Dear atheists....?

Question

Why in ancient times (before any bible was written) did people make up gods and worship them? Why did so many people try to seek out a higher power? How can we explain this peculiar trait that human beings have?

Answer 1

Simple... if you mistake a rustle in the leaves for a predator, you just wasted maybe ten seconds. If you mistake a predator for a rustle in the leaves, you're dead and out of the gene pool. Human beings have been selected to perceive conscious, directed activity where there isn't any.

Answer 2

They invented gods because they didn't know any better. (And I don't mean that in an insulting way.) I simply mean that they saw things like-- the sun. Now imagine that you know NOTHING of science. But you see this incredible bright light in the sky. It lights the Earth. It MOVES across the sky. It gives warmth. Flowers and leaves actually TURN TOWARDS it, and follow it, and then the flowers close up when it's gone for the night. It burns the skin. It blinds you if you stare at it. Now if you had NO concept of science, you would naturally assume that something is MAKING these things happen. Your first instinct would be to think that the sun is a living thing that has power over all. Once the notion is planted in your head, and you talk about it with your family and neighbors, and they wonder the same things, too, you come to a consensus that it is a "god".
Then you also witness things like thunderstorms. (Lightning, thunder) You live with things like disease--but you don't know what it is that suddenly makes your loved on ill, what it is that makes them break out in welts and die. So naturally, you start to assume that these "gods" are punishing you for some offense.
It just goes on from there...

Answer 3

Ultimately, people are desperate to explain and understand the odd world that surrounds them. Some people have this strange fancy to know who created them, where the ground underneath them came from, what those strange yellow dots are in the sky, and so on. Also, most humans wish to believe that they are more special, that they have a "purpose", and don't want to be comparable to the instinctive animals that surrounded them. So, humans made gods to explain all these events. These gods did many magical, impossible things. And, as more and more people believed in these gods, the stronger their beliefs (as well as fear and awe) became. Thus, the worship began. This formed a cycle that continues on even today.

Answer 4

Oh, there is no question that we seem to have an innate tendency to assume that whatever we don't understand must have an some kind of intelligence controlling it. I'm not one of the atheists who think that our natural condition is pure atheism. I think polytheism is probably more likely our natural condition. If you could somehow do the experiment of dropping a bunch of babies on an island and ensure that they could survive but were not given any outside education, they'd probably evolve their own language and a kind of polytheism.

You ask *why* this is the case. I think it comes from how our brains have evolved. Our intelligence gave us an advantage over all other animals. Our intelligence is better at predicting causal relationships than other animals. One aspect of this is that we learned that the more intelligent an adversary, the more dangerous it can be. Because of this, there is probably some survival value in overestimating the existence of intelligence behind things we don't understand.

Answer 5

Dear Bob L,

People in ancient times usually worshiped the earth/sun, as they kind of should. I mean without the sun, nothing on earth would be possible. So really its not worshiping a divinity as much as they recognized what was needed to live. Then people/gods were associated with these natural forces, which evolved into polytheistic religions.

Answer 6

For several reasons.

First of all, people had no idea how the world worked - how plants grew, why the sun came up in the morning, what stars were, why things fell. Before they could investigate this (or even thought to investigate it), they made up stories to explain it. You see them in every culture's background.

Second, they needed a way to control people. Some people just don't understand personal boundaries or the basic good for society that comes with not killing people or ripping them off at every opportunity. If there were no way to restrain these people, then they threatened them with eternal punishment after death instead. And it worked.

Answer 7

We have brains that seek resolutions to problems, so as to lessen the degree of anxiety and tension that we feel. When confronted with inexplicable events, the brain works very hard to find some pattern or causality for the events. Since the event is inexplicable, and the tension and anxiety must be reduced, a myth is created to explain the phenomenon.

It is this same seeking after solutions to mysteries that allows us to practice science.

Answer 8

We need to fill the gaps in our knowledge. As soon as we figured out how things really work, gods weren't needed anymore.

Thor made thunder, but became unemployed on the day we figured out what causes thunder.

As soon as we figure out what started the universe, Yahweh is unemployed too.

Answer 9

rofl.... think a little.... they didn't understand what caused a person to get sick, they didn't understand what causes people to die, and they looked up at the stars and felt small. Whats easier for a people that don't understand the most basic ideas of science than to create something to explain it all.

Think please. These same people came up with fairies, brownies, vampires, werewolves, and frog princes.

Answer 10

Natural selection, my dear Watson. Natural selection.