What functions does religion seem to serve?
These are not really new, but looking at religious belief and activity, I think there are four major components: it lends coherence to a complex world; it enormously improves psychological well-being; it produces social bonding, creating a sense of belongingness, being part of a community; and last but not least, it enforces conformity – the hellfire and damnation component. Some of these come from within, some from without. Freud mused that these components affect our behaviour in the real world by helping us to step back and cope with its awfulness, tsunamis etc, by providing an interpretative or predictive framework. This ability to assess and survive is uniquely human, without it we might be tempted to look for the nearest cliff. So what does religion do for us? Depressingly for those who are not religious, it seems that there are huge payoffs to being in a religious framework. This has much more to do with the mind state of being religious, and of being part of a community, rather
