The Origins of Worship

85:0.1Prim­i­tive re­li­gion had a bi­o­logic ori­gin, a nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment, aside from moral as­so­ci­a­tions and apart from all spir­i­tual in­flu­ences. The higher an­i­mals have fears but no il­lu­sions, hence no re­li­gion. Man cre­ates his prim­i­tive re­li­gions out of his fears and by means of his il­lu­sions.

85:0.2In the evo­lu­tion of the hu­man species, wor­ship in its prim­i­tive man­i­fes­ta­tions ap­pears long be­fore the mind of man is ca­pa­ble of for­mu­lat­ing the more com­plex con­cepts of life now and in the here­after which de­serve to be called re­li­gion. Early re­li­gion was wholly in­tel­lec­tual in na­ture and was en­tirely pred­i­cated on as­so­ci­a­tional cir­cum­stances. The ob­jects of wor­ship were al­to­gether sug­ges­tive; they con­sisted of the things of na­ture which were close at hand, or which loomed large in the com­mon­place ex­pe­ri­ence of the sim­ple-minded prim­i­tive Uran­tians.

85:0.3When re­li­gion once evolved be­yond na­ture wor­ship, it ac­quired roots of spirit ori­gin but was nev­er­the­less al­ways con­di­tioned by the so­cial en­vi­ron­ment. As na­ture wor­ship de­vel­oped, man’s con­cepts en­vi­sioned a di­vi­sion of la­bor in the super­mor­tal world; there were na­ture spir­its for lakes, trees, wa­ter­falls, rain, and hun­dreds of other or­di­nary ter­res­trial phe­nom­ena.

85:0.4At one time or an­other mor­tal man has wor­shiped ev­ery­thing on the face of the earth, in­clud­ing him­self. He has also wor­shiped about ev­ery­thing imag­in­able in the sky and be­neath the sur­face of the earth. Prim­i­tive man feared all man­i­fes­ta­tions of power; he wor­shiped ev­ery nat­u­ral phe­nom­e­non he could not com­pre­hend. The ob­ser­va­tion of pow­er­ful nat­u­ral forces, such as storms, floods, earth­quakes, land­slides, vol­ca­noes, fire, heat, and cold, greatly im­pressed the ex­pand­ing mind of man. The in­ex­pli­ca­ble things of life are still termed “acts of God” and “mys­te­ri­ous dis­pen­sa­tions of Prov­i­dence.”