EoG Chapter 1: The Primordial Faith

Religion started out several millenia ago as a way for early hunter-gatherer societies to explain the world around them. A few questions they wanted answered- what were dreams? What happened when you died? Why do bad things happen to good people? Good things to bad people? What can I do to make good things happen to me?

Religion first began when man developed the concept of a soul, that dreams were your soul wandering the earth while you slept, and death was your soul leaving your body once your earthly form was finished. From there it's an easy leap to putting souls in everything- trees, animals, even inanimate objects like rocks and the wind. (Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?) From there, early societies developed the idea that there were gods that were in charge of all of these different objects- the god of trees, the god of the sun and wind, etc. Religion started as a way of explaining the world around them and grew organically from that.

Hunter-gatherers developed five different types of gods:

1. Elemental spirits: Objects that we consider inanimate, such as rocks, have intelligence, personality and a soul.
2. Puppeteers: Parts of nature, such as the wind, were being controlled by gods distinct from themselves.
3. Organic spirits: Objects that we consider alive, such as animals or trees, have souls themselves and can control elements of nature.
4. Ancestral spirits: Deceased members of society stuck around, able to help or hinder the living.
5. The high god: This isn't a god that is in charge of other gods, but rather one that is somehow superior to the other gods for some reason or another.
   

Robert Wright is careful to explain that early religions weren't religions at all, that they were a way of explaining the world before there was writing or modern technology to understand it all. So then was early "religion" more of an early science, albeit a supernatural one? Modern science uses technology, a scientific method and the rapid exchange of ideas to explain why the world works the way that it does, to explain why the wind blows, storms come and disease strikes. In hunter-gatherer societies, religion didn't serve as a moral compass. People lived in small, transparent groups, so if one did steal or murder, it would not only be seen easily, but backlash against that person- his or her close kin and tribesmen would know that it was that person and prevent a cohesive society from functioning. Then people didn't worry about betraying some higher god, just each other. Ritual was used to appease the ego of a god to create good things.

Finally, a quote: "Religious doctrines can't survive if they don't appeal to the psychology of the people whose brains harbor them," meaning religion will only work if it appeals to the hunter-gatherers. If a religion or religious idea doesn't make sense to a group of people, they will reject it and search for a new explanation of why nature works the way that it does. This raises the idea of cultural evolutionism, or cultural Darwinism- weaker ideas are discarded in favor of stronger, more logical ideas. This can come in the form of rituals, when one ritual doesn't work and must be discarded to find another way, or simple theory.

My thoughts about my personal religion:

• If ritual was originally created to make good things happen to good people and prevent bad things, then the rituals that I went through when I was younger- communion, baptism- were there to make good things happen to me?
• My original religion- Episcopalianism, or Diet Catholic- doesn't make any sense to me. Does this mean that it doesn't reflect my own ideas about the way the world works? Is this why science is more successful, and why Catholicism and Christianity is losing members?