'It was THIS big!' as the Birth of the God Concept The development of the specific term God is middle eastern/western. There is no primary concept of God (or religion) in the East.
It is an idea had just yesterday so need to look into it more. Not sure how much weight there is to it tbh.
I am well aware of all of this. The thought came to me by thinking about the different approaches/perspectives of religion across the globe. I was basically backtracking in terms of how reason and logic developed in the West compared to the East. The concept of God does seem to latch onto imaginative ideas and dealing with extremes; and it is that that got me thinking about how humans interact and behave. It is a bit of a stretch I know that, but I do not think I have heard of this idea before so threw it out there.
An interesting read and nice OP. However as someone said on here before, it would be logical to assume religion(s) and god(s) came about from the initial belief of animism, which likely came about due to pareidolia. — Outlander
I know this. I am not really here to compete with other theories ... ironically!
:D
I guess my main line of thinking here is that humans are kind of new to reason. Applying reasonable explanations by assuming how we see the world is part and parcel of why I started to think like this.
Take for example how God has come to be defined (in Western/Middle Eastern Traditions) as all knowing, all seeing and all powerful. It seems fairly feasible that competing ideas of some act between peoples could result in a gradual process of Good to Better to Best to Ultimate (God). There are fairly clear instances of individuals being given a Deity level status - as mentioned in the East although there is no God in the main tradition of Buddhism it is pretty clear to see that the actual person is given something akin to an Ultimate Status even if not literally conceived of as a God (by most Buddhist sects).
As for animism, I am not really sure that can be called a 'Religion' in the Western sense anymore than Confucianism or Shamanism. The term Religion doe snot translate into Eastern languages really. They adopted the Western concept of Religion - through the God concept. The terms shukyo (Japanese) and zongjiao (Chinese) were created to apply to Western religious traditions. That said, undoubtedly many Eastern traditions have adopted the God concept in part.
Going back to the Middle East it is fairly apparent that cities had traditions that developed into God concepts too. This plays into the competitive concept of state versus state but in a more direct and concrete fashion. By this stage though we are probably way, way past the kind of incremental steps I am talking about that arose through some form of exaggeration for entertainments sake.