For the most part, in Christianity there is one fact that arises above the rest: though they claim to be one of three faiths of the book, they are not that biblically literate. Nor are they familiar with the history of their own religion, other than what they cursory learned in sunday school (besides all the Bible stories in the OT, the Apostles in the NT). Back in my Christian days, I was probably one of the rare ones who had enough intellectual curiosity to actually read the entire thing from front to back and actually pay attention to details. And when you pay attention to details, you notice things. Things like, two different creation accounts in Genesis, the silly magical stuff like Lot's wife turning to a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom, all the genocide, murder, war, rape and mayhem in the Conquest of Canaan story, why would Jesus curse a fig tree for not bearing fruit when it was not even fig season? Even if they do read the Bible, it is with blinders on. They rationalize the crap that does not make sense, because of the shit the preachers tell them to gloss over them or simply leave parts out when they preach.
And you don't necessarily have to have written words to be religious. The anthropological and archaeological record indicates many societies that had religious expressions of animism, totemism, and other basic primitive religious thought processes.
If you are looking to satisfy your own curiosity I suggest learning about the history of how the Torah came to be and how the New Testament came to be. I have learned a lot through my own readings and tangents because of my interest in ancient Middle Eastern history. Studying the Sumerians I learned that nearly all the stories from the first few chapters of Genesis derive from Sumerian and Assyro-Babylonian mythology, which also interests me.
And you don't necessarily have to have written words to be religious. The anthropological and archaeological record indicates many societies that had religious expressions of animism, totemism, and other basic primitive religious thought processes.
If you are looking to satisfy your own curiosity I suggest learning about the history of how the Torah came to be and how the New Testament came to be. I have learned a lot through my own readings and tangents because of my interest in ancient Middle Eastern history. Studying the Sumerians I learned that nearly all the stories from the first few chapters of Genesis derive from Sumerian and Assyro-Babylonian mythology, which also interests me.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."--Thomas Jefferson
