Shiari
Blutterer
Ah, but that tendency is actually hard wired into our brains.
We often must tell young children that no, their stuffed animal is not alive. Animism is a phase that we all naturally go through. Now, the most "primitive" or "oldest" religions appear to involve a great deal of animism. Early humans would not have known either way if that amasing old oak tree was sentient or not, for example.
Now, from this, attributing sentience to weather phenomena is an easy step. "Rain cloud is angry." And because they believe it has awareness like themselves, and because they can be propitiated, why not the clouds? So things are tried to make the clouds 'happy' so there are no devastating storms, no lightnings. Things are attempted to be found as 'causes' of the anger.
Then all that might need be asked at some point is "what makes the cloud" and suddenly, there is psychological need for an answer. And this answer can be easily and neatly stated as "the cloud/rain person"... or god. This can be seen in the wonderful questions of "why is the sky blue?" Answer that, and you'll get a "why", not *just* because the why game is fun (flustering the parents, YAY!).
The conversation would likely go a lot better than the attempted truthful version:
"Why is the sky blue?"
"Because Sky god made it that way."
"Why did he make it blue and not green?"
"Because he likes the color blue best."
Further on, as we humans tend to like heirarchies, there is naturally going to need to be a god in charge of the other gods. And we've watched the rest from there as that later evolved into monotheism.
We often must tell young children that no, their stuffed animal is not alive. Animism is a phase that we all naturally go through. Now, the most "primitive" or "oldest" religions appear to involve a great deal of animism. Early humans would not have known either way if that amasing old oak tree was sentient or not, for example.
Now, from this, attributing sentience to weather phenomena is an easy step. "Rain cloud is angry." And because they believe it has awareness like themselves, and because they can be propitiated, why not the clouds? So things are tried to make the clouds 'happy' so there are no devastating storms, no lightnings. Things are attempted to be found as 'causes' of the anger.
Then all that might need be asked at some point is "what makes the cloud" and suddenly, there is psychological need for an answer. And this answer can be easily and neatly stated as "the cloud/rain person"... or god. This can be seen in the wonderful questions of "why is the sky blue?" Answer that, and you'll get a "why", not *just* because the why game is fun (flustering the parents, YAY!).
The conversation would likely go a lot better than the attempted truthful version:
"Why is the sky blue?"
"Because Sky god made it that way."
"Why did he make it blue and not green?"
"Because he likes the color blue best."
Further on, as we humans tend to like heirarchies, there is naturally going to need to be a god in charge of the other gods. And we've watched the rest from there as that later evolved into monotheism.
) I'm able to accept that I don't understand everything so I don't have to make up a deity or a divine something to attribute to everything I can't explain. I can happily live without that.