(February 13, 2013 at 8:16 am)RichardP Wrote:(February 12, 2013 at 9:03 am)Brian37 Wrote: This may help a fence sitter or someone still in a religion but has questions. But hard core believers both Jews and Christians have bullshit excuses to ignore these rightfully stated facts above.
I argued with Jews about the Canaanite influence and they say "It's not the same". Missing the point that life does not exist in a vacuum and they got their ideas and motifs and characters from prior polytheism. Changing the game pieces and color of the box doesn't make the religion original. Jews and Christians refuse to see that the reality is that EVERY religion has always been a spinoff of something prior.
It is the same concept in commercial marketing. Pepsi will come out with a cherry soda, Coke will look at it, come up with it's own version, change the name of the soda and color of the can and compete with Pepsi.
Saying that either the Hebrew or Christian religion are original is like saying Coke was the first beverage because it's can is red. Islam is also a spin off too.
Humans make up religions and that is all that is going on. You might help weak theists or skeptics afraid to leave theism, but hardcore theists will completely ignore reality and make excuses as to why their monotheism did not come from polytheism when it is obvious it did.
Religion is successful, not because a god is real, any god, religion is successful because of marketing and gullibility.
I think that perhaps this is the reason that some Christians are so determined to argue that the earth is only 10,000 years old. They want to believe that the entire world history is covered by the Bible -- and nothing came before it!
Pesky science always puts a damper on fantasy.
