Religious belief stifling U.S. climate change action

Darwin wrote about the universal belief in unseen or spiritual agents among less civilized races but doubted whether that qualified as a belief in god or even something that separated us from animals. Ghosts, especially, are more commonly created than gods, and no more plausible as a result.

“There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travellers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea.”

“[The] idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.”

 

There is no evidence? I think Darwin is wrong on this one. He talks about a christian god.

The poynesians had a sophisticated belief system involving a "family" of gods that wasn't unlike the belief system of the aztecs that wasn't unlike the belief system of the egyptians. I don't think those peoples ever crossed paths in a way that would propagate the idea from one civilization to another.