Houston Southard
a name that looks so fake you'll care just as little to learn it's not
Reza Aslan - God, A human History
Religion is composed of 3 parts: 2 cognitive. 1 sociopolitical.
The 1st part is hypersensitive agency detection [HAD]. A stick in the grass is first seen as a snake because evolution taught us to ascribe everything with agency, because seeing everything as a threat is selectively adaptive.
The 2nd is Theory of Mind [TOM]. Our conscious experience is the model by which we interpret the world around us. It's an executive brain function that develops around age 5 that compels us to give things - animate or inanimate - an internal state matching ours.
The 3rd is politicomorphism. The divinization of earthly politics is the central feature of almost every religious system in the world.
Today marks the 99th anniversary of Howard Carter opening the tomb of Tutankamen. King Tut, aka Amenotep IV, was the son of Akhenaten, aka Amenotep III, Pharaoh of Egypt, who around 1150 BCE attempted the world's 1st failed attempt at trying to get monotheism to catch on with the sun god Aten. 200 years later, Zarathustra Spitama, aka Zoroaster, made the 2nd attempt in what's now Iran with his dualistic spin on the god Ahura Mazda. 3rd time's the charm, because apparently, all it took a millennium later was an ex post facto greek-made trinity.
More on the journey of religion's first manifestation of animism through its current misunderstood abrahamic-dominated syncretism in my report of Reza Aslan's 'God, A Human History' on my site. Link in bio. Happy hump day sinners.