That&#x27;s a rather naive, if popular, view of religion.<p>Probably made even more popular by the fact that in the US any kind of fringe BS can pass as a religion, from Scientology to what have you.<p>And by fringe I don&#x27;t mean less true in the &quot;god exists&quot; way (well, he doesn&#x27;t exist, at least not in any religious guise), but less historically established and having served an important societal role.<p>Because religions were an early cultural framework for formulation of a code of ethics, building ideas about society, life, etc. That we today deem some of those ideas bad doesn&#x27;t mean they were bad when they formed (or even now), or that they didn&#x27;t play an important (positive I mean) role in society&#x27;s development.<p>(The inverse idea is usually based on two naive beliefs: religious people were just dupes manipulated by priests, and religion is useless since its myths don&#x27;t correspond to objective truth).<p>Heck, there are even evolutionary studies on the benefit of religion to human development...