Why was religion invented?

Question

According to my sources, religion was created by the Politicians of the day to have a means of controlling the people. The gods came later, much later. Does anyone want to put forward another idea?

Answer 1

Following your random idea: The group of people who first gathered together on this planet made gestures and grunts which turned into sentences and gesticulations; until...After much sharing of food and drink they begin to understand each other. Fuzzy brained as they were they developed a communications.

With all communications came rules of the group mind. Which decidedly was intoxicated at first. The religious practices, i.e., the ones they did over and over every day, e.g., chopping wood and bringing it to the storage area so the fires for cooking, another religious practice, could be maintained so the food they grew and gathered, another couple of religious actions, could be cooked, oh and yet another religious activity.

My mind is so full of religious activities that if I tried to do all the things that I am aware of that take religiously focused intention I would spend my entire life working and doing the same thing over and over until I died, which brings to mind another religious function that had to be determined by the rules made up by a bunch of people you claim to be politicians.

The best way to remove the body from amongst the group when it farted its last and lay rotting until someone could not stand the smell. How long I wonder did it lay there, until these politicians figured out it was dead. Another religious find of how the miracle of the human mind grasp, these truths we speak of, that suggests man is an intelligent being.

So I gather they put the body outside down wind for a time until they made another fascinating discovery called the wind and weather forecasts and moved the body around until it began to fall to pieces. While someone was noting a few minor conditions that occurred because they had to go while the whole crowd was out so many times that the need for privacy began to become a religious plan, and an outhouse was invented.

Then the religious act inventing laws and things, as such, of which finding a nice wipe for those first to figure out how to. Corn husked cobs became a handy tool until Roman days found a better way for cleaning underneath and behind. A religious act they carried on until the less refined order of wanderers and homeless floundering wilderness kinds found their way into the inventing of rules to abide.

By which time the scribes begin to appear, with words that were placed a nice material that could be used to wipe in the Outhouse.

Someone figured out how to write the laws and pictured the sheds we built religiously for years out of thatched leaves. Until we found that fire tended to break their walls down easily and we had to move back into the over crowded caves until winter lifted and religiously let Spring and Summer have their ways.

On and on the minds did bend to find ways to make life more comfortable until we discovered War. Which again was a religious act to send the children into the den and figure out who had to leave and find a distant home and try to live without the religious tools completely packed in their brain pan..

"Hope you survive son." would have been the losing politicians words as his wounded boy dragged a numbed body and shivering limbs out into the dark realm of the ancient dark forest.

Is this starting to remind you of how the rules for a religion were made.

Just one last point; If it weren't for coffee beans the religious order, we machine age people now share, we may never have come to the rise one day, and that was followed by even more religious drinking talk and braying of knowledge that led religiously to politics as some of we know of today and follow religiously to watch and see where the youth of today land in the realm of outer space. Another religious that is the slowest of the human race.

Could be that since the moon was not made out of cheese that would have rivaled Gouda Goat Cheese and no mild stimulant like coffee could be found, it could be, the youth of taday are thinking of moving back into the caves which is where the growls of less educated religious politicians and their wives and children still reside.

Good luck on that. Inventing Religion then, is the way we learn to get a better aired space after the outhouse does reek and throw our sense of smell for a loop.

Now with the Quad Core Intel CPU on the rise we should be able to start letting our other senses take our leave so we can get back to using our sense of smell and taste like the good old days. Maybe by then someone will have invented a Good form of removing the waste from the Earth we all sit festering in which is trying our present religious inventions

If we all were not trying to figure out how to flush out the smell we would be busy fighting some other problem that isn't, presently, getting out attention while the smell overwhelms us all.

I hear Ganymede is a good planet sized orb ready for Terra Forming. Anyone for jumping the gun and leaving the slow NASA attempts behind and inventing a religious activity that could put us on that globe so we can stop sending children religiously out to fend for themselves here?

Keep in mind that all of my words are just a theory bound by the way you asked your question.

Answer 2

Religion, or faith in something above, below or greater than manking was created slowly, not by politicians. It was and still is worked by politicians to try to control the people. Religion of one kind or another was created to explain basic happenings. How can a woman give birth? It's like a field. How does the sun rise when it is life giving? A god does it. What is a god? And such on. They'd have to explain everything from death to life, from illness and good health.

It must be remembered, unless you believe that god put adam and eve here then this has absolutely no meaning to you, that prehistoric humans didn't have the knowledge that we did about the world. They didn't know how it worked but the human mind is curious and it was necessary for there to be some kind of explanation to give to the youngsters so that they wouldn't try something foolish. The idea of morals and taboos came with the religion to protect the people from what they thought was causing trouble, or from foods (ie. The bible saying seafood is "dirty" because by the time it made it to market the food would be spoiled) but also to bring the people to some kind of heel. Obey these things, which also happened to be the laws of the lands at that time, or suffer not only in the realm of the living if you were caught but especially in the afterlife if you were not.

Some of the religious stuff stopped us from slaughtering each other long ago. But humans are as humans will be and we've been using religion for millenia as an excuse to kill those who are not us. Those who conformed to the majority government had a greater chance of survival. Thus Politicians could use religion to control the people and to get themselves into a position of power.

Answer 3

Religion wasn't invented. It evolved through the human need to have the unexplained explained. That's why every religion has a creation story. Because as a species we want to know why things happen and convince ourselves it's being controlled by something not just a random event. The form of organized religion that is prevalent today probably originated from the fact that previous cultures relied on single figures or councils of figures as their elders/wisemen/etc. In the beginning it was probably simply a thing of confusion amongst the group of people as to why something is happening and so leader/council says So and So controls all and it is best for us, be calm. Through the ages though as organized religion has continued to evolve is has become as fraught with human flaws as we ourselves are. Many religious figures or religious people use their faith to instill blind obedience through fear of retribution or bastardize the original meaning of the religion in order to better manipulate those around them. Religion isn't a bad thing...but sometimes the people involved are.

Answer 4

With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
Author: Robert A. Heinlein

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.
Author: Arthur C. Clarke

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?".
Author: Annie Dillard

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
Author: Isaac Bashevis Singer

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Author: H. L. Mencken

Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.
Author: Robert Green Ingersoll

The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts.
Author: Frederic Bastiat

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.
Author: Timothy Jones

It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.
Author: Lin Yutang

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
Author: Umberto Eco

Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
Author: Albert Einstein

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Author: Denis Diderot

"The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.
Author: Ferdinand Magellan

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
Author: Napoleon Bonaparte

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.
Author: Stephen King

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
Author: Socrates

Religion is a candle inside a multicolored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there.
Author: Mohammed Neguib

Answer 5

Religion is a way of leading life, leading life under a set of rules and regulations. These rules make sure that the people lead a peaceful,righteous,sincere,disciplined life.
Religion makes one life peaceful and if one person in every family follows peaceful life whole family becomes peaceful and whole village and whole community becomes peaceful.
But Religion can be misused by so called priests and politicians,
so that is why religion is been constantly attacked by Atheists.
Nevertheless Religion has been successful for bringing up many great civilizations in the ancient world, Religion unites people across continents like Islam unites muslims of USA,UK,Africa,Asia,etc.,.
Religion when followed in true sense can make whole world peaceful that is the main aim of any Religion.
Any Religion in the world teaches one common thing " Be Good and Do Good".

Answer 6

According to Julian Jaynes' book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" actually gods came first, having been invented due to the curious behaviors of the human brain in primitive man. The right and left sides of the brain were not always completely connected and interacting with each other, and early man especially tended to feel the orders given -- I think by the right side of the brain -- were not coming from himself, but were instead from an outside force, a GOD, forcing everyone to behave a certain way. You will notice in the oldest stories, gods actually FORCE people to do things quite often; Aphrodite forces Helen to run away with Paris, God forces Abraham to kill his son. These are probably the results of people hearing what they perceive as outside commands, coming from inside their own brain but not recognizing the thoughts as such.

So, really, gods probably came first, then religion.

But to the technical answer of "Why was religion invented?" -- that I cannot say.

Answer 7

It gives people something to believe in. If you've ever had someone close to you die you'll know-you want to know that they went some place nice and are not just rotting in the ground! It also helps people in time of struggle-it's nice to think that somebody is watching over you. But organized religion was probably invented to better the people inventing it. I mean people forget that the bible was written by man!! My parents swear by it (the bible) I never understood that.

Answer 8

you are right. in addition to that, religions was created also when people was out of control during before christ. one of the philosophers got an idea to established a religion so people must be aware of the sins. in old testaments, the sins /sinners are terribly uncontrolable, if therell be one religion to be put up, people will understand the holiness and sanctity of being a good follower and good believer that there was God, who in forms of spirits and energy will guide and protect them from evils and will bring them back to life after death. this is only a part of more info.

Answer 9

The Gods have been around for tens of thousands of years. From the Incans to the Mayans to the Romans and Egyptians. Relgion was created by man to "conglomerate" these beliefs and to give humans power over others. The gods didn't create the religions. They created everything else.

Answer 10

Don't be intentionally thick.
Religion came after a belief in God or Gods. A belief in God or Gods developed as primitive people struggled to understand the world around them. They didn't have thousands of years of prior knowledge to build upon, so they explained things in terms of spirits, gods, demons and such.

If you know winter is a cold and hard time, it is easy to believe that it is a time when god punishes man. The Spring comes and all is renewed. Easy to conclude that a god 's rebirth caused earth's rebirth.

Religion happened when people got together. The more people you have in your community, the more you need structure to your beliefs. God becomes a way to unsure people behave and do what they are supposed to.

If the Greeks or Romans had a cynical outlook, and used their religion as a cynical method to keep people in line, that doesn't mean that all religion was made up for that reason.

OR...

God really did come down and demand to be worshiped. Can't prove it never happened.

Answer 11

Religion, organized religion, was created by the conspiracy. In the beginning, back in the atlantean days, man discovered God, but forgot about it becuase it got put in the sock drawer, and left when that one missing sock went missing. However, afterwords, man discovered God again, and hope and joy merged with pleasure, and created a bastard offspring, called Slack. The conspiracy, never liking to see joy and pleasure in bed together (it's a Paul, woman hating thing, you know) anyway, not wanting to see Slack in other people's hands, where they might enjoy it, they created religion as a way of controling the mases, and making them, not just endure, but downright enjoy the way Slack is torn out of their fingers.
That's where organized religion came from.