by William Collins

Created on: May 21, 2009   Last Updated: May 23, 2009

I think we all wish we knew the answer to this question and although there are many who will tout their religious beliefs as if they are facts the truth is that they are not.

(Please keep in mind that this subject could be a very large book, I will be flying through the information for quick reading.)

Cultures across the globe in ancient times developed their own mythologies to convey important social and moral lessons to the youth and people. These stories used local and cultural symbols (and often outrageous characters and situations) to pass on information in such a way that spoke on a deeper level than the mind and ego system normally allow. (Think of how a piece of music or art or story can affect you on a level that is difficult to put into words.)

Eventually dominant cultures canonized their beliefs and as they met other groups tried to convert or kill the heathens who don't want to change. Weaker cultures, now with their belief systems destroyed, fall apart (Think American Indians and innumerable other small groups and cultures) and those that aren't killed are absorbed into the dominant culture with their canonized mythology that we will now call religion.

The problem is that the absorbed people often have a hard time relating to the stories of the new religion that use symbols and situations that they are not familiar with, from a part of the world they have never seen. They understand the concept of God and get it and may even follow the religion on an intellectual level but how do they effectively pass these ideas to the next generation and still have a positive effect when there is nothing there that they can relate too? The answer is: You can't.

Churches rise up to pound in this new belief and control the masses through guilt and punishment. They care mostly that they get more money to build more churches and spread their religion further to get more money, to build more churches (repeat ad nauseam). The culture spreads, absorbing more people and eventually the religion has to change with the times and to appeal to more people...God becomes a business and the marketing strategy changes to appeal to more and more people.

The point is that all the cultures found their own way to relate to a higher power. They call their higher power by a different name or names and have different ways of honoring it. All cultures in all times have had some belief system about such things; it is one of the traits of humans that could be called innate (along

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