Paul's Writings Underpin Western Thought

[Pat Mustard]

Sounds like yet another fuckhead walking around clothed in a sandwich board.

Yes. This other super liberal oh so reasonable cultural atheist immediately springs to mind.

Wanker.

Or the Grauniad's religion editor Andrew Browne whose every article would better be written as simply "I'm an atheist, but christianity, it's the best, most true and most complete ideology ever!"

Got myself banned off the comments for reporting a particularly vicious and libellous attack made by him on another poster who simply pointed out an obvious mistruth he'd written in an article.

[Angrboda]

Constantine -did- adopt christianity as a political expedient, though.....?

Whatever else it may have been...it was that as well.

Well, I have to ask you what you mean by that and what your claim is based upon, and hope you've got a better answer in mind than any that Brian supplied. And to be precise, Brian claimed that Constantine did it for its political expediency, meaning that it was what motivated his embracing Christianity, and not simply a fact incidental and coincident with his doing so.

[The Grand Nudger]

I didn't see what Brian offered..but...Constantine was a reformer by necessity, the imperial cult had withered (Julian called-Apostate after him would not be able to revive it) and he needed a new hook on both the plebs and the military.  He spent his time as emperor consolidating his power and far be it from me to say that the elderly Constantine.... on his deathbed...... didn't deeply truly believe...but...if he did, it was still damned convenient to the diminished seat of the roman emperor at the time. That particular throne had always been based on divine providence (ideologically)....but the scheme of divinity was changing.

IDK if the emperor would have converted specifically for it's value as propaganda....but I doubt that he would have been unaware of the same.

(it helps to check works on the early lives of constantine and his immediate successors.......honestly, very interesting people. Julian, easily, is my favorite person in history. As far as christerism is concverned..the two men had the same people in common but the outcome was directly opposite.) Whatever the Eusebs had to say to Constantine (and ignoring the practical value)..it had a converse effect on Julian)

[The Industrial Atheist]

Paul didn't say people can't have slaves. He just said they were equal under god. While he did say you can't have sex with people you aren't married to,(shitty to unmarried people but would prevent some rapes) he didn't say you can't rape your child wife. Which I'm sure happened.

Muslim Magic Book tries to thread that needle as well.  All may be equal before god...but neither ideology was willing to go to bat against the prevailing norm of chattel slavery man-to-man at the time of their inception.  To much risk, no reward.  Assuming..for the lulz..that god talked to all the nitwits who claim a direct line...they heard god say "and quit the slavery shit"....and thought to themselves.."let's ease that one in when we have a little purchase." - simply failing to record the lord of the cosmos enlightened stance on the autonomy of all human beings.

: snickers:

I don't doubt it.   at the part I bolded.

[Angrboda]

I didn't see what Brian offered..but...Constantine was a reformer by necessity, the imperial cult had withered (Julian called-Apostate after him would not be able to revive it) and he needed a new hook on both the plebs and the military.  He spent his time as emperor consolidating his power and far be it from me to say that the elderly Constantine.... on his deathbed...... didn't deeply truly believe...but...if he did, it was still damned convenient to the diminished seat of the roman emperor at the time.  That particular throne had always been based on divine providence....but the scheme of divinity was changing.

I don't doubt that he might have truly believed. What I doubt is that such explanations as yours or Brian's have any firm basis in fact and evidence. They're like the apologist dodge of "it could have happened" that way. The question is not could it happen that way, but did it happen that way. If there were some official recognition of such an explanation, I suspect I'd have heard that before, instead of the usual trash about Constantine wanting to curry favor with a small and unrepresentative religious minority. So your explanation while plausible, is lacking the proverbial smoking gun which would clinch it.

[The Grand Nudger]

If the question is -did- it happen that way..then yes..it did happen that way, even if a roman emperor didn't realize how politically expedient his decision, truncated by his kin, and resumed by the man to succeed..would be.   

I err on the side of education in the case of roman emperors.   Not alot of dummies there.  Bad leaders sure....dummies..not so much.

Constantine wasn't interested in any minority, specifically. Constantine, particularly near the end of his life, was interested in anything that robbed power from a conspiratorial majority. The imperial cult had lost control of the imperial apparatus at this point. Later emperors would blame the decline of civilization on precisely this.

[Minimalist]

Constantine -did- adopt christianity as a political expedient, though.....?

Whatever else it may have been...it was that as well.

And yet there is no xtian iconography on the Arch of Constantine completed in 315 to mark his victory over Maxentius supposedly with the (cough) divine inspiration of some xtian bullshit in the sky.

You know, it could just be that xtians are full of shit, too.

[The Grand Nudger]

That story, sure...but no one disputes the fact that christianity was legitimized during his reign. Let's be clear. I'm not endorsing the deathbed conversion story...I'm accepting that...to a roman emperor at that time....there would be no reason to vociferously deny it. Either in person or as a successor.

"The slaves think I converted to the slave religion? Wonderful!"

[Fake Messiah]

If you believe everyone is highly valued by God, your worldview must change over time. Things like education and hospitals and social welfare are natural extensions of your worldview

Have you heard of conservative Christian movement in the United States? You know they see healthcare and free education as an Antichrist. Just ask Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum and Tony Perkins and Peter LaBarbera what they think about free education and Obamacare.

I'm not saying if not for Christianity, then we would not have these, but I think that we can find other cultures to make a comparison and it turns out this is a very far-reaching feature of a Christian worldview.

So that means China is much more "Christian" because they are way more into socialism.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and that's the rub.  Christianity has always been based on the zeitgeist of the time.  So, today...you have a bunch of Muricans thinking Socialism™ is the end of the world.....?  

Expect to see that in their sermons.