Religion, in general and throughout history, does not work like that. You cannot use Christianity as the template for understanding world religions; Christianity is in fact a very odd and atypical religion, with an extreme emphasis on faith and belief. Most religions are not like that; most religions are just a seamless element of the overall cultural fabric, and any deviation in religious practice is treated just any other cultural deviation. Yes, there might be censure, but that's no different than with any other social or cultural thing.
Humans are instinctively inclined to see patterns, even in phenomena where there is no pattern. It is likely one of the sources of human spirituality.
You might be able to go with something more certain than, "likely", inasmuch as they sometimes drew us a diagram, or many, as such, depicting anthropomorphized cosmology. And because I'm in such a vague mood, it seems nearly sufficient to say that, given the realities behind notions of nothing ever going as planned, the facts of failure, frailty, and imperfection virtually require a comparative suggestion of enduring, unflawed success. Anthropomorphized perfection seems an inevitable logical outcome if one devises a complicated enough explanation to require containment within a singular and easily exchanged communication. By the time we get to existential questions themselves, the anthropomorphized polytheistic deities logically require a singular organizational principle, which thus emerges as a monotheistic godhead. Imagine comparative perfection as an evolutionary symptom; all we really need is an underlying existential comparison, such as we might find implied in pretty much any explanation of kin selection. But it's true, I think you could trade, "likely", for anything from, "evidently", to skipping it entirely in favor of something far more assured: It is one of the fundamental sources of human spirituality. Of course, I'm also considering the idea of pattern identification vaguely, and essentially presupposed; not necessarily self and other, as I haven't figured that one out, but something about distingusing this other from that other.
We have to settle for "likely" in lieu of evidence of what Neolithic people thought and believed. There is evidence that deliberately producing altered states of consciousness, and resulting entoptic phenomena, were at least one root of early religion. Megalithic monuments and early cave art shows similar geometric patterns across cultures, many of which match entoptic phenomena we can observe in controlled settings today. So it's not our pattern-tracking in and of itself that generates religious concepts, it's in combination with other phenomena and experiences. I do not think monotheism is inevitable. That's a selective, Frazerian misreading of history. Polytheism is perfectly capable to handling existential questions.
We see agency where there is none. For example, thinking that bad weather is a consequence of bad moral choices, like when we find human sacrifices in South America that correlate to times of drought.
I'm not using x-tianity as a template for world religions. I'm using the definition that I quoted and the typical behaviour of humans based on how we evolved (tribalism) "The behaviour and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one's own tribe or social group." - Lexico "strong in-group loyalty" - Merriam-Webster that's literally the point I just made but using culture rather than religion: it only changes the words to "If you're perceived as being outside of the norm, you're "wrong" per a cultural standard that you've not accepted". It doesn't matter if the religion is integrated into the society being examined, it still demonstrates the same argument: whenever people gather to share ideological beliefs, inevitably there will be someone who seeks to codify those beliefs into rules of how to be a better acolyte of [insert faith here]. ... It's teaching prejudice and how to justify that prejudice with a set of arbitrary rules based upon a faith [or culture] that isn't universally accepted (and I'm speaking in the broadest sense, as in, the actual universe). So how is a random judgement based on someone else's personally accepted arbitrary rules fair? It's not. it's also a hell of a lot more popular and used in more cultures, apparently at least, to my experiences and reading, anyway.
Not for every last religious believer. Depends on the application. Depends on the believer and the application. Ask the Sun God about the drought and fires: The deity is either cruel or helpless. As an existential consideration, the amusement of cruel gods is its own range of questions; to the other, the idea of a helpless deity, that this is how it is because that is how it goes, describes or requires an effect of constraint. Many believers won't bother wondering about that constraint until they need to, but once one starts down that path, rational consistency eventually and necessarily describes a greater authority. Lather, rinse, repeat, until one runs out of boundaries, and monotheism emerges, and as I read it, tending toward panentheism.
Is that what he was talking about? Nevermind. But thanks spidey Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
