Another theory is that in actuality religion was around at the birth of humanity as a
response the spiritual
void that
material association in daily life
created. The
holistic, and
gestalt nature of human
perception required a
united view of reality that reflected the
understanding and
order imposed upon the world by man's
daily activities.
Religion was thus the
concious manifestation of the
human desire to return to the
unity and
harmony which was present in the original
perceptual matrix, and viewed as a
gateway to God. Or to put it another way, we created
religion as a way of becoming closer to
God.
The advent of the priest and other innovations are perhaps more closely associated with societial needs for ritual and exercise of authority than with genuine religious purpose. As we find in Buddhism, and in Islam, while there are religous persons, there is rarely the kind of priesthood seen in various cultures scattered around the world. These two religions also exhibit interesting views on society, Buddhists rejecting it, and Islamic peoples drawing it into religous expression.
In one there is ideally no government, and in the other the government is a religious institution set up for the moral organisation and welfare of society. Thus in both, religion comes before and encompasses society within a moral framework.