Just a theory

[The Valkyrie]

I’ve always thought  that religion was first invented to explain what our early ancestors didn’t understand.

It seems that humans were inventing religions two times because human look on a world changed almost completely when they switched to agricultural society. So humans invented gods once when they were hunter gatherers looking out of caves and wondering about what they saw. What made the lightning flash? Where did the wind come from? Why would winter start soon and why would all the green things die? And then why did they all come back to life the next spring?
The wind is much stronger than the breath of any ordinary man and it had been blowing ever since man could remember. Therefore, the wind must be created by a tremendously huge and powerful man, one who never died. Such a superhuman being was a "god" or "demon."

But then as humans became agricultural gods took a turn to be about food. There needed to be like a mediator between the idea of life-force that comes down as food, feeds people and then people give back to the life-force and then it goes back again which were kings and ruling class.
The Bible used a tale of forbidden food to define all of human nature.
Mayas believed that maize was the flesh of the gods containing divine power, and at harvest time the gods were, in effect, sacrificing themselves to sustain humanity.
Aztecs belived The Earth Mother was nourished by human blood and the crops would only grow if she was given enough of it.
Incas also thought sacrifice was necessary to nourish the gods.
In China both gods and royal ancestors were offered grain, millet beer, animals and human sacrifices. etc

I always liked the Aztecs.

I think we should all adopt their religion.

And there are plenty of people of other religions to sacrifice...

[Angrboda]

It's a simple extrapolation of an idea that we are all born with.  We only see the physical form of another person, yet we project the idea of an invisible, immaterial mind behind the face of the other person as a way of explaining their behavior.  We don't view people just as bodies, but bodies which possess minds that move and coordinate their actions.  Minds which we "believe" are the same as our own, possessed of thoughts, beliefs, and so on.  From there, it's a simple step to imagine minds without bodies, such as ghosts, or people continuing on after death.  From there, it's but a hop skip and a jump to imagine minds which are able to make things happen simply by willing them.  And thus gods were born.  They had plenty of reference to immaterial minds with the power to will things to happen prior to the invention of gods.

There's an interesting experiment by Jesse Bering, in which he put on a brief puppet show for children of various ages.  In the puppet show, an alligator eats a mouse.  The researchers then asked the children various questions, such as does the mouse still need food?  Does the mouse still want to go home?  And so on.  From a young age, the children could understand that the mouse no longer had physical needs and actions, but they continued to posit mental qualities to the mouse after its death.  It was only later children who acknowledged that those, too, ended with the death of the mouse.  Interestingly enough, they repeated the experiment with groups that might have a bias towards belief in the afterlife, such as children at a Catholic school, and they found that those children did not give up the belief in the persistence of the mouse's mental attributes after death as readily as more secular children.

As for the first part of your post I disagree, it would be far more complicated than you seem to believe.

How so? Do we not already have the idea of immaterial minds that are able to cause things to happen by willing them?

As for death people understood what death was and at some point someone would have wanted to live forever because of their fear of death, but this in no way could lead to an idea of gods.

In order for people to be able to project the mental beyond death, they must first have the ability to separate the mental from the physical.

In the first part of your post you are basing and assuming from a modern man's perspective, from ideas we have today not what they were missing in the ages past.

No, little children do what you're claiming only comes from a modern perspective. I highly doubt the concept of minds being separate from bodies is a modern invention.

The only reasonable answer is that from the beginning God made himself know to man through Adam and Eve.

That's quite the hypothesis.

[Mister Agenda]

You're really stumped by where ideas come from? Do you think the idea of aliens came from aliens and if they weren't real we'd never have thought of them? Ideas come from our dreams and our imaginations.

When we sleep, we seem to go places and encounter people and things, while everyone can confirm that you never left your spot by the campfire. It sure seems like there's an invisible part of you that can walk around and have adventures while you're asleep. While you're dreaming you can encounter people who are dead, talking animals (talking anything, really), and gods (and these days, aliens).

Not to mention our ancestors were as capable of making up stories as we are. Storytelling is what humans do when its dark and there's a fire going. Memorable stories are more likely to remembered and passed on, and throwing in some superhuman feats by the heroes and villains makes the story more memorable.

 None of what you said explains anything and here's why. When we dream our minds use what we have already been exposed to, sure the mind might extrapolate something weird from the information but nothing new. A god would be something new for man because he would have not been exposed to the idea or information that would lead to such a dream, the concept would have been completely foreign to him.

 GC

Let's see. To a baby, our parents are omniscient and omnipotent. In experiments, a three-year old assumes its mother knows what's in a sealed box, presumably because it can't imagine there's anything Mom can't know. Compared to an infant, an adult is godlike. A village chief is a person greater than the others who demands obedience.

Gods aren't an original concept, they're just humans, magnified and aspects of nature and culture, personified. I water my garden to make the plants grow. When it rains, a greater gardener is watering the earth. To get from a god to a God, just keep magnifying it.

Your position that we couldn't come up with the idea of gods unless there were real gods is asinine.

[Whateverist]

I know this is very far fetched but hear me out.  I was thinking about religion (I am newly atheist) and thought that maybe religion was originally made to keep early humans in order.  Before police and jail and law at all.  Think about it, if you couldn't keep people under control and there were no laws, what would you do to keep people from killing and stealing?  I know what I would do.  I would come up with a story in which people who do bad and immoral things get punished after they die, and people who do great and kind things live in a perfect place after they die.  Sound familiar?  I honestly believe that religion could have originated from an early human form of "law"

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Kindest regards,

Kb

The only thing I would challenge is the idea that religion was made up knowingly to serve a purpose. Story telling goes way back to preliterate times. Stories like genes are passed down and some stories imbue a culture with qualities which help it thrive. People didn't need to invent religion directly, it just grew out of story telling. Natural selection on a societal basis would do the rest. It wasn't the invention of a charlatan priest looking to exploit rubes to make an easy living. That came much later.

---

Not to mention our ancestors were as capable of making up stories as we are. Storytelling is what humans do when its dark and there's a fire going. Memorable stories are more likely to remembered and passed on, and throwing in some superhuman feats by the heroes and villains makes the story more memorable.

I was well and truly ninja'd I see.

---

It seems that humans were inventing religions two times because human look on a world changed almost completely when they switched to agricultural society. So humans invented gods once when they were hunter gatherers looking out of caves and wondering about what they saw. What made the lightning flash? Where did the wind come from? Why would winter start soon and why would all the green things die? And then why did they all come back to life the next spring?
The wind is much stronger than the breath of any ordinary man and it had been blowing ever since man could remember. Therefore, the wind must be created by a tremendously huge and powerful man, one who never died. Such a superhuman being was a "god" or "demon."

But then as humans became agricultural gods took a turn to be about food. There needed to be like a mediator between the idea of life-force that comes down as food, feeds people and then people give back to the life-force and then it goes back again which were kings and ruling class.
The Bible used a tale of forbidden food to define all of human nature.
Mayas believed that maize was the flesh of the gods containing divine power, and at harvest time the gods were, in effect, sacrificing themselves to sustain humanity.
Aztecs belived The Earth Mother was nourished by human blood and the crops would only grow if she was given enough of it.
Incas also thought sacrifice was necessary to nourish the gods.
In China both gods and royal ancestors were offered grain, millet beer, animals and human sacrifices. etc

I always liked the Aztecs.

I think we should all adopt their religion.

And there are plenty of people of other religions to sacrifice...

The Aztecs would have had a lot of work for woman good with a scalpel.

[Godscreated]

 None of what you said explains anything and here's why. When we dream our minds use what we have already been exposed to, sure the mind might extrapolate something weird from the information but nothing new. A god would be something new for man because he would have not been exposed to the idea or information that would lead to such a dream, the concept would have been completely foreign to him.

 GC

Let's see. To a baby, our parents are omniscient and omnipotent. In experiments, a three-year old assumes its mother knows what's in a sealed box, presumably because it can't imagine there's anything Mom can't know. Compared to an infant, an adult is godlike. A village chief is a person greater than the others who demands obedience.

Gods aren't an original concept, they're just humans, magnified and aspects of nature and culture, personified. I water my garden to make the plants grow. When it rains, a greater gardener is watering the earth. To get from a god to a God, just keep magnifying it.

Your position that we couldn't come up with the idea of gods unless there were real gods is asinine.

Again what you have posted doesn't explain anything. By what you say babies and small children invented gods and that's ridiculous. Tell me how can a three year old be a reliable source, surely you realize that they aren't reliable, right. The concept of gods would have been beyond man's capacity, all we have to do is look at inventions through the ages to see that each feed off another. You're making excuses because you have no answer to your problem of where gods came from.

GC

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As for the first part of your post I disagree, it would be far more complicated than you seem to believe.

How so?  Do we not already have the idea of immaterial minds that are able to cause things to happen by willing them?

That's because we have the understanding of the God.

As for death people understood what death was and at some point someone would have wanted to live forever because of their fear of death, but this in no way could lead to an idea of gods.

In order for people to be able to project the mental beyond death, they must first have the ability to separate the mental from the physical.

That explains nothing about inventing gods.

In the first part of your post you are basing and assuming from a modern man's perspective, from ideas we have today not what they were missing in the ages past.

No, little children do what you're claiming only comes from a modern perspective.  I highly doubt the concept of minds being separate from bodies is a modern invention.

Those little kids have the modern perspective, you and Mr. Agenda need to let loose of the children and get serious. Doubting proves nothing. Just like inventions they feed from the past inventions. We invent for physical reasons, God is spiritual.

The only reasonable answer is that from the beginning God made himself know to man through Adam and Eve.

That's quite the hypothesis.

 It is far better than anything you have proposed which is little.

GC

[Fake Messiah]

You're making excuses because you have no answer to your problem of where gods came from.

Yeah, Mister Agenda, how dare you claim you know gods were invented. I mean who would make up shit like that



Or this:



I mean this is so beyond human imagination that you're making a fool of yourself in Godscreated's eyes who not only feels this shit is real but talks to them on regular basis.

[Mister Agenda]

Let's see. To a baby, our parents are omniscient and omnipotent. In experiments, a three-year old assumes its mother knows what's in a sealed box, presumably because it can't imagine there's anything Mom can't know. Compared to an infant, an adult is godlike. A village chief is a person greater than the others who demands obedience.

Gods aren't an original concept, they're just humans, magnified and aspects of nature and culture, personified. I water my garden to make the plants grow. When it rains, a greater gardener is watering the earth. To get from a god to a God, just keep magnifying it.

Your position that we couldn't come up with the idea of gods unless there were real gods is asinine.

Again what you have posted doesn't explain anything. By what you say babies and small children invented gods and that's ridiculous. Tell me how can a three year old be a reliable source, surely you realize that they aren't reliable, right. The concept of gods would have been beyond man's capacity, all we have to do is look at inventions through the ages to see that each feed off another. You're making excuses because you have no answer to your problem of where gods came from.

GC

Sheesh, dude, babies grow up. You did not know that? This has nothing to do with reliable witnesses and everything to do with entertaining stories and believing whatever your parents tell you.

How do you think we came up with Superman? The only difference if we understand that it's made up. That you have to deny our ability to make up interesting characters to me shows that you must know on some level how extremely weak your arguments are. You certainly wouldn't be resorting to this if you could think of anything less weak.

TL;DR: It's not a problem because they're made up, not real.

[Minimalist]

Where would the idea of a god or gods come from, what would cause people to actually try and conceive of such, there is no evidence to support your thought.

I don't know.... where did the idea of dragons come from?  Or the boogey-man?  Or honest politicians? Or Just Wars?

Human imagination is a marvelous thing, G-C.  You don't know because you have none.  You should try it some time.

[JairCrawford]

CG 's deluded raving hits fever pitch

Actually, there is truth to what GC says, even if you look at it from a completely skeptical mindset. Belief in divine or spiritual beings is not necessarily mutually exclusive to morality, because many divine beings in ancient and current religions are depicted as doing immoral things.

[Amarok]

CG 's deluded raving hits fever pitch

Actually, there is truth to what GC says, even if you look at it from a completely skeptical mindset. Belief in divine or spiritual beings is not necessarily mutually exclusive to morality, because many divine beings in ancient and current religions are depicted as doing immoral things.

No there really isn't