Christianity offers false hope to the weak minded.

In regards to past societies that lacked certain education for the masses, technological discoveries, or traditions, I am under no illusions that mankind today is inherently more intelligent in a way that really matters at all. For instance, amazing biotechnology has allowed us to create maize and soy seed and crop with foreign genetic features that make it temporarily resistant to certain pests and herbicides. A humongous amount of investment, not only in money, but in brain power to create such products. But thousands of executives, scientists, and other "smart" folks in biotech companies the world over, with the blessing of other "smart" folks in government (FDA, EPA), have purposefully looked the other way from the dangers and potential dangers this kind of product has introduced to the environment and humans. For all their intelligence, status, wealth, and scientific discovery in the palm of their hands, they have not created something that is better than a previous generation, they have actually made a worse product and possibly (probably?) endangered humans and the environment. And it is all because of the simple common humans weaknesses like "the love of money is the root of all evil", and basic stupid pride. We have felt we have reached some pinnacle of achievement because we are so scientifically, technologically superior to our ancestors, but in the end, it was "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". There is a vast gulf between knowledge and wisdom. We have taken in a great amount of knowledge in the sciences and negated the possibilities and advantages it could confer because we are still corrupted by our own demons. Regarding oral traditions and the possible biases and embellishments added (to, I presume, the Bible), it is surprising to hear that for the many centuries that have passed since, another form of "copy and paste" has proven the Hebrew Bible we have today is quite accurate, when looked through the lens of the Dead Sea Scrolls. "The well-preserved Isaiah scroll from Cave 1 illustrates the tender care with which these sacred texts were copied. Since about 1700 years separated Isaiah in the Masoretic Text (MT) from its original source, textual critics assumed that centuries of copying and recopying this book must have introduced scribal errors into the document that obscured the original message of the author. The Isaiah scrolls found at Qumran closed that gap to within 500 years of the original manuscript. Interestingly, when scholars compared the MT of Isaiah to the Isaiah scroll of Qumran, the correspondence was astounding. The texts from Qumran proved to be word-for-word identical to our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text." -Garry K. Brantley, M.A., M.Div. While the above quotes are not identifying orally passed down documents, the argument is the same: The old ways of passing on information to future generations could be accurate to a very high degree just because of the very fact that they are not technologically complex. Just imagine 2000 years from now, just how accurate will all the CD-ROMS, hard drives, magneto-optical discs, and NAND flash be for people to extract information from so they can learn about our times, traditions, discoveries, and beliefs? Considering the enormous complexity and quantity of 1s and 0s needing to be the right length and right order in order to produce even a small amount of tangible datum, and the complex devices (computers) needed to interpret that datum, I highly doubt our "more perfect" information storage methods will be any better than oral traditions or re-copied manuscripts we'd like to rag on. The whole issue about whether oral transmission is less accurate than written is actually debatable. The "phone conversation" idea is something of a ruse, because you are not invoking professionals or people dedicating their lives to remembering the details of a story. Regarding choosing Christianity out of fear for life and limb, you mention Galileo. Let's see... "It is often argued that Galileo"s scientific theories were being silenced because they were opposed to Church doctrine, but I believe that a closer examination of his argument reveals a different story. His arguments for the movement of the Earth were not scientifically valid, and thus the Church"s decisions against him cannot justifiably be viewed as anti-scientific." In addition... "By deliberately ignoring the Tychonic system he avoided having to deal with the fact that there was no observational evidence by which he could definitively say that the Earth moves. Particularly important to note is the tidal argument. In Day 4 of the Dialogues, Galileo attempts to use the tides as 'proof' that the Earth moves, which is not only incorrect, but also in direct contradiction with his earlier arguments about relative motion. His logic is internally inconsistent and offers a new theory which has no more power to explain the observations than the current (Tychonic) paradigm. His argument for its advantages over a system that serious astronomers didn"t even use anymore is irrelevant, and so, scientifically, his theory was too weak to be accepted." Finally, "...Galileo was a Christian. He responded from a distinctly Christian perspective to the secular professors who attacked his theory; in Letter to the Grand Duchess he invokes arguments by St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas regarding Biblical interpretation." http://www.bethinking.org... In regards to the Bible nullifying some of it's own teachings, such as, let's say, the killing of bulls or goats to atone for sins, this is something that could be given up by New Testament believers because those ceremonies and traditions were designed to demonstrate a spiritual truth about sin and sacrifice, as displayed in this verse... "For the law [old testament] having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." -Hebrews 10 So, with Hebrews informing us that the Old Testament believers were required to sacrifice bulls and goats so as to REMIND them continually of their sins and need for a sacrifice (Savior) to atone for sin, but did NOT mean that those blood sacrifices ACTUALLY atoned for their sins. In addition, it was NEVER possible that killing an animal would actually pay for the sins of a person. Only the sacrifice of Jesus could do that. He was the bull. He was the goat. The blood sacrifices were just spiritual pictures, and so in the New Testament era, since Christ had already done the real sacrifice, killing bulls and goats was no longer required.