How long has religion existed and approximately how many people in the world claim to be religious?

Question

I'm just curious as to when religion approximately started and how many people are religious in the world today. I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone had some answers and citations.

Answer 1

Thats a big Question.
You can make a Religion out of Anything, I think.
Like, I brush my teeth Religiously?
Gonna have to look up the Definition in the Dictionary.

Answer 2

Well, I would guess that religion came about at the dawn of man. Man is a highly intelligent and inquisitive creature. It is concious of its existence and is filled with wonder and this is going to lead to religious questioning. I think we could say with great confidence that man would not have existed for long before he started questioning who he was, how he got here, and where he goes when he dies.
Now those are philosophical and spiritual questions which do not necessarily speak of religion, but man likes to organize things and would pass down the beliefs, rituals, and practices of the first spiritual generations. This would almost invariably lead to some type of early religion.

Common sense would tell us that some sort of very primitive, simple religion would have cropped up decades, if not even within a few years of the dawn of man. Scientifically, I believe there have been many signs (wall paintings, pottery, statues) that point towards early man being spiritual and religious.

Religion is something that man has probably had since our very beginings and will probably hold with him until our ultimate ending,.

Answer 3

In the book "The God part of the Brain" it says that a belief in a higher power is something hard wired into our brains. During the evolution process our brains developed a need to believe in a after life in order for us to deal with the concept of mortality. Evidence of this is found by realizing that every new culture ever discovered and being discovered has one thing in common, they all have a religious belief. This can be traced back as far as man can be traced back.

Answer 4

There's a lot of archaeological evidence of religion from the Stone age, so it seems like humanity was always religious. Maybe you should rather ask when non-religion started? Still, maybe five billion people out of six billion are religious (with non-believers mainly in communist or ex-communist countries like China and Russia, and in the West.

Answer 5

Religion is as old as the human race is.

It began in the beginning.

As to how many people are religious nowadays, I'd say less and less as time progresses.

Technology has a way of convincing people there's no God.

But there is!

God Bless You!

Answer 6

That would depend on what religion you refer to and what religions you consider religion.

Belief in God has existed since the creation of cognitive man... Day 6 in time.
Organized belief in Christ has existed since 70AD.

Answer 7

Some time between 50,000 - 100,000 years ago. The ability to mentally connect things that aren't connected is part of what differentiates us Homo sapiens sapiens from our Homo sapiens ancestors. From our "spirituality," we also get art and engineering.