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Religion is a chain that has been forged link by link over the millenia. Viewers will appreciate that ideas are not subject to carbon dating techniques. The estimate given for the earliest aspect of religious behaviour coincides with the emergence of Homo Habilis. While belief in spirits or the soul may be taken as the foundation stone of religion, it should not be supposed that this was an intellectual decision taken by Homo Habilis, who's 600 cc brain would have been incapable of abstract thought. No, spirits would simply be accepted as a natural part of their day.
Link- Circa 2 million BC? From the dream experience would come the first idea about the supernatural: the belief that a soul lived within the human body.
Link- Animism sees the extension of the soul or spirit concept to include all beings and inanimate objects. A belief in spiritual beings may be considered as a minimum definition of religion.
Link-The Taboo, or concept of forbidden things arises out of fear of the dominant alpha male, or Old Man.
Link-Fear of the living Old Man passes into fear of his departed spirit. The tribal god is born. This leads to...
Link- Sacrifice to propitiate his spirit, along with the kindred urge to..
Link- Pray. Prayer arrives as an attempt to gain supernatural aid.
Link- Circa 100,000 BC. The development of language allows primitive spiritual feelings to be expressed as ideas. Religion, as we understand it, arrives on the scene.
Link- 5,000 BC: The Neolithic phase sees a proliferation in tribal gods, as cities and temples sprout from the earliest civilisations.
Link- Circa 600 BC: Tribal gods give way to monotheism, as the Hebrew tribal God Yahweh has his portfolio expanded to include all of creation.
The end result of this long evolutionary process has seen the dominance of a relative handful of large scale religious organisations who insist on the right to tell you how to live your life.
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