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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (5110)	12/17/2000 4:57:49 AM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

"Bland" only posts in third person. It's just part of the fun, part of the way his id developed (originally on Yahoo). "He" doesn't speak that way in real life. The emperor Constantine adopted Christianity for purely political purposes. The net result was that the entire politico-military organization and machinery of the Roman state became available to help spread and perpetuate it by sheer brute force. It was lacking that never-to-be-underestimated advantage before. That is ultimately how it rose to become a world religion. The Roman army as a vehicle of the Roman empire served, more than any other factor, to spread, enforce, and consolidate its influence throughout Europe, and the institutions of the Roman state provided it with the necessary stability and longevity to cement its hold.

To: Greg or e who wrote (5110)	12/17/2000 2:27:11 PM
From: ecommerceman	Respond to of 28931

Greg--you're absolutely right about: Rome tried to exterminate Christianity but found that persecution was like throwing water on a grease fire, it only helped to spread it. "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church". According to the truly great (and Pulitzer Prize winning) book, "The Gnostic Gospels," it was the martyrdom of Orthodox Christians that enabled them to defeat the Gnostic Christians, who were their main rivals at the time. Gnostics didn't believe in martyrdom, but the populace at large found the concept of martyrdom so inspiring that the Gnostics lost momentum and eventually disappeared (sadly). FWIW, the Gnostics were a much more progressive branch of Christianity--they believed that God (hey, what the hell is up with this "G-d" stuff, anyway? Last time I read the B-I-B-L-E, "that's the book for me," btw, "God" was spelled "God" not "G-d." Does someone know better than the Bible??? Oh my God! Sacrilege!!) was both male and female, they didn't believe in all the harsh judgments of the Orthodox Christians, and they believed that if one didn't develop the potential within one, it would eat them alive (not literally, fundamentalists, it's just an expression...).