As a student of history you are of course aware of who kept civilization going while Christianity was clawing up the furniture and pissing on the carpets in Europe. "That's not fair, that wasn't about religion, that was about politics, see Christianity was a better method of social control than the big mess of every conquered people's religions that preceded it because a monotheistic state religion doesn't leave room for dissent and it was close enough to the cult of Mithras to not alienate the army, so it was encouraged to be violent and repressive from the start to keep the proles in line and that was ingrained by the time it was all that was left of the Empire..." Sure, but using most of the Middle East as proxies for the cold war was politics too.