Interesting discourse but are we considering all the history quoted is used as dictum without subjecting it to test. What were the circumstances then and now and why just digest unquestionably to address such weighty issues? Has P. Ochieng helped to add to knowledge and either are we? From one fallacy to the next within the domain of mental ghosts.

Interesting discourse but are we considering all the history quoted is used as dictum without subjecting it to test. What were the circumstances then and now and why just digest unquestionably to address such weighty issues? Has P. Ochieng helped to add to knowledge and either are we? From one fallacy to the next within the domain of mental ghosts.

Quite true. So I think we could say the version that has come down to us is the one written by the victors (Romans). This is the certainly the case with the Christian Bible, there is nothing divine its compilation, unless we say that the Emperor and the Bishops who congregated at Nice were divinely guided (they were certainly politically guided)



There have been many such groups opposing 'political Christianity', even before the break up of the Catholic church. This is how we have, for instance, the Jerusalem Bible and, further out, the Essenes and Agnostics and later the Protestants, all who practiced a faith markedly different from mainstream Christianity. Many of them paid with their lives as you point out.

But the French have a saying, 'plus ca change...' The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Think of the original issue behind this thread, the sale of miracles. The early Catholic Church used to sell 'miracles' too. They were called 'indulgences.' You paid the priest some money, he spoke to God and got your sins wiped off the slate. It was a lucrative racket when it lasted, even the Popes were in on it.



The Romans were an intellectually and religiously promiscuous people. Like the present Americans, they borrowed ideas from everywhere and made them their own. The only thing that the original Romans had going was superior military organization and sheer daring. Even their Engineering know-how was initially borrowed from the Etruscans, whom they absorbed. They didn't even have their own Gods, they borrowed them from the Greeks, who were their subjects.

It was thus no harder to borrow the 'one God worship idea from a backwater Province called Judea and expand it into a world dominating religious empire. I think you are right that the Roman Empire never ended.

But my conclusion here is: I think the Romans gift to the present world was a good one. They created a unifying narrative and attitude (the Judeo Christian work ethic) on which most scientific, political, social and economic organization has been based for much of the world since then.

We owe our current development to the Romans.

God's idea I believe was not to create robots. Ask any scientist what they'd prefer to create, a robot or a life being. First you have to believe in God for it to make sense. People have free will and when we sin we have a way back to God through Jesus. Think about it, does your life have purpose outside God? If it does then you will realise soon that it was not fulfilling.