Probably some bloke in the paleolithic, if not far earlier.
Seems to me that humans have pretty much always had an urge to the divine. That believing in things greater than oneself meets some very important human needs. These include helping to deal with the fear of death, giving a sense of meaning, purpose and control where non exists. Providing a sense of community. Even today being part of the dominant religious community can be a matter of life or death.
It is also my position that religious beliefs probably have or at least had, an evolutionary benefit. Even today, around 85% of all humans have some kind of religious belief.
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The intellectual basis of the origin of religions and their continuance seems to me to have always had this basic logical fallacy somewhere . That fallacy is called ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ (after this therefor because of this)
EG Then: Shaman prays and has a dance ,begging for rain. Rain comes the next day. Obviously it was the Shaman’s prays and dance.
Today the most common example is perhaps miracles. Person has disgusting disease. Goes to Lourdes, prays to the virgin for her intercession with god and drinks from the holy spring. Disgusting disease goes away.Obviously a miracle through the intercession of the Virgin with god. The millions, tens of millions of equally or more worthy prayers not answered are ignored. This is called ’ confirmation bias’
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Bernadette Soubirous, the 14 year old French peasant, had her hallucinations of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes in 1858. Since that time, pilgrims to Lourdes are perhaps over 100 million. Of all of those desperate, suffering people, the Catholic Church recognises a total of 65 miracles. There have been no recorded regrowth of missing body parts, not so much as a foreskin.
PS the general rate of spontaneous remission is 1:30,000.
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