hand with each other; a fact that is evident to anyone who has ever read Proverbs (with Ecclesiastes also being a pretty decent indication of this fact).  If it's critics truly are correct, and the church seriously can't grasp even that simple truth (again, I haven't verified that one way or the other, nor am I aware of any empirical studies that have)...then it would've been better if Christianity HADN'T spread as far as it did.  Then, at least, the institutions it DID beget would've been much more faithful to what was written in the Bible.

Generally speaking, Christianity and logic/science have a spotty history. For every instance of Mendel fathering the field of genetics (and the role Monks and the Monasteries preserving science and literature in general), you have an instance of Galileo being persecuted for supporting heliocentrism. That is to say, Christianity has throughout history had an equal capacity for being pro and anti-science, although the degree to which Christianity has itself played into each role is arguable. I personally think that the relation between religion and the sciences occurs circumstantially whereas religion is often the cause of anti-science attitudes, but that's just my subjective view of the matter.

[Tryhard]

From what I understand the Galileo thing has been very misrepresented.

Quote

Many people wrongly believe Galileo proved heliocentricism. He could not answer the strongest argument against it, which had been made nearly two thousand years earlier by Aristotle: If heliocentrism were true, then there would be observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun. However, given the technology of Galileo’s time, no such shifts in their positions could be observed. It would require more sensitive measuring equipment than was available in Galileo’s day to document the existence of these shifts, given the stars’ great distance. Until then, the available evidence suggested that the stars were fixed in their positions relative to the earth, and, thus, that the earth and the stars were not moving in space—only the sun, moon, and planets were.

Thus Galileo did not prove the theory by the Aristotelian standards of science in his day. In his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina and other documents, Galileo claimed that the Copernican theory had the "sensible demonstrations" needed according to Aristotelian science, but most knew that such demonstrations were not yet forthcoming. Most astronomers in that day were not convinced of the great distance of the stars that the Copernican theory required to account for the absence of observable parallax shifts. This is one of the main reasons why the respected astronomer Tycho Brahe refused to adopt Copernicus fully.

Galileo could have safely proposed heliocentricism as a theory or a method to more simply account for the planets’ motions. His problem arose when he stopped proposing it as a scientific theory and began proclaiming it as truth, though there was no conclusive proof of it at the time. Even so, Galileo would not have been in so much trouble if he had chosen to stay within the realm of science and out of the realm of theology. But, despite his friends’ warnings, he insisted on moving the debate onto theological grounds.

...

At Galileo’s request, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit—one of the most important Catholic theologians of the day—issued a certificate that, although it forbade Galileo to hold or defend the heliocentric theory, did not prevent him from conjecturing it. When Galileo met with the new pope, Urban VIII, in 1623, he received permission from his longtime friend to write a work on heliocentrism, but the new pontiff cautioned him not to advocate the new position, only to present arguments for and against it. When Galileo wrote the Dialogue on the Two World Systems, he used an argument the pope had offered and placed it in the mouth of his character Simplicio. Galileo, perhaps inadvertently, made fun of the pope, a result that could only have disastrous consequences. Urban felt mocked and could not believe how his friend could disgrace him publicly. Galileo had mocked the very person he needed as a benefactor. He also alienated his long-time supporters, the Jesuits, with attacks on one of their astronomers. The result was the infamous trial, which is still heralded as the final separation of science and religion.

...

It is a good thing that the Church did not rush to embrace Galileo’s views, because it turned out that his ideas were not entirely correct, either. Galileo believed that the sun was not just the fixed center of the solar system but the fixed center of the universe. We now know that the sun is not the center of the universe and that it does move—it simply orbits the center of the galaxy rather than the earth.

from a Catholic source that may be biased, but as far as I know all the details it gives are documented truthfully: https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy

Any claims of him being tortured are as far as I know fabricated. He was kept under house arrest until the end of his life and treated well, while yes the situation was not exactly benevolent on the part of the Catholic Church, but the thing that has often been ignored is that he attempted to "prove" scripture being incorrect on his own accord for something which he had provided no conclusive proof of, from what I understand of it. He was initially cleared of the accusation of heresy but continued to pursue heliocentricism. It's worth noting that there were many scientists on both sides of this heliocentricism argument at the time, and none of them seemed to be facing the same trials Galileo did.

The Catholic Church has supported the theory of evolution and climate change science for many years and openly done so, though other flavourings of religion may often be not as kind. They are at least somewhat accommodating for science. Take Neil deGrasse Tyson's word for it.

Edited September 22, 2017 by Tryhard

[blah the Prussian]

10 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

Before we go on, I must know.  How ARE you generating multiple quote boxes while still preserving the "2 hours ago, this guy said:" label?  I could NEVER figure out how to do that once Serenes changed the way it encoded it's forum posts; so if you could enlighten me, that'd be great!

Anyway...

12 hours ago, blah the Prussian said:

I'm just clicking on Quote this on my laptop.

10 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

Even so, Caesar used his supposed "divinity" to further impose his will upon his people.  His religion may not have been the only one widely accepted by the Romans, but it was pretty clearly the one with the most force behind it; the one that ACTUALLY mattered in terms of moving and shaking the world it was preached in.  Any other pagan religions that did their thing did so only with the approval of Caesar himself.

Quote

Not the case, though. All Roman Emperors were only deified after their deaths. The ones that tried to be worshipped as Gods while living, such as Elagabulus, tended to not last long. Again, the Romans were relatively tolerant of other religions in that you could worship your gods basically as long as you acknowledged the existence of theirs, which, while not ideal, was better than the Jews and, yes, the Christians. What makes worshipping dead Emperors worse than worshipping other Gods, anyway?

10 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

See, that's where you're getting your terms mixed up.  What you're actually saying is that the Christian people weren't doing fine without Constantine.  But that is not a good indication of how well Christianity itself was doing.  

To illustrate my point further...imagine Kim Jong un.  Let's say he one day decided he hates Mathematics.  HATES IT!  He thought his college teacher was a smelly jerk who had it out for him; so he, in a burst of insanity, decides that mathematics needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.  So he (somehow) ropes the whole world into the mass murder of every mathematician in existence.  He kills so many mathematicians in his mad quest that only 2% of them are left alive.

Does that mean the very concept of mathematics itself has been wiped from the face of the earth?  No.  Because, evidently, mathematics is such a powerful tool for relating to the physical realities of our world, that nothing could ever replace it.  Whosoever gains knowledge of it has their lives irrevocably changed.  Never again will they be as helpless as they were when they couldn't do 2 + 2.

That's what I meant when I said that Christianity does not need to force itself on others in order to survive.  No matter how hard the dominant culture tried, it could never be snuffed out; not even after 300 years.  There were (and are) always martyrs willing to lay down their lives, and new converts to replenish it's numbers (even if they didn't represent the popular opinion).  Evidently, the effect Jesus's teachings had on his followers was so powerful, that even the threat of death could not deter them.  Paul, Thomas, and those that followed them went on, even after seeing their own teacher get strung up on the cross.

Quote

See, that's the case with a good deal of religion, though. Zoroastrianism survives today despite persecution by Islam, for example. Judaism has survived much longer than Christianity. However Christians were still very much a minority in Europe before, during, and after Constantine. I don't think Christianity would have been completely eradicated, but it would not have spread without state sponsorship.