Evolutionary Theories of Religion

[Iroscato]

Oddly enough, I personally think it was a result of emerging intelligence, or at least intelligence doing weird stuff with our lizard brains. Obviously we kept evolving and have finally begun outgrowing religion altogether, but I do think it acted as an excellent catalyst for bringing together groups of people. It most likely started when primitive humans began perceiving patterns in their environment. One of the brain's most powerful abilities is its capacity for pattern-spotting - it's why we see faces and shapes in clouds, it's why we have concept's such as Sod's Law, and it helped with quickly identifying a fuckmothering sabre-toothed tiger coming in hot for what is almost certainly not a hug. However, when these simplistic, basic functions are overlaid with an elevated intelligence, things start getting weird.
Why does the massive, bright yellow thing keep rising every morning, for example? The heat feels good and it lets me see. WHAT IF IT NEVER RISES AGAIN? THAT WOULD BE BAD. OGG NO WANT COLD. And so, driven by fear that was perhaps exacerbated by a particularly stormy day (or a sequence of stormy days that gradually reinforced the pattern over years, decades or generations), the proto-theists perhaps began to associate certain behaviours with making the sun rise every day, or making the rains come every season, and so on.
The social element of it would come in when you get more than one Ogg sharing the same or similar ideals. As a by-product of extended interactions combined with the increased intelligence, more sophisticated communication would be natural. That would lead to deeper and more complex theories put forward by individuals, driven on by their compulsion to spot patterns, and unintentionally using confirmation bias to 'confirm' these patterns to themselves. Over centuries and millenia, you get a gradually emerging framework of ideas.

It was also probably a form of entertainment for them as well, at the time. When you think about it, all there was going was farming, fucking and sleeping. More curious individuals would be inclined to think about the heavier stuff. Ironic perhaps that what may have been the smartest people around at the time ended up starting the dumbest fucking thing ever inflicted on our society...