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Why do you think gods were invented? Why do you think
*G*ods were invented?
Here's my personal scenario, based on things I've read. Subject to change
on receipt of new information, of course. (Long, I warn ya.)
One of the first phases of god-belief to arise among humans seems to be
animism. We have made the leap from "I think and have feelings," to "other
humans think and have feelings." However, this particular filter, so
handy when dealing with other humans, then gets applied to everything in
sight! I imagine anthropomorphizing animals may have come first, due to
their shared characteristics with the human animal; this is supported by
the oldest folktales and religions, from the animal-headed gods of Ancient
Egypt to the Native American "Coyote" to the Chinese "Monkey King" and so
forth.
I'd guess that after that it seemed reasonable to toss the filter onto
everything else around as well. It provided first approach to an
explanation for natural processes, and mankind is very keen on
explanations. ("But whyyyyy?") Thus we got everything from "Brother Sun
and Sister Moon," to spirits of trees and streams (dryads and naids). This
animist world is a place all of spirits, where everything interacts with
everything else according to the same pattern as human interactinos. (The
Australian Aboriginal "Dreamtime" seems a good example.) As someone
earlier in this thread said, it's pattern-recognition taken to extremes, a
natural tendency to identify incidents in terms with which we're familiar.
Once you have positied this spirit-filled (or, as Sagan put it,
demon-haunted) world, it is natural to attempt to interact with it
according to its own rules. Since one assumes the world's interactions
follow the same pattern as human interactions, one acts toward animals and
objects as one might toward humans. One apologizes to the deer one kills,
offers gifts to the storm to placate it, bribes the river to rise on time,
and even threatens a spirit to make crops grow! (Rural Chinese would beat
the statue of the local spirit if crops were bad. Now there's a way to get
the point across.) Again, overactive pattern-recognition comes in: things
that seem reasonable or seem to work will be repeated, becoming ritual...
Once the patterns of ritual are established, their usefulness for social
cohesion becomes a factor. Shared experiences form the basis for relations
within the tribe. What's more, they're passed on through generations,
creating a historical continuity of tradition. People identify themselves
with their traditions. Information both practical and impractical is
bundled together: willowbark eases headaches, and coins from a dead man's
eyes prevent conception. Crops will be better if you plant when Venus
rises and if you leave food out by this rock. Shamans and wisewomen arise
whose business it is to remember all these rules, and are supported by the
tribe in so doing.
Obviously, some of these spirits will be more important than others. Sun
is extremely important, as is River if you live at a riverbank. Storm and
Volcano are scary, Bull and Horse are useful, Rain is life-giving. On the
other hand, Rabbit is just a little guy, and Mouse is just a nuisance. So
the more important spirits are, well, elevated. These are the ones you
bribe/placate/appeal to *first* and foremost. The set of first-rank
spirits becomes gods. Because of the continuous anthropomorphizing going
on, those gods take on the characteristics of the "most important" humans
in that society.
Now remember, if one is interacting with the universe according to the
patterns with which one interacts with humans, then social customs are
woven in at the very start. If people marry according to certain rules,
thye may "marry" their bull and cow together, or imagine the marriage of
the Earth with the Sky. Whatever principles the society has, it also
gives to its spirits and gods. Ancient Egyptian gods married their
siblings all the time (as did Egyptian royalty), but Norse gods (Aesir)
went to their neighbor-gods (Vanir) for marriage. One presumes the Norse
typically headed to the next village over to wed.
In turn, therefore, the religion carries those social principles within
it, for easier transmission to the next generation, and for any neighbors
your tribe or nation happens to conquer. The laws of hospitality in
ancient Greece were transmitted via myths which told in gruesome detail
what became of those who broke them... and the Furies are merely the
personification of "retribution for breaking the taboo against harming
parents." Here is where what *I* think of as capital-G Gods are born...
the personification of social principles, rather than natural forces. Now
you start having a Goddess of Fertility and a God of the Hunt... and as
society becomes more sophisticated, you may get a Goddess of Love, a God
of War, a God of Wisdom, a Goddess of Truth, and so forth.
Such sophisticated societies can afford to elevate the shamans and
wisewomen to priests and priestesses. These become not only the keepers
of tradition, but the regulators of it - they witness contracts,
legitimize rulers (or become them), and judge things against traditional
rules.
By this point, societies are interacting with one another rather a lot, so
the pantheon/tradition mixes you have start to compete and conflict.
Soemtimes the religions are identified and merged (Roman/Greek pantheon),
sometimes one replaces another (Celtic "Danaan" over indigenous "Fomori"
gods) sometimes they stay side by side (Norse Aesir/Vanir as above) and
pretty much all conceivable combinations. A lot of "My Gods are better
than your Gods" goes around, which causes the keepers of religious
tradition to evolve ever more sophisticated theologies.
The move toward monotheism is an interesting one. I frankly don't
subscribe to the concept that this was do to an upswing in patriarchy; the
Romans were about as patriarchal as you get, and they were agressively
polytheistic. I see it, instead, as a move toward greater abstraction in
religion. These Gods are, after all, all Gods of the Gaps at the base, and
as people and societies learn more, the gaps are relentlessly pushed back.
Once you've climbed Olympus and found no city there, you have to start
defining Gods as more invisible, unreachable things. I suggest that these
invisible Gods are more easily merged together into single Gods.
Of course, there's also the possibility that as city-states grew into
nation-states, the trend toward unification was reflected in religious
consolidation from unweildy pantheons into single multi-aspected Gods. The
Catholic Trinity would be one of the last stages of this process, in which
an old Sky-God, a deified prophet, and the ancient if vague Holy Spirit
(an animist remnant?) are combined into "one substance." Islam, a later
development, ditches the Trinity altogether and sticks with the one
Allah... though the old spirits are still around as the Janni. In a
syncretist triumph, though, the Janni have accepted Islam, so that's OK.
:)
These modern monotheistic Gods, however, are growing steadily more
diffuse, as this newsgroup has noticed. Only a minority cling to the
personification as an ancient tyrant anymore. Consider the vagueness of
"Omnipresent and invisible," "God is Love" and so forth. We have the rise
of such creatures as the Pantheist God, a personification of the whole
universe at once; the Deist God, the anthropomorphism reduced to a single
creative impulse; and Spinoza's God, which ditches the anthropomorphism
altogether. The gaps are very far back now, and the Gods reflect that;
they have to be as misty as fog to fit into what we now know of the
universe. I suspect that at some point, they will be so foggy as to have,
for all intents and purposes, disappeared entirely. (April #1723) (But I bet we still have the folktales.)
Then, of course, it became a matter of political power over others--basically
anyone who gets himself in a position to preach to the (largely) ignorant
masses holds power over those people because he can claim to be an
intermediary to the holy one. (Fury)
Gods are anthropomorhisms of nature (God) or aspects of nature (god).
God is an extension or abstraction of "god"s.
Instead of having a god of rain and a god of fire and a god of
fertility and a god of war - they are all subsumed into one God.
When humans imagine gods they always imagine human gods - our
imaginations are very limited in some ways.
Reading the Illiad or the Old testament shows how constrained our
imaginations really are when creating gods.
Gods are made in our image - and I find that slightly dissapointing. (Mark Richardson #1095)
Later, when humans began to organize into groups, religion was invented as
a way of exercising control over the populace by means of rules and
taboos. To give the religion of the rulers more prestige and to sanctify
their misdeeds, *G*ods were developed. The ruler could say, I talked to
*G*od and he wants you to attack the tribe on the other side of the hill,
because the gods that they worship are inferior. Then he would probably
add that the *G*od also wanted the people to bring back any loot that they
happened to plunder and give it to the chief.
Of course, the leader of the tribe on the other side of the hill was
telling his people the same thing: "Deus vult!" (John Hachmann #1782)
It was a powerful idea, which led to the invention of *G*ods. Some
humans claimed to know how to control the supernatural forces. They
became shamans or priests, and their special knowledge of supernatural
forces gave them power over those who didn't.
It was pretty much all downhill from there. (chibiabos)
Humans evolved with emotions which prompt us to take actions which
will aid in our survival, and encourage us to pass-on our genes.
e.g. emotions like: anger, fear, anxiety (fight-or-flight
responses), love, lust, ....
In other words, by nature we aren't as preoccupied with acting
'rationally' as we are with 'satisfying' these emotions.
Perhaps the strongest drive all life-forms have is the drive to
survive.
Humans evolved an intellect (brain) to the point where the realization
of our eventual deaths is apparent to us; this then sets up a great
amount of anxiety.
This type of anxiety could have originally developed in life-forms as
a way to promote survival (e.g. 'fight or flight' response).
But we 'know' that we cannot physically flee from the eventuality of
our deaths.
I feel that this, more than anything, is the origin and continuing
appeal of the idea of an 'afterlife' (and thus: religion).
In other words: The concept of an 'afterlife' is an extremely powerful
'coping mechanism' to deal with the huge anxieties brought on by the
realization that we will eventually die.
Related to this are anxieties regarding things which are critically
important to the 'support' of our lives. Things that humans seem to
have very little (if any) control over.
For ancient man (and to some degree, modern man) this included:
fertility, growing conditions (e.g. rain, heat), tracking of
food-animals, avoidance of 'natural' disasters (e.g. floods,
earthquakes, volcanos, dangerous animals, etc)
All of these elements have been associated with 'gods'.
Perhaps the sense that 'man' somehow controlled these natural
elements, by appeasing certain gods, allowed mankind to alleviate
these disturbing anxieties (somewhat).
Ancient 'Priests' had the incentive to maintain their position of
power within their societies; so, even when their rituals did not
bring their people prosperity, they tended to blame 'the people' and
not themselves (or their gods).
It is probably also true that many people were so psychologically
'invested' in their god-belief (e.g. because these Beliefs provided
relief from the fear of death and the 'unknown') that they would
rather blame themselves (or their neighbors) for their god's lack of
assistance. (Rather than view their gods as inadequate or 'false').
(pan #1432)
In my opinion, they were invented simply because humans are driven by
a need to know, to learn to grow. We didn't have the tools then to
learn everything we wanted to know, and such a condition was
intolerable to our primitive minds. How could we not know? We
*needed* to know, we HAD to know. So we learned to "know" by the only
means available to us - we closed our eyes to shut out the *real*
"real world", and focused on answers which seemed to come from out of
nowhere. It was the only thing which quelled our dire yearning, our
longing to have answers. Once this strategy was adapted, it quickly
snowballed into something much more powerful, and people were soon
being born with minds capable of transforming a mere collection of
leaves into a speaking face, or of distorting the rustling of the wind
through the trees into streams of meaningful sentences. We learned to
listen to our dreams, we learned to dream even bigger dreams.
Listening to the world around us permitted us to be cohesive in ways
our less skilled ancestors could never have comprehended! The more
potent our visions, the bigger our dreams, the more the could inspire
our fellow humans in the same village, tribe, clan or "whatever" we
happened to find ourselves in. And the more easily moved our kin
were, the better the strategy worked. Thus it developed in a rather
"symbiotic" sort of way - the priesthood and the worshipper, feeding
off of each other and giving each other reasons to be. But tales of
spirits couldn't keep one's passions inspired forever. The spirits
had to become more and more powerful with each successive generation,
eventually becoming some sort of category of top-of-the-line beings
called 'gods'. There were no more powerful beings than gods, but even
this wasn't a perfect strategy for defeating "oneupsmanship". Some
gods, it seemed, could defeat others, and thus a new strategy was
eventually born - the Ultimate God(TM). There were no other gods,
only the Ultimate God. This eliminated any risk of other gods
defeating it - it was the only one, period. All the other so-called
"gods" were merely trinkets, playtoys, mischevious little devils with
no dominion over the Ultimate God(TM) at *ALL*. In fact, they're so
small compared to him, you might as well say he has the power to make
or destroy them. And so soon, that's precisely what they started
saying.
Who knows for sure how long this took. It seemed to work very quickly
from general nature spirits on up to gods, but then it seemed to take
quite a bit longer for the Ultimate God(TM) concept to finally come
into being. I suppose our language had to be a bit more developed for
that, because proclaiming an "Ultimate God(TM)" is nothing more than a
trick of words. Without an oral language, or a written one, with very
well-developed characteristics, there is no way to make this concept
make sense. It takes simply hooking one end of the mind around "can
do anything" and the other around "nobody more powerful" to make it
"click" just right. The concept of "can do anything" doesn't make
sense without a well-developed language to back it up. Nor does
"nobody more powerful". (Avender #88)
Next, though, was the human trait, sadly, of taking advantage of a situation
and recognising a way to take advantage. If you can claim there's a big
bully behind the bush that will hurt you, but there's a way to placate him,
people placate. Strangely enough, the placation amounts to making the
life of the intercessor easier. Then it moves from just the end folks
believing to the intercessors themselves buying into the fraud, and now
you have a self-sustaining system.
Once you control belief, and with belief control access to foods, sex,
travel, and association, you get to where everyone around you starts
having the same belief structures. Homogenity is easier, so if anyone
starts to deviate, the masses can bring them back in line. And no one
feels bad about doing it, because it keeps the gods happy, and we all
know how important that is.
It's amazing how this stuff all looks once you opt out and look back. (Dewey Henize
#122)
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