section_path: Skeptical interpretations
section_name: Skeptical interpretations
paragraph_text: Skeptical interpretations
  
  Attempts to rationally explain belief in deities extend all the way back to ancient Greece. The Greek philosopher Democritus argued that the concept of deities arose when human beings observed natural phenomena such as lightning, solar eclipses, and the changing of the seasons. Later, in the third century BCE, the scholar Euhemerus argued in his book Sacred History that the gods were originally flesh-and-blood mortal kings who were posthumously deified, and that religion was therefore the continuation of these kings' mortal reigns, a view now known as Euhemerism. Sigmund Freud suggested that God concepts are a projection of one's father.
  
  A tendency to believe in deities and other supernatural beings may be an integral part of the human consciousness. Children are naturally inclined to believe in supernatural entities such as gods, spirits, and demons, even without being introduced into a particular religious tradition. Humans have an overactive agency detection system, which has a tendency to conclude that events are caused by intelligent entities, even if they really are not. This is a system which may have evolved to cope with threats to the survival of human ancestors: in the wild, a person who perceived intelligent and potentially dangerous beings everywhere was more likely to survive than a person who failed to perceive actual threats, such as wild animals or human enemies. Humans are also inclined to think teleologically and ascribe meaning and significance to their surroundings, a trait which may lead people to believe in a creator-deity. This may have developed as a side effect of human social intelligence, the ability to discern what other people are thinking.
  
  Stories of encounters with supernatural beings are especially likely to be retold, passed on, and embellished due to their descriptions of standard ontological categories (person, artifact, animal, plant, natural object) with counterintuitive properties (humans that are invisible, houses that remember what happened in them, etc.). As belief in deities spread, humans may have attributed anthropomorphic thought processes to them, leading to the idea of leaving offerings to the gods and praying to them for assistance, ideas which are seen in all cultures around the world.
  
  Sociologists of religion have proposed that the personality and characteristics of deities may reflect a culture's sense of self-esteem and that a culture projects its revered values into deities and in spiritual terms. The cherished, desired or sought human personality is congruent with the personality it defines to be gods. Lonely and fearful societies tend to invent wrathful, violent, submission-seeking deities, while happier and secure societies tend to invent loving, non-violent, compassionate deities. Émile Durkheim states that gods represent an extension of human social life to include supernatural beings. According to Matt Rossano, God concepts may be a means of enforcing morality and building more cooperative community groups.