I didn’t used to understand foreign involvement in wars, like the whole America-Vietnam shenanigans. But I can see why after watching this Israeli Palestine Conflict since birth.
But now it’s like watching two children fighting over who’s sandcastles can be built in the sandbox. And what do we do if children can’t learn to share? You take away everything and no one is happy.
So is that what this is going to come to? Do adults need to intervene to quell the infants?
I think the cycle is something like this Assholes want power over others > they invent religion, which conveniently gives them power > stupid people, content being told what to do accept religious bullshit > said stupid people push religion on their children > new crop of credulous people is raised > assholes want power over said idiots >… Religion… > stupid people, content being told what to do accept religious bullshit…
It’s a bit more complicated than that, as typically religion developed initially as an adaptive social evolution.
For example, early attempts at transitioning to agriculture failed because of a lack of sanitary practices, so disease ran rampant. Much later on when the transition happened again, it was around societies that had developed ideas around the importance of burying the dead, or burning the leftover parts of butchered meats “for the gods.”
What you see more is evidence of alterations to religions in order to protect authoritarianism.
A good example of this is Deuteronomy 21:1-9.
The foundational ritual is one where when there was an unknown murder, the elders of the closest town needed to sacrifice one of its cows. From a sociological standpoint, this created a communal shared cost on unsolved murders occurring.
But notice what happens in 21:5.
Literally in the middle of the elders standing in the water breaking the neck of the cow, the priests - sons of Levi - show up to remind everyone that they are the ones chosen to perform rituals and pronounce judgement. And then in the very next line we’re back to the elders and the cow in the water.
This line was probably a later addition to an earlier elder-driven ritual following a social shift to a priesthood based on ancestry controlling the religion.
There’s a ton of things like this.
So religious practices developed from causes ranging from OCD to social evolution, and then those practices eventually get reworked to support the authorities, and then the continued survival of those religions tend to reinforce authoritarianism even after the original authorities are long dead.