We Humans have some sort of “religious instinct”……..we “feel” as if there is something out there.
It's called superstition.
Yes, like most animals, we are very prone to superstition.
Next to that, we also have an instinct to infuse agency in otherwise random events. This is an evolutionary artefact of spending millions of years as prey of predators.
Like the infamous example goes... if we are in the jungle and hear a noise in the bushes, we'll sooner think it's a dangerous predator sneaking up on us rather then merely the wind.
The underlying psychological consequence, is that we tend to feel "special" and "targeted". Combine that with superstition and belief in magical agents (be it centaurs, angels, leprechauns or gods) is almost like an inescapable result.
Even to the point of UFO sightings. We see a strange light in the sky? MUST be aliens visiting us, because who wouldn't want to visit us special humans?
In fact, we even make the position of the stars and planets about us.... It's called astrology.
At bottom, al these things are a result of a simple evolutionary survival mechanism: to assume agency and intention with you as the target. Aka Type 2 cognition errors (the false positive).
Belief in God(s) was caused by this instinct. And then this belief in God evolved in to what we call religions.
Yep.
Not just belief in Gods though. Also voodoo, astrology, poltergeists, ... and just about everything magical / supernatural.
Talking specifically about Jesus, well he was a historical person who did stuff that witnesses interpreted as miracles,
There's no evidence he actually was a historical person though.
I think any of three options is possible:
- it's based on a historical person and beefed up so that if you were to meet this person, you'ld barely recognise him as jesus
- it's actually several historical persons botched together into a legend
- it's just stories.
I'm betting on option 1 or 2.
No matter what the answer is though, it's all hearsay nonetheless. Things interpreted as "miracles" are a dime a dozen. Also, apparently none of these miracles were impressive enough for contemporary corroboration by independent sources.
My point is that God was not “designed” in the way the OP suggests, it is not like someone woke up and decided to create the idea of God for some purpose in mind.
I agree that that is not how it happened, as I explained above.
It's also not what the OP is saying happened.
So the question is why do we have this religious instinct? Is it a delusion that evolved through natural selection? Did it evolved by chance? Or perhaps God created us with this instinct.
See above. It's an evolutionary artefact. A survival mechanism. It's engrained in our psychology.
or why did the witnesses interpreted their observations as miracles………where they hallucinating? Or perhaps there where actual miracles. (I would argue that the second is the best explanation but I am open if you have any other hypothesis)
When somebody makes an extra-ordinary claim without a shred of evidence, the "best explanation" for the claim never is that the claim is correct.
First of all, considering the accounts we have are by far not first-hand accounts, but rather copies of copies of translations of translations of copies of stories passed on through oral traditions.... the telephone game impact must be taken into account. That alone already puts a a very dark cloud over its credibility. Especially if we add into the mix that this occurred in a time of extreme scientific ignorance and where superstition was so much through the roof it was even part of civil law.
Hallucinating, honestly mistaken, lying, warped / embellished stories as they are passed down the generations,.... all of these are infinitely more plausible then "a miracle occurred", even only for the simple fact that we have precedents for ALL of them and NONE for actual miracles.
On top of that, you also have the thousands upon thousands of other gods / religions to deal with. For your christian religion to be right, all others must be false.
So right out the gates, you would agree that 99% of religions are false religions. By definition, that would mean that they were invented by humans.
So we have thousands of precedents of humans inventing religions.
We have zero precedents of religions being actual revelations of gods.
We have zero precedents of any miracles.
We have zero evidence for the existence of any gods or anything supernatural.
So knowing all this, how could "a miracle occurred" ever be "the best" explanation for anything?