(October 27, 2014 at 3:15 pm)abaris Wrote:(October 27, 2014 at 12:03 pm)JuliaL Wrote: The Christians are an iron age mutation of the Jews who inherited from the Hebrew tribes. They changed the meme to include the weak and the poor. By cementing together enough of the underclasses, they built a large, accretive structure, resilient, powerful and growth oriented.
That may be true for early christianity, but let's not forget the Constantinian buttkissing contest of 325 at Nicaea. They sucked up to power and happily threw their every believes obverboards. That's their secret of success. That's why every given army had their field curates although prominent early christian thinkers banned christians from doing military service.
I consider the adoption of Christianity by Constantine the Great and thereby the Roman empire as one of those accidents of history which would not have happened again if the game were replayed. I doubt the bookies of the time would have given even odds at his birth that Constantine would have become either emperor or Christian. It's more that he fell into the roll by luck, talent and effort like Bill Gates got rich because he got the gig with IBM. Details like whether he snagged QDOS from Gary Kildall or not aren't material. The rest, as they say, is history. Damned flapping butterflies.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? 
