[fingers]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

It's pretty easy to understand, really. Before there were reasonable explanations available for completely day-to-day phenomena (e.g. the sun, thunder, lightning, sandstorms, tornadoes...) you can see why people believed that there were "powerful beings" behind it; the early gods such as the Egyptian and Greek gods were the only explanations people could come up with, and stories were conjured up and elaborated on over time. Later, it was simplified by some into one "all-powerful" God (in Judaism) which spawned the offshoots of Christianity and later Islam... because, basically, as numbers increase you will ALWAYS start to get people disagreeing and coming up with their own variations, on everything.

As for how it spread, that's fairly simple too. Control. The Romans adopted Christianity because it was taking hold in the region and the old "gods" were being abandonned, and they spread it across Europe (replacing mainly paganism) as they conquered. Later, countries such as Britain and Spain did the same, but globally through colonialism / missionaries.

Religion is the root cause of ALL the evil in the world today, in the past, and will still be the root cause in the future until people realise how they've been hoodwinked for the last 2000 odd yeas