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The history of religion is the written record of human religious feelings, thoughts, and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,200 years ago (3200 BCE). [1] The prehistory of religion involves the study of religious beliefs that existed prior to the advent of written records.
either that religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage; or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, saw religion as an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words: religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.
Sociological, psychological, and anthropological theories about religion generally attempt to explain the origin and function of religion. [1] These theories define what they present as universal characteristics of religious belief and practice .
The origin of religious belief is an open ... Sociological and anthropological theories of religion generally attempt to explain the origin and function of religion. ...
The Latin term religiō, the origin of the modern lexeme religion (via Old French/Middle Latin [2]), is of ultimately obscure etymology. It is recorded beginning in the 1st century BC, i.e. in Classical Latin at the end of the Roman Republic , notably by Cicero , in the sense of "scrupulous or strict observance of the traditional cultus ".
The bulk of the human religious experience pre-dates written history, which is roughly 70,000 years old. [1] A lack of written records results in most of the knowledge of pre-historic religion being derived from archaeological records and other indirect sources, and from suppositions. Much pre-historic religion is subject to continued debate.
Religious cosmology is an explanation of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe from a religious perspective. This may include beliefs on origin in the form of a creation myth , subsequent evolution, current organizational form and nature, and eventual fate or destiny.
Critical reception of Religion Explained has been mixed.. The psychologist Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi called the book "a milestone on the road to a new behavioral understanding of religion, basing itself on what has come to be known as cognitive anthropology, and pointedly ignoring much work done over the past one hundred years in the behavioral study of religion and in the psychological ...