Why do you think religion started?

Wavally · 1日前

Wikipedia marks the beginning of religion by the ritualistic burying of the dead. I think religion started as a way to answer long standing questions about our environment and to help with grief.

TricksterPriestJace · 1日前

I always loved Patton Oswalt's sky cake hypothesis.

usurious · 1日前

It could have had an evolutionary benefit if belief in Gods and religion acted as moral cohesion within groups. Humanity's ability to cooperate outside of immediate kin is pretty unique. If groups that acted as one unit more effectively were able to out compete other groups that lacked that ability, due to some unifier like religion, it's definitely plausible some gene-culture co-evolution took over in the last 50,000 years or so.

Thelonious_Cube · 1日前

In my opinion, religion started as the great answer to all of life's questions.

While I don't think this is out-and-out wrong, I think it considerably oversimplifies things.

I believe religion evolved to satisfy a number of needs, both individual and collective, but the need for explanations is just one of those things.

Other things I think it attempts to address in varying degrees across various instances: grounding ethics, providing a rationale for social structures, a feeling of belonging (particularly as societies get larger and one loses the sense of the immediate tribe), the desire for a purposeful, meaningful life, the desire for a supreme authority, the desire to believe that things happen for a reason, etc.

Explaining physical phenomena is one small part and probably a lot less important that some of the other functions.

Please note that I am in no way saying that religion suffices to meet any of these needs, nor am I endorsing religion as a way to satisfy any of those needs, nor am I suggesting that the needs themselves are "legitimate" or useful or beneficial or even universal.

^{The opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Reddit Mgt., their parent company, their sponsors or members of their families. All entries must be postmarked before midnight tonight. In case of a tie, duplicate prizes may be awarded at the discretion of the judges. All decisions of the judges are final and do not necessarily reflect those of Reddit Mgt., their parent company, their sponsors or members of their families.}

kadda1212 · 1日前

I guess, the anthropologists would say it started when people witnessed a beloved person passing away. Suddenly you are confronted with the pain and loss, you realize this body is dead and the person will never talk with me again, is gone.

Then you wonder, whether they are really gone and you decide that their spirit might still be somewhere and you bury them or burn their body.

There are two different funeral rituals and they give us an idea about the beliefs of the early cultures.

If the body was burnt the people believed that the soul would rise to heaven, maybe the spirit would eventually be reincarnated.

If they buried the body, they believed in an underworld.

Ozymandius383 · 21時間前

I'm kind of amazed that none of these answers explain the real, urgent draw of religion. If you look at history or even listen to a religious person talk for ten minutes, you'll see that religion arises to answer what's, in my opinion, the most pressing question that any person must answer: How can we live in a world totally pervaded by pain and death? Your average religious person doesn't give half a damn about how the world works, they use religion to keep living right now.

I mean honestly, none of these response even mention the word pain, and the only one that mentions death acts like it's mere curiosity about death that drives religion. Have any of you ever asked yourself what it is that drives you?

LightBringerFlex · 21時間前

Religion is mankinds way of explaining God and life.

dankine · 1日前

An attempt to explain the unknown, among other reasons no doubt.

sdbear · 23時間前

“Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.” -Mark Twain

GoldenTaint · 1日前

I suspect that the answer is quite simple. I imagine that religion began when the first person dealt with the death of a loved one.

BdaMann · 22時間前

If reincarnation is real and souls can migrate from body to body, then it's possible that some residual memories from previous lives can be transferred as well. The earliest humans may have had memories of previous lives but had no idea how to interpret their memories.

ChurroBandit · 21時間前

as a puppy, my dog once chased a rabbit into a drainspout. then, as an adult, whenever she got stressed, she'd go over to the drainspout and scratch at it, bark at it once, and then she'd feel a little better, like she had exerted some control over her environment and been dominant over something.

irrational but comforting ritualized behavior isn't just exclusive to humans, or even to primates.

morphotomy · 21時間前

Because there must have been something here before us. Something that created us. Thats not to say that it had "intelligence" or "intent", but does a seed have the intent to be a tree? Or does it just do that.

Also the alternative is fucking horrifying.

Jovianflower · 20時間前

To explain the unexplainable. For comfort from the fear of the unknown.

Snugglerific · 19時間前

Let's move away from armchair speculation into what we can make of the facts so far. I think our best bet is that religion is a confluence of certain social and cognitive factors that when they happen to align in a certain way, we call it "religion." (Getting into the problem of defining religion is another problem as well.)

What the precise content of the earliest religion was, there's no real way to say. Based on historical and ethnographic records, there is no real reason to suppose it looked like what we call religion today. The earliest symbolic behavior has recently been found in an engraved shell associated with an H. erectus ~500,000 years ago. What this means, we really have no idea. The first uncontroversial find that has been linked to religion are the ceremonial burials at Qafzeh and Skhul caves in present-day Israel. This may indicate some sort of belief in ancestor worship, an afterlife, or spiritual guidance by dead ancestors. That's about the extent of what can be said about any beliefs related to these burials.

A possible reconstruction of what early religions might have looked like based on ethnography and history can only give us some generalities. Two popular answers are the classic functionalist theory of group cohesion, or the intellectualist answer that early religion was a bad way of explaining physical phenomena, basically a pseudo-science. The former fails because morality and religious belief are not universally connected. It is easily more conceivable that morality and concepts of the supernatural evolved along separate lines and became intertwined at specific historical periods. The latter is also untenable because it assumes that people seek explanations for everything, which is not always the case cross-culturally.

To take a very extreme example, the Piraha of the Amazon have only the most minimalist concept of anything that could be called a religion. They have a three-tiered cosmology and spirits. The spirits, however, do not interact with them all that much and they don't serve as explanations for physical phenomena or figures of moral guidance. If anything, they are hyper-empiricists -- anything that they can't experience directly might as well not exist. This is why Dan Everett, when he went on a mission, failed to convert them. This actually stretches back to the earliest missionaries, many of whom had trouble converting indigenous peoples because their concepts of religion were so incredibly different.

We also run into another problem with ontology in the sense that not all societies have a concept of a division between natural and supernatural. One example is the Nayaka in India. There are unseen entities in their belief system, but they are conceived of as natural entities. The word "superperson" has increasingly been used to refer to these entities.

What might we be able to say? Middle Paleolithic religions would very likely have looked very different from any of today's world religions. Some characteristics may have included the following: Some may have had the concept of spirits, some may have had superpersons. Ceremonial burial was a common ritual. Morality was not particularly connected to spiritual ideas. There were few, if any, religious specialists. Beliefs were probably not a specified set of doctrines. A tiered cosmology may have existed. By the Upper Paleolithic, religious specialists developed in the form of shamans. In certain regions of Europe, going by cave art, rituals may have included going deep into caves. This could help in achieving altered states of consciousness through sensory deprivation. It is difficult to go to anything beyond some of these generalizations.

Sources: Asad, Talal. The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category

Atran, Scott. In Gods We Trust

Bird-David, Nurit. Animism Revisited

Bloch, Maurice. Why Religion is Nothing Special But Central. Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained

Everett, Daniel. Don't Sleep; There Are Snakes.

Fowles, Severin. An Archaeology of Doings.

Jordans et al. Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving

Lewis-Williams, J. David. The Mind in the Cave

Mayer, Vandermeersch, and Bar-Yosef. Shells and ochre in Middle Paleolithic Qafzeh Cave, Israel: indications for modern behavior

Owens and Hayden. Pre-Historic Rites of Passage: A Comparative Study of Trans-Egalitarian Hunter-Gatherers

Stark, Rodney. Gods, Rituals, and the Moral Order

nuclearfirecracker · 16時間前

Spiritualism, animism etc seems to be something we have evolved to do, the primitive human ancestor that assigned intent and agency to everything around him was more cautious and survived better.

Religion on the other hand, just read Exodus, get past all the myth of the heroic escape of Egypt and the silly golden bull story and what comes next? Chapter after chapter of, when you do x sacrifice a little bit of cow and give the rest to the priest, when you do y sacrifice a little bit of chicken and give the rest to the priest. For any conceivable situation the priest gets to take his portion, it describes perfectly a money making scheme. People took the superstitious beliefs of the people and found a way to make money and power off it, just like any charlatan, quack, Nigerian prince or new age healer does today.

Spiritwalke · 1日前

Broadly speaking, religion and myth serves four functions for a society. Ask someone 'why religion' and they will answer based on which function, if any, impacts their life.

' The Metaphysical function serves to awaken the consciousness of its consumers to a reality lying just beyond the veil of normal perception. This is a spiritual and religious purpose meant to inspire a sense of awe and reverence to the great mystery of existence. Campbell spoke of this classification also as a mystical one. Myth seeks to lead all to the fundamental conviction that there is unity in the universe. The universe is the one (uni-) statement (verse) of all there is. There is no separation, division, or segmentation. One thing is not a part of the whole. Each thing is the whole of the holarchy. To create and maintain an individual’s immanent experience of a transcendent reality, to inspire one to look into the night sky and surrender to the wonder of it all, to stand in complete awe of the absolute mystery of the universe and the self… this is the Metaphysical function of mythology.

The second function of mythology is the Cosmological. The Cosmological function provides the boundary conditions of the universe, explaining the origins, shape, size, location, and birth and death dates of things such as time, space, matter, energy, biological organisms, and the universe as a whole. Humanity’s mythology and philosophy in this respect is incredibly sophisticated. Each culture contains its own creation story. A majority of religions seek to provide a framework in which this universe resides and includes many other realms of existence. The Buddhist cosmology is analogous of the psyche and states of consciousness that sentient beings have access to. Another philosophical attempt at this game lies within the sciences, especially in biology, astronomy, geology, etc. The scientific cosmology has served its people well, eliminating many archaic ideas while converging with others. Through the process of elimination mankind is edging closer to a more accurate representation of What’s Really Going On, and to be thanked is none other than the Cosmological function of mythology.

The third function of mythology is the Sociological, dealing with validating the order and ideas of a culture. Myth can provide a model of social behavior that, when adhered to, makes for a not-so-squeeky cog in the great machine. Parables and fables guide morality. Myth disseminate geographically confined fixed law, such as “thou shalt not kill” to set limits for those unable to approach a post-conventional level of morality. In the Vedic society of the Hindus society is ordered in a very specific and efficient fashion (albeit with extremely decreased social mobility) and justified by being tied into the mythology of the land. Without this order carried out ritually, the gods and the universe are not reified and thus the cosmos itself crumbles. The Scoiological function creates social order and reason and validates it for those living within it, allowing for consensual agreement on what is and is not allowed.

The Pedagogical function of mythology serves the psychological sphere of human existence. By establishing rites of passage into critical stages of life, from dependency to maturity, old age, and finally death, myth provides guideposts and beacons to serve as a reminder that there is a purpose. This is to allow a sense of comfort in the entire process, as the individual remembers that he is not the first and certaintly not the last to embark upon this Hero’s Journey, regardless how far along he arrives. This adventure of experience is tied directly to the ground of all being, the unity of the Metaphysical function. Not only is it all okay, but there is a well worn and well lit path to follow if attention is paid and warnings heeded. This centers an individual and brings him into harmony with the way things are and have been. These external signs are symbolic for what is within, and to find commonalities with myth is to find a self-narrative for one’s own life primed for the injection of whatever meaning one can brave. The Pedagogical function presents myth as a teacher, an outline for life, and reference manual for existence. '

http://ndpmythology.blogspot.com/2011/08/campbells-four-functions-of-myth.html

DrDiarrhea · 1日前

"Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool". Voltaire.

Actually i think the answer is, as with everything about humans, evolutionary. We are wet wired to find meaning in random data..and part of that is being teleological..assiging purpose to everything. So for example, thinking the river is there so you can drink, or thinking the sun is there for light. Existence as a whole goes through our brains in the same way, assigning intent and purpose, and therefore a controlling agent, to the universe. People who fall for the Fine Tuning argument are doing this.

HuNoze · 22時間前

Why do you think religion started?

People trying to explain stuff that they don't understand.

Aroot · 1日前

In order to connect with the divine, which is what religion does across the world.

In my opinion, religion started as the great answer to all of life's questions. Why is there lightning? The gods are mad. Why did we have such a good crop? The gods are generous. What is our purpose? To serve god.

"Explaining the unknown" is a common answer but "explaining the unknown" has very very little to do with religion. How much of Christianity is about "explaining the unknown"? If anything, religion creates and acknowledges even more unknowns than you would get from looking at the natural world. Trinity, Incarnation, Grace, Essence, Eucharist, etc. all famously are subjects of so many questions and wonder themselves.

Cutsie answers like "Oh lightning means the angels are bowling" have very little to do with the actual core of the religion, which is bridging the gap between humanity and the divine, and what's more "explaining" things doesn't ever require the divine or God to begin with. For a long time, illness was explained using the four humors. "We are sick because our humors are unbalanced". And all the cute answers in the world of course, don't make a religion.

Gullex · 1日前

That kind of depends on the religion you're talking about, doesn't it?

Why did the Roman and Greek religions start? They wanted a way to explain phenomena they didn't have an explanation for.

Why did Buddhism start? A guy had a realization that made his life a lot better and other people also wanted to know how to make their lives better.

iamkuato · 1日前

I like the we-were-ignorant-so-we-made-stuff-up answer. But I think that the we-were-ignorant-so-we-were-easily-manipulated-by-the-shaman answer is more likely.

From that point, it has just been momentum.

At first, everyone's job was to get food. The first two jobs outside of the food-production equation were military/political leader (or chief) and healer/religious leader (or shaman). You paid both for protection.

So - religion was born as the world's first protection racket. Sort of an "I'm in tight with the gods and if you don't give me stuff you will be punished" thing.

othilien · 1日前

I think narcissistic personality disorder runs in my family, and I would guess most of the people that started religions also had it. NPD lets people fabricate, believe, and swear by stories that would put them in an important position. That plus some gullible people is all it would take to establish a myth. If you're not used to it, delusional stories from a person that totally believes them can be pretty convincing, so I would guess this would happen particularly when someone with NPD would move somewhere new by themselves, where the people were unfamiliar and unskeptical of them.

After these people died, the followers had already found some love, meaning, and freedom in the stories, so they continued telling them.

anonoman925 · 1日前

We weren't really cognitively developed as we are now. We functioned a lot like children. We didn't grow out of this like a butterfly; it's still a huge part of how we operate.

Trying to make sense of a chaotic world. That's why many popular religions focus on a reward if you adhere. Things are miserable for a variety of reasons, but we don't blame God, we collectively assume the problem is us.

Something like Judaism takes our flaws and runs with it. We disobeyed God and now pay for it. There's no redemption, but be a good person. This is one of the more tolerable stances for me.

But look at Jewish law. Don't eat shellfish, in the desert. Don't fuck with another man's property; so don't fuck with his wife. This all makes sense from a pragmatic stance. But since they already decided on the Devine, these are rules from the Devine.

FacelessJane · 22時間前

There's a fantastic movie called "The Invention of Lying" which I think addresses this beautifully.. It presents the theory that the beginnings of religion were perhaps well intentioned stories which hoped to teach and provide comfort from life's mysteries and unanswerable questions. It has a great response to those who advocate that even if religion is not factually true, provides a service of encouraging morality, good deeds and comfort... I highly recommend.

donit · 18時間前

In my opinion,

That's not really your opinion- we were all taught to think that in school. But think about it: Why would anyone, upon seeing something they don't understand, pull a shitty explanation like that out of their ass? How many times have YOU ever done that? Yeah, me neither.

"Dad, what was that sound in the attic?" Well son, that was what's called a snipeadactyl. It's the ghost of a prehistoric bird that sneaks in through the bushes and then crashes around in people's attics."

"What's that creaking sound coming from the ceiling?" Son, that's the sound of your great grandma's bones. She had terrible arthritis, and so every time her ghost walks through this room, you can hear the sound of her bones creaking."

I'll take "Things that never happened" for $300, Alex.

Unless your dad is Chevy Chase, he's just going to answer "It just is. It's just the way of the world."

rontonimobay · 1日前

Death be scary. Lies can feel good.

worldatturmoil · 15時間前

The sun, obviously. Imagine trying to explain such a thing, witnessing the seasons change as it moved across the sky, giver of all life. What better explanation would there have been?

bunker_man · 8時間前

Because at early times guesses were the only way to systematize ways to make sense of the world, and the idea of hierarchy of beings presumed that there were beings below human level and so presumably ones higher in the reverse.

IAMA_Drunk_Armadillo · 2時間前

I think that at some point 100,000+ years ago there was a fundamental shift in human cognition humanity (and this would include the offshoots and cousin species so probably going back to homo erectus) we started to recognize we weren't like other animals. This lead to questions about our existence and religion was born out of that. Regardless of where you find humans you find religion and they all answer, so to speak, the same basic things such as the origin of life and the universe what our purpose is and how we should live.

Nonid · 1日前

I picture it like this :

Thunder

The tribe is like WTF ?? what is that ?

Most of them "I don't know ! It's weird !"

One guy, the one who always has something to say about everything is like "Seems obvious, it's the great mind of the powerful KAWAKAWA.

Everybody look at him...they're like : "What are you talking about again weirdo !"

Smart ass is happy by all the attention ! He start to tell a weird story about an invisible and powerful guy named KAWAKAWA. In the end he just says : KAWAKAWA is not happy with us and wants us to kneel before him.

All the others are like : "KAWAKAWA ? Come on, you're making that stuff up ! It's stupid !"

The smart ass is like : "Do you have a better explanation ? I know what I'm talking about, he spoke to me in my dreams. Listen everybody, you want to survive ? You want to live and make KAWAKAWA happy ? You need to do as I say ! He told me what he wants"

Smart ass sees the opportunity to bang the best girl of the village ! He keeps telling stuff about KAWAKAWA to sound legit.

Everybody is confused... People look at each other and the most scared by the thunder starts to follow the smart ass.

A bunch of guys are like "No, that's dumb, I won't believe this crap ! KAWAKAWA doesn't exist ! It's just noise and rain, stop your bullshit"

The smart ass says to his followers : "If they don't follow us, they'll make all of us killed !! Listen the scream of KAWAKAWA ! He will destroy us if we don't follow his orders !"

The crowd trys to convince the non believers. Of course they end up arguing and fighting. By the end of the day, all non believers are dead in the name of KAWAKAWA. The smart ass become the great preacher, bang the sexy chicks as part of the ritual for the god and everybody start to build him the best house you can imagine. The house is called "the great temple"

This is how the KAWAKAWA religion started. It lasted a hundred years...until a guy come and talk about the celestial Rabbit who sculpted the world in the great carrot of life....

But it's just what my imagination tells me ;p

I can't prove it !

renenuca · 22時間前

First of all, research the Anthony Flew case.

I think reason gives you the answer. If you randomly press a piano's keys, there will never be a melody (at much there could be like 3 notes in a row that have harmmony, but then that harmmony is broken). An intelligence is needed in order to make a melody. Ourselves, nature, life and the interactions between lifeforms and their surroundings are far more complex than a melody and have much more variables that could break the harmmony. Therefore, an intelligence is needed, and intelligence that created us. That is what we call God.

There are other ways of finding the existence of God, i recommend you to study "The five ways" of St. Thomas.

According to abrahamic religions, God made us to love us and for us to love him, so, as it is our purpose, we are always trying to find him. God is always in contact with us, he constantly reveals himself to man.

GeoCosmos · 1日前

Yes religion is a setup for "fantasy protecting - and persecuting alteregos". These fantasies automatically arise even in children when they are frustrated or outright abused. "Imaginary friends". Look at www.psychohistory.com, Lloyd deMause has a clear explanation to your question. By the way your answers are good enough.

Mrphilosopher · 1日前

See "Sky cake" by Patton Oswalt, funny and true.

Herodriver · 22時間前

They're seeking power. What better way to gain it than claiming that you're the representative of god. Your words will be considered as god's law. To oppose you,means opposing god itself. It's a perfect tool for power hungry maniacs.

75Rollo · 19時間前

Everybody has a belief set.

Religion is the formal outworking of a belief set.

Ergo, everyone has a religion of sorts.

Red5point1 · 1日前

Basically fear and ignorance of the natural world is the answer.
Religion goes back a lot further back into human history than we actually imagine.
So it was not really to answer questions about our existence. That is really a very new concept.

Why is there lightning? The gods are mad.

I don't agree with that, it was more like "shit what was that?!" "must be some powerful entity, lets not make it mad"
So they ended up doing things that may or may not appease that powerful entity that makes loud noise and light, eventually evolved into a god.

Hypersapien · 22時間前

An attempt to explain the world around us. The earliest religions anthropomorphized the sun, moon, wind, rain and lightning.

greenfields210 · 21時間前

Intuition of a higher order and a desire to be in tune with it.

Jeffreyrock · 1日前

Because the purpose of life is to find God, and perfection cannot be found in this imperfect world.

Three_Scarabs · 20時間前

It really, really makes no sense to theorize religion started to answer questions. I long agreed with that, but it doesn't fit at all with how humans try to solve problems logically and using their senses first. Ancient people would have easily seen a correlation between something like storm clouds and lightning, and they later assigned deities to these things symbolically. More likely is that ancient humans were given a reason to accept religion.

Theist	Atheist
/u/krashmo	/u/dale_glass
/u/KaliYugaz	/u/Jez2718
/u/sher_bear	/u/maskedman3d
/u/Zosim	/u/hayshed
/u/Zyracksis	/u/_pH_
	/u/Joebloggy
	/u/Temper4Temper
	/u/WeaponsGradeHumanity
	/u/wokeupabug

DebateReligion

(when in doubt contact us)

Filter posts by subject

The ModWatch

Meet the ModWatchers

Related Communities

調停者