Religions origins.

This came up in a debate, and I thought it worth posting. A bit long, sorry, but you may be bored over the next couple of days.

Most theories of religion's history, and its early evolutionary origin, seem to miss one big elephant in the room. Which is that, the need, which religion is most designed to answer, is not that of, health and long life, living together without conflict, nor even remotely, long term survival. But it originally existed mainly to answer, by far the biggest and overwhelming human need of all, the need to avoid boredom. Before tourism, TV, and film etc., by far the greatest use that people make of religion, myth and story telling, even more than all its other uses together, was simply that of amusement. Myth and stories occupy down time, with interest and excitement, and most religious rituals are designed primarily as theater for amusement.

And not long ago, amusement came to be needed ever more, following the agricultural revolution. When an ape, who was adapted to the endless variations of hunting and gathering, came to swap those for either the drudgery of farming, or becoming one of the small number of, (Largely males.) who thanks to the new wealth agriculture created, found themselves, both very rich and very idle indeed. As no hunter gatherer could ever be.

Which often sadly, despite the glorification of kindness that many religions pretend, means that our boredom, more than anything else, drove them to extremes of cruelty, bullying, exploitation and even violence. Which things, religion, as the great provider of entertainment, renders easy, by acting as a great enabler, (As in pimp.) so that crude things are made much easier to access, than finding more kind, intelligent and even, sometimes, less self harming, but more challenging, forms of entertainment.

The misogyny, for example, found in many theist religions, is no doubt the result of pandering to bored, idle and stupid, rich men. Who, since they no longer needed women, mainly, as equal partners in the hunting, and survival. Now thought that they could turn them into toys for amusement, to be bullied and sexually exploited, because lacking imagination they could think of nothing more useful to do. And what better weapon to use, to gain those ends, than mental indoctrination. The power of religion in other words.

Theism was originally, and is still largely today, part of the of the entertainments economy, and often, despite its pretensions, at the bottom end of that industry. Getting your political and moral values from it, is therefore, is really very like, getting them from B. movies and porn sites. You may find a few good moral lessons there, but a lot more which is not so good.