Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Supposedly, Jesus said he was God.
So did the Pharoahs in ancient Egypt.
How come the number of people who make a "leap of faith" believing one is not the same as the number of people who do the same for the other?
There are many factors which influence what religion a person follows. One of the biggest is obviously what your parents (or other socially close people) beliefs are otherwise we would expect a somewhat more uniform distribution of faiths throughout the world.
Another factor is how evangelistic a religion is. For example, I haven't seen any of pharaohs followers on tv trying to spread their religion.
One very important factor is how closely a religions "message" fits what peoples personal views are or what they are looking for. I have often heard the phrases "I couldn't believe in a God who would..." or "If I am wrong I don't want to be right."
Peoples religious beliefs are much more about what they want to be true than what they have deduced to be true based on the available evidence.
Even if we take the Bible as evidence of God, the Bible portrays a wrathful, violent and selfish God and yet people pick and choose the bits that they want to believe and not the bits that they don't like.
Its not so much that Jesus or Pharaoh said they were God but more a question of what promises they made if you believed in them.