When did you transcend your own psyche so that you can stand outside it and tell us how things really are?
in the above case i use a principle from my own school of analytical nihilism known as 'promethean75's razor'. and what this principle allows me to do is disclose the distinction between sensible metaphysical statements about empirical objects and processes, and nonsensical metaphysical statements about concepts about empirical objects and processes. what i have discovered is that there are far less sensible metaphysical statements that can be made, then philosophers and theologians like to believe. my duty is to identify that very thin line between such kinds of statements and serve the philosopher/theologian who makes them, a bologna sandwich.
that beind said, there is absolutely nothing that can be derived directly from experience that could sensibly lead a philosopher/theologian to taking any of the available religious doctrines seriously for even a moment. now because there is almost certainly no 'god', and, all things must have causes, there must be something other than the existence of the thing believed to exist through the kinds of metaphysical reasoning that leads philosophers/theologians to think it does, that is responsible for making them believe the things they do. in other words, it isn't because 'god' exists that people think 'god' exists. something else is responsible for this hermeneutic intellectual process, and the bad news is that it's almost without exception drawn from and out of a deeply entrenched psychological anxiety... and the even worser news is that this anxiety is itself rooted in the general constitutional weakness and fragility of the human psyche.
the only thing of interest to me regarding the history of religions is an anthropological and sociological examination of the kind of environment in which the religion evolved. the kinds of influences responsible for leading a particular type of people to believing a particular version of this kind of nonsensical metaphysical thinking. this general investigation falls under the rubric of historical materialism, first, and then from that basis particular facts of analysis can be ascertained. for instance, why christians believed in 'this' kind of god while hindus believed in 'these' kinds of gods, etc. or why this religion permits polygamy while this one doesn't. or why this religion holds strongly to the notion of 'sin' while that other one does not. so on and so forth.
as you can see once i've established that both a logical/empirical proof for the existence of 'god' is impossible, and have as well dismissed the possibility of revelatory knowledge of 'god' (there are mental hospitals and opium dens for folks like that), i'm still at liberty, as an analytical nihilist, to seek the actual causes for why and how people believe in 'god(s)' and offer them, at the least, a bologna sandwich.
