Don't Understand The Appeal Of Christianity To People

[robvalue]

It's just a childhood indoctrination thing. At worst your parents will drag you to church, and if you don't toe the line you're punished.

In my case it was more of a chance to spend extra time with grannie, while she told me stories about how much Jesus loves me. I also believed Santa and the Easter Bunny were real at the time, so stories about talking donkeys and getting a bunch of animals on a boat and someone spending three days inside a whale weren't so far fetched.

I don't understand why other people don't just grow out of it though the same way they grow out of belief in Santa Claus as I did, even with the child indoctrination. The whole thing is so unrealistic and completely contradicted by evidence.

Why didn't child indoctrination ever work on me? 

It's a very difficult question. Although I wasn't religiously indoctrinated, I was indoctrinated in other ways which affected me psychologically and still do today. It can be really powerful. My indoctrination was much more closely knit to reality, making it easier to stick. I think sceptical brains reject religious indoctrination because it is so ridiculously far fetched.

You're right, the religious beliefs are totally absurd and at odds with all evidence that we have. I think they survive partly because they never come under scrutiny, they are designed to be non-falsifiable. No matter what science tells us, people can just say, "Well yes, but God did all that". And even prayer is set up so that there is no failure criteria. So because they can't fail as such, they continue to co-exist with the real understanding of reality. And because they can't be proved wrong, the fear of letting go of them is enough in a lot of cases to keep the superstition going. My wife is not religious, but she falls into the same mental traps. She was brought up by superstitious parents, and now she doesn't dare break certain meaningless rules "just in case something bad happens".