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RealUglyMF t1_je8qorc wrote

You only need to see your neighbours kid get killed for blasphemy to think it's not worth the risk

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Hefty-Set5236 t1_je8qphh wrote

Often times the penalty for not following the new religion was death. Most would fall in line, some would not. Of those who did not, some would get caught and some would flee to an area where they could freely practice the old religion. After a generation, the cycle would continue. Some would convert, some would get caught, some would flee. Over the course of generations, this would eventually lead to very few people still secretly practicing the old religion. In other cases, many followers of the old religion would simply be rounded up and killed before they knew to hide, similar to what happened to the jews under nazi rule. As this is one of the largest and most recent examples of religious purification, reading up on this history could provide you with a more detailed answer.

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atuljinni OP t1_je8r4q7 wrote

I did not think of the issue this way. Great answer, but I want to know, how could one change their entire view so suddenly. Like if one has grown up knowing that worshipping X is the correct way, only to be told that they have to worship Y now, which the person never believed to be a god anyway. So would the person not feel that they are getting in the wrong books of the god and probably ruining their afterlife, only to worship god Y in whom they don't believe anyway, and so is fruitless.

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Hefty-Set5236 t1_je8rlis wrote

That's a much more complicated question. To give the shortest possible answer, the new religion usually incorporates aspects of the old one, sometimes on purpose, like Christmas (pagan festival of lights) to ease the transition of conversion. The threat of death can also be very compelling. Each example in history was a bit different, so its difficult to provide a good answer.

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die_kuestenwache t1_je8s2bo wrote

If you are very religious you might view your defeat as a sign that your god has abandoned you or that their god is more powerful. Good reasons to warship someone else. If you are not, you might just not care that much either way.

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battling_futility t1_je8rtjn wrote

There is also an element of Stockholm syndrome as well. Not forgetting another religeon sweeps in often by force, clearly they are more favoured by the gods and your god wasn't real or didn't care.

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Whatawaist t1_je8t58m wrote

Also keep in mind that ancient religions don't always match cleanly with what we expect out of modern ones.

Especially the idea of deific exclusivity. If you have always believed that your gods and your neighbors gods are different and war with one another just like you and your neighbors do, then maybe they lost along with you.

Plenty of stories about gods dying, probably feels better that your gods died trying to save you than ran off and abandoned you.

Just one speculative example, but no one today would assume that a personal problem is because their religion got annihilated, maybe not so much with all the numerous past belief systems.

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Mr_Mojo_Risin_83 t1_je8t72a wrote

They don’t have to. They just need to act like they do or get killed. And teaching your kids the old religion would see them get executed so you don’t teach it to them. Your kids only get instructed with the new religion so within a generation or two, the old religion dies out.

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Loki-L t1_je8sltx wrote

One way to achieve that is syncretism. The practice of putting parts of the existing religion into the new one.

The people kept celebrating their old festivals the way they used to but they had to put some new labels on some things.

Some deities and stories were identified with figures and deities from the new religion. So nothing much changed.

This is a feature of religions in general and happens naturally especially if there is no central authority that says what is and isn't true. It can also happen on purpose.

Another factor is that in most places most of the time religion was not just a thing that stood by itself. It was part of politics and daily life.

The government and the religious leadership were not really separate things, but so deeply entwined that they were almost the same.

Keeping the old faith was the same as keeping to the old rulers. If the ruler themselves converted publicly this became even less a thing people would do.

Freedom of religion was usually not a thing. People were whatever religion they ruler said they were and going against that was like rebelling against the ruler. It was rebelling against the laws and customs that held society together itself.

Rulers were not keen on that sort of thing and neither were most of the people themselves. Finding someone in their midst who went against their rules and customs like that would not even always require the intervention of some far away tyrant to resolve but would be done away with locally by the community.

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skaliton t1_je8sv35 wrote

There really isn't going to be one answer because there is a massive difference between forcing someone to switch branches of the same religion (catholic to protestant for example) and time in history.

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For the most part an uneducated peasant really isn't going to be hard to 'convince' to convert because most religious rules are pretty similar. Oh God is called Allah now, but realistically not a whole lot is changing there. Or now the big holy day/time is Saturday evening instead of Sunday morning. Really minus religion specific things (like genital mutilation) that guy whose farming really isn't going to care all that much

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Really the 'hard sell' is the nobility and other influential figures. Don't think of Christianity vs Islam (or whatever) as two competing religions - they are two different 'lords' that don't like each other. Generations of fealty to the first lord is important because that lord likely knows your family and may even have family members working for them and the lord won't want those family members associating with you anymore because of the concern that they will also defect. Maybe some/all of your family's property is contractually bound to the first lord and if you defect you lose everything.

This is one side of the scale, the other is the guy who currently has a knife to your throat is telling you to join his lord and if you don't he is going to kill you. It probably isn't all that shocking to realize that many people are more interested in not having their neck sliced open than they are keeping the first lord from becoming upset.

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Wu-Tang-Chan t1_je8sams wrote

your life will get better if you believe and stop getting beat up and arguing all the time and holy crap, it worked.

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mnemonikos82 t1_je8u7zo wrote

Historically it's a matter of power. The same way colonization generally works. Those that submit to the forced religion are given privilege and power, especially access to food and medicine. Then it's perpetuated by giving them power specifically over others, and in order to maintain that power they have to demonstrate adherence and conversion of others. It leads to class-based stratification and a superiority complex, which leads to buying into the religion, if only to maintain that power and privilege and to justify their actions against their own people.

There's also the good old fashioned death penalty and forced indoctrination of the young.

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