Religion and Social Evolution

Religion as defined by many is a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny. Some define it as an institution to express belief in a divine power. One more definition which includes most of the variations is from wikipedia:
"Religion is commonly defined as a group of beliefs concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the moral codes, practices, values, institutions and rituals associated with such belief. It is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system. In the course of the development of religion, it has taken many forms in various cultures and individuals."
Religion played a major part in uniting diverse small societies and helping in peaceful existence. Initially, faith or worshiping a god or gods was limited in smaller societies and served as to provide some rationality to the existence. As initial societies had a very close relationship with their surrounding nature, their deities were mainly derived from the nature only. Sun, trees, fire, wind, rocks and water were essential part of their religious practices. As the development of language, it became easier to propagate one faith from one group to another. Also with this competition arose rationalization by illusion or fantasies. People, in quest of proving their faith to be superior to others, turned to fantasies and used arguments based on just imagination.
Before, talking more about religion, I should go back on the emergence of human settlements and differentiation between public and private. In apes, there is not much difference between public and private domain. Apes share everything with group and sometimes use force to increase their share. Sometimes, they also show meanness in reserving some new food find for themselves. In terms of relationships, they have strong hierarchy system. This system is mainly decided by force, meaning powerful apes are regarded superior that their weaker counterpart. Females mostly are not part of this system and their social standing is determined by the standing of their male mate. In most of the apes, there is no definite pairing thus all males and females are free to have relation with anyone. In some apes, like baboons, couples have lifelong relationships. The need of pairing can be considered as a solution to provide care for infants. An infant needing more help in its development requires support from its parents and group. Human infants for a long duration are completely dependent on their parents. Group can't provide personal care for this long. Marriage or socially acceptable pairing evolved as a mean of providing more care to the human infants. When settlements started evolving, ownership of land and property became major issue. Society started recognizing private space and boundaries between public and private was introduced. Conflicts between two parties on the ownership of a land or property needed to be resolved in social parameters. This need gave rise to a social structure which had some strict set of rules agreed by all and to be followed by all.

Religion became a tool to solve the conflicts between two parties in initial human settlement. Priest or whoever considered as an authority figure on religious practices, became powerful and was regarded with respect from followers. In earlier towns, priest evolved into a ruling class and they started using religion as a tool for rationalizing their authority over others. These towns were agricultural societies and spread over some specific fertile regions. As the interaction between these societies increased new communities like traders evolved. Wars also became more frequent and a separate warrior class evolved in some societies. People of one faith spread their religion by means of war or trade. Initially, cause of the wars was territorial rights, religion was used only as a mean to provide law and divide labor in the society. It was used as only a managerial concept.

As human groups from different regions started interacting, religion became part of person's identity. Different groups trying to prove their superiority over other started using religion as part of this conflict. With the evolution of modern religions, this difference also became more distinct. In some way, modern religions with their differences from other existing religions, provided people a solution to this confrontation of identity. People realized the similarities between different existing religions and it confused them as which version to believe. Modern religions with their strict rules and differentiated identity gave them a moral solution to their ethnic confusion. Modern religion thus evolved were not based on toleration and accepting of different beliefs but were a strict vision of some few, so called prophets or thinkers. They defined their own doctrines to accommodate every human in their time and region. Popularity of these doctrines served as a common medium which united different people, thus reducing confrontations.
Religion was and is evolving as a set of rules and regulations adhered by a society. Modern religions can be compared to corporates [I have also put a post on this topic on my other blog]. In the same context, religions were and are used unite people similar to nationalism. Nationalism evolved recently in Europe as to unite people from multi-ethnic society. Religion and culture are distinct but as the society is developing this difference is subsiding.