Why didn’t early Christians critically examine the things they heard and debunk them then?
Because doing so would have been hard. Limited communication and transportation technology, as well as a lack of written documents, would have made it very hard to trace down the source of any claims. Also, because when people join a cult, they become emotionally invested in believing what they’re told. Probably, people’s social networks, friends and family, were used as tools for bringing in converts, and you tend to trust your friends and family. • Do you see evidence that many people will more readily believe an extraordinary lie than a mundane truth? Yes. In the 70’s there was a psychological experiment where researchers had a young actor do magic tricks or the sort being used by fake psychics of the time. Researchers played around with the conditions of the experiment, and even when they made no claim what he was doing was real, even when they led people through the thought processes needed to figure out he was probably fake, most of them still were convinced he was real. • How co
