Where does religion come from? - Animism to Monotheism

Read through the information carefully and use the ‘Key Words’ to help you.

Nobody knows exactly when religion started, but it is thought to be between 30,000 and 70,000 years ago, when language first developed.

Early humans became curious about themselves and the world around them. With the development of language came the possibility of asking questions:

• What controls the movement of the sun in the sky? • What controls the changing of the seasons? • What happens to a person when they die?

The last question prompted our ancestors to develop concern for the dead. They buried their dead, and sometimes buried tools and other useful items with them. Perhaps this meant that early humans believed there was another sort of life after death, possibly in a world of spirits.

Of course, language meant these people could communicate their thoughts and ideas about life, death and the universe, so they could share a common way of seeing things. At the same time, they could share ideas about how they could live peacefully in groups. Human beings could develop rituals or special ceremonies to help them link with the spirit world in the hope that the spirits could protect them from bad luck and bring them success in hunting and growing food.

Human beings were developing communities that shared: • Beliefs and ideas about the supernatural and the spiritual • Rituals and practices • The same ideas about right and wrong.

This could be seen as the start of religion

How did ideas about God develop?

At first, spirits were seen to live not just in human beings, but in all elements of the environment: animals, trees, rocks, rivers, mountains and the weather. This belief is known as animism and is the earliest form of religious belief. Importantly, people came to believe that they could communicate with the spirits and influence them. At the same time, the spirits chose to help people or harm them. Religious ideas grew as human societies developed. As families joined with others to form clans and clans joined into tribes, people thought their growing numbers as believers made their gods more and more powerful.

As tribes came into contact with each other, and even conflicted with each other, they recognised that each had their own god or gods. Nevertheless, they only worshipped their own.

Over time, tribes became nations, and their ideas about their gods combined to create new, more powerful gods. Shared beliefs gave societies an identity. People from the same group who didn’t know each other would know that they shared the same values: they belonged. Religion bound people together.

It was important that a nation’s god was seen as more powerful than the gods of other nations. People realised the best way to show that they were in power was to deny that any other gods but theirs existed. It is reckoned that belief in one God was first established in about 1500BCE.

Of the major religions in the UK today, Christianity and Islam, Judaism and Sikhism are monotheistic. Hinduism is more complex, since it includes a variety of viewpoints on God and gods. Although Buddhism is certainly not monotheistic, there is a range of views on spirits and gods.

Key Ideas

‘Theos’ is the Greek word for ‘God’. Belief that there is a God is called theism. Belief that there is no God is called atheism. Belief that there is not enough evidence to say whether there is a God or not is called agnosticism. Belief in many gods is called polytheism. Belief that there are many gods, while worshipping only one god is called henotheism. Belief in one (creator) God is called monotheism. It is thought that the word ‘religion’ comes from the Latin ‘religare’, meaning ‘to bind together’.

Key Words

Religion – a system of belief, faith and worship. Rituals – a ceremony made up of a sequence of activities that follow an established pattern. Animism – the belief that natural objects have spirits.

Activities

Now you have read through the information, have a go at these activities. The ones in the GREEN box are the easiest ones, then YELLOW, then RED. If you find one set of tasks easy, move up to the next set. If you find you are struggling, do your best to finish that box and then stop.

1. Where does the word ‘religion’ come from and what does it mean? 2. Which major religions in the UK are monotheistic? 3. What do agnostics believe? 4. Roughly how long ago did monotheism start?

5. What were the early ‘seeds’ of religion? 6. Draw a flow chart of the development of religion, from the ability to use language up to the beginning of monotheism. 7. How does religion ‘bind’ people together?

8. ‘Religions are just sets of ideas invented by human beings.’ Do you agree with this? Explain your answers. How might someone else respond?