Every society needs rules, ways to enforce these rules, ways to teach these rules, and ways to get people to align to common objectives.
Throughout history societies have used religion as a way to do this. Every society usually had one official religion that was used in this way: ancient egyptians, ancient greece, roman empire (first a religion copied from greece, later replaced by christianity, where the center of christianity was actually moved to rome), european kingsdoms with different versions of their official christian religions, and other countries throughout the world.
It's a pretty simple mechanism: follow our rules, god sees everything, if you don't follow the rules you will be punished, i.e., go to hell, if you follow the rules you will be rewarded, i.e., go to heaven.
We do the same thing with children in the hope that they'll listen to their parents: if you are a good boy/girl you get presents from sinterklaas (santaclause), if you are bad you will be be punished. Dutch santaclaus will take the bad children to spain, which is our version of hell ;-)
Funny thing is that children around the age of 8 will be smart enough to understand that they've been lied to and that santaclaus doesn't exist, whereas with religion some adults never get to this point of enlightenment.
Throughout history societies have used religion as a way to do this. Every society usually had one official religion that was used in this way: ancient egyptians, ancient greece, roman empire (first a religion copied from greece, later replaced by christianity, where the center of christianity was actually moved to rome), european kingsdoms with different versions of their official christian religions, and other countries throughout the world.
It's a pretty simple mechanism: follow our rules, god sees everything, if you don't follow the rules you will be punished, i.e., go to hell, if you follow the rules you will be rewarded, i.e., go to heaven.
We do the same thing with children in the hope that they'll listen to their parents: if you are a good boy/girl you get presents from sinterklaas (santaclause), if you are bad you will be be punished. Dutch santaclaus will take the bad children to spain, which is our version of hell ;-)
Funny thing is that children around the age of 8 will be smart enough to understand that they've been lied to and that santaclaus doesn't exist, whereas with religion some adults never get to this point of enlightenment.