How can so many people accept grotesque religious ideologies like hell and eternal damnation or actions like stoning death someone for "working" on the Sabbath?

I find humans frightening because they have embraced some terrible religious ideas and exploited them.

I wonder what psychological explanation there might be as well.

Largely people have evolved to believe what they are told by trustworthy authority figures when they are children. Children who didn't believe their parents when they said "don't go there" "don't touch that snake" "don't go near the fire" were much less likely to survive. This mechanism has been hijacked by religious memes and when rooted in childhood adults find it very hard to let them go.

There are remarkably few people with a serious and literal conviction in hell or stoning people to death who weren't taught it by rote in childhood.

I was taught vicious religious ideas as a child but I never embraced them.

I was completely forced into religion from a baby to 17 before being thrown out of home and so I believed some of it but never to the extent of my parents or some other people I knew.

I was never a hell and damnation person. I think religious indoctrination is part of the problem but not the whole problem.

I don't know how to explain unquestioning religious belief because I never had it. I could never question my parents but I always asked questions to myself.

Religious people have been proved wrong time and again throughout history yet still people believe. For instance when someone predicts the return of Jesus gets it wrong again and again yet retains followers. So it is not like their isn't counter evidence.

Also Christianity is totally ignorant of future history. It doesn't mention The British Empire, America, France, Spain,China and all the other major players in world history. So I don't even see how it maintained its relevance when it is just about the Middle East, Nomads, goat herders, Pharaohs and people with unpronounceable names. I had to read the bible every day for nearly two decades and couldn't see its general relevance past a few pithy quotes like "Judged not lest ye be judged" which most Christians seem to have ignored.

Here's a monstrous religious practice: mutilate a baby boy's dick, and right afterwards give him a hummer. Oh, and by the way don't worry that you might give him a fatal STD in so doing.

ETA: accuse any that criticise the practice of anti-semitism.

Andrew4Handel wrote:How can so many people accept grotesque religious ideologies like hell and eternal damnation or actions like stoning death someone for "working" on the Sabbath?

Well from my own experience, fear of Hell - even if I wasn't entirely sure what exactly it was - is so stupifyingly paralysing that it bypassed all my rational thought processes and grabs something deep and visceral in my gut, so that no belief seemed too outlandish or illogical if it offered a way of avoiding damnation.

There are probably many other reasons. There's unlikely to be one simple and straightforward explanation for a complex phenomenon like religion.

I find humans frightening because they have embraced some terrible religious ideas and exploited them.

This is true. But don't forget that humans are capable of great love and kindness and compassion, too. (This is something I struggle with myself)