Intelligent pack hunting predators tend to have complex hierarchies and they instinctively want to subordinate and control other members of their species.
And as Edwin O. Wilson pointed out, they also have an urge to *be subordinated*. That is, to be dominated and led by a stronger pack member. In politics we call this "the people's hunger for leadership." Wilson believes this is the origin of religion, and I agree completely. This is particularly obvious for the Judeo-Christian deity which has all of the attributes of a dominant alpha male. It also explains why many Judeo-Christian are adamantly convinced that God is a He -- a male -- even though the concept of sexual attributes in a deity makes absolutely no sense and means nothing as far as I can tell. Being "male" means having male sexual organs, hormones and so on. As one critic put it, why does God supposedly have a penis if there is no Mrs. God?
It is not surprising that primitive people came to believe this. They tend to assume that everything in nature has sex distinctions -- especially all animate objects. When isolated tribe members first see a helicopter or airplane land near their village, they often ask, is that thing male or female? They assume an airplane is like a horse or some other domesticated animal. They are not stupid; when you tell him it is "like a boat" (a man-made object) they quickly understand. Many languages such as French assign male or female genders to all nouns. Of course modern French people do not think that every item actually has a sex, but it would not surprise me to learn that ancient French people did.
- Jed
