Religious beliefs have been inherent in human society for many millennia. The debate about the time and reasons for the emergence of religion lasts more than one century and does not subside to the present moment.
The Christian theory of the origin of religion is set forth in the Bible. Before the Fall, the first people lived in paradise, therefore all knowledge about God is natural for man and is akin to knowledge about the world. All atheistic theories of the emergence of religion can be divided into two groups. One includes teachings that claim that the emergence of religion was facilitated by objective reasons, and the other - theories that believe that religion has always existed, although it is a great delusion. In the era of the Enlightenment, an enlightenment theory of the emergence of religion arose, according to which fear, ignorance and deception lie at the root of the emergence of a religious worldview. “Fear is inherent in human nature,” asserted the French enlighteners Diderot, Helvetius and Holbach. Therefore, there are always those who play on this emotion and, inventing various terrible fables, affect the imagination and human psyche. At the beginning of the 19th century, the German philosopher Feuerbach put forward a theory in which he explained the emergence of religion by the essence of man. "The mystery of theology is anthropology," wrote Feuerbach. A person does not know himself at all, does not understand his nature, and therefore endows them with the status of independent existence. He saw the divine essence in the ideal, purified and devoid of individuality of the human essence. In Marxist theory, the emphasis is not on deceiving man by man, but on self-deception. Man, according to Karl Marx, cannot explain the phenomena of nature and the world, because he is hammered and crushed by social relations. Supporters of the Marxist theory associate the emergence of religion with the emergence of a class society in which the oppression of the main masses led to the emergence of a religious worldview. Many scientists, adherents of different teachings, believe that in the history of mankind there was a "pre-religious period" during which there were no religious beliefs. But the existence of this concept does not explain in any way the reasons for the emergence of religion in the future. In the XX century, the theory of pramonotheism appeared. It argues that before pagan polytheism (worship of several gods), there was a period of monotheism (belief in one God). Based on the research of ethnographers, the Scottish scientist E. Lang put forward the concept that religion accompanies a person all the way. And in all the variety of existing religious beliefs there are common roots or echoes of the oldest faith in one God. This theory was developed by W. Schmidt, Catholic priest, ethnologist and linguist, founder of the Vienna Ethnological School, in his work "The Origin of the Idea of God."
