Of religion, god and Anti-depressants

I agree to the comment on religion and it being a survival tool for ancient societies (by anonymous). Religion has helped us at a societal level in many ways. The fear of god has been used by many a king and politician to make the more powerful obey them or their rules, be they good or bad, even if it meant incurring a personal loss. If you want the little guy to obey you, you can always coerce and threaten him into submission, but the big guy wouldn’t give in so easily. For that you need a powerful ally by you side. So if you are small but smart, make up a powerful god and promptly befriend him. And he who is closest to GOD gets to be the king (alpha male, whatever). The rest would now follow him and his rules or face the wrath of the super natural being and its mysterious magical powers. The subsequent good effects of the 'adhering to the rules' would only enhance people's belief in god/s and the idea that if you follow god's rules, he shall reward you, whatever.

BTW once you come to power, you should make up monotheism, so that no one else can make up any other god more powerful than yours, or worse make up two. You let him do that and you are sure to be dethroned, and burned for the appeasement of the wining gods.

Anyway - religion has made us all aware that a society is better off with rules.

And the belief in god has ‘helped' many at the individual level too. It is like a psychological crutch for the less brave, who can not face up to life in the real universe. They must find a way to escape from reality when things go very 'bad n sad' in life so as to prevent a total melt down. A belief that they have an all powerful ally does help such people confidently face their many fears, fears of what calamity they might face in the ever opaque future.
Many a drug can do that today, better and with lesser side effects too. Maybe the god worshipers may want to change over to worshiping tablet strips of their choice- Prozac, Ecstasy, other anxiety relievers, anti depressants etc, etc.
Believing in gods has helped us a lot, and it has hurt us a lot, but that does not make a god come to life.

The belief in god is real, not god itself. God by itself is not good for society, but RULES ARE.

Also maybe we are at a time now when at least at the societal level, we don't need the fear of god to make us follow the rules of civics / laws anymore. We can choose to make and follow them with the conscious knowledge that it is good for us. To enforce them, we have our governments and the police. The biggest defect in most god based religions is that, in order to be enforceable on the weak and also the powerful in a society, and to prevent itself from being corrupted by shrewd people for their own selfish ends, it had to be suitably rigid, unchangeable. And that is the very seed of fundamentalism. Total rigidity prevents any corruption, but also prevents any scope for improvement either. Islam is a prime example. The more corrupt the people in a society, the more unbending its rules must be, to be effective or last for long. A religion that allows for change but strictly by some criteria defined for making possible changes would be improvable but still be immune to corruption. But that would require the followers of such a religion to allow for changes to be introduced by mere humans, and not just by gods.
That missing criteria I think is REASON.
That is – the reason for having rules at all, which to me is to make the people in a society more peaceful, progressive and happy.
Any rule of that hypothetical religion, existing or proposed, must now be shown to promote peace, progress and happiness. We could of course call it by the more modern word - CIVICS, which it is.