Today, in the United States of America, the vast majority of the world is Christian. The Pew Forum shows that 22 percent of the country's population is not affiliated with any religion and that about 70 percent of people living here are Christian. With this religious belief infecting the country like a virus, the American people should learn where much of their religious cultural beliefs actually come from. They don't come from the famous superhero named Jesus, but many of these ideas and models derive from the ancient Greeks. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay Thanks to the development of the human brain, we have managed to thrive in a violent world where we are now the most dominant species in all. Evolution has led us to outthink the predator instead of always having to outthink it. In the ancient world, we used our imaginations to craft weapons, armor, hunting tactics, shelter, and other basic items to help us survive. Over time, our thinking brains have improved these ideas to make our daily lives easier. However, the downside of having a thinking brain with an imagination that has been crucial to our survival is that it sometimes gets the better of us. As human beings, we tend to become spiritual creatures. Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson referred to it in an interview with Richard Dawkins at the planetarium. He said he has observed that when the majority of people are asked to identify the subject they have difficulty with in school, the most common answer is math. This leads him to believe that the human species may not have evolved to be rational, logical creatures, but rather to be spiritual, creative, and very fond of imagination. This is a very provable hypothesis when you realize that many people believe in visitations from aliens, Loch Ness monsters, Big Foot, ghosts, zombies, vampires, psychics and other irrational nonsense . Hollywood has managed to capitalize on these beliefs by making many unrealistic films that stimulate the human imagination and thus help bring in money. But when it comes to capturing the human imagination, perhaps no one has done it like the ancient Greeks. The ancient Greeks were a sophisticated civilization with a gift for storytelling. In The God Gene, there is a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright that says, “I believe in God, only I spell it nature.” This seems to describe the basis of Greek mythology. It seems that most of their stories were a way of describing nature. “But even these legends of the gods contain a germ of empirical reality, because they are linked to cosmic phenomena, such as the sky, the stars, the earth and the sea…”. They personified certain aspects of nature by giving them a human figure and magical powers that explained certain events and called this “God”. After passing down these stories from generation to generation, it is only natural that people begin to feel some sort of connection with them. Especially when it comes to stories of heroes and idols in a civilization constantly at war. This connection can give people a sense of the sublime and become an element of self-transcendence. Therefore, make them believe that these gods really existed: Zeus was the god of the sky, Poseidon the god of the seas, Hades the god of the dead, Hephaestus the god of fire and Demeter the god of agriculture and fertility. These are some of the gods ofGreek mythology attributed to natural causes of the world. It was the best attempt they made to make sense of their world since they did not have the sophisticated technology that currently exists in modern times. However, they didn't just have gods to explain cosmetic phenomena. They also had gods to explain basic human psychology or emotions. Examples are Eros who was the god of love and Ares who was the god of violence. These were a very important part of Greek culture as well as their education. In ancient Greek mythologies, the poets who wrote them seem preoccupied with the origin of the evil that exists throughout the world. Prometheus was a good example. He was known as the helper of man because of all the deeds he had done for the human race. One such act was when he gave fire to humans by stealing it from Zeus, because Zeus was denying it to humanity. As a result, Zeus' anger was aroused and he then had Prometheus and man punished. The man was punished by having the first woman, Pandora, presented. When she was introduced, she came with the gift of death, disease, and despair. Prometheus, on the other hand, was punished by hanging from a cliff for around 30,000 years until Heracles came to save him. According to this myth, man and Prometheus share the same guilt and this is the origin of evil. Heracles was an important figure of the Greeks, he represented courage and strength. In the myth, Heracles is punished by Hera because he is the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. Heracles kills his family and performs twelve horrible tasks in order to alleviate his guilt. After completing his tasks, he returns home where he is burned alive. The ways in which it was burned vary depending on which version of the myth is told. But basically, the ending is always the same. When he is burned, his mortal self descends to Hades while his divine self ascends to Mount Olympus where he is united with his father Zeus. This ending, that of a hero descending and ascending, is common in myths even today. Myths, as powerful as they were in ancient Greece, also had an influence on philosophy. Perhaps one of the greatest philosophers of all time was Socrates, and as great as he was, it is possible that he was still influenced by these myths. René Descartes, also known as the father of Western philosophy, had argued that no matter how great Socrates and Plato were, “they were always constrained by the conscience of their times.” But despite this, Socrates had managed to introduce a new perspective into people's minds. Regarding the soul, he explained it by dividing reality into two areas. The first realm was eternal and the second was physical. The physical realm is the material world where the body lives and dies, the eternal realm is where the soul is found. He asserted that the soul seeks truth and wisdom and that this is the only way for the soul to achieve eternal happiness. While this may not seem like a typical myth, it actually is by definition. A myth is a story used to explain a phenomenon, and Socrates' vision of the soul does indeed tell a story about life and the afterlife. All these myths of the ancient Greeks are deeply rooted in today's modern world. And better yet, seventy percent of America lives by these myths without even knowing it. As previously mentioned, the Greek gods had powers over every aspect of the natural world, over emotions, and over almost all of reality. We can see this resemblance in the Christian god today. It seems like what happened was that the Christian religion took all these Greek gods and made them.