Noted author and religious studies professor Huston Smith (from his book Why Religion Matters) on the prevalence of religious artifacts and the importance of religion throughout human history:
Wherever people live, whenever they live, they find themselves faced with three inescapable problems:
- How to win food and shelter from their natural environment (the problem nature poses),
- How to get along with one another (the social problem), and
- How to relate themselves to the total scheme of things (the religious problem).
If this third issue seems less important than the other two, we should remind ourselves that religious artifacts are the oldest that archeologists have discovered.