Pr⊕phet
12-05-2007, 08:46 AM
any take on this :
Why Invent Hell?
Historians have estimated that by the year 200 CE, less than one percent of the population of the central provinces of the Roman Empire were Christians and these were almost all confined to dwellers in the cities and town. The rural folk held so strongly to their old beliefs that the Latin term for peasants, pagani, became for Christians the generic term for adherents of the old religions.
Christianity was not doing well at all even after coming under the imperial favour of the emporor Constantine in the early fourth century. Even after the conversion of Constantine the growth of the religion had stagnated and it is a historical fact that by the beginning of the fourth century the Christian church was already on its death throes; partly due to the persecution by the Emperor Diocletian (245-313) and due to the intense competition for converts by the rival religion, Mithraism (http://englishatheist.org/oamithras.shtml).
Even after the council of Nicaea, in 325CE, decided that Jesus was divine, and the heretics who said otherwise had all been slaughted, more was needed to win converts. It didn't offer a superior theology or morality, so why not play on one of humankind’s most basic fears: death, the dissolution of the individual ego.
Promise people eternal life, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support this belief, because most people are so terrified of death that they cling to this promise, insisting that it must be true.
Offer them personal immortality if they accept Christian dogma and faith but tell them that they will burn in Hell for eternity if they don't.
from
Why The Christians Invented The Devil and Hell
http://englishatheist.org/indexz26.shtml
Why Invent Hell?
Historians have estimated that by the year 200 CE, less than one percent of the population of the central provinces of the Roman Empire were Christians and these were almost all confined to dwellers in the cities and town. The rural folk held so strongly to their old beliefs that the Latin term for peasants, pagani, became for Christians the generic term for adherents of the old religions.
Christianity was not doing well at all even after coming under the imperial favour of the emporor Constantine in the early fourth century. Even after the conversion of Constantine the growth of the religion had stagnated and it is a historical fact that by the beginning of the fourth century the Christian church was already on its death throes; partly due to the persecution by the Emperor Diocletian (245-313) and due to the intense competition for converts by the rival religion, Mithraism (http://englishatheist.org/oamithras.shtml).
Even after the council of Nicaea, in 325CE, decided that Jesus was divine, and the heretics who said otherwise had all been slaughted, more was needed to win converts. It didn't offer a superior theology or morality, so why not play on one of humankind’s most basic fears: death, the dissolution of the individual ego.
Promise people eternal life, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support this belief, because most people are so terrified of death that they cling to this promise, insisting that it must be true.
Offer them personal immortality if they accept Christian dogma and faith but tell them that they will burn in Hell for eternity if they don't.
from
Why The Christians Invented The Devil and Hell
http://englishatheist.org/indexz26.shtml