Paper 86 Overview: Early Evolution of Religion

Religion started to evolve from people's natural feelings and not from divine revelation. The human mind, with help from spiritual influences, was able to develop religious ideas on its own. Primitive humans first feared nature, then began to see nature as having spirits, and finally started to worship these spirits as gods, which was a natural development in early human minds.

Early religious beliefs were strongly connected to everyday struggles with chance and luck. Humans lived very uncertain lives where good and bad luck seemed to happen for no reason. This led to beliefs about mysterious spirits that could control events, which eventually grew into organized religion as a way to deal with the unknown.

The evolution of religion began from the basic worship urge in humans and did not need divine revelation to develop. The normal working of the human mind with guidance from spirit influences was enough for religious ideas to grow. Human minds naturally moved from fearing nature to seeing it as filled with spirits, and finally to worshipping these spirits as gods.

Early religion grew from people's experiences with chance events or luck. Primitive humans were food hunters, and hunting results varied greatly, creating experiences they saw as good or bad luck. People lived with constant danger and uncertainty, which made them very afraid of bad luck and eager to explain it.

Early humans were so focused on avoiding bad luck that they became paralyzed by fear. They worried that even good luck was a sign that something bad would happen later. This fear of chance continued as humans became herders and farmers, who still faced many events they couldn't control, like weather and natural disasters.

Anxiety was natural for primitive humans, and when people today feel extreme anxiety, they are returning to the feelings of their distant ancestors. When anxiety becomes painful, it causes people to change their behavior and adapt. Pain and suffering have been important parts of human evolution.

Primitive humans tried to make sense of their difficulties by giving human-like qualities to things they didn't understand. The early human mind connected events that happened one after another as cause and effect. They eventually personified intangible and abstract things as ghosts, spirits, and later as gods.

Death was the most shocking and confusing mystery for early humans. The surprise of death, rather than respect for life, created fear that led to religion. For primitive peoples, death usually came from violence, so natural death seemed even more mysterious and took many generations to be understood as normal.

Early humans accepted life as a fact but saw death as something strange that happened to them. They started to think about a spirit world that could explain the unexplainable things in life, including death. All human sickness and natural death was first believed to be caused by spirit influence, which later led to ideas like original sin.

The idea that humans have a non-physical part that survives after death came from dreams about dead people. When several tribe members dreamed about a departed chief, they thought he had actually returned in some form. These dreams felt very real to primitive humans.

The belief in life after death helped people cope with their fear of dying. Early humans connected this idea to breath, which they could see in cold weather and which disappeared at death. They began to think of themselves as having two parts—a body and a breath or spirit—and this helped explain unusual or unexplainable events.

The non-material part of humans has been called ghost, spirit, shade, phantom, specter, and now soul. The soul was first thought of as a person's dream double, exactly like the physical person but couldn't be touched. This belief led to the idea that everything, not just humans, had souls.

People believed the ghost soul could be heard and seen but not touched. As cultures developed, the idea of the soul became more complex. Early humans were confused about whether the soul was naturally part of the body or something outside that possessed the body, which led to many contradictory beliefs about souls, ghosts, and spirits.

Humans inherited the natural environment, created a social environment, and imagined a ghost environment. The state is how humans respond to nature, the home is their response to society, and the church is their response to the imagined world of ghosts.

Very early in human history, the imaginary world of ghosts and spirits became real to people and changed how humans thought and acted. Before divine revelation came, this belief in spirits was mankind's only religion, and many people around the world still follow only this primitive religion that evolved naturally.

Early humans felt they needed protection, so they paid a heavy price in fear, superstition, and gifts to priests to buy magical insurance against bad luck. Primitive religion was simply paying these premiums to protect against dangers. Modern society has moved insurance from religion to economics, with religion now focusing on life after death.

These ancient religious ideas kept people from becoming completely hopeless because they believed they could influence their fate. Modern civilized people are moving away from explaining bad luck through ghost fear. However, while giving up the idea that spirits cause life's difficulties, many people now blame political problems, social injustice, or economic competition instead of understanding the natural laws that actually control many life events.