How Religions Got Started

Many believed that religion is invented because men realize that limitation of their understanding and control of the world they lived in. They created gods to explain the things that they cannot control or understand so that they would not look stupid, but instead, appear to understand certain mysteries. Many of these secular people believed that religions evolved first as a polytheism and evolved into monotheism as the thoughts of the people progressed.

And people became even more progressive and came up science and the scientific method that taught the people to think, to experiment and to prove. As science progress, ignorance was stripped away and the control of the environment increase. One by one, the gods started to lose their jobs. They were no longer required as an explanation for many things.

Secular people treat religion as part of the progress of mankind, something that may still have some good, but not always relevant to the modern world. Secular governments treat all religions as equal, tolerating them as long as they respect state control.

While the petty gods slipped away, one God continues to hold out against science, the God that created the heavens and the earth. While science has progressed to explained most things, science is still unable to explain creation. The best science can come up with is the Big Bang theory, but what caused the Big Bang? Nobody knows. So the God that created the heavens and the earth is still needed to fill the gap. Will He lose His job like the rest of the petty gods?

"Well," He said, "No." For He has another explanation on how religions were started. Men were created to believe in God. Religions were started when men refused to believe in the one true God. But since men were created to believe, something had to replace the true creator. Thus all kinds of gods were invented as a substitute. So first there was monotheism. Then it degenerated into polytheism. Since these gods are false, they could not withstand the scrutiny of science and they started to look stupid, giving all religions a bad name (called superstitions).

For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.

Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen. (Romans 1:18-25 HCSB)