I am really not a sociologist, so someone correct me if I what I’ll say is totally wrong, but it seems to me that there are at least two quite distinct types of religion (and a continuum of possibilities in-between), the first one consisting of those religions where “religion” religion (gods, clergy, etc.) is almost one and the same thing as something like civil religion of a community (for example, if you found out that a tribe adds various religious chants to their local “judical process” which otherwise is very similar to a Western judical process you would not hesitate to call it a religious ritual, even though chanting part may be inessential), and another where those are two different things. In my mind the first type roughly corresponds to paganism, and the second one to religions similar to Christianity. I think that religions of the first type may be useful to “grease the wheels” of society (especially not a very sophisticated one), and its leaders may not even be that interested in spreading it, except for personal gains. However, note that this is a vague guess, I would need to read much more about pagan societies to understand if it is at least partially the case. It is unclear to me what does religions of the second type do, because greasing the wheels of society is covered by a civic religion.
Another possible benefit of some types of religion is providing some incentives to get some (although not all) things correct. If you believe that god judges you whether or not you your thinking about the world is correct, you might feel and behave as if you have “skin in the game” and thus you might end up with higher motivation to avoid deceiving yourself (and others) for personal gain [1]. In many contemporary societies personal belief in god seems isolated from most beliefs that have practical consequences. If your society practices trial by combat, and your belief in god makes you willing to fight against a stronger person believing that you will win just because you are in the right, your belief will have practical personal consequences. However, in a contemporary society belief in god is usually harmful only indirectly. Thus, a question is, does feeling that you have “skin in the game of believing the truth about god’s creation” lead to enough correct beliefs so as to outweigh having incorrect beliefs about god? I think that it is likely that at least in some cases might do. In addition to that perhaps in some cases religious beliefs might be personally helpful if they are harmless and they displace potentially dangerous beliefs who are new and have not yet shed their most extreme parts.
I think that in both cases religion/belief in god is not strictly a necessity, but in some cases it may (or may not) turn out to be somewhat useful if there are no better alternatives available at that time.
[1] I don’t like it. Also, I guess that it is probably not very good for society in the long run.
I am really not a sociologist, so someone correct me if I what I’ll say is totally wrong, but it seems to me that there are at least two quite distinct types of religion (and a continuum of possibilities in-between), the first one consisting of those religions where “religion” religion (gods, clergy, etc.) is almost one and the same thing as something like civil religion of a community (for example, if you found out that a tribe adds various religious chants to their local “judical process” which otherwise is very similar to a Western judical process you would not hesitate to call it a religious ritual, even though chanting part may be inessential), and another where those are two different things. In my mind the first type roughly corresponds to paganism, and the second one to religions similar to Christianity. I think that religions of the first type may be useful to “grease the wheels” of society (especially not a very sophisticated one), and its leaders may not even be that interested in spreading it, except for personal gains. However, note that this is a vague guess, I would need to read much more about pagan societies to understand if it is at least partially the case. It is unclear to me what does religions of the second type do, because greasing the wheels of society is covered by a civic religion.
Another possible benefit of some types of religion is providing some incentives to get some (although not all) things correct. If you believe that god judges you whether or not you your thinking about the world is correct, you might feel and behave as if you have “skin in the game” and thus you might end up with higher motivation to avoid deceiving yourself (and others) for personal gain [1]. In many contemporary societies personal belief in god seems isolated from most beliefs that have practical consequences. If your society practices trial by combat, and your belief in god makes you willing to fight against a stronger person believing that you will win just because you are in the right, your belief will have practical personal consequences. However, in a contemporary society belief in god is usually harmful only indirectly. Thus, a question is, does feeling that you have “skin in the game of believing the truth about god’s creation” lead to enough correct beliefs so as to outweigh having incorrect beliefs about god? I think that it is likely that at least in some cases might do. In addition to that perhaps in some cases religious beliefs might be personally helpful if they are harmless and they displace potentially dangerous beliefs who are new and have not yet shed their most extreme parts.
I think that in both cases religion/belief in god is not strictly a necessity, but in some cases it may (or may not) turn out to be somewhat useful if there are no better alternatives available at that time.
[1] I don’t like it. Also, I guess that it is probably not very good for society in the long run.