I am not a religious person myself. In fact I had the pleasure to regularly attend church during my childhood and it didn't just give my nothing but in fact it was terrible, since I was never a morning person. F*cking church stole me 8 years worth of Sunday sleep.
But what I encountered is that if you take away all the traditions and attributes and everything that's not necessary, then - not in every case - you get down to the bottom-line that religion and religious thought is nothing superstitious, but in its core essence systematic recursive thinking as I have described it.
Of course,you can discover that on your own, but as a society (with its not so ambitious members), it is only a coincidence that a non-religious tradition of recursive thinking emerges. In fact I wouldn't know of any society that got this done. It's always in connection with a belief system.
Anyway, my personal thesis is that its carrier function for recursive thinking is the evolutionary reason of why religion is still out there. In fact, I believe religion is the necessary social skill that a culture needs to emerge. Because without recursive thinking, you can't build castles, sewers, infrastructure generally, cathedrals and what ever else you need (like non-material stuff like a codified law system) to get an over-generationally stable social order in place.
I am not saying that all religion are good, or positive in any way or that they don't have massive downsides that can lead to a cultural loss like you see it with todays Islam. The same would happen, if suddenly everyone turned puritan.
Religion must be tamed, but without religion, I believe at one point you will lose the capability to transfer your culture into the next generation. And then, when a crisis comes, everything will be washed away.
Unless of course, you can tell me another social technique that works as a carrier wave for recursive thinking.
That's an interesting take on religion. Where I differ in opinion is whether the contribution made to society as a whole has been worthwhile when compared to the downside of religious zealotry. The organized religions can easily make the claim that they created a set of boundaries for their adherents that will allow them to claim a prize when they die (heaven for example). In return for their subservience, they got organized infrastructure creation, codified law, etc. However, if you are not a believer, you are an outcast and cannot win the prize offered when you die.
The easiest way to control large populations is to keep them hungry and scared by whatever means are available. Religion is a great mechanism for this because of indoctrination from an early age for most people. If someone tells you over and over again that the sky is green from the time you can speak, you will very quickly believe that it is green, and that anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
History offers some great examples of people who tried to advance thinking and novel ideas who were summarily dismissed by the church and exiled or worse. In many cases, they were later vindicated and in a sense pardoned by the church.
The idea that religious people are peace loving and god fearing productive members of society can be disproven in a thousand different ways. All religions are by design a control mechanism. When control is maintained, innovation and idea spreading are stifled. When a person prostrates themself before an invisible master because they are told to do so by a control manager in the church, they are giving up a part of their humanity. When they attack another religion because a control manager tells them to kill all the infidels because "god" wants them to, they not only lose their own humanity, they steal their victims and their families humanity in the process.
I could go on and on, but I have dragons to slay elsewhere....
thx for reading