To those that mock you with "Why couldn't you Googles that"?

Obvious troll is obvious

Maybe this can refresh your memory... "Brah", that's what you say in such cases ?

he may have just been having a loser sneeze.

Eye Brow.

I would count the beginning of the Christianization of Anglo Saxon England as beginning in 595, not 597, because thats the year that Pope Gregory I decdided to send a mission to convert the Anglo Saxons. The mission landed 2 years later, its true, but if the President of the US issues an order to launch missiles at Russia at 1:00 am, and the misiles land at 1:30 am, most historians would probably choose 1:00 am as the start of the war.

Nice. What if Augustine never made it to Kent?  

so you're saying its better to google

bingo

Basically everything on wiki and google came from books, but not everything in books is on wiki and google... so its just a mathematical fact that wiki and google are inferior to books. Asking a question on a forum gives you the chance to speak with someone who knows things that aren't on the internet. Unfortunately, most forums are spammed up by trolls who just want to argue all day, and don't have anything valuable to contribute.

What do you feel about the proposition that the google is "dumbing down" knowledge by promoting the idea that instantly-served up blurbs, summaries, and factoids are the equivalent of books?

Its erroneous to state that "the beginning of the Christianization of Anglo Saxon England" was in 595 or 597. Christianity was already present in that region for several  hundred years prior to this date.

Oh yes, its part of the same problem we see with television and the general degradation of writing. Books (and newspapers) from the 19th century and the early 20th century are more complex and nuanced. This debate over the "beginning of Christianization" is a good example. The actual story is quite long and you can't just select a single date and say "this is when that began".

http://www.mcgill.ca/files/classics/2004-05.pdf

This article provides some more detail, as it is from a book and not written for a website, but this is actually a mere summary of information found within libraries and archives. If you really want to understand the subject, you've got a couple years of hard work ahead of you (and you'll probably need to learn a couple languages)... you can't just google the answer and pretend you know it.

In response to Herr von Rinkleff, post #360:

True, Christianity was present in Romano-Celtic Britain.  Rome pulled out in 410, then the pagan Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded and established their own dominions and religions starting in the mid 400's.  Christianity dwindled back to near nothing over the next century.  In fact, great numbers of the Britons were killed.  (The exact percentage is debatable, older historians claimed almost a total genocide.)  

Christianity was present in Roman Britian, but that was not Anglo-Saxon England.  The Anglo-Saxons were a different people.

That is why I framed my original proposition yesterday by asking "what effect did the lingering Romano-Celtic population have on the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms?"  (i.e., how "dead" was Christianity by the beginning of the permanent Anglo-Saxon conquests?  What was the state of it by 597?  There is evidence that Christianity started declining immediately after Rome's withdrawal in 410.  A broader question would be: How totally did the Anglo-Saxons destroy the extant Romano-Celtic native culture?)

Here's a history question that the internet won't answer:

What happened at the battle of Mons during World War II?

I could give you an answer which goes on for a dozen pages or so, but the internet won't give you much more than a few scattered sentences, many of which are inaccurate.

Yes, but the article above indicates that several historians have concluded that Christianity did continue to exist in Britain. Was the papal delegate really the primary cause of conversion, or was the already existing community more influential? I'm sure someone could write a thesis on this, but they would need more than google. I think your point, which I agree with, is that neither one of us could answer this without doing a lot of research.

Ooh...nice find my man.  You mean the McGill University article in post #461?

Yah, I skimmed through it. Clearly there are a number of books which discuss this topic, but obviously they aren't all available online. Anyone who wanted to seriously study this would have to look at all of them, not just relying upon the one or two which have been copied.

Of course, those books are based upon other books, and archives, and you'd have to examine all of that data as well.

Perhaps, in the ultimate answer to you john: Whether google or a forum thread is better... Well, at least in a forum you might meet someone like me who would start listing books that you would need to read. Simply searching google for "what books do I need to read to understand the history of Christianity" will not get you very far.

Actually, you'd need to jump on a plane to England and spend a year there.  Perhaps get the department to pay for a side trip to Rome too for some "archival research."

Well, yah, of course. It will help if you have some archaeology experience. To really answer this question you'd need to take a couple years to learn the languages (at least), plus a couple years of reading and writing and thinking, and that's all training so that you can then go overseas and do more reading and writing and thinking.