What is religion good for?

This follows up on the suggestion in Message 22.What is the value of religion, in the sense of its social role within society? And what is the value of religion to an individual?The question arises from the observation that many different societies have religions. Apparently religions tend to evolve, in the sense of cultural evolution. This suggests that religion brings some sort of value to societies.Many people are troubled by fundamentalism. In order to better understand it, we would need to know something about what brings people to fundamentalist religions.This is not a question about any particular religion, although answers might be different for different religions. This is intended as a science topic, not a faith topic, although the scientific issues might mainly concern the social sciences.Answers such as "to save your soul" are not welcome in this thread. A different thread could be proposed for that if anyone thinks it is appropriate.I suggest Creation/Evolution Miscellany for this.

I will have to leave it to your judgement as to where it should go.Perhaps Social Issues in Creation/Evolution would be better. My main concern was that this not be discussed as a religious topic.

I remember when I was very young, my mother used to take me to church with her. Boring -- very boring. Eventually, I protested. My father (who never went to church) said that I had to go, but I could try a different church. So I tried one down the street. It was an evangelical church.Somehow, I got hooked. I'm not sure why. But it may have been because they had a pretty good youth outreach program. They had a variety of activities for youth (tennis competitions in the summer, basketball in the winter, a variety of interesting local trips, a youth club).Later, when I went to grad school, I tried a church there. Nobody much paid attention. I was just part of the audience. Maybe that's why I found it easy to stop attending.So I am thinking that social activities can be part of the attraction. And if a person makes good friends in the religious group, that makes it so much easier to accept the religion.

I'm inclined to think that's a bit simplistic.Religion has been part of the glue that binds societies together. Maybe we don't need that today, because we have radio, television, cable, the internet, rapid travel in aircraft, rock music, etc.It is easy to pick on the downside of religion. Many of the bad points are quite apparent, with the crusades being a particularly bad example. But perhaps there is a good side that hasn't been noticed.Here is an interesting question for your crashfrog. Why did the industrial revolution happen? A lot of the technological, mathematical and scientific discoveries had been made earlier in other places - China for example. Why did they treat it more as a pastime, and not push it the way western europe did. Was this something peculiar about the British? Or was it christianity? Or was it protestantism?I think the answers are not known, but there apparently are some strong hints that religion was involved.

Hi robin, crash.We are getting a bit off topic here.The aim was to understand what attracts people to fundamentalist religions. Talking about state religions doesn't help with that.Thanks.

No, but it is my thread so I would like it to not wander too far off.