Essay written for the course "Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences" at Rutgers - New Jersey State University taken at Coursera.

1. Religion as an amalgam of societies
Luiz Guilherme Leite AMARAL1
It is understood by many authors and scholars that religion is, at the very least,
a common compound when in the early formations of different societies. When you
cross subjects such as History, Sociology and Anthropology, you can grasp a more
comprehensive concept on how tribes became neighborhoods, and neighborhoods
became cities and so forth, as well as how religion was an amalgam for this entire
process.
The main purpose of a religion is to keep people united and focused on
common purposes, such as fairness and stability, and those things are operated by a
system of obedience and reward that disguise a kind of control over a society that
aims to a balance. For example, early tribes knew all along that if a person steals from
his neighbor, this will create a sense of instability. In other works, the sense of
survival may be jeopardized because justice itself begins to lose its meaning. The role
of religion, in this case, is to make these people understand that there is as invisible
punishment that cannot be controlled by humans, so the system that operates with
obedience and reward starts to shape up and have a huge influence on people’s
behaviors. As a matter of fact, balance has everything to do with survival.
Another role for religion is to suppress human failures and ignorance. This is
easy to recognize when you understand how religious minds work. For example: there
are some Brazilian Indian tribes that believe that the Sun is a god and the Moon is
another god. When rain pours down, they believe that the gods are mad at them for
some reason, but when the sun comes and gardens begin to grow, they take the
assumption that the gods are happy. Settling in land drives to pattern recognition, but
those patterns cannot be fully explained because there isn’t enough knowledge – or
science – for such. So, a god being happy or sad makes more sense when you can’t
explain some phenomenon because that particular knowledge is based solely on
beliefs and shallow reckoning. A woman coming out of a man’s ribs makes more
sense. To die and meet the relatives makes more sense. This is all about desires, or,
how our ancestors wanted us to believe things are.
Societies became more structured throughout the years, and so have evolved
our knowledge about nature. We know now that rain is part of a process, which the
water is renewed by different stages. We also know how a person is born, or how our
own species came to be through natural selection. We came to a point where science
and religion aren’t even two sides of the same coin, and what is sad: religion isn’t as
strong to maintain our societies balanced. The fact is that our societies have become
far more complex to fit in religious dogmas, and that may lead us to rethink how we
relate to magic thoughts.
1
Regular
student
on
the
Master’s
in
Communication
and
Culture
Program
at
University
of
Sorocaba,
Brazil.
Ministry
of
Education
CAPES
scholarship
granted
in
March
2015.