Scientific

With the limited scientific information obtained so far about the life of primitive man, it is difficult to expect a completely correct and thorough solution to the question of how and under what conditions religion was born in the human race. However, no matter how thoroughly studied the life of primitive man, still this question will not receive proper permission. Here it is not enough to know the external conditions of life of primitive people, as only can tell us the material monuments that have survived from the stone age, when people were inhabitants of caves and pile buildings; here it is necessary to guess the psyche of the most ancient man, to restore his spiritual life, his view of the surrounding nature, all his spiritual aspirations that forced him to enter the path of religious life.

And yet the question of the origin of religion in the human race is one of those questions that have long attracted the attention of representatives not only of religion, but also of science. Recently, when attention has been drawn to the prominent role played by religion among all peoples in the history of culture, the question of the origin of religion has become the subject of particularly persistent research on the part of mainly researchers of primitive culture. However the theories proposed so far about the origin of religion cannot claim to be fully scientific; we see in them only a more or less successful attempt to approach the scientific solution of the question. However, without giving a final answer to the question, these theories shed light on the original forms of religion and restore to some extent the picture of the religious life of prehistoric peoples.

In order to approach a solution of the question of the origin of religion, we must first find out another question: is religion an accidental and transient phenomenon in the human race, or is it as necessary a moment in our life as morality, the pursuit of knowledge, art, etc.? In the first case, the source of religion must be sought in the purely external and accidental influences of the surrounding nature on man, with the elimination of which religion must cease to exist; and in the second case we must recognize that religion is rooted in the very nature of the human spirit and meets its most basic needs.