Losing my religion through literature

I don't remember much about what I liked to read until I got to HS. My 10th grade literature teacher was fantastic and introduced me to the world of Frank Herbert. I don't know how she managed to do it but everyone in our class got a paperback copy of Dune and we studied it for a whole semester. By the end of six weeks I had finished Dune and the other two books in the trilogy. The subject of how the main character was the savior of the Galactic Empire was not lost on me. Paul was a person of myth and prophesy, so very much like Jesus.

About that time, or perhaps a few years before, we had read the Greek and Roman myths in school. I enjoyed them immensely and noticed the similarities between those stories and the biblical stories I was exposed to. I remember vaguely thinking that if we knew the Greek stories weren't true then why were the Christian stories, which were just as unbelievable, considered true to many people? I didn't give it much more thought until I read Dune.

Now there are lots of reasons I never considered Christianity as a worldview. My mother being a bad role model set the stage for me to reject Christianity but I consider the reading of Dune to be an event that opened my eyes to what religion was really all about. Control!

More on this later...