Bogus shit people try to implant in you so that they're the only ones that can ''fix'' you.

A form of mind control?

Bye.

In my opinion, the people who made these religions knew it was complete crap, but they were smart and wanted to create a perfect world, so in convincing people he(referring "them" to "he" now) is right they will follow what he says. Sin to them is "Don't do this and you go to heaven; eternal peace," sin to whoever thought of it is "Do this, and nothing will happen, but I'll follow it for the people." I believe people who devised religions were atheists, including Jesus. Christianity however was devised from Jesus' magical powers so they would say "Whoa I'm not going to take this guy's word that he's the son of God, he's just being modest, this guy is God he freaking rocks!" So now Jesus in fairy land is saying "Whoa guys, don't praise me... Dad?" all God can say is "Your all the rage now son..." Yeah I kind of went off on a rant there, but you kind of get my point right? Anyway...

Lil' notes for lazy people:

Sin = Order

God = His son?

Properly designed and followed religion = Peace

Designers of religion = Atheist

Christianity = Design taken to seriously

Jesus = Some atheist who knew how to do some "rabbit out of the hat" tricks.

I shouldn't really use the "=" symbol because it's all opinion, I should've used the "~" why didn't I just modify it? I do a lot of strange things.

For the most part, I disagree with you. Generally speaking, yes, people who invented religions *did* believe in these things they said. That it was a method of control was a mere positive side-effect; kind of like how getting extra protein is a side-effect of practicing animal sacrifice in certain cultures.

The way that they thought they had received the Truth, however, seems surprisingly similar, and may indicate that religious experiences, of all kinds, ultimately come from the same source in the brain. I'm not versed in any neurobiology, however, so I can't say at all if that's true.

Nah. Religions of hunter-gatherers or nomads are radically different from the much later agricultural and/or city/town-based religions that grew up once humans started farming year-round. And those evolved over time as well- becoming less about immanent powers of an incomprehensible and arbitrary natural world, and more about abstracted reflections of the natural world, or of the mental processes of humans that had the time and safety to think about such things at length. At which point we can say 'And then came monotheism.' Though if you want a history of *that*.... well.... have you got a few months? It's incredibly complicated.

So basically: It's pretty much impossible to talk about an original religion. It's no more true than the idea that goddess worship (goddess-only, I mean) predates any male deity worship. That was based upon assumptions that had their base in the misinterpretation of artifacts such as the Venus of Willendorf. Archaeologists and anthropologists either ignored or did not have the other types of objects (votive, maybe?) that were common at such sites- there were lots of phallic figurines, for instance, in the same sites. This shows less the possibility of goddess worship, and more the possibility of something akin to what later became known as the 'doctrine of signatures'- the idea that the 'microcosm' of the human form was reflected by the 'macrocosm' of the universe, or world in the case of the ancients (the world was realized to be much bigger over time, as we all know).

Sin? easy:

First, you need a protractor. Create a right triangle ABC with C as the right triangle. Let angle B be your angle. Make rough measurements of the three sides of the triangle. now:
sin B = AC/AB

Easy as Π.

OK, I am not onboard with the idea of sin as spoken of by the current religions. However, I suspect that the idea may be much bigger than that. My concept of sin goes back to before we even had the idea of a spoken language. Basically, it would refer to actions that cause stress and that could have happened differently.

As an example, some of us have had the experience of hitting our thumb with a hammer. It hurts and having done that, we resolve not to do it again. Yet, at the moment that it happens, it can be a natural thing for one to say “that was stupid of me, why did I do that?” If you who are reading this have not done exactly that, I am sure that you can think of an example that merits a similar response.

Now consider primitive societies.

Most of them tend to build around clusters of people who number around 200 individuals. So everyone knows everyone else. Such social groups still exist today where there is some degree of isolation. In such groups, there is a concept of a group morality where if one individual acts in a way that is apart from the interest of the group, they will become outcast from the group. Since that still goes on today, we can be reasonably sure that such is a basic idea.

So now we have a larger idea of “sin”. Act out of what matters to the group and you may not remain part of the group. Again, the act precedes the stress. Even so, avoidance of stress is a powerful motive to act as part of the group.

As societies grow larger, the same idea continues. Once some form of social bureaucracy develops, then the really old idea becomes the idea of using stress avoidance as a method of social control.

So far, pretty much everyone that posted has agreed that it is a human construct.

Do any theists care to chip in?