Trinity Nonsense

[Zenith]

But remember, for 1,000 years after they had the right to murder/torture anyone who disagreed or disputed their bullshit. I've said many times that if you gave me the right to execute people who disagree I could have millions worshiping a toaster in 20 years. Fear is a great motivator. Religious scumbags know that better than almost anyone else.

I don't have too much time these days, but I wanted to say something...
You know, in the first centuries since christianity became an official religion, the situation was like this: the Empire there was now an organized religion: priests, bishops, archbishops, etc. whom the people were indeed following blindly. So there was absolutely no need to punish a no-one-cares-for John for believing otherwise. The IMPORTANT thing when having a council was to force on every bishop & archbishop the accepted dogmas - the head of the beast is dangerous (i.e. the leader, the one who inspires others), not the tail! And when a bishop or archbishop refused to accept the new dogma, he was exiled (also mocked and stuff like that) - not butchered and tortured (at least the centuries 4 to 11, where we have the topic). Yet violence can still happen in the population, because once they have heard the "undeniable truth", they hate and despise the minority that refuses it, so there is a high probability for incidents to happen.

In few words: once you put into the minds of the mob to blindly believe their religious leaders, then, if you want to introduce a certain doctrine, you need only a council which everybody calls "ecumenical" (which, the mob believes it to be "God chose that through the Church") and force some bishops and archbishops to believe and preach what the Emperor & the majority of bishops & archbishops want.

Unfortunately, I didn't study about how things were going on in later centuries (after year 1000), and especially how things were in the Orthodox Christianity (i.e. the orthodox people did not have an inquisition, for instance).