Why do people still believe in fairy tales?

Question

Religious doctorine is nothing more. I think it's acceptable to embrace the spirtual side of religion but to accept the bible word or word... come on people, think for yourselves.

Answer 1

Why don't you wake up!? Do you think Jesus was kidding
when he was hung on that cross? He wasn't!!

and God Bless You, too

Answer 2

Let's say I accepted the dogma that told me to think for myself. Well, I wouldn't really be thinking for myself, since I first heard of thinking for one's self from someone else. In fact, my concept of what thinking is comes from a combination of experience and learning from others.

As for why people still believe in fairy tales...I wish they did. There is no more magical or inspiring a world than one in which your garden path runs past a fairy ring or a dragon roost. I think believing in such things makes for a better world.

But there is nothing of fairies in the Bible. Dragons do come up from time to time, though, and so I still have hope that the west will become once again superstitious.

Answer 3

i am not a religous person an don't believe in god an individual being, but religion gives people hope that there is more to life and that we are not just a crack of the whip in time for ever to be forgotten, it also give them structure to life and a great set of morals for the most part, any ways.

Answer 4

So you think the Bible is a fairy tale? Why? Why don't you believe in the Bible? And I'm being serious. Just tell me why you don't believe in the Bible.

Answer 5

Someday everyone will know the Bible is the true word of God. Even you. Hopefully you find out before it's too late

Answer 6

People believe in the fairy tales of religion, and in the Bible which is a compilation of fairy tales, because they are too lazy and too afraid to think for themselves.

Answer 7

I think that sometimes it's easier for people to live in a world where they think that have the answer to everything. Facing the truth about reality is tough for anyone, so give them a break.

Answer 8

Would it be so bad to believe that we are not part of something larger? Is your life so pathetic that there is no meaning unless you are in the service of a "lord"? If you answer yes to this question I feel very sorry for you.

Answer 9

I agree with The Fool

Answer 10

Fairy tales? You mean like the magic wand of random mutation turned a frog into a Prince over millions of years? I guess people will fall for anything. As P. T. Barnum said "There's a sucker born every minute".

Charles Darwin, always ready to come up with a theory about everything, explains how the "monstrous whale" originated:

"In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."—*Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859 and 1984 editions), p. 184.

The giraffe used to look just like other grazing animals in Africa. But while the other animals were content to eat the grasses growing in the field and the leaves on the lower branches, the giraffe felt that the survival of his fittest depended on reaching up and plucking leaves from still higher branches. This went on for a time, as he and his brothers and sisters kept reaching ever higher. Only those that reached the highest branches of leaves survived.

All the other giraffes in the meadow died from starvation (all because they were too proud to bend down and eat the lush vegetation that all the other short-necked animals were eating). So only the longest-necked giraffes had enough food to eat while all their brother and sister giraffes died from lack of food. Sad story; don’t you think? But that is the story of how the giraffe grew its long neck.

Picture the tragic tale: Dead giraffes lying about in the grass while the short-necked grazers, such as the antelope and gazelle, walked by them, having plenty to eat. So there is a lesson for us: Do not be too proud to bend your neck down and eat. Oh, you say, but their necks were by that time too long to bend down to eat grass! Not so; every giraffe has to bend its neck down to get water to drink. *Darwin’s giraffes died of starvation, not thirst.

So that is how the giraffe acquired its long neck, according to the pioneer thinkers of a century ago, the men who gave us our basic evolutionary theories.

Oh, you don’t believe me. Read on.

"We know that this animal, the tallest of mammals, dwells in the interior of Africa, in places where the soil, almost always arid and without herbage [not true], obliges it to browse on trees and to strain itself continuously to reach them. This habit sustained for long, has had the result in all members of its race that the forelegs have grown longer than the hind legs and that its neck has become so stretched, that the giraffe, without standing on its hind legs, lifts its head to a height of six meters."—*Jean-Baptist de Monet (1744-1829), quoted in Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 87.

"So under nature with the nascent giraffe, the individuals which were the highest browsers, and were able during dearths to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved . . By this process long-continued . . combined no doubt in a most important manner with the inherited effects of increased use of parts, it seems to me almost certain that any ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a giraffe."—*Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species (1859), p. 202.

Gather around and listen; we’re not finished with giraffes yet. There is even more to the story: "Once long ago, the giraffe kept reaching up into the higher branches to obtain enough food to keep it from perishing. But, because only those giraffes with the longest necks were fittest, only the males survived—because none of the females were as tall! That is why there are no female giraffes in Africa today." End of tale. You don’t believe it? Well, you need to attend a university.

"This issue [of how the giraffe got its long neck] came up on one occasion in a pre-med class in the University of Toronto. The lecturer did not lack enthusiasm for his subject and I’m sure the students were duly impressed with this illustration of how the giraffe got its long neck and of the power of natural selection.

"But I asked the lecturer if there was any difference in height between the males and the females. He paused for a minute as the possible significance of the question seemed to sink in. After a while he said, ‘I don’t know. I shall look into it.’ Then he explained to the class that if the difference [in male and female giraffe neck lengths] was substantial, it could put a crimp in the illustration unless the males were uncommonly gentlemanly and stood back to allow the females ‘to survive as well.’

"He never did come back with an answer to my question; but in due course I found it for myself. According to Jones the female giraffe is 24 inches shorter than the male. The observation is confirmed by Cannon. Interestingly, the Reader’s Digest publication, The Living World of Animals, extends the potential difference to 3 feet!

"Yet Life magazine, a while ago, presented the giraffe story as a most convincing example of natural selection at work."—Arthur C. Custance, "Equal Rights Amendment for Giraffes?" in Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1980, p. 230 [references cited: *F. Wood Jones, Trends of Life (1953), p. 93; *H. Graham Cannon, Evolution of Living Things (1958), p. 139; *Reader’s Digest World of Animals (1970), p. 102].