I do a lot of thinking, and one thing I have given some thought recently is why people fear snakes. Obviously a human may fear a snake because some are venemous. Some snakes poison when they bite, some snakes strangle you to death, and some snakes are just scary looking. But why do we feel some snakes are scary looking? Is it their "danger/warning colors"? Why do some people, especially in the American culture (that is key), have a deep rooted fear of snakes?
Without getting too philosiphical and making an essay out of this, I believe it is because religion conditions many people to fear snakes, albeit indirectly. In Christianity, Satan appears to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the form of a snake. Some forms of Christianity even boast that this is how snakes lost their legs; God banished them after Satan's misdeeds in the Garden.
Yet in the old Jewish faith (I think it was Judaism), the snake was praised like a god. Some religions celebrate snakes. Some condem them. Some would argue this discretion between religions is only because as Christianity was trying to garner support, they had to compete with other religions. What better way than to condemn the gods or things that were worshipped by other religions than to say they are works of Satan? I am digressing.
I think that a lot of Christians especially have a deep rooted fear of snakes for no other reason that the fact that when they were very young, they were told stories that snakes we/are evil. They were not conditioned to fear poisonous snakes, they were conditioned to fear snakes in general because snakes=Satan. Many do not even know this to be the reason they fear snakes because they cannot understand this sort of psychology. They cannot objectify their personality and see themselves for what they are: well oiled cogs in a machine, built to believe certain things in order to act/reply in a certain way. But again, I don't want to turn this into an essay.
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