Nature and Religion

Early Man: Nature’s Deities

Unique among life on earth, mankind developed a sophisticated imagination. Our imagination enabled us to survive changing environments and in a wide assortment of environments. Tragically, the imagination also brought us massive amounts of fear and confusion. Humans can imagine horrible frightening things and have the ability to contemplate why and how the world works. Human experience reveals cause and effect relationships that all or most other animals do not recognize. Because early humans realized they were powerless in the face of nature’s forces and because of the desire to eradicate inexplicable causes humans invented gods. We believe the first gods consisted of natural entities, chiefly the sun and moon. Some cultures imagined gods of the forest, the ocean, the trees, the grass, each distinct lake; everything contained its own minor god. Inventing gods provided our ancestors with the origins of natural occurrences and let them feel secure in being able to appease the gods thus protecting themselves. Parents would tell their children about the gods and so for many generations the traditions would carry on and people would think their beliefs were correct.

This form of religion was completely rational for the ancients who had no other way to account for many natural phenomena. Modern cultures would not benefit from such a belief system and our increased understanding of nature makes praising the moon or ocean seems silly.

This is the same thinking atheists share for all religions, where religion is referring to a belief system including spiritual entities. Meditation and self reflection do not count, unless they are seen as a way to contact your soul which is a spiritual entity and utter crap.