How can somebody who studies history be religious?

How can somebody who studies history be religious?

If you learn about how judaism developped, how it started as a normal polytheistic religion with Yahweh just one god among many.
And then judaism copied the duality of good and evil from Zoroastrianism and Yahweh became the single God.
Then finally, Jesus of Nazareth appears, a jewish preachers wo teaches about the end of the world and anti-materialism.
After his death, the Church forgets his message almost immediately, and instead they teach how Jesus died for our sins.

For somebody who knows all of this, where is the room for divine intervention?
Isn't it perfectly clear that religion is a story that was made up by men and that changed over time?

The role of religion is far beyond that conception, one is religius when adopt a certain religion for its moral values etc and not for the creationist part, which is clearly made up

You can come up with your own morality through an ideology without attaching a mythology to it

Not everyone is a ubermensch unfortunately

Cool pic though, where did you find it?

You can say the same thing about morality. The fact that the modern day morals we hold dear are inventions within history honestly bothers me sometimes.

To an extent they are but they actually have utility, unlike religion. Murder and stealing for example need to be suppressed for us to form a society as large and complex as our own. Hobbes already solved this problem

>lol this one book is not true
>b/c this other book says so

think more deeply

i googled history of religion

I personally agree, knowing about the vast variety of human spiritual beliefs and how they spring from natural phenomena and human creativity makes me certain that none of them are exclusively cosmological true.

However at the same time people are strongly influenced by whatever culture they live in, perhaps if indoctrinated early enough, they could learn about other religions but compartmentalize their own as more valuable.

We are fortunate enough to live in a society that has no real strict social consequences for nonconforming belief and behavior, so we are more free to reject religious lifestyles. Perhaps others don't have that luxury and need to remain religious for social expectations.

Read your Campbell.

Uploading a higher quality one.

>You can come up with your own morality
>just follows the 10 Commandments anyway

kek

>religion doesn't have utility

Go read some Weber and Durkheim bub

Is there a list for all the religions that were the main rival of Christianity before the schism of 1054?
>Judaism
>Greco-Roman paganism
>Neo-Platonism
>Manichaeism
>Arianism
>Hethenism
>Heresy
>Islam
Any others?

It's all about the mental gymnastics and the small gaps.

Very few people actually follow them. They're treated like a version of the golden rule, but the first three are insular. Also, no rape.

>For somebody who knows all of this, where is the room for divine intervention?
Revelation across time and space(religion tends to coalesce toward monotheism in a lot of places).
God revealing Himself as time goes on.
Stuff like that.
Besides, Yahweh seems to be taken as a henotheistic being from the Shasu.

>For somebody who knows all of this, where is the room for divine intervention?

The supernatural, among other things. It's impossible to honestly study history without noticing it.

>atenism created Zoroastrianism

That's just idiotic. Just because two religions have similarities does not mean they copied off each other. The Israelites have never been polytheistic. OP believes he is enlightened by his own intelligence.

>the Israelites have never been polytheistic

LALALALALALA I can't hear the heresy.

>OP believes he is enlightened by his own intelligence

I hope the archbishop rapes you.

>The Israelites have never been polytheistic
Jesus, the Bible admits they were polytheists. Why the fuck would they worship Baal Hadad if they didn't think he existed?

Which of their works would you suggest starting off on?

I dunno, I could see someone still believing in a philosophically grounded religion like Neo-Platonism, Buddhism, or early Taoism. But believing that some tribal mythology or another is divinely revealed truth is just downright inane.

Cause you can still believe in god even if you know that the bible was written by several writers and that much of the things written in it are factually wrong. You cna even still believe knowing that much written in it was for political and social reasons.

You see, religion and tradition come in when you have to weigh in between two options that seem equalliy valid for you.
Think of religion, the one you were born into or the religion of your ancestors, as a guide in the unknown, that through history directs yo uforward exactly when you are not sure what to do when faces with many valid options.

The question is not to come up with some moral understandings in theory but to have a moral framework which you will actually follow when you must make an actual choice in real life.
You can write a book but how do you write one others will want ot read?
Religions have the power of history behind them, they transcend your single life and stretch far back and this deep history is what gives them strength and validity.