How & why did religion evolve?

BBC - Future - How and why did religion evolve?

Can the roots of spiritual behaviors and feelings be found in other animals? In the first of a two-part special, Brandon Ambrosino examines the evolutionary origins of religion.

“This is my body.”

These words, recorded in the Gospels as being spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, are said daily at Church services around the world before the communion meal is eaten. When Christians hear these words spoken in the present, we’re reminded of the past, which is always with us, which never goes away.

Just how much past are Christians reminded of? Certainly the last two millennia, which, in addition to devout celebrations of the Eucharist, are rife with doctrinal disputes, church splits, episodes of violence, excommunications, papal pronouncements, and various metaphysical debates, all revolving around the communion meal.
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And let's not forget the Defenestration of Prague.

But the oral traditions that are at the foundation of the Old Testament go back to Mesopotamia & even much earlier: floods, Arks, cataclysms, the wrath of divine entities. And who was there to take notes during the first chapters of Genesis?

The origins of religion will never be known as it began before recorded history.
I think a fair assumption is that it was an explanation by some of why how things happen that was beyond their understanding. Those who gave these explanations discovered that it gave them a certain amount of power over others who sought not just answers to how and why the world was as it was but advice on how to make it better or avoid it getting worse, thus religions began.

How & why did religion evolve?

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• Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion
• The Origins of Religion: How Supernatural Beliefs Evolved
• Seeing Spirituality in Chimpanzees Some animals have been observed performing the same rituals over and over, leading scientists to speculate that they might have a sense of the sacred.
• Prehistoric Religion

God forfend animals having found religion. If they do, it'll surely be their undoing.

IMO, religion began when the first hunter-gatherers huddled around campfires at night & established oral traditions as to how to ward off the nasty beasties that were eyeing them hungrily from just outside the circle of light. In essence, they started praying to unseen gods to help them survive the night without becoming a buffet for the animals.

My best guess is to give a human figure (leader?) additional (divine?) power. Rather than asking others (followers?) to to simply accept his/her authority (on any given matter) they instead claim to be expressing "God's word".

Quag said:

The origins of religion will never be known as it began before recorded history.
I think a fair assumption is that it was an explanation by some of why how things happen that was beyond their understanding. Those who gave these explanations discovered that it gave them a certain amount of power over others who sought not just answers to how and why the world was as it was but advice on how to make it better or avoid it getting worse, thus religions began.

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I generally agree. Mankind has three natures; a physical, a mental and a spiritual. We live in a physical universe and, as you pointed out, there are several unknowns which were often given supernatural causes such as Zeus throwing lightning bolts at the ground.

Atheists often try to conflate religion with the spiritual nature of man, but religion is a subset of that spiritual nature. Over 90% of human beings have spiritual beliefs. Not all of those beliefs are based on religions nor do they strictly adhere to religious dogma. Another thread pointed out how attendance at dogmatic religions was down, but it would be ignorant to believe those people losing faith in dogmatic religions have all become atheists. They are simply recognizing that dogmatic religions are not giving them the answers they are seeking.

JacksinPA said:

BBC - Future - How and why did religion evolve?

Can the roots of spiritual behaviors and feelings be found in other animals? In the first of a two-part special, Brandon Ambrosino examines the evolutionary origins of religion.

“This is my body.”

These words, recorded in the Gospels as being spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, are said daily at Church services around the world before the communion meal is eaten. When Christians hear these words spoken in the present, we’re reminded of the past, which is always with us, which never goes away.

Just how much past are Christians reminded of? Certainly the last two millennia, which, in addition to devout celebrations of the Eucharist, are rife with doctrinal disputes, church splits, episodes of violence, excommunications, papal pronouncements, and various metaphysical debates, all revolving around the communion meal.
==========================================
And let's not forget the Defenestration of Prague.

But the oral traditions that are at the foundation of the Old Testament go back to Mesopotamia & even much earlier: floods, Arks, cataclysms, the wrath of divine entities. And who was there to take notes during the first chapters of Genesis?

Click to expand...

I assume that it's actually a product of curiosity. The human brain is complex enough that we thirst for answers, but not perfect enough that we don't succumb to irrational thinking while going from point A to point B. People want answers, and are likely to simply make them up if they don't get those answers. People tell each other stories, and they beleive those stories because they want to, because it offers them comfort amidst a confusing existence. It's what we did before we learned to draw conclusions based on evidence, probability, and data.

Those beleifs became engrained into a society because of how we tend to act as a herd in thought and ideas.

Rising Sun said:

I generally agree. Mankind has three natures; a physical, a mental and a spiritual. We live in a physical universe and, as you pointed out, there are several unknowns which were often given supernatural causes such as Zeus throwing lightning bolts at the ground.

Atheists often try to conflate religion with the spiritual nature of man, but religion is a subset of that spiritual nature. Over 90% of human beings have spiritual beliefs. Not all of those beliefs are based on religions nor do they strictly adhere to religious dogma. Another thread pointed out how attendance at dogmatic religions was down, but it would be ignorant to believe those people losing faith in dogmatic religions have all become atheists. They are simply recognizing that dogmatic religions are not giving them the answers they are seeking.

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Not sure if your 90% figure is accurate but anecdotally I know more and more people who are either atheist or as you say have beliefs but either follow no particular religion or just dont actively participate in the one they "follow"

JacksinPA said:

IMO, religion began when the first hunter-gatherers huddled around campfires at night & established oral traditions as to how to ward off the nasty beasties that were eyeing them hungrily from just outside the circle of light. In essence, they started praying to unseen gods to help them survive the night without becoming a buffet for the animals.

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Damn close, I mean damn close!

The ultimate irony here is once the shift occurred from hunter-gatherers to societies based on agriculture and trade it was systems of law and order that came first. The idea that people needed a set of rules to abide by in an effort to ensure as much social calm as possible (even though that did not work out to well either.) Disagreement, societies development at different points, communication, etc. Aristocracy from governance was an almost natural reaction in terms of trying to instill society and order.

Next, systems of belief started to pop up. The various studies of societies throughout history suggest that almost immediately humanity turned to deity to explain things. To both answer what could not be explained otherwise, but really as a means of social control and order. The idea of needing to have an unseen parent who could reward or punish based on activity became the means to craft systems of belief. That bridged the gap between why a culture would win a conflict with some other culture, or explain why famine caused a culture to suffer, etc.

But since social order became more and more important, as more societies developed and they became much larger, we saw aristocracy turn to another idea... human-gods.

So... Law and aristocracy, then order, then belief, and ultimately fear.

Cornerstone to any concept of social order is control, and when law was not enough the idea of something you could not see rewarding or punishing you became a means of human control. Silly explanations for why there are stars, or why a flood occurred, or where they went after they died, etc. System of process were no where in sight even though evolution of humanity demanded simple things like control of fire, hunting, agriculture, language, writing, the wheel, what have you. Had to develop to survive won out over have to explain via the exact same process.

But evolution of religion *had* to occur as societies became so large that humanity (that was still largely uneducated well into the Bronze Age) needed new explanations. Polytheism to monotheism was reactionary, and the period was filled to the brim with new stories to explain what the various strains of polytheism failed to do. Control of people changed hands frequently enough suggesting replacing one belief with another. The stories of why something happened to a city, or person, spread as communications among various societies, empires, etc. went up as fast as nations became other nations. Through being conquered or otherwise, someone’s beliefs won out over someone else’s.

Think about it, without a short period of the Roman Empire then Christianity would not be what we see it as today. At all.

Behind the scenes of it all... aristocracy... and that same need for control through law or belief or both is still the basis for any longevity of that control.

... and thousands of years later, we still have it.

There are still plenty of people today that cannot make a decision about their own health without a magical power as there were thousands of years ago with people trying to explain why it did not rain when they needed it to.

DH Kirkwood said:

I assume that it's actually a product of curiosity. The human brain is complex enough that we thirst for answers, but not perfect enough that we don't succumb to irrational thinking while going from point A to point B. People want answers, and are likely to simply make them up if they don't get those answers. People tell each other stories, and they beleive those stories because they want to, because it offers them comfort amidst a confusing existence. It's what we did before we learned to draw conclusions based on evidence, probability, and data.

Those beleifs became engrained into a society because of how we tend to act as a herd in thought and ideas.

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I think religion is a product of the strongest human emotion: fear.

I think it developed from man's conscious awareness of his spiritual need...of being painfully aware of his spiritual poverty and of his need for God...Matthew5:3...

JacksinPA said:

I think religion is a product of the strongest human emotion: fear.

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Not all religions preach about an after-life, or fire and brimstone. Perhaps fear came into the picture as soon as those seeking to maintain power realized that religion can be used to control a population.

Gobekli Tepe is so far the oldest temple ever discovered estimated to be around 11,000 years ago. It marks an important difference between spirituality which existed before religion and the religion we understand today.

Remnants of spirituality such as cave drawings show that the drawings gave equal or more importance to animal spirits as it did to man. Where as the first temple used carvings of humans as a center for the temple while animal carvings were given lesser importance. In other words religion began when man changed from seeing himself as one with the animals and plants and instead saw himself as being above other creatures.

The other factor in this is that civilisation also began at roughly the same time period. Religion was a necessary draw card that held people from differing tribal families together to act as a large group that is needed to make a civilisation.
Prior to this humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years in what was basic family made up tribes and held no common religions but instead had spiritual beliefs about animals and the environment.

Quag said:

Not sure if your 90% figure is accurate but anecdotally I know more and more people who are either atheist or as you say have beliefs but either follow no particular religion or just dont actively participate in the one they "follow"

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It would depend upon who you hang out with. I'm using the figures from polling sites. Example: Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics | Pew Research Center

JacksinPA said:

BBC - Future - How and why did religion evolve?

Can the roots of spiritual behaviors and feelings be found in other animals? In the first of a two-part special, Brandon Ambrosino examines the evolutionary origins of religion.

“This is my body.”

These words, recorded in the Gospels as being spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, are said daily at Church services around the world before the communion meal is eaten. When Christians hear these words spoken in the present, we’re reminded of the past, which is always with us, which never goes away.

Just how much past are Christians reminded of? Certainly the last two millennia, which, in addition to devout celebrations of the Eucharist, are rife with doctrinal disputes, church splits, episodes of violence, excommunications, papal pronouncements, and various metaphysical debates, all revolving around the communion meal.
==========================================
And let's not forget the Defenestration of Prague.

But the oral traditions that are at the foundation of the Old Testament go back to Mesopotamia & even much earlier: floods, Arks, cataclysms, the wrath of divine entities. And who was there to take notes during the first chapters of Genesis?

Click to expand...

God created the universe in the beginning and He related the facts to writers like Moses to give humans a written record of the things that took place. There have always been a rebellious crowd of unbelievers who do not want to believe and obey God and these misguided souls have invented all sorts of alternative theories for how the universe suddenly appeared from nothing and how biologically complicated life forms got their start from dumb helpless chemicals which somehow appeared out of nothing and nowhere some miraculous inexplicable way.

JacksinPA said:

BBC - Future - How and why did religion evolve?

Can the roots of spiritual behaviors and feelings be found in other animals? In the first of a two-part special, Brandon Ambrosino examines the evolutionary origins of religion.

“This is my body.”

These words, recorded in the Gospels as being spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, are said daily at Church services around the world before the communion meal is eaten. When Christians hear these words spoken in the present, we’re reminded of the past, which is always with us, which never goes away.

Just how much past are Christians reminded of? Certainly the last two millennia, which, in addition to devout celebrations of the Eucharist, are rife with doctrinal disputes, church splits, episodes of violence, excommunications, papal pronouncements, and various metaphysical debates, all revolving around the communion meal.
==========================================
And let's not forget the Defenestration of Prague.

But the oral traditions that are at the foundation of the Old Testament go back to Mesopotamia & even much earlier: floods, Arks, cataclysms, the wrath of divine entities. And who was there to take notes during the first chapters of Genesis?

Click to expand...

The stories that people will tell themselves, so that they can justify denying the truth, are really quite astounding.

If you don't believe in God, you'll believe in anything but God.

Rising Sun said:

It would depend upon who you hang out with. I'm using the figures from polling sites. Example: Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics | Pew Research Center

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religious groups in the U.S. by tradition, family and denomination

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You said 90% of human beings but the site is referring to the USA
Bolded is where it fails for me as well. I know many who consider themselves culturally of a certain religion but are also atheist/agnostic. Ie they celebrate Christmas, passover or whatever but dont have any religious/spiritual beliefs about such events.

Though it seems to be an interesting site in general thanx

Looking globally it doesnt seem to be close to that

The six countries in the world with the most 'convinced atheists' | The Independent
Importance of religion by country - Wikipedia
List of countries by irreligion - Wikipedia
Global Spirituality Index: Ranking the World’s Most Spiritual Countries

Quag said:

The origins of religion will never be known as it began before recorded history.
I think a fair assumption is that it was an explanation by some of why how things happen that was beyond their understanding. Those who gave these explanations discovered that it gave them a certain amount of power over others who sought not just answers to how and why the world was as it was but advice on how to make it better or avoid it getting worse, thus religions began.

Click to expand...

As my old friend Seneca used to sy:

Lucius Annaeus Seneca: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

Quag said:

You said 90% of human beings but the site is referring to the USA
Bolded is where it fails for me as well. I know many who consider themselves culturally of a certain religion but are also atheist/agnostic. Ie they celebrate Christmas, passover or whatever but dont have any religious/spiritual beliefs about such events.

Though it seems to be an interesting site in general thanx

Looking globally it doesnt seem to be close to that

The six countries in the world with the most 'convinced atheists' | The Independent
Importance of religion by country - Wikipedia
List of countries by irreligion - Wikipedia
Global Spirituality Index: Ranking the World’s Most Spiritual Countries

Click to expand...

The difference between you and I seems to be that you keep referring to religion and I keep referring to spirituality.

Additionally, some atheists love to fluff up their numbers by claiming all Buddhists are "atheists". By a strict definition of the word, that is true since Buddhists don't believe in a "god", but they certainly are spiritual, Buddhism is certainly a religion and most Buddhists believe in reincarnation, meaning life-after-death. Not the standard atheist "When you're dead, you're dead".

Your own links mix religion and spirituality. They are not the same.

My suspicion is that ritual, and proto-religious thinking were born out of social authority in groups of hominids. Curiosity, wonder, fear, loss, and anxiety may have caused tensions in simple hominid family or clan groupings and hominid leaders who could satisfy or assuage such impulses in their group's individuals could devote more time, thought and effort to coordinated cooperative behaviour to improve the group's prospects of survival. Fantastical explanations or shared beliefs might have achieved the social relief needed to better focus on cooperative survival strategies. Higher survival rates in cooperative groups of primates or hominids may have allowed the hereditary traits which favoured ritual and belief in the leaders' explanations to out perform more "secular" social arrangements. Thus the capacity for belief and faith may have been self-bred into us unintentionally. This is only supposition because we will likely not know what really happened in the pre-history of mankind and its predecessors until we find a way to travel backwards in time or find a parallel universe where close primate/hominid analogues are going through this process in real time.

A potentially unethical experiment might be to take a community of bonobos and try to breed into them the traits which favour organised ritual and proto-religion induction in their groupings. An even more unethical approach would be to turn uncooperative human infants into feral humans over several generations and then try to induce in their offspring traits leading to adopting belief and ritual. But that is wholely unacceptable behaviour. It may however spark ideas in others about other less unpalatable experiments in analogues for primates and hominids.

Cheers.
Very Evilroddy.

JacksinPA said:

I think religion is a product of the strongest human emotion: fear.

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I agree; fear of the unknown. What happens when you draw your last breath? Is there another life after what we experience here in our lifetimes? Best to paint a rosy picture for the masses. Early on the clergy found that “faith” could be used to control the masses and enrich themselves in the bargain.

Rising Sun said:

The difference between you and I seems to be that you keep referring to religion and I keep referring to spirituality.

Additionally, some atheists love to fluff up their numbers by claiming all Buddhists are "atheists". By a strict definition of the word, that is true since Buddhists don't believe in a "god", but they certainly are spiritual, Buddhism is certainly a religion and most Buddhists believe in reincarnation, meaning life-after-death. Not the standard atheist "When you're dead, you're dead".

Your own links mix religion and spirituality. They are not the same.

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I understand you are talking about spirituality but your link mixed tradition, and denomination not spirituality. Again I dont have the numbers I googled and that was the best I found. I am sure there are many spiritual but non religious people but I havent seen anything that shows the numbers on that and am not that vested t spend hours googling but If you are I would be more than happy to see

Quag said:

I understand you are talking about spirituality but your link mixed tradition, and denomination not spirituality. Again I dont have the numbers I googled and that was the best I found. I am sure there are many spiritual but non religious people but I havent seen anything that shows the numbers on that and am not that vested t spend hours googling but If you are I would be more than happy to see

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Dude, you ask for an example and I gave you one not a thesis on religion and spirituality. The bottom line here is that in industrialized nations the dogmatic religions are losing favor, but atheists are only ticking up slightly. Mostly among the young but the majority are still seeking spiritual fulfillment. "Why?" is the all important question.

My theory is that most people, on the order of over 90%, sense there is more to existence than eating, sleeping, ****ing and dying.

Dawkins has the best explanation for this; it is evolutionary in nature. This is just a theory but it makes sense.

Caveman A walks past a bush. He hears a rustle in the bush. Fearing attack from an unseen and unknown presence, he flees and lives to both tell his tale and spread his genes into the gene pool.

Caveman B walks past a bush and hears a similar rustle. Seeing no predators or danger, he asserts the wind caused the rustle. A predator eats him. He is thus unable to spread his genes.

Caveman A spreads his acceptance of the unknown into the gene pool. These folks tend to live longer because they are more fearful. These folks also thus spread this to the gene pool. The rustle, to them, takes on a supernatural quality and gives rise to the notion of unseen powers at play, encouraging the creation of gods and other things through superstitious nonsense.