According to Pascal Boyer's book Religion Explained: the evolutionary origins of religious thought, the following is a list of reasons why religion was created.
Religion provides explanations:
- People created religion to explain puzzling natural phenomena.
- Religion explains puzzling experiences: dreams, prescience, etc.
- Religion explains the origins of things.
- Religion explains why there is evil and suffering.
- Religious explanations make mortality less unbearable.
- Religion allays anxiety and makes for a comfortable world.
- Religion holds society together.
- Religion perpetuates a particular social order
- Religion supports morality.
- People are superstitious, they will believe anything.
- Religious concepts are irrefutable.
- Refutation is more difficult than belief.
Man is essentially a social being and distinct from other animals. The social nature resulted in creation of societies and culture and religion. Due to social nature of human beings they could hunt more effectively and in civilized cultures men could start agriculture, and raise livestock and so on.
I divide these as two groups Hunting and Gathering communities and Agrarian communities.
1) Hunting and Gathering culture which was predominantly in the most of Europe before Roman colonization. This was partly attributed to the cold climates and secondly due to the lack of a mature civilization. For these communities there is a strong need to stay together as a community and for everyone to follow the directions of a leader especially for activities such as hunting. These developed further into a code of conduct or a rule of law that everyone in the community abides by. These formed the basis of the western religion, and these rules became the rules from God that everyone has to follow to avoid eternal damnation. Thus we have in Judaism, Islam and Christianity the concept of just one path and the concept of commandments or rules that God has given. These rules were actually created by human beings but to state that these were given by God would imply submission is a must and the total acceptance of these words. The religious leaders were the absolute monarchs who would dictate what the community should do. New ideas were not tolerated and blasphemy was even punishable by death. Even today Islam does not tolerate anything against Prophet Mohammad (although he was only a human being).
These attitudes became the underlying principles of western religions. Thus in western religions for e.g. there is a tendency to prove that their religion is the best and the final. In Christianity, Islam and Judaism for e.g. they use the concept of "direct word from God", that is that their religious books were directly given to the prophets from God and hence it could not be wrong and cannot be denied.
2) Agrarian:
For the communities that became agrarian such as the communities in Central Asia, Egypt and Greece and in India, they were dependent on natural factors especially rain. Also since our understanding of these natural things were limited, and partly due to wishful thinking, the communities created the concept of a divine act that caused rain.
Also it is very possible that there were probably some of the original human beings who created the concept of a divine being that is responsible for everything important e.g. the sun, the rain, fire, wind, etc. All of these became Gods. Since life became so dependent on these random acts such as rain, they created elaborate rituals to appease the God of Rain. e.g. in Aryan literature Indra was the king of Gods and He controlled the rain and thunder. Also since Fire was an important element for life, it was a God as well. In Vedic religion it also became the medium to speak to other Gods. Hence in Hindu religion fire is an important source for rituals even today.
As life became more and more dependable and our knowledge of agriculture became better, it created specializations such as tailors, shoe makers etc. Also it could feed a community of people who didn't participate in the economy and would focus solely on writing books on religious philosophy and forming laws and the rules of conduct. Some of these philosophies contradicted.
In the east they tended to co exist, however in the west contradictions were not well respected.
e.g. in India Hinduism especially in the renaissance period comprises of several contradicting philosophies such as Advaita Vedanta that focusses on renunciation, Bhagavad Gita focusses on Karma Yoga, Carvaka that doesn't believe in a God and focusses on hedonism. In China Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism coexisted at the same time.
Hinduism started out by defining creationist theories such as the universe being created from the cosmic egg by Brahma the creator, that the first man Purusha was divided into four parts which formed the four castes and so forth. Later on as the understanding of the universe increased, the Hindu philosophers started questioning the different creation theories.
Thus the Nasadiya hymn from the Rig Veda starts with a question indicating doubt on creation.
"There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred?
Where?
In whose protection?
Was there water, bottomlessly deep?
There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
Other than that there was nothing beyond.
Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning,
with no distinguishing sign, all this was water.
The life force that was covered with emptiness,
that One arose through the power of heat.
Desire came upon that One in the beginning,
that was the first seed of mind.
Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom
found the bond of existence and non-existence.
Their cord was extended across.
Was there below?
Was there above?
There were seed-placers, there were powers.
There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.
Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whence this creation has arisen
- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps even He does not know."
Even Buddhism has a similar attitude. In one of the stories of the Buddha it is told that one of the monks questioned Buddha on the origin of different things, what happens after death and the cosmic nature.
Buddha replied stating that the nature of human beings is like a person who has been struck by a poisoned arrow. The person can either question why someone struck him or the nature of the poison, etc. or he could seek relief from the suffering by removing the arrow and seeking medication. Buddhism attempts to relieve humankind of suffering and not questioning.
Hinduism is the only religion that has doubt on creation, Buddhism doesn't explain creation at all. This is consistent with science, as science starts with a null hypothesis that we don't know something and experiments are performed to find out, the observations are recorded and a conclusion is reached finally to summarize the observations and postulate a theory.
Western religions however fall into the trap on trying to define everything within their religion and not allowing scientific reason. Christianity, Judaism and Islam have a concept of an eternal God who created the world in 7 days and so forth.
As our knowledge of science became better, we could better explain what was unknown in the past with reasoning and logic and there were better explanations on creation or I should say evolution that resulted in how we are today.
This is one of the issues where the western religions face the most issues. Since the books do tend to give a little too much detail, for e.g. the world being created 6000 years ago, and it was created by God in 7 days and that this was told by God Himself. The Catholic Church up until as recently as the 15th century believed that the earth was flat and to state that the Earth was round was blasphemous.
As our knowledge of science increased and as we could produce better scientific explanations to creation, natural occurrences and so forth. For e.g. today we can use science can explain that the world was created much earlier. As a result the religion loses its credibility and people tend to become atheists since they don't want to believe in anything their religion says. This is a problem especially for western religions which does not accept any change to their scriptures since they are the direct word of God.
Hinduism especially during the renaissance period changed significantly to reject rituals and use abstract philosophies and tries not to delve into the region of science. Also the philosophies are not final and they can continue to evolve as our knowledge increases and we can provide explanations for things that were otherwise unknown in the past. Hinduism also started out as every other religion by trying to explain everything as an act of God. However the key difference was that nothing in Hinduism is assumed to be a final word of God. The philosophies and texts can continue to evolve. Even today there are several Gurus who tend to have their own philosophy and they have a huge following.
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