I see that the old. Was religion a good thing in the beginning or was it always exploitive, debate is raising its head again. This is where I am going to annoy both sides, (Also a long one sorry.) so sit back and get ready to throw stones at the donkey. Here's why I do not bother much to take part, since to my mind, both sides in the debate are making the same fundamental mistake, at a deep level.

Religion existed for a long time before agriculture and nations, and it probably did a very good job of addressing pre-agriculture and pre-national problems. (Though not perfect, nothing ever is.) Modern organized religion, which mainly appeared after agriculture, in an attempt to use the existing religious traditions, to address the mismatches that the new life created with our basic nature, however, failed. Because the pre-civilization and pre-agricultural precepts that religion brought with it, simply could not rise to the challenge of the new problems. And it failed so conspicuously, that it became needful therefore, even by as early as a thousand BCE to invent philosophy, and later its child science, to provide the intellectual understanding the new world required. And the proof of religion's failing, is simply that institutions like philosophy and science exist at all, since if religion, which was once nearly all of culture, had succeeded in addressing the problems of the new life, they would never have been invented.

While at the same time, politics was invented to address religions failing to address the problems of social justice, that civilization brought, secular art and sport, because religion alone, could no longer address the settled populations need for the stimulation, that hunter gathering had once provided, law because the old traditions of curses and oaths etc. insured personal justice no longer, medicine, because the old healing systems of religion were no longer adequate for a growing population, literature and news media, because going to the temple for a ritual was no longer equal to the task of spreading information. All these institutions and many more, grew because of the gap left by failing religion.

And all of them became better at their task as they purified themselves of the baggage they inherited from pre-civilized religion. Sport for example, probably started in places like Minoan Crete with rituals like bull jumping, which were mainly religious, but by the time of the early Olympic games, the religious ritual had become a side show to the main secular event, and when eventually, the chariots raced in the circus, no one even bothered to talk about the pre-race blessing, and many probably never turned up in time for it.

And as the institutions of, philosophy, science, art, sport, politics, law, medicine etc. have grown in both scope and effectiveness, they gave religion a problem, very like the god of the gaps problem, but on a purely human scale. Where now is there, a human need for what it has to offer, is there any human institution which is not capable of creating its own structure, ideology, and useful fictions, more effectively, and with wider appeal to more of the population, without religions help ? Yes, there is just one, and that is crime, and the anti-social movements, which alone can not do those things for themselves. And so we see, an ever deepening love affair between the anti-social and religion, which given time, may well become a full monogamous marriage, especially if the two of them working together do not pull civilization down first.

This is why I do not bother much, to take part in debates between the, "religion was always a crime belief", and the, "it was a good thing once and could be again" view. Since, religion is not crime, not yet anyway. But both side in the debate are making the same fundamental mistake, at a far deeper level, of failing to see that religion is a part of human culture, and that human culture as a whole, is almost infinitely flexible, and subject to deep fundamental change over time, especially when viewed from the perspective of single human lifetimes.

The, "religion is crime belief" therefore sees, that there is a strong link, between religion and many anti-social and anti-environmental elements, in the world of today, and assumes therefore that religion always has been a bad thing, projecting that observation backwards into the deep past. Which is a bad mistake, because there is little doubt, that in many early pre-agricultural societies, it was probably a very useful great and good thing. Whereas the opposite view which sees early religion arising, in early societies as a great and good thing, but then assumes that because it starts out, as a good thing with many answers to life's problems, that it must always be so, makes exactly the same mistake in reverse. It was never perfect, and probably always did some harm along with the good, but its real arc of progress over time has been, from useful, entertaining and good, increasingly towards the sordid and the evil. And from all observation that arc will probably continue long into the future.

Time changes everything.