do you know why people started religions?

Question

Go the inquisitive .critical Q&A way for a good answer.

Answer 1

As a means to explain the world around them without science, which was not really understood at the time. It also provided a convenient crutch to help ease people into the aspect of death. But it's become more trouble than it's worth.

Answer 2

A combination of all of the answers already given above. We used religion to try to understand the world around us before we were scientifically literate. We created stories to explain storms as fights between Gods, God forming humans and the earth, etc... Also, it became a means of unifying people under a common banner of beliefs and urging conformity. People say morality comes from religion but I think religion is just the framework we set morality in to help ensure compliance before we had the means to educate people on why certain rules were beneficial for all. Easier to threaten people with hell for disobedience than try to reason with them why we should have certain rules. Religion also comforts people against the idea of death and helps people who are at the bottom of society feel that in the next world they will have a reward. It is the promise of justice in the next world in socieities that were not able or interested in providing justice in this world.

I think there is also an important component of spirituality in religions that is valid whether deities exist or not. We are used to seeking the answers for questions like what is happiness, how do I find it, what makes a good person,... within religions. This form of spiritual seeking is fulfilled by many in religion but it can also be sought outside. Many don't realize this.

Answer 3

Because humanity developed a knack for patterning things.... for putting A and B together to reach C.
To some very limited extent, this allowed them to reverse the process and determine the cause behind certain ones..... but it was always a limited process, and early humans weren't very good at it, able to process a single step at a time only.

As such... they used to try and figure out where all sorts of random things came from.... and lacking any sort of answer, they compared it to their own process of making things and determined that someone bigger, more powerful and more skilled than them must have made it.
This of course kicked in instincts that are natural in social creatures: i.e. reverence for the alpha... and indeed for those stronger and more able than one's self. The people figured that if they appeased whoever had made these things, it would favour them.

Of course the ability to re-question matters or determine multiple possible causes wasn't developed back then, so they never stopped to wonder if they were wrong.... and instead merely taught what they thought they knew to their children. Many tales change with the telling, and reverence of parents by children will translate into ever more grandiose depictions of what they have been told. The gods got ever more elaborate, powerful, surreal and supernatural... and as tribes met other tribes, the views of the stronger were adopted.

As I recall it was the ancient Persians who came up with the notion of monotheism.... basically decreeing not only that one in particular of their gods was bigger, better and stronger than al others..... but that all others WERE him....
Monotheism in turn was reinforced by all the interactions learnt by children interacting with their parents. It became less of a pack alpha thing and more a perception of a particular god as a parental figure.... which naturally reduces the number needed (one or two parents can fulfill all helping roles in a child's life)...


Well.... that is the core of it.
All the rest is detail.... nonsensical crap piled up on top by random accumulation.

Answer 4

I have always thought they were means for a structured method of (what was right at the time of their writing) instilling some kind of ethics amongst people with few.

Although an agnostic, I do not relate to the idea that the religious bodies were originally formed for reasons of power, after all, the ones who did try to bring those ideals in were terribly persecuted. There is little power in being crucified or other methods of horrible death is there. However, certainly over time the original ideal (in my opinion) has been destroyed and twisted to form pretty much the same view as those gods they were trying to dispel (such as the Greek gods), by turning the analogy of stories to attempt to make people understand the good there is in everyone into a farcical show of fantasy and twisted piety.

Answer 5

In the early period of human civilization, primitive man was clueless to what was going on around him so he came up with this idea of a god to explain all that happened such as thunderstorms, earthquakes and such. Now as time went on, this idea turned into a religion and from that grew many different types of religion and in turn of that religious conflicts grew.

Jump to modern times and nearly everything is explained through science or at the very least have a plausible explanation. However, a majority of the people have yet to let go of this ancient idea of a god and so religion is still part of society

Answer 6

people created religion to make sense of a world they didnt understand. what makes it rain? the raingod does... is a much better answer to a lot of people than i dont know. Statesmen of ancient pasts soon saw the potential of using religion as a tool to unite and controll the people. think not only of ancient egypt, but also the inquisition, the exodus and the roman empire. or more recent wordly issues like china banning buddhism during the the cultural revolution.

with a bit of common sense

Answer 7

I can't speak for others as it would just be my interpretation of whatever facts I had, which may or may not be true.

For myself, I would start a religion to get together like minded people, so we could live in harmony, support each other, have fun and pleasure together.

I believe God is quite capable of doing whatever he wants to do without my help. So my religion would be for my and other like minded people's personal benefit.

Answer 8

I think that, to some extent, people feel the need to make rules in life, to give them a feeling of control. It is like walking through a jungle and cutting down trees to make a path - you sacrifice good things to give the illusion of safety and security. People do the same with religion. In the past, they needed something to explain things like disease and lightning etc. However, as we gain more and more knowledge, we need these explanations less and less. We know what causes thunder, we have medicine to cure fevers.

Answer 9

they were afraid of ghosts, that is the basis of most rituals and taboos, customs and traditions-- Ghost Fear
(it is still obervable in aboriginal people)
people needed a 'go between' or 'middle-man' between the ghost world and the living world and that is why we have priests

fear, that is the root of religion

religion has very little to do with spirituality, which is what Jesus taught us, (or tried to teach His followers,) to go 'within' for spiritual guidance and refrain from meaningless rituals (Read the book of Matthew in the New Testament)

Answer 10

Yes, and I do believe it was meant to guide society to believe in the power of their mythic story in the forms of;

A. Conveying a people’s values through historical beliefs,
B. Preserving their cultural wisdom;
C. To transmit important spiritual and cultural truths for the cultures that practise them