TheERK said:
If the post still makes its point without the use of an Achyara S. quote, then she should not have been referenced in the first place.
OK, fine....
What about the theory that "Religion" actually started out as fables to asist an agrarian peoples without a written language to understand and plot the planting and harvesting seasons by making up stories about the shapes they drew in the stars and how they moved in relation to each other?
It's hard to deny the obvious parallels between the Bible stories and the stories of ancient Grecian and Roman mythology (yes, we call it "mythology" now), and it is all but impossible to deny the basis of those Gods and stories were based on the planets and constellations moving through the sky predictably at different times of the year.
Later, people tried understanding more about the world around them, but were initially unable, so simply assigned the "unknown" tasks to these characters (which, amazingly and sadly, "enlightened" people
STILL do) that were made up (characters that were known to be ficticious characters in simple fables) by the "primative" people that created them.
It is no coincidence that we find evidence of many ancient civilizations practicing (seemably even perfecting) astronomy.
Some even seem to have astronomy as a central point that their civilizations revolved around.
Perhaps most notably, the Mayan astronomical calendar, ancient Egypt and Stonehenge (which the latest evidence reveals that it was built long before the Druids were in the region, and was built during the time that "primative" agrarian societies lived there).
Then we find ourselves at step 1.
Don't forget that there was an important step between 1 and 2 (step 1.5) when people started to amass in larger civilizations and interact with people of OTHER civilizations and complex systems of governing those masses HAD to form.
Some brilliant person realized the power these "Gods" had over people and how much power (s)he could weild over people if (s)he could contain and control them and what people thought about them.
They finally perfected it, and thus, the Holy Roman Catholic Chruch was born on the cusp of step 2.
How's that?