Vilifying Christianity because politicians make use of whatever they can to control the world, including religion, results from delusional fantasy, sometimes bordering on psychosis. Perhaps blaming a religion for the misdeeds of religious authority is due to the aggressors' repressed childhood dread of going to church on Christmas day, before being allowed to open their presents. Whatever the reason, the extent people argue that religion only serves those desiring power is rather disturbing, Some have taken the assertion to amazing academic and theological extremes. So I am obligated to address some words to it, for the sake of their own sanity. In so doing, I am also obligated to address the actual historical events leading to the Nicene creed, which remains rather undisputed as absolutely true throughout almost all current Christian churches.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of Constatine's Motive to Form the Nicene Council

It starts with Emperor Constantine funding a council to make Christianity a state religion. Cynics frequently advocate the Nicene council sole intent was to execute a state takeover from the very beginning. To me at least, that is a complete fantasy. Constantine just sent the council money because he wanted to make Christianity a state religion. From what we know of the character of the man, Constantine might have found "bishops," per se, demanding that he make them in charge of the world amusing, but beyond that, he really had his own agenda and rather ignored everyone.

Beyond making Christianity a state religion, Constantine was not particularly concerned about it at all. He didn’t even take the committee's decisions that seriously either. There is NO DENIAL of that from historical evidence. The council tried to figure out how to make a state religion, and who should do what, and all of them had different side agenda, and agreeing on anything was very difficult. One thing the council could NOT do was challenge Constantine's authority. He had hired them.

Thus the Nicene creed carefully avoids exclusion of OTHER Gods besides the three-in-one Trinity. Hence, Egyptian concepts of the absolute ruler being necessarily divine continued. One after another divine ruler controlled the world, Christian or not, all the way through the Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, Western Roman Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, and even the Papacy after the empires were gone, over many centuries, extending beyond a millennium.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of the Nicene Creed, Nicene Canon, and Self Castration

Regarding the Nicene creed itself, it addressed two man concerns at the time: Arianism and Self Castration. The first concern, to establish the Trinity over Arian ideas, led to the creed being very long, but otherwise was not that significant. It was a complex cover up of the fact that there could be more than one God, without actually saying Constantine was a God too.

The REALLY significant problem confronting the good people on the council was the spreading amount of self mutilation, particularly self castration. Self Castration was such a big problem, the Nicene council had to make it the first law in the Nicene canon. So frequently and entirely ignored, the Nicene canon, a set of rules for all churches, was far more significant at the time than the creed, which really was more of a justification of the canon rules at the time. The rapid spread of self mutilation by those wishing to prove their admission before God is not a particularly pleasant subject. Documents describing the practice from Egypt make it clear it had reached all the way there from Turkey, where a Phrygian myth from ~400BC had started the practice. One may challenge the rather large amount of evidence that the church father Origen castrated himself, and rather liked it--although one may legitimately question the motives of those advocating anyone would ever want to fabricate such a fact. One can debate the authenticity of ancient documents from that time lauding the virtues of self mutilation as a path to salvation, citing one o rmore of a dozen New Testament verses as theological validation. Some may even enjoy such debate, for what reason I would rather not conemplate. Personally, I find the law forbidding castration being the FIRST in the rules of the Nicene Canon, quite sufficient to consider by itself as evidence for the rapidly spreading problem.

Hence the Nicene creed's primary purpose was to stop self castration, but its specific wording has perpetuated long after the actual reason for its statement was far more than forgotten. It was intentionally ignored. Hence the Nicene creed clearly specifies that personal salvation is ONLY possible through one single route that denies all alternatives,.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Long and Continuing Influence
of the Nicene Creed's Misconstrued Intents

While human Godhods eventually disappeared, we still live under the Nicene's creed's claim to exclusivity in defining the only path to salvation, despite the creed's primitive nature and intent. After the crucifixion, the creed claims the Old Judaic Law requiring sacrifice for redemption was replaced by the New Law, even while Jews still practiced sacrifice, for a long time even unaware the Law might have changed. Just as emperors and popes continued to enforce primitive Egyptian concepts of human Godhood, defining themselves as divine rulers, for more than a millennium, the exclsusivity of redemption, only possible through Christ, remains two millenia later, an absolute requirement for faith in virtually all Christian churches today, and even frequently stated as the only important belief, superceding all others--just as it was held during the Dark Ages, when most people could not even read.

The creed ALSO led to OTHER dismissals of alternative ideas of salvation, but that was not its intent. Its intent, at the time, was to curb as quickly as possible the dreadful spread of castration, and according to some historical sources, EVEN WORSE acts of self mutilation.

Since then, humankind in its usual trite manner has adopted the Nicene creed as the absolute and total, single, and exclusive way to find redemption. This is so obviously not true, merely by considering people born before Christ or in places where Christianity was not known, not even considering alternate Christian creeds at all. Nonetheless it has become a petulant, childish, and totally ridiculous simplistic interpretation, not only dominating the mind of ignorami, but forcing them to accept supernatural events beyond explication of the laws of science as defined by the Creator, which is hardly good for any person's mental health, let alone those least endowed with intelligence.

Moreover, the myopism exacerbates cynicism, attacking the good nature of Jesus, supplementing the hatred of people who as children had to wait to open their presents until after church.

(As a sidepoint, the division between first, second, and third councils is almost entirely an academic convenience. Just like all committees, it wallowed around, with membership and authority within itself continuously changing, and had recesses at various times. As to how the council and its actions overall should be divided up is really a matter of personal preference. Now, we look back, and see identify three distinct sets of actions over time. So during this millennium, its become popular to think of it as three separate councils. Now we look back and say, their mission was to make a creed. Well even the council itself didn’t know that was what it was going to do when it started. This division into three councils over time is a relatively recent emphasis that appears to me largely contrived.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of Augustine's Influence

The 'domination of thought and conduct' now frequently claimed as the main intent of Christianity clearly arose from a different source: Augustine. But he shouldn't be blamed either. At the time Augustine wrote them, THEY WERE MEDITATIONS, NOT DOCTRINES, which came to have a disproportionate affect on the religious practice due to the sheer volume of thought on the topic for the time that he expressed in writing, rather dwarfing alternative views for people who might have thought otherwise but were not that inclined to think about it so much. It is a continuing pursuit of cynical pleasure to blame a person who thinks of an idea for the acts of people who use that idea vindictively.

Augustine had no intent that the church power replace Roman power either. He just objected to Romans feeding Christian's to lions, etc., and provided spiritual justification for questioning their authority to do so. As a side poiint, Augustine's Apologetics were the first MAKOR attack on Arianism, which is more doctrinal, and has nothing to do with controlling power.

The first major attack on denial of secular law can be found in Augustine' CITY OF GOD, which states secular law (and therefore secular authority) is insignificant compared to the needs of personal salvation. That was seized upon by those thirsting for power as a legitimate excuse to depose the Roman empire and place religious authority in its stead. THAT wasn't Augustine’s intent either.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion

The extensive infatuation with blaming the use of religion to obtain political power, and saying religion is for nothing else--particularly blaming the Nicene Council which wrote the first Christian creed--is rather psychotic, with delusions of grandeur.

Regarding the insistence of there being only one single path to salvation as defined by the Nicene creed, I make one final assertion. The differences between creeds, both within and across religions, are human inventions, not God's invention. Certainly it is possible that Christ provides the only route to salvation, if consciously known or not. However, the significance of the claim rather diminishes after one adds such a condition, and the claim cannot make sense without it. For more significantly, no human has the right to say all people who do not specifically follow the Nicene creed are condemned to hell. Whether or not conscious acknowledgment of Jesus is necessary for redemption is almost entirely ancillary. If we are to believe in a benign, judging God, then we must allow Him to make the decision as to whom deserves what in any afterlife of any faith, and never take that decision upon ourselves.

Thank you for reading.