Ancient History

About.com seems to say religion causes a lot of things.

That guy is completely biased.

I don't see how being pacifist can destroy an empire.

That didn't even say Christianity caused the fall.

And?

You are completely biased.

Didn't we already explain this to you 30 pages back?

Rome fell because of corruption and invasions. Anything after that, Including religion, just deteriorated the states that broke off.

Just a little "fishy".

You are completely biased.

Explain that everyone here thinks Christianity can cause the destruction of the world therefore that we need to abolish all Christians and persecute them because of their beliefs and say that the one empire that actually did anything of notice that converted to Christianity is the sole purpose of the destruction of the empire.




EDIT: By the way, the Eastern Roman Empire was more "religious" than the Western Roman Empire. So you can say that Christianity is the reason that the Western half fell, BULLSHIT!

Rome didn't quite persecute Christians when they were powerful. When there were only a few thousand? Feed em to the lions.

Hundred thousand? A valuable Political asset. They were part of the Roman Government at one point, they didn't deterioriate it. Well, maybe the Byzantines, but that was much later.

I said that I was persecuted.

The Christians persecuted a damn lot of people too.

Everyone has their faults.

That's not a good defense for massascres and Witch Burnings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians

It's not fishy if I have 5 other sources to back up their claims.

Unlike you, I keep my opinion of the religion itself out of this.

Do I have to fucking repeat myself for the gazillionth time? I never fucking said Christianity was the sole cause of the fall of the western roman empire. I said it was one of the major causes.

also, you say pacifism is not bad in this case. If barbarians are overruning your territory, and you need to quickly field an army to stop them, having a bunch of pacifists who don't wanna join the army and try to get around it can only be a bad thing.

The Eastern Roman Empire was rich, and there was not hordes of barbarians overrunning their territory. Any problems they had, they could solve with gold.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Wait, are you really trying to defend the Christian Religion in it's constant holy war?

The pain wrought by Christians, because they've been well backed and funded, well outweighs the opposite.

Bullshit.

The "barbarians" were predominately Christian.

I forgot to reply to this sentence specifically but I will now, you do know the Church didn't split until about 1000 AD?

True, but the empire allowed them to settle in their lands peacefully because of the fact they were Christian.


Also, most of the Western Roman Empire was still Pagan at the time of their collapse.

Believe what you want to believe.

They were arian christians. Which btw, the Roman christians basically called heretics.

There were still divisions. Christians were persecuting each other left right and center for being heretics. Also, there were arian christians.

They gave them some land, and then they found a reason to revolt and fight for more land. The only reason they seceded so much land was because they couldn't raise the troops to fight them. This spelled doomsday for the WRE.

No it wasn't.

Thus the East and Holy Roman empires.

@slydessertfox your face at the start of this debate

Yahoo Answers? Yahoo fucking Answers? Where a normal question is "Durr duur, I swam in a pool where a dude came, am I pregnant lolz?"? You're seriously using that as a viable source?

We've been over this. Wikipedia is an open encyclopaedia which anyone can edit. Whenever someone pulls a stupid prank and puts something false up there, it's corrected within minutes. Unless you timed it wrong, I'm sure you can trust most of what's written there.

I don't think there's a single word in this post that makes the least bit of sense.

Barbarians were all people who weren't Roman. No need to put them in quotation marks.

I'm pretty sure they were allowed to settle within Roman lands because otherwise, they'd take it forcefully. Rome lacked the manpower to defend itself against them. Heck, they even recruited these barbarians into their own armies, which, while it was necessary, ended up being a terrible idea regardless.

Why do people keep throwing around this word? They obviously have no idea what it means.

Even you should be able to see the irony in this.


As for the original question: As the height of the Roman Empire and most periods of peace were during the time the Empire was Pagan, I'd have to say Paganism. Of course, many factors played a role in this. Somewhat competent Emperors, no barbarians moving all over the place, not much religious strife, etc.

EVIL CHRISTIAN HATING ATHEIST ASSHOLE! YOUR OPINION IS OBVIOUSLY BIASED SO IT IS AUTOMATICALLY INVALID.

True.

I didn't rely on it, I simply stated "Interesting thing I found on Yahoo Answers."

When did I discredit Wikipedia? I simply stated the author of that book is completely biased.

Read again.

Barbarian-
1
: of or relating to a land, culture, or people alien and usually believed to be inferior to another land, culture, or people
2
: lacking refinement, learning, or artistic or literary culture

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/barbarian

Persecution-the condition of being persecuted, harassed, or annoyed
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/persecution
I am annoyed.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2153351/posts
Nothing about Christianity there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire
Nothing about Christianity there.

You can't judge the fall of the empire on a religion because what if Paganism was still the "official" religion of the empire. Maybe the Arian "Christians" would have attacked because they felt they must purge the "heathens" of the Roman Empire. You can't really say that Christianity is the cause when you don't know the outcome of Paganism being the "official" religion.

Hypocrite.

Shows how immature you are. You don't know what it is like to be persecuted for your religious beliefs. This was the most stupid and immature comment to post on this forum.....no wonder no one liked your attention seeking beliefs.



Also, I know everyone will side with Sly, and Rico because most of this forum is composed of people who reject Christianity.

You got it all wrong. The arian christians didn't give two shits that the Romans were a different branch of Christianity than them. The Roman Christians did and despised the barbarians for it.

lolwut?

Yeah and I bet all those Jews and Pagans who were persecuted left right and center for their religious beliefs when Christianity took over the empire would say the same to you.

Why do you constantly bring my opinion of modern day christianity in on this? I am not trying to bring my personal beliefs of Christianity in on this. I'm just trying to look at the facts. You are trying to basically discredit me by saying I hate Christianity, therefore my argument is invalid, when that has little to no influence on my opinion. There's a lot of historians who are Christians, who would agree with me about Christianity being a major player in the downfall of the empire