Ingwey Gooblebogger wrote:
One person's religion is another person's cult.
It took about 400 years before the Roman Catholic church went from cult to religion, as, finally, the Roman emperor adopted Christianity and then enforced it on his people.
The cross was an execution intstrument, and they (or the cross image) seem to be everywhere. Imagine, if there were iamges of the hangman's noose, or firing squad's rifles, or the lethal inection's needles. Those would appear quite sinister, no?
Images can have different meaning for diferent cultures. For instance, the raven is welcome symbol in some cultures, but, in others, it is a sign of an omen.
I think most of the symbols on buildings had more to do with artistic merit, or homages to mythology, than to anything else.
Just as Gooble says, symbols are interpreted in different ways by different cultures.
I have an interest in symbols, if you dig deeper it's amazing how many religions and cults are copies of ancient cultures thousands of years older than any modern religion. Many think that all religions and symbols originate back to Sumeria.
For example, on this video the symbol of DNA was used 6000 used ago by the Sumerians:
