What is religion and why do religions develop?

Answer 1

Our tiny brains are designed for hunting and gathering. Concepts such as God, the universe and our relationship with either are beyond our immediate comprehension - just as are things like electricity and particle physics. To obtain a reasonable degree of understanding, we need to make models. Religion is our model that lets us understand God and the universe. Throughout man's development various people have had a greater degree of insight into these concepts and the world's major religions are the result of their teaching.

Answer 2

Humans were created with the need to worship God. Adam and Eve knew about God and passed it down through generations. God also made contact with other prophets. That is what is consider by many to be the true religion. Also, some angels decided they wanted to be worship themselves and separated from the loyal group of celestial beings and became demons. This demons, headed by the infamous Satan, spread lies and made people worship them, weather they new it or not. Many modern religions have adopted believes from those concepts spread by demons and have mixed them with concepts of the true religion, making other religions that appear to be based on the word of God, but are not.

Answer 3

Religion is basically the belief in a "higher being" or a spirit or a God. There are several reasons religion developed. One was that in the early stages of the human species, we did not have the science or technology to explain things as we do today, such as solar eclipses and natural disaster, therefore, people believed that a higher being or beings had made things, and caused things to happen.

Some religions had many gods, such as in Greek and Roman mythology. Others believe in one God, such as Christianity or Islam. Many do not believe in gods at all, such as Atheism. Another reason religion developed was that people simply could not believe that they were in control of their own destiny. Therefore, they reasoned, a god must have planned out their life for them.

According to mainstream religious doctrine (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), the humans were created with the need to worship God. In time, people started to look for other things to worship other than God, and started calling them god, gods or goddesses. Superstition had a big influence in early religious beliefs.

Answer 4

In the early history of mankind people knew God. But over the generations mankind has turned away from God or knowledge of God has become corrupted and religions developed. In the New Testament of The Bible you can read that it was not long before the simple message of "salvation by faith" became corrupted. Some of the letters in the NT were written to correct wrong teaching. Today we have all kinds of religions that teach their variation of God and man.

Anthropologists say that religion is a way of revitalizing a culture.

Answer 5

Religious beliefs developed because people have an innate urge to explain the world around them. Before modern science, that manifested in various myths. It also served the purpose of either comfort, if the deity was loving, or fear to keep you in line if it were vengeful instead.

Nowadays it is important to not make fun of people because of their outdated beliefs, but to understand that much of it is a result of social conditioning.

People are prone to form as a group and make up something to motivate them which is what they believe in.

Answer 6

Actually it should be more a question of why cultures adopt their distinct beliefs, or alter earlier ones, rather than asking about the original beliefs. Original belief is universal. No ancient society ever existed that did not believe in the supernatural in some form. It is a tradition of all mankind.
See also: What was the original belief?