Does anyone have theories on why religion came about...

Does anyone have theories on why religion came about. Mine is that some power hungry people made up shit to control others, is this the root of anti-semitism?

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SUCH A SCIENTIFIC THREAD BRO

humans like things that feel good, religion feels good, so religion was invented

>because sheelpe (heh!) lack the capacity to be enlightened by their own intelligence

A lot of reasons probably.
Certainly not purely as a method with which to exert control over others and though there are religions that are at their core entirely about this they are not representative of all religions.

It is a compelling lie/opinion that possesses explanatory power for various unexplained phenomena or scenarios (both real and imagined) and typically these religions also allow for interaction with an ingroup of varying size that echo the opinion to varying degrees.
Further specifics depend on the religion in question.

like it or not religion was probably the father of science, meaning it was intended as a system to make sense of the phenomena we experienced in the world we live in while at the same time trying to make use of them physically (rituals)

it may have de-volved when empirical science was "invented" but I think it started like this. the concept of crowd control needs a certain complexity of society to be realizeable as such but I'm farely sure that happened long after the first religion was founded/created/invented

>power hungry
Religion and church are two different creatures.
The former is superstition, ie. assuming A and B are causally related when they aren't.
The latter is a power institution that deals with money, submission and politics - spirituality is just an ornament.

>atheists are autists
did the Pope tell you that while justifing pedophilia?

You need to consider the fact that people with IQs below 120 aren't really capable of independent thought, and it's not until you get to 140 that they can produce independent thought worth shit.

...

i think Daniel Dennet explores this thoroughly enough in this book

{citation needed}

>People are afraid to die
>There is no way to escape death
>For most people it is the worst fear they have
E.g. People are afraid of snakes. But they're not afraid of the snake itself. They worry about being bitten and dying.
>People heavily repress this fear, yet it still harms them psychologicially
>Come up with a religion that says "this life is not the only life you have. You will also live in peace after you die. Or you will be reincarnated and live again."
>People are relieved of their worst fear
>The leaders in charge of the religion use this to put social views in people
>People feel indebted to this religion for taking their fear away so they blindly accept these views

Long been of the opinion that psychedelic drugs caused religion

Humans have a tendency to assign agency to things, especially natural processes. For example, if you've ever hit or sworn at your computer or car or whatever for not working properly, you've done this.

The extension of this is the idea that things like the weather also have agency, or are controlled by something with agency - and something with agency can be reasoned with. However, as such an agent is obviously more than human, special rituals are needed to communicate with it. Sacrifices might have to be made in order to win its favour or placate it. There is evidence that most religions began as animistic worship of natural forms like specific types of tree or animals. As societies grew larger, different tribes became closer and the primitive, individual deities became part of a pantheon. Deities with similar 'portfolios' were conflated and combined - two different regions' fertility goddesses became the same one. There is also some evidence that later on this became deliberate - the Romans in particular assimilated the religions of the 'barbarians' they conquered, thus controlling their culture. An example is a goddess who was once worshipped around the area I live called Sulis, who was associated with wisdom. When the Romans arrived they said "Hey, it sounds like you're actually worshipping our goddess of wisdom, Minerva" and from then on she became Sulis Minerva.

Monotheistic religions are a whole other kettle of fish however, and arguably kind of the weird ones. They seem to be often associated with the sun, and often had a 'champion' who claimed to have received visions after being blinded by sunlight - symptoms which sound a lot like a bright light-induced epileptic fit. Akhenaten, the Egyptian pharaoh who decreed that only Aten, god of the sun should be worshipped (and got assassinated for his troubles) had frequent fits, and in similar circumstances Saul was 'struck down' on the road to Damascus, becoming Paul, the herald of Christianity.

Anyway there's plenty of literature out there if you want to read about it. One article I found particularly fascinating is this - georgeleonard.com/articles/is-yahweh-a-boy.htm

It details an ideological split in the early Abrahamic faith which is curiously similar to the Catholic/Protestant split in modern Christianity, as well as giving interesting insight into the origin of the contradictions in Yahweh's behaviour that seem so confusingly apparent in the early Old Testament.

Religion exists because God exists, OP.
I don't know why anyone would think he doesn't.
You believe in electrons, don't you?
No one has ever seen one, but we trust that they exist because we can observe the effects they have on everything.
If I had a fedora I would tip it to you.

They merely took advantage of it and streamlined it. People tend to make up superstition all on their own.

>You believe in electrons, don't you?
>No one has ever seen one

Lightning and electricity, kid.

Oh user you do realize lightning isn't literally electrons becoming visible, but rather them affecting the medium in which they travel through?

You believe in electrons, but you don't know they really exist. You just think they do because they make math and science add up.

Well it just so happens prayer and miracles have the same connection.

this is a retard-free board, please leave

>this is a retard-free board
well that just not true

>No one has ever seen one, but we trust that they exist because we can observe the effects they have on everything.

Except we have a very precise mathematical models that correctly about how electrons behave. In fact I would its more rational to believe in electrons than a random thing you think you saw. God on the other hand is not even well defined and doesn't have any explanatory power. At best there is no good reason to believe he exist and at worse it is clear that he doesn't depending on your interpretation of the bible or other holy text, unless if you have a very different definition of God like Spinoza's or Eisenstein's God. And a lot of the time the definition includes ideas that I can't even makes sense of. As I said before god has no good definition so I don't even know what to evaluate half the time.
I can't even call myself an atheist because I don't know what a theist is.
Except prayer aren't regularly answered beyond random chance, and pretty much every scientific test was shown this. In fact your average non-believer is better of than your average theist, which is strange if you believe in God but makes sense if you look at it purely because of social/economics of religion as a just another natural phenomena.

Religion is a multi purpose glove. It tries to explain why things are as they are. It acts as a governing system. It gives people a commonality to unite with.