When Did Religions First Begin?

[Ernesto]

On this topic, I often offend people; please take no offense. It is just that I regard that line of thinking as a dead end used to avoid dealing with the real evolution issue.
I consider the real explanation to be that we evolved as hunting-gathering group social primates whose whole instinctive repertoire is bult around adjusting to, living in and feeling secure in such small groups. The only way we manage to function in such large societies we have learned to accomodate to is that we evolved religions that unite us into these societies and enable us to feel a common bond with everyone else in that society. Now, we have attached Secular HUmanism to these old religions and it has enabled a weak but effrective uniting of the whole world.

But the secular bond is superficial. It is just resting on the other old religions which
will remain whether secularism survives or not---and the growing distrust of the U.S. world wide is a bad sign. Our near failure in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan help cast the future of our whole Secular HUmanism in doubt.

In other words, we have always had religions because we have always had a need for ideology to bind us together in larger groups so we can better survive in the world---even to thrive and dominate it even to the point of wearing it down and over using it.

I'm not offended. I offered a theory; you proposed a different one.

 

[Sunstone]

The origin of religion is an interesting topic. There is much evidence displaying that religion is a psychological by-product of something else. (Huzzah, using evolution to explain religion!) Most psychologists agree that the brain is a collection of modules for dealing with sets of needs, such as a module for dealing with kinship, one for empathy, love, and so forth. It is possible, therefore, that religion is merely a by-product of the misfirings of several of these modules. This theory would help to explain why religion exists in every human culture on Earth - it is nothing but an evolutionary mishap, a mutation.

I'm in substantial agreement with the view that religion is largely a by-product of processes that evolved to serve other ends.