I’m a newbie so, please, no words over 3 syllables unless needed (I wanted to say necessary but it breaks the syllable rule!).
I’m curious how “religions” get started in an innocent way (ie not cults run by 1 person trying to satisfy his/her ego).
Did a Norse mother tell a child a night-time story thousands of years ago about the thunder, and just made up the name Thor. Maybe she made up all the characters, and the stories were so good they endured and eventually generations went by re-telling the story with reverence.
And, how about those claiming direct spirit contact: like Moses, and Muhammed the Prophet. Assuming that some of their story is correct (and ignoring the parts that are distorted thru retelling, translations, etc), were they on LSD-type drugs , or ailed with schizophrenia (all those syllables were needed!) or vivid dreams, etc? or is there another non-spiritual option?
At some points, I imagine an egoic scribe might have wanted to add major themes to the stories (I’m not talking about minor rewordings), but why would they risk it with Judaism, Christians and Muslims teachings of death to anyone who changes “the word of god”?
Are there any SIMPLE places to read about such basic questions? Thanks.
Seems to me that most religions take on some aspects of previously existing religions. Religions developed before writing developed. So we have no written history of the earliest religions.
Please be advised that “JJ” and “jj” are two different people, one of whom forgot he even had an account here, until you used the lower case instead of the upper case.
Yeah, I’m the same ‘jj’ as participated in JREF, etc.
No idea who “JJ” is, but ‘j’ is a very common letter to start a name with.
As an aside, I have a different (somewhat farcical) idea of how religion started.
We sit, around the fire in the shelter cave, eating the day’s kill. Ogg, the big, strong brute, takes the food from a smaller person, and eats it.
The wise man say s"Ogg, if you do that, big Juju gonna get you".
Ogg comes down with dysentery a few days later due to random causes.
Wise man says “see what happened”.
jj: Ogg, the big, strong brute, takes the food from a smaller person, and eats it.
The wise man say s”Ogg, if you do that, big Juju gonna get you”.
Ogg comes down with dysentery a few days later due to random causes.
The human ability/curse to see connections between events, regardless of whether there's actually a connection or not, is almost certainly the root of religions. So your idea of how religion started is bang on.