What came first religion or society?

Answer 1

Adam and Eve started with faith and abandoned it, then came sin and messed up society, then when people turned to God, good values showed up. There has been a struggle against sin for a long time.

Answer 2

The society in Eden, then sin, then being cast out of Eden, then the choices of the children of Adam and Eve. Faith, and love for God eventually led to good society; as sin and hate and violence led to bad society.

Answer 3

Human culture came about long before religion.

Human culture evolved before there was any sophisticated form of verbal communication. It can be safely assumed the first type of information shared by a group of early humans was information about their environment, i.e., where to find the best shelter from the elements, what nuts and berries were good to eat and where to find them, where to find and how to transport water, how to work collectively to bring down game, which plants were good to eat, how to find materials for tools and how to make them, etc. What each early individual learned for the first time was passed on to the group. A group could pass on more collective information than an individual could acquire on their own.

Social learning and cooperation were the raw materials that began to form human culture. The earliest human brains were not capable of creating religion. Religion developed as humans became more cognitively sophisticated and sought to explain the world around them and natural occurrences.

Evidence of human culture can be found in the earliest art forms. The oldest known works of art are geometric cave paintings found in Africa dated at 75,000 years. Animal paintings were discovered in France that were dated at 37,000 years. The earliest example of paleolithic carved figurative art is a female form found in Germany that has been carbon dated at 35,000 years old. Perhaps it is an example that the first objects of veneration were the female, the bringer of life.

The earliest known religions were animalistic and shamanistic in nature. Shamans are intermediaries between the spirit world (human and animal spirits) and the human world. Shamanism is thought to have originated in the paleolithic age and predates all organized religions. A shaman burial site dated at 12,000 years was found in Israel in 2008. Shamanism may be better recognized by most people by its more modern term: Paganism.