jlf1961
Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008 From: Somewhere Texas Status: offline
|
I don't know, maybe it is just a pet peeve, but does anyone else get upset when so-called "Educational" shows present outright falsehood as fact? Is it any wonder why our educational system is screwed up to the point of being near useless. In just one show, The History Channel's "Haunted history of Halloween" the statement "Roman Emperor Constantine saw a vision of Christ on a battlefield and converted to Christianity." and followed that with "Constantine called the bishops of the christian church to Nicaea to set the basic ideas of the church." 1. Constantine did not convert to Christianity until he was on his deathbed, and only at the urging of his wife who was Christian. Constantine was a lifelong follower of Sol Invictus, the Roman Sun God. 2) The council of Nicaea was called to, first get all of the priests and bishops to preach the same thing, at the point of a sword, and second to force an agreement that the birth of Christ would be celebrated on the 21st of December, the winter solstice which was also a high feast day for Sol Invictus, Mithras (another sun god) and numerous pagan religions within the Roman Empire. They got around that by coming up with the Nicene Creed which was more doubletalk than an actual declaration of faith. It said that Jesus was the son of god, but did not set his divinity. The basic dogma didn't come about for another 200 years, about the same time as what books of the bible were canon and what were heresy, or to put it one way, anything that disagreed with the powers that be was thrown out. The truth is far more interesting. Constantine had a vision of the cross, and in his vision he was told, "By this sign you will conquer." So he had his troops paint crosses on their shields, but didn't convert to Christianity. He remained a follower of the sun god simply to keep him popular with the majority of his subjects. Christians were a minority, a growing minority, but not the dominant religion of the empire. In fact, if you were to compare the religion of Sol Invictus against all the beliefs in the empire, it was no more popular than any one of the other beliefs during the time.
_____________________________
Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think? You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of. Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI
|