Interestingly, even in ancient times, some people thought that the Greek gods might have been based on real people who then came to be worshipped as gods.
Like in the 2nd century BCE, Quintus Ennius, the father of Roman poetry, seemed to have thought that Venus was originally a woman who invented prostitution, and who then came to be worshipped as a goddess:
And she first instituted the art of courtesanship, as is contained in the sacred history; and taught women in Cyprus to seek gain by prostitution, which she commanded for this purpose, that she alone might not appear unchaste and a courter of men beyond other females. Has she, too, any claim to religious worship, on whose part more adulteries are recorded than births?
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07011.htm
Like in the 2nd century BCE, Quintus Ennius, the father of Roman poetry, seemed to have thought that Venus was originally a woman who invented prostitution, and who then came to be worshipped as a goddess:
And she first instituted the art of courtesanship, as is contained in the sacred history; and taught women in Cyprus to seek gain by prostitution, which she commanded for this purpose, that she alone might not appear unchaste and a courter of men beyond other females. Has she, too, any claim to religious worship, on whose part more adulteries are recorded than births?
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07011.htm
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"
