I bet "But who moves the sun around if there is no Shamash" seemed like a very solid reasoning at the time.
Because religion is all about indoctrination. When I came out as atheist my dad said that all my ancestors were Christians and I'm stopping that tradition. I don't care, if they belived that doesn't mean that I also have to belive and just because it's a tradition it doesn't mean it should continue. He also said that goal of atheism is to make people lose their identity (he and many others in my country think that identity is just religious and natinoal identity, they also think that those two things are same). After that I had to explain to him what is identity, how it's impossible to lose it and that there is no agenda behind atheism.
It's important to keep in mind that religion explained a lot of stuff, especially regarding health and wellbeing (you're sick = evil spirits), before we managed to figure out the actual workings of some natural laws. I mean, hygiene was only "invented" in the late 1800s and the mere idea of washing your hands before coming in contact with a hospital patient was considered preposterous.
Nowadays, although we have amazing instruments that help us keep track of stellar bodies, we still can't quite correctly predict the weather past 1 week. Might as well say that's up to the gods.
More on topic, back on those times, each city had its patron god and it was common for conquered cities to lose their god, having the statue moved to the conqueror's temple.
But that's before the creation!
Well at least the sun actually exists and you can see and feel it and measure it with many different devices. It's nice when people appreciate an actual physical body and this one certainly has forces at work that far exceed ones imagination. Considering humans are "stardust" and we need sunlight, it even makes sense to call stars creators of life.
Some people worship cookies, others worship smartphones, animals or a person of the opposite sex, hell even nowadays many non-religious people worship singers, politicians, influencers or what have you. I wonder if any culture worships galaxies or black holes or some other objects in space that are not a big ball of hot plasma, a planet or a moon.
Economics is the control system which filled the void in society vacated by religion after the enlightenment.
An arbitrary set of rules, conjured by the ruling class, obfuscated and protected from scrutiny, and imposed on the weary masses.
Finance, an arbitrary subset of mathematics, serves as its mythology.
Banks and financial institutions serve as its churches and cathedrals.
Economists serve as its priests.
God replaced by GDP.
Deist arguments do not validate your brand of theism.
Your god is a lie, my god is a lie - all gods are lies! Hail Eris, all hail Discordia!
Or "none of the above" perhaps
It’s moments like this when religious people get all mystical and say that all religions are ultimately orbiting the same thing. They will say this as if they are the first person to ever think of it, and as if it makes them a next level innovative thinker and an elevated spirit.
In fact it’s just a way to cop out of the issue. If all religions are the same then prove it and worship fucking Marduk or whatever. But no. Today religions are all the same. Tomorrow, we’ll be back to following the Bible literally because it’s objectively the direct word of god.
It's weird to me that some atheists here are seeing this as evidence that religious people are dumb. What makes anyone think that they wouldn't also be worshipping whatever god their parents and culture taught them to worship if they grew up in Babylonia 6000 years ago? This meme points out that we are the product of our upbringing. Calling religious folks stupid in this thread lacks the very self awareness that it criticises, and isn't going to win any arguments anyway.
Religion is a control mechanism. It helps people feel better about things they can't control, mysterious ways and all that, but it is always about control and power. Ea is gonna get you, be scared
time traveler story where a mormon travels to 2000 BC on mission and ends up accidentally creating mithraism
