Archaeologists Find Athenian Naval Base

[Anomalocaris]

This digression revolved around whether Rome in particular or classical western civilization in general had acheived substantially heightened probability of attaining scientific modernity which were subsequently squandered under the baleful influence of Christianity.

It's a historical conundrum along the lines of "what would have happened if Pickett's Charge succeeded?" or "suppose Napoleon had won at Waterloo."

The deadening hand of jesusism - or "baleful influence" as you put it - put a definite break on intellectual pursuits in the Empire which were not concerned with god shit.  Theology is about the most useless subject anyone can imagine but we also have the example of the Byzantines where the Empire did not fall for another 1,000 years but which still wasted much of its energy and resources on church-related shit.

However, it could be an intellectually interesting discussion.  Suppose instead of this jesus death cult with its fixation on the next world Rome had maintained its policy of tolerance and worried more about this world?  Suppose we had not consigned those 8-9 centuries in the West to the flames of ignorance?

If the west had not been consigned during those 8-9 centuries to the flame of ignorance fanned for the benefit of the cult of Jesus, the west might have looked better during those 8-9 centuries.  But that's it.   I don't think it would have hastened the arrival of the scientific enlightenment 11 centuries later in the western world.    Keep in mind during those same 8-9 centuries, there were other civilizations on earth that did look much better, that stared out as advanced as Rome and never suffered any thing comparable to the dark ages.  They experienced no scientific enlightenment.