Most creatures that are up and about in daylight hours seem to like the warmth of the sun. It's no surprise that many of the first religions throughout the world involved worship of the sun, as it is so powerful and has such a huge effect on all life both animal and plant. For all of recorded history in pretty much every part of the world, the sun has been worshipped.
I find it curious how worship of this hugely important and highly visible physical object changed, over millennia, into worship of invisible, intangible gods. Worship of the visible changed to worship of the invisible; in the major world religions, the god or gods are not physical, nor are they directly seen or heard (not any more anyway) .
What caused people to change from worshipping the physical to the intangible?
I don't know, but here is one theory:
Religion is a means of controlling people, a means for a small number of powerful people to control the lives of a large number of ordinary people. All of the major religions and most of the minor ones have leaders who tell the followers what to do. They can be called rabbis, priests, priestesses, preachers, shaman, and a host of other names including the give-away one "leaders".
This control is far easier if the god or gods are more cloaked, so over time the gods have become invisible and mysterious. It's no surprise that the Judeo/Christian god hasn't appeared to anyone for about 2,000 years, other than the (possibly false) claims of a few individuals . The more shrouded in mystery a god is, the easier it is for the leaders to maintain power over the followers. What secrets can the Sun have? It disappears and comes back again; much sun worship revolves around explaining and observing this disappearance and return.
The concentric circle model is used by many religions, and also satanic and esoteric groups, with power and knowledge increasing as you progress to the inner circles.
The control process is two-way. Religion springs from hysterical superstition and fear of the unknown (“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature“). Intervention by a mystical, magical deity is an easy cop-out answer for unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions. So, not only is religion a means for control, it is an organised means for society to accept control. The religious actually want to be controlled. How unsurprising it is then to find that there are those who want to take that control, by telling people that if they do as they’re told they’ll feel better about being poor and exploited and will get a reward when they are dead. And no-one has ever come back from being dead and confirmed that there really is a reward for good behaviour, as promised....or a punishment for disobedience!
Cheers, Tom.
dennypoos
Thoughtful as alway Thomas.