Johnny Skeptic

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.htm...words&id=10738

http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/vb...ead.php?t=6124

In the late 3rd century the pagan philosopher Porphyry stated that promising any criminal that he would be absolved of his sins and enter paradise as long as he was baptized before he died undermined the very foundations of a society of decent human beings. The gnostics regarded a literal belief in the resurrection as the 'faith of fools'. Even the 3rd-century Christian philosopher Origen dismissed literalist Christianity as a 'popular, irrational faith', and stated bluntly: 'Christ crucified is teaching for babes'.

Edit: Will a moderator please change the title to "Evidence against Eusebius, Constantine, and literalism"?

mountainman

Hi Johnny Skeptic,

This is actually misinformative since the Nag Hammadi texts
could not possibly be related to "christian gnosticism" as defined
with respect to the Eusebian ecclesisatical history. The Nag
Hammadi texts are written in Coptic, and none of the purportedly
existent "christian gnostics" wrote in coptic.

Furthermore, and more importantly, the spiritual master who is
referred to in the texts at Nag Hammadi is "Thrice-great Hermes".

It is clear to me that the scribes at Nag Hammadi were christian
during the year 348 CE, according to the C14 dating at the site.
However, they were also fabricating christian texts from "pagan"
letters. IMO the christian religion in that year celebrated its
24th birthday ---- it was a new thing.

Our unexamined postulate that christians were in the world
before Constantine rose to power needs to be examined.

Best wishes,


Pete

Doug Shaver

Constantine did not establish the church as a state institution. All he did was make it legal for the church to exist.

mountainman

That is not all he did.
He did alot more than that.

He introduced tax-exemption on grand scales for this church.
In 350 CE land tax had tripled within living memory.
He personally appointed all of its bishops.
He considered himself as "the bishop of bishops".
He considered himself as "the thirteenth apostle".
He ordered for the destruction of non-christian temples.
He ordered for the execution of non-christian priests.
He ordered for the burning of non-christian academic writings.

Has anyone read "War is a Racket"
by Smedley Butler, or is that off limits
to textual critics?




Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Toto

@mountainman: what happened to the surf?

Smedley Butler's War is a Racket

Smedley_Butler

Butler made serious charges against military imperialists, but I don't think that they included massive forgery or the creation of a new religion.

Please explain the connection between Butler and Constantine, or drop this subject.

Rich Oliver

:rolling: Yes I'm intrigued by the connection too. They were both complete loons perhaps?

mountainman

@toto: the surf is always there.

The military imperialists that Butler wrote of operated
in the twentieth century. Their theatre of operations
was large and modern and their "war was a racket".

Butler had integrity, and despite seeing it all, wrote
against what he saw with "to hell with war". Had he
thrown in with political schemers, instead of blowing
the whistle on them, we may well have seen a regime
using massive forgery and/or a new religion, who is to
know what an increased level of absolute power will
manifest "at the top"?

I have recently completed a very small unit of study concentrating
on the second century author Suetonius, and specifically
his work The Lives of the Twelve Caesars.

Suetonius describes the way that each of the successive
Caesars handled the reigns of an absolute power
that corrupted them each in different ways. They were
twelve supreme imperial mafia thugs - many of them
malevolent dictators - who prevailed against their opposition
by one or more executions at a time.

They were constantly at war. And it was just as big a racket
then as it was in the twentieth century. In fact bigger, because
in theory we have evolved out of the acceptance of slavery
and oppression. And because of the level of education, and
the ABSOLUTENESS of the Roman Emperor's power over life
and death, and all things was as if he were "a god" (while he
lived).

Constantine was "at war" big-time.
And it was one big gigantic racket.
The "Holy War" was his biggest racket.

Smedley Butler would have seen this instantly IMO.
Because he had integrity, and he understood the
cunning of the military mind.

Toto, the connection between Butler and Constantine
is the racket and brigandry of war, which Constantine
engaged in on a massive scale. His building project
of basilicas, for example, is the greatest expenditure
of building stone conducted by any person in antiquity.

I see Butler as a kind of Arius, who by his integrity
speaks out against the injustice of war and its
racketeering, in opposition to the imperial supremacists.

(NB: I probably see Arius differently to most, but the
point is that we only know of one opponent to the
ideas of Constantine, and the person who had the
guts to speak up (against the Boss) was Arius. ....)

Butler was lucky to live in the 20th century because
had he lived in the rule of Constantine, he would not
have published. Conversely, the 20th century is lucky
to have witnessed the integrity of Smedley Butler,
who after seeing war first hand at the top, denounced
it in plain and simple terms "as a racket".

I hope this explains my position Toto.
I have only respect for Butler, and
none whatsoever for the likes of Constantine.


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

Toto

This is just a fantasy. Do you have any real examples of dictators inventing an entire religious history, including heretics and dissenters? Do you think that Butler was the only intelligent person on the planet at the time?

I don't know where to start on this. Yes, the Roman emperors were violent men - they rose to the top in a system that rewarded or required that sort of behavior. But what is government, but the legitimate use of violence? This distinguishes government from the Mafia, which is the private and illegitimate use of violence.

But I don't think you realize how hard it is to be a real dictator. The modern world has seen the development of real totalitarian regimes, because we now have the technology for complete social control. The Romans had the technology to defeat their enemies, but not necessarily to control every aspect of life.

Constantine may have been the biggest man in the Empire, but being able to murder your opponents is a blunt instrument. You are asking us to believe that Constantine created an entire religion from scratch. This involves not only the scribes to create the history, including the heretics, but all of the structure of the church - the elders and deacons, the house churches, etc. After all, the purpose of this religion was to bind the empire together, and what presumably attracted Constantine to the Christians was their existing social network.

This act of creation would take much more than mafia style thuggery. It would take a deft intelligence and support from an army of scribes and organizers, working in several languages, spread out over the empire. That's not what you see with Constantine, is it? Why would he bother inventing a religion when the Roman Empire had so many to start out with?

mountainman

A small quibble ...

The technology of supremacy was sufficient Toto.

In 55 BCE there were estimated to be 6 million Gallic Celts.
Julius Caesar killed one million and brought another
million to the commonwealth of the Roman Empire
(to usde the phrase of Ammianus Marcillenus) as
common slaves. There is the issue of Trajan and
the genocide of the Dacians.

The technology of supremacy was sufficient for the
times to shut down any and all resistance, especially
in matters of writing, literature, and its preservation
(or perversion) --- as the history of the fourth
century records.

"The highways were covered
with galloping bishops". [AM]


Best wishes,


Pete

premjan

Killed 1 million and enslaved 1 million (out of 6 million total)!! Sounds proportionally worse than what the Muslims did to Hindus in India.