W
WinterBorn
Guest
Again, no one is attempting to prove God "exists".
You could argue all kinds of reasons for why humans worship, but you are speculating based on preconceived ideas. Why would man want or need to find answers and understand? What makes you so certain this attribute came before spiritual belief? Maybe it was the other way around, maybe spiritual belief fostered man's inquisitiveness and caused him to need to find answers?
You hit on another point as well, "religion has allowed those who were not the strongest or the fittest to lead." I can't count the number of times I have heard someone confess, they couldn't have done something without the help of God. If nothing more than a purely psychological aspect, it would appear God is indeed real to these people. In any event, human spirituality plays too important a role in humankind, to presume it is some trivial superstition without meaning or purpose.
I am speculating based on te fact that the higher primates are curious. Being an even higher primate, we would be even more curious. I can picture a group of neanderthals caught in a storm. The huge flash of lightning and the crash of thunder. The little one asking "WTF was that?" And being told it was the god of the sky, or whatever. I have studied a little anthropology. The earliest religions always involved the natural elements. That tells me that they were answering questions concerning their natural world in an effort to understand.
My comment about those who are not the fittest or strongest becoming religious leaders is shown in the tribes having shaman. The shaman bodies in graves we have uncovered are rarely large healthy ones. The chiefs and kings were often the larger ones.