Be sure to check out Nate's latest Graphic. We can discuss it there too but I want to be sure this hits the standard "discussion" threads where it can be found in searches:
The quote he includes as documentation is excellent:
"The Epicurean revival was not the first such challenge to the hegemony of the Christian religion over European culture. Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics were pagans too, and in their work they sounded many of the themes that would make the Epicurean philosophy so dangerous, as did a number of the more radical theologians of the late medieval period. One could further complicate the narrative by pointing out that for some of the people some of the time, the Epicurean revolution passed for a renovation of the established religion from within. In Epicurus, however, there was nothing of that compromising, dialectical spirit that pervaded Aristotle and the others and allowed them to be wrestled to the ground and marked with the sign of the cross. 'Among all the ancient obdurate atheists, and inveterate enemies of religion, no one seems more sincere and more implacable than Epicurus' observed [the poet Richard] Blackmore." (Stewart, Nature's GOD: The Heretical Origins of the AMERICAN REPUBLIC 85)
Pre Christian Philosophers and Pathfinders of the Way, based on the frescos at the Monastery of Vatopaidi on Mount Athos, as well as the Monastery of the Transfiguration of Christ in Meteora
