[PaulKersey]

You sound an awful lot like JasonC to me. Lots of pompous academic arrogance. Got all the answers. Not interested in talking TO anyone, just AT everyone. Do you really think you will convince anyone of anything, or is your own ego satisfaction enough? Maybe you can get the same result with loud farts!

Now why don't you and JasonC go outside and play and leave it to the adults to think great ORIGINAL thoughts, speculative or not. This thead is not for amateur thinkers and pedantic regurgitators.

[The_Reader_David]

I haven't a clue who JasonC is, save that he shows up on the ping list with me.

As for arrogance, I think the whole scholarly tradition in Western Europe and America which follows Gibbon in disparaging the Christian Empire, a civilization which spanned over 1000 years and was the dominant power in Europe and the Levant through much of it, is the height of arrogance in its cultural self-centeredness.

Great original thoughts which do not accord with fact are called fantasies and are the province of adolecents, not adults.