Origins of Religion

[Darwin]

I´d like to dedicate a thread to ponder on the origins of religious faith,psychology of religion and possible birth of-.
Briefly put,would prefer to see you posting your own ideas,hypotheses or resources on this subject.

Despite what many would think about him,I´m posting Freud´s theories for some additional insight.
http://www.freud.org.uk/religion.html

[c4ts]

Religion probably started out as the inadvertent result of a combination of intellectual boredom, storytelling, boiled vegetables, and rudimentary politics, probably.

[BroodingSkill]

Personally I'm currently leaning in the direction of Desmond Morris' view of religion from "The Naked Ape" quote:

"At first sight, it is surprising that religion has been so successful, but it's extreme potency is simply a measure of the strength of our fundamental biological tendency, inherited directly from our monkey and ape ancestors, to submit ourselves to an all-powerful,dominate member of the group. Because of this, religion has proved immensely valuable as a device for aiding social cohesion, and it is doubtful whether our species could have progressed far without it, given the unique combination of circumstances of our evolutionary origins."
from "The Naked Ape"by Desmond Morris pg180.

Morris goes on to say that those who have rejected religion end up replacing it with something else, for example, science, political ideologies, public figures, etc....so long as there is something to answer to.

Now I don't happen to agree with eveything said in this book, but it has become the starting point in my on personal research to answer some questions about what we(human beings) are.

That being said,I'm not religious, but this particular explaination of it struck a cord with me.

[Dancing David]

Religion fills the need for the chaotic world to make sense.

Peace

[Darwin]

c4ts,
I understand the point about boiled vegetables.
Seriously,thanks for posting.

BroodingSkill,
Sounds interesting enough.
I´ll have to look for "Naked Ape" sometime soon,anyway.

[Dancing David]

I have to recomend Jung for the search for the roots of religion.

[Dymanic]

Here's my take on it:

I think it has a lot to do with the way our brains are wired.

For one thing, our ability to discern patterns is so efficient that it allows us to see patterns even where none actually exist.

For another thing, one of the most important jobs which survival requires our brains to do is understand why other humans do the things they do so that we can make reasonable guesses as to what they are likely to do next, or how they will respond to our actions.

It is the most normal thing for us to project onto inanimate objects the same kinds of motivations we see in other humans, and ourselves. I occasionally find myself attempting to use intimidation and physical violence as a manipulative tool to try to get some object to cooperate with me. This is especially noticeable when I work on cars, or plumbing.

A volcano, or a thunderstorm, appear to be the results of anger on the part of some powerful entity. If you hear similar growling sounds from a clump of foliage, the safest assumption is that its source is a large predatory animal.

A hostile human, or group of humans, may often be appeased by a 'peace offering'; some sort of gift intended to buy favor.

Put these together, and it is quite natural to conclude that tossing a virgin or two into the volcano will have the same effect. Once you have a few well-paid individuals who are specialists in knowing what the spirits are up to, a strong feedback effect comes into play; their job security depends on keeping their secrets secret, and on keeping the myth going. That's where the whole dominance posturing thing comes in.

[BobK]

Back in the stone age people would go to the wise man of the clan to have their questions answered, and for this the wise man was exempt from doing any of the heavy duty chores.

While he wasn't any great shakes when it came to explaining the forces of nature, he did come up with a very tasty bat on a stick recipe.

Now another guy in the clan, seeing the wise man living the good life, and wanting to get that status for himself, saw that the wise man being honest about his knowledge, couldn't answer a lot of questions.

Such as what causes thunder, rain etc. so he simply answered what the wise man couldn't, by making up names of invisible, powerful beings as being responsible.

The wise man couldn't prove him wrong, so eventually the clan executed a coup d'etat, replacing the wise man with the new guy because they already had the wise man's recipe, and he wasn't able to answer the defining questions of their time.

That's why we started out with a bunch of gods.

That's the way I think it happened.