@hawkeye10,
Quote:For most of the Christain period very few people had the ability to read, all known stories were passed verbally.
You just make this **** up as you go along, dontcha, Rollo?
Quote:the splintering of the church....is that a cause or is it effect, did the church splinter because it had grown weak, or did it become weak as the center fell apart? I don't think that we know.
I'm sure you don't know. You could try educating yourself, but you'd have to understand a lot of ecclesiastic history. Start with Avignon Papacy, then proceed to the Western Schism. While you're working on that, look up the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, the Waldensians, and Jan Hus and the Hussites, for a more balanced view of continuing schism and the gradual fragmentation of ecclesiastic authority. When you've gotten as far as the Hussites, you're within a century of Martin Luther. Jan Hus was condemned by the Council of Constance, which was attempting to heal the rift in the Church which had lead to the Papal Schism. So you'll want to read all about the Council of Constance. But you'll also want to read all about simony, because that was how three popes financed their political and military campaigns against one another. You want to then read about the Spaniard, Roderic de Borja y Borja, known to the Italians as Rodrigo de Borgia, and who became Pope Alexander VI. He was depraved even by the lax standards of the Schism and the Renaissance. Which will lead you back to simony, and in particular, to the selling of indulgences and to Johann Tetzel.
Which will finally lead you to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
Just because you don't know a thing (a common enough circumstance, especially when it comes to history), doesn't mean that "we" don't know it.
Quote:I know that collectives need some type of shared experience to glue them together because I am not a compete idiot.
No, i'd say that you are as yet incomplete . . . you are so far, only a novice idiot. What glues people together is common cause, and the social contract, the one being necessary to the other. It doesn't require organized religion, and in fact, many successful societies in world history have prospered without established religion, and even with religious tolerance. So, once again, what you "know" and what you can substantiate with sound historical evidence are not consonant.
Quote:Notice how when you run out of argument you turn to personal slander? I did.
I didn't run out of arguments, i asked you a question. You haven't answered that question satisfactorily. The personal insults are just gravy at the side of a solid, sustaining meal, Rapist Boy.
