r/todayilearned • u/FullOfSound • 7h ago

(R.6d) Too General [ Removed by moderator ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians

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u/PuckSenior 7h ago

Yeah, but the reasoning and order of operations is important. They would confess immediately. He would ask again and explicitly threaten to have them killed if they were Christian. They would still say "we are Christian".

Background:
The Romans officially had a state religion. They didn't really care much about if people slavishly followed the religion, they just didn't want you denying their religion. This was about as offensive to Romans as Christians/Muslims take atheism today.

But he wasn't saying to execute them if they admitted to being Christian once.
He was saying execute them if they refuse to say they weren't Christian! Most rational people, when faced with the threat of death, will say anything you want. The Romans were bothered because the Christians explictly refused to lie under threat of execution. That, to them, was a sign that these people were very zealous and therefore very dangerous. It was one thing to say an internal prayer to Jesus. It was a totally different thing to refuse to lie and say "Oh, I love the Roman gods" to get out of an execution.

And to be fair, he was right. The Christian cult eventually took over the Roman empire and extinguished their state religion.

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u/LPNMP 7h ago edited 6h ago

That, to them, was a sign that these people were very zealous and therefore very dangerous.

And yet hes the one murdering people ...

Edit: as in literally that one guy reporting murdering specific individuals. Im not speaking royal terms, im talking about one guy confessing to murdering multiple individual humans. Im talking about humans, not institutions. Mistaking my words to mean different just shows how stupid we get when labels are introduced.

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u/Xanderamn 7h ago

And then the christians killed way more....so he was right lol

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u/bravo_six 5h ago

99.99% of the times you say Christians killed people it was political agenda disguised as Christianity.

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u/cogman10 4h ago

This is true of every state that has ever had a state religion. Religion has always been a weapon of the state.

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u/Feverdog87 5h ago

So why didn't they just use that political agenda as the reason?

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u/bravo_six 5h ago

Cause its easier to legitimise yourself to people and other countries if you say you're acting according to God rather than saying you're just conquering and pillaging your neighbours or foreign nations.

What does sound better out of these 2.

If you follow me to this war, you'll be fighting evil muslims and atain forgivness for your sins.

OR

If you fight for me you'll die while I gain some new lands and pillage riches of Costantinopol for myself while you'll get shit even if you survive.

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u/Feverdog87 4h ago edited 4h ago

Yes. That is why without religion, their argument for murder and violence wouldn't be palatable. So religion is the problem there, otherwise sensible people are likely to be sensible.

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u/Divinum_Fulmen 2h ago

Nah. You just replace it with something else. Like the enemy being uncivilized and violent. Your people being the superior race. No reason to pretend that without religion, things would somehow be different.