Yep.

i think that had a little bit to do with it.

belief in a higher power came about because we wanted to explain how the world around us worked, I don't think the Theory of Evolution caused this...a belief in god is more of a philosophical issue than a biological like evolution

Evolution didn't cause humans to create a belief in a god, but did make it possible to make that choice.

Im going to say yes but only in the fact that evolution increased our brain capacity. God was created by man to explain the unexplainable, you know back when science sucked/ did not exist.

In a way. We have a lot of curiousity but were unable to create the necessary technology to attain answers to questions concerning death, natural phenomena, etc. We replaced uncertainty (not knowing) with certainty (God) which some argue makes us "feel safer." These seemingly innate traits, like curiousity and the need for security, is psychological and therefore most likely linked to our evolution.

or did God create mankind with an innate desire to worship?

The concept of a Gawd was probably not a human "creation," but rather a human realization or discovery. What "went wrong," was when different folks attempted to "speak for" The Creator, and to tell others what they thought a Gawd would want them to know about Him (or, Her) which was, of course, not the proper thing to do. +5

Partly, the first time we asked the question why and did not have an answer for that question the concept of god was born. Daddy why does the wind blow? Well there is a god on that mountain and every time he farts he creates the wind. Then how come the wind doesn't smell? Well some times it does and that's when he farts, the other times he's sleeping and is breathing heavy. When the wind really blows it's because he sneezes. And thus god was created.

Sometimes I think evolutionists just made up evolution to laugh at us when we believed in it... :D

As a species we're a curious bunch. We HATE having unanswered questions. Gods fulfilled the role of providing an answer to any question we had, thus allowing us to move on to other things which we could understand. Thus, lightning was attributed to Zeus, allowing us to move on and learn about electricity and electrons, then we could return to lightning, giving its correct explanation and discarding Zeus.

no. Not having answers to what causes natural phenomena did. That basic quest then evolved into something that can be very beautiful at its best and insnaely ugly at its worst.

I think you're pretty much right. We evolved up to the point where we could think & reason. Then we realised there were many, many things we couldn't explain. Consequently we invented gods to give meaning to the unexplainable........ like what the hells that fiery red thing in the sky!

yes, i think so. and as we are still evolving, I think we may also disprove one day once and for all that we were not put here by a God or deity.

In a round about way. We evolved to the point where we could reason and think. We had the answers to lots of things, but there were far more things we could not find an answer for. In comes the idea of God - that way, there is an answer for absolutely everything. Until we started being able to find better answers for these questions ourselves in observable science, and then the doubt set in.

Possibly. Even probably, in my opinion. We are a tribal animal, with a natural sense of hierarchy. We want a powerful and competent tribal leader. But, as intelligent beings, we know that the actual leaders we have are also human beings, little better than ourselves. So we are open to the idea of a mystical perfect leader who embodies all the things we want in our perfect leader - knowledge, power, benevolence.

I believe that it did. However, I still believe in a high power, not that of one being, because my thought is what did "God" do before this world was occupied..IF (s)he existed?!?!?!

Humans by nature are very inquisitive beings. When things are so complex that they can't be immediately figured out, we make up theories to explain. Hence "Gods". They exist in every culture. As science progresses it becomes harder to rationalize invisible higher powers. This is why most religions fear science.

I doubt that fish for example give any thought of a God or Gods but they are not talking. I suppose the more highly evolved the more curious any lifeform becomes. I guess I gotta go with yes unless you don't like it then I will respond with a no. +5

Good question. If you read Karen Armstrong's 'The Transformation' she gives some very good historical background to the development of religions. Personally, I believe that humans needed an explanation for all the things that mysteriously happened to them and related them to a divine being over which they had no control but which seemed to control their fate.

"God" was an invention of the Cylons, reflecting the difference between the "maker" and the "created" intrinsic to machines. The "God" concept was introduced to the Twelve Colonies of Kobol by Gaius Baltar. Source: http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2008/04/02/bsg_explainer/

Concur with answer. The book(s) to read are any by Karen Armstrong. Former nun, now a high level "God-based" religion scholar.

1) We could not discover an idea of God by animals, but this could be due to our anthropocentric blindness and the level of our investigations. So it seems that we evolved in beings who could develop a concept of God. This concept might also already have developed in our unconscious, as archetype (C.G. Jung): "Archetypal psychology is a polytheistic psychology, in that it attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies and myths—gods, goddesses, demigods, mortals and animals—that shape and are shaped by our psychological lives." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes A further help must have been the use of psychotropic drugs, or various disciplines causing altered states of counsciousness. Alternatively, some have proposed that a few religions could have been developed after a contact with extraterrestrials. 2) "Humanity’s closest living relatives are common chimpanzees and bonobos. These primates share a common ancestor with humans who lived between four and six million years ago. It is for this reason that chimpanzees and bonobos are viewed as the best available surrogate for this common ancestor. Barbara King argues that while non-human primates are not religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, realization of "self" and a concept of continuity." "Dr. Frans de Waal and Barbara King both view human morality as having grown out of primate sociality. Though morality is a unique human trait, many social animals, such as primates, dolphins and whales, have been known to exhibit pre-moral sentiments. According to Michael Shermer, the following characteristics are shared by humans and other social animals, particularly the great apes: "attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group". De Waal contends that all social animals have had to restrain or alter their behavior for group living to be worthwhile. Pre-moral sentiments evolved in primate societies as a method of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups. For any social species, the benefits of being part of an altruistic group should outweigh the benefits of individualism. For example, lack of group cohesion could make individuals more vulnerable to attack from outsiders. Being part of group may also improve the chances of finding food. This is evident among animals that hunt in packs to take down large or dangerous prey. All social animals have hierarchical societies in which each member knows its own place. Social order is maintained by certain rules of expected behavior and dominant group members enforce order through punishment. However, higher order primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. Chimpanzees remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. For example, chimpanzees are more likely to share food with individuals who have previously groomed them. Chimpanzees live in fission-fusion groups that average 50 individuals. It is likely that early ancestors of humans lived in groups of similar size. Based on the size of extant hunter-gatherer societies, recent Paleolithic hominids lived in bands of a few hundred individuals. As community size increased over the course of human evolution, greater enforcement to achieve group cohesion would have been required. Morality may have evolved in these bands of 100 to 200 people as a means of social control, conflict resolution and group solidarity. According to Dr. de Waal, human morality has two extra levels of sophistication that are not found in primate societies. Humans enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. People also apply a degree of judgment and reason, not seen in the animal kingdom. Psychologist Matt J. Rossano argues that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural agents. By including ever-watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups. The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival." "There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that either religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that religion was an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words that religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons. Such mechanisms may include the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come up with causal narratives for natural events (etiology), and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc. Some scholars have suggested that religion is genetically "hardwired" into the human condition. One controversial hypothesis, the God gene hypothesis, states that some human beings bear a gene which gives them a predisposition to episodes interpreted as religious revelation. One gene claimed to be of this nature is VMAT2." "1 Primate behavior 1.1 Evolution of morality 2 Evolution of the brain 3 Tool use 4 Language and religion 5 Evolutionary psychology of religion 6 Prehistoric evidence of religion 6.1 Paleolithic burials 6.2 The use of symbolism 6.3 Origins of organized religion 6.4 Invention of writing" Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religions Further information: - "Where did the concept of God really originate?": http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/7192124