Religion as an amalgam of societies

Luiz Guilherme Leite AMARAL1

It is understood by many authors and scholars that religion is, at the very least, a common compound when in the early formations of different societies. When you cross subjects such as History, Sociology and Anthropology, you can grasp a more comprehensive concept on how tribes became neighborhoods, and neighborhoods became cities and so forth, as well as how religion was an amalgam for this entire process.

The main purpose of a religion is to keep people united and focused on common purposes, such as fairness and stability, and those things are operated by a system of obedience and reward that disguise a kind of control over a society that aims to a balance. For example, early tribes knew all along that if a person steals from his neighbor, this will create a sense of instability. In other works, the sense of survival may be jeopardized because justice itself begins to lose its meaning. The role of religion, in this case, is to make these people understand that there is as invisible punishment that cannot be controlled by humans, so the system that operates with obedience and reward starts to shape up and have a huge influence on people’s behaviors. As a matter of fact, balance has everything to do with survival.

Another role for religion is to suppress human failures and ignorance. This is easy to recognize when you understand how religious minds work. For example: there are some Brazilian Indian tribes that believe that the Sun is a god and the Moon is another god. When rain pours down, they believe that the gods are mad at them for some reason, but when the sun comes and gardens begin to grow, they take the assumption that the gods are happy. Settling in land drives to pattern recognition, but those patterns cannot be fully explained because there isn’t enough knowledge – or science – for such. So, a god being happy or sad makes more sense when you can’t explain some phenomenon because that particular knowledge is based solely on beliefs and shallow reckoning. A woman coming out of a man’s ribs makes more sense. To die and meet the relatives makes more sense. This is all about desires, or, how our ancestors wanted us to believe things are.

Societies became more structured throughout the years, and so have evolved our knowledge about nature. We know now that rain is part of a process, which the water is renewed by different stages. We also know how a person is born, or how our own species came to be through natural selection. We came to a point where science and religion aren’t even two sides of the same coin, and what is sad: religion isn’t as strong to maintain our societies balanced. The fact is that our societies have become far more complex to fit in religious dogmas, and that may lead us to rethink how we relate to magic thoughts.

                                                                                                               1  Regular  student  on  the  Master’s  in  Communication  and  Culture  Program  at  University  of  Sorocaba,  Brazil.  Ministry  of  Education  CAPES  scholarship  granted  in  March  2015.