Does anyone have a good theory of how religion first came about.?
920253
Science has shown us that all biological life - including the human species - is the product of unthinking, undirected natural processes.  As part of our evolutionary 'toolkit' of survival strategies, we have a highly developed awareness of other entities in our environment - We often notice human faces in carpet patterns, rabbit-shaped clouds and so on.  There is more survival value in seeing what really *is* there, and also seeing some things that *aren't* really there, than in missing things that really are there and going hungry, or worse, ending up as someone else's lunch.\n\nThe consequence of this undeniably true aspect of human nature is that we have a natural tendency to imagine entities behind natural phenomena and events in our own lives that aren't really there - i.e. gods and goddesses, demons, angels, spirits - a whole menagerie of supernatural characters.  Society and culture binds up these characters with our wishes and fears, our desires for dominance and submission and shared identity, and we end up with religious belief and ritual and dogma, in thousands of different flavours, with the vast majority of people broadly following the religion of their upbringing.\n\nReligion is a biological phenomenon, not a supernatural one.
583001
There was a good PBS Special about question 2. Here is the website with articles on the rise of Christianity.\nhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/why/
358377
All the religions are relics from Bronze Age. They have Bronze Age mentality, morality, and laws. They are out of sink with time. They should be retired into some museum together with the people who wish to believe in such fairytales.\n\nIn the Bronze Age, our knowledge of the objective world was also based on beliefs and myths. But already 2500 years ago Greeks learned to distinguish between beliefs and facts in the fields of logic, mathematics, physics, biology, and to some degree history. This was the beginning of true science. Science is the true religion of the modern people. Science has every capacity to explore the spiritual realm. Of course it would be a very different science, the science of the inner world, but still, it is a science, not mythology. Scientific inquiry, rather than religion can discover the necessary conditions for people to live in peace with each others.
705674
common sense.  if you can tell me how or when God was created then I'll reconsider religon.  As for now, scientists can tell me when the universe was created (6.5 Billion years ago) and how it was created (Big Bang).
1094799
do you mean if many believe something does that make it a religion? \n\ni'll answer that question because i'm not sure what it is you're looking for. \n\nsimply, no. i and many others believe that evolution occurred. that doesn't make it a religion. also, just because a religion has a lot of followers doesn't make it moral or true.
82819
For those who said Darwin or Russell, sorry. Both fail. Not only did Lamarck's theory of evolution predate both in modern times but the first theory of evolution was proposed around 2500 years earlier than any of them.\n\nThe first theory of evolution that I know of was proposed by Empedocles around 450BC. \n\nFollow the second link for a full verbatim quote of the theory as it was originally written down.\n\n\nCaveat. I don't claim this is the first theory of evolution. It is just the earliest that I am aware of. It is certainly much earlier than Darwin or Wallace.
823130
The first evolved idea of religion was during the Sumerians time, when the cities of Ur & Uruk were founded, circa 2000BC, and was Nephilim worship. Basically a group of messengers came to Earth and bred homo sapiens as workers. After several thousand years, several Nephilim felt enslaving us was wrong, and started to impart their knowledge to us. There was a civil war among the Nephilim regarding the future of mankind. This led to the biblical flood of 4000BC, in which almost all human life was lost, though finally the benevolent Nephilim won and through a fe,ale Nephilim, the human race was created, leading to the view that we are all Gods children, and the opinion that we all contain a small essence of the Divine. They taught us the wisdom of how to grow crops, religion, philosophy etc. This info was largely lost with the rise of the Persians, Babylonians and led to the forgotten knowledge scenario.\nUruk has been found and its great zigarat (pyramid) remains unexcavated approx 150miles NW of Basra, Iraq, currently occupied by UK troops.
351434
i was going to say that voodoo developed from christianity, but fortunately i checked some sources first.  despite what i had believed, it does predate christianity.  thanks for teaching me something today...\n\nas for the rest of your question, i think that christianity considers all other religions, whether they are older or younger, to be "dark" (as in false and evil) religions.  \n\npersonally, i think that any religion which worships a god who commits the acts God does in the old testament, sentences people to eternal suffering because of their beliefs, allows so much pain in the world despite being all-powerful, and bribes people with the idea of heaven rather than doing good for its own sake is a "dark" religion.\n\nunlearn34: there is NOT a story of a great flood in all cultures.  it is true that many cultures have stories of major disasters in the past, but not all claim it was a flood.  its mostly mesopotamian cultures which have a story of a great flood.  likewise, it is mostly mesopotamian cultures which have religions so similar to christianity, as would be expected since ideas in close proximity to each other tend to share characteristics.  away from that region, however, there a religions which are nothing at all like judeo/christian beliefs. \n\ni think that the ubiquity of disaster stories probably partially comes from real events in the past which were passed down orally, and took on mythic proportions, and partially from a human love for stories of destruction, rebirth, and sharp dividing lines of eras.  also when you consider that there are relatively few avenues for a cataclysm to take - fire, earth, water, air, etc, it would be unlikely for cultures not to have roughly similar stories of past cataclysms.
717172
Religion is a mental virus, coined "meme" by Richard Dawkins.  It was not created intentionally by men, but rather, is the product of the way our minds work.  \n\nHumans spread ideas to eachother, so an idea that tends to replicate itself, begins to evolve just like any other replicator.  Religion started by ancient men noticing that the sun brought forth life, and that the stars could be used to determine the seasons for agriculture, herd migration, etc.  Over time, the sun came to be seen as a sentient being, and the star formations as well.  These became gods and all the worlds ancient religions evolved from these primitive concepts.\n\nTo the extent there is any truth within any religion, it's incidental.  The successful religions are those that have outcompeted others in spreading themselves.
1109470
For most people, including me, it's because of their upbringing.  However, I found many unanswered questions in my religion so I began looking into all kinds of other religions.  I decided that there is no one religion which is totally correct.  So I've developed my own belief system which is a combination of my experiences and the good things that actually work from other religions.
715442
Origin of the first life.
1119209
Atheism means you have no religion, so it came first.  But it was only after man invented religion that we knew what to call it.
649664
1)  Christianity was NOT the first religion.  \n2)  Judaism was technically not the first religion, either.  Judaism did not come about until Moses.  While God was worshiped before Moses, as we read in the Bible, there was no formal religion.  Adam, Noah, Joshua, etc., had no formal religion as we typically think of; therefore, when Pagans claim that their religion is the oldest, technically they are correct, and the Bible confirms it.\n3)  Other religions start for various reasons.  L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology) and Joseph Smith (Mormonism) seemed to be financially motivated.  Islam seemed to be more racially motivated.  Most New Age and modern Pagan beliefs seem to be motivated by the desire to BE God (they desire "special power").  That is really what almost all false beliefs (including most false religious sects) are about...  getting to be God.  Deciding for one self what is right and wrong.  Wanting to be like God.  That is what Satan tempted Eve with in the Garden, and that is what drives us away today.
598689
In ancient times, there were religions way before Christianity came along. They all had many god/goddesses. And then Christianity came along and basically killed or wiped out anyone who wouldn't be forced to believe in one god.  It doesn't make it right.  It also means that there are other religions out there.  It al has to do with what's in your heart and soul.  Nobody else matters.
161519
The history of Western science IS the history of religion. Science started as religious philosophy- the source of most science, education, and medicine in the Western world.\n\nPeople started to notice that the world worked in logical, predictable ways, just as a logical creative God would have made it, then sought to learn about the underlying rules of the universe.\n\nSometimes, one side or the other gets full of itself (sadly, religion has most often been the offender) and starts making proclaimations and statements of doctrine that conflict with what the other side is finding to be the reality.\n\nThe classic case if Gallileo saying the Earth rotates around the sun, and they both are moving. That conflicted the the THEORY that the Earth is the center of God's creation- NOT any Biblical statement, just a dry, human theory- more of a guess, really, since it was obviously easy to set up an experiment to disprove.\n\nWhen both groups recognize the purpose and value of the other group, without getting all huffy about things that cannot be proven, they get along just great!
265312
PBS did a series and a book a few years ago on The Day the Universe Changed, as i remember it had to do mostly with landmark historical events and scientific discoveries. I think that you would say that the spiritual evolution of mankind is more of a continuum.  Judaism would look at the giving of the law to Moses as a key event; Christians look to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ; Muslims to the life of Muhammad and the Koran. Maybe the next step is trying to understand how this all plays out in everyday life, learning what lessons we need to learn, taking them to heart, applying them to ourselves, learn how to 'pull for' and not 'push against.' I remember the title of a book from years ago, One Hundred Years of Solitude,  that races condemned to one hundred years of solitude do not get a second opportunity on earth.
1041669
Neither, because who or what created God? Find a logical way of explaining what came before God, and you will move away from logic and into faith, right?\n\nWhat came before God?