“Now, primitive man is neither a metaphysician nor an idealist. He does not concern himself with the origin and destiny of the universe, nor even with its nature, except so far as his necessities compel him to form some conclusions as to the nature of the forces around him. His gods are in no sense a creation of an “idealising faculty,” they are the most concrete matter-of-fact expressions. It is not even a question of morality. He does not say, “Let us make gods in the interest of morality and the higher life”; it is the sheer pressure of facts upon an uninformed mind that leads him to believe in those extra-natural beings, whose anger he is bound to placate.” -Chapman Cohen
Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. The Greek mind dying, came to a tranmigrated life in the theology and liturgy of the Church; the Greek language, having reigned for centuries over philosophy, became the vehicle of Christian literature and ritual; the Greek mysteries passed down into the impressive mystery of the Mass. Other pagan cultures contributed to the syncretist result. From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity, the Last Judgement, and a personal immortality of reward and punishment; from Egypt the adoration of the Mother and Child, and the mystic theosophy that made Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and obscured the Christian creed; there, too, Christian moanasticism would find its exemplars and its source. From Phrygia came the worship of the Great Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis; from Thrace, perhaps the cult of Dionysus, the dying and saving god. From Persia came millennarianism, the “ages of the world,” the “final conflagration,” the dualism of Satan and God, of Darkness and Light; already in the Forth Gospel Christ is the “Light shining in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.” The Mithraic ritual so closely resemled the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass that Christian fathers charged the Devil with inventing these similarities to mislead frail minds. Christianity was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world.” -Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization
In the Middle East, the Bronze Age people of Canaan–the ancient region between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean that roughly corresponds to Israel–also failed to adapt to the drying out of their lands around 2200 BC(E). In their case, says Arlene Rosen of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, it was their beliefs that were their undoing. ‘In Canaan, people believed that environmental disasters were caused by a deity unhappy with the people,” she says. Like the Mayans, the Canaanites could have coped with the new conditions by introducing new irrigation systems for their crops.
Instead, they attributed the shift in climate to the wrath of the gods, built more temples and prayed for better times. Within a short time, the cities and towns were abandoned and the people became nomadic hearders. -Rigid’ cultures caught out by climate change, article in the 5 March 1994 edition of New Scientist