(November 23, 2020 at 8:16 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Probably not. We were religious and had rituals and ritual beliefs for many (many many many many many) thousands of years before anyone came up with the silly man in the sky shit - which would have seemed even sillier to people with those strong religious beliefs. A bit like they're all convinced to this very day that the rest of them sound silly.
Theism and theistic religion is very uniquely and very distinctly a product of the late neolithic and early bronze related to the organization of nascent societies with needs that exceed (and evade) the tight and tacitly accepted bonds and rules of the extended family unit.
TDR version is that it would have sounded ridiculous that a man ran shit in the sky when men didn't run shit on the ground yet. It's only after that point that we see any indication of such beliefs.
The silly man in the sky is a pretty recent phenomenon— ~6 thousands years or so— Polytheism is older than monotheism.
The evolutionary concept of god is more about some supernatural power with intent. This goes back to early onset of cognitive revolution some 70 thousands years ago.
Rituals in itself don’t have to be religious in nature—they are a way to accomplish various group/tribal goals like signal conformance and trust and transmission of knowledge from generation to another. The religious rituals most probably started through concept of afterlife where early homo sapiens didn’t quite grasp death and thought of survival of the living beings once body is dead.
