Quote Originally Posted by Dave Blue View Post
Faith is accepting something even though you haven’t seen it. Surely you can grasp that? Don’t you think there must be something in ‘these fairy stories’ you easily dismiss that has brought people to faith for 2000 years when other ‘fairy stories’ don’t last 2 minutes? There is little ‘control’ on our lives these days yet this faith survives and is prospering all over the world. A bit deep to dismiss casually as bollocks don’t you think?
People have been indoctrinated by the state, by conquering powers and their community regarding religions and millions of people believe in dogmas other than Christianity. Indeed, even Abrahamism has such deep schisms that they perceived the role of Jesus differently.
Christianity was transported around Europe by the Roman Empire and by subsequent colonial expansion from countries that were under the yoke of that Empire originally.
Language travelled along that same conduit and that's why most South Americans speak Spanish and are Catholics by default - and let's not forget than non-believers around the world were punished for being non-believers (or deemed as being punished in various types of hell) and persecuted for expounding a different model of the universe than stated in various religious tomes.
The Bible didn't land in Earth in the format it is now and has been tinkered with, edited, parts thrown out and those parts remain are often contradictory, ridiculously fanciful (talking snakes, talking donkeys, virgin births etc) and are merely the product of bronze age primitivity. The various authors thereof knew very little, if anything, about microbes, atoms, electricity, plate tectonics, the universe and a million other things.
A great many of stories in the Bible were lifted from preceding religions, which few adherents seem to know about or take on board.
It's fascinating folklore but it's not stand-alone stuff if you study religion. And religion has not been a free choice historically. Children have been indoctrinated by fear and reward of religions in their communities for millennia. It's no coincidence that believers tend to follow the religion of their immediate community rather than have an overview of world religions. It's indoctrination and without sufficient proof for critical thinkers.
To believe in a talking snake and the Garden of Eden (also lifted from previous religions) is pure unquestioning gullibility - just as many of the stories are. People in other cultures and who have been similarly indoctrinated still believe in a god with an elephant's head and gods who are polar bears and lizards. It's just a case of unquestioning belief in something that unknown primitive people came up with.
I can't remember having a discussion with any believers who acknowledge that their religion was grafted from a preceding one as they tend not to look into things that much and merely see their version of their religion as a template for all else to fit in with. Funnily enough, their religion and schism thereof, is usually the first one they are exposed to as a child.
I would be surprised if you were to come across a member of the Inuit people who believed in Shiva, someone raised as a Catholic in Cardiff who believed in the polar bear god or someone from Outer Mongolia who believed in Wodin or Janus.
The language we speak and the religions we traditionally worshipped throughout history are merely cultural appropriations.
Fascinating - but it's folklore.