When I was young, I used to go to church with my family. Needless to say, I don't remember anything about going there. To me, it always felt forced and I never really connected with it. However, there are a bunch of stories that I remember from when I was a kid that I've come to find out are from religion. I didn't know it at the time, but they were stories out of the bible that were popularized to try to compete with a secular world.
Probably one of the biggest ones for me to find out was from the bible was Noah's Ark. I knew the story had god in it but I never realized it was specifically from the bible. Looking into the differences between the original version from the bible and the popularized version most people know, I noticed how much people get from popular culture rather than from actual church. Anytime I've ever heard anything about the story, it's always that he gathered two of every animal, a male and a female, so that he had one pair of each. In the original, he actually fourteen of every animal making seven pairs of each. I never knew that detail about the story and it makes me wonder how much religion relies on popular culture now to get out its stories into the world.
On the flipside of things, it also makes me wonder how much religion has had to change in itself in order to compete with everything else in the world. Originally, going to church was, in a way, the only form of entertainment people had. Over time, those who weren't actually devout had other things that they could do. As more people found other forms of entertainment, the church had to try to compete and its from this that more popular versions of stories in the bible were created. In order to continue spreading its message in today's world, religion must continue to find ways to grab peoples attention or else it will begin to fade as the world becomes more secular in its ideas.
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