Every human civilisation that has ever existed invented gods. Not the same gods - but gods. The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Vedic poets of ancient India, the Greeks, the Norse, the Aztecs — all of them looked up at the same sky and came back with completely different stories about who made the world, and why.
In this episode, we ask the oldest question: why do humans worship at all? We move from the Enuma Elish of ancient Babylon — the world's oldest creation myth — through the gods of Egypt, the Rigveda's radical Hymn of Creation, the psychology of William James and Carl Jung, the neuroscience of religious experience, and the philosophical traditions that tried to answer the question of meaning without a god at all.
We cover: Mesopotamian mythology, Egyptian religion, Vedic gods, monotheism, Buddhism, Stoicism, the psychology of belief, and what the human brain does when it prays.
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