Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> Sorry, but I call bullshit.
> It is precisely
> what the Romans who adopted the religion **wanted** everyone to think,
> so as to more easily remove all the annoying priests that where not
> *conveniently* members of their own families. The first Roman family to
> officially adopt the religion was the Flavians, and the second official
> pope, considered second *only* because he claimed that was made such by
> Paul, was *also* a Flavian and a close relative to *ding ding ding*, the
> new Emperor, who thought it would be a real neat idea to adopt
> Christianity as his families religion. Odd that... lol
Odd that historians know about nothing about the second pope, Linus, and you
know everything. Can you cite a paper?
>
> These where not stupid people. Most already pretty much concluded that
> the Gods where all BS, but that they had to pretend to support the
> priests and allow the thousands of temples to flourish, because if they
> tried to throw any of them out the people wouldn't stand for it. But,
> that meant that a) they had *no* real control over any of them and b)
> huge amounts of money they would have loved to get themselves was
> disappearing into church coffers. They initially had some success
> declaring *themselves* gods, after they noted how well it seemed to work
> in Egypt, but then that kind of fell apart when the Egyptians started
> bringing in temples for Isis, Ra, etc. as well.
Strange, Egyptians had been doing that for millenia, what's new?
> How better to kill two
> bird with one stone than a) declare a religion that is so new and
> relatively unknown to be the true one, assign one of your own family
> members to head the local version, set up a council to sort through all
> the legends, stories, etc., and find stuff that is useful to you,
> convince at least "some" of the Jews you are fighting that Titus Flavius
> is the second coming, thus removing *another* problem, blame them for
> the death of the savior, so that any still around are hated even more
> than before, and so on.
>
> You want to know why Christianity *succeeded*? Because it was the only
> one that the Roman Emperors had near absolute control over, undermined
> the power and will to fight of those who where, at the time, there worst
> enemies, and which, because they controlled it, could be written to
> support any idea they wanted. No other religion of the time period was
> sufficiently unknown, malleable, and lacking in a powerful, entrenched,
> priesthood, which the ruling families couldn't have gotten rid of, or
> subverted enough to control them. After all, declaring the emperor a god
> didn't get rid of all those other religions. Building a new one, then
> later telling people that all the others where false, did. Its certainly
> what I might have considered, in their position. Not that it did them
> much good, because as soon as the idiots in their own families started
> believing the BS they became more concerned with who was committing sins
> than maintaining a military or defending their borders, and *poof* no
> more empire.
>
Sounds like a plan Red Mage would come up with.
(http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=010302). And plenty of unexplained
facts, like Domitian and plenty of other emperors persecuting christians:
"Yeah, let's kill our religion members in costly games to fill our coffers". Or
the Emperor not converting for over two centuries. Why not invent a new religion
instead of looking for trouble in a troublesome region like that?
And no more *Western* empire. The Eastern empire was even more obsessed with
religion, yet it survived a lot longer. Methinks your theory has more holes
than a sieve.
> --
> void main () {

>     if version = "Vista" {
>       call slow_by_half();
>       call DRM_everything();
>     }
>     call functional_code();
>   }
>   else
>     call crash_windows();
> }
>
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