(June 25, 2017 at 6:41 am)AtlasS33 Wrote: Some believe because emotions were the kick; the door opener. I think a perfect example would be an argument from design that led a thinker to get attached to an abstract figure in their head; then completed it with comparing different religions and picking the one more suitable to his/her previous thoughts.
You can strengthen the example more if we imagined the thinker's own emotions towards the design.
I can see emotions having a role in the early phase, when someone looks at something beautiful and is filled with a sense of awe, but that isn't necessarily directed to worship until that person conceives of a designer and then starts thinking about what that designer might be like.
The reason I see this as two separate processes is that there are many people who experience a sense of awe without it leading to religious belief. For example, I consider total solar eclipses to be utterly amazing, but attributing them to a god is IMO simply not necessary and would clutter up the experience.
