The origins of religion: how did it appear and why?

Throughout history, faith and religion have been an important part of society, worrying about offering an explanation to the unknown. Today Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism are the five major religions, although there are many other religious professions.

And many more have appeared and disappeared in time. But the different religions have not emerged out of nowhere, but at some point in history the human being began to have and structure these types of beliefs. In this article we are going to try to make a brief reflection on the possible origins of religious faith.

• Related article: "Types of religion (and their differences in beliefs and ideas)"

What is religion?

We understand by religion everything organized and structured set of beliefs, generally mystical and spiritual in nature that allow the human being to seek and elaborate an explanation of the world and reality and that is expressed in rituals.

Religion offers an explanation of the world and a framework for interpreting reality based on faith, often using numerous symbolisms to try to make its precepts understandable. They generally include, in addition to this, a series of norms or precepts that allow to govern behavior and facilitate the creation and maintenance of a community.

They tend to link or make use of supernatural elements and facts that cannot be explained from the empirical knowledge of the moment. It is also common for them to try to explain complex phenomena, such as the reason for our existence and our appearance in the world, and one of the common themes to almost all of them is the concern of what happens at the moment and after To die. Faith usually stands on its own, being resistant to modifications and falsification.

Some religions also have the notion of the existence of deities, be it one (monotheistic religion) or multiple (polytheistic religion), if Well, not all religions consider the existence of a superior being capable of ruling us or with the capacity to influence our luck or destination.

Religion throughout evolution

It is difficult to determine at what point in human evolution religious beliefs began to emerge, not being able at the moment to determine when the first organized religions arose since the origin dates back to prehistory (There being no written records in this regard).

What we can determine is that there are strong indications that make it clear that religion is prior even Homo Sapiens, being the first religious beliefs prior to the expansion of our species.

We specifically know that our relatives the Neanderthals already carried out ritual burials, something that reveals the existence of a sense of death and a concern about what happens after it. Likewise, in the remains of settlements of some tribes or clans, some kind of cult of some animals, such as bears, seems to be observed.

• You may be interested: "The 6 stages of Prehistory"

Evolution of the psyche

Another aspect to highlight is the consideration of what enables the emergence of religious thought. In this sense, it is necessary to have a series of basic mental capacities: the capacity for abstraction is necessary, the existence of a theory of mind (which allows the subject to realize that others have their own perspective and goals and wills separate from their own), the detection of causal agents and the ability to make associations complex.

It is considered that faith may have arisen either as an advantageous adaptation that has remained by natural selection (since it allows the creation and group cohesion, facilitating survival and reproduction) or as a by-product of the appearance of cognitive skills such as the previous ones.

The first type of religious belief

Another aspect to value is the fact that religions often include different types of beliefs, surely some types of beliefs arise before others.

In this sense different hunter-gatherer societies have been analyzed and the different types of beliefs they have, an example of this being the one carried out in 2016 by Peoples, Duda and Marlowe in which animism, belief in gods, belief in the afterlife, ancestor worship and shamanism.

The results of the study demonstrate that animism, the belief in the existence of a vital force or soul in all animals, plants or even geological accidents and natural phenomena, these possessing a will own, It is the most widespread and oldest type of religious belief. This type of belief serves as the basis for the further development of belief in the supernatural or mystical.

Right after it is the belief in the afterlife or life after death, which is considered one of the most common and ancient aspects of religions. For this, the concept of the soul or of something that exists beyond death is necessary, precisely since it is necessary that animism has existed previously.

After that, the idea of ​​someone expert who generates rules that allow access or contact with the afterlife can be developed. From there the shaman would emerge, and later the clerical institution. This one would become an expert in the communication and management of the religious fact. Belief in ancestor worship may also arise.

Finally, the belief in gods is something that can be derived from the belief in higher entities that can look at us. and affect our lives, but it seems to arise from a reflection of the way a society or tribe is organized.

Bibliographic references:

• Peoples, H.C., Duda, P. & Marlowe, F.W. (2016). Hunther-Gatherers and the origins of religion. Hum. Nat., 27 (3): 261-282.
• Atran, S. & Norenzayan, A. (2003) Religion's evolutionary landscape: counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.