The idea of a god or goddess, no matter how old, has always been responsible for a single thing, namely bringing people together, especially in times of need. Religion may have very well played a part in the aggregation of the first human societies, when people were much more exposed to the whims of nature than they are today. At this point, the main religions of the world are fairly elaborate, and have tens and hundreds of millions of followers worldwide. But, in the old days, such “complex” gods were not yet invented, and people only believed in the natural forces they saw, as in the Sun, the wind and the Earth itself.
Belief in the same things may have helped the first human groups come closer together, and also “knit” intricate social connections, whose role was to keep them from losing members. A larger degree of cooperation in hunting and taking care of the young ones may have aided only specific communities survive over others, which basically made religion an evolutionary trait.
Furthermore, times of great despair are generally known to unite people in a search for their respective gods and goddesses. For example, in 1929-1930, when the Great Depression was wrecking havoc in the United States, many citizens turned to Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, or even to hard-line orientations belonging to one of these creeds. Their attendance was not motivated by a sudden re-encounter with their god, but rather by the fact that they were uncertain of what tomorrow was going to bring.
In other words, insecurity is one of the main “catalysts” for people to start attending service in a church, mosque or temple again, even if their whole lives up to one point were incompatible with the teachings of those religions. This has lead some researchers to believe that the brain develops an innate ability to believe in a god. That's not to say the mind is “hard-wired” in that, but that by the very nature of our construction, we are prone to believe in the supernatural.
Of course, these beliefs can take on dramatic shapes, as history tells us. The deeds of the Catholic Church, for example, that killed people because they didn't fit the priests' ideal of a worshiper, that tortured and burned thousands at the stake for a single word, that led crusades on foreign lands for money, that prevented the progress of science as much as it could, by killing researchers, astronomers and mathematicians for heresy, and that kept control over schools for several centuries, are a clear reminder of what unfounded religious fanaticism can do.
Find us on Google+
