(August 4, 2015 at 11:11 am)Aoi Magi Wrote: I think religions evolved from the need of people to appear superior to others. In most ancient religions, the gods were actually the rulers and warlords. In order to control their subjects, they had to maintain their superiority, make a show of superior knowledge and miracles.
It seems to me that over time ruler-gods emerged from the animist spirits paleolithic humans thought inhabited everything (I'm obviously generalizing) in a sort of mirror image of how human civilization was evolving. Humans went from individualist hunter-gatherer tribes and slowly coalesced into larger and larger societies in which singular leaders began to emerge and then build a hierarchy of rulers with a single ruler at the pinnacle, and the whittling down of animist gods into tribal gods, into pantheisms of gods, to a monotheistic god does seem to correlate strongly with evolving Western politics.
Not saying the one caused the other, but the correlation is very suspicious.
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
