When did religeon and all this god stuff start?

N

Naturelles

Future Scientist
Registered Senior Member
Well, ancient religions date back very long, but why do you think people may have created it in the first place? Other animals don't have anything called "religion" they just survive in their environment or whatever they do. So it would be that humans are the ones that created this concept of a "god". But why? Due to fear?

People say god created us the planet the universe and whatever blah blah etc... But I think its more like humans have created "god"

Whatever it is. :bugeye:
 
Naturelles said:
Well, ancient religions date back very long, but why do you think people may have created it in the first place? Other animals don't have anything called "religion" they just survive in their environment or whatever they do. So it would be that humans are the ones that created this concept of a "god". But why? Due to fear?

People say god created us the planet the universe and whatever blah blah etc... But I think its more like humans have created "god"

Whatever it is. :bugeye:
Click to expand...

Well, the reason you don't see religion in the animal kingdom is because they aren't able to think abstractly. We are.

Why did we create religion? For the same reason we philosophize today: to find answers to our questions. It's part philosophy and part superstition. And I think you do touch on an important point when you mention fear, because one of the most common themes in religion is eternal life, be it here on earth or in a spiritual realm after physical death. Death must have been a total mindfuck, pardon the language, for early man, and I imagine religion helped, just like it does today.

The oldest religion? I've heard that Hinduism is considered by many to be the oldest religion still being practiced today. But looking at some of these religions we practice today, there are elements of animal worship, and solar worship, so it's likely that both of those were practiced thousands of years ago. And I've also heard that the religious practices of the Australian aboriginal goes back something like 60,000 years.

I'm not an expert on that stuff, but that's what I've read.
 
Naturelles said:
Well, ancient religions date back very long, but why do you think people may have created it in the first place? Other animals don't have anything called "religion" they just survive in their environment or whatever they do. So it would be that humans are the ones that created this concept of a "god". But why? Due to fear?

People say god created us the planet the universe and whatever blah blah etc... But I think its more like humans have created "god"

Whatever it is.
Click to expand...

Probably the very first thing you should learn is not about religion, but about tolerance and understand of the culture of others. Making fun of religion is not exactly a tolerant and understanding thing to do.

Learning a little humility might help you, too. Think about it ...please.

Baron Max
 
Naturelles said:
So it would be that humans are the ones that created this concept of a "god". But why? Due to fear?
Click to expand...

It's because we reached a level of population density where people regularly interact with others to whom they are not related by blood or marriage. In smaller populations, you are related to everyone that you interact with, and so disputes can be settled, and the peace kept, via family-based conflict resolution systems.

This breaks down, when you regularly interact with people that you share no family bond with. If such a large, dense population is to endure - and be organized into a governable entity - the people must be supplied with a rationale as to why they should not kill and rob strangers who are unrelated to them (as well as follow the dictums of the leader, pay tribute to enable governance, fight wars, etc.), and religion provides this.

In terms of social evolution, religion provides a competitive advantage, by making it possible to organize larger social groups, which can then dominate, subsume or displace any competing societies without similar means of organization. And so religion ends up proliferating.

This is all classic Jared Diamond material.
 
Baron Max said:
Probably the very first thing you should learn is not about religion, but about tolerance and understand of the culture of others. Making fun of religion is not exactly a tolerant and understanding thing to do.

Learning a little humility might help you, too. Think about it ...please.

Baron Max
Click to expand...

He has every right to make fun of religion. But that's not what he was doing here.

And YOU asking someone to be tolerant and understand of others is fucking hysterical.
 
Naturelles said:
Well, ancient religions date back very long, but why do you think people may have created it in the first place? Other animals don't have anything called "religion" they just survive in their environment or whatever they do. So it would be that humans are the ones that created this concept of a "god". But why? Due to fear?

People say god created us the planet the universe and whatever blah blah etc... But I think its more like humans have created "god"

Whatever it is. :bugeye:
Click to expand...

And if you think about it, you are correct!

Proof: mankind created all words.
 
And when humans were unable to accept they don't have the answers & when they felt compelled to blame someone yet couldn't hang it on a human.
When something bad happens, usually people must blame some entity.
 
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
And when humans were unable to accept they don't have the answers & when they felt compelled to blame someone yet couldn't hang it on a human.
When something bad happens, usually people must blame some entity.
Click to expand...

Actually, there were rulers in early civilizations that were believed to be gods themselves.
 
JDawg said:
Actually, there were rulers in early civilizations that were believed to be gods themselves.
Click to expand...

Oh yes, in India, many ancient people who were just good people were referred to as a "god". Jesus Christ was just another normal human being.
 
Naturelles said:
Well, ancient religions date back very long, but why do you think people may have created it in the first place? Other animals don't have anything called "religion" they just survive in their environment or whatever they do. So it would be that humans are the ones that created this concept of a "god". But why? Due to fear?

People say god created us the planet the universe and whatever blah blah etc... But I think its more like humans have created "god"

Whatever it is. :bugeye:
Click to expand...

Well, the modern human race has existed for about 170,000 years, and I'd guess that some sort of idea about the afterlife has existed for at least that long. That suggests therefore that some idea of a controlling power has also existed. As I've written in some other threads, Jane Goodall mentioned seeing chimpanzees gazing in fascination at the rainbows generated by a forest waterfall in Gombe--so wonder at the mysterious is nothing new. Movement implies life, which explains why the natural forces were seen as having souls or controlling elemental forces which needed to be worshipped, just to be on the safe side.

The earliest neanderthals in Europe, ca 400,000 years ago, just dumped the bodies of their dead into a pit at the back of their cave (see the National Geographic article about the Cave of the Bones, published a few years ago). Yet at Shanadir in northern Iraq, the Soleckis excavated neanderthal skeletons that demonstrated proper burial ceremonies. This shows that even the neanderthals had developed an idea of an afterlife; so possibly they had some sort of idea about God as well. Whether Homo Erectus had any ideas about God or and afterlife, I'm not sure--but they existed as late as about 30,000 years ago, so it's possible the latest and last members of their species may have had some ideas about the subject, even if they only borrowed the concept from their more advanced neighbours.
 
Ah, OK, I just did a quick search, and I found that aside from belief in some societies that burial is the key to reaching the afterlife, there could also be the idea that in order for societies to maintain a certain lifestyle, they are required to bury their dead. That one strikes me as a maintenance thing.

Another idea is that respect for others does not end when the person dies, so burial could serve as a way to make one final show of respect--largely by protecting the deceased from scavengers, but also by allowing their families to have closure (ie not seeing them anymore).

Sounds reasonable. I wonder where the community stands on this, though.
 
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