[Alpha_Q]

For all its faults, I thought that James Frazer’s The Golden Bough answered the question of “why religion?” by saying that worship was a way to bring about a means of controlling the uncontrollable. By placing a spirit or divine being in charge of a natural phenomenon, humans were able to control the phenomenon by appeasing the spirit/god.
The evolution of religion involved the rise of monotheism, as it was more efficient to worship one god rather than many, and people realized that not only did religion provide a sense of control (as false as it was) over nature, it could also provide a genuine control over populations.
I believe that is where we are today, where religion has as much to do with the spiritual comfort of the believer as it does with the control over the same believer.
Perhaps this is slipping as the church and state separate. Fundamentalist regimes and attempts to bring the church back into political power aside, I think that as society becomes more intellectual as a whole, the less influence deity-based religion will have.
Today, religion gives the believer comfort in a world that does not make sense. Of course, violence has always been with us, and the world has never made much ‘sense’.
One would think that if a society becomes more violent and unpredictable, the religion would falter, but it seems to become stronger, as people cling to a belief that no matter what happens, someone is in charge, and everyone will be judged. The devout will ultimately be rewarded, while those who are responsible for the calamitous nature of society, no matter how well they succeeded in life, and those who use improper fonts on message boards, will be punished in death.
I often wonder what religion will evolve into. In the long run, are we going to lose our belief in a supernatural deity, and replace it with a belief in the nature of humankind, where it may do more good, or will it de-evolve to a worship of earth, not so much as a means to try top coerce nature into giving us what we want, but rather, a big ‘thank you’ for giving us the bounty that we have received?
Having written all that, I’ll now read the article, and see what kind of moron I’ve come across as.