Did man  create Religion as a form of adaptation?
412276
Yes. It keeps the crowds quiet.
793581
Yes - and no.\n\nReligion is a by-product of evolution. As we developed into thinking humans, our brains developed an interesting trait - it will beleive ANYTHING it is told if it is told so by a parent or an elder. This served a certain survival mechanism. When a child was told by its parent not to stray too close to the lion's den, the child did one of two things - he either listened and lived, or he didnt listen and ended up lion food. Those that survived passed on a good survival tool - listen to your elders...\nProblem is, your elders can also tell you things that arent so useful to survival. Such as "You must sacrifice a goat to the sun god to ensure it rains." Now, we all know this to be false, yet beleifs in deities still persist. \nThe reason for the persistence is because the human brain STILL listens and beleives what it is told by its elders. And nowadays, people have no respect for their parents - but they listen to their pastors. So the myths persist.\n\n\nSo you are corect in your assumption that religion is an evolutionary mechanism - but not for war. Thats just another by-product of religion as well.
705790
As humans evolved, many phenomenon on earth could not be explained, e.g. volcanoes, planets, etc., so we created gods. We still cannot explain what happened before the big bang, so it is possible that god created this space and time (and therefore,ultimately, us).
357386
I think an anthropologist would say that belief in a higher power was a way for humans to rationalize the unknown and frightening (e.g., fierce animals, lightning, fire, starvation, illness, etc.); and that soon after it began, opportunistic humans took advantage of the fear and turned superstition into a business, organizing sacrifices, providing privileged communication with the god(s), collecting offerings, recruiting acolytes and suppressing dissent, all in the name of tribal safety and prosperity. Now we call these entrepreneurs preachers, pontiffs, imams, rabbis, etc. and with the assistance of compliant civil governments, they can aspire to more effective means of retaining belief and power.
1024018
Sure, I think the answer to both questions is yes. Religion was created to conquer a fear of death and religion was created to control people. However, aside from religion, a man rose from the dead and this man is named Jesus. Something is remarkably different about this person and you can read about him in the Christian Bible. This one event shows that there is more to a religion than a mere belief or control. God has a plan for our lives and God made himself known throughout history.
525184
Nearly all people on the face of this planet grew up with some concept of religion that had at least SOME direct correlation to thier upbringing.  Some of us have choosen to either ignore or deny those teachings but whether we like it or not those beliefs that were introduced to us when we were so young tended to shape us to where we are now in our lives.  Yes we can change our minds and form new opinions but depending on our exposure to those beliefs they can radically affect our opinions of others without us even knowing this.  Athiests and Agnostics are no exceptions to this.  So while it may be hard to understand why some people would rather have a religious leader with a questionable and dubious background rather then an intelligent and reasonable man with a heroic background, it might be better to ask why the monkey is always going for the bananna... because he's used to it.
1071025
Man created God in his own image
170837
No, but I think modern monkeys and I had a common ancestor a very, very long time ago.  When a family diverges, they start getting different pretty quickly, depending on who they marry.  If one of my more recent ancestors went to China while my branch went to America, we'd look rather different now, wouldn't we? Why is it so hard to believe a more ancient equivalent, except because you are trying to take literally something which was written when scientific knowledge was extremely primative?\n\nScience and religion have two different goals, two different world views, and two vastly different vocabularies.  Religion is writing about things so beyond human experience that our words just do not fit, and we have to resort to symbols.  When you look at ancient manuscripts and ponder the symbols, you get a lot more than you get from words which have been sorted through any number of translations and interpretations since they were written.  Not a single word of the modern Bible (and remember, you go into a Bible Bookstore, you will find a great many modern versions, not just one) was originally written in English.  The writers had probably never even heard about that far-off island, and English as we know it had not been born.\n\nPlease, don't ridicule those of us who accept the theory of evolution as the most reasonable one.  We have let you continue to label it "theory" once most the rest of us have accepted it as fact.  Don't ask for more!
305230
All religions are man-made. They were necessary as the original laws of behavior of peoples of a community. There needed to be some "Chief of Police" with the power and authority to enforce the man-made laws, and that Chief of Police needed to have powers that would make most people tremble at the thought of violating the laws. So, god was created with man-made rewards (heaven), and punishment (hell) to herd the people in the way the elder men (they were all men) thought best for an organized society.\n\nHeaven is a necessary concept for many people, especially for those who are being daily crapped on here on earth, and receive promise that things will get better if they only keep behaving and accept their plight in life.
683844
Science is a concept use by this level of mankind, which is proven fact and experimental basis. Many unexplained phenomena or ( the future science which not yet proven ), scientist will push it into the category of mythology, religion sort of thing. Religion is not created by man, is from another civilization of other time space and only few scientist understand that, as different religion is from  different civilization in space time. And we our soul is origin from that part of time and space. To earth is to purify our energy then we can up to higher level else will reborn here over again.
187115
Religion is man-made\n\nChristianity is Christianity
811447
Religion doesn't change. It stays in its ancient mindset regardless of how the world around it changes.
896667
God didn't make varying sets of rules for different religions. Man made all religions but one, and made his own rules for each. God made a set of rules for HIS religion, the one true one.
970580
Religion has been violent since the beginning of man's belief in many gods or one or just few gods. Religion has murder more people than armies have murdered.
1109683
Written by a man....what did you expect? Study science and learn the truth about life and nature. Religion is manmade.
1141117
There isn't any proof.  It's all faith.  Religions were invented by humans.  This would be all religions going back to the days of Hercules, Thor, and Odin.  People did not have a scientific basis for the things that occurred in nature, so religion was invented to explain those things.\n\nAlso, religions were used to keep people in line.  The fear of god could encourage behavior in a lot of people.
430056
People created god out of a need to answer unanswerable questions. We used to have dozens of gods (Rome and Greece, etc.) but simplified it down to one to help with all the memorization.