SAM said:
A religious group is formed to ensure a certain kind of society. Like evolutionists who sneer at creationists, people who do not share the beliefs become outsiders.
So we ensure that all societies are formed by religions simply by expanding our concept of religion to include anything that forms a society, establishes norms of conduct, etc.
I think that's traditional, among religious anthropologists. Sometimes the people so described object, but what do they know ?
Poorer societies seem to organize as tribes, often extended families, with or without religion. Richer ones, too large for that, have to find something else. Those that do, tend to take over - religious belief is thereby a strength in war, for example.
Religion does other very valuable things for a group of people - such as prevent Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons. But these services mostly become critical when agriculture comes into the picture - which connects religion with conventionally "stable" as well as comparatively wealthy socieites.
And these good offices of religion are obtained regardless of the abstract doctrines or beliefs - provided only they can be marketed, or imposed, successfully. So throwing virgins into volcanoes or burning widows alive on their husband's pyre or providing human flesh for the Sun King's supper will do just as well, for hundreds of years, as any other expression of belief, provided the social group and sound agricultural practices are maintained. One God, ten Gods, no Gods, humans as Gods, animals as Gods, anything from weather phenomena to special trees worshipped - nature is indifferent to all that. Nature is not indifferent to whether the low field lies fallow every three years or every seven, however. Or whether medical practices are informed by study of anatomy and analysis of disease rather than by visions from prophets.
And so religions have their time, particular to a technology and way of life - but as these change, so must the religion, lest it become a burden. At this point, all those Gods and so forth have a real effect - like a flywheel on a car, they resist quick alterations of custom. They remember.
And we have people in Minnesota who get rickets and cancer from wearing hoodies all summer long, refuse to eat pork or ride a bicycle, and send their children overseas for genital mutilation. They are creating their society, see ?
