There is evidence of ritual in protohuman cultures (although not really religion - that's controversial), but early humans appear to have worshipped all kinds of deities; at least, they revered things like fish or deer or whatever
sustained them, for example. Ritual helped make sense of the world, feel better about what could not be controlled or understood, and I think provided closure to death.
I would agree to a point on being hung up on naming things, but would extend it much further. I think we are hung up on inferring agents when none are there. That is what has led to the idea of a ‘god’ being propagated in the first place never mind the countless iterations that followed.
Absolutely. It seems very distinctly human to
need to fill gaps in knowledge, hence "the God of the Gaps." But this tendency to fill gaps, explain anything unusual with little available information, or to be uncomfortable saying "I don't know" manifests itself on a day-to-day basis as well. "Oh, it can't be a coincidence!" I hear someone say probably once every couple days. Well, why not? Or, why couldn't whatever happened simply at this point be unexplainable because you don't have enough information? Or whatever. It's a tendency in human beings that I find a little unnerving and probably rather limiting. The reason is that once a person says, "Oh, it was God," then they have a tendency to stop investigating.
