Leaders (and wannabe leaders) invented religion for selfish reasons. They make the people simple enough to believe in literal God(s) afraid of death and hellfire, while as Barkley pointed out, they make the rest of us fear ostracism. But even if you are both smart and know plenty of other freethinkers, religion forces you to waste time and mental energy paying lip service to it, thus (the leader hopes) keeping everyone too busy to plot any kind of rebellion. This idea was already thousands of years old when Hobbes wrote about it in Leviathan.
Religion that is not part and parcel of government is a very new idea historically, and I doubt it will survive much longer, except perhaps as part of some new entity that replaces some of the traditional functions of government (I’m thinking the “phyles” in Stephenson’s The Diamond Age).
Leaders (and wannabe leaders) invented religion for selfish reasons. They make the people simple enough to believe in literal God(s) afraid of death and hellfire, while as Barkley pointed out, they make the rest of us fear ostracism. But even if you are both smart and know plenty of other freethinkers, religion forces you to waste time and mental energy paying lip service to it, thus (the leader hopes) keeping everyone too busy to plot any kind of rebellion. This idea was already thousands of years old when Hobbes wrote about it in Leviathan.
Religion that is not part and parcel of government is a very new idea historically, and I doubt it will survive much longer, except perhaps as part of some new entity that replaces some of the traditional functions of government (I’m thinking the “phyles” in Stephenson’s The Diamond Age).