The tale can’t be doubted or argued, as it is the truth. Therefore, the tale is much stronger than the miracle. As stupid as it may sound, it does work every time. From there, the classic behavior of the true believers is that they separate themselves from the crowd and perform their new rituals. That makes them feel special. Also, it injects in them the feeling of a tribe. It’s a natural feeling of security that we inherited from our evolutionary path, making them feel happy.
After that, the group starts to grow as more lost souls are absorbed. Usually, we do want to belong to an exclusive group just to satisfy our egos, especially if it supposedly promotes virtues. However, the tribe feeling is lost once the group reaches a large number of believers. At that point, everyone is trapped under the legitimacy of the prophet, the shaman, or an authoritarian, charismatic leader.
Lastly, if this new religion survives until the birth of the next generation, then usually it will survive forever. It will then be indoctrinated to the youngsters as part of their identity that can’t be separated from their personality. Then, their personality is forged by the tale as the absolute truth.
Belief is what makes a religion. If you could see the miracle, then it is a fact, as the miracle itself happened in front of your eyes, so believing is not needed. That is why magicians are not gods or prophets.
Oina did produce a miracle, a talking baby that everybody saw, therefore the people who saw that are not believers. Instead, they are, in fact, witnesses. It occurred to me the story of one of the most charismatic prophets of all time, about when he woke up one morning and said to everyone that he went on a dragon to meet the gods. That was the best-selling pitch ever, so bold, fearless, direct, and without leaving any doubt. He said, “You must believe in my story, or you will go to hell.” It worked.
Second, creating a strong religion needs strong preparation, or let's say an impossible preparation. Strong religions are like unicorns. They do rarely appear over long gaps of time, mainly because they are, in fact, created by the circumstances of society itself and not by prophets, gods, or even masters. Masters usually choose a simpler life.
Through time, some societies cornered themselves miserably in a small mental space. Some of them did reach the point of extreme disorder where no one could live properly, not even the rich and the strong. From there, they needed a radical, new way of life that cannot be dictated by the same people that are the cause of the disaster, and they needed that fast.
Some organized societies did appoint dictators to sort out their lives. Others, not that organized and mainly tribal, created a prophet, as he dictates god’s new way of life as facts and orders. He is usually a trusted person in the community, but a kind of outsider. His behavior will shift day after day, usually starting in hesitation and ending up as the true messenger or a god.
I never blamed the prophets for thinking that they are chosen by the gods, or even they are the gods, as their message is like a holy frisbee played and loved by everyone around them. Fights will erupt, of course, between the different groups, and violence will be necessary to break up the old system and replace it with the new one. The new believers with their new dogma will emerge from the bottom of the society and may win if they really believe in their cause or, let's say, in their gods. The irony is, the more faithful they are, the more successful they become.
Belief is the building block of the homo sapiens’ core behavior. It is not an evolutionary mistake. It is a brilliant way of existence. We can't calculate all the risks and produce a clear estimation of the dangers or opportunities. All that comes is the imagination and belief, building for us a global analysis based on earlier experiences or sometimes based on a vaguely distorted analogous situation. This distorted estimation, even if it is false, keeps us moving and trying. It gives us a ground truth until a new belief emerges or we correct our reality with facts.
But meanwhile, we have to believe in our distorted reality so we can keep moving forward. We must remember that our planet was flat at some point in our history, and we used to believe in that as the truth to make sense of our world. A world where everything is quantified is a still, and it is a timeless world where imagination and belief are non-existent. Religion is believing, and it is a natural phenomenon. It cannot be concocted in a laboratory.
Third and last, religion needs to resolve a problem, or at least, tries. The first Egap tribes didn’t create gods to help them make sense of the natural phenomena and didn't count much on deities. Of course, they had some, but only as folkloric stories. They never practiced forced rituals to beg the gods to save them. They never thought that they were special. They even do not kill animals, and they think they are equal with them. The forest was their playground the same as it was for the rest of the creatures. They never thought that if they made a god, she would help them in their daily routine of gathering wood for fire and fruits for nourishment.
They must now admit that they are different from the rest of world, mainly because they lived in a continent, all alone, in small tribes that didn’t need to fight for resources. Anyone could form his tribe
