[elefanten]

Alternate possibility: religion is a pre-modern adaptation to encourage co-operation / unity / pro-social behavior and it likely correlated with fitness of societies for a long time.

To the extent it played that function, indoctrinating children was no different than teaching them to hunt or gather.

[MattPalmer1086]

In practise, both are probably true.

I fundamentally dislike religion and the tribal, irrational cult like mind control they seem to all exhibit. But I have seen it in a different light after reading "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari. So I now acknowledge that it has probably played a useful role in human society, despite its large negative traits.

[elefanten]

Yeah, I've been against religion most of my life, but softened the stance a bit. There's good and bad.

We need a modern social construct that fulfills and replaces some of what religion provided. I don't think we've nailed that yet.

[inkblotuniverse]

It's not that easy to replace something that arose semi-organically across large swaths of space and time. The whale is dead, and we've been living in its carcass for the last 200 years. Can you build a replacement whale whole cloth? Do you understand what all the little fiddly bits do, and why they're there? It sounds hard

[MattPalmer1086]

Alain De Botton makes this argument in Religion for Athiests.

https://www.alaindebotton.com/religion/