Theism is literally childish

[The Grand Nudger]

It's working as intended, in that regard, to increase cultural commonality by deference to a filial authority.  The end result is supposed to be cohesion, and it works until it doesn't.  

Unfortunately, even when it works, there are side effects.  The minds of those indoctrinated are palpably stunted by the process, but only insomuch as we now see those subjects it's coopts as indicators of maturity.  When people only lived to be 35, tops...speed of conformity was more important than a meaningful understanding. This expressed itself then (and now) as a fundamental difference between the laity and the priestly caste.

The shaman, or any mature adult..really, would always have a host of better reason for why "thou shalt not kill" than "because the great spirit said so" - the former is simply more important than the latter in light of the fact that we are capable of murder long before we understand it's consequences, and always have been. It makes sense to leverage predictable human deference in those cases..and particularly when group numbers are low and conflict (intra and extra) is a credible threat. The impulse and the formation of a system that leverages that impulse cannot be understood apart from the setting of it;s earliest representatives. Ourselves, no longer living our lives in that way, in that environment..might find it inexplicable today, but that;s only because of our privileged place in history. An aversion to the lesser of two evils when one of them is no longer necessary or even relevant. Why would I actively stunt my childs maturity without compulsion?

The answer for most..today, is the compulsion of tradition..and that tradition has been fetishized. Like so many things became divorced from their underpinnings long ago..and not at all unlike the ceremonial swords and spurs that modern cav units wear. The ceremonial dress of today's cav units wouldn't even have made sense on their ancestral battlefields. Similarly, encouraging divisive, delusional and paranoic beliefs and behavior in children was not the aim or the conceptualization of theism then, and would not have been a good idea then. It was a list of taboos within a family. It's since -become- a taboo between families. It stunts us in all the wrong ways, today. In the begining, so to speak, the payoffs for theism were huge and the cost negligible. The situation has since changed, and changed so meaningfully that there is no payout, and the cost has become immense. It would not have come as a surprise, in the grey area between modernity and history, to find that the most theistic societies were more cohesive than their prehistoric counterparts (and so more successful). One only has to read the news to see that this is no longer the case. That gods have been fetishized beyond the point of utility and deeply into useless and harmful ceremony....and all that remains is the childish response of the stunted.