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All living beings live by two simple rules : 1. Survival of the Self. and 2. Survival of the Species. Animals fight physically for survival. Man having a developed brain has invented ideas which enhance his and ultimately human survivability and religion was one of them. Science is his latest idea and as it develops and prooves its effectiveness may replace religion. There is nothing divine about religion and it is just another survival strategy devised by man. Religion originated when they started burying animals with bodies. It was evident that they had started believing in an afterlife and buried the animal to help the dead in the afterlife. Religion overcame the harshness of reality in ancient times where mortality was high by providing inspirational stories/myths and faux plausible explanations of natural phenomenon to prevent people from tiring their brains by overthinking on these topics. There was no science for man to investigate nature and yet there was all this world in front of him begging for an explanation. Religion brought in myths and stories of origin so that ancient man could get on with life. All ancient peoples grouped together in small horticultural societies worshipped women and fertility because that was where more help was going to come from - necessary since mortality was high. This led to hedonism and later when organised religion sought to unite men and synergize their energies they had to break the power women had over men. This is why in almost all major religions women are marginalized and in some veiled. In modern times in prosperous societies it is no longer necessary to unite men against some common enemy and hence there is the rise of the feminine. As population increased and with the rise of agriculture mass religion appeared to unite the masses. It is still called the opium of the masses. Many people now with the rise of the information age and the spread of information see that all religions are essentially the same and hence educated societies like Parsis worship Ganapati and Hindus visit Mount Mary. Spirituality will become man's next frontier after he develops spiritual lobes on top of his frontal lobes. This will only happen if spiritually developed persons are preferentially selected as good mating material. This does not seem to be happening as in all religions spiritually developed persons seem to shun the material world and 'samsara'. The change will probably take place when a mutation induces a change in a certain population which enables it to perform miracles and enhance survivability. Such people will then be selected over others as good mating material and very gradually over millenia the whole population will change. Religion has had its run. Science is the new religion.
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