I don’t know if religions entirely responsible, there is a lot of bad books out there and people chose what they decide to act upon and believe. As for the biggest lie, I don’t know. I wish I could say but there’s to many messed up things in our history to be sure.
Not so. It’s just not that easy. Social influence will initiate most beliefs. A belief is then like a memory. The brain holds onto it like a memory; however, beliefs go one step more. They are not passive as in remembering getting a bike for christmas. Beliefs are active. They act as filters in the brain for incoming information. All new information is filtered against what we already believe. What we have learned from the world around us. It is the rare among us that can step outside social convention and expected norms to question the reality around us. Fewer still can avoid having that reality affect their psychological understanding of the world.
Interestingly, a look at Chinese Brainwashing camps can shed some light on the subject, as can the US military. Look at how the military indoctrinates new recruits. Rip them down, tear them apart, and then build them back up the way you want them to be. It’s probably not as effective as the Chinese thought control camps, as it is not a severe, but it is the same thing.
In any attempt to control another’s thought’s from cults, to the military to Chinese thought control camps, the first step is to isolate the individual. Isolate them from their previous social influences. Step Two: Control all the information the person recieves. (This is also, exactly how cult deprogramming works.) Next, former beliefs must be challenged by creating uncertainty. (In come the programming or deprogramming experts.) New messages are repeated endlessly. And the whole thing needs to occur in an intensely pressured or emotional environment. Memory is created by the senses. The more senses acting on an event or on information, the more likely it is to be remembered.
If a plane suddently crashed outside your window, you would instantly and automatically remember the event for the rest of your life. It is traumatic, out of the ordinary, and emotional. The event would engage all the senses and activate memory. Belief is held in the brain just as memory is held in the brain. You can no more get rid of a memory than you can get rid of a belief. It’s not just about choice.
It’s certainly about loosening the filters by which a person sees the world around them.
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I fully agree. I was raised in what can be described as a racist family. In the military it was a continuation, just us Anglo-Saxons against the Quebecois. Only at about the age of 25 when I worked side-by-side with some blacks (my first true close interaction) did I eventually come to understand that they were just as intelligent, moral, compassionate, and hard-working as myself. And with that epiphany did I begin my journey in changing myself, to accept others and cast off my ingrained racism.
That being said, now at the age of 71 I do recognize that I have not completely eliminated traits of racism. It’s still simmering below the surface, but I now understand that such beliefs are just pure wrong.
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There was a study done by some British guy… Cambridge university I think. A fairly recent study. They showed people pictures of black faces. The study pointed out that race was completely irrelivant when it came to rating trustworthiness. Black respondents and white respondents scored the same. Responses were measured activity in the amygdala (fight of flight response). Point is, white or black, we pick up our norms from the culture arouind us. And wheter we think we are prejudice or not, chances are we hold, to some degree, all that shit we grew up with. We all have some prejudice. We simply have to admit it and then try to live with it… Most importantly… (It’s not a white thing but a cultural thing.) I personally workd with a lot of black people in LA as a counselor and what you don’t hear a lot of them admitting is that they are as prejudice as the white culture around them. How light or dark a person’s skin is, is a common topic in black commuinities. The darker a person’s skin, the more they are talked about. Have hear white skin and they get offended when you call yourself black, especially if you are successful. In the black community, it is a common assertion that black people hold black people back. (That in no way eliminates or solves the problem of white prejudice. Like I said, it’s something we rarely hear about.) Black people also adopt norms from the culture around them.
If there was an easy solution we would all be fucking perfect. We aren’t. We are human and perhaps that is the best we can hope to be. Lose all the labels and just try to be human.
All the religious bogus, nonsense topics…
Biggest lie in history?
“I swear, Joseph, I’m still a virgin.”
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I swear, I had a vasectomy.
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lol right up there with “Oh I’m fixed. I can’t get pregnant.”
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And along those same lines… “I swear, I’ll put in just the tip. Just for a few seconds.”
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That one scares the shit out of Tin. He hears it every six months when he goes to the proctologist who whips out the ole dip stick and tests Tin for an oil change. “I swear! This time, I’ll just put the tip in for a few seconds.”
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Oh, damn. That reminds me. It’s almost time for my annual hydraulic fluid change. Thanks, Cog.
…(droooool)… 
… Uh, excuse me a moment. I’m, uh, just, uh, going to, uh, go down the hallway to a secluded room for a moment or two. Won’t take long. Be back in a stiffi-… I mean, uh, a jiffy.
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To really change it from a rather mundane lie into the whopper of all lies I think you need to add the “and god impregnated me” part.
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Bwaaa-haaa-haaa-haaa!
FTFY.
(20 characters bla bla bla)
Hey, it’s MY lie. I’ll tell it how I want to tell it. 
Repeated assertion does not constitute proof.