But they are useful.

Yep, slavery, child rape, atom bombs, fraud, misogyny, etc. etc. all ultimately earth/god made, if you follow genetic determinism to its ultimate. And fortunately so is my wish not to have any of them, and to do all I can persuade, others to reject them as well. Because reason , science, human rights, a sense of justice, humanity, etc. are all earth born too, and sometimes when earth born things are in conflict, one of them wins.

Tao

@Garban
I am left to wonder why you would prefer such an interpretation.

@Garban
Apparently not. I haven’t mentioned justifying anything. I’m just pointing out that, contrary to popular human opinion, humans aren’t the sole creators of all things human. I’m not engaging the free-will debate here - just saying we have a tendency toward anthropocentrism that is not fully warranted by the objective facts.

It appears to me that bio-cultural evolution (forces of nature - not forces of human will) played a larger role in the development of religion than human decision-making. We chose, in various locations and at various times, similar solutions to similar problems, even when societies were isolated from each other, but we did not write the menu from which we made those choices. And we did not create the cognitive machinery we used to make the choices. Nature did all of that.