Grant Allen sets out to explain, step by step, how human beings came to believe in a deity. Beginning with ideas about the life of the dead, he moves through sacred stones, stakes and trees, the gods of Egypt and Israel, the rise of monotheism and human gods, arguing that worship grew from ancestor cults and the honouring of the dead.
A bold 1897 work of Victorian rationalism, still interesting for anyone who reads the history of religious ideas. Download the free EPUB.