sd6515 I think you've missed my point. My objection with Christianity (for the basis of this discussion I'll stick to this religion, although the same applies for Judaism, Islam, etc.) is not necessarily with the believability of its texts, however far-fetched they may be. Rather, the thing that bothers me is that these religions claim that if you do not believe what they have to say (Jesus is the son of God, he died for your sins, blah blah blah) you will endure eternal pain and suffering, even if you live a perfectly moral and altruistic life in terms of how you treat yourself and others. Then, these religions try and equate believing in them with believing in secular historical accounts. Like I said in my original post, believing in commonly accepted accounts of the Civil War does not require you to also believe that non-believers in said accounts suffer eternal damnation.

I don't see why it's so hard for some people to see how demented it is to send a guy to hell simply because he believes in, for example, Muhammad instead of Jesus. Do you really think Ghandi (a Hindu) should burn for the rest of eternity because he didn't "accept Jesus as his savior"? When posed with this sort of question, many Christians like to answer by saying things like, "well that's for God to decide, not me," but that's just a cop-out. Being Christian requires unequivocal belief in the Bible, which in turn requires unequivocal belief that accepting Jesus is the only way to avoid eternal punishment, and unequivocal belief that people like Ghandi will go to hell. I think punishing someone not for their actions but instead for not believing one far-fetched story in favor of another is ridiculously spiteful and mean-spirited, to say the least.

Another thing that's wrong with the notion that religious accounts are on par with secular historical accounts is the fact that secular historians are entirely willing to consider the idea that they are completely wrong, while religious people, by definition, are not. If a secular historian were to find evidence that suggests his previous beliefs about something might be incorrect, he'd sit down and try to figure out if the overall collection of evidence still supports his beliefs. If it doesn't, then he'd be willing to change his beliefs. On the other hand, Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. have been taught to NEVER, under any circumstances, consider the fact that they may be wrong in their beliefs. There's a massive difference between this mindset and that of secular historians.