# When did humans become cognizant of God? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 28, 2015, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080 "2015-05-28T23:11:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080/61 "2015-06-02T21:26:45Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > The question requires a complex answer that only a cultural anthropologist could give appropriately. From what I’ve read, human beings’ awareness of the divine came with their upright standing/walking posture and symbolic thinking. > > Not only did symbolic thinking allow human beings to produce information and understand the world, but it also created the almost biological necessity to find a profound meaning beyond their profane life. > > On the other hand, the early people were probably the first beings on this planet to observe and wonder about the celestial bodies and their cyclical manifestation. > > Here are two quotes from Mircea Eliade’s “History of Religious Ideas”: > > “[…]it is difficult to imagine how the human mind could function without the conviction that there is something irreducibly real in the world; and it is impossible to imagine how consciousness could appear without conferring a meaning on man’s impulses and experiences. Consciousness of a real and meaningful world is intimately conected with the discovery of the sacred.” > > “Uprightness cannot be maintained except in a state of wakefulness. It is because of man’s vertical posture that space is organized in a structure inaccessible to the prehominians: in four horizontal directions radiating from an “up”-“down” central axis. In other words, space can be organized around the human body as extending forward, backward, to right, to left, upward, and downward. It is from this original and originating experience - feeling oneself “thrown” into the middle of an apparently limitless, unknown and threatening extention - that the different methods of \*orientatio \*are developed; for it is impossible to survive for any length of time in the vertigo brought on by disorientation. This experience of space oriented around a “center” explains the importance of paradigmatic divisions and distributions of territories, agglomerations, and habitations and their cosmological symbolism.” Not really. It happens because we are pattern monkeys - we are monkeys (well, apes) who look for and find patterns in everything. Just like we see faces in the dark (a survival trait- be wary!), or on our toast, we seek the rational behaviour behind purely random events like floods or thunderstorms or bad luck. We ascribe these perceived patterns to the river sprites, to annoyed Jupiter or Thor, or Yaweh in a “jealous God” mood. Bad luck comes in threes. walking under ladders is dangerous. Large prime numbers like 13 are unusual, so therefore unlucky. ---
**Author:** ![Smartass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@Smartass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smartass)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2015, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080/62 "2015-06-02T23:10:45Z")
> [@Oddball\_92](#): > > …as well as those educated beyond their intelligence… I think we should all just pause a moment to savor this. To me, there is a kind of beauty in the way such a few words can so perfectly epitomize the kind of tortured reasoning that can pass through a religious mind without setting off any alarms. -VM ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080/63 "2015-06-03T04:40:56Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Upright walking had nothing to do with it. You might as well say that it started when tetrapods first pulled themselves up onto land. > > “Uprightness cannot be maintained except in a state of wakefulness. It is because of man’s vertical posture that space is organized in a structure inaccessible to the prehominians” > > What a bunch of pseudo-scientific nonsense. It’s a weakness of mine. When it comes to debatable issues, I would rather listen to a specialist’s discourse than a layman’s nitpicks. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080/64 "2015-06-03T08:44:25Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > It’s a weakness of mine. When it comes to debatable issues, I would rather listen to a specialist’s discourse than a layman’s nitpicks. Except that, in this case, it really is such gibberish and nonsense, that even a layman can see it. Don’t you think that tree dwelling creatures would benifit even more from this x-y axis awareness? Or flying creatures. That encompasses quite a few prehominians, and extrahominians. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080/65 "2015-06-03T12:13:58Z")
> [@Smartass](#): > > I think we should all just pause a moment to savor this. To me, there is a kind of beauty in the way such a few words can so perfectly epitomize the kind of tortured reasoning that can pass through a religious mind without setting off any alarms. > > -VM On the other hand, occasionally a very great natural intelligence sometimes arrives at correct conclusions through the framework of religion despite its premises, which we tend to call “wisdom”. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080/66 "2015-06-03T13:17:11Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > It’s a weakness of mine. When it comes to debatable issues, I would rather listen to a specialist’s discourse than a layman’s nitpicks. He’s a philosopher (or some sort of humanities specialist), not a scientist, so I would not call him an expert in the field of human evolution. And he wrote that decades ago, before we knew what we know now about the evolution of upright walking. The conventional wisdom back in his time was that upright walking evolved after the brain expansion began. Now, of course, we know that is completely wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Smartass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@Smartass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smartass)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080/67 "2015-06-03T16:01:39Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > On the other hand, occasionally a very great natural intelligence sometimes arrives at correct conclusions through the framework of religion despite its premises, which we tend to call “wisdom”. You may call it wisdom. I call it luck. And a rare kind of luck at that. To me, it’s no different than saying occasionally a person takes all the wrong roads and still arrives at their intended destination, and it must mean they are wise. I think if there were more people like that, there would be less people like that. -VM ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080/68 "2015-06-03T19:29:17Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I think the answer is “always, depending on how you define ‘God’” > > That is to say, Homo sapiens likely always had the tendency to attribute personality, and other human-like characteristics, to phenomena that they did not understand. > > Then gradually, this becomes a belief in a multitude of _gods_ (since if there is a sentient figure responsible for lightning, say, then that figure seems to have abilities humans do not, and seems to live indefinitely). > Finally multi-gods give way to a more elegant single god concept. > > Draw your line wherever you like. This follows a popular theme. The schema proceeds: everything has spirit/animism ==\> there are a lot of specific spirits (gods)/polytheism ==\> our spirit (god) is better than all the other spirits (gods)/henotheism ==\> there is only the one god/monotheism ==\> there are no gods/atheism. Unfortunately, despite its popularity, there is no actual evidence for this movement. There are multiple occasions where polytheism has been replaced by (or revived from) polytheism without ever passing through henotheism. We have certainly seen both monotheism and polytheism being replaced by atheism. But there is no standard movement from one set of beliefs to another. The notion of a universal evolution of belief is simply not documented anywhere. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-humans-become-cognizant-of-god/721080.md?page=3)