How did a belief in god begin and why is it so universal and enduring?

Introduction.

Belief in gods is almost universal among human cultures. How did people get the idea to start believing in them, and why are those beliefs so enduring?

If gods do exist, what led people in the direction of discovering them?

If gods don't exist, why did people invent them?

It is human instinct to believe all occurrences are intentionally caused.

Humans live in societies. Most of the things that happen to a human are caused by other humans, and most of those things are done intentionally. Recognizing that an act was done intentionally and correctly interpreting the intent are so important to our survival in societies that those abilities have become inborn instincts invoked in all our dealings with others. However, they are such strong instincts that we do not only use them to interpret the activities of other humans.

When rains fall and crops grow, humans can eat, they are able to feed their children, and they are happy. If in the following year no rain falls, the crops fail, and their children die, they are miserable, sad, and angry. Events they cannot control and mysterious powerful forces pique them to joy or despair just as do the actions of their fellow humans. Their lives are by capricious turns enriched or destroyed, and their emotion, accustomed to having for its target another human, cries out for an object upon which it can be vented. Who? Who? In all their social relations there is a Who, and in the agony of loss their souls implore, Who did this to us, and why?

Whether there is or is not a Who, choose according to your own predilection as believer or atheist. But in human social interactions there always is a Who, and the human relationship with the natural world is enough similar to a social relationship that human instinct begs for there to be one there, as well. What characteristics do humans tend to attribute to this Who, and why?

Psychologists say children want authority, guidance, and reassurance. Grown-ups want those things, too.

Human infants are born weak and ignorant into an environment where all that happens is mysterious and caused by beings more powerful than themselves. Those beings tell them what they can and cannot do, explain mysteries, provide safety, and give comfort in times of doubt.

Human adults understand more than they did as children, but much of the natural world's happenings remain mysterious and are more powerful than themselves. Although grown up, they still suffer from powerlessness and ignorance and are far more comfortable if those conditions can be alleviated by a relationship with a higher power that provides the helpfulness and reassurance that their parents once did. Into such a parental role they place their gods, giving them the attributes they would like them to have.

It is easy to assign any personality to these higher powers by the unconscious phenomenon of selective attention. In their many, daily, and varied interactions with nature, people are treated by nature in many and varied ways. To inadvertently attribute a personality to these powers, they need only give more attention to one set of occurrences (supporting the personality they want) while overlooking others. Predominantly, people give these higher powers parental roles.

As described in the preceding section, there is strong cause for people to believe that the actions of nature are intentional, and therefore that there should exist one or more higher powers. And as described in this section, people are desirous that those higher powers should have certain qualities. But to this point we have given them no proof or strong indications that they really exist. Is there anything in their experience that could lead them in this direction? Yes, there is.

Dreams and voices in people's heads personify the great unknown.

Dreams

In the world of dreams roam metamorphosed embodiments of people we know, eerie reincarnations of family members who have died, magical beings of unearthly description, and pleasures and tortures we have never known in waking life. Dreams feel like portals to other worlds of knowledge and power to which human souls are admitted only while the body sleeps. Whether divinely inspired or creations of the imagination or some combination, the dreams of ancient peoples undoubtedly were sources of myth and legend. If one seeks the origin of the initial idea that there are divine beings, magical worlds where ghostly spirits mingle, where the dead live again, where animals talk, and where miracles transpire, one need look no farther than dreams.

Voices

In all cultures there are people who hear voices spoken to them by people who are not physically present. It might be a god speaking to them, or it might be mental illness, or it might be a god sometimes and mental illness other times. Again, choose according to your belief, but the only thing that is important in this argument is that it happens, and when it happens it personifies the unknown with exceptional vividness because the person is awake.

Both dreams and voices impart to a culture the idea that there exist beings in other worlds, who have magical powers, who perform miracles, and who speak to them in their own language. In what culture would it not occur to someone to start speaking back?

Intermittent reward is the strongest type of reinforcement.

Reward for what? How did prayer begin?

Prayer can develop either after or before a human culture has established a personal relationship with nature. If it is after, then the relationship will cause prayer. If it is before, then the praying will lead to the relationship. Either will cause the other.

A few paragraphs ago, we left a human society impoverished for want of rain and enraged at the power Who denies it to them. It is certain that they wish it would rain. If it does not rain one day, they hope it will the next. A power that denies it could surely provide it, and it would be the most natural thing in the world, in this predicament, to ask for it. The relationship leads to prayer.

Another nearby society is similarly impoverished, afflicted by the same drought, but they have not come to believe it is caused by a willful entity. Nonetheless, they, too, wish it would rain, and if it does not rain one day, they hope it will the next. Then one day while they are hoping and wishing it would rain, it does. It worked! If they had not previously established a personal relationship with the one who hears their wishes and grants them, it cannot be too far distant in their future. Prayer leads to the relationship.

Prayer is a natural extension of wishing and hoping. When people discover that someone seems to be paying attention to their wishing and hoping, they begin asking.

What is intermittent reward?

When humans perform some action in anticipation of obtaining a reward, there are three basic things that can happen. They can always get what they want, or they can never get what they want, or they can sometimes get what they want. When they sometimes get what they want, it is called intermittent reward, and experiments in behavioral science have established that it is the one of the three that is most effective at getting someone to repeat a behavior. Slot machine gambling provides this type of reward pattern, and addiction to it is often, predictably, the result.

Prayer sometimes pays off, and sometimes doesn't. This gives it the same reward pattern as a slot machine. A god who wanted to keep people praying couldn't devise a better strategy.

Sacrifice inspires commitment.

To be inventive is another human instinct, one that is available to those who pray. When humans try something and it doesn't work, they are apt to try variations of it, and if those don't work, they try something else.

One of our human societies, from a few paragraphs ago, still has not received the rain it desires and has asked for. Their relationship with nature is patterned after their own relationships with each other, and in human relationships when one asks and fails to receive, what does one do? Negotiate. Offer to give something in return. If the first thing offered does not bring results, inventiveness dictates that something else being tried, and in the course of the sequence the stakes are raised until something works. At this point, the humans know what nature's price is.

That price is a sacrifice the humans must make, which brings into play another demonstrated principle of human psychology: when humans sacrifice for something, they become more devoted to it. The larger the sacrifice, the larger their investment is, the more devoted they become and the less likely they are to abandon it.

Conclusion: if gods didn't exist, humans would create them.

Humans use their human relationships as the model for their relationship with the natural world because the actions of nature provoke them to the same emotional responses that the actions of their fellow humans do. Because humans assume intentionality in each other, they are led by instinct to assume intentionality in nature, too. Once they have posited a willful being who commands the forces of nature, they are led to prayer. Their prayer is rewarded intermittently, which serves as a powerful inducement to continue doing it.

If gods do not exist, humans would create them because their own instincts would lead them in that direction.

If gods do exist, humans inevitably would discover their existence because, again, their own instincts would lead them in that direction.

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