“...Religion originated in an innate desire to explain the world.” (Palaeolithic). Taken out of context, this sentence appears to be a valid option for the primary element of religion. Though according to Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams in their article Paleolithic Art and Religion, there is more to religion than this. The way religion has transgressed from symbolic cave paintings to religious leaders maintaining their own cities makes it difficult for those of us who have grown up surrounded by religion, its ideas and practices, to think back to the beginning of this thousand of years old tradition. I view religion in the way I was brought up, in the services I attended growing up, and the decisions I made when I realized what religion suited me and my beliefs. I have biased opinions intergraded into me by my environment and culture during this time period. The modern views of religion do not always correspond with those from years past.
The importance of symbols in Religion is not enough to be considered the primary element. Each religion has a symbol that represents them, though the symbols are depictions of other things that must have come first, ruling out a symbol initiating everything in the first place. For example, the symbol that represents Christianity is a cross, but the cross did not start Christianity. The same is true for the Jewish Star of David.
Symbols inevitably lead to art, as the symbols become more elaborate, intricate, and complex, but artwork is a purely human tendency based off of other things, be it objects or ideas. Artwork does not seem to be the primary element of religion either. The article mentions that “belief in a supernatural world to which the dead go can be safely assumed” (Palaeolithic) and if this is true, then the supernatural world just be an explanation of what happens after death. Again, the idea that religion was based off “universal human traits, such as a desire to explain natural phenomena” (Palaeolithic) indicates the primary element of religion is a removal of the unknown. This in turn is somewhat ironic, as religion cannot be proven or confirmed. The answers to the unknown come from the epitome of the unidentified in the form of a higher power. That is why they call it “Faith.”
.jpg){kind=small}