The first question
is a good one. I can't actually tell you because I wasn't there when somebody came up with the idea. However, in a large, unexplored world, you can imagine how easy it would be to look at complicated and confusing as natural phenomena and suppose that perhaps the thunderstorm was caused by a monster that lives beyond the horizon, and you can see how ideas like that might develop into the idea of a big, bearded feller at the top of the sky who put everything together in the first place.

The second question - don't be daft, I was delivered by a crow! Joking aside, you give up the stork story because it can very easily be proven to be patently false. That, and your parents admit they were lying. Unfortunately, religion seems to endure because it has long had this habit of shrouding itself in mystical gibberish and hiding behind the (flimsy) excuse that 'science doesn't know everything.'

Science will accept the existence of 'god' when he/she/it can be detected, and not before. Religion claims that 'god' is beyond the limits of our perception or similar. Trouble is, this leaves them in a stalemate, where religion's only defence is its claim that science can't disprove the existence of 'god.' Anyone with a better understanding of logic, please feel free to pick that apart; personally I've resigned to the stance that even though science has no counterexample to logically disprove the existence of 'god' to the satisfaction of religion, common sense suggests that the enormous, gaping lack of evidence for 'god' is pretty damn convincing.
(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 12:20, 3 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

I agree with you
And I think I'd be agnostic if it wasn't for a few very deep experiences. But I realize that believing is not something that can be forced into someone.

I had a priest explaining me that faith is a blessing, and not everybody gets the same blessings. So, some people don't believe because God didn't want them to believe. It gets more and more complicated.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 15 Jun 2010, 12:24, Reply)

Some people do have these odd experiences.
And, being typically cynical and a bit pragmatic about it, I'd say there's almost certainly a natural explanation for them. So you're right: believing is not something that can be forced into someone.

As for the faith/blessing explanation from that priest...I'm sorry if it meant a lot to you, but to me, that has all the hallmarks of the typical horse-shit I was just talking about.
(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 12:27, Reply)

lack of evidence can be convincing, but it's rarely, if ever, proof.
The existence of some higher power beyond our perceptions is, by definition of it's properties ("beyond our perception"), impossible to prove. Therefore you have to have faith in it's existence, and faith that it is benevolent and caring.
I can not make that leap.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 12:26, Reply)

The last bit about proving the existence of god is interesting.
when god lived in a high mountain, it was easy to say so. Then when the people said "I've been up there and he isn't." the goal posts had to move. God then was in the sky. Well, someone looked through a telescope and couldn't see him. So god became invisble and now, outside of the universe.

The closer technology or man comes to god, the more ellusive god is.
( Bartleby A dead man on vacation, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 12:28, Reply)