Religion: a tool for the ruling class to keep the population under control?

[Tartarus Sauce]

Organized religion essentially began as a codification of state authority. Historically, civilizations that attained categorized social hierarchies and complex political machinations adopted religions that were sanctified by the state and became extensions of their will. From the Egyptian pharaohs personifying a literal bridge between humans and the gods, to the Chinese "Mandate of Heaven" claiming emperors were picked by the divines to rule justly and fairly, to the government decrees on animal sacrifices in Rome and human sacrifices among the Aztecs, to the intermingling between the Catholic Church and feudal kingdoms in medieval Europe; organized religion has acted as a vessel for the state's agenda. It's only been in the past few centuries that we've begun disentangling the two.

Unorganized religion on the other hand, dates back way beyond written records or the formation of states, and was definitely not formulated as a tool of control. Human predilection for spirituality is a combination of the way our brains are wired for both interpreting the external world and our socializing tendencies. Our brains are predisposed for pattern seeking and attributing agency to external actions. You can find this embedded in the philosophical problem of other minds, except instead of asking how do we know other minds exist, refocus the question to ask why we're inclined to assume other minds exist to begin with. It's because our brains are wired to attribute consciousness and agency to others to facilitate our socializing tendencies, so hardwired in fact that we sometimes attribute agency where there is none. That tree that fell on top of your friend and killed him after he chopped it down? That wasn't a random act of physics, that was a the will of a nature spirit punishing him for his transgression. This is also why coincidences are frequently described as "eerie," because we're predisposed to assume a type of purpose is guiding such events.

Once you've established the beliefs, social rituals will almost inevitably generate in its wake. This is to be expected of creatures as socially inclined as us, since we find all sorts of means through which to facilitate social bonding and forging collective identities, and religion is no different in this regard. It's hardly surprising that states have historically predicated their existence through religious justifications, at which point the pre-existing belief systems were co-opted to function as an arm of the government. Instead of identifying with your tribe through your religion, all of the sudden your religion identifies you with a nation, and that produces loyal subjects to your rule because they view it as authentic.