I would steelman “a [collective] relationship with the Christian God” as something like:
people feel like they are a part of a community
(there is a formal hierarchy, but informal) status competitions are frowned upon
the community endorses things like “be nice to each other” and “help the poor” (in the sense of doing charity, not yelling at those who are not poor and taking their stuff by force)
the community clearly opposes certain criminal behaviors, such as theft or interpersonal violence
and all of this is common knowledge (as opposed to most people just privately being nice and opposing violence, but not being sure whether their neighbors do the same)
These generally seem like things that help individual well-being, and probably increase productivity because people need to spend less resources defending against each other.
As opposed to a situation where:
many people feel lonely
they waste a lot of time and resources in zero-sum status competitions that most of them lose
the default way of (online) communication is yelling at each other
people feel that they are economically threatened and no one cares; the poor because they feel ignored, the non-poor because they expect that others will try to take away stuff from them
you feel helpless to stop all kinds of social dysfunction that happens all around you
coordination seems almost impossible
...which is basically the modern way of life for most people. Unless you build your own community, but that is often just a small bubble in a larger dysfunctional sea.
Sure but then those things aren’t due to an actual relationship with an actual God, they are for the reasons you state. Which is really really importantly different.
Maybe different for us, but not necessarily for them. If you are an atheist, you see religious claims as epiphenomenal, unrelated to the actual things that happen (which may include the social effects of the organized religion). You have a clear line between things that exist and things that don’t, and the latter includes all the claims of supernatural. But this “religion kinda works, but for reasons completely unrelated to their claims about the supernatural” is inherently an atheist perspective.
For a religious person, sometimes things actually happen as a result of God’s influence. People in a religious group don’t feel lonely, because it is the Holy Spirit acting in them, or whatever. People don’t waste resources on zero-sum status competition, because God doesn’t want his people to do that. People are nice to each other, help each other, prevent social dysfunctions, etc. because this is what Jesus told them to do. And the fact that they can coordinate on large scale and keep the coordination going for millennia is evidence of the special relation God has with His church.
You could try to explain that people naturally don’t feel lonely when they become members of the group, but I assume the response would be something like “yes, that is a part of the reason, but the other, more important part is the Holy Spirit”. They might give you specific examples of some small religious groups that survived various adversities, and examples of secular clubs that quickly fell apart (and yes, from our perspective this would be selection bias), as evidence that your explanation is not sufficient.
So they would probably be like: yes, communities are good, even if they are not religious; also nonbelievers can be nice to each other, etc., but… why do it the complicated and unreliable way, if you could simply ask God for guidance and receive tons of supernatural help? You are just stubborn and you refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence that your strategy simply does not work.
tl;dr—if you assume that God is epiphenomenal, you are modelling religious people incorrectly
I would steelman “a [collective] relationship with the Christian God” as something like:
people feel like they are a part of a community
(there is a formal hierarchy, but informal) status competitions are frowned upon
the community endorses things like “be nice to each other” and “help the poor” (in the sense of doing charity, not yelling at those who are not poor and taking their stuff by force)
the community clearly opposes certain criminal behaviors, such as theft or interpersonal violence
and all of this is common knowledge (as opposed to most people just privately being nice and opposing violence, but not being sure whether their neighbors do the same)
These generally seem like things that help individual well-being, and probably increase productivity because people need to spend less resources defending against each other.
As opposed to a situation where:
many people feel lonely
they waste a lot of time and resources in zero-sum status competitions that most of them lose
the default way of (online) communication is yelling at each other
people feel that they are economically threatened and no one cares; the poor because they feel ignored, the non-poor because they expect that others will try to take away stuff from them
you feel helpless to stop all kinds of social dysfunction that happens all around you
coordination seems almost impossible
...which is basically the modern way of life for most people. Unless you build your own community, but that is often just a small bubble in a larger dysfunctional sea.
Sure but then those things aren’t due to an actual relationship with an actual God, they are for the reasons you state. Which is really really importantly different.
Maybe different for us, but not necessarily for them. If you are an atheist, you see religious claims as epiphenomenal, unrelated to the actual things that happen (which may include the social effects of the organized religion). You have a clear line between things that exist and things that don’t, and the latter includes all the claims of supernatural. But this “religion kinda works, but for reasons completely unrelated to their claims about the supernatural” is inherently an atheist perspective.
For a religious person, sometimes things actually happen as a result of God’s influence. People in a religious group don’t feel lonely, because it is the Holy Spirit acting in them, or whatever. People don’t waste resources on zero-sum status competition, because God doesn’t want his people to do that. People are nice to each other, help each other, prevent social dysfunctions, etc. because this is what Jesus told them to do. And the fact that they can coordinate on large scale and keep the coordination going for millennia is evidence of the special relation God has with His church.
You could try to explain that people naturally don’t feel lonely when they become members of the group, but I assume the response would be something like “yes, that is a part of the reason, but the other, more important part is the Holy Spirit”. They might give you specific examples of some small religious groups that survived various adversities, and examples of secular clubs that quickly fell apart (and yes, from our perspective this would be selection bias), as evidence that your explanation is not sufficient.
So they would probably be like: yes, communities are good, even if they are not religious; also nonbelievers can be nice to each other, etc., but… why do it the complicated and unreliable way, if you could simply ask God for guidance and receive tons of supernatural help? You are just stubborn and you refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence that your strategy simply does not work.
tl;dr—if you assume that God is epiphenomenal, you are modelling religious people incorrectly