The Myth of Christianity
By William Bezanson
About 3,000 years ago, the people of Greece believed that twelve immortal gods and goddesses lived up high, out of sight, on Mount Olympus, and that they monitored and influenced everyday life for normal mortals.
Those were the Olympians, the divine pantheon of ancient Greek culture. Zeus was the chief god, Hera was his wife, and the other ten were all related to them. Belief in this pantheon and its meddling in human affairs comprised the ancient Greek religion.
And these gods really did meddle in human affairs, according to the Greek myths. For example, during the Trojan War, as related by Homer in The Iliad, there were many direct interferences with the course of the war. When Paris shot an arrow at Achilles (a Greek leader) Apollo, the god of light, music, and enlightenment, being angry with Achilles, deliberately influenced the arrow to strike him in his heel, his only vulnerable body part (his “Achilles heel”), thereby killing him.
The common people took these stories seriously; they prayed to the gods, offered sacrifices to them, and looked to them for guidance in conducting their affairs and for defeating their enemies.
Now, in our modern era, some 3,000 years later, we enlightened and sophisticated folk look back in amusement at those simple Greeks. How juvenile they were! Imagine believing that there existed a pantheon of deities that deserved worship and interfered with human lives!
Well … let us stop and consider our own situation. Imagine 3,000 years from now, in our future. What will the even more enlightened folk at that time think of our own religions?
