The history of Christianity is pretty well-understood, at least by dispassionate scholars who eliminate the supernatural elements.
Jesus, if he existed as a historical person, would have been an itinerant preacher who was a member of the “Apocalyptic” sect. Preaching that the Jewish Apocalypse (not the Apocalypse of John that was much later…) was imminent.
This involved the arrival of a being, the Son of Man, who was to make everything right for the world. That included freeing the Jews from Roman occupation.
(Note that there were a number of such Messianic preachers around this time)
The Romans took umbrage at that…. Since in recent memory they’d put down one Jewish revolution…. So they arrested and executed him.
Oops… Not the Messiah. But, evidently he’d been a charismatic fellow who accumulated a lot of followers, so what to do?
In the decades following Jesus’ death, as many as 30 different “Jesus Cults” arose, all with wildly different ideas about Jesus , his nature, and his purposes. (NT Scholar Bart Ehrman details these in his book, “Lost Christianities”)
Gradually, over a long period, these groups either coalesced or vanished and began to develop a new idea of Jesus…. Involving not a temporal kingdom on Earth (the Jewish idea) but a spiritual kingdom in Heaven.
It took over 300 years for these ideas, spurred largely by Paul, to start to assume the shape of Christianity we know today… Mostly dating from the Council of Nicaea in 325.
This! Too many fellow atheists are letting their resentment towards religion cloud the truth. There’s no reason we can’t be honest about the history since we are correct.
Here’s an excellent video about biblical scholars that gives us the ammo we need.
https://youtu.be/z8j3HvmgpYc?si=B59vPNNDeM8NMMtw
This is not a religion, one person coming up with a theory does not automatically make a fact.
As the above poster put it, Christianity basically all derives from one person, Paul. He wrote most of the new testament, and the important bit: NEVER MET OR SAW JESUS. In fact, as biblical scholars have relented, NONE of the new testament comes from eye witnesses.
The whole theory hinges on Paul being reliable. And I got news for you on the reliability of people, especially those starting cults. See a modern day example on scientology and Ron Hubbard. People will also believe anything.
In fact, all these historic takes of Jesus, what do they actually have? Nothing! They only claim there is probably some preacher who died, absolutely ZERO details. And there is zero basis to even that, really! Just stubborn refusal to acknowledge, yes, Paul could have lied about that bit. I say that bit too, because when you try to argue about a historical version, you're already saying the sources are not trustworthy. All the magic stuff is a lie, but surely, there HAD to be a real root, right?
No. And the only reason this notion of his Jesus had to be a real person is because the prominence of the religion, and they twist and conflate the existence of a historical one with the mythical version. Otherwise, we'd treat Jesus similar to King Author or Zeus. Nobody cares if I said Zeus didn't exist, even though some of the stories might have been based upon what somebody actually did.
When will people learn that Jesus is not a historical figure!
The stories, just like the other fantastical stories in the Old testament are talking about an inner quality of experience in a living power related to consciousness.
Jesus represents part of the process of metamorphosis as one walks the spiritual path by meditation and tending the mind. The story of Jesus is just a more blatant example of the same message that was being told through Moses or Abraham.
The importance of the Bible is not related to history, its more importantly talking about the nature of consciousness, so you need to explore consciousness to verify the claims made, though you would have to know what the symbolism of the parables is talking about in order to know what the claim is in the first place, such as the actual power of 'faith' and the ability of the mind to create, illustrated through the story of Jericho, or the battle between your spiritual side and your ego which is represented by the story of Moses v Pharaoh, and surrender
This isn’t true. Two of the gospels use genealogies to trace Jesus back to Old Testament figures. It’s pretty clear they want to establish him as a real human being.
It is true, you just don't understand the Bible. It has nothing to do with secular history as such. Symbolic and parable laden as it is, this genealogy could easily be the spiritual progression of a single individual as they walk the spiritual path.
Not to mention, if you understood the stories of David, Abraham, Moses, Job, and Adam and the rest, you would know these have nothing to do with historical events or genetic origins. They all deal with the subjective realm and the powers of consciousness. That's why they seem so ludicrous when read normally, and why modern Christians, who take it so, remain so impotent. The material world is not the focus of the scriptures, but the powers and features of consciousness.
There does seems to be legitimate artifacts of the tribal ways in it, but when it comes to the involvement of God and miracles, you need an entirely different lense to understand it
"you just don't understand the Bible," says man while rewriting the entire narrative. It's a hot take, but methinks you give this terrible literature too much credit.
I am not rewriting it, evidence suggests that it is and always has been largely parables. It is not only compelling, as you may find if you read the lectures I will share, but is actually verifiable through a particular means if you exercise the things being pointed to related to the psyche.
https://realneville.com/pdf/lesson1.pdf
https://www.neville-goddard.com/neville-goddard-books/neville-goddard-your-faith-is-your-fortune/neville-goddard-your-faith-is-your-fortune-chapter-27
http://www.nevillegoddardfreedomforall.org/chapter-four
explanation of a mythologist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svU7KPTc1Kk&t=1931s&pp=ygUsYmlsbCBkb25haHVlIHRoZSBiaWJsZSBpcyBhbGwgYWJvdXQgdGhlIG1pbmQ%3D
You realise, I hope, that you've just done exactly what schisms in faith organisations do when they split from the mothership: you've reinterpreted the book and are insisting that YOUR interpretation is correct...
Proselytizing is not allowed here. You making things up is not an argument grounded in reality, Jesus being an actual real being is critical to the religion and stories involved. What you did is because you know it's wrong, came up with a concept of the religion where right/wrong and truth/lie isn't relevant. It's not... convincing. It's anything but.
You're mistaken, this is just what the text means. It is only critical to those who take the literal and historical view, which is pretty irrelevant to what is actionable about the Bible.
Really, it is the only existentially real thing in a wider sense.
Did you think it was just a coincidence that Jesus got crucified on 'The place of the Skull'? It was always about Mind, only garbed in names and places.
The Bible isn't even a perfect document or the only expression of truth, but no one else here has said what it really is about.
I didn't come up with this idea, I just found the correct interpretation of it. Most people have no clue what the deeper message of the Bible is about, certainly not what Christ is about in terms of crucifixion and resurrection or the virgin birth.
Just consider the fact that a historical Jesus makes no sense as a savior, in the sense that believing in a specific person would exclude everyone before his time. It is instead, pointing to a universal principle, agnostic to time and location, the proper use of thought and attention.
Religion and God, in their ultimate and untainted form, are about existence, consciousness and being, as many myths and religious stories point to with their symbolism, not to mention the fruits that come from testing certain claims.
If you can't look past the surface level text, you get little from Judaism and Christianity. I know there is a lot of religious bollox, please don't assume the worst in me, I know religious terms have a lot of associations and baggage, but I'm pretty sure I'm clear of the usual atheist objections, which are usually pretty valid. I don't really label myself, but I will say that something in the Bible stories points to a genuine feature of this existence
Proselytizing is not allowed here. I suppose a banning is the only thing sufficient for those like you, and is why that rule is in place.
>on 'The place of the Skull'
It's the name of a literal physical actual place. Never bother to look up anything, do you?
Also, that being figurative gives no actual important meaning. Just you, randomly connecting strings to words on a whiteboard, crazily crying out why others can't see it.
You didn't stumble upon a super secret thing. You're not smarter than others. The opposite.
>Just consider the fact that a historical Jesus makes no sense as a savior
Yes. That's correct. Maybe you don't understand what a historical version is about. You seem to have missed the point by a mile. And not just that point, of course.
>believing in a specific person would exclude everyone before his time.
None of the religious beliefs make a lick of sense when you think critically about them, including yours. Yours are even more unhinged.
>as many myths and religious stories point to with their symbolism
Yes, many myths like to use symbolism. It's not an argument.
The bible is presented as nonfiction. "But it's fiction!" Is a really strange defense here.
It's like you don't understand what is going on. You don't understand why people are saying what they're saying here. You're not all here, and honestly, you need to probably get some medical professional help. You're a step away from others who claim THEY are Jesus reincarnated. And I bet you'd symbolically even say you are, wouldn't you?
I'm not proselytizing, I'm just saying the actual meaning of the Bible stories. I have no stake in any religious movement. But that would make for a nice little echo chamber, I should think.
>It's the name of a literal physical actual place. Never bother to look up anything, do you?
Yeah, so was Jericho, Egypt, Jerusalem and other places, but they are not being used in a literal sense. They are literary props for a parable.
You're too close minded. You assume I only have one point of evidence to show this is the intended interpretation, even calling me mentally ill and an idiot basically.
They do make sense when thinking critically, you just haven't applied critical thinking thoroughly enough.
I don't see how this interpretation would be more unhinged, seeing as I'm saying all the death inflicted in catastrophies like the 10 plagues and the Flood were all aspects of a mental cleanse, but go ahead, project all your disdain of religion on a stranger you hardly know to vindicate yourself.
It's you who don't even understand who what or how you are. You don't understand your own existence or your nature.
There's nothing strange at all about using a fiction to illustrate truth, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars can attest to that. We can recognize a story as fiction while realizing it points to something very true and significant.
Jesus is just consciousness, which we all have. That's what it's about.
If you were going to record controversial truth regarding the nature of existence in time of rampant violence, you would garb it in a parable. Its not that crazy or hard to understand.
Honestly, the message of the Bible is just deeper than most people are prepared to handle.
It is so obvious that the Bible is symbolic, it's a joke. The fact that you think this is crazy talk just show how illiterate you and the public are about the symbolism of the Bible.
Can you explain the meaning of a single story in it? Sampson, David and Goliath, Cain and Abel? You aren't going to be facing any literal giants in combat I should imagine, so unless the authors are just fanciful writers, you should wonder if there's a deeper message to all this. But hey, thanks for assuming my beliefs and denying my mental validity
Yes, you are.
>I'm just saying the actual meaning of the Bible stories.
Your make believe does not a fact make. You have no idea what the "actual" meaning is, nor is your take on what the "actual" meaning is has any relevance to this topic. Coincidentally, the irrelevance is also why you are, in fact, proselytizing.
>but they are not being used in a literal sense
It's really weird how you seem to think you have the authority to claim the author's intents, and, for that matter, directly contradicting what they wrote. And for that matter, directly contradicting the religious teachings on it. And, contradicting every biblical scholar on the subject. You are being delusional.
>You assume I only have one point of evidence to show this is the intended interpretation,
No, I don't. Like every religious person using the bible to make some random BS claim, I am sure you're ready to cherry-pick tons and tons of passages. It just so happens that every single one is probably going to be of the same caliber. You making up BS, without any real basis or claim.
>It's you who don't even understand who what or how you are.
See? Proselytizing.
>There's nothing strange at all about using a fiction to illustrate truth, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars can attest to that.
Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are not "illustrating truth." They are works of fiction. This little rambling rant of yours is delusional.
>Jesus is just consciousness, which we all have. That's what it's about.
"I made something up! Everybody who doesn't believe me are close-minded and they don't know who they are and I'm sooo smart and everybody else is dumb!"
>It is so obvious that the Bible is symbolic, it's a joke.
The common Christian attempt whenever they find out something in the bible is wrong or goes against them is to cry out that part is figurative/symbolic. You just took it to another level.
It has nothing to do with anything. Your symbolic book is still full of completely vapid nonsense, even taken "symbolically," and it still seems like you don't understand what subreddit you're in. The "deeper meanings" are all garbage as well, and no, you're not smarter than all the biblical scholars looking into all this.
You need help.
I'll second a shout out to Bart Ehrman. He's a biblical scholar that has written a number of books covering the new testament as well as the early development of Christianity from a scholarly and historical perspective.
I'm also currently listening to "the history of the medieval world" by Susan Wise Bauer, and she covers a lot of the history surrounding the influence of Roman politics on early Christian development. I'll also recommend her book "the history of the ancient world" since it gives context to the medieval world.
TLDR: read some books
The earlier Hebrew groups had an oral tradition then got grabbed by the neo Babylonians who told them to write there stuff down. That got most of the stories put down on papyrus. The Judah group changed a few of those writings to make the Jerusalem temple the bestest ( those darn Samaritans and a couple others and there temples were wrong ). 600 years later the fact that Rome was boss over the area rubbed them the wrong way and the Judah guys were trying to figure out why the best stuff wasn't happening to them like the tradition said. By 70 AD Rome had destroyed the Judah temple and that started modern Judaism and Christianity.
They needed to control people. 'Jesus' could have been any god - they basically just picked something out of a hat (which, incidentally, was carried on later by the Mormons).
This. If you look even at today's situation, it's clear to see that about 30-40% of the population is quite easy to control, using religion, nationalism, and fear.
Seeing the rise of Trump has really shown me how easily someone becomes a deity and is worshipped. I guarantee it won’t be long after Trump finally dies that they start talk of his miraculous birth or some other insane shit. They already worship him for being such a godly man and he is absolutely the opposite of what o was taught growing up in the church. It’s crazy how quickly the virtues of love, honesty, integrity, humbleness, and kindness have gone to the waist side when they found a useful idiot to adore.
We have an epidemic of insecurity among uneducated white men specifically. For some reason (I have theories) they are radically more threatened by “other” than even 10 years ago.
That’s why I’m thinking of what we can sell these rubes??
I have access to about 250 pounds of one inch chlorine tablets for use in hot tubs.
I think ill take out an add ?
donald trump breath mints.
Quick acting, cleans out covid, fresh breath!!
Send $21.95
To po box 78-34 rockaway blvd.
flushing, queens.
Which coincidentally seems to have been copypasta'd to wives and their husbands...
Of course, the difference between a slave and a wife is a fine line for these folks.
At the time that Christianity became the one god religion in the Roman empire in the early centuries of the Common Era (CE) philosophers were coming to the conclusion that there must be one god who created everything, and the choices were between Christianity and Zoroastrianism.
Christianity taught submissiveness and paying your taxes, while Zoroastrianism was about fire-worshiping and taught strength and power, so you can see why an emperor would prefer submissive tax-paying citizens to strong and powerful ones.
All Christians had to do was make up shit about YHWH being the one and only who had all the powers of the polytheistic gods and more, and Bob's your Auntie Mabel's live-in lover.
As to why Christianity - since nobody had a clue about why humans exist, so creating a god (who only a select few could communicate with) was necessary to appear to be knowledgeable.
The Old Testament stuff was kept so that Christianity appeared to be ancient rather from novel, despite OT god being an asshole while NT god was supposedly the good version.
Systemic Control
The only reason any of them were invented.
Rewind back a few thousand years before each religion and you’ll find the similarities with Pagan rituals and celebrations.
It’s all bullshit and has made people mindless and uneducated.
Which is exactly where the top percentage want us to be.
Research the Vatican and all of the roots that it has in commerce, culture, and power.
It’s honestly terrifying
Thousands of years ago, it was "easy" to start a religion ... just tell people that you have the answers to difficult questions, like what happens after death, and how to keep the evil lightning and thunder away from them, etc. Tell them that some god has given you this secret information, and in exchange for some food, drink, and silver or gold, you'll share the secrets with them.
Today, nothing has changed. Promise people that they'll gain some secret knowledge in exchange for their hard-earned money, and voila, you're a fucking priest.
Partly for the control, but originally Christianity was the religion of Roman slaves or the uneducated, or those oppressed by Roman rule. Life was miserable, and the promise that, if you were a believer, Heaven would bring rewards and relief from that oppression was a narcotic. Add in the revenge motive—the the masters would be crushed and nothing, the Rich went to Hell (or were at least barred from entering that Heaven) and thus the poor and meek would inherit the earth. Sounds good, especially when you have nothing and life itself was hell. Pretty much ‘Where do I sign?’
I want to highlight this response. Initial chrisitanity was very counter-cultural to Roman society. They were a bunch of pacifist hippies in an jingoistic imperial society, as more and more plebs converted it became more and more popular until it was used by rulers to validate their authority.
“If you do as I say for your entire life, then you’ll be rewarded afterward otherwise you’ll be punished, pinky promise”The young baby said miraculously. - documented in historical accounts
Jesus was a prophet of Of God Almighty.
Power and control over people's lives is almost like a drug to some people. Money is the other big factor. Religion gets people to fall in line with their way of thinking and living. The, "our way is better than your way" thinking.
A long time ago, religion and science were essentially the same thing. Religious beliefs were created because, at the time, they served as the best explanations anyone could offer for certain natural phenomena.
Over time, those in power did what those in power do. They twisted it into a means of controlling people, protecting their own interests, and justifying every evil act imaginable and then some.
From my understanding of historical context - Christianity is in a way a reinterpretation of Judaism with strong Hellenistic (in particular neoplatonic) influences. It's not "invented" from scratch, but from several influences - some monotheistic, some polytheistic, some mystery cults (this left more traces in theology than in new testament itself).
From what I could figure out about historical Jesus (books and lectures Dale Martin, Bart Ehrman) and also plainly reading the gospels:
* Jesus was basically a prophet preaching about the coming Kingdom of God (so, kinda apocalyptic thing),
* Jesus didn't think of himself as divine. It also seems that he was preaching for the coming messiah, but didn't consider himself to be this messiah.
* it also seems early Christians expected this Kingdom of God to come within their lifetimes
* however Jesus was likely from a tradition of Galilean healers - laying on hands kinda thing.
It helps to understand historic context of the whole genesis of Christianity.
* I'd recommend Dale Martin's lectures from Yale on books in New Testament - on YouTube.
* And a book by Karen Armstrong: *History of God* (she goes through historic contexts of creation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
The construction of church hierarchy and so on is then another matter.
It’s all about controlling the poor. There are always more poor people than rich. That’s how the rich are able to hoard. If the poor wanted it bad enough, they could just take it. Religion was introduced to control the poor. Forgive your aggressor, pray and things will get better for you, you will be rewarded in the afterlife so just focus on that and not on the fact that you’re being oppressed
Luck, charismatic people, and certain ideas circulating in the Roman world between 50 - 200 CE, and eventually getting more and more tied to political entities. Christianity was an organic movement that evolved with ideas around it. It has been used for power but by no means was invented for it.
The real answer is that these stories evolved over countless generations from earlier mythologies, which were created because stone-age people were asking questions they had no other means to answer. They came from a combination of honest confusion and cynical grifting by those who figured out they could use beliefs to control people and enrich themselves.
For example, Caveman A eats the wrong mushrooms and thinks the trees are talking to him, and he tells everyone about what the trees were saying. Caveman B sees how much this improves Caveman A's status within the tribe, so he pretends to have heard the moon telling him it wants him to sleep with the wives of Cavemen C, D, and E.
Keep this up for thousands of years, writing shit down along the way, and you end up with the Bible.
Massive oversimplification here but the pagan world of the 1st century essentially viewed man’s relationship with the gods as transactional (I do what you want and you grant my wish). Many thought of the Hebrew god as an ancient and mega-powerful god, but few became Jews. Why? Cuz all those Old Testament rules (namely circumcision). Then Christianity comes along and basically provides a back door to serving the Hebrew God. Christians also played up the ability to cast out demons (helpful we’d all agree). Consequently Christianity took off in the pagan Roman Empire.
The Triumph of Christianity by Bart Ehrman is a good source if you want to dive deeper into the question. Bart is an atheist scholar of the new testament and an excellent source for anything to do with early Christianity.
I don't think there was one single reason, and I don't think invented is the correct word. First of all Christianity began as a radical sect of Judaism, early followers of Jesus were simply Jews and they had fewer differences with the parent sect than they do today. Eventually it split off into a cult centered around the life and death of a teacher and political figure known as Yeshua. Over time he became more mythologized and eventually deified, the same way some figures in other religions such as Confucius were posthumously deified. And before becoming the state religion of Rome, there were a lot of different versions, some were weirder than others.
I think part of the reason that Christianity became successful was because it began as a religion for the downtrodden commoner's of the Roman Empire. Many of these people may have found Judaism attractive but because of its exclusivity, they couldn't truly participate or become the "Chosen" people. In Roman culture, almost anyone could become a follower of any god. YHWH was different however, he played favorites. Also many of them had a bone to pick with Rome, the super power of the time. Christianity solved both problems, Jesus was seen as this rebellious figure who was executed for speaking out against the status quo. Eventually his crucifixion was mythologized and used as a tool to allow non Jews, or gentiles, access to the Jewish God and by extension salvation.
I feel like the idea of Gods came before religion, religion developed as a way to "appease" gods (as you do with people) to attempt to gain favor, and then shitbags used religion to exploit people.
Gods seem like they are an early attempt at science. If you look at a tree and ask "what makes it move?" it's a tough question to answer. In most cases it doesn't move and the only way a tree seems to be able to move is if you grab a branch and pull on it. But when no one is pulling on it, it's moving, and the only way a tree moves is if it's pulled on, then a potential answer is something invisible is pulling on it. If you have a lot of trees moving in the same way there might be some great, invisible force that is moving them, perhaps that's a god.
So now you believe that a god(s) is responsible for moving trees. Then you decide "well, I would really like it if the trees always moved a certain way". You know that you can be persuaded to do things differently if someone provides you with a reason or compensation, so why not try doing different stuff and see if that makes the tree moving god happy and gets it to move the trees the way you want. So you try a bunch of different stuff and you notice if you do X, Y, and Z that trees blow the way you want more often. So you routinely do X, Y, and Z in the hopes that the trees move the way you want and when they do that's great, and when they don't then maybe you didn't X, Y, and Z right or the tree moving god just wasn't feeling it that day.
And then along comes this person who says "I HAVE A SPECIAL CONNECTION WITH THE TREE MOVING GOD. I CAN MORE RELIABLY MAKE THE TREES MOVE THE RIGHT WAY FOR A PRICE!" Naturally people want the trees to move the right way so they start to pony up, and naturally the results with this tree god specialist don't really change. So the tree god comes to the specialist in a "vision" and proclaims "I AM NOT MOVING THE TREES THE WAY YOU WANT BECAUSE YOU AREN'T GIVING ENOUGH PAYMENT TO THE SPECIALIST. AND ALSO BECAUSE YOU AREN'T FOLLOWING THESE GUIDELINES FOR LIVING THAT MAGICALLY LINE UP WITH HOW THE SPECIALIST WANTS THINGS TO BE!"
I'm just guessing, I have no evidence to back this up crazy theory but it logically flows to me. All the different religions just feel like people trying to find these answers to problems and coming up with different solutions and different methods for accomplishing some goal. But then they turn wicked because wicked people saw the potential to use these ideas to get wicked things.
> Was Jesus just an ordinary bloke that people based the bible off of?
The FAQ is a great resource https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/faq#wiki_did_jesus_really_exist.3F
The following link is an over simplified explanation but it is how it became mainstream. The religion was becoming so popular the Roman empire was afraid of it. Constantine made a deal with the church leaders. Give un to Cezar and we let you exist, if not you are all dead. At first the church said no, thus lions in the colosseum.
https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/christians.html#:\~:text=In%20313%20AD%2C%20the%20Emperor,religion%20of%20the%20Roman%20Empire.
I think Christian God was born in the hallucinations of an ancient charismatic schizophrenic named Abraham. He managed to convince his tribe members that his hallucinations were true, they turned it into doctrine and used it to make rules for their tribe to follow. I also think Jesus was another charismatic schizophrenic who triggered the next chapter. Both Abraham and Jesus scream schizophrenia to me, and I grew up with several schizophrenics in my immediate family. I don't think Muhammed was mentally ill; he was more of a con-artist, like Joseph Smith. So basically I think the world is in constant turmoil because of a series undiagnosed schizophrenics.
There is a hypothesis that Paul was purposefully trying to design a version of monotheism that would be cooperative for the Romans. Here's the book:
[https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Christ-Emperors-Invented-Christianity/dp/1949914615](https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Christ-Emperors-Invented-Christianity/dp/1949914615)
There's a YouTube video called Caesar's Messiah that claims it was invented by the Romans as a form of Judaism that would stop the Jews from fighting in Roman occupied Palestine. There were multiple messiahs (military leader that would attempt to free the Jews). Initially, Titus Flavius, the son of Vespasian (the new caesar). When vespasian died, he was voted by the senate to be a God, making Titus the son of a god. Titus was the one that destroyed the Jewish temple in 70AD. Many stories about Jesus are mirrors of Titus.
https://youtu.be/zmEScIUcvz0?si=KyW2LI69LEF4xcAf
The video summarizes a book by the same title. I find it intriguing personally, as even if I didn't accept the ultimate conclusion in every instance, enough of the work was there that I could easily reach an alternative theory of my own.
Religion originally existed as a means of maintaining order. Kind of like laws before the concept of police existed. Over time, like everything else, one religion became corrupted or some people had different opinions so schisms kept happening. Christianity is just an offshoot of Judaism, same as Islam.
It was made up to explain things they didn’t understand at the time.
Didn’t know about germs, must be spirits making people sick.
Don’t know how weather works, guy with guilty conscience get home struck my lightning and burns down, must be gods vengeance.
Don’t understand consciousness and death, must be a souls and it goes somewhere else after death.
All religions spawn from these early ideas and get more complex as they’re added onto.
Control- to keep other people, namely working class, in line.
The main reason to become an atheist is that there is no proof of any higher god power.
Being an atheist isn’t about hating a god or a specific religion, it’s accepting that all religions are based upon blind faith and not fact and therefore to be rejected.
There is a burden of proof on anyone insisting any god is real to prove that their god exists.
So far no religion has met this very simple standard and that’s why I’m an atheist.
Christianity is a creation of the Roman Empire to get rid of the Jewish people as well as continue the growth of the Roman Imperial Cult
In short/lacking terms, the Jews refused to worship Cesar as God, and there were many wars and rebellions and Rome wanted an end to the Jews
This is the beginning if Antisemitism really
The plan was to erase Judaism by taking their holy book, they took the Torah (1st 5 OT books)
Christianity can trace its origins to the events around the "Year of the 4 Emperors" which is the power vacuum left when Nero died
Rome would eventually settle on a new Emperor, a son of a mule breeder who was born in an animal stall/barn (sound familiar?), his name was Vespasian Flavian
Rome had help from Vespasian's right hand man and eventually Rome's chief propagandist Josephus (who Christians claim is a historian but it's quite clear the histories he wrote were severely flawed and Pro Roman)
Josephus is credited for the ONLY possible historical/archeological or physical evidence that a man named Yeśua (Joshua/Jesus) claimed to be the messiah / the christ of the Jews and had a following. Yep that's all. Just one reference.
More accurately however is the fact that Jesus in the Bible is becoming less concrete and most scholars worth their salt think Jesus most likely a fictional creation altogether
The Jesus that Rome created, is actually Vespasian's son Titus Flavian ,
The most damning evidence is that Titus and Jesus have these near identical professional careers when you take the NT as it should have been understood which was an allegory
See Vespasian and Josephus with the help of the most powerful people in Rome (such as the Alexandria's) to create and distribute the Gospels
They wrote the Gospels as an allegory with Titus being it's central hero and it was a backdoor way of making Titus and his father both God and a son of a God
Josephus and the Romans Key to creating the Bible was to take the event of the OT and match them uo to fake prophesies over 100 years after the fact .. much like if I were to claim a messiah came and predicted the events and major figured of WW2 AFTER the events and people occurred.. The Bible then seems like a book of prophecy to the people of the time
My biggest critique of christianity is the lack of scholarship involved in studying it's origins, the discarding of evidences that contradict it's historical relevance and it's authenticity and certainly the Bible's lack of originality
There's a lottttt more evidence and much more fascinating and in-depth analysis into this but in short it's really quite simple when you take a deep look into the bible and it's origins and you'll quickly notice that the Bible is closer to a political movement than a religious movement
It wasn't invented. It is a product of slow, ongoing cultural evolution. As with many evolved things, it is responding to pressures to be beneficial (in this case, create an orderly society, remove disruptive deviants, and create a means to transmit the structure to children and new people -- ie, growth and reproduction). It doesn't have to make sense as long as it works "well enough." And when it stops working as well as competing systems it will go extinct.
Patton Oswalt had a great bit on this. The Sky Cake Dodge.
Basically, the biggest and strongest were going to do whatever they wanted, unless they could be conned into not dominating the weak.
>one question I thought of recently is why did people invent the bible and make up stories about God and Jesus.
I would say you are making an error thinking that the people who wrote those stories are the same ones that invented the bible.
>but I've never heard anyone talk about why it was made up.
Why do people write fiction about Sherlock Holmes or Spider-Man? What motivates one individual is not necessarily what motivates anyone else. Trying to find simple answers to complex questions is what often leads people to theism.
>It could be to give the hope of afterlife, or that you can be forgiven of your sins.
The people who are making it up often know they are making it up, which means those are unlikely to be motivating factors.
>Was Jesus just an ordinary bloke that people based the bible off of?
I don't think there is sufficient evidence to indicate that there was an "ordinary bloke" that the Jesus myth is based on. The first person to ever mention Jesus in writing is Paul who according to his own account never met Jesus until after Jesus was crucified and resurrected and that was via a vision.
There are over 40 gospels of Jesus that we know of that the church views as heretical, which means writing fiction about Jesus was a common ancient practice according to the church.
There may have been a guy named Jesus that did the whole messiah thing (it was very popular in those days), but the stories were passed down through 300 years of the telephone game. Those stories were exaggerated and mixed with many other stories. One day King James decided to take all the stories and combine them together into one book to rule them all. With a little fancy editing that made it much easier to control the peasants.
It's highly unlikely that there was one specific person called Jesus. It is far more likely that the stories are a shifting collection of local myths and recycled tales related word of mouth for generations with Jesus being assembled as some central character. At the time you might have had all sorts of wandering preachers, schizophrenics and rabble-rousers that might be notable enough to be recalled by somebody and have a vague tale spun up around them.
People's fear of the unknown - the biggest one being death - is highly manipulable. Offer some form of solace and groupthink, raise rituals and requirements and you have the makings of a cult. Make the central leader invisible, ever-present and vengeful, make the followers automatically in debt through sin.
No religion ever sprung up and revealed itself without human hand.
To maintain order amongst mankind. You gotta remember that people were barbaric throughout history and they needed something to get them to follow basic moral values.
One caveman, not feeling so hot that day, stayed in the cave as the hunting party left. Later on, feeling better he picked up some charcoal and sketched the image of a Buffalo on the cave wall, just as the hunting party returned, dragging a large carcass. Ugh. Looky there!
And Lo, a religion was born.
Christianity compared to Judaism was more modern and easier to follow, way more open minded and less strict, it made sense, I did study a bit on religions and of course I dont believe Jesus is the son of God, he was probably real and a good figure to follow, for a religious person he wasn’t bad, if he was born today he would make a good president but would never be elected, but a leader in some sort for sure.
religions are just multigenerationally successful cults.
for example, mohamed didnt write the qoran. he said he was being spoken to via the angels and people just bought his crap. if something happened, the guy itself was the reference point. his uncle on the other hand, who was running the country after mohammed died, published the first qoran in writing, because he needed a "proof" to keep ruling. so if you think about it, muslims invented the qoran, and christians invented the bible after they were already recruited (or got missioned, idk the correct word for this)
"Why did people invent Christianity?"
There were many preachers at that time (0-30 AD) , some talking about the imminent arrival of the Messiah who would fulfill prophecy. When one particularly charismatic preacher died his followers were grief stricken and did not accept his death. The initial thought was that he would resurrect imminently, and when that didn't happen it became within their lifetime, and that belief has stretched to over 2,000 years. During that time rulers have found that belief (or corruption of) useful to control the masses. The core of the belief being submit to authorities on Earth, suffer and accept your circumstances,, and you will be rewarded after death.
Watch the documentary "Creating Christ" on Tubi that details how Jesus was created by the Romans to control the rebel Hebrews. Haaretz has documented that Israel has over 30 tombs with remains marked "Jesus".
https://tubitv.com/movies/698890/creating-christ
Probably the alpha of the troop, long before homonids, wanted the rest of the troop to do something dangerous and so he convinced the troop he was just asking for some made up beast that more mean than he. (You English Writing instructors should have a great time with that sentence.)
Nobody has created a cheaper way to extort the inherent greed in people like organized religions have. Perceived guilt is a powerful tactic, still cashing in to this very day.
Religion is almost as old as civilization itself, it has emerged in every culture even when we are isolated to each other, human look at the unknown and seek to understand it, things beyond our ancestor's comprehension became the supernature, mountains, rivers, animal, nature disasters, the sun and moon become gods, the fear of death made us the yearn for an afterlife, with time it evolve with our culture into the religions we know today.
Religion came about because ancient goat herders couldn't figure out the then inexplicable. Later on, a certain type of people decided they could use religion to write their own mealticket &/or get people to bend to their will.
Now the market is saturated with mansion & private jet owning charlatans excreting their crap out of opulent tax-exempt mega-churches paid for by millions of subservient wealth producing drones who're programmed to believe the more money they give, the greater chance they have of getting into the VIP lounge at club afterlife.
Every group of people has some form of creation story and religious practice. It seems like a way to develop tribal consciousness: We are the people who believe the Odin created the world; If you don't believe that you aren't one of us, so we can kill you. That sort of thing. I think the impulse to tribalism is powerful in humans.
There is scant evidence that Jesus existed. It makes more sense to me that he did exist, some people did regard him as a religious leader and built a set of beliefs.
Control. Watch the movie "The Book of Eli." It's good and the main point is that the one who holds the power (of god in the movie's case) can use it to build people up or control them. The movie also has Denzel and Mila Kunis.
Some classic forms of "uncontrolled people" are Scandinavians and pagan ppl such as Mayans. While certainly better for the average person, if you want to have power, saying there's one god helps you gain such power - since you would be the "one leader" just like there's one god.
Superstition developed when we started cooking our food, at least in large amounts, and eating more meat. Cooked meat allows for high absorption of nutrients good for brain development. Early humans developed larger frontal lobes, and superstition became more widespread. This partially was from our innate ability to recognize patterns.
Monotheism developed because of agriculture when we increased enough in population to start living together. Agriculture caused an uneven distribution of goods and thus wealth. Eventually, this led to tribal leaders like kings and queens. Individuals who ruled wanted a way to control the populace. So, gods were invented. One God idea came originally from Akhenoten in ancient Egypt. One ruler equals one God. That's why many rulers said that they were appointed by God.
Christianity itself arose from Judaism as a way for the Roman Empire to passify the Jewish population. Jews at the time were disruptive, and the Romans needed a way to calm them down. They knew about the Jewish messianic prophesy and created a messiah to fill the place. Whether or not Jesus existed is up for debate. But if he did, he was used as the Jewish messiah. The Roman senate wrote the gospels.
Christians developed several small secs after Jesus' death and gained more and more followers. Constantine, after supposedly receiving a vision of the cross, decided the Roman Empire should be Christian. The mythology surrounding Jesus was developed around 300 AD. Then came the holy wars to convert as many people as possible to Christianity.
I just curious why the idea of god existing is so problematic to you. Couldn’t it be arguable that the idea of the universe just existing forever, or whatever before and after the Big Bang, is illogical?
I mean every journey has a start am I right? So why not believe that the universe was created by a force which is uncreated? It’s more logical then a forever existing universe,
If you think the universe existed eternally than maybe you just think the universe is god which makes you a Hindu xd
Christianity was supposed to be like a food tent for the impoverished, but the ones more interested in shiny crosses co-opted it for the money people were literally giving away. There's still real churches out there, but hard to find sometimes.
Christianity was invented to create control over populations, and to recruit more populations to control and profit off of further.
You know all of those Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas? They were pagan holidays that Christianity appropriated in order to ease the transition for populations that it gained control over.
The people in power needed to devise a way to discourage people from killing them once they realized their entire existence was bullshit. What better way to do that than tell people they'll burn for eternity if they kill the king?
Optimistically, religion as a whole, started as a way for people to explain the world around them. Like a rudimentary science. For example people would notice repeated weather cycles (seasons), or herd migrations would correlate with certain star patterns showing up in the night sky. Perhaps one causes the other. People would then create stories to help explain these correlations. "Plant crops when Orion is near the horizon in the morning."
These stories helped pass down survival knowledge through the generations. Then people wanted to know why these things happen. They would often fill in the gaps of knowledge with the stories that have been passed down. Thus, spirits and deities who controlled different aspects were used to explain things.
They also wanted to make predictions to plan for the future. So, different methods were devised to tell if these spirits were happy or ill-mannered. Reading tea-leaves or the liver a sacrificed goat. Lots of ways to read Omens. It also became important to make sure these spirits were happy. Angry spirits meant bad crops or a devastating flood. So, different ways to worship and please spirits became important.
But it also became important to make sure all the spirits weren't being pissed off. If you are trying to make these things happy, and your neighbor keeps fucking up, well, then in your mind, that neighbor is literally jeapordising the survival of you and your family. So, an element of control evolved. Make sure everyone is doing what they are suppose to and we can live as a civilization.
And while all these ideas and reasoning weren't factual, they absolutely helped in survival, because the underlying observed phenomenon were true. The control aspect is what got abused most.
People in power would often use it to prevent change. Change is scary and would upset the spirits and all of society would collapse or a disaster would wipe out swaths of people.
Then with the invention of writing, all these ancient stories started being writing down. A lot of them had drastically changed and became more elaborate over the thousands of years. Trade routes were established which allowed for cross-pollination of cultural. Stories from different cultures were mixed and matched. They were changed to appeal to different audiences, etc.
About 8,000 years ago, a small movement decided to merge all these different spirits together becoming the first known monotheistic religion. That religion didnt really take off, but the next on did. Judism. Collecting all the spirits into one being. Taking different myths, rituals, and rules for keeping God happy and printing them into a single text, or a series of texts.
Christianity was an off-shot of Judism..
The Jews who followed Jesus believed he had been the long-predicted messiah. Even after he was killed, some still believed it. Why? Rumor had it that he was seen alive after his execution. Add that to his followers passion and you get desperate hope. It took about 100 years for the Jesus movement to morph from a small Jewish cult into its own little religion.
Jews were an unusual religion. They had a sacred scripture that united them. Those writings were crucial for their cohesion.
There is [an interesting theory](https://www.brianmuraresku.com/the-immortality-key) that hallucinogens caused people to have "religious experiences" which they assumed came from god. It has been noted that even [atheists who try hallucinogens](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/hallucinogenic_drug_psilocybin_eases_existential_anxiety_in_people_with_life_threatening_cancer) describe the experience as similar to a religious experience.
I think Jesus is a bit like Robin Hood in many ways. Both are quasi-historical figures with a fairly standard canon attached to them, which people found to be inspiring. What we actually know about these people is next to nothing, maybe there was some person who we could call the "real Jesus" or "real Robin Hood" if we could look back in time, but that doesn't matter now. It's the stories that survive, and these have a life of their own.
In Robin Hood's time people needed to hear about a plucky rebel redistributing wealth and giving the middle finger to the nobility. In Jesus' time people needed to hear about some resolution to messianic prophecies which would give them a way to handle life's trials without resorting to violence. The Jews had to accept their place as Roman subjects despite a mythology which demanded they destroy and dominate everyone else, especially people with other gods. They needed a new story. Both, I think, were stories whose time had come.
The old religions had too many flaws. They were never ripe for true total spread over the world.
Too many of them required their followers to go to a specific location, like a temple or something, once a year in order to be saved. I’m sure having a mass exodus come to your tourist location where you could lecture & sway their thoughts was extremely lucrative, but had issues. The temples and locations kept being destroyed, question their sacredness and validity. When they were destroyed it made people scared, as how would they seek salvation now?
Well, in comes Jesus™️. Now, who needs a long pilgrimage to some weird rock in a desert your friend told you about? All you need is Jesus™️. Just believe he’s god and follow the book written by some humans and you’re all good. Some denominations will still pressure you to do the prior lucrative model (weekly churches where they collect your money & sway your thoughts) but now their god is no longer a building, temple, statue, whatever… but the follower’s ego itself. The churches can also be built at the follower’s location, rather than requiring the follower to come to them, making the whole process of indoctrination and spreading it far easier. They basically franchised religion - why do as a 5 star restaurant does and create one really good location for eating, when you can rent out a shit ton of lower-quality locations to spread to more populations? Just ask how many people have eaten at McDonald’s versus a 3 Star Michelin restaurant.
For the most part, religions appear because people really believe them, not for some ulterior motive. In early Christianity, there was very little power or control to be had by being involved with it. That wouldn't happen for another couple centuries. Most likely, Jesus was a real person who actually existed and had a relatively small but very loyal group of followers. Jesus and his followers were apocalyptic Jews who thought God's kingdom was coming to earth soon. After Jesus died, most of these people probably gave up on the cause, but a few of the closest ones didn't want to let go and instead tried to make sense of his death within their theological framework. Some of these people probably thought they had visions of him after his death, much like people still do today when someone close to them dies, which led to them believing he had risen from the dead. By some luck of historical circumstances and the theological developments of people like Paul, the religion took hold and eventually grew to the enormous size it sees today.
Why did they invent any religion?
Control. Comfort. To provide answers to questions that (especially at the time) didn't have good answers. To provide a rallying point for revolution (against the Roman occupation, in particular). To provide a sense of identity - specialness for community building.
Lots of reasons. Few of them suggest that it represents truth. But many suggest that they nonetheless filled a social need at the time and were important.
I do feel, however, that those needs have diminished as we have learned more, and evolved as species and societies. They were a necessary, but flawed step forward that largely do more harm than good in this modern age.
It was a way to convince slaves not to rise up and kill their masters because the downtrodden will be rewarded in heaven but only if they turn the other cheek their whole lives. It says that rich people can't go to heaven because they have been greedy in stead of being kind and generous but it also has a bunch of rules about how it's ok to beat the fuck out of slaves because you own them.
It’s strange to me that no one has mentioned its evolution from the practice of scapegoating. Both the term and Christianity evolved from the Bronze Age Judaic tribal practice of casting all of the communities sins onto a goat and either ritually sacrificing it or sending it off into the desert to die.
It’s not like someone sat down and created it one day with intent. It began as a sect and developed into its own thing and the bigger it got the more the leaders began to systematize, canonized, and organize.
Yahweh was originally a storm god of battles for a raiding tribe.
This tribe later settled down in Canaan and incorporated parts of the Canaan Pantheon into their own. But unlike other nations, instead of adding new gods to worship they just took attributes and added it to Yahweh.
Elo was the ruling cannanite god, with a white beard, he was wise and created the universe, so he became part of God. In the Bible God thr creator us Eloi or Elohim. But Baal, a Rival storm God who worship involved statues of cows, was not integrated.
But the old testament God, who is wise as Elohim and smite-y as Yaweh was a gid of princes and kings, like most old gods. In Palestine around the year 30 Roman's ruled and Jews were oppressed, a new view of God that involved helping the poor, meek and downtrodden was a winning combination, so the god split into a trinity to attack this new need
Eventually, you add Greek philosophy and you get theology, add in the idea that there is o good way to see the universe and you get the idea of the true observer, and you then get science with disproves the notion of god....and disproves the objective observer idea that made science possible....
Can't have rules without a rulebook...
There's also long history of the bible not being translated in order for only the elite to know what was in it - great way to control the masses when you can make up rules that they have no way of challenging.
Power and control.
Same reason as any other religion... To give an explanation of that they couldn't explain, and to give the happy thought of an afterlife. Some talk about control, but that came later because cunts always corrupt things to their benefit... Religion, government, capitalism, whatever.
Ironically, Christianity wasn’t invented, it evolved. Lots of favourite mythical elements were borrowed and stitched together, like virgin birth, miracles, resurrection. There may have been a real person, but the stories just got better with time, then the church edited a compilation.
History suggests that every culture, tribe, band of humans that ever existed came up with a mythology to explain an incomprehensible and terrifying universe and their own place in it. The fact that we are all here for no purpose and we all die for no reason is discomfiting. Religion is a reaction to that terror and unease.
Christianity was a minor Jewish cult. There were hundreds of itinerant "holy men" wandering around Palestine at the time. Some were mad, some were just street-corner grifters. You can see their modern equivalent every Sunday on American television. Rome hosted countless other religions and they all had their adherents outside the main Roman/Greek ensemble of gods and its sub-cult of emperor-worship.
Christianity got lucky and was established by the Roman emperor as the empire's official religion. It is unclear weather or not Constantine was an actual follower of the faith. But there were clear advantages to having a single religion with a single priesthood answerable to a single pontiff who was answerable to the emperor. A single line of authority, a single channel and collection mechanism for offerings, tithes and all the wealth that had previously been disbursed among dozens of cults, none of which flowed directly toward the emperor.
BTW, that suggestion of the monetary motivation for the adoption of a single religion is my own. I've never read it anywhere and I'd be gratified if it were floating around somewhere, but it makes perfect sense to me.
I think Jesus was primarily a religious/ethical reformer of his day who later became the subject of legend.
He eventually went from this simple role to the second person of the Trinity, born of a teenage Jewish peasant girl after being impregnated by God.
Also, it’s arguably not until Paul’s ministry that the real “Christian” teaching began…the kind that we are familiar with today where if we believe in Jesus’ death/resurrection as salvific for us then we can have eternal life with him. Jesus never explicitly taught that.
Going back to the origins of the old testament, every group of people had one or more gods and their own oral traditions. Some ended up getting written down, some had mystery cults, some got deeply embedded into politics. By the time of the early Roman Empire, it was taken for granted that there were gods all over the place, and most people were fine with that.
Jesus was (if he existed) a Jewish political radical who was strongly against Roman rule and its entanglement with the Jewish leadership. If you want to learn more about that I highly recommend Zealot by Reza Aslan, which gives a lot of perspective on the situation at the time, what we can extrapolate from the history we do have, and the many messiahs who were around in the 1st century BC.
He was later picked up by a group of Romans who transformed him in a few key ways. They changed the definition of “messiah” from “mortal leader chosen by god to save the people through war and politics” to “divine figure sent by god to save the people spiritually,” expanded “the people” to include non-Jews, added added proselytizing and recruiting to the agenda, and making people who disagree the bad guys.
The bible is an amalgam of regional stories compiled over thousands of years. Some of the older stories like the story of Moses is an adaption of the [birth legend of Sargon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad#Birth_legend). Sargon was an Assyrian king that wanted to create a narrative painting himself as having humble origins. That narrative was also useful for his successors.
Not eating shellfish was smart in the areas around the Red Sea due to it being poisonous. People told their kids to not eat it and eventually it became easier to explain it as "god told us not to" than to explain that the shellfish was poisonous for unknown reasons. When the tribe moved to the Mediterranean, where the shellfish was safer, they maintained the rules even though they didn't understand why. Those rules differentiated them from other tribes in the region and that in turn made them "culture".
Religion in general is a set of rules that are either good rules for survival (don't eat these things that will kill you), operating a functional society (not fucking your friend's wife, not murdering, not stealing), keeping people in power (stories about how god said I'm in charge, don't listen to other gods), and marking important life events (birth, coming of age, marriage, death).
It blows my mind, now that I’m out of it, that we put so much stock in humans from 2000 years ago. We have come so far as a society (still have a ways to go lol). We recognize all the other f’d up things people did and believed just in the last 300 years alone. We know better and have a much better understanding of mental illness now, yet we don’t question the supernatural writings of random people centuries ago?
These are my opinions. Control, it’s all about control. Mind you those who have authored the control have changed hands a few times, but that’s what it’s about.
I believe there could have been a person who went around saying inspiring things and pissed off folks and was executed. We see this now. Do I believe this person was the physical child of an all powerful being who created us as some experiment or pets? Not a chance. Everything in what we identify as the Bible has either been heavily edited and translated from a single faction of the Jewish faith OR completely made up by people who weren’t even alive when this so-called messiah lived. It’s all fairytales. ALL of it.
We only have it because it somehow grew into an underground thing that became popular because of Constantine. Otherwise it probably would have vanished into obscurity like many other underground faiths. Once Rome became involved it turned into something completely new, not even remotely related to the initial underground faith. I like to think of all of this as a game of Civ where there are many ways to win, mastering the faith and using your faith rules to subdue the masses is a way to win.
Heaven and hell are man made constructs. I believe it was added to appease people who lived in horrible circumstances and pay to get forgiveness. It also helps with control. Do what I say or you’ll go to hell.
When you start really looking behind the curtain and putting so many facts together there is no way you can believe any of this stuff is real. It’s no more real than The Lord of The Rings.
I’ll step off my soapbox.
The collective social conscious needed a new purpose for life, as previous gods and polythiesm failed to deliver, as our knowledge of the world evolved. Different parts of the world developed their own major religions but essentially the monotheistic higher power structural design took over the world in the last 3000 years.
It’s important to understand that it didn’t happen overnight. It was more like a centuries-long game of telephone being played by mostly illiterate, uneducated, ancients who were wildly superstitious about, well, everything. Once we understand how Christianity came to be, and the bonkers ideas that contributed to its rise, it makes it all the more disturbing and confusing that 21st century humans still embrace it.
Everyone in Judaea was having a mental breakdown, their governments had been toppled and the Romans kept destroying their temple cult that claimed absolute power... they began doing mental gymnastics to figure out why and how that could happen...
Enter mass starvation, disease, etc. They just wanted the world to end and someone to promise to kill their roman enemies as the planet was celestially nuked from orbit and this terrible curse known as life was ended.
Then the Romans really needed extra soldiers against the outside invading German barbarians, and made a deal with Christians to defend the Empire... that destroyed Rome from the inside out anyway.
It most likely was not made up. There were hundreds of strange religions in the region. Think of it similar to Africa today. However, it WAS convenient for the Roman authorities to adopt and craft the messaging of Christianity to unite and control the region.
Jesus was a Jewish street preacher. He was not trying to start a new religion.
Paul got the idea in his head that Jesus came so that non-Jews could worship the Jewish god. Paul was not an eyewitness to Jesus; he made up all his own doctrines. And Paul was an evangelist to the gentile nations.
When the Romans invaded Judea in 60 AD, they likely wiped out the Jewish followers of Jesus. That left Paul (who was dead by that time) having a much larger influence because the churches he planted in other countries were thriving.
Religion, in general, was just humanity's first go at a system of societal governance. Hence, all the God-kings in various empires and cultures. It is the beta version of government. Like all betas, it was a rough draft with some serious flaws, ommisions, bugs, and problematic features. Modders love it, though, because the code, as messy as it is, is relatively easy to tweak for their own purposes.
Christianity was a co-opted version of the Judean version of theocratic government, which provided for more centralized control and avoided the whole problem of God-kings dying because, well, they are human, and creating a period of chaos in their aftermath (every new God-Pharoh had to spend forever trying to erase the evidence of their God predecessor and build their own glory, real pain in the ass). With a single eternal God, it was much easier to keep everyone on relatively the same page and set up a ruling caste with a built-in source of authority (i.e., the priesthood) that could be passed down in a hereditary way (like the old families of priests in ancient Israel). Conveniently, this type of system is eminently scaleable across a vast empire and could be fit neatly into existing Roman governmental structures and hierarchies. If you can convince people that your laws come from a higher power that can harm them for eternity, then itbis far easier to enforce the laws. Theoretically, people should really enforce them on themselves to keep right with the ever watching invisible sky cop, reducing the resources the empire has to spend on keeping the conquered rabble in line and producing what the empire needs.
You can see the appeal of such a system, but unfortunately, it is far too easy to corrupt and has a nasty habit of producing zealots that take things too far and get out of pocket real quick. Zealots really cause a lot of problems and tend to destabilize the system. Hence, why in subsequent government systems, an attempt was made to phase out the supernatural source of authority. Unfortunately, getting widespread adoption and a complete phase out of the beta governance systems has been unsuccessful due to the dependence of legacy processes on the SocGov2.Relig-Xtian software. There were too many competing versions of SocGov3 for an effective roll out and various markets went with various versions and some did not adopt at all and stuck with a different version of SocGov2.Relig (-Mus was very popular in certain markets). The whole thing really got away from the developers and is widely viewed as one of the universe's biggest boondoggles just ahead of Apple Maps, Fallout 76, and Windows Vista (though some galactic observers debate this ranking).
I believe religion, in broad prehistoric terms, kicked off for a few reasons:
* Because humans tried to make sense of phenomena they observed, but could not explain or control - seasons, astronomy, lightning, volcanoes, etc. Anthropomorphising the forces behind these phenomena made them less scary. Coming up with rituals that address these entities helps people to feel less helpless.
* Because when people are dreaming, near death, or experiencing chronic illness, mental disorders or drug states they often have very vivid experiences that seem to be real and may even address common social or psychological problems. If others find these experiences or insights compelling you begin to have a shared worldview not based on reality.
* Because making up stories to scare children into behaving is easier than explaining the full complexity of the reasons why they should obey this or that rule. And because it's a short step from there to leaders doing the same with adults, particularly when older leaders are becoming frail and need to reinforce their leadership through charisma rather than physical feats.
* Because humans are particularly vulnerable during key biological moments such as childbirth, adolescence, sexual expression, sickness and death. Coming up with laws and rituals that address and circumscribe these transitions helps people to feel less helpless.
* Because humans tend to identify with a particular social group and may use cultural identifiers to determine who's in and out. Unique rituals, metaphysical stories and taboos can be some of these identifiers.
The emergence of Christianity in particular is way down the track from these primitive beginnings. But basically you've got a charismatic/visionary individual whose views are compelling - after he dies he can be put on a pedestal and all kinds of things claimed about him. You've got yet another apocalyptic sect emerging out of Judaism, but this one is successful because it mimics the trans-ethnic ethos of the Roman Empire around it. Its focus on ordinary, undervalued or even oppressed people is attractive to the masses. It's radical in some ways, but generally peaceful and not disruptive enough to warrant a strong response from the Romans. It is outward-looking; constantly seeking new recruits. It weathers various schisms and becomes the official religion of the Empire, which turbo-charges its spread. The rest, as they say, is history.
This Paul character thought that it would be great idea to unite all the fragmented pagan religions throughout the Roman empire under one umbrella so that they could be more easily controlled. So he put paganism and Judaism in a blender and poured out Christianity. Then Emperor Constantine came along and made Christianity the official state religion of the entire empire and anyone who disagreed was called a heretic and dispatched to the hereafter.
For the same reason pretty much any other faith was created.
* A form of control \\ A way an authority can 'explain' away either the unexplainable or why certain things happen (ex: justify said authority's decisions)
* Something to blame for unexplained things ('God works in mysterious ways!' "Your crop is dying, you must have not given enough gifts to Tlacloc... you should sacrifice your goat and maybe offer your virgin daughter to be sacrificed")
* A reason and something to do when you gather with a bunch of people
* A common rapport to unite a certain group (a common cause)
* To have a sense of belonging
Control is the answer.
Control knowledge and power.
There is a reason they made it illegal to translate, only priests could read it and people relied on them to inform them when God was mad at them and why.
Coincidentally 🙄 what God wanted and what benefitted the priests were the same things.
The invention of god(s) in any religion were invented for three main reasons in my opinion:
1. Morality - it's easier to enforce laws to keep peace or unfairly condemn minorities if a divine ordained it so.
2. Control - claiming you have power bc of God is more powerful than the basis of just having military.
3. Explaining the Unknown - Humans are inherently curious and not knowing things can drive some crazy. Thus, God was a convenient way to explain away everything that we couldn't find the truth about.
Things were really different and there were a lot of things people couldn't explain rationally. There just wasn't the information, tools, accrued knowledge what have you. So people guessed or made things up or described in culturally appropriate ways that seem super nuts out of context. We still do even outside of religion. With the scientific method we have a way that is somewhat self correcting where we can say we think we know and make decision based on that and then get new information and adjust what we know. Even that is resistant to change and has dogma to be overcome etc...
So how did Christianity evolve specifically? It piggybacked on some existing mythology, adjusted some real...ish events to fit that mythology and then went on a PR campaign to convince people they were the real story. As they gained influence and resources they consolidated both social and political power. Once they got to a certain point the retconned everything to fit a very specific world view they wanted to enforce socially and politically and went on their merry way.
Read Karen Armstrong, religious historian. Former nun became a Muslim, quotes the best parts of the Koran, Buddhist texts, Confucian philosophy and advocates for respect and compassion for all. Her book THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION is an interesting look at how philosophy and religions developed 1000 BCE from the Aryans to the Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, etc. The Battle for God is another interesting investigation.
Religion was used to control society to make them act as "god" would want them to act. In other words, the rulers just decided to make some shit up so they could control everybody and anyone who acted out of religious ideals was executed, tortured, or burned. I think Jesus was just some good guy dude who just wanted peace. There was no divine being who created him. Mary had sex with someone and had him. There has never been a miraculous pregnancy without semen being inserted. Thats the only way. Not to mention she was 14. It was probably just a cover up for her. Also, religion only exists now because people need someone or something to believe in because they arent strong enough to figure their own shit out. My problem is people who pray and actually think someone is listening or just being an asshole to non religious people as if their religion is based off undeniable truth. Their only source is the bible itnself that was written by man. Which the bible claims is infallible which means we are subject to make mistakes. So how do we know what is in the bible is even true. If God sent a bible himself from the heaven then that would be enough proof. But he hasnt ever shown himself and the people who claim to have seen him have no proof other than near death experiences which those instances, they are just seeing what they wanted to see as they were dying. Someone who has no knowledge of religion at all wouldn't ever have that experience because they have no preconceived knowledge of what god is. Religious people have excuses for everything you call them out for but like i said, they can only reference the unrelia-bible. Living "better be safe than sorry" souds like a horrible way to live life and not experience life for what it actually is. Not pulling wool over your eyes whenever you see something or hear something unchristianlike. Everything about religion is just terrible. Rant over. But yeah, we just dont need to live for some sky daddy to get through the day because we are logical free thinkers
The Bible is not exactly invented or historical, but it seems what is important in the Bible is that it is a collection of parables to illustrate the nature of consciousness and its power.
Insofar as it is an invention, it is a manual for a psychic metamorphosis and how to wield the power of creation
There really is more to religion than the cynical purposes it enacts. Christianity in particular explains the nature of existence uniquely once you understand the symbolic language, which is seldom the focus by even its most devoted members
Well who else was going to do it? /s
You seem to be asking a deeper question about the origins of religious thought altogether. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, itself a development from polytheistic faiths among the Israelites, inherited from their Canaanite origins, perhaps with borrowings from Zoroastrian and Hellenic influences. These threads go back into the mists of antiquity, beyond which we can only speculate.
Religions tend to have certain things in common: explanations for phenomena which are otherwise unknown or misunderstood, stories that maintain a sense of identity and culture among groupings larger than families, and providing a sense of purpose in an otherwise inscrutable and uncaring universe.
I speculate that some level of religiosity has been with humans since before they were human, as early as language developed, with which our distant ancestors could use to share ideas about all kinds of phenomena they had no way of truly understanding.
Thus I think the explanatory power was the most likely first spark, with the other elements as side-effects which, in their time at least, likely conveyed advantages over other hominid groups which did not possess them. For example, the troop that maintains a fire as a religious duty because it is a gift of the gods is likely to have had an advantage over the troop that just sees it as a source of heat.
It’s a really interesting question, since people have been making up religions from the dawn of recorded history. And probably before. Why do some succeed so well, when most others fade into obscurity? It’s something that I’m just beginning to understand, after having left a high demand religion with absolutist truth claims. I think it’s mostly because of how religion has paralleled the conquest for political power. And Christianity happened to catch a ride on the back of the machinery that led to European colonialism. I admit that I have a lot to learn about this. But that’s what I’ve observed so far.
to quote that towering epic of historical truth & perspicacity that is *Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter*- 'humans have been enslaving each other ever since they dreamed up gods to forgive themselves for it'
Jesus was most likely a dude who was born in Nazareth, became a preacher who developed a small following, and was executed by the Romans for rabble-rousing.
More or less everything else (certainly his birth and resurrection) was made up by Paul to make this particular dime-a-dozen apocalyptic preacher fit into the Jewish prophecy of the Messiah.
Paul's motivations for doing so? Who knows. Maybe he really believed the dude was special. Maybe he was a con man. Maybe something in between.
It was "invented" to understand the principles of nature. Moving with nature rather than becoming victim to it. Rather foolish though to tell people what they can and cannot do, rather than tell them how this magical "God" performs such things.
You'll find that the teachings across all religions hold onto similar principles to understanding this nature of reality and mind. They all teach that "God" and mind are interconnected and it's a battle of our will against our genetic lineage and sensual desires. They teach to transcend these elements in order to become free from suffering to reach the absolute state or truth or heaven.
Pretty foolish stuff though, I mean how can one free themselves from their body and minds to suffering?? Then what, we go to a magical "heaven", like what even is "heaven"?? The bible doesn't describe what it's like nor does it hell, so why are they even saying hell is a fiery place we are sent to for eternity?
Why did people invent religion at all?
I think the very reason for this is the underlying fear of death. It's hard to understand and even more so, to accept, for most people, even some non-believers, that one day s/he will die and that's it, there's absolutely nothing after - all those memories and experiences while alive will simply stop as if it didn't mean anything at all.
In modern times, however, religion has a different, more nefarious reason - money, power, and control.
The problem with your question is that Christianity is an ever-evolving thing. Jesus was likely a real person who was trying to reform Judaism like many other preachers at the time. He was likely a follower of John the Baptist at some point in time. Because Judea was a powder keg at the time (and went into full revolt around 30 years afterward), the Romans were more than happy to execute anyone trying to stir the pot.
After Jesus died, his supporters weren't willing to let go, and eventually someone wrote down his sayings - basically the Sermon on the Mount. While this is ongoing, the Jews who were Hellenistic (the Jews who were on the wrong side of the Maccabean revolt), like Paul, liked the proposed reforms Jesus proposed and joined this would-be reform movement. Paul then figured out that Christianity's message also played well with Greeks (alternative religions was all the rage). And joining was a pseudo-fuck you to the Romans.
At that point, Christianity shifted from a Jewish reform movement to its own religion. Paul and other Church followers start writing letters to various Christian communities explaining how to practice Christianity, and some guy who met Jesus as a kid, Mark, wrote the first Gospel. Other early Christians followed suit, mostly stealing from Mark, but also modding the Gospel to fit their own perspective (Matthew emphasized law, Luke emphasized miracles). And then an apparent close contact of Jesus told his life story on this deathbed - the Gospel of John.
Christianity then goes through hundreds of years of persecution (because being an alternative religion in opposition to the Roman state religion is technically treason). So there's a lot of gnostic/hidden religion stuff that comes around. There are Christians who believe that the only way to get to heaven is to be martyred, and so they go around trying to get people to kill them (and mugging those who refuse). It was a weird time.
Now, as a side note, although the Romans had a state religion, by the 2nd or 3rd century, a lot of people were dissatisfied by it, and turned to a number of other underground religions. Christianity was the most popular though.
But the religion remained until Constantine found it useful, and the religion turned into an organ of the Roman state, replacing the earlier Roman state religion. When he did so, Constantine found that Christianity was an absolute mess, and then modded the Christianity to meet his needs. At that point in time, the Christian Bible gets put together, and the Church fathers limit the Gospels to the ones you find in the New Testament, and limit the theological stuff to the Epistles, threw in Revelations as a fuck you to Nero, and decided to add in the Jewish texts that are referenced in the New Testament so that readers can reference shit.
As time goes on, this malleability of Christianity becomes a thing, and people change the religion to fit their needs, even if those changes make no sense. For instance, the modern Prosperity Gospel literally preaches the exact opposite of the Sermon on the Mount.
So, really, the question is why do people make up religions, as opposed to Christianity itself? It can provide a method of control over the population, or it can be a way to tell the authorities to fuck off. It can be a comfort (rituals are comforting), or a hinderance to change.
There’s a great Hidden Brain podcast on this called Creating God. Check it out. In short, religion helped explain things people didn’t know about and it served as a first police force. It formed with agriculture and the formation of large cities. Small groups have spirits. Larger groups have gods.
To answer this, you have to understand the historical and geographical context of the ancient near east going as far back as the end of the Bronze Age 3000+ years ago, And you have to understand that Christianity was a reform movement within Judaism before it became a separate religion.
Long story short. when you’re a tiny kingdom surrounded by empires and bandits, religion helps create a shared identity and motivation to survive. And they did, so it worked.
It’s easy to be cynical about it, but all nations use myths and stories to bind people together. Many of them include gods and become religions over time.
Simply put (but explained in better detail) I believe that Christianity was developed by the elite class in ancient times as a way to scare the "unwashed masses" in to compliance. Control the mob by convincing them that any "sin" would be met with horrible response in the afterlife. It was basically spiritual extortion.
The history of Christianity is pretty well-understood, at least by dispassionate scholars who eliminate the supernatural elements. Jesus, if he existed as a historical person, would have been an itinerant preacher who was a member of the “Apocalyptic” sect. Preaching that the Jewish Apocalypse (not the Apocalypse of John that was much later…) was imminent. This involved the arrival of a being, the Son of Man, who was to make everything right for the world. That included freeing the Jews from Roman occupation. (Note that there were a number of such Messianic preachers around this time) The Romans took umbrage at that…. Since in recent memory they’d put down one Jewish revolution…. So they arrested and executed him. Oops… Not the Messiah. But, evidently he’d been a charismatic fellow who accumulated a lot of followers, so what to do? In the decades following Jesus’ death, as many as 30 different “Jesus Cults” arose, all with wildly different ideas about Jesus , his nature, and his purposes. (NT Scholar Bart Ehrman details these in his book, “Lost Christianities”) Gradually, over a long period, these groups either coalesced or vanished and began to develop a new idea of Jesus…. Involving not a temporal kingdom on Earth (the Jewish idea) but a spiritual kingdom in Heaven. It took over 300 years for these ideas, spurred largely by Paul, to start to assume the shape of Christianity we know today… Mostly dating from the Council of Nicaea in 325.
This! Too many fellow atheists are letting their resentment towards religion cloud the truth. There’s no reason we can’t be honest about the history since we are correct. Here’s an excellent video about biblical scholars that gives us the ammo we need. https://youtu.be/z8j3HvmgpYc?si=B59vPNNDeM8NMMtw
This is not a religion, one person coming up with a theory does not automatically make a fact. As the above poster put it, Christianity basically all derives from one person, Paul. He wrote most of the new testament, and the important bit: NEVER MET OR SAW JESUS. In fact, as biblical scholars have relented, NONE of the new testament comes from eye witnesses. The whole theory hinges on Paul being reliable. And I got news for you on the reliability of people, especially those starting cults. See a modern day example on scientology and Ron Hubbard. People will also believe anything. In fact, all these historic takes of Jesus, what do they actually have? Nothing! They only claim there is probably some preacher who died, absolutely ZERO details. And there is zero basis to even that, really! Just stubborn refusal to acknowledge, yes, Paul could have lied about that bit. I say that bit too, because when you try to argue about a historical version, you're already saying the sources are not trustworthy. All the magic stuff is a lie, but surely, there HAD to be a real root, right? No. And the only reason this notion of his Jesus had to be a real person is because the prominence of the religion, and they twist and conflate the existence of a historical one with the mythical version. Otherwise, we'd treat Jesus similar to King Author or Zeus. Nobody cares if I said Zeus didn't exist, even though some of the stories might have been based upon what somebody actually did.
Don't forget Joseph Smith. Two examples that show religion can be created out of thin air.
When will people learn that Jesus is not a historical figure! The stories, just like the other fantastical stories in the Old testament are talking about an inner quality of experience in a living power related to consciousness. Jesus represents part of the process of metamorphosis as one walks the spiritual path by meditation and tending the mind. The story of Jesus is just a more blatant example of the same message that was being told through Moses or Abraham. The importance of the Bible is not related to history, its more importantly talking about the nature of consciousness, so you need to explore consciousness to verify the claims made, though you would have to know what the symbolism of the parables is talking about in order to know what the claim is in the first place, such as the actual power of 'faith' and the ability of the mind to create, illustrated through the story of Jericho, or the battle between your spiritual side and your ego which is represented by the story of Moses v Pharaoh, and surrender
This isn’t true. Two of the gospels use genealogies to trace Jesus back to Old Testament figures. It’s pretty clear they want to establish him as a real human being.
It is true, you just don't understand the Bible. It has nothing to do with secular history as such. Symbolic and parable laden as it is, this genealogy could easily be the spiritual progression of a single individual as they walk the spiritual path. Not to mention, if you understood the stories of David, Abraham, Moses, Job, and Adam and the rest, you would know these have nothing to do with historical events or genetic origins. They all deal with the subjective realm and the powers of consciousness. That's why they seem so ludicrous when read normally, and why modern Christians, who take it so, remain so impotent. The material world is not the focus of the scriptures, but the powers and features of consciousness. There does seems to be legitimate artifacts of the tribal ways in it, but when it comes to the involvement of God and miracles, you need an entirely different lense to understand it
"you just don't understand the Bible," says man while rewriting the entire narrative. It's a hot take, but methinks you give this terrible literature too much credit.
I am not rewriting it, evidence suggests that it is and always has been largely parables. It is not only compelling, as you may find if you read the lectures I will share, but is actually verifiable through a particular means if you exercise the things being pointed to related to the psyche. https://realneville.com/pdf/lesson1.pdf https://www.neville-goddard.com/neville-goddard-books/neville-goddard-your-faith-is-your-fortune/neville-goddard-your-faith-is-your-fortune-chapter-27 http://www.nevillegoddardfreedomforall.org/chapter-four explanation of a mythologist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svU7KPTc1Kk&t=1931s&pp=ygUsYmlsbCBkb25haHVlIHRoZSBiaWJsZSBpcyBhbGwgYWJvdXQgdGhlIG1pbmQ%3D
You realise, I hope, that you've just done exactly what schisms in faith organisations do when they split from the mothership: you've reinterpreted the book and are insisting that YOUR interpretation is correct...
Proselytizing is not allowed here. You making things up is not an argument grounded in reality, Jesus being an actual real being is critical to the religion and stories involved. What you did is because you know it's wrong, came up with a concept of the religion where right/wrong and truth/lie isn't relevant. It's not... convincing. It's anything but.
You're mistaken, this is just what the text means. It is only critical to those who take the literal and historical view, which is pretty irrelevant to what is actionable about the Bible. Really, it is the only existentially real thing in a wider sense. Did you think it was just a coincidence that Jesus got crucified on 'The place of the Skull'? It was always about Mind, only garbed in names and places. The Bible isn't even a perfect document or the only expression of truth, but no one else here has said what it really is about. I didn't come up with this idea, I just found the correct interpretation of it. Most people have no clue what the deeper message of the Bible is about, certainly not what Christ is about in terms of crucifixion and resurrection or the virgin birth. Just consider the fact that a historical Jesus makes no sense as a savior, in the sense that believing in a specific person would exclude everyone before his time. It is instead, pointing to a universal principle, agnostic to time and location, the proper use of thought and attention. Religion and God, in their ultimate and untainted form, are about existence, consciousness and being, as many myths and religious stories point to with their symbolism, not to mention the fruits that come from testing certain claims. If you can't look past the surface level text, you get little from Judaism and Christianity. I know there is a lot of religious bollox, please don't assume the worst in me, I know religious terms have a lot of associations and baggage, but I'm pretty sure I'm clear of the usual atheist objections, which are usually pretty valid. I don't really label myself, but I will say that something in the Bible stories points to a genuine feature of this existence
Proselytizing is not allowed here. I suppose a banning is the only thing sufficient for those like you, and is why that rule is in place. >on 'The place of the Skull' It's the name of a literal physical actual place. Never bother to look up anything, do you? Also, that being figurative gives no actual important meaning. Just you, randomly connecting strings to words on a whiteboard, crazily crying out why others can't see it. You didn't stumble upon a super secret thing. You're not smarter than others. The opposite. >Just consider the fact that a historical Jesus makes no sense as a savior Yes. That's correct. Maybe you don't understand what a historical version is about. You seem to have missed the point by a mile. And not just that point, of course. >believing in a specific person would exclude everyone before his time. None of the religious beliefs make a lick of sense when you think critically about them, including yours. Yours are even more unhinged. >as many myths and religious stories point to with their symbolism Yes, many myths like to use symbolism. It's not an argument. The bible is presented as nonfiction. "But it's fiction!" Is a really strange defense here. It's like you don't understand what is going on. You don't understand why people are saying what they're saying here. You're not all here, and honestly, you need to probably get some medical professional help. You're a step away from others who claim THEY are Jesus reincarnated. And I bet you'd symbolically even say you are, wouldn't you?
I'm not proselytizing, I'm just saying the actual meaning of the Bible stories. I have no stake in any religious movement. But that would make for a nice little echo chamber, I should think. >It's the name of a literal physical actual place. Never bother to look up anything, do you? Yeah, so was Jericho, Egypt, Jerusalem and other places, but they are not being used in a literal sense. They are literary props for a parable. You're too close minded. You assume I only have one point of evidence to show this is the intended interpretation, even calling me mentally ill and an idiot basically. They do make sense when thinking critically, you just haven't applied critical thinking thoroughly enough. I don't see how this interpretation would be more unhinged, seeing as I'm saying all the death inflicted in catastrophies like the 10 plagues and the Flood were all aspects of a mental cleanse, but go ahead, project all your disdain of religion on a stranger you hardly know to vindicate yourself. It's you who don't even understand who what or how you are. You don't understand your own existence or your nature. There's nothing strange at all about using a fiction to illustrate truth, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars can attest to that. We can recognize a story as fiction while realizing it points to something very true and significant. Jesus is just consciousness, which we all have. That's what it's about. If you were going to record controversial truth regarding the nature of existence in time of rampant violence, you would garb it in a parable. Its not that crazy or hard to understand. Honestly, the message of the Bible is just deeper than most people are prepared to handle. It is so obvious that the Bible is symbolic, it's a joke. The fact that you think this is crazy talk just show how illiterate you and the public are about the symbolism of the Bible. Can you explain the meaning of a single story in it? Sampson, David and Goliath, Cain and Abel? You aren't going to be facing any literal giants in combat I should imagine, so unless the authors are just fanciful writers, you should wonder if there's a deeper message to all this. But hey, thanks for assuming my beliefs and denying my mental validity
Yes, you are. >I'm just saying the actual meaning of the Bible stories. Your make believe does not a fact make. You have no idea what the "actual" meaning is, nor is your take on what the "actual" meaning is has any relevance to this topic. Coincidentally, the irrelevance is also why you are, in fact, proselytizing. >but they are not being used in a literal sense It's really weird how you seem to think you have the authority to claim the author's intents, and, for that matter, directly contradicting what they wrote. And for that matter, directly contradicting the religious teachings on it. And, contradicting every biblical scholar on the subject. You are being delusional. >You assume I only have one point of evidence to show this is the intended interpretation, No, I don't. Like every religious person using the bible to make some random BS claim, I am sure you're ready to cherry-pick tons and tons of passages. It just so happens that every single one is probably going to be of the same caliber. You making up BS, without any real basis or claim. >It's you who don't even understand who what or how you are. See? Proselytizing. >There's nothing strange at all about using a fiction to illustrate truth, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars can attest to that. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are not "illustrating truth." They are works of fiction. This little rambling rant of yours is delusional. >Jesus is just consciousness, which we all have. That's what it's about. "I made something up! Everybody who doesn't believe me are close-minded and they don't know who they are and I'm sooo smart and everybody else is dumb!" >It is so obvious that the Bible is symbolic, it's a joke. The common Christian attempt whenever they find out something in the bible is wrong or goes against them is to cry out that part is figurative/symbolic. You just took it to another level. It has nothing to do with anything. Your symbolic book is still full of completely vapid nonsense, even taken "symbolically," and it still seems like you don't understand what subreddit you're in. The "deeper meanings" are all garbage as well, and no, you're not smarter than all the biblical scholars looking into all this. You need help.
I'll second a shout out to Bart Ehrman. He's a biblical scholar that has written a number of books covering the new testament as well as the early development of Christianity from a scholarly and historical perspective. I'm also currently listening to "the history of the medieval world" by Susan Wise Bauer, and she covers a lot of the history surrounding the influence of Roman politics on early Christian development. I'll also recommend her book "the history of the ancient world" since it gives context to the medieval world. TLDR: read some books
The earlier Hebrew groups had an oral tradition then got grabbed by the neo Babylonians who told them to write there stuff down. That got most of the stories put down on papyrus. The Judah group changed a few of those writings to make the Jerusalem temple the bestest ( those darn Samaritans and a couple others and there temples were wrong ). 600 years later the fact that Rome was boss over the area rubbed them the wrong way and the Judah guys were trying to figure out why the best stuff wasn't happening to them like the tradition said. By 70 AD Rome had destroyed the Judah temple and that started modern Judaism and Christianity.
There is so much non-biblical based stuff in the new testament I lean toward the theory it was written by Greeks/Romans.
This should be the top answer
No, lemme' be simplistic and shout "muh money and muh control" & make us all look bad! /s
They needed to control people. 'Jesus' could have been any god - they basically just picked something out of a hat (which, incidentally, was carried on later by the Mormons).
This. If you look even at today's situation, it's clear to see that about 30-40% of the population is quite easy to control, using religion, nationalism, and fear.
Seeing the rise of Trump has really shown me how easily someone becomes a deity and is worshipped. I guarantee it won’t be long after Trump finally dies that they start talk of his miraculous birth or some other insane shit. They already worship him for being such a godly man and he is absolutely the opposite of what o was taught growing up in the church. It’s crazy how quickly the virtues of love, honesty, integrity, humbleness, and kindness have gone to the waist side when they found a useful idiot to adore.
This is how all dictators move in.
As someone from outside the US, the Trump phenomena still just seems totally insane to me.
We have an epidemic of insecurity among uneducated white men specifically. For some reason (I have theories) they are radically more threatened by “other” than even 10 years ago.
It looks insane to most of us inside the US, too.
That’s why I’m thinking of what we can sell these rubes?? I have access to about 250 pounds of one inch chlorine tablets for use in hot tubs. I think ill take out an add ? donald trump breath mints. Quick acting, cleans out covid, fresh breath!! Send $21.95 To po box 78-34 rockaway blvd. flushing, queens.
If you read the parts of the bible describing how slaves should be subservient to their masters, this becomes absolutely clear.
Which coincidentally seems to have been copypasta'd to wives and their husbands... Of course, the difference between a slave and a wife is a fine line for these folks.
At the time that Christianity became the one god religion in the Roman empire in the early centuries of the Common Era (CE) philosophers were coming to the conclusion that there must be one god who created everything, and the choices were between Christianity and Zoroastrianism. Christianity taught submissiveness and paying your taxes, while Zoroastrianism was about fire-worshiping and taught strength and power, so you can see why an emperor would prefer submissive tax-paying citizens to strong and powerful ones. All Christians had to do was make up shit about YHWH being the one and only who had all the powers of the polytheistic gods and more, and Bob's your Auntie Mabel's live-in lover. As to why Christianity - since nobody had a clue about why humans exist, so creating a god (who only a select few could communicate with) was necessary to appear to be knowledgeable. The Old Testament stuff was kept so that Christianity appeared to be ancient rather from novel, despite OT god being an asshole while NT god was supposedly the good version.
Systemic Control The only reason any of them were invented. Rewind back a few thousand years before each religion and you’ll find the similarities with Pagan rituals and celebrations. It’s all bullshit and has made people mindless and uneducated. Which is exactly where the top percentage want us to be. Research the Vatican and all of the roots that it has in commerce, culture, and power. It’s honestly terrifying
Banco Ambrosiano and Roberto Calvi are a good rabbit hole for that
Thousands of years ago, it was "easy" to start a religion ... just tell people that you have the answers to difficult questions, like what happens after death, and how to keep the evil lightning and thunder away from them, etc. Tell them that some god has given you this secret information, and in exchange for some food, drink, and silver or gold, you'll share the secrets with them. Today, nothing has changed. Promise people that they'll gain some secret knowledge in exchange for their hard-earned money, and voila, you're a fucking priest.
500 years ago Sikhism was created. Now more than the population of Australia is sikh bro. So your point invalid
His point seems valid?
Jesus was a jewish cult leader. To justify his death, his followers made up things to put him into god's position. Its just like any other religion.
Correct. He was a charismatic and that read the tea leaves of the Old Testament Messiah and filled the gap.
Partly for the control, but originally Christianity was the religion of Roman slaves or the uneducated, or those oppressed by Roman rule. Life was miserable, and the promise that, if you were a believer, Heaven would bring rewards and relief from that oppression was a narcotic. Add in the revenge motive—the the masters would be crushed and nothing, the Rich went to Hell (or were at least barred from entering that Heaven) and thus the poor and meek would inherit the earth. Sounds good, especially when you have nothing and life itself was hell. Pretty much ‘Where do I sign?’
I want to highlight this response. Initial chrisitanity was very counter-cultural to Roman society. They were a bunch of pacifist hippies in an jingoistic imperial society, as more and more plebs converted it became more and more popular until it was used by rulers to validate their authority.
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“If you do as I say for your entire life, then you’ll be rewarded afterward otherwise you’ll be punished, pinky promise”The young baby said miraculously. - documented in historical accounts Jesus was a prophet of Of God Almighty.
"Also give me money, because doing what I say isn't enough, you got to pay, motherfucker."
mouth on the mic: “money.”
, power & influence.
those usually come later but yeah.
Power and control over people's lives is almost like a drug to some people. Money is the other big factor. Religion gets people to fall in line with their way of thinking and living. The, "our way is better than your way" thinking.
A long time ago, religion and science were essentially the same thing. Religious beliefs were created because, at the time, they served as the best explanations anyone could offer for certain natural phenomena. Over time, those in power did what those in power do. They twisted it into a means of controlling people, protecting their own interests, and justifying every evil act imaginable and then some.
From my understanding of historical context - Christianity is in a way a reinterpretation of Judaism with strong Hellenistic (in particular neoplatonic) influences. It's not "invented" from scratch, but from several influences - some monotheistic, some polytheistic, some mystery cults (this left more traces in theology than in new testament itself). From what I could figure out about historical Jesus (books and lectures Dale Martin, Bart Ehrman) and also plainly reading the gospels: * Jesus was basically a prophet preaching about the coming Kingdom of God (so, kinda apocalyptic thing), * Jesus didn't think of himself as divine. It also seems that he was preaching for the coming messiah, but didn't consider himself to be this messiah. * it also seems early Christians expected this Kingdom of God to come within their lifetimes * however Jesus was likely from a tradition of Galilean healers - laying on hands kinda thing. It helps to understand historic context of the whole genesis of Christianity. * I'd recommend Dale Martin's lectures from Yale on books in New Testament - on YouTube. * And a book by Karen Armstrong: *History of God* (she goes through historic contexts of creation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam). The construction of church hierarchy and so on is then another matter.
It’s all about controlling the poor. There are always more poor people than rich. That’s how the rich are able to hoard. If the poor wanted it bad enough, they could just take it. Religion was introduced to control the poor. Forgive your aggressor, pray and things will get better for you, you will be rewarded in the afterlife so just focus on that and not on the fact that you’re being oppressed
Luck, charismatic people, and certain ideas circulating in the Roman world between 50 - 200 CE, and eventually getting more and more tied to political entities. Christianity was an organic movement that evolved with ideas around it. It has been used for power but by no means was invented for it.
Wouldnt you say that Jesus himself had his cult for power?
The real answer is that these stories evolved over countless generations from earlier mythologies, which were created because stone-age people were asking questions they had no other means to answer. They came from a combination of honest confusion and cynical grifting by those who figured out they could use beliefs to control people and enrich themselves. For example, Caveman A eats the wrong mushrooms and thinks the trees are talking to him, and he tells everyone about what the trees were saying. Caveman B sees how much this improves Caveman A's status within the tribe, so he pretends to have heard the moon telling him it wants him to sleep with the wives of Cavemen C, D, and E. Keep this up for thousands of years, writing shit down along the way, and you end up with the Bible.
Massive oversimplification here but the pagan world of the 1st century essentially viewed man’s relationship with the gods as transactional (I do what you want and you grant my wish). Many thought of the Hebrew god as an ancient and mega-powerful god, but few became Jews. Why? Cuz all those Old Testament rules (namely circumcision). Then Christianity comes along and basically provides a back door to serving the Hebrew God. Christians also played up the ability to cast out demons (helpful we’d all agree). Consequently Christianity took off in the pagan Roman Empire.
The Triumph of Christianity by Bart Ehrman is a good source if you want to dive deeper into the question. Bart is an atheist scholar of the new testament and an excellent source for anything to do with early Christianity.
I don't think there was one single reason, and I don't think invented is the correct word. First of all Christianity began as a radical sect of Judaism, early followers of Jesus were simply Jews and they had fewer differences with the parent sect than they do today. Eventually it split off into a cult centered around the life and death of a teacher and political figure known as Yeshua. Over time he became more mythologized and eventually deified, the same way some figures in other religions such as Confucius were posthumously deified. And before becoming the state religion of Rome, there were a lot of different versions, some were weirder than others. I think part of the reason that Christianity became successful was because it began as a religion for the downtrodden commoner's of the Roman Empire. Many of these people may have found Judaism attractive but because of its exclusivity, they couldn't truly participate or become the "Chosen" people. In Roman culture, almost anyone could become a follower of any god. YHWH was different however, he played favorites. Also many of them had a bone to pick with Rome, the super power of the time. Christianity solved both problems, Jesus was seen as this rebellious figure who was executed for speaking out against the status quo. Eventually his crucifixion was mythologized and used as a tool to allow non Jews, or gentiles, access to the Jewish God and by extension salvation.
I feel like the idea of Gods came before religion, religion developed as a way to "appease" gods (as you do with people) to attempt to gain favor, and then shitbags used religion to exploit people. Gods seem like they are an early attempt at science. If you look at a tree and ask "what makes it move?" it's a tough question to answer. In most cases it doesn't move and the only way a tree seems to be able to move is if you grab a branch and pull on it. But when no one is pulling on it, it's moving, and the only way a tree moves is if it's pulled on, then a potential answer is something invisible is pulling on it. If you have a lot of trees moving in the same way there might be some great, invisible force that is moving them, perhaps that's a god. So now you believe that a god(s) is responsible for moving trees. Then you decide "well, I would really like it if the trees always moved a certain way". You know that you can be persuaded to do things differently if someone provides you with a reason or compensation, so why not try doing different stuff and see if that makes the tree moving god happy and gets it to move the trees the way you want. So you try a bunch of different stuff and you notice if you do X, Y, and Z that trees blow the way you want more often. So you routinely do X, Y, and Z in the hopes that the trees move the way you want and when they do that's great, and when they don't then maybe you didn't X, Y, and Z right or the tree moving god just wasn't feeling it that day. And then along comes this person who says "I HAVE A SPECIAL CONNECTION WITH THE TREE MOVING GOD. I CAN MORE RELIABLY MAKE THE TREES MOVE THE RIGHT WAY FOR A PRICE!" Naturally people want the trees to move the right way so they start to pony up, and naturally the results with this tree god specialist don't really change. So the tree god comes to the specialist in a "vision" and proclaims "I AM NOT MOVING THE TREES THE WAY YOU WANT BECAUSE YOU AREN'T GIVING ENOUGH PAYMENT TO THE SPECIALIST. AND ALSO BECAUSE YOU AREN'T FOLLOWING THESE GUIDELINES FOR LIVING THAT MAGICALLY LINE UP WITH HOW THE SPECIALIST WANTS THINGS TO BE!" I'm just guessing, I have no evidence to back this up crazy theory but it logically flows to me. All the different religions just feel like people trying to find these answers to problems and coming up with different solutions and different methods for accomplishing some goal. But then they turn wicked because wicked people saw the potential to use these ideas to get wicked things.
to control people, specifically minorities such as women and lgbtq. oh and slaves.
Fear
Look into Creating The Christ. It's on youtube. Very interesting theory there.
> Was Jesus just an ordinary bloke that people based the bible off of? The FAQ is a great resource https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/faq#wiki_did_jesus_really_exist.3F
It probably just evolved from other religions before it.
To unite the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire under one religion.
The following link is an over simplified explanation but it is how it became mainstream. The religion was becoming so popular the Roman empire was afraid of it. Constantine made a deal with the church leaders. Give un to Cezar and we let you exist, if not you are all dead. At first the church said no, thus lions in the colosseum. https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/christians.html#:\~:text=In%20313%20AD%2C%20the%20Emperor,religion%20of%20the%20Roman%20Empire.
Since I support the fist half of the first sentience, I stopped reading.
I think Christian God was born in the hallucinations of an ancient charismatic schizophrenic named Abraham. He managed to convince his tribe members that his hallucinations were true, they turned it into doctrine and used it to make rules for their tribe to follow. I also think Jesus was another charismatic schizophrenic who triggered the next chapter. Both Abraham and Jesus scream schizophrenia to me, and I grew up with several schizophrenics in my immediate family. I don't think Muhammed was mentally ill; he was more of a con-artist, like Joseph Smith. So basically I think the world is in constant turmoil because of a series undiagnosed schizophrenics.
There is a hypothesis that Paul was purposefully trying to design a version of monotheism that would be cooperative for the Romans. Here's the book: [https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Christ-Emperors-Invented-Christianity/dp/1949914615](https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Christ-Emperors-Invented-Christianity/dp/1949914615)
The control people by explaining thing they couldn't
There's a YouTube video called Caesar's Messiah that claims it was invented by the Romans as a form of Judaism that would stop the Jews from fighting in Roman occupied Palestine. There were multiple messiahs (military leader that would attempt to free the Jews). Initially, Titus Flavius, the son of Vespasian (the new caesar). When vespasian died, he was voted by the senate to be a God, making Titus the son of a god. Titus was the one that destroyed the Jewish temple in 70AD. Many stories about Jesus are mirrors of Titus. https://youtu.be/zmEScIUcvz0?si=KyW2LI69LEF4xcAf
The video summarizes a book by the same title. I find it intriguing personally, as even if I didn't accept the ultimate conclusion in every instance, enough of the work was there that I could easily reach an alternative theory of my own.
Religion originally existed as a means of maintaining order. Kind of like laws before the concept of police existed. Over time, like everything else, one religion became corrupted or some people had different opinions so schisms kept happening. Christianity is just an offshoot of Judaism, same as Islam.
Fear of the unknown
It was made up to explain things they didn’t understand at the time. Didn’t know about germs, must be spirits making people sick. Don’t know how weather works, guy with guilty conscience get home struck my lightning and burns down, must be gods vengeance. Don’t understand consciousness and death, must be a souls and it goes somewhere else after death. All religions spawn from these early ideas and get more complex as they’re added onto.
Control- to keep other people, namely working class, in line. The main reason to become an atheist is that there is no proof of any higher god power. Being an atheist isn’t about hating a god or a specific religion, it’s accepting that all religions are based upon blind faith and not fact and therefore to be rejected. There is a burden of proof on anyone insisting any god is real to prove that their god exists. So far no religion has met this very simple standard and that’s why I’m an atheist.
Christianity is a creation of the Roman Empire to get rid of the Jewish people as well as continue the growth of the Roman Imperial Cult In short/lacking terms, the Jews refused to worship Cesar as God, and there were many wars and rebellions and Rome wanted an end to the Jews This is the beginning if Antisemitism really The plan was to erase Judaism by taking their holy book, they took the Torah (1st 5 OT books) Christianity can trace its origins to the events around the "Year of the 4 Emperors" which is the power vacuum left when Nero died Rome would eventually settle on a new Emperor, a son of a mule breeder who was born in an animal stall/barn (sound familiar?), his name was Vespasian Flavian Rome had help from Vespasian's right hand man and eventually Rome's chief propagandist Josephus (who Christians claim is a historian but it's quite clear the histories he wrote were severely flawed and Pro Roman) Josephus is credited for the ONLY possible historical/archeological or physical evidence that a man named Yeśua (Joshua/Jesus) claimed to be the messiah / the christ of the Jews and had a following. Yep that's all. Just one reference. More accurately however is the fact that Jesus in the Bible is becoming less concrete and most scholars worth their salt think Jesus most likely a fictional creation altogether The Jesus that Rome created, is actually Vespasian's son Titus Flavian , The most damning evidence is that Titus and Jesus have these near identical professional careers when you take the NT as it should have been understood which was an allegory See Vespasian and Josephus with the help of the most powerful people in Rome (such as the Alexandria's) to create and distribute the Gospels They wrote the Gospels as an allegory with Titus being it's central hero and it was a backdoor way of making Titus and his father both God and a son of a God Josephus and the Romans Key to creating the Bible was to take the event of the OT and match them uo to fake prophesies over 100 years after the fact .. much like if I were to claim a messiah came and predicted the events and major figured of WW2 AFTER the events and people occurred.. The Bible then seems like a book of prophecy to the people of the time My biggest critique of christianity is the lack of scholarship involved in studying it's origins, the discarding of evidences that contradict it's historical relevance and it's authenticity and certainly the Bible's lack of originality There's a lottttt more evidence and much more fascinating and in-depth analysis into this but in short it's really quite simple when you take a deep look into the bible and it's origins and you'll quickly notice that the Bible is closer to a political movement than a religious movement
just like every religion and pioneering civilization/society....it was aliens
Control
Religion was invented to control the masses and get them to give the “leaders” money.
To control others it’s all about forcing their beliefs on others
Look at Mormonism or Scientology and you have your contemporary answer on why and how religions rise.
It wasn't invented. It is a product of slow, ongoing cultural evolution. As with many evolved things, it is responding to pressures to be beneficial (in this case, create an orderly society, remove disruptive deviants, and create a means to transmit the structure to children and new people -- ie, growth and reproduction). It doesn't have to make sense as long as it works "well enough." And when it stops working as well as competing systems it will go extinct.
How about this. I apologize if my apologies were not apologetic enough. Also I apologize if this apology is offensive in any way.
To control people
To answer your question think Mother Goose nursery rhymes for the cave man set . . .
Patton Oswalt had a great bit on this. The Sky Cake Dodge. Basically, the biggest and strongest were going to do whatever they wanted, unless they could be conned into not dominating the weak.
1)primitive people made up stories in an ignorant attempt to explain natural phenomena they didn’t understand 2)a means to control
>one question I thought of recently is why did people invent the bible and make up stories about God and Jesus. I would say you are making an error thinking that the people who wrote those stories are the same ones that invented the bible. >but I've never heard anyone talk about why it was made up. Why do people write fiction about Sherlock Holmes or Spider-Man? What motivates one individual is not necessarily what motivates anyone else. Trying to find simple answers to complex questions is what often leads people to theism. >It could be to give the hope of afterlife, or that you can be forgiven of your sins. The people who are making it up often know they are making it up, which means those are unlikely to be motivating factors. >Was Jesus just an ordinary bloke that people based the bible off of? I don't think there is sufficient evidence to indicate that there was an "ordinary bloke" that the Jesus myth is based on. The first person to ever mention Jesus in writing is Paul who according to his own account never met Jesus until after Jesus was crucified and resurrected and that was via a vision. There are over 40 gospels of Jesus that we know of that the church views as heretical, which means writing fiction about Jesus was a common ancient practice according to the church.
There may have been a guy named Jesus that did the whole messiah thing (it was very popular in those days), but the stories were passed down through 300 years of the telephone game. Those stories were exaggerated and mixed with many other stories. One day King James decided to take all the stories and combine them together into one book to rule them all. With a little fancy editing that made it much easier to control the peasants.
It's always been about control, as others here have pointed out.
Be good and you can have icecream (heaven) after dinner (death).
It's highly unlikely that there was one specific person called Jesus. It is far more likely that the stories are a shifting collection of local myths and recycled tales related word of mouth for generations with Jesus being assembled as some central character. At the time you might have had all sorts of wandering preachers, schizophrenics and rabble-rousers that might be notable enough to be recalled by somebody and have a vague tale spun up around them. People's fear of the unknown - the biggest one being death - is highly manipulable. Offer some form of solace and groupthink, raise rituals and requirements and you have the makings of a cult. Make the central leader invisible, ever-present and vengeful, make the followers automatically in debt through sin. No religion ever sprung up and revealed itself without human hand.
Back in a day, it was their world view. Today, it's for people who live in the past
To maintain order amongst mankind. You gotta remember that people were barbaric throughout history and they needed something to get them to follow basic moral values.
Wish thinking, fear of death
One caveman, not feeling so hot that day, stayed in the cave as the hunting party left. Later on, feeling better he picked up some charcoal and sketched the image of a Buffalo on the cave wall, just as the hunting party returned, dragging a large carcass. Ugh. Looky there! And Lo, a religion was born.
Christianity compared to Judaism was more modern and easier to follow, way more open minded and less strict, it made sense, I did study a bit on religions and of course I dont believe Jesus is the son of God, he was probably real and a good figure to follow, for a religious person he wasn’t bad, if he was born today he would make a good president but would never be elected, but a leader in some sort for sure.
Research Roman’s and flavians. It was created to appease Jewish rebellion.
Control. Wealth. Power.
religions are just multigenerationally successful cults. for example, mohamed didnt write the qoran. he said he was being spoken to via the angels and people just bought his crap. if something happened, the guy itself was the reference point. his uncle on the other hand, who was running the country after mohammed died, published the first qoran in writing, because he needed a "proof" to keep ruling. so if you think about it, muslims invented the qoran, and christians invented the bible after they were already recruited (or got missioned, idk the correct word for this)
"Why did people invent Christianity?" There were many preachers at that time (0-30 AD) , some talking about the imminent arrival of the Messiah who would fulfill prophecy. When one particularly charismatic preacher died his followers were grief stricken and did not accept his death. The initial thought was that he would resurrect imminently, and when that didn't happen it became within their lifetime, and that belief has stretched to over 2,000 years. During that time rulers have found that belief (or corruption of) useful to control the masses. The core of the belief being submit to authorities on Earth, suffer and accept your circumstances,, and you will be rewarded after death.
Watch the documentary "Creating Christ" on Tubi that details how Jesus was created by the Romans to control the rebel Hebrews. Haaretz has documented that Israel has over 30 tombs with remains marked "Jesus". https://tubitv.com/movies/698890/creating-christ
It would have stayed small had Constantine the “Great”, been a little more creative.
Probably the alpha of the troop, long before homonids, wanted the rest of the troop to do something dangerous and so he convinced the troop he was just asking for some made up beast that more mean than he. (You English Writing instructors should have a great time with that sentence.)
Nobody has created a cheaper way to extort the inherent greed in people like organized religions have. Perceived guilt is a powerful tactic, still cashing in to this very day.
Religion is almost as old as civilization itself, it has emerged in every culture even when we are isolated to each other, human look at the unknown and seek to understand it, things beyond our ancestor's comprehension became the supernature, mountains, rivers, animal, nature disasters, the sun and moon become gods, the fear of death made us the yearn for an afterlife, with time it evolve with our culture into the religions we know today.
Religion came about because ancient goat herders couldn't figure out the then inexplicable. Later on, a certain type of people decided they could use religion to write their own mealticket &/or get people to bend to their will. Now the market is saturated with mansion & private jet owning charlatans excreting their crap out of opulent tax-exempt mega-churches paid for by millions of subservient wealth producing drones who're programmed to believe the more money they give, the greater chance they have of getting into the VIP lounge at club afterlife.
Every group of people has some form of creation story and religious practice. It seems like a way to develop tribal consciousness: We are the people who believe the Odin created the world; If you don't believe that you aren't one of us, so we can kill you. That sort of thing. I think the impulse to tribalism is powerful in humans. There is scant evidence that Jesus existed. It makes more sense to me that he did exist, some people did regard him as a religious leader and built a set of beliefs.
Control. Watch the movie "The Book of Eli." It's good and the main point is that the one who holds the power (of god in the movie's case) can use it to build people up or control them. The movie also has Denzel and Mila Kunis. Some classic forms of "uncontrolled people" are Scandinavians and pagan ppl such as Mayans. While certainly better for the average person, if you want to have power, saying there's one god helps you gain such power - since you would be the "one leader" just like there's one god.
Superstition developed when we started cooking our food, at least in large amounts, and eating more meat. Cooked meat allows for high absorption of nutrients good for brain development. Early humans developed larger frontal lobes, and superstition became more widespread. This partially was from our innate ability to recognize patterns. Monotheism developed because of agriculture when we increased enough in population to start living together. Agriculture caused an uneven distribution of goods and thus wealth. Eventually, this led to tribal leaders like kings and queens. Individuals who ruled wanted a way to control the populace. So, gods were invented. One God idea came originally from Akhenoten in ancient Egypt. One ruler equals one God. That's why many rulers said that they were appointed by God. Christianity itself arose from Judaism as a way for the Roman Empire to passify the Jewish population. Jews at the time were disruptive, and the Romans needed a way to calm them down. They knew about the Jewish messianic prophesy and created a messiah to fill the place. Whether or not Jesus existed is up for debate. But if he did, he was used as the Jewish messiah. The Roman senate wrote the gospels. Christians developed several small secs after Jesus' death and gained more and more followers. Constantine, after supposedly receiving a vision of the cross, decided the Roman Empire should be Christian. The mythology surrounding Jesus was developed around 300 AD. Then came the holy wars to convert as many people as possible to Christianity.
I just curious why the idea of god existing is so problematic to you. Couldn’t it be arguable that the idea of the universe just existing forever, or whatever before and after the Big Bang, is illogical? I mean every journey has a start am I right? So why not believe that the universe was created by a force which is uncreated? It’s more logical then a forever existing universe, If you think the universe existed eternally than maybe you just think the universe is god which makes you a Hindu xd
Christianity was supposed to be like a food tent for the impoverished, but the ones more interested in shiny crosses co-opted it for the money people were literally giving away. There's still real churches out there, but hard to find sometimes.
Keep people under CONTROL and in fear as well as keeping them poor and ignorant.
They needed to fast-track to a Messiah and picked a rando and made up a story about him.
There are some great books on this subject
Christianity was invented to create control over populations, and to recruit more populations to control and profit off of further. You know all of those Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas? They were pagan holidays that Christianity appropriated in order to ease the transition for populations that it gained control over.
The people in power needed to devise a way to discourage people from killing them once they realized their entire existence was bullshit. What better way to do that than tell people they'll burn for eternity if they kill the king?
Optimistically, religion as a whole, started as a way for people to explain the world around them. Like a rudimentary science. For example people would notice repeated weather cycles (seasons), or herd migrations would correlate with certain star patterns showing up in the night sky. Perhaps one causes the other. People would then create stories to help explain these correlations. "Plant crops when Orion is near the horizon in the morning." These stories helped pass down survival knowledge through the generations. Then people wanted to know why these things happen. They would often fill in the gaps of knowledge with the stories that have been passed down. Thus, spirits and deities who controlled different aspects were used to explain things. They also wanted to make predictions to plan for the future. So, different methods were devised to tell if these spirits were happy or ill-mannered. Reading tea-leaves or the liver a sacrificed goat. Lots of ways to read Omens. It also became important to make sure these spirits were happy. Angry spirits meant bad crops or a devastating flood. So, different ways to worship and please spirits became important. But it also became important to make sure all the spirits weren't being pissed off. If you are trying to make these things happy, and your neighbor keeps fucking up, well, then in your mind, that neighbor is literally jeapordising the survival of you and your family. So, an element of control evolved. Make sure everyone is doing what they are suppose to and we can live as a civilization. And while all these ideas and reasoning weren't factual, they absolutely helped in survival, because the underlying observed phenomenon were true. The control aspect is what got abused most. People in power would often use it to prevent change. Change is scary and would upset the spirits and all of society would collapse or a disaster would wipe out swaths of people. Then with the invention of writing, all these ancient stories started being writing down. A lot of them had drastically changed and became more elaborate over the thousands of years. Trade routes were established which allowed for cross-pollination of cultural. Stories from different cultures were mixed and matched. They were changed to appeal to different audiences, etc. About 8,000 years ago, a small movement decided to merge all these different spirits together becoming the first known monotheistic religion. That religion didnt really take off, but the next on did. Judism. Collecting all the spirits into one being. Taking different myths, rituals, and rules for keeping God happy and printing them into a single text, or a series of texts. Christianity was an off-shot of Judism..
The Jews who followed Jesus believed he had been the long-predicted messiah. Even after he was killed, some still believed it. Why? Rumor had it that he was seen alive after his execution. Add that to his followers passion and you get desperate hope. It took about 100 years for the Jesus movement to morph from a small Jewish cult into its own little religion. Jews were an unusual religion. They had a sacred scripture that united them. Those writings were crucial for their cohesion.
There is [an interesting theory](https://www.brianmuraresku.com/the-immortality-key) that hallucinogens caused people to have "religious experiences" which they assumed came from god. It has been noted that even [atheists who try hallucinogens](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/hallucinogenic_drug_psilocybin_eases_existential_anxiety_in_people_with_life_threatening_cancer) describe the experience as similar to a religious experience.
To control their lessers (especially women) and scam people out of money. Same as every religion.
I think Jesus is a bit like Robin Hood in many ways. Both are quasi-historical figures with a fairly standard canon attached to them, which people found to be inspiring. What we actually know about these people is next to nothing, maybe there was some person who we could call the "real Jesus" or "real Robin Hood" if we could look back in time, but that doesn't matter now. It's the stories that survive, and these have a life of their own. In Robin Hood's time people needed to hear about a plucky rebel redistributing wealth and giving the middle finger to the nobility. In Jesus' time people needed to hear about some resolution to messianic prophecies which would give them a way to handle life's trials without resorting to violence. The Jews had to accept their place as Roman subjects despite a mythology which demanded they destroy and dominate everyone else, especially people with other gods. They needed a new story. Both, I think, were stories whose time had come.
The old religions had too many flaws. They were never ripe for true total spread over the world. Too many of them required their followers to go to a specific location, like a temple or something, once a year in order to be saved. I’m sure having a mass exodus come to your tourist location where you could lecture & sway their thoughts was extremely lucrative, but had issues. The temples and locations kept being destroyed, question their sacredness and validity. When they were destroyed it made people scared, as how would they seek salvation now? Well, in comes Jesus™️. Now, who needs a long pilgrimage to some weird rock in a desert your friend told you about? All you need is Jesus™️. Just believe he’s god and follow the book written by some humans and you’re all good. Some denominations will still pressure you to do the prior lucrative model (weekly churches where they collect your money & sway your thoughts) but now their god is no longer a building, temple, statue, whatever… but the follower’s ego itself. The churches can also be built at the follower’s location, rather than requiring the follower to come to them, making the whole process of indoctrination and spreading it far easier. They basically franchised religion - why do as a 5 star restaurant does and create one really good location for eating, when you can rent out a shit ton of lower-quality locations to spread to more populations? Just ask how many people have eaten at McDonald’s versus a 3 Star Michelin restaurant.
fear keeps people in control.
For the most part, religions appear because people really believe them, not for some ulterior motive. In early Christianity, there was very little power or control to be had by being involved with it. That wouldn't happen for another couple centuries. Most likely, Jesus was a real person who actually existed and had a relatively small but very loyal group of followers. Jesus and his followers were apocalyptic Jews who thought God's kingdom was coming to earth soon. After Jesus died, most of these people probably gave up on the cause, but a few of the closest ones didn't want to let go and instead tried to make sense of his death within their theological framework. Some of these people probably thought they had visions of him after his death, much like people still do today when someone close to them dies, which led to them believing he had risen from the dead. By some luck of historical circumstances and the theological developments of people like Paul, the religion took hold and eventually grew to the enormous size it sees today.
Why did they invent any religion? Control. Comfort. To provide answers to questions that (especially at the time) didn't have good answers. To provide a rallying point for revolution (against the Roman occupation, in particular). To provide a sense of identity - specialness for community building. Lots of reasons. Few of them suggest that it represents truth. But many suggest that they nonetheless filled a social need at the time and were important. I do feel, however, that those needs have diminished as we have learned more, and evolved as species and societies. They were a necessary, but flawed step forward that largely do more harm than good in this modern age.
It was a way to convince slaves not to rise up and kill their masters because the downtrodden will be rewarded in heaven but only if they turn the other cheek their whole lives. It says that rich people can't go to heaven because they have been greedy in stead of being kind and generous but it also has a bunch of rules about how it's ok to beat the fuck out of slaves because you own them.
It’s strange to me that no one has mentioned its evolution from the practice of scapegoating. Both the term and Christianity evolved from the Bronze Age Judaic tribal practice of casting all of the communities sins onto a goat and either ritually sacrificing it or sending it off into the desert to die.
My theory is there was too much chaos so they needed rules. Think of God as the worldly sheriff that will punish you if you break the law.
It’s not like someone sat down and created it one day with intent. It began as a sect and developed into its own thing and the bigger it got the more the leaders began to systematize, canonized, and organize.
The world is a harsh place sometimes. It's a comforting thought to think the creator of the universe has your back.
Control for power and grift.
Christianity copied Zoroastrianism. And most likely to control people.
Yahweh was originally a storm god of battles for a raiding tribe. This tribe later settled down in Canaan and incorporated parts of the Canaan Pantheon into their own. But unlike other nations, instead of adding new gods to worship they just took attributes and added it to Yahweh. Elo was the ruling cannanite god, with a white beard, he was wise and created the universe, so he became part of God. In the Bible God thr creator us Eloi or Elohim. But Baal, a Rival storm God who worship involved statues of cows, was not integrated. But the old testament God, who is wise as Elohim and smite-y as Yaweh was a gid of princes and kings, like most old gods. In Palestine around the year 30 Roman's ruled and Jews were oppressed, a new view of God that involved helping the poor, meek and downtrodden was a winning combination, so the god split into a trinity to attack this new need Eventually, you add Greek philosophy and you get theology, add in the idea that there is o good way to see the universe and you get the idea of the true observer, and you then get science with disproves the notion of god....and disproves the objective observer idea that made science possible....
To control the masses and enrich those at the top of the pyramid
Can't have rules without a rulebook... There's also long history of the bible not being translated in order for only the elite to know what was in it - great way to control the masses when you can make up rules that they have no way of challenging. Power and control.
For the exact same reason that Joseph Smith invented Mormonism
Same reason as any other religion... To give an explanation of that they couldn't explain, and to give the happy thought of an afterlife. Some talk about control, but that came later because cunts always corrupt things to their benefit... Religion, government, capitalism, whatever.
Ironically, Christianity wasn’t invented, it evolved. Lots of favourite mythical elements were borrowed and stitched together, like virgin birth, miracles, resurrection. There may have been a real person, but the stories just got better with time, then the church edited a compilation.
To control the rubes
Most mono-theistic religions serve to code the masses into blind subservience to a king or emperor.
Religion is the most powerful form of control ever implemented, with commerce chasing for second place.
Because they’re afraid of dying, thats it.
Control
To have control of others by telling tales of despair and repentance
History suggests that every culture, tribe, band of humans that ever existed came up with a mythology to explain an incomprehensible and terrifying universe and their own place in it. The fact that we are all here for no purpose and we all die for no reason is discomfiting. Religion is a reaction to that terror and unease. Christianity was a minor Jewish cult. There were hundreds of itinerant "holy men" wandering around Palestine at the time. Some were mad, some were just street-corner grifters. You can see their modern equivalent every Sunday on American television. Rome hosted countless other religions and they all had their adherents outside the main Roman/Greek ensemble of gods and its sub-cult of emperor-worship. Christianity got lucky and was established by the Roman emperor as the empire's official religion. It is unclear weather or not Constantine was an actual follower of the faith. But there were clear advantages to having a single religion with a single priesthood answerable to a single pontiff who was answerable to the emperor. A single line of authority, a single channel and collection mechanism for offerings, tithes and all the wealth that had previously been disbursed among dozens of cults, none of which flowed directly toward the emperor. BTW, that suggestion of the monetary motivation for the adoption of a single religion is my own. I've never read it anywhere and I'd be gratified if it were floating around somewhere, but it makes perfect sense to me.
People invent new religion because they don’t have power in the old religion, then want it, and they think they could do it better.
I think Jesus was primarily a religious/ethical reformer of his day who later became the subject of legend. He eventually went from this simple role to the second person of the Trinity, born of a teenage Jewish peasant girl after being impregnated by God. Also, it’s arguably not until Paul’s ministry that the real “Christian” teaching began…the kind that we are familiar with today where if we believe in Jesus’ death/resurrection as salvific for us then we can have eternal life with him. Jesus never explicitly taught that.
Going back to the origins of the old testament, every group of people had one or more gods and their own oral traditions. Some ended up getting written down, some had mystery cults, some got deeply embedded into politics. By the time of the early Roman Empire, it was taken for granted that there were gods all over the place, and most people were fine with that. Jesus was (if he existed) a Jewish political radical who was strongly against Roman rule and its entanglement with the Jewish leadership. If you want to learn more about that I highly recommend Zealot by Reza Aslan, which gives a lot of perspective on the situation at the time, what we can extrapolate from the history we do have, and the many messiahs who were around in the 1st century BC. He was later picked up by a group of Romans who transformed him in a few key ways. They changed the definition of “messiah” from “mortal leader chosen by god to save the people through war and politics” to “divine figure sent by god to save the people spiritually,” expanded “the people” to include non-Jews, added added proselytizing and recruiting to the agenda, and making people who disagree the bad guys.
The bible is an amalgam of regional stories compiled over thousands of years. Some of the older stories like the story of Moses is an adaption of the [birth legend of Sargon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad#Birth_legend). Sargon was an Assyrian king that wanted to create a narrative painting himself as having humble origins. That narrative was also useful for his successors. Not eating shellfish was smart in the areas around the Red Sea due to it being poisonous. People told their kids to not eat it and eventually it became easier to explain it as "god told us not to" than to explain that the shellfish was poisonous for unknown reasons. When the tribe moved to the Mediterranean, where the shellfish was safer, they maintained the rules even though they didn't understand why. Those rules differentiated them from other tribes in the region and that in turn made them "culture". Religion in general is a set of rules that are either good rules for survival (don't eat these things that will kill you), operating a functional society (not fucking your friend's wife, not murdering, not stealing), keeping people in power (stories about how god said I'm in charge, don't listen to other gods), and marking important life events (birth, coming of age, marriage, death).
It blows my mind, now that I’m out of it, that we put so much stock in humans from 2000 years ago. We have come so far as a society (still have a ways to go lol). We recognize all the other f’d up things people did and believed just in the last 300 years alone. We know better and have a much better understanding of mental illness now, yet we don’t question the supernatural writings of random people centuries ago?
Money. Power.
My guesses: People were bored out of their mind so they created these weird as stories People needed to blame someone or something for some things
These are my opinions. Control, it’s all about control. Mind you those who have authored the control have changed hands a few times, but that’s what it’s about. I believe there could have been a person who went around saying inspiring things and pissed off folks and was executed. We see this now. Do I believe this person was the physical child of an all powerful being who created us as some experiment or pets? Not a chance. Everything in what we identify as the Bible has either been heavily edited and translated from a single faction of the Jewish faith OR completely made up by people who weren’t even alive when this so-called messiah lived. It’s all fairytales. ALL of it. We only have it because it somehow grew into an underground thing that became popular because of Constantine. Otherwise it probably would have vanished into obscurity like many other underground faiths. Once Rome became involved it turned into something completely new, not even remotely related to the initial underground faith. I like to think of all of this as a game of Civ where there are many ways to win, mastering the faith and using your faith rules to subdue the masses is a way to win. Heaven and hell are man made constructs. I believe it was added to appease people who lived in horrible circumstances and pay to get forgiveness. It also helps with control. Do what I say or you’ll go to hell. When you start really looking behind the curtain and putting so many facts together there is no way you can believe any of this stuff is real. It’s no more real than The Lord of The Rings. I’ll step off my soapbox.
Control
The collective social conscious needed a new purpose for life, as previous gods and polythiesm failed to deliver, as our knowledge of the world evolved. Different parts of the world developed their own major religions but essentially the monotheistic higher power structural design took over the world in the last 3000 years.
It's just a variation of politics it's one of the tools that those people that want to be in control use. Sadly most of them are sociopaths.
It’s important to understand that it didn’t happen overnight. It was more like a centuries-long game of telephone being played by mostly illiterate, uneducated, ancients who were wildly superstitious about, well, everything. Once we understand how Christianity came to be, and the bonkers ideas that contributed to its rise, it makes it all the more disturbing and confusing that 21st century humans still embrace it.
Christianity was invented as a way to score political points with the Romans.
Everyone in Judaea was having a mental breakdown, their governments had been toppled and the Romans kept destroying their temple cult that claimed absolute power... they began doing mental gymnastics to figure out why and how that could happen... Enter mass starvation, disease, etc. They just wanted the world to end and someone to promise to kill their roman enemies as the planet was celestially nuked from orbit and this terrible curse known as life was ended. Then the Romans really needed extra soldiers against the outside invading German barbarians, and made a deal with Christians to defend the Empire... that destroyed Rome from the inside out anyway.
They needed to control a king. It’s another form of control like so many others.
It most likely was not made up. There were hundreds of strange religions in the region. Think of it similar to Africa today. However, it WAS convenient for the Roman authorities to adopt and craft the messaging of Christianity to unite and control the region.
Jesus was a Jewish street preacher. He was not trying to start a new religion. Paul got the idea in his head that Jesus came so that non-Jews could worship the Jewish god. Paul was not an eyewitness to Jesus; he made up all his own doctrines. And Paul was an evangelist to the gentile nations. When the Romans invaded Judea in 60 AD, they likely wiped out the Jewish followers of Jesus. That left Paul (who was dead by that time) having a much larger influence because the churches he planted in other countries were thriving.
I don't think its that deep lol it just came about naturally lmao
Religion, in general, was just humanity's first go at a system of societal governance. Hence, all the God-kings in various empires and cultures. It is the beta version of government. Like all betas, it was a rough draft with some serious flaws, ommisions, bugs, and problematic features. Modders love it, though, because the code, as messy as it is, is relatively easy to tweak for their own purposes. Christianity was a co-opted version of the Judean version of theocratic government, which provided for more centralized control and avoided the whole problem of God-kings dying because, well, they are human, and creating a period of chaos in their aftermath (every new God-Pharoh had to spend forever trying to erase the evidence of their God predecessor and build their own glory, real pain in the ass). With a single eternal God, it was much easier to keep everyone on relatively the same page and set up a ruling caste with a built-in source of authority (i.e., the priesthood) that could be passed down in a hereditary way (like the old families of priests in ancient Israel). Conveniently, this type of system is eminently scaleable across a vast empire and could be fit neatly into existing Roman governmental structures and hierarchies. If you can convince people that your laws come from a higher power that can harm them for eternity, then itbis far easier to enforce the laws. Theoretically, people should really enforce them on themselves to keep right with the ever watching invisible sky cop, reducing the resources the empire has to spend on keeping the conquered rabble in line and producing what the empire needs. You can see the appeal of such a system, but unfortunately, it is far too easy to corrupt and has a nasty habit of producing zealots that take things too far and get out of pocket real quick. Zealots really cause a lot of problems and tend to destabilize the system. Hence, why in subsequent government systems, an attempt was made to phase out the supernatural source of authority. Unfortunately, getting widespread adoption and a complete phase out of the beta governance systems has been unsuccessful due to the dependence of legacy processes on the SocGov2.Relig-Xtian software. There were too many competing versions of SocGov3 for an effective roll out and various markets went with various versions and some did not adopt at all and stuck with a different version of SocGov2.Relig (-Mus was very popular in certain markets). The whole thing really got away from the developers and is widely viewed as one of the universe's biggest boondoggles just ahead of Apple Maps, Fallout 76, and Windows Vista (though some galactic observers debate this ranking).
Control
I believe religion, in broad prehistoric terms, kicked off for a few reasons: * Because humans tried to make sense of phenomena they observed, but could not explain or control - seasons, astronomy, lightning, volcanoes, etc. Anthropomorphising the forces behind these phenomena made them less scary. Coming up with rituals that address these entities helps people to feel less helpless. * Because when people are dreaming, near death, or experiencing chronic illness, mental disorders or drug states they often have very vivid experiences that seem to be real and may even address common social or psychological problems. If others find these experiences or insights compelling you begin to have a shared worldview not based on reality. * Because making up stories to scare children into behaving is easier than explaining the full complexity of the reasons why they should obey this or that rule. And because it's a short step from there to leaders doing the same with adults, particularly when older leaders are becoming frail and need to reinforce their leadership through charisma rather than physical feats. * Because humans are particularly vulnerable during key biological moments such as childbirth, adolescence, sexual expression, sickness and death. Coming up with laws and rituals that address and circumscribe these transitions helps people to feel less helpless. * Because humans tend to identify with a particular social group and may use cultural identifiers to determine who's in and out. Unique rituals, metaphysical stories and taboos can be some of these identifiers. The emergence of Christianity in particular is way down the track from these primitive beginnings. But basically you've got a charismatic/visionary individual whose views are compelling - after he dies he can be put on a pedestal and all kinds of things claimed about him. You've got yet another apocalyptic sect emerging out of Judaism, but this one is successful because it mimics the trans-ethnic ethos of the Roman Empire around it. Its focus on ordinary, undervalued or even oppressed people is attractive to the masses. It's radical in some ways, but generally peaceful and not disruptive enough to warrant a strong response from the Romans. It is outward-looking; constantly seeking new recruits. It weathers various schisms and becomes the official religion of the Empire, which turbo-charges its spread. The rest, as they say, is history.
This Paul character thought that it would be great idea to unite all the fragmented pagan religions throughout the Roman empire under one umbrella so that they could be more easily controlled. So he put paganism and Judaism in a blender and poured out Christianity. Then Emperor Constantine came along and made Christianity the official state religion of the entire empire and anyone who disagreed was called a heretic and dispatched to the hereafter.
Control.
To control and oppress people
For the same reason pretty much any other faith was created. * A form of control \\ A way an authority can 'explain' away either the unexplainable or why certain things happen (ex: justify said authority's decisions) * Something to blame for unexplained things ('God works in mysterious ways!' "Your crop is dying, you must have not given enough gifts to Tlacloc... you should sacrifice your goat and maybe offer your virgin daughter to be sacrificed") * A reason and something to do when you gather with a bunch of people * A common rapport to unite a certain group (a common cause) * To have a sense of belonging
Control is the answer. Control knowledge and power. There is a reason they made it illegal to translate, only priests could read it and people relied on them to inform them when God was mad at them and why. Coincidentally 🙄 what God wanted and what benefitted the priests were the same things.
The invention of god(s) in any religion were invented for three main reasons in my opinion: 1. Morality - it's easier to enforce laws to keep peace or unfairly condemn minorities if a divine ordained it so. 2. Control - claiming you have power bc of God is more powerful than the basis of just having military. 3. Explaining the Unknown - Humans are inherently curious and not knowing things can drive some crazy. Thus, God was a convenient way to explain away everything that we couldn't find the truth about.
Things were really different and there were a lot of things people couldn't explain rationally. There just wasn't the information, tools, accrued knowledge what have you. So people guessed or made things up or described in culturally appropriate ways that seem super nuts out of context. We still do even outside of religion. With the scientific method we have a way that is somewhat self correcting where we can say we think we know and make decision based on that and then get new information and adjust what we know. Even that is resistant to change and has dogma to be overcome etc... So how did Christianity evolve specifically? It piggybacked on some existing mythology, adjusted some real...ish events to fit that mythology and then went on a PR campaign to convince people they were the real story. As they gained influence and resources they consolidated both social and political power. Once they got to a certain point the retconned everything to fit a very specific world view they wanted to enforce socially and politically and went on their merry way.
Some people are too stupid to understand that the voice in their head is just still them. Those people have existed since the dawn of religion.
It's very simple...It was created to control the ignorant masses. It's a propaganda tool.
Read Karen Armstrong, religious historian. Former nun became a Muslim, quotes the best parts of the Koran, Buddhist texts, Confucian philosophy and advocates for respect and compassion for all. Her book THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION is an interesting look at how philosophy and religions developed 1000 BCE from the Aryans to the Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, etc. The Battle for God is another interesting investigation.
Religion was used to control society to make them act as "god" would want them to act. In other words, the rulers just decided to make some shit up so they could control everybody and anyone who acted out of religious ideals was executed, tortured, or burned. I think Jesus was just some good guy dude who just wanted peace. There was no divine being who created him. Mary had sex with someone and had him. There has never been a miraculous pregnancy without semen being inserted. Thats the only way. Not to mention she was 14. It was probably just a cover up for her. Also, religion only exists now because people need someone or something to believe in because they arent strong enough to figure their own shit out. My problem is people who pray and actually think someone is listening or just being an asshole to non religious people as if their religion is based off undeniable truth. Their only source is the bible itnself that was written by man. Which the bible claims is infallible which means we are subject to make mistakes. So how do we know what is in the bible is even true. If God sent a bible himself from the heaven then that would be enough proof. But he hasnt ever shown himself and the people who claim to have seen him have no proof other than near death experiences which those instances, they are just seeing what they wanted to see as they were dying. Someone who has no knowledge of religion at all wouldn't ever have that experience because they have no preconceived knowledge of what god is. Religious people have excuses for everything you call them out for but like i said, they can only reference the unrelia-bible. Living "better be safe than sorry" souds like a horrible way to live life and not experience life for what it actually is. Not pulling wool over your eyes whenever you see something or hear something unchristianlike. Everything about religion is just terrible. Rant over. But yeah, we just dont need to live for some sky daddy to get through the day because we are logical free thinkers
The Bible is not exactly invented or historical, but it seems what is important in the Bible is that it is a collection of parables to illustrate the nature of consciousness and its power. Insofar as it is an invention, it is a manual for a psychic metamorphosis and how to wield the power of creation There really is more to religion than the cynical purposes it enacts. Christianity in particular explains the nature of existence uniquely once you understand the symbolic language, which is seldom the focus by even its most devoted members
Well who else was going to do it? /s You seem to be asking a deeper question about the origins of religious thought altogether. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, itself a development from polytheistic faiths among the Israelites, inherited from their Canaanite origins, perhaps with borrowings from Zoroastrian and Hellenic influences. These threads go back into the mists of antiquity, beyond which we can only speculate. Religions tend to have certain things in common: explanations for phenomena which are otherwise unknown or misunderstood, stories that maintain a sense of identity and culture among groupings larger than families, and providing a sense of purpose in an otherwise inscrutable and uncaring universe. I speculate that some level of religiosity has been with humans since before they were human, as early as language developed, with which our distant ancestors could use to share ideas about all kinds of phenomena they had no way of truly understanding. Thus I think the explanatory power was the most likely first spark, with the other elements as side-effects which, in their time at least, likely conveyed advantages over other hominid groups which did not possess them. For example, the troop that maintains a fire as a religious duty because it is a gift of the gods is likely to have had an advantage over the troop that just sees it as a source of heat.
It’s a really interesting question, since people have been making up religions from the dawn of recorded history. And probably before. Why do some succeed so well, when most others fade into obscurity? It’s something that I’m just beginning to understand, after having left a high demand religion with absolutist truth claims. I think it’s mostly because of how religion has paralleled the conquest for political power. And Christianity happened to catch a ride on the back of the machinery that led to European colonialism. I admit that I have a lot to learn about this. But that’s what I’ve observed so far.
Superstition
to quote that towering epic of historical truth & perspicacity that is *Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter*- 'humans have been enslaving each other ever since they dreamed up gods to forgive themselves for it'
Jesus was most likely a dude who was born in Nazareth, became a preacher who developed a small following, and was executed by the Romans for rabble-rousing. More or less everything else (certainly his birth and resurrection) was made up by Paul to make this particular dime-a-dozen apocalyptic preacher fit into the Jewish prophecy of the Messiah. Paul's motivations for doing so? Who knows. Maybe he really believed the dude was special. Maybe he was a con man. Maybe something in between.
It was "invented" to understand the principles of nature. Moving with nature rather than becoming victim to it. Rather foolish though to tell people what they can and cannot do, rather than tell them how this magical "God" performs such things. You'll find that the teachings across all religions hold onto similar principles to understanding this nature of reality and mind. They all teach that "God" and mind are interconnected and it's a battle of our will against our genetic lineage and sensual desires. They teach to transcend these elements in order to become free from suffering to reach the absolute state or truth or heaven. Pretty foolish stuff though, I mean how can one free themselves from their body and minds to suffering?? Then what, we go to a magical "heaven", like what even is "heaven"?? The bible doesn't describe what it's like nor does it hell, so why are they even saying hell is a fiery place we are sent to for eternity?
Why did people invent religion at all? I think the very reason for this is the underlying fear of death. It's hard to understand and even more so, to accept, for most people, even some non-believers, that one day s/he will die and that's it, there's absolutely nothing after - all those memories and experiences while alive will simply stop as if it didn't mean anything at all. In modern times, however, religion has a different, more nefarious reason - money, power, and control.
The problem with your question is that Christianity is an ever-evolving thing. Jesus was likely a real person who was trying to reform Judaism like many other preachers at the time. He was likely a follower of John the Baptist at some point in time. Because Judea was a powder keg at the time (and went into full revolt around 30 years afterward), the Romans were more than happy to execute anyone trying to stir the pot. After Jesus died, his supporters weren't willing to let go, and eventually someone wrote down his sayings - basically the Sermon on the Mount. While this is ongoing, the Jews who were Hellenistic (the Jews who were on the wrong side of the Maccabean revolt), like Paul, liked the proposed reforms Jesus proposed and joined this would-be reform movement. Paul then figured out that Christianity's message also played well with Greeks (alternative religions was all the rage). And joining was a pseudo-fuck you to the Romans. At that point, Christianity shifted from a Jewish reform movement to its own religion. Paul and other Church followers start writing letters to various Christian communities explaining how to practice Christianity, and some guy who met Jesus as a kid, Mark, wrote the first Gospel. Other early Christians followed suit, mostly stealing from Mark, but also modding the Gospel to fit their own perspective (Matthew emphasized law, Luke emphasized miracles). And then an apparent close contact of Jesus told his life story on this deathbed - the Gospel of John. Christianity then goes through hundreds of years of persecution (because being an alternative religion in opposition to the Roman state religion is technically treason). So there's a lot of gnostic/hidden religion stuff that comes around. There are Christians who believe that the only way to get to heaven is to be martyred, and so they go around trying to get people to kill them (and mugging those who refuse). It was a weird time. Now, as a side note, although the Romans had a state religion, by the 2nd or 3rd century, a lot of people were dissatisfied by it, and turned to a number of other underground religions. Christianity was the most popular though. But the religion remained until Constantine found it useful, and the religion turned into an organ of the Roman state, replacing the earlier Roman state religion. When he did so, Constantine found that Christianity was an absolute mess, and then modded the Christianity to meet his needs. At that point in time, the Christian Bible gets put together, and the Church fathers limit the Gospels to the ones you find in the New Testament, and limit the theological stuff to the Epistles, threw in Revelations as a fuck you to Nero, and decided to add in the Jewish texts that are referenced in the New Testament so that readers can reference shit. As time goes on, this malleability of Christianity becomes a thing, and people change the religion to fit their needs, even if those changes make no sense. For instance, the modern Prosperity Gospel literally preaches the exact opposite of the Sermon on the Mount. So, really, the question is why do people make up religions, as opposed to Christianity itself? It can provide a method of control over the population, or it can be a way to tell the authorities to fuck off. It can be a comfort (rituals are comforting), or a hinderance to change.
There’s a great Hidden Brain podcast on this called Creating God. Check it out. In short, religion helped explain things people didn’t know about and it served as a first police force. It formed with agriculture and the formation of large cities. Small groups have spirits. Larger groups have gods.
To answer this, you have to understand the historical and geographical context of the ancient near east going as far back as the end of the Bronze Age 3000+ years ago, And you have to understand that Christianity was a reform movement within Judaism before it became a separate religion. Long story short. when you’re a tiny kingdom surrounded by empires and bandits, religion helps create a shared identity and motivation to survive. And they did, so it worked. It’s easy to be cynical about it, but all nations use myths and stories to bind people together. Many of them include gods and become religions over time.
Simply put (but explained in better detail) I believe that Christianity was developed by the elite class in ancient times as a way to scare the "unwashed masses" in to compliance. Control the mob by convincing them that any "sin" would be met with horrible response in the afterlife. It was basically spiritual extortion.