The Origins of Worship

85:6.1Hav­ing wor­shiped ev­ery­thing else on the face of the earth and in the heav­ens above, man has not hes­i­tated to honor him­self with such ado­ra­tion. The sim­ple-minded sav­age makes no clear dis­tinc­tion be­tween beasts, men, and gods.

85:6.2Early man re­garded all un­usual per­sons as super­hu­man, and he so feared such be­ings as to hold them in rev­er­en­tial awe; to some de­gree he lit­er­ally wor­shiped them. Even hav­ing twins was re­garded as be­ing ei­ther very lucky or very un­lucky. Lu­natics, epilep­tics, and the fee­ble-minded were of­ten wor­shiped by their nor­mal-minded fel­lows, who be­lieved that such ab­nor­mal be­ings were in­dwelt by the gods. Priests, kings, and proph­ets were wor­shiped; the holy men of old were looked upon as in­spired by the de­i­ties.

85:6.3Tribal chiefs died and were de­i­fied. Later, dis­tin­guished souls passed on and were sainted. Un­aided evo­lu­tion never orig­i­nated gods higher than the glo­ri­fied, ex­alted, and evolved spir­its of de­ceased hu­mans. In early evo­lu­tion re­li­gion cre­ates its own gods. In the course of rev­e­la­tion the Gods for­mu­late re­li­gion. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion cre­ates its gods in the im­age and like­ness of mor­tal man; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion seeks to evolve and trans­form mor­tal man into the im­age and like­ness of God.

85:6.4The ghost gods, who are of sup­posed hu­man ori­gin, should be dis­tin­guished from the na­ture gods, for na­ture wor­ship did evolve a pan­theon—na­ture spir­its el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of gods. The na­ture cults con­tin­ued to de­velop along with the later ap­pear­ing ghost cults, and each ex­erted an in­flu­ence upon the other. Many re­li­gious sys­tems em­braced a dual con­cept of de­ity, na­ture gods and ghost gods; in some the­olo­gies these con­cepts are con­fus­ingly in­ter­twined, as is il­lus­trated by Thor, a ghost hero who was also mas­ter of the light­ning.

85:6.5But the wor­ship of man by man reached its height when tem­po­ral rulers com­manded such ven­er­a­tion from their sub­jects and, in sub­stan­ti­a­tion of such de­mands, claimed to have de­scended from de­ity.