The Origin of Religion

a) The True Origin of Religion

Leaving the testimony of Holy Scripture momentarily out of account, we declare that religion takes its origin in man’s reason, which shows him that the world did not make itself, but must have a maker, and ultimately a maker who is the First Cause, infinite, necessary, all-perfect, all-powerful Being. Thus is the existence of God made manifest to reason. Now, once the existence of the all-perfect God is known, reason further manifests the fact that man depends utterly upon God; that God is to be recognized as the First Efficient Cause and Last Final Cause of man’s existence ; that man must, therefore, know, love, and serve God. In a word, reason makes manifest the fundamental truths of religion. Therefore, the origin of religion is found in man’s reason deducing truth from the consideration of the created world. But we must not leave Holy Scripture out of account. We have not yet proved Scripture as the Word of God, nor even as a reliable historical document. It will be our task to make such a proof later. Here let us assume the fact that Scripture is reliable history. Now Scripture informs us that God taught the fundamental truths of religion to the first human beings (primitive revelation). This testimony of Scripture has the confirmation of human history, for the belief in one God held by the first men, as Scripture testifies, was the belief of all ancient peoples. It is the clear testimony of historical research that polytheism (belief in several or many gods) was a lapse that came after monotheism (belief in one God). Thus the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Chinese, Hindus, Persians, all held to the belief in one God in the earliest times—as their philosophicoreligious literature and sacred inscriptions testify— and only later fell into polytheistic beliefs. The primitive revelation was preserved intact among one people, the Hebrews, from whom the Redeemer was to come. Other peoples quickly lost the revealed truth, transmitted it imperfectly, allowed it to become intermingled with tribal lore and superstitious fables. Among the Hebrews it was conserved by successive new revelations through men divinely sent (prophets, priests, kings, judges). Thus, the true religion was given to man by God in revelation; revelation is the origin of religion. Bringing together the two results of our study, we say that the origin of religion is twofold, viz., the primitive revelation, and man’s reason. Human reason alone would suffice to explain the existence of religion in the world. That a primitive revelation was actually made, does not change that fact. Reason would not suffice, as we shall see, for all the requirements of men in the matter of religion; but the fact remains that reason alone would have brought religion—granted an imperfect religion—into being. Reason itself is a natural revelation. For “revelation” is “the removal or withdrawal of a veil”—of a veil that hangs between man’s senses and the invisible causality in things. Reason pierces this veil. Reason recognizes the fact that this changing, limited, contingent, composite world is not self-explanatory; that, in a word, the world is an effect; which must have a satisfactory and adequate cause. The quest of causes carries reason ultimately to the recognition of a First Cause, itself Uncaused, Infinite, Necessary, All-Perfect. Thus does reason arrive inevitably and infallibly at the fact of God’s existence, the basic fact of religion. Directly deducible from the existence of the one infinite God, is man’s dependence upon Him, and man’s duty of knowledge, love, and service toward God. Here, then, is the rational origin of religion. Thus, speaking absolutely—that is, without taking into account the differences of individual men, their tastes, capacities, and circumstances—the, chief fundamental truths of religion must be recognized by reason. Because of this fact St. Paul declared that the pagans were inexcusable for their want of piety. He said that they should have known God and should have given Him honor, because His existence and perfections may be known by reason from the facts and phenomena of creation. And again, the Saint said that the moral law, as coming from God, must be known to all because conscience (i.e., reason) bears testimony to its reality. Now the existence of God and the moral law as coming from God are fundamental truths of religion. In a word, man is inevitably a religious being. That man have reason is of his essence; and if he use reason, he must recognize religious truths, or, simply, he must recognize religion.

b) False Theories about the Origin of Religion

I. The Fear Theory. Primitive men were amazed and frightened by many things. The flash of lightning, the roar of the rolling thunder, the power of the surging sea, the destructive sweep of the forest fire, mysterious disease, the cold and paralyzing unresponsiveness of a dear one dead—all these things stirred man’s heart to fear. Here were things of terrible character, and their causes and reasons were hidden, invisible. Man came to think of the invisible causes of terrifying things as powers that were intelligent, powers that could look upon him and harm him, powers, therefore, that he ought to placate. So man spoke with reverence to these invisible powers of nature, and lo, the first prayer was uttered, the first gods were recognized, religion was born!—Fear cannot account for the origin of religion. Fear is only shrinking from a recognized danger. Fear may indeed quicken the mental faculties and make man use his reason feverishly. If fear made primitive men reason about the causes of natural phenomena, then reason, and not fear, was the origin of religion. Natural phenomena (like lightning, thunder, storms, fires, disease, death) are manifestations of creatures, and they show, as all creatures do, the existence of the Creator. It is altogether possible that the tendency to pray should come strongly upon us when we are afraid; but that is because our reason teaches us that God exists, and our fear makes us run to God, just as a frightened child runs to its parents. But fear alone can teach nothing whatever. Fear is in no wise an instructive force. Its reaction upon reason may, as we have said, stir reason to effort, and to intense effort; but the result is a reasoned result, and not a blind and meaningless conception of new thoughts and theories. Indeed, fear, inasmuch as it may stir man to religion, presupposes religious conviction existing in man’s mind before fear stirred him to its active recognition. For the rest: if there were anything in the fear theory of the origin of religion, then nonreasoning animals would have religion, for such animals can suffer fear even to the extent of panic. 2. The Fraud Theory. In early times shrewd men set themselves up as a priesthood to secure for themselves a place of respect and honor and easy living. They played upon the credulity of the people, and by their pseudo-ceremonial of witchcraft or incantations, aided here and there by fortunate guesses which passed for true prophecy, they aroused in the minds of the people a conviction that they were in communication with an unseen power which ruled the world. Thus religion came into existence.—A priesthood presupposes a religion. Nor could a group of leaders, be they ever so clever, gain such sway over men as to imprint ineradicably upon the minds of all peoples of all times a false notion of an unseen power. Quackery is ever found within narrow limits of place and time; truth lives, but error dies. Besides, this theory takes for granted that primitive men were of absurdly low mentality, a supposition which, as Ethnology teaches, is contrary to historical fact. That this theory is the invention of unbelievers who wish to establish their case at any cost, even at the cost of selfcontradiction, is obvious from the fact that it declares that there were priests before there was any religion! This is like saying that there was no Baptism till baptized persons invented it, or that there was no authority recognized in the world until persons in authority insisted upon its recognition. For the rest, we have seen that religion is a rational necessity of man; it is rooted in reason. 3. The Law Theory. Legislators in early times found it necessary, in order to secure reverence for laws, to appeal to powers of more than earthly authority as their inspiration and support, and to get current the belief that even undetected offenders would not escape punishment because their activities were under the constant inspection of certain allseeing eyes. Thus men came to believe in gods. Naturally, too, legislators were held in fear and honor as the spokesmen of divinities, and they encouraged more and more the fraudulent religion which elevated their office.—This objection, like the last, is self-contradictory. How could legislators appeal to the gods with any hope of success if men did not already believe in gods? This theory presupposes the existence of the very thing which it pretends to ac- count for. This objection—again like the last—is seldom urged nowadays, but it was once in favor among “unreligionists,” and it deserves the notice we have given it here. 4. The Ghost Theory. Sleep was a great mystery to primitive man. It seemed that it was a state during which an inner man or ghost left the outer visible man unconscious while it journeyed in strange places. Dreams were but the ill-remembered adventures of the ghost, brought back by the ghost when it returned to the outer man and caused him to wake. Then death was but the permanent absence of the ghost which had often been temporarily absent before, that is, when man slept. In time the conviction grew general that the ghosts of dead men, particularly of dead ancestors, continued to have an interest in earthly things and to exert an unseen power. It were wise, therefore, to keep these ghosts friendly. Practices of placating ghosts took form; ancestor-worship appeared among men; totemism or belief in the kinship of family, tribe, or clan with a certain genus of animals or plants appeared. Thus came the cult of the unseen, and religion.—Historical fact upsets this fantastic bit of imagination. Many of the lowest and “most primitive” races had no ancestor-worship, no trace of totemism, no trace of a ghost-theory at all, for instance the Pygmies of the Congo. Totemism, animism (ancestor-worship) and fetishism (belief in a god resident in some bodily object) all explain with many words that man believed in such and such supramundane powers. They do not tell us how he began to believe, unless, indeed, they posit reason as the root of belief, of religion. And then their theory vanishes, for it is their point to deny the rational origin of religion. The ghost-theory, in whatever form it may be understood, makes primitive man less than a moron in intelligence, it tries to explain the universal fact of religion by instancing fictitious tribal beliefs of varying kinds, it contradicts Ethnology, and it stultifies itself by its assertion that belief in the unseen began through belief in the unseen. 5. The Social Theory. Primitive men, living in groups, came under the dominance of group-conscience. They developed a sense of unity in their group or tribe that made them “herd animals,” and they grew more and more slow to venture upon any procedure not sanctioned by the group. To such men group-existence was a thing different from, and superior to, individual existence. It was but natural that they should “project” their group-unity or groupspirit and view it mentally as a kind of high power. From this it was only a step to the deification of group-unity, group-spirit, group-power. As society developed, however, the strong sense of group-unity slackened; men emerged into a clearer consciousness and appreciation of their individuality. Still, the old idea of a superior power, a god or gods, endured. The scope of this religious notion was much narrowed and adapted to man’s new consciousness of his individual self, and there arose the concept of individual gods.— Among primitives there were many outstanding men, leaders, distinctly individual. Our own American Indians give us a type of primitive civilization, and their brief recorded history is full of the names of great chiefs who were not only warriors, but orators, counsellors of ripe wisdom, some of them inventors of forms of writing for their tribal dialects. The social theory contradicts historical fact, richly increased in our own times by ethnological research, which gives us clear evidence that primitive peoples were not dull masses of witless herd animals. The basic fallacy of this theory is that it makes the individual man among primitives a nonentity, a unit that counts for nothing. There is no shadow of evidence for the assertion of this fallacious notion; its reason for existence lies in the fact that it suits the theory! 6. The Instinct Theory (called also the Prejudice Theory). Emil Durkheim, leader of a French school of sociology, is largely responsible for this theory. It amounts to this: human societies, like animal societies, obey instincts. Conscience and reason are only instincts expressed in abstract language. These instinctive common ways of acting have taken such deep root in men that they endure as ineradicable prejudices. Thus consciousness—even reasoned consciousness—of the existence of God and the need of religion is but an inherited prejudice that has nothing to do with fact.—What of the “reason” that worked out this absurd theory? Is that but an instinct “expressed in abstract language”? To what primitive source may we trace the roots of this ineradicable prejudice? And where does the prejudice itself exist outside the narrow limits of the school of Durkheim and his slavish American clientele ? The theory seems to destroy the reason for its own existence. This fallacious theory refuses to see humanity as it is, viz., as an association of individual beings, almost wildly different in character, tastes, temperaments, and views it as a homogeneous mass in which individuality is unknown.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have briefly indicated the true origin of religion. Then we have outlined and criticized six of the better known theories that are proposed, with small ingenuity, to account for the origin of religion among men. We have found these fallacious theories insufficient. We come back inevitably to the certainty that, if there be any value at all in any human knowledge, the knowledge of God’s existence is valid as founded directly upon reason, which works

13° from the facts and phenomena of creation to the one, all-perfect, necessary, infinite Creator. And directly deducible by reason from the existence of the allperfect God are the truths of man’s dependence upon Him, and the necessity of religion.

In the works of creation God reveals Himself and His perfections to man’s reason. Since this revelation can be received and recognized by man’s unaided natural knowingpowers, it is called natural revelation. This Chapter discusses supernatural revelation, and asks whether God has manifested truths which lie beyond the scope and grasp of unaided human reason. The assertion that God has done so is made, and is supported by rational argument. This Chapter explains the meaning of revelation, and discusses the possibility, necessity, and fact of supernatural revelation. These matters are studied in two Articles, as follows: Article i. The Meaning, Possibility, and Necessity of Supernatural Revelation Article 2. The Fact of Supernatural Revelation