If we put aside organized religion, the oldest form of worship is naturalistic Paganism, from which Wicca and other forms of Earth reverence were born. Earth and nature is believed to be worshiped as a Goddess as far back as Paleolithic times. It might be interesting to note the anthropologistic view of Paleolithic times. For anthropologists and those who trust fossil records, Paleolithic era is the time when Humankind evolved from early members of the genus Homo such as Homo habilis into fully behaviorally and anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens). One of the distinguishing features of Homo sapiens sapiens is its remarkably developed pre-frontal cortex involved in higher cognitive function and abstract thinking. So, if you do decide to believe in evolution and fossil records, we can safely assume that it was the time when Humans started their basic philosophical questioning attempting to rationalize their existence.
Our religious beliefs are highly influenced by what we see and learn from other humans and this includes communication in the form of texts written by some humans thousands of years ago based on what they had seen, thought or learned. What are the religious beliefs of a child, a young, say 2 years old kid? Or the one isolated from all forms of communication, like Massieu or Kaspar Hauser? None! If my kid or these folks were raised under the impression that a small cozy teapot in the middle of Mars and Jupiter (or a flying Spaghetti Monster for that matter) is an utterly holy God and that we should all worship it, they would most likely believe that (just like Jim Carey believes that the studio-city around him represents the real world in the movie – The Trueman Show)! However, as their pre-frontal cortex would mature with age and he gains enough information about himself and the world around himself, they would perhaps begin questioning the idea of having a teapot God just like Jim Carey discovers that he has been living in a constructed reality soap opera and believing just what others have been pretending it to be!! Finally, they shall discover that it is utter non-sense!! (For more on Teapot God and Flying Spaghetti Monster, See Bertrand Russell’s Tea pot God and Flying Spaghetti Monster ). Clearly, it’s all a man made construct – a by product of trying to explain life and the cosmos simply by introspection and imaginative thinking!
Agreed, we still don’t know a lot about many things but we know quite a lot to know that there’s no role of a super natural being in the grand scheme of things. Even if there is one such being, in this model-based realism, he/she/it seemed to have left the universe to evolve on its own after the big bang of the point of singularity. We still don’t know how the matter/energy came to be at the first place, we still don’t properly understand the basis of our conscious nature amongst a lot of other unknown things but evoking an imaginative, invisible being to fill in those ever shrinking gaps doesn’t further our understanding at all. It rather puts you in an infinite regress. You, I or anyone else have no good reason to believe if naturalistic atheism (that stems from evolution and scientific worldview) is true or not. Intuition and sensory modalities could be deceiving and are certainly quite limiting. That’s why scientific method of investigation is used to learn more about the universe using “multitude” of empirical validations using methods based on “different underlying principles”. Only those hypothesis can be said to reflect the picture of reality in this modal-based-realism which can be empirically validated independently by various methods based on different underlying principles. The picture we have so far is that of naturalistic atheism. I would love to believe otherwise, but there is no better reason to do so. However, people like to go one step further in their imaginative thinking and believe that such self-conceived supernatural being(s) hates embryonic stem cell research, or using condoms in Africa or cares about anything and everything that we do, that’s just wishful delusional thinking to the point of absurdity. The nooddly appendages of my Lord flying Spaghetti Monster God are much better, tastier and merciful!
Following readings are suggested on this subject matter:
1. The God DelusionRichard Dawkins’: The God Delusion
3. Stephen Hawking’s – The Grand Design (2010)
4. Evolution of Religion: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/3534
5. Lawrence Krauss’s lecture on the Origin of Universe:
