h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"The official state religion was the worship of Sol Invictus, the Sun God, and this was Constantine's own religion."

"It was at this meeting that Constantine and his council resolved that if the proletariat* had to have their superstitions.."

This makes a lot of good points, but the conspiratorial spin on it is unwarranted. I see the Council of Nicea mostly as an attempt to synthesize competing Christian sects with various elements of paganism. All Constantine had to do to win the support of bishops for the state was to bribe them. Constantine had agreed to endorse Christianity before the Council.(Oh yeah, that's just what they want us to think!) I believe the Virgin Birth idea was to counter accusations about Jesus coming from Jews-that Mary was a whore. Why didn't they "cut out" all the verses that indicate that Peter and all the early apostles were married? Yes, there was cutting. And they did suppress knowledge of Jesus's marriage, but that started long before they dreamed any emperor would ever endorse the Catholic church and while the bishops of Rome still denied supremacy.

Why doesn't Constantine's religion of worshipping the Sun count as superstition by your standards? Do you seriously believe that none of the bishops and religious leaders at the council believed in Christianity as implied, even though they had suffered persecution under the emperors before Constantine? You are way too cynical! This is just an intellectualized-secularized version of the typical anti-Catholic screeds you can find chick.com. If you put your mind to it, you can make almost any ideology or religion sound intelligient(Christianity began as a combo-pacifistic anarchism). Any, including yours.

*"proletariat?" You sound like a socialist. Or are you just trying to impress us with five-syllable words? This was being imposed on everyone below the emperor, not just slaves and the free laborers.

I am not absolving the Catholic church of persecuting pagans+Jews, the Crusades, the Inquistion,etc. As they say "power corrupts.."

(I apologize for any spelling errors.)

For G..... sake dont start talking about Catholicism in the context of the Council of Nicea. Remember that Rome was vitually finished as the capital of the empire. Constantinople was increasingly the capital and continued so after the fall of Rome. The true centre of Christianity was there, all that Rome had was a vicar. It was only after the Crusades that Rome gained Supremacy.