Quote:
Originally Posted by Flacker
I'd like to see a non-church source for this one please. They just gleefully and willingly abandoned their traditional beliefs for Christianity, because it was better? More relatable? Please provide reasons why these natives would have discarded their existing belief system without any influence?
|
Indigenous faiths in the New World rarely endured for more than a generation after first contact. There was coercion, of course. But to the millions who saw their civilization and way of life collapse overnight, with disease wiping out nine out of ten in their communities and all their rituals proving impotent to stem the tide, it must have seemed clear that their gods had abandoned them.
Humans are adaptable creatures. If a conquerors’ credo seems more powerful, we’ll switch horses mid-race. Look at Islam. In 630 it was an obscure religion confined to the Arabian peninsula. Eventually, it became the faith of the great majority of people in the Middle East and North Africa. There weren’t enough Arabs at the time to impose Islam through coercion alone. Locals saw which way the wind was blowing, and must have also found something appealing and persuasive in the tenets of the religion itself.
People who think religion persists and spreads only through coercion don’t understand human nature and psychology.