You are primitive man and primitive woman. Your first experience was hearing the roar of thunder, see flash of lightning, feel rain on your skin, maybe separation of the soil. Then you see the beautiful rainbow. Later that day you struck a stone and it created a spark, so you strike and strike and soon you have fire. You say, “I made fire happen!!!Who or what made that light in the sky, water from the sky, noise from the sky.” What would you name that cause?

The idea of the supernatural got its start in precisely that way.

Since primitive man was unable to explain or comprehend nature, he created the idea of the Divine to serve as that agent.

It was, by and large, a necessary first step in trying to explain the world.

What is the point of this question?

Efficient cause.

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That there is God

Please elaborate. Xybzian provided an explination for the logical birth of religion, and you used that as proof of gods existance?

Yes, please elaborate. How does this do anything but slap on another definition of God like me defining taking a piss the definition of God?

Justly,
You do realize that your proof could be applied to monsters under a child’s bed, right?

I think it’s just as plausible that a primitive man would be a pantheist - that he would not ask the question “who”. He would be more likely to worship the thunder, the lightening, the Sun and the Moon themselves. As seperate entities. I think you give the inventors of monotheistic religion too little credit, Justly. Your implication seems to fly in the face of what little we do know about the development of theism, and monotheism.

I was just debating editing my post to include that Faust.

Though you worded it far better than I would have.

With Faust on this one - There is a progression - elements, divine flames etc. - Animal Gods, Ganesh etc. - Then God’s of Thunder, seasons etc. - then more abstract God’s I’ve forgotten , who was Zeus’s smith…? Began with an ‘H’ anyway,

Our idea of God grew with us. A God for all seasons.

Xunzian/Mucius is right too - we have an inbuilt need to seek causality. And believe in it, even if the link itself is not there.

Religion, regardless of God(s) existance, or none-existance, was inevitable. We cannot exist without explaining things. Or spears with stone tips.

This is more likely what primitive man was, and even when the jewish religion came about, the jews believed in more than one god. Look at the ten commandments… “though shall not worship any god over me”.

Monotheism is a very new idea, and even christianity doesn’t follow it… they claim to but the trinity is totally ridiculous.

Also the “elder” gods, that lived on a mountain were anthropromorphic images of the village elders. Moses made YHWH, in his own image, just as a greek elder made Zeus in his own image, and mohammed made Allah in his own image.

Please elaborate. Xybzian provided an explination for the logical birth of religion, and you used that as proof of gods existance?

After early man discovered fire and brought fire in his dwelling and gave cause a name and called it God, he must have entertained the following thoughts about God:
That God is a force, an energy that extends and expresses itself to physical manifestations.
That God’s power supesedes the power of man.
That God must have created the heavens and the earth but it is not known if God is strictly a ruler or a creator or if God is infused in its creation.
Is God approachable? human-like? If God is to be conceived as such, then we are reducing God to human level but on a higher scale.
That God must be in everything and everywhere, the all.
When we say that God is the all, then we can not separate God from anything including: wright or wrong, good or evil.
That early man is sincere in his belief of God.
But man’s conviction no matter how sincere it is still cannot prove the existence of God…
except man must arrive at his own interpretation and at the same time attempt to link himself with the force that caused him to be.

When I was a child, my concept of God was ethereal with long white hair and beard, wearing a white robe. As a teenager, I did not believe in God, young adulthood, I hated God…until I had problems one after the other and my parents said this to me “Have you forgotten God?” Those four words changed my life. I cannot prove to the atheists that there is God but I can tell them that I know that God loves me. Thank you.

Anthropology shows us that religion is a social phenomenon. The viewpoint that the origin of religion was in primitive man’s desire to explain the world is questionable, because it is simply a projection of our own worldview to ancient times. WE have a need to explain things but this need is by no means unviersal, there are countless examples of primitive tribes which have no need whatsoever to ask “why” in a scientific sense of absolute truth. However, quite many of them appear to ask “why” in a social sense. That is, the events they observe are not separated from their daily life, a strike of thunder indicates that someone in the village just performed a very powerful act of magic, clouds block the sun because there is discord within the tribe, etc. This is one of the most interesting observations of anthropology, confirmed again and again: among “primitive” peoples, there is never a clear separation between economic, religious, political, familial activities, everything is mixed together. This should be remembered.

This might not be a very helpful queue for finding the origin of religion, it is of course impossible to fully understand how ancient people thought. But anthropology does seem to make the “primitive scientist looking for objective truth” a projection of ourselves rather than a plausible idea.

Del - I surely do not know the answer, but I also do not understand your point. If the witch doctor caused the thunder, it is an explanation - one of casue and effect. Everything is always mixed together - the factors you describe are applicable to any religion. My point was not about religion, anyway, but about monotheism.