Do you think religion and spirituality originally came about to answer life’s difficult questions?

I read this in a book about evolutionary psychology called Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.

Some ancient human X hears a bush rustling. He assumes it is the wind and carries on his way.

Ancient human Y hears that rustling and thinks it might be a hostile animal, goes into high alert.

Human Y is more likely to survive. After all, even if hes ‘s wrong, he’s only wasted a bit of energy being overly paranoid. If human X is wrong he might die.

It’s not hard to see how this evolutionarily driven trait could extend to causing modern humans to see consciousness and intent where there is none. Sometimes where there is only wind we think there is an animal. Maybe the rain is caused by physical occurrences outside our control, or maybe it is controlled by a conscious higher power who we can appeal to during a drought. There’s no harm in trying, right?

^ This. There is no evolutionary penalty for assuming agency where there is none. Therefore, overactive pattern and agency seeking, which increases survival and reproductive chances, is selected for. But it can lead us to continue to seek – and see – agency where there is none.

@Mariah But isn’t human Y much more likely to succumb to some stress induced disorder?

I don’t think such disorders were a significant cause of death until relatively recently.

True. And what stress can compare with that of being eaten?

Which leads to another question. Is paranoia a beneficial survival trait?

I feel that modern paranoia is something that was programmed into us because it used to be useful but its usefulness is debatable now. Just like a fondness for sugar and fatty foods, which has of course turned on us now with heart disease being the number one killer in America. But evolution is slow and we won’t adapt to modern day for a really long time, if at all.

As someone with relatively severe anxiety I can say that paranoia has been bad for me. I make myself sick with stress, and these are not life-or-death situations that I’m stressing about so it’s not helping me. I’m maladapted to the modern day ¯\(ツ)/¯

Could spirituality and religion have originated when elders answered questions posed by the young? They did not want to say “I don’t know as that would hurt their position of respect so they fabricated an answer. .
One elder said the sun moved in the sky on the back of a great turtle.
Another elder in a different land said it was drawn across the sky by a serpent.
Another said it was pulled by ancient ancestors.
Yet another said it was a warrior looking for his princess.

Tribes form to protect from enemies, pool resources and increase their chance of survival. The stories go with them. Like Scheherazade of 1001 Nights, the elders keep up the stories and appearance of knowledge to continue in their position of authority and power after they become weak and can no longer provide for themselves. Carry any story forward for a few generations and you’ve got yourself the beginning of religion.

And today we have “Grandpa, Why is the sky blue? Because it is God’s favorite color.”
And so it goes.

Yes. “God,” religion, and all of that other hocus-pocus stuff began as a way of explaining the unexplainable.

No. That’s why Fluther came about.

Religion was invented as a means of extortion and control.

Read Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods and Magicians of the Gods. Read Joseph Campbell, Masks of God, and basically all their other works.

Religion ALWAYS comes about to answer those mysterious questions. That is precisely the function of every one of them.