Origin of God Concept by Larry Wood

Since Atheists do not believe that God exists, why do approximately 95% of Americans answer yes, when asked if they believe in God? This raises the obvious question: where did the concept of God come from? As I will demonstrate, and suppose that some of you either know or suspect, God is an invention of the human mind.

We begin with the evolution of the human mind.  Of course, it is effectively impossible to directly chart the evolution of the mind, but since the mind is the product of electrochemical interactions between brain neurons, it is reasonable to assume that the mind evolved in parallel with the evolution of the brain which can be charted by following the development of the skull since the brain occupies most of the volume of the brain. Reference 1 Fig 14-1 is a graph, which traces brain capacity from the 500 cc A. afarensis brain, 2.5 MYA to the first appearance of Modern man’s brain, 1350 cc, 100 – 200 MYA. Since Modern man produced sophisticated stone tools and had mastered fire, it’s reasonable to assume that the mind produced by this brain was fully capable of curiosity regarding itself and its surroundings.

Unfortunately, since the only observational tool available at this time was the human eye – not a particularly useful investigative device, this mind had to contend with the existence of five illusions:

1. The apparently solid earth; caused by the inability of the eye to see atoms and molecules.
2. The apparent motion of the sun and planets around the earth, caused by the Earth’s rotation which is undetectable without proper instruments such as a Foucault pendulum.
3. The apparent same size of the sun and moon and the apparent closeness of both the sun and moon, due the lack of a proper reference for distant objects.
4. The apparent motion of the stars around the earth, and the apparent closeness of the stars, again due to the rotation of the Earth and lack of proper references.
5. The apparently unchanging physical and biological feature of the earth, due to the glacial slowness of geological processes such as erosion and biological processes such evolution.

I term Illusions 2, 3, and 4 the “astronomical illusions” because they involve phenomena that occur above the earth.

As might be expected, these illusions led to decidedly incorrect conclusions.

The astronomical illusions led to the incorrect belief that humans were at the center of a rather small universe that revolved around the earth.

The apparently unchanging earth features led to the incorrect belief that the earth was probably not very old.

The solid earth illusion did not apparently cause any problems at this time.

The two incorrect beliefs then led logically to three questions: how did the earth, sun, moon, and stars originate (i.e., where did they come from?), what or who controls the various earthly phenomena, such as the cycle of the seasons, the sun and moon, and how did life originate?

The initial answer to these questions was the incorrect, but perhaps reasonable under the circumstances, belief that all powerful, but unseen, supernatural entities called Spirits or Gods, that “created, inhabited, and controlled everything.”

This belief system was discovered by the British Anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), who made in-depth examinations of early cultures in the mid-1800s. Tylor published the results of his examinations in several publications, but his most influential was Primitive Culture, published in 1871 Tylor’s examinations revealed that all of the earliest cultures had strong beliefs that a soul or spirit existed in every object, even if the object was inanimate. Tylor coined the term Animism as a name for these beliefs, where animism is derived from the Latin word anima, meaning “breath” or “soul”².

Although Tylor lacked more modern information such as the graph in Reference 1, he correctly concluded that Animism to be the first religion, a religion which persisted for thousands of years and was orally transmitted from generation to generation. With the advent of writing, Animism was written down and is the logical source of first verses of the book of Genesis. Animism ultimately morphed into polytheism which further morphed into monotheism

Thus, it follows that, since animism was essentially the first religion, the need to explain the unexplainable is an essential aspect of the origin of religion.

In a more recent treatment of Animism, Sara Wenner confirms that another term for “spirit” is “god.” As she points out, “Animistic gods often are immortalized by mythology explaining the creation of fire, wind, water, man, animals, and other natural earthly things³.^”

This description could equally apply to the book of Genesis. So once again, it is clear that supernatural gods or god was the invention of the human mind that was desperate for explanations of the unexplainable. Voltaire is supposed to have remarked, “what if he [God] didn’t [exist]? Well, we would have to invent him.⁴”

Regarding creationism, if we compare the dictionary definition of creationism—“Belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things as related in the Bible,” with the descriptions of Animism, it is clear that creationism is essentially a modern, monotheistic version of Animism.

I encountered an interesting question while checking resources, “How did the same concept, Animism, develop approximately simultaneously in all cultures without the help of God?” The answer to this question is easy, it didn’t. Animism largely developed while humans were still living in Africa.  When Modern humans dispersed out of Africa approximately 80,000 to 100,000 years ago ⁵ they spread Animism wherever they went.

References:

1. Lawrence H. Wood, 2010, Evolution and the Future of Mankind, IUniverse, Bl., IL, Fig. 14-1
2. Wikipedia, Edward Tylor,
3. Wenner, Sara. (2001) Animism
4. Everything2.com IfGoddidnotexist,itwouldbenecessarytoinventhim
5. Patterns of Hominid Dispersal, http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/disp.html