“Primitives” have the same brains we do today and were capable of understanding the same things we are.

Lol that’s the problem then - bc even today, what do we really “know”!? It’s not about intelligence though it’s cultural - what did they care about knowing then? Like what is a “point” and why would it matter if the universe came from one or many of them? And obviously it took a great deal of time - building anytime at all does not happen instantly.

Moreover there’s an ancient Semite vs. modern English translation issue with the words - that identical word “day” for instance is translated elsewhere as “season” and a bunch of other stuff, so basically 7 epochs / eras? Like LOTR where we came in on basically the end of the age of the elves, as it transitioned into the age of men.

It’s a story, meant to be told to children. The same way that we today preach the miracle of Santa Claus - which supposedly prepares kids for learning that not everything they are taught is strictly speaking “true”, and therefore that they need to question everything to sort the truths from the lies. Whether we think it through in those terms or not, that tradition survived somehow?

There are many philosophers, like Daniel Dennett the famous (and now late) atheist counter-apologist, that provide many examples of how religion has been helpful in the past, to get us from purely and literal tribal cultures to great nation-states. It’s our history, and it got us here to today, right or wrong.

Anyway you can go to ideological war with the 84% of people world-wide that affiliate with some kind of religion if you want (according to this Pew study, but I’m saying that there are allies within Christianity, within Muslim, within Buddhism, etc. who are capable of rational thought. Even as there are also a handful of atheists who, perhaps having inherited their beliefs, are dumb as fuck. There are fewer, and the system does not encourage that, but it does happen.

I outright enjoy talking with people of any religious background who genuinely believe whatever they believe, so long as they are willing to critically examine the nature of their beliefs. Such people are much more likely to arrive at whatever “truth” is out there to find, than someone sitting still who isn’t listening to anyone. Question everything - sound familiar? It’s both the atheist creed (or was at some point) as well as literally commanded in the Christian worldview (not that people give a damn about what the Bible says) as well as practically the scientific motto.

Or at least it used to be. People seem to be redefining what “science” means these days, as in science is why planes fly - it’s not though, science is the PROCESS that lead to the DISCOVERY of HOW planes fly. So how is it that religious people are doing the questioning process more than some modern atheists, who simply say “this is the way the world works”?

To be clear, I have no idea how the world works. I wasn’t there when it started, I only know what I can see now, which is extremely limited. Hence why I prefer my answer as being “I do not know”, rather than “I know and let me tell you how it happened…”

What the fuck are you even talking about here?

Our two answers are much more similar than I think you realize. But they do differ somewhat in important ways too, although it sounds like you are triggered so let’s end it here: I know exactly what you are saying and if you think about it you’ll see what I was trying to convey, but there seems little point to going more rounds just emotionally venting our upset feelings at the fuckers who misuse their authority as “leaders” of their communities to abuse people - including but not limited to children. Maybe authoritarianism thought control to abolish all religion everywhere would do the trick, but so long as wishes were horses then we all would ride, and I think there are better ways - and that’s what I was trying to convey. Not that magic exists as a replacement for science (although again, it does exist when viewed from the other side of it - i.e. to those who don’t understand the principles yet, how could it be viewed as anything but magic? If we were suddenly picked up by sufficiently advanced aliens, we would react no differently ourselves, bc as you said, we really aren’t any different at all from those that came before, only our culture has shifted).