(January 20, 2013 at 1:47 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Oral tradition? How easy would that be to corrupt?
It would have been oral tradition before writing was invented.
(January 20, 2013 at 1:47 pm)pocaracas Wrote: And where did such beliefs come from, when somewhere else some account of a god appears?
I think it all goes back to the way the human brain behaves. People have visions which are interpreted as being from a deity. People moved around, adopted other communities' mythology and adapted it to their own world view. For example, the story of Noah's Ark bears astonishing similarities to the flood myth in the Epic Of Gilgamesh.
(January 20, 2013 at 1:47 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Well, I think you can see where this is going....
Where did such knowledge of other gods come from, if only one of them is right?
bonus: which one is right, if any?
I think that as religions became established their followers tried to rationalise why nobody had believed in their deity before. One way is to say that the deity didn't choose to reveal itself before a certain time. The Christian idea is that God only bothered with his chosen people until Jesus came to Earth. After that, his disciples revealed the Judaic deity to non-Jews. From what I've gathered, Islam is supposed to be the true form of the religion which God originally revealed to his chosen people.
