The long answer; religions have played a huge part in the past few millennium or so. Maybe even at the dawning of homo sapiens. The earliest tracked region comes from many places, some say Asia, Australia, Africa, these tend to go back to about 60,000 years or so but this is the most basic of all religious belief. This is called animism or the worship of nature, animals, rivers, or the "unknown forces of the world". To explain all of this animism which sprang up independent in different religions.
The next for of worship that i could track back was animal/higher power worship. Almost every form of the older religions talks about gods, or demigods which tend to appear in the shape of animals. Satan = Seperant, Christ = Lamb of god, Ra = sun, Romulus and Remus = sons of a wolf. Again something that they don't understand like animals, sun, stars (e.g. Jesus 12 followers = 12 constellations) is called a god. Some followings that like Mesopotamia which focused on the "giants" which were said to come from the stars (maybe an alien). Even though some Asian regions predates Mesopotamian Buddhism does not. Buddhism is similar to Bonpo in which a child of a powerful authority figure goes out and sees suffering, this child meditates to find what if the meaning of the things he doesn't understands. Creating a religion in the process.
So lets remember most religions started out as a basic worship of the things we don't understand. And as we started to understand the world around us religion started to teach people to be nice. Becuase of the sin/evil religion starts to instill the fact that there is a punishment for evil. (Rebirth into something bad/Hell) And for those who are good get rewarded (Rebirth into someone important/Heaven).
Then after this the religions realized that artifacts have important meaning and that can be made a profit on. As this new age dawned people started to treat religion as a business and bend the rules to their own satisfaction. However of course some people aren't like that... Some rules bending was e.g. 1000 years of praying to get into heaven if you fought and killed, they realized that if 1000 people prayed it'd only take 1 year. This business model of religion is more known in regions like Scientology which basically take your money for some crappy books (i've met some people who've lost there entire lives becuase they joined Scientology.) These regions are more of cults than anything else becuase people realize that a strong enough belief for something can make people do anything. (e.g. killing themselves, donating their entire life savings, etc.)
Man has just started to dawn, I want to hear you religion and why you chose it. Maybe it was just a religion you grew up with, maybe you were lost and found a religion that you truly understand becuase they have the same beliefs as you. Or maybe your just an atheist becuase you don't believe in religion or haven't found the right religion yet. Whatever your cup of tea i want to hear it and why.
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 29 2011, 12:57 am by Tempz.
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