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With the advent of man's first technologies, he began to think of himself as a creature distinct from--and above all other animals. With the inborn curiosity of any creature, plus his increasing brain-size, he began to need explanations of the intermesh of this near-infinite and ever-readjusting mechanism.
At that point, he began to take the awesome truth of how the world works, and simplify it into the common ability to understand.
The principle became personified into the most convenient god of the time, as if the god added an experience to his resume! A few cultures, true, taught that a raven, a snake, an eagle, or a particular rock magically created the world, but these things too, had very human qualities, and may qualify as gods.
In later times, the established symbol-worshipers fought to the death... other people's deaths --millions of other people-- for their particular one-true-religion. Even recently there was an uproar to protect a symbol (the flag), though protecting it that way would destroy part of the reality (the constitution) that the symbol stood for! This doesn't say much for our increased brain-size!
Despite a good attempt by Mark Twain, we didn't begin to see ourselves as not so different from the apes til the 1960's. Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey showed us more. Genetic tests proved that there is only a couple (2.4%?) percentage-points difference in DNA between us and the chimps and gorillas. ( the other apes.) Naturally, humans see those percentages as significant.
**Counter-argument to above, from the more traditional CO-religion point of view.
[Let's keep out of politics.]
For the times of two thousand years ago, things were simplified extremely. Much --nearly all-- of the beauty was lost, omitted for the time being. E.G.: All the awesomeness of a billion kinds of existences (species), and a billion-squared interactions... became simply a puff into a handful of dust. It was a good image for the time, but now we'd like to give God a lot more credit than that!
A dusty puff may seem inadequate to the job done, like explaining all the invention, cleverness, and work that went into the development of the light bulb as merely the "brightness" literally still emanating from Edison's mind.
Sure, Gaia is a good theory. Feels true. But it can just as well be said that it was God who set up the Gaian mechanism in such a way as to be automatic. In the same way, he set up the Solar System to revolve in a stable fashion. Then he sent prophets to simplify it all to the level that people of any particular time would understand. Because of very limited science at that time, it was more important for the people then to have a GOOD understanding of the symbol of the thing, than to have a POOR understanding of the entire details of the truth.
Perhaps there were prophets tens of thousands of years ago, and perhaps there are some now. (We do NOT sneakily mean that it is any of us.)
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**Reply: "Yes, God could've done it. We are forced to say,
however, that neither of us know."