Religion

There have been literally thousands of religions in the history of the human race.  Until the coming of the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all religions were pantheistic, each god with a different area of responsibility.  The concept of a single all-powerful god responsible for everything made religion simpler and was a logical improvement over the many gods belief systems, where some gods’ authorities overlapped, and some areas that no god oversaw .

 In ancient times, the Babylonians worshiped Baal, El, and Ishtar, among others.  Egypt also had many, including Aten, Isis, Osiris and Ra.  In Greece, their gods included Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares and of course Zeus.  And the Romans believed in Jupiter, Mars, Neptune Juno, and more.  In their day, hundreds of thousands and even millions of perfectly sane people believed in these all-powerful beings.  They had their temples, their priests and their rituals, and were worshipped, prayed to, and offered sacrifices. Non-believers were punished, and wars fought in defense of these gods

But were these older gods real?  Is there anyone in the world today who believes in Baal, Ra. Zeus or Jupiter?   I seriously doubt it.  But why?  Probably because these gods were not real; they were inventions of these ancient civilizations to explain natural happenings that they couldn’t understand – the rising and setting of the sun and moon, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, disease, etc., and to give the populace the feeling that they could influence natural events by propitiating the gods.

So my question is this – if these ancient gods are so obviously figments of the imagination, is there any reason why the major religions of today should be any more real?  All three Abrahamic belief systems were founded thousands of years ago, as were most other major religions such as Hinduism, at a time when people’s understanding of natural events was no better than that of their ancestors. What makes ancient writings sacred when they were written in an age of scientific ignorance and superstition? When I read these ancient texts, I don’t consider  them sacred, but merely thousands of years out of date.

Anything that philosophers and early scientists couldn’t explain was attributed to God, and this propensity still exists today.  Even some basic scientific principles such as evolution and the big bang theory of the beginning of the universe are disbelieved because they disagree with current religious teachings. And there are some very attractive inducements – the promise of eternal life and the answering of prayers.  However, when you step away from the dominant beliefs of today, and look at the entire history of religion, from the very beginning up to today, there is only one logical conclusion –

God did not create Man, Man created God.,

 And finally, if this omnipotent, omniscient, immortal ‘god’ created the Universe, with it’s billions  of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, and therefore quintillions of planets, why would he bother with a few billion semi-intelligent, ape-like creatures on an insignificant planet orbiting a small star in one  arm of a very ordinary galaxy, listen to their words, and send those who don’t believe in him to a fiery furnace for eternity? Surely there are million of planets in the so-called Goldilocks zone where life has evolved, much of it intelligent, so what makes humans so special?

Conclusion?  All Earthly religions are a combination  of myths, misinterpretations and outright fabrication.

A motto for the religious to live by “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise”