By my research, religious is an adjective primarily related to scrupulous, or exact. The popular lexicon generalizes it such that a precise meaning must depend upon its greater context.

My point is, be careful how you evaluate or criticize a subject as subjective as religion; you may appear to practice your atheism religiously.

Persinger induced a magnetic field across the brain hemispheres that gave the religious feeling. How that feeling is interpreted, if it is as God or as ET, depends on the culture.

Hunter Gatherers have the lightest density footprint and have a flat hierarchy , little or no religion and a looser or no specific bonding between children and parents( unstratified) .They are the baseline of our evolution.
Tribes have lineages ( requires a strong child-parent bond) and require alot of co-operation ,leadership , division of clans = hierarchy ) to compete with other tribes ( high population density) .Hunter Gatherers skim of the landscape and can only exist in a low density pattern.

The Toba event caused the population worldwide to decrease synchronously 60k years ago
and the population increases thereafter synchronised the rise of religions/civilisations
to the last 30k years as population densities recovered.

The first border war we fight as individuals is for the personal/self space we feel that
is ours.An authority figure will puncture this space and demand modulation to your behavioural
output ( the same pathway that makes you vunerable to hypnotherapy in later life…I’m sure Hunter
Gatherers are not hypnotizable ).This involves a loss of self and a gain for the larger group.
The benefits to the larger group eventually accrue back to the individual..which is why religion is so sucessful..This border skirmish is usually a singular event and the parent always win .They are larger physically ( as is God) , all powerful as compared to the child ( as God is), and can punish and withhold their love…all attributes of Gods.
If the insecurity of that breach causes you to seek more security , you are a right -winger ( good for the group).
If it causes some insecurity but only enough for you to despise the cause of the insecurity..
you will become a revolutionary , anarchist anti-authoutarian personality ( no good for
the group).If the insecurity leaves you in neither camp..you can empathise both ways ..you become a
liberal.
If you seek spirituality from a sense of weakness within..you will seek the comfort of the
the establised ‘ church’.This is a religious person in the fullest sense ( a follower , never a prophet)
A spiritual person …has a sense that the locus of the events that matter in a religious sense…are
within them selves..( quite correctly) and not in institutions..more the individual.
These people are irrelevent to the group hierarchy but become nucleators when a large grouping needs to re-align and politically re-define itself.These spiritiual nucleators are always around , but at oppurtune times , the larger group will re-orient itself using a nucleator …a new prophet is born.

The left+up vs the right+down arena of the brain and the relationship of these two are the backbone
for this interplay .

I think the social vs individual can be a bit of a mistake. Human babies being so dependant we are a tribal species. The personal spirituality is often affected by language, social views of what is real (even if a sub-cultures views). As soon as the spiritual affects the social it starts becoming ‘religious’.

These are my thoughts. Keen to hear other’s.

Religion positively promotes and is initially created by close proximity living…such as Caves , or in resource dense areas that can sustain higher densities.
The child is denied free will and has to succumb to a hierarchy through intense parental subjugation.
The loss of free will is compensated by a population that can bear to live much more closely to each other .Emotional outbursts from close living could increase violations of the moral codes. Moral codes ( being innate )are re-ratified through taboo and ritual.That inner repressed self is allowed to burst out / channelled towards a ‘parent God – sinful child who can become good ‘ narrative…the inner child can re-channel the damage done by the branding done by the parent by loving an outer parent…invisible …but very apt for a love that was lost in childhood and kept unconscious.( invisible itself )…
The upshot is higher densities , stratified societies.Very sucessful.So sucessful that they can sustain Atheism…a reaction against that parental authority paradigm or just open defiance from individuals who have a need to express their non- belief….only possible in societies that have grown beyond the sustenace of the religion paradigm and are generating new paradigms.
But when societies fail…its religion that comes back.
We see reason everywhere as we move away from childhood .We serialise , intentionalise everything.
The kernel of emotional damage is never fully assimilated and we are forever projecting it outwardly…so our emotions become to flavour the outer world as they are left orphaned within us….
So we see intentionality in animals and the Sun and rain…..
The inner damage also causes us to seek more security amonsgt each other and that positively re-inforces the hierarchy.
The left brain -right brain hierarchy is the first hierarchy that is the cornerstone .The parent affects the emotional right side and effects changes in the left brain…hence re-inforcing a naturally occuring hierarchy.The right brain spills over into the outer world and the left brain channels new explanations that help it cope ( intentionalizing the inanimate..idols..sun moon….and the animate….animals ) .
Those that are left feeling insecure from the parental ‘conditioning’ seek more security and become ‘conservatives’….those that have a more fluid relationship with both cerebral hemispheres ..can become liberals.Those that have an emotional sides that career wildly within ..uncontainable by the left brain..are potential prophets.
Smaller religious societies require a higher proportion of rightwingers.When they get incredibly sucessful…they need liberals to occassionaly steer them onto novel or new paths ( social democracies).
Sorry if it bit waffly.
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