Let’s Be Honest about Why You Are a Christian or a Muslim: Your Forebears Murdered Their Way into Your Mind (Richard Carrier blog)

Christianity, as with all religions, started in one tiny place, when the rest of the Earth was populated by a wildly marvelous diversity of religious beliefs—and yet, curiously enough, the concept of warfare over religious differences was virtually nonexistent. Most people in ancient times believed it was proper to respect the gods of other peoples. This changed on a global scale when Christianity was spread, quite literally, by the sword. Those who attempted to assert their religious differences were harassed, tortured, robbed of their land and belongings, even killed. Before it achieved political power, Christianity was a small sect, a heresy against the Jewish faith, that had to accept equality among all the other religions of the Roman Empire. Yet it was the first religion to openly attack the religions of other people as false (the Jews, at least, were a little more tactful). Needless to say, Christianity only truly flourished when it had the ability to eliminate the competition—when it had the full support of Rome’s Emperors after 313 A.D., and when, in 395 A.D., every religion other than Christianity was actually outlawed...

It is not a coincidence that the two most widespread religions in the world today are the most warlike and intolerant religions in history...

So why are convictions still so strong when it comes to the certainty of such amazing claims as God and heaven or the miracles of Jesus? Though theologians still answer this question with the claim that it is evidence of their truth and God’s grace in the world, the real answer is that many are essentially afraid not to believe, a fear whose encouragement is built into each religion itself—as we saw, for example, in the quotations from scripture above. Besides threats of hell, we face an almost insurmountable degree of peer pressure when it comes to our religious convictions. Some still say to themselves that if everyone else believes it, it must be true. After all, how could so many people be that crazy or misguided? Some might jokingly call this the “lemming” effect, but it is no small force in society. Ask yourself how often you have held a serious critical discussion about the reasons and evidence supporting your beliefs. If you think about it carefully you might realize that the support for some of your beliefs is so vague or weak that the same reasons and experiences could just as easily support any religion on earth, including voodoo and alien mind control...

In the final analysis, the only reason you or anyone today is a Christian or a Muslim is because your forebears murdered their way into your mind. Had Christianity and Islam behaved peacefully and with tolerance and acceptance, and taught rather than threatened, abused, and poisoned to crush and displace its competitors and dominate society like an abusive tyrant, no empire would ever have been Christian or Islamic. The religions you would find familiar and socially accepted and providing of all the things you want, from answers to community, kindness and honesty, would be tolerant heathen pantheons. There might still have been corruption and villainy, but it wouldn’t have been the norm, and it would more freely and easily have been called out and diminished...

Christianity and Islam cannot survive true religious freedom because they only exist today because of their core DNA of religious oppression. By violently colonizing the globe, Christianity colonized your mind. You are only a Christian or a Muslim because of mass global murder. Not because of evidence, utility, or wisdom... 

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/43391