Quote:His thinking that Christianity was the cause of the Roman decline reminds me of Nietzsche's thinking about the general decline (decadence) of societies.
Yeah - I don't buy that. Rome was in trouble in the mid 3d century, long before xtians attained any political power. The biggest problem was the deterioration of the emperor into a "Man on Horseback" figure who was out leading the armies himself. Continual political upheaval followed by the really dubious idea of dividing the empire into halves thereby virtually guaranteeing continual civil war. The sad fact was that the Western Empire was too poor to support itself. Thus I will give the xtians a pass on that one. The Western Empire fell as a result of human error. And one should remember that the Eastern empire lasted for a thousand years even with xtians fucking things up.
