The world’s best advertising campaign?
“A couple thousand years ago, a woman named Mary became pregnant. She was still a virgin though because God, a higher power who created the earth, miraculously impregnated her with a son; Jesus. Jesus, who was really God Himself, died from a painful execution on a cross, but came back to life a few days later.”
I admit I’m having a bit of fun with that story and am by no means a biblical scholar, but nonetheless it’s fascinating that millions of people would agree with the above story, or at least a very close version of it.
Why would anyone believe any story even remotely resembling this?
Interestingly enough, the very same people who believe this kind of story wouldn’t believe it if it happened today.
Imagine someone’s teenage daughter came home and said, “Dad, I’m pregnant. I know what you are thinking but it’s really not like that. God is the father. I didn’t do anything”.
Very few people would even consider that as a possibility; whereas they feel certain the story with Mary is true. Interesting…..
On the surface, both stories are equally eyebrow raising. No one living today actually witnessed either conception. Why believe the first story to be absolutely true, while giving the second story no merit whatsoever?
Let’s look at some possible factors:
1. We know that millions of other people believe the story of the virgin Mary. Even some extremely intelligent people believe this. In many circles, you’ll be accepted and respected by believing the Mary story. You’ll be outcast as a gullible fool if you believe the tale of the teenage daughter. It’s a well-known fact that people are more likely to believe what people around them believe.
2. The Bible also uses an impressive advertising tactic. Heaven and Hell are the ultimate pain and pleasure motivators.
We are told, as impressionable infants, that believing in God and following the Bible will bring us to the coolest place we can imagine after we die. The place is called Heaven and it is amazing. It’s better than anything on earth and better than anything we can even imagine. You will be there for an eternity as well.
Oh yeah, and if you don’t believe in this story than you will go to a place worse than you could imagine for eternity. It’s called Hell and you’ll burn and be tortured there for eternity.
That’s even more motivating than saying, “[Santa] knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake”.
3. We are also told that God is so much better than us in every way. It’s impossible for us to even start to imagine how great He is so there is really no point in trying. He’s beyond science and beyond us. We’ll never be able to understand Him. It’s better to just have faith in Him and forget about your own logical ideas, which are just pathetic anyway in comparison.
Although impressively shocking, these factors may very well explain why so many people believe in this story. There is so much to gain from believing in it and so much to lose from not believing in it. We hear it when we are young and the fear stays with us. When our logical minds try to tell us not to be gullible, we can remind ourselves that our own logical minds are relatively useless tools anyways.
March 27th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Wow. I never really thought about it that way. I believed in God my whole life. What should I do now?
March 28th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Christianity as an advertising campaign. So who benefited? The early followers of Jesus were brutally killed for generations for their beliefs and persisted even as they were offered leniency if they disavowed him. There was no secret cabal of Dr. Evil-types cynically plotting to fool the world into believing a fairy tale. The early Christian Church was founded by true believers who suffered unspeakably for their beliefs. If they benefited at all during those early times, it was with the conviction that their suffering on earth would be rewarded in the afterlife.
March 30th, 2008 at 4:05 am
What came first, the chicken or the egg? A possibility that seems likely is that the early followers actually chose to believe because it was a means of alleviating themselves from their brutal reality. It is actually well-known that people are genetically designed to choose the path of least resistance (i.e. suppressing their emotions of fear and pain); and they do this at all costs. For example, many individuals who have suffered unspeakable pain, like soldiers who have returned from war, have very complex suppression mechanisms that alleviate their painful memories. Far more signicant, one would expect, is the topic at hand. That is, for such a important topic - peoples’ own lives - one would expect each individual to follow a common belief that allows themself to escape their true reality. A painful and inevitable ending. Unless they are one of the lucky ones - they get blasted by a nuke!!