Coor wrote:I agree that we should question things, but one must think...
How can something that no one has ever seen guide the lives of billions of people over thousands and thousands of years?
it has to be more than human stupidity...
Just my opinion.
Coor:
This is commonly Known as the "
Argument from Popularity," or "argumentum ad populum."
There are deeper things involved here, too. Like the fact that over those "thousands and thousands" of years, the actual beliefs and practices of those "billions of people" have changed... a lot... many times... so much so, that it's even a stretch to say that it's the same belief system as it was when it started.
Now, it's also important to remember that other religions lasted for thousands of years even before the rise of Judaism. There are also religions practiced today that do not believe in monotheism that are older than the Judaic or Christian faiths. There are even animist religions which may be considerably older which have been passed down only verbally, yet still survive.
It's not stupidity that has made religion survive for so long. It is memetics.
Consider Christianity. Remember that it was basically a small cult of "dangerous Jewish fanatics" for a long time. The earliest we can even say that a formalized church existed for Christianity is the late 3rd century. Even then, most people in the world thought it was a bunch of crazies and heretics.
After the Romans adopted it, it started to really take off. But think about it for a minute. Was this due to "popularity," or was it influenced by the fact that for centuries the Roman Emperor was considered a God himself, and that there were active endeavors to not only *spread* Christianity, but to *impose* it? I think a mixture of the two, but more the latter than the former.
In the middle ages, the imposition of church rule is undeniable.
By the time we got to the point of the printing press and a decent level of literacy, most people were far too afraid of persecution to actually question faith. Fear has played a large part in the spread of most religions. Even when the fear is only of a social nature... your friends will stop being your friends if they think you're a sinner... it is an extremely powerful thing.
There have been many, many things that have influenced the persistence of the belief in God or gods. This just simply does not make it true, or even give it some kind of merit in the form of "billions of people can't be wrong." There have just been far too many things which the majority of the Earth's population has been wrong about (even outside of religion) to believe that popularity or persistence of an idea makes it valid.
The short, not so well thought out, modern examples that come to my mind:
Millions of people think that Britney Spears is a talented singer.
The majority of parents check their children's Halloween candy for tampering. The only known case of someone actually putting needles (or any other "dangerous" object) into halloween treats
happened 6 years ago, and was most like *inspired* by the decades old urban legend. All other cases have turned out to be either pranks pulled by a sibling, or a hoax played by attention grabbing parents. There has never been a single case of anyone ever drugging or poisoning Halloween treats (oh... except for people intentionally poisoning themselves or their own children (no trick-or-treats, though)). Remember what I said about fear? This one is so persistent that even people who *know* it's never happened still check their kids' treats, and will only ever say, "better safe than sorry." Fear. It's what's for dinner.
(That actually brings up another good point: consider the persistence of urban legends, email chain letters, hoaxes... These are not due to stupidity, so much as they are an inability to critically examine things.)
Millions of people spend millions of dollars every year on "anti-aging" creams and products... which have no greater effect than a placebo. Fear and marketing... just like God.
The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.
