Some Religion Beginnings

The information below came from the fantastic book "Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari. I highly recommend reading it.

It covers the entire span of human history up to and including Google and gene editing. Note, humans began before homo sapiens. There were previous 'homo' species.

Religions were just one small part of the book, but it points out that Polytheistic religions were all "local" in that they did not try to spread their beliefs outside their own area...

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Judaism argued that the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, yet his chief interest is in the tiny Jewish nation and in the obscure land of Israel. Judaism had little to offer other nations, and throughout most of its existence it has not been a missionary religion.

The big breakthrough came with Christianity. This faith began as a esoteric Jewish sect that sought to convince Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited messiah. However, one of the sect's first leaders, Paul of Tarsus, reasoned that if the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, and if he had bothered to incarnate himself in the flesh and to die on the cross for the salvation of humankind, then this is something everyone should hear about, not just Jews.

The Christian success served as a model for another monotheist religion that appeared in the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century - Islam.

Catholicism and Protestantism both involved accepting Christ's divinity and his gospel of compassion and love. However they disagreed about the nature of this love. Protestants believe that the divine love is so great that God was incarnated in flesh and allowed himself to be tortured and crucified, thereby redeeming the original sin and opening the gates of heaven to all those who professed faith in him.

Catholics maintain that faith, while essential, is not enough. To enter heaven, believers had to participate in church rituals and do good deeds. Protestants refuse to accept this believing whoever thinks entry to heaven depends upon his or her own good deeds magnifies his own importance, and implies that Christ's suffering on the cross and God's love for humankind are not enough.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Catholics and Protestants killed each other by the hundreds of thousands. On Aug. 23, 1572, French Catholics, who stressed the importance of good deeds, attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God's love for humankind. In this attack, St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, between 5,000 - 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered by Catholics in less than 24 hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organized festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican's rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors). More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those 24 hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence.