Gregory Aldrete: prediction

Transcript context

…Could we talk about the role of religion in the Roman Empire? What’s the story there? I mean, religion’s interesting. Because in my mind, the rise to dominance in a lot of the world of monotheistic religions is one of the huge turning points, because it’s just such a different mentality. I mean, it’s very, very different where you say, “There’s one God, and it’s my God,” versus, “Okay, I believe in this god, but there’s an infinite number of legitimate gods.” And nowadays, particularly in the West, we tend to view the monotheistic perspective as the norm. But for more than half of human history, it was not. It used to be the notion in a lot of Roman history, up until about 300 AD, the idea was, “Well, there’s just a ton of gods floating around. Maybe you worship that one, and I worship these two that I like. And the guy across the street worships the oak tree in his backyard, and it’s all good.” They’re all legitimate things, versus, “Oh, no, no, no. Now there is one God, and only one God that’s the correct answer.” And as soon as you do that, religion becomes foregrounded in your decision making much more. I mean, the Romans had religion, but it wasn’t really driving anything, if you know what I mean. It was auxiliary to things, rather than a central force. For a lot of Roman history, you had standard, I guess, pagan polytheism where there’s a bunch of gods. There’s certain gods who are associated with the Roman state. There would be prayer said to those gods on behalf of the Roman state. But you weren’t trying to execute the will of Zeus or something, or Jupiter or Mars or anybody else. And in your private life, it was the same thing. You might ask certain gods for help, but it wasn’t as much of a dominant thing in your own existence. So I think that’s a real transition point where religion started to become so foregrounded. And as soon as you get the monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in particular; it really shifts how people start to think about themselves in relationship to the world around them. So Jesus was born during the rule of Emperor Augustus.…

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