![]() The priest takes a piece of bread and says, in the Latin version, ‘Hoc est Corpus’ and, suddenly, the bread actually becomes the body of Jesus, though everyone can see that, in fact, it does no such thing. A prime example is the Christian ritual of Eucharist. Then was added a creation myth and a repetitious ritual. Some of the stories are much as already mentioned. Then throw in a spot of personal sacrifice here and there. Second, fix it in peoples’ minds with a series of easy rituals. First, cook up some appealing yarn that could not actually be proved to be wrong. So how, in the past, did all these holy men – each with his own personal axe to grind – win over the peasants so that they started to believe the stuff they were being handed? It was done via a highly successful sequence. And again, we have only the words of the Prophet to confirm that he really did once go riding on a winged horse name Burak. Similarly apart from bits of the equally dubious Bible and its priests there is no evidence that anyone ever walked on water or rose from the dead. For example, other than for the highly questionable contents of the holy literature of Hinduism there exists no evidence that the sacrifice of a horse really does explain the creation and history of the universe. This weakness for stories is nowhere more prominent and successful than in the sphere of religion. In short the story has, in a way, taken over the real truth, and ourselves with it. Without it nothing is secure and might all just collapse. The world as we know it seems to depend on the story. ![]() It may well come to influence much that we do and much that follows from that. We may even get married according to the dictates of the story. It intrudes when we try to explain things that are hard to explain. ![]() It features when we give evidence in a law court. It crops up in all sorts of unexpected places. ![]()
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