RE: Don't Understand The Appeal Of Christianity To People
September 9, 2015 at 7:57 am
(This post was last modified: September 9, 2015 at 7:59 am by Fake Messiah.)
(August 26, 2015 at 12:12 pm)Imaginos7 Wrote:(August 26, 2015 at 7:37 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Religion has hijacked the evolved tendency of humans to accept authority when they’re young, something that would have enhanced the survival of our ancestors (learning is a good way to avoid the dangers of experience). Because when you're born you don't know anything and have to listen to your parents to survive like "Don't play near that lake cuz crock will eat you." and those kids that didn't listen didn't pass the disobedient gene. Similar if you hear a rustle in the bushes, you’re more likely to survive (or get food) if you believe it came from another animal than from a gust of wind. These beliefs about conscious agents in nature can easily be transferred to things like lightning and earthquakes. Because our ancestors lacked naturalistic explanations for such things, conjectures about supernatural humanlike beings or spirits might follow. So afterward it is really hard for lots of people to part something they learned in childhood as "untouchable" (sacred, if you want) truth.
And so if you’re born in Saudi Arabia, in all likelihood you’ll be brought up Muslim, accepting its doctrines as true. If born in Utah, the chances of your becoming a Mormon are high (around 60 percent), and in Brazil you’re likely to become a Catholic. To a very large extent, which religion you accept and which you reject are accidents of birth. And after you’ve been religious for years, and surrounded by those who believe likewise, you become emotionally invested in your faith’s truth. This makes you more susceptible to confirmation bias and less likely to be skeptical about your beliefs.
Yeah but all the rituals of going to church and the theology of Christianity are so unappealing I don't even understand why people form or sustain any emotional attachment to it. I went to a religious church school where they taught you stories of the Bible as if they were fact and I became an atheist by the time I was aged 10 and it never caused me discomfort to not believe any of it because I had no attachment to it in the first place.
The single only thing I can see in its appeal to adults to believe in life after death but you have no fear of death when you're a child so that doesn't apply when you're growing up.
Well you'd be surprised what fear of eternal suffering will do to people. You think this self deluding people admit to themselves that it's boring? And one of the tactics of Catholic Church is not only blame others with same crimes they commit so that spotlight moves off them, but also to call stuff like that boring mass a celebration - so it's a party actually
You should read what Alan Alda wrote when he was a catholic, how he was afraid to even touch the God Cracker with his teeth and then one day he just said "The Fuck With it."
And also there are pilgrimages to holy places and Marian apparitions to introduce at least some change in that abhorring monotony of Catholic mass where people can walk on their knees, walk long distances; or visit Papal castle - it's like Disneyland for bored Catholics.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"