That's what happened with me. And, it is why believers are taught to cling to their beliefs, not to question them -at least not in any true, faith-challenging, way.

@Joanne Yet there it is, right in there; “test everything, and keep what is good”

Or the one person telling the other what he or she wants to hear... Without evidence.

That’s true!

Errr, depending upon what era you are talking about with people being 'attracted' to Christianity, if it were at the very onset then there were NO books written about it and at least 99% of the common people were totally illiterate.
The very first accounts were written by Scribes, 40 of them separated by miles of seas and land on 3 (THREE) separate Continents approx. 325+ years AFTER these supposed and very mythical events had been assumed to have occurred.
Ergo, people were seduced into believing in this mythical Messiah by mere word of mouth and NOT by reading about it/him.

@Triphid I think Brenton is referring to reading historic researchers and writers whose specialty is the period such as Diarmaid MacCulloch and Charles Freeman

@Geoffrey51 I was just merely adding a bit of historical knowledge to his comment.
But, IF asked, I'd suggest studying Theology, etc, as I and many others I know of have done, that really does open up the eyes and the mind, IF it is NOT already closed, shuttered and sealed tight that is.

I don't disagree with your assessment but that wouldn't be fair though because xtians have been around about 700 years longer, I think.

One should include cults of personality. In many Asian countries, the absolute subservience that is demanded by authoritarians like Mao, Kim Jong's and the Japanese emperors seem alien, but they are accepted by those cultures. The body counts get pretty high for those. Because the leaders don't follow conventional religions, they are denounced as atheists by other religionists. The conveniently ignoring the religious cult aspects of the organizations. Cults of personality certainly overlap religious and political organizations, as we see with Trump and Hitler.

@Cyklone Yes well Xrstians have been going at it ( committing Mass Genocides that is) in the name of God and Jesus since around the time when Emperor Constantine made Xrstianity an official religion in the Roman Empire.
But we could use the Xrstian Purging of Alexandria, Egypt as a starting point since that has been historically documented.
I.e. the Xtrstians slaughtered a total of 5,400+ innocent peoples in Alexandria, destroyed at least 80% of the Great Library, raped and mutilated around 700 women and young girls, then we could go on and include those that were slaughtered by the Xrstians in the Middle East, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Europe including France, Germany, the Scandanavian Countries, Russia, North and South Americas, Africa, shit the list is almost endless.
One would probably be badly underestimating if one were to say that the Death Toll would be, over the centuries, easily in thousands of MILLIONS.

@Triphid It's a pity the bastards can't be called to account.

@Cyklone Yes, they should charged with Crimes against Humanity with all the things they've done in past centuries and more.
After all, is NOT the Pope the direct ELECTED descendant, so the Church tells everyone, of Saint Peter?
Ergo, as they also tell us, "the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons", therefore he, the Pope MUST be held accountable for the wrongs his predecessors have committed should he not?

@Triphid well, I'm for destroying the whole vatican, and everyone in it.

@Triphid Since all of the gold and jewels and real estate the Pope sits on is essentially loot from these genocides in one way or another, shouldn't it be seized and redistributed among humankind as restitution? This is what they did after WWII with the loot that Hitler had amassed.

@Surfpirate Shit yeah, poverty would almost disappear overnight then.