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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[smjjames]

Yeah I know. Was just trying to reroute the tangent over here, didn't work apparently.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Christianity gained widespread acceptance because of its relatively peaceful and tolerant ideology at it's founding. Yes, it began as a cult around a guy who was basically like "Hey, maybe we can chill with all these crazy sacrifices, punishments, and rape stuff?"

The other part was that it promised hella rewards in the afterlife. Live your whole life chaste? Dude, you're like a king in heaven for that shit! Don't kill anyone? Guaranteed mansion on God's street.

Finally, Rome's aggressive religious pluralism was basically like "Yo, you have a different god? That's chill he's part of the pantheon now, just pay your taxes, okay?"

[redwallzyl]

Finally, Rome's aggressive religious pluralism was basically like "Yo, you have a different god? That's chill he's part of the pantheon now, just pay your taxes, okay?"

Well unless you didn't like them putting statues of the emperor in your holy temple that is.

[Descan]

Roman authorities also weren't fans of the "no other gods" bit of Christianity and Judaism; felt it was fucking with the Pax Deorum for large chunks of their populace to spite and ignore the gods except for Christ and YHWH. Like, literal treason, for a person to ignore the gods and to not honour them. You know how the Greco-Roman gods were, spiteful little cunts, so the idea goes if you piss THEM off, you are directly fucking with Romes peace and power. So, therefore, it's treasonous to not honour and worship the gods and only to honour your own god(s).

Wiki: "neglecting the religiones owed to the traditional gods was atheism, a charge leveled during the Empire at Jews,[435] Christians, and Epicureans.[436] Any of these moral deviations could cause divine anger (ira deorum) and therefore harm the State."

[Urist McScoopbeard]

And yet Christianity overtook the Roman Polytheism.

[Rolan7]

And yet Christianity overtook the Roman Polytheism.

Thanks evidently to one formerly pagan ruler who happened to be in charge of the empire, had a vision, then worked even beyond his already-formidable station to establish his notion as the new official-ne-death religion in an area that spans the globe.

[Egan_BW]

If by "spans the globe" you mean bits of africa and eurasia, sure.

[scriver]

I mean. That is a span.

[Teneb]

It also bears remembering that Christianity had a few rivals when it came down to being the Empire's hot new religion. Namely Mithraism and Manichaeism.

But Christianity was marginalized for several reasons: their rituals sound horrible if you don't know anything about it (drowning babies (baptism), cannibalism (eucharist), and so on), they went around pissing people off by saying their gods were actually either fakes or demons and that they were going to be eternally tortured over it, being pacifists and as such in conflict with Rome's militarist culture, denying the divinity of the Agustus, and so on.

Once Constantine converted, though, things changed. Everyone in the roman elite who wanted to be in his good graces converted too, and while maybe they didn't truly believe, their descendants eventually did. The oppressed christians became dominant, and, as we all know, the moment you put an oppressed group in power the first thing they do is start oppressing everyone else. Such is life.

[TD1]

And boy, did they have fun with the oppression.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

And boy, did they have fun with the oppression.

Much oppression, so wow. Very inquisition, yes.

[Rolan7]

Nobody expected it!

[smjjames]

And yet Christianity overtook the Roman Polytheism.

And yet somehow Poseidon/Neptune made it in as a saint, or at least theres a saint (greek I think) who seems a heck of a lot like Poseidon.

Might have been this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas who, incidentially, is the same Saint Nick that Santa Claus is based off of.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

the moral of the story: always bet on Poseidon.

[ChairmanPoo]

Fools, you have no perception! The stakes we are gambling are frighteningly high.