How did religion come about? (Not a thread for those believe)

[Soubriquet]

I’m an atheist. I do not believe in God, Allah, Moses, Yahweh or any other deity.

It does make me wonder at times though, is how someone managed to convince the entire world that this happened and this is how it happened.

So, how did the so called word of god come about and why do so many people believe it?

My take is that it is something pretty inherent to the human mind, even in the absence of traditional religion we create new rules and dogma, we create scared classes of people who must always be privileged and centred and never questioned. Some see the absence of God as permission for amorality and shame those who criticise that which is just another form of puritanism. In some ways the kind of dogma that grips todays society is worse than religion or at least equal to it. Essentially Humans = Religion and Dogma so it is a case of pick your poison.

I'm a believer. But I think this is a superb (very) short story on the topic. "How it Happened" by Isaac Asimov (sumware.com)

Yes. Human beings want to worship something. They will set something up to worship.

As a way of controlling people through fear and making them believe that if they do as they expected then they’ll have a happy eternal life. Stories of people suffering hardship but being saved in the end because they believed and followed god just add to making people fearful of not following.

I am neither a believer or not really, but I presume if people have always believed in God then religion has always been around

I presume to explain the unexplainable

I do wonder if people 'doing good deeds' and being nice and using manners type things came from the creation of religion or did religion come from humans doing this

Human brain trying to make sense of what's happening and then later a dangerous tool of control and manipulation.

I watched a film called "In The Earth" recently. It's an art-house movie about belief, spirituality and our relationship with the natural world. One of the charaters says something along the lines of "The problem with humans is that they need to turn everything into a story." That sums up my opinion on why religion exists. Storytelling is our main way of understanding our existence and when a truthful story is missing or unsatisfactory we make up a fictional story instead.

Control of the masses.

This!

I also think it’s an unintended side effect of our incredible intelligence, - this hunger for explanation and reasons, and also a disbelief that this incredibly rich interior and exterior life and consciousness can just end with death. It’s notable that all major religions provide the hope if some form of life after death. For most of human history death was all around us from birth, we would have lost siblings, often mothers in childbirth, you can see the appeal of an explanatory theology.

Then yes, you can see how the powerful would exploit and bolster religion. Seeing the ultimate authority for their power.

I wonder if religion is a basic history type books of some events that may have happened and humanities early mixing with extrestialls.
But then the books evolved via humans writing them and rewriting them for different respons etc