One nation, under who again?

chcr said:
*sigh*
I misspoke (mistyped?). It did not originally mean non-or anti-christian, in fact it didn't originally have religious connotations at all. The christians redefined it to be so. Kind of like gay used to mean "happy-go-lucky." Then it meant homosexual and now it just means bad.
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Alright, but I don't see why you wanted me to look up the origin of the word "pagan".

chcr said:
Work it out. Edison didn't invent the incandescent light bulb, but we say he did. John Crapper didn't invent the flush toilet but we say he did. It's in the nature of a figure of speech. No one perswon "invented" christmas. Constantine, however, decided (for whatever reason) to make christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. He brought together the various most accepted factions of christianity and "suggested" that they work out a coherent dogma. Believing that he excercised no input whatsoever into the process would be naive in the extreme. I realize this flies in the face of everything you've been told, but it's fairly obvious anyway. Constantine is the one who chose the Roman holiday of Saturnalia as the day, for instance. Therefore, I say he "invented" christmas.
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For a skeptic, you sure accept those assertions even though there is no substantial proof.

1. There is no proof that Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

2. Constantine did preside over the Council of Nicaea and respected the authority of the bishops who were there. Did he add his own input on the matter? Certainly. In fact, he tended to side with Arius who sparked the need for the council, though Arius' side lost. Did Constantine's opinion counted? No. In fact, he had absolutely no authority within the Catholic Church, i.e., he had no say in the matter of doctrine or dogma. He was not a bishop or a priest - he was nothing in that regard.

3. Constantine did not make December 25 the Christmas date. It wasn't even until AD 349 that Pope Julius fixed the Christmas date to December 25 for the Western Church - 12 years after Constantine's death.

I wonder, which Dan Brown approved books you're reading? Seriously, where are you getting your information?

chcr said:
Re your "evidence," I stated my objections. You still believe your evidence. Really not my problem at all. Many "well respected" historians accept that King Arthur actually existed even though you can show them the novel in which he was invented. Same goes for Robin Hood. The evidence is simply not compelling if you reflect on it dispassionately. A few "historians" (you can't really say with any certainty how well respedted they were 2000 years ago, now can you?) mention the Jesus story as it was related to them. thousands of other historians don't mention it at all. You choose what to believe. I choose what not to.
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Just imagine, pagan historians who just hate Christianity with a passion, were not even present to witness Jesus. They could of said that this man called "Jesus" doesn't really appear to be real. But they didn't. Why? Access to historical records? Knew the Apostles or their family? Talked to witnesses who remembered hearing him preach?

I do understand your position, chcr. I won't press the matter further, but I will provide some logical and most likely reasons why other historians didn't mention Jesus:

1. As far as the historians of the day were concerned, he was just a "blip" on the screen. Jesus was not considered to be historically significant by historians of his time. He did not address the Roman Senate, or write extensive Greek philosophical treatises; He never travelled outside of the regions of Palestine, and was not a member of any known political party. It is only because Christians later made Jesus a "celebrity" that He became known. Sanders, comparing Jesus to Alexander, notes that the latter "so greatly altered the political situation in a large part of the world that the main outline of his public life is very well known indeed. Jesus did not change the social, political and economic circumstances in Palestine (Note: It was left for His followers to do that!) ..the superiority of evidence for Jesus is seen when we ask what he thought." [Sand.HistF, 3] Harris adds that "Roman writers could hardly be expected to have foreseen the subsequent influence of Christianity on the Roman Empire and therefore to have carefully documented" Christian origins. How were they to know that this minor Nazarene prophet would cause such a fuss?

2. Jesus was executed as a criminal, providing him with the ultimate marginality. This was one reason why historians would have ignored Jesus. He suffered the ultimate humiliation, both in the eyes of Jews (Deut. 21:23 - Anyone hung on a tree is cursed!) and the Romans (He died the death of slaves and rebels.). On the other hand, Jesus was a minimal threat compared to other proclaimed "Messiahs" of the time. Rome had to call out troops to quell the disturbances caused by the unnamed Egyptian referenced in the Book of Acts [Sand.HistF, 51] . In contrast, no troops were required to suppress Jesus' followers. To the Romans, the primary gatekeepers of written history at the time, Jesus during His own life would have been no different than thousands of other everyday criminals that were crucified.

3. Jesus marginalized himself by being occupied as an itinerant preacher. Of course, there was no Palestine News Network, and even if there had been one, there were no televisions to broadcast it. Jesus never used the established "news organs" of the day to spread His message. He travelled about the countryside, avoiding for the most part (and with the exception of Jerusalem) the major urban centers of the day. How would we regard someone who preached only in sites like, say, Hahira, Georgia?

4. Jesus' teachings did not always jibe with, and were sometimes offensive to, the established religious order of the day. It has been said that if Jesus appeared on the news today, it would be as a troublemaker. He certainly did not make many friends as a preacher.

5. Jesus lived an offensive lifestyle and alienated many people. He associated with the despised and rejected: Tax collectors, prostitutes, and the band of fishermen He had as disciples.

6. Jesus was a poor, rural person in a land run by wealthy urbanites. Yes, class discrimination was alive and well in the first century also!
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Source
 
chcr said:
*sigh*

Many "well respected" historians accept that King Arthur actually existed even though you can show them the novel in which he was invented. Same goes for Robin Hood.
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well, for someone taking what appears to be the longest dump in history ...

image.php

and that from a great height ...you ain't half talking shi- .... :D oh Hi Prof ... 'The Enforcer' :D ...

where was I?

oh yeah Chcr's ponderings whilst on a frozen throne ...dumping thoughts from a great height ... :bgpimp:

"well respected" historians accept that King Arthur actually existed even though you can show them the novel in which he was invented. Same goes for Robin Hood."

Evidence for a king along the lines of Arthur is indisputable. That someone later decided to write a legend or tale out of The once and future King, the first true King of the britons or whatever, is hardly news-worthy and as a logical argument is about as firm as a soggy lemon cake left out in the rain.

That the nasty queer frenchie (the cowardly Rikky "lionheart") taxed England (where he had hardly ever set foot) to the hilt and beyond to finance his foreign wars in the crusades, and that a few Good honest saxon lads might want to eat venison and get pissed off at the taxes, oppression, harsh justice, poverty etc and become *gasp!!* bandits ..is hardly very unlikely.

That someone subsequently took a folk hero /rogue / thief and glamourised it (or if you prefer propagandised the tale) into a rousing folk tale of Resitance to the elite foppish nasty Norman gits ... :shrug:

...well, worra suprise!

So what?


You yourself say that history is revisionist.
 
Gotholic, I get my information from various books I've read over the last few decades. Dan Brown is a novelist, he's written novels. They don't have anything to do with history other than using the basic framework of christian myth as a basis for their story (by the way, they're pretty good). You accept one specific possible interpretation of events (the roman catholic one) and therefore you assume that any other interpretation must, by definition, be wrong. There are dozens of myths of children born of gods and mortals, several to virgins, many mythical characters who died and rose again, etc., etc., etc... It's clearly another myth, just a (currently) more popular one. Hell, it's largely plagiarized from earlier myths. Now, taking that knowledge and the knowledge of how political interaction works, Then reading various histories of how Constantine reformed the Roman Empire, it's pretty clear that he had a much larger influence on the early church than the church would have you believe. Some of these conlusions are just that, conclusions based as much on what isn't said sometimes as what is. As I have often said, history is written by the winners. It frequently fails to reflect all or even most of the facts.

BB, were there kings around the time that the Arthurian legend is set? Sure there were, probably lots of disputing ones and many folk tales about them. Most likely the Arthurian legend is based on several. The actual story is the product of someone's imagination. The fact that Arthur is largely accepted as a real, specific king is a perfect example of how history works. Robin Hood is the same. I suspect that any number of younger sons of landed gentry took to poaching and banditry in those times of hardship. It's very unlikely to me that "Robin Hood" was a specific person, but that the story is again a collection of folk tales involving many different men. Folk tales and rumors get turned into history when the real story either doesn't fire the imagination or shows the winners in a less than flattering light.

As I said earlier, 99% of people that have gone to American primary schools can and will tell you that Paul Revere warned the revolutionists that the British were coming. In fact, he only did that in a poem by Longfellow written a nearly a hundred years after the battle. This is just one very obvious example out of hundreds, if not thousands. Want another? Ask Gonz to describe Abraham Lincoln for you. Now ask SouthernandProud. Who's right? I'm thinking neither, how about you? But I'm supposed to accept these other stories as fact because some other people do? As unc said. without an eyewitness, what do you really know about it? A lot of things have happened in the "history" of humanity, most of them are unlikely to have happened the way "history" says they did. Believe what you want to, I do.
 
chcr said:
Gotholic, I get my information from various books I've read over the last few decades. Dan Brown is a novelist, he's written novels. They don't have anything to do with history other than using the basic framework of christian myth as a basis for their story (by the way, they're pretty good). You accept one specific possible interpretation of events (the roman catholic one) and therefore you assume that any other interpretation must, by definition, be wrong. There are dozens of myths of children born of gods and mortals, several to virgins, many mythical characters who died and rose again, etc., etc., etc... It's clearly another myth, just a (currently) more popular one. Hell, it's largely plagiarized from earlier myths. Now, taking that knowledge and the knowledge of how political interaction works, Then reading various histories of how Constantine reformed the Roman Empire, it's pretty clear that he had a much larger influence on the early church than the church would have you believe. Some of these conlusions are just that, conclusions based as much on what isn't said sometimes as what is. As I have often said, history is written by the winners. It frequently fails to reflect all or even most of the facts.

As I said earlier, 99% of people that have gone to American primary schools can and will tell you that Paul Revere warned the revolutionists that the British were coming. In fact, he only did that in a poem by Longfellow written a nearly a hundred years after the battle. This is just one very obvious example out of hundreds, if not thousands. Want another? Ask Gonz to describe Abraham Lincoln for you. Now ask SouthernandProud. Who's right? I'm thinking neither, how about you? But I'm supposed to accept these other stories as fact because some other people do? As unc said. without an eyewitness, what do you really know about it? A lot of things have happened in the "history" of humanity, most of them are unlikely to have happened the way "history" says they did. Believe what you want to, I do.
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When I said, "Dan Brown approved books", I meant books that coincide with his apparent alternate view of history.

Gonz and SoutherN'Proud do provide contradictory views of history. I see great points made by both. They both back up what they are saying with data that can be checked to be critiqued or validated upon. Even something as simple as a quote with the date of when it was said and its source is good enough to check on.

chcr, you provide me nothing to check with. There are three main comments you made in this thread that come to my attention:

1. Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

2. Constantine "invented" Christmas - i.e., he made December 25 the official date.

3. Constantine had authority in the Catholic Church - i.e., he set doctrine or dogmas for the Church.

In regards to #1, many claim that the Edict of Milan(read the whole edict here) declared Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. It did not, but in regards to Christianity, it made it legal to practice. It wasn't until under the reign of Theodosius the Great, that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

In regards to #2, it was in the year 349 that Pope Julius fixed the Christmas date to December 25 for the Western Church - 12 years after Constantine's death.

In regards to #3, I can't find anything that would show Constantine to have authority within the Catholic Church.

Now, chcr, I simply ask that you provided some data that will back up your #1-3 comments and refute or at least challenge my responses to your comments restated in this post.
 
*sigh*

You're a product of your upbringing. You only believe that which is written down and refuse to question that which yuor teachers hold true. I try to read between the lines of history. I suggest, no prove to you that history is at best flawed and far from accurate and you throw more of it (and I've read most if not all of what you cite) out as support for your position. Seems a little mindless to me but there it is.

Believe what you want, I will.
 
chcr said:
*sigh*

You're a product of your upbringing. You only believe that which is written down and refuse to question that which yuor teachers hold true. I try to read between the lines of history. I suggest, no prove to you that history is at best flawed and far from accurate and you throw more of it (and I've read most if not all of what you cite) out as support for your position. Seems a little mindless to me but there it is.

Believe what you want, I will.
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Appearances can be quite deceiving. I would be a different person today had I not questioned how I was brought up.

You claim my responses to your statements are based from flawed history, yet, you cannot produce any support of this.

It is obvious you cannot back up your assertions, which have been and remain unsound.
 
Once again, I don't need to justify myself to you or anyone else. I'm not the one looking for vindication or acceptance, I was simply bored and proceeded with the debate. What it boils down to is you con't accept my reasoning, I don't accept yours. Sorry, thanks for playing. :D

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive. - Blaise Pascal
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chcr said:
Once again, I don't need to justify myself to you or anyone else. I'm not the one looking for vindication or acceptance, I was simply bored and proceeded with the debate. What it boils down to is you con't accept my reasoning, I don't accept yours. Sorry, thanks for playing. :D

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive. - Blaise Pascal
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You cannot back up your reasoning.

Clearly, chcr, you lost this one.
 
No, he actually folds it ... Inky ...


... it's like a game of words ... if you don't play you get all 'backed up' :D

... (to be cont ...) ;)
 
BB said:
No, he actually folds it ... Inky ...


... it's like a game of words ... if you don't play you get all 'backed up' :D

... (to be cont ...) ;)
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If you don't fold it it swirls around way too much. Actually, if your really interested I roll my underwear up like a joint. Haven't lit one accidentally yet.
 
chcr said:
If you don't fold it it swirls around way too much. Actually, if your really interested I roll my underwear up like a joint. Haven't lit one accidentally yet.
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Roll the edges and the middle will take care of itself?
 
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