A Theory into the Origin of Religion

[TheSilentArbiter]

Now, for a moment, imagine you are primitive man. (For you evolutionists, think Homo Erectus, for you creationists, think very early human civilizations. Like before Abraham, Moses, and the like.) One night, you look into the sky and see a brilliant meteor shower. Well, you wouldn't CALL it a meteor shower. What would you call it? What would you think it was? Well, those who are capable of rational thought today know that the lights shooting across the night sky are meteors burning in Earth's atmosphere. But you are early man. You don't know what an atmosphere is. Or meteors. What could have caused it? It takes time, but the thought comes across your mind:

"WHO did this?" not "What", "Who?"

In short, what if God hasn't always existed? What if our collective thoughts and ideas gave birth to the notion of powers beyond our own. Spirits, Gods, Goddesses, all through time. What if God didn't create us? What if we created God?

[Tiapan]

And if someone suffered from narcolepsy, or ate a bit of puffer fish, they might have thought they had risen from the dead.

Cheers

[SugaCubez352]

If you look at the evolution of this "god meme" that has plagued us, we will see that this god meme has evolved along side the brain capacity of our species.

We don't even have to go back into time to see how. If we go and anthropologically study different groups of people who have different levels of understandings well see this.

If you study the Pigmiies of Africa, the Papuans, and most other indigenous "primitive" tribes, you see that they have a belief in animistic "spirits," of trees, rocks, mountains, and such. They have stories about spirits, certain things about life and existence causes fear in them, and they have primitive rights and stories to explain away these mysteries and fears. This group would most likely represent primitive man.

Those pagans on the other hand - much like the ancient Greeks and Romans - worship the god meme in anthropomorphic fashion by giving or superimposing their own understandings of human nature onto their gods.

Then you have the monotheists who utilizes one one god meme to explain life and existence away to their adherents. The most pressing mystery being what happens to us when we die, and what we are doing here.

Now today our brain capacity - the ability for some of us to think and behold greater or higher levels of thought - has brought us to a weird place where part of us have left that god meme behind for current scientific wisdom and what we have dis-covered about our universe...

And we are also seeing that those of use modern humans that cannot free themselves from this god meme have evolved - or updated their idea or conception of a god - by fabricating these weird alien based religions where some extraterrestrial life form created mankind via genetic manipulation... or we see this same updating of the god meme affect in certain religious sects who re-interprets the god of the bible in such extraterrestrial weltanschauungs.

[dogsgod]

The following book takes us back to the very possible beginnings of religion itself. I would recommend it to anyone interested in religion's roots.




Blood Rites
Origins and History of the Passions of War by Barbara Ehrenreich


In Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the mystery of the human attraction to violence: What draws our species to war and even makes us see it as a kind of sacred undertaking? Blood Rites takes us on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Sifting through the fragile records of prehistory, Ehrenreich discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place -- not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experience of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception, rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that will transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.

[Riverwolf]

It's certainly a way that pure theism may have come about, which, in turn, would have led to some sort of mythology.

[Riverwolf]

Originally Posted by dogsgod

The following book takes us back to the very possible beginnings of religion itself. I would recommend it to anyone interested in religion's roots.




Blood Rites
Origins and History of the Passions of War by Barbara Ehrenreich


In Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the mystery of the human attraction to violence: What draws our species to war and even makes us see it as a kind of sacred undertaking? Blood Rites takes us on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Sifting through the fragile records of prehistory, Ehrenreich discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place -- not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experience of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception, rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that will transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.

What's that got to do with the origins of religion?

[Dunemeister]

Originally Posted by TheSilentArbiter

Now, for a moment, imagine you are primitive man. (For you evolutionists, think Homo Erectus, for you creationists, think very early human civilizations. Like before Abraham, Moses, and the like.) One night, you look into the sky and see a brilliant meteor shower. Well, you wouldn't CALL it a meteor shower. What would you call it? What would you think it was? Well, those who are capable of rational thought today know that the lights shooting across the night sky are meteors burning in Earth's atmosphere. But you are early man. You don't know what an atmosphere is. Or meteors. What could have caused it? It takes time, but the thought comes across your mind:

"WHO did this?" not "What", "Who?"

In short, what if God hasn't always existed? What if our collective thoughts and ideas gave birth to the notion of powers beyond our own. Spirits, Gods, Goddesses, all through time. What if God didn't create us? What if we created God?

This has even less to commend it than Nietzche's and Freud's vacant ramblings on the same topic.

[dogsgod]

Originally Posted by Riverwolf

What's that got to do with the origins of religion?

A lot. This book is a study of the earliest forms of religion and how they may have come about.

[Mikael]

When presened with a prestene world of plenty, as ancient man was, arose a feeling of gratitude that had to be directed somewhere. So man did, and called it god/spirit/holy tree/holy mountain/holy sea etc and worshipped it. Of course, in periods when the plenty declined the worship became even more important. And even, if some worship REALLY didn´t seem to work, we just moved on to other forms. I clearly remember this to be the truth of the matter.

So is this man creating the deity, or the deity manifesting itself through the reality of man? I really don´t see the importance in this distinction! We are here now!

[footprints]

Originally Posted by TheSilentArbiter

Now, for a moment, imagine you are primitive man. (For you evolutionists, think Homo Erectus, for you creationists, think very early human civilizations. Like before Abraham, Moses, and the like.) One night, you look into the sky and see a brilliant meteor shower. Well, you wouldn't CALL it a meteor shower. What would you call it? What would you think it was? Well, those who are capable of rational thought today know that the lights shooting across the night sky are meteors burning in Earth's atmosphere. But you are early man. You don't know what an atmosphere is. Or meteors. What could have caused it? It takes time, but the thought comes across your mind:

"WHO did this?" not "What", "Who?"

In short, what if God hasn't always existed? What if our collective thoughts and ideas gave birth to the notion of powers beyond our own. Spirits, Gods, Goddesses, all through time. What if God didn't create us? What if we created God?

Religion is nothing more, nothing less than an extention of culture (race). The heritage of where people came from.

Although from a modern day perspective, (base) ancient cultures can appear very primitive and sometimes naive, this is more due to our lack of understanding of that culture, rather than a fact of reality.

Personally to even imagine the contents of the OP, I reckon a person would have to have watched a movie like, "The Gods must be crazy," one too many times.

In order for the human brain to associate, the human brain does need something to relate to. Certainly something like a comet or a meteor, would have given them something to relate to. Albeit, to relate it to a deity, would mean they would have had to have had a deity figure in order to relate it to that way. If a person doesn't relate they cannot associate, it is an impossiblity.

As to the "Who, not What," scenario. This would take a very vivid, modern mind to relate and associate that way. Base ancient cultures related in the same way as we do, not just Who and What but also why and how. It is the primary reason tools and hunting implements were developed, simply because humans had the intelligence to figure it out and them put them to use.