I think religion is only a set of rules teleologically designed to hold a society of people together into performing lawful and supposedly ethical acts and thoughts. The promise of a heaven and the warning of a hell, are but, it’s tools.
Ponderings of a Thinker
I think religion is only a set of rules teleologically designed to hold a society of people together into performing lawful and supposedly ethical acts and thoughts. The promise of a heaven and the warning of a hell, are but, it’s tools.
Meditations 
So you see take the social view on religion? Have you read Durkheim?
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Are you saying that religions deontological rules have a teleological use? So while you are aware of your duty to a god, the real purpose of your belief is social coherence? Durkheim and many others held that view. It doesnt take into account the personal motive, but invents an allknowing designer of religion who has intent. But of course religious people themselves often defend the social usefulness of religion when the truthclaims doesnt hold up. In view of better forms of rule, like democracy, that stance is easy to criticize.
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I think they do have such a use, even if it might not be the only use. Even the fact, as you mentioned, that religious people themselves defend its social usefulness, adds weight to it. And of course the stance is easy to criticize now, but now is not the time when religion first came into picture.
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Actually now is also the time when religion comes into the picture. People still invent new ones and reinvent old ones. Often they use old arguments that should have been disposed of ages ago. The social usefulness of religion is one of them. Its strange that there are those who actually think the laws of moses are superior to modern laws when it comes to create social coherence. Higher theology often takes bible criticism and such into account, but the average worshiper still uses the first mover argument for example. One might imagine that religion is slowly suffocating by the advances of every science, that it is forced to deal more with metaphysics than with matters of fact and the rule of law. But not if people educationally remain in the middle ages. Some things are easy to criticize but not as easy to erraticate.
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Perfectly true! That is perhaps one of the major problems involved with the entire belief system concerned here. The teleology does not hold completely true in the present age as much as it would have perhaps held centuries back. Notwithstanding, we take that the probable delusion of social usefulness is one of the methods of defending its existence in the present day.
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