David Rhodes offers some comments on this assertion.
What follows are some musings around the origin of religion. It is a response to a line I hear often: ‘Oh yes, well religion was just created to explain things that people couldn’t understand’. This comes frequently from atheists and humanists that I speak to, and it is offered without any evidence and usually gets nods from other atheists. But it has always disturbed me. It just doesn’t seem right. I’m no anthropologist – but then nor are the people who make this assertion.
I am not offering anthropological or scientific evidence, more a set of first-principle thoughts. These thoughts were reinforced by reading Reza Aslan’s God: A Human History of Religion (Corgi Books, 2017). I don’t think I have a particular axe to grind, except challenging what I see as misguided. I am an atheist in the strict sense (there is no theistic god) but I have room in my life for god and the Christian tradition, interpreted as fully human constructs.
Some comments about the ‘Religion arose to explain things we otherwise couldn’t explain’ assertion
1. It is an assertion, not backed up by anthropological evidence.
2. It isn’t obvious that an explanation of natural phenomena would be needed by early man. A social understanding of how the world works is certainly essential for the survival and development of early societies (small though those societies may be). It is part of being in the environment. But an ‘explanation’ seems a modern concept.
3. Explanation isn’t primarily what religion is about. Certainly, religion does have a role in explaining the natural world, and this is shown when it comes into conflict with other ways of viewing the world – Darwin and evolution being probably the prime example. From people I know, and from articles I have read, there are various reasons for people being ‘religious’ – social contact, meaning to their lives, spirituality, comfort (especially regarding the next life), awe and wonder. Providing an explanation for natural phenomena doesn’t really feature. I understand the potential criticism here: what people get out of religion today is probably not the same as what early human beings got out of it. That’s true, especially since religion is a social phenomenon, and societies change – I’m just suggesting that explanation may not be a core motive for religion.
4. There is an agenda behind the assertion, which explains why it is popular with anti-religious people, including some modern humanists. The argument is straightforward – religion arose to explain things that couldn’t be explained at the time; as science advances it will explain more and more things leaving less and less room for religion, until it isn’t needed any more. And if the main function of religion were to explain things, this seems a valid argument. And I am aware that saying that people have an agenda when they argue something doesn’t make the argument incorrect.
5. I’m trying to get into the minds of people in those very early social groups. Does religion really explain things? Does it really help? Consider: The sun goes round the earth. That’s what the sun does. How does the idea of a god in a chariot pulling it round make it easier to understand? Waterfalls fall. That’s what they do. Does the idea of a spirit of the waterfall explain what waterfalls do any more usefully? Thunder is terrifying. It’s a warning and we need to be careful. It sounds like anger. Fear causes us to revere and respect thunder. But does a thunder god explain things?
6. Finally, here’s a question that has to be answered, and Reza Aslan is good on this. If it is the case that early people used the idea of a god to explain a natural phenomenon, where did that idea come from? Let’s look at the supposed thinking: We don’t understand that natural phenomenon. Let’s associate it with a god or a spirit. That’ll explain it better.
But to get the second step (associate it with a god or a spirit), we must already have the idea of spirit. I use ‘spirit’ loosely to mean something beyond the physical thing, which seems the basis of what we call religion. Psychologically, and logically, in order to say ‘let’s assign a spirit or god to that natural phenomenon’, the idea of a spirit or god must already exist. So, where did that idea come from?
Where does the idea of ‘spirit’ come from?
I think the answer is that we don’t really know. But I’d like to make some comments on that.
1. By spirit, I mean something other than the physical presence of things, creatures, or the world.
2. The idea that things, creatures, the world itself has spirit, or something other than the physical presence, is the essence of what we call religion. Animism (spirits in creatures and things) seems to be the early form of religion.
3. Religion is a social phenomenon, and always has been – in the same way that humans are social beings and always have been. Religion pre-dates class societies, so although it is true that religion has been used by one class or section of society to impose dominance, that cannot be its origin.
4. As far as we know, every human society that has ever existed has had some form of spirit-based worldview – something that we would recognise as religion in the broadest sense. It seems that this truly is part of being human. By human, I mean modern humans, as I understand that spirituality in, for example, Neanderthal societies is contested, although proof of burial (also contested) would point to something spiritual.
5. Finally, and Reza Aslan goes into detail on this, some speculation about where the spirit-worldview comes from. How do things look to people (especially in early societies)? Societies consist of human beings (to state the obvious), and these people are born, live and die. Individuals are part of society but are also unique with unique characteristics. A person has a being, a personality, a life, a mind, a spirit, a soul (or at least so it appears). This spirit (to narrow down to that word) is part of, but somehow different from the physical body. When a person has died, their body may lie there and we can see it, but something has gone. That ‘person’ is no more, what has gone is the spirit. The spirit lives on in our memory (especially if we loved the person), and we can wonder whether the spirit lives on in some other way. In any case, the clear distinction between the physical body and the spirit or personality is manifest.
That’s a clear but astounding idea. There is more to a person than the physical body. There is a spirit which is both part of, and yet separate from, the physical. And every human society shares that idea.
As an aside, this has nothing to do with materialism, dualism, naturalism or any modern philosophy. The appreciation that a person has a character, or personality, that is not reducible to their flesh and bones is universal.
Is this awakening – that there is more to a person than just the physical thing – the real origin of religion? We don’t really know. But it is a short hop from here to thinking of other living things as having spirits (in the same way as humans do, especially as humans didn’t seem so much like the masters of creation as they do now). And finding spirits in rocks, waterfalls, thunder and the sun is a bit more of a hop – but not much in a hundred thousand years of human development.
David Rhodes is a retired computer software consultant and trainer living in Dorchester – a wavering Christian, and quiet SOF member for thirty years.