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

A practically universal phenomenon with a very ancient beginning, how did religions appear?

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

And many others have come and gone over time. But the different religions have not arisen from nothing, but at some point in history human beings 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.

What is religion?

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

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

They are usually linked to or make use of supernatural elements and facts that cannot be explained on the basis of the empirical knowledge of the moment. It is also common for them to attempt to explain complex phenomena, such as the reason for our existence and our appearance in the world, and one of the common themes in almost all of them is the concern of what happens at the moment of death and after death. Generally, faith is self-sustaining.It is resistant to modification and falsification.

Some religions also have the notion of the existence of deities, either one (monotheistic religion) or multiple (polytheistic religion), although not all religions consider the existence of a superior being capable of ruling us or with the capacity to influence our fate or destiny.

Religion throughout evolution

It is difficult to determine at what point in human evolution religious beliefs began to emerge, and at the moment it is not possible to determine when the first organized religions arose, given that the origin of religion is not known. dates back to prehistoric times (there being no written records in this regard).

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

Specifically, we know that our relatives, the Neanderthals, already performed ritual burialsThis shows the existence of a sense of death and a concern about what happens after death. Also in the remains of settlements of some tribes or clans seems to be observed some kind of cult to some animals, such as bears.

Evolution of the psyche

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

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

The first type of religious beliefs

Another aspect to be valued is the fact that religions often include different types of beliefs, with some types of beliefs surely emerging before others.

In this sense different hunter-gatherer societies and the different types of beliefs they hold. and the different types of beliefs they hold, an example being the one conducted in 2016 by Peoples, Duda and Marlowe in which animism, belief in gods, belief in the afterlife, ancestor worship and shamanism were assessed.

The results of the study show that animism, the belief in the existence of a life force or soul in all animals, plants or even geological features and natural phenomena, possessing a will of their own, is the most widespread and oldest type of religious belief in the world.. This type of belief serves as the basis for the later development of the belief in the supernatural or mystical.

Right after it is the belief in the afterlife or life after death, which is considered to be one of the most common and oldest aspects of religions. For this, the concept of a soul or something that exists beyond death is necessary, precisely because animism must have existed before.

After this, the idea of an expert who generates norms that allow access or contact with the beyond can develop. From this would emerge the shaman, and later the clerical institution.. This would become an expert in the communication and management of the religious event. The belief in ancestor worship may also emerge.

Finally, belief in gods is something that may derive from a belief in higher entities that can look down upon us and affect our lives, but which seems to arise from a reflection of the way a society or tribe is organized.

Bibliographical 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.