Religious indoctrination is built upon emotion, not intelligence.

I was also brought up with the fam believing crazy, seemingly koolaid ridden things. Ever wonder how some people, otherwise quite intelligent, can believe such shit?

"Anyway, I think what keeps this indoctrination going on and on is the emotions behind it all"
"Eve" iow, quite possibly.
well plus the overwhelming desire for soul-immortality, cult of sol invictus iow

"Personal Devotions"; I hope to god this crap ends soon.......

A pastor and a hypnotist use similar techniques but with the hypnotist you know what you are getting into when you go. Church is covert hypnotism

As a child I was brainwashed to exercise blind faith in the church and its leaders, and to not put any trust in science, facts or evidence. What a horrible scam.

Scary isn't it

We are now in the day and time that believers have put their god in another dimension so you cannot touch him in any way. Not only would this prevent such a god from lifting the rock, it would also prevent us from knowing anything about him.

Imagine 2 fish bowls with fish in one and god is in the other. Believers now claim their god can jump in and out of dimensions like jumping in and out of fish bowls and leave no evidence at all of doing it. Isn't that lovely. How did the believers ever come to this knowledge in the first place?

All that , and yet , here you are

zealots can accomplish things that normal, "unzealoted" people tend not to do.

And why wouldn't they...its worked for thousands of years...if it ain't broke...don't fix it.

In retrospect, I think church service was a place where people could let loose their emotions and get a release of sorts. It was ‘ok’ to weep at the altar, to shout ‘amen’; to babble in tongues, etc.
In my house, it was NOT acceptable to be emotional...except for my narcissistic mother; she was drama personified, but the family ‘overlooked’ her behavior. Big difference in what was acceptable in each setting.
Plus God was there perfect patsy. Prayer not working? God answered, he just said NO. Or you ain’t living right.
A baby dies? God needs another angel. ‘But...can’t god just make angels instead of taking...’—SHUT UP, that’s blasphemy!!
You find out you have a painful chronic illness? God is testing you. It’s all in his plan.

Yup. A metric fuckton of total BULLSHIT.

God's got more important things to do than make rocks so big he can't lift them. He's got worlds to create, with but a wave of his hand and people to make then destroy for not pleasing him despite the fact that being omniscient he knew in advance they weren't going to please him so why make them in the first place? He's also got toast to burn his image into and virgins to impregnate immaculately and all those prayers to not answer.

God's a busy guy.