I think some of you folks are mixing the origin of religion(s) with the origin of belief in the super-natural.
A religion is "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects." [from our friend, the dictionary.com].
And a belief is "confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof" [same source].
And "belief in the super-natural" is what we generally call "faith". If you can prove something super-natural, it becomes part of the natural world, no?
At first, people must have wondered about death; how can the personality of the dying person just disappear? Maybe it goes somewhere...
Add some sprinkles of newcome fire and experiments with burning random stuff, or simply some strange bug that infected a few people and made them "see" their dead loved ones or something that they interpreted as dead people... and the rest is "evolution".
A religion is "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects." [from our friend, the dictionary.com].
And a belief is "confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof" [same source].
And "belief in the super-natural" is what we generally call "faith". If you can prove something super-natural, it becomes part of the natural world, no?
At first, people must have wondered about death; how can the personality of the dying person just disappear? Maybe it goes somewhere...
Add some sprinkles of newcome fire and experiments with burning random stuff, or simply some strange bug that infected a few people and made them "see" their dead loved ones or something that they interpreted as dead people... and the rest is "evolution".
