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I will answer this question from the point of view of social sciences. Religion as an institution of spiritual and social life performs the following functions and solves the following issues in society:
First, religion answers the question of how the world works. For a person still unfamiliar with scientific discovery, unfamiliar with the laws of nature, the basis of being remained an important question. Why and how does our world exist? Why is it raining? Where did man come from and why does he speak and think, but other species seem not to? Religion answers such questions through the supernatural (with the help of God, magic, spirits, or a common ancestor).
Second, religion removes the existential horror of human life. On the one hand, we can't predict what will happen tomorrow, in a week, in a year, or in eight years. On the other hand, the outcome is clear to us. It is immutable. Everything ends in death, but we don't know what's going on abroad. Religion copes with this fear by using myths about the afterlife, paradise, and Valhalla.�
Third, religion cements society through ritual. It serves as a unifying element for a tribe in which blood ties are beginning to weaken.�
Fourth, religion is a system of first taboos – a system of first social norms designed to regulate, at first, the simplest aspects of society's life. First of all, the system of prohibitions concerns sexual regulation: for example, the prohibition of incest, marriages between relatives. Then there are prohibitions on parricide and fratricide, the obligation to listen to and honor parents, etc.
Any authoritative religion answers three main questions::
Who is God
Who is a person (in the sense of relationship with God: servant, slave, son ,spiritual particle, etc.)
How a person can reach God (rituals, spiritual practices, prayers, etc.).
By solving these questions, a person attains spiritual happiness.
Religion allows a person not to think. This is a simplified worldview. Everyone gets questions sooner or later: who are we, where did we come from, and how did this world come about? The answers to them are found in the natural sciences, most of them are very complex and contain a large amount of literature. It's hard to master it right away. Religion offers a simple version, ala ” and God created people.” Leaving no questions, everything is black and white and elementary. For fools. Our development is our choice: someone knows and understands complex scientific postulates, and someone is forced to be content with stupid, savage, primitive ideas.
Religion initially presupposes the presence of free will. The natural-scientific view of man, rather, indicates that free will is just an illusion. Experiments have long been conducted that show that the brain makes a decision and begins to prepare to act before a person realizes their choice (in about 4 seconds). In this sense, consciousness serves only as an interpreter and does not participate in decision-making. This, by the way, is clearly visible in manic-depressive psychosis. Depression, for example, quite often provokes ideas of self-blame, and mania (pathologically elevated mood) makes a person do the stupidest things, which later, when he comes to, he will bitterly regret. It turns out that it is enough to change a person's mood to make him perform inappropriate actions.
In general, it is not very pleasant to think about such things. And religion provides a simple answer, just as it does to the question of the meaning of life.