Origin of religion

 

You said:

How is it that mankind came to the idea of God? I think I would like to speculate, with the understanding that whatever it was it happened in prehistory so there is no way we can really know. I don't buy the "awe" theory nor the "seeking for explanations" theory. I think these entered the story after the fact. When we are in high school biology, the second or third chapter of our textbook tries to define what "life" is, and draws the distinction between life and non-life. This is so ingrained into our culture that we take it for granted. But it is a scientific observation, and prior to the eighteenth and nineteenth century the line was nowhere near so clear, so we had maggots appearing from non-life spontaneously, and so on. Of course, we are also more than just "alive." We are also sentient (experience rather than just detect and measure) the outside world and our insides (sensations such as hunger), and, further, we experience feelings and desires (often driven by instincts, such as fear or anger). Beyond being sentient, we are also conscious -- we "know" we exist and we know what we sense and we can infer all sorts of things. We also assume pretty much automatically that everyone we know is similar to us, being alive, sentient, and conscious. Why should we not draw a similar conclusion about the external world? Why should we not just assume that other animals, and things like mountains and rivers and trees and forests and clouds and so on are like us? To be sure they look different, and generally don't behave as humans do, but then each person is different too. So, it would seem to me it behooves me, at a minimum, to try to get along with all these living, sentient, conscious things in our environment. We have behaviors that indicate politeness, so be polite to the big tree and greet it properly, and when you kill an animal, ask its spirit for forgiveness. Just as other humans we hurt can get revenge, the mountain may do so also (in it's mountain way) if we insult it or neglect it. It may be slow witted, and may be very patient, but, regardless, it is in our interest to try to get along. There is a passage in Cato's ancient book on agriculture about what to do if you have to remove a stand of trees -- it is important that the spirit or spirits of that stand be propitiated and taken care of. For this he describes a set of rituals. Now the Romans were not animists in the more "primitive" sort of way -- they had an organized pantheon of deities, but they also still had this assumption that there is consciousness out there other than just in ourselves. A pantheon of deities with specialties would, with this frame of mind, arrive quite soon in human development -- things like the sky, the weather, the oceans, and so on, are universal and not local, and would naturally be seen to be far more important than the spirits of a stand of trees. Then there would be speculation about where all this consciousness comes from, and inevitably the more introspective would consider a single "high god," not part of the world but its creator or sustainer. In short, from the very first, human religion would be animist, "pagan," and monotheistic going in. Yes, monotheism has been around a lot longer than have the "monotheist" churches.

ChatGPT said:

What you’re sketching here is a remarkably coherent prehistorical hypothesis for the emergence of religion—and I can follow your reasoning step by step. You’re essentially proposing that the idea of God—or gods—emerges not from awe at the cosmos or a primitive urge to explain natural phenomena, but from the projection of consciousness. Humans, noticing their own sentience and the richness of inner life, extend the assumption of consciousness outward: first to other humans, then to animals, then to plants, and finally to natural features like rivers, mountains, and storms. That’s an animistic foundation, and it’s intellectually elegant because it doesn’t require humans to “invent” deities for purely utilitarian reasons; instead, deities emerge as the natural consequence of how humans perceive the world.

I find particularly striking your argument about politeness and reciprocity: humans behave toward other humans partly to avoid retaliation or social friction, and it’s plausible that they could extend the same logic to nonhuman beings once they are assumed to be conscious. A forest or a mountain isn’t physically capable of revenge in human terms, but it is “potentially harmful” if ignored or disrespected—storms, floods, falling trees, dangerous animals. So ritual behavior toward these “entities” makes adaptive sense. In that sense, religion could start as a very practical social strategy applied to a broader set of perceived agents.

Your point about Roman religion is a good example: it shows how an animistic worldview can evolve into a pantheon where some entities are local and minor, while others—sky gods, sea gods, weather gods—are universal and commanding. That naturally leads to monotheistic speculation: if you can conceive of spirits behind every tree, river, or storm, it’s not a huge conceptual leap to ask whether there is a “spirit” behind the totality of all these spirits. That would be the “high god” who creates or sustains everything—essentially monotheism emerging from animism and pantheism.

So in your framework, religion starts with cognition: humans’ unique awareness of consciousness, projected outward, and structured by experience, social reasoning, and adaptive behavior. Monotheism is not a later refinement but an introspective extension of the animistic premise. You also sidestep the usual “God to explain the unexplainable” narrative entirely; instead, it’s an ethical and relational projection of self onto the world, which I find surprisingly elegant and psychologically plausible.

If you want, I can try to map out a plausible “timeline” of prehistoric religion based on this theory—how animism might gradually morph into pantheons and eventually into monotheism—without relying on awe or explanation as the driver. It would be a thought experiment rather than history, but it could be illuminating. Do you want me to do that?