Weeaall....if you look at the total activities of the Roman Emperor Constantine things turned out pretty well for them. He omitted three gospel accounts, he selected pagan holidays for Christmas and Easter....he basically formed Christianity for the rewards to be passed along to the Roman empire. If you look closely the whole thing has worked out well for them....look at Vatican City, the architecture, the fine art, the massive collections of silver and gold.....that ol' boy knew what he was doing and anyone who doesn't realize it ain't paying attention:
Roman Catholic Christianity goes a lot deeper than that. (understatement) Beyond the ostensible outcomes you are highlighting.
Plus, I think you are overstating Constantine’s influence by a thousand. The growth and influence would have occurred with or without his involvement. Only if there is no God could your illustration have any truth to it.
Then I'm right on target. By the way.....which god? Everybody thinks their god is the only true god and there have been dozens of them and the main influence they've had on mankind has been wars....one after another ever since we began to gather the low hanging fruit. Screw god and screw religion. Mankind would have been ten times better off without any of it. You know what? people are finally beginning to catch on:
Survey: One in five Americans has no religion
By
Dan Merica, CNN
Washington (CNN) – The fastest growing "religious" group in America is made up of people with no religion at all, according to a Pew survey showing that one in five Americans is not affiliated with any religion.
The number of these Americans has grown by 25% just in the past five years, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The survey found that the ranks of the unaffiliated are growing even faster among younger Americans.
Thirty-three million Americans now have no religious affiliation, with 13 million in that group identifying as either atheist or agnostic, according to the new survey.
Pew found that those who are religiously unaffiliated are strikingly less religious than the public at large. They attend church infrequently, if at all, are largely not seeking out religion and say that the lack of it in their lives is of little importance.
I understand. Misery loves company. Not only is there a percentage growth in unbelievers, other trends have spiked as well --- including, general immorality of every stripe imaginable. Plus selfishness, rudeness, gossip, greed, crime, and a drop in education standards. Younger adults know so little about the larger world, it only follows that the subject of God is too heavy for their pleasure-seeking minds as well.
You, on the other hand, claim to know better. You base your atheism on your education, selective as that may be. I could document scores of supernatural manifestations and you would find some highly implausible escape to keep you demystified and on some short-lived pleasure cruise. The evidence for God cannot be avoided, except by doing what Barbra Streisand sings in The way we Were --- "that which is too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget."
