We are all born agnostic/atheist until someone starts telling/indoctrinating us about their mythological beliefs/indoctrinations.

Deities seem to have been the best explanation that early Man was able to come up with to explain the world around him. Examples include ancient Egypt, with its subsequent translations into the Greek and then the Roman gods, the Mayans, and the First Australians. As far as I know, the first monotheist was Akhenaten (died around 1335 BCE), and then there was Zoroaster (a.k.a Zarathustra) about 800 years afterwards.

That theism still seems to be embedded in some cultures may be due to tribalism (the need to belong to a band of humans for survival purposes) being stronger than rationalism.

(edited for typo)

Funny incident from my past.
My mother was a very religious Catholic. When I was a child she sent me to religious instruction at the local church. I was sitting next to my friend Louie who was not too bright. The nun asked Louie....""What is God made of"" She was fishing for a "Trinity" answer...but Louie looked around....then looked up at the big crucifix above us and answered "WOOD"
It wasn't until years later that I realized that Louie had answered correctly.

I think the earliest humans realised that without the sun we could not exist ...they therefore regarded the sun as all important, and conferred on it a godlike status. It was the first thing that man worshipped and is quite logical, compared to a belief in any other gods that man subsequently invented, because it is a real entity. The number of mythological, animal and human gods that have been worshipped and revered are countless, and multiplied exponentially with man’s development and imagination. The Abrahamic god is a relatively recent invention which fashioned god into man’s own image and not the other way around.

My conclusion is that there is an inherent need in mankind, a compunction if you like, that we feel we have to look to something outside of ourselves to fill a void in us which needs to be supplied with answers to things beyond our knowledge or comprehension. Science has been able to fill in some of this void, but as yet not completely, and the majority of people prefer the comfort and easy answers that religion and a belief in God brings. Belief that we were created by an all powerful god who controls this life and an everlasting afterlife, if all they have to do is believe in him, is an attractive proposition to most people. On the other hand, the skepticism and doubt of disbelief, which brings with it the risk of eternal damnation and being cast out, is most unattractive, so better to hedge bets and stick with the majority view. Rather that, than take the more rational, reasoned, but less well held view, that belief in god is superstition, and not reasoned thought based on logic and science.

"God belief goes back much further than any attempt to explain anything."

How would it be possible for you to even know something like this, and what would compel you to make such an assertion?

Who knows? I scoffed at Bible stories at age five. They were like Grimm's Fairy tales.

"Mom, I decided I'm an atheist," I told my mother at 13. "That's fine, honey," she replied calmly. "What do you want for dinner?"

In my 30s, Mom said she became an atheist in nursing school after being raised Catholic. "I realized a woman cannot be turned into salt," she said and laughed.

My parents didn't have a leg to stand on. Dad never went to church. Mom dumped us kids off at Sunday school, then went home.

Guess they hoped us four intelligent, spirited kids would learn to behave ourselves. Didn't work.

Despair. I really think that's the core. most people can barely think within the box much less than outside of it. The false hope given by religion is extremely seductive to even the intelligent, much less, those who dare not even attempt to see reality for what it is.

My question is always: why this particular one ( god, I mean)

It is the fear of death I am convinced...they want to believe that the ride doesn't end...its a primal fear, so mankind created a God(conveniently in his own image...and conveniently white also) that promised eternal life ... That's why the Religious sect is and always will be so fanatically bonded...its not about LIFE...it never was...its about DEATH...its easier for most people to face the inevitable if they believe there is a never ending life...throw in a "GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD...i.e...GOD FORGIVES YOU YOUR SINS" and you have the perfect scenario for a following...makes it real easy to get 10% of your money also.

The idea was not bad in essence but history reveals the abuse that was and still is going on...only now it is more blatant and scandalous...look at what's going on in the White House with Paula White ? did I get her name right...the bitch is such an obvious charletan it's not funny but people are buying into it...its gotten really pathetic...

Im with you...interesting and important question. Of course, I don't have the answer, but here are a couple of the random, quick thoughts I've had.

Because as humans, we know in a simple, absolute way, that things can be invisible, transparent, unseen and still real, its IS actually fairly logical to extrapolate that dieties of all kinds exist.

Cuz as children, generally speaking, our parents help us feel safe, we wanna experience those feelings all the time ..but we need something bigger than ourselves to pull that off...oh, heck, make it omniscient, like momma and daddy FELT when were little too. Oh,geepers...hello god

I believe the truth about God (However you define it) is that it rested once creation was finished. Biblically the 7th day. Every thing we need is now here and always has been. The rest is up to us to understand as much about life, physical matter, etc. as we can through philosophy, science, self examination and by any other means.
. Prior to the development of these types of inquiries however, man struggled with the idea that things exist, so who or what was responsible for all this and who or what created us. Surely it had to be a superior being. The rest of human history is an exploration of creation as well as that which was pre-existent. Most want to know who God is. There is no answer to that question though, because God isn't a who. Its a what.

I believe most religions were conjured up to control people who are frightened of death.

The best explanation for the origin of religion, I found in Paganism/earth-based polytheism: survival. If hunters failed to get enough meat and the food gathering or harvest was poor, people starved or couldn’t fight off illness each winter. Naming elements and natural forces, anthromorphizing them...gave a sense of control and a feeling of connection. What pagans call the ‘wheel of the year’ is a seasonal agricultural calendar, which still reflects into modern holidays. December 21–Yule, March 21, approximately Easter. Actually, the date for Easter is based on the vernal equinox: it’s the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Very Xtian, right?

"What do you suppose gives rise to and supports belief in God?"

The evolved trait of belief in agency behind events, because once upon a time it was safer to assume the noise in the bushes was a lion. If we were wrong, that is a type one error and you live to reproduce.
If you did not believe it was a lion and it was, thats a type two error and your dead before breeding, your genes die with you.

Over time it became an evolved human trait to assume an agency behind events, eventually those were explained with myths, which became religions and also evolved.

It gets passed down through families and communities. It doesn't blossom from nothing for each generation.

g

I have always thought religion is just bad science, a lazy attempt to explain what science hasn't revealed yet. As for the masses of believers I attribute to Stockholm Syndrome.

It is human nature to look for a cause/reason and to assign agency to events.

When we see no immediate cause we assign agency to some force with intent. And, because we have the ability to ask questions, we want answers. Maybe the branch didn't just fall on Ug's head, maybe something made it fall. Maybe it was because he did something to anger this force? What can we do to appease this force? And, because we have the ability to tell stories, and to embellish, and to believe nonsensical things, these forces were personified and became gods.

At some point, people began to look for natural answers. They often got them wrong, but they were at least looking.

Today, we know about gravity and what causes clouds, and rain and earthquakes, and what stars are , and what causes diseases etc...etc...

Sadly, even with all we know, people still fall for nonsense.

For most “official” religions it seems that torture and murder work fine.

Confirmation bias, our natural capacity of recognizing patterns and the fact that a false positive is in general less costly than a false negative.

The case of false positives and negatives.
The high grass shakes, can be wind or tiger.
4 outcomes:

It is wind and you stay: true negative - Best case scenario, you survived and spared energy
It is wind and you run away: False positive - you survived and spent a little extra energy
It is tiger and you run away: True positive - You survived and spent the energy necessary to do it
It is tiger and you stay: False negative - You die

See that in this situation statistically running is the best option always because no big harm will happen and you avoid the worst possible outcome.
Now instead of letting people choose always and risk death, someone will link a supernatural history to say that grass shake=run away. The ones that believed in this will survive more often than the ones that take individual decision and eventually don't run from a tiger.
At this point you introduced a false positive in the culture.
Accumulate those false positives for generations and you have a religion!
And then you have things like the separation rules from people that follows Judaism are false positives of some hygienic rules that now we understand. and if allowed them to avoid a lot of diseases that attacked other people.

You can even make a pigeon develop a religion:
[io9.gizmodo.com]

Now Imagine our brain that is far better at recognizing patterns (even if false ones) dealing with a complex world.

One pother example: We have a city where plague already killed a lot of people and we are the immune descendants.
A strong militaristic tribe from far away put our city under siege.
We pray to our gods to free us from the invaders.
They die of the plague because as they come from far away they have never had contact with our diseases.
The siege fails THUS our god is true.

The infidels learn how powerful is our gods, they start following the god (we are all polytheistic anyway), after a generation they rebuild their army with the descendant of the survivors (thus with some immunity to the disease).
They besiege our city again, this time they also pray to our god, and the plague is not that strong on them, they conquer us. THUS Our god is confirmed to be the strongest god...

That is how gods of metallurgy became powerful also, because tribes that discovered bronze, iron and steel had a huge advantage of the other ones that it could only be attributed to the god of metals.

BONUS: Societies with strong religion have a bonus on political cohesion, so they could better organize work, public administration, armies over larger and more numerous empires.
This makes strong religions seems to be a bless to people as the tribe with strong religion could take down the less organized tribe with a weak religion.

As you can see religions also developed and grew by evolutionary mechanisms.

Religion began as a reaction by primitive minds to fear. They lived in a world of deadly creatures, diseases they had no idea how to cure, natural phenomena that could destroy them. They created entities in their frightened minds that they could entreat or petition for their aid to protect them from these things. Then some enterprising Neanderthal figured he could use this to his advantage and became the spokesman for these supernatural beings. The rest, as they say, is history.

"God belief goes back much further than any attempt to explain anything."
Agreed. Ancient hominids probably didn't care for explanations, they just wanted to make it to the next day. We appear to have an innate fear of animals with fangs and claws, and those who survived likely carried superstitious fears regarding natural events like earthquakes, volcanoes and violent storms. Paranoia can confer a survival benefit. Believing that someone (or something) is relentlessly trying to kill you tends to keep the group on the alert. My assumption is that superstitious belief in spirits is as old as language, which began with gestures, grunts and hand signals. However, it is actually not natural to be a monotheist--polytheism has been the norm.

Most people are screwed up by their parents, sadly.

Religion began with human beings feeling ignorant and powerless. Humans were led to believe in gods who, they were told, had the answers and power. In believing, they were told, they would protect themselves. I would recommend that you consult the philosophy of Feuerbach, and read ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM by Erich Fromm

Desperation and inability to cope with today's Bullshit