Religious beliefs and practices are found in all known contemporary societies, and archaeologists think they have found signs of religious belief associated with Homo sapiens who lived at least 60,000 years ago. People then deliberately buried their dead, and many graves contain the remains of food, tools, and other objects that were probably thought to be needed in an afterlife. Some of the artistic productions of modern humans after about 30,000 years ago may have been used for religious purposes. For example, sculptures of females with ample secondary sex characteristics may have been fertility charms.
Cave paintings in which the predominant images are animals of the hunt may reflect a belief that the image had some power over events. Perhaps early humans thought that their hunting would be more successful if they drew images depicting good fortune in hunting.
The details of religions practiced in the distant past cannot be recovered. Yet evidence of ritual treatment of the dead suggests that early people believed in the existence of supernatural spirits and tried to communicate with, and perhaps influence, them.
Most think that religions are created by humans in response to certain universal needs or conditions. We consider five such needs or conditions here:
- (1) a need for intellectual understanding
- (2) reversion to childhood feelings
- (3) anxiety and uncertainty
- (4) a need for community
- (5) a need for cooperation.
The Need to Understand
One of the earliest social scientists to propose a major theory of the origin of religion was Edward Tylor. In Tylor’s view, religion originated in people’s speculation about dreams, trances, and death. The dead, the distant, those in the next house, animals— all seem real in dreams and trances. Tylor thought that the lifelike appearances of these imagined people and animals suggest a dual existence for all things—a physical, visible body and a psychic, invisible soul. In sleep, the soul can leave the body and appear to other people; at death, the soul permanently leaves the body. Because the dead appear in dreams, people come to believe that the souls of the dead are still around. Tylor thought that the belief in souls was the earliest form of religion; animism is the term he used to refer to belief in souls. But many scholars criticized Tylor’s theory for primitive being too intellectual and not dealing with the emotional component of religion.
One of Tylor’s students, R. R. Marett, felt that Tylor’s animism was too sophisticated an idea to be the origin of religion. Marett suggested that animatism—a belief in impersonal supernatural forces (e.g., the power of a rabbit’s foot)—preceded the creation of spirits. A similar idea is that when people believe in gods, they are anthropomorphizing—attributing human characteristics and motivations to nonhuman, particularly supernatural, events. Anthropomorphizing may be an attempt to understand what is otherwise incomprehensible and disturbing.
Reversion to Childhood Feelings
Sigmund Freud believed that early humans lived in groups, each of which was dominated by a tyrannical man who kept all the women for himself. Freud postulated that, on maturing, the sons were driven out of the group. Later, they joined together to kill and eat the hated father. But then the sons felt enormous guilt and remorse, which they expressed (projected) by prohibiting the killing of a totem animal (the father substitute). Subsequently, on ritual occasions, the cannibalistic scene was repeated in the form of a totem meal. Freud believed that these early practices gradually became transformed into the worship of deities or gods modeled after the father.
Most social scientists today do not accept Freud’s interpretation of the origin of religion. But there is widespread agreement with his idea that events in infancy can have long-lasting and powerful effects on beliefs and practices in adult life. Helpless and dependent on parents for many years, infants and children inevitably and unconsciously view their parents as all-knowing and all-powerful. When adults feel out of control or in need, they may unconsciously revert to their infantile and childhood feelings. They may then look to gods or magic to do what they cannot do for themselves, just as they looked to their parents to take care of their needs. As we shall see, there is evidence that feelings about the supernatural world parallel feelings in everyday life.
Anxiety and Uncertainty
Freud thought that humans would turn to religion during times of uncertainty, but he did not view religion positively, believing that humans would eventually outgrow the need for religion. Others viewed religion more positively. Bronislaw Malinowski noted that people in all societies are faced with anxiety and uncertainty. They may have skills and knowledge to take care of many of their needs, but knowledge is not sufficient to prevent illness, accidents, and natural disasters. The most frightening prospect is death itself. Consequently, there is an intense desire for immortality. As Malinowski saw it, religion is born from the universal need to find comfort in inevitable times of stress. Through religious belief, people affirm their convictions that death is neither real nor final, that people are endowed with a personality that persists even after death. In religious ceremony, humans can commemorate and communicate with those who have died and achieve some measure of comfort in these ways.
Theorists such as William James, Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, and Abraham Maslow have viewed religion even more positively: Religion is not just a way of relieving anxiety; it is thought to be therapeutic. James suggested that religion provides a feeling of union with something larger than oneself, and Jung suggested that it helps people resolve their inner conflicts and attain maturity.8 Fromm proposed that religion gives people a framework of values, and Maslow argued that it provides a transcendental understanding of the world.
A considerable amount of research supports the idea that religion generally relieves stress, anxiety, and uncertainty. Engaging in religious rituals appears to lower individuals’ blood pressure; elevated blood pressure is often caused by stress. Regular church-goers have lower incidence of depression than non church-goers. Fisherman who go out on longer deep-sea trips are more likely to believe in magical avoidances. People faced with terrorism close to home are more likely to engage in prayer or psalm recitation. If religion is good for health by reducing anxiety, why has the number of religious believers declined recently in so many countries? A comparison of countries suggests that the number of nonbelievers in a country is related to fewer stresses in the environment. So, greater economic development, less inequality, higher life expectancy, more peacefulness, and lower disease loads are all associated with a higher number of nonbelievers. These relationships support the idea that when uncertainty is lessened, the need for religion is lessened.
The Need for Community
All those theories of religion agree on one thing: Whatever the beliefs or rituals, religion may satisfy psychological needs common to all people. But some social scientists believe that religion springs from society and serves social, rather than psychological, needs. Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist, pointed out that living in society makes humans feel pushed and pulled by powerful forces. These forces direct their behavior, pushing them to resist what is considered wrong, pulling them to do what is considered right. These are the forces of public opinion, custom, and law. Because they are largely invisible and unexplained, people would feel them as mysterious forces and therefore come to believe in gods and spirits. Durkheim suggested that religion arises out of the experience of living in social groups; religious belief and practice affirm a person’s place in society, enhance feelings of community, and give people confidence. He proposed that society is really the object of worship in religion.
Consider how Durkheim explained totemism, so often discussed by early religious theorists. He thought that nothing inherent in a lizard, rat, or frog—animal totems for some Australian aboriginal groups—would be sufficient to make them sacred. The totem animal therefore must be a symbol. But a symbol of what? Durkheim noted that there are things that are always unknown about others, particularly their inner states. It is from these unknowns that the mystical aspects of religion arise. But the form religion takes has a lot to do with how societies are structured. Durkheim noted that in societies organized into clans, each clan has its own totem animal; the totem distinguishes one clan from another.
So the totem is the focus of the clan’s religious rituals and symbolizes both the clan and the clan’s spirits. It is the clan that is affirmed in ritual. Guy Swanson accepted Durkheim’s belief that certain aspects or conditions of society generate the responses we call religious, but he thought that Durkheim was too vague about exactly what in society would generate the belief in spirits or gods. So what might?
Swanson suggested that the belief in spirits derives from the existence of sovereign groups in a society. These are the groups that have independent jurisdiction (decision-making powers) over some sphere of life—the family, the clan, the village, the state. Such groups are not mortal; they persist beyond the lifetimes of their individual members. According to Swanson, then, the spirits or gods that people invent personify or represent the powerful decision-making groups in their society. Just like sovereign groups in a society, the spirits or gods are immortal and have purposes and goals that supersede those of individuals.
Need for Cooperation
While Durkheim stressed the solidarity that religion created in groups, more recently, evolutionary theorists have focused on a specific aspect of solidarity—human cooperation. Evolutionary theorists have to deal with a paradox—human groups are quite cooperative, but how did cooperation arise when helping others has a cost to an individual? If a village needs to be defended, it is advantageous for an individual to run away and let others risk their lives, but if everyone cooperates, the group is more likely to ward off the attackers.
What keeps people together and prevents individuals from letting others bear all the costs? Religion, some theorists argue, particularly the kind where supreme beings are concerned with morality, provides a strong mechanism to promote cooperation. First, participating in rituals and ceremonies promotes communal feelings. Second, supernatural beings can “police” better—they cannot only “see all,” but they can invoke powerful punishments such as sickness or death. Presumably then people will be more likely watch their behavior. But what if an individual just pretends to participate in religious behavior to gain benefits from others? Here is where another mechanism is suggested. If religions require considerable participation and sacrifices (such as fasting, curtailment of activities, specialized dress), religious participation will be hard to fake for an individual who wants to deceive.